+ sweaty

I’m immediately upgrading said snow event to Sweaty Snow. The combination of heat and snow is odd. Your face expects to be frozen when it’s snowing, instead this snow somehow gives off heat. I was wondering how the forecast overnight could possibly be for rain, but now after a plod to buy completely digestively unwarranted items with no nutritional value it’s clear how this will evolve to rain.

Yuck. This is mixed signal weather.

In Montreal the variety of cold I experienced was what I’d term the frozen turnip head cold. Ottawa had the same temperature in November but was way less uncomfortable on the brain region. Montreal had a slicing wind. Also, Ottawa seemed to handle the snowfall better. Streets were cleared swiftly. Montreal streets are also cleared admirably compared to what would pass for salting and snow ploughs here, but the extreme physical discomfort when moving about there was more challenging. Does Ottawa receive that slicing wind I wonder? Was it just that I was there during an absence of it? Edmonton’s wind took me by surprise. I dread the state of one’s head when trying to trot about in that Edmonton wind & -40. It was quite balmy during my time there. (Last October).

That last paragraph reads rather like a weather jigsaw puzzle. I’ll await the brains on the matter to chime in below in the comments section and establish the facts to finish the puzzle.

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Clarice Lispector has joined my reading pile. The Passion According to G.H. I’ve ordered another Thalia Field collection and shipped another copy of Point & Line to a friend. Aprés Montreal I want to reread Gail Scott’s The Obituary.  Plus there’s the Natalie Sarraute novel unread. And reading about the history of Confession has proferred a list of works that if I traced them all I’d be consumed til about 2022 with them alone. But I must look up Foucault on Confession.

Snow with purgatory

We are in the middle, or coming towards the end, of a protracted snow event. It’s very strange. The temperature doesn’t feel cold enough for snow and yet, it relentlessly falls. However, in different parts of the city it fails to accumulate and on higher ground.. e.g. further away from the water it piles. This has made driving quite manageable. But we have had every variety of snow flake from fine salt to sifting flour snow to quarter sized flakes. There has been variation in the speed with which it has fallen. Last night it veered into “drowse” mode and watching it was nothing short of being given an anaesthetic that did not quite take.

This weather event has been quite intriguing because the slight adjustment in say .5 of a degree produced immediate change in size of snowflakes.

I spent the weekend absorbed in a book about the history of confession which contained invocations of purgatory and hellish human behaviour. Inside I was convening with 15th century priests and 17th century self flagellating head cases while outside la neige tombe par terre.

I wonder if there’s a weather forecasting service in or for purgatory.

Ideas do not have walls

“Ideas don’t have walls is my feeling.” This was a tweet I posted this morning in the aftermath of the National Forum on the Literary Arts which the Canada Council for the Arts organised in Montreal this past week and at which I was privileged to be a participant. I acknowledge that privilege and understand if you were not present this may irk you. However I caution do not withdraw from the gesture of the conference. You too can participate in this ongoing discussion. There will be outlets online for you to air your views responses and to challenge what emerges. It was two days of rigorous engagement and exchange in both French and English (also some Mohawk spoken by the wonderful Janet Rogers) between 250 different people in the literary arts sector from coast to coast . It was a progressive and visionary idea for the council to organize such an event. I will write in more detail about what I heard, once I have gathered some sleep. The tweet I posted was in response to physically being in the room. I made the choice to tweet what I was listening to like a maniac. This was both immensely challenging with the bilingual language factor, hearing a delayed and sometimes erratic translation (this is no reflection on the translator more that people passionately expressing themselves, sometimes do so forcefully and in a fragmented, esoteric manner) and enormously satisfying. It was satisfying because I began to have engagement from people outside the room, outside the province etc. There was a sense of people relying on me to transmit what I was hearing.

Now we can bring ideas to each other through these new mediums like twitter.

So let’s bring each other into and out of the rooms we are privileged to be invited into and let’s invite those to join us, who can’t make it physically into the space because virtually we are united (or we can unite?). This is quite a remarkable feeling or realization.

We have to up the standard of public discourse around literature. I refuse to settle for this predetermined factional vs Pavlov choice of “acceptable” response. If we are to engage critically in ideas about our literature, we must be prepared to disagree and accept it is valid to disagree. Ideas are departures, they are not the station at the end of the line. We have to be prepared to listen for what it is we don’t know, what we may not have considered or contemplated or heard before. It has to be about working for the greater good not just the singular, or self interest.

Again, thank you to all the people at the forum and the Canada Council and its partners, the staff who worked so hard at the event both in advance organizing and during it.

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Busted complex

The “complex weather event” was a BUST. A hefty one. I spotted about 16 snowflakes down South of the border on the I5 and then once I returned home realized i did see snow but it was 40 KM ago. I should stress we were not pleading for snow. Rather I’d processed the prospect of it! So it was like the tastebuds gearing up for a macaroon which you drop on the road before you swipe a lick.

A fascinating thing occurred: the temperature rose a degree or so and rain moved in. I’ve never experienced a weather event where I was so accutely aware of the transition between cold and meh not quite so cold anymore. If there’s a border between temperatures we stood on it that day. Amazing one an degree or two can adjust.

We are back to heavy rain. The weather warning said “heavy rain” but was restrained on mm predictions. Heavy snow is falling in the BC interior and 2-3cm I heard rumour in the North-West and West of Ireland.

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The complex weather event

We are waiting on the “complex” weather event, whose patterns will not be known until the system lands tomorrow. She was supposed to visit us today, but appears to have diverted or stopped off for a breather. She was initially promised at 2cm-7cm of snow, but may have been downgraded to freezing rain. As the weather statement tells us: she’s complex.

The sky is burdened looking, although there’s just a small wink of light appearing now.

Last night I went to eat with a friend in a small place that was so loud my balance organs did ballroom dancing. I think it might be time to create middle-aged dens where there are lights on for fading eyesight and self controlled volume levels for background music at every table. Or better still none. Or not a DJ who pumps it up in this case. I think a wrestling ring would prove more manageable to eat and natter beside. When we came outside we had an excellent frozen conversation on the sidewalk (pavement), where we threw words across to each other in a badminton match of relief — maybe because we could actually finally hear each other. Also, there’s nothing like minus temperatures to up your verbal word count.

Happy Sunday weather wonderers. Legwarmers on, get a pint of milk in and keep eyes skyward.

El plunge

We are due a plunge in temperature tonight. By 2am it’s supposed to hit -5, by morning -8 which is -15 with the windchill factored in. This is a sudden and surprising descent for our temperature. It’s been preceded by a flash of sunny, azure blue-sky days — a factor that arctic outflow systems tend to bring.

I might not have even inquired of the temperature had my teen not expressed how cold he was to me. He’s never cold. These boyos could roam about in tee shirts, I’m freezing he said. I’m shivering. It was 4.30pm. This drove me to weathery inquiry and lo agus behold the imminent plunge revealed itself.

All evening I heard from friends with babies and young kids who are sick, mostly with stomach flu. Wouldn’t you imagine the low temperatures would kill such germs and stall all infection? Apparently not.

This is a legwarmer alert.

I am finishing reading a book here at the temperature plunges.  A book plein de tribulation.

Script

Some time ago I met a man whose handwriting I admired and I asked him if I could take a picture of it. I have just chanced upon the photo. I recall the conversation where he explained to us how he had to train his hand. I think he was left handed. He had decided to write in this fashion for a reason I cannot remember, but there was some practical element to it. I must ask the person I was with that day if he remembers why this fella used such loops on and under his letters. He had small books filled with such lettering and notes. I wonder if a certain area of his brain is clacking away like a manic set of knitting needles trying to keep up with creating all these additional looping details. I do recall he is a geographer or urban geographer even. Wouldn’t this man’s writing make fine wallpaper?

daily words, wording

I have begun to wonder if the word of the day is thematic or randomly generated or tied to current events.

In recent days: the Spanish word of the day included: pildora anticonceptiva [n]: a contraceptive in the form of a pill containing etc, virgen [a]: characteristic of a virgin or virginity… escala [n]: relative magnitude…

I’m wondering if the Spanish word of the day is in fact WORDS of the day since I appear to receive multiples, unless I signed up twice and it is truly individually random (!). Note in relation to those words there was a big protest this weekend about proposed changes to abortion laws in Spain.

From the Urban dictionary I received Tactical Orgasm defined as having an orgasm before making an important decision.

And finally from the more grey-suits at dictionary.com: galligaskins: leggings or gaiters, usually of leather.

Put those into your random generator! I think it’s time to sign up for the Latin word of the day.

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If bird watching is known as birding, might word-watching become known as wording?

Clock card

I had the passing thought today that the recent weather events I have failed to log, for a bundle of reasons, are now lost. Disappeared. Gone. I was trying to recall what I have missed. I cannot summon them. There were a number of very specific FOG events, which made me coin the term INSOMNIACS FOR FOG. This, of course, a lovely contradiction. How can a fog event have any specificity? Well now because of a lack of a log, I have no reference point to support how this can be and yet I know it to be so from trapping moments during my foggy wanders. There were the banks of plonked fog, there was shifting fog and “insert whatever version of fog you fancy”.

I subsequently contemplated why it might be equally valid not to log these weather events. I don’t imagine a vast quantity of humans suspended or distraught at not logging every weather event that transits through their triangle of sky nor tuning in here to find what precisely I failed to log recently.  My thoughts shifted to the matter of blogging becoming, as and when we adhere to it, not that far from clocking in and out of the factory floor. (Except it’s a charitable factory, the indulgence of perhaps excessive self expression, which formerly would have lain inside a bound journal). The matter that we now choose to announce (in my case) to anyone willing to arrive at a URL what we think or thought at a particular moment of a rain event suggests that just as we now move physically through reviewed space, (google street view have been there before you) that if we permit it, we are submitting psychologically to (selectively I suppose) constant or consistent review.  Then I dismissed all such thoughts and scrubbed the floor. Now that bundle of thoughts could all appropriately be termed: the fog log or fogged log event. Or simply fog it, it’s gone.

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On the contrasting topic of clarity, I highly recommend Tamara Faith Berger’s essay AFTERWORD at the end of her recently republished novel Little Cat. It’s remarkable. Her use of the stout sentence in this essay is strong, strong, strong. Go and find it. Open the novel, turn to the back and read this essay. I am not going to make it easy for you with quotes and temptation. It needs to be read entirely as one piece. When you read it you will see what I mean.

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On the topic of traps: The Forum radio programme on the BBC World Service gave us this ideas discussion today: 

Traps

Catching neutrinos, unsuspecting gamers and pictures of elusive mammals