January 2012
5 posts
amazing. →
grammar- back to basics
So, my new job that I will be starting in a few weeks requires that I copyedit author’s manuscripts. In an effort to ensure proper preparation (and also due to the fact that I always over-prepare in an effort to fend off anxious night/daymares about impending doom & failure…) I’ve decided to get a head start on some grammar exercises using Maxine Ruvinksy’s Practical...
December 2011
1 post
the grand tour
the ferry ride is the best part of my day. I get to watch the city yawn & scratch her eyes, and on the way home the lighthouse on George’s island winks at me.
I recently started working across the harbour in Dartmouth. As a born-again optimist, I have discovered it holds a kind of sad beauty, but I’m also constantly overwhelmed by a grotesque and almost osmotic sense...
November 2011
2 posts
I just love this book so much. →
Margaret Atwood asks good questions.
My girl Margaret Atwood’s at it again with her newest release “In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination” — allowing her inner geek to take up the pen to pontificate over everything from Batman to Victorian literature. My favourite passage so far is a rambling tangent of questions about my favourite meta-literary concept, storytelling:
“…do stories free the...
October 2011
1 post
the fall- things i'm excited about
pumpkin pie
cold nights
orange & purple sunsets
crunching leaves beneath my feet
scarves (although I attempt to wear these year-round—like comfy little neck blankets)
book basking in the rays of the late afternoon sun, letting the Atlantic breeze turn my pages for me
squash soup
black skies and bright stars
watching my breath turn to smoke
dark beer
poetry competitions
keeping...
August 2010
6 posts
bring back the cyanotypes!
The other day (last week?) I stopped in to see local photographer Graham Ward’s show “Camera Obscura” for which he created his own camera (obscura) using glass plate negatives and all the chemicals. Funny how now that we’re ‘blessed’ with all of these new technologies designed for making things ‘easier’ we discover that the quality is lacking and we...
“The invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love”
– Gabriel Garcia Marquez
fuck octopi, give me iceland.
I just found out that Iceland has a Sea Monster Museum. I now want to go there even more than I did after the first time I watched the Sigur Ros doc “Heima”. Also when Icelandic people speak it sounds like they’re choking (in a nice way), and the landscape suggests to me an alternate version of nova scotia with fjords where everyone is beautiful.
i have a t-shirt addiction...
i think I bought three this week alone… that’s the problem with going to festivals /concerts, etc… i thought i was safe at home and I found these: http://www.speakoutpoetry.com/about/merchandize/
I had to support SpeakOut Poetry— a poetry slam initiative going on in the GTA. I saw a slam last winter in Kitchener and it blew my mind. The experience inspired me to write...
“Pray to god I won’t live to see the death of everything that’s wild.”
– arcade fire, ‘half light II (no celebration)
July 2010
6 posts
bottles and bones (shade & sympathy)
i’ve decided to try & associate music with my days, kind of like a soundtrack.
if today were a song it would be ‘bottles & bones’ by califone. not due to the lyrics, but just the lazy vibe of the steady simple guitar & the shrill yet gentle piano. today was in slow motion & not because i was hungover this time but genuinely happy.
i had a great day at work. i...
rain makes me think.
rainy days make me creative.
& heavy rain is best.
today i drew something for the first time in
a long time?
a year?
my sketchbook didn’t remember me much.
i also wrote a letter to a good friend.
A tiny part of me gets a little excited when a good friend lives far away, just because letter writing is something I love to do. And receiving letters in the mail has never ceased to...
oh, internet.
this is the language of the internet, it points—creates patterns, leads me on a string and before I know it I’m tangled in a series of connected ideas. And there is nothing more terrifying than coincidence.
All I was doing was looking for a library copy of ‘Camera Lucida’ by Roland Barthes for a research project based on two texts I’ve been reading this summer...
excuse me while i embody the twenties version of...
(Woodstock 1969)
I hate logic.
i am poor, therefore I must work. But because I am going to be working I will miss out on SO many festivals going on this summer. Just to name a few that I’ve been drooling over:
Evolve-Antigonish (mostly because fred penner is playing, FRED FUCKING PENNER). Oh, the best part is my brewery is going to be on-site, but I didn’t get any shifts there....
"did you see any koalas?"
i just went to Australia for a month. If you ask me about it I will probably just smile. This is not meant to be facetious but I can’t describe it to you, so don’t expect me to. I can show you photographs, but even as I pinned my body to the ground and strained to capture the ancient strangler fig tree with nothing but aperture lens film & flash I could not. The experience cannot...
May 2010
7 posts
tired of destructive metaphors
just as the sinking of the titanic was a violently obvious metaphor for the destructive nature of european empire and decadence, so too is the bp oil spill a disgusting, tangible, and deadly metaphorical representation of international corporate greed. It is also the slimy black result of our own inability—as lazy entitled ‘westerners’ afraid of altering our lifestyles...
post-grad depression
Forget post-partum (sorry Charlotte Perkins-Gilman)— this is the new depression. According to an article from the Australian Broadcasting Company’s online news section, “Masters degrees in particular are marketed as the ultimate in wellbeing and personal fulfillment: the intellectual equivalent of travelling to an exotic location to change, find or better yourself”. SO...
a thousand words a photograph
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/12/arts/photography-view-ask-it-no-questions-the-camera-can-lie.html?pagewanted=1?pagewanted=1
Danielewski’s “novel” mentions this article in a footnote and I find it absolutely fascinating. Written in 1990, don’t forget. Although I do believe there are still a few of us who strive to capture ‘life’ at its most simplistic,...
knew it.
so, a few years ago when i started this ‘blog’ i wasn’t sure what i was doing and because i know my tragic flaws so well i accurately assumed the worst and it came to pass— I got bored; forgot; went to do my MA in English Literature; spent my time thinking without often writing things down. But my memory is so reliably horrible that I’ve decided between my oft...
December 2008
2 posts
untitled, a good start.
well, i’ve decided to try my hand at this blogging sensation. Most likely I’ll become bored quite soon and perhaps never even show this to anyone.
It’s vanity really, this whole “meme” phenomenon, ie: YOUtube, facebook, this, etc… it’s all just a plea for others to view us as we view ourselves, or the portrait of ourselves that we hope to paint for...
“Life is more talented than we”
– vladimir nabokov