more vacuous surfing

i just got a whole helluva lot more respect for britney.



it might not go with the pearls, but it's got a certain je ne sais quoi.


and in honour, a little nugget from free to be you and me, that good ole childhood staple.

waste time much?

the thing i love about youtube is that i can get completely lost on it and end up in the weirdest places, and on the strangest trips down memory lane.

viz:



when was this? 1986? 1987? i'm pretty sure it was junior high, and i'm pretty sure i had a big old crush on belinda carlisle. but then again, who didn't? she was a go-go after all...

metastasis

from this month's scientific american:

"The complexity of this system [the relationship of any single gene with the myriad networks in which it participates] in normal cells is evident in what we already know about cancer -- that it results from the stepwise loss of such cellular self-control, which becomes more and more complete as the disease progresses."
-- Renato Dulbecco

The Hallmarks of Cancer
The six abnormal capabilities listed below together give tumors their lethal power to overrun their native tissue and spread through the body.
Self-sufficiency in growth signalling
Cancer cells amplify external growth cues or generate their own.
Insensitivity to antigrowth signals
Cancer cells become deaf to quiescence cues from surrounding tissue.
Evasion of cell suicide
Mechanisms that should trigger or carry out a self-destruct program in damaged cells are disabled or overridden.
Limitless replicative potential
Cancer cells evade intrinsic limits on the number of times a normal cell can divide.
Sustained blood vessel growth
Tumors emit signals promoting the development of new blood vessels to deliver oxygen and nutrients.
Invasiveness and motility
Cancer cells defy multiple signals and forces that hold a cell in place and prevent it from traveling to - and thriving in - other tissues.

and then, from atwood, morning in the burned house, circa 1995 (courtesy j.)

Cell
Now look objectively. You have to
admit the cancer cell is beautiful.
If it were a flower, you'd say, How pretty,
with its mauve centre and pink petals

or if a cover for a pulpy thirties
sci-fi magazine, How striking;
as an alien, a success,
all purple eye and jelly tentacles
and spines, or are they gills,
creeping around on granular Martian
dirt red as the inside of the body,

while its tender walls
expand and burst, its spores
scatter elsewhere, take root, like money,
drifting like a fiction or
miasma in and out of people's
brains, digging themselves
industriously in. The lab technician

says, It has forgotten
how to die. But why remember? All it wants is more
amnesia. More life, and more abundantly. To take
more. To eat more. To replicate itself. To keep on
doing these things forever. Such desires
are not unknown. Look in the mirror.

martin sexton - hallelujah

on the climate change bandwagon

and let me make it clear - there's nothing wrong with being on it.

this morning's globe and mail has a feature section on climate change. they call it the climate change almanac, with alphabetic listings of things we should all know about global warming. and i'm reading it, and agreeing with it, and j and i are lying in bed with coffee and our sections of the paper and discussing how to live with a smaller environmental footprint.

and there's a picture splashed across the head of one of the pages - polar bears on these tiny little bits of ice - and i say to j, "this is the saddest picture i've seen in a long time." it's so sad that i want to clip it out and post it on my bulletin board in my office to remind myself of the slippery slope of self-justification, the larger impacts of my decisions.

so i go to my office and google the photographer, one Dan Crosbie, and the picture. and i find that the pic itself, apparently taken in 2004, is famously controversial. evidently rush limbaugh has found out that the picture is a "fraud". the polar bears, he says, are "frolicking" on said ice floe, and that use of the photo to illustrate the effects of global warming is, to paraphrase, bullshit. in fact, while online, i find a whole bunch of right wing pundits taking issue with this picture, as if the fact that it's being used out of context (apparently, the original title of the photo presented the bears as being on naturally occurring ice sculptures) makes the fact of global warming untrue.

wtf???? that the photo captures the pathos of global warming - that the image of polar bears stranded on an increasingly small bit of arctic real estate eloquently expresses something that scientific talk of carbon loads and acidification and desertification fails to - is in my mind the beauty of the photograph. because whether or not the bears were, at the moment the photo was taken, waving or drowning makes little difference. they're drowning now. and the discrepancy in those two positions makes the pic all the more poignant.

so i'm still clipping the pic and posting it on my bulletin board. because my heart responds to it. and if my heart responds, then my head responds. and if my head responds, then maybe i can live my little life a little more mindfully. and it might not be much in the grand scheme of things, but it's something. and that little something is all i got to give.

two little feet - karen savoca

so how does this thing work anyhow?

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Jen sent me instructions on how to put music on my blog. I've tried, unsuccessfully, to get it to work that way (doubtless due to my own ineptitude and impatience, and not to Jen's excellent instructions) but it seems there may be another way to do it. So I'm testing this now. If this post comes up and down a few times, my apologies. Am just trying to get this to work.

And so, if it does, a song for a snowy february afternoon, when my girl has just recently come back from doing just this, melancholy and all.

John Prine - Taking a Walk

driven to distraction

i can't concentrate. jacqueline went out for dinner with a friend of ours last night, and came back to report that her son had been diagnosed with ADD. i'm not sure exactly what that means, psychologically or medically, but i'm getting a sense of what it might be like to experience living in that right at this moment. j has a theory, which i think isn't half-bad, that the internet and its short-term surfability, its ability to condition us to expect interruptions (popups, flash movies, you have mail) impacts our long term attention capacity. if she's right, then my day today might be considered data for the theory.

i've been sitting in front of these notes for my cognitive science exam all morning, banging my head against my cognitive wall, and the fact of my lack of will, and am trying - though i recognize i'm not trying very hard - to make sense of what i'm reading. and i'm sitting in front of my laptop, which might actually be the root of my problem. but anyway, i've now checked my gmail a million times, read through pretty much every rss feed that's come through on my reader, checked out the goings on on a premed forum, paid some bills, applied to u of t for undergraduate admission, in case this med school thing doesn't pan out, and now i'm blogging. surely this is the outer edge of procrastination.

at what point do i get to label it clinical? and can someone give me a prescription for this?

you have got to be kidding me

now, i have a reputation for being a little overly hard on academia. it's true -- i've been known to rant for hours about the overspecialization of knowledge in the ivory tower, and the too-oft vacuous push towards research, when maybe teaching would be a better use of one's time. indeed, just last night, some thread of this came up in a discussion that j and i were having, and i found myself trying to clarify the fact that i am by no means anti-academic. rather, i think that there is sometimes a tendency in academia to make hay from germs of ideas that might have been better left as ... well, germs.

and then, my friend austin, who is much renowned for sending tidbits of information he gets from god knows where, sent this.

and i rest my case.

of course, as a postscript, it occurs to me that maybe they *are* kidding me. in which case, i stand down. irony can sometimes get lost on the net.

still crazy after all these years

8 years ago today was the last time i talked to my mother. i remember sitting on my bed in montreal, slow-brewing winter storm outside. we talked weekend-style - it was a saturday - an hour-long conversation, verbal tussle with a smile. politics. i seem to remember something about kyoto, but i'm not even sure if that's possible. the reform party, certainly, and the dramas in her condo. i had to go to pick up that old creaky violin i was getting fixed, with the full intent of playing it. (i never play it.) i remember walking up st-denis on the way home, the city blowing with white. i bought d. a ring in all that snow. it was time for a new commitment. it was time to live in a promise. it was also before the towers came down. before, even, the global panic party for the millenial changeover. it seems so long ago. it seems like yesterday.

a lot can happen in the blink of an eye. you were alive. then you weren't. a lot can happen in 8 years, too. so much i'd like to be able to tell you. like, for example, that i got an interview at mac.

i wonder what you'd think about that.


Buhrstone

Morning after morning

The awakening village howls
Like an insect
About to be dipped in amber.

I separate myself from the sky

But still carry the inevitable
Dream of your body
Covered in butterflies or in bees.

Here's a living blanket for your grave.

Here's who I've quietly become:
A slightly wilder version of you. Your hands
Knead the dough for my bread

And my husband's flesh, thick and smooth.
They wash my breasts and hips, they light
my cigarette, they crack my beer.

You've been dead too long.

Morning after morning
The heavy amber of you
Around my neck, inside the heels

Of my boots. I wear your gloves.
Your winter scarves, your winter hair,
And that heavy shearling coat.

Soon I will forget how to preserve you.

But for now I continue to dream daily,
Morning after morning: your body blooming
In yellow wings, thousands of butterflies alighting

And you just lie there.

Morning after morning
The orange grass keeps burning
Under the grey grey sky.

-- Olena Katyiak Davis

i've been lately thinking

studying sort of half-heartedly for the cognitive science midterm i have in a couple of weeks time - catching up on stuff i got behind in. are humans rational? how is our unconscious processing information? how much do we, can we, really know about how our minds work? is there such a thing as epistemic boundary when it comes to thinking about thinking?

and i know the researchers can't and won't believe in the latter, though for my part, i like the idea of a mysterious core and there being Something More Besides This at work in what we call human (i know, i know, it's suspiciously spiritual. shhh. don't tell). more than that though, sometimes just accepting that things are the way they are - instead of dismantling, dissecting, chasing the whys down infinitely smaller rabbit holes - seems so much more peaceful. of course, this may be simply the purview of the generalist, and god knows i'm a posterchild generalist. i can't help but thinking that there's probably a link between this "let it lie" view and my own resistance to what the psychologists call "expert" knowledge.

but i digress. i had actually sat down to write about the fact that i sometimes like the idea that there's a cohesiveness to my mental world that i'm not fully conscious of. like this morning... i woke to the memory of big snow at whistler and a weekend with an ex-girlfriend. and there's all kinds of conscious reasons for me to be thinking of whistler (jane last night, talking about heading slopewise in a couple of weeks; jen mentioning her guy's compensatory fondness for wintersport and his checking the weather at BC's most famous resort) but this particular memory came up. and it wasn't until i sat in it for a while that i realized that the memory in question would have happened right around this time, give or take a week, four years ago. and i like that despite the fact that i'm not so good with dates and times in my waking life - if it ain't in the agenda, i'm extremely likely to forget - my body is keeping track of at least some trace of where i've been.

i'm not being particularly articulate but i wanted to get this down. all the people i've been and the things i've done are right here. even if i lose the edges of them, even if they blur, even if i think i've forgotten... they're here. and i find that comforting.

dona nobis pacem

kelli's mother died this morning.

i feel like there should be words to send, words that i've learned to say to comfort, words that comforted me when i lost mine. but i don't have any, because in many ways, i don't believe there are any.


sometimes the only thing big enough to hold what you need to say is silence.




for dane. for kelli. for mom. for me.
peace be with you.

for k

You sent me this book, years ago, and put a piece of it up in the world a while back that held for a month or more. There's many in here, one I'll save for the 6th, for my own mother. but in the meantime....

Around the Edges of A Cold Cold Day

Under the ice they're dragging the river,
but I don't mean for this to signify
some kind of casualty, some kind of loss.
Even now a bicycle is being stubbornly
pedaled around the edges
of this wintry day, the cold
snapping in its spokes, the red metal frame.
Hitting everyone in the face,
the fevered sun wants things
to be louder, a little something
in exchange for the patina, a little
something for all this gloss.

But just the breath of the figure
floating above the bicycle,
and that clump of warmth
I think I'll call his heart, pumping
petals wrapped in a flourescent wreath
of thorns, is just the evaporation of loss.

This day feels like it'll crack,
the ice will surely part and unveil
the flushed body of the guy
you heard of on the radio, finally
found, hunting underwater caribou
all these months; his wife still sweeping
the river with the hook of her mind.

Funny how the river lived.
Funny how my life continued.
All the glaring stories I walked over
as I collected my mail by way of the frozen
slough. They seemed solid as ice.
But how expertly I must have swum
through this prolonged winter, how deftly
I must have navigated this cold body
of water, not to have lost the feeling
in my fingers, this feeling in my lungs.

-- Olena Kalytiak Davis

because i know you love her

and i love this one, too.

on closure

it's been a strange sort of week, or at least a strange sort of weekend. thought about posting this sooner, but wanted to sit with it for a couple of days, think on its significance. way back in october 05 i had tracked down someone from my past and written about it. linked to her blog. noted, i thought in passing, that we had nothing to say to each other, that the past was ancient history, questioned the wisdom of getting in touch. so i didn't get in touch. in fact, i didn't come back to this blog for over a year. and shortly after i had written, she found me (courtesy of the bits and pieces of ourselves we unknowingly shed over the internet - a scent trail? the forensic traces of cyberworld), left a comment. made an entry about it on her own corner of the universe. and i didn't see it until she had traveled the world and come back. until i had jumped my own ship and was making a go of swimming to shore. or out to sea. i'm afraid i'm a bit lacking in direction. but that's not the story.

the story is that i finally saw the comment and wasn't sure what to do with it. how to make amends, where that 19-year-old me, and that 19-year-old her, fit in the story of who i have become. and what would it mean to reach out? what would there be to say apart from hello how are you and i'm sorry and i'm different now i swear? what's the measure of across the ocean and 15 years in a friendship that lived for a few months in that time of so much becoming? as i wrote back when i first tracked her down, what, now after all these years, would there be to say to each other?

but on a whim, or in a fit of self-confidence, or maybe desire to connect, a couple of weeks after i had seen the comment, i sent her an email. wanted to say, at least, that i saw that she had been here. and she wrote back, with a lot of kindness and a lot of honesty. and i wrote back to that. and i don't know if we'll keep corresponding, but i think it kind of doesn't matter anymore, though if this chance collision strikes up a friendship with two people who used to know each other, so much the better. but what mattered, i realize, is not what there was to say to each other. it was that we said anything at all. there's some closure in that, and some small weight that comes off, and some sense that in this big opaque world, you never know what might happen. so if we never connect again, i wish you happiness. and i thank you for writing. it's been a good surprise.


Everything's Okay

And the sun with spin on it now, with hover. Lower over
the light industrial west end, shot back by windowed towers
of the Big Three, it blinds you coming

and going, something smart with your name on it. Spring
walks all over us on sharp heels. Spring chants its way
through the playoffs. Things, being things,

have never been better. Here on the grid, you have reason
to appreciate urban planning more than anything
your parents ever taught you, as Lake Ontario sleeps

with its freighted eye open under sky like a smoker's
bedclothes. Say Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus
until you mean it, say Roncesvalles until you buy that bit

about beauty in ugliness, under oath as you are to living
for the moment, uncut, blow by blow. A woman sings
karaoke in a third floor flat, while below, an engine grinds,

trying to turn over. Behind café glass, a man leans
to his companion as though he loves her. You believe one idea,
and then another. That is, in the instant, at the time.

-- Karen Solie


---------------------
box: gould - goldberg variations

you asked for it

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness
comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Rumi

You had wanted me to post something happy. Or happier. I don't know if this counts. But you have to admit, it has some hope in it...

would someone please

disabuse me of my jennifer aniston crush?

it's kinda embarassing. and the fact that this story makes me disproportionately happy is a little worrisome. maybe i'll just blame it on this low-grade depression and leave it at that. guess i shouldn't knock the fact that something is actually making me happy....

come to my window

so this is the colour of the sky in my world today. is this what they call the bleak midwinter? feels like it. and i'm annoyed with myself for letting it go so long, for being so dragged down. today on the subway i felt like crying only because the tracks seemed so damn close to the imagination. this is not the way i meant to become. thank god tomorrow is another day.

home renovations

the image of scaffolding has always appealed to me. skeletons on the outside to shore up skeletons on the inside. i used to think of scaffolding as support - but i'm wondering now if it's not a way of getting around the walls. a way of scaling when knocking them down just won't do.

yesterday i met with anna and we talked a lot about my neat and tidy compartments. the challenge of living a life within the confines of some very thick walls. and as she was talking, as she was telling back to me my stories of stoic restraint, i had this image of mike holmes swinging a sledgehammer, tearing down drywall, making open space. i need a way to access that space. i need my own sledgehammer. because this scaffolding i've constructed isn't doing the trick. or i've been misusing it. misunderstanding it. maybe it's all gotta come down. and then let's see what happens.

-----------
box: yo yo ma, bach's cello suites

monday morning, freezing rain

'nuff said.

okay i have a problem

i'm wondering if there's a term for this aimless internet wandering i get stuck in, to the detriment of ALL productivity and any profound thought... viz, my current, and seemingly lasting obsession with go fug yourself, wikipedia, cbc.ca, yahoo entertainment, the globeandmail.com, and - and this is truly embarassing - people.com. my mother did not give birth to me for this. i blame rss feeds and the easy way gmail fixes me with them.

it puts me in mind of buffalo - a stoner moment, for sure. jessica campbell had come to visit me. i had pot, which i smoked only occasionally, and, truth be told, never really enjoyed all that much. we sat on my futon in that creaky old apartment on richmond ave - the one with all the centipedes and the grey lo-pile carpet that got pockmarked with the remains of k's cigarettes, and which i later painstakingly repaired with crazy glue and carefully shorn carpet graft obtained from less visible corners of the apartment so as to get that precious damage deposit back in full - and watched kids in the hall reruns. i got ridiculously high. and ridiculously paranoid, convinced i was going to be stuck in stoner world for the rest of my life. and poor jess, who was being sweet and kind and who never really has been my friend, though we've both been earnest in our showing up for the label, didn't really know what to do. what's the parallel? being stuck in stoner world. only now i'm not stoned. i'm just stuck online in some ridiculously mundane mobius strip of non-entertainment and meaningless gathering of trivia that i will never ever use. it's a damn good thing i don't have a job at the moment, since i would have to get fired for getting nothing done.

okay back to the surf. surely someone must have posted something new in the last 5 minutes.

--------------
box: tom waits, orphans. all 3 discs, but in keeping with the truth of my moribund musical tastes, it's the bawlers that get me.

bedside table: the wars by timothy findley, two girls fat and thin by mary gaitskill. course reading in artificial intelligence.

just watched: shattered glass (hayden christensen, peter sarsgaard) about the downfall of steven glass; capturing the friedmans. liked 'em both. and i never thought i would say this - but i'm actually grateful to blockbuster. for some reason, they're stocking some damn good films in my neighbourhood outlet (sorry e. i know this drives you mental).

and i had thought they for sure would have disabled me

okay. so back to this blogging thing. i never have been very good at sustaining. see that last post. (am thankful for the comment, which i just saw today - over a year later. talk about not being with the program). i haven't written yet, just so you know (though i imagine after over a year, you'd hardly be sending a thought this way), not because i don't want to. there's something in me that wants to get it right. that wants to make it right. and until i can either figure that out, or let it lie, or just plain stop angsting over it, it's best for both of us if i keep myself small and quiet. but btw, i love that you use the word mawkish. it's a good one.

there's wind where i am. big gusting skylight shaking wind in the midst of a snowless winter. the dog oblivious at my feet, and me as lost as i ever was, googling in a half-hearted sort of way, and thinking of where you are today. and all the other you's in my life. the yous that left. the yous i ran off. the yous who just disappeared or changed into something else. those yous. and, for that matter, those mes.

procrastination is the worst kind of purgatory - self-inflicted. how to figure out which world to have a foot in?