Benjibopper

Monday

2012-02-13T09:01:00.002-05:00

Monday again
a week since your death
And yet: Monday again

9. French for the F-word

2012-02-03T07:40:00.002-05:00

They were hauled into the office and plunked into cushy brownish-orange chairs that provided no comfort. The cold eyes of Secretary Alice White froze them.

They sat and thought of doom. It was called the principal’s office but everyone knew it was owned and ruled by Vice-Principal Morris. The principal, whatever his name was, was a figurehead at best. In the silence of Mrs. White’s frosty stare they took deep breaths, smelled the new carpet, tried not to look at each other, listened to the clock’s second hand tick and tick.

The American kid muttered something strange. "Lamb-are-eh."

He was in the middle. They glanced at him, nothing moving but their eyes.

"What?" Pierre whispered.

"Lamb-are-eh," he said. "It's French for...the f-word."

Pierre snickered and Danh cackled, a high-pitch staccato wail.

Mrs. White snapped her head up. "Shhhh!"

They looked down at the grey carpet, inhaled its chemical smell. "You talk French?" Danh whispered.

"Nope."

"Lamb-are-eh." Pierre rolled the syllables over his tongue. His maman was Acadian but he never learned her language. It thrilled him to know she’d hate him saying this particular word.

"Boys!" Vice-Principal Morris barked them out of their solidarity. He was a red-headed giant with a grizzly face and a gap-toothed beaver smile. He jerked his thumb and led them into his personal office with the placard reading 'Morris'. He pointed at two chairs across from his desk. Pierre walked past the chairs and stood with arms folded over his belly.

Danh took the seat closest to Pierre and Gerry took the other.

"Well boys," Mr. Morris began. "Mrs. Charles tells me you all had a little scuffle in the schoolyard."

He picked at his teeth with the nail on his pinkie. When the pinkie was retracted Pierre couldn’t see anything on it or the teeth.

"She tells me there were some expletives put into play, by which I mean some references to adults-only activities were made by you boys, and perhaps some of you described going number two in certain vulgar terms."

He went back to the teeth again.

"Furthermore, as I can see by your clothes, blood was drawn over the matter. It must have been quite serious. Care to tell me about it?"

Silence, other than Mr. Morris' wall clock ticking. It sounded identical to the one in the main office, equally relentless. Pierre didn’t dare turn to see if it was the same. He smelled the fumes of another new carpet. Mr. Morris' eyes were on him now, and only him.

"Pierre?" Mr. Morris said. His eyes were blue under his bright red afro, like some kind of sadistic heathen pirate on the Indian Ocean. "Pierre?"

9. Crowd Control

2012-01-27T13:15:00.001-05:00

Before Pierre could count two he heard and felt Gerry’s forehead break his nose. Pierre dropped to the ground.

"Fuck you, fatty!" Gerry yelled, kicking Pierre in the gut.

Pierre felt nothing but the crowd around them getting closer, laughing louder. He could smell the mud off the boys’ boots at the periphery of his sight. He knew the girls would be at the back, peering over shoulders pretending to be disgusted. He winced and looked down, noticed Gerry was wearing shiny black rubber boots. What a loser. Pierre caught and yanked Gerry’s foot as he tried to kick him again. He climbed on top and sat on Gerry's chest, pounded his face.

His own pain was sinking in now and he felt blood rolling from his nose over his lips. His head was ringing. That was fine. He had to win the crowd back. That was the main thing.

"Up - yours - with - a - rubber - hose," Pierre grunted, one word for each time he punched. The crowd was laughing with him now. Every punch got harder.

Gerry was kneeing Pierre's back but it didn’t hurt. Pierre wailed on him harder. It was easy to connect; Gerry didn’t protect his face and he kept his eyes closed.

"Say uncle," Pierre said.

Gerry opened his eyes. There was blood all over his face and a drop of it rolled into his eyes. He didn’t blink. "Hockey sucks," he panted.

Sadly, Pierre was going to have to kill this kid. "OK," he said, pulling his fist back.

32. Best Friends

2012-01-26T14:49:00.006-05:00

-

"Tell me again about these guys."

Jamaica’s voice was soft, like a small sharp needle pushed ever-so-gently into the neck. He’d explained it before.

Outside he could hear the increasing pitch of a 767 engine as it went airborne. He patted down his cargo shorts until he found the Maalox pills. The crinkle of the plastic wrap was reassuring. He popped one.

"They're my best friends," he said.

"I thought Travis and Pete were your best friends."

He squinted water from his eyes and gagged a little on the Maalox. She was looking at him so he shook his head. "Nope." He burped softly. "Not even close."

"If these guys, neither of whom I have ever met, are your best friends, why you so nervous?"

"Pierre!"

He snapped his head sideways and peered back. It was Gerry. What were the odds of that? His flight must have come in early.

-

Favourite Albums 2011

2012-01-23T15:32:00.004-05:00

Here's the music I enjoyed most last year, though it didn't necessarily come out then [edit: I almost forgot one I picked up in Toronto right after Christmas, by the great Paul Simon]:

Mike Evin - Do You Feel the World? - he plays with a smile on his face and you can hear it.

Drive-by Truckers - Go-Go Boots - musical storytelling, esp. "Used to be a Cop"

Robert Earl Keen - Picnic - slightly more hillbilly musical storytelling.

Los Lobos - The Ride - and "and friends" album featuring old and new; bluesy, soulful, musically accomplished.

Matt Andersen - Something in Between - off-the-chart guitar and voice chops

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black - started listening to this six months before she died - what a freakin' voice.

Moonshine Ramblers - Moonshine Ramblers - trippy folk, roots, bluegrass, blues and country with a boot to the head.

Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What - an old master working his bountiful bag of tricks and astute rhymes, his best since Graceland.

Best Books I Read in 2011

2012-01-17T13:57:00.016-05:00

It's time for my annual "Best Books I Read Last Year" list, this time featuring 13 works of poetry, novels, nonfiction and anthology. As usual, these books didn't necessarily come out in 2010; that's just when I read them. This year, you should too. [Click on the picture to find out more about the book.] Happy reading!

Poetry

Goyette’s imagery is evocative, precise, tangible yet layered with meaning:

I'm beyond biased here because I've got two poems in this anthology of Halifax guerilla poetry, and I like the idea so much I've written a feature about it. But I was genuinely impressed by the quality of work from my town's closet poets:

Nonfiction

Rogers elucidates how the failures of "green" or "natural" capitalism are the failings of capitalism itself:

Paradoxically dense and sprawling, but worth the effort. You know when people say, "This is how the world really works!" Well, this is part of it:

It's actually a novel interspersed among reflections on a campaign to ban uranium mining in Nova Scotia. I never quite figured out how they fit together, but the former is engaging and entertaining and the latter is inspirational and thought-provoking:

Fiction

Rushdie, having accomplished everything a writer could hope for, seems to be just having fun now. And it's a lot of fantastical fun to read too:

This novel was a rollicking fantastic adventure through the idealism of the 60s and the coming of age bestowed by Vietnam. Above all, it had an enormous sense of wonder:

Counter-intuitive to the title, for me these stories resonate with the sad truth of being a grownup:

MacDonald is a natural story teller and he connected all the emotional dots, providing a poignant tale of cultural change, the erosion of old ways and the maturation of young talent and pride:

The lady dialing 911 for love with all the wrong paramedics, the crack-addicted mathematician scoring rock for Robert Oppenheimer, the single condo-dwelling web designer more easily accepting the flaws of his Andalucian woolfhound than those of human companions – all serve Christie well as he masterfully illustrates the interwoven highs and lows of urban isolation:

Takes you right there, with the protagonists, feeling their fears, anxieties, pain and stress:

This is a good old-fashioned slog that probably wouldn't be published in the modern Canlit scene. It's prose is poetry and it's best scenes are heart-wrenching. In its entirety it is an unforgettable, honest portrait of rural life, its hardship and its absolute dependence on community even when community gets nasty:

Once again I'm totally biased because I have a short story in this one. But once again I was genuinely impressed to find myself in such accomplished company:

Hear me Oh Lord in my longing

2011-12-21T10:29:00.005-05:00

-
The unquenchable why of this living is mistaken.
We wail for the family lost eons ago
when this land was nutritious candy.

Now God kneels outside our iron bars
seeking hope in humanity's extinction
or survival.
He has created and is horrified.

We have revolted, and evolved -
met our Maker, apologized
for traceless political love affairs,
and demanded a map back to Eden.

[this is a rewrite of one I posted a while back]

07-08

2011-12-09T09:11:00.000-05:00

Twice I've seen rosebushes bloom ash
twice felt roots ensnare my skin
and known my remains would fly
with Grandpa and his sisters
and the ocean would take its share -
the grey darkening, solidifying, sinking
But only once has death given roses
You said to me, "I want this same fate
with you and your ancestors."

Finale

2011-11-02T11:40:00.001-04:00

Clear the floor.
Play the song.
Too hip for then
now too far.
Attack every angle,
your last kill.

Don’t mind the lens.
Just give me
one last shot of you
dancing before you die.

You ahead,
giant feet flying
farther away,
quickened by the thrill of
anticipated horizons.

Still you move,
still you whoop,
just out of range.

Make room,
shove close.
A duty and joy.
Zoom in:
one last shot of you
dancing before you die.

You Did Us Profound

2011-11-01T11:19:00.002-04:00

You did us profound
you wobbly walker.

Your visible symbols say,
"why do you have that cage?
Why does that cage got blood?"

The mean-saying lady says
her reasons are good.

You nod like you do when Big People
dodge questions.

Mom and Dad do that too
when you wonder on origins
through taboo paths to temptations.

The Documenting

2011-09-07T08:14:00.003-04:00

A war photographer measures success in scars
to see human things from outside -
his guard against impending sensory attacks,
like men wearing only balaclavas
ripping burkas from dangling corpses
in a theatre of oppression.

From the right he hears dark-robed shaggy faces chant:
“Wear it! Wear it! Wear it!”
And the Nike-swooshed hoodies on the left shout:
“Show your tits! Show your tits!”

In the balcony he cuts himself, sucks the blood,
macros his forearm’s red bubble,
whispers, “God is Great; Capitalism’s workings Mysterious.”
He’s faceless as the men on stage
in snatching the soul of the stoning.

Ascent

2011-08-02T20:46:00.003-04:00

into newness
or return to formerness,
with a twist;

from charged brown hominids,
some having orangey fur
bubbling like whitewater brooks
with magic-8-ball eyes -
scorn or desire;

from tough roads, jungle trees,
an island of effluent not affluence
food not polystyrene
service not manufacture
haggle not hustle;

from water clear as floating plastic
with a fulfilled destiny
lacking destination;

from thunderous motorcycle crashes,
loud and harmless,
idiots abroad facing
adventure not danger,
sunburned in a hot spring,
then painless goodbyes
with liked ones;

from foggy horizons,
bubbling ashen brews
viscous green goos,
easing down mountainsides
like goats
high on Bob Marley
and his kaya philosophy;

into Big Booming cities
of magazines, expensive cigarettes,
sweet sin and egotism,
books of great magnitude,
where newspaper salesmen
would fly but for the time -
so much pornography left to sell;

into newness:
the sweet, the stale,
the curvaceous, the limp,
the shaking, the et cetera
of this vast living’s
eternal march.

Rekindle

2011-07-27T10:27:00.003-04:00

The print's kind of small in this, but it's a great little piece on the comeback of one Ivan Prokopchuk, a long-time blogger pal who I met all-too-briefly at the Toronto launch of Drive-by Saviours last fall. Go Ivan go!

Isolation (the human condition)

2011-07-12T12:51:00.004-04:00

[My brother wrote a great tune for this but it's not online anymore so here are the lyrics alone]:

Went into the City
Escaped from the trees
away from the lions
chasing me

Bought a robot
to fix me drinks
sat on my porch
so I could think

Planes overhead
through clouds and smog
shut the factory down
No more jobs

Homeless for miles
but the coal still burns
Bums on the freeway
amphetamine turns

Get me out of here
Can't take it no more
Get me out of here
Trash on the rat-race floor

Went back to the farmland
put the tractor in gear
Tilled my fields
until they were clear

Cut down the trees
for my fireplace
Looked in the mirror
at a stranger's face

Worked the good earth
fought the pests
Grew me some veggies
The flowers sold best

Lonely worked the land for years
Lonely now there's nothin' left

Get me out of here
Can't take it no more
Get me out of here
This life is an endless chore

Went into the forest
back to the trees
Prayed for redemption
on fragile knees

Walked through woods
lived on berries and leaves
Wandered forever
alone with me

Went raving mad
Fought with myself
spent seven years
In a paradise hell

Surrounded by beauty
Nothing to do
No one to share
What would you do?

Get me out of here
Can't take it no more
Get me out of here
This beauty's a bore

Went into the city
Escaped from the trees...

Sitting Pool

2011-06-09T11:31:00.004-04:00

Something I wrote maybe 13 years ago:

Salamander sits in a sitting pool,
eyes bulging through the water,
trying to get some shade and being cool,
while the day keeps heating getting hotter.

Fly flies by makes waves in the air,
salamander's snack causes fodder
'cause swimming nearby with streaks in his hair,
is a pudgy little cute littler otter.

Snapping of the tongue, salamander's undone,
his snack becomes snack for the otter.

Another day at the pond
and life goes on
not for all but for some,
in the riffles and the runs,
of the sitting pool in the water.

Miia

2011-05-16T14:40:00.005-04:00

-
miia man o when i in ya eye i a man who will make you sigh

and you a woman who will make me try

and i try i try i try i try and i try

to be a man for a miia when we lie

late at night side by side but in between there's a baby cry

and he the apple and the pear in his parents' eyes

oh miia oh miia i hope you see you a woman you a woman to me

you the woman you the woman you the woman for me

when we dance when we dance in the living room

and we step then glide in a small circle

and we kiss and we touch and we no longer there

we dance all across a small city

and we dance and we touch across a small province

and i call and i say  your name miia and you hear it all across
the big country

miia lover miia warrior when i in your eyes

you a ama when you in my eyes when you laugh or you sweep

or you sigh or you sing you my aphrodite and miia slave for you

miia fighter for you miia spy for you miia scribe for you
'cause me

miia man o when i in your eye miia man o who make you sigh

and even if the baby cry

and we soothe him long just to get him lie

and now we both tired

miia gonna dance with you all across this small world

going in circles with you it all i really wanna do

is be a man for you 'cause miia miia miia man for you and
you a you a you a

woman for me

Contents May Vary

2011-05-04T10:06:00.003-04:00

In the future
they had an ad
for 23 scoops of raisins
in a package of K-log Raisin B.

When I bit into it
I said:
"No friggin way;
this tastes exactly like
two scoops from the past."

Hope Seller

2011-04-19T16:11:00.006-04:00

-
You, your prized stories foretell
of crystalline reborn uprisings
ambiguous revolutions
revolt or repetition

Your doctorate language opaque
as you mount the charismatic healer,
lay us low with scorched-earth smiling

Our leader, you implore
with your brow's Utopian promise
All we're to do is sign

The Bored Spinster

2011-04-08T14:26:00.003-04:00

I don't remember the year after the accident very well, other than sitting in Aunt Chelsea's kitchen listening to talk radio. Those deep-voiced shock jocks made me laugh. They were verbal bullies and I was a safe bystander, unseen and unheard, too young and unknown to ever be their prey.

One day, in summer I think, because the sun through the window was making me sweat, they got on about drugs in the north.

"Here's a story from today's Herald," one of the jocks said - and that's how most of their segments started. "Says half of all teenagers in Frobisher Bay are addicted to alcohol, gas or glue."

"What are the other other half addicted to?" the other jock said.

I laughed.

Aunt Chelsea whipped her head around and shot me a look with her shoulders still squared to the counter, where she was working on her latest batch of sweets. "This'll cheer you up," she'd say to me, daily it seems, handing me a heaping plate of hot cookies or a steaming piece of pie.

"Dan," she said now. "That's not funny you know."

"Yes, Aunt Chelsea."

"I told you to drop it with the aunt stuff. No titles in this house."

"Seriously," the first jock was saying. "And if half of them aren't hooked yet, why aren't they doing something to stop the other half? Y'know, exert a little of what the social workers would call Positive Peer Pressure?"

"Here's what, y'know, ticks me off," the second jock said.

Aunt Chelsea and I stared at the radio as if it was a charismatic guest in our home.

"These so-called experts, these social policy wonks, are so fond of reminding us every time some special interest group tries to do the rest of us a favour and do itself in, about systemic this and that. Never is there any accountability on the part of the community or the family. What I'm saying is, these kids up north are all killing themselves with drugs. Where does the buck stop, y'know?

"I mean, we gave these people their own government, for cripes sake, and they've only made things worse for themselves, which anyone with any common sense could have predicted. And the same is true - and I know we'll get mail about this but to hell with it, it has to be said - the same is true of the African states post colonialism. So, my question is: what system do we blame here? Huh? I'm sure the socialist liberal media will blame the system, or the white man. But hey, are we the ones drinking Frobisher Bay's babies into oblivion every night?"

I looked away from the radio to Aunt Chelsea. She had stopped mixing whatever she was making in her bowl and stood still as a photo, except her mouth was opening and closing like a slow motion silent film. I noticed for the first time she had the phone held to her ear. Aunt Chelsea still had her old rotary phone but it had a long chord.

"I'll hold," she said.

She turned to me. "Go listen to this in your room."

I ran up the stairs and flipped on my ghetto blaster.

"Anyway, moving along, the city is facing yet another shortfall thanks to the big spenders we for some reason elected to City Hall."

"Wait a minute before we get into that I'm told we have a Chelsea MacDougall on the line from Halifax who wants to talk about this Frobisher Bay situation.

"Holy shit, Aunt Chelsea," I said to my G.I. Joes and Transformers.

"Uh, yes, Mrs. MacDougall, go ahead. What do you know about it?"

"It's Ms. MacDougall," Aunt Chelsea's voice said through the radio. "And I dont' know anything about it. I've never been there, have you?"

There were a few seconds of dead air. "Well no, Ms. MacDougall, I haven't. But why would you call in about something you don't know anything about? I mean we get a lot of, y'know with all due respect, morons calling us with two-bit opinions and we're always happy to tear them a new one. But most of them at least have an opinion, Ms. MacDougall."

"You a little bored all alone at home today, Ms. MacDougall?" the other jock said.

"If you've never been to Frobisher Bay," Aunt Chelsea said, "who should possibly give a tiny little shit about anything to have to say about it? The answer is nobody. Your opinion about the place, like mine, amounts to absolutely nothing, you pompous asses."

There was a loud click and another few seconds of dead air, followed by an outburst of deep-voiced laughter. "Well, sir, it looks like we have been told by the bored spinster set," the first jock said.

"Dan! Come have supper," Aunt Chelsea hollered.

I switched the ghetto off and ran back downstairs to the kitchen, where a tenor's bombastic voice filled the air. It was the first time Aunt Chelsea had changed the radio station on me since I'd moved in after my parents' death.

"There's goulash on the table," she said.

I smiled at her, sat down and took a bite. I hated goulash.

10 CDs You Should Hear

2011-03-10T10:16:00.003-05:00

Hi folks, I usually try to do this in January but it's been that kind of year already. But, here they are, 10 records that blew my mind in 2010. As usual they didn't necessarily come out then. That's just when I fell in love with them:

The Hitchin' Post, Heather Kelday - She played at my book launch and everybody sang along even though most of them had never heard her play before.

New Train, Paul Pena - This is the guy who wrote Big Ole Jet Airliner, but the body of his work is far better than that. I saw him in Genghis Blues, a documentary about his trip to Tuva to compete in a throat-singing contest, a skill he learned listening to the ham radio.

My Hands Are On Fire and Other Love Songs, Old Man Luedecke - I love every song this guy writes.

Self Titled, Charms - It's bluegrassy, folky, catchy and ridiculously harmonious. These two sound like they've been singing together since birth.

Dirt Farmer, Levon Helm - He's back, he's farming, and his voice is still powerful.

Son of a Rudderless Boat, Kev Corbett - Half bard, half musical genius, Kev's become one of my favourite songwriters.

Best of, Townes Van Zandt - My housemates used to love this guy and last year I was finally able to give him a good listen. Possibly the best, and saddest, country songs ever written.

Sunset Sea, Danny Michel - I love every song this guy writes.

Wake Up! John Legend & The Roots - Old political soul music reborn by the best male voice in pop music, and about the best backing hip hop band there is.

Where I Need to Be, Kim Wempe - If there is a yin to John Legend's yang it just might be the wall-shaking voice of Kim Wempe. [Her new album, Painting With the Tides, is great too, but I didn't get to it until 2011.]

This is the Sea, Sarah Kenvyn - Pretty much stole the show at my book launch and I pretty much haven't stopped listening to this disc since.

The Study of Placenta

2011-02-04T09:26:00.005-05:00

"Did you know the placenta is essentially a parasite?" she said, tapping my paper with her index finger.

I looked up at her, raised my eyebrow and instantly regretted not plucking its middle section that morning, or putting on some makeup at least. She had high Polynesian cheekbones under spiked brown hair, wore pink lip gloss and a North Face fleecy.

"Its effect on a woman’s body is similar to that of cancer," she added.

"Really," I said, but the word got caught in the phlegm of my throat and I coughed it at her.

She squinted and pursed her lips. "Totally," she said.

We’d been sitting side by side in silence since our plane took off two hours earlier. I didn’t even look at her before she spoke. "The Kaili of Central Sulawesi believe the placenta is the elder brother of the child," I said, pointing at the paper I’d been reading on the very subject. "They preserve it in a pot wrapped in white cotton, and hide it under the mother’s sarong. She buries it and the spot is marked with palm trees."

"Well," she said, "Thank God I don’t work with the Kaili of Central Sulawesi. I’d never get the chance to study a placenta if everybody buried them."

I smiled and nodded, wondered if she was perhaps a bit crazy. I hoped so. Crazy women liked me.

"I’m a placental scientist," she said.

I nodded, as if that was only natural, but the revelation shocked me. "Small world," I said. "I study ethnographic interpretations of the placenta."

"Excuse me?"

"Um, I study various indigenous cultures and their treatments of the placenta. What it means to them and what they do with it."

"Fascinating," she said.

I smiled.

"Are any of them aware of its cancerous properties?"

I frowned. "I’ve never encountered any such interpretation."

"Well, it’s the scientific one," she said.

I ran a finger over my lips, trying to look pensive, but it reminded me that they were pale and plain compared to hers.

"The fetus too can be seen as parasitic. And the placenta is the intermediary between woman and fetus, you see? Half her DNA and half its DNA. And together the fetus and placenta live off their host until it finally rejects them, forcing them out."

I considered her argument and slipped into a six-month flashback to Chiapas Mexico, where I shadowed a partera, a traditional Mayan midwife. She was a stout woman but strong and blessed with the confidence of one who has never had to wonder what her life was about or where she belonged.

The community had become somewhat used to white people hanging around asking questions in broken Spanish. She was willing to let me attend births with her as long as I stayed out of her way and kept my mouth shut. But first I had to wrap my head around the complicated spiritual dance of birth, as explained by the partera.

"The biggest problem is when the younger siblings are born and the spirit of the first born tries to eat the spirit of the younger one," she said. "That involves a lot of praying and sometimes we need to sacrifice a chicken and pray with the older child to prevent that from happening. And with all those spirits running around it’s hard on a woman’s body, and it’s a hard change in life for her anyway. The father is happy but for the mother it’s the end of her carefree days.

"But if I do all the right ceremonies and pay attention to the signs and pray before I enter the house and before I touch the woman and pray to every corner and all the guardians, and if I bathe the baby properly and pray before the crib and make sure the children eat properly, and wash their hair properly and sweep and clean the room before I leave and pray again, then it comes out OK."

I shared this story with the placental scientist sitting next to me. She frowned at me, the downward movement of her lips shining in the fluorescent lights. "You know a very small percentage of fetuses are actually born. Most women have miscarriages early in pregnancy without even knowing it."

I smiled. "Maybe we aren’t praying enough anymore."

"Right," she said. "Try telling that to my sister. She’s had three miscarriages, that she knows of, and is about ready to kill herself because she wants to be a mom so bad. She prays for it every ten minutes."

I turned away from her, looked out the window at the clouds. "I guess your sister’s not a partera," I said. When I turned back she had put her headphones on and closed her eyes. I ran a finger across my unibrow, relieved I hadn’t bothered to pluck it.

Best Books I Read in 2010

2011-01-07T13:35:00.018-05:00

It's time for my annual "Best Books I Read Last Year" list, this time featuring a dozen works of poetry, novels, nonfiction and anthology. As usual, these books didn't necessarily come out in 2010; that's just when I read them. This year, you should too. Happy reading!

Chris Benjamin

Poetry:

George Elliott Clarke is a master of story and language; Whylah Falls is drama in guttural verse, suspenseful and rhythmic to the last page.

Nonfiction:

Our world is losing cultural diversity as fast as it is losing biological diversity. In The Wayfinders, Davis eloquently tells the story of what we're losing, and how it will cost us more than we know, based on decades of work with hunter-gatherer peoples in regions across the globe.

Thomas F. Pawlick is an Ontario farmer and investigative journalist. His writing sears with anger, fueled by frustration at the amalgamation of the food industry into a giant, unhealthy, unsustainable corporate funnel, squeezing out the traditional, small family farmers in the process. He tells his story from their perspective.

After reading the Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan I can better appreciate why he's a hit with foodies, environmentalists and word nerds. This is the history of our relationship with four distinct foods, told with an astute sense of wonder. Those stories illuminate what it is to eat, how we're doing this simplest of life functions wrong, and what we have to gain from food thoughtfulness. Fiction:

Tariq Ali wrote the best analysis of religion and politics I've ever read (Clash of the Fundamentalisms) so I was anxious to begin his Islam Quintet with Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree. It didn't disappoint. The writing is straightforward and formal, perhaps to convey the feel of his 1499 setting. It worked well enough and the story, the slow buildup to an inevitable massacre of a culture by an emerging colonial empire, was riveting. They ending was horrifying, but true to history.

I didn't realize how funny Philip Roth was until this year. The closest book I can think of to Portnoy's Complaint is Lenny Bruce's autobiography. If you're wondering, his complaint is the 20th-century New York Jewish condition, particularly with respect to family.

As I wrote on the Advent Book Blog: Halifax has been largely overlooked in Canlit (excluding books on lighthouses and the Halifax Explosion) but it is a vibrant city, and more multicultural than most Canadians realize. Anna Quon’s Migration Songs tells the story of a Chinese-Canadian woman’s hyphenated experience, her search for place and meaning to counter her overwhelming sense of detachment.

Kenneth Oppel has written a lot of young adult fiction, and I guess Half Brother fits that category. But as a 35-year-old fascinated by human-other animal interactions I couldn't put it down. Although it was a plot-first story of a teenage boy whose university-prof parents "adopt" a chimp and raise him as a human, I think Oppel's subtle analysis of how we exploit animals in our misguided attempts to better understand ourselves is spot on.

In satirizing Soviet Communism's "New Soviet Man" Bulgakov was, perhaps unwittingly, satirizing civilization itself, and the false believe that we can rise above our animal impulses. This bizarre story (a novella really) of a mangy dog cum revolting man via mad science turns the whole notion of humans residing on a higher plane than other animals on its ear.

Chad Pelley has said he specializes in literary page-turners, and that's certainly the case with Away from Everywhere, his debut novel. It's a heartbreaker that explores the depths of human folly and then, spurred on by schizophrenia, goes even deeper into despair. Yet, to borrow from Leonard Cohen, his losers have the beauty to buoy the reader through the pain of empathizing with people who are destined to fail.

Ian Holding's first novel, Unfeeling, is a taut, horrifying read about white Zimbabweans desperately clinging to their farms as a brutal and corrupt government reclaims the land for black citizens. The work would have greatly benefited from more diverse perspectives - i.e. that of black Zimbabweans. But it gives the perspective it gives very well; it is a perfectly paced, complete story with well-timed reveals, and a fully engaging read.

Anthology:

Descant's prison issue is just that: an issue of a literary journal, but it's so good I had to include it. [Full disclosure: I have an essay in this one, which may bias me, but whatever, this issue really was amazing and you should read it.] It includes fiction, creative non-fiction, illustration, poetry and essays, and I don't think a single one was a miss. A diverse array of perspectives is provided, from short-timers, mass murderers, drunk tank delinquents and academic outsiders. Hurricane Rubin Carter writes of how he spent much of his sentence in "the hole," completely isolated and cut off from humanity. But it isn't all bleak - the resilience of prisoners shines through nearly every page.

Xofa Xmas

2010-12-23T14:58:00.002-05:00

I have a short piece of holiday fiction in today's Coast. Thought I'd share it and wish all happy holidays. Click the image below to read the story.

May we have peace, love, joy, justice, sustainability, creativity and healthy communities in 2011.

-Chris Benjamin

Anger part 3

2010-12-02T11:52:00.003-05:00

Then UGH! - UGH! - UGH! from the bathroom. And I’d stare at my father waiting for him to solve the problem somehow. The man solved problems for a living. He was some kind of PR monkey with the government. I was sure his chewing routine was just a delay tactic, or a meditative thing that would help him find a solution.

But it was Mother who found the solution. I really don’t know how - maybe Jesus found her - but one day I got sent home from my private junior high school early for beating both Sissy Jannah’s eyes black and saw a two-foot Jesus-on-crucifix on the piano. Above it was Jesus in profile, turning the other cheek I presume and looking serene.

Mother ran from the kitchen in a flour-covered apron and hugged me. I stiffened my body and hung my arms straight at my sides. "Whatever it is I forgive you," she said.

Since then she’s been on a mission, volunteering at the food bank, raising money for the church, even letting Christian refugees stay in our basement. She doesn’t cry anymore.

So, I’d love to find that Jesus of hers, or have him find me. And I look too. I spend 23 hours a day in this cell and all I do is look for Jesus. I've looked at every brick. I’ve looked under my bed and under my mattress, and under my roomie’s mattress and bed when she was getting her hour in the yard. All I do is sleep and look for Jesus. Before I sleep I pray he’ll come find me, because I don’t see him anywhere, and I don’t dream anymore either.

Anger part 2

2010-11-29T19:27:00.002-05:00

But the whole world’s a heartache and most people seem to have smiles chiseled into their faces, so none of that, nor all those UN statistics or crime-page newspapers explain my anger, do they?

It just feels good to let it out sometimes, and when I was little I guess it got me what I wanted. It was easier to give the kid a treat than hear her scream. Mother couldn't stand to see me suffer even a little bit. She still can't, and that’s why she won't visit. She sends me letters that read like Jehovah's Witness pamphlets. The word 'Jesus' appears so frequently I started counting. Her last letter, a four-pager, had 46 'Jesus'es, and 16 'pray's.

And I try. I’m not just humouring her either. I remember how she was before Jesus. She cried all the time. Never in front of people. She'd excuse herself from the dinner table and go to the bathroom and let rip these heaving, gutteral sobs in stucatto bursts. It sounded kind of like Eddie Murphy's laugh.

Father completely ignored it. He'd cut into his steak or pork or whatever and pop a little piece into his mouth and chew like his teeth were on fire. He probably counted his chews - 50 or a hundred times or whatever. He'd swallow with an exaggerated gulp and yell, "Honey! This is delicious. Truly extraordinary!"

Anger

2010-11-25T15:02:00.004-05:00

Something very new I'm working on:

I thought my anger would place me well in this angry world. But like two magnetic norths the world and I could never quite come together. I swung at it and swung at it and never caught anything but air, landed on my face as often as kept my feet.

Dr. Hattie is always at me about where the anger comes from, and I just tell her, "Inside." She calls bullshit and I know it is, but it feels that way at the time, like a car wreck inside of me, an exploding Hollywood car wreck only you never see it coming from the outside. Inside there’s a buildup, two different drivers at a party having a few too many. But fuck me if I know how it all got started. Dr. Hattie might as well ask me how the big bang got started.

"Inside," I say again, and she calls bullshit again. "Outside then," I say, but she just frowns at me. I frown back. Outside is the God’s honest truth. I don’t want to giver her my sob story. It's a cop out isn’t it? Or maybe that’s what she wants. I can tell her about Dad’s drinking, Mum’s born again high-handed bullshit preaching after years of openly cheating on her husband and letting daycares and schools raise me. Would I be this angry if children's aid social workers had taken me away?

Life Lessons

2010-11-24T09:10:00.004-05:00

Hi folks, I have been swamped, working on a nonfiction book called Green Souls (coming out Fall 2011). Thought I'd share a little teaser from the first chapter, see what you all think:

Michel Desjardins' first major life lesson was about excess. "My father has never liked excess," he tells me. "To be excessive is to waste, and therefore to abuse the resource."

The way to avoid that abuse, according to Dr. Desjardins the senior, is to take care of the resource yourself. Despite being a busy professional, the good doctor has always taken the time to tend his own garden and cut his own wood.

"That had a tremendous influence on me," Michel says, "though it took me a long time to appreciate the lesson."

His second major life lesson, passed down from his grandparents, was this: get ahead, find a better life than this tough one we toiling farmers have. Be a skilled professional, not an unskilled labourer. Make your fortune in the knowledge industries and take the world, not just the good earth, into your hands. Buy a bigger house and a better car.

These were the contradictory lessons that were eventually passed on to young Michel, so it is no surprise that his midlife crisis, brought on by the political defeat of his employer, left him soul-searching. Even though his father was a simple man, Michel Desjardins was raised thinking he had to do better, to carry forward the legacy of an optometrist. To get the letters of a legal professional, and to shape his city’s and then his province’s destiny in the new economy. He hadn’t taken the time to look back.

Drive-by Saviours is Essential Read

2010-10-28T15:17:00.001-04:00

Exciting news all - Drive-by Saviours made the Canada Reads longlist of "Top 40 Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade."

And we the people will decide which books make the top 10 list. You only get one vote.

If you want to vote Drive-by Saviours, just go to Canada Reads and click the circle next to Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin, scroll down and click the vote button. You have until Nov 7 - but really why wait until Nov 7 what you could do right now?

Btw, here is the Top 40 list, and there are some damn fine books there. What say you, dear reader? What books should have made the list but didn't. Any on the list that you don't think are so hot?

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall

Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright

Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant

Conceit by Mary Novik

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin

Elle by Douglas Glover

Essex County by Jeff Lemire

Far to Go by Alison Pick

February by Lisa Moore

Galore by Michael Crummey

Heave by Christy Ann Conlin

Inside by Kenneth J. Harvey

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill

Moody Food by Ray Robertson

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Room by Emma Donoghue

Shelf Monkey by Corey Redekop

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis

The Birth House by Ami McKay

The Bishop's Man by Linden MacIntyre

The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Fallen by Stephen Finucan

The Girls Who Saw Everything by Sean Dixon

The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe

The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart

The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden

Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden

Twenty-Six by Leo McKay Jr.

Unless by Carol Shields

Thanks,
Chris Benjamin

Apparently I'm Big in Germany

2010-10-18T14:16:00.002-04:00

We left Lachutes in what we thought was plenty of time. But we hit Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic at the outskirts of Montreal. "City squirrels go to the cottage and their kids come back from school," Jeff said, his fingers tapping frantic rhythm on the wheel.

We crawled another hour-and-a-half to our turnoff, then bolted through downtown as the rain hammered everything. We drove by the Canadian Pacific sign and scanned the streetscape with stretched eyes until Jeff pulled the truck into the drop off. We fist bumped; I grabbed my bags and ran, glancing at the gates I passed until I found Campbellton and flashed my ticket. "Moncton?"

"Yep. Hurry down and just say 'Moncton' at the foot of the stairs."

From my seat I texted Jeff. "Made it."

Seventeen hours later, the red-headed Hertz guy picked me up at the train station and drove me 20 minutes to the airport for paperwork. He's a Moncton lifer, spent time in the states but after 9/11 things got too weird there and he came to the small town he knows and loves.

We were all set to go until I gave them my wife's credit card - no can do. And mine was in Halifax. No cash deposit. I was stuck at Moncton airport, two hours until my reading in Fredericton. The Hertz guy (another one) asked the Budget girl if they cioiuld rent me a car on cash deposit. Nope, but Delta could, back downtown.

Tristan needed to get some fresh air anyway, he said. He's a Nova Scotia boy, north shore, stuck in Moncton too long. "I hate it," he said. "It's a giant industrial park that people happen to live in. It's ugly and there's nothing to do." I found the outskirts pretty anyway, with the fall colours, but he hopes to move to Halifax as soon as he can.

Delta was empty. I knocked on the glass and a guy came out with a broom and dustpan. "You the one who called?"

It was an all paper, no computer business, with a mandatory vehicle walk-around, and several spots to initial on the long form. He put my cash deposit in an envelope, sealed and signed it, had me check to make sure the tank was full, pointed me to the highway and I was gone, red-lined to Fredericton, only 10 minutes late for the reading.

It was a small group but I sold a few books and met a women who'd already red Drive-by Saviours and is recommending it to her book club. And I met Corey Redekop, author of Shelf Monkey - soon to be on Canada Reads top 40 must-read list. We bantered on canlit and the mneed for authors to embrace our inner pimps - be self promoters that is.

I nabbed a few hours sleep at an old friend's place, a suburban household of 11 - her stepdaughter, several international billets, a visiting German family of five, and me. "I'll take the ISBN and get it back in Germany," the mister told me. "They'll order in anything for me!" And that's how the book tour pays off, I think, the face-to-face that gets your book in a German store before it's even translated.

Lachutes

2010-10-14T11:29:00.009-04:00

I'm writing from Lachutes, Quebec, about 40 km northwest of Montreal. A good friend of mine is Superintendent of a golf course here and he's putting me up. Tonight, (Thurs Oct 14), I read at 8:00pm in Montreal, at Argo Bookshop, 1915 Ste Catherine W. There will be three writers reading tonight, starting at 7:30 pm. Also up will be Susan Gillis, author of Volta, and Claudia Coutu Radmore, author of A Minute or Two/Without Remembering. Hopefully more authors means more people, more energy.

It's been thrilling meeting book lovers in small towns and large cities. In Lindsay, at Kent Books, we had a small crowd of five, but somehow sold 10 books. In Kingston, at the Princess St Indigo Bookstore, I didn't read at all, but signed and sold 10 more books to a sparse crowd on Thanksgiving Day. I met aspiring writers, a military woman who blogs with Chatelaine, and one very young woman who has her first book coming out, about a girl battling with anorexia, later this year. Her mother did most of the talking but you could tell how excited they were. Some folks were kind enough to want to support a first-time novelist, others had heard of the book and were keen to read it. The staff were particularly supportive and several of them bought copies.

My host in Kingston, friend and prolific freelancer Meredith Dault, organized a Thanksgiving Monday potluck and let me read to an intimate and highly receptive audience. They were mostly cultural studies grad students so it was slightly nerve wracking and their questions were astute. I'll have to steal some of them for future book club questions.

At Octopus Books in Ottawa (where even the t-shirts lean left), I was given the warmest welcome I could imagine from Jenn Farr, who does promotions for the store. "Your not the Chris Benjamin are you? You are? Hoorayyyyyyyy!!! Would you like some apple cidar?" It was a small but enthusiastic crowd, including a woman I'd met in Kingston who lived in Ottawa. (My first groupie? Nah, just a kind book-lover with two gorgeous black labs.) Jenn video'd the whole thing and hopefully it'll end up on Octopus' website.

That night I stayed with a friend of mine who I met in Indonesia, where the seeds of Drive-by Saviours were sewn in the form of graduate research. I had an 'I really hope I got this right' moment with her at the reading. There was little time to talk old times though because her three-year old had a lot on his mind, including the complete lyrics to K'naan's 'Waving Flag'.

Boarding the train early the next morning I felt a bit like the lyrics to that Credence song 'Playing in a Traveling Band': take me to the next show / baggage gone, oh well / someone got excited / had to call the state militia / gotta move

OK, maybe not quite that dramatic but the stop-and-go can be a bit jarring. It's nice to have two whole nights in Quebec. The reunions, reminiscing and celebration continue as I introduce my creation to Eastern Canada, and hope people take notice.

Doing the Bookstore Hustle

2010-10-06T10:53:00.008-04:00

I met Ivan Prokopchuk the other night, in person. He's long been one of the most colourful personalities I've met as a blogger, and a character who consistently captures my imagination.

But there he was in the Lula Lounge, in full colour, three dimensions, in the flesh, across the table from me with his book, The Fire in Bradford, in hand. "I'll show you mine if you you show me yours," he grinned.

[That's me in the pink shirt, reading to an enthusiastic crowd at the Lula Lounge.]

But with Another Story Bookshop on hand selling Drive-by Saviours I didn't have any swap copies. The swap had been my suggestion, but with all the insanity of travel, visiting family and friends, organizing book launches and an Eastern Canadian book tour, I'd forgotten. I promised to send Ivan a copy in the mail and he gave me his book, shook my hand and heartily congratulated me. And he was gone, making way for the next in line.

It was one of a series of surreal encounters I've had lately with old friends. The support has been overwhelming - people I haven't seen in years, people I've only met online, have come out to my two book launches in Halifax and Toronto to celebrate my accomplishment.

And now, writing from a friend's home in East Toronto, planning to head up to Kent Bookstore in Lindsay Ontario in a few hours for another reading and more old friends (and to meet a boisterous one-year-old), I'm feeling a deep easy happiness in that willingness to celebrate what others among us do.

At the same time, I ache for my wife and son, who flew back to Halifax yesterday morning at about crack o'clock, and I long for my own bed where I could properly nurse this worsening cold. Suddenly I'm a lone drifter again, something I missed and didn't expect to experience again so soon. Last time I was a young man, full of abstractions and equipped with an eager pen and ink-hungry notebooks. It all seems a little more businesslike this time - I'm a drifter with a mission, a product to move. I feel like a huckster with a money-bulge in my pocket.

That's not a complaint. I'm loving meeting people, sharing my art with them, and experiencing their kind and enthusiastic responses - their questions, comments and cash. Living the dream for me has moved beyond sloganism and into reality.

My Big Day Downtown

2010-09-01T10:33:00.004-04:00

I was given $100 by the Downtown Halifax Business Commission to spend on anything I wanted, as long as I documented the experience publicly. I, naturally, chose books. Here's a video (shot by my wife, edited by me, with music by my brother) of the experience:

Amanda Mongeon Reads from Drive-by Saviours

2010-08-26T17:39:00.001-04:00

Benjamin Talks Drive-by Saviours - Themes

2010-08-13T11:36:00.001-04:00

Desire Seed

2010-08-10T07:33:00.004-04:00

Desire is seed.
Your arms
snychro-waving in the dark,
flashing across the dance-cave.
My stillbirth reborn.
My feet walk themselves over.

Tears lubricate my body over;
Tetris pieces withhold seed
until ancestors are reborn.
Telephone chords mimic arms
poorly, cold as caves,
desiring touch in the dark.

Tree pastors towering dark,
our shivers gratefully ruled over.
The sauna a geothermal cave,
where idealized eternity sows seed,
across the arc of the other’s arms;
tradition is repetition reborn.

Desire is reborn
in the deepest dark,
stillborn with too few arms;
hungry voices’ journey over.
Our spinning globe scatters seed,
frees us from the cubicle cave.

365 exploration of continental cave.
365 labours daily reborn.
Restively flailed seed,
unharvested from the faraway dark;
ocean’s gravity heaves vagabondage over.
Ancestors require our arms.

Hands in sand and legs as arms,
an inverted tower till elbows cave.
Reunion summer’s over.
Old routines reborn.
In cavernous downtown funkitecture’s dark:
A desire, an egg, a seed.

With his birth we’re reborn
in a solitary cave.
Desire is seed.

Drive-by Saviours Trailer

2010-07-30T10:57:00.002-04:00

Hi folks, here's a trailer I made for my novel with some help from my brother:

Drive-by Saviours

2010-06-25T21:05:00.001-04:00

I've been quite busy with the novel lately (it's coming out in September), first doing final edits then thinking marketing. To that effect, I've created a myspace page and put up a clip of me reading from the novel there, as well as some fusion-y music my brother created for a trailer we're working on. Click my face below to listen to those:I've also created a website for the book. Below is what the cover will look like. Click on that for the website (not a lot of content there yet but stay tuned for some video I'm working on regarding the book):

The publisher, Roseway (an imprint of Fernwood), also has a website for the book. Click the Fernwood logo to see that site. You can read a longer excerpt there:

Spiral

2010-05-21T08:34:00.004-04:00

I was late to the clinic and
my adjustment counselor was pissed.

Wasn't that just like me?
On account of my oppositional complex.

I just had to stop for that quick hit
in the drive-thru alley with the junkies.

But if Daddy hadn't screwed up my order
I wouldn't have had to shoot up twice.

I'd sleep on a feather mattress
instead of this old gym-mat.

Bill on a Code of Ethics for the Province

2010-05-11T10:54:00.004-04:00

As the honourable member for East Sinsancto power-reads the Cautious Liberal amendments for a bill altering the unethical behaviours of all elected representatives, those officials snicker chat and spitball each other.

The Ever Forward Conservative representative of Nova Bay South next offers his party's amendments as the honourable member from Lower Downtown Pugington whispers sweet something-or-others into the ear of his assistant.

Finally the Chair, who backbenches the Ruling Central Left Leaners, submits his own written amendments and winks his deferral to the morning's 1st coffee. Relieved laughter ricochets as the sun threatens the west-facing windows.

Before the Beginning

2010-03-30T13:24:00.003-04:00

It was the first draught year Ashfad had known in 20 years, since he was a little boy. Hoofed urus were hard to find, and they were all bones poking through fur that looked draped on as an afterthought. Vegetables scarcely blinked through the dry earth before retreating, as if scared of the sun’s intense heat.

Ashfad surveyed the land. It looked as if the earth had been roasted over a fire and broken into little pieces of dried clay. "Imagine," he said to Sulwood, his hunting partner, "if we never had to hunt again, if the animals would stop running from us. If they would lay down before us so we could take our pick for the slaughter."

Ashfad returned to his wife, Mersk, empty-handed. His empty hands entwined with hers, and they swayed together in slow motion. They settled for a watery rye soup and laid themselves to rest with their daughter snoring rapidly a few feet away. Ashfad was amazed with the big noises that came from such a girthless little girl.

When he finally joined his family in the somnambulant dreamscape he couldn’t quite place his family among the animals there. The urus were plentiful, fat, and prepared to absorb his spear that he might live another day. Strangest of all, they were tame like dogs. They had no fear of Ashfad, just as he had imagined it with Sulwood.

Let us reinvent the wheel

2010-03-23T14:48:00.003-04:00

Let us reinvent the wheel.
The old one takes us nowhere, fast.
Let us forget its existence;
let us strip its ill-gotten rubber
and beat it until its flatness engulfs
our hammers.

Let us kick its metal rims
as the rappers' gab is open-mouth muted
and they've only politics left to rhyme about.
Let our steel toes outlast it.
Let its nuts be eaten by spring's ravenous squirrels,
and its bolts be corroded by vinegar blasted from
our super-soakers.

Let there be no remnants of its perfection,
its blind efficient roll into oblivion.
Let us start anew with a wooden block,
balanced by its corner on a sealskin dome
as we drum like malnourished apes with
broken sticks.

[opening excerpt of] Drafts 5 Through 8 in Chapter 6

2010-02-22T21:13:00.003-05:00

Good social workers don’t share my fear of action and conflict. Some of them crave it. The best ones have a conflict switch that shuts down their own feelings so they can strategically dissect the heightened emotions of others. They have bagfuls of touchless tactics. They can throw bureaucracy at anger, they can speak in calm soothing tones that smother panicked screeching, and they can use just the right language to help a client accept the blame for his own problems.

It’s not that social workers don’t see the way society crushes people. But good ones know they can’t do shit about it, so they focus on the possible. With time, effort and smarts they can change how a client deals with the world.

I’m not a good social worker. I’ve been fleeing conflict since I was a child. I ran from family conflict to join my friends, and I ran even further away as soon as I got a student loan. I fled Nova Scotia, returned to the big city of my early childhood with saving-the-world dreams.

My sister flunked out of high school, remained at home and worked full time at the local paper mill. During my undergrad I studied a lot of Freud-babble about family and childhood, learned strategies, tactics and techniques for counselling people who had suffered family trauma, or were living in dysfunctional situations.

These theories fascinated me but I never related them to my own family. We students had been warned about our tendencies to self-diagnose, usually incorrectly, when learning about new disorders and behaviours. I hardly thought about my family at all. I put them out of my mind, barely kept in touch. And in the case of my sister, our adult relationship existed only through my mother’s updates. Michelle and my stepfather never bothered to talk after she moved to the US four years ago.

I thought about Michelle after the blackout, the next time I rode the TTC. I got on the bus and saw the usual waves of humanity.

I had promised myself I’d be more open to people when the power came back, but when I saw them all I was hit with agoraphobia. I sat down at the front, where you’re supposed to stand up for the elderly and disabled. I pulled out my sketchpad and sketched the lot of them, all hobbled together, like a comic book proof before the colour artist does his magic. For the thousandth time I wished for Michelle’s talent.

By the time I found Sarah snoring on the couch I had too many historical thoughts swirling in my head to bother with her. I went to bed and thought about Michelle some more. I thought about the girl she was, her genius of creation, with talents that far surpassed anything I could ever hope to achieve.

I’ve been drawing since I was a child. Once I entered the workforce I took classes every week. It kept my hands busy, scratched the itch that my computer keyboard gave me every day. I learned the techniques illustrators have used since the pencil was invented to create reasonably hand-drawn facsimiles of buildings and trees and faces. But I was more craftsman than artist.

Then there was Michelle. She could do what almost no one in human history could do. She could make something out of nothing. Those models she made as an early teen progressed from representations of places she’d seen in books to thin-air creations. She invented entire cities writ small. Tradition was just her starting point. It taught Michelle more about what was wrong with how we live than it did about rules and techniques for success. Michelle could revamp tradition and innovate on it, bring in new techniques from the atmosphere, spit on the gods and the ancestors and come away victorious. She was the greatest city planner and engineer in North America. At least on a model scale. Real life was a different story.

In real life Michelle taught English as a Second Language to immigrants in Portland. It was honourable work but it wasn’t exactly earth-moving, for a genius. I thought about it all night, until my stomach hurt. I called in sick in the morning.

11 Favourite Albums I Got in 2009

2010-02-03T16:26:00.004-05:00

Here are my 11 favourite albums from 2009. Mind you, these didn't necessarily come out last year, that's just when I got a hold of them. The bolded ones are the best of the best:

1) Tracy Chapman, Our Bright Future - The first half of this album features some really new sounds from her, almost like folk-lounge music. The second half is a bit of a let down but the first half carries it.

2) K’naan, Troubador - On the flipside, the second half of this album is really innovative hip hop with brilliant storytelling. The first half is a lot slicker than his first offering, and a bit plain. But the second half is worth the wait.

3) Luke Doucet, Blood’s Too Rich - Took a few listens to get into, but Luke's a phenomenal guitar player and his music is a tonne of fun.

4) Joel Plaskett, Three - Oh man this guy has a gift for catchy riffs and hooks, and this is his magnum opus - a trilogy detailing his departure from, exodus away, and return to Nova Scotia. Amazing backup vocals from some of the province's finast female vocalists, sweet harmonic blend.

5) Bop Ensemble, Between Trains - Saw this "Canadian folk music super group" at Stanfest. I'd never heard of any of the members, but they are indeed super. I guess they literally recorded this between trains, so it's got a good jam feel, yet the songwriting and talent of the performers gives it polish.

6) Brett Dennen, Hope for the Hopeless - My favourite musical discovery of the year is California's Brett Dennen, lovechild of Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and Ron Sexsmith. Highly political lyrics with a folkish reggae backbeat.

7) Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed - One of those classic albums you think maybe you should own, and then you hear it and you wonder how you lived without it.

8) Martha Wainwright, I Know You’re Married but I’ve Got Feelings Too - Raunchy folk-signer who is way better than her more famous brother.

9) Mary Margaret O’Hara, Miss America - Another classic you should really, really own.

10) Metric, Fantasies - I was surprised by this album, how good it is, kind of transports me to a funkier universe while I type my missives.

11) Cat Power, Jukebox - Powerful sultry vocals covering some great but mostly lesser known American country/folk/blues numbers from the last half century.

Best 16 Movies I Saw Last Year

2010-01-27T15:10:00.003-05:00

Here is a list of the 15 best movies I saw last year, in no particular order. The best of the best are in bold. These movies didn't necessarily come out last year; that's just when I saw them:

1) Milk - In many ways a typical biopic, but I knew little of Harvey Milk before seeing it and it was a very well acted, entertaining way to learn about an important political figure in the movement for gay rights.

2) Hamlet 2 - I thought I'd had enough high school comedies, but Andrew Fleming was perfectly bizarre enough to flip the whole genre on its head without even mucking much with the formula.

3) Frozen River - My favourite kind of movie: simple, well-told story (about two desperate women who get involved in human smuggling across an Indian reservation straddling the USA and Canada), with plenty of suspense.

4) God Grew Tired of Us - Emotionally powerful, sometimes funny documentary about some of the "lost boys of Sudan," who in this case make it to the USA and experience tremendous culture and economic shock in the land of excess.

5) Che Part 1 - Documentary-style story of Cuban guerillas fighting their way to take the capital, led by Che Guevara as portrayed by Cannes best actor Benicio Del Toro. It has a similar feel to Battle of Algiers - raw realism without a lot of Hollywood drama, so despite its being a war movie the violence is sudden and shocking. A clear example of show-don't-tell. (Part II will likely be on next year's list.)

6) The Wrestler - Micky Rourke's comeback vehicle got me good - he may be nothing but a busted up piece of meat making bad decisions and big mistakes, but his character rings true and sympathetic, and the tension of his story escalates right to the cliffhanger ending.

7) Pan's Labrynth - This movie creates a convincing world for the young protagonist to rejoice and suffer in, and to grow in ways she can't in the real world of the Franquist repression. Although it is a fantasy with a happy ending, it does honest justice to the hardships and cruelties of the real world, without any cheap preaching.

8) The Tiger Next Door - A heart-breaking movie about a crazy man who raises tigers in Indiana, and sees himself as some kind of animal saviour while keeping them in cages where they get sick. Sadly, he is one of many. The doc lets the viewers judge for themselves.

9) Moolaade - Story of a Burkino Faso village in which young girls and women resist genital mutiliation, heroically fighting cultural tradition and patriarchy. It is a story of heroism that resists the oversimplicity of a good v. evil motif.

10) Darjeeling Ltd - Deadpan funny story of three brothers traveling through India in search of their mother, trying to patch the wounds of their relationships with one another and deal with the death of their father. The deepest of Wes Anderson's movies, except maybe that animated one, called:

11) The Fantastic Mr. Fox - An animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's novel. The movie seems geared more to adults, but then Dahl tended to write pretty darkly, and with sophistication, for a children's author. The movie, to me, is a great allegory about the downside of civilization, how it has tamed us at the cost of our sense of place in the world, and our freedom.

12) Goodbye Solo - Straight story of an old guy in Winston-Salem who wants to die, and a Senegalese-American cab driver who wants to be his friend, and maybe stop him from killing himself. The movie is very character-based and shows so much about culture clash, and the joys and regrets of life and living.

13) Jesus Camp - Scary documentary about pentecostal fundamentalists in North Dakota, and their use of a children's camp to indoctrinate. There's very little editorial - the filmmakers just show you the craziness as anti-abortionists and other devout republicans visit the camp and tie politics to religion. It's a fascinating look at the lives of people in the American far-right Christian movement, and how they pass their message on to the next generation.

14) We Feed the World - A documentary about farmers and fishermen, and how the globalized industrialized food system is eating up their livelihoods and their knowledge and their ways of life, and torturing and destroying our food in the process.

15) Bruno - Once again Sacha Baren Cohen made me very uncomfortable, and made me laugh very hard. Making people uncomfortable is his gift, and the viewer gets to see how people react in comic and often twisted ways. We criticize because we know he's showing us how shallow and intolerant we really are, when we'd rather pretend we're not.

16) Addicted to Plastic - Great documentary follows plastic around the world from cradle to grave, including the massive "plastic islands" accumulating in our oceans. It stays with you and makes you re-consider every purchase.

Nova Scotian wisdom

2010-01-18T10:05:00.002-05:00

"Bhutan's sacramental attitude towards the natural world - that the world is literally alive and sentient - is the normal human view. It's shared by my Celtic ancestors, by virtually all ancient civilizations, by aboriginal peoples worldwide." -Silver Donald Cameron

Best Books I Read Last Year

2010-01-09T18:23:00.010-05:00

Below is a list of the 11 best books I read in 2009. These books weren't necessarily published in 2009; that's just when I read them. These are in no particular order, but my top four are in bold text:

1) Nisa, the Life and Words of a !Kung Woman - by Marjorie Shastak; An engrossing antrhropological account of a group of !Kung San hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari desert, full of lessons that civilization continues to ignore.

2) Resistance - by Derrick Jensen; This is volume II of the two-volume Endgame, and it argues for the forceful dismantling of civilization. Needless to say it is provocative, if not an argument I've been able to get behind. Jensen is also a great writer of personal narrative.

3) The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith - by Peter Carey; Carey creates a convincing and telling slightly alternate universe and a great twist on the nerd done good genre, in which the plucky kid with immense physical challenge is also a hard-to-love know-nothing brat.

4) Lost Highway - by David Adams Richards; He has an unusual, rambling kind of writing style that goes to great lengths to rationalize the morally ambiguous, leaving you sympathetic to the most dastardly and confused as to what is right. This is my favourite by him so far, a work of art.

5) Dust From Our Eyes - by Joan Baxter; The straight truth on what rich countries have done to Africa, and the resilience and beauty of that continent, by a journalist who has spent much of her adult life reporting from there.

6) Through Black Spruce - by Joseph Boyden; Some of the best, tautest prose I've ever read, such beauty in a bleak tale. The best book I read last year.

7) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - by Barbara Kingsolver; Fantastic personal narrative of a locavore family growing their own food, and the challenges and joys therein.

8) Nova Scotia: Visions of the Future - edited by Lesley Choyce; For full disclosure I had a chapter in this book, which I loved reading mainly because it revealed the depths of talent in this province, and the brilliant array of ideas. I hope all the newly elected officials read it, and the old bureaucrats too.

9) The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss - by Claire Nouvian; The gorgeous images of deep deep aquatic life in this book look alien because we are so unfamiliar with what lies beneath. Many of them can't be studied out of water because they explode when removed from the extreme pressure of the deeps. And there are countless more species down there yet to be seen, let alone understood. I felt like a kid again reading this book, full of the excitement of new discovery.

10) Amphibian - by Carla Gunn; Nine-year-old Phin Walsh is the narrator, and he's all wound up in knots over the destruction of the earth. Despite the adults' best efforts to reassure him, his logic is indisputable. How I wished I could stamp his earnest, honest lack of cynacism on every adult.

11) Imani's Music - by Sheron Williams; This is the first kid's book I've ever put on a best of list, but then I probably read more kids books last year than anything else. The writing is superb and the tale is complex, weaving in the transatlantic slave trade in a way kids can understand (as well as anyone can) without being trite, and exploring the immense power of music, culture and tradition.

Redwoods

2010-01-05T15:31:00.007-05:00

As usual I head-down rushed

into overextended darkness

singing Dylan Cowboy Junkies

U2 Paul Simon Tweedy

everything I knew or half-knew

flashlight dim-dying

keeping those predators at play

far away from me

except owls bats and flying things

unruffled by my bad notes

until I stumbled upon their vacating wings.

Three hours of forest-singing darkness

that forest the biggest and best

I’ve ever seen

those trees each a major miracle

before my eyes

that had never registered such distances

up and 50-feet around.

Lushness mile-stretching

ready for a fight versus winds

since the chainsaw

for now has been subdued.

But the next day the NSA

full-forest pressed me with wet

so I soaked out at the halfway hostel

and with my MEC sewing kit

reattached re-moveable thumbs,

they having been reclaimed

from the bus on a blustery day.

At the tree museum is a free fresh look

at Native American cultural artifacts

some older than civilization.

"And here we dwell on Yurok land,

forgetting how we got it

and what these people once were

or even what they now are.

It is rarely mentioned that Jefferson learned

the concept of democracy

from the truest and best

democratic system in history,

that of the many Native American Nations."

For fence-guard capitalists

those tree museum girls

sure tasted sweet

with their hot chocolate hospitality

on the house and southern smiled

feeding the fireplace

while I aristocrat sat

reading about GW Bush

and the boys and I felt

like a real American Boy myself.

Eco-Rehab, a Second Excerpt

2009-11-30T15:25:00.003-05:00

Nurse Anna was beautiful in more than just a fuck-me kind of way. She introduced herself that way, "Hi, I’m Nurse Anna." The mix of formal and informal turned me on too much to make my usual sponge bath joke, which I even made for the bull-dyke who looked ready to tear my hands off and use them to punch me in my dirty balls.

"Nurse Anna," was all I could think to say. I swallowed my 'you're pretty' follow-up.

"Hi Steve," she said. "I was told to watch out for you and your sweet-talk. So what, I’m not sweet-talk worthy?"

I shook my head so hard something cracked. I winced back tears. Vehemence and whiplash don’t mix. Nurse Anna steadied my head and dabbed my eyes. "It's okay," she said. "Maybe you're not up to flirting today."

"But I have an erection," I blurted.

She hit me with a pained smiled. I couldn’t tell if she was stifling laughter or vomit.

"Sorry," I said. "That came out wrong."

She smiled again. "I hope so," she laughed. She looked down at her clipboard and her smile flattened. "I think I see what your problem is," she said.

"Whiplash?" I ventured.

"Cars," she said.

"Oh, like the root of my problem," I said.

"No, that would be your whole lifestyle," she said.

My erection was getting worse.

I finally screwed up the courage to ask her out when I was discharged a few days later. "I don’t think I can," she said.

"But I'm not your patient anymore."

"You will be," she said.

I don’t know why I loved this kind of treatment. Masochism I guess. "You gonna sick Nurse Miller on me?" I asked.

"You’re awful," she said. "I can’t date someone who says things like that about Nurse Miller - she’s an inspiring woman. And I definitely can’t date someone who lives like you."

"How do I live?"

Here’s how she said I lived: on a diet of drugs and fat, in a hyper-sedentary high-stress environment, on too little sleep, surrounded by resource-devouring consumer products designed to make bearable my otherwise mechanized, suicidal existence. I couldn’t deny it.

"Who doesn’t live that way?" I asked.

"I don’t," she said.

Here’s how she said she lived: on a chemical-free, mostly local vegan homemade diet, balancing a challenging job she loved with active modes of transportation and regular yoga, ample sleep, in a communal housing arrangement, with minimal possessions.

"I can live like that," I said.

"You can?"

"You'll see."

California

2009-11-14T11:38:00.002-05:00

Waves slapping rock, slapping rock.
Me riding the biggest one -
a world prince baby,
and it’s cold at the lonely up here,
but beautiful blue-white waters.

California’s sun
and those 1,200 year-old 300-foot beauties
at the tree museum
($15 just to see ‘em
except I found an extra exit,
a forest being a frightful tough thing
to fence in).

Paul Bunyon:
"The Greatest Tree-Jacker in history!"
proudly overseeing that half-fenced forest,
his display speakers speaking the legend:

"The Indians refused to walk in these woods
because they thought they were filled
with powerful spirits.
Heh-heh, who knows?
Maybe they were right."

Kooky Indians
got me thinking back
of when she said,
"I wish he would stop drifting
and settle down somewhere."

Chirping crows caw to the slapping waves,
breeze blows me in the middle
of sweet solitude lonely lost
but awake and hungry alive on arrival,
barely once again.

If she could see this now she’d know why.

Poverty

2009-11-13T16:13:00.002-05:00

"The poor are not those who have been 'left behind'; they are the ones who have been robbed." -Vandana Shiva

"Before we can make poverty history, we need to get the history of poverty right. It’s not about how much wealthy nations can give, so much as how much less they can take." -Vandana Shiva

Stuff You Wouldn't Think He'd Have Said

2009-11-12T15:14:00.000-05:00

"Every gain that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."--Eisenhower

Eco-Rehab - an opening excerpt

2009-11-04T12:37:00.005-05:00

Eco-Rehab - an opening excerpt

The median over-compensated for my lack of judgement, and the BMW curbed the median’s enthusiasm. My crumpled Tercel found itself staring down oncoming superior models, smoke rising from its 300,000 kilometre engine, me half-conscious at its wheel, my power bill glued by my blood to its windshield.

Of all the ways I’ve ever abused my body, trying to read my power bill while driving was the stupidest. I was in an ongoing struggle with Nova Scotia Power at the time. After I moved to Creighton Street they kept sending my bills to my old student address on University. Somehow, when the bills went unpaid, they managed to send their threat to disconnect to my new address. It arrived about a half-hour after my power went out.

I controlled my January shivers long enough to open their nasty letter and pick up the phone. When a pubescent customer service drone picked up I had to force the words through my chattering teeth. "You in-comp-et-ant f-f-fucks!" I shouted, my rage compounded by the ten minutes of elevatorized Coldplay jammed into my ears while I was on hold.

The customer service drone hung up and I looked down at the letter of threat again. A thousand-and-twenty bucks they wanted. "F-fuck!" I shouted to the dark, crumpling the notice, trying not to wonder how I didn’t notice that I’d gone half a year with no power bills, trying not to remember all the drugs I’d been doing since I got my own apartment.

I worked out a payment plan. Two weeks later my power was cut again, without even a note this time. My first online payment somehow went to someone else’s account, and I had to talk them into restoring my power again. I couldn’t wait to get the next bill, just to see that little dent I’d made in what I owed. It was the same with my student loans and my credit cards. Nobody liked getting bills as much as I did.

I grabbed them all from the mail-woman on my way back to the office after a quick supper and a toke to get me through what promised to be another long night. My real-world job as an investment banker was harder than I’d expected, as hard as my old man had predicted. "You have no fucking idea what you’re in for, sonny," he used to tell me, back in high school when I was voted most likely to be a welfare bum and love it.

I wanted to prove my classmates wrong - didn’t know I’d prove Dad right in the process. He was a grade-school teacher so I don’t know how he got so clairvoyant about banking. It was on his advice I bought my 15-year-old Tercel, the one I was rushing back to the office in, those bills staring up at me from the passenger seat. I was chugging at an extra-large Timmy’s triple-triple, trying to balance out the joint I’d smoked with my two-whopper dinner.

I geared down to accelerate onto the 102, whipped by a boomer driving a BMW and cut him off with a wave of my hand. Everything in that moment was too fast - I’d gone home specifically to take in some online porn and masturbate, and didn’t even have time for that. It came down to food and marijuana, or sex and marijuana. No time for both, and my tummy growled harder than my balls ached. I wouldn’t even have time for my purest pleasure: peaking at those ever-so-slightly decreased numbers.

Finally I buckled, made my greatest mistake, grabbed the phone bill and ripped it open, two-handed, and took a peak. Then a stare. Fuckers! My payment was barely more than the interest they were charging me for their mistake. That’s when I hit the median.

Caged

2009-10-04T10:29:00.005-04:00

God kneels outside the iron bars of my cage,
seeking hope in humanity's extinction or survival.
Having long pondered, He's got an action itch.
"Sit still. Hear," I command my captive Master.

"The unquenchable why of this living is mistaken;
this lethargy seared over agonized boredom.
We miss our eons lost family. Never wondered
who we were; we were part of the family.

"The land was nutritious candy,
not this tasteless mystery meat.
What makes you not an animal, O Lord?
What makes you not wild and dangerous?"

He rises Formidable with eyefuls of disdain,
says nothing. His eternal meditations
left Him traceless political love affairs
and no map home.

Dam

2009-09-22T07:02:00.008-04:00

"Why do you bring your mistakes here?" -elderly Ghanaian woman to journalist Joan Baxter

Dam
Sunlight soil and water,
the Hank Aaron (former) homerun king sandwich.
Former: cocktailed from history's highball of fame,

left out wind-twisted in late-night Chubby Checker marathons,
an asterisk's footnote.

Could be worse:
Harder to be a fish,
whose life beats odds of exponential shrinkage
and just before the life-dream's achieved
she hits the wall.
Her estrogen-laden piscine brain's last thought:
W-T-F?!

Her mercury diet betrayed
with a concrete kiss.

Formerly: One in ten million spawn,
the (parallel universe) Pete Rose payoff.
The plants are the lucky ones.

King Philosopher

2009-08-24T13:48:00.005-04:00

This is a re-write of a 2006 poem, which some may have seen in its previous incarnation:

King Philosopher
Dear Manpower,
I humbly seek employment
as a Great Philosopher.

I can start begging during the fast
to be whipped by wisdom
in a street with inverted signs.
Even pop stars know:
no shameful confusion;
no prospects for upward nobility.

When wisdom whips my eye,
only then will I demand
promotions toward the industry’s ultimate.

I humbly insist that destiny decrees
I be a chosen Great Philosopher
alongside the textbook hall-of-famers
featured in Ideas of the Great Philosophers.

Even such stratospheric aspirations
cannot sate my celebrity ambition
until I parlay my success
into a reality TV show:
'What is Truth?'

A Great Philosopher’s memory is long,
Dear Manpower,
Alight this steadfast understanding-seeker;
afford me passage to gluttonous opportunity
and your staff shall be
my Season One Sophists.

Loonsong

2009-08-20T09:22:00.004-04:00

The loon’s lilt is my Halloween ghost.
Its icy broken fingers caress my inner ear at night,
just as it did when I fit
into that basement box
with the stuffed animals and plastic
propaganda warriors.

Though I’ve grown and left boy-toys
in mouldy asbestos boxes,
though I’ve married and moved to city soundscapes:
the yowling ups & downs of feline passion;
the dotingly shattered bottles of downtown drunks
stumbling home arm-in-arm;
the new day confessions of the broken-hearted,
I can still hear the lake loon twitters of childhood.

And though my wife sleeps snoring beside me,
though my baby cries for milk and entertainment,
I can still feel the loneliness in that loon’s solitary song,
sung only for its echo.

It is as loud and empty in my mind’s ear
as it was when I shrank tiny in the bottom corner
of that little basement on a midnight lake
under an open window,
shivering damp and sunburnt in the autumn sun’s
breezy shadow.

Cal

2009-08-10T10:28:00.005-04:00

"The major purpose of the dirty money structure that we in the West have created and expanded is the movement of money from poor to rich - out of the hands of the poor, into the hands of the rich; out of the countries where 80 percent of the world's population lives, into the countries where 20 percent of the world's population lives." --Raymond Baker

Cal

"Wooo-eee! Goin' fishin!"

So squealed the passing sarcasmo cyclist as I sidled beside a thick-moustachioed man with his 3-day grizzle, and his Gunn motorboat hitched to the back of his pickup. We broke conversational ground gently. He told me his name was Cal and asked my occupation. I told him about that grad school to the east.

"An environmentalist you are, eh?" he said. "I'm actually pretty good friends with David Suzuki. David's a riot. He's a real ole environmentalist until he comes across a salmon. Then his Japanese heritage kicks in."

I nodded neutrally, and he was off to the races.

"Listen," he said, "I'm gonna pull in here and get gas, so you can mull this over. I'm goin' fishin' near Cache Creek, four hours north. It'll be about five o'clock when I get there. I could drop you on the highway there, and you can stand and stick yer thumb out and stand there and wait. Or you can come to the most beautiful desert river in the world with me. We can make a party on the beach, do some fishin', roast some chicken and fresh desert corn on the fire, sleep under the stars. It's up to you."

He gave me a raised upper lip smile. "That was my problem hitchin' in New Zealand," he said. "I always got hijacked. One farmer's drivin' along and he says to me, 'Well you gotta come meet the missus, have some supper.'

"Well, one steak dinner and a shit-load a beer later he's too drunk to feel like drivin' me back to the road. He says to me, 'Why don'tch ya take the night out in the barn there? Hey, you any good with horses?'

"And I tell him, 'Hey, I grew up in British Columbia, sure I am!'

"He says, 'Great! Tomorrow you can help me round up the sheep.'

"Well, the sheep dogs do all the work, so I get to romp around on this beautiful steed, almost a racehorse, drinkin' beer all day. At the end of the day I guess he’s pretty impressed by me and he says, 'Make you a deal. Stay a week. I'll feed you, give you 30 bucks a day.'

"So after five days of this he finally drives me out to the road. But it was a set up. Two minutes later his neighbour picks me up! Anyway, speaking of beer, you want one of these? Attaboy!

"Yeah, I loved New Zealand. I was there teaching Antarctic explorers survival skills. They wanted me to go with them, but fuck that extreme cold. I’m a geographer by training, see.

"After that I lived in Fiji for a while, cruising for American pussy mostly. Me and a buddy lived in this small village, we’d go out and find tourists in bikinis and fuck them in the village." Cal grinned and broke into a falsetto voice, "'Oh we have boyfriends back home,'" he squealed. "But that never lasted long.

"Anyway I must a had 50 girlfriends before I got married. Still got a few honeys kickin' around, come out to see me sometimes when I go fishin'.

"Fishin'! My first love. I was a commercial fisherman from age 13 to 33. Still own the boat, rent it out now to some young guys - they still pull in over a hundred K. But I seen that decline comin'. One trip we brought home 8,000 pounds a salmon, made a fortune. Next trip we caught just as much, nearly lost the boat on our trip home, and made less than eight grand. Wasn't worth the effort. So I got out.

"Then Whistler hired me because I'm a great skier, and a geographer. I was one of Whistler's original 200 inhabitants actually, now it’s up to 10,000. For a while, when I got home from Fiji, I installed weather stations."

Cal pointed to an amalgam of twisted metal in the distance. "There's one there, I installed that.

"Anyway at Whistler I skied with ole Murph Wells. We used to race heli over 50 foot cliffs. It was thanks to him I got to ski with Trudeau, who was lookin' for some action away from the main slopes. Now it just so happened I had seen Pierre and Maggie on the T-bar the day before. I couldn't resist pinchin' Maggie's ass as she got on. Maggie leans over and whispers in Trudeau's ear, 'Pierre! He pinched my butt!' Pierre turns and looks back at me, and he just grins!

"So when Trudeau walks in a the ski patrol office and says he's looking for Cal McNeill, I panic. 'I'm sorry I pinched your wife's ass!' I yell.

"Pierre just looks at me a second, then he says 'Oh, that was you? Oh now, that's okay. I was told by Murph Wells that you could take me skiing off the main runs.' I tell you, we had a great ole time, me and Pierre Trudeau.

"I tell you though, I created Whistler. I was behind IntraWest, I wrote their avalanche control program, I even acted as a medic stitchin' guys’ wounds when they wiped out. That was before snowboards. There's more accidents now. Them guys got no control, kamikazes.

"One guy ran right over my skis one time. I just hauled off and punched his jaw, dropped him. It was the only time I skied away from an unconscious skier. That guy never knew what hit him."

Cal suddenly swerved the truck hard around a slow driver and screamed "Move it or lose it asshole! Fuckin' Sunday drivers" without ever taking his eyes off the road. "'Nother beer?'" he offered.

"So anyway I figure I spent enough time droppin' dynamite out a helicopters - that's how we create a controlled avalanche to prevent unexpected ones. It’s law of averages eh? Just a matter of time till that fateful trip. The pay ain't worth it. I built Whistler, for 12 bucks an hour, 80 hours a week.

"So I’m a plumber now. I designed the plumbing for Bill Gates' right-hand man’s house. Guys name is Jeff something. Oh yeah I met Bill a few times - he's a sharp guy, but Windows 95 sucks. I'll stick to Unix. Anyway I learned programming before I went to plumbing school, so I taught Jeff’s computer to talk to his plumbing - one of the few houses that can do that. It's safe work, steady."

On we rolled through BC’s mountain desert, with its sliding sagebrush and hot blowing sands, hottest 40+ climate in Canada. The Thompson slithered in through rare grouse, rare but faster and smarter than boys with guns, with low short flights between delayed gunshot blasts. And my host talked through it all until we arrived at a sandy riverbank and unloaded his Gunn into the water.

"Trout's the target, rainbow trout!"

Soon enough the rough river’s instinctual splashes showed us the plentiful targets in Cal's fly-line. "I've converted a few worm fishermen in my day," he told me. "Just had to show them some quality flies in action."

The Gunn cruised hard through Thompson’s shivers, bow bouncing on warfield waves. "I've never seen the water here so calm!" Cal said. "And it's the perfect depth with the recent rain. It usually never rains here, but I been caught in a couple a downpours. Hey! Check out that sun goin’ down. This beats standing on the road with yer thumb out eh?"

It did, and so did the chain-gang chicken barbequed on Cal’s homemade grill, the white corncobs butter-basted and mouth-melting, and the beer can pyramids growing under a next-door tree.

"So you studied environment in school eh?" Cal said. "Fuck, they teach it all now. They even teach women's studies - sounds like my kind of studies. Well anyway, I want to let you know in my humble opinion that the salmon farms are destroying the environment faster than anything, and should disappear from the face of the earth."

With that Cal sent another green Kootenay can arching through the darkness and clinking cheers with its reunited beerless brothers.

Questions

2009-08-06T09:57:00.002-04:00

"How could it be...that Mali was producing more than 60 tonnes of gold a year (and more cotton than any other country in sub-Sahara Africa) and still be coming out at the bottom of the United Nations' HUman Development Index, usually ranking among the five least developed countries on earth?

"And how could it be that Nigeria, Angola, Cameroon, Gabon and the Republic of Congo (capital Brazzaville) and more recently Mauritania, and Equatorial Guinea could be such important oil producers and still suffer such crushing monetary poverty and dismal statistics on access to basic education and health care, life expectancy and other key indicators on human development?"

--Joan Baxter

cheap calories

2009-08-05T09:56:00.001-04:00

"We all subsidize the cheap calories with our tax dollars, the strategists make fortunes, and the overwight consumers get blamed for the violation. The perfect crime." --Barbara Kingsolver

television eyes

2009-08-01T22:51:00.001-04:00

"You might see things better on television, but you'll never know if you were alive or dead while you watched."--Barbara Kingsolver

The Difference

2009-07-22T15:25:00.003-04:00

"We need to theorize race and gender not as meaningless but as meaningful---as sites of difference, filled with constructed meanings that are in need of constant decoding and interrogation. Such analysis may not finally free us of the ubiquitous body-biology bind or release us from the quagmire of racism and sexism, but it may be at once the most and the least we can do to reclaim difference from the molds of mass production and the casts of the dominant culture."

--Ann duCille

Atwood on Poetry

2009-06-28T12:46:00.003-04:00

"[Poetry] lets the shadowy forms of thought and feeling out into the light, where we can take a good look at them and perhaps come to a better understanding of who we are and what we want, and what the limits to those wants may be." --Margaret Atwood

Economic Migration

2009-06-21T16:12:00.003-04:00

"Africans returning from the wealthy world often perpetuate these myths that life there is easy and money very easy to come by. They may not wish to divulge that they earned their salaries by cleaning bathrooms, suffered humiliating insults, and that they did not live like kings while abroad. Few in Africa have any idea of just what squats and slums and hardship really await the unskilled or the sans papiers (illegal) immigrants in Europe or North America. Some are shocked when they learn that in major European and North American cities there are homeless people living on the streets. Few people seeking visas seemed to want to listen to me list the constraints they would have to adapt to in the wealthy world, where competition is extreme, taxes must be paid and where time is money and thus king, ruling every minute of the day. From their perspective, these issues were all irrelevant. The important thing was a steady income that would provide funds to help support the family back home and could be saved towards a more secure future. A minimum wage job in Europe or North America could bring in more than a teacher or even a doctor earns in much of Africa."
--Joan Baxter

the universe

2009-06-13T23:07:00.000-04:00

The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees--all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related. --Thomas Berry

A Tuneless Song

2009-05-24T09:43:00.005-04:00

"Development concepts are generated at universities, accepted as profound by policy types in Washington, and then declared as gospel. In order to raise money to do the same types of projects you've always done, you have to be sure to include the appropirate current jargon in your project proposal and in subsequent progress reports." --Michael Maren

"The nomadic ethos views farmers as inferior beings forced to live a life of toil. The nomad is a free man." --Michael Maren

Procrastination Blues

Woke up at the crack of noon
But I ain’t quite wide awake yet
Been wishing I was someone else
But I’m afraid this is good as it gets

Been down with the Muppet Show
And forty-four product ads
Been feeling it’s time to create
But my visions all seem like fads

Chorus:
How I wish I was a morning man
Sipping coffee with the rising sun
How I wish I had working hands
Bleeding till my work is done

Here I sit on a garbage can
Tryna tune a broken guitar
Can’t play it anyway
But if I could man I’d go far

Ain’t nothing but work to do
And the list got a mind of its own
If it keeps growing up like this
It’ll be the only thing I own

Chorus

I know I should get up now
Get going on my dreams
Yeah I coulda been someone
If my body wasn’t so free

If I ever get myself to work
Sleep’ll take me back soon enough
It never wants to let me go
And those dreams like to play rough

Chorus

Neo-Colonial Aid

2009-05-07T09:15:00.012-04:00

"When colonialists came ashore, they didn't say, 'We're here to steal your land and take your resources and employ your people to clean our toilets and guard our big houses.' They said, 'We're here to help you.' And then thety went and took their land and resources and hired their people to clean their toilets. And now there come the aid workers, who move into the big colonial houses and ride in high cars above the squalor, all the while insisting they've come to help." --Michael Maren

"Most of the countries in Africa had indigenous methods for dealing with food shortages. Somalia in particular had a well-established system for dealing with regular cycles of drought and famine. Farmers in the river valleys built secure underground vaults where grain was stored during the fat years. When drought threatened the nomads, animals that might die anyway were exchanged for grains. Though nomads showed very little respect for farmers, they were aware that their lives might one day depend on these sedentary clans. They were therefore generous with the bounty of their herds when times were good. The result was a mutual insurance system and a truce of necessity across the land." --Michael Maren

A Sentence I Loved

2009-05-05T18:40:00.001-04:00

"It is this enforced brevity that discourages obfuscating digressions and promotes precision."

--Lia Gainger, This Magazine, May 2009

Gulls

2009-05-04T08:05:00.006-04:00

"We are not 'running out of water.' Agrictulture and industry are using it all. Dams could go and people could still have water: water to drink, cook with, and bathe in. Not to keep their fucking lawns green. Make no mistake: these waters are not being murdered to serve humans, and the humans who do not have access to water - and many millions of these people die each year - are not being murdered because there is not enough water. They are being murdered so the civilized can build computers, so they can play golf, so they can grow cotton in the desert, so they can always have lawns." --Derrick Jensen

Gulls

Stepped quickly outside, heard a small seagull squawk -
an omen.

Follow omens; they have reason.

Walked where I could see as much of the ocean as possible -
no seagulls.
The sun was too hot,
my belly too full,
tired eyes.

Found my way to delirious shade,
but first,
a little bird, pretty brown and white,
a touch of green.
I got too close and it flew away.
Sat down in the cool shade,
tried to open communicative lines.

Trickling stream, what is your destiny?
[I feed the ocean, I am its servant.]
So monotonous a task.
[Wasn’t my choice.]
Too bad.
[Life is easy when you know your destiny.]

I walked back to the ocean.
Ocean, what is your destiny?
[I am vast and powerful.
I house and feed plants and animals.
I give you breath,
decorate the shore.
I am everywhere.
Nothing is greater than I.]
So many tasks you have,
must be difficult to keep up.
[Not for me.
I am the ocean, vast and mighty.
Nothing is greater than me.]
Not even the sun?
[That little clot up there?]

I asked the sun.
Sun, what is your destiny?
[I give you life.]
Me?
[Everything.]
You can do that from there?
[Yes, I have that power. And more I suppose.]
Isn’t it monotonous, just that one task?
Sun rolled over my eyes,
an orange warm blanket.
[Without ego, simplicity is joy.]

Dinner bell rang.
I opened my eyes.
Seagulls everywhere.

Gridwork

2009-04-30T12:23:00.007-04:00

"The U.S. rail system, and I would be amazed if Europe's was any different, is wide open. There are tens of thousands of miles of unobserved track that could be taken out with nothing more than a crowbar." --hacker quoted by Derrick Jensen

"Not only is the electrical grid wide open but so is the natural gas supply line. Here's an example of just how easy it would be to safely take out a natural gas pipe. Buy a car battery, a piece of glass tubing, and some plastic gloves. First, pour the acid from the battery into a suitable container, then go to one of the millions of gas pipes or relay stations around the world, attach the tube to the pipe with tape molding putty or whatever, pour the acid into the tube, and then walk away and let the acid eat through the pipe. Your onsite time is maybe two minutes." --hacker quoted by Derrick Jensen

Activists and Hackers

2009-04-21T11:48:00.004-04:00

"Activists so often get burned out and frustrated because we're trying to achieve sustainability within a system that is inherently unsustainable." --Derrick Jensen

"I think that twelve hackers could take down the electrical grid of all of North America, a blackout lasting for months. That blackout itself would take out key components. Of course those in power would immediately start retooling, and because they have more resources than we do they'd eventually be able to come back online. We'd have to hit them again in the meantime." --Brian the Hacker, quoted by Jensen

Whistler II (of II)

2009-04-16T11:53:00.004-04:00

"He who passes not his days in the realm of dreams is the slave of the days." --Kahlil Gibran

"Will the sheep drink from springs whose waters are stained with blood?...Will the mother at the cradle of her infant, brooding on the perils of tomorrow, be able to sing a lullaby?" --Kahlil Gibran

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back at the cottage mansion Cub passed out and Leo’s booze got agitated, came out in streams of profanity, while I taught Thea the art of the backward summersault.

"This is my town!" Leo shouted, thumping his chest. "I love it. This is where I had my slut stage. Thank God Thea rescued me. But in Whistler, it’s sex sex sex every night. Girls come out here from the city and they just look for a local guy to fuck. God I miss those days!"

Hence, I guess, the blonde bimbo blast from the past as we finally left the bar. "Leo!" she squealed, blonde palm extended like false eyelashes. "Hi Leo, remember me?" She took his blank stare for fear. "Don’t worry," she said, rubbing his shoulder, "I’m totally past my valley girl stage now."

Thea looked about to snap somebody’s neck, so I extended my hand and said, "Hi, I’m Benji."

"Nice to meetchoo." She smiled but didn’t say her name. "This is T."

A tall buff and handsome man stepped out from under the streetlight and said, "Hi, I’m T. I sell porn to minors, collect bills, and distribute spam on the internet. What do you all do?" His smile was all teeth and gloss.

"Is it okay if we take turns punching you now?" I asked.

T gave an uncertain smile and the ex valley girl offered an icy stare, turned back to Leo. "T-man’s the one I left you for, Leo."

"Porn is one thing," I said, "but it’s you fuckers who keep crashing my hotmail."

"Hey, I make the bucks baby," T offered in his defence. "That’s all I care about, man. All you poor schmucks out there take a lesson from me. I got a Porsche."

"My twelve-year-old brother gets porn on email all the time," Thea said.

"That’s your mother’s fault."

Leo, the ex valley girl and I had to pull Thea off him.

"Crazy bitch," the ex valley girl said, and T and I had to pull Leo off her. Thea didn’t help, and she didn’t say much about Leo’s reminiscing about his slut phase when we got back to the cottage either.

The minute he started ranting about the past I said, "I’ll be in the Jacuzzi."

To my surprise he joined me there and complimented my body. "Wow! Your body’s looking good man. Nice tan, you just need a little more definition."

"Okay," I said. "Listen, you really like this town? It’s a weird place, man. The whole thing is designed for people to come and spend money."

"That’s what tourism’s all about."

Next day I hitched a ride out of town in a ’78 Impala. "This car reminds me of my slut phase," I told the driver. He smiled like a shark with a lemon in its mouth.

Whistler I

2009-04-06T17:54:00.005-04:00

"The press is the hired agent of a monied system, set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where the interests are concerned." --Henry Adams

"Your pacifism will not protect you." --Audre Lourde

"Within this culture pacifism has in many circles been able to claim the moral high ground, having presumably found it empty after its previous holders--those who defended themselves and those they loved--had their landbases, cultures, bodies, and souls destroyed by the relentless physical, rhetorical, and spiritual attacks of the civilized." --Derrick Jensen

"It's no wonder we don't defend the land where we live. We don't live here. We live in television programs and movies and books and with celebrities and in heaven and by rules and laws and abstractions created by people far away and we live anywhere and everywhere except in our particular bodies on this particular land at this particular moment in these particular circumstances." --Derrick Jensen

It was just four organic plums: me, Leo, Thea, and Cub. The bobbing crowd around us were all genetically modified, pitless, soft and juicy.

We all got fermented together, found hip hop grooves in a Whistler meat market, where I found myself face-to-face with Thea while Leo passed cards to his exes saying, "Everything is a pyramid, brother. But this one makes you money. I tried them all. This is the only one where you’re truly your own boss. No paperwork. No inventory, just networking, building your network and providing a service, and I’ll be your helper, not your boss. Bosses watch you; I help you. And like my helper said to me, 'Those who do what no one else will today do what no one else can tomorrow.'"

Meanwhile Thea told me of sexy shy boys too high on their own mirrors to make the first move. "The girl you want is probably dying for you to ask her out. Don’t waste that opportunity."

"You’re the girl I want," my invisible self told her.

"This music makes me want to take my shirt off," my out loud self said.

"Maybe I should step aside," she said.

"You’d better or else you’ll get trampled when all the chicks in this bar charge for my rippling chest." Why was she standing so close to me?

"I hope Leo is okay," she said. "He wants to stay an extra night. His ex-girlfriend is here. He thinks I’m jealous, but actually I just don’t like her. Nothing to do with Leo. She’s just a bitch."

"He’ll forget it by tomorrow when he’s sober."

"I hate it when he drinks. I got a call one night at 1:00 AM, 'Thea, take me home!' So I drive to the bar. No Leo. I go inside. No Leo. I got a bad feeling from the start. And then I see these bouncers all over some guy. I hate that stuff so I just walk away. Then I hear them saying, 'He was trying to break into my fucking car!'

"So I go home, worried sick. Three AM I get a call; he’s crying, 'Thea I’m hurt!' Of course he had bruises all over his face. Of all the cars he picks a bouncer’s. That’s why I worry. We’ll never get home if he keeps yapping."

"He’ll run out of business cards eventually."

--

Sucks to be Rich

2009-04-02T15:18:00.006-04:00

"If your experience--far deeper than belief or perception--is that your food comes from the grocery store (and your water from the tap), from the economic system, from the social system we call civilization...You will defend this social system to your very death.

"If your experience...is that food and water come from your landbase, or more broadly from the living earth, you will make and keep promises to your landbase in exchange for this food. You will honor and keep and participate in the fundamental predator/prey relationship. You will be responsible to the community that supplies you with food and water. You will defend this community to your very death." --Derrick Jensen

Munching on a chicken burger at the start of a long-distance northward journey into the mountains, my vegetarianism lapsed but not my guilt, I had to resort to logic: "The problem," I explained to Cub, "logically, which vegetarians face, is that they don’t want to endorse the suffering or murder of sentient beings, but who is to say that vegetables aren’t sentient? The vegetarian argument, when based on ethics, is really an emotional one. It’s easier to empathize with a chicken than with a carrot, because you can hear a chicken cry. It’s obvious the chicken feels pain, but with a carrot you don’t know. A lot of people eat chicken, but how many people actually kill one for supper?"

"That’s my problem with vegetarians," Cub said, resolutely. "And with environmentalists in fact."

Cub’s logical self churned right over his talkative tongue: practical percolation with nary a hitch in production. "The way we perceive things, and what we believe, is based totally on our own experience in life: where we grow up, how much money we have, who our parents are, and so on. So how can one person think he knows better than the rest how to live? How can environmentalists go around telling people how to live? Do they think people will listen when they have their own beliefs and philosophies and experiences?"

Having just spent two years in a basement learning how to save energy and influence people, I took a mental back-step, then lurched forward. "I don’t think you can force people to accept your philosophy," I said, "but you can engage in honest dialogue, and hope that people can learn from your own experience and philosophy. And you can lead by example. If I think Western Society consumes too much, I can consume less, and still be happy. And any unhappy rich guy I meet might take notice, and finally realize that money doesn’t bring happiness."

"What about happy rich people?"

"What like Oprah?" Oprah kept invading our high-minded conversations with her popular drivel. "Even she says money doesn’t bring happiness. But she owns five mansions. She’s set for life, and her children’s lives, and their kids too, et cetera. The Dalai Lama, he’s always been taken care of financially - although he’s had other troubles - but he says he finds happiness mostly in helping others. Come to think of it, maybe rich people are the ones most in a position to realize that money doesn’t make you happy. It’s poor people who think money will make you happy."

"Then why do you have rich people working their asses off for more money?" Cub asked, hooked on my waxy philosophy junk already, just as Leo predicted he would be.

"They’re addicted," I argued. "Obsessed, and they have a junkie’s complete lack of reason. Some people get rich and go, 'Oh, there’s still more to life.' Others get rich and still need more. I guess the uber-rich have addictive personalities or something."

"So do you think the example you set as a minimalist can reach these money-junkies?"

"Maybe not directly," I admitted. "But...say me and some friends have a common interest. We get together and start a business - not to get rich, just to make a living, doing something we enjoy. So of course if we make a go of it we’re pretty happy. Life isn’t perfect, it never is, and never has been, but we spend half our time doing a job we like and the rest with people we love - which is ultimately where happiness comes from, other people, people you love or at least like.

"So, I meet some poor miserable rich workaholic, who is obsessed with making his millions, and has no real friends because he works 90 hours a week at this job he hates, and maybe he could learn from me that life isn’t about the millions; it’s more about the work itself.

"And if more of these little co-op type of businesses start emerging in different places around the world, maybe more people would follow the example, and maybe over generations the concept of corporations designed solely to make people money would fade away."

"The problem with that fantasy," Cub informed me, "is that whatever your passion, you have to find a market for it. I love to read, but nobody’s going to pay me to read all day."

"But they might pay you to write all day, if you’re good. Me, I don’t claim to be the writingest genius of all time, but I know if I work hard, and if I’m creative, and persistent, I can get paid enough for writing about things that interest people to get by. The key is whether I believe in myself enough to do that, or do I get scared and take a job I don’t love because it’s steady and risk-free?

"I guess I’m making the assumption that most people have a marketable passion. You love to read; that’s a hobby. But a philosopher like you could easily be a writer or artist of some sort. Some people love to build things. Leo loves to talk, so he’s doing this network marketing thing."

"There she is boys and girls!" Leo shouted, right on cue, pointing at Thea’s parents' three-storey cottage, with its outdoor jacuzzi steam room, and its large bay windows looking down on Whitsler’s trees, and the one in the back looking up at the majesty of its mountains.

Cub emitted a long, slow whistle. "Yep, sucks to be rich," he said.

Dream-fields

2009-03-27T10:17:00.005-04:00

"My new motto has become...Dismantle globally, renew locally." --Derrick Jensen

"Civilization requires the importation of resources, which means it requires the use of force to maintain iteself. This means that if these folks who are visualizing world peace really are interested in actualizing world peace, they should also be visualizing industrial collapse. And bringing it about." --Derrick Jensen

Dream-fields
Leo’s whirlwind tour past blue sky trains and urban sprawl took me, circuitously, to the best chicken sandwiches ever, and conversations of the pros and cons of veggie burgers, covered in torture chamber cheese from hapless dairy cows. The whole way there it was all marketing all the time.

"Poor Ben has to listen all about Thrust all the time; he knows all about this business now," Leo quipped.

The Recruit lilting-reed smiled as he joked of the 50 ways he’d love to fuck her, or any other abstract 20-year-old with shady olive skins and kite-high cheek bones, especially the ones in Beamers.

"Soon that’ll be you," he told her, pointing out a six-figure automobile with a young woman at the wheel. "Driving along in your BMW thinking, 'Who're those two geeks in the Honda staring at me like that?'"

Her face stayed a mask. "Yeah," she said.

Vancouver chicks put on a sunflower show of late summer skin just for us, liquid libido mojo risin’.

We picked up Leo’s fiancée, Thea, whose name you may recognize from professional field hockey fame. Professional field hockey, despite its glamour, didn’t exactly pay Texas oil baron wages, so Thea worked a day job as an administrator for the Institution Notoriously Traveling on the Remains of American Indian Western Land, or INTRA-WEST, the people who brought Whistler to the wealthy. After a spectacular rookie season and a sub-par sophomore year Thea was on an all-flesh diet and titanium-lifting regimen.

The final pickup was Cub, the Chinese-Canadian railroad philosopher who introduced Leo to Thea all those years before. His mantra on climbing into the Honda was, "Let’s get to Whistler!"

"Food first," Leo insisted. That’s how Vancouver captured more of my debt, with ten dollar hot branded chicken and a creamy Nanaimo bar.

Leo

2009-03-23T09:31:00.003-04:00

"In the three year period ending 2003, refugees accounted for 21 per cent of immigrants to the Atlantic compared with 11 per cent nationally." --Robin Arthur

"The political inclusion of newcomers in the Maritimes does not come anywhere close to the rate of inclusion of newcomers in the political corridors at the national level." --Robin Arthur

"We [Maritimers] are traditionally friendly, but closed in terms of being socially inclusive." --Claudette Legault

The Boys of Brazil, in their topless bright-lite pants, boogied to a ringing guitar and multiple rhythm drums, their capoeira, while white dudes in collared shirts sipped juice and ate barbequed beef burgers. I swung my ass while an old Asian asshole danced with his umbrella, much to the crowd’s delight. When the music and movement stopped they offered scattered golf clap appreciation for true genius, near an art gallery hotdog stand. Marketing: it’s all marketing. Give that band a million-dollar label and those white suits would line Carnegie Hall for quaint new age exotic delights like this.

Marketing. It’s what Leo and friends do best, with their cell phones blazing in sushi joints ice cream parlors cafes and bars. "You too could make your millions just offering people a service. Get up in the morning and your biggest decision is hit the gym or the golf course. Do whatever you want with your time because you’re financially secure." Like Oprah, who says money isn’t what makes you happy, but of course she has no worries. Vince Carter said the same thing after signing a $94 million contract to play his favourite game in a million-man city that loves him so much they give him free MRIs for sprained ankles while cancer patients wait in the wings.

Multiple cell phone car conversations and Leo turned to me and said, "My biggest fear is that once I’m financially secure I’ll have too much fun, too many temptations from girls who want me because I’m financially secure. The hookers in this city are so beautiful. Back home they’re all fat and ugly. I couldn’t believe it when I got here; I didn’t think hookers could be so beautiful. We learn that girls are supposed to be so pure. Maybe that’s why people think hookers are bad. But they’re just trying to make a living, providing a service." He cackled, high-pitched. "It’s true! But it seems weird because we think girls are supposed to be pure and innocent. That’s why I wouldn’t wanna pay for a hooker. I feel weird even at strip clubs."

In the bar we joined a group of young professionals calling themselves the Chinese Hand Game Club, led by a mysterious Japanese expat known as The Hyena. Our connection was Leo’s newest recruit, a dough-eyed beauty and close personal friend of The Hyena, Leo’s secret Asian twin. The drinks came fast and plentiful.

"So what’s this new business of hers?" Leo wanted to know.

"She sells drugs." Deadpan.

Leo gave his maniacal cackle again, more hyena-like than The Hyena. "Who would ever suspect her?"

"She sells her body sometimes too."

"Really? Why didn’t you ever sell your body to me?!" he asks, feigning offense with another cackle, and another, and another, effeminate hairs on feminine mannerisms, but hot for the recruit.

Our drinks were replenished, and outside the sky was blue, even though I couldn’t see it through the concrete. I was painfully aware of the witness it bore to my doom from way up above me, with the sun and birds.

God Questions Man

2009-03-20T08:46:00.004-04:00

"Religion was an improper response to the Divine."

"Whenever a state or an individual cited 'insufficient funds' as an excuse for neglecting this important thing or that, it was indicative of the extent to which reality had been distorted by the abstract lens of wealth."
--Tom Robbins [sorry Ivan, that's the last one from him.]

"So now you have a rainsuit."

"Yeah. Nice eh?"

"Quality."

"Fashionable."

"You happy now?"

"Yeah."

"Worried about the future?"

"Naw."

"Learned from your mistake?"

"Yeah."

"Good!"

Vancouver Hostile

2009-03-16T09:43:00.003-04:00

"The monkey wrench in the progressive machinery of primate evolution was the propensity of the primate band to take its political leaders - its dominant males - too seriously. Of benefit to the band only when it was actively threatened by predators, the dominant male (or political boss) was almost wholly self-serving and was naturally dedicated not to liberation but to control. Behind his chest-banging and fang display, he was largely a joke and could be kept in his place (his place being that of a necessary evil) by disrespect and laughter. If, for example, when HItler stood up to rant in the beer halls of Munich, the good drinkers had taken him more lightly, had they, instead of buying his act, snickered and hooted and pelted him with sausage skins, the Holocaust might have been avoided. Of course, as long as there were willing followers, there would be exploitative leaders. And there would be willing followers until humanity reached that philosophical plateau where it recognized that its great mission in life had nothing to do with any struggle between classes, races, nations, or ideologies, but was, rather, a personal quest to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain. On that quest, politics was simply a roadblock of stentorian baboons."

"If god were a being, even a supreme being, our prayers would have bored him to death long ago."
--Tom Robbins

Vancouver: almost as much sushi as coffee; almost as much coffee as weed.

My hostel bunkies' early morning conversation and soft-drug sharing woke me. There was a Montreal engineer-slash-travelling salesman, an English Asia-trotter, a couple Newfie migrant drinkers, a French fondler of masculine muscles, and a Missisauga Lenny Kravitz look-alike who thought I was a blue-eyed Mi’kmaq.

"I love travellin'. I don’t understand homesick."

"Don’t you think more about your parents now?"

"It’s funny, you grow up just wanting to get the fuck away from these freaks. Then you finally do, and you realize 'Hey, they ain’t so bad.'"

"For sure! You appreciate them more. It really improves the relationship with them when you leave. But I wouldn’t say I miss them."

"I don’t miss my parents, or Newfoundland even. Sometimes I miss people I met along the way, shared a drink with."

"Oh yeah. But sometimes it’s nice to have people around you have a history with, someone who really knows."

"It’s also nice to connect with somebody without having to tell your life story to them. It makes me feel less alone in the universe. But then sometimes you catch yourself and you realize, 'Whoa! What’s goin’ on here? I hardly know this person.'"

"One minute you think it’s sort of a soul-mate, then they say something totally uncool. It’s like, uh, political."

"I hate fuckin' politics."

"It’s all money."

"Debt."

"Debt's bullshit. Just paper stuff. Nothing to do with reality. No reason not to forfeit on a government's debt. There is no possible retribution."

"Politics is just control."

"Who needs it?"

"Fuck it. Ignore it. Do your own thing."

"Fuck the government!"

"But hey, we have it pretty good. Ten bucks a night for a room, not bad fuck."

"Some people don't even have ten bucks, like ten percent of seniors are poor - they want to form a Canadian Seniors Department - and 20 percent of children are poor too.

"The Head Rooster should understand; he’s 67."

The HR, in the news, had this to say about that: "I tell dat Dubya to go to H E double hockey sticks if he wanna save my forest. Fuck 'im I say. No oil for 'im then, no water neither. I tell 'im very clear, you know me!"

To which Alberta's Premium Rooster said, "Hmm-hmmm, uh, Johnny-Boy, we, uh, we need Dubya's business, so unless you wanna step into the pen for a good ole cock fight, I suggest you shut the fuck up."

"You know, ahhh, what I of course mean was, dat free trade is free trade, forestry and also da fuel like da gas and da oil, you know, you know me. I was totally very clear with 'im der on dat one. By da way, da economy is in trouble, so I change my mind about da money for da hospital and environment and, ahhh, whatsitcall? Education."

West-Coast People Trap

2009-03-07T09:09:00.003-05:00

"A longing for the Divine is intrinsic in Homo sapiens. (For all we know, it is innate in squirrels, dandelions, and diamond rings, as well.) We approach the Divine by enlarging our souls and lighting up our brains. To expedite those two things may be the mission of our existence...But such activity runs counter to the aspirations of commerce and politics. Politics is the science of domination, and persons in the process of enlargement and illumination are notoriously difficult to control. Therefore, to protect its vested interests, politics usurped religion a very long time ago. Kings bought off priests with land and adornments. Together, they drained the shady ponds and replaced them with fish tanks. The walls of the tanks were constructed of ignorance and superstition, held together with fear. They called the tanks 'synagogues' or 'churches' or 'mosques'."

"Religion is a paramount contributor to human misery. It is not merely the opium of the masses, it is the cyanide."

"Never trust a country that won't allow live poultry
To ride on its buses."
--Tom Robbins

I sipped acidic caffeine in a mocha money shop in the rain-soaked west-coast People Trap, and gazed fondly downward to $150-worth of new raingear, purchased in surrender at the giant Monumentally Expensive Co-op (MEC - for gear-head yuppie escape-the-city-two-weeks-a-year-in-their-SUV types).

Vancouver: where protesters vacation. How did I get here?

A boat and then a fortuitously long ride into town. My ride misguided circuitously toward a downtown backpackers hostel, ten bucks a night for a dorm-room bed, an extra dollar for sheets. It takes a special effort to be the kind of ass the hostel operator was.

Me from a faraway payphone: "I’m on Burrard, how do I find you?"

"Walk down Pender." No Pender in sight.

Eventually, me standing before the ass himself: "Where’s MEC?"

"Around the corner."

"OK, thanks. Here, this is for my room."

"I have no change. You have to pay me ten even."

"I don’t have a ten."

"You have to get one." All around us five hundred megawatt monotone reggae submerged words and strangled sentences.

"What did you say?!"

"I said, 'Pooh’s ass shits cum.'"

"What?! I can’t hear you, speak up!"

His eyes spun an infinity of exasperation, and he actually lowered his voice slightly. "You have to get one."

The MEC was barely within ten kilometres of around the corner.

Talking to God

2009-02-23T09:59:00.005-05:00

"Unfortunately, we have seen that live oral polio has consequences of its own, perhaps because nature never intended us to swallow an orange-flavored concentrate of live poliovirus."
--Aviva Jill Romm

There was something else in that stopwatch rain, before I returned to Serenity. A plea, a conversation, interrupted only by a song:

"Why forsake me with this isolation?"

"You need the space to think, Boy."

"What’s that got to do with rain?"

"You don’t like it? I thought you liked rain?"

"I do, sometimes. Not when I’m stuck in it with these 90 pounds of pathetic possessions, her all over my brain, drenched."

"Like her cunt."

"Yeah, but colder."

"Less tasty."

"Um, yeah."

"----"

"So?"

"So what?"

"What’s with this rain? Make it stop."

"Can’t do it."

"So what’s the point?"

"Omens."

"Omens."

"Yep, omens."

"So. What’s it mean?"

"I won’t insult your intelligence. Think about it."

I sang two songs complete, the only two I knew, sung them strong because there was no one, no one there, but me and God, and I’d forgotten God for the moment, the fucker. My voice was good, because there was no one there to hear it. It really made a sound. It wasn’t Bono, or an imitation. It was me, and I could sing. No Murry Mclaughlin twang, no Jeff Tweedy rasp, no Bob Dylan slur, no Johnny Cash boom-bass. My natural singing voice, it would seem, is kinda high.

"Focus!"

"You’re back."

"I never left. I went to all this trouble for you, the rain and bad breaks, and you just sing 80s pop?"

"It’s only 80s pop in retrospect. It wasn't pop at the time."

"Whatever! Focus."

God was almost making me cry. "I’m no camper."

"I’ve seen worse. You’re pretty tough."

"I’m a bad decision-maker."

"I’ve seen better."

"She wouldn’t a let me pitch my tent on a hill."

"She’s gone."

"Right."

"You happy?"

"Now?"

"In general."

"It’s up and it’s down. The past few months have been good."

"What about the past few years."

"It’s hard to measure. My life changes every few months."

"So what’s next?"

"Who knows."

"You been thinking on it all day."

"I know! But I can never figure it out."

"Hmmm."

"Hmmm. Time to settle down?...God? Dammit!"

That’s when the Jetta drove by, and I cried after it, "You have no heart!" not knowing they’d double back and return me to Serenity.

Link to the Reading

2009-02-16T15:39:00.002-05:00

You can listen to my story, It's Muhammad, as read on VoicePrint Canada on February 14, by clicking here, then clicking LISTEN.

-BB

It's Muhammad

2009-02-13T09:17:00.002-05:00

Hi folks,

My short story, It's Muhammad, will be television broadcast by VoicePrint Canada, this Saturday morning (February 14), at 9.30 Eastern Time. If you live in Canada, own a relatively new television, and would like to hear it, tune in to the CBC NewsWorld television channel and activate your SAP (MTS) button (that's Second Audio Program, Multichannel Television Sound) on your remote control.

Alternatively, you can listen to it at the VoicePrint Canada website, but the broadcast time is less certain - some time after noon.

Thanks,
Benjibopper

Stopwatch Rain

2009-02-12T08:51:00.006-05:00

"The hijab, 'is not an issue for me,' explained one woman in the village of Abasan. 'In my community it's natural to wear it. The problem is when little boys, including my son, feel they have the right to tell me to wear it.'"

--Rema Hammami

Made my way back to Serenity’s salvation. The real world was too frightening to face alone. I tried I tried but that wet bed, it was too cold.

After another hour-and-a-half of 90-pound bag-weight march in the stopwatch rain, a Jetta passed me by. "You have no heart!" I cried.

But they did have hearts; they just kicked in a little late, and were full of 1960s baggage. Their hearts and their car too. "Throw your pack on between the trunk and the bicycles; rest it on the ropes," the Mrs. Told me. Pack-mule sore, I agreed.

"He used to live up there near that same Indian reserve," she told me, finger jerking at Mr. Don’t know how she guessed where I’d been. "It was a logger’s camp back then."

"Yep, 1971," he concurred. "Sort of a hippie commune."

"I used to live in the Queen Charlotte’s myself," she added. "Ten years."

"I’m going there," I told them. "To farm with the Macleans."

"You’re one of those, what do you call them, Willing Workers for Farms or something, WWOOFers? I did that once, back in the day."

"Yeah, Willing Workers on Organic Farms - WWOOF."

"Wait a minute, I know the Macleans. Kari-Anne and Gord, right?"

Fate went out of its way, returned me to Serenity, where Chet and Jill awaited me like family, with all the same psychotic coziness. Everything dried, in time, and I even stopped cursing God for a while. But all those ignored omens kept pointing me back to the city, that people-trap, where things were drier.

Blackberry Blues

2009-02-06T10:27:00.005-05:00

"Most social scientists look to the humiliations of Versailles and the deprivations of the Great Depression to explain the 'escape from freedom' into a violent, chauvinistic, exclusivist, right-wing European movement - fascism - in the 1930s. But how oftern do we look to military defeat and economic crisis to explain Middle Eastern extremism?"
--Sheila Carapico

Even the stars disappeared eventually, gone behind black clouds, the perfect cover for ear-buzzing mosquitoes. I sat near the edge of the island, watching the city lights, when I heard the thunderous hooves of the apocalypse. Right behind. What a way to die!

"Lost in the woods? Over-exposure? Hypothermia?"

"Nope. Run over by deer. It was dark out. Poor fucker never saw it coming."

Bed-time, I told myself, climbing into my 45-degree angle Canadian Tire tent, pitched in the wilds just to avoid the tenting permit police, with their 50 dollar fines, or island justice alternatives I didn’t want to know about.

Fuck it! What a sleepless night of imagination, alliterations break-dancing in interval dreams, between fits of re-adjustment, as the skies turned on, let loose sexy sprays of cold hard rain. I bolted awake at 7:00 AM, relocated to a stolen flat campsite. Let the park coppers bring their worst.

But when the wet gets in you, it stays. I got up again and tried the seven-hour forest march, to a miniature lighthouse named Virginia, through ancient Pene-akut land, and to an almost as old abandoned reservation, picking slight-sustenance blackberries and waiting for the appearance of no-show hallucinations. Isolation. I meditated on the deep woods moss under a forever upward fir, my camera snapping, all my memories creeping up on me disguised as fantasies of impossible futures, until I heard a shot, and saw more schizophrenic deer than I had human beings in the past few days, stumbling by me, unaware of my presence, again.

A lone camouflaged hunter stumbled after them, tripped over my specter. "Oh-ho!" he said, brushing himself off, head hung sheepishly. He looked mad, but I sensed a kindred spirit in that neither of us wanted anything to do with park rangers at a time like this.

"Been out here long?" I asked, trying to keep the tone casual.

"Oh, no sir," he said, shuffling his green boots and kicking gently at the moss. "Just a few hours."

"Oh," I said. "What news from civilization?"

He smiled then, knowing he was in no trouble. "I heard on the news on the ride in that the Association of Activists of All Kinds - AAAK! - has invited Chevron’s head chicken and the World Bank’s head chimp to their annual discussion on why the world sucks, and this other group, calling themselves Activists Preferring Everybody Shut Up - APE-SU - is pissed."

"And what of Chevron and the World Bank; what do they say?"

"The World Bank’s head chimp was quoted as saying something like, 'Okay, we’ll come to your little party, drink your tea, but that doesn’t mean you can come to our party. You’re too young for our kind of party and that’s that.'"

I shook his hand, wished him luck, and made my way back to gather my tent. Civilization was the same mess I left it, but I couldn’t live on blackberries for long, and I was afraid of guns.

Dionisio

2009-02-03T09:45:00.004-05:00

"Democrats, historically the party of social investment, are today the party of fiscal parismony and deficit reduction. This is widely seen as a strength, despite scant evidence that it has ever been a particularly powerful political asset for Democrats."
--Nordhaus & Shellenberger

Moss bed, ocean front-lawn, star roof, tree walls,
mainland mountains in the misty distance.
Tent illegally parked, holding my Earth possessions,
less electronics and such.

Billie Holiday birds and buzzing things
backed by bass drum waves.

Dionisio:
Empty Galiano provincial Douglas Fir park.

Galiano Island: home of exiled carpenters
cutting and pasting together weird angled
shoreline homes.

My finally ride away from Serenity,
one Wisconsin inter-racial couple.
Comes with hopeless slush,
food forgetting, and much ado.

It was the Wisconsin inter-racial couple who saved me from the rain, on their island exploration adventure, and helped me sniff Sadie’s scent to the Moore Farm, where her two-year-old ghost taunted me, "I was here first!"

"Oh yeah, Sadie, we remember her," the Moores told me. "She actually built both these houses herself, thinned all the trees, herself, installed the solar power too - provides half our energy including enough for our 17-year-old internet junkie." Internet: the drug of choice on this Isolation Island.

I nodded, soaking in all Sadie’s un-avenged achievements, but there was more. "She planted the orchard, gardens, made the windmill, and she even hatched the chickens if I recollect correctly."

I looked through the dim-lit room to a picture window large enough to hold all Vancouver’s lights. "It’s time," said the city lights. I fled, not knowing Sadie’s ghost was still chasing me.

The Wisconsins followed me out the door, each putting an arm around me outside. They offered me a ride all the way. "I own hot dog stands, five of ‘em," Mr. Wisconsin told me.

"I’m just a librarian," Mrs. Wisconsin said.

"She takes care of their brains all day; I take care of their stomachs at night. Mostly it’s post bar hopping hungry drunks though. So, uh, what’s your story?"

I told them about the month I spent with my hands in the dirt, killing unwanted plants.

"Wow, that’s cool man! I didn’t know people did that stuff. Well, I knew people like you existed, but that farm - middle a nowhere! And I didn’t know people traveled across the country to volunteer for them. And man, your friend Sadie sounds like quite a lady!"

I thanked them at the gates of Dionisio Provincial Park, at the northern tip of the island, where I pitched my mismatched tent for the first time since Sadie left me. In her memory I made a point to fuss over which direction the door pointed. She cared about things like that.

Hunger points me to Jillian’s goodbye bag of goodies:
Four hard-boiled eggs, fruit leather, jalapeno havarti,
green and yellow peppers, pot-bellied zucchini, walnuts,
peanut butter energy treat. Shit!

Goddamn my hapless nature and missing mind.
No food. Left in the Wisconsins' car.
Just bread, granola, soy flour. No toilet paper,
no cash, not even for a campsite.
Granola, soy flour water supper, no spoon.
Rough in it. Sleep under stars. No moon.

Terrible Twos

2009-01-30T08:54:00.010-05:00

"In the United States the average home has grown from 983 square feet in 1950 to 2,434 square feet in 2005. It's a trend seen across the Western world...I think it is more than coincidence that over that same period, North American scores on an international survey of happiness have dropped and the amount of time we spend with our children has decreased."
--Michael Ungar, Ph.D.

Terrible Twos

Beaver has a case of the Terrible Twos.

"Mine," he says, jamming his toy explorers,
two-footed into the arctic snow.

Beaver’s scientists are on a mission:
to solve the ownership issue,
prove the north pole is
tectonically connected to his home
on native land, as the old song goes.

"When all this melts I’ll own
whatever’s left of it!" Beaver proclaims.
"My peer-reviewed journals will prove it."

All well and good,
until Bear comes out to play.

Bear’s in that same phase,
also staking claims,
learning his power,
unaware of repercussions
or limits.
But he’s so much bigger.
Adults expect more from Bear.

"Mine," Bear says, jamming flag-poles,
single-speared into everything,
even underwater.

Bear’s toy soldiers are on a mission:
to get there first, like Sputnik,
to defend what so obviously
belongs to him,
like the old Soviet republics.

"When all this melts I’ll own
whatever’s left of it!" Bear proclaims.
"All my flags will prove it."

Books

2009-01-23T13:27:00.003-05:00

"The inventor of their heaven empties into it all the nations of the earth, in one common jumble. All are on an equality absolute, no one of them ranking another; they have to be "brothers"; they have to mix together, pray together, harp together, hosannah together - whites, n*****rs, Jews, everybody - there's no distinction. Here in the earth all nations hate each other, and every one of them hates the Jew. Yet evey pious person adores that heaven and wants to get into it. He really does. And when he is in a holy rapture he thinks that if he were only there he would take all the populace to his heart, and hug, and hug, and hug!"
--Mark Twain on delusion

"The law of nature, as quite plainly expressed in its construction, is this: There shall be no limit put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life. The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in man's construction, is this: During your entire life you shall be under inflexible limits and restrictions, sexually...Now if you or any other really intelligent person were arranging the fairnesses and justices between man and woman, you would give the man a one-fiftieth interest in one woman, and the woman a harem."
--Mark Twain on human sexuality

Here are 15 books I loved reading in 2008, with my favourite 6 in bold:

1. Leaf Storm and Other Stories, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - incredible prose and imagery, bountiful imagination.

2. A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson - a science textbook for laypeople full of the history of discovery, and all the unsung geniuses who had the glory snatched from them by future generations finally ready for their work.

3. Skinny Legs and All, Tom Robbins - very imaginative, unusual, bubbling stacatto prose of the spiritual adventure of inanimate objects and brain-dead people.

4. A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Housseini - very simply written, all about the story, and the people of Afghanistan.

5. A Language Older Than Words, by Derrick Jensen - it rambles over a lot of ground, but stays true to its viscious, though heavily provoked, attack on our culture.

6. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison - crazy, crazy journey into the dark heart of the racial majority's prejudices, and a man of the racialized minority struggling to be seen for what he is.

7. Civilization and Its Part in My Downfall, by Paul Quarrington - hilarious story of a movie stuntman.

8. We Were Not the Savages, by Daniel Paul - important re-telling of Nova Scotia history by a descendant of the 'losers', the ones we tried to assimilate and/or annihilate.

9. The Birth Partner: A Complete Guide to Childbirth for Dads, Doulas and All Other Labour Companions, by Penny Simkin - highly recommended to anyone who knows anyone who will be giving birth soon. Practical, balanced, by far the best of several books I read on the subject.

10. Ramblin' Man: the Life and Times of Woody Guthrie, by Ed Cray - Not just the story of a man, but of a movement, a time in history, a country.

11. The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein - Only read this because I was interviewing her for an article. Read in one mind-bending weekend. It's a brilliant theory, brilliantly argued, that brings together many strands we already know.

12. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann - Archeology and anthropology have come a long way, and what we thought was history is new again. This book shows why.

13. Cibou, by Susan Young de Biagi - Great story by a Nova Scotian writer of worlds, and worldviews, colliding with calamitous results. Simply but powerfully told.

14. Grimus, by Salman Rushdie - Magic realism at its best; Rushdie just piles on layers of imagery until your mind is high as a kite and ready to dream.

15. Down to the Dirt, by Joel Thomas Hynes - Gritty story of a young man's fascinating and disturbing, all too realistic, self-destruction.

9 Movies I Enjoyed This Year

2009-01-13T18:04:00.008-05:00

"Our chief - in his ceaseless care for his people - lived in a humble wikuom and ate the simplest food. This Stewart, who cared nothing for his men, was given the very best food and lodging."
--Mouse, in the novel Cibou, by Susan Young De Biagi

Best 9 movies I saw last year:

1. Homicide: Life on the Streets, Seasons 1-7 + made-for-tv movie: Technically not a movie but probably the best cop show ever - a lot of the people involved went on to make The Wire which I hear is even better.

2. Adaptation: Charlie Kaufman is just so brilliant for the layers of dramatic irony, the stories within the stories, and the pathetic insecure writer as character. One of my favourite movies.

3. On the Waterfront: Classic Hollywood Brando union story. "I coulda been somebody...Instead of a bum, which is what I am."

4. Instinct: In which white man learns from silverback gorillas, goes to the loony bin, teaches young black man what he learned. When I put it that way, it sounds terrible doesn't it? But it's a surprisingly good adaptation of Ishmael, considering that book (as much as I loved it) had almost no plot to work with. They did a great job getting the basic idea across and creating their own plot.

5. The Dark Knight: Some have called it over-rated, over-hyped. I disagree. Ledger was freaky and engrossing; the high-flying Chinese cityscapes gave me vertigo, I was on the edge of my seat through the whole thing.

6. Whale Rider: Beautiful magic-realist tale of a Maori girl-chief.

7. Inner Strength: All it is, is shots of six different couples giving birth at different times, but all in a Dutch birth centre. Almost no dialogue other than moaning and screaming and crying. It is absolutely beautiful.

8. The Man Without a Past: Stoic Finnish skid row bums playing funk music for the salvation army. It doesn't get much better.

9. The Battle of Algiers: Incredible realism, unblinking look at both the French and Algerian atrocities of war. Has a documentary feel but isn't a documentary. Gripping stuff.

11 Albums

2009-01-09T08:44:00.006-05:00

Here are 11 albums I picked up this year that I really think you should hear. Especially the 5 that I put in bold:

1. Juno Soundtrack: Fun movie and equally fun soundtrack highlighted by Kimya Dawson.

2. Melissa Maclellan - Thumbelina's One-Night Stand: This Toronto singer-songwriter opened for Blue Rodeo (after Cuff the Duke got caught in a snowstorm) and stole the show with an incredible sultry-strong voice and great songwriting chops. And she's married to Luke Doucet.

3. Danny Michel - Feather, Fur & Fin: Danny Michell, the little known songster from Kitchener-Waterloo, delivers again and again and again. This is one of his best.

4. Justin Rutledge - Man Descending: This kid continues to impress with his poetic sensibilities and pretty pretty voice.

5. David Myles - Things Have Changed: Originally from New Brunswick, now a Haligonian, his music has a folky jazzy bluesy old-school vibe. Another great songwriter telling stories about how he learned to live.

6. Martin Sexton - Seeds: He is best experienced live (he paid is dues selling tens of thousands of self-made cd's as a Boston busker), but Sexton's incredible vocal range, gorgeous energy, and his ability to exhale complex music like carbon dioxide, make his recorded work well worth the investment.

7. Country & Western: This is a 10-disc compilation of old-time American country circa 1929-1951, talking Jimmie Rodgers, Gene Autry, Jack Guthrie, the Carters, that kinda thing. It was a time and an era and a feel. It's nostalgia on disc and I love it.

8. Kathleen Edwards - Asking for Flowers: There's a strong streak of punk in Canada's new queen of alt-country (make room Neko Case). Her songs are gritty and real, her voice is powerful and true.

9. Bob Dylan - Tell Tale Signs (Bootleg Series Volume 8): These songs are so good it's hard to believe they were the ones that didn't make the cut on the original discs. Some of these songs I like a lot more than what was originally released. The man's talent just falls off him.

10. Buffy St. Marie - Running for the Drum: Amazing that you can go decades without releasing an album and then come out with something this good. It's really got it all: political songs, love songs, songs of the reservation and home, Canada and America; blues, old time rock-and-roll, hip-hop sampling. When I saw her live this summer she talked about how she got labelled as a folk singer back in the 60s and started writing 'traditional' Irish-style folk diddies to please the masses. You can see with this album just how much she was holding back.

11. Old Man Luekecke - Notes From the Banjo Underground: Somehow I forgot to include this in my original list, even though this is an absolutely fabulous album! It's a few years old now and I don't have his new one yet, but his songwriting is this strange Mark Twainish folk philosophy that is pure genius, all accompanied by gorgeous banjo pickin. Now one of my very favourite albums.

Ukrainian Christmas in October

2008-12-29T10:13:00.003-05:00

Hi folks, The Coast published a short edited excerpt from my novel for its annual Christmas holiday fiction issue. Click the picture to the left to read it.

-BB

Birth

2008-12-11T13:06:00.005-05:00

"the trouble with Flann O'Toole had to do with two things: his preoccupation with being such a disgustingly uproarious broth of a boy, and the fact that his middle name was Napoleon. An Irish Napoleon was a concept so grotesque it had to end up like O'Toole. O'Toole made potato whisky in a back room and seduction attempts upon the person of every female who entered the Elbaroom; he swore oaths regularly and broke promises unfeelingly; he was prone to fits of violent temper, but thought himself a reasonable man; he was likely at any moment of the day or night to keel over in an alcoholic stupor, but he considered himself a man of power; he was carried to his bed every night in a haze of obscenity and vomit, but he was convinced he was a leader in the community; he quoted poetry as he did ugly things." --Salman Rushdie [master of characterization]

Birth
At first it’s a slow leak,
nothing to panic about.
We watch the game
after a brief call to the midwife,
who is concerned by the snow
barricading her country home.

To bed for now,
in our basement bedroom.

4 am comes too early.
My between-contraction naps
become too brief and frequent.
Then pop.
Gush.
Bags of waters,
which protected this 9-month concept,
down the drain.
Still no midwife.

5 am the shrieking begins;
there’s blood on the floor.
A slightly panicked call to the midwife,
who says in the face of rapid dilation,
to stay low and calm -
no shrieking.

Just low moans,
at the buffalo frequency,
bouncing on your birth ball.

Fill the tub.
Muddy bloodied waters.
No problem,
as long as it’s warm
in the cold
and cool in the heat.

Stay low and calm
at the buffalo frequency.

Help me,
you whisper your scream.
We’re only 2 hours in.

Stay low and calm
at the buffalo frequency.

You can do this,
I mock confidence.
And then we’ll have a baby.

Where’s the midwife?
Your query
more rhythmic than contractions.

Friends come first,
with a breakfast to go cold
as they boil water,
like a 60s sitcom birth.
Filling our birth pool
by the fire they built
in our living room.

Where’s the midwife?

Stay low and calm
at the buffalo frequency.
Tepid water over contracting belly,
moaning low.
300 liquid scoops
cool the pain
until it gets worse,
and you push them away
as the midwife arrives.

I feel like I want to push.

No don’t do that!
quoth the ignorant partner.

The voice of experience
searches for cervix,
finds nothing,
says, it’s all natural.
You’re ready to go.

So up we go,
you staggering, punch-drunk
like a lopsided prizefighter
begging to throw in the towel.

Nobody can do this but you,
and guess what, you’re doin’ it.
You will get this baby in your arms,
she informs you, her lips taut
like the memory of a cigarette,
her voice all silken dominatrix.
Now push!

You scream your war cry.
Forget low and calm,
to hell with buffaloes.
You sweat methane.
Arm in arm we squat,
your full weight on me,
fire in our legs
and on our skin.
My back breaks,
as the pool is filled
with 37-degree water.

You climb in
but you won’t take my hand,
just ice-water.
Ice-water to forehead,
ice-water to lips,
to throat, then spilled
under a small slice of sea.
My hand is freed
For shoulder neck massage.

You wail, just short of ululation.
Your language is clear,
your cries reverential.
This is not the time to be crass,
though the neighbours think
you are being tortured.

The baby responds with a crown.
You can’t see it.
Anticipation fills the room,
like a back-alley yodel
you’re so close, Mama,
we all agree.
But you aren’t impressed
by the sliver of emergent hair.
I’m so far away.
Can I quit now?

Low moans,
buffalo frequency.

Seven more warriors cry.
Seven more uterine contracts.
Your baby’s face is slipping through,
and my hands are placed for the pull,
but the shoulder is stuck as we heave,
and it’ll surely break with such force,
our biceps one way
your contorted primal writhing
the other.

I can only whimper and cry,
as this marathon miracle 1st prize
passes through my hands, head-first
into the rivulet between your breasts.
Legs are spread to see
his swollen testicles dangling.
It’s a boy, my little baby boy!
But you already knew that.
My shoulders heaving tears,
your face a sheet of white shock.
What just happened?

The radio sings:
I’m Here
for You

A smile washes over my body.
He looks like me.
He looks like you.
A smile washes over my body,
blocks my fears
of tyrannical fatherhood.

We kiss,
each other and him,
our lips his cheeks.

Just sculpted lines between mother and child
have blurred and blended again,
leaving a singular hope.

Stuck in a Mall

2008-12-05T14:56:00.006-05:00

"Environmentalists have gotten their politics backward. For too long they have demanded that Americans Wake Up! rather than encouraging them to dream." --Nordhaus & Shellenberger

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Stuck in a mall.
Instrumental Christmas carols
looping ear to ear.
Dazzling white light displays
flashing eye to eye.
Fat broiler boiling over
wafting nostril to nostril.
Snow proof warehouse boots dragging,
eyelids blinking slow
at the product kaleidoscope.

There is a list in my pocket
next to the plastic,
and a clock ticking to 5.
If it gets there
before the list is ticked
my in-laws won’t love me.

No time for my nagging questions,
wondering what it’s all for,
where it was all made,
where it goes when novelty fades
like a catalogue model’s allure.
She and the swag lost
their battle with time.
I can’t suffer that fate.
My wife would kill me
if I succumbed to wax philosophies
and missed my plastic deadline.

For Cheb Khaled

2008-11-27T11:25:00.004-05:00

"White folks seemed always to expect you to know those things which they'd done everything they could think of to prevent you from knowing." --Ralph Ellison

For Cheb Khaleb
I've lost my teenager,
his bouncing strut disappeared.

I weigh 375 now.
My 39-year-old maid died
while sound-proofing my bedroom.

The priest next door inflicts on me
the cries of his wives as he beats them
until I drop to my knees begging
for new ideas.
Then I weep until sleep claims me.

I'm trapped in this inherited mansion.
I've lost my carefree teenaged dancer.
Too much Cuban ex drove him
from me to nowhere.
I replaced him with titanium gates.

I built a super-computer to track
the slow death of my self-made father,
self-made with help from my mother.

My teenager won't answer my calls;
skin cancer ate my father's face
while doctors swore things were fine.

My titanium gates have since rusted,
but I still can't see through them
and my teenager took my maps.

Patching Worm-holes with Pancakes

2008-10-08T11:56:00.006-04:00

It’s the long empty-earth time between harvests
and, though I am full of bounty,
my fingers have idled above ground
for more than ten thousand years.

I’ve been to a dream-time college;
got a diploma in patching worm-holes with pancakes.
It’s a high growth sector because
no one wants outsiders from other dimensions
coming here to steal our jobs.

The pancakes are made from corn
because everyone knows the darkness of oil,
and you need something solid yet fluffy
to absorb the shifting suction of science.

It takes skill to seal off a force of nature
with leftovers from five-dollar diners.
Facing that reverse hurricane,
flapjack bag slung over shoulder,
that’s where formula meets phenom.
No bar-graph can protect us from novelty.

My classmate was vacuumed away
in her first attempt at crepe application.
Perhaps she has become the alien
to some xenophobic settlement
on the far side of the universe,
where the spring planting has begun.

best novel

2008-10-02T20:52:00.006-04:00

The lighting and sound aren't the best, and I st-st-stumbled on a couple words, but here's a video of me receiving the Atlantic Writing Competition best novel prize from novelist Alf Silver. Below the video is the text of the reading in case you want to follow along.

The fantastic voyage began on a sandy blue paradise for fishermen and their children renting snorkelling equipment to drive-by tourists in 1973. This is where and when Bumi was born, his face all small and crinkly, brown and wide-eyed wonder at the implausibility of being plucked from his mother’s womb while she lay bleeding on a dirt floor silently and stubbornly refusing to cry out at the pain of birth. He was the Bugis boy with a Javanese name, chosen by his Javanese mother. She had, for the most part, let her own traditions slip away as the years and the island colluded to make her their own. Rilaka became her new motherland, its Buginese language her lingua franca. Her firstborn’s name was a tribute to that natal part of her, and because it meant ‘earth’ in her faraway mother-tongue, it honoured the place of his birth in a multicultural chorus.

From the beginning Bumi’s eyes pierced harder than any other, glowering while his father forced him to try football, glowing brightly at the chance to help the man count market money from mainland fish sales. By age three he’d humbled his father by becoming a faster and more accurate bookkeeper, who also spoke better Indonesian, a skill his father exploited for price negotiations with mainlanders. By age five he bored of accounting and took to engineering, devising a cheap and effective net floatation device out of two-litre pop bottles washed up along the shore.

Bumi’s father, a wiry man with surprising strength and audaciously self-granted authority, went looking for the boy late one evening after Bumi failed to come home for supper. On their tiny island of a hundred people, any lost child not found in five minutes was assumed drowned. Bumi’s father, Yusupu, was not worried. Bumi was no likely drowning victim, the first four-year-old potentially smarter than the sea.

Yusupu found Bumi on the far sloping side of the island where no one had ever bothered to build or settle. It was simply too far away from the others. In recent years it had become a place where the women gathered to make clothing when they wanted to get away from the tourists.

Bumi was there cursing a foul black streak the likes of which Yusupu hadn’t heard in all his years on boats, not from his father or grandfather, nor any other man he’d known.

“Bumi! What’s wrong?” he shouted, half in anger and half in concern, a magical mix of fatherly emotion that keeps us from being a threat to ourselves from a young age.

“I can’t get it tied!” Bumi retorted, pointing in frustration at a small tangle of netting he’d somehow dragged across the village, and 30 empty plastic pop bottles. “My fingers’re too small!”

“Why do you want to tie them?” Yusupu asked. The sharpness in his voice was all but gone.

“You tie them at one end to make it float, then you can leave it and go play,” Bumi explained. “Then you come back and you have fish. So then you have more time to play with me, Daddy.”

Yusupu was not an exceptionally hard-working man, but he did spend six hours a day at sea – six hours Bumi felt would be better spent playing with him. While floatation nets have existed in many other fishing cultures for centuries, Rilaka’s more labour intensive methods were ingenious for keeping the men out of the women’s hair for six hours a day, and vice versa, and for making physically strong, hardy men for an island left naked in the exposure of rain and merciless sun.

Most human beings survive on tradition their whole lives, and Yusupu had much in common with most human beings, especially the men of Rilaka. His son Bumi was among the rare few whose novel ideas change the way a species like ours lives, and indirectly change the way all life lives or dies.

Like most human innovations Bumi’s idea had unforeseen impacts. The lighter workload and greater cash flow that came their way (once Yusupu caught on and got to tying what Bumi’s little fingers couldn’t coordinate) resulted not in more play-time with his father, but less. And the time he did spend with the man became much less pleasant.

Yusupu and the other Rilakan fishers had never before felt any need for alcohol, which was technically forbidden. Not being pious men, finding themselves with unprecedented time on their hands, and not being in any particular hurry to return to their families, they decided to stop into a little bar with a live musician near the seaport. The toxins in the liquor put the inexperienced drinkers in a collectively ill mood, and most of them disliked the numbing effect of too many drinks. Only Yusupu’s stubbornness pushed him forward until he had drunk more than his fill several nights in a row. His cohorts would keep him company and switch to coffee after just one glass of strong rum. For Yusupu, the new practice became his habit after the others had tired of alcohol.

It was a week into the experiment that Bumi learned what betrayal really felt like. He had heard many stories of betrayal from his Uncle Karsi, the world's greatest storyteller, and in them the dastardly deeds were swiftly repaid, vigilante style. From Karsi's words Bumi imagined that betrayal was merely a seed of desire for revenge. The first time Yusupu hit him forever changed his understanding of pain. There was no desire in it at all, just deep disappointment.

He had stayed up late, determined to see his father before dream-time. He had refused to come home, afraid that sleep would take him if he got too comfortable. Instead he stayed by the shore playing long after the tourists had returned to the mainland and the other children had gone to sleep. He drew pictures in the sand with a stick to pass the hours long past sunset, and even past midnight, bleary-eyed and obsessed with the single thought of his father. When the boats finally returned Bumi ran to them and watched open-mouthed as the other men helped his father over the gunwale. Yusupu retched and spit into the sea he'd always told Bumi was sacred.

"Daddy!" Bumi cried, thinking Yusupu was hurt. He ran to him and pushed through the other men to offer a hand.

Yusupu looked down at Bumi and sneered. "What are you doing up?" he demanded.
Bumi swallowed and looked up at Yusupu, who pulled back at his matted salt-and-pepper hair. Even hunched over Yusupu towered over the boy like a giant sea creature lurching onto the land. "Waiting for you," Bumi said.

The men laughed and one tussled Bumi’s hair. "He misses you," one of them told Yusupu, who smiled a shy bemused smile, took the boy up into his arms, and carried him home.

Yusupu kept smiling until he had crouched in through the door of their little house. Then he put Bumi down and took him by the arm, looked the boy in the eyes, and said, "Don't you ever embarrass me like that again."

He gave a half smile and slapped Bumi across the face. Bumi's lips quivered and a tear came to his eye. "Are you going to cry now, Son?" he asked. "Are you going to embarrass me further?"

Bumi swallowed hard, sucking a head full of tension down his throat. His body was shaking, but he didn't cry. He shook his head solemnly 'no'. He would not embarrass his father any further.

"Good," Yusupu said. "Now get to sleep."

Homing

2008-09-21T11:08:00.004-04:00

White caps on black sand
on the northern California coast
where I learned how to drive with my thumbs

Green trees on sharp turns
on the way down to Big Sur
where Seeley gave his Thanks to Gravity

Foggy memories on monarch shore
on a timeout from the cause
where I learned destiny was following me

Condor dots on blind sun
on a moment to myself
where I learned how big the world could be

X spot on blue line
in between San Fran and Crescent City
where I earned a single moment of free

Closed eyes on rhythm waves
on the northern California coast
where I wondered what home would be

Gone in the Morning

2008-09-16T11:16:00.001-04:00

Your mouth tasted like a train
but you were the only place to go
when I needed a little sin
so please don’t ask me where I’ve been

I stood up in the underground
put pretty red paint over crumbling mould
cranked the treble through a whammy bar
sipped an overpriced cheap whiskey
called it a den of creative energy
for new talents to get our heads bobbing
but every morning I had to emerge
blinking against the dawn
every morning I had to come home
and report everything I’d done wrong

Your skin felt like a carnival
complete with games of chance
there was a good chance I’d lose
so just don’t ask me where I’ve been

You hit me in the knees
with that falsetto melody
hammered me with a violin
until I couldn’t think straight
it was all images of nudity
feminine forms dancing just for me
on each note your eyes shot at me
It was like controlling your dreams
I could get away with anything
and it would all be erased in the morning

Your chest pounded like a marching band
but the big game was cancelled
any remaining routines
left no trace of where I’d been

Apology

2008-09-04T10:11:00.007-04:00

"I ain't a communist necessarily, but I have been in the red all my life."
--Woody Guthrie

I’m sorry.
On behalf of the world
I apologize.

I don’t blame the sweat-soaked man
who pulled the black market trigger.
His scar was constant danger,
bloated by a leaden bulge
and an itch
to be the man society demands,
a drive-by saviour.

I don't blame you.
You wanted a mother to shield you
from the ones who have it all
and the others like you
who have nothing,
your competition
for the trickle-down leftovers.

I don’t blame your mother,
who escaped on her own,
left you alone.
It's hard to blame a Third-World woman.
Blame is a masculine fist,
another uninvited seed.
What choice did your mother have?
No more than you.

Where can I, a faraway foreigner
place my scuffed steel-toes?
Whose ass do I kick here?
Where shall I stand for you
with all this money?
It’s available now;
you are already fallen.

I’m sorry
on behalf of my world.
We feared your lyrical science,
stole your books and bricks,
gave you machetes and guns and glue,
and a place in the ground.
The only shield left for you
is the mother of us all.

ps. I made the news! This time not as a journalist but as a subject, in the Books section, for my contest win. Click here to read it.

Humungo News!

2008-08-25T11:33:00.002-04:00

An exciting development for me: I won the H.R. (Bill) Percy Novel Prize for my novel (Living in the Dirt/Drive-by Saviours) in the Atlantic Writing Competition!

This is hopefully a big step toward finding a publisher.

Check out http://www.writers.ns.ca/pr25Aug08.html for details.

I will receive my prize and give a reading at a Gala Celebration of Writers and Writing next month.

At The Old Salvation

2008-08-12T13:46:00.005-04:00

It's amateur hour at the Old Salvation
We're upchucking our distillations
There's a lady crying in consternation
We're all dying of anticipation
waiting on a better day

We're all agreed on this world of bleeders
it's not what we wanted and we feel cheated
but we're over-run by false-hearted leaders
control-freaks and bottom-feeders
while we search for better ways

Dancing is our only relief from living
We soothe our guilt with token-giving
drown our tears with libation tipping
shred our souls with fake-sex stripping
waiting for the final play

Happy hour comes at half past middle
Good and evil duel it out on the fiddle
Jello shooters kill us a little
As we wipe away each other's spittle
we drink to the loss of pain

When morning arrives 48 hours later
we're devoid of love and lost our haters
Some surrender to instinct and be-come maters
a new generation emerges much later
and soon it too will pray

Pray for the loss of pain
Pray for the final play
Pray for better ways
Pray for a better day

Heat

2008-08-10T17:08:00.008-04:00

You feel like Dante's innermost circles have risen around me
shown themselves to be playgrounds and creatively wacky theme parks,
pogo sticks on trampolines

You give me vertigo and soothe that fear with targeted foot rubs
slow my heart rate to a post sauna tingle, when the skin is crystal clean,
and satin smooth

It's a bizarro anticipation for what has already been, because spinning
old is new again, same old conversations make us sweat again, solitude scary
as birth again

Same sense of separation, don't fear; though fear is natural as conflict
In death, chaos, and survival know that you are adored, treasured, wanted
because

You feel like Satan's fall was never intended, that it never mattered
just a joy-ride, a bare bones pleasure cruise, under low hanging candy
and whipped cream

where there is no entertainment but what we create together
This is how you feel when I remember you here, when my mind is ready
and my body can be put at ease.