"Woman Part One"

a tiny thing

a small thing

a tornado whip
lashed on to her feet
but,
she cannot be pulled
into richter's scrum.

she howls
and
he runs -

falls! -

outward, but to the center;
stymied
by the very thing
he had beseeched to
enslave her...


a wee bit -

lilliputian -

of her drops against him.
his jaw falls off...
but,
she is kind, merciful,
and lets him run.


the lash falls
and both run. Continue Reading...

"Way Down In The Land Of Twins"

A.C. Newman - Get Guilty
(Matador: 2009)

Allan Carl Newman (AC or Newman hereafter) has, in a single decade, cemented an enviable place for himself in the history of great Canadian music.  To me, that's both at once a remarkable and an immensely difficult thing to do.  And I'm not necessarily talking record sales, profit made, or legions of adoring preteen/teen youngsters scratching at the heels of his celebrity (although he probably does dandily in all three categories).  No, we are talking about quality, about perceived sensibility, about ability, and finally about legacy, to name a few aspects.  From his early days with Superconductor to his meteoric rise with The New Pornographers to his more recent solo records, Newman has been a lightning rod for success.

While these are kind words, it wasn't always this way.  It has taken me literally years to "get into" Newman's stuff.  I was always more partial to Dan Bejar's and to a lesser extent, Neko Case's musical styles.  I should mention that I still like Destroyer more than The New Pornographers or anything Neko Case has done, but I suppose what has changed is: a) Neko Case falls to the bronze position, and b) Newman is now in the silver position.  I still feel AC is much too polished for my liking but that doesn't mean he's not uber-talented; his songs are well written and most of them are much better than quite a lot of the Pornographers' stuff.

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"The secrecy of your revolt poisons you like a secret disease..."

Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens
Basic Books, 2002
(New York)

Why should we care about George Orwell?  Why does he matter?  Does he, in the 21st century, have anything pertinent or relevant to show us?  Isn’t Orwell just a crack-pot conspiracy theorist, whose grim outlook on life compelled him to write of a totalitarian, dark future?  Are his ideas of that future not overblown and overly gloomy (to say nothing of accuracy)?

Well, as it turns out, he is mind-bendingly relevant and still an important read for us advanced 21st century humans.  He died over 60 years ago, yet his voice wafts ever eerily to us over the decades, warning us, scolding us, and in a way shaming us:  the type of shame one feels when being told by a healthy person that eating that chocolate bar will make you unhealthy.  It's not that we don't already know this, it's just that more often than not, we succumb to our frailty.  In relation to George Orwell, this frailty involves a linguistic laziness.

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"There was no more talk of doves and pigeons..."

Pilgrim by Timothy Findley

HarperCollins Publishers

1999: Toronto

I have only read one other book by Timothy Findley, and that book is Famous Last Words, which I enjoyed thoroughly.  It is, like Pilgrim, a dark and fantastically mysterious journey that mingles and copulates fact with fiction.  That is not to say that Findley portrays his work as some sort of documentary - far from it.  What it does mean, however, is that the reader is left with an oftentimes plausible alternative reality that is, most times, only fit for the page or the screen (as fortunate or unfortunate as it is).

We actually know quite a great deal about the novel before we open the first page, which to me is quite unfortunate.  I like to delve and discover a novel, which is why I have conflicted opinions on putting writing on the back covers of books.  I think sometimes they tell way too much; in this case, the back cover of Pilgrim told me way too much:  "Ageless.  Sexless.  Deathless.  Timeless.  Pilgrim - the man who has lived throughout human history..."  Those are things I would have loved not to know beforehand.  I digress...

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