Beneath the lakes

This is a film that parallels photos of certain houses and areas, as they were in 1939 in Wicklow and how they are today, sunk in 1940, beneath the Poulaphuca reservoir. Astonishing to realize that 6500 acres of farms, four bridges and I think 75 houses were sunk by said reservoir. In the event of drought would all those buildings and bridges ever be re-revealed?

John Gaughan (RIP)

It is with further sadness I acknowledge the recent passing of my Uncle Johnny last Friday week.

Uncle Johnny was my favourite Uncle when I was nearly seven. (Hence I capitalize Uncle).

May he rest in peace and my thanks follow him into the grave for the Christmas of 1977 when he was so unbelievably kind to us. This was the year my father died. I can still recall the laughter he provoked in us that Christmas. I even recall the slippers I had on my feet as he made me laugh. (Very strange since I can barely recall the slippers I currently have in the hallway).

His sudden loss is very hard on his immediate family and siblings.

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The morale of this post if there is to be any, beyond sadness, is if you’re given the choice between making someone miserable or laughter, I’d opt for laughter since as the above testifies laughter is a long-lasting memory. Thanks Uncle Johnny.

Help

I’m looking for titles about the history of public discourse in Canada. Specifically any historical examination of discourse or discussion on the literary arts. I’m interested in examining the tone of it and whether it has significantly shifted or changed. If you have any suggestions or if you have memories/remarks/thoughts on how it was historically vs is currently, please post them in the comments or drop me an email at mrsokana@gmail.com

I have a title on my shelf that I was examining this morning called Canada — The Middle Power or some such. It is a bunch of papers that were given in Banff in 1965 one of which refers to remarks Churchill made about Canada calling the country the “interpreter” of the US. I will look the precise quote up when I am reunited with the book and post it entirely. (obviously this didn’t go down so heartily with the people he said it to)

Another paper includes the words “peculiar culture” in relation to Ireland.

There is no essay or paper in relation to Canada’s artistic role in the world in the book. Every other role seems included.

Fintan O’Toole published a fine column this week decrying the current debacle in Limerick over it’s City of Culture celebrations. Click this quote to read:

“It bears out a rule of thumb: in Ireland, every public project that is not rigorously thought through will revert to the default habits of machine politics. The City of Culture project has collapsed because no one thought about it properly and no one showed the slightest respect for art and artists.”

Highway sway

Yesterday afternoon saw the arrival of a storm system that culminated after days, if not a century of rain. Friday evening was a fully spiked Pineapple Express, which basically flushed any bird shite off the top of any building, lamp post. It was the rain equivalent of a high speed water flosser. If you had bird shite stuck between your teeth this rain would have freed it. The chimney pots of the city must be sparkling after it.

Yesterday’s storm arrived amid serious flooding on the roads in some parts. I know because I was driving in the middle of it. It was terrifying. In the Southerly direction of my journey the wind was so fierce my car was being blown into the neighbouring lane. I have never experienced wind that could shake the booty of the back wheels of my car. I was panicked. I don’t know how to drive in wind I thought. Do I need to pull over and google it? I slowed down much to pissery of those who clearly either do know how to drive in it or whose cars are of the ten ton variety.

On the Northerly return journey a blinder of a rainstorm added itself to the wind. No visibility whatsoever. Had to perch my head over the dashboard to deal with the glare of the car behind in my mirror.

In between the South and the North journeys, I stopped at a petrol station and chatted with a few fellas who were gathered and we analysed the weather. One was a trucker who had pulled off the highway.  Another fella working at the petrol station generously googled to find out how long the wind warning would be in effect and whether I could sit it out. 1am he said, shaking his head. We had a good laugh and I left fortified. The trucker told me he slows down in these conditions and they all agreed there is no specific way to drive in the wind — except hold on tight.

The journey reminded me of a storm described in one of Alex Leslie’s early stories in her collection People Who Disappear and the interlude at the petrol station reminded me of Jess Walter’s novel The Financial Lives of Poets. This was heartening to be pondering literature amid my holy terror and happy petrol pals.

Caravan: Rashid Jahan

Aamer Hussain documents an extensive article on the work of literary mentor and Urdu writer Rashid Jahan at Delhi-based Caravan magazine. This is a fascinating read, especially for a neophyte such as myself, who knows nada about Urdu literature. Also, curious to contemplate how this happens across many literary cultures, where work and the role an early voice played are buried and forgotten about. Click the paragraph to read the entire article.

1952. ISMAT CHUGHTAI HAD BEEN, for nearly a decade, the leading short story writer and novelist in the world of Urdu literature. But across the border in Pakistan, Qurratulain Hyder’s reputation as the disaffected chronicler of the generation lost to the tribulations of Partition was rapidly rising and would soon challenge Chughtai’s supremacy. In Lahore, Hijab Imtiaz Ali was turning to psychoanalytically inspired fictions about alcoholism and the Electra complex. Several other young, female Urdu short story writers, of a generation nurtured on the literature of the Progressive Writers’ Movement, were coming to maturity: Khadija Mastur, Hajra Masroor, Mumtaz Shirin, Shaista Ikramullah, Amina Nazli. And Rashid Jahan—doctor, political activist, Chughtai’s literary mentor and the forerunner of this entire wave of writers—died of cancer in a Russian hospital in July of that year, some weeks before her forty-seventh birthday, almost forgotten by the literary world she had stormed two decades before. Yet she had freed the tongues and the pens of several generations that followed; her impact would be surpassed only three decades later, by Fahmida Riaz and Kishwar Naheed, the feminist poets of the 1960s who replaced the forensic idiom of Rashid’s work with a lyrical celebration of women’s bodies. 

Hack My Hearing

Hack My Hearing

In this programme, Frank asks what the future holds for people like him, part of a tech-savvy generation who want to hack their hearing aids to tune in to invisible data in the world around them.

Could these designers and hackers create the next supersense?

To listen to the radio piece click here

Live with the rolling tarps

Here is a LIVE weather report. Behind the rainy system, which was deceptively warm looking but when I took my trotters to run the track proved icy rain and unkind on my spectacles, hid a North Westerly Wind storm. It has just arrived in the past 30 mins at is gusting at 63 KM p hr.

It just body checked my window with what sounded like a hefty bump off the arse of a wrestling owl colliding with it. There followed another gust which sounded TARP esque.

I am tentatively predicting the next windy sounds will be redolent of sheet metal being shook.

On va voir.

Meanwhile over on the East Coast a big thunk of a snowstorm is landing. Of course our 63 k phr have shook things right up. All sympathy momentarily dissolved and distracted. An Orange alert declared in Connemara, (Ireland obv) but my weather spy reported the roof of the house ready to lift off I quote “Orange alert my eye”. We are united in weatherly affront.

Bonne nuit.

Radio rain

Oh God this perishing rain. The sound of it through the curtains makes one feel like you are having your hair washed in a too small sink, with one of those dubious plastic plugs onto the taps pink shower attachment and the water is constantly douching your protesting ears and running down the back of your neck.

Good morning World — that’s my radio rain frustration moment passed. Now I must step and give this weather system something of a chance to express itself visually.

The second day of 2014 has deadlines, reading and no toast on the menu.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to one and all! Bonne Année et Bonne Santé ! e2014 commenced with fog, rolling fog or mildly undulating fog.

I wish you health, humour and happiness during 2014.

I ended 2013 with my family here in Vancouver, eating, watching comedies ensemble (and then subsequently one of the worst films ever written, set in Paris) drinking and scrambling to learn muscle names up and down the anterior and the posterior views of the body.