Benjibopper

[My brother wrote a great tune for this but it's not online anymore so here are the lyrics alone]:

Went into the City
Escaped from the trees
away from the lions
chasing me

Bought a robot
to fix me drinks
sat on my porch
so I could think

Planes overhead
through clouds and smog
shut the factory down
No more jobs

Homeless for miles
but the coal still burns
Bums on the freeway
amphetamine turns

Get me out of here
Can't take it no more
Get me out of here
Trash on the rat-race floor

Went back to the farmland
put the tractor in gear
Tilled my fields
until they were clear

Cut down the trees
for my fireplace
Looked in the mirror
at a stranger's face

Worked the good earth
fought the pests
Grew me some veggies
The flowers sold best

Lonely worked the land for years
Lonely now there's nothin' left

Get me out of here
Can't take it no more
Get me out of here
This life is an endless chore

Went into the forest
back to the trees
Prayed for redemption
on fragile knees

Walked through woods
lived on berries and leaves
Wandered forever
alone with me

Went raving mad
Fought with myself
spent seven years
In a paradise hell

Surrounded by beauty
Nothing to do
No one to share
What would you do?

Get me out of here
Can't take it no more
Get me out of here
This beauty's a bore

Went into the city
Escaped from the trees...

Labels: 2005, philosophy, Poetry, Toronto

I met Ivan Prokopchuk the other night, in person. He's long been one of the most colourful personalities I've met as a blogger, and a character who consistently captures my imagination.

But there he was in the Lula Lounge, in full colour, three dimensions, in the flesh, across the table from me with his book, The Fire in Bradford, in hand. "I'll show you mine if you you show me yours," he grinned.
But with Another Story Bookshop on hand selling Drive-by Saviours I didn't have any swap copies. The swap had been my suggestion, but with all the insanity of travel, visiting family and friends, organizing book launches and an Eastern Canadian book tour, I'd forgotten. I promised to send Ivan a copy in the mail and he gave me his book, shook my hand and heartily congratulated me. And he was gone, making way for the next in line.

It was one of a series of surreal encounters I've had lately with old friends. The support has been overwhelming - people I haven't seen in years, people I've only met online, have come out to my two book launches in Halifax and Toronto to celebrate my accomplishment.

And now, writing from a friend's home in East Toronto, planning to head up to Kent Bookstore in Lindsay Ontario in a few hours for another reading and more old friends (and to meet a boisterous one-year-old), I'm feeling a deep easy happiness in that willingness to celebrate what others among us do.

At the same time, I ache for my wife and son, who flew back to Halifax yesterday morning at about crack o'clock, and I long for my own bed where I could properly nurse this worsening cold. Suddenly I'm a lone drifter again, something I missed and didn't expect to experience again so soon. Last time I was a young man, full of abstractions and equipped with an eager pen and ink-hungry notebooks. It all seems a little more businesslike this time - I'm a drifter with a mission, a product to move. I feel like a huckster with a money-bulge in my pocket.

That's not a complaint. I'm loving meeting people, sharing my art with them, and experiencing their kind and enthusiastic responses - their questions, comments and cash. Living the dream for me has moved beyond sloganism and into reality.

Labels: 2010, love junk, non-fiction, Toronto

Hi folks, here's a trailer I made for my novel with some help from my brother:

Labels: 2010, Fiction, Indonesia, subway novel, Toronto

Good social workers don’t share my fear of action and conflict. Some of them crave it. The best ones have a conflict switch that shuts down their own feelings so they can strategically dissect the heightened emotions of others. They have bagfuls of touchless tactics. They can throw bureaucracy at anger, they can speak in calm soothing tones that smother panicked screeching, and they can use just the right language to help a client accept the blame for his own problems.

It’s not that social workers don’t see the way society crushes people. But good ones know they can’t do shit about it, so they focus on the possible. With time, effort and smarts they can change how a client deals with the world.

I’m not a good social worker. I’ve been fleeing conflict since I was a child. I ran from family conflict to join my friends, and I ran even further away as soon as I got a student loan. I fled Nova Scotia, returned to the big city of my early childhood with saving-the-world dreams.

My sister flunked out of high school, remained at home and worked full time at the local paper mill. During my undergrad I studied a lot of Freud-babble about family and childhood, learned strategies, tactics and techniques for counselling people who had suffered family trauma, or were living in dysfunctional situations.

These theories fascinated me but I never related them to my own family. We students had been warned about our tendencies to self-diagnose, usually incorrectly, when learning about new disorders and behaviours. I hardly thought about my family at all. I put them out of my mind, barely kept in touch. And in the case of my sister, our adult relationship existed only through my mother’s updates. Michelle and my stepfather never bothered to talk after she moved to the US four years ago.

I thought about Michelle after the blackout, the next time I rode the TTC. I got on the bus and saw the usual waves of humanity.

I had promised myself I’d be more open to people when the power came back, but when I saw them all I was hit with agoraphobia. I sat down at the front, where you’re supposed to stand up for the elderly and disabled. I pulled out my sketchpad and sketched the lot of them, all hobbled together, like a comic book proof before the colour artist does his magic. For the thousandth time I wished for Michelle’s talent.

By the time I found Sarah snoring on the couch I had too many historical thoughts swirling in my head to bother with her. I went to bed and thought about Michelle some more. I thought about the girl she was, her genius of creation, with talents that far surpassed anything I could ever hope to achieve.

I’ve been drawing since I was a child. Once I entered the workforce I took classes every week. It kept my hands busy, scratched the itch that my computer keyboard gave me every day. I learned the techniques illustrators have used since the pencil was invented to create reasonably hand-drawn facsimiles of buildings and trees and faces. But I was more craftsman than artist.

Then there was Michelle. She could do what almost no one in human history could do. She could make something out of nothing. Those models she made as an early teen progressed from representations of places she’d seen in books to thin-air creations. She invented entire cities writ small. Tradition was just her starting point. It taught Michelle more about what was wrong with how we live than it did about rules and techniques for success. Michelle could revamp tradition and innovate on it, bring in new techniques from the atmosphere, spit on the gods and the ancestors and come away victorious. She was the greatest city planner and engineer in North America. At least on a model scale. Real life was a different story.

In real life Michelle taught English as a Second Language to immigrants in Portland. It was honourable work but it wasn’t exactly earth-moving, for a genius. I thought about it all night, until my stomach hurt. I called in sick in the morning.

Labels: 2003, Fiction, subway novel, Toronto

He took a pen and he drew a line
above one number, under another
He said 'ten years from this time
not a soul will fall asunder'

That was twenty years ago
Now four children play on swings
A fifth has no where to go
and no energy to bring

Welcome to the bottom of the poverty line
Watch those bombs fall on TV
Each could pay rent 3,000 times
They make apathy look easy

It's lonely at the top too
Welcome to the working poor
You won't suffer too little to do
12-hour shift to finish your chores

Café latte at table eight
Smile pretty for the ladies in prime
Work for welfare don't be late
Strangers watch your kids all the time

Welcome to the top of the poverty line
Not poor enough for subsidies
Dropped bomb pays rent just 2,000 times
Their apathy is still a breeze

Labels: 2003, Poetry, politics, Toronto

Labels: 2004, Poetry, politics, Toronto

“I’m a good driver,” he said. “Been drivin professionally for 15 years never had one single accident.”

As he switched lanes the Tercel in the other lane quickly veered off the road into a telephone pole. With a quick glance over the shoulder he sneered, “Idiot! Probably drunk.”

Back to the passing lane he switched, forcing a black pick-up truck into the median, off of which it smashed-steel bounced into a swerving Mercedes, and together they careened into the ditch. Hearing the crash he exclaimed, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Well, that’s a Chinaman for ya. I’m not racist but those fuckers can’t drive worth shit!”

Looking back to the road he swerved to avoid a pedestrian and ran a red light in the wrong lane. Two cars driving perpendicular to us through the green were forced to swerve into cars stopped for the red, causing all four vehicles to explode.

“By Christ that was close!” he hollered. “Fuckin pedestrians!”

It was as he cut off a caravan and it swerved and flipped end over end six times in mid air that I turned on the television over his bunk in the back. The President was addressing the press, and through them, the nation.

“I, am a good pres-i-daant,” he drawled. “During my time in office I worked hard to build our great nation’s economy and protect our security, and nothing could affect my resolve!”

Just then a homeless man’s frozen body dropped dead. “What was that thud?” the President asked, scanning the assembled press corps for answers.

A giant drill broke sacred ground, the caribou starved and thundered into a pit of oil, and the locals joined the welfare line at the back. The President didn’t seem to notice. A two-tonne bomb landed in a remote southern village taking many lives and leaving many widowed wives hungry and wondering if there is something wrong with their country’s economic resolve.

“Today, thanks to me, we are a stronger, richer nation,” the President replied distractedly.

Then a transport truck ran him over, and I was distracted from that television when I heard the trucker say, “What was that thud?”

Secret service bullets came smashing through the windshield.

Labels: 2003, Fiction, short story, Toronto

Labels: 2007, Fiction, short story, Toronto

I've been enjoying going through a bunch of old papers as I move into the new place. Here's one gem I had forgetten about. I wrote it as a short screenplay in 2003 but it was never made:



EXT – Day, Deep Woods

[A couple sits under the canopy of some trees gnawing on big hunks of raw meat, chewing and chewing slowly and disgustedly. They are both dressed in tattered business suits.]

JANE

Ten years of vegetarianism gone down the drain.

ADAM

Mmmm.

JANE

This is truly disgusting.

ADAM

(beat) I wonder how Jesus is doing without me running Hostile Takeovers.

JANE

I wonder how Tarik is doing without me to get his reapplication in order. He’ll never get his Thesta-Distatica patented without me to look out for him. He’ll probably be another victim of DigestCom in fact.

ADAM

Would you shut up?

JANE

Ooooh, do I detect a little lingering loyalty to the assimilation machine?

ADAM (moping)

No. I left for a reason you know. As much as I could go for some bruschetta and a café latte right now, I’d rather be here gnawing on this half burnt half bloody deer meat than carving up the corpses of small businesses to keep Jesus and the shareholders secure in the knowledge that anything innovative will soon be theirs. I’m just sick of talking about the city. We’re better off out here.

JANE

We’re miserable out here, Adam. This isn’t food, this is a dead animal. It’s not meat it’s flesh! And this isn’t living. God I have the shakes.

ADAM

Caffeine withdrawal?

JANE

I haven’t slept more than four hours a single night since we got here.

ADAM

You haven’t slept more than four hours a single night since university.

JANE

Yes but we’re supposed to be getting past that. What’s the point of caffeine withdrawal if you still can’t sleep at night? And what’s the point of sleep deprivation if you don’t have to work tomorrow-

ADAM (interrupting)

Oh we have to work tomorrow, girl-

JANE (interrupting)

Have to but can’t. How are we supposed to work when we’re shaking like this.

[Jane holds up her left hand to demonstrate. It’s shaking heavily and she has trouble even holding it up. It’s caked in dark deer blood.]

ADAM

Yeah, I know, I know. (beat) Not to mention our eyes.

[Camera shows close-up of a bloodshot red watery eye.]

JANE

Don’t remind me, please.

[Adam holds his lids open and leans in close to show Jane.]

JANE (ctd)

What I just say?

[She grabs Adam by the face and shoves his head away.]

ADAM

Seriously Jane what do you think is causing this eye thing?

INT. Adam at a computer, typing a financial report, with his eyes mere inches from the screen.

EXT. Back under the canopy

JANE (shrugs)

I dunno. My eyes are fine.

ADAM

Yeah but your ear looks like a head of cauliflower – mmm, cauliflower.

INT. Jane on the phone arguing about a rejected patent claim.

EXT. Back under the canopy. Jane gives Adam another face shove as he leans toward her ear with his mouth open and watering.

EXT – In an open field now, Adam and Jane are hovering over a fire upon which rests a boiling Teflon pot of dark green liquid

ADAM (shaking all over as if feverishly sick)

This better work, Jane.

JANE (very defensively)

Or what, Adam?

[Adam looks at her blankly but if looks could kill…]

JANE (ctd)

Whose dumbass idea was it to come out here again? Was it, hmm, maybe, I think, yes, was it – YOUR idea, Adam!

[Jane switches to a deep, goofy voice.]

JANE (ctd)

Oh, Jane, we’re stuck in a trap here. We’re working so hard we never have time for each other, and when we do I’m so stressed I can’t even get it up anymore. Oh Jane this life is too much work for too little reward – what’s the point of all our possessions if we can’t even enjoy them together, Jane? Oh Jane, let’s move out somewhere wild, build a lean-to and live like hunter-gatherers – we can be naked all the time. It’ll be our own Garden of Eden – except we can even eat the apples, oh Jane let’s do it.

[Jane switches back to her own voice, except angrier than we’ve yet seen her, she’s yelling at the top of her lungs now.]

JANE (ctd)

Well you know what? You may be Adam, but I ain’t no Eve, and there ain’t no apples on this godforsaken island!

[Jane storms out of sight. Adam stares deep into the brewing cauldron, pulls some small berries out of his breast pocket and squeezes a milky substance from them into the pot, and stirs with a stick.]

ADAM (calling over his shoulder)

Jane, I think it’s ready.

EXT. Back under the canopy. Jane and Adam sit sipping from two Second Cup stainless steel traveler mugs, making contorted disgusted faces with each sip. Jane occasionally looks like she’s going to wretch. They sit sipping for about 15 seconds, eyeing each other suspiciously, saying nothing.

EXT. Back to the wide open field. Adam is chasing Jane. She lets him catch her, hugs him, squirms loose, runs, lets him catch her again.

ADAM

Feeling better?

JANE

Oh Adam! What did you put in that tea?

ADAM

That was no tea Jane, it was espresso, espresso au natural.

JANE

Adam, some espresso, it was disgusting.

ADAM

I think it has potential. It must be healthy, look how much better we feel. I haven’t eaten for hours and I’m not even hungry. And I’ve stopped shaking. And so have you! And I don’t feel thirsty either, it’s a wonder drink. We just have to figure out how to make it taste good and we could make millions.

JANE

I thought you weren’t interested in making millions anymore.

ADAM

Well, I’m not, but, you know. (beat) I thought you were.

JANE

I just want to get out of the jungle.

ADAM

And go back to our miserable lives working non-stop, never seeing each other or our friends, consuming unstoppably, glued to our desks, stressed, sleepless?

JANE

Let’s work on this natural espresso. Show me what you put in it.

EXT. Over the fire and boiling pot again. Through the magic of time lapse photography we see Jane and Adam trying batch after batch, making a vast diversity of contorted faces until, eureka! They make a delicious batch.

EXT. Adam and Jane selling ‘Natural Espresso’ on the side of the road to Galiano tourists, thus curing the tourists’ caffeine withdrawal. They’re talking up the customers about city life, the beauty of nature but also how one misses the finer, higher culture things in life: the theatre, the ballet, the symphony, espresso.

JANE

Oh you can’t beat Karen Kain, Minigawa’s beautiful but she doesn’t have as much grace – that’s just how it is. I wish Karen Kain would perform again, even if she’s past her prime, she’ll always have that graceful beauty.

CAFFEINE CUSTOMER

Heather Ogden is something to watch. She’s very self-assured.

ADAM

Yes, she certainly is (beat) something to watch.

[Jane elbows Adam playfully. The customer thanks them, returns to her Prius with a travel mug full of a dark green brew, and drives away.]

JANE

We’ll be rich!

ADAM

Yes, rich because we’ll be in the city we love, with a job we actually believe in – bringing this great energy drink to our fellow yuppies, actually having conversations with people. And we can grow a rooftop garden that will supply us with all our raw materials. Rich indeed, a kind of wealth too few people know.

JANE

Whatever.


THE END.

Labels: 2003, Fiction, short story, Toronto

1. When I first came to Toronto back in 1997, fresh out of the brain factory and following the scent of a scantily clad woman, there were two men who saved me from mediocrity: RK and BC.

2. RK was a California long-hair who was just too cool for Canada, and rode me in his red jeep with the top down all the way to Niagara Falls, me shivering in the blind wind the whole way. We drank ourselves white as breaking water and had an early breakfast. He had the lumberjack special and I had poached eggs.

3. BC got himself a corporate banking job and filled two grocery carts with high-end liquor, half of which he fed to me over a high-stakes game of monopoly. He expressed shock at my choice of pizza toppings. "I think that's a disgusting combination," he said with the dignity of old money, before ordering himself a heart-attack-special.

4. These two opposite men teased me for my incumbent vegetarianism and general anti-corporate stances - they couldn't quite fathom such choices after what we'd been through together, specifically completing a degree in Commerce. In between laughing spasms we could all feel the chasm that was starting to separate us.

5. RK soon disappeared to all and everyone who'd known him up to that point in my life, and none of us has heard from him since.

6. BC became a father last season to 1.5 pounds of premature miracle, a real beauty. The mother claims she married BC because she wanted her liberal vote to cancel his conservative vote so they had to live in the same polling area - may as well be the same house and bed.

7. He and I don't see each other much any more - he's got higher priorities now than an old acquaintance and I completely understand that.

8. I'm free from mediocrity now anyway.

There you go TWM, eight random things about me (as random as anything can be amidst the organized chaos of intelligent design), with some added inspiration from Ivan. I won't tag anyone else so the chain may die, but I don't think anyone will miss it. I must say though that I did enjoy this little challenge. If anyone else feels like playing, consider yourself tagged.

Labels: 1997, love junk, non-fiction, Toronto

Sing 'hallelujah!' Throw up your hands, the first draft of the novel is complete. Four years later. Tis a glorious day, and will allow for a nice weekend before the editing process begins. To celebrate, here is an excerpt from Chapter 11:




1,089 Hours and 7,000 Kilometres in Chapter 11

According to Robadise the case of the four child deaths and the Pulau man who killed them (some claimed that his weapon was black magic) had become a national issue thanks to the state supported media’s love of rogue violence and swift vengeful justice. Therefore, nowhere in Indonesia was safe for Bumi, the new prime public enemy. Robadise’s plan was to smuggle Bumi somewhere the Indonesian government couldn’t reach him. He provided few details, saying only that the less Bumi knew about it the better.

“Here’s the deal,” he told Bumi. “If you stay here you will die. I have friends who can save you from that, and save Ada, Bunga, and Baharuddin the pain of losing you. If it works, you can one day send for them. To be frank, it’s a long shot. But staying here is certain death, and that would in turn kill my sister and my niece and my nephew. At least this way they have some hope to hold on to.”

Robadise explained that his friend in the navy was well connected with the Chinese human smuggling industry. Bumi’s special circumstances complicated things, but for a high price he could be sent somewhere he could be a free man. “Think Bumi, no more hiding your books. No more living a lie, you can be yourself again.”

Bumi informed his brother-in-law that without Ada, he could not be himself.

“This is your only hope, Bumi. Maybe you would rather die than leave your family, but think of their needs. This way they have hope, and maybe one day you can be reunited in a place that is free, where you can pursue your ideas, where your intelligence can be put to good use. Maybe you will become rich.”

This beast my brother-in-law, thought Bumi, is a clever one. And again, questions. Why does he want to be rid of me? Is he working for Suharto? Perhaps he thinks I’m an inadequate husband for his wife? Bumi’s obsession with having committed child murder had been replaced with a deeply planted fear of the only man who seemed to be his friend. Yet another obsession he could not put to rest, an idea he could not disprove. “And Ada, you’ve discussed this with her?” he asked.

“Yes, Bumi.”

“And?”

“She reluctantly agreed.” Aha! Reluctantly. And her absence was an indicator; why was she sent away like a common servant after bringing their untouched tea during the most important conversation of Bumi’s life? As if reading between the lines on Bumi’s face Robadise elaborated. “Of course she doesn’t want to lose you, Bumi. But it is obvious to everyone, expect maybe yourself, that we will lose you one way or another. We either lose you to God, or we lose you to Canada.”

“Canada?!” Bumi felt drunk as his mind clouded. Canada? The plan was insane. And Canada, of all the destinations.

“I shouldn’t have told you that,” said Robadise. “You weren’t supposed to know that much.”

“You couldn’t send me far enough, could you brother?” Bumi answered through pursed lips. He squeezed his eyes shut hard, straining his face until it was crinkled like his birth-face and tears were forced from his eyes. His chest heaved as he felt everything slip away, again. And now, 15 years later, he remained utterly feeble and small in the face of the powers acting to move him. He laid his head down on the floor and closed his eyes all the way, ready to submit to his fate and accept it as punishment for all his imagined deeds, and the evil he may have done, the things he had thought about that should never have crossed his mind.

“Canada is a good place for you to go, Bumi. Lots of coast, multicultural, easy refugee laws. Australia is almost impossible. And they treat refugees like criminals. Worse actually - they put them in internment camps worse than prisons, you don’t even get a lawyer and most people there just want to die.” Bumi knew exactly how they felt. “I even hear that Suharto has spies in those intern camps. They report back to him about who is trying to get out of Indonesia and into Australia. So if Australia sends you home he knows it, and you die.

"Anyway, most likely you’d never get past their navy – they patrol the shoreline for illegals. Most likely you’d starve to death at sea or get sent back. You don’t want that. The USA is difficult too. Everyone tries to go there and few succeed. Canada has very good odds, and it’s too far for them to get to you.

"Besides, your politics fit better in Canada.”

Labels: 2006, Fiction, subway novel, Toronto

Labels: 2007, photography, Toronto

In a twist on the practice of tagging, I've decided to tag myself. Bopper, your it! Answer this question: what's the grossest story your spouse, partner or lover has told you over dinnertime conversation?

Well, let's see, that's a tough one. There are so many to choose from. Okay, here goes:

Back in 02 she worked in the prisons of El Salvador, where she encountered a strange and grotesque practice by the inmates of machismo, who were so intent on pleasing their conjugal visitors that they inserted ball bearings and marbles under the skin at the base of their penises using knitting needles. The nurse with whom she met showed my spouse the jar full of spheres extracted from infected practitioners.

Ew!

Labels: 2007, love junk, non-fiction, Toronto

Sleeping disturbed in our bed
princess of knowledge in our bed
What dreams have you so beholden?

you with knowledge filling your head
you who've seen from every angle
a tilting world inside your head

you who've seen through skilled deceit
of professional liars primed
for great political power
lay beholden to fantasy

Darkness and evil intention
assault your darkened slumber

What wound has slain your time of peace?
gave passage to nightmare demons

Who kidnapped your sweet good night?
you born a pastor's daughter
your mother a hunter too
a survivor of ditch-side snowstorms

You slayer of ignorance
challenger of assumption

you holder of rolled up sleeves
stockpiled productive muscles

brain-brawn master of high class
who thinks that slack is body sleep
who breaks only from exhaustion
who shares her energy with sun
vulnerable only in dark

The superhero's weakness
the antidote to her power
the wound left by some villain
the hole through which light escapes
the hole through which nightmares invade

slay your great knowledge and wit
left helpless gazing at victims
impaled by supposed saviours

Oh my sweet girl from the north
my Suomi princess divine

with the strength of thirteen others
with the knowledge of history
with the understanding of time
with the connection to youngness
with the addiction to newness
with the respect for agedness
with the visits to distant shores
with the ardent ears of a scribe

the original servant queen
ruler of the academy
ruler of kitchen things
student of male trivia

Hailed by the aristocracy
hailed by the ones who would be kings
were prejudiced exclusion
not a factor in all such things

Sleeping disturbed in our bed
princess of knowledge in our bed

pride is not what drives me to you
pride neither the reason I stay

though honoured by your listless arms
though honoured by idea flow
though honoured by inclusion

in your body-mind diversions
sleeping disturbed in our bed
princess of knowledge in our bed

Heart of good intentioned strength
shares energy with the sun
loves and is easily broken
letting in the darkness of night
demon nightmares of world gone wrong

your heart your single greatest strength
your heart your vulnerable part
your heart what drives me to you
your heart the reason I stay

Labels: 2005, love junk, Poetry, Toronto

How's this for my novel jacket blurb?

Woolly Visions

This forceful novel explores the ambiguous fears of bleeding hearts abroad, illuminating the scandalous distance between the ideas of academics and how the world is run.

The star of the story is 27-year-old Koko Valentine, a roving student on the run from love and comfort. He is jerked from his blind routine during a mass protest against high gas prices in Indonesia, when he meets Pram and Budi, two quick-learning bus drivers whose astute yet simple observations set in motion a botched plan to end a new kind of terrorism.

As a perpetual voice of neutrality, Koko is torn between the arguments of powerful men and women who can’t agree on how to make the world and humanity flourish. One the one side are the Death Consultants who argue that by mass marketing implements of destruction like motor vehicles and weaponry, the worst elements of humanity can be eliminated, allowing the rest to flourish. On the other side, plain language consultants argue for behaviour-shaping education of the masses. In the middle Koko is falling in love with a Danish children’s novelist and being seduced by a radical Indonesian eco-activist.

Prodding more intensely into his new lover’s ideas and character, Koko unveils the authenticity of his own mind. This is a novel that abolishes the pretense that knowledge leads to action, pulls back the curtain covering our power structures, and ultimately exposes the reedy streak separating progressives and war-hawks.

Finally, Koko is distorted by the trap he chooses to enter. Readers too may fail to recover from the power of Benjamin’s words.

Labels: 2002, Fiction, Toronto, Woolly Visions

I have always had this dream
to build me a house without stairs
Just a trampoline to break my fall

Labels: 2006, philosophy, Poetry, Toronto

I spent three weeks of my 19th summer loading shingles into a machine that applied a layer of grey paint to its contents (the shingles). At the end of my three week temp job I was offered, and I declined, a full-summer placement. The factory lunatics had given me a glimpse into what I would become after a full summer of such boredom. So it is difficult for me to imagine how Bumi, who has twice my intellectual capacity and was crazy before he began factory work, survived six years of it.

I do know that during those years he became an almost complete insomniac, consumed hundreds of books a year, lost complete touch with his coffee shop friends, and was in constant conflict with Ada’s family. It was only his devotion to Ada and his children that kept him living.

Baharuddin was born under the usual sheen of slick placental fluids and Bumi was surprised to find himself as amazed by his second child as he was by the first. Bumi’s dazed amazement inspired Ada to choose the boy’s name, a description of newness. Newness never fails to astound.

A week after Baharuddin’s birth, taking inspiration from ‘Roots’, which he finished reading while Ada was in labour, Bumi took his 7-pound newborn outside the hospital walls and cradled his whole backside in his left hand and lifted him to see the stars and the black heavens. He said, “Look my son.” Baharuddin cried as his white cotton blankets unfurled and fell around Bumi’s hand.

“Look son,” repeated Bumi in a loud deep voice. “I want to tell you something very important. You are immensely special and important. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. In this world you will be expected to conform and you will receive nothing if not pressure to be numb, to obey, to feed the collective ambiguity. Don’t let them do that to you. You are the most important thing, other than what you see high above and around you. Always remember that.”

Bumi gathered the crying infant back into his arms, covered him again and whispered gently in his ear, “You are more important than anything except the universe itself. God will never help you through this life and I am not a strong man. I will always give you my love and let you be what you want to be. The rest is up to you.”

Labels: 2005, Fiction, subway novel, Toronto

So I've got myself into this little tiff with the cult over at E-NOUGH!, who don't have the sense of humour I would have expected from people who blog and read about Islamofascists and dead ex-presidents.

It all started when I wandered haplessly into the hornet asylum and responded to this post with my own idea for a really funny cartoon. Turns out they didn't share my sense of humour.

Ever since that time I've received a whole slew of of really interesting comments from someone calling himself (or possibly herself) Anonymous. When I 'googled' this name I found all kinds of fascinating quotations attributed to this person, but no biography. Too bad because s/he's said some really interesting things, like "a closed mouth gathers no feet," "efficiency is intellectual laziness," and "going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car." Profound statements.

All this comes at a time when I've been reading a really interesting book called Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, by George Lakoff. The author's argument is that US conservatives are very smart people, and the proof is that they keep winning elections. If Lakoff is right, and I think he is, then the people over at E-NOUGH (being smart) are either insane or just really really angry and bitter, scared and brainwashed.

Despite their intelligence, it seems they've never been taught how to have a meaningful, engaging debate with someone who sees the world differently than they do. This judging by the responses to my post over there and the vitriolic tirade Anonymous has flooded my blog with.

On the flipside, perhaps my brainwashing is just different than their brainwashing. Perhaps we just have different sources of information.

I need to consider their mission and vision a little more and make sure I understand it, but this is my impression to date:

Mission: There is much evil in the world, and if we [US far-right conservatives] good people don't stamp it out, it will destroy us.
Vision: A world free of people who are different than we are, so that everyone remaining will get along.

So, of course, I like my own vision better: A world where people who are all very different get along and learn from each other's differences.

What do you think, fair reader? Which vision do you prefer?

Labels: 2005, non-fiction, politics, Toronto

I’ve read all about you in several books now; my favourite was the Motorcycle Diaries because they were your words, written young and naïve like my own age (at that time). I’d always liked Kerouac and you came like some exotic, socially conscious version of him, equally sexy in your idealist solitude, but less depressed and by the time I got a copy we all knew what bold actions you’d take later in life.

Your hero’s profile captivated me early and had me beholden anew with each turned page. Yet I can’t help but wonder with each bullet’s flight if, had you lived, your back pages would have come to resemble Fidel’s litany of American newspaper oppression. Even in youth’s naiveté you struck hard for what you believed, hard enough to fall all potential threats, including those who’d never have amounted to much – you were bold yet cautious.

So, with relatively unfettered admiration and respect, I’m glad you aren’t around to see all the hip capitalist kids wearing that copyrighted throwaway image of you that you probably wouldn’t even remember having posed for. I can only imagine that you would have been angered by such celebrity worship, and I doubt we coffee-shop revolutionaries could have stomached the real you.

Yours in solidarity,

Margarita

Labels: 2005, Poetry, politics, Toronto

free is to be not what i am or anybody is living like this in such a state of disrepair discombobulated mountain homes grown alone and disenfranchised of bigcity folly.

free is not a state of mind or nothing left to lose but more nothing to gain and no desire to do so anyway because each time the sun sets there is no need for more hours and no regret for what wasn't done that day; there is no concept of day for night or burning oil of any sort, only a sense of purpose that is inate easy and never questioned.

free is not knowing exactly where you'll be but having a general sense of direction and a strong sense of place, even when you're moving around or going on a long trip to someplace you've never been before because you know who your home is and you know you'll return here again when the time is right.

free is not rushed never being in a hurry and never being late, always being responsible but never having too much responsibility or too much to do.

free is following the flow offered by the universe yet not necessarily falling under its whimsical tides, at least not until the time is right.

free is not being rich but not having to struggle just to survive some meaningless existence.

free is lacking in this giant monoculture because no one i've ever met in my whole damn life lives the way i'm describing.

free never heard of existential, and i long for it.

--Bopper

Labels: 2005, philosophy, Poetry, Toronto