March 1st, 2011

Love song for letters

I am into sending and receiving letters. I am actually into all forms of communication. Writing is (natch) a favourite–but the letter-love originates way before I ever anticipated an audience larger than one at a time. As a kid (and still), I had no family beyond parents/brother/pets in Canada. I wrote a newsletter for the household, but that did not satisfy my need to communicate–I wanted to contact with the outside world. My parents attempted to corral a few recalcitrant relatives into writing to me, and I would get the occasional note (I actually got more gifts than letters in the post, so I shouldn’t complain). By and large, though, I couldn’t get the long-form sustained letter-exchange that forms literary collections (I was, at this point, 7 or 8, so you can’t really blame them–often my letters consisted of descriptions of the houses on our road).

My most attentive relative, a step-uncle who, unsurprisingly, was a writer, used to call me “my faithful correspondant” because I usually responded to whatever he sent by return mail. He also once sent detailed instructions for folding a letter into thirds so that it would fit into a normal envelope–a trick I’d been having trouble with.

In grade school, a popular writing exercise was to pass out overseas penpal addresses to anyone who was interested. I signed up every time the program was offered, and quickly exhausted pals in Argentina, England, and Norway. These days, most people who want to keep up a long term correspondance do so by email, which is fine with me–old-fashioned as it is, I’m more concerned with the medium than the message. But I do *like* getting letters, when someone chooses to send me one. There are a few people in the world who send me mail, and it does make me very happy to see a penned address in the mailbox (unless it is my own handwriting on a self-addressed stamped envelope, signifying literary rejection).

The point of all this is that I was so charmed by Arcade Fire’s We Used to Wait when I realized it was about nostalgia for sending and receiving letters. It’s a strangely sweet song, I think, off the (I hear) Grammy-winning album *The Suburbs*. You can listen at the above link, and/or read the lyrics I will now attempt to transcribe for you below (yes, I still believe the exercise of listening closely enough to transcribe song lyrics is somehow helpful for my writing. I’m just not sure how.)

We Used to Wait/Arcade Fire

I used to write
I used to write letters
I used to sign my name
I used to sleep at night
Before the flashing lights settled deep in my brain

But by the time we met
By the time we met the times had already changed
So I never wrote a letter
I never took my true heart
I never wrote it down
So when the lights cut out
I was lost standing in the wilderness downtown

Now our lives are changing fast (repeat)
Hope that something pure could last (repeat)

It seemed strange
How we used to wait for letters to arrive
What was stranger still
Is how something so small could keep you alive

(We used to wait)
We used to waste hours just walking around
(We used to wait)
All those wasted lives in the wilderness downtown
(Ooo, we used to wait) (repeat 4x)
Sometimes they never came (repeat 2x)
Still movin through the pain

I’m gonna write a letter to my true love
I’m gonna sign my name
Like a patient on a table
I wanna walk again
Gotta move through the pain

Now our lives are changin fast (repeat)
Hope that something pure could last (repeat)
(We used to wait) (repeat x3)
Sometimes they never came (repeat)
Still moving through the pain
We used to wait (repeat)

We used to wait for it (repeat)
And now we’re screaming
Sing the chorus again

We used to wait for it (repeat)
And now we’re screaming
Sing the chorus again

I used to wait for it (repeat)
And now we’re screaming
Sing the chorus again

Wait for it (repeatx3)

February 28th, 2011

The Bad Driver Chronicles

I was once a fairly awesome driver–I could navigate street-parking in downtown Toronto without getting (too) flustered and drove solo to Ottawa and Massachussets. Not truly champion material, but I was damn good. It didn’t come naturally to me though; I struggled learning to drive and only got my license on the third try. It didn’t help that my driving instructor turned out to be crazy (he mainly played the magnetic fish game and chanted hymns while I drove), so I had to learn to drive from my father. The adage that you should never learn to drive from someone who loves you is true–it’s just too scary for them to let you drive the speed limit. Add to that that my dad is the best driver I know, and can’t really accept that I could be less good than him but still competent, and also at that time he hadn’t been a passenger seat in 20 years (I’m barely exaggerating) and you have basically a year of shouting matches. But he taught me well, and after I was finally able to drive unsupervised, I had jobs that caused me to drive long distances every day, cementing my lessons.

However, there was a period of, oh, the last 10 years, when I’ve only occasionally needed to drive, and rarely had a car available otherwise. And my skills, such as they were, atrophied. It took a long time to get into trouble–like I say, I was actually pretty good, so I had a long way to fall. But I realized this summer, too late, trying to drive through Quebec City on the TransCanada, that I’m not all that good anymore. I still know the rules of the road, and I’m still fairly smooth most of the time. But I’m no longer a good enough driver to deal with bad drivers–and as anyone who’s been on a public thoroughfare knows, one really has to be. If you cut me off and it’s a close call for me not to hit you, I’m so floored that it’s miles before I’m able to pull it together. I don’t know what would happen if this happened twice in close succession.

I also have a huge problem with tailgaters–they scare me to death. I actually tried to look up if tailgating is illegal in Ontario but couldn’t figure it out (but did find out that the only time it is legal for an airplane to take off from a provincial highway is when it had to land there for emergency puroposes). Do you know? Anyway, to me tailgating is following so closely that you would not have sufficient time to stop if the person in front braked suddenly (ie., if a cat ran in the road, a sudden slowdown in traffic, meteor shower). I think people do it to subtly remind me that I am driving too slowly, or perhaps to punish me for doing so.

And I do occasionally drive too slowly. Good drivers and bad drivers alike both speed, but only bad drivers ever drive too slowly for conditions. It’s really really hard to convince one’s reptile brain that when piloting a tonne of hurtling steel amid other tonnes of hurtling steel, the safest thing to do is not to slow down but speed up. Mainly I can force myself, and since I’m not driving alone these days, otherwise my passenger/coach will tell me to pick up the pace. However, when really startled or panicked, yes, I admit it, I’m that idiot going 70km/h in the centre lane on the Gardiner.

I’m sorry! I really am, and it usually only takes me a minute or two to get it together. For the folks behind me who are infuriated by that 70k minute, please just honk or give me the finger or something that does not imperil our lives. Because trust me, giving me a new thing to be afraid of is not going to speed things along!

I’m a little worried that this post makes me sound like a public nuisance and/or a danger, and I’m really not–I’m just not 100% as a driver. I want to be, and am trying to practice, but since there is almost no time that I *need* to drive, and anyway, I don’t have a car, it’s a bit of a slow process. If you have any tips about how to get back in the saddle as a confident driver, how to shake off tailgaters, or even a Toronto driving instructor that teaches not how to drive but how to driver really well, I’m all ears!

February 27th, 2011

Outline Issues

Do you ever write outlines for written pieces before you write them? The last 4 words of that sentence seem redundant, but they actually aren’t for me. The only time I do an outline is after I have a working draft of a story. I call them “story maps,” partly because I like having my own terminology for stuff, partly because since it’s an outline of a thing that exists, it’s mapping the terrain rather than charting a course (as an outline would be). Story maps are a great way to see if your pacing is messed up (if your outline reads, “pages 3-4: describe room,” that’s a bad sign) and if you are putting the emphasis where you want it to (see previous example).

Even after-draft outlines are pretty rare; I don’t usually outline at all. My excuse is that everything I write is pretty short, less than 20 pages, so I can keep it pretty well clear in my mind without having to make any notes. I’m pretty sure, if I wrote a novel it would have to be different, but then again, maybe that’s just why I’ve never successfully written a novel–I’m just not an outliner.

I’m working on an essay right now that needed an outline as part of the review process. Even though I obsessed about it for ages, looking up “essay outlines” online, and got some good advice from Scott, I *could not* write the outline until I had gotten a good chunk of the essay draft written. The essay draft actually sucked quite hard, and now that I have written a lovely outline and had it approved, I am vigorously rewriting the draft to coincide with what I actually outlined. But I needed that sort of lame “warm-up” writing to even know how I want the essay to be. Weird, eh?

I haven’t written a proper essay in a while (what’s on this blog being very improper indeed). Now that I’m back in this mode, I recall doing this sort of thing in school, even grad school: you research, you make notes, and then you start basically at random and write until you have a good idea–then you go on from there trying to shape an essay, and later go back and scrap everything you wrote upt until that point. This is a pretty inefficient way to do things, but really it’s just thinking on the keyboard, and it makes me feel productive.

Does it sound smug or misguided (or both) to say I feel lucky that I’m not one of those writers who can’t put down a sentence until they’re sure it’s brilliant? If I were that sort, I don’t know if I’d ever write anything; most of what I write, even at my most inspired, requires huge revising. I wish I could outline properly, because I think it would save me some time, but I don’t really mind my process (except in outline-required circumstances). I’ve always thought a certain percentage of willingness-to-revise could be substituted for actual brilliance. At least, I hope it works that way.

February 22nd, 2011

Retro moment–April 29, 2001

I totally meant to blog all day today, but somehow none of my ideas seemed to pan out. Then I happened to glance at this really old journal entry, and it made me laugh–perhaps it will have the same effect on you?

Before you read it, I have to say that living inside my own brain makes it difficult to tell if I’m changing or maturing at all. Usually I’m pretty sure I’m not, and am exactly the same as I was at 18. Or 15. But a few things in this post are actually quite different than my current modus operani. For example:
–many questionable dietary decisions (this was before I really knew what fat content was)
–owned a Walkman (even in 2001, this was a bit odd, actually)
–spending actual money on *Glamour* (I would still be happy to read *Glamour*, if someone happened to give me one for free–paying for it is where I draw the line)
–spelling “deal” as “dil” (I regret this deeply!)
–casual use of the word “bitch”, a word I’m pretty careful with these days
–rather worked up over having to use cash machine. I can’t honestly remember why this was–maybe I had higher banking fees back then?

Anyway, here you are–a random day from 10 years ago, when I was slightly different than I am now:
—
In the first moments of the doomed April 29, I realized that I had no batteries for my walkman, which I wanted to listen to on the train. So, off I trotted to the dep, full of innocent hope. On the way there, noticed copious police cars and tape. Figure there was an accident. Proceed to dep. Select batteries and Butterfinger bar. As I go to pay, cops enter and announce that someone was just stabbed across the street, that the stabber is still wandering around and we have the choice of staying barricaded in the dep until they bring the dogs in to find him, or running home now. This is bad.

Bad for the person who got stabbed, bad for business at the dep, but also bad for me, who now has no time to pay by interact and has to give up five dollars of her paltry remaining cash. Sprint home, lock all locks. Heart pounding. Worry about friends who are out and will have to walk home alone. Freak out. Go to bed at one and lie there freaking out for a while. Wake up at five, in order to have an hour to get ready in. Worry about stabber. Have time on hands so do dishes?!

Call cab (note: cab lady is a lot friendlier and less likely to hang up on you at dawn). Arrive at station and give cab driver all of remaining cash. Walk in. Train is not listed on departure board. Get sinking feeling. Ask man at desk what the dil is with 7am train. He explains that it is Sunday and therefore there *is* no 7am train. I beg to differ, as I have a ticket for said train. Upon examination, the ticket proves to be for the previous day. Wish to kill man who sold it to me under the pretence of it being for Sunday. Wish to kill self for not checking. Put head down on the ticket guy’s desk. Is too early to comtemplate alternative plan.

Debate calling parents at 6:10am, but extreme exhaustion makes me unable to be considerate of others. As it turns out, *they were having breakfast and it was a good thing I called so early because they would have left soon to meet by 11:30 arriving train in the city an hour away*. My parents now exist in an entirely parallel universe. They are extremely sypathetic but have no good ideas. Mother suggests waiting three hours in train station for first real train of the day, but am not wild about that idea. Return to ticket man (all this while dragging suitcases, I might add. Heavy suitcases).

Ask him for phone number of bus station, which he writes out for me. He attempts to tell me something helpful about using the old ticket next time, which causes me to be snippy and say I can’t understand the machinations of the VIA universe because I have been up since 5am. Storm off. Stop and turn around and say, “Well, so have you, I guess”. Feel like giant bitch, likely because I am one.

Call bus station. For $60 extra dollars and several extra hours, can finally leave city. Hurrah? Return *again* to ticket desk to ask directions to bank machine so as to get cash for taxi. Extremely nice ticket man says he will pay for my taxi, which he calls for me, instructs the driver and opens the door for me. Am truly giant bitch. Props to lovely VIA ticket man.

Arrive at train station. Purchase ticket. Eat terrible egg and tomato (??) sandwich, made by the waitress at the restaurant because the cook was apparently missing or possibly dead (I ascertained this by listening to the waitress shriek “JOHNNY” for five minutes until it was clear if he was in fact still alive and in the building, he would be kneeling in supplication with eardrums bleeding by then). Buy Glamour and Chuppa Pops. Examine fellow travellers. Bus passangers have none of the air of shabby gentility of those on the train – some are different to distinguish from people who just sleep at the bus depot. I am puzzled by this, as the price difference is really not very much.

Board bus. At least are no chickens. Get teensy tiny double seat to self (makes you appreciate the turquoise semi-spaciousness of the train) and spend rest of day studiously avoiding eye contact with new passengers so will not have to share. Read Glamour, eat apple. Time passes. Woman behind me occasionally pokes me in the shoulder by “accident” and attempts to speak to me in some non-English, non-French language which she never seems to believe that I just don’t understand. Am past caring.

Wake up in Kingston with hood somehow over face. Each lunch lying on grass median of the bus station parking lot. Return to bus and lapse into blissful unconsciousness. Somehow arrive in TO *early*. Wait outside for family. See car at the lights, wave and trot over. They don’t see me and drive off, leaving me looking like a freak in front of taxi drivers, who honk at me. Eventually brother arrives and shepards me, whimpering, to car. Eat spaghetti. Go home.

Discover computer will not disgorge story that needs to be finished by tomorrow. This means must wake up at 8 as opposed to say, 3, to go to Bureau en Gros to see if they can print it out, which they probably can’t. Is now time for bed, if I do not slip in the shower and knock myself out first. Fingers crossed.

February 18th, 2011

Reminder about Public Lending Right

In case you haven’t heard, the Public Lending Right is Canadian authors’ hard-won right to be compensated for our books in the public libraries, and registration for published in 2010 (or prior) opened on February 15, so if you’ve published a book in Canada, you should sign up.

February 17th, 2011

Rose-coloured reviews a nice day (and the movie *Somewhere*)

After finishing a stressful project at work, I’m taking a few days off to rest, read, write, and bum around. It’s magically warm in the city right now, and I have a busy weekend ahead, so it’s been really nice to float around in my own happy cloud. I get sick of my own company though–I’m much less of a solitaire than writers are supposed to be. So midafternoon today I headed out to a Starbucks, hoping to write there and also eavesdrop on a few angst-ridden teens (yes, I timed my excursion to coincide with school getting out).

I was totally not in luck, winding up in a cafe filled with sullen old people (“You’re sitting in my seat. I left my things there!” pointing to a stir stick) and shrieking toddlers. I wound up between two fellow laptop jockeys, so had no choice but to work for a while. Then I lucked out when an old woman passing in the street glanced in the window, spotted the fellow beside me and came in (Toronto is far more like a small town than most people give it credit for). I think she was his mother, and they proceeded to get into an argument about whether he was doing enough to help his brother find an apartment. Then they looked at some places on Craigslist, but nothing was really resolved. Then she left, and we all got back to work.

Starbucks bonus–on my way out, I finally found a table of young teens and as I passed, one who was *maybe* 14 dropped her head into her hands and exclaimed, “Worst life *ever*!”

Then I did a little gift shopping for a friend, and went to have dinner in a food court. While I was eating my ginger chicken, a man and a woman approached me to ask if I would take their picture. There was nothing scenic about this underground food court (why, yes, I *am* happy with how I’m spending my vacation, thank you), so I guess they just wanted to be captured together. They both spoke imperfect English, but she was Asian and he maybe Middle Eastern. They were unhappy with the first shot, and really also the second though they were too embarrassed to ask me to take a third (I wouldn’t have minded). I thought they were a couple, but as they were walking a way, I heard her ask him for his email address. What was their story, I wonder.

Then I went to the bathroom, and as I entered a woman brushed past me on her way out. The woman behind her announced, “You have toilet paper on your shoe” in an Irish accent (ok, honestly, she could’ve been Australian or Maritime Canadian–I’m terrible with accents). The first woman did not stop and, slightly put out, the possibly Irish woman chased her into the hallway yelled, “YOU HAVE TOILET PAPER ON YOUR SHOE!” before coming back in to wash her hands. In this very same bathroom, I also witnessed a woman scrubbing her hands as if preparing to perform surgery, whilst singing a merry tune.

Then I grabbed some mango frozen yoghurt and went to the movies to see Somewhere. I’d read a review that said the film revisits director Sophia Coppola’s obsession with celebrity, but I always thought she was obsessed with people. Sure, Lost in Translation was about people touched by fame, but it was also about being stuck in your own stupid skin, which is what The Virgin Suicides was about (VS is also one of the few movies that comes close to being as enrapturing as the book on which it is based. Close.)

Anyway, stupid reviews aside, I knew I would like a quiet movie about a dad and his kid set in sunny LA, and I was right. This movie is a gentle confection, sweet not like sacchrine but like cherries. It’s about the theme mentioned above, but also about the simple solace of *doing things*–characters in this movie drive cars, ice skate, dance, play piano, play Wii and Guitar Hero, play ping-pong, cook, make masks, play guitar, and do a host of other things that require attention, often for minutes-long takes. It’s lovely to watch the characters shake off their misery (no one’s particularly happy here) and immerse themselves in the task at hand. This is also the first time I’ve ever seen video games portrayed in the movies as not the refuge of sullen dolts, but lots of fun. A milestone, I think.

The movie has no soundtrack until the 80-minute mark (I happened to glance at my watch), so we hear what the characters hear. They listen to music sometimes, whole songs even, but incidental noise looms really large, especially since there’s little dialogue. In the pole-dancing scenes, you hear the rub of flesh on pole, and in the Guitar Hero one, the click of keys.

Since the stars, Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning play it *way* understated, the cinemetography is the real star here, and the film is glorious to watch. All kinds of weird shot of models watching down the hall silhouette by the sun behind them, or the stars goofing about underwater. There was also a mysterious theme about plaster that I didn’t really get. Early in the movie, Dorff’s character Johnny breaks his wrist and spend most of the rest of the film with it in a cast, which he rips off towards the end–symbolism of butterfly emerging from chrysalis?? God, I hope not. Johnny also has a plaster cast made of his face for some movie special effects thing (never explained) and a cast of his hand made when he is welcomed to Milan (again, not really sure why). If anyone knows what the plaster theme meant, please let me know.

But really, who cares? This was such a quiet, gorgeous, incredibly sad film–this was the sort of film I would make if I could. I didn’t care too much for the epiphany at the end, but I suppose they had to give us something.

And then I trotted home, typed this up, and will write a few other little things, before cheerfully to bed. Tomorrow I’m trying a new ballet class!

February 14th, 2011

Be Nice to Everyone Day

I’ve mellowed on V-day over the years–if you dig pink cupcakes and mylar balloons, for yourself or a friend or significant other or anyone at all, I say go for it. I wish deli counter in my grocery store weren’t covered in such things, but in general I find them benign at worst, kinda sweet at best.

However, I am still not convinced we need a whole day to remind us to be nice to those, by most definitions of romantic love, we are already usually nice to. I see a much greater need for a “Don’t grunt at the bus-driver; say thank you!” day. Or a “Don’t let the door slam in the guy behind you’s face” day. A “Don’t shoot the messenger” day or a “Help out your colleagues!” day. A “Turn down the stero without the neighbours banging on the wall” or “Take out your earbuds at the cash register!” day. Sometimes I worry that Western society places such a great emphasis on couple-dom because that’s where the greatest return on investment is. Eternal love and happiness? Sure, I’ll make you that odd dessert you like. But a waitress I might never see again? Where’s the return on being civil to her?

So, I hope you have an awesome day today, and whatever your plans are this evening, I hope they are lovely. I’m going to try to make everyone’s day as nice as possible, people I love, people I just like a little, and total strangers.

Ok, and in case this is insufficiently romantic for Valentine’s, here’s something I found in Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo, which I find entirely apt and lovely:

“And I believe people are wrong who think love prevents one from thinking clearly, for it is then that one thinks very clearly and is more active than before. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as between and unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and it was a good lamp, but now it sheds light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one more calm about many things, and so one is more fit for one’s work.”

February 13th, 2011

Kitten in Slow Motion

For anyone else who maybe had a crappy week last week, I bring you kitten in slow motion (via Mark). Not just for rabid kitten fanciers like myself, this is 121 seconds of pure sunlit joy, albeit joy experienced by someone who wants to eat a little fake bird attached to the end of a wire.

Hope it helps you cheer up, too!

February 11th, 2011

Rose-coloured reviews *Inventory* by Dionne Brand

Dionne Brand’s Inventory is a long poem in seven sections and many subsections. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a 100-page poem outside of school before, and that might be one reason this book stayed on my shelf so long, though I’ve always enjoyed Brand’s work in the past.

And what I’ve enjoyed is still there–the rhythmic voice and global vocabulary, sadness without cynicism and, very occasionally, plainspoken joy. The subject is the grim catologing of the world’s dead and other damages, wrought mainly through war but natural disasters and local violence make appearances, too. The sadness was challenging to deal with, no question, especially because of the ever-shifting narrator’s bafflement and slow-burning rage. But though I read very slowly, I felt no urge to stop to read something more cheery.

The poem is described on the jacket as “incantatory,” a word I always thought meant “in the manner of singing” but actually turns out to be “in the manner of chanting a magic spell.” *Inventory* actually seemed like both, like a song of sorrows and a magic spell to help the reader bear them. Although it is incredibly sad–it is after all an inventory of death–I felt the character’s love for the world in her sadness, and her warm and constant attention to the real details of real life. “Half the mind is atrophied in this / just as inanimate doors and pickup trucks / the unremitting malls of all desire.” What I think this means is that pain makes us objects, inanimate, unable to feel, but not entirely–we’ll never stop desiring. Am I close? Who knows! I like the lines, though, and when I don’t understand I feel secure nonetheless with these concrete nouns recognizable and benign.

I say “character,” but the book is tricksy on this aspect. The first section starts with “We believed in nothing” and continues in the first person plural throughout–not a defined group, I felt, but more a we-the-people, we-the-world’s-citizens. At the beginning of the last stanza of the first section, the lines ” now we must wait on their exhaustion, now / we have to pray for their demise with spiked hands” I was pretty sure she meant “everybody.” The second and third sections specify down onto a single person, “she,” a watcher of boys eating burgers and slick cities, a watcher of news on TV and, resulting from that, a weeper. “She” seems distinct from the narrator, who seems to identify with her closely and yet sometimes to pull back to a greater distance. Towards the end of the third section we get “we, / there is no “we” / let us separate ourselves now, / though perhaps we can’t.” Does this mean separation between the narrator and “she”? I think rather it means the impossibility of the “we-the-world” global consciousness in the first section–we can’t identify with each other really, yet we are stuck with each other, humanity’s collective fate impinging on all of our personal fates. Or something like that.

And “she” is observing fates both collective and personal. Where I got excited was in the fourth section, which is divided into subsections. The first of these returns to the “we,” but it is much more specific and intimate than before–now “we” are on a trip, touring Al Rifai Mosque, listening to the guard sing and wondering at the beauty. And then in the second subsection we finally get a “me”–“a voice called to me, “Welcome back, Cousin.” I can’t tell you why I was so happy about this, but I felt sort of like it was a homecoming, the narrator reunited with “she” to become a more cogent, personal whole.

Again, no idea if I’m close–this review (a good one, both in the sense of being positive and of being well-written) mentions there being several “characters” in the book, which seems plausible, but I’m happy with the idea of one woman in many guises, from many angles. In the fourth section, she’s being mistaken for someone else, or might be–this man’s cousin–though she’s willing to admit the possibility.

The next section is an elegy for someone who left and was mourned for, and is dedicated to Marlene Green. If Green is a public figure, I don’t know of her (Google fails me); perhaps that’s not the case. I read the section as broken-hearted sorrow for lost love, because I felt the book getting more intimate and because I felt that the “she/I” mourned a personal loss beyond what she saw on tv.

The 5th and 6th sections move back and fourth with “I” and “she”, with a fair amount of “you” thrown in, but I already felt implicated. They are also beautiful, beautiful, but what I read this morning on the bus is the thing that burst my head open, and that’s the 7th section, which begins “On reading this someone will say / God, is there no happines then, of course, tennis matches and soccer games, / and river song and bird song and / wine naturally and some Sundays.” And so it goes, the last dozen pages of the book, a genuine, faltering, beautiful attempt to offer comfort, succour, joy or something like it in the face of tragedy. This section would not have been half so stunning were it not in the context of all that came before, were it not in some small sense *earned* by the reader. I don’t doubt that I’ll sometimes take the book down and read only the 7th section, to revel in it, but it’ll never feel quite the same way without the rest.

What a stunning book. One thing I thought upon closing it is that it must’ve been so hard to write. However, in the reading of it, the strain of emotion is apparent, but never the strain of poetry–maybe poetry is the real succour?

This is the 4th book in my To Be Read challenge. The first poetry collection, and also the first Canadian book. Interesting, whatever that says about what languishes on my shelves.

February 8th, 2011

Evolution of Language: Really Trying Here

Language is a constant work in progress, shedding antiquated words and usages while growing new ones. One reason I have so much trouble with this concept is that it is my job *not* to accept the newest of the new growth. When you edit formal instructional prose for a living, what’s being said on the street, no matter how popular and well understood, is not really acceptable on page.

At least, that’s my excuse. Another real part of my problem is that I am resistant to change in any form. I like the first thing I find that works, and see no reason to replace it until it becomes impossible not to. I listened to cassette tapes until they were barely available, I have the same furniture I bought in 1998, and I will not be purchasing a cell phone until Bell actually refuses to give me a land line (actually, I think we might be rather close to that last one).

But that doesn’t *exactly* fit my idea of language. I like cool new things if they serve a new purpose, express a new thought: I like slang, idioms, and phonetic spellings that better express how people actually speak. And since people don’t actually speak grammatically, I’m fine with writing dialogue in the choppy, elliptical way most of us actually converse. When something new *does* something new, I like that (ok, cell phones do many things that landlines don’t do, fine. Let’s just admit it: cell phones frighten me.)

What makes me editorially and personally insane is expressing something WE ALREADY HAVE WORDS FOR in a dumber way for no reason. Which is why I continued to repudiate “they” as a gender neutral personal pronoun for so long. It’s fine in quick casual speech, but to insist on making this a formal decision indicates to me, “I cannot spend 10 seconds recasting this sentence into the plural, or a specific example, or deal with a adding six characters with ‘his or her.'” I am snarky about this sort of lack of effort–the fault is not the English language’s.

However, someone recently told me that some trans people prefer to have the pronoun “they” applied to themselves in the singular. And some people don’t, by birth or by choice or by medical intervention, identify in the gender binary. Their lives are probably hard enough without an inappropriate pronoun or, even worse, “it.” Does anyone know if this is actually a common usage in the trans community, or outside it? If it is really being used, I guess it is good that the use of the singular “they” is so common now, that anyone being referred to as such wouldn’t necessarily feel singled-out or condescended to. It’s just something that sometimes gets said. I mean, in most contexts I still hate it, but it’s good to have the option.