January 22nd, 2009

Next

My “Now and Next” list (at right) is all now and no next–I’ve gotten behind! Lest you think January has defeated me (it hasn’t, much), here’s what’s upcoming:

Starting in February–I’ll be participating in the very very cool Now Hear This/SWAT program through the Descant Foundation of Arts and Letters. SWAT=Students, Writers and Teachers, and what this means is I’ll be teaching high school creative writing classes one day a week for a couple months, in conjunction with an actual professional English teacher. This is a thrilling opportunity for me to learn about teaching and about teenagers, as well as (I hope) offer something useful about writing practice in return. I can’t *wait*.

Sunday February 15, 4:35-5:45pm–I’ll be speaking on a panel entitled “Wandering Jews?” at the Limmud day of Jewish learning at UofT. My fellow panelists are Adam Sol and Sidura Ludwig.

Sunday April 5, Time TBD–I’ll be reading at the Gritlit literary festival in Hamilton.

Sometime in 2009–My two stories, “ContEd” and “Tech Support” will appear in The Fiddlehead.

Of course more to come eventually–there’s always something!

I don’t have a simple answer/but I know that I can answer
RR

January 21st, 2009

Rose-coloured Reviews *Unisex Love Poems* by Angela Szczepaniak

The plucky heroine of Angela Szczepaniak’s dizzying novel in poems is referred to as a “gingerpear confection” as she dangles suspended on a tightrope and “encounters the world inverted.” The expression is an apt description of the whole collection: sharp and sweet and worth savouring, though hard to read slowly.

I was scared to read this book. A wonderful front cover illlustration by Jeff Szuc did not sufficiently distract me from the jacket copy, which promises “[a]n autopsy of language,” terrifying to those of us who didn’t know language was dead and didn’t even send a bundt cake.

The wonderful lightness and elegance of Szczepaniak’s work might be better likened to surgery than autopsy–at times gory, at times clinical, but all with the goal (in my opinion) of ressucitation. Yes, these poems work with language as an object, dead if you like, a thing with physical properties like a serif or a ligature in print, a stammer or an accent when voiced. And at *the same time* these poems play with words to tell a decidedly alive and lively set of stories, about a lonely guy named slug who breaks out in a horrible rash and sets about investigating his apartment building to find the cause. In his search, he meets Butterfingers, a lonely girl with a history of sad relationships and a stammer.

That slug’s rash is made up of h’s, in several fonts, and that Butterfingers’s stammer stands in for punctuation and gradually begins to confuse meanings, is just part of the magic and tragedy of these characters. The linguistic high-wire act goes on right above the emotional lives of the characters.

As you might have gathered, a book that gets it’s initial plot push from a rash is not a buoyant one. While terribly funny, and I think ultimately quite romantic, *Unisex Love Poems* takes a grim view of the rites of love. There are two competing advice tomes running through the book, one for “Nice girls” who seek to avoid getting groped and secure matrimony, and one for their paramours, who seek to turn “your pretty poppy into a spirited spark plug.” Both use the same peppy euphemistic language and even similar flower metaphors, and both use metaphors of trapping the opposite sex into doing your desires.

Also on the advice front are some remarkable recipes for preparing the various internal organs (and two for tongue!) Nothing will make you rethink the common metaphor like a recipe for for “Stuffed Coeur” that advises one to “trim visible fat and functions” and that “the industrious and devoted honeydrop will use strands of her own hair to sew cavities.”

The recipes and accompanying diagrams gave me a tough time, as much as I was enjoying the jokes. And I was so sad for poor slug, whose wife is after his accent in his divorce case and who seeks companionship in a spider behind his fridge. But I was cheered up by slug’s lawyers, spitz and spatz, fairies because they are three and a half inches tall…or because of their “companionable” as well as legal relationship.

Also, typographic cartoons! Also, slug’s fieldnotes on all the living things he finds in his apartment. This book is less than 200 pages long, but it’s full to bursting. It’s best to be honest and admit that I’m *sure* I missed things too subtle and complex to be gotten in a quick and devouring read. But I’m quite happy to reread sometime soon.

About halfway through reading *Unisex Love Poems, I dropped the book in a dish of ice-cream while sitting in a cafe. As I began to clean it off with the only implement available, my tongue, it did occur to me that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a better book to lick.

I was lost but I was kind
RR

January 20th, 2009

It’s Official: My Hopes are Up

Barack Obama will be President of the United States of America in 1.25 hours.

I am thrilled.

I would like, for a good long while, not to hear another cynical word about getting my hopes up too high, pinning too many hopes on just one guy, or anything along the lines of “bound to be disappointed.”

The people of America voted for a guy who believes in the ideal of change, the ideal of transparency and accountability, the ideal of partnership and bi-partisanship, negotiation and respect and diplomacy and discussion.

They voted for the ideals and for the person they thought embodied them, not for the promise of getting all those things by next weekend. Among other things, the American people voted for a President that respects that they make intelligent decisions, that the American people can be reasoned with and informed as adults, and they voted for a President who would present such a vision of America to the world.

Let’s do American voters the honour of respecting their informed election of their polical leader. I really don’t think anyone is expecting a miracle, but nor do I think those of us who *do* expect rational discourse and thoughtful reform are in any way misled. A little bit, over the long-term, I actually do hope for greatness.

Happy inauguration!
RR

January 19th, 2009

Words of Strength

Monday excitement–I’ll be reading at Strong Words tonight at the Gladstone Art Bar (that’s the room *upstairs*; there is a different, also very good bookish event going on downstairs).

It’s an impressive lineup, and slightly intimidating as both my fellow readers are not only writers but performers–Kathleen Phillips as a character comedian and Mike Smith as the punk-rock poet and stand-up surrealist White Noise Machine. Read their full bios at the link above, and come out tonight to experience their performances firsthand. I’ll be reading my short story about romantic longing at the grocery store, “Hello Hello,” from the latest issue of Rampike and trying, as ever, not to fall down.

Got gloss on my lips
RR

January 18th, 2009

“Where is the washroom?” in Japanese

Toire wa doko desu ka.
トイレはどこですか｡
Where is the washroom?

Forget about what I said / the lights are on and the party’s over
RR

TTC Tribute

It’s hard to believe that the Ottawa Transit Strike is still ongoing, making everyday tasks a nightmare for so much of the population. In Toronto, transit strikes and strike threats are grounds for quick action and, indeed, panic, and I don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case everywhere.

I am grateful (almost) every day to live in a city with a more or less wonderful transit system, to be able to go wherever I want to go without a favour, an insurance policy or thousands of dollars of investment in motor vehicle. This was revelatory when I first moved to a big city, and I’m still mildly shocked that I could, if I put enough thought into it, go to the airport or the zoo at 2am on a Thursday without telling anyone or even being conscious en route, all for $2.75. This should be a basic right of city citizens everywhere, and it’s worth getting upset that the citizens in Ottawa now lack those freedoms.

When it’s awful and slushy and cold, it’s about as easy for transit-takers to get around town as when it’s pleasant–not so for car commuters. But certainly, life is less easy for those who operate the vehicles, so between the weather and the sitch in Ottawa, it seems a good time to pay tribute to a random sampling of TTC awesomeness:

–drivers who stop when they see people running
— drivers who give directions, and call you up to the front just before your stop
–drivers who patiently hear out people who don’t make sense and don’t know where they are going, but are very very angry about it
–drivers who smile/make eye-contact/make jokes/just say hi whilst they are navigating through sleet and rush-hour and some woman is screaming about someone stepping on her toe

The TTC often brings out the worst in people, granted, just as being smushed up against strangers often will no matter where you are, but it occasionally brings out some loveliness from strangers I would not encounter otherwise. Life this:
–the man who chased me *off* the bus last night to give me back my forgotten gloves
–the glee with which people leap to give their seats to pregnant ladies and people with canes and crutches (sadly, such a polite city is Toronto is that this does not happen with the elderly, for fear of giving offense to someone who doesn’t consider him/herself elderly. You’d have to be about 150 to get more than a tentative tap and half-thigh raise and questioning shrug.)
–when someone compliments me on my reading material
–when Kerry was trying to explain something to me about a George Michael song opening and I was too dumb to remember the bit, so she sang it, the two old ladies next to her beamed (Kerry has a very good voice).

And now for a list of my very favourite bus and subway routes:
Toronto–7 Bathurst, 25D Don Mills (I never went beyond Steeles, I just like the D), 86 Sheppard (Zoo bus!), 99 Arrow Road, 510 Spadina Streetcar, 352 Lawrence West night bus, and special category prize goes to 122 Graydon Hall, which is technically an awful irregular bus that disappears for half an hour in the least rain, but I love it because I met so many good people whilst cursing it.
Montreal–On STCUM (yes, I know it’s not called that anymore, but that’s really too bad) I particularly enjoyed the 24 Sherbrooke, 80 Parc, and of course the blue line of the Metro.
New York–On the MTA, the A Train seemed particularly nice. I fell asleep on the F Train, which probably indicates a high comfort level.
Boston–To be honest, I never knew what I was doing on the MBTA, but I always got where I was going on those funny about-the-rails tracks, so let’s count it all as a win.
Tokyo–Not there yet, but oh my goodness, how sexy!!!

Soldier on, Ottawa. We transit-takers stand (and ride) with you in our hearts!

My heart only works
RR

January 16th, 2009

The guardian of gates and hallways

Obviously, it’s better if your life just doesn’t suck at all, but that can be a tall order in January (if you’ve got it down, and it’s not “move south,” I want to hear your solutions). Sooner or later, spring will arrive and/or we’ll all have to address the actual issues in our lives. Meantime, though, here are some pennyante stop-gap solutions–

–Leave the house. You might well have a good time (Pivot of the last post was even more awesome than expected, as was the birthday dinner and both [gah]) movies I saw this week). Even if you don’t, you get the smugness of saying to people, “It’s minus *twenty*, but y’know, it’s not *that* bad.” Makes you feel tough.
–Go to the movies. Nothing like other people’s problems to make you forget your own. Even (especially?) if their problems are stupid.
–Do the thing you’ve been trying to get out of. Misery has economies of scale, I find. It’s far easier to agree to do something unfun on a day I already hate–I guess I figure things probably can’t get worse, and someone might as well get what they want. Occasionally, this will bloom into getting thanked profusely, which is nice, but don’t count on it; it is January.
–Learn something new: I thought the term “Janus” was a fancy way of calling someone a liar, ’cause he’s the two-faced Roman god, but it turns out that he’s two-faced because he’s looking both forwards and back. Janus is the god of hallways and doors and gates, portals and new beginnings. Which his namesake month, January, allegedly is. We’ll see.
–Whatever you do, don’t wear two pairs of tights of profoundly different waist-levels–the higher one will somehow push the lower one down (and down and down), and you will spend the entire day trying to reach unobtrusively under your skirt to recalibrate things. This final point, which I am currently living out, will probably discourage anyone from taking any of my other advice. So be it.

Your English is good
RR

January 14th, 2009

Woes

Woes are not what Rose-coloured is about, so I’ll spare you (no, I won’t: my eyelashes froze this morning; inadequate communication; excessive communication; I saw someone on the subway reading a blank duotang for 13 stops). *Anyway,* all will be mitigated when I go to Pivot at the Press Club tonight and see Kyle Buckley, Rocco de Giamcomo and Jessica Westhead be awesome.

Right? Right.

I guess I changed my mind
RR

January 13th, 2009

Rose-coloured Reviews “The Limner” by Julian Barnes

I like to think I’m an astute enough reader to recognize a good story even if it is one that doesn’t appeal to me personally. I’m sure there are flaws in my judgement, things I judge to be objectively bad when in fact it’s just my subjective taste talking, but I do try on that front. Conversely, I try not to let personal pleasure in a story ellide it’s objective flaws. For some reason, the latter task feels tougher than the former.

Julian Barnes’s short story, The Limner, in last week’s New Yorker was delightful reading. It is a Victorian period piece about a travelling artisan, an self-trained portrait painter (that’s what a limner is). It’s lovely, detailed in the specifics of the back and front of house relations and authentic in how only the most “Christian” of clients would treat a travelling artisan as a guest in their homes rather than a servant.

There’s also lots of subtle visual description in this story, doubly emphasized because the protagonist is both a painter and deaf. We get the intricacy of the claw-foot piano and the customs officer’s waistcoat button as Wadsworth works to portray them on the canvas, the limner’s mare “shook her tail against the flies, or impatiently raised her neck.” Barnes does an admirable job of making these elements not just visual beauties but technical challenges of the painter. Barnes is also does much detailed work on facial expressions, because this is principally how Wadsworth understands human communication. Deaf since 5, he has never learned to lip-read or speak, so he relies on notebook to both send and receive communication.

But really, with most people, Wadsworth can “could silently perceive their meaning”: he observes the attitudes of their faces and bodies and divines their hearts, their true values.

Sounds a bit fairy-tale-ish, or at least morality-tale-ish doesn’t it? This isn’t *exactly* relevant, but if you have worked with recent grade-school-level pedagogical materials, you’ll know it’s considered unhelpful for young students to read stories like this, stories that imply a disability in one area confers a perhaps semi-supernatural gift in another. The stereotype of the moral-superhero parapalegic is just damaging and silly as the stereotype of the dumb blond or viscious jock.

The stereotypes and stock characters are pretty thick on the ground in Barnes’s story, though: in addition to the moral and perceptive deaf artist, there is Mr. Tuttle, the customs officer who poses for his portrait. He’s a customs officer and ungenerous, argumentative, undignified, self-important–shock! And a garden boy who is simple and sweet, “an elf with eyes of burnt umber.”

The resolution of the story is nearly contained in the fourth paragraph. We know in the first that the customs officer is awful, Wadsworth deaf, devout and humble. Then, we learn “And then there had been that incident on the third evening, against which he had failed—or felt unable—to protest. It had made him sleep uneasily. It had wounded him, too, if the truth were known.” An action against the child by the customs officer, we learn straightaways too, and what to be done about it?

I won’t, I guess, reveal what exactly, but suffice to say that no character goes against type or expectation, and that the end is quite satisfying in a fairy-tale way. It was very pleasant reading both because I like Victorian fiction (yes, yes, me, your high-school English teacher and your great-aunt Elsbeth) and because I like fairness. And the level of detail and colour was high and lovely.

But really, I think that’s all there was–nothing surprising or challenging or at all beyond the level of pleasant. Which is really hardly what I’d expect from a *New Yorker* short story. A momentary pleasure, quickly forgotten. How shocking.

I did my best to make it / when the call came down the line
RR

January 12th, 2009

Fire in Japanese

Kaji da!

I’m not waiting on a lady / I’m just waiting on a friend
RR