France: Cherbourg

From the window of Le Circle Naval, a hotel for the Navy & Naval families. Hearing we went to Cherbourg, the first words out of my father's mouth "Did you see Napoleon?"

Movie Recommendations

I don't recommend watching Amelie if you are trying to stop being head over heels with a man who always wears red Converse sneakers to work.

Living is Easy

Photo 1 via The Sartorialist, Photo 2 via Tumblr: theniftyfifties

I had the flu earlier in the week and I went into the office today. Summertime indeed. I might go dancing tonight, but I would rather go back in time and go bike ride and go to a swimming pool and sunbathe while drinking soda.

In Fact

"While it is true that the mind is common to all human beings, the active employment thereof is not conducive to all. For women, in fact, this activity can be quite harmful. Because of their natural weakness, greater brain activity in women would exhaust all the other organs and thus disrupt their proper functioning."

Paul-Victor de Seze, 1786

Looking Back/Ahead

Long time no blog, etc. Various ills and aches of the bones and lungs and head and metaphorical heart, a winter spring hibernation of body and mind where all I ever did was drag myself out of bed for work and the occaisonal coffee. Read ridiculous things and watched shows about dead bodies (Bones & Pushing Daisies). Have been slowly pulling myself back together, making outfits and plans and being social, mainly when lured out with Indian food and bike rides. Above, Friday night in a beautiful garden with wonderful Gallery coworkers and coworkers' iPhones.

Dreaming in the mothertongue and lovelorn most days, I decided a trip to the motherland was in order. Now am I wondering if I am asking for trouble by taking a magazine called Bomb with a painting of bare breasts on the cover onto the plane? I will probably have devoured it by then (Anne Carson poem and Siri Hustvedt interview). Less than a month to go. Last week I would have said likely a year. So no time at all.

Necessities

"There is nothing more tedious, puerile and inhumane than love; yet it is also beautiful and necessary."

--To the Lighthouse

It's Okay

Had the strangest, terryifying seemingly endless dream. As if it had lasted eight hours. There is a killer, or the ghost of a killer, who is still killing. Gabby is there, and she is helping me exorcise the place? Except we are probably going to die yet I am already dead? At times I think I am the one about to die, the corporeal killer whom I refer to as a ghost is bearing a knife. At times he looks like Bob (the owls are not what they seem) at times he looks like Dan (poet Dan who will be in town this weekend, not creepy Dan). There are hallways and running. Then the dream is corridors and walking. The tone of the dream changes entirely, even though I am referring to things that happend. Jeff is in the corridor with me, and tells me either "It's okay" or "It's just a play" In the context of the dream, both things make sense. Gabby and Dan are there helping us load things into a car, a labyrinthian under or above ground carpark. There is a lot of walking to and from the haunted apartment to the carpark through concrete halls. Jeff and I are alone and I am quite drunk. I move to kiss him then abruptly stop and say "No, the door is open." We walk around alot of places, the empty city at night a summer night a winter night, an open field. I wake up with a start, angry at him for buying a haunted theatre.

Accordeon

Accidentally spent the whole evening watching NFB shorts...

Other Dangerous Things

“They have love, but they also have typewriters. That is interesting.”



RACTER The Policeman's Beard http://ubu.artmob.ca/text/racter/racter_policemansbeard.pdf

Bok Notes Toward a Potential Robopoetics http://www.ubu.com/papers/object/03_bok.pdf

The Heroic vs The Humble

Simon Hughes, Father/Daughter Composition, 2009

"She was only 18 months old when she did it and she's two and a half now... The wierd thing is she never did a scribble quite that good again." --Simon Hughes in Border Crossings

Rather productive winter break (clean clean clean apt, bags of clothes to take out). Snow falls outside after a few mild days. This morning cat chases tissue paper mewling out her abandonment issues while I read Border Crossings, an article about gardens and the avant garde and theories of work/art/absence/silence/etc, story about bears.

Bless Vimeo

Hauschka - The Key from Jeff Desom on Vimeo.

Train track sounds

LoopLoop from Patrick Bergeron on Vimeo. Will be at Neutral Ground end of January, looking forward. 2011! The future!

You are an animal now

Leafcutter John from Antje Taiga on Vimeo.

Calendar

Ridiculously busy, despite the headache about to head out for 3rd night in a row: Mercury for grilleds and gossip followed by A Bout de Souffle at the RPL; Jeannie Mah & Jack Anderson Reception/Panel at the Dunlop folllowed by Godard Project shorts by Filmpool; finally tonight Curtain Razors at Neutral Ground after a Saturday in the office/gallery.

My hour of you, my cursive thoughts, a pulpit beating under these ribs --Sina Queryas again

Spine like a seahorse

To arrive is practice, conversation or conversion, a story over a field
My Sweet, of concrete or whispering, furrows of a path no longer, not
Sure, was there, and snow combed in curlicues and dog ears a zigzag
Through January. Sure you are witty, but are you any less romantic?
In my remembering, I have undone all my beliefs, it is a luxury to lay
Unencumbered here, or there, the bones flexed with tendons, the
Spine like a seahorse, the heart far from a cliche unless beating is
Innocent, though innocence is not as supple as you think, nor as flexible,
Nor as perfumed, nor convenient, or even clean: between things regret
Gathers force. I remember that day: it was cold and the coffee tepid.

excerpt, "Euphoria" Sina Queyras at poetryfoundation.org