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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?"

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.