Nothing quite so reliable as the insomniac’s weather report!
At 1.07am if you were in the land of slumber I am pleased to report for you it was raining. And a most excellent rain it was too, coming as it did after the 27 degree scorcher of a day. (The employment of the gerund in this sentence is an absolute disservice to the quality and verve of the rain, but the insomniac weather report cannot focus on guitar solo grammar and must remain attentive instead to the finery of nabbing what you are sensibly missing by being asleep).
This is a fresh camping rain without the pain and discomfort of needing to go camping. This rain possesses a sense of contentment rather than entitlement… (the insomniac’s weather report is permitted to give the weather human qualities, since slumbering humans are not awake to dispute it).
A rain of convenience and I repeat finery. A fresh cross breeze included. The kind of breeze a random doorway smoker could absolutely destroy if they stood beneath your window.
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I have been blessed yet again by tripping over literary treasure. This time a 12 cent copy of a book called Lifetime by Scott Sommer. It is sharp, short fiction. No one I’ve asked remembers him. (But those I’ve asked do not live in Brooklyn where perhaps he’s v well remembered) He died of a heart attack at 42. This book was published in (well it lists several dates so am thinking it must be a third printing, the dates offered are 78, 81 and 86. Sommer was a writer who certainly embraced new ways of cutting up his sandwiches. The form of these stories is lively and innovative.
I had the thought as I was struggling to link two back handsprings together (from standing) at gymnastics last night, that it is so much harder to be in the body than the mind.
Might this be age or is it a simple fact?
When you determine to be more in your body, the next day the body protests this determination. But there is the promise of a contraction within all this. And after a contraction comes an exhale, a beautiful pause.
Today’s weather also contains that exhale quality.
Saturday will see the launch of the first in the series of publications for Rereading the Riot Act, (published by Publication Studio Vancouver) a project I curated with Unit/Pitt.
The first publication is by leannej and is called Re-Reading the Riot Act. Cycles One through Five. It’s a wonderful book, I am very excited to have it as our Number One.
Each publication will now form a continued departure in the project. I am conceiving of the publications as remixes. They will be paste-up and delivered as incarnations. I’m quite keen to move away from the sequential delivery of information and ideas. Eclipse has been a strong theme throughout this project, so this will also inform the publications.
The publication process prompted me to reconfigure my conception of essays, catalogues as recordings. I am much more curious about a process that facilitates further response and departure. Outwards rather than backwards. I am grateful for what this challenge to my original idea affords and am looking forward to the dialogue that evolves. I’ve been galvanized researching & noticing the forms of publishing in and around labour, labour activity, recording and documentation related to labour and labour history in this city and province. It’s v rich and I do not understand why it’s become obscured rather than explored.
The Flower Man took a look at my garden plot today and advised me I’d inadvertently turned it into a sponge and this explained why things were not growing as they should, slugs were aplenty and my leaves yellow.
Seemingly the early season disaster with my excess addition of peat was the root of the problem. He pointed this out to me, by plucking the soil and squeezing the water out of it.
I love to get gardening tips. He told me to add some potting soil or a layer of something to dry it out a bit or to hope for a few days heat so it might bake. He also told me he’d been gardening for 25 years and had learnt from his mistakes. His plot looks magnificent but he cited the planting of some kind of lily in the middle as a faux pas. Another gardener gave me the most peculiar bean to try, it is a very long, pointy shape and is flavoured like a radish.
In search of an obscure supplement I went to Kerrisdale today, a place I’ve never been before, aside from teaching in a school in that general area and visiting a friend who lives on the outskirts, I’ve only visited that area of shops there in novels. In reality it reminded me somewhat of border towns in Washington. I managed to get quite lost and was surprised by the volume of traffic and a sign outside one shop announcing the arrival of a green pan. The other thing that perturbed me was the sale of processed marrowfat peas in a tin! Imported of course from England. Wha? Who would seriously shell out $2.49 for tinned, processed, marrowfat peas. I discovered the tinned peas because I’d entered a place that promised “British products” in search of a packet of Jaffa Cakes because my beloved son has become fixated on them due to a podcast he listens to that references them and I’d promised to reveal what they are.
On the shelf were a number of astonishingly expensive teabags ($12 for 80 $9.00 for 40), a bottle of Schweppes Bitter Lemon (er?), tins of treacle, and other unremarkables. The tin of marrowfat peas almost knocked me over. Not least since the best local shelling peas are delicious and in season all over the place. Tea, chocolate I understand but a bottle of Bitter Lemon and a tin of Marrowfat peas …. and what? Lie back and think of England?
On a more remarkable note, there is still a camera shop in Kerrisdale.
On the way home I passed a billboard outside BC Women’s Hospital that read Canada’s Leading Maternity Hospital. Are they recruiting pregnant women to fly in and give birth from other parts of the country? It’s a v odd billboard. What’s the criteria for being Canada’s Leading Maternity Hospital exactly versus any other maternity hospital? And who is it exactly they’re advertising this to? Is it designed to reassure women arriving to give birth … and by this token does the most regressive hospital in the country also have a billboard?
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Certain news events & stories in the last week had me pondering conscience and what of the make up and brains of humans who don’t have one? The rate of sociopaths in the US was quoted at 4 per cent and I can’t imagine it’s that different here. It was v interesting reading descriptions of people with a complete absence of conscience in relation to their behaviour. The advice however was to have absolutely nothing to with a person who matches the description of a sociopath. I wondered about the resultant isolation of that person and how that exacerbates and furthers enables them to carry on mindlessly. But the experts were absolutely clear. Avoid, avoid, avoid at all costs is their advice.
Today I was thinking of how Georges Bataille might reinvent the book review or longer critical essay, integrating new technologies, were he still about and spent some time hunting an edition of Documents from 1929, available entirely on this wonderful National Library of France site.
I drew a blank on my first question, but certainly enjoyed the reading and that interface. (Configure it to full screen scrolling and read it like an ipad book lifting the corner of each page as you wish and zooming in on the particulars).
I also finally after a concerted battle, hitherto recorded on this blog, nabbed the polygamous slug sect leader who has been populating my small community garden plot with the 250 baby slugs I’ve removed by hand. As you can see he/she’s also gourged on my entire planting of beans. Look at the audacious lounge of him …. I was unable to establish whether Apophallation had taken place because I was beset with imminent salty euphoria.
Buried Treasure, resurrected, rerecorded, remixed
Look what I stumbled across today … also includes an interactive game.
eight randomly numbered pages, the text of Jorge Luis Borges’ story The Book of Sand (as translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni), with pictures and animations based on old engravings and photographs. It is, I hope, an intriguing presentation of one of Borges’ lesser-known works. But it also offers a unique opportunity for readers to interact with the story.