Communicable disease forecast

Environment Canada has introduced a 24-hour-breakdown for our weather forecast. This is welcome. Yesterday the first one I looked at indicated — accurately so far — 24 hours of rain. Non-stop per hour, per millisecond RAIN.

In house we are struck by a norovirus. My son was so violently ill all of yesterday that I am amazed to see him upright and naturally semi-video gaming today. I’ve been searching for some sort of provincial data on the state of such virus’s to no avail. There’s a pretty reasonable flu version, but nothing for virulent tummy flu. I’m surprised, mostly, because it might lessen attendance at the Emergency Room if people could cross check against what’s “in the area” so to speak.

I have to send solidarity to the 7 nursing homes or seniors residences on Vancouver Island that are plagued by the aforementioned norovirus according to a newspaper report I read.

I attempted to speed read Spinoza today, which wasn’t a particularly sensible thing to do. I think it may have something to do with the fact his name reminds me of spinach and I consume it only under duress and rapidly. Or possibly that my brain really fancied a bit of Snoopy instead but had a crossed line with George Eliot on the path to admitting it.

A very happy hand-sanitized and puddle plenty Saturday to you all.

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On the way back from collecting said violently sick son yesterday, he announced in between up-chucks that when he got home he’d have to watch something to cheer himself up .. before expanding to …that something would be an episode of Top Gear. Lord in the leaves above says I, how on earth could the rattling argol-bargol of Jeremy Clarkson (The bouncing Argolbargoulist?) aide your upending stomach. He then sat through an episode of these thinly disguised grown- up 12 yr olds driving lorries across Burma. As if Burma hadn’t enough problems without the lorry lads showing up.

Over for Agonia

I would worship the God who was able to stop that Agonia rain weather event overnight. It ceased! Thanks be to “insert speculative God like force” or the simple art of meteorological passing, it stopped.

I must find out where the most rain on earth falls and send those towns, villages or 5 people a large tin of biscuits or a barrell of gin. In fact hello all you wealthy philanthropic sorts heed this call.

Yesterday I decided we need significant rain related comfort rituals. I am not sure what they are or might be. They probably involve hot water bottles, food and alcohol, maybe comedy and very soft bed socks. Post your suggestions. Together we shall compile and change the future shape of being deluged. #endagonia.

Agonia

I am reporting, in a timorous condition, from what I suspect to be a pause for prayer (given it’s the Lenten season) during our major AGONIA rain weather event.  Agonia from the latin meaning agony. Agon from the Greek inferring competition.  The weather was pure agony today. Despair. Competitive agony 7-12 long hours of it. Each hour competing with the next not to allow any hint of light through the busted dimmer switch.

This megoostifluff (meaning Lord knows what just made it up — mega-chunk-of non stop suffocating goose arse blinding you) weather event came on the back of several rain events this week and utterly sunk me. It was raining inside my brain from the moment I looked out this morning. it was so perilously dark I wondered what drug could possibly ever help the human brain deal with this. I coined the term, being mentally Shackletoned as in spending hours trying like Shackleton to put foot one in front of other despite only walking from kitchen table to kettle, rather than submitting to the upper peak of Everest.

I was dispatched outside in a request from a writer friend  in Toronto to go and investigate whether or not she was in the Vancouver Sun today. I took off on this quest with no wind at my back because well there was no wind today, just the water canons overhead. Now it is common enough that when one exits the second floor that the elements even if they are misbehaving or challenging provoke a sense of vigor. Not during the Agonia weather event, far from it. These weather elements succeeded in sending the population even further down the manhole! Oh but you just need to take shelter and regard it with a warm drink I told myself. No! Another rebuke! As I looked out at it it only reinforced and furthered the agony it was.

My fave lines today came from two different friends “it would even depress the saints” texted one friend. “You wouldn’t put a rumour out in this weather” was the second.

It is still watery sounding out there, but no longer torrential. The other good news is the clocks go forward an hour overnight so if it continues with the agony-infused water canon showdown we will have one less hour to endure it tomorrow.

Finally the strangest sight today was right beside the grocery store on one of the busiest routes in the city, in the middle of this epic rain event, a man was very publicly piddling against the shop wall. (A toilet being approx 4 steps away from him, clearly he felt there wasn’t enough public watering happening).

By night I read. I read and I read and I read like I was on the quest for oxygen. I contemplated a stipend or a patronage idea where people could be paid only to read.

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Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes

This was flagged to me by a friend and I very much enjoyed it.

“The collapse to form a black hole will in general be chaotic and the dual CFT on the boundary of ADS will be turbulent. Thus, like weather forecasting on Earth, information will effectively be lost, although there would be no loss of unitarity.”

To read the entire weather forecast for Black Holes submitted on Jan 22, 2014 by S W Hawking under High Energy Physics Theory .. click this blue word

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In non-black hole related forecasts, but the outside my front window forecast today was for a brisk walk to buy bus tickets and a cup of steeped tea. The sky was nice and clear. There was a hint of rain alright but the entire weather system was utterly drowned out by a non-stop cacophony of sirens. Sirens were excessive this evening, I hope there’s nothing untoward happening in the city beyond the usual range of heart attacks, illness or accidents that befall us.

Hush on BBC Radio 4

Here was my delight discovery for today:

Josie Long presents a series of short documentaries about keeping quiet, being lost for words and complete silence.

From the crushing silence after a musician’s mistake to the tense hush that surrounds two teenage boys as they hide inches from their headmaster in an oversized box – tales of attempts to keep quiet and the struggle to raise your voice.

Josie Long has a lovely voice to listen to!  Link to series is here

A funny thing that happened

The rain made the hallway in my apartment very dark. When I arrived at my destination I looked down and eh voila a complete mismatch. One has a back, the other does not. Both need polishing.

Lispector up!

There was much ado on the radio waves (ie. at least two mentions) of impending 25cm snow event overnight which decided not invade us. Yesterday in the preamble to the main event, I drove South on the highway and grains of snow were pooling on the road and swirling east like a sweeping brush was attacking them. It was quite beautiful. Perhaps it was something in the combination of travelling and speed and the wind sweep that created this patterning. It is the very first time I can report a ground level weather event. Usually when weather reaches the ground it’s finished. It either piles or pools and that’s all there is to it.

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More impressive than the lack of the promised 25cm was the rise last night of Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H. translated by the marvelous Idra Novey. It was a toss up between playing my very first League of Legends game online or reading Lispector. LOL would take a further 27 minutes to download while Ms Lispector and G.H only required opening the cover.

13 pages later, I knew I had made the most appropriate choice. Rich, precise it went straight to the muscles that desperately needed it. I subsequently, immediately ordered and posted a copy to a friend. Lately several such things have turned up in my post box. The other night I wore a dress to an event for the first time that a much loved friend had dispatched by post from Brussels. A book landed this week written by another friend, which I opened and read in the post office and some months ago Maira Kalman book turned up from the kind thoughts of someone way across the country. That was pure delightful. Ah humanity and life, how they both provide.

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+ 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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