I tie one end of the twine to you
the other to my sturdiest brown
belt then run away
bearing slightly to the left.
As i run i see the other poles
in the playground, their satellites
set to various speeds and distances.
Some change direction but that
usually knots the cord. Here and there
someone just hops in place. That's a strategy
but they don't seem to get very far.
When tired, they lean on the pole for support.
I run faster. If i strain enough
maybe the wire will stretch a little.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
a poem by AM Klein
Reading "the Rocking Chair" right now, seldom have i encountered a body of poems that hits the highlights and pitfalls of my desire in poetry so well. yes, write things if you like. search language. dream beyond sequence and imagine a home for real bodies - in hurt as well as celebration.
thot i would toss one up that made me very happy:
Flowering jungle where all fauna meet
crossing the marbled pool to thickets whence
the prompted parrots, alien-voiced, entreat
the kernel'd horde, the efflorescent pence, --
wondrous your caves, whose big doors must be rolled
for entrance, and whose flora none can seek
against the armed unicorn, furred blue and gold,
against the vines fatal, or the berries that touched, shriek.
How quiet is your shade with broad green leaves!
Yet is it jungle-quiet which deceives:
toothless, with drawn nails, the beasts paw your ground --
O, the fierce deaths expiring with no sound!
:0)
c
thot i would toss one up that made me very happy:
Commercial Bank
Flowering jungle where all fauna meet
crossing the marbled pool to thickets whence
the prompted parrots, alien-voiced, entreat
the kernel'd horde, the efflorescent pence, --
wondrous your caves, whose big doors must be rolled
for entrance, and whose flora none can seek
against the armed unicorn, furred blue and gold,
against the vines fatal, or the berries that touched, shriek.
How quiet is your shade with broad green leaves!
Yet is it jungle-quiet which deceives:
toothless, with drawn nails, the beasts paw your ground --
O, the fierce deaths expiring with no sound!
:0)
c
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
another killer drug
by another leading multi-national pharmaceutical company:
Bayer anti-bleeding drug linked to 50 % higher death rate than alternatives
TORONTO - An expensive drug used to minimize severe bleeding during heart surgery actually significantly increased the risk that patients would die during surgery or in the 30 days following, a Canadian study comparing the drug to two far cheaper alternatives shows.
Called the BART trial, the study found people who received Trasylol or aprotinin (its generic name) were 53 per cent more likely to die than people who received the other anti-bleeding agents, tranexamic acid or aminocaproic acid.
In absolute terms that means for every 100 patients who got aprotinin during high-risk cardiac surgery, six died. For every 100 patients getting tranexamic acid or aminocaproic acid, four died, according to the study, published electronically on Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.
"The risks of aprotinin are greater than its benefits," said Dr. Paul Hebert, a critical care doctor at the Ottawa Health Research Institute and one of the principal investigators in BART (short for Blood Conservation using Antifibrinolytics in a Randomized Trial).
"The two other drugs are safe alternatives."
Given the number of such surgeries performed around the world every year, the difference could translate into thousands of lives. It is estimated that roughly 250,000 high-risk cardiac surgeries are performed annually; use of one of the anti-bleeding agents in high-risk cardiac surgery is standard care, said Dr. David Mazer, one of the lead researchers.
"The BART study has changed the way heart surgery will be done in Canada and around the world," predicted Mazer, a cardiovascular anesthesiologist and critical care physician at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.
Trasylol's manufacturer, Bayer HealthCare, suspended worldwide sales of the drug last November after Hebert and his research partners notified Health Canada and other international drug regulatory agencies that they were halting the BART trial.
The decision to end the trial early was made on the advice of an independent data safety monitoring board, which spotted the higher rates of death in the patients who received aprotinin.
Bayer has never said whether it plans to try to resuscitate aprotinin. And even with the release of the BART data, it is hedging its bets.
"Bayer will continue to carefully review this article, the editorial and (when available) the underlying data on which the authors have based their conclusions and continue to discuss both the restricted access programs for Trasylol and the worldwide temporary marketing suspension of the drug with regulatory authorities," the company said in a prepared statement.
"When further conclusions are reached, Bayer will communicate publicly."
But an editorial in the journal predicted the drug is done.
"In all likelihood this is the end of the aprotinin story," wrote Wayne Ray and Dr. Michael Stein of the Vanderbilt University Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics in Nashville, Tenn.
Aprotinin and the other anti-bleeding drugs have been used for years to try to lower the risk of major bleeding events during high-risk heart surgeries.
Cardiac surgeons and their teams are aggressive about trying to reduce the need for blood transfusions, said Dr. Martin London, an anesthesiologist who specializes in cardiovascular surgeries at the University of California, San Francisco.
"Bleeding in cardiac surgery has profound consequences and can cause mortality both acutely and then later on," London explained. "We've got plenty of observational data that suggests that the more blood you got during surgery the worse your outcome is long-term."
Over time it seemed aprotinin was more effective than the other two and Bayer marketed it aggressively, London said.
The drug cost substantially more than the alternatives. During the course of the study, aprotinin cost between $1,200 and $1,500 per patient, compared to about $150 per patient for tranexamic acid or aminocaproic acid. In places where aminocaproic acid is made - it is not made in Canada - that cost could be less than $4 per surgery, the study noted.
No head-to-head trial had been done on the effectiveness of the drugs. So, with funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Ontario's Ministry of Health and Long-term Care, Hebert and co-principal investigator Dr. Dean Fergusson of the Ottawa Health Research Institute started the BART trial.
"The Canadians stepped up to the plate in terms of doing the necessary randomized trials," said London, who was not involved in the study. "If the BART study hadn't been done, we probably would still be using aprotinin."
The original plan was to enrol 3,000 patients. At the time the enrolment was stopped, 2,331 patients had been randomly assigned to receive either aprotinin, tranexamic acid or aminocaproic acid during surgery.
Aprotinin did appear to be slightly more effective in preventing major bleeds. But that benefit was outweighed by the increased risk of death.
Hebert said the research doesn't show why deaths were higher among patients who got aprotinin, but the researchers believe the drug's apparent superiority at inducing clotting was both a positive and a negative in this setting.
"Our hypothesis at this point, although we can't prove it, we speculate that it worked a little bit better in preventing bleeding. It also worked a little bit better in causing clotting. And that's why a few more patients died."
Saturday, May 10, 2008
the olive
this poem grunts
as it shoves itself into you
it pushes your head down
and slaps your mouth open
your open mouth
stuffed wetly says
nothing this poem
slobbers on chins
into course hairs
that don't dye
like they should
this poem bent double
can lick its anus
breathe its breath
and dream of the
holes where seeds were
this poem squirts juices
when pressed it explains
consumption as wheezing
as though class
meant caste
this poem sears
other people's meat
seals in their flavours
under glass it can't be seen
for the other poems
as it shoves itself into you
it pushes your head down
and slaps your mouth open
your open mouth
stuffed wetly says
nothing this poem
slobbers on chins
into course hairs
that don't dye
like they should
this poem bent double
can lick its anus
breathe its breath
and dream of the
holes where seeds were
this poem squirts juices
when pressed it explains
consumption as wheezing
as though class
meant caste
this poem sears
other people's meat
seals in their flavours
under glass it can't be seen
for the other poems
Friday, April 11, 2008
Back it up at the Truck
Old School: Back it up at the Truck
Don't miss Old School: Back it up at the Truck!
Featuring readings by: Brea Burton, Emily Cargan, Carmen Derkson, Jill Hartman, Natalie Simpson, Lindsay Tipping, and Julia Williams!
When: Saturday, April 19, 2008
Doors open at 7:00
Reading starts at 7:30
Where: The Truck Gallery
The Grain Exchange (Lower Level)
815 -1st Street SW
Cost: Free!
Licensed: Hell yeah!
Brea Burton would like to report she is saddened by the fact that she can no longer wear jeans and Converse runners with skulls on them to work. She has recently become a downtown lemming, a strange little animal that feeds mostly on chai lattes and stale Easter candy. Her cubicle is small and dimly lit but her heart is big and her spirit bright. Sometimes, she makes jokes about ergonomically correct staplers and cleans under her nails with misshapen paper clips.
Calgary-based Mary Emily Cargan is now under new ownership, following the successful take-over of MEC Enterprises Inc. (formally D-Ed) by Turfcutters International of London and New York. Activist shareholders supported Turfcutters’ hostile bid for MEC Ent., which had shown poor returns for quarters two and three of 2007 predicated on last year’s sharp drop in bog futures. Heavily invested in bog futures, Turfcutters’ take-over of MEC Ent., a specialty player in detritus distribution systems, promises to steadily return shares to their former market value. Investors have so far reacted favourably to the newly installed Board of Directors and their projected restructuring of the company.
Carmen Derkson writes nomadic poetry.
According to Canada Council guidelines, Jill Hartman is a mid-career-writer. Does that mean her career will be over in 5 more years? Aw, who’s she kidding, she’s been at it for at least ten now. A lot can happen in ten years. Or not. Well, here’s to the next ten—it’s all downhill from here. Or uphill. Or maybe this is her hump-year.
Lately, Natalie Simpson spends her days annoying the cat, completing the bar, writing about writing, sporadically blogging, and publishing chapbooks through edits all over press. Her previous accomplishments include poems in Post-Prairie, Shift & Switch, Queen Street Quarterly, The Capilano Review, West Coast Line, and filling Station. Her recent publications include accrete or crumble (LINEbooks 2006) and Dirty Work (aboveground press series #4).
Lindsay Tipping did a lot of writing in Calgary before running away to become a TV star, horoscope writer and music promoter in China. She has been published in filling station, dandelion, house press and various ESL textbooks across Asia. She lives in Toronto...for now. She likes messing with confessional literature. She like lies that are more fun than truth. She likes that place between story and reality where the reader starts to wonder, "Did Lindsay really stab some guy in the heart in a back alley?" Don't worry, she didn't stab anyone.
Julia Williams writes poetry and prose. Her work has appeared in The Capilano Review, The Literary Review of Canada, Matrix Magazine and CV2, and was selected for the anthology Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry. Her first book of poetry, The Sink House, was published by Coach House Books in 2004. She lives in Calgary.
10 Interesting things about sex.
10 things you don't know about sex
Wing Sze Tang reports.
Provided by FASHION Magazine1: Ready, set, go—there’s nearly no difference in the amount of time it takes healthy men and women to reach peak sexual arousal: roughly 10 minutes.
2: One per cent of adults have zero interest in sex and have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all. Asexuality may be an under-the-radar sexual orientation, but researchers have only just begun to study it. On the other end of the rainbow, an estimated 3 to 6 per cent of the population have some form of sex addiction.
3: Straight, gay or flexible? Recent research suggests women may be “intrinsically bisexual,” and the higher their libido, the more they desire both sexes. In another study, the female subjects—whether they considered themselves straight or gay—were physically aroused by erotic films of both men and women. In contrast, the straight men were excited just by women, and the gay men only by men.
4: Canadian men have, on average, 23 sexual partners in total (notably more than the global average of 13), according to one recent worldwide survey. Their female counterparts reportedly have 10. The hitch? Number crunchers say the finding that men have substantially more bedmates on average than women is mathematically impossible.
5: Beyond its unsexy smell and taste, smoking appears to double a man’s risk of moderate or complete erectile dysfunction.
6: Once upon a time, doctors treated women suffering from “hysteria” by stimulating them to orgasm—a service dubbed “medical massage.” By the 1930s, it was abandoned in favour of psychotherapy.
7: Why do I bed thee? Let me count the ways. U.S. researchers who set out to catalogue all the reasons why humans have sex came up with 237 distinct ones. Among the top 10 motives, women and men had eight in common. A notable exception: “I realized I was in love” came in at number nine for women, but at number 17 for men.
8: Having sex regularly—at least once a week—may promote fertility in women by regulating hormones and menstrual patterns.
9: Male sweat contains androstadienone, a compound that enhances mood and sexual arousal in women. Alas, it also boosts levels of stress hormones. The chemical has been used as an ingredient in men’s fragrances.
10: What’s love got to do with it? Sexual arousal and romantic love activate quite distinct areas of the brain—and love is clearly the more powerful. The latter turns on dopamine-rich regions linked with motivation, and falling in love is not unlike the rush of taking cocaine, hence the addictiveness of a new crush, and the withdrawal-like symptoms of love lost.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
10 Least Accurate Movies - lifted from yahoo movies
-
10,000 B.C.
Director Roland Emmerich is usually a stickler for realism (see: sending a computer virus via Macintosh to aliens in Independence Day). So we hate to inform him that woolly mammoths were not, in fact, used to build pyramids. Heck, woolly mammoths weren't even found in the desert. They wouldn't need to be woolly if that were the case. And there weren't any pyramids in Egypt until 2,500 B.C or so.
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos -
Gladiator
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
Emperor Commodus was not the sniveling sister-obsessed creep portrayed in the movie. A violent alcoholic, sure, but not so whiny. He ruled ably for over a decade rather than ineptly for a couple months. He also didn't kill his father, Marcus Aurelius, who actually died of chickenpox. And instead of being killed in the gladiatorial arena, he was murdered in his bathtub. -
300
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
Though this paean to ancient moral codes and modern physical training is based on the real Battle of Thermopylae, the film takes many stylistic liberties. The most obvious one being Persian king Xerxes was not an 8-foot-tall Cirque du Soleil reject. The Spartan council was made up of men over the age of 60, with no one as young as Theron (played by 37-year-old Dominic West). And the warriors of Sparta went into battle wearing bronze armor, not just leather Speedos. -
The Last Samurai
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
The Japanese in the late 19th century did hire foreign advisers to modernize their army, but they were mostly French, not American. Ken Watanabe's character was based on the real Saigo Takamori who committed ritual suicide, or "seppuku," in defeat rather than in a volley of Gatling gun fire. Also, it's doubtful that a 40-something alcoholic Civil War vet, even one with great hair, would master the chopsticks much less the samurai sword. -
Apocalypto
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
This one movie has given entire Anthropology departments migraines. Sure the Maya did have the odd human sacrifice but not to Kulkulkan, the Sun God, and only high-ranking captives taken in battle were killed. The conquistadors arriving at the end of the film made for unlikely saviors: an estimated 90% of indigenous American population was killed by smallpox from the infected Spanish pigs. -
Memoirs of a Geisha
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
The geisha coming-of-age, called "mizuage," was really more of a makeover, where she changed her hairstyle and clothes. It didn't involve her getting... intimate with a client. In the climactic scene where Sayuri wows Gion patrons with her dancing prowess, her routine - which involves some platform shoes, fake snow, and a strobe light - seems more like a Studio 54 drag show than anything in pre-war Kyoto. -
Braveheart
Movie Info | Production Photos
Let's forget the fact that kilts weren't worn in Scotland until about 300 years after William Wallace's day and just do some simple math. According to the movie, Wallace's blue-eyed charm at the Battle of Falkirk was so overpowering, he seduced King Edward II's wife, Isabella of France, and the result of their affair was Edward III. But according to the history books, Isabella was three years old at the time of Falkirk, and Edward III was born seven years after Wallace died. -
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
In 1585, when the movie takes place, Queen Elizabeth was 52 years old - Cate Blanchett was 36 when she shot the film - and was not being courted by suitors like Ivan the Terrible (who was dead by then). And though the movie has her rallying the troops at Tilbury astride a white steed in full armor with a sword, in fact she rode side saddle, carrying a baton. She was more of a regal majorette than Joan of Arc. -
The Patriot
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
Revolutionary War figure Francis "The Swamp Fox" Marion was the basis for Mel Gibson's character, but he wasn't the forward-thinking family man they show in the flick. He was a slave owner who didn't get married (to his cousin) until after the war was over. Historians also say that he actively persecuted and murdered native Cherokees. Plus, the thrilling Battle of Guilford Court House where he vanquishes his British nemesis? In reality, the Americans lost that one. -
2001: A Space Odyssey
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
According to this film, in year 2001 we would have had manned voyages to Jupiter, a battle of wits with a sentient computer, and a quantum leap in human evolution. Instead we got the Mir Space Station falling from the sky, Windows XP, and Freddy Got Fingered. Apparently the lesson here is that sometimes it's better when the movies get the facts all wrong.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Concordia Grad Colloquium and Readings
The Colloquium Committee proudly presents the sixth Annual Concordia Graduate Colloquium, "Anatomy of Passions."
The conference will take place on March 28 and March 29 in room H-762, and features graduate students from Concordia University and universities abroad. Please see the schedule below for more information.
We look forward to seeing you there,
English Graduate Colloquium Committee:
Bassel Atallah, Jennifer Baker, Jean-Francois Bernard, Lizzy Edwards, Megan Findlay, Caitlin Hartnett, Rachel Kyne, Jean-Marc Leblanc, Colin Martin, Valerie Medzalabanleth, Kathleen Ogden, Simon Reader, Katye Seip
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The conference will take place on March 28 and March 29 in room H-762, and features graduate students from Concordia University and universities abroad. Please see the schedule below for more information.
We look forward to seeing you there,
English Graduate Colloquium Committee:
Bassel Atallah, Jennifer Baker, Jean-Francois Bernard, Lizzy Edwards, Megan Findlay, Caitlin Hartnett, Rachel Kyne, Jean-Marc Leblanc, Colin Martin, Valerie Medzalabanleth, Kathleen Ogden, Simon Reader, Katye Seip
------------------------------
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY - DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
SIXTH ANNUAL GRADUATE COLLOQUIUM
ANATOMY OF PASSIONS
FRIDAY MARCH 28th
All panels held in Room H-762 (Hall Building)
PANEL 1: PENNING PERVERSION
Chair: Colin Martin
Sarah Cochrane, (University of British Columbia)
Psychopathic Feeling: Representations of Affect and Abnormality in Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley
Mariiane Mays, (University of Manitoba)
Blood Runs Thicker Than Water: Perverse Humour(s) in Jean Stafford's The Mountain Lion
Psychopathic Feeling: Representations of Affect and Abnormality in Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley
Mariiane Mays, (University of Manitoba)
Blood Runs Thicker Than Water: Perverse Humour(s) in Jean Stafford's The Mountain Lion
Holly Luhning, (University of Saskatchewan)
Humanization of the Rake: Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess
Humanization of the Rake: Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess
PANEL 2: INSIDE OUTSIDE UPSIDE DOWN 2:15pm – 3:30pm
Chair: Caitlin Hartnett
Philip Koch, (University of Manitoba)
Dark Matters: Architectural Resistances and the Productions of Space
David Rozon, (Concordia University)
Architectural Personalities: Deviance in Norman Mailer's The Armies of
the Night
Jennifer Baker, (Concordia University)
Small Sources of Power: 18th Century Service and the Economy of
Information
KEYNOTE LECTURE 4pm – 5pm
Professor Allan Pero (University of Western Ontario)
"A Corporal Radioscopy": Lacan, Badiou and Baroque Love
EVENING RECEPTION 8pm
Irish Embassy Pub & Grill—1234 rue Bishop
SATURDAY MARCH 29TH
All panels held in Room H-762
PANEL 3: EXECUTION OF FEELING
Chair: Kathleen Ogden
Stephanie Yorke, (University of New Brunswick)
Affect and Representation in Two Accounts of the Execution of Mary Stuart, or Mary Stuart: Beheaded, and Still Talking Out Both Sides of Her Mouth
Nathan Szymanski, (Concordia University)
Anti-Catharsis and the Passions in Marlowe's Edward II
Rachel Price, (Concordia University)
Stoic Agency in John Donne's View of Death
PANEL 4: MASSIVE MANIPULATIONS
Chair: Jean-Francois Bernard
Kate Trebuss, (University of Toronto)
Ordering the Elements of Affect: The Language of the Passions in
Paradise Lost
Chris Dilworth, (University of Montreal)
Drives and Affect: Motivation in the Theories of Butler and Sedgwick
Colin Martin, (Concordia University)
When Logic Fails: Nationalism, Marxism and a Place for Poesy
PANEL 5: SHOCK THERAPY: READING, REACTING AND REINTERPRETING
Chair: Valerie Medzalabanleth
Tine Appelman, (Concordia University)
Samuel Pepys: "all alone, like a man out of the world
Natalie Huffels, (McGill University)
Tracing the History of Trauma in Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White
Joan Wry, (McGill University)
Shelley's Mont Blanc: Romantic Affect and the Negative Sublime
Tracing the History of Trauma in Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White
Joan Wry, (McGill University)
Shelley's Mont Blanc: Romantic Affect and the Negative Sublime
THIRD ANNUAL YEAR END GRADUATE READING 8PM
Arts Café—201 Fairmount Ouest
Arts Café—201 Fairmount Ouest
Sunday, March 16, 2008
micheal taussig notes
rough notes from march 13/08 talk at concordia...my commentsandthoughts in italics
no mic, no shoes, no service. mike problems solved by using the mic rather than standing apart from it.
anthropology of estrangement, lives in roland barthes, the third meaning lives on in what we're to hear today - filtered by taussig sketch in his field notebook filled working in columbia, july 2000.
the sketch shows pictures of cars out of alignment with the ruled page and a picture of a woman stitching a man into what appears to be a sleeping bag. it appears to have been drawn by a child, though apparently filled in with no small effort using watercolour paints.
july, 2000 in Medellin, Columbia. people sleeping in traffic tunnel because it was warm in the tunnel (according to my driver). a woman sews a man into a white nylon bag in a world of four million homeless - an epidemic caused by paramilitary activity and cows. no man's land, they have no land - and in this country all want land because all want cattle. even the president is a noted cattleman who, like others of his class, owns paramilitary to drive people off the land, that they can avoid being taxed on their cattle.
nylon cocoon in freeway canyon, inches between the cars and the people. what moth will emerge? a movement of enclosure writ at many levels as "freedom" implies homeless, no place. how is meaning subverted through barthes? square it away and then refute your square, as he, a restless thinker, does.
stifling deadly enclosures as a safety. stillness on a freeway. criticism a failed enterprise from its beginning: gap between meaning and picture, we have a silly understanding of understanding. this a drawing from life, real, but he draws it, makes an image but we have a fuzzy understanding of how the pictures we leave in give meaning.
carnival => barthes => surreal => benjamin
image and language take precedence. can reality out strip surreality? how strange is this normal? to be surreal is to go back and forth on this threshold between sleeping and waking. the region from which the surreal precision of poetry reports.
i see a young man waiting at an intersection. when the light goes red, he enters traffic, juggling flaming sticks with incredible skill. he circulates the intersection, juggling traffic with aplomb. animated, he juggles the sullen dummies in the cars - the tabla rasa for his surreal poetry, the way Breton's paris must have appeared when he juggled them also: as though an atom bomb has fallen in a fiery apparition amongst the sluggards. surreal is urban, through barthes' third meaning.
the third meaning is an interrogative meaning, living in film cells (stills) or panels from comic books. the drawing a reservoir of meaning. the french government attempted to return a preserved tattooed Maori head to new zealand for proper burial. but the minister of culture deems that the head may not leave france because it is a work of art and it is owned by france and is therefore french art and this man's head and thirty others of his brothers and sisters are artistic things belonging to the french people.
the head is not a body part. as french art, photos may no longer be taken of the head. drawings are permitted, as in a court room. in court, drawings - perhaps due to their temporal duration - fail to harm the living sacrifice the way photographic simulacra do.
...a mystery...
does the drawing, in its stillness, enter the realm of the sacred? bataille suggests cave paintings came after the hunt - made in celebration of the deceased - rather than before the hunt as previously assumed. celebration of the living rather than supplication to the immaterial for success in killing. bataille opposes greed, insecurity, survival of the fittest in favour of a wasteful, celebratory general economy.
perhaps barthes' study of signs tells us nothing, merely intellectualizes the image and ignores its imagicity. the power of image imaginary. but not so imaginary as incredible and shocking. the image a way to absorb shock, to mediate: image magic and the need to mark coexist in the words (as in taussig's sketch, written before the sketch was made) i swear i saw this.
to swear is to stand outside truth in order to insure truth. Bush aides will not testify under oath in the scandal over illegal influence peddling in the american judiciary and the Gonzales placing. they refuse to swear. foul language that can hurt the object of the foul language if misdirected. to be under oath could mean to turn the direction of the curse upon one's self, if the truth were not adequately dispensed by oath-makers.
to witness is needed only when no court available: but to whom do you swear? trying to heal a 17 year old from sorcery, taussig sang as he had seen other healers sing: but he faltered, unable to conjure the spirits. he put in real people to his mind, he imaged those who could help him sing and his imaging was good. seeing cannot be separated from singing, touching, but they differ from speaking. he struggled to write (speak) in his field journal of this healing song - too many "you's" appeared in the audience. he refigures them as spirits and can write.
all writers (especially diarists) write to spirits. i swear i saw this (witness) summons spirits. this is sketchy and ridiculous, despite Writing and Witnessing. all in this room are potential shamans, of freeway and traffic tunnels in negative capability; that curious state of the mastery of non-mastery.
regarding Primo Levi: writing the experience of Auschwitz as a weekly factory report. a factory built while he worked as camp labour at Auschwitz. can you witness (critically) your own witnessing? Levi realizes he writes a bunch of literature. "may your house fall apart - the curse, by the witness feeling the shame the just man feels at another's crime. does this shame disqualify the witness? it was the witness who survived, despite being (often) the least worthy person:
"We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses [...] we are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless."
taussig, through Levi, disagrees that Auschwitz lies outside language. the weekly factory report provided in _if this is a man_ creates a magical armature.
the taussig drawing? does it have a sacred quality? stupendous normality is what triggers the stupendous abnormality. levi no game but that of benjamin's story teller. forsake narrative for the still shot. remove the image from its succession: that removal is what barthes calls filmic. time stands still and is radically reorganized. this tension compresses time into space. allegorical reasoning stacks in the image, still despite the time taken crafting image, reading image. this is the eye of the hurricane.
taussig now reenacts a reenactment of a healing by a shaman who demonstrates how to heal a child of the evil eye (fright). the child is measured, the string is folded. the child is measured on another axis - the discrepancy indicates the length of the child's fright.
because children can see the other world, the spirit world, they are open to fright. to heal fright close the gap (length of fright) between those worlds and this. the result is a loss of fear and a conflation of the worlds. a third meaning.
QandA
Q - what do you gain making spirits of real people?
A - i started wondering what purpose field notebook drawings serve. does skill matter when drawing feels necessary? as anthropologists, we rely on truth of witnessing, i want to investigate that. as to why call it sacred and the implied demeaning of subjects this process could entail, i don't think it's romanticizing or exploitive but an adjunct or approach/tack to true witnessing. i swear i saw this invokes an external authority to underscore truth-telling and why wouldn't i include this?
there is no place in our urban language today for the human-spirit circuit except in metaphor of poetry, but in these other societies it is a triangle: spirits of living, dead, absent - that our language short circuits and thus stops meaning from working.
Q - re: singing
A - an essential part (with hallucinogens) without words to differ from speaking, making the song sounds (recordings with a curing fan as syncopated percussion, always shifting rhythms) different than speaking, it channels spiritual in so much of divinity throughout the world, even in contemporary pop songs. though i'm a great believer in language (i think it'll always get you there) this shadow of language can add a depth to the meaning of what you witness.
thinking is saturated with imagery.
talking is saturated with imagery.
but not really imaginary. drawings like this ask how picture-bound language is and how we take that for granted or how sometimes (Plato) we intensely fear it. this fear continues today, especially film and popular culture, when in conflict with 'real learning' - that is so suspect of what happens in an experiential environment.
no mic, no shoes, no service. mike problems solved by using the mic rather than standing apart from it.
anthropology of estrangement, lives in roland barthes, the third meaning lives on in what we're to hear today - filtered by taussig sketch in his field notebook filled working in columbia, july 2000.
the sketch shows pictures of cars out of alignment with the ruled page and a picture of a woman stitching a man into what appears to be a sleeping bag. it appears to have been drawn by a child, though apparently filled in with no small effort using watercolour paints.
july, 2000 in Medellin, Columbia. people sleeping in traffic tunnel because it was warm in the tunnel (according to my driver). a woman sews a man into a white nylon bag in a world of four million homeless - an epidemic caused by paramilitary activity and cows. no man's land, they have no land - and in this country all want land because all want cattle. even the president is a noted cattleman who, like others of his class, owns paramilitary to drive people off the land, that they can avoid being taxed on their cattle.
nylon cocoon in freeway canyon, inches between the cars and the people. what moth will emerge? a movement of enclosure writ at many levels as "freedom" implies homeless, no place. how is meaning subverted through barthes? square it away and then refute your square, as he, a restless thinker, does.
stifling deadly enclosures as a safety. stillness on a freeway. criticism a failed enterprise from its beginning: gap between meaning and picture, we have a silly understanding of understanding. this a drawing from life, real, but he draws it, makes an image but we have a fuzzy understanding of how the pictures we leave in give meaning.
carnival => barthes => surreal => benjamin
image and language take precedence. can reality out strip surreality? how strange is this normal? to be surreal is to go back and forth on this threshold between sleeping and waking. the region from which the surreal precision of poetry reports.
i see a young man waiting at an intersection. when the light goes red, he enters traffic, juggling flaming sticks with incredible skill. he circulates the intersection, juggling traffic with aplomb. animated, he juggles the sullen dummies in the cars - the tabla rasa for his surreal poetry, the way Breton's paris must have appeared when he juggled them also: as though an atom bomb has fallen in a fiery apparition amongst the sluggards. surreal is urban, through barthes' third meaning.
the third meaning is an interrogative meaning, living in film cells (stills) or panels from comic books. the drawing a reservoir of meaning. the french government attempted to return a preserved tattooed Maori head to new zealand for proper burial. but the minister of culture deems that the head may not leave france because it is a work of art and it is owned by france and is therefore french art and this man's head and thirty others of his brothers and sisters are artistic things belonging to the french people.
the head is not a body part. as french art, photos may no longer be taken of the head. drawings are permitted, as in a court room. in court, drawings - perhaps due to their temporal duration - fail to harm the living sacrifice the way photographic simulacra do.
...a mystery...
does the drawing, in its stillness, enter the realm of the sacred? bataille suggests cave paintings came after the hunt - made in celebration of the deceased - rather than before the hunt as previously assumed. celebration of the living rather than supplication to the immaterial for success in killing. bataille opposes greed, insecurity, survival of the fittest in favour of a wasteful, celebratory general economy.
perhaps barthes' study of signs tells us nothing, merely intellectualizes the image and ignores its imagicity. the power of image imaginary. but not so imaginary as incredible and shocking. the image a way to absorb shock, to mediate: image magic and the need to mark coexist in the words (as in taussig's sketch, written before the sketch was made) i swear i saw this.
to swear is to stand outside truth in order to insure truth. Bush aides will not testify under oath in the scandal over illegal influence peddling in the american judiciary and the Gonzales placing. they refuse to swear. foul language that can hurt the object of the foul language if misdirected. to be under oath could mean to turn the direction of the curse upon one's self, if the truth were not adequately dispensed by oath-makers.
to witness is needed only when no court available: but to whom do you swear? trying to heal a 17 year old from sorcery, taussig sang as he had seen other healers sing: but he faltered, unable to conjure the spirits. he put in real people to his mind, he imaged those who could help him sing and his imaging was good. seeing cannot be separated from singing, touching, but they differ from speaking. he struggled to write (speak) in his field journal of this healing song - too many "you's" appeared in the audience. he refigures them as spirits and can write.
all writers (especially diarists) write to spirits. i swear i saw this (witness) summons spirits. this is sketchy and ridiculous, despite Writing and Witnessing. all in this room are potential shamans, of freeway and traffic tunnels in negative capability; that curious state of the mastery of non-mastery.
regarding Primo Levi: writing the experience of Auschwitz as a weekly factory report. a factory built while he worked as camp labour at Auschwitz. can you witness (critically) your own witnessing? Levi realizes he writes a bunch of literature. "may your house fall apart - the curse, by the witness feeling the shame the just man feels at another's crime. does this shame disqualify the witness? it was the witness who survived, despite being (often) the least worthy person:
"We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses [...] we are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless."
taussig, through Levi, disagrees that Auschwitz lies outside language. the weekly factory report provided in _if this is a man_ creates a magical armature.
the taussig drawing? does it have a sacred quality? stupendous normality is what triggers the stupendous abnormality. levi no game but that of benjamin's story teller. forsake narrative for the still shot. remove the image from its succession: that removal is what barthes calls filmic. time stands still and is radically reorganized. this tension compresses time into space. allegorical reasoning stacks in the image, still despite the time taken crafting image, reading image. this is the eye of the hurricane.
taussig now reenacts a reenactment of a healing by a shaman who demonstrates how to heal a child of the evil eye (fright). the child is measured, the string is folded. the child is measured on another axis - the discrepancy indicates the length of the child's fright.
because children can see the other world, the spirit world, they are open to fright. to heal fright close the gap (length of fright) between those worlds and this. the result is a loss of fear and a conflation of the worlds. a third meaning.
QandA
Q - what do you gain making spirits of real people?
A - i started wondering what purpose field notebook drawings serve. does skill matter when drawing feels necessary? as anthropologists, we rely on truth of witnessing, i want to investigate that. as to why call it sacred and the implied demeaning of subjects this process could entail, i don't think it's romanticizing or exploitive but an adjunct or approach/tack to true witnessing. i swear i saw this invokes an external authority to underscore truth-telling and why wouldn't i include this?
there is no place in our urban language today for the human-spirit circuit except in metaphor of poetry, but in these other societies it is a triangle: spirits of living, dead, absent - that our language short circuits and thus stops meaning from working.
Q - re: singing
A - an essential part (with hallucinogens) without words to differ from speaking, making the song sounds (recordings with a curing fan as syncopated percussion, always shifting rhythms) different than speaking, it channels spiritual in so much of divinity throughout the world, even in contemporary pop songs. though i'm a great believer in language (i think it'll always get you there) this shadow of language can add a depth to the meaning of what you witness.
thinking is saturated with imagery.
talking is saturated with imagery.
but not really imaginary. drawings like this ask how picture-bound language is and how we take that for granted or how sometimes (Plato) we intensely fear it. this fear continues today, especially film and popular culture, when in conflict with 'real learning' - that is so suspect of what happens in an experiential environment.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
john giorno
feb 4/08
some notes from john giorno master class (a mishmash and hastily scribbled hash):
"i'm seventy years old...and i became a poet when i was fourteen...you're all poets or prose writers - there's no difference. i went to school in the 40's, the middle ages, when nothing had happened yet.
concerned poetry is 75 years behind every other art form...time to try something new."
Journal Poetry Systems - "the idea that you don't have to be the victim of publishers. use the technology, from records to phones and so forth...nothing happens by mistake"
i.e. dial a poem...now telephone hotlines for love and dating, viral and reaching into the other world.
"painting and sculpture imprisoned by money but poetry, being worthless, enters a golden age. poetry is wisdom: nothing->wisdom->sound->word (poem).
- a great poem is that which releases the wisdom in other people's mind. Buddhism not a religion (practiced by giorno) but a way to train the chaos of the mind, to distill its ability to achieve wisdom.
bryan gyson
william burroughs
their return to NYC changed his world (they hated Warhol, his previous circle)
"i abandoned the lyric (beats) and i abandoned modernism (NYC aesthetic) and i don't really know what i am doing. poetry in translation. making the 60 pp score for a publication fit a later mode."
the poetry (scores) of performance, mediated for publication in terms of the greater body of work.
silk screen versions of the poems in production
a lot of people who would have been poets, like patti smyth, wound up picking up a guitar (tom waits)
60's onward: a loving golden age of promiscuity. then aids hit, a total catastrophe. "it felt like we failed" back then a gay poet was gide or proust. "then i read Howl and it was like reading of my mind. warhol didn't have the guts: in art, being gay was the kiss of death."
importance of public arts funding for small presses: crucial for the golden age of poetry...until the days of the NEA-4 and the conservatives slowly crushed it. they fought. i continued making poetry. i'm glad they fought but that wasn't for me.
as regards community: "wonderful when you reach the moment of feedback, of performance, but i prefer to be alone when making my poems."
re: money: actually, poets never have been paid, even when they are commissioned, in any culture, ever. even the poet-lamas were some how poor lamas. hou have to decide to be always marginal. someone as famous as william burroughs in visual arts would command $3-5million per year. he had to work for every penny.
if you choose to be a poet, you choose because you can't choose any thing else. this is a life.
some notes from john giorno master class (a mishmash and hastily scribbled hash):
"i'm seventy years old...and i became a poet when i was fourteen...you're all poets or prose writers - there's no difference. i went to school in the 40's, the middle ages, when nothing had happened yet.
concerned poetry is 75 years behind every other art form...time to try something new."
Journal Poetry Systems - "the idea that you don't have to be the victim of publishers. use the technology, from records to phones and so forth...nothing happens by mistake"
i.e. dial a poem...now telephone hotlines for love and dating, viral and reaching into the other world.
"painting and sculpture imprisoned by money but poetry, being worthless, enters a golden age. poetry is wisdom: nothing->wisdom->sound->word (poem).
- a great poem is that which releases the wisdom in other people's mind. Buddhism not a religion (practiced by giorno) but a way to train the chaos of the mind, to distill its ability to achieve wisdom.
bryan gyson
william burroughs
their return to NYC changed his world (they hated Warhol, his previous circle)
"i abandoned the lyric (beats) and i abandoned modernism (NYC aesthetic) and i don't really know what i am doing. poetry in translation. making the 60 pp score for a publication fit a later mode."
the poetry (scores) of performance, mediated for publication in terms of the greater body of work.
silk screen versions of the poems in production
a lot of people who would have been poets, like patti smyth, wound up picking up a guitar (tom waits)
60's onward: a loving golden age of promiscuity. then aids hit, a total catastrophe. "it felt like we failed" back then a gay poet was gide or proust. "then i read Howl and it was like reading of my mind. warhol didn't have the guts: in art, being gay was the kiss of death."
importance of public arts funding for small presses: crucial for the golden age of poetry...until the days of the NEA-4 and the conservatives slowly crushed it. they fought. i continued making poetry. i'm glad they fought but that wasn't for me.
as regards community: "wonderful when you reach the moment of feedback, of performance, but i prefer to be alone when making my poems."
re: money: actually, poets never have been paid, even when they are commissioned, in any culture, ever. even the poet-lamas were some how poor lamas. hou have to decide to be always marginal. someone as famous as william burroughs in visual arts would command $3-5million per year. he had to work for every penny.
if you choose to be a poet, you choose because you can't choose any thing else. this is a life.
call for sumbit
The University of Calgary's student newspaper, The Gauntlet, and the UofC's creative works magazine, NōD Magazine, are working together to publish a creative literary insert later this March.
Which means...
Open Call for creative submissions!
Interested? Or know someone who might be?
Submit to the Gauntlet via email to- gauntlet@ucalgary.ca.
Deadline: thurs. march15. 08.
Please include a few sentences of biographical information with your submission.
Submissions over 1500 words will not be considered.
One last reminder:
NōD will be accepting submissions for Issue 8 until March 1st. Issue 8 will be viral themed. We will consider creative work that is parasitic, replicative, or related to computer viruses, sickness or epidemics.
Quickly, spread the word!
Cheers,
Ian Kinney,
Editor, NōD
--
NōD Magazine
Department of English, University of Calgary
2500 University Drive N.W.
Calgary, AB
T2T 1N4
Which means...
Open Call for creative submissions!
Interested? Or know someone who might be?
Submit to the Gauntlet via email to- gauntlet@ucalgary.ca.
Deadline: thurs. march15. 08.
Please include a few sentences of biographical information with your submission.
Submissions over 1500 words will not be considered.
One last reminder:
NōD will be accepting submissions for Issue 8 until March 1st. Issue 8 will be viral themed. We will consider creative work that is parasitic, replicative, or related to computer viruses, sickness or epidemics.
Quickly, spread the word!
Cheers,
Ian Kinney,
Editor, NōD
--
NōD Magazine
Department of English, University of Calgary
2500 University Drive N.W.
Calgary, AB
T2T 1N4
Monday, February 25, 2008
WJT Mitchell
Jan 17.08
Talk on upcoming book, 9-11 to Abu Graib, War of Images: Cloning Terror.
what an extraordinary attendance. I feel guilty for having arrived in time to get a seat. especially now that all my profs are showing up to stand in a crowded room. 9-11 sure is popular. a speaker for the new centre for interdisciplinary studies at concordia. that's nice for them.
reading images as interplay of the visible and the readable. uses such terms as horrific. 9-11 "designed to produce an image to traumatize a nation". circumscribed within a master metaphor: the war on terror. a logical impossibility, given you can't wage war on a tactic.
the realization that such a war is futile will not mark its end: vietnam lasted four years after that moment was reached and there can be no closure to a war with no enemy. (note to self: read his 2004 book through benjamin) the mechanical image production replaced with biological, viral production capable of replicating itself and being endlessly cloned in digital production.
image 1: frontis (text only)
image 2: table of contents
clonophobia: the fear of the simulacrum. modeled on homophobia.
torture the evil twin of terrorism: those who practice it are terrorists.
the war is over: there are no weapons of mass destruction in iraq
there is no al queada in iraq
there is no freedom from torture being offered by america
the taliban destroying buddhas in afganistan:
images (iconography) destruction of images, must be seen as creative distruction. taliban used image as calendar poster. the iconographic gesture. americans reproduce this act in iraq, toppling statues of saddam - masquerade activity as spontaneous gesture by iraqi people.
the virtual memorial in place of inability to actually mourn: remember 2nd commandment: that of no graven image before god. was engraved as text, the longest commandment. tony mavrakos creates image of twin towers as the stones of the commandments. image no longer circulated online.
documentary: control room. regarding saddam pull-down.
saddam's dental exam: get inside the "head of state", reveal hidden secrets. appropriated quickly by internet cloning community. it took 60 years for iwo jima picture to be destabilized, 24 hours for the dental exam.
iraq never had a suicide bombing before invasion. now the bombers parade.
the wmd trucks, it turns out, where actually used to launch weather balloons. david reese (tom tomorrow) the new world of journalism.
'war on...' a metaphor for maximum effort, now made literal.
imagine a war on poverty where poor people get shot and bombed. oh wait. that's what actually happens.
the digital dinosaur: clone and terror, jurassic park. where dna and code overlap in cloning project. step forward, remember the after math of 9-11 and the efforts to find cellular matter of the dead to bury and mourn. those remains still highly toxic.
iRaq, blue version
benjamin's concern: the mass man and clone army. george lucas makes it happen.
terrorism the rubric of american foreign policy. domestic concern: stem cells and cloning. the debate over who clones what and how far continues to rage.
etymology: clone first meant the entire series, not the individual unit. clone as graven image.
al parker, gay superstar. simulates (clones) ideal hetero man. rugged and vigorous. cloning (as science) allows homosexual reproduction and men (real men) become irrelevant.
the abu ghraib archive (re: rockwell) finds the transference of lynching to abu ghraib from its normative black american association. shortages of everything at the prison except panties. those are sent by the pentagon to use as hoods on male moslem prisoners.
a few more things to consider: the claim by the jailers that they followed SOP (standard operating procedure). image carries two strands, the obscene (sexual) and the sacred (victim as christ) and the image of liberty as hooded, as clan.
osama as recruiter: purpose of 9-11 was to lure america into invading an arab country and alienating the arab world in all countries. it appears to have worked.
last note: john kerry chose not to bring up abu ghraib during the 2004 election. complicity is not partisan in america.
Talk on upcoming book, 9-11 to Abu Graib, War of Images: Cloning Terror.
what an extraordinary attendance. I feel guilty for having arrived in time to get a seat. especially now that all my profs are showing up to stand in a crowded room. 9-11 sure is popular. a speaker for the new centre for interdisciplinary studies at concordia. that's nice for them.
reading images as interplay of the visible and the readable. uses such terms as horrific. 9-11 "designed to produce an image to traumatize a nation". circumscribed within a master metaphor: the war on terror. a logical impossibility, given you can't wage war on a tactic.
the realization that such a war is futile will not mark its end: vietnam lasted four years after that moment was reached and there can be no closure to a war with no enemy. (note to self: read his 2004 book through benjamin) the mechanical image production replaced with biological, viral production capable of replicating itself and being endlessly cloned in digital production.
image 1: frontis (text only)
image 2: table of contents
clonophobia: the fear of the simulacrum. modeled on homophobia.
torture the evil twin of terrorism: those who practice it are terrorists.
 | |||
there is no al queada in iraq
there is no freedom from torture being offered by america
the taliban destroying buddhas in afganistan:
 |
images (iconography) destruction of images, must be seen as creative distruction. taliban used image as calendar poster. the iconographic gesture. americans reproduce this act in iraq, toppling statues of saddam - masquerade activity as spontaneous gesture by iraqi people.
the virtual memorial in place of inability to actually mourn: remember 2nd commandment: that of no graven image before god. was engraved as text, the longest commandment. tony mavrakos creates image of twin towers as the stones of the commandments. image no longer circulated online.
documentary: control room. regarding saddam pull-down.
saddam's dental exam: get inside the "head of state", reveal hidden secrets. appropriated quickly by internet cloning community. it took 60 years for iwo jima picture to be destabilized, 24 hours for the dental exam.
iraq never had a suicide bombing before invasion. now the bombers parade.
the wmd trucks, it turns out, where actually used to launch weather balloons. david reese (tom tomorrow) the new world of journalism.
'war on...' a metaphor for maximum effort, now made literal.
imagine a war on poverty where poor people get shot and bombed. oh wait. that's what actually happens.
the digital dinosaur: clone and terror, jurassic park. where dna and code overlap in cloning project. step forward, remember the after math of 9-11 and the efforts to find cellular matter of the dead to bury and mourn. those remains still highly toxic.
iRaq, blue version
iRaq, green version
iRaq, pink version
iRaq, yellow version
benjamin's concern: the mass man and clone army. george lucas makes it happen.
terrorism the rubric of american foreign policy. domestic concern: stem cells and cloning. the debate over who clones what and how far continues to rage.
etymology: clone first meant the entire series, not the individual unit. clone as graven image.
al parker, gay superstar. simulates (clones) ideal hetero man. rugged and vigorous. cloning (as science) allows homosexual reproduction and men (real men) become irrelevant.
the abu ghraib archive (re: rockwell) finds the transference of lynching to abu ghraib from its normative black american association. shortages of everything at the prison except panties. those are sent by the pentagon to use as hoods on male moslem prisoners.
a few more things to consider: the claim by the jailers that they followed SOP (standard operating procedure). image carries two strands, the obscene (sexual) and the sacred (victim as christ) and the image of liberty as hooded, as clan.
osama as recruiter: purpose of 9-11 was to lure america into invading an arab country and alienating the arab world in all countries. it appears to have worked.
last note: john kerry chose not to bring up abu ghraib during the 2004 election. complicity is not partisan in america.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
fS call for submissions
Submit to filling Station
filling Station is a literary magazine based in Calgary, Alberta, that is dedicated to showcasing innovative poetry, fiction, drama, film and visual art, and to promotion local and international arts communities.
We are now accepting submissions for 2008. filling Station accepts poetry, visual art, fiction, drama, film, interviews and reviews.
Spring Issue (#42)Deadline: March 1st.
Summer Issue (#43) Deadline: June 1st. The release of this year's summer issue will coincide with the fourth annual Calgary Blow-Out! literary festival. Theme: Ugliness and Undesirability. If your work engages in any way with with the aesthetics and poetics of disgust, ugliness, and revulsion, please send in work for this issue.
Fall Issue (#44) Deadline: September 1st
Please visit http://www.fillingstation.ca for submission guidelines.
filling Station is a literary magazine based in Calgary, Alberta, that is dedicated to showcasing innovative poetry, fiction, drama, film and visual art, and to promotion local and international arts communities.
We are now accepting submissions for 2008. filling Station accepts poetry, visual art, fiction, drama, film, interviews and reviews.
Spring Issue (#42)Deadline: March 1st.
Summer Issue (#43) Deadline: June 1st. The release of this year's summer issue will coincide with the fourth annual Calgary Blow-Out! literary festival. Theme: Ugliness and Undesirability. If your work engages in any way with with the aesthetics and poetics of disgust, ugliness, and revulsion, please send in work for this issue.
Fall Issue (#44) Deadline: September 1st
Please visit http://www.fillingstation.ca for submission guidelines.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
birthday in montreal
been an interesting year. started as a flunky for the phone company. turned that job in for one as a project manager at a marketing firm. wonderful job, really enjoyed it. left to abandon calgary and move with Ashleigh to montreal and attend grad school at concordia. a rougher go. i'm tiring of being poor and intellectual work in montreal pays half what one gets in calgary. and, contrary to popular belief, living expenses are not lower here. prices are lower. taxes much higher. end result is no change but a lowered income. myth busted.
concordia is good - i've struggled to get back into a productive school pattern and spent two months trading illnesses with Ash but have had some scholastic success - namely the Wynne Francis award. the payment comes in at the end of january - not a moment too soon. ALIS cut $4k from my student loans so i don't actually have enough money to get through the year without that help.
i teach english part time. for a third what i would make in calgary. the ELS market is very big here and wages quite low. grill cooks in calgary make more than i do. the experience, i tell myself. do it for the experience. i like the job, so doing for the experience isn't that bad, even though prep work = doing it for the volunteer experience.
ran a record time this summer in the chinook half ironman. record for me, any way. but i had to swallow the $600 entry fee for ironman canada when the start dates at concordia conflicted with the race. recovered from a stress fracture in my femur to beat my brother at the chicago marathon during a heat wave. someone died and 232 people were hospitalized but perry and i both managed to finish before they ran out of water and canceled the race.
housing prices in montreal nearly made it possible for Ash and i to buy a house this year. then it snowed (and i mean snowed) and the roof of the house started leaking. we'll hold off on buying it for the time being.
i'm 34 now. mid thirties. i don't think of 34 year-olds as young people. i guess i had better start since i'm not prepared to think of myself as middle aged. Ash is out of town until tomorrow. i feel lonely. that's new. i guess i'm not such an old dog after all, if i'm still learning new tricks. i wonder sometimes what it was like for my dad, living alone in BC after my parents separated. girlfriends came and went but i imagine he spent a fair bit of time flying solo, right about the age i'm sitting at now.
i never thought that sort of thing would matter to me. being alone. another new trick, or at least a variation. i don't want to be alone. i.i.i. i write that letter far too often. try it this way: solitude is over-rated. and i (dammit!) for one am not more productive in it. three weeks in an empty house have taught me that much at least. time to go to the gym. endorphins help.
concordia is good - i've struggled to get back into a productive school pattern and spent two months trading illnesses with Ash but have had some scholastic success - namely the Wynne Francis award. the payment comes in at the end of january - not a moment too soon. ALIS cut $4k from my student loans so i don't actually have enough money to get through the year without that help.
i teach english part time. for a third what i would make in calgary. the ELS market is very big here and wages quite low. grill cooks in calgary make more than i do. the experience, i tell myself. do it for the experience. i like the job, so doing for the experience isn't that bad, even though prep work = doing it for the volunteer experience.
ran a record time this summer in the chinook half ironman. record for me, any way. but i had to swallow the $600 entry fee for ironman canada when the start dates at concordia conflicted with the race. recovered from a stress fracture in my femur to beat my brother at the chicago marathon during a heat wave. someone died and 232 people were hospitalized but perry and i both managed to finish before they ran out of water and canceled the race.
housing prices in montreal nearly made it possible for Ash and i to buy a house this year. then it snowed (and i mean snowed) and the roof of the house started leaking. we'll hold off on buying it for the time being.
i'm 34 now. mid thirties. i don't think of 34 year-olds as young people. i guess i had better start since i'm not prepared to think of myself as middle aged. Ash is out of town until tomorrow. i feel lonely. that's new. i guess i'm not such an old dog after all, if i'm still learning new tricks. i wonder sometimes what it was like for my dad, living alone in BC after my parents separated. girlfriends came and went but i imagine he spent a fair bit of time flying solo, right about the age i'm sitting at now.
i never thought that sort of thing would matter to me. being alone. another new trick, or at least a variation. i don't want to be alone. i.i.i. i write that letter far too often. try it this way: solitude is over-rated. and i (dammit!) for one am not more productive in it. three weeks in an empty house have taught me that much at least. time to go to the gym. endorphins help.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
These are Dick Cheney's labs, Jackson and Dave. Jackson is black and Dave is white. Jackson is an evil overlord and Dave is the savior of the world. Jackson shares a name with a black political adversary while Dave shares his moniker with the king of Israel.
The white house released these photos, probably thinking they would be seen as a cute, humanizing picture of the life of the American President, Vice. Tastes rather like another shot from the good ol' boy to the 90% of the world he continues to oppress.
Hey Dick. Nice arrogance, you fat bigot sociopath. Fuck off and die.
The white house released these photos, probably thinking they would be seen as a cute, humanizing picture of the life of the American President, Vice. Tastes rather like another shot from the good ol' boy to the 90% of the world he continues to oppress.
Hey Dick. Nice arrogance, you fat bigot sociopath. Fuck off and die.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
thus since august and the Dalai Lama
Haven't apparently posted a blog since August. That's interesting, given all that has happened since. There was the epic cross-Canada journey with heater blazing amid reddened dachshund nipples (which ended in a rather now-living-in-Montreal sort of state). A Concordianism ensued amidst fevered sweating runs through Jarry Park. That of course culminated in the bus-ride of ought-seven and included a 30th Anniversary Chicago Marathon with all the dead and hospitalized persons such an event demands.
This weekend brought more, some of it in Ottawa. On Saturday, Ash, myself and some of her friends from Concordia drove there and on Saturday, shopping and drinking happened. I shopped for poets at the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair and found quite a few. The girls did other kinds of shopping and later the many of us drank - some with poets who continued to be shopped well into the evening. A boyfriend named Geoff joined us and on Sunday morning we ate breakfasts (after, of course, we got out of the prison which had housed us until that time).
Then we went to see his holiness the Dalai Lama at the Ottawa Civic Centre. Here's a synopsis of the event and what was said (please remember that this is a recollection based on hastily written notes):
An introduction by Mark Tewkesbury, following a video highlight reel of his gold medal victory in the Olympics. A winning essay read aloud by a high school student, who states that if we remove bias and corruption, we can all be members of one world-country. I don't at this moment miss my naivete.
A Tibetan opera singer/musician performs. Ethereal, beautiful music swallowed by the 18, 000 people in the audience. After his song he tells us that he loves his Tibetan music. And to tell us that if we also like his Tibetan music - he pauses slightly as he contemplates the crowd - to come visit him at his table. Mark takes a moment later to tell us that the musician's few hundred spectators who watched the rehearsal and sound check were the largest audience he had ever had.
Members of the Tibetan Cultural Association of Montreal come out next to dance in front of a mural of the Potala Palace. They represent different regions of Tibet in their clothes and dance, though they dance together to a single song, they sing together a single song as they circle and weave around a solitary flag-bearer.
With a Starbucks coffee (proudly served) and some stale nachos in my hands I join the crowd in greeting the Dalai Lama. Interestingly, the crowd does not applaud the announcement that the Dalai Lama is a Nobel Laureate but gives a standing ovation at the news that he was awarded an American Congressional Gold Medal of Honour. Or Honor, if you spell it south of the border.
He welcomes us to the hockey arena as an honourary member of our country - having received honourary Canadian citizenship in June during his last (unofficial) visit. The Canadian government can ignore Chinese trade threats now, since they're just welcoming (officially) another Canadian citizen. He chuckles gleefully as a cheer rises up - once more, the home team wins.
In the seats to my right, the Regional Dancers of the Tibetan Cultural Association of Montreal quietly take their seats and their babies; the seats become a pot of brightly coloured flowers cuddling little fuzzy bees as the Lama takes off his shoes, grins, wiggles into a comfortable lotus position on his regal chair and dons a cap with visor that he may better see the audience. He hopes (grinning still) that we are warmer than the frosty breeze that welcomed him off the plane this morning. He introduces his chat with a request that we seek to understand with care his meaning, rather than his words, as he grapples with (his not so very) broken English.
His message: he has nothing to offer us. He is no healer, only a simple monk. He himself strongly doubts the powers of healers. When his neck developed a terrible dry itch, he asked for a healer to prove such powers and heal it. None appeared - but a doctor gave him an ointment for it which worked quite nicely.
He likes comfort and says the silver lining to being a refugee is the reduced standing on formality. Once, in Mexico, he saw a Japanese minister stiffly attending upon his role as a leader, working his way through a rosary. The string for the rosary broke, scattering beads everywhere but the Japanese minister maintained his appearance of formal duty. The Dalai Lama claims that had his own string done such a thing he would have giggled for certain.
He says of George Bush (Jr.) that he loves the US President. That George is a lovely man, a very nice person who shares the Lama's dislike of unnecessary formality. But the Lama does have some reservations about Bush's policies. Regarding Iraq: the invasion and subsequent activity was not necessarily led with bad intent but the policy method was very unrealistic and has now worsened the problems there.
Everything is interconnected throughout the world - including the Tibet problem. One must know the causes of the past to find proper methods to solve problems in the present. Right now, problem solving methods among nations are still based on negative emotions such as hatred, anger, desire for revenge. These are the modern theology. To reduce man-made problems, more holistic views are required.
18th and 19th century nations were more self sufficient than nations today and their populations were much lower than now. The idea of national ideology was more relevant then than it is today. It is no longer applicable, resources are limited in many regions, the quality of life in many, perhaps most, places has dropped in recent years. Where a community in India of three thousand Tibetans had three thousand acres ten years ago, they are now ten thousand on the same three thousand acres. That is not sustainable. We ask for more land and resources for the people but the Indian people suffer the same problem. The many communities of nations should work together as one entity. Our approach to problems must become more realistic - our perceptions still remain limited to "old thinking" and we continue to exploit one another.
This causes war. That is clear-cut. But we have lost our demarcation and do not realize that destruction of any member of the world is a destruction of self. We must keep in mind the interest, the right, in the human family and learn compromise. This shall take serious effort. We must learn first Inner Disarmament and erase inner hatred and jealousy. This leads directly to External Disarmament and removal of attitude of aggression and removal of weapons, nuclear arms, step by step.
This process can be aided by Unified Force. Once nations such as Germany and France share an armed force, they will no longer have a conflict. North America, the US, Canada and Mexico, should also create such a unified force. Move the EU to Poland, put NATO in Moscow. In other words, nations should give their arms to their neighbors, their enemies, to care for and effort should be made to nurture Russia's democracy.
Some force will always be necessary: there will always be mischievous people. The main point is: war is out of date, it is obsolete. It is like hitting oneself in the leg. Rather than send young people who are restless at home to other countries to wage war in order to channel their energy, it is better to create "adversity" for energetic young people by sending them abroad to learn and find a sense of purpose, that they may become educated and bring new skills and ways of living back to their country. They will also bring the languages and tools of trade with them. I (the Lama) feel very useful. So should your young people go to other countries and serve them and find purpose.
In the USSR in 1979 I felt an aggression to attack among the people and some leaders manipulated that motivation. And today, for instance, I feel that distance-attitude in Iran. We need more effort to come in closer contact to them and not just governments but from all individuals. As one of your citizens (chuckle) I feel some right to interfere in your community.
A really important matter: in order to be happy, person and community, we need to put aside money matter and political issues. In both person and government we should endeavor to find friendship rather than merely the behavior of giving gifts.
When I get a medical checkup, whatever place that I am in, some doctors ask me how I feel. Some treat me as a machine, something to have an illness. Trust will lead to healing. That's why a placebo can work. If there is compassion and warm-heartedness between patient and physician, healing will improve. The doctor must empathize with the pain of the patient. This results not from knowledge but from warm-heartedness.
When our lives start, a mother's state of mind will impact the unborn child. How does a puppy with eyes not yet open find the mother's nipples? Without that trust and affection, growth cannot happen. In medical experiments, young rats separated from their mothers had lower neuron development than other young rats. My own mother was a very compassionate,
uneducated person. A very warm person, even when we were poor, she shared what we had with all people. So today, I serve with compassion.
When I was six or seven, learning Buddhism was no fun but even then I had compassion. I learned this from my mother, not from religion. We all come from mothers wombs: we all have the same potential for compassion. That is the secret to happiness and it will strengthen our immune systems. People who spend their lives in the compassionate service of others have more active brains and bodies than other people. Many scientists consider compassionate feeling important for health whether the person is a believer or an unbeliever. You should take care of your health.
Some get the misimpression that this is a religious matter. That is a mistake. Some think that compassionate service may be good for others but not for the self. That is also a mistake. Sometimes, when I smile, people feel nervous rather than happy. They wonder why I am smiling without a cause - they are suspicious and become more uncomfortable, though I smile with warm-heartedness. Therefore, practice of compassion helps the self first before it helps others. It gives you lower stress, better circulation, better health.
Studies have shown that people who communicate mostly with words "I" and "mine" have greater risk of heart attacks. This reflects their minds. They are self-separate. When you consider others, you interact, you reduce stress and anxiety. Essentially, we should know each other. It brings peace of mind. When people have anger, that negative-ness is 90% projection and that brings disaster. When you make important decisions, remain open and you will see reality more clearly.
Use your intelligence and combine it with warm-heartedness. You will become a good citizen of the world.
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During the question period...
My day starts at 3:30 am. I exercise meditate, jog, do yoga until about eight or 8:30. And of course, breakfast. My brother who sleeps in, when I tease him he teases me back by saying that I get up so early to eat extra breakfast! I do not eat dinner so breakfast is very important.
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When considering any situation from a Buddhist perspective one cannot merely follow the words of another. Buddhist Science leads one to analyze reality of which, there are two branches: quantum physics, or the reality of particles and matter and inner science, the science of logic, reason and meditation upon phenomenology. Reality is understood through reason, not by listening to me, or to any Buddha. Reason is the ultimate instrument to know reality. When interpreting what a religion has to say about a circumstance, remember the scripture is not a literal lesson.
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We do not seek to separate from China but to find common institutions and to be autonomous. The Chinese population in Tibet is now bigger than the Tibetan population, many of whom are no longer in
Tibet. In the long run, the Tibetan community is very small: to them I say please produce more children! (laughs) That should be our response to the family planning strategy.
Violence and non-violence are method. Most important is motivation and goal. Therefore some times violence can be useful, to stop harmful activities. The main difference is in motivation. But both are method and they will deliver your message. In Tibet, because we strictly stay non-violent, more Chinese now support us. If we became violent, that would be suicide.
The Tibetan people seek human harmony, religious harmony. I support the monks in Burma and hopefully some strong influence from China can save the monks from Tyranny.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Miss Lamp recommended by the Calgary Public Library
A little news from the wire...
That's right! Chris Ewart's dazzling debut novel, Miss Lamp, about a lovely litigator who, among other things, really enjoys a properly made grilled cheese sandwich, is not just for people who buy books anymore.
The Calgary Public Library has made Miss Lamp one of its recommended titles for August 2007. We encourage readers in Calgary and outside it to take the CPL up on its suggestion.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
A Brief Note About Failure
A brief note about failure.
On Sunday I grabbed my bike and went hill climbing. Nothing crazy; the hill I was doing laps on is less than 2k in length and never exceeds a six or seven percent grade. By the time I started my fourth lap, the burning in my thigh was excruciating and I pulled out halfway to ride flatland for a while before heading home.
On Sunday night I decided to pull out of Ironman
Ironman’s schedule, like so many of my usual races this year, directly conflicts with more important events and, given the possibility of seriously worsening my injuries, it really only makes sense that I withdraw and focus on the impending move to Montreal and Grad School.
Right?
I enjoy calling myself a triathlete. I enjoy being an “ironman”. I enjoy it so much I’ve let my writing wither, sacrificed time with my partner, ignored my friends and spent all the money I need to live on while I pursue my writing career. That’s unhealthy ego and I really don’t regret pulling out. It’s a long time coming and I’ve had a lot of trouble motivating myself to train this year.
But I’m quitting one of those rare things that makes me different and, in my eyes, special. There’s no good reason for doing it – it wouldn’t have been my first and may not even have been my fastest – but I’m a little less me, now. And that…that’s too bad.
Enough of the pity party. Bleagh. Tastes like shit.
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