file under: almost gone (going home)

in exactly 3 weeks, i will be wrapping up my last shift of the year and preparing for a trip to that Dirty Old Town with N, after which we will spend a handful of days in the frozen northern climes of her youth. then it will be a new year. can you believe how quickly things are coming to a close? december is, like, friggin' tomorrow, yo. i seriously can't believe that shit.

file under: dotted lines visible from space

having lived in this country for just under 3 years, i've got some major background reading to do before speaking with much confidence on the matter, but this whole situation seems to be a deft political maneuver intended to, on one hand, stall a more aggressive proposal from the bloc quebecois while, on the other hand, formally acknowledge something that most people assume to be blatantly obvious (namely, that quebec has a distinct yet amorphous cultural "identity" that is the extension of one branch of this country's co-founding communities).

of course, while harper's acknowledgement avoids any real political or legal transformation for QC (thus far, at least), it does seem to be one of those "gesture intended to signal major break from historical positions" things.

we'll see how quickly and how badly this vague declaration will be distorted by parties eager to expand its scope and meaning before more specific language limits the many possibilities for abuse.

[found this thread later, which has been informative and thankfully not too knee-jerky.]

file under: excerpts against interpretation

part 4, first paragraph:

"in a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art."

part 6, last paragraph:

"interpretaion, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. it makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories."

part 9, last few paragraphs:

"what is important now is to recover our senses. we must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.

our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.

the aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our experience - more rather than less, real to us. the function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means."

and finally, part 10 in its entirety:

"in place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art."

[susan sontag ruled all the way back in 1964.]

how many bands have i been extremely annoyed with because their lyrics are clever or literate while the instrumentation is somewhat unremarkable? is that an unfortunate side effect of the written world reporting upon sound? have i lost hope in music's ability to communicate anything literal and concrete? is that why i'm liking noise so much these days? i'm not sure about any of it.

file under: catching fire

walking to the subway stop early yesterday morning after work, the quiet downtown core was shrouded in the weirdest blanket of fog i've ever seen. where it was thinnest, you could see that the sky was blue above - no clouds to speak of. that made the fog itself look more like smoke from a de-centered fire, like you were walking either into or away from a disaster zone of some kind.

i'm sure it's simply what happens when the air reaches 100% humidity without the usual accompaniment of cloud cover. still, the technical explanation fails to convey the weirdness of the phenomenon, because that shit was seriously bizarre.

[update tuesday morning: about 8 photos of the fog can be found here.]

file under: an evangelical vision of geopolitical redemption

after reading an excellent history of the players involved, i still had one lingering question: how could so many bright, ambitious, politically-seasoned people, who have been advocating action in iraq for about 30 years, have failed so miserably to anticipate the difficulties of their pre-emptive aftermath?

here's the best answer i've come across yet.

[and while we're on the subject, who do we google to find a well-reasoned argument for the necessity of the war, now that no one is even pretending there were WMD's or any link to the events of 9/11? the best i can find is an "it was inevitable" defense from my usual source of contrary opinion (and even he stopped "restating the case for war" after nov. 2003, apparently). i hope something out there is more compelling than that, because "inevitability" certainly doesn't go very far in justifying the unilateral rush to disaster that ensued. or is it simply that even the pro-war types have accepted that this whole endeavor can't be justified and that there's no point in talking about reasons anymore?]

file under: yes, virginia, there really is a thanksgiving

N was scheduled to work a half-day on thursday, which means we both knew she'd be gone before i got home. that, in turn, meant that i wouldn't see her until i woke up thursday evening.

and that's basically what happened: i finally got out of bed a little after 7pm and then, on my way to the bathroom, noticed that there was ALL KINDS OF DELICIOUS FOOD in the kitchen! like, actual thanksgiving-type delicious food! wow! for a second there, it felt more like christmas, like waking up to bing crosby on the radio and presents under the tree waiting to be unwrapped.

N had orchestrated the whole thing (secretly, as is her wont sometimes) at least a few days ahead of time, obscuring the groceries as best she could in the fridge and on our makeshift "pantry". the scheduled half-day of work even fit in, as she'd be home in the early afternoon, all the better to get everything together while i coma'd away in oblivious slumber. how perfect!

and it was. we flew to seattle for the canadian thanksgiving weekend in october, so i was already resigned to foregoing the holiday completely this year (which, for just 2 people, can be an easy resignation to forego). but we still had turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, and even (perhaps most amazingly) pumpkin pie, something our high-end supermarket hasn't carried all year (not even during canada's own thnxgiving, much to our surprise and disappointment).

for that gift of unexpected holiday cheer, and for every other day that we spend together, i have to say that i am most gratefully thankful for my wife and for the love she never fails to show me.

file under: also

happy thanksgiving, practicing americans!

file under: hissyfit

one trip with calvin to the vet for his travelling papers, and the halloween image of a black cat possessed by some unholy power makes perfect sense.

seriously, i've never heard a domestic housecat make noises like that before. it was both extremely hilarious and also quite mortifying - the vet at one point apologized because he clearly would be unable to thoroughly examine the howling, hissing, thrashing demonspawn we had brought to him at 9:45 in the morning. what could i do but apologize to him, hoping to indicate that we weren't actually condoning or (god forbid) instilling this kind of behavior.

i mean, i knew the anal temperature probe was going to be bad, but the whole examination was so out of control that i didn't even know the probe had happened until N filled me in on it later (i was busy bolting the carrier back together at the time, as they were unable to get calvin out of the thing safely without dissembling it).

on the cab ride home, calvin was slumped against the carrier door, almost nodding off. he'd literally worn himself out struggling for 30 minutes with 2 veterinarians.

this does not bode well for his trip back to nyc in 1 week - i'll have to fit him into an even smaller carrier and try to convince customs that taking him out and inspecting him won't be worth the pain and suffering he will inflict upon them, the poor bastards.

file under: on this day

JFK was assassinated 43 years ago today. to be honest, that never meant much to me. as a kid in the '80s, it felt like a remote event that had been talked about to death. over the last few years, though, it's started to take on more and more weight in my imagination.

and for good reason: an early victory against a scowling nixon on the televised debate, onto camelot, pink pillbox hats, marilyn monroe's birthday serenade (and suicide a year before dallas), the space race, cuban missle crisis, birth of the berlin wall, the opening wound that was vietnam, mobilization of the civil rights movement, not to mention the tragedies of the brothers (another death and chappaquiddick shortly thereafter), even onto the famous torch-passing photo of the president with a young and hopeful william jefferson clinton. there's so much tied into that knot of events! no wonder it's at the center of so much obsessive speculation.

throw in zapruder and the truly shakespearean minor character hand-wringing that was oliver stones examination, (even house of yes, if you like, possibly only for style points) and you have the greatest greek tragedy ever made on american soil.

file under: dérive-ination

one of toronto's distinct urban features are these labyrinths-in-a-teacup (otherwise known as laneways) tucked away in various neighborhoods.

combining the romance of the secret pathway with the voyeuristic pull of private backyards, i instantly fell in love with these endless alleyways and spent much of my first summer here searching out their interconnections and endpoints.

it's easy to forget about them in the late fall/ early winter months; the chill sets in and you're not as inclined to do the dérive, if you know what i mean.

still, i felt a little wistful twinge when i stumbled across this announcement.

file under: caught! fate conspiring

first came this, which i was happy to see in the hometown's free weekly (oddly vexing reader comment included).

but then came this, arrived at quite independently (yet apparently posted not long after the nod from the alibi).

i'm sure there are reasons for such things, like a conference on internetting in the area or something. it's the only connection i can think of between the two photos.

still.... i can't help but feel that this is really a secret sign just for me. but what could it mean? am i supposed to make a sojourn to calgary? for what purpose? is it a destiny thing?

que curiosidad, though. i mean, i've heard about heeding the call and everything, but...

a yodeling sausage?

what could it all mean? i'm at a loss.

file under: kriss krobviouss

upon hearing that ludacris would be hosting SNL a few days ago, i said to nirmala: i wonder if luda, even if it was for just a second, ever thought about going by ridicuris.

har har, right? so imagine my surprise when luda's opening monologue featured keenan thompson playing a childhood friend from the neighborhood named rick barnes... AKA RICK DICULOUS.

coincidence or brainulation? you be the judge.

file under: 2 silents

after finally seeing battleship potemkin, it was hard for me to believe two things:

1) that the film was shot 4 years after nosferatu, which i popped in immediately afterwards in order to kind of compare technical aspects. potemkin may lack some of what can only be described as the charming indie-eaque fx of nosferatu, but it seems to be light years ahead in nearly every other category.

2) that the battleship used in the film was made 20 years before filming began. seriously, the ship looked so modern i had to brush up on such terminology as pre-dreadnought vs. dreadnought battleships during the course of an investigative maelstrom. i'm sure that was part of the allure of basing a propagandistic film around the ship, the tidy historical event of the rebellion itself notwithstanding. using the ship's clean lines and massive volumes as a clear symbol of modernity in the service of communism was a truly masterful touch.

that doesn't necessarily make potemkin a better film (i think they're both incredibly great), but it is staggering to see the obvious differences between the two onscreen. admittedly, that may have to do with the copy of nosferatu that we own more than anything else, as the film's public domain status means the market has been flooded with cheap copies made prior to a restoration it underwent in 1994. in fact, all of the original prints and negatives of nosferatu were to be destroyed as part of a lawsuit settlement with bram stoker's widow! something clearly survived the ordered annihilation, though. much like the undead, IT WOULD NOT BE SO EASILY DESTROYED!

on top of that, the version i saw of potemkin was apparently from a 1976 restoration, so there's that to consider as well. but does that account entirely for the difference? i doubt it.

file under: missing

screaming o.d. was still in the ER when i went back to work the next night. when i first sat down, she was talking about needing to leave because her dog had been alone for the past 3 days without food or water. one of the nurses tried to get her address and possibly the phone number of a friend who could check in on her pet, but she kept screaming, "i don't trust you!" everyone was relieved when she was eventually sedated.

that sorta reminded me of the time (when i worked at the rehab hospital) that the police called because they had busted down the door of a patient's apartment. he was an old guy, 92 or so and more or less senile. he only managed to live alone because his neighbors checked in on him so much. anyway, the police had broken in because the neighbors hadn't seen the old guy around for a few days, so they assumed he had died. he'd actually been with us for around a week by that point, recovering from a broken hip or something (i can't remember exactly). the police put his door back on its hinges and then used that yellow tape to keep others out.

i was trying to find out some kind of contact or next of kin information when he first came in, but all he could tell me was, "there's a chinese man who parks his car in my driveway, but i don't know his name or where he lives." that was literally the first person that came to mind when i asked him who we should put down as his next of kin.

how many of the elderly are that alone in the world, tucked away in their apartments or homes, depending on neighbors to help them get by? i'm sure the statistics are startling.

file under: PTSD (EVNTLLY)

let it be known that last night was, for some unknown reason, the busiest night of the entire year. who would've guessed that a friggin' wednesday of an otherwise mellow week could explode into such disorder and disarray? i can't explain it.

one of the highlights was an attempted overdose patient screaming "heeeeelp meeeeeeee!!!!!" at the top of her lungs for hours (once she revived - around 4:30am). hearing that particular phrase over and over again was more distressing than you might initially think. i mean, it was sincere and painfully desperate.

i don't even know what part of her brain was actually functioning at the time, because she seriously sounded like an animal for long stretches, descending into these weirdly guttural shrieks while crying incessantly. at one point, she yelled out "do you want this to happen to you?!?!?" it was a somewhat sobering question, if you'll pardon the not-quite-right pun.

listening to her completely lose her shit had me wondering how the staff could stay so professional through it all (although most were cursing under their breath as they walked away from the area, to be honest). it's like they took the blanket of weirdness this one particular patient was adding to an already trying evening in stride. maybe it's no big deal anymore for most of them. what would be, at this point?

still, for some reason, a sneaking suspicion came over me as the shift was ending, something that shouldn't be much of a surprise once you stop to think about it.

[also on the way home, gray and rainy yet again, i saw that neighborhood guy i pointed out to N during the summer. he's middle-aged, red haired, i think a little developmentally delayed. he talks to himself and sings very loudly until people are close to him on the sidewalk; then he quickly pipes down or sings softly until they pass. today he was reading an article while he walked, meticulously clipped from some newspaper, like the things CMP used to send me in letters addressed to seattle.]

[also: PF certification came through from the registrawr generale yesterday. that's code talking for a selec-ted audience, but i'm mentioning it because it should be duly noted somewheres.]

file under: hottness

the best thing about sports these days has got to be the blatantly homoerotic release it provides for both "performer" and "spectator". if they were more honest with themselves, i wonder how many in the athlete/fan demimonde would fess up to certain tingly feelings during the post-game shower....

file under: dream of KRS-ONE

my dad and i were supposed to pick up a patient from some local health clinic and transport them "home" (wherever that is). we got into his old blue chevy behemoth and lumbered out in search of our person.

we found the clinic - a set of very 70's one-story brown buildings. inside, we looked over the paperwork and saw that this person lived in "ontario, canada". hey! that works out well, right? how convenient.

my step-sister, kelly, was sitting sideways in a chair in the waiting room. i haven't seen her in about 15 years, so we caught each other up on stuff while the patient was being brought out to us. kelly tells me that she's married to KRS-ONE (??), but that "it's an open relationship." while she's talking, my vision is filled with a b&w image of KRS. i keep thinking, "look at those stringy-ass dreads!" it's not a good look for him, especially in this dream.

[in the real world, kelly called me once when i was living in nyc. she lives in st. louis and has her own business providing security to clubs and hip-hop shows. she had gotten my number from my dad and had called to see if i knew any record producers in new york. apparently, she had branched out in the biz and was looking to promote some local rappers she knew. i think she was disappointed that i wasn't better connected in that area - it could've been that she wasn't aware of my shift in musical tastes since we last lived together (1988? 1989?), and therefore assumed that i still listened to rap almost exclusively.]

file under: incumbents upon us

okay, so it may not have been as suspenseful as super tuesday, but the city-wide elections saw the candidates we vaguely favored confirmed for another term.

locally, that means joe mihevc remains councillor for ward 21. i'm glad for that, actually, if for no other reason than it will mean there will be continued support for transformation of the wychwood barns into community artspace. i can't think of a better usage for such interesting buildings.

file under: first tastes

GC's 4 year old son was apparently looking forward to meeting me because i have the same name as a robot on his favorite tv show. i don't know that he was disappointed, exactly, but i do know that the comic book SD brought for him overshadowed just about everything else in the world for the duration of our brunch.

it was a 100th issue of spider man. in the back, there was a 3 or 4 page x-men adventure included. while the adults chatted and ate, he pored over the pages, asking for explanations when he couldn't quite figure out what was going on in the cells. his father used a fork to illustrate the idea of telepathy (the fork floated in the air, plucked up an imaginary french fry, then swooped towards the boy for him to eat it).

i wondered later whether he'd ever owned a comic book before - we could have witnessed his introduction to the medium (or format, i suppose), which is an oddly sweet notion.

i actually remember the first comic i had. it was an x-men, of course. i hadn't learned to read yet, but i studied those pages anyway. although i built up quite a collection over the following ten or twelve years, i would eventually sell the more valuable ones and give the rest to my best friend, saying they were just turning to paper mush in the back of my closet.

by then, music had replaced their primacy in my life. i would wouldn't really look back to those heady print-smudged days until my early twenties, when zines and alt/indie comics showed up on my radar.

is that a rite of passage for every boy born after 1963?

file under: remember art?

woke up feeling much in need of some artcrawling (despite the shit weather, which was your garden variety dark 'n' dismal), so i headed down to queen street west because after a few years here in toronto i'm still unsure where else to find decent art galleries.

i thought it would be a good weekend to go because it was safe from any first-of or end-of the month puttings up or down of shows, but i was completely ignorant of the fact that it was actually a good weekend to go because it was taafi time.

honestly, i went into the gladstone to check things out, walked up the lovely staircase, then promptly balked at the $7 admission. i know that sucks, but there was enough stuff in the usual suspects to be seen for free (i also poked my head into the solé gallery for the first time, and was impressed by the space, if not so much the art).

i'm sure the gladstone and drake were both serving up some interesting stuff, but i don't really feel too bad about not committing to it today.

while checking out taafi's site after the fact, i was interested to see will munro's name mentioned. he came up in a conversation recently with N because she found out that he is now co-owner of the fabled beaver, which was the proud host of LB and AG's reception last night.

VF has also mentioned him when we were talking about dj nights, and i recall an awesome art installation he had up for while as well. busy-bodies are inspiring!

anyway, being out and going to the regular galleries reminded me that my own artistic output has lapsed beyond the excusable, and that i need to be doing stuff again. so what else is new?

file under: going to the chapel

cheers to the lovely bride and groom!

[photo courtesy miss imperial, who covered the ceremony and reception quite splendidly]

file under: 90

CMP turned 90 years old today. lord, i do love that woman! it will be good to see her again, soon.

file under: demolition redux

i had not heard an ER nurse actually use the phrase "clusterfuck" in terms of the patient load until tonight. and it has indeed been a clusterfuck, from the moment i walked in.

of course, i was already in a bad mood because there were problems with the subway - i had to get off two stops early and hoof it the rest of the way to work (another first - toronto's subway system has thus far proven to be quite dependable).

walking at night through the business/financial district was an unexpected treat, though. the glass and concrete landscape looked so icy and severe. the countless office lights that were left on vaguely resembled stars formed in geometric (corporate?) constellations.

[at this point, i make a subtle reference to the fact that leaving such lights on in office buildings leads to the demise of many birds. i manage to tie that into a reference to icarus, which highlights not only the comparison of the office lights to the sun, but also the notion of icarus utilizing a bird's specialized anatomy - namely, wings - to fly away from the labyrinth he lives in, towards his famously recounted tragedy]

walking from union station also allowed me the opportunity to check in on that demolition site near the hospital. there were worklights trained on the dissembled building tonight, casting the whole scene in this weird, "artificially staged" glow that actually caused me to stop and stare in wonder. it was so quiet, too! maybe that enhanced the posed feel of it all. things are also getting to the point where it really does resemble some kind of ruin nestled amongst a forest of gleaming monoliths - very caspar david friedrich somehow.

file under: the same song

i don't think all the results are in, and i'm not really too optimistic about the outcomes anyway. for sure, some gains were made, but i can't help wondering (in the kind of willful misreading of a song's original subject matter that i am sometimes guilty of), "what difference does it make?"

i know that's a bit too cynical, but i'd rather not get my hopes up just yet.

file under: fingers crossed

needless to say, i'll be holding my breath (and, in the case of some of the tighter races, my nose as well) for the next 24 hours or so.

file under: slippin'

did not get anything done this weekend, really. so what else is new?

it's like that line in a song i like more than i probably should:

maybe, someday / i'll be more together

file under: dream of john coltrane day

walking down a semi-busy street in a little havana-ish or similar neighborhood (possibly in brooklyn/bronx), sunny out, shoeless and wearing shorts for some reason. it’s late afternoon, 4pm or so, and i’m coming back from some obligation. there is a lot of music coming from various sources: radios on streetcorners, apartment windows, passing cars. i turn up a particular street and walk past 2 older men playing jazz on a record player right next to the sidewalk. it’s very 60’s, flighty, atonal, freeform-like jazz, maybe a version of “take five” (a song which i actually kind of hate – in real life, N and i were listening to a reggae version of it on that recent trojan compilation that dj spooky did, so that's probably how it creeped into my subconscious).

anyway, everything sounds so good that i decide to walk into the middle of the street, where the music is louder/loudest. i start jumping up and twisting around in the air like a total spazz, getting totally caught up in the music and actually getting choked up with joy at SUCH SOUND within the dream, because it just sounded incredible. it’s hard to describe how great it felt, this really nice, ecstatic moment within the dream, tears running down my face and all.

i woke up at about 12:30pm, which is waaaaaaaaaaaay too early for me to be up during the week. it’s the weekend, though, so I need to start switching my sleep schedule around a bit anyway so that I’m not awake all night and asleep all day.

once up, i immediately put john coltrane’s expression on, because I knew it was close to what I heard in my dream (which i had, in the meantime, decided was a sign to think of this day as “unofficial john coltrane day”). hearing it was just what i was looking for.

i’m not even terribly knowledgeable of coltrane’s oeuvre – we have 3 or 4 of his more famous albums (giant steps, blue train, a love supreme, coltrane, basically the usual suspects) and only own expression because i read that it was the last thing he recorded before passing away. i wanted to know if you could hear any of that in his playing, if there was some kind of awareness of the end coming. it can be meditative at times for sure, like a lot of coltrane can be, but it’s also still full of such life and inquisitiveness, “even in the face of death”, i guess. it’s inspiring.

file under: punditry on pause

just finished rise of the vulcans by james mann earlier this evening, and am impressed by both the extensive research and the refreshingly level-headed articulation that went into it. thank god not everything written these days is prone to off-putting hyperventilation (even if said hyperventilation is totally warranted).

i first read about the book in a christopher hitchens article, which might not be the greatest association for some people out there. mister hitchens is one of the few pro-war commentators whose opinion i find thought-provoking and engaging (even though i still manage to strongly disagree with the majority of conclusions he draws), but that's just me. i know opinions on him vary, and his inability to restrain his inner contrarian can be extremely irritating for sure.

anyway, i found the book to be very informative and surprisingly fair (if a bit too forgiving at times). still, definitely recommended for people wanting some real context to go with their current events dissection.

file under: happy dia de los muertos!

enjoy a sugar skull in the graveyard, won't you?

file under: vespers

next to the hospital there's a church, pushed back from the street by a decently-sized expanse of grass criss-crossed with pathways, benches, and a few squat cement tables for chess.

at night, this park-like area is taken over by the derelicts of the area - drunks curled up or sprawled out, dealers and prostitutes in conductio, loiterers and vagrants talking or shuffling around.

there's something about this staging of urban blight that reminds me very much of central avenue in ABQ, which means that i am terribly nostalgic for and extremely fond of it. as dumb as it may sound, it's a texture i need in my life and it's one of the bigger perks of working where i do. standing outside of the hospital at 3 or 4 in the morning (tired nurses on their smoke breaks, sitting on the cement steps) takes me back to my early 20's, when i was getting to really know the shabbier parts of my hometown with shane (ah, shane! i've been missing him so much lately).

i'm not as self-destructive these days, but there are some old feelings inside that still respond to that kind of environment. i don't really know how to talk about it without it being lame or sounding romantic in the worst kind of way - there's just a feeling i get when it's that time of night and i'm outside, like i'm standing on the lip of something vaguely familiar that i've been missing.