Clock Tower Sandwich

I spend a lot of time procrastinating, trying to convince myself that what I'm doing will pay off in the end, that it's all part of the process. But it's always just procrastinating.

Or is it just Newton's 10 percent inspiration, 90 percent perspiration?

Ouellet, religion, vatican.

The Golden Compass.

It's an Order of Men.

Organization. Once the fulcrum of power, but still has a role to play.

The bar.

The future of the novel:

The novel will be interactive. There will be sidebars, extrapolations, definitions, comments, lists of references, pictures, web addresses.

And the like.

You can choose to read a tidbit of a character's past -- or not.

The page will look like a web page.

Pulling excerpts from my novel requires rum.

* * *

My thievery at least wasn't premeditated. I was trying to get somewhere, hopping through backyards, came across a bike.

I got on it, and got home faster. That's all.

I have that bike still. Or most of it: frame, handlebars, wheels, pedals.

The other parts come from other bikes.

Toronto from floor 27, looking north-west

"Couldn't hurt to see a doctor."

"Unless they operate on you."

Human(e) Efficiency

"You're right there. You're going to have to deal with it."

"You can get it, too."

"I didn't say I couldn't. All I'm saying is, you could get it easier."

"Easier than what?"

"Easier than I could get it."

On the Troubles with Money

Efficiency is a good thing--until you tie it to money. Then more money equals greater efficiency, the argument goes. Which isn't always true.

You just can't measure efficiency that way. Sorry.

Better to consider human impact.

That's right: people.

Put people into the equation and see what happens. See what comes out. If you make people the focal point, you end up with a negative result.

As it stands.

Put people into the equation.

Two and a Half Oil Paintings

Moonlight on Water

Moonlight on Water with Lighthouse on Rocky Outcrop

Colour Wheel

wine

The only time there is good wine at my place is when someone brings it.

flowers, bugs, bike and stairs

Blue

















And burgundy

Absurd?

Tiger Fly

What is the goal of late capitalism? Stated and unstated. Capitalism requires continuous growth. But there are limits built into the system; it's a closed system. The atmosphere can hold only so much carbon dioxide before it becomes supersaturated and toxic to humans.

Late capitalism grows by taking from the poor.

Capitalism makes more and more people more and more poor. The rich become richer; the richest are still the richest. Impoverishment. Manufactured dependency. Subservience. They take more and more from more and more.

Some say it would be best for humankind if money were gathered in a few hands -- that the survival of the human race depends on it. The people who are able to manipulate the system in favour of their needs and wants are the most able custodians of the human race. Hey, if they can get all that money, they must be doing something right. They have a compass. It may not be moral, but they at least can navigate us into the future.

We are on a Judgment Day course. Things are going to hell, no question. How we know this may be the cause or it may be the result, it doesn't really matter. What's important is that it's happening at all, and to realize the reason, the most plausible outcome.

Oligarchy

More and more money in fewer and fewer hands is evidence of an impending collapse. Resources are scarce. There are too many people. Take what you can and make for the proverbial hills -- even if those hills are other planets. If we only rescue 1/6th of the population, that's plenty. Late capitalism, or exclusive capitalism, excludes 5/6ths of the world's population -- or about 5 billion people. The 5 billion are throwaways, a sacrifice, the price paid...

(For more, and better, info on this and other pressing issues, see a discussion by none other than David Suzuki and Stephen Lewis on CBC Radio. For an intro clip, click here.)

Bee

G + J

Gerald and Joe

Joseph wants to get the job done. The junkyard belongs to "so-and-so's so-and-so's so-and-so."

To Gerald this is a good enough answer. He wants the job done too.

They go in and take hubcaps, doubt whether there's even a legal issue to worry about. Are trying to convince each other there's no legal issue.

WWIII

In a recent Time article you'll find the following words grouped pretty well as I show them:

"The massive 'surge' of U.S. and Iraqi troops in and around Baghdad has made the Iraqi capital safer . . . but terrorist groups have stepped up attacks elsewhere."

One of those "elsewheres" is "northern Iraq, which had enjoyed a long spell of peace before the start of the 'surge.'"

Is it possible this was not foreseen--that terrorism would increase outside Baghdad?

I doubt it.

So it has to be asked: How does the U.S. Administration benefit from the surge?

August? Mid? 2007?

Modern art at Tommy Thompson Park?

Safe cemetery, which at least is better than an unsafe cemetery.

Bottles

Flowers

July 26, 2007

She's a Transformer. There's more to her than meets the eye.

Dining Out

We were the diners the proprietor wasn't sure what to do with. We were respectful enough. Had command of speech insofar as we made half sense, enough to make the receiver, waiters in this case, suppose that maybe we might have something of a point to make.

Which of course we did. There was a point that needed making, and we were making it. No question.

The question was, could we pull it off and not get thrown out?

Or could we at least get thrown out after pulling it off?

Burlap Sack

Burlap Sack is a story about a burlap sack.

There's a guy lugging around a burlap sack with a body in it. This represents his worries.

The moral/lesson of the story is that you can't bury your worries because your worries are what make you who you are. Bury your worries and you are no longer you.

So when the protagonist buries the burlap sack with the body in it that represents his worries, he gets shot, by the police.

There's a scene where he catches a ride, and the driver is asking him about the burlap sack, about his worries. He of course denies the burlap sack, denies his worries.

"What, this? Oh, it's nothing, just something I picked up along the way. Yes, it is quite heavy, a heavy burden you might say, but see how I carry it, the way I balance it on my shoulders just right, not too much this way, and not too much that way? It's not that bad, really."

"All right, if you say so. There's plenty of room in the back. I'm sure Martha wouldn't mind."

He glances back at Martha who's happy to be alive and smiles ear to ear.

Or is that where she's cut?

Margaret Atwood, etc.

Welcome to Pride Week -- Careful of Barriers

Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid and Her Tale

There is something about Marg that rubs me the wrong way. Can't put my finger on it quite. Take The Handmaid's Tale. Go ahead, take it.

Not that it's a bad book.

It would be a good book if it were written by someone else.

Stephen King, say.

The Handmaid's Tale is a good story; it's just not executed well. In Atwood's hands, despite she being the titular handmaid, it just feels off somehow, as though something's not quite matching up.

Then there's Stephen King, a good solid writer who could use better material much of the time.

One of the exceptions being Carrie, but then his wife helped him with that.

POMES

They're actually a major problem,
poems are. They're a major pain.

Empathy, or, Theatre of the Absurd

But I don't want to discourage
anyone from attempting them.

Don't want to encourage anyone
either.

It can be rewarding. You just have
to decide if the sacrifice is worth it.

I don't know if anyone ever
consciously sits down to write a
poem. They just come. Of
course, some come more easily
than others, get jotted down in
a fever and are done or very
near done.

For example, how Bob Dylan wrote
songs in the sixties, especially in
the earlier years.

One can almost see how one would
jump to the conclusion that it is
evidence of some divine-super-
natural-being-energy-power.
It is a trap into which one can almost
hardly blame one for falling.

Not that it isn't evidence of
divine-supernatural-being-energy-
power, just not in the same sense.

Oftentimes they don't come down in
one go, for instance. You have to
wrestle with them awhile. Some
never make it.

At least generally with time you can
begin to tell which ones are worth
fighting for and which ones are best
let go.

Tuesday

The Problem with Capitalism - Take Two

Capitalism as practiced is totalitarianism, no less so than Soviet Communism was, or Fascist/Nazi Germany.

Those who, leading up and into WWII, described Germany as a later version of Britain were right.

Well, actually, they were left -- politically.

But those who aligned themselves with Communism made a misstep. They failed to perceive the fascistic essence of Soviet Communism.

So it was choosing one fascistic order over another.

And just as Nazi Germany was a manner of late capitalism, or later capitalism than Britain was, Western capitalism today descends in its late capitalistic form from Soviet Communism. Like Germany and Russia, Britain, the U.S. and Canada are totalitarian states, run by the moneyed Cabals introduced in "The Problem with Capitalism."

It is the Right masquerading as the Left; the Left as the Right.

Sunday

Plant at Sundown

Cadillac Hatchback
(Some people think it's a Mazda, and it is.)

Contents, trunk (boot), May 23, 2007

On Writing Poetry

"This may be an
unanswerable question.
When you've had it in
your mind to write a poem,
how do you go about it?
Do you start with an
idea, an image, a word?
Do you let it write itself?
Do you consciously work at form?"

It's not an unanswerable question, but it's a big question, can't be dispensed with by a flippant response.

The Problem with Capitalism

Does no one else see that there is something inherently wrong with Capitalism, that it is mostly the cause of woe?

Just a question.

"Whoa," the naysayers say,"ain't no way it's the cause of no woe. Ain't nothing wrong with it. What's wrong is you."

They jab a meaty finger at you.

Capitalism as it is practiced at least is what there is something wrong with. In theory it is not all bad.

In theory, it is individuals fighting against all odds from the bottom if that's where they happen to be to make it to the top.

It's a grandiose delusion.

The problem is that Capitalism as it is practiced is made up of Cabals. Capitalism in practice tends toward organization, grouping, categorizing, assemblage based on capital worth, so that the only appeal of Capitalism (that anyone can make it to the top, which anyway is mostly a delusion) is negated by the fact of these moneyed Cabals.

* * * * *

Thoughts on War

Sacking and overthrowing and believing oneself to be superior and demanding one be acknowledged as such by all others.

This is a problem.

Why do we want to raise ourselves above others?

Land control

Control generally.

Territorialism.

Supremacy, primacy.

Animals fight for supremacy, establish a pecking order—for assured access to resources?

But when there is no lack, when there is a surfeit of needs and wants and we know this cannot be challenged—as rational animals, could we accept that? Could we live beneficently, in harmony, without want? I.e. could we accept and agree on that as a reality?

Paranoia is a problem.

If we can have rules in war, couldn’t we just rule out war?

We negate the reason demonstrated in having rules in war by having war at all. We are as good as barbaric. Why not rule out war?

It is strange to think that a rational animal can sit down and discuss with his enemy the horrifying realities of war, and that the once or presumably future warring parties can draw up plans together about what they can and cannot do in war, and yet fail to take it one step further and rather write rules against the practice of war itself.

Probabilistically speaking


Lights flicker.

Save your work! Save your work!

There's a storm coming.

There's something wrong with the elevators, too. Well, maybe not wrong, but not quite right either. It's taking too long, they're on the fritz.

To get in or to not get in --
that is the question.

What, I thought, is there some question about taking the elevator, or more specifically, not taking it. Because I walked to the elevator, fully expecting to get on, and I'm not about to turn back, find a way out, like stairs. I don't even know where stairs are, and it's too late to go after the woman that just left to take some.

I'd heard the bell, the one that sounds when someone gets stuck in the elevator -- the red emergency button or whatever it is. Never had to use it, I don't think.

I did pull a fire alarm once.

Accidentally.

It was red too.

So the power's on the fritz, which results in the fritz on which the elevators are. (Uhhhh...?) And I kind of want to take the stairs, but I know I won't find them now, and the elevator's got to come soon.

We listen to elevators slide along shafts, chains jingling, pulleys pulling. Something's happening. That welcome bell sounds that says there's an elevator ready. We look at all four doors in turn. None of them open.

But then there's another one that lights up that we, or at least I, least expected. It looked dead last to me. Yet there it was.

Really says something...

Liquid Language

All symbolic gestures are an attempt to deny reality.

* * *

The worst thing about having a hernia operation was how it compromised my chiseled physique. Not that I have one, but I confess to wanting one, and even striving for one in my own way.

* * *

I asked her: You can't even remember your mother's phone number?

It was written on whiteboard, in red. (Lipstick?)

She said she did remember it, but leaves it up there in case something happens to her and someone needs to be contacted, which should evidently be her mother.

I said I'd erase it before anybody got to it.

Luminato (weekend) 2007

PRISONERS

Don't know where these folks is goin'
Nor what they doin'.

Red brick underpass.

I am not a terrorist...

...nor have any such ambitions:

War

of the
World

Blobes

Bowling ball.

Space Balls

Stay here:

The Four Horses of the Apocalypse
(the light wasn't quite right)

The Cristal

Machine man.