Malarky hanging with the mighty Jamaica Kincaid

I would be thrilled to be on an overdue library book list beside Jamaica Kincaid, so was very happy to find Malarky invoked in a Winnipeg Free Press review of Jamaica’s new novel See Now Then.

Here’s the mention:

“Kincaid draws readers into the couple’s deepest thoughts and feelings as they ponder, as the novel’s title suggests, their past, present and future. In this way, the narrative is reminiscent of Canadian Anakana Schofield’s 2012 novel Malarky, a very different story about mismatched spouses, unhappiness and longing that focuses heavily on the inner dialogue of its characters. That one too was lyrically written, but too peculiar in style to enjoy wide appeal.”

I’ve just started reading See Now Then and ponder it’s curly, exhaling sentences. They perfectly fit the the image of  the roots of a plant or shrub that wraps itself under the soil and around and on and on … very much the way a marriage does. The way peoples lives entwine into and out of and away from, in parallel and back towards. There could be no better form for such a book. It’s a novel to ponder on the sentence level and to meet in the same way its’ sentences greet the reader. They are railway tracks. She manages to create undulating railway tracks where the train (from my reading) does not derail. As I said I’ve only begun the novel, but there’s also an assumptive quality to the text, that has an oration feel to it and such assumptive tone and lift are again the domain, the domicile of marriage. Versions within versions. Chorus. Back to the version.

I default to Blanchot when I talk about this work. Forget the writer’s intention, (who cares whether it is or is not from her life I can find no consideration more tedious) forget the reader’s response, interrogate the text and what’s it offers. What’s there in those words alone, how they sit, why they sit how they do. It’s plenty enough. Even the title gives us this instruction.

épuisé

“Exhausted is a whole lot more than tired. ‘It’s not just tiredness it’s not just I’m exhausted in spite of the climb. The tired no longer prepares for any possibility (subjective): she therefore cannot realize the smallest possiblity (objective): But possibility remains because you never realize all of the possible, you even bring it into being as you realize some of it. The tired has only exhausted realization, while the exhausted exhausts all of the possible. The tired can no longer realize but the exhausted can no longer possibilitate’…”

The Exhausted Gilles Deleuze and Anthony Uhlmann (with Beckett exhausted into it)

“The Arcades of Paris and Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of Cities”

Glad to see Frank Cunningham is coming back to SFU next Tuesday (Room 7000, SFU Harbour Ctr. 7pm) to give this talk. I heard him speak last year on philosophy of the city. The Institute for Humanites organize some fine events & talks in Vancouver, some of my favourites and there’s no old bullshit about them, which is uplifting. Anyone can ask questions without being made to feel like a dimwit. The Institute welcome public attendence and engagement in my experience.

“The Arcades of Paris and Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of Cities”
Abstract: In the 1920’s and 30’s the German philosopher Walter Benjamin began a philosophical study of urban life inspired by the Paris arcades (passages). This paper revisits the still existing arcades referred to by Benjamin to explicate his urban-philosophical methodology and conclusions and to take account of continuities and changes in the arcades, their uses, and environs between his time and that of present-day Paris.

Welcome Cinnamon Sally

We are back to neither here nor there weather. Rain on the road weather. It was so chilly inside I left the apt with two cardigans and a down jacket to discover it was a balmy 8.9 degrees outside.

*

Today there was significant family news. I met the new family addition in Dublin. Alfie Cyril has a four legged cousin and a great, mighty woman she is too. My sister introduced me by Skype to her new dog Sally Cinnamon, a rescue greyhound.

I am not a dog person, but am certainly, as of today, a Sally Cinnamon person. She lumbered over to greet me, laid her chin on my sister’s knee (“it’s a greyhound thing” said her mother) and then did a delightful yogic downward dog stretch. She is massive. Huge. In my opinion. Horsey!  Well compared to Alfie Cyril, a very podgy, hen shaped guinea pig. I had imagined more of Whippet type of dog. They sleep in a very remarkable manner greyhounds, like lounging queens from another century. Do all dogs sleep like that? My sister says she looks like Scooby Doo when she is asleep. I found her very regal, except she stuck half her back legs in her paw print furry basket while the rest of her (and there’s plenty of her) poured out across the rug. Apparently greyhounds are somnolent creatures and can sleep up to 18 hrs per day.

I am going to be knitting for Lady Sally since I think she could use some insulation on her hind humps from the ferocious Cabra wind. Really forget Downton Abbey — Sally Cinnamon in her snood slinking about Cabra will topple Lady Grantham’s mother.

Hot! Hot! Hot! Crew, shoe and Malarky

Possibly by far the hottest place to cover Malarky is Crew Magazine. Crew is a gay magazine for everyone. Sometimes their chesty males flash up in my Facebook feed, along with very fine furniture and the current homepage features some rather ravishing shoes.

I just learned of a piece they generously wrote about Malarky in November of all months. When we were all feeling especially chesty because of that grim weather.

Thank you to Bruce Michael for placing Our Woman right where she belongs between the specimans and the furniture.

Read the piece by clicking the quote here (not entirely sure where I was heading with the chillies…): “Thinking back, she’s eroticizing what she witnesses in a way,” Schofield adds. “It awakens something within her. It’s a bit like foreign food. You either don’t like it or you stuff your mouth with hot chilies or whatever.”

Or click here to see the ravishing shoe if you prefer.

You can hunt for the chesties on your steam.

Sometimes I think it is foggy and I am interrupted in this thinking

There was again a hint of fog yesterday. A friend texted me to report it was rolling up the hill! A most generous gesture. However the fog did not reach our recent fog capacity. By this evening, I exited the Vancouver Art Gallery to the least celebratory of rains. A smearing type of rain, with one redeeming feature. It did not flood your shoes.

*

Today was the final installment of the PuSh Festival project Sometimes I think, I can see you (Mariano Pensotti) that I’ve been working on for the past three weeks. It has been a curious study in response, boundaries, public space, movement, exhaustion, repetition — and most poignantly for me, interruption. What is it for text (created realtime) to interrupt public space and respond to movement, to speculate on that movement or fictionalize it and then or perhaps now contemplate the response to that fiction.  It was diverse and darting the response. From the warm hugs, loud laughter, genuine confidant who would share the other side of “their story” to the restrained, to the affronted, the indifferent, confused and much more inbetween.

I’ll share a moment from today Sunday. A young woman who I had fictionalized on the screen as a skateboarder jumped to her feet, took to the foyer of the VAG and broke out twice in some fairly wild break dancing.

And yesterday, a woman and her daughter passed me on the street on my way to VPL and we exchanged a bit of banter about boots. Later I noticed them walking and watching the installation as I wrote, so I added them into my fiction. Finally I bumped into them again on the third floor at the Human Library PuSh project and we had a great old natter about our various encounters that day: the real and the fictional.

I had multiple experiences with this kind of exchange with members of the public who would chat once I had finished my writing shift and I am grateful to those people who approached and spoke with me so warmly about their experience on the other side of it. Thank you to the public for their collaborative, warm spirit and even to the resistors (or affronted) since resistance or objecitng in itself is a response. It’s a response to public art. It’s a response to the interruption that is public art. And it causes us to examine what we are prepared to be interrupted by? Must interruption have a purpose? What is the relationship between interruption and entitlement? Do the entitled feel they are above interruption? What is the relationship between interruption and social class and how does interruption manifest itself in other parts of the city ? And to return to the project brief what of the silent interrupter, the hidden documenter, what of the surveillance camera or drone? What if the charting is quiet, passive and secret rather than bold and declaratory?

Thank you to the PuSh Festival for including me in this project and to my fellow writers who participated and the volunteers who helped out and the staff at the various locations.

*