Hello all,
As previously mentioned, my first “curated video” essay for Ryeberg is now online. Enjoy.
Ryeberg Article is Up!
Photo: Behind Clouds
Photo: Self-Portrait @ Queen W. & Augusta
Ryeberg
I should note that I’ve contributed a few pieces of work to an innovative website, called Ryeberg. The conceit of the site is user-contributed curated YouTube videos, narrated by personal essays on a variety of topics. I am in revision-mode currently, but when my stuff gets posted, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, feel free to visit.
Fiction Excerpt: Cloud Species
I’ve labelled myself a fiction writer in my bio – I’ve certainly mentioned my writing here and there – yet I have never posted any work on this blog. Why? Well, mainly for fear of publishing something which would contravene most lit journals’ definition of “unpublished”. How am I getting around this? Well, at least for now, I am providing an orphaned excerpt – I don’t know what it belongs to, so please consider this a “work in progress”. Well…maybe I do know what it belongs to, but I think it’s safe to upload it, for now at least.)
Cloud Species (excerpt)
Something made the hedge in front of the porch shake, as if shook by a hand reaching out of the ground. I would’ve leaned forward to look closer, but I was exhausted from the previous night. There – it happened again. I could hear dry twigs cracking. The morning sun approached my feet on the floor of the porch, the volume of civilization rising slowly around me: coffee grinders, piano lessons, radios. Yet I couldn’t see a soul. I was alone, focused on the hedge, curious what made it move. I didn’t want the sun to touch me yet.
She left a newspaper behind but I didn’t touch it. It was sitting in the sun. She must have been up earlier than me. Perhaps she’d been up all night until now? I didn’t want her gifts and I didn’t want the troubles of the world to make rain from the cloudy anger hanging in my head. I sat brooding in a Muskoka chair asking myself what exactly I’d expected to have happened the night before, instead of what did.
It was a robin. It ran out from the hedge onto the yard, took one look at me, head cocked to the side, momentarily frozen. It was hunting. It seemed more threatening than I could be, sitting staring at it helplessly, drinking coffee like it was an antidote for paralysis.
I asked myself why I’d gone to bed so early. Why before then I’d drank so much, so quickly. Why I’d bothered making the trip if I was so exhausted in the first place. I couldn’t answer any of it. I wasn’t allowing myself to. It was like staring at long division on a chalkboard: I could see the numbers but didn’t want to understand where they came from.
The bird carried on with its sweep of the yard, unconcerned by my presence. The sunlight crept closer to my feet, my head was stuffed with thoughts, a jumble of unconnected ideas which became words scribbled over each other, my coffee cup was empty and I knew I’d have to creep up the stairs in order to get more. Past her, sleeping. Sleeping, I hoped, alone.
Conversations With Abandoned Chairs
I’m not sure why it hasn’t occurred to me to post this here yet, but perhaps this gives an indication of how stretched my resources are at the moment. Over the last year, whenever I’ve come across an abandoned chair on the side of the road, I’ve taken a picture: a photo which does the abandoned chair justice. This has grown into a small collection of photos (with people submitting their own finds recently). I thought I would share. You can see the collection on my (ugh) Flickr site – just follow this link to see the set Conversations With Abandoned Chairs.
Cellphoto: Condo Fire
The Hammer (pt. 1)
When I rented a car and went to Brantford/Onondaga to do some reminiscing and photo-taking, I knew that Hamilton was also, ultimately, on my to-do list.
The aim of these trips is not preconceived. This makes it doubly hard to explain to others (friends, strangers, and loved ones) what exactly the hell I’m planning to do. “Taking pictures and stuff.” I’ll say – that’s certainly no lie, but of course there’s more to it. The thing about Zen is this: the second you begin to describe it, it disappears. And so – Art & Zen being the same – there’s always a scaffolding I build around my explanation for these trips. It’s the same scaffolding I use when I go out writing, or to take photos locally: a vague (yet not untrue) reason which allows me to unspoil the inspiration (which itself needs to be vague) while preventing others from thinking I’ve lost my mind. I’m not uncomplicated.
Hamilton, being a place of the past for me, exists in patches of haze – this isn’t to say I did a lot of drinking or drugs when it was a destination, and yet it seems that way: murky. Of course, a good chunk of that time is best forgotten now. The downtown seems more hollowed-out than it did before, with the exception of Gore Park which to this day reminds me what a good idea it is to have spacious downtown promenades.
It was a precursory destination. First, with an ill-fated relationship which spawned a series of bad decisions which I owe to naivety. I am not alone in stating that I owe many mistakes in my 20s to naivety. It all culminated in a brief tenancy at an old apartment building north of St. Joseph’s hospital. In so many ways, it was one of the more excruciating periods in my life – I think the haze I mentioned previously is partially there to protect me from looking too closely at things like this.
The second identity Hamilton had for me happened a few years later when, staying with relatives in Burlington while I studied at college, it became a “big city” to escape to. Toronto was bigger, of course, but it was too far to drive to just to have kicks. Hamilton was perfect and in the early 90s had a great nighttime scene in and around Hess Village. My hang-out was the Bauhaus Café, which sadly (though not surprisingly) no longer exists.
Walking around there now, it seems as if parts of it just gave up. People don’t even want to advertise on billboards. To be fair, I shouldn’t make any judgments without going there again, but on a Friday night – I’m afraid however that these judgments will only skew worse if I do.
Perhaps I have a better understanding of the haze now: it’s there to protect my feelings, it’s there to protect the city from the cold light of an unsympathetic audience.