August 6, 2011
I can find no one who recalls Scott Sommer’s work and there’s little online about it, maybe because he wrote during a pre-internet time and history is being written up at such a pace each day, by the epic recording that takes place both individually and collectively, that anything pre- a few years faces obsolescence. Yet from what I have found Sommer was far from an obscure writer in his time.
Somebody has asked on a question forum when did Scott Sommer die? Not far from this question is a neighbouring question: Who flies to Tapei?
I am going to hunt the rest of his work, in addition to the title I discovered last week, and pen A Consideration on the work. His prose demands it.
August 6, 2011
I am living out very Beckettian exchanges with my practically teenage son that I find amusing.
Recently he was away chez Grandmaman and would request I phone him. I would phone.
“Hello” I’d say.
“You’re rambling,” he’d reply.
Occasionally he’d send an email that demanded an instant response. “Write back immediately” he’d type.
I’d write back to no response.
I’d write back again to no response.
But most of all I enjoy the expression that covers his face when I suggest something deliberately ludicrous. Hence I think of more ludicrous things to elicit that wonderful glaze the besets him and the head shake that joins it.
August 5, 2011
I want to learn to build cupboards, but it’s a very particular cupboard I want to build. One that requires little in the way of tools, other than a handsaw and the obvious ingredients. I want them to be “here and there” skinny, odd cupboards. Little fellas.
I’ve successfully built my own shelves all over the teeny gaff, so am upping my game to add back and sides and (maybe) doors. But everywhere I look for simple instructions I find very convoluted constructions that require multiple things with plugs on them.
I had very little success learning to cut hair from videos, plumbing was a completely different matter. I hold my single plumbing achievement in the highest regard, despite my partner’s insistence it was back to front.
August 4, 2011
Yesterday I spent six hours getting treatment in a local Emergency Room where my doctor sent me. Besides the fact the care I received was excellent (particularly touched by the empathy of the nurses given it was a v busy day for them), when you spend six hours in a place and you’re pushing an I/V pole back and forth to the bathroom, you begin to notice who’s in there with you and the turnover therein.
Work related injuries seemed high, fingers damaged or hanging off, injured eyes, swollen ankles: all day they came and went. The triage area is better organized these days and the assessment is faster. Unfortunately I was in the category of clogging up a room due to my particular treatment, but I noticed they were able to administer many patients I/Vs and certain kinds of treatment in chairs.
In future when I hear people cribbing about unions and workers and extended health benefits — I’ll direct them to sit and observe a day in the Emergency Room. (And to remember those who also sustain injuries on the job treating the injured) I feel glad to live in a country where when people are injured or ill they get treatment and their access to that treatment is based on their immediate need (in terms of emergency medicine) rather than (individual) ability to pay.
One thing I do not quite grasp is why technology remains so old fashioned when it comes to treating women’s health issues particularly. (Tho’ the prostate test could equally be improved) They are still pulling out the equivalent of gardening implements and putting them into uncomfortable spots where they do not fit and fumbling about with said uncomfortable gardening shears to grab some tiny something or other that doesn’t fancy being grabbed, yet heart surgery can be performed through a vein with a tiny balloon, all kinds of things can be dealt with through the belly-button, knee surgery through a keyhole, etc therefore if you are out there inventing some high tech laser gadget for entertainment put it down and take up the cause of revolutionizing some of these darned gynae implements instead. Think pelvis not poker!
July 31, 2011
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.
*
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.
July 28, 2011
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.
July 27, 2011
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.
July 27, 2011
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.