Adam Abbas, author

A Discussion on Setting and the Attraction of Canada

2012-01-08T09:29:00.000-08:00

On the subject of the attraction of Canada:

Being told that the country I live in isn't "sexy", and therefore does not sell products, is odd. Putting aside the triteness of the all-encompassing "sex sells" business maxim...this controversial statement spills over into my own self-image. Am I contributing to the lack of appeal in Canada? Guilt by association, theoretically if all Canadians were sexy then there would be no problem, website posts like these are boring, you're doing it to yourself without even noticing...

...Or is it the varied ecospheres of Canada? The flat prairies, the cold and uninviting north territories, the endless uniform trees?

Is it the fact that we're considered an integrated rather than an assimilated society? And based on that, the idea that we have no real identity of our own and rely on the US and the rest of the globe to further our own cultural progress?

Is it the notion that we're all considered docile and polite, with the exception of middle-aged Canadian women whom are thought to be loud and ignorant?

Is it how some artists based in Canada and trying to break into the US don't outwardly express their Canadian heritage? (which can actually work for Canada's benefit when the band is awful, even though the truth eventually comes out)

Or is it the lack of recognition as to what happens in a Canadian city? Our cities haven't been explored in art and media to the extent that cities like Tokyo or England have. And they lack the mystery which unknown cities like Antananarivo (capital of Madagascar) have. Canadian cities seem to be unknown, but who would want to know them?

On the subject of setting:

Robert McKee writes in Story that a precise setting in a story will give way to more possibilities and appeal, as opposed to a broad and unspecified setting which limits expression.
This is important when trying to write a story about Canada. In my opinion - the crucial aspects of setting are how appealing and relatable it is. The problem is, how do you write about a certain Canadian setting if people won't find it appealing?

My thoughts on these two matters:

The problem of writing an appealing Canadian setting has plagued me for awhile. Of course it's possible to write within a specific, unknown, seemingly boring Canadian setting - Alice Munro has done it repeatedly to great success.
The issue of setting doesn't limit her simply because her stories are so complex and absorbing that people pay the setting no real mind, not thinking to themselves of all the conceptions about Canada which I listed above.

Still, it seems that the odds are weighed against Canadian writers. The Life of Pi for example is considered a Canadian book but describes Canada as full of people with bad haircuts, and not really much else. It takes a lot to have the talent which Alice Munro wields, or yields, I don't know which. To base a story in a boring Canadian landscape and not have it reflect that boredom could be a difficult task. Of course it's a battle.

But it's not impossible to imagine a great love story based in the prairies of Saskatchewan or Alberta. Just because the audience doesn't have an awareness or interest in the prairies, that doesn't mean it can't be instilled if the story is written well enough. To say there's no sexual appeal in the Canadian prairies is inherently ridiculous just because of how it looks on the surface. Canadian authors who base their work solely in, New York City because it's well-known and everyone wants to go there, is weak to me. Of course a Canadian author can base stories in New York, but to try and capitalize on it without any mention of their own country/background is fake.

Any setting can be attractive. It's based on how the characters perceive and interact with it. But - I would argue that a setting doesn't need to be the central part of a story, because if a story focuses too much on a setting which no one really knows, it will eventually become tiresome and alienate the reader.

Of course an author may think, "What can I really do with this setting? What goes on here which is different and dangerous? How can I make this setting something which people will take a step back and re-consider, and actually get into?" It's something I struggle with...trying to write a story in Toronto while not thinking it's only going to appeal to Canadians. That's where research and imagination come in.

Lynx

2011-10-20T13:05:00.000-07:00

The lynx, one of my favourite animals.

Elusive and stylish.

I was surprised to find out that in inhabits areas in both western Canada and Spain (the Iberian lynx), two very different climates.

I wonder if this scene ever happened: a young man walking around the outskirts of Ibiza as the sun begins to rise, after the most hedonistic, devastating and fortunate party experience of his life. He sits on the ground, and sees a lynx staring at him from far away. The lynx stares, then leaves, and the young man watches it go...and then starts running, chasing it.

The difference between Toronto and Ottawa

2011-08-20T17:48:00.000-07:00

Specifically, the rivalry. The clash, which runs deeper than drunken hockey shouting matches and brawls and Leafs graffiti sprayed in public parks in Ottawa.

Having lived in Ottawa from 2006 - 2008 (as well as spending my childhood there, yet I didn't notice the rivalry at that time) and currently living in Toronto, I've sensed a divide between the two Ontario cities. It could be easy to say that the rivalry stems from basic differences such as Ottawa having the status as Canada's capital whereas Toronto is only Ontario's capital, and the Canada Day celebration in Ottawa is way better, but that's not the deepest it sinks.

Toronto's obviously larger population equals more opportunity. And when I worked as a dishwasher in Ottawa I repeatedly heard people talk about what there really is in Ottawa - what oportunity could be capitalized on, and what room for growth there is aside from the governmental avenues. I remember reading an issue of the Ottawa Xpress wherein an artist was defending his move from Ottawa to Toronto, with the article praising the artist's seemingly imminent rise to fame. I haven't heard of him since moving here, but then again I haven't been paying attention to the art scene that closely. I never really was, though. All I remember was that the article seemed to be aware of the hostility which would be lobbied against the artist for moving.

When I was living in Ottawa a friend of mine said that she would move to Toronto because she wanted to see life at all hours of the night, to see people and vibrancy. And she said I could go anywhere and do anything, that I didn't have anything holding me back. And Ottawa has been compared to Winnipeg, where the small size of the city makes people know each other indirectly. Whenever I visit Winnipeg I almost always see people I've met or seen before. Although a smaller city, like a smaller college or university, can also lead to less impersonality between people since it's more tight-knit. Some people like that. I like that, but I don't think it's impossible to find a tight-knit group of people in a large city. The idea of pursuing artistic endeavours to the extent where you lose your desire to get to know and appreciate other people is disturbing, even though a necessary trait of any art is solitude.

The standard of living is also an important factor. Just as Toronto is thought to loook down on Ottawa, people from NYC or LA probably look down on Toronto. But I met people from NYC and they said Toronto is much better, and I've heard from an intelligent former native Californian that it's every liberal American's dream to move to Canada. As as enticing as living in NYC is, I wouldn't want to deal with mice, cockroaches, bedbugs, thieves, pollution, overly crowded streets, expensive items and living expenses, being looked down on for being Canadian, and other issues that would continually arise in order to live in NYC or LA. How much of my personal well-being would I have to sacrifice in order to say "I live in New York City" ? That's where I see Ottawa as having an edge over Toronto - the allure of a large city doesn't always match the toll it takes on your body and mind. I get stressed out here...but I got stressed out living by myself in Ottawa as well.

At different literary events I've heard the speakers make odd allusions to Ottawa which has sent the audience chuckling. I mean odd in the sense that they weren't being insulting. I can't remember what they said, unfortunately - all I remember is the vibe they created.

But this was the first sign that tipped me off about the tension between the cities: when I first moved to Ottawa I was walking around the Byward Market and saw a large banner that said TORONTO APPRECIATION DAY, but in front of this banner there was only a single little man hitting a small drum in a discordant manner. There was also a guy with a large camera filming him and also people's reactions.
Most people were just puzzled, but I saw the humour in it - the man hitting the drum represented the amount of appreciation people living in Ottawa (Ottawan, though I don't like that term) held for Toronto.
I laughed as I walked by and took it in, and the cameraman smiled and filmed me. I wonder where the footage went. Ruminating on it now, I wonder if the battle is continuing in the same media format, or different.

What was I going to achieve by continuing to live in Ottawa? What would've happened to me if I'd have stayed there? Walking through the Rideau Centre (this is another trait of Canadian cities - they all have a mall which marks the downtown core, somethng that Ottawa and Toronto share), I remember seeing a large poster for nuclear power, touting its benefits. This unnerved me slightly, like seeing a gun shop in the States for the first time.
Did/does Ottawa rely on nuclear power? I didn't know and still don't. But I felt that Toronto held more literary opportunity, and so I moved here. The city of Ottawa is laid out perfectly, its architecture, museums, streets, the parks, Hog's Back Park, the way to Hull...despite the fact that Ottawa was originally built on top of a swamp, it's lovely. I didn't have good luck with people there though, which was also part of the reason why I left. Yet Toronto held more allure for me and still does, even though I'd feel off wearing a Blue Jays cap.

I - the Play, SummerWorks Festival 2011

2011-08-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

I have a role in the play I, which is part of the SummerWorks Festival here in Toronto for 2011, and it's been great to have been a part of it so far. The Pulse Theatre Collective produced the play - written and directed by David Hersh and starring Emannuelle Zeesman - and their website can be found by clicking here.

The play is about a young female writer named Eugenia who moves to Paris (leaving her family and friends behind) to write her magnum opus. She meets the ghost of the playwright, who goes by the name of I, whom she's looked up to since childhood and he proceeds to become her mentor, although he quickly becomes tiresome and then eventually a threat.

My role in the play is small - I'm part of the Chorus and we represent I's mind. Which is a great concept, representing a ghost's mind. We're the ghosts within the ghost, it could be said.

I (the play) is metafictional and intertextual as it's based on a play by Eugène Ionesco. What appeals to me about the play is the role of I himself, who's played by David Macniven. I (the character) is self-aggrandizing, self-unaware and uninformed of basic concepts such as different religions, and cannot treat Eugenia with the respect and intelligence she bestows on him, instead baiting her into allowing him to play more games with her. Although this is interlaced with humour (and the play is very witty and funny, with an Abbot and Costello wraparound style)it still reflects on the character of I in a greater sense.

Because I gives Eugenia advice which is fundamental for success in writing, yet due to the nature of his character it wouldn't seem as though Eugenia would be apt to take it. I tells Eugenia that writing is a discipline, and that it needs to be done continuously - which reflects the advice I stumbled upon from the artist Chuck Close not too long ago.
Yet with all the stress Eugenia has to endure through I's mentorship, and his lack of real knowledge, it would be easy to cast aside his advice and just to do what she wants and feels.

To me this ties in closely to a parent-child relationship, where a parent might not know everything and can repel their children against their (maybe hard-fought) advice. And it also relates to the general idea of an author, and how some people look to them for the answers to all their questions.

Sometimes the artist is better off not known. There can be a transformation from an icon to a human being. Autonomy. I delves into this, albeit in a humorous fashion. Just throwing away all of our impressions and forging our own path is what Eugenia and I represent and also showcases the parent-child relationship where a growing child can decide not to follow the path of their parent. The rebellious artist, not knowing what will come of their endeavours. But if they stick with it, as I advises to, they can succeed.

I also tells Eugenia of what it takes to separate literature (wheat) from books (chaff). How a book has to either be someone cherishes or despises. And what would an author really want to create? One or the other or both? So these opposite ends of the spectrum graduate a book into literature. Which I think is sound advice to give to a young author because reading is only worthwhile if it sparks emotion and intellect.

Modeling

2011-07-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some modeling recently, and I'm represented by the Fulcher Agency here in Toronto.

My modeling website can be found by clicking here.

Modeling and writing don't seem to go hand in hand. One is considered vapid and the other intellectual (or for some, pseudo-intellectual). And I wrote earlier that I don't post too many pictures of myself here because it makes me feel self-ingratiating and self-absorbed.

But I've decided to try out modeling for a change of pace in jobs. After so much manual labour I'd like to make some money doing something fun. And do I really have to justify myself when it comes to this? I know what the boundaries of good taste are when it comes to modeling, and I'm not going to do anything embarrassing which people can look to in the future and ridicule and call me out on. I'm well aware of how someone's image can be tarnished and how public opinion can be swayed.

And it could be argued that there's no potential for literary growth in modeling. That it doesn't add breadth of experience which can contribute to a solid story. But I personally believe that all the arts should be interconnected. I act, I take photos, I play guitar, I paint. Although modeling might not be considered an artform, it relies on artforms in order to grow.

Modeling is not a question of narcissism. I know I'm not the best-looking model. I'm grounded. But it's all cool.

Opinions...

2011-06-28T11:10:00.001-07:00

It was recently mentioned to me by a good friend of mine that "All writing is opinion."

I don't fully agree with this, but then that's just my opinion.

We all know what opinions are like. So then everyone has one, and everyone is entitled to one. Which reminds me of the case against vanity publishing, wherein people will freely publish what they want and there won't be any filter of quality. Who's to say that my opinion is better than yours, however researched and polished it may be? It's yours, because the events in your life have moulded it to be so. A person's opinions could be said to play an integral part in who they are, and why should someone's identity (and stability as a result) be compromised to adopt an opinion which will force them to re-think and take steps backwards?

These are all questions I have as well.

Literature wholly comprised of opinion is a disturbing thought to me. What about the stories which were meant to function solely as stories without morals or what the author thinks? Is that possible?

If the question is what kind of literature do I value, that which is rebellious and subversive or that which isn't challenging and depicts common everyday aspects of life in clever and poignant ways which I previously haven't thought of...the answer would be both.
Both can be based on opinion and both can allow readers to glean their own meanings from the texts. But would they be better without?

Throughout this post I've gotten very tired of discussing something which has no answer and only leads to more dead-end questions. Which I suppose is the apotheosis of bad writing. So it would be best to stop now...

...on style and practicality.

2011-06-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

...and instead point out various elements of society which, in my opinion, shouldn't exist. Is this necessary? Does memorable literature tie into a blog post about bad trends? Most likely not. Should I overthink it? I feel like writing about it, so I may as well get it out of my system. I'm human, and this is the age I was born into, and in media-saturated times it's important to have a critical edge.
But still - for me, people can do and wear what they want. If they're judged by someone else, does it matter? No. Do what you want, live for yourself. Is true wisdom found in the strict classification of people who do certain things - how their entire future and entire output in life can be determined solely by certain little things they do or what they wear?

Some would say so. Some would also say that wisdom entails knowing all the characteristics of a certain ethnicity, knowing exactly how and why a person will act as a result.

But nevertheless there are still things that irritate me. To wit:

I saw someone wearing these on the subway some time ago. I along with other passengers were just staring. Because these shoes look absolutely ridiculous. There seems to be a push in today's world (or at least in North America) to be "futurized". I've previously discussed how authors (journalists) make attempts to create new words that sound stupid in order to "progress". Ugly shoes like this are the same thing.

Don't drink bottled water. Please don't. Buy a water filter and a water bottle and fill it up.
The sad part is that I've only just done this recently in terms of using a water bottle when I go out to exercise or skate. I rarely buy bottled water but when I do I feel like I've degraded the world just a little bit more. Which of course I have because bottled water is detrimental to the globe as a whole.

Not only Christmas music...
...but all music played in department stores and grocery stores.
I don't have social anxiety disorder. I'm comfortable in public. But I have to take my MP3 player with me when I go into these places because it's very uncomfortable to have to listen to the story of a lover's broken heart told through trite guitar riffs and high-pitched warbling singing as I'm looking for a mop and bucket. There's something wrong with that to me.
The emotion that these songs attempt to convey do not translate into a run-of-the-mill shopping experience at all. Not that the music I listen to is about run-of-the-mill shopping experiences whenever I enter Zellers. But I don't think people who enjoy the music or find something in it as they shop are wrong for doing so, I just find it personally uncomfortable.

I don't see the fixed gear bike (I hear they're fun) or plaid long-sleeved lumberjack shirt on here.
I can't stand being thought of as fitting into the hipster persona. I'm not trying to follow trends anymore, I'm not a teenager. I wear what's classic. I wear old-school Vans and I drink PBR sometimes. I wear hoodies rarely; they're more sporty than trendy though. I wear a painters cap with a Kansas City Royals logo on it and wear V-necked white shirts. Does this all mean I'm a hipster? Or is it separate elements combined with my youth which could make people label me as a hipster? Isn't it sad when people automatically fit you into a corner based on their assumptions and don't want to slightly try and see you as a human being? Or worse, they get to know you and still fit you into a corner despite your three-dimensionality?

The word "your" does not replace "you're". It doesn't matter. Right? Extinction of grammar through technology, it doesn't matter. Is the internet dumbing us down and reducing our attention spans? That's how it feels at times, but we can make the internet what we want it to be. But going with the flow and dumbing yourself (not you'reself, the way people mistake it) down in order to be in tune with the majority should not be the preferred choice. Neither should putting oneself on a pedestal and claiming to be better than most of the world due to not going with the flow, either. I just prefer to have things tighter than looser. Keep it tight, keep it focused.

And that's it for now.

Memories of the homeless asking for change

2011-06-09T06:05:00.000-07:00

Back when I was nine, I visited Toronto for the first time with my mother during the summer of 1994 and saw a Native homeless man asking for change on the street. A black man came up to him and said "Of course" and gave him some money and I was struck at how polite and gracious he was. Later on that same trip I rode the subway for the first time and saw two kids sitting opposite myself and my mother, with one of them shaping his fingers into a pistol, pointing them to everyone around him including the two of us, and going "bang bang bang".

When I was eleven and living in Winnipeg I bought a Big Gulp from a Seven-Eleven, but I couldn't drink all that soda. There was a man sitting on the curb outside of the store, and I gave the drink to him. He responded by saying "It's too big, it's too big" and my mother laughed but I was genuninely angry with how he responded - that he wasn't thankful and instead critical of getting something for free. If he was joking, I couldn't tell at the time.

When I was nineteen I drove to a beer vendor and bought a 12-pack case of PBR beer in bottles. The bottled beer didn't taste good to me but there was nowhere else to buy PBR in the city. I didn't know what to do with all the beer I'd bought. I didn't have anyone to drink it with and I couldn't bring it home. Driving through Osborne Village, downtown Winnipeg where I lived, there was someone sitting on the sidewalk asking for change; after I saw him I parked the car behind a building on the street, then brought the entire case of beer and gave it to him. I said something like "It doesn't taste that good" but he was so appreciative of it that he didn't care. I saw him a couple of days later on the street and he smiled and gave me a nod of thanks. I was always charitable, I still am.

A story of a story - back when I was a teenager, two kids I knew told me of a window-washer on the corner who had a sackful of change sitting in a bus stop. He told them that he had to keep running from thugs who would chase him with bats and steal all the change he'd received.

The homeless in Ottawa are rampant and when I was living there it felt like a parallel to Washington D.C.. A couple of years ago I came out of a Giant Tiger close to the city centre and two destitute men asked me for change. I responded by saying I didn't have any money, and they insisted that I did. So I insulted them and walked away while they came up with weak insults to fire back with. A little later on I saw a man become angry with a pedestrian because she wouldn't give him money.

A little while ago I was here in downtown Toronto walking past Union Station with a girl who'd later fight me and try to pull my hair out. We passed a homeless man sitting on the street asking for change and she looked into her purse. I told her that homeless people choose their lifestyle - there's a better way to live but they've made the choice to ask for change and live off of other people. By giving them change we only promote them to no go out and try to make a better quality of life for themselves. But I didn't try to stop her from giving him money, I only said it to give a new perspective.

There've been times where I've wanted to request a dance in exchange for the money, and the homeless man or woman and I would perform a spontaneous, perfectly choreogrpahed dance through downtown. Of course I never have.

"You can always depend on the kindness of strangers". This phrase should never become archaic. But it shouldn't justify panhandling.

Syllogism

2011-05-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

A equals X

X equals Y

A equals Y : definition of a syllogism.

Logic and order. You don't read a book backwards. Sentences shouldn't have words that are unnecessary. Paragraphs shouldn't have sentences that are unnecessary. Just like with music - there shouldn't be notes that don't have to be there. Everything is focused. The craft of writing can be understood, but not the soul of writing. Nadine Gordimer, a South African writer who focuses on apartheid, mentioned that creative writing classes did nothing for her because the soul of an artist can't be taught in a classroom.

I've taken a creative writing class before. I sparodically attend a writer's group. I never saw either of these as necessary for my work, I just believed and still believe that it's comforting to be around people who are in some respects the same as me.

Good music -

Old Wives' Tales

2011-04-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

* If you still get pimples after 30, you have the skills to build a lawnmower.

* If you're renting a new apartment and the previous tenant is a friend of someone you've seen before but haven't introduced yourself to, you'll eventually break a mirror.

* The best way to cure a broken arm is to start running everywhere you would normally walk to even if you're not in a hurry.

* You will give birth to octuplets if you won a surfboard in a Pepsi under the cap contest.

* A nine-year-old girl can cure chicken pox by trying to drive her parents' vehicle.

* The way to make leaves bloom early in the spring is to start smoking (19th-century logic)

* If you slightly burn yourself on a hot frying pan, an attractive older woman will smile at you someday.

* The best way to find a great new pair of sweatpants is to start pronouncing your "r"s as "w"s. (such as Wingo Staww)

* If you enjoy telling white lies, one day while singing karaoke you'll be ridiculed so badly by a group of teenagers that you'll want to be a teenager. And if you already are a teenager, you'll want to be friends with the teenagers ridiculing you.

Whispering and still, the wives wove the superstitions that we hold close. (but not really)

2011-04-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

This is what I look like. There aren't any photos on this website demonstrating that. I honestly don't want to post too many photos of my face or me in general because it gives me a feeling of self-absorption, but one can't hurt.

There are times when writing reminds me of how as children we would place one hand or fist on top of one another to see who would go first in a playground game, like Four Square or Mr. Wolf.

I was nineteen and twenty years old when I wrote Disassociation and I had it published when I was twenty-one. And since then, the range of people's reactions has been fascinating - from people who absolutely don't care to people who want a copy strictly for the purpose of selling it on eBay in the future.

And through it all it always feels like there's a sense of intimidation (an oft-cited word nowadays, like intense and confident - I wonder why that is) that's carried with me whenever the subject's brought up. It feels like because I wrote it, there's a level of expectation that people attach to me and it never feels like I'm fulfilling it. Expectations like having an unmatchably quick wit, having incredible stories at my fingertips to tell whenever I like, of looking into my eyes and seeing innumerable points of wisdom, having a certain swagger, a je ne sais quoi. That certain something that just draws people towards you...which I don't believe in and never will.

Once when I was volunteering in a rest home an elderly woman said "Your eyes, they seem to have so much in them...".

But then again, when I was volunteering in a different rest home I walked by an old man who looked at me and kept saying "It's all your fault. It's all your fault."

What I feel I've cultivated with publishing Disassociation is intimidation...and jealousy, which is what I never wanted to follow me. This is why I don't immediately bring it up in conversation - I've noticed how it creates a barrier between people. I can't have any more barriers, but at the same time I don't want my writing life to become a secret identity. This is yet another dichotomy in my life that I've had to contend with.

There's no doubt that the novel is juvenilia, which people generally don't want to read. I don't take offense to people who say they'll buy the book or read the book and then don't - I have my reservations about empty pleasantries but they're par for the course in our society. Even the title itself is challenging - the word 'disassociation' exists but it isn't normally used, the word 'dissociation' is used. I like the challenge of the title, but people could easily see it as a huge spelling error when it wasn't meant to be.

And I've changed since publishing it. I've greatly changed from being a teenager. But I haven't changed drastically.

The life I live has always been lonely, and writing feels like it only increases that pressure. Where the girl whom I'm in love with and is two years younger than I am thinks I'm too sophisticated for her. Where writers are expected to be lonely in order to continually create. I've had to fend off the ugly premonition that I've been alone for so long, I've become too used to being alone.

And people might think I'm revealing my weaknesses, and therefore can't be an artist of any worthwhile measure as a result - with the word 'artist' not conforming to the higher-status platform that others use it for. But this is real.

One of my flaws is that I dwell on the negative too much, and this post reveals that. I've had a lot of support from a lot of people in my life as well. I won't lie, I need people's support in order to maintain my work ethic and drive. Even though I've had to depend on my own resolve a lot more than others, I can't say that all I need is myself. I don't find that healthy.

Rumination on Television

2011-04-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

"IT ROTS THE IMAGINATION DEAD" - lyric from an Oompa Loompa song about Mike Teavee's obsession with television, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

"Television is the opiate of the masses." - Bill Watterson spoof on Karl Marx's famous saying "Religion is the opiate of the masses."

But this is not a rant. None of these posts will ever be rants.

I don't watch TV anymore. Of course I used to until I was about nineteen, but I never set aside a certain amount of time to watch TV except for The Simpsons on Sunday evenings. Then I pretty much stopped because I didn't get cable and the two channels available were fuzzy. When I moved out by myself a year later it was the same deal.

When I was twenty-two I moved into a place with free cable. I watched a couple episodes of Friends and then unplugged the cable, gave it to my landlord, and said I didn't want it in my place because it was distracting.

A year ago when I was working in a bread factory I told a kid I knew, a co-worker, that I didn't watch television and he responded, "So what do you watch when you're high?" I don't get high any more, so I didn't have an answer.

I still think there's value in some television programs, but not for the majority of it. Shows which aren't a variation of philosopher Robert Nozick's Pleasure Machine Thought Experiment, wherein cables are inserted into a person's brain and stimulate the person's neural activity to do nothing but receive pleasure, essentially making the person immobile and lifeless save for the continual feelings of pleasure.

That's not the kind of life anyone sane would want to live...
...and that's not how I view television.

The reason why I stopped watching television is simply because I felt I didn't have time for it any longer. I know for a fact that wanting to create effective literature is not an easy task. It takes a lot of consideration, research and development of style. It's a different discipline than a lot of other facets of life. I stil watch movies, and clips of older TV shows on Youtube. I have a few DVDs of TV shows I liked. I don't watch them that much any longer, but I still have them.

And sometimes I think I should keep watching television due to how it's a meter for current times. But then again the internet can serve as the same.

I can't really imagine what my life would be like now if I hadn't watched television when I was younger. If my parents hadn't let me watch TV at all. I don't know exactly who I'd be - I'd look the same (presumably) but it seems logical that I hypothetically wouldn't be as "in tune" with the rest of the world.

By in tune I mean, for all the years that I abstained from watching TV while my peers did...and going through the motions of dying to watch it in order to fit in as a child, and eventually accepting how I didn't need it, and then becoming very critical of it...it seems that I would be more wary and cynical about developed world culture than I am now. But that's only my initial, unresearched opinion. (And this isn't 'concrete' as William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White would say)

I asked a friend of mine once if he would give up buying a brand-new TV in order to donate the money to an underdeveloped nation and he said no. But before you think my friend is evil, countless other people all over the world have responded the same way, just not out loud.

Libyan Protest Rally - Toronto, March 2011

2011-04-05T18:39:00.000-07:00

I attended a Libyan protest rally in Dundas Square here in Toronto a couple weeks back and shot the above photos.

For the most part, I'm not heavily aware of politics around the world. But I'm half-Libyan and I felt it was necessary to show my support for a new Libyan government from all the backlash I've heard about Gaddafi's regime.

The rally itself was for the most part well-controlled. There was no disparagement of North America or Jewish people, as some might expect from any Arabic protest. Any political uprising can never be effective if it promotes narrow-minded thinking and I would've left if that had been the case.

The two problems with the protest were that for one thing, some of the chants were trite (for example "Hey-hey, ho-ho, Gaddafi has to go"). Since that formula has been used so many times over it becomes clichéd and can be ridiculed easily. But there were also direct and powerful chants that I chanted along with.

The second problem was that there was a St. Patrick's Day Parade marching across Dundas St. People were watching the parade and simultaneously watching all of us show our support for a new Libyan government and it felt incongruous to me. It was beneficial because the rally was noticed by more civilians, reporters and photographers. But even so, it felt like we were impeding on the festive time people were expecting of the afternoon.

I also noticed two members of the actual parade try and mock the rally. One started to pretend to dance along to our chanting. Another started shouting "Gaddafi is a legend" and some older men in the rally turned their thumbs down at him. These were actual members of the St. Patrick's Day parade, acting like that...but that's what can be expected. Mockery in the face of rallying for peace, from anyone.

Just a reminder

2011-04-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

1) That V. Which

- "The car that I was driving got a flat tire."
- "My son's car, which I was driving, got a flat tire."

- The distinction between restrictive and nonrestrictive adjective clauses affects the choice between that and which. In nonrestrictive adjective clauses, which is nearly always used now instead of that.

- Use only that in restrictive adjective clauses...we distinguish restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses in writing by putting commas around the nonrestrictive ones.

2) Lie V. Lay

- Rule of thumb: You lie around, but you lay something down.

Lie - conjugation:

Present tense: lie/lies
Past tense: lay
Past participle: lain
Present participle: lying

Lay = conjugation:

Present tense: lay/lays
Past tense: laid
Past participle: laid
Present participle: laying

- The past tense of lie and the present tense of lay are the same thing (i.e. lay)...this can create a lot of confusion.

Source: The McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage, 2005.

2011-03-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday, mom. I love you as I always have.

"It's so easy to be a poet and so hard to be a man."

2011-03-26T15:10:00.001-07:00

That was written by Charles Bukowski, pictured above. When people were saying in the early 90s that computers were "glorified typewriters", he was embracing the new movement...that was the impetus for me to use this photo. I'm not promoting his writing or his beliefs because I don't agree with all of them, but nevertheless it's important to discuss him.

I always wonder about authors like him, and how they would view me (and if I achieved success in my writing, how they would see me then).
I never starved, although life's been hard since I moved out by myself five years ago. I never had parents who didn't care about me - they give me money to help me live. I never absolutely had to work a deadening job in order to survive, although I've worked those jobs before. I've never had a delibitating illness or physical handicap. I've never had to go to war. I've never suffered a great loss (such as the death of someone very close to me, yet). I've never had to run for my life.

But I don't see myself as better than people who've gone through these misfortunes. And I don't try to hide myself from the misfortunes of the world. I've never wanted to live off of my parents for as long as I could, I wanted to live on my own terms and support myself...but money is addictive when I have little of it. And I never believed that I was special and the world needed to know - I've only known that I'm taking a path which few people take, and I'm using the talent I have to press through it. And does it really matter what they would think? Do I need to dwell on it? (Not really.)

Yet if they saw me as unwise and uninformed as a result of not going through what they've gone through, and as a result they didn't see me as capable of creating great literature...is that tolerable? Do I need to suffer like they've suffered? Will that allow me to write better? (No.)

A lot of soldiers want to write their life story. And they do, and they take it to a self-publishing company and have it released. They're proud of having written their story. Does the fact that they've been through the depression of war mean that their work automatically has more substance than my own (assuming their experience/position led them to experience the sickness war can hold)?

I don't think so, but some would say that it's true. And this is another part of the interior struggle I have to contend with, being on my own and having a passion for literature.
Bukowski's quote above disgusts me - I never want to become someone who writes like they mean it yet can't maintain a stable life outside of writing. Who just leeches off of everyone and doesn't sculpt their own place in the world, who can't support a family, who only thinks of himself, who doesn't believe in charity. And yet still he strives to write meaningful literature. Again the question of autonomy comes up.

The quote ties into a mantra of mine that I've been thinking of for years - "It's so easy to fail and so hard to succeed." The two thoughts, when intertwined in my mind, create a parallel between how hard it can be for people to maintain a respectable position in life.
Many people, once they learn the discipline and craft of writing, can write a poem. And I'd like to believe that the meaning of that poem is based on how respectable the poet is outside of their writing, although that isn't always the case.

The image of me standing on the street, with clothes that attempt to look upper-class but are still fraying, with nothing to my name and no family, holding only my published work...it makes me wonder how far can the romanticism of art be pushed. People set themselves up to fail all the time. The lamentations of writers regarding how little literature has given to them in contrast to how much devotion they've given to literature is frightening.

So I shouldn't think about it and I shouldn't waste time, don't talk about it, only do it. Virginia Woolf wrote two pages a day. I told a friend of mine years ago that I wrote two hours a day (but nowadays I don't) and he was surprised at my level of dedication. I don't know where that dedication is going to lead. Yet it won't let me melt into the person I never want to become.

The Artist as Creator of Propaganda

2011-03-25T14:27:00.000-07:00

(photo courtesy of hobotraveler.com)
Mural of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, with his face removed. I wonder who painted it, and removed his face...maybe it was the same artist. As I wrote that last sentence I actually had a faint moment of déjà vu.

Is the freedom artists have to not create government propaganda one of the few freedoms that is never taken for granted? Or do people here in North America forget about how we can create whatever piece of art we think of?

It doesn't seem as though people, when they want to create, will create vast poems, stories, music and paintings to praise the government. That would be funny - going out on a warm summer evening to a grassy hilltop by my villa...with a soft breeze and the recent memory of my wife's legs wrapped around my body as she sits beside me...and painting a picture of Stephen Harper shaking hands with George W. Bush based on the inspiration of my surroundings and memories.

It's abnormal for anyone creating art to have that level of patriotic compassion. We create art to look inside ourselves and to express what we admire, or desire, or detest, or disagree with...not to indulge in patriotism (unless commissioned and depending on their morals). There are artists that take it upon themselves to do so, but from what I've seen they comprise the minority.

Which fuels the paradox of anti-conformity. "So what if I write stories promoting our Prime Minister's greatness...is that what's popular? I don't think so. That's why this is the cutting edge."

You'll be the name to know, a mainstay on the Oprah Network, praised by every famous literary convention and conference including the Meat Loaf with Dijon Mustard Box Social, winner of the Governal General's Award, wined and dined by the ghosts of Virginia Woolf and Hunter S. Thompson on a celestial plane, invited to partake in a seminar at the York Woods Public Library.

Maybe the real artists in our society don't forget that they have freedom of expression because they let it wash through them every day they choose. But I'm forgetting that people are still people, and one quality in a person doesn't rule out any other quality (as Thomas Harris wrote, I like his work). The issue of censorship in art is a huge issue - "You can say what you want but we still have to regulate it."
Does that mean that it's pointless to say anything at all?

It's plausible that people who don't create art are those who forget about their freedom of artistic expression.

I always marvel at concerts where people go crazy for musicians. It seems to me like these are people who've never attempted to create music themselves. If everyone who attended a concert was a musician, I think they'd be more grounded and not as fame-struck. They might have more appreciation for the artist's talent, but there'd be a common ground.
The audience should never forget the potential they have to learn what they want to learn.

Abandoned Factories/Royal Coat of Arms

2011-03-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

Large abandoned buildings have always held my intrigue. I'm sure it's like that for a lot of people. Their immensity and complexity contrasted against their emptiness is undoubtedly appealing, as is their prospect of exploration. I can't really do anything but look at them and admire them. I've never been into an abandoned factory, warehouse, prison or any other building for that matter - they might be better left to my imagination.

Back in 2006 when I was living in Winnipeg, I drove a line cook home one night from the restaurant we worked at. He had a band and I wrote them a song for fun, but it wasn't very good. It was the only song I've ever written so far...now being older, it seems like the music should come before the lyrics.
Along the way, he asked me to make a detour to this one abandoned house because he wanted to show me some graffiti that was written. I said alright - I wasn't afraid that he was going to do something dangerous, he was a good kid. It was January and there was snow everywhere, so I parked a small distance away from the house and we walked through the snow so he could show me what he wanted to.

We get to the house and he shows me one side. It said "FAKE STREET KIDS GO HOME" written in large letters. "See", he said. "Fake street kids go home." He looked at it for awhile then we trudged back to my car and I took him to his dad's place.

He didn't to show me the graffiti in order to teach me a lesson. I had no idea the house existed, nor did I pretend that I had lived on the streets at work. What I believe he wanted to show me was that there were kids trying to pretend as though they lived in poverty and abuse, and that they were known to do so by the kids living hand-to-mouth every day. The "cool" that the fakes wanted to inhabit was unacceptable. When I thought about what he showed me afterwards it seemed incomprehensible that the struggling kids had to write graffiti on a house they used for shelter in order to ward off others trying to feed off of their lifestyle, and who could even bring attention to the house and perhaps have it sealed off.
But that's what happens in many instances - when an aspect of life is untouched and appreciated only by those who truly care for it, the risk of it being overexposed and losing its meaning becomes that much greater.

What does this have to do with royal seals/emblems/coats of arms? I would say it's only the same complex imagery. Like large abandoned factories (and buildings in general), a country's coat of arms has always appealed to me visually (that is, when it's very detailed and not sparse/trite in design).

The point I want to make with a coat of arms is that even though they're aesthetically appealing (the two examples above are the Bahamas and Canada), they still run the risk of standing for injustice, hypocrisy and lies. Ian MacKaye from the band Fugazi stated that flags were ugly things based on how they stand for a country's misgivings. I think that statement could extend to a coat of arms as well, especially since it might be more prevalent in a military. There is a contrast between their appealing style and what they stand for.

This then asks the question, "Can I really look at a coat of arms with the same admiration?" It's like the issue of literary autonomy - can I read an author's work with the same comfort if I know that he or she stands for something wrong or has done something unforgivable? I can't, because it matters to me who the author is as a person. With a coat of arms, I'll admit that they look stylish - I've always wanted to create a line of shirts and sweaters with full-bleed (meaning covering the entire front or back) coats of arms on them. And I suppose I could, since families create their own crests all the time. Yet the point still remains that any appreciation of a coat of arms is always tarnished by the wrong decisions of a country - it's the hiding behind appealing visual symbols that feels impure.

Movie Music

2011-02-21T19:18:00.000-08:00

Not my favourite movie.

"Nothing's Sacred"

2011-02-12T16:04:00.001-08:00

"You're an artist Clifford, it's your job to give offense." - Jennifer Wallace, character from Martin Crimp's The Treatment.

And that's the bottom line...I try to rebel against that idea. It's not impossible to write literature that doesn't offend yet still challenges and stimulates an audience.

When looking at comedy for example, even though it can't be taken seriously (no matter how much the comedian tries to assert that they're making a dire statement), there's comedy that directly offends other people (for example Don Rickles) and comedy that doesn't attempt to provoke and offend and is just as popular without becoming pablum (for example Mitch Hedberg RIP).

If this is true of one "artform" then it should be true of all of them. If comedy can hold this dichotomy, then so should literature, painting, et al..

To write and challenge without offending is a non-conformist idea to me. What I hold valuable in writing is the concept of appealing to audiences without creating unnecessary offense or barriers between people. I don't try to write wild claims in my work that I can't back up solidly just to get attention.

This is one of my golden rules when trying to create effective literature, whether it's successful or not time will tell. But then there are other maxims for success (in a lot of the business world, at least) which have translated sucessfully into art that I have trouble with...

...for example, "sex sells" and "anxiety sells", with the former being more well-known. To incorporate both ideologies into art - but in a manner that creates inspiration and knowledge rather than insecurity - isn't an implausible direction for me to work towards.

The "sex sells" attitude is detrimental in my mind to progression as an author. I have nothing against sex itself, no hesitation, disgust, perversions, dismissal. A lot of people say they have no issues with sexuality, but they still harbour discomfort surrounding it. I'm heterosexual but I believe in rights for homosexuals and women. I wish sex was a part of my everyday life to tell the truth, and that's not because of the fact that I'm twenty-five either. To me it's integral to health and to relationships...but it seems to me that sexuality has been tarnished by an overabundance of media regarding it, as well as it sinking so quickly into humour. Its meaning can become dulled as a result.

I don't take sexuality completely seriously (as should be the case), but I think its power, importance and its complexity is diminished by an unceasing flux of media content which exists mainly to generate profits. It's common sense that too much of anything doesn't result in positivity. Yet since it's an integral part of life (as should be the case) it needs to have a place in art. What sort of place it has, and should have, in today's society needs to be taken into deep consideration by artists.

"Anxiety sells" when it comes to aging, comfort in your home, countless other issues...the problems that could arise or be there already, but you don't know, but buy this product just in case they happen, or buy this product to save time because time is money...
...and it's easy to get caught up in this. I recently bought tea tree oil for my hair because I'm worried about losing it from stress, and I think it's healthy to use. Will it work? Time will tell. Are natural health products a huge goldmine which all stem from fostering anxiety? Does just thinking you have a problem lead to you having an actual problem? Paranoia should never be the only sane state of mind...it shouldn't exist at all. No one told me or suggested that I'm losing my hair, or to buy tea tree oil - it was all by my own volition. And I'm not saying that health and beauty products are unnecessary, they can definitely be beneficial. Only in cases where a business will convince people that their lives are lacking without certain products, and trying to foster instability and a sense of self-loathing which can be cured by buying their merchandise, pressuring people to consume and not allowing them freedom of choice is what's repulsive.

I haven't separated myself from regular consumer choices. I choose not to purchase certain products, yet I still own pairs of Nike shoes, I still wear clothes with logos, and it's rare but I'll go to malls if I need something like electronics or dress shoes. I don't see doing so as being tricked into supporting devilish industries. But I still try to stay aware of what I buy and what shops and industies I support because it's incumbent on me as an educated member of society. Most advertising depresses me and I choose to ignore it, for example the ad which starts this post and promotes violence against women. But when I saw the ad pictured below for the first time, it gave me some hope for the future of the advertisement industry.

There are people who would completely do away with the ideas that sex and anxiety sell and strive to create meaningful art without their backing. If this has been attempted and it works (outside of children's literature that is), then I'd applaud the author who managed it...

...and simultaneously ask the question, did they do so just to be different from everyone else to try and achieve attention that way, or did they have a genuine interest in subverting creative norms?

And is the attention they might receive a result of the public as a whole becoming sick of how much sexual content and anxiety are inundating society, or would it be based on the right timing, a welcome change of pace that opens people's eyes before they inevitably close, to go to sleep once again?

The Words of Chuck Close and Rainer Maria Rilke.

2011-01-26T14:58:00.000-08:00

Rilke - the poet.

Close - the painter.

I was reading a book called Wisdom which featured interviews with prominent cultural icons and Chuck Close was one of them.

I agreed with two statements of his and have since taken them to heart: he mentioned he wouldn't create if he didn't have an audience, and that you can't rely on inspiration in order to create since it's based on discipline and devotion.

The former statement goes against what a lot of people base their ideology around - how they would create even if no one was around to see their work, how it doesn't matter if no one cares, because what matters is the fact that they're expressing themselves and working.
But I found Chuck Close's statement to be refreshing and honest - he's working (despite his paralysis) because he knows other people care about his efforts and not simply to satiate the need (if it is a need) to create for his own purposes.

Does this contrast what Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet? He stated that "if one feels they could live without writing, one shouldn't write at all".
I originally interpreted this to mean that if you think you could work at another profession aside from writing, you shouldn't write. This mode of thinking places a limit on an author - how they're expected only to write. Look at Sherwood Anderson or Franz Kafka, who had prominent positions as president of a manufacturing company and for a worker accident insurance company respectively.

They were working and writing. The question is if they were writing for an audience. Or maybe the bigger question is if their love for writing is what really mattered. Because that's also what Rilke could've meant. But people can enjoy something yet still live without it, and I don't think that if people write for simple expression or enjoyment that they should be deprived of it.

What Rilke may have meant is that if you're not serious about the progression of literature and write only for fame or money, then you're not writing for the proper reasons. And I would agree with him on that. But if he's saying that the only people who write should devote themselves to literature and not have the potential to become something else (even if it's something they don't have as much enthusiasm for), I disagree with that because it limits our freedoms.

Which ties into another statement by Rilke: "Don't write love poems." To which I think, "Don't tell me what to write and what not to write." Which may seem immature, like I'm going against one of my parents, but it's true. Just because the love poem can easily become bathetic, that doesn't mean it doesn't have potential. To write one and not make it trite (while retaining a high level of truth and emotion) is I think an admirable effort.

Chuck Close's statement of not letting your work be guided by inspiration also ties into Rilke's. A lot of writing is inspired by love, and rightly so. But at the same time, if I write solely because I was inspired by an attractive girl I saw and left writing alone for the rest of the time, would I really be accomplishing anything of value and demonstrating my love for the artform, or just trying to use the artform without appreciating it? I think it's perfectly alright to be inspired and to draw upon the strength from that - that's what I do on a regular basis. But I now believe that the dedication stokes the fire of the inspiration, thanks to Close's comment - a support that lacks in my life more often than not.

"Good music, good music"

2011-01-24T19:26:00.000-08:00

2011-01-14T07:37:00.001-08:00

André Malraux.

2010-12-12T17:59:00.000-08:00

He looks quite a bit like Nabokov in the photo I used for this post. Maybe it's a staple of photographers to try and capture the "darkness" of a writer, staring lurching and heaving in the corner, sacrificing an animal in the middle of a dinner party. You have to be dark to write, and you have to suffer. And an artist doesn't need to study, they need to create. And to be an author you have to study the great works of literature. And to be an author you had to have been something, anything beforehand (do all the past jobs I've had count?). And so many other stipulations - are they in the best interests of aspiring authors or are they blockades to try and preserve the market?

Malraux once stated "Art is the rebellion against man's fate." This has stuck in my mind due to its implications. On first glance I thought it mirrored artistic rebellion against political oppression, but then it seemed like it spread deeper into how an artist wants to change the past and form the future, to escape their the people in their lives. Just come face to face with what's disturbing you and try to change it. Like the recent scandal at York University where I study - how could someone who was a university professor, married, and described as being an outgoing positive person also be into child pornography?

On the subject of Malraux, I believe those interpretations I listed are all dependent on whether or not the idea of fate is to be believed. Personally I don't believe in fate - I believe existence is to be lived in the best way we can try to live it. That sounds like the whimsy of youth but it should be upheld. Fate is reminiscent of the Calvinist doctrine's idea of absolute predestination, which states that certain people have been selected by God to go to Heaven and some haven't. This type of selective thinking is unnecessary but people buy into it. I apologize if you're a Calvinist and reading this, but no one should blindly follow any religion without questioning it and placing it in the greater context of their lives. Neither should anyone believe that their religion is better than others, or force their beliefs on other people.

It could be argued that fate is a method of classification, and in many instances classification is a form of control. A society where a domineering train of thought is to control other people isn't what I have in mind when I think of the place I'd like to spend my days. These days I'd rather be in a Bohemian atmosphere, where people want to go out on adventures where the people are friendly and mature and considerate, the architecture's nice and the air's always fresh, and she's there. You can write that off as being trite and unrealistic, caught in a flailing North American dreamscape, but it holds a lot of promise for me. To get older and say to myself "I just kinda go with the flow" isn't what I would commit to.

The White Flash.

2010-11-23T15:38:00.000-08:00

Today I heard that if you meet an author you should avoid them, because they'll eventually write about you and it most likely won't be a positive depiction.

It's funny how I heard this at a time when I've been trying to create more exposure and sent out a story to a writer's group recently which could be seen as based around someone I've met in real life. It's funny because, well...I've found all the negativity that comes up in writing nowadays is numbing to the point of grim humour, but it's more depressing than anything because this is another misconception about myself and my life that I have to defend myself against. I would never meet someone then commence to write a story entirely based around them, or provide a description of them. I've never based my work around creating a mirror for someone I've met, to reveal "what they're about" to the public, to categorize them.

On this website I've written the very rare true anecdote that includes people I know in real life. I was never fully comfortable with it so I've gotten rid of them. It's inevitable that a creation is going to draw upon someone the artist has met no matter if they're successful or not. But I'm not a hypocrite and I don't want to seem like one, so I've learned from what I've heard today. But what I've heard today doesn't fit me into a mould by any means either.

I might get inspired by people I know, but I would never write about them as I know them. There's never been any fictional character in any of my writing that I've designed around people I've known, and that's the truth. No characters in Disssociation or my poems or short stories are depictions of people I've known. Pentimenti is an exception - it's based around someone I know but it's solely out of respect. They're manifestations of my own thoughts. I wrote some poems for girls before, and I shared them with said girls before showing them to anyone else. That's it. I've had a story written about me, and I was uncomfortable with my depiction as well. I haven't spoken to the author in a long time because I couldn't handle the issue. I understand the problems it creates.

But the hard fact of the matter is that people might not believe me. But that's alright - I've told people before that I wouldn't base anything I write on their own lives. No one can trace any of the characters I wrote to anyone in real life, because they're wholly fictional.
There's nothing else I can say about this matter. As I've stated earlier it's just another misconception in writing that I have to bear the brunt of. So please don't avoid me.

But I shouldn't overthink it. And now for the good music.

Cute and sweet.

2010-11-20T07:33:00.000-08:00

William Faulkner stated that an author needs three things to succeed - imagination, wisdom and observation, with any two of those able to substitute for the other. The issue of substitution is reassuring for me - I've always known that imagination and observation can lead to wisdom but for Faulkner to have mentioned it provides me with a strength that allows me to diminish the stress set in by not feeling 'old enough'.

But as I've mentioned in the past I don't conform to the stereotype of the author wherein we're considered to be lurking in the shadows, trying to listen in on people. I think that's what people have in mind. But that's not what observation is. It's not found by going out and looking for something weird that people are doing. It's a very sad image to me, an aspiring author furiously scribbling notes in their small notebook as some bizarre event is unfolding in front of them on the street. I don't believe that observation is genuine if you go out looking for it; it's genuine when you come across something by chance, and it remains in your memory. I believe that's one of the keys for an author to have - a strong memory.

But a strong memory isn't always fortunate, especially when I've been exposed to something disturbing. Then it's a struggle not to think and to move on from what I've seen. For too long I've had to deal with rejection, relying on my own self to combat whatever ugliness comes around. It brings to mind the struggle between 'thinking' and 'feeling', basic as that sounds. Don't think, just feel. Don't concern yourself with the ramifications.

Weltanschauung.

2010-11-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

The definition of a weltanschauung is "world view", or your complete set of views that comprise your understanding of the world.

It's a lush word (another being boustrophedon which means numerous lines written from right to left and vice versa), one of many that define my enjoyment of language. They say the more words you learn and absorb into your active vocabulary, the lesser your chances of growing senile.

But what I'm trying to accomplish with this title is the fact that the world view of many people doesn't include an innate sense of health. So many people pine for good health - and it's there for you to achieve. That's the problem - the answer is there and can be realized.
I don't smoke, I rarely drink coffee, I rarely eat fast food and think its domineering presence in North American society is ridiculous, I scrutinize my saturated/trans fat and cholesterol intake, I watch my sugar/salt intake, and I don't do drugs (I drink occasionally but I'm weaning myself off of it gradually). I don't judge people if they do partake in any of this. I exercise; I take care of my body. And I don't have anyone to motivate me - it all happens by my own resolve.

Is that a problem? Do I not fit into the traditional role of an author by maintaining this level of self-respect?

What happens if I post this photo of a protein/vitamin supplement powder - Bodyflex AM - which I think is excellent and use on a regular basis? Maybe a real artist isn't supposed to endorse any product, and in doing so becomes a sellout. Maybe, since the devil is much more appealing than God, my strength as an author is diminished.
It has always been numbing to me - how there should be a measure of self-destruction embedded in an artist for their work to gain recognition. Maybe that's just a role people buy into. The role that my peers all over the world buy into because this is the time period in which they're supposed to do what I aspire to do for a living - write. The mid-twenties ennui that creates countless drunken poems and stories, ideas which never came about because they weren't supposed to. It makes me laugh, how ever since I was a child I wanted to write - and now that I'm in my twenties and writing, I'm only seen as fitting into a mould that's expected of my age range.

But I don't laugh too hard or too long. I never fell to the bottom of the hole of self-destruction. I'm focused on self-development. Whether or not this is going to become detrimental for my future, I'll have yet to see.

2010-10-24T14:15:00.001-07:00

David Foster Wallace.

2010-10-20T19:39:00.000-07:00

I first heard about David Foster Wallace in 2008 in a university class for grammar. The professor handed us an essay written by Wallace on SWE (Standard Written English). The very next week, our professor told us David Foster Wallace had committed suicide. I still remember how he said it...not to talk badly about my former professor, but he was very matter-of-fact and almost amused by the news of Wallace's death.

The fact that he's more popular after his death is something I'll overlook in this post. This video is important to me based on how he, an author of talent and stature and intelligence, doesn't put a lot of stock in publicity and making appearances.

The reclusive, hidden author who's always out of the public eye, creating his or her latest masterpiece...does this maintain the traditional legend of the subversive, effective author? Fitting into old, respected romantic roles... .

I can understand his discomfort with reading his work aloud - I personally can't decide on what sections of Disassociation to read aloud because every paragraph falls under a greater context and reading one out of context to people who haven't read the book is always a difficult task.

He expresses ennui at going to bookstores and performing readings, saying how an author is relegated to a quasi-celebrity as a result. And I can understand how it would be stiff and impersonal to read passages from a book people have already read, not caring about the content and just wanting to see the creator and how he or she sounds.
But I don't see the discomfort on his level. Maybe it's a less intelligent level. I wouldn't have a problem going to read my already-read work to audiences. I say 'already-read' because whenever I do readings I know the work I read hasn't been read by anyone in the audience before. But I don't see anything wrong with giving audiences...admirers...maybe even fanatics...? a taste of how I look, and how I read. Maybe I wouldn't even read from the work I'd be promoting. I could write entirely new poems and stories and weave the novel/collection I promote into the contents somehow...neglecting my commercial publishers' intents in a middle finger to corporate agendas...
...when you go to a concert and the band plays a different version of the song, are you excited or disappointed? Similarly, if I go to read a passage from the book I'm promoting but put a new spin on it (somehow, without sacrificing the strength of the rest of the book), would that be enjoyable or just confusing and unappealing?

Throughout all of this speculation, I don't have a fame complex, I can live without ever gaining mass fame. I believe fame is a byproduct of creating meaningful works of art, and not the means to the end. It's the same with money...but the argument against this should be a separate post.
To give an audience what they want is completely acceptable to me. After all, I don't believe the strength of my work would suffer as a result. It's a lesson to learn, how writing is really a social act instead of the private suffering act we're pushed to believe in. But there's nothing wrong with subverting the expected... .

Fields.

2010-10-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

But throughout all the negativity... how this isn't something an author of any merit would undertake, how it's considered juvenile and commercialized in the...

...Well, why overthink it. I should just allow it to mean what I want it to mean. It's just fun and challenging. This was the biggest drop-in I've ever done. It was at the Winnipeg park at the Forks. I was trembling after I did it for the first time, which was on a previous morning and not filmed. It was an overbearing mental boundary that I overcame by myself, as with most problems in my life.

I rolled away clean the first time I did it. This time I rode over the bump in the middle and fell, but it doesn't really matter. In retrospect it's only a stepping stone for me to start skating vert the way I want to - because I did this, now I can drop in on the vert at the Vanderhooft park, and after that the 10-foot vert ramp at the CJ park, and then the 11-foot extension there as well...and that'll be the beginning of a new beginning.

It's an activity I enjoy - not a lifestyle (although I can't stand the way it's portrayed in mainstream media, MSM), not a hobby, not a closet full of skeletons or a cross to bear.

"Everybody needs a hobby."

2010-10-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

I always feel depressed and angry whenever the overwhelming feeling of being used happens - even in this website, sometimes it feels like it's just a tool for my thoughts and discussion to be copied/used in order for people to further their own literary ambitions (because so many want to write a bestselling novel strictly to become rich and famous). This is not a statement made from lack of recognition/fame, it's made from the pitfalls I've been exposed to throughout my life. Can you imagine what kind of life it would be just to exist as a forgotten benchmark, never to reap the full benefits of your efforts and morals?

And this relates to the domineering encumbrance I have to try and forget whenever I write - the idea of authority. How writing is nothing more than a method to exert authority over objects, other people, anything. How people just use writing to classify others, to drive them in a corner and prepackage them in method of storytelling to try and appeal to the public's sense of stereotype and therefore sense of control. Gore Vidal was once quoted as saying "I want to destroy younger authors." All the competition and nonstop classification, scrambling to get the upper hand all the time. No wonder a lot of established authors are reclusive - all they wanted is to forge their own path and write the best literature they could, not to be exposed to people clawing at their heels and trying to undermine them, most likely starting from when they were young and continuing to their current age.

This is only one part of the overall stress that I have to fend off every day. But I should make it clear that I'm very well aware this can be seen as expressing my frustrations, which Virginia Woolf would warn against as I've mentioned in the past, or bordering on "singing my distress" as André Breton wrote...
...but it's still necessary. And I know why.

Depth of focus...

2010-09-29T19:40:00.000-07:00

...is an example of an aspect of life that I should've been familiar with for quite some time now, instead of in the past couple of days.

Whenever I look at the documents that comprise the beginning of my next novel I always wonder why I'm not spending more time on it. It's still a regular occurrence.

It's easy to say that it's the intervention of university, and how it falls under the ironic spell of education getting in the way of my progress (although I've been learning quite a bit about literature, and how to write properly). But it's more than that...

...it's a matter of continually developing style, for one. It's been said that an author's life doesn't lie in their deeds and accomplishments, but instead the progression of their writing style.

This is a disturbing idea to me - how perception of the level of dedication and what you have to sacrifice reaches the level of your actual accomplishments outside of writing taking a back seat to the writing itself. If I get married, is that of lesser importance than the inspiration to write that I would garner from getting married?

The reading public might think so. My work would be of more importance to them than my wife herself, so it's logical. But that wouldn't be the same for me, it's possible I'd hold my marriage in higher regard than my work. Which is a very complex subject that I probably shouldn't expound on with no knowledge, it's actually kind of humorous.

Inspiration is another factor... in the back of my mind I believe that something has to happen which hasn't previously happened. A couple of years ago I wasn't in university, and just worked as a dishwasher and read and wrote. I know I can write with the same intensity, yet something feels like it has to happen. But at the same time, I believe that's whimsical thinking as well - it's just as simple as sitting down to the computers and my notebooks and working.

As I've mentioned before, Flannery O'Connor wrote in an essay that the best writers she knew also painted, because it gave them a method of seeing. I paint, although sporadically - I've been doing so since I was ten. And a couple of years ago, during the same time span when I just worked, read and wrote, I also painted. I'll post pictures of my work in the future.

Science shouldn't be a mystery... .

Words Alive Festival 2010

2010-09-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

It happened today. I didn't arrive there.

I woke up this morning feeling sick because I left my window open all night. I was exhausted and didn't think I could go, and started pacing around my room. I eventually worked up the energy to start getting ready. It was a very positive experience when I went last year and I wanted to be a part of it again. I tried to print my work but my printer wasn't functioning for the first time since I've owned it. So I had to write it out.

I left at 11:42 and thought I'd arrive in time for the 2:30 open mic. Michael Helm and Myna Wallin were going to be there and I wanted to see them.
But the buses took too long, including one being out of service along the way. By the time I got to Newmarket I was told that the next bus for Sharon would be arriving at 3:15 and would get to my destination by 3:30, which was when the festival ended. So I headed back home.

Along the way on the bus there was a drunken kid, bigger than I was, who got on the bus and met his friends. He looked much older than they did. He sat down and started swearing constantly and very loudly. No one was saying anything to him (although the seats on the bus were cramped and full of passengers) or his friends. I had my earphones on, listening to music, and could still hear him.
So out of the whole bus I turned around and asked him to be quiet. He was for a moment and then started doing the same thing, so I turned around again and shouted HEY at him. The guy beside me got up from his seat and moved away. The kid opened his eyes wide and clenched his mouth, and his friends said they were getting off at the next stop.

The stop comes up, the kid gets up with his eyes still open and his mouth still clenched. He walks up to me, trying to stare me down, and I'm sitting down and staring back at him and not saying anything. Meeting his stare. His friends call for him to get of the bus and he starts swearing at me saying "Get off the bus too, fucking pussy" then he leaves. Didn't try to touch me, just had that ridiculous expression on his face, trying to be hard and wanting me to buckle down. A guy sitting close to me with his girlfriend came up as the kid got off, ready to help me if he started to fight, and said "Fuckin' idiot, huh?" to me. As soon as he got off I stopped watching him, but I could hear him hitting the bus as we drove away and could hear other passengers being shocked at his behaviour.

The strange part is, after the bus went out of service and we had to transfer, the kid and his friends were on the new bus. I was sitting farther away and wasn't close to him. I could them all faintly talking though. After five minutes these two girls started telling the kid to be quiet, and it quickly escalated into a large argument. The guy who'd gotten up to help me earlier rushed from his chair and started yelling at the kid.

I didn't go up and add to the argument, but I walked to the bus driver and told him he'd have to remove the kid and his friends. The stop came up quickly and the driver announced "Okay, who's getting off?" Didn't get up from his seat at all. The kid and his friends got off. The two girls who told them off got off later.

The girls were smiling when they left. So was the kid and his friends. It ressurected an old feeling of mine: as though behaviour like that is desired, so we can fight and feel the excitement of standing up for ourselves, the tension and unexpectedness, the words that come out of our mouths and the spontaneous wit that we're delighted to unearth in ourselves. Maybe that's what the people on the bus desired. But I wasn't looking to start a fight when I intervened.

When the kid got on the bus and was swearing loudly, no one said anything. I was the only one to do something about it. Before I did, the thought came to my mind that I was going to a literary festival to read poems to people...and I'm just going to let this kid ruin everyone's day? I'm not going to do anything, just bow my head down, turn the volume on my MP3 player to maximum and let it happen? It was a matter of autonomy, as I've discussed before - how could I feel comfortable with myself reading my work if I didn't do anything about the garbage happening right before me? There's been other instances like this as well.

So even though I tried to attend, I wasn't able to. It's a shame - I don't know if I'm going to be in Toronto next September, that's based on opportunities from different universities for my Masters degree and if I find a woman.

It's my birthday in a week and I don't want to spend it by myself, I want to spend it with a girl. I can't stand this loneliness. I don't trap myself in loneliness, I don't want it. I never did. I wrote this ghazal awhile back for university and people thought it expressed a desire to stay lonely.
That's never what I wanted. It comes so easy to so many people.

Pentimenti

Marble and chrome, Inniskillin, raucous laughter, kismet.
Rooftop parties with old friends on summer evenings, watching the sun set.

Romanticism and loneliness, dreams of foolish goals.
Trapped inside them but not defeated as of yet.

“Gemstones mean nothing to the value of human life.”
But I’m still joyous to see hornets encased in cut garnet.

Remembering her love of nature, and my desire to nibble on her earlobe.
Always with me as I watch Night Jessamines sway in the breeze, deathly quiet.

Years pass by and swell with her accomplishments.
I only sit in the middle of a room with a high ceiling, at work on a tercet.

Not able to forget the dreams of running into each other on the street.
Growing ever more nervous at how memory is considered an asset.

Rest in peace Moshie my cousin.

Nabokov and deceit.

2010-09-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

Reading Nabokov's Lectures on Literature led me to come across his claim that authors must be experts of deceit - he argues that nature is deceitful and authors follow in nature's footsteps.

But I don't want to deceive people when I write simply because I'm not that kind of person. If you're willingly deceitful, is that a positive quality to have? When I published Disassociation I included a note at the beginnng stating that none of the events within the plot occurred in my real life and that it was all fiction. People have read it and believed that the story was based on my own life regardless of the note I left, which isn't the case. I never had two best friends who were violent and dangerous, I never went to Juvenile Detention and I never moved to Montreal by myself. I'll admit that it's somewhat flattering to hear people say they believe the plot actually happened - I was glad I wrote it realistically enough for that to happen.

But I never led them on. I never tried to deceive them and say that it really did happen, like other authors who've sadly gained attention and adulation for doing so which is completely idiotic. I came across a similar quote in Neil Gaiman's work of all people which stated that "Writers are liars."
I can't fit myself into these expectations. Sometimes it feels like authors say these things to atone for their own transgressions/guilt, but I'm not saying that's the case here. I just want to write and not try to fit into any expectations.
Not caring about what other people think, doing what feels most comfortable to me.

Yet when I consider Nabokov's intelligence...his reputation...his influence...it just puts pressure on me when I try to dismiss his expectations of deceit. Is the power of his wisdom/influence more important than my resolve not to fall into his pattern? Henry Miller once wrote in a letter to Anaïs Nin that he believed he was a great man. I don't have that level of self-esteem, should I? I consider that being egotistical. But sometimes it feels like I need that level of self-assurance in order to maintain my beliefs.

I believe in autonomy, that an author's own morals and deeds influence the way I regard their work. Some people would argue that their work stands independent of their own life but being a writer myself I can't agree with that. If I was violent towards people, abused women, abused my parents, was wasteful and conniving and hypocritical yet wrote well-crafted work could you really value my work considering how little of a real man I was? If my work was a way to make amends for my behaviour and to dispel my pent-up anger and angst, is that justifiable grounds for being destructive to everyone around me?
This ties into the argument people make that "Well, his work is so good that it's okay for him to act disrespectful to people around him" (thinking of Christian Bök here). I don't really believe that. In a previous post I discussed Jorge Luis Borges' view that people don't have the soul of a writer; they only view writing as a craft to be learned and practiced, and I think that applies here.

I think an author should be humble and have positive values for their work to be respected. That's not to say that they should write bland repetitive material, nor that they should act holier-than-thou, but they should be someone whom others can respect. Can you respect someone who's purposefully deceitful?

Early fall.

2010-09-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

Back when I was thirteen, this song meant a lot to me.

The G20 Protests / Literary Readings / August in Photos.

2010-08-29T15:48:00.000-07:00

I was present at the G20 protests that were held here in Toronto due to the summit. I saw a lot of odd occurrences and filmed a march. In the third photo, the police suddenly surged forward and we all moved back. It was hard to document anything through photography without feeling like it was in the interest of sensationalism. Maybe the whole ordeal was in the vein of sensationalism.

During that same weekend I did two readings of poetry in Toronto, at the Sweet Tooth Cafe in the first photo and at Central restaurant for the Plasticine Poetry series.

I rented a car for the first time and drove by myself for 11 hours to Long Island, New York just to get away and see a new place. The drive into the island, going through the peaks and valleys of New York farmland at early dusk, was one of the most tranquil experiences I've had in a long time. It almost made me forget how I was detained at the border, with guards telling me lies about how I couldn't take a rented car over the border in order to satisfy their racial profiling.

I visited a skateshop called Poets (named so b/c of Poet's Corner, although I'd like to believe they appreciate literature as well) which is run by one of my favourite skateboarders Gino Iannucci and his friend Matt Bell, who was very hospitable. This photo is of their 2-year anniversary party which I attended for a little bit. It was fun, but it's hard going to parties by myself and not knowing anyone there either. Everyone there was cool though. I wanted to meet Gino but he wasn't there - maybe another time. Their website's here.

And I saw Lou Barlow play live last night at the Horseshoe Tavern. The second photo is of him and the Missingmen playing an amazing fast-paced version of Home.
I met Lou. It was completely incidental. I went downstairs and there he was. I don't admire a lot of people - I don't fan out over celebrities - but his lyrics/music have been influential to me. I asked him for a photo and he politely said yes. I have the photo on my camera, but it's valuable - I don't know how internet copyright goes, so it'll have to stay there.

2010-07-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

Leen Sleiman, one of the contestants for Miss Lebanon. Like myself she's majoring in English literature.

Marisa Berenson.

I've never been that shallow about a woman's looks. A woman with freckles shouldn't be ashamed of her features. I feel the same way about arm hair, but if it's thicker than mine... .

Back in the mid-90's I first heard the name Silken Laumann, a Canadian Olympic gold medalist for rowing, for the first time. It sounded so mysterious back then. It's still one of the most striking names I've heard.

Eva Green. The Dreamers was a tour-de-force because of her.

But even with these photos, some of the most numinous women I've ever seen I know personally.

The natural author.

2010-06-30T20:09:00.000-07:00

I recently read a quote from Jorge Luis Borges wherein he mentioned his distaste for meeting fellow well-renowned authors whose conversations consisted of unappealing and base topics like 'smutty stories', and unintellectual discussion. He argued that they didn't seem like real authors and instead viewed writing as a craft, a technical skill they learned. It seems to me that he would believe they write for a living.

His discussion of this type of social behaviour somewhat echoes the feeling I have whenever I post anything on this website. Can I really be an author of any merit if I'm posting up pictures of motorcycles and funny videos to accompany them? "That's what adolescents and teenagers do on their walls." Not what ambitious authors (too much alliteration) spend their time on, I would think most of the literati believe.

At least I'm not posting videos of myself in the bathroom in the vein of peep culture, if that's the right term.

And I keep hearing it: this technology will destroy us. I was at the Trillium Book Prize presentation here in Toronto last Tuesday and the speaker, an anchor for the news, mentioned how Twitter and Facebook and the Internet in general is destroying creativity. That's the word she used - destroying.
I looked around - it was mainly older people in the audience whom I didn't think were steeped in technology as much as my generation - and it felt as though the anchor was appealing to the older crowd by persuading them that younger generations would never have the amount of potential and creativity that they have. Through her words the anchor was reassuring the audience that their aspirations in Canadian literature were safe against the pressure of youth. It was a source of discouragement as I left the ceremony - I knew that in part, the anchor could have mentioned what she did b/c she wanted to challenge and rile up the younger crowd present, but that didn't seem to be what was supposed to be gleaned... .

And I know that seems to be biased, almost angry thinking on my part, but this comes back to what I'll always believe - the fact that I'm a part of movements in increased technology doesn't mean I've lost anything. If anyone thought that the writing on this website showcased the extent of my skill and was a premonition for my actual published/disseminated work, they'd be mistaken. This is simple internet writing. Although it's associated with my name and shown to the world, it's still just the Internet. And although what I've posted may seem as if I'd share a smutty story with Borges if he were still here and receptive of my company, even if I didn't see that quote I'd know who I was dealing with and what was proper.

I would never post my actual work on this website because of copyright issues with this server and other people stealing my material. Real authors don't share their work until it's done. I've made the mistake of mentioning the smallest and broadest aspects of my work and I've never felt good afterwards.

There's time.

2010-06-16T20:40:00.001-07:00

The Triumph Rocket III. The fact that Triumph created the video below to showcase its manufacturing process doesn't hurt its rep.

Ibsen.

2010-06-03T17:09:00.001-07:00

I'm writing a study of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, in comparison to Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly.

I like Ghosts, it's intelligent and accessible. I won't reiterate all the points of my study though.
I'd rather talk about more superficial (?) points such as his facial hair. What came to my mind was James Joyce's goatee. It was surprising to learn that Joyce wrote a poem about Ghosts and used it in his own work.
Maybe I should have a facial hair style. But by that token, maybe I should wear white evening dress suits like Tom Wolfe and Marshall McLuhan. And take a walk at an exact certain time every day like Immanuel Kant. Obviously I'm kidding, but who knows. There's a quote I came across in an issue of Contemporary Verse: "I like it better when artists look like artists." An undercurrent of thought - do I need to adopt a certain style or practice in order to seem like a progressive creative force?

Of course not.

Aimee Mann.

2010-05-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

I was introduced to Aimee Mann when I first watched Magnolia years ago. I bought the soundtrack based on her songs.
It's embarrassing to say but her songs were a comfort to me. She seemed to take the side of the lonely man, and it was reassuring to listen to her music every once in awhile. Not a lot of female artists I've encountered take that side as clearly as she has.

This isn't turning into a music forum, and I'm not trying to wallow in self-pity with these sad songs.

2010-05-23T18:21:00.001-07:00

Just read in the textbook Mass Communication in Canada: Sixth Edition that "...Television creates couch potatoes. Radio causes us to imagine. Books make us think and separate us from social interaction. Magazines involve."

I think it's justifiable to say that these sentences are overly classifying. Take the comment on books. Reading a book separates us from socially interacting with other people? Hmm. I remember reading an article in a small library newspaper years back about how books can serve as 'friends for the lonely'. So with these two standpoints in mind, books simultaneously draw us away from other people and comfort us when we walk away from them. The key is to listen to the radio and read magazines for optimal mental/social stability.
Because as we all know, nothing stimulates the imagination more than radio DJs and the commercials they play.
And nothing involves us with the global village on a meaningful level more than magazines with tons of advertisements and articles reissuing the same ideas repeatedly.

But you know...keeping people interested in something calls for a level of controversy (in certain cases) and I suppose the authors of the textbook wanted to provoke conversation.
And I realize that by pointing out the discomforting conventions of radio and magazines doesn't let me expound on the ones that are doing it right (for example some university radio stations and Adbusters magazine).
And I know I'm not the most social person right now but that's due to moving to Toronto and not really knowing anyone who lives here. The same author stereotype which I don't conform to keeps persisting at a time when I don't need unneccessary stress from people's unfounded views. What's ironic is that later in the textbook on the subject of news stories, it's mentioned how news reports often don't contain the entire story and as a result it shrinks our thinking down to binary opposites and simplistic viewpoints of others. Like the classifications of different audiences for different communication mediums doesn't?
But that's what happens when you play with fire - you get burned, yet you create sparks.

Besides, if I took the textbook's intentions to heart and started listening to the radio (at least the popular channels) I doubt I'd hear uplifting music like this.

2010-05-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

I couldn't care less about whatever ramifications stem from affiliating this song with my name. Typecasted, dismissed...o the sad artist. It's a simple, sublime song. The video has style, but it's marred by Berry's mysterious-looking gestures. I always hear this song with a deep bass sound (in the style of the BG refrain) when notes are played at the beginning, instead of the more upbeat sound.

I've been caught in the thick of schoolwork, but should have more involved content soon.

2010-05-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

Oxygene 8, the collaboration between Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarré, is one of my favourite songs to this date. The video made for it, although crisp, doesn't illustrate what the song means to me. This remake sounds much better than the original.

The album Oxygene was released in 1976, ahead of its time. I own it, and the song that I chose to post is one of the shorter yet most powerful tracks. You might think, with the song's sound and the album cover, that it's reminiscent of horror movies but I didn't find that comparison until other people mentioned it. It's just originality, precision, power and beauty... .

Neon lights.

2010-05-06T17:53:00.001-07:00

Vangelis. This piece of music can't be forgotten.

2010-04-24T10:55:00.001-07:00

I watched Quiz Show awhile ago, a favourite movie of mine from the past.

I was surprised how much literary content surrounded the film with regards to Charles Van Doren and his family (it's been years since I saw it last). He mentions that he wrote a novel about patricide, has a PhD in Literature (and a Masters in Astrophysics), teaches literature, and his father is a renowned poet and professor.

With this sort of background, I had to wonder what the film was trying to say about the strength of literature affecting our beliefs and decisions. Van Doren's well-read, yet still makes the wrong decision and chooses to receive the answers to the quiz show Twenty-One based on the allure of money and fame. Is this to say that all the wisdom and wit passed down from all the literature one can be immersed in won't be able to instill and maintan fundamental lessons about right and wrong?

Rest in peace Guru.

2010-04-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

Like other rappers Guru's lyrics seemed egotistical at times, but it never mattered much. His wordplay, intelligent lyrics and flow more than made up for it.

The Google Books Settlement Pt. 1

2010-04-18T18:54:00.000-07:00

The GBS has been on my mind for some time. At first I believed it was going to allow readers to immediately download books as soon as they became available without paying for them, and then read them on e-book readers which eventually abolish printed books, adding to the idea that in the future the arts will become entirely free to all...for better or worse.

Whether this will actually be the case is anyone's guess. I've only read these three articles regarding the matter, so there might be loopholes that I haven't noticed.
Of course there are other issues besides allowing a new book to be downloaded for free instead of paying the artist their due. Notably the issues of how e-books could possibly pervert the author's vision of their work with advertisments, which is something I noticed in the Canadian article, as well as Google possibly censoring and rewriting certain works which is absolutely wrong.
There are issues that don't apply to me but I still want them to have their proper consideration, such as Google copyrighting and e-releasing books that have gone out of print, and Quebec authors not getting their due.
A saving grace of the GBS is that authors can freely null different options of it by filling out a form and sending it to Google. But even so, the deal extends to their publishing house as well which can overrule the author's wishes of not being a part of the GBS.

Personally, at this point in time I wouldn't mind Google taking sections of the books I write, for example a couple of chapters, and putting them online for free dissemination. You could liken it to downloading a song from an album to spark interest in a singer (although not in the case of a one-hit wonder. And even with file sharing and Youtube videos, there's still certain songs and shows that are kept from being enjoyed free of charge). Or it could be compared to a library carrying a couple copies of the book. It would allow for quicker access to my work, which is always beneficial. As long as they pay me for whatever advertisments they use my work in.

Eveybody's talking about the future of the printed book, and how reading will change. I would much rather prefer reading a book instead of reading a screen, but at the same time I'm not averse to technological changes. I mean, when it comes to literature I'm always reading a book. I've never listened to a book on tape or CD. I haven't tested a Kindle or any other e-book reader. But technology doesn't have to be detrimental to the reading process, nor does it have to reformat our attention spans/memories (although as I've mentioned earlier Socrates said reading in general degrades our memories so we may as well step on the gas?). That's why I hope that the GBS doesn't take away any money from authors or diminsh the meaning and quality of their works.
It's still disturbing how reading is fundamentally changing in my lifetime. And of course this adds to my many levels of stress about my future in literature. Yet no matter what happens, the quality of the work always comes foremost.

These are my initial thoughts on the subject, anyways. I'm sure I'll have more posts about it as new developments arrive.

2010-04-13T19:20:00.000-07:00

Two long, epic songs. The visual imagery doesn't do them justice.

But even so I've lost touch with them.

Sherwood Anderson.

2010-04-10T19:00:00.000-07:00

With his second wife, Elizabeth Prall. Sublime photo.

I was first introduced to Sherwood Anderson through a poem by Charles Bukowski entitled One for Sherwood Anderson. And for the time he wrote in, I expected him to hold typically racist views about minorities. But when I read the two books above I didn't find any racist sentiment involved. These two books were very refreshing due to their clear, direct writing style mixed with the complexity of the content that they discussed. It was surprising to see how direct and concise his writing was at the time it was published, the early 20th century.

But my one reservation with Caucasian writers during the early to mid-20th century is that they're explicitly racist towards one minority. I don't have any desire to read Hamsun or Pound (yes), for example. And I looked for racist overtones in Anderson's writing.
Autonomy is important to me, both as a writer and a reader.
From what I've studied, I couldn't find any racial bias towards African-Americans, or Semitic people, or any others in Anderson's writing.
From what I've studied he wrote in racist voices (the 15 year old in I Want to Know Why, which parallels Huck Finn) but he rallied against racism even in those times, which is documented here. Did he think the segregated school system in 1928 was wrong and spoke out against it? I would say so. But maybe I'm wrong, and my whole outlook on Sherwood Anderson and my acceptance of his style and literary efforts are all for naught. No matter how much I appreciate his work, no matter how painful it may be the truth is more appreciated. The sublime photo will turn ugly as a result. And the world will grow dark yet again. I'll be reminded why I haven't done a post on any Arabic authors (which is coming) again. And I am thinking of it, and researching it.

2010-04-03T19:52:00.000-07:00

Title Photo.

2010-04-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

I've got money in the bank again after years on end. And once again I'm devising ways to spend it without considering the bigger picture. The title photo above alludes to this in how I have an overwhelming desire to buy a vehicle and go traveling. I haven't owned a vehicle in seven years and this time I'm much wiser in going about it.
But there's still a level of compromise that I don't want to think about, namely either buying a model that doesn't appeal to me or simply just waiting for another year. I don't plan on buying a vehicle until the end of this year, which is a long time in itself to wait...

It's been so often wherein I've dreamed of going on long road trips to places I've always wanted to visit in North America. The vehicle has to be a convertible. Going with a partner, listening to music loudly, her long hair flying around in the air (not during the winter, though). You know, the old romanticism.

I know this isn't subversive and provoking, qualities that a writer needs to have, and as a result this website might seem too self-ingratiating.
But I would much rather dwell upon issues like this than say, for example, American right-wing conservatives who make openly racist comments and try to hide them under the guise of humour. I don't feel the need to name them and thereby give them more exposure. People will say that we need to continuously be challenged and offended to keep each other sharp and aware, but sometimes it feel like that thought process has been fostered too often for there to be progress. But that's worth a week of posts in itself.

Health is wealth?

2010-03-31T19:37:00.000-07:00

Only recently have I heard about Irish Moss. I'm planning on trying it out, it's been said to have many health benefits. I've tried out other lesser-known foods such as sei-tan and bulgur and they've been worth the effort.

This weight gain diet I'm on is very hard to follow. You'd think that merely eating more food per day, or at least fulfilling the amount of calories/protein I'd need, would be easy. And for many people it would be, but I've always been used to eating smaller portions of food. And there's the mental factor - I get stressed that I'm overloading my body with nutrients. I also eat a lot of the same food, such as eggs, peanuts, chickpeas, whole wheat flax bread, chicken and others, and I was told that if you eat the same food for prolonged periods of time then its nutritional value decreases. But I've already planned out what foods I need to eat based on their fat/protein/carb levels after extensive research. Do I have to switch it around again? This is where more research comes into play. Exercise is like politics - there are so many different opinions, usually overly outspoken and self-confident, that you have to wade through so much of them just to find out the real truth.

I mean, I've gotten stronger and bigger but not as much as I'd like over the past one and a half years. But that's because I haven't made necessary steps that would bolster my confidence level, such as keeping a diary and continuously measuring my weight. A lot of exercise is mental - when I'm lifting a weight for the final two reps and I'm dying, the amount of time I've spent on exercise and all the food I've eaten rings inside my mind and gives me additional drive to complete the exercise. That's just me, though. I haven't gone about exercise in a comprehensive manner, but I've always got the desire to exercise and that's fundamental...

"I don't hit the ball because it'll only slow my bat down." - Mike Watt
"No hope gives me guts." - D. Boon

2010-03-27T19:32:00.000-07:00

It encapsulates a lot.

I should rethink what I write on here.

2010-03-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry for the lack of posts. I've been steeped in schoolwork and life situations, but that's no excuse. There's really no excuse for neglecting something important in your life (potentially or clearly or otherwise). Maybe spending my time on said issues might be a gain towards my future. But maybe not. If people close to me can't tell me what they think of this website...

Thank you Anonymous, Aaron and Laura.

Between grass and hay they say.

2010-03-08T12:53:00.000-08:00

It's 14 degrees Celsius outside and I'm spending the day indoors, healing a lower back injury from gym exercise. I can barely bend down.
It's just another weird occurrence in my life, out of many that have happened recently. But the thing is, I'm not too stressed. I've been through multiple back/leg injuries before, what I was doing wasn't too strenuous (although it was a rookie mistake - a combination of inadequate stretching and too much weight), it was nice out yesterday as well and I got a taste of it...I should be fine by Friday. I'm feeling better than yesterday evening, already on the come-up. It's good, it's good.

But rather than attempt to create a segue (lazy) I'd like to discuss some advice from authors I've read recently.

Virginia Woolf said that writing should not consist of expressing one's frustrations.

Alex Haley said that in order to be successful one should want to write, not want to be a writer.

Lorrie Moore said in How to be a Writer that one should try to be anything else, first of all.

Out of these three imprints of advice, I can relate to Haley's the most. I've seen it before, people who want to make money or be famous based on a book they want to write. I won't lie, I've entertained these thoughts as well but they don't comprise my drive to write. Money and fame are only by-products of creating a substantial work of art; they aren't the overall goal. If I write a book which ultimately makes me enough money to live on, I won't quit writing thinking that I've accomplished my 'goal'. Which I'm sure people would scoff at based on my youth and the fact that I'm already immodestly billing myself as a novelist, but it's the truth...

I don't necessarily agree with Woolf but she makes a good case regarding quality in literature. Writing for therapeutic release is a very healthy practice, and I do agree that other people should be exposed to it, but to an extent. I always think of the divide between writing something and publishing something - what causes someone to take the publishing step. If you honestly believe that people will benefit from reading your work, and you believe it's original and well-written enough to create a mark in literature, and you care about the state of literature itself and not just how you can profit off of it, then I would say it stands a chance...
In my life, I was always attached to literature. I always had a talent and appreciation for it. I read constantly, often books that weren't targeted towards my particular demographic. A small memory I have is of a science fair I attended when I was twelve - there was a girl there my age with an exhibit as well, and she was reading The Partner by John Grisham, which I was also reading at the time. It surprised me and I wanted to tell her but didn't.

My life has been saturated with literature. Which brings me to Moore's point. Although reading and writing have been staples of my life I still haven't been born and bred for a writing career, like say politicians or princes and how they know from a young age where their lives are going to lead. But at the same time I don't see how aiming for a writing career is ill-advised. I think Moore's advice is controversial because it places a limit on how people should understand the writing world. It might sound naïve to say but I've had many small jobs before, all not involving writing - does this mean I'm exempt of Moore's advice?
She could mean that I have to have initial career plans not involving writing at all, and writing should strike me at any given moment (I might be exempt of this possibility as well - I started taking Environmental Studies in my first year of university). Does it mean that I should have a career I've spent years on while writing on the side, finally reading for my chance to shine (which is a strong possibility for me as well)? Maybe I should check out the entire book, right?

I'm talking about myself too much.

It's spring, when a young man's fancy turns to love. I never liked the word 'fancy'. And I've always wanted a girl's love no matter what season it was. Maybe restricting myself to conventional 'parameters' like the aforementioned would increase my chances of finding love, because it's what people expect...

And yet and yet!

2010-03-06T19:35:00.000-08:00

Not to sound coy but there's a divide growing in my mind as to what I should share on my website and what I should keep for my own personal writing...thoughts that can't be categorized, that seem too important for my own writing to be shared (and most likely claimed as copyright) on this Internet service...

This website is too important to fall into repetition (e.g. claiming I'm going to write posts regarding topics and then not doing so) or to fall into languishment. I just have to climb out of the hole.

We can always be better.

By the beer of your profit.

2010-03-02T21:22:00.000-08:00

This is a book that I've tried to read by itself, that I've done research into, that I know requires another reference book to properly explain itself to the reader, that will supposedly drive someone insane trying to read it all. It's an amazing book to say the least.

Maybe the world isn't ready to read on the level that Finnegan's Wake demands. Or maybe we're not supposed to.

But why place limitations on the potential of someone's attention span for reading?

Humble Beginnings.

2010-02-25T19:32:00.000-08:00

If I don't do this post now, I'll regret it later. Some of my favourite books from nine to eleven years old in descending order.

The Secret World of Og, Pierre Berton. A Canadian milestone.

Zoom Upstream and Mischief City, both by Tim Wynne-Jones, another Canadian writer. I also enjoyed The Metallic Sparrow and The Outlaw League by Lance Woolaver though I couldn't find photos of either. I met all three writers when I was younger, Berton at school and Wynne-Jones and Woolaver at a young writers' fair...

Batman: Knightfall, Dennis O'Neil. I haven't read this book in some time, but when I first read it at ten years old it stunned me with its writing style.

Star Trek: Vendetta, Peter David. I was never a stranger to pop culture back then, a marked change from now. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? But to each their own. Like Knightfall this book was also infused with style when I first read it. I always liked The Next Generation but never really got into any of the other series.

The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson. Who didn't? Garfield, the Far Side, early FoxTrot, Peanuts and Beetle Bailey as well. All eye-opening cartoons on different levels of wit and content.

When I was eleven I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. Although Harper Lee's style was advanced I still read through it. I didn't read too many great literature novels because I didn't feel like I was ready to understand them, to put as much time into them as they needed...but I still read this book - with that same cover as well.
Just a few out of countless others...books I can only remember the contents of, not the titles...books I don't want to share to the public...the ones I read when I was younger that I can't find the right images for...and so on.
Trips down memory lane, of reading alone, reading at dinner, some of the books still carrying stains from the food I dropped on them.
The last book I read was Thomas More's Utopia.
Thanks for the Og picture and enjoying my site, Laura. Her site's here.

2010-02-20T19:06:00.000-08:00

If there's one image I try to remove from my mind it's one of me 'blogging up a storm.' I never liked the word 'blog' from the first moment I heard it - it's another example of ugly portmanteau words that are supposed to reflect modern times. A couple of years ago I read an article in a prominent Canadian newspaper (I can't remember which one) that had suggestions of new words for the 21st century. I can't remember any of the words either - but trust me when I say that none of them looked/sounded like anything I'd add to my personal lexicon. Sometimes I like to joke around and say that the new English words of the 21st century will be found in captchas...but I'm sure that's already been done in the past, with an author wise in computers who used a program to generate as many random words as possible, then attached different meanings to them and tried to write a book out of it all. But successfully achieving a task like that seems like the rarest accomplishment in literature - id est Finnegan's Wake, and Joyce had no idea of computers or their eventual impact on the world, which I'm sure has been expounded on elsewhere.

And while I'm on the topic of words, why am I finding the word 'interesting' being used so frequently nowadays? I take umbrage at it. But since language is excessive and pseudo-intellectual, why bother worrying? Whatever works, works - keep it going.
First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the woman.

And as much as I hate to expose one of my favourite bands, a fault of mine where I want to keep what's lesser known and amazing to myself so it doesn't get overexposed (is it a fault? They'd want the exposure - I guess it's a symptom of youth, keeping secrets)... this is The Sea and Cake. Oui is one of the best albums I've ever listened to, as well as The Fawn and Everybody. Sometimes I feel like writing about how literature and music are wrapped around one another. Until then...

2010-02-18T20:35:00.000-08:00

I was in the midst of creating a larger post but I'm exhausted. So instead I'm sharing a video/song I was first exposed to when I was eleven or so, which still stuck with me. The song's name was in the back of my mind for years, like some others. It's on my mp3 player but I very rarely listen to it. I can still appreciate some of the video's imagery. And this is the only song I know by her.

Yes, this is embarrassing.

"You figure it out, I can't." "I'm only the middleman." "I don't know what's going on."

2010-02-17T19:04:00.001-08:00

I've heard it before. Each sentence in the title is from a different cartoonist, painter and photographer respectively. Is it the calling card of the real, successful artist?

Is it pointless to try and explain any artistic endeavour?

If it doesn't make dollars it doesn't make sense, some say. In the case of art this has long been the exception to the rule in most instances, maybe because people believe it has to be the exception...but even the word 'art' makes people renounce its definition in full due to its ubiquitousness...

It's funny how in an essay I read by Flannery O'Connor, she mentions how a lot of good writers she knows paint - not because they're exceptionally good but because they use it as a way of 'seeing'. I've been painting on and off (on a canvas and easel) since I was nine. I still remember how surprised I was on my tenth birthday when...well, why should I share that story here. I paint, but it's not often. It's more often than when I drink caffeine though, which is about three to four times a year.

I've never known because I''ve never been given the chance.

2010-02-17T16:58:00.000-08:00

In recent e-mails with my Creative Writing professor Michael Helm he was kind enough to give me words of encouragement, saying that (this is non-verbatim) the development of my writing and the amount of work that I've created shows that I will (well, can) be an author in the future. I hope so, before loneliness and its comates destroy me. I've been through bizarre instances with the release of my work to the public, shallowness and ridicule, but once in awhile I receive a boost of morale and it means a lot. Professor Helm is a novelist whose work is widely respected - you can find it here at mclelland.com as well as in bookstores.

"Writing only leads to more writing" is a quote by the female French author Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, more widely known just as Colette. And while this is a famous quote, a piece of advice that she gave to Georges Simenon - "Now take out the poetry" - is one that looms more heavily in my mind. Also the fact that she passed away at eighty-one years of age (maybe this is narrowminded but I find that a lot of authors seem to live very long - recently JD Salinger and P.K. Page passed away and they were both in their early nineties. Rest In Peace).

Socrates denounced writing - he saw writing anything down as detrimental to the human memory and instead preferred to try and remember everything, functioning solely on speech. When I heard this my first thoughts were of personal humiliation, how it was just another block in the enjoyment I got out of my work (by block I mean obstacle - although I like the ambiguousness of the word in this instance).
I don't see Socrates' views as a continual source of humiliation though - the times he lived in were obviously much simpler. But to me, his views connect to the way people see the Internet as a source of creating decreased attention spans, like the way people saw TV when it came out. We should not - and this includes writers - try and prey on people's fears and potential worriments.
I don't and never did believe that if I watch videos on Youtube and write on my website, it's not going to allow me to concentrate on a book or my own personal work. There's an overflow of instability when it comes to someone's development and potential for a sound mind.
I'm not saying I'm completely enlightened. There are negative thoughts I have that stick with me. How I could only be seen as an experiment for study in the arts...how it's so easy to fail but so hard to succeed...how people including myself always want to hear the truth, just not about their own lives...how I place too much happiness in material goods (I'm halfway to buying a BMW - factory earnings), et al. But through all these blocks and many others I've never underestimated my ability to achieve my goals...

I wanted to have the next book I'm writing (I've only shared its name once) to have been done at my current age. And now I don't see it being finished for four years at least. There's a myriad of reasons why - I've got 650 pages of rough material to sort through (which is only ideas and structure, not drafts), I've got school and work (which is the weakest reason), I don't have a girlfriend (which many others would see as the weakest reason but I see as the strongest), and most surprisingly I find that some of the work has less meaning than in the past three years.
Not less meaning in terms of how important it is, but in terms of how I want to present it. This relates to Colette's advice that I wrote of earlier - the way that I present the work has been going through changes. Not radical changes (except in the case of one story and how postmodernism can enhance its content) but changes in how the work relates to the rest of literature and the world as a whole. Education is slowing my progress, ironic (and trite, and maybe eventually naïve?) as it sounds, with countless points of inspiration and imagination being found in common pathways to life I've never been able to explore yet.

2010-02-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

Observatory Crest.

2010-02-10T19:23:00.000-08:00

It's a great song except for the last 20 seconds, which I'm not even sure belong to the song. The video doesn't do it justice (the whole video in itself is bizarre but it was the only one I could find with an entire version of the song), but some of the imagery is fitting.

I've been wanting to watch this movie for years and I finally did today. I didn't know much about the plot - all I had to go on was the poster image and the fact that Neil Jordan directed it.
So I watched it and all I can basically say is that it's chaotic. Eamonn Owens is now the best young actor in my mind (or was, since the film was released in '97). I don't know much about acting but his performance is top-notch. The blend of drama and dark comedy seemed uneven to me at times but I'm still glad I watched this film at last.

Any guy would do this thing for me...why can't you.

2010-02-09T19:34:00.000-08:00

When I was 19 back in the spring of 2005 and traveling by myself I discovered Dinosaur Jr's Where You Been album for the first time. It was in a small hotel room in Ottawa that had cable - I changed the channel and the music video for Start Choppin' was playing (a rare video in itself). I still remember Mike Johnson's vacant face staring into nothing. The next day I went and found the album in a used CD store. It became one of my favourites to this day.

Not The Same has since turned into my most beloved track on the album, with Drawerings a close second. The journalist who thought J. ruined Not The Same with his voice had it all wrong. When I first heard that people thought J.'s voice ruined Dinosaur Jr's songs it gave me pause(just like Stevie Nicks' voice, they say)...but I found that despite their claims, the songs didn't lose any of their appeal and depth.

2010-02-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

Mcenroe is the maestrosity (for a second I was foolish enough to think that I had perhaps invented that word )behind Peanuts and Corn records. Some of the music he's engineered has been brobdingnagian in its quality. It just never gets old. I recently ordered a stack of instrumental CDs from the site and got an e-mail from him. Check their website here.

Sickles and Hammers.

2010-02-07T09:04:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of things I could say about this video...the way skateboarding's been maligned in pop culture...how this side of my life could cause a lot of people to instantly negate my credibility/potential as an author based on skateboarding's 'young and dumb' rep...the quality of the skating itself (it's not the best I've got - after skating street for nine years I only started to skate transition back in the summer. Plus I've only been filmed three times in said nine years, this being one of those times. It's hard when you don't have any friends that skate because there's a lot of motivation that's missing. I've been trying to skate the vert ramp at CJs park here in Toronto. I wanted to get a clip of that but the park's far away and I haven't had time). There's really not much more I want to say about it, because I don't think it's necessary. I don't mean that pessimistically - I mean it pragmatically. Skateboarding's always been fun. That's all I have to say...

P.S. I don't know why it becomes unavailable after a period of time. I had to republish it in order for the video to work again. And apparently still have to...

Numbers on the ground.

2010-01-30T19:13:00.000-08:00

I wanted to kickstart the posts on this website with some personal video footage and I'm working towards it.
But until then - and that's not to say that the current content is of lesser value than the footage - here's a Shakespearean sonnet I wrote awhile back.
I'm also writing another in spondaic pentameter, but it's not finished yet.

For A-.

In times of dreadful sadness rearing up

Which almost always happens nowadays

To beg a drink of water from your cup

Can carry force majeure inside your maze.

When seeds and hairs, despite a constant growth

Are nurtured into states so beauteous

Reminders glare inside my eyes of oaths

I once believed to sound so duteous.

Designing tales free of vicious truth

Absolves my absolutely frail mind

Of crying games, alcohol, and living proof

Persuading heart and soul to break their bind.

Imagination blind, my efforts hold

Predictions bearing weight in worthless gold.

Beauteous and duteous aside, writing sonnets is more enjoyable than I thought it'd be. I'm not inclined towards poetry - it feels like every poem I write can be expanded into something larger, and rightly so in most instances. But sonnets require form, and with form comes concision (in some cases)...and the form that sonnets require make me discover new ideas, I find. It's true.

There's not enough legend behind this sonnet to make it worthwhile to the general public, I know. For now it's only a case of the young man (YOUNG MAN) expressing his feelings through words, which we all know is a cute but fruitless endeavour. Right? Right. This youth just disgusts me (it's time for me to stop writing about this tired subject).

Women are beautiful.

2009-12-17T10:14:00.000-08:00

Catalina Sandino Moreno. She was great in Maria Full of Grace.

Sade is forever.

I always liked Wendy O. Williams. Rest in peace.

Nadine Labaki is untouchable.

Chalk another post up to the folly of youth.

And I should mention I don't believe in being a player at all. This post might incline some people to believe that. Eventually I'll write a post about the subject.

Tastes, thoughts. Observation. Marketing. Control.

2009-12-09T17:36:00.000-08:00

Sebadoh doesn't promote mind terrors.

I always wonder if a necessary element of writing is to exert authority over a topic or fellow author.

It's easier to criticize something than to create something.

I recently read Kathy Acker's Blood and Guts in High School. Just one more example of the violent, domineering Arab to be found within the text. I should've discussed in class how including this stereotype within the book is a burden against the stand for women's rights that the book creates.
Of course Acker was influenced by Burroughs' Naked Lunch. Both were set in Tangier to an extent. But the topic of Arabic identity in either books is something for another time, since it'll potentially attract discussion/criticism and I should be better prepared than I am now.

Reading a synopsis of Suttree, the book doesn't sound that appealing. Cormac McCarthy's one of the writers to know and study (and I'm sure it's for good reason), like a lot of others whose work I haven't read in full. But I should check out his work and judge it for myself, like every other author I hear about(but a character having sex with watermelons?). It reminds me of when I was in my pre-adolescence and watched movies based almost strictly on what critics spoke of them. I printed out reviews by Siskel and Ebert back in the mid-to-late 90s when Compuserve and Prodigy were popular. Back when there were more R-rated (read: realistic) movies being created.
It made sense; I was young, the critics knew what they were talking about, so why not follow their wisdom?
I remember seeing a poll back then about people who followed critic's reviews or not. The grand majority of them chose that they didn't follow the reviews and instead went by their own judgement. I was honestly surprised by this. But it opened a new door even at that age; I was allowed to fully believe what I wanted to believe when it came to media.

2009-12-04T07:20:00.000-08:00

At work on Monday there was an overuse of a cleaning chemical that if breathed in for long enough could cause respiratory poisoning and even death.

There wasn't any warning beforehand as to its use, no signs or words spoken. It was being used on the 2nd floor, where I usually worked. Since there was no warning, I breathed it in for a second and my nose started to burn, as well as my eyes. I ran to the lunchroom while covering my face. It turned out that the lunchroom was the only safe place to stay, and most of us sat there for an hour while others cleaned the chemical off.

There wasn't any serious damage, no one had to go to the hospital, no one fainted. Some felt unbalanced, their eyes were red or their lungs were burning, but it was nothing severe. I was alright but stressing out to the point where my heart started to pound and the nerves in my hands flared up. But I calmed down and studied for an exam as the chemical was being cleaned.

...So for people who might think that I'm one of those young authors who's had everything handed to them and never had to work for anything, that's not the case. I've had a lot of jobs in my life and I've had to deal with a lot of rough situations, like most other people.

This was one of them.

2009-11-21T19:38:00.000-08:00

It's recommended that I spend at least an hour to two hours a week updating this site. And I spend one day every two weeks at least. But it's intentional because I don't want the content I've written previously to get lost in the mix, esp. the second post detailing the background of Disassociation. Yet at the same time I don't want to keep things too stale either.

I've erased a lot of posts because they detail my frustrations with being alone and the distant opposite sex. I can't leave those posts up for long.

So...I'm going insane from not being in a relationship and not having the side of me which values romance being requited. I can't stand the idea that the more you care about a woman, the less she'll care about you. I can't handle the coded ways in which women respond to my company. I can't deal with feeling inferior because I'm not over six feet tall, don't know a lot about cars, don't have a lot of money, don't follow the newest trends, considered a pretty boy. I don't want to believe in the idea that no one wants me to succeed because no one cares.

And more than ever, I don't want to believe that when I write things like this, they only serve to push me further into a corner that I don't want to be pushed into.

Even if no one cares, at least I can care about myself and achieve the goals I've wanted to achieve.
But I can't lie to myself and say that I'm perfectly happy being alone, and I don't care about what other people think because I'm not like that. The question of whether this is a strength or a weakness is a very personal and complex one to ask.

I know this is very basic writing, and it doesn't reflect the extent of my knowledge.

2009-11-05T20:01:00.000-08:00

Sean Connery advocated domestic abuse towards women. Maybe he's changed his stance from the time this interview was conducted. I hope that he has. It's obvious that what he's saying is wrong.

I'll admit that I watched James Bond movies when I was younger, but I never looked up to Connery or the Bond character in general. It was eye candy entertainment. It was impressive, a rich saga. One man facing the odds of everything against him (despite his backing from the English gov't) and seducing women in the process. I wasn't critical of the politics (gender and otherwise) in the films at the time. Although I can't remember Bond ever physically assaulting a woman, this clip does cast the character in a new and ugly light, at least in my opinion. With the advent of time and maturity, I've become much more critical of the Bond series. But of course I would. Was the series ever designed for 24 year-olds in the first place? Was it instead designed towards the adolescents of the period, to appeal to their disposable income and vicarious experience like so many other artistic efforts?

The amount of Youtube comments advocating Connery's position was pretty shocking to me. They seemed veiled in humour. As if humour softened their concurring views and made them more palpable for the rest of the world to agree with.

As for the actual conversation, I'd like to hear an example of what Connery considered a woman 'not leaving it alone' is. That's not to say that I think he might provide an example wherein I'd agree and say "In that instance, it's completely befitting of a mature male human being to start beating his wife."
The comment by Barbara Walters at the end made me want to watch the entire episode. It reversed the attitude she took on at the time of the interview, for one. Her tone at the end was of eerie cheer. Of course some people are going to say "If he beats his wife, it makes for a stronger relationship," which of course isn't true as many people can attest to. Hitting a woman or members of your family is never justified.

The saddest aspect to this is Connery's large following, and how they could take his views to heart and emulate him. I know this interview is around 20 years old. I'm aware that people have their own minds and don't rationalize violent acts that quickly and easily, but it's still very easy to fall into agreement. Celebrities and movie stars have an inordinate amount of power and importance in society. "If Sean Connery says it, and all these men and women appreciate his position, it's got to have some truth and I can fall into it as well."
Peer pressure. It doesn't dissolve as some people get older, with the fact that since Connery rationalized this behavour, it might have appealed to men with families who are older than I am and who are looking for an excuse to hit their wives. That's never an appropriate way to try and solve any problem.

Rest In Peace Nelly Arcan.

2009-10-24T18:14:00.000-07:00

A Quebec author who published Putain and Folle. She passed away a month ago.
I don't know much about her but I wish she hadn't died. And I wish I hadn't initially heard about her through the news of her death.
I know these statements could be seen as volatile. I don't mean any disrespect towards her at all.

New Title Photo.

2009-10-11T14:39:00.000-07:00

After 10 months I decided to change the title photo from Jeff Wall's After 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue to the above.

Although no one mentioned it, I had a small amount of doubt and embarrassment regarding my use of Wall's photo...in my more cynical moments it felt like I was using his image to brag of my creative prowess, due to the numerous light bulbs hanging above the lone male figure sitting in his apartment.
This wasn't my intention when I first used it as the title; I was in the midst of discovering Wall's photography at the time and I thought After Invisible Man was the most striking piece. And for the art critics who want to pan my former decision based on how I'm attracted to flash more than subtle genius and who want to call 'pearls before swine'...don't.

So now I've switched to another photo I found just as memorable.
I should mention it's not a slight to those who work in cubicles. You might see the great expanse around the desk as a testament to a novelist's creativity, a stark contrast to the labour performed in cubicles...at least that's the stereotype.
It's not true, I don't believe in it. I've just always had an affinity for void warehouses (or devoid, depending on their history...but preferably void). The desk and computer reflect my own lifestyle, but my desk is a fraction of the size and I use a laptop. My desk also doesn't carry as much of an office motif as the one in the photo does. I don't have tape, for instance.
And the fact that nobody's sitting at the desk is an eerie reflection of how I'm not spending as much time as I should on my next novel.

Here were my other choices for the title photo...

This is the Cave of Crystals underneath the Chihuahua Desert in Mexico. You can read about it here.

This is bismuth crystal. There's a copy of this photo that's larger which I almost ended up using...it fit well onto the screen, but the standard black lines on the screen which hold the title photo were sticking out too sloppily to look professional.

Although I really like the snow and power grid in this photo because it reminds me a lot of my childhood, in the end I felt it was another standard sunset photo. Reverberations of what Oscar Wilde wrote about the sunset being too obvious to truly be considered beautiful (which I don't agree with) invaded my thoughts. But I still might use it in the future.

Rest in Peace Roc Raida. I saw him for the first time in Mixtape, definitely impressive.

Draft Collective Reading Series 2009

2009-10-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

I was at the Draft Collective reading yesterday afternoon. With only three minutes on the mic (like the other three readers besides me), I read a small selection from Disassociation. The first three photos were graciously taken by Christina Clapperton, who's getting a selection from her upcoming novel published in an anthology entitled Canadian Voices, which comes out November. You can find her website here.

That's a disco ball in the upper middle of the above photo. Is it just me, or can you see a face in it? It looks ominous and smarmy.

These next pictures are of the same reading, but taken from my own camera by one of the coordinators of the event. I'm reluctant to put these up because I also put them on Facebook, and since they're contributing (more or less) to the career I'm hoping to forge I'm wondering if Facebook is going to claim some absurd copyright infringement and demand money from me in the future. I'm not being paranoid; these really are the backwards technological times my generation has to claw and flail through. I've done extensive research into social networking privacy issues and I'm still not entirely sure. But I guess I'll risk it.

There's mysterious occurrences in these photos. I'm pretty sure that black bat-like form in the middle of the above image is a blurry side view of the head moderator coming up on stage to let me know the time. You can't see me reading in either of the photos, but I like them nonetheless...

I was also at the Word on the Street Festival this year, and although I took some pictures they aren't anything worthwhile; it was more me meeting different magazine editors and publishers instead of anything photo-worthy.

The Canadian Authors Association meeting is on the 15th, so hopefully I'll be able to attend it if my new part-time factory job permits. Yes, I work part-time, and go to university, and write, and maintain my apartment's cleanliness and take care of my health and my cat's health as well.

Words Alive Festival 2009

2009-09-20T15:45:00.001-07:00

I read a short story of mine entitled Cry Much?, as well as two passages from Disassociation.

After my reading the MC of the Open Mic stage, a writer named Malcolm, gave me some very high accolades and the audience gave me a loud ovation. A photographer from Snap Newspaper took me aside and asked me for some information regarding Disassociation, and then proceeded to take two photos of me holding it. I hope they use the photos and info. So it was all worth it in the end.
But when I left the Festival alone, just like when I came in alone, I thought more about how I wanted a girlfriend to share the whole thing with.

I'm in the far middle. There was a larger audience behind the shots as well, about twenty-five people. Modest, but enough to make me nervous.

The shots of my reading were taken by a music teacher also named Adam. I don't know if he'll see this, but if he does*, thanks and I appreciate it.
*originally written as 'is', just now corrected. Better late than never.

Poet David Glick reading from his book of poems inside a restored old house.

Some performers around my age. The woman in blue was giving spoken word to music.

The left side of the Festival.

This woman also performed some simple, clean poetry on the Open Mic.

York Professor Priscilla Uppal reading from her latest novel.

The entrance to the Festival.

I'm also going to be at the Draft Reading Series here in Toronto in early October, so hopefully I'll be able to have some shots from that as well.

I was also at the Word on the Street Festival, and will post the photos soon. I don't know why I thought the International Writer's Festival was this week.

"Cry much?"

2009-09-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

What if our bodies could never heal themselves?

What if commercialization/commodification were viewed in the same regard as molestation and rape?

What if people could at least respond with their real feelings and thoughts? What if the women I've tried to talk to did so?

What if people never played the game of 'Don't contact them, wait for them to contact you'?

What if I disregarded my social values based on how they can easily lead to ugliness, weakness and depression?

What if I never reach my goals of being able to reach and sustain a career that allows for me to provide for myself, my future wife, our future children, and my parents?

What if people remembered what it actually was, as much as what it should've been for them?

What if I broke free of the shell that the Past has tried to slowly construct for me?

What if I received a comment on this website that was actually positive?

Imagine existing only to, at the end of the day, be so grateful and thankful of the slightest response from people whom you've contacted repeatedly and whom you don't owe anything or haven't disgraced (if you even receive a response at all). People whom you've changed your life for, have stressed out over and generally have placed way more thought and importance in...and you know they haven't placed a fraction of the thought and measure in your life as you have theirs. Is it better than nothing? Does the world need people like you in order to revolve?

Words Alive Literary Festival/ 'A Novel' / What Women Want

2009-09-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

I'll be heading to the above, the Words Alive Literary Festival, in a week from now on the 20th. I don't have a table nor am I one of the featured authors but I do intend to attend the open mic and read from Disassociation, as well as a short story I submitted to Rampike which I'm not sure has been accepted.

So it'll be 3 1/2 hours taking four different buses from Toronto to Sharon, ON (where it's being held), and 3 1/2 hours back...all for five minutes (I'm guessing) on a microphone, and I don't even know if there's going to be that large of an audience. And I have to pay 5$ to get in. And I'm pretty sure that people will immediately discredit my work - or label it as a fluke - based on the stigma surrounding the 'young author'. But on the other hand, maybe people will take genuine interest. But I should never really count on what I think I deserve, right?

I've never read this novel. I'm guessing it falls under the unnerving portmanteau 'chicklit' which I don't really read. Not to say that the book isn't good though, it may very well be.

I'd like to discuss something that's been in the recesses of my mind for awhile, and it's the subtitle 'A Novel' that's included on the front of book covers. When I was first selling Disassociation through consignment deals in Ottawa, the representative at Chapters told me that it might be a good idea to include 'A Novel' on the cover in order to tell people exactly what the book is.

I didn't end up doing it. I like the cover as it is. At the time when it was first mentioned to me, I felt embarrassed - as though I'd committed a gaffe so obvious and I was getting off on the wrong foot from the very start. But as time passed I noticed more and more novels without the use of 'A Novel'. Watership Down, for example, has nothing more than the author's name, the title, and a nice image of a rabbit behind a blue, cloudy sky. It works just as well - I'd even go so far as to say it adds a bit of intrigue and mystique to books.

They'll never chase other women, they'll always make as much time for you as they can, they'll value your interests and your intellect, they'll treat you respectfully and equally.
It's all a joke.

University?

2009-08-27T17:30:00.001-07:00

I'm starting university in a couple of days.

When I wrote nothing more than 'university is..." in the Google searchbox, the results it displayed were overwhelmingly negative. University is a waste of time, university is useless, university is bullshit, and so on.

I've been hearing this sentiment for years, spanning decades of thought and opinion. For example Bukowski spent about one year at higher education: "The only damage they did was to your mind", he wrote although that isn't verbatim. And he wrote much more in his courses than what was expected and was considered an A-grade material student, yet he dropped out. I don't see him as the be-all-end-all of literature but he does write the occasional good line of poetry. Hey, everyone loves him.
I remember my first year of university at the U of Manitoba, how my Economics professor joked that you'd only be able to get a worthwhile job if you weren't in university, and the whole class laughed...as though they knew their degree would guarantee them a dream job, or as though they went through the System and knew the time/money (because they're one and the same) put into university would have the biggest payoff...Were they right to laugh?
When I worked as a dishwasher in Ottawa I clearly remember a fellow employee of mine lamenting how post-secondary education was a money-grabbing waste of time - and he was in university...
I mean the real secret to success is that (spurred on by a quote by a former American president - Coolidge?) what really matters in the world is how much guts you have...

For the arts? Universty is a waste of time for the arts, of course. Even moreso for writing. I mean I should've realized that people want youthful artists to create MUSIC- and they want people who are older to be their writers. It's futile to even try and be yourself and not conform to what everyone believes by writing. If I'm not conforming to what everyone else believes, how do I expect to have any appeal? Do I think I'll be so immersed in the 'other side' that people will actually care and try to live vicariously through me?

A writer needs experience in order to write. You can't gain experience in a classroom. Just like the best way to interpret art is to be in front of the art yourself (instead of having someone tell you what it's supposed to mean), the best way to write about life is to experience life itself rather than have a teacher tell you what you're supposed to infer from what a writer inscribes. "Go back to school, little Starling."

After all, that's what one of my professors once told me: that the author's intention is irrelevant, and only your opinion of the text counts. Barthes, anyone? "The death of the author is necessary for the reader to make sense of the text", he wrote. But when I created Disassociation, I wanted people to bring up their stereotypes (both negative and positive) of Arabic people and re-evaluate them. To realize that the Arabic person walking down the street actually might not be a terrorist and not agree with terrorist values, and could be their own individual person. And just as importantly, for the young Arabic person to understand what their belief in blind violence could lead to...Do my intentions push my novel into the 'useless trash fiction' category of writing, since they aren't supposed to have any value? And more importantly, does my lamenting of this problem onto the Internet somehow undermine my future? Did I ever have any future to begin with? Would anyone even think to themselves, "I want to broaden my perception of Arabic people and not think of them in a stereotypical fashion?"

...So with all this weight against me and my writing as I get ready to start another year of university, I really don't know if the money and effort I put into York is going to be worth it in the long run. So let's have another chastising comment tell me the opposite!

Tintin.

2009-08-22T17:46:00.000-07:00

I'm not above reading any children's literature, but it's usually only the literature that I enjoyed as a child more than a decade earlier, and it consists solely of my old Tintin books and the Bone cartoon books. Lately I've been reading my Tintin books again. I have them all except for Tintin and Alph-Art, and the original Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.

When I was eleven I first heard that Herge, the creator of Tintin, was affiliated with the Nazis. And he did work for the newspaper Le Soir which was under Nazi rule, and he did believe during that time that the Nazi regime was going to establish world control. I don't think that he was anti-Semitic or fascist, but there are theories supporting those thoughts.
I've noticed for awhile that some of the Tintin books don't exactly portray Arabic people in a positive light. For example in The Red Sea Sharks when the Emir doesn't fully express sympathy for African slave-trading; Tintin says it's horrible, and the Emir responds 'Er...yes...' as if he's implicitly taking some part in it as well. Pretty strange.

And on the subject of African stereotypes...When I went to New York for the first time I visited a comic book shop and was surprised to discover Tintin in the Congo, a book I'd never even heard of before. Yet to this day I haven't read the whole thing because of how stereotypical the book portrayed African people. There's a scene where an African fails at doing something and Tintin responds "I'll show you how a real man does things", and that pretty much turned me off from the rest of the book. Tintin doesn't talk like that.

I know that some Tintin books refute stereotypes though, such as The Blue Lotus which clearly disputes widespread European beliefs about the strange practices of Chinese people, such as women dumping their babies in rivers. But it seems Herge was advised to refute these stereotypes, rather than doing it of his own accord...

And Herge should've given credit to his whole staff and not just put his own name (which is actually a pseudonym) on all the books.

I admired Tintin so much as a kid that I went to the Tintin Store in Montreal with my mom once and bought a Tintin watch and a couple of books. And when I read The Beach by Alex Garland I found his discussions on Tintin pretty cool (he also references the series in The Tesseract with the Karaboudjan and in The Coma with the word puzzle).

And even though I plan on buying the Alph-Art book, I still find the realities behind Tintin a taking larger and larger presence.
That's adulthood.

And no, I don't plan on seeing the movie. Why aren't there more original movies being created rather than remakes of what was popular in the past?

Time after time.

2009-08-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

Things I appreciate nowadays:

1) My cat Grvslv making a soft 'mah-mah' sound (hence the above photo, which I'm reluctant to put up because it's not the most masculine image. But I think it's funny, who cares.)

2) The songs Time after Time (Cyndi Lauper, also not the most masculine) and Nighttiming (Coconut Records).

3) Receiving a pair of winterfresh scarlet red OG DC Kalises in the mail that I bought off eBay for $20.50. I'm so proud of the adjective 'winterfresh'. In fact, I'm going to copyright it. Wait, gum companies already use it?

4) The good weather here in the Toronto area, and the strong sunscreen I've been using to keep it at bay.

5) Random pieces of information. I passed a golf course on the way to my apartment building this evening and saw a golfer playing in the dark...and he was using glow-in-the-dark golf balls. I had no idea. I can just imagine the connotations between a glowing golf ball and a shooting star start to arise, most likely in golf magazines. Golf.
And I found out today that Spam is actually an acronym for Shoulder of Pork and Ham. I don't eat pork, and I'll never eat Spam in my entire life. But this factoid is interesting due to how it's a contender for the most useless piece of information I've ever come across. No offense, but I just don't like Spam. Sort of like a certain Monty...

Simple pleasures...for a simple mind? I don't think so, contrary to popular belief...

Famous photos.

2009-08-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

These are images by photographers whose work I've pored over in public libraries.

By Don McCullin.

By David Plowden. Industrial Landscape is one of my favourite photo books, although this particular image isn't from it.

Both photos by Yousuf Karsh. He took multiple portraits of Albert Camus. In one of Mr. Karsh's books he shares personal anecdotes about his subjects. Although it wasn't during the above picture, Karsh asked Camus what he thought of the growing Arabic world (Camus was Algerian). Camus responded simply by saying that the Arabic world had a long way to go...
...Simple doesn't necessarily mean devoid of thought and intelligence.

Addendum:
I remember hearing a certain reason why people hold their hands to their head while posing for photos. I can't remember what it is offhand but I'm guessing it's because it makes us look more thoughtful and therefore more intelligent. I heard cosmetically it can give us a tiny 'facelift' and compliment our features...
...I'm not sure if it goes deeper than that, though.

2009-08-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

That poem by William Carlos Williams - the old woman (the narrator's mother? I can't remember) who says she's grown tired of seeing trees...

...This came to my mind when thunderstorms were tearing up the sky this evening, and I enjoyed seeing thunderbolts connected like veins on my hand suddenly flash in the dark sky...

The thought came to my mind that I've always enjoyed seeing lightning. And then the Williams poem came to mind. After that, I wondered if I'd grow tired of seeing lightning in my old age.

Internet watchdogs trying to pinpoint the interests of their target demographic please take note.
As well as other writers who steal ideas.

The News.

2009-08-06T15:07:00.000-07:00

Today I read in the news about Ronnie Biggs, one of the main criminals of the Great Train Robbery back in 1963. He's getting released from prison due to his ailing health in his old age.
The article I read described the robbery as 'daring'. At its end, it explained that Ronnie came back to England after escaping from jail and traveling the world, finishing off with his quote of how his 'last wish was to enter a pub as an Englishman and buy a pint of bitter'.
The article seemed to portray Biggs as a rapturous, whimsical ne'er-do-well with a wink in his eye, swooping down from a staircase and catching your woman along for the ride, leaving her breathless and exhilarated and stealing her away to exotic locales with his large fortune he acquired from his gutsy adventures you would never attempt to try, so timid are you. A real man, this Biggs - grown up from his days of bullying others at school and making all the girls secretly swoon, wanting to tame and change this wild Alpha Male.

So, fine. Sometimes I feel like I exist only to be ridiculed and/or imitated, as people respect and admire criminals and those who use others.
"You're his servant now".
"I lose interest in a man as soon as he begins to care for me."

Codes, games.

The boxer Arturo Gatti committed suicide recently and one of the speculated reasons was his problems with women.

What follows is a true anecdote. I was on the bus about a week ago and behind me were two elderly women talking about the affair with Arturo Gatti. I hate eavesdropping but I forgot my mp3 player and they were loud. One of them mentioned how Gatti's wife was plotting the whole thing.
"Women are evil", this elderly woman said. "My son had to deal with his wife divorcing him and taking his things..." She kept repeating it. "Women are evil". "Women are evil, my son had to deal with..."
One of Gatti's family members was quoted as saying "Even if he had problems with his wife, there were at least twenty other women waiting in line..."

There was a terrible shooting in Pittsburgh a few days ago and my condolences to everyone who was harmed by the tragedy.
The shooter had a website and on part of it he wrote about his long sufferings with women, which I think authorities believe was one of the reasons of his violence. He ended his website by saying "Death Lives".

Suicide and violence. I would never consider either.

"It doesn't hurt as much when you're young".
It will never hurt that much.

"Writers are the loneliest people in the world", Anais Nin wrote in her diary.

What can I say? I need a woman in my life, but aside from that?

Body Break.

2009-07-30T13:33:00.000-07:00

I went to Popeye's the other day and ordered four pieces of chicken, a biscuit and a 7Up. It was the most fast food I've had in a long time, a couple of months at least. It was a long walk as well. Reason being for this journey was that I simply felt like eating some fast food, which is a craving that arrives from time to time, yet it's not strong/justifiable enough for me to satiate it. And this time around when I did acknowledge the urge, it reminded me of why I don't eat it more often.

The one thing I can safely say about being twenty-three is that during this year I became a lot more health-conscious. Aside from that, and finishing another year of university, there's nothing else I can really be proud of in my own life. I did start this website and Disassociation has garnered more attention, my mother's healthy and positive and that always gives me support, my dad's taking care of himself...all these factors give me strength as well. Being health-conscious is certainly one of them.

I started weight training at the university gym last September and I haven't stopped since. This is a clear contrast to when I was an adolescent and teenager and tried to exercise for a couple of weeks and then stopped for months, even years, then started again for a little while...and then the pattern would continue.
But when I started university last year I started weight training to build muscle mass, for two simple reasons. The first is that it cost less than twenty dollars to go to the gym. The second and infinitely more important reason is that it provides a strong feeling of stability to my life. This is a time where I don't have a wife or girlfriend for support, I don't have a clear and bright path for my future, and where I truly believe I'm at the age where I need to start practicing the habit of maintaining/developing my good health, to prepare for my future. And when I do achieve what's lacking in my life now, I'll still be performing workout routines because it really is a part of who I am now and nothing can change that.
When I was fourteen I (along with my class) was informed by my teacher that guys start working out either because they're actively involved in team sports (which I wasn't), or because they want to attract women. The latter, my teacher went on to say, quit after a couple of weeks or so. But I'm doing it for neither of those reasons. It gives me peace of mind (no matter what physical strain I go through at the gym) to know that I'm properly developing my body.

But what's important is health, and diet. My optimal diet is one that holds about 3600 calories, yet with no trans fat intake and a 90% daily recommended saturated fat intake at most. I'd list all the different foods I eat but that would take too much space (available upon request). The drawback to my diet is the sodium intake, which is higher than 100%.

They say that a proper diet is 80% of the equation to gain mass, and excercise is the other 20%. Not scientifically proven, but a large diet is definitely important. But with an increased diet comes inspection into what ingredients are within it, and from this I learned all about MSG, or monosodium glutamate. It was initially revealed to me after watching a Youtube video that explained how Muscle Milk contained a large amount of MSG and was detrimental to people's health (a lot of protein powders contain MSG as well). I didn't know much about it prior to my studies into proper health, only noticing that Oriental restaurants promoted their foods as being devoid of it. Studying MSG, I found that even though it's naturally occurring in foods, strong amounts of it can act as a neurotoxin on the brain. Fast food chains are especially notorious for adding MSG to their foods - it becomes addictive to the human palate, making us buy more. In order to hide the name 'monosodium glutamate' from their ingredient lists on products, food companies use names like 'hydrolyzed vegetable/corn/etc. protein', or 'natural flavour' or 'calcium caseinate'.
KFC is one of the foremost perpetrators of MSG. I haven't eaten KFC in years because I couldn't stand it (but I don't look down on people who do like it). And as for Popeye's...I'll be honest, I'm not sure if Popeye's uses this neurotoxin, but it seems very likely. I ate all the food I bought but I had grease on my hands and face and felt like I knew better the whole time. There was also a piece of aluminum foil - I believe - on a chicken leg.
It wasn't a case of "I'm doing it so I can remind myself how much I hate it". I was merely hungry for chicken and wanted to eat a lot of it to get a lot of calories, despite the consequences. So after my experience I won't eat fast food again for who knows how long. I also went for chicken rather than beef due to how much of the world's resources are improperly allocated towards cattle production.

I'm not perfect, though. I sometimes use a protein powder that contains glutamic acid, which is a lesser form of MSG. I don't eat as much as I should be in order to gain more mass (I only weigh 150 pounds and want to reach 200 - I used to weigh 140). I drink alcohol a bit more than I should. And sometimes I feel that people see my efforts as an attempt to fit into the brutish, dominant Man that's aligned with violence and idiocy, rather than a path towards stability and assurance. That it's just another factor to distance me from other people, or to make them jealous of me.

2009-07-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

Shyness, nervousness...

...I've been entertaining thoughts of increasing age allowing for a decrease in these emotions. Just to get to the point where I tell myself "I'm too old to keep feeling these feelings". Of course the question that then arrives is whether or not the current situations which cause me to feel these emotions are the same ones that have arrived in my past (or different in some areas, but essentially the same). And the other question of how much I need to overcome these emotions arises; how integral overcoming them is going to be in order for me to create a stable future for myself. It makes me wonder about the balance of age, where a stronger sense of self and importance is weighed against the problems of maintaining responsibilities and the strength of your name.

We all have our own definitions of work. There is no basic definition of work, aside from perhaps doing activities that you earn money from. But even that last part of the sentence is debatable. And I don't even want to delve into this lest it cast me into some 90's slacker neo-hippie that a fair amount of the world would believe it does, but it still gave me pause for consideration today after going to the bank.

This is not a case of rodomontade.

2009-07-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Disassociation seems to be a favourite among eBook customers...

...which can be found by clicking here. It's number 17 on the list of Customer Recommended eBooks.

It seems too good to be true, but I hope it is.

2009-07-11T08:40:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of times where I say to myself that I just have to move on, and focus on my work. That's the only thing that matters. To look forward and put my energy in my work. If something's not panning out, in the end it doesn't matter - the work survives.
There's a certain amount of comfort and esteem in thinking like this - at least there was, for me.
But recently I thought about how thinking like this is only causing me strain - how it's unhealthy. If there's a problem, I wouldn't have to know why - I'd just forget about it and continue with my work. It's not appealing any more.

I was at last year's Toronto Small Press Book Fair, but I didn't go this year. I was worried that it would be the same people, doing the same thing - that it wouldn't be a new experience any more. The same audience and the same writers. I don't mean to call down the Fair, though. And this is where a flaw of mine comes into play - I shouldn't be worried about the same things. There was a large potential for new opportunities but I didn't see them, I only saw what was potentially negative.

I was going to mention something else, but I can't remember. I still haven't taught myself to immediately jot down what comes to my mind all the time. I do it most of the time, but haven't now...

2009-07-02T20:42:00.000-07:00

Today I was thinking about how people can start from the bottom and be seen as unkempt and ugly, and then slowly rise from this muck and be considered prestigious and worthy and golden...do all of them deserve it?

I hope most future literature is based around social networking, because it most likely will in order to appeal to the widest audience it can in order to sell more books. At least the book industry isn't as shallow and trendy as perhaps the music industry - even though they're both considered arts/entertainment. That label Arts and Entertainment has always bothered me. As if a piece of art that was created to inspire and evoke brain matter is on the same level as shallow vicarious eye-candy entertainment. But it's too late to reverse the two words from becoming synonymous with each other, right? May as well get used to the relation because you can't reverse it...

It's funny how my generation is the first one to be born around computers, since they were integrated into my everyday life for as long as I can remember. Back when I was 9 - 10, computers were normal; we used Encarta to research topics we were studying in school. But this was before social networking. It's definitely important to be critical of it. In the 'developed' world more than other countries...

As you can tell, I don't have that much to say here.

RIP Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. You didn't influence me as much as others, but your impact is undeniable.

28 to 45, double-digit fixed income.

2009-06-09T14:44:00.000-07:00

I should like to discuss three American cities that have always remained mysterious in my mind: Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.

I've never been to said cities. As a matter of fact the only American towns I've been to are Minneapolis, New York and Fargo. Yet B, P, and C are intriguing to me due to how I've built them up in my mind, starting from childhood. When I was seven to ten years old I collected baseball cards, and enjoyed the names and logos of their teams; the Orioles, the Pirates, and the Reds. I had an old Game Gear baseball game that I played frequently and all three of those teams were on there, cementing the cities in my memory. I never had a great urge to visit any of the cities, but they still interested me.

Thinking about them now, with the exception of Pittsburgh having a strong hockey team (but I'm never really sure of how large the role of hockey is in American consciousness - when Anaheim was playing Ottawa for the Cup a couple of years back, I jokingly remarked that the series was rigged so Anaheim would win due to how it's located in California, the most densely populated state in the US, and if California received the glory of the Stanley Cup it would exponentially increase interest/sales in NHL tickets and merchandise which would be strongly needed for the franchise because of loss of revenue from the previous lockout - but enough of sports theories. I actually rarely pay attention to sports, but still appreciate them from time to time), I don't really know much about them. I never hear anything about said cities in the news, and I haven't noticed anything based in or around them (aside from the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, but I'm not researching this so I'm not sure of other outlets. There's most likely a lot of history and achievement throughout the three cities, but I'm just discussing my initial thoughts). But without research, I can safely say that Baltimore is in Maryland, Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and Cincinnati in Ohio. Aside from these most basic of facts, the well quickly runs dry.
I was tempted to include Detroit in the mix because it has the same vibe in my mind, but I know more about it than the other three - medium to high crime rate, a large automotive industry (immortalized in David Plowden's photography book Industrial Landscape), and of course Robocop. I'm not speaking ill of Detroit when it comes to the crime rate, once again I'm donating my first impressions.

There's just a modicum of intrigue and secrecy about Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati to me, someone who's grown up in Canada and rarely visited the States. I'm not trying to be whimsical, I'm only trying to be honest and critical of my own views.

And all the cool kids shout out, "No one cares!"

Plese leave comments so I can increase my popularity at school. They'll like me once they get to know me, I just need an 'in'. So no one will take me aside and say, "You're trying too hard."

The Tyndall Effect.

2009-05-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

What's up, John? You pointed out the fact that I need new entries here and I've responded because I'm cool like that (even though I have an English paper, a science experiment, and four final exams to complete from the 20th to the 27th). See you in about 12 days, blood.

Kiki Smith is a great artist. And Nan Goldin, who is a great photographer, took the photo. And yes, I know this website seems to only be a showcase of my tastes instead of my work but this will change in the summer months...

P.S. And the Amazon link has been revitalized as well. I just clicked on it to see if it still worked and it didn't, who knows for how long, who knows how this negatively influenced my reputation/credibility as an author...

New content?

2009-04-26T15:55:00.001-07:00

Coming soon...

...As you can see, the hype machine is in full effect. Like billboards that initially display cryptic phrases that eventually become full-on advertising slogans...

...No, but seriously, in the midst of university work ("The reason you go to college is to learn how not to work" - An Albatross), I'm just not sure what to put up next on the site. But hopefully I'll be able to come across something interesting soon..

...something like this , maybe...

...with a discussion to follow.

P.S. The title photo is by Jeff Wall, and no, that's not me in the photo.

Fine arteeste.

2009-03-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

I watched My Kid Could Paint That a couple of days ago and thought about this Kids in the Hall sketch. I don't know if I can recommend the movie due to how it cast me in uncertainty regarding how much Marla, the girl who paints, was being helped with her work. But I can, on the other hand, recommend this sketch. And I know this has nothing to do with writing and literature, which is what I'm focused on; I just find art interesting. And isn't writing a blog about sharing your interests so that internet watchdogs can report back to their marketing companies?

Reading at the University of Toronto.

2009-02-27T06:13:00.000-08:00

Last night I read two passages from Disassociation at the Hart House at the U of T. It could've gone better, it could've gone worse, but I was still comfortable nonetheless.

Social Problem photos.

2009-02-22T16:08:00.001-08:00

Social Problem is a rare book of paintings by Mark Gonzales. It also contains his first-ever published poetry. It was published in Japan by Little More. When I met Gonz last year at an art show he had, he signed my copy for me, which is shown in the top photo. I took photos of the show as well, but I'm saving that for later. This post and a few future ones will be comprised of photos I've taken of random pages of Social Problem.

Two years and counting.

2009-02-16T10:57:00.000-08:00

Two documents of material, all of it going towards my next novel. Three books planned after I finally finish this one. But this novel I'm writing now deserves the appropriate amount of time and energy required to make it the best I can make it. I don't know when it'll be done - most likely a little while after I receive my degree - but I've been working on it for the past two years and will be for years to come.

Dinosaur Jr. concert June 2007

2009-02-16T10:32:00.000-08:00

Random photos.

2009-02-11T06:23:00.000-08:00

My current workspace - the kitchen of my apartment. I cut off/shaved my beard three days ago.

Powerful graffiti on the streets of New York in Manhattan, when I was there last summer.

Photo of a burning apartment building I took, from the window of my previous apartment building. I was living in Ottawa at the time. Strange days.