Pros and cons of a human cull

Re: 'Pros and cons of a human cull' (Editorial, Dec. 7)

I am one amongst many who are becoming increasingly concerned with the overpopulation of humans in the suburban and rural areas of the City of Hamilton.

The humans have been increasing in very large numbers over the past several years, and are now becoming bolder when it comes to approaching forests and, indeed, our creeks throughout the area.

In addition, the human population has in recent years become a bane to grazers who border the wooded areas and ravines throughout the city.

As a resident of Dundas living on a ravine, I have lost access to my shrubs and gardens to the ravenous land appetites of these intruders who only share if they are too stupid to put up a fence.

As many forest dwellers can attest, humans will turn almost anything into private property and the significant cost of the loss falls to the animals who live there.

As well, humans have devoured countless resources, leaving residents of the Earth with environments that are bare from the ground to the heights the humans can reach.

We animals of the forest try to keep our properties looking presentable year-round, but after the humans have satisfied their appetites at our expense, our homes take on a shabby appearance in spite of our continuing efforts to enhance their appearance.

I, and many others, call on the Hamilton Conservation Authority to do the right thing and help protect the land and sky and especially the forest animals from this ever-worsening situation.

The human population must be reduced -- now.

Sincerely,
A. Deer

PS: I apologize for the delay in responding to the article of December 7. As I am unable to change my word processing software to accommodate my cloven hoof, typing for me involves patience and frequent use of the delete key.

While the above letter is intended as satire, I cannot help but note the seriousness with which it was written. The author of the original words views life forms as disposable when they inconvenience him. It seems rational to him that the deer population should be controlled, as otherwise they threaten human activities such as driving and the appreciation of one particular style of landscaping. He spends countless hundreds of dollars per year on plants and he wants to appreciate their beauty. Fair enough, Mr. Moore.

However, the attitude on display by supporters of the cull is at the heart of the environmental problems which have begun to define the twenty-first century. Let me put aside for the moment the argument of the rights of the deer not to be killed. Let me also put aside the argument that in the grand scheme of things the deer have just as much right to eat Mr. Moore’s shrubs as he has in finding them beautiful. Human activity has historically been in a sense selfish. Every human activity involving the environment was made rational through property laws – if you owned something, then you could do what you like to it. However, the environmental consequences of such activity can no longer be ignored. Human habitation is increasing at the expense of non-human ecosystems.

Modern science suggests that the only way for humanity to survive and prosper is as a component of a larger, healthy biosphere. In order for such to occur, humans will need to live in symbiotic relationships with other life forms. The ideology that humans should be masters of the Earth for their benefit is currently resulting in a rate of species extinction not seen outside of unique catastrophes in the archaeological record. With this in mind, Mr. Moore, is it not logical for you to do a little research into which among the thousands of plant species not eaten by deer is attractive enough for you to plant in your garden. Surely, such diligence will avoid extending the financial and moral expense of “humanely” culling a deer population from those Hamilton taxpayers who thoroughly enjoy the co-habitation of the deer in the west end.

letter to the Hamilton Spectator

today and the other one

The professors were dancing and it was a party that I didn’t like: the usual story. An old flame walks into the bar and conversation stops, at least toward me. They know us both, I thought. Everyone else was making noise with each other and some were dancing. I complained to my friends not in the room through my phone, and we all typed for over an hour. Steve and Michael and Mel and me. I typed that my own confrontational psychology was at fault. I wondered why some of the people dancing in the room with me talk about art but are offended by the life processes which often create it. Steve typed, you are beginning to ask the big questions of life because you have a qwerty keyboard on your phone now and are a Mr. because of it. Me phone no smart. Take long type stuff. I typed that it was research into being one of those fucks with a mobile. That was definitely your duck with a noble face, Steve typed. Ha :) that is predictive text for “fuck with a mobile face”.

In the room full of dancing professors, I began to laugh. I typed to everyone who wasn't with me, is my friend my phone or is my phone my friend? I don’t know, Mel typed. I typed, it’s really only myself that I don’t like, so I put everyone else in a bag. I’m so bored. I look at people having fun around me. They barely know how to entertain themselves let alone others. Mel typed that academics are as I describe, but I knew I was lying and really just being mean to myself again. Other people happily moved in circles and were smiling. Jesus, Mel typed. Come home. I want to buy a bike.

I found a conversation after putting my drink on the bar. Alyson was a nice girl, but in a photograph I made later some people would confuse her with a television and become mad at me. I went to the washroom and when I got back the bartender had stolen my drink. You’ll have to buy another, he said and I waved my hand once in his face from down to up and left.

I’m back in Hamilton and it’s raining. Mel phoned while I showered and I missed it. She had typed as well. Her message was black on white. Cadillac cruising style bike. Good for me? Please advise as per VM I just left. I called her and she said that she had a bike ready for her. She was part of a business trading community. Businesses trading services and sometimes goods to each other using the internet and no money. A restaurant wanted photographs of their food, and Mel quoted high. She had not found anything to buy with her credits until this bike. I don’t know what it is though, she said. You’re the bike guy, so I want you to come see it.

Mel and Noel came in their big black truck, and with me in the back we drove down James North. We stopped on Canon and parked at Pho. Across the street was the bike shop. We entered and Mel fell in love with a Dutch bike. The bike store guy said that all of the machinery was contained, so she could wear anything and ride it around. Just go to work in your work clothes, he said. Or you could ride to meet friends and have a drink without special clothes. Mel liked that she could wear a dress and the shoes that she was wearing with a potential for heels. It’s so hot, she said slowly. I’m fingering it in the ass. It’s my bike and I want it. Noel said that we should go look at the other barter bike, because Mel still had credits and we should see if it would be worth selling. I said that we should see if Bike store guy would trade it in. I like Bike store guy, Mel said. He’ll take it. We left the store saying that we would be getting a new bike for the bike store guy.

When we got east, we stopped at a Tim Horton’s and bought the usual. They gave us three coffees instead of the two Mel and Noel wanted. Mel had already paid with her card, so I sold the extra double double to a guy in the line behind us. He gave Mel one dollar fifty, so she earned five cents for the deal. I said that I worked for Tim Horton’s for four years and lived on my tips. The trader was in a strip mall surrounded by offices. On the second floor, no one was inside and two of the barter bikes were against the wall. They were a matching pair of Cadillacs. I said we could just ride these bikes away out of here and why is there no security at the barter. A minute later a woman came from a room and said hi. Mel told her that she would take the barter bike for girls.

I lifted the barter bike into the bed of Noel’s truck after he placed blankets against the metal. We drove back to the bike store guy and came smiling with the barter bike. I told you we would come back, Mel said. Now how do I turn this bike into that bike? Bike store guy laughed and looked on the internet. My friend Matt came from downstairs with grease on his hands. We talked and I went down into the repair floor of the shop behind him. Get your hands dirty, he said and handed me a derailer.

Mel came down the stairs wearing a new tshirt. I’m shopping, she said, and I need bags. She went back upstairs and picked out a saddle bag for the new Dutch bike. Matt said he thought the internet trading idea was a good one. Bike store guy unlocked the bikes in front of his store so that Mel and Noel could try them out. I went next door to Mixed Media to see Dave. We talked and he gave me some money for a CD of mine which had sold. Sweet, I'm up to 26, I said and watched a kid on a new bike fly past the window. I thought that he had grabbed a bike from next door as Noel was out riding, so I chased him down the street. He stopped when I said that he dropped something. I asked about the bike and he said that the bike was his so I took a picture and went back to see the bike store guy. He said it's not mine and went back to the internet.

Noel came back in the store after riding a black Dutch bike. I like the men’s bike, he said. I was sceptical of the Dutch, but now I’m sold. Look at the seat. It’s like a cloud. Hey, I hear you did some crimefighting there. Mel came into the store with the Dutch and said that she didn’t fit the bike, but that they could get one in her size by Monday. The bike store guy said that he would try to sell the Cadillac. Three fifty for the old new and a thousand for the new new. Mel was really happy and we went back to her place.

Noel offered me his bong and smoke which had come from a field. He threw chicken on the barbecue and cut up a pineapple for me. Everything burned as it should and was soaked in tequila. Noel insisted that I smell the food. Mel’s sister Rebecca came over and got dressed. She rehearsed her lines for the stand-up that she was going to perform that night. They were printed on paper like a movie script. Mel told me that it was funny the other night when she ran through her Q’s, including one who knew everybody and Robert De Niro. She called that Q on her phone and thought it was me. She told Q and not me to come over for a smoke. It took her ten minutes before she realized that she had called the wrong Q, but she was too embarrassed about using one Q for another to not bring him over. The part of the story that I already knew was when she called me. I came late and had to leave early. Q didn’t smoke pot, but had come early and stayed late. Mel was annoyed and wanted my Q to be above his Q in her phone so that she would not make that mistake again.

Rebecca was eating some of the cooked pineapple and spilled it on the counter. We laughed and she took some of the chicken. I can’t cook, she said. Do I have chicken in my lipstick? You don’t want me for a housewife. I don’t want a house wife, I said. I don’t like houses. She repeated the joke to her sister and I was ta-da but didn’t smile. It was almost nine. They called for a car and I had to go home. We said goodbye see you on the weekend, and I walked in the rain as they were driven to comedy.

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

this is not creative writing

i came to a slight realization on the bus this afternoon.

some biographical detail is required for this self-indulgence.

when i was really young, i used to write for pleasure. usually the writing occurred when sitting alone in the hallway outside of a classroom, after i had been kicked out by the teacher for disrupting my friends after having finished my work. in every subject except handwriting, i finished class assignments exceptionally fast and then became an exceptional nuisance to the teacher. one morning in the fourth grade, my notebook was taken from me after the teacher found it full of stories about monsters and daemons, knights and astronauts, and other mythologies about the past and the future. at first i thought that she was mad about the violence and gore which i frequently included, and perhaps even highlighted -- this was, after all, the era of the Reagan Star Wars laser defence shield and high-body-count television and action films. my parents were called in to the school for a meeting, and i found out that the teacher didn't like all of the swear words which i had used. my father told her that to keep me from acting up in class and getting kicked out into the hall, she should let me write down the words which kept me occupied. i remember his words from that afternoon very well: "any damn word he pleases".

and so from that day i kept writing for pleasure. for the transmutation of an afternoon into a semi-tangible vision. for the loss of ego into imagination. for the fruits of productive isolation. for the way that some of my words seemed to have been worthy enough to have been printed and read by others, who then generated more words in response. for the spaces and patterns made by the writing if you looked at the whole page and unfocused your eyes. for the way that after i produced and dot-matrix-printed a series of newspapers for myself, i felt like i was part of the media which captivated me from birth. for the simple control of the ink as it left my pen and tainted the paper. for the pleasure of both failure and success. for looking to the earth and the sky and reaching through time. for something to read.

words were fun because of their appearance and sound as well as their meaning. in this sense, the joy received by writing is precisely the joy of writing experiencing itself. pleasure in this context is a derivative of subjectivity. by the age of ten or eleven, i had come to appreciate the difference between the writing which gave me pleasure and that which was deemed "good" by virtue of adherence to function or evaluative protocol. while it may sound obvious, i really liked the pleasure, the pleasure as a pleasure. the functions or evaluation of my words provided no real feedback to me. so what if i received a perfect grade for something which i had written, when i knew that the writing had given me little harbour and as such was an essentially misrepresentative process? -- as an aside, the school projects from my youth which i have come to cherish most highly do not come from my representations of truth, but rather from fictions which i was able to pass off as truths: an en-francais book report and improvised oral presentation of a translation of James and the Giant Peach involved an elaborate inter-species taxi, cake delivery, and dating service; a history paper written in high school involved an invented civilization from the Eurasian steppes which was feared throughout the western part of the roman empire for their mounted female fire archers and which had been conquered through the religious practises of an equally non-existent but territorially-aggressive group of midget barbarians; an eighth-grade science report for an invented species of reptile involved several photomicrographs of tissue samples taken from my father's "cancer collection" along with an audio recording of its mating call which i had created using a two-litre pop bottle half-filled with used motor oil; a grade thirteen kinesiology paper which examined a fake west asian sport whose history and rules were inspired by the menu of a vegetarian all-you-can-eat Indian buffet. often, i would invent extended and cross-indexed bibliographies, and on one occasion i even forged the Dewey decimal cards which kept stock of the inventory at my high school library to prove the existence of several of the non-existent books referenced in a ten-page term paper to a teacher. all of this work received top marks from ostensibly qualified instructors at ostensibly well-regarded schools.

and i kept writing. on the back of a transfer, waiting for a bus. on a napkin, waiting for a friend to return from a restaurant bathroom. in the margins of a newspaper, waiting for my mother to return from a store. on the sides of packing boxes, waiting between lines of customers at work. on the sides of buildings, waiting for my city of Hamilton to return to life. the joy seemed to be that i could fill the time otherwise spent waiting for things to happen by elaborating the happenings of my own invention.

then university happened, and i lost my attention to the joys which free writing provided to me. for some reason my writing began to tailor itself to function more than to the self-reflexive/self-excessive process of writing. i began to write only when given either an academic or a financial opportunity. remuneration, that's what writing had become. more to the point, it seems as though i now only write when i feel that i have a purpose to do so. to relay information. to invite. to make a cultural sell. the joy of purposeless writing from my youth has departed from me. until i realized that i play with words all of the time. i can, in fact, not help but play with words whenever i am given the slightest opportunity.

sitting on the bus today, waiting for my laptop to boot while the snow-covered fields of industry rolled past my window, i came to understand the illusory fiction of purpose. society provides to us a definition of purpose as a geography inhabited by adults who must guide children and the irresponsible away from the random vectors of their instincts. purpose requires a judge, an evaluative agent which can dispense truth and due consequence within the bounds of reason created by the system of evaluation itself. "purpose" is the forced conscription of innocence and creative association into the armed guilt against pleasure which many in society define as reasonable and responsible function. "purpose" is a means of looking beyond oneself to view subjectivity solely within the circumscription of ecstasis: what can you do for others with your words and how will they use them? "purpose" burns off the body, rejecting corporeality as an impurity which detempers the truth of representation. it is a means of working for others for the purpose of instrumentality: I am my words, my words are the truth; you can trust me and here is what you need to know. to be subsumed to function is to engage in a self-inflicted form of wage slavery.

writing is a geography of play. woe to thee, land whose king is no longer a child.

untitled (June 3, 2008)

laying, face fragile,
in thought i am marginal to her story,
while everyting else pours into her, being

so, with grace
and upturned intentions, she is smiling
sideways, gravity marks time for us

as i, hold, still
and soft as death or a sidewalk
when life enters and exits without fanfare

until a warmth comes
closer. submersed and paralytic,
in vain do i sit beside her so

june 3, 2008

i woke up this morning as the ex-mayor was stealing my mail

I woke up this morning, made some tea, ate my breakfast and opened my front door to see that the ex-mayor of Hamilton Larry Di Ianni was rifling through my mail. We exchanged pleasantries, and he forced a campaign handbill upon me. He asked me the manner in which i employ myself, and after mentioning that i had taught for Mohawk and McMaster, he tried to bond with me by discussing his past as a teacher of high-school english. We laughed and talked about student life. Despite the fact that in his hand ex-Mayor of Hamilton Larry Di Ianni was holding several of my financial statements along with a notification of an unsolicited offer for a pre-approved mortgage and credit card and a flyer suggesting that now is the season for me to get my roof fixed, the day had started off pleasantly enough. I noticed that the letter at the top of the pile which he was holding was a phone bill.

When I asked Larry Di Ianni about specific policies in which i am interested -- high-speed rail from Windsor to Quebec City, light rail for the cities; all using Hamilton steel and jobs from the province's shrinking automotive sector -- he brushed me off and referred to the bullet points on his campaign poster. I was indeed impressed, as it did clearly and emphatically state that "He can do more! He will do more!"

I then asked him to clarify his environmental policies, with specific regard to the transportation needs of working Ontarians. He reminded me that he built the Red Hill Creek Expressway. I reminded him that i had met a few very personable individuals who sat in trees seeking to block construction of another highway through part of Hamilton. I further reminded him that it was a rather undemocratic idea for him to have used city lawyers to make the protestors financially liable for the security measures required to "contain" them. I then reminded him that one Matt Jelly had invited him to a public debate over the issue, and that he had refused to participate.

At this point, Larry Di Ianni put my mail back into my mailbox.

He told me that while we might disagree on traffic concerns, that his record for obtaining provincial funding for municipal social services and job creation speaks for itself, and proves that he will be a force for change if he is elected federally. After all, he can and will do more.

I quickly realized that ex-Mayor of Hamilton Larry Di Ianni was campaigning without a platform, and would only listen to those points which might already agree with Liberal policy. I mentioned the concern that i had for the inherent problems of integrating an economy based on resource extraction and speculative trading (with particular emphasis on energy futures) with the real-world environmental depreciation of many of the biological processes which are fundamental to the continuation of modern civilization as we have come to enjoy it. Food prices are getting as out-of-control as our nation's oil inventory.

Larry Di Ianni then expressed the Liberal party's desire to invest in "green technology", such as biofuels. He elequently explained his enthusiasm for this emerging industry. I agreed, but wondered how we could rationalize the fact that biofuel trades land intended for food with land intended for energy development, and that the poor and working families will naturally suffer as a result of exponentially-rising food and fuel costs. I also said that my grandfather had been a wheat farmer in Alberta, and wondered whether growing a field of plants to make enough biofuel to allow the combine and other harvesting equipment to harvest the field of plants intended for biofuel was a winning strategy in the race to sustainability.

Larry Di Ianni mentioned that he himself was about to be a grandfather. He noted the importance of family life, then bid me a good morning after saying that i was remarkably well informed for a young man who introduced himself as a friend of Matt Jelly. "You should work for my campaign!" he stated enthusiastically. I told him that I would come to his thing if he would come to mine, and I began to relay information about the May 9th New Harbours performance with Michael Snow. He said that he was always interested in the arts, but could not attend. Using his Blackberry, Larry Di Ianni quite eloquently confirmed to me that he had two stag parties to attend that evening. Then, after reminding me of a pleasant Red Hill Creek Expressway drive which he and Matt Jelly experienced, ex-Mayor Larry Di Ianni left me to my porch and tea.

Which got me to thinking.

Larry Di Ianni, I will take you up on this offer. I will work hard to get the youth voters onside with the Liberal party. I will smile for grandmothers everywhere, and dance like a monkey in a suit for the continuing benefit of the federal Liberal party. The federal Liberals were an effective and socially-minded governing party forty years ago, and perhaps some prodding from the youthfully militant will aid to rid the Liberals of their more dogmatically conservative impulses. Red is not normally my choice for political colours, but I would love the chance to help bring some real issues to public debate.

Of course, this would mean that I would have to work for a self-described "Man for All Reasons".

If anyone wishes to contact ex-Mayor, federal Liberal candidate, and enfant-terrible Larry Di Ianni, he can be reached at the following email address. Feel free to speak as liberally as possible when congratulating the ex-Mayor for his contributions to life in the city of Hamilton.

ldiianni@cogeco.ca

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Mr. Hewlett,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. As you may know, Mr. Di Ianni was selected by your local Liberal riding association to represent the Liberal Party in the next election. As such, he enjoys the full support of the Leader and the Liberal Party of Canada.

Having said that, I have shared your comments with Mr. Di Ianni in the hopes that he can address your concerns personally.

Regards,

Daniel Lauzon

Directeur adjoint des communications / Deputy Director of Communications

Parti libéral du Canada / Liberal Party of Canada

-----

Quintin,

Imagine my shock at reading your letter, as well as the slanderous blog fabrication of the conversation we had on the front porch of your home.

Upon checking our records, my canvassing partner, who was standing just below the steps of your porch, recorded you as ‘possibly supportive’ after what I described to him as a friendly conversation. In fact, based on our exchange, I did ask you to volunteer during the election. I certainly would not have done that had I sensed your lack of support. So, I can only assume that your behaviour was duplicitous: pretending civility, while harbouring mischief. I have already asked my friend to alter our records, so we won’t bother you again.

I suppose when you told me that you were Matt Jelly’s friend, you were trying to give me a message. Because I have had very civil conversations with Mr. Jelly in our last encounters, I didn’t until now understand your true intent. I have no problems with people not supporting me. I do have problems with outright lies and fabrications. Your blog contains many of these untruths that reflect neither my statements to you or the tenor of our conversation.

You are correct on one count. My pamphlet is not a platform; it is a candidate card intended to introduce myself as a Liberal candidate for Hamilton East Stoney Creek to constituents. You will note that the card contains the following: My Experience; my community Involvement; my personal biography; some of my accomplishments in politics; and a testimonial assessment, from the local newspaper, on my abilities in office.

Nowhere does it include the Liberal Platform and the reason is simple. There is no election yet and the platform has not yet been released. At the doors, I do talk about the general themes that have attracted me to be a member of the Liberal Party and its candidate in this riding. These themes are: Infrastructure support for cities, Poverty Reduction, Manufacturing assistance, and Environmental Sustainability. Mr. Dion has talked about each of these over the past months, and details will be released at the appropriate time. Each of these is important to Hamilton and will be well-received when details are released.

Contrary to your exaggeration in the blog essay, I do recall your mention of rail transportation being important to you. I mentioned my support for this as well, and I have actually written about the need to improve in this area. Why you would mis-represent our conversation is mind-boggling.

What disappointed me most in your entry, however, is your slanderous lie about me taking your mail. How dare you? I know you stated in your letter to M. Dion that you had the intention of being ‘avec humour’, I see nothing humorous about accusing someone of such an intrusive act. I ask you out of decency to retract that allegation.

Common sense will tell everyone that I am knocking on doors to solicit support, not to pry into people’s private mail. The accusation is bizarre. My canvasser friend was flabbergasted when I told him about this allegation of yours, as was I.

In fact, as irony will have it, I have crossed paths with the local postman on more than one occasion as I knocked on doors in the neighbourhood and he and I joked about being on the same route.

Similarly, I have met with a good deal of support in your whole area, with people agreeing to take lawn signs during the campaign supporting my candidacy. I won’t reveal the number of signs to protect my campaign’s strategic position, but even on your street, I met with considerable success. I am sure that each of these residents can be called upon to summarize the content of our positive exchange, if need be.

In summary, Quentin, I have no problems with your support of someone else at election time. I do have problems with duplicity, exaggeration and mischief-making.

Larry Di Ianni, HESC Candidate

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Mr. Di Ianni,

In relation to the article which I posted on my blog, despite the funny title the heart of the matter is of course the number of political issues which I raised with you.

The matter of you "stealing my mail" was intended as humour, and was not intended to slander your reputation any further than what you yourself have done while Mayor of the city of Hamilton. I am fully aware that you had my mail in your hand with my phone bill on top simply because you were placing a campaign handbill into my mailbox.

Poetic exaggeration is key to satire.

After the strong-arm tactics which were used by yourself and your administration to push the Red Hill Creek Expressway into existence, I feel that you made yourself into a caricature worthy of some derision. With this in mind, I wrote that you "stole my mail". If I could draw a picture then you would have a big nose and funny facial features, but sadly I cannot do so. I hope you understand that no individual who read this post actually thought that you were stealing my mail for any devious purpose, and in conversation with them I did make it clear that you were just scattering handbills around the neighbourhood. My readers, as such, were more concerned with the fact that you did not have any adequate responses to the issues that I raised with you.

You suggest that since I disagreed with your statements, and yet was wholly civil during our conversation, that I acted in some way in a duplicitous manner. Well my mother ultimately taught me well: I believe that all humans deserve to be treated in a civil manner. You are a personable and generally friendly person, Mr. Di Ianni, and I do not wish to slander you as a person. Perhaps one day soon we could play chess together: as people. But you have to understand that politicians are not simply individuals. In their public function, the individual humanity of a public figure is abstracted into a more hybridized entity which shares an ontological space with creative enterprises -- the fiction of celebrity, if you will. It is with this "hybrid" that I dialogued when I wrote the piece on my blog. Words are words, Mr. Di Ianni. You have yours, and I have mine; we occupy the space in between our respective language. In transubstantive terms, neither of us is fully represented or constituted as individuals by them.

In my youth I was certainly more militant, and would likely have removed you from my porch with a litany of curses. Now that I have aged and grown a few beards, I have come to understand that change in civil society must come through peaceful and productive discourse. Of course, for this discourse to be productive, both parties in conversation must actually hear and understand what each other is saying.

It is with this last point that I believe my satirical article to have found its mark. Namely, you weren't listening to what I was saying, except for when it already agreed with aspects of your campaign. In your response you mention that we agreed when I raised the topic of light and high-speed rail to your attention. A clarification to your "agreement" is necessary. I must counter that I raised this particular issue at three different times during our brief chat, as for years I have been of the opinion that rail is the solution to Hamilton's highway problem. The first time I mentioned it, you started talking about your production as Mayor of Hamilton.

After the second time, when I explained the benefits to the Ontario manufacturing sector that such a project would entail, you mentioned that the Liberal party is the sole party which supports "Manufacturing Assistance". In my blog I mentioned that the only times in our conversation during which you seemed to be listening to the points that I was making occurred when my thoughts strayed into territory covered by the Liberal political platform. While I understand that the official platform is as yet unreleased by the Liberal party, you must agree that a certain political trajectory is quite readily visible to anyone who pays attention to federal politics.

The city of Hamilton is populated with a very high number of working-class families who will not be able to afford the oil required to transport themselves as gas prices continue to rise as oil supplies continue to fall (perhaps as a federally-appointed Liberal, you will come to see that oil production worldwide stagnated a few years ago and is now in decline). Perhaps if I had used the current buzzword LRT to describe my position on rail then you would have remembered the issue that I tried to have you remember. Rail development surely would have helped back in 2003, when Red Hill was peaking as an issue and Stelco was bottoming out. Plus, by taking on such a project Hamilton would have proved itself two years ahead of Al Gore's cinematic popularization of environmental issues.

Perhaps your confusion around the civility of my behaviour and the hostility of my actual statements to the ideologies which you represent is due to the fact that many of my opinions are frequently heard coming from the revolutionary left. Those who are forced closer to the margins of society -- including the protesters on whom you unleashed city lawyers to "recoup" the security costs of their containment -- do indeed make their ideas known in what can to more conservative eyes be described as "crazy". While I do believe that at times more vehement acts of political dissent are necessary, those times are only validated by larger social crises. I myself wish to take a more academic approach. It is with a certain perverse hope that, in the not-too-distant future, a legal team will be able to demonstrate your own financial liability in the matter, as the environmental costs of this development will be itemized as financial losses to the residents of the city of Hamilton.

Your support in the liberal party is assured; I can understand why you have been chosen as a candidate for Hamilton East as your success is a virtual inevitability. Right now the Liberals need some winners, and such is the life of party politics: pick the winners before the ideologies. For at least a few years, you will likely collect cheques as an MPP.

By the way Mr Di Ianni, I checked my own records, which due to my "single" status does not rely on a partner of canvases but rather my own memory. There was no canvassing partner present at the base of my stairs. You may indeed have been walking in the neighbourhood with one, but this person was not present during our conversation. Then again, I sat on my porch drinking tea for the next fifteen minutes and didn't see anyone catch up with you down my street. I assume that for the sake of expediency (not something for which the Liberals are known, by the way) your canvassing partner was busy canvassing a different street.

Perhaps we could test each other's memory: roughly three-and-a-half minutes into our conversation, there was a loud cheering sound in the neighbourhood. Pointing to a truck three doors down from me, I made a joke: "I trust that was from the school, and not the construction guys after having moved something heavy." You laughed then proffered your own joke. We laughed together. Mr. Di Ianni, having canvassed those houses, you had just come from that direction and your joke corrected my statement. They were not construction guys at all. Do you remember your own statement, which correctly described the work and the workers? I certainly do, and perhaps your response will authenticate which person's ability to remember allows a more "truthful" version of events that spring morning.

It may come to pass that I am wrong about your potential as MPP. Perhaps by then you will have come to understand such concepts as "sustainable development", "peak oil", and "suburban sprawl". Until then, your legacy remains tied to the Red Hill Creek Expressway which, while of short-term economic benefit to some people, will be a grey stain on the landscape of Hamilton for decades to come.

If such is mischief-making, then I stand properly accused.

q x

-----

Thank you for your reply. I am familiar with satire, Quintin, and still don’t find your headline humourous or satirical. Obviously neither did some of your friends who had to call to ask if I was really stealing mail. You sort of prove my point. At some appropriate moment, perhaps we can talk in detail about each of your assertions about the road, my motives and my legacy in the city, as well as the protesters and the role of the city in resolving that issue. It would require some time to do that.

I do appreciate civility and always return the courtesy. You are obviously a bright, educated young man and would be deserving of some time.

However, you have reached conclusions based on your own biases, not the record. And that can be the subject of our discussion. The only concern I would have is that you might again publish an exaggeration, or fabrication or satirical version of the conversation without giving me the opportunity to rebut on your blog. Perhaps we can invite some listeners to hear the conversation, just to keep it on the record. I say this without any implied formality…I would want it to be very informal.

A second point, I am running Federally, not provincially (so MP, not MPP). I hope to win based on a record of service, but ultimately, our voters will decide; and I’m ready for their decision and will respect it.

As for my canvassing friend. He is only there to keep records, so he doesn’t do other streets. I am going to every door myself in this pre-writ period and he was there, rest assured.

I will alter my approach, however, and bring him to the doors with me from now on.

Again, I appreciate your response and ask again that you alter your offensive headline on your blog, or at least make it obvious that you are taking ‘poetic’ liberties.

Thank you.

Larry Di Ianni, HESC Candidate

feeling my way around itaewon

our first full day off after the esl camp in korea, and we had celebrated the previous night by, of course, drinking excessively. i was wearing contacts, and the exceptionally dry atmosphere left them decently attached to my eyeballs, despite my regular use of drops -- regular up to the point where i stopped caring / noticing the problem. regardless, fun was had and by the end of the night my eyes ended up in their proper sockets, so to speak.

i woke up the next day completely blind and in an exceptional amount of pain. i couldn't keep my eyes either closed or shut. after three hours of trying to sleep it off into the afternoon, i decided to venture out to the clinic and see (now that there is a certain distance of then and now, it's easy to use such a terrible pun) what was what. since i was completely blind, i had to make the trek by feel. somehow i managed to cross the street, touching brick, stone, and other inhabitants of this dismal American borough of Seoul. when i got the other side, some US military police stopped me and asked why i was so drunk at such an early part of the day ("you must be a fucking Canadian" one said!). i explained my situation and they pointed out that the clinic on my side of the street was closed for renovations, so i had to make my way up the street a half kilometre to another one. fun times.

feeling one's way up the main street in Itaewon is in fact the only way to travel this strip, even if you are graced with vision. every small street vendor that you pass grabs you and brings you closer to their somewhat stunted paychecks. i now know what calvin klein socks feel like. how each item in a line of gucci purses supplely enters your palm only to slip into the next design, arresting you for a second of desire amassed and rejected. the fact that almost everything you see is a bootleg, a facsimile made by hands other than armani's. all of the luggage and tourist items are displayed in order to trip up any passer-by who doesn't give even a second to evaluate their worth, which under my fingers seemed for the most part quite adequate. there is a certain presence of tactile response, a knowledge of where you came from and where you are going, atom by atom from birth unto death. above anything else i learned that the body only knows time within relative immanence. everything is given time by bodily experience, and from this sense of "everything" taken altogether comes the gesture toward transcendence. meaning is precisely this interception of sense into consciousness while trying to avoid the scars of time: an impossible procedure. the blind-for-a-day are given meaning in a pure sense, without referent. no, it says, immortality does not come that cheap; welcome back to present day reality. at this instant the body returns upon itself, and either you allow the non-corporeal to maintain its distance like a prayer, or you let it fold in upon both itself and you.

with this manifest realization, i was able to pick up what was, when i was finally able to see it two days later, a pretty sweet shirt by feeling the design on the front. aesthetics are an interesting consideration when you lose a sense. by what criteria should we really judge things? referentiality is our only recourse. so what then of aesthetics and universality? what then is beautiful beyond that which simply brings relief to the suffering of a particular individual? it was precisely at this moment of purchase that i decided true happiness would only come about if i created something back at my hotel. with such limited options as i had available to myself, i knew that such a creation would be me and a camera, solitary in solidarity. hopefully the resultant video doesn't linger too long as anything of importance, as in my mind it was merely a distraction and one which served it's fitful purpose. if i learned anything from this birthing, it is that isolation -- true isolation -- breeds incontinence. truth be told, i like this space of incontinence. it is one of freedom despite harsh criticism from both within and without; minima moralia.



i made it to the clinic only to find out that many of Itaewon's public services -- in the sense that i have come to understand the meaning of public -- close for random three-hour sessions, sporadically throughout the day. presently i was out of luck, so i decided to try and get back home and knock myself out with soju after fucking around with my attempts at an important visual. on the way, i'm not sure how, i managed to get to the atm in the subway (thank you random australian man who read to me my atm info. up to that point, i was thinking that i might get fucked over by someone stealing cash or my pin). a quick mission of happiness, and some food for my sojourn at the love motel.

being vegetarian and blind in korea is a double misunderstanding. multiply by ten when you add a certain lack of ability with the korean language. obviously i was not allowed to touch the food which interested me. as a consequence, i had to trust my limited korean vocabulary for this pursuit of culinary justice. at one kitchen, i tasted crab and got sick immediately. this led to the exchange of some verbal abuse on the part of those serving me my food. weird. it seemed pretty straight-forward to me. annio golgi, annio mul golgi: no meat, no seafood. then i try to explain no dairy and no eggs. all good, despite my hang'-'glish barbarisms. good, except for the fact that many korean kitchens do not assume things like crab, pork, chicken, etc, to be meat in the traditional sense, and sometimes after explaining that you will not eat a single animal product you still get random animal legs sticking out of your meal in a "decorative" fashion.

nightmare.

the only thing i knew with confidence that i could consume was bi bim bap, a multi-disciplinary salad with rice that sometimes comes with an egg or meat on top but is traditionally vegan. cooking your own food in korea is my recommendation though, unless you really really like bi bim bap, as in three times a day like-alicious.

on this day i had to resort to pictographs in order to get my meal requirements across. this process led me into seven different kitchens, after six different arguments. when fighting blind, the fury of presence is removed from you, as is the hatred which comes from knowing your opposition. it is at once the most heartless and unsatisfying thing you can do. provocation requires a willingness to stare into the eyes of an opponent and convince them of the absolute assurity of your position by strength of metabolism alone. when you go blind, your body language changes, becomes unpredictable. in the end i starved a fair amount, as there was no way for me to express my desires to korean chefs without staring them in the face. blind, fidgety, and half-drunk, i was looked upon as a miser and a cheat, and was given little respect from any food vendor that i found.



at this point, i was so blinded by pain and fuzzy-wrecked-eyedness that i was getting myself around my touch and touch alone -- with occasional barely-peeled eyes telling me of unfocussed shapes and hazy occurences. i now know what most buildings in Itaewon feel like, and some of the people as well. this could have quite easily led me down dark paths, and every bar in my vicinity catered to such a lack of willpower against vice.

i dragged myself home, and was accosted by several prostitutes who i think were balkan. they sounded cute and obviously knew how to endear themselves, but their practised voices were very raspy and tired. i could hear the wheeze of the mattress with every sentence they uttered; articulations seemed determinately cut short by their boredom and the cold wind which passed over their lips. they offered to me everything they didn't really have: presence and a certain emotional tangeability, bought cheaply each half-hour. luckily for them i don't believe in ghosts which i can't see, and so there was no animosity as i left them alone on the street with nothing exchanged between us.

one thing i really liked about my hotel room was the sheer containment it provided. there was no way to excuse the fact that a body needed space. life and breath were taken for granted here in the love motel. this was a region of unforgiven corpses and daily transcience, and my foreign-ness was no exception. time becomes irresolute in such places. the day passed a lot more quickly than i imagined it would upon first waking, in pain and somewhat desperate.

another four hours of listening to music and trying to sleep off my pain. i tried to avoid having my eyes burn when they were either closed OR open. it was a continual and transcendent buzz which elevated my body beyond itself to a relative absolution with the walls, the floor, other people outside my little vacuum. the annihilation of it all was a sweet relief from the immediacy of sensation -- the dry heat from the floor heaters -- pipes under the whole floor which keep the room nice and toasty and also dry the air the fuck out -- made me try another walk into the street. since it was now after supper, the prostitutes were out in full force. no nudity in the public here, unlike North America. the little strip right in front of our love motel is an expanded barracks for GIs picking up hookers and taking them to places like the motel where we have been staying. naked girls left in small dirty rooms after they are used. i thought at first that these little daily mantras of money-then-sex / sex-and-then-money were obscene, a realization of the "love you long time" scene in Full Metal Jacket. i tried everything in my power to save myself from it all. it was crass and i was moralizing, but i took pride in being a judge over these people and their situation. it was liberating, and i wanted the imposition of freedom's distant horizons.

i was starting to see to the horizon, but in fuzzy, half-formed shapes. a young korean girl in a hospital mask came up to me and asked me for a date. she walked in a daze up the street. quick quick quick, then slowly falling to a pause. for a few seconds, my eyes cleared enough that i could make out her face, which was quite beautiful and sad. her english was pretty good, at least the words which weren't drowned out by the blood i saw on the inside of her mask. i asked her why she needed a date from some random guy on the street when she could be winning guys all over the place back at high school or whatever. the only thing which i could see in entire clarity that day -- perhaps the thing which stands out most clearly from the whole trip -- was how her eyes lit up as she pulled her entire mask off her face and told me that she wasn't allowed in school anymore. i could see that she had been beaten up, and was indeed still bleeding from her lip and nose.i wanted to find three hundred thousand won and give it to her just to stay inside for one night. immediately i fell despondent, as this was a malignant thought, one breeding disease. she laughed a little and said, you aren't a GI, you are with a happier face. i realized that my desire to help this girl was precisely her problem. everyone helped her with money, as time was very expensive for her. she was never going to be this young again. she wanted some time back to herself, and that would not come from a foreignor's won. i almost dropped to her feet when she smiled again through the blood around her mouth, then replaced her hospital mask before leaving up the street.

later in my hotel: a camera, a blind photographer, and no subject. i think it was the careless and yet absolute manner in which she placed the mask around her wounds, as though it were not a cover but an interface. i was frozen. precisely because i didn't know her. i could never know her yet could think of nothing else but her immediacy -- she could have founded a temple with that grace. and here i was unable to create even a simple monument of a gesture.



i decided to try some sightless drinking in public to see if i could at least find some conversation. one of the bars next to our love motel was supposedly "Canadian", so i went inside. they did have some presque-canadian whiskey and beer on tap, but i didn't recognize any of it. export only, it seems. regardless of the friendly labels on the beer, my tarsand spirits as well as two British girls who came into the bar soon after i did convinced me to go in the whiskey direction. worst. shit. ever. i only had two drinks, and since the girls weren't exactly masters of conversation except "so are all Canadian boys as funny as you?" and "We are sharing a hostel, want to bring down our rent a bit?" there was nothing but refusal on my mind. i was holding the hand of one of the girls who insisted that it be held, and so i thought: that's right girls. i'm in so much pain that i want to gouge out my retinas with a spoon and fling them down the street, and yet i'd love to go back to your boozy hostel for so much sex and crying. nice try, but that won't get my mind off things. and so it was a terse goodbye as i decided to get the hell out of there.

there's this thing about south korea where public drunkenness is not only completely accepted, but it's thoroughly encouraged if you are a guy. touching every wall and door to find my way back to my room allowed me to bump into five old men who were so thoroughly intoxicated that I had to them get back to their feet and moving in the proper direction. blind leading the blind. one guy even gave me what i later saw was 5,000 won to help him up the stairs to his place. thankfully he asked nothing else. another 45 minutes of walking on my fingers and i was home. it was 9 pm. i drank the last bottle of soju i had in my room in under three minutes and missed a good deal of the remainder of the pain behind my eyeballs.



i tend to like contacts to function as portals to the living world, not as coins allowing passage through the underworld.

Random Telephone Conversation # 354b-98

QZH: "Afternoon, Hamilton Artists Inc. Quintin speaking."

Female caller: "Are you a towing company?"

QZH "No, we're an artist-run centre."

Female caller: "Can i get a tow?"

QZH: "No, but I might be able to show you what that looks like."

Female caller: "What?"

QZH: "Towing. One car, preferably a truck, pulling another one to someplace it wasn't located initially."

Female caller: "Do I have to pay to have that done?"

QZH: "You have to pay to have anything done, unless it's an emergency."

Female caller: "Aren't you guys CAA?"

QZH: "No. We are an artist-run centre, which isn't currently specializing in towing."

Female caller: "So you can't tow. Can you change tires?"

QZH: "Umm, we do a different kind of work."

Female caller: "Well, this number was given to me by the phone directory."

QZH: "Well, then it looks like you need a tow. Hold on a second, let me write some of this down."

Female caller: "Thank you."

QZH: "Where are you located?"

Female caller: "Flamborough."

QZH: "That is within our jurisdiction."

Female caller: "Can you get here soon?"

QZH: "No."

Female caller: "You can't hurry up? It's raining and we're pretty cold."

QZH: "Well, I'd have to bike to Flamborough, and that might take a half-hour or so. Maybe more, because it's raining and I'll probably also get a little cold. Maybe not though, as biking warms you up quite a bit."

Female caller: "Why can't you get here sooner?"

QZH: "Because I'm on a bike. Maybe a bus goes out there, I don't know."

Female caller: "I pay good money to you people every year! Why the fuck can't you help?"

QZH: "Hamilton Artists Inc has a limited mandate, even though we do service Flamborough and much of the area surrounding Hamilton."

Female caller: "What do you mean?"

QZH: "Well, I'd like to help. But I don't think our membership accords."

Female caller: "But we just paid you guys like a month ago."

QZH: "I don't think so. Did you pay the CAA? Maybe you should call them."

Female caller: "Well somebody cashed our cheque!"

QZH: "I wish it had been us, then I could get on my bike and help you out with towing your vehicle. From Flamborough. On my bike."

Female caller: "You should be able to help."

QZH: "With a bike?"

Female caller: "Are all your trucks on other calls?"

QZH: "No, Mme. We have no trucks of any sort. Well, none that I know of anyway."

Female caller: "What kind of a fucking towing company are you???"

QZH: "None."

Female caller: "So why can't you help?"

QZH: "Maybe I'll start again. Good afternoon. Hamilton Artists Inc, Quintin speaking."

Female caller: "Yeah, you said that already."

QZH: "Really? I forgot. It was so long ago now."

Female caller: "So you plan on just leaving us out here?"

QZH: "There's only so much one person at an artist-run centre can do."

Female caller: "Nothing, right? Nothing at all."

QZH: "Apparently not, no. Have you tried calling anybody else? CAA perhaps."

Female caller: "No. You're supposed to be able to help. That's why your number came up."

QZH: "It looks like we haven't been updated in the directory."

...

QZH: "Mme, have you tried calling somebody who actually tows trucks? The CAA perhaps."

Female caller: "You already said you don't have our membership."

QZH: "We don't, no. I can send you an application package if you give me your address though. We have an opening coming up in a few weeks."

Female caller: "No thanks. I'm not paying twice."

QZH: "..."

Female caller: "You should be ashamed for not helping. I'm going to get a lawyer."

QZH: "I'm not sure if he or she can tow your vehicle either. Try the CAA."

Female caller: "Thanks for nothing."

QZH: "You aren't the first to say that about our organization, you know."

Female caller: [hangs up]

all you have to do to make a map is walk around and draw what you see

Folding myself into what I wanted to be had gone wonderfully.

I had come to the bar seeking solace in a new woman, and as with everything else I did I had arrived too late. Far too late, even considering my usual standards. There was neither bartender nor bar available. I looked at my phone for the time. 3:12, long after last call. My spit came course and vitriolic. There was no way I was going to ever see her again, I thought. I walked back home. The sun came up before I went to bed.

* * * * * *

A slight and hazy buzz opened in my ears, and my eyes stayed shut. A hell of a tragic consequence, it screamed in multiphonic valency. I muttered a short prayer for the dismissal of this sound and pulled what was left of my jacket over my face. I tried to sleep for another two hours and failed miserably. The buzz kept growing insistent, so I decided to get out of my apartment as quickly as possible.

There was method to this. Putting water on my face was my absolution; staring into my pores in the mirror over the sink my penance. Coffee always left me wanting and jittery. Such is the body of Our Lord.

The walk to the studio was always my favourite part of the day. Certainly it was better than the work itself, which covered me inside and out with plaster dust and left my hands rough and a little withered.

There was never a way to pass the food stands in the Chinese district without talking to Xien. Most of the time he was waiting outside his store, watching his employees shuffle produce from basket to bin, watching it all happen. It was like he knew the streets were full of flesh but empty of skeletons – maybe he thought that conversations restored bodies whole.

“Mr. Handel, I want you to try my kiwis today. Sweetest of the year! This load will be here three days, until Wednesday. They bring back energy like sleeping. You want to try?” He handed me a slice from the fruit in his left hand while cursing the blade in his other. I was beginning to understand Mandarin, but would never be able to have anything but an uncivil conversation with anybody.

I ate the slice and thanked Xien.

“So how’s your ladyfriend? What was her name, Sarah?” Somehow without paying any attention to what he was doing, every kiwi and apple sitting in the bins in front of him became perfectly organized in under thirty seconds. I thought for a second that maybe I should hire him for the studio. A man with such a meticulous unconscious would be a good moulder or detailer. Too bad the studio wasn’t really making money from our current labours.

“She’s doing ok, Xien. We’re not together anymore.” I picked up two kiwis and an apple and motioned that I wanted to pay.

“So sorry to hear! Maybe it’s for the best. You look happier.” He didn’t smile at all when he said that. In truth I was happier.

“I don’t know about that. We had a good thing. Then I started working again.”

“Keep working hard, Mr. Handel. Good way to keep a mind together. My grandpa was in the war, eh? They worked him like dogs, and here I am!” Xien looked me straight in the eye while I handed him the coins for the fruit. I opened my backpack and put the kiwis next to some bananas that I had picked up two days before. They weren’t really edible anymore, but still brought a good weight to my bag. Health by osmosis, I guess.

“I’m going to get a new tattoo for my back.” I thought he was going to take off his shirt, but he patted his right shoulder blade instead. “A poem by Li Po, in characters. ‘We sit together, the mountain and I, until only the mountain remains.’ What do you think?”

“I think that joy and suffering are all that remains. But a mountain will do. That’s pretty, Xien. How big are you going to get it?” I begin to spin the small apple that I had purchased over my knuckles, failed after two attempts, and watched it bruise on the pavement.

“Oh, you want another one? It’s ok, I have lots to give!” Xien handed me another and I thanked him. “Keep dropping them and I’ll sell you more!” He laughed. I thanked him again and continued walking.

There was no way I would get much done at work today, I thought. It was a good thing I owned the place, although I was getting ready to fire myself for gross incompetence. Both Neil and Jodie were there to greet my arrival. They were working on the mantel for the wall of the fake castle that was our commission. It was almost finished – maybe another two or three days – and I knew that I had done little to help.

“Hey Jordan, where the fuck have you been all afternoon? It’s already after three!” Neil was painting rock details and had to remove the breather from his face to speak. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and saw that it was twelve minutes after three. Nothing clicked.

“Rough night, thanks for asking.” I grabbed my own mask and set to the other side of the wall, which was still rough, undetailed plaster. It looked like I had a good nine hours in front of me.

After three hours, I broke down to let the plaster dry. Neil joined me out back, and after a few minutes of useless small talk, he produced a spinner. We smoked in silence, then returned to work. An hour passed before anybody spoke.

“So how was your date with Becky last night? I don’t want the bullet points, but from the look of your tired face it was a good one.” Neil’s face was twisted smiley like any well-stoned bastard.

“I fucked it up. Don’t want to talk about it.”

“C’mon. I’m not going to let this go! It’s been what, three months since Sarah? Time for some movin’ and groovin’ buddy.”

“Look, she wasn’t there. I fucked up. Let’s forget about it.” I put my breather back on.

“What, you were handed the prettiest girl in Kensington and you didn’t even get there on time?”

I looked over at Jodie, who seemed oblivious to the fact that she was the only one working. I took the pretense of a breather from off my face. “Don’t worry about it. Sinking ships are better forgotten.”

“Whatever.”

We sat in silence for almost a minute before I got up to use the washroom.

* * * * * *

The walk home was brisk that night. August sometimes did that to you. There was a street parade of drunken students enjoying their last week of freedom. I didn’t mind the pyjamas they wore, but the noise of their joyful tantrums averted my gaze too much. I took a back alley to get away from it all.

One thing about alleys that I have always loved is their containment. Escape without an exit. Garbage kept you on path, but the buildings seemed to want to deny you passage, even when you could see the street ahead. Then there were the unexpectedly frequent and random encounters with people who, unlike when they are in the street, never seemed to want anything from you. I liked that purity. It was contagious, and like a disease there was no way to turn it off.

I wanted certain memories to come back to me, the ones that I had used periodically to restrain myself. I could afford them that night, being spent from the day. All of Sarah was present, every inch and every movement. I wanted to reach out to her, to force that immanence into my pores. I fell asleep with the gratification of the flesh rendered mortal.

* * * * * *

Waking from such dreams without a hangover was always tragic. It was comforting to be pained when you had spent the night in grace. A headache gave you something to accomplish, something to hope for, something to remember your time with. Once she had been gloriously Sarah, and now there was a glorious absence. What a glorious morning. All of my dirty mantras had remained intact. Waking up sober was the least healthy thing to do at that point, and I was resolved to never let it happen again.

The bed stand was covered in wasps. They had swarmed around the backpack which I had left there the night before. There must have been a few dozen, coagulating on the bag filled rotten. It was for moments like this that they worked to elevate a queen. I sat on the edge of my bed and counted. Some were inside the bag, some hovered peacefully. I felt like all my lovers were coming out of me simultaneously to walk on my grave.

I got up and went to work not forgetting my morning mass. This time, it was extended with the additional cleansing of a sacrament made holy by the applications of thirty insects.

* * * * * *

We finished the wall as well as the roof of the castle. Neon Lit Holes would get their masterpiece after all. I called the store to let them know the good news. They promised a cheque by Monday. I promised to pay Neil and Jodie on Tuesday, and they left for the weekend. I sat in the studio and thought about Sarah. She was gossamer in front of me for three hours, then I woke to find it was early into the next day. I wiped sweat from my face and got out of the windowless incandescence of the studio.

It was sunny, so I bought a watermelon from Xien’s stall. Xien wasn’t there, so I also bought some pears and bread from a stall across the street. I talked to another customer about why my clothes were covered in various substances before I decided to hit the bar.

The Bishop Ryan was one of those bars that made you want to look under the floorboards. I drank five pints in silence. Nobody except the waitress bothered me. She was pretty. At the end of the last pint, I realized what had happened. Over the four hours of my stay, I had come to observe about thirty people whose lives seemed unaffected by each other. As sudden as a decade that passes under your feet, I realized that I had begun to seek the same thing as they did. I was a complainer whose silence was liquor. But in a way I had beaten the system. This kind of loneliness had a habit of not turning on a person until it was far too late to do anything about it. Time was irrelevant when you wanted to age like wine in a dingy bar. Conversations, if they occurred, were always villainous, and you felt yourself entertained by the misery of it all. It was this vicarious joy that really oppressed me. It felt like a curtain obscuring your view of the sea. I knew that was what I had been after, this isolation from immensities that made one whole, and that thought offended me.

I paid my tab and left to go back to the studio.

* * * * * *

New project. What would keep me sane, otherwise?

I started a few ideas, and I was pretty sure that their failure was that I wasn’t restricting myself to paint. There were too many obstructions in other media. Paint fell under your control very quickly, and I felt pleased by my progress. I worked quickly through the weekend, taking breaks periodically at the Bishop to let the thing dry a bit while working feverishly on my alcoholism. I finally went to bed shortly before six Tuesday morning.

The rest of the day almost never happened. I woke shortly before eleven in the evening, confessed, and went into the studio. There was a short delay in my clarity as I fumbled the keys on the lock. I cursed my headache and finally got the door open. Neil’s shoes were on the floor. It hadn’t rained in three weeks, but I noticed that he had covered them in mud. Fuck, I thought. I had forgotten to get money for him and Jodie.

“So I rounded up the shit you left around.” Neil walked casually into the front hallway, where I was stumbling to get myself together. He was eating from a tub of ice cream, and seemed to be enjoying the fact that he didn’t plan on offering any of it.

“Neil, I’ll admit right now I can’t pay you guys until tomorrow. There was a burst of activity that kept me here, and I didn’t get to the bank.”

“It’s ok. I saw your piece. It’s cool. Your reds are fantastic.” He wiped something from his hands onto his apron.

“I can’t remember much except the face, which is blue. Ok, if you think that it works.”

“I don’t see anything figurative there. Changing schools a bit? That’s cool.”

“I dunno. Things are pretty clear to me right now, and I think portraits without people being depicted immediately there is what I want, you know. I’m sick of looking at people.” I took off my glasses and wiped my face. I had spent the weekend in a bar, and now I was expected to hold a conversation. “Listen, I’m going to work on a few more, like for a set or something. Can I just come over to your place tomorrow and pay you. Maybe we can go out with Jodie for a coffee or something.”

I pushed past him and went into the workspace.

“Whatever, I’ll get out of here in a minute.” Apparently I had stretched more canvas than I remembered, so that saved me a night’s work. Neil was coming in and out of the workspace. I saw him grab a few of his pieces and put them into a basket. He said goodnight, then left in his truck.

* * * * * *

It took me only a few days to finish two more pieces. It was cool that I finished them in the first week of the month, because that meant that I could still do some real work for the rest and not lose too much cash when the bills hit. I had a few backlogged to July, so we could finish those up and get paid again. The work was pedestrian, but it paid well enough that I didn’t really have to worry about anything from thanksgiving until the end of the year. Then Sarah called. She wished me happy holidays, and told me that she had breast cancer.

* * * * * *

We cried together for a few minutes, and then she told me which hospital was looking after her. I didn’t sleep at all that night, and finally they let me into the hospital in the morning. Sarah wasn’t sleeping either.

“You look well,” she said as she tried to sit up. Her breathing was forced. There was a cross around her neck. I wasn’t sure, but I think it belonged to her mother.

“So do you.” Already it was a sinking ship, and we both knew that we could always find the joys of firing canons at each other. I sat beside her bed.

“Thanks for coming over. You were an ass to me, but I wanted you to be here.” She smiled as much as she could. I tried to laugh, but couldn’t find the breath to do it properly.

“You were never any good at being anywhere, and here you are.”

“Well, I really did want it to work, Sarah.”

She laughed quietly for a second, then turned. “Nothing works anymore, Jordan.”

“Sarah...”

“No I mean it. Nothing. Everything’s malignant. My bones are weak, my lungs are dying. I don’t really eat anything.” I had nothing to say, so I just held her hand and looked out the window. Flames from the industrial part of town made the early morning sky radiant in red and blue.

“I love you”

“You know there’s no way I can talk about that now.”

“Jordan...” Her voice grew course, and she started coughing. “They told me that no matter what, I won’t be able to have kids anymore.”

I started to cry. I knew then that I would be with her always.

* * * * * *

Money extra than my bills never really appealed to me, so I took time off work and concentrated on my paintings. I quickly learned that it didn’t take that much longer to work on five paintings at once as it did fifteen, so I decided to take the whole workspace to myself and work as quickly as possible. Neil and Jodie came into the studio to work, but were usually unable to find space. We talked sometimes, but for the most part I could ignore them. Then they stopped coming altogether.

It was late December. Susan's funeral had passed, and the snows had come.

I finished almost three hundred paintings before the sudden disappearance of wasps from my apartment left me naked and confused.

* * * * * *

There was no other way to deal with the situation. I took all three hundred of my paintings and chaotically piled them in the middle of the workspace. They stacked almost all the way to the roof. Fifteen feet of canvas, oil, random objects, and wood was enough to demonstrate my intentions. The weight of it all tore into the canvas on the pieces near the bottom. One of the frames broke and pulled the torn canvas with it.

You really couldn’t see much except the randomness of it all, so I walked over to the front of the space and wrote Erasure in black marker over the inside of the doorway and Portraits over the outside.

I called Neil and told him to come over with a bunch of friends. “We’re having an opening,” I said.

Then I sat on the floor in silence outside of the workspace, and looked in. Sarah was sitting cross-legged and in thought on the pile of paintings, as beautiful and gossamer as always. It was exactly the way we met, smiling and ready for each other.

she writes in blank spaces

the walk was surreptitious and silent
and I remembered how it was made:
we had always swept past each other
going to work, or in play resting
intangible and ever volatile
we met looking sideways

once in walking we passed a year
our bigness dwarfed the whole street
i realized then that the way you move
gives title to moments of pleasure
i took your hand and pressed it to my days
marking the calendar on my wall in bald faces

on this Monday we were going to your place
it was a tea that had filled a week, promised
and poured with my cup handed
when i smiled you stopped, then
burning drops went over my hand caressing

i sentenced you to life for that transgression

Advent For Love

sitting sideways we
stare into each other
unblinking
like props looking
de la soul
and you preen my wrongdoing

yet i know this is a tarnished forever

imminent and glowing
how it should
be
with a respect
for the speech that lies
ever after

it's tough not to wonder at the size of it all

Broadcast

I flashed my light into the dust-choked window and saw that everything was in order. There was a reason that Michael had sent us out to the Darum flats, but I wasn’t convinced that looking into a mostly empty parts shed was worth anybody’s time.

“Hurry it the hell up Mahir, we have two more hobos to frill before the light ends.” Kojo was my driver and I liked him that way. A few years back, during the Kuinails Insurgencies we were in the field together scupping the rebellious in Pakistan. There was much to be silenced in those times, and I knew all too well the extent to which Kojo could defend himself against the innocent noises. There were times when I felt that we both had gone over to a darker place, especially when we were posted in the Northern Areas.

I pried my face from the window of the small metal shed and jumped back into the cruiser. Kojo didn’t say a thing before running us 10 kilometres south.

The shale sands channelling our vector straight were new, and must have been formed when they blew up the Torrent here a few years ago. Kojo and I had checked our meters, but the rads were mostly under control.

I stared out the window with the rise and fall of Kojo’s breath being mimicked by the pulse of my suit transponder. We were now passing what was once called Bakersfield, back when the Americans were occupying the area. I hated moving on from their entrenchments, but the pay got better elsewhere so I booked camp and fled North with a bunch of outlanders.

“Is there any way we can get to Armstrong before the month ends?” I asked, getting ready to pull out my travel pad from the pack under my seat.

“No way. I want to clear 470 by June in order to keep next year’s taxes in line.”

“You don’t think we can make another, what, 213 by then?”

“Not really. There’s been too many other scrubs out here since February, mopping the place up too well. It’s getting harder to find lines, and even harder to get a trace of those lines back to proper channels. Zip kills all over the place, too many multifrags. Even nanotags are getting repped by bandits stealing kills. Pay attention to your newswire.”

Kojo printed off a thumb pass and, with a quick motion, delegated it to me. “I already got you in for next Tuesday in G-ton Atol, buddy. You want your nut happy, you go there instead.”

“This is a two-kill thrill, and you fucking know it. Armstrong will pay off. Lots of cred for popping that Spring holdings up there.” I looked at the circular pass and knew that I shouldn’t have shared my imprint with an offshore like Kojo. His entire process cycled continually, forging ahead on you. He found it comical to cull fallen bits for pleasure.

“Mahizeer, you’re an underground drip, you know it? I don’t care what you say, I’m going to pulse there without you. Back by Wednesday morning, promise.”

“Right. No funerealz this time, eh? I’m not going to keep it U-S-B for you this time, buddy. You’ll be on your own.”

The dash perspired in red as we came past 50° on the map. This was a new music zone, and the newsfeed changed with a sinful bell. I kept marking the thumb pass to see if I could change the date, but Kojo had put a DNA interface on it. Whatever. I had access to Selkirk point. Not as nice as Armstrong, but Kojo has refused to take me there since we got back from the Insurgencies. He has refused to take me to a lot of places.

We pulled up beside a river, and Kojo got out of the cruiser and immediately began to scan some of the plants by the door. His suit transmitted a few bits to me, and I could see that we were headed in the right direction. The rads were getting lower.

Kojo stood up from his crouch and looked out onto the wide river beside us. He tossed a toxin pack into the water for a reading. The turning barriers that were used on the old highway system were still mostly intact, and harboured us close to a three metre drop. I thought my friends online back home would like to see this beautiful river valley, all alone among so much dessert, so I tried to pull it all in. Kojo was too decisive, however, and was back in the cruiser before I could scan everything that I wanted. Still, Micah would probably be able to piece it all together for an engine demo or something. Everything, all that you know and everything that you can’t, must be made into positive stats or the cred-flow quickly dries, leaving you with no options for an audience.

“We have to keep the show flowing, you know.” Kojo nodded, then put his visor back on. I knew that he was trying to ignore my intentions.

“I’m not concerned about the aesthetics of it this time. There’s no way that a style can be imposed. Well, nothing that isn’t already there, you know? I mean, that last couple we scupped, they were lit so wrong it hurt, but when we brought it out in software it was gorgeous.” He pulled up the vid on his glovescreen. “I mean, the way she folded before separating? Classic.”

“Ya, I know that comes out sometimes. I dunno. Maybe with so many scrubs around we should set ourselves higher you know. That guy back in Flint really opened up some new vectors, and we should follow up.”

“Fuck copying everything. They have different standards down there, like they plan too much or something. Just kind of be the thrill.”

“I’m not sure if that’s it though. What does anyone know anyway? I mean, opinions are selling these days.”

“So you agree with me. Let’s move-“

There was a bug and it was K’s shoulder, so punched it was, my glove shut and screen off. Kids back home really do like buddy vids.

“Fuck off! Anyway, opinions are not aesthetics. I want a purity of representation.” He took a small red candy from his pocket and slid a little sideways in his chair. I scanned the channels to see if any tourneys were being played, but found nothing beyond the usual high school amateurs.

After an hour we pulled up to our second last place for the day. It was a cabin placed high on the edge of the lake fed by the river we passed earlier. Nice wood siding, stone chimney, ATV by the shed. Nostalgia found everywhere. I hoped we could really deploy here.

“My turn.” Kojo fell out of the cruiser and I rode out high beside him. Unlike the shed, this place had more than one entrance.

“I’ll check out the window, you grab the door.” I think that he wanted to spin a little aggressive today; heroics really got him off. I waited until he got back from the side of the cabin.

I heard him before I could see him. My viewers were right. Around the bend I could have capped him dead in the head, but this wasn’t a tourney so I left it for the kids back home to sim.

“You’re going to have to be quiet unless you always want to muscle it it.”

“Bullshit” Kojo whispered. I always thought that he looked a bit like an old friend of mine called Omari, and never more so than now. “We’re going to have to enter the front door. The window’s a projection.” I heard that the new mechs out on the westland were doing things like that to keep the satellites guessing.

The door was simple, my suit wouldn’t have a problem deactivating the lock without me even noticing. I was surprised by the absence.

So was Kojo when we entered the room. Nothing. Not a table, a closet, or anything. Just a cement floor, walls, and ceiling. I started knocking on the walls to see if there were any more projections inside, but could find no hollows.

“Do you think it’s a dud?” Kojo looked at me intently, and I could still feel the unease left by his voice a few seconds after the com.

“I’m not sure what to expect. The place must have been cleaned out or something.” He looked around the floor by the far wall where the projection was. “Must be internal, there’s no lightbox here.”

I turned off my datacast. No reason to waste bandwidth on a two percent viewership.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

like i never even cared

So there is this thing that i like to call progress.

It sits and waits patiently while I encircle its reach,
fumbling lecherously in front and behind.
Unfurled and delectable she brings me to a fold and a eyelash:
I am made humble in this divine presence.
After every look is a bite, at the end of it all.

I look and cannot help myself.

Others see passage where I only see isolation and false depth,
probed to the extent of its necessity.
We put all our hopes and dreams into this preternatural evolutionary path,
wanting a future like the warm, friendly hug of a straightjacket.
We turn together and find pleasure in this, in it all and everything that it is not.
"Does the vulture believe in progress when it finds another carcass?"
-- once this had been asked, there was little comfort
with typical and daily tragedies.

Instead of revolution, I learned absolution to be necessary:
a way to forgive oneself for one's own transgressions,
rather than those of a vocal and sociable past.

We bring ourselves to the height of it all and lie fallow.

Spent, I waited for my income to rise again.
It became quite clear to me that dialog was impossible.
She never felt the same again.

A diner once taught me that after every individual, all of society is a mute point and simultaneously an in situ violation of the self. It took a positive regression for me to fully understand this.

happy, happy times ten

joy is filling the skies with plenitude, so My Psychiatrist told me in a dream.

we fought over cupcakes and spat on our noses, the stars a happy antioch. i wept for a friday that was never there, only getting a new day as a pill. this was the hope and endeavour that would ensure its awakened prophecy. a nod to the coach and we both sat inside.

"have you been experiencing these reports every morning?" already knowing yes, a mark was encoded forever in science and the barren trees surrounding my childhood years. he put the notepad down and looked deep into my black composure.

"there will only be triumphant and ecstatic fullness, a fuel for exposing the true nature of where it sits and where you stand. take this", he said passing me a dollar.

the coin was swept clean of its blood and still did not shine as my convictions felt it should. solely, it was turned sideways in my palm and broken home. i looked at the raincoat on the floor by my envy, and it was weeping.

the door opened and slowly backwards was a field of mice spilling. i pitied the wrong doctor, i told myself. my foot reached the earth for the first time in a week, and a daisy grew sadly in my place.

Orpheus Was Right

The Welsh left me for dead by the roadside. It had been hours since they had first picked me up, but I could hardly remember any of it. All that was left was an impression of red. My clothes were sticking to my back and my hair matted to my face. There was nothing left to do but pick myself from off the ground and try to get back to Dallas. Such a long way, and somehow I had travelled without my wallet.

'Is there anything I can help you with?'

A man was suddenly standing over me. I grabbed his ankle and felt my way up toward his belt buckle. It was there that I discovered the true nature of our burgeoning relationship. It was his job to keep me from falling back into the sewer, but also was it his job to ensure that I never really brought myself from such apparent depravity. I thought I could see the shining metal star on his right breast pocket, but instead it turned out to be the tip of a pen. The manner in which his gaze accused me of such evil wrongdoings sent me reeling as he grasped my wrist with an unmistakable firmness. I had to say something to pacify the situation.

I need to find the Welsh and get back to my home, was my intention, although in retrospect I must have said something much more hostile as I soon found myself being dragged into a brightly lit room. I prayed for a music, an enlightenment, to break up the monotony of the white linoleum and flickering neon. I felt that this man who brought me into his office wanted me to resist him -- It doesn't matter, I wanted to tell him, c'est toute une absurdite. The pain he was inflicting on my left arm while fastening me to my seat suggested that he knew little of Sartre's dictates, however.

'I think we need to talk about your future with this firm'
It was at this point that I know my..........what consciousness i had left was a mental illmness as i let my head fall onoyo theh keyboard...............


what am I supposed to be writing here? my memory fails.


'You've been wasting a lot of our time by means of this acid acid aicd acid acdi adic aidca caiad cida dcia icad as of late fallen by the corporate wayside. It has been brought to my attention that you left thursday's meeting without signing the new agreement. All of our representatives have been signing this agreement and you must be one of our representatives...'

The conversation apparently had continued along these lines until my falling onto the floor broke the eerie silence between our respective understandings. It was at this point that I realized that I had been re-enacting something which had been staged before, and this event was not in fact worthy of such distinction as becoming the ritual in which I was currently engaged. There was an unmistakable tension in the air between us, as red once again filled my vision.

Promptly I left the room, and the Welsh left me for dead by the roadside.

I got up from my bed and felt around for my keys. Instead all I could find were quills, an endless sea of quills stretching from my fingertips to some exotic and sublime beacon. Am I a true renaissance man? asked the poet in me. I was determined to ignore his damn preaching, despite his pompous righteousness. My determination quickly failed as thoughts began to wash themselves upon the poet's shores...Even though I can find a tangible nothing at the end of a sentence, I can't find my place in anything. Localization! That's what I had been told by the man who made me sign that agreement. Fuck me, do I ever need to find the Welsh! was my mantra to a song. It was meant as an attempt for the poet to reign in its quills.

frankenstein come into being thanks to a drunken party

i wanted to explain my position on politics to friends
they fought back

it's easy to get addicted to lifestyles
i wish my friends had never gotten so smart
because now they only wish to perform miracles

the night felt like fingers closing eyes by fingers
the uncontrolled fastness of it like a baby
you make it in them you can't stop seeing
them: i'm going into that one tonight, now that one.

this is society, this is fucking involvement.

subway bag

you came and
went
like the wind in
fall, who had?
lasting clear, yet always,
and your country will always be

a new David and Artaud
built
like bread and clothing
with mournings at
minimum wage remembered
like yesterday's kings

the bag™ is the most important thing

i don't think that

i don't think anything
i already know that i
don't trust, so there is no eye
that will always be a chore

all there is, is a lifting
simultaneous in rags do we drink it
removing from anything which is pure
and only itself joy
entombed in all that is seen
this tragedy, seemingly a betrayal
and a hope absurd, is all that is
and all that lifts itself into absolution

into ourselves we bring it
where all is memory
a ritual of prolonged extinction
where the only apostle is time
a wine which consumes,
intoxicates all senses

wasting trees

i sit and waste trees
because
even words can cut
and so i fall in as the not-me
so beautifully green
my speech fleeting as a guitar
sonorous cousin in sleep
passes like a discovery
making all glow in time
that leaning so, slow
asking like a waiting room
but like a good patient
it's all in my head
and so patiently, everything
wasted and reborn

Robin

last night i dreamt of my father:
his face so close it chimed like a bell

i wanted to reach out, but remembering the rules i looked
the other way, into the subtle folds of his sadness,
where grace held triumphantly its shameful cup
and the days were equally marked by too much work

through him i learned that time seeds like moonlight
casting shadow upon shadow-all, wrapped in one intensity
it is the glue of bandaids holding us together
and keeping us all locked tight

in my dream i saw a black cat try to cross a highway:
this was my father's childhood
a mouth entered and every second breathing
a language, caressed by the tongues of silence

my father's leg, paralysed by diabetes
that old stick-in-the-mud who said yes
too often like a baby, i wanted more "no"
he looks at me, passing my inheritance
while clutching it fiercely, like a beggar
i wanted so desperately for him to walk
so i could take him out into the park
and we could fly kites written

what poetry is this, where grammar is so inarticulate?

i woke up and circled my feet like wings beating.
the day was sunny,
so bright that twenty-six years open
in front of me like a moth

Feb 27 2004 - Dec 4 1977

the end of capitalism

in my shoe
is
a foot
moving
grasping
holes and tears
like any other foot

i see better shoes
mounting other people
and i know that
with kicking
it will all end in a riot