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Showing posts from August, 2011

in my neighbourhood

New York circa 1919. "Cripples at baseball." Victor Cassiere at left. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. * * * * * York Street between Cherry and Carlisle is a funny, expressive little block. A few months ago, on our way to daycare, Oona and I came across a front door spray-painted with the words *UCK YOU in red capital letters (the asterisk is mine). Then, just yesterday, and a few doors down, on the street beside the sidewalk, someone had used white paint, a name and a giant arrow to suggest that the occupant of that house was a drug addict. Or DRUG ADDICT. Capital! On the way home, we saw that someone (else) had covered it up with blotchy brown paint. There's always lots of other colour on that street, in the way of shirtless guys falling off their bicycles or hipster-construction guys singing on guitar as they walk home from work or homeless guys who project the smell of something grey and dead and singed around the edges at least half a bloc

see them flinging out the banner

Two highlights, lately ... 1} Having my book short-listed for the ReLit Awards (people like me don't win things like this, but it's nice to make the last heat) and 2} coming home from holidays (and no internet access) to see my essay Bike Chain in the new (online) issue of Knee-Jerk . I need a new author photo though ... in that one I look like I just woke up. * * * * * At the same time, I still get to trade in all sorts of grubby low notes, such as these with the editor of the Portland Review : From: DJ Berger To: Sarah Marshall Hi Sarah, Back in May 2010 I received the following ... > From: "Editor, Portland Review" > Date: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 6:26 pm > Subject: Re: Your Submission to Portland Review > Dear DJ Berger, > > We enjoyed and would like to include your piece "The Roof" in > the upcoming issue of *Portland Review*. If it still available, please send > an electronic copy in response

intruded

I don't why I fell so easily into this strange little game . The surveillance-camera conceit was part of it. And having recourse to nothing but arrow keys was something, too. And the music is good. But really it's just this staticky, disquieting packet of a thing, like some surrealist short story. And it's free.

less than a feeling

We go on vacation from August 3rd to August 22nd. To my wife's cottage on the Northumberland Strait (you can see the bridge to PEI in the distance). I keep a little notebook, as I usually do. The inscription on the inside front cover reads A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. -- George Moore This is, of course, exactly the kind of bullshit they put in little notebooks. * * * * * We leave Kingston on a Wednesday morning. As I haul the last few things to the car, the back yard is a gauntlet of hot hammers, a vortexing heat sink. As it's been for weeks now. It's also been like this *every* time we've left on vacation. * * * * * Another thing that happens to us every summer vacation? We cross the border into Quebec and the world becomes some kind of Kurosawa void, this land of ghosts and fog. Air like sprayed bleach. I kept expecting the blonde cop from Silent Hill to pull us over. * * * * * Someday,