Thumbo!

Photos courtesy of Alison & Instagram.

Good Day

I'm at my parents' place in Markham, Ontario, right now, ostensibly for my mom's 65th birthday, but also escaping the stresses of my life in Halifax for a short recharge. Yesterday I biked over to Stouffville to see my sister Erika's family and their new house.

It was such a nice day and a beautiful ride. A flat, straight road under a giant, cloudless sky. Lots of lush marsh- and farmland between the two towns, once you get past the latest ugly developments, which extend a bit farther north every year. But there were birds greeting me the whole way, and then I saw a small airplane pulling a glider ahead of me.

The two went back and forth a few times, and I wondered whether the glider would eventually be let go to continue on its own. Eventually I noticed the motored plane over to my left, and couldn't make out the glider with it. I searched the sky ahead, left, right, and behind, but couldn't find it. I'd just convinced myself that the other plane WAS the glider, when a large shadow passed over me from behind, making the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

I looked straight up, and there it was, silently coasting right over my head. It was so slow and beautiful and free. I pulled over to the side of the road and got off my bike to watch it. The sun was also directly above, so I had to shade my eyes quite a bit to see it, but it circled around me four or five times before heading off in the direction I'd seen the other plane in. I couldn't tell whether the people in the glider were actually communicating with me or not, or even whether they could see me, but I waved to them. It was kind of a mystical experience. I felt happier than I have in a long time, and in a way that I haven't since I was a kid.

Baiku

Needed some outdoors today, so I went for a long bike ride. It was warm, but very windy. This haiku came to me.

Trees are not waving
Goodbye in the summer wind —
They are just waving.

Personification in haiku is a definite no-no, as the point is to depict what happens unadorned. That way, the reader is able to have the same experience the writer did, rather than just be told what the experience was. So pointing out the absence of personification in one's own haiku is probably a sneaky trick that's just as bad, when it comes down to it. I like it, though.

Get Out While You Still Can III

In yet another example of cynically inappropriate song repurposing by television advertisers (see Iggy Pop's ode to heroin addiction, "Lust for Life," used to sell ocean cruise vacations, and then this), tonight I saw Laurie Anderson's "O Superman" promoting a cell phone!



It's only one of the most devastatingly bleak critiques of the technological age I've ever heard. It's 1981, and humans are replaced by their answering machines. Love is replaced by justice and then force. Mom is replaced by electronics, chemicals, and the military.

In case you think the producers of the commercial spot didn't bother to listen to the lyrics — making them not actually cynical but just lazy and dumb — the ad's storyline features people jumping gleefully out of an airplane. Viewers are thereby induced to start singing, "Here come the planes."

The unsettling irony created in the song at this point by conflating images of pleasure trips with those of air warfare is here reduced to a plain old post-modern embracing of opposites. Why shouldn't parachuting be a military exercise AND a fun thing to do with a bunch of friends? Why shouldn't love be human AND technological? As long as you can afford it, why not wrap yourself tighter in those electronic arms?

Two Things

1. R.I.P., Maurice Sendak, beloved crotchety misanthrope and children's book writer/illustrator.

2. Another one of those poems appeared on a blackboard in front of the house on Harvard Street. This one's a real winner too:

The Weather in Space

Is God being or pure force? The wind
Or what commands it? When our lives slow
And we can hold all that we love, it sprawls
In our laps like a gangly doll. When the storm
Kicks up and nothing is ours, we go chasing
After all we’re certain to lose, so alive—
Faces radiant with panic.

- Tracy K. Smith

I keep stopping by to reread it, and I smile every time.

How are these two things connected? I don't know. Can't you make up your own story, for once? Or better yet, just appreciate two unconnected things WITHOUT a story around them? Geez...

Chaotic Forces

I seem to have adopted a cat. At least, temporarily. Her owner is a client of a friend's mother and can't take care of her for awhile, so I'll be looking after her indefinitely. I hadn't planned on getting another cat, but she needed a place to stay, and I could use some company.

Apparently her name is Cuddles, but I refuse to call her that while she stays with me. Haven't decided on a better name yet, though. So far I've just been alternating among generic nicknames like Kitty, Buddy, Monkey, Weirdo, etc. She's a cutie — very playful and a bit of a comedian. I can tell she's going to stir up some trouble around here.

Here's one Alison took on her phone while the cat spied on us from across the room.

And speaking of allowing nature's complexity into our rigidly simplistic human lives, here's a really great talk by the incomparable Alan Watts, recorded for television in 1971. I just finished reading The Wisdom of Insecurity again and discovered this yesterday. Low quality video, but highly recommended.

Hard Times

Oh, lord. What HASN'T been going on? Let's see, let's see...

1.  I gave Stephen Harper $12,000 to do with as he sees fit.


2.  I watched Lars von Trier's Melancholia (see fig. A, above). Twice. I feel like I want to tell you all about it hyperenthusiatically but can't because I'd have to give awesome surprises away. Let me just say that I was not much of a fan of Trier's before this (although I'd forgotten he also made The Idiots, which I did kind of love), so if Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark and possibly Dogville all made you angry with their brutal treatment of angelic female characters, don't let that stop you from checking out this one. You'll be thinking about it days later, in a good way, I swear. And when you do, ask yourself this bonus question: Does Melancholia, the planet, bring on melancholia, the condition, or vice versa? Hmmm?


3. Buster has apparently been ignoring his food and leaving presents on Alison's living room floor that would be better positioned in his litter box. I may have to take him back.


4. Amber is in the hospital for three weeks, having had a giant growth removed from around her knee. She probably won't be able to walk for two more months after that, during which time she'll be living with her mom on the Eastern Shore. She's not exactly happy.


5. My eye rash has finally cleared up, possibly because Buster and his weird cat litter are no longer living here (but see point 3, above).


6. A client who is months late in paying me $300 has outright refused to pay the further $1,700 he has accumulated in late fees over the past couple of years. He's also stopped giving me work or returning my calls, and I've seen posters advertising his services around town that were not done by me. I'm going to have to take him to small claims court.


7. I gave notice to my landlords that I won't be renewing my lease at the end of July as I can't afford this place by myself, not least because of point 1. Where I will be living and with whom are undetermined.


8. My lower back is giving me problems and I'm not sleeping well. It's unclear which is cause and which effect.


9. Even though I never have any money, I seem to be so overwhelmed with work that I can barely get it done. How is this possible? See points 1, 6, and 7, I guess?


10. Wah.

HowEVER...

I'm still playing and writing a lot of music, and really loving it. I've also been to some great shows recently (Bad Vibrations, Monomyth/Hymm/Air-Fire/JFM) and read or reread a few inspiring books (Black Swan Green, The Wisdom of Insecurity, Freedom Evolves). And I'll be spending a week with my parents and sisters in Ontario for my mom's birthday later in the month. So all is far from desperate.