It will remain quiet here

...until I meet a couple big deadlines. It's cold outside, so I'm quite content to sit here and plunk away. Things should be back to normal in a few weeks.

A couple books arrived in the mail today. The Lost Coast: Salmon, Memory and the Death of Wild Culture by Tim Bowling and
Acquainted with the Night by Christopher Dewdney. Word of mouth led me to these books. I hope to dig into them sometime in December.

For the past week I've been ending my days with John Metcalf's literary memoir Shut Up He Explained. I'm struck by Metcalf's passion for the short story. It's compelling, especially in light of the list of cumulative sales figures for books by Porcupine's Quill authors on page 130. How sobering. Those numbers have been haunting me as I write. As I edit. I thought about them yesterday when I was chatting with a writer about chapbooks. I've been wondering which press would be a good fit for a particular sequence of poems and what my priorities are when it comes to chapbooks. I'm very tempted to just publish the sequence online. I love stumbling upon new-to-me work, The Middle Stories by Sheila Heti being a good, high profile example. Granted, hers is already published work, but I like the idea of just getting the work out there. I like the idea of cumulative hits.

Here's a response

...to the "nerdy" comment in this post on rockstarpoet.

A winter storm warning

...was issued for us today. We got plenty of snow. I'll be shoveling tomorrow. While I'm shoveling, a job I love, H will continue renovating the bedroom.

Today, under the bottom layer of flooring, he found an old negative.


It looked as if it had been carefully placed there. I wonder why people do these things? Now I want to know who they are.

Update:
I did some research to see if I could convert the scanned negative to an image using photoshop. Yes. Click invert. Here it is.


I inverted an already reduced jpg. The original file is on H's computer, so I imagine we'll come up with a better quality image tomorrow. If so, I'll post it. I'm guessing it dates back to Flin Flon's early days. I also plan to take a drive. I think I know which street it is.

How educated

...must an artist be?

*
Here's a lengthy article on Oliver Sacks, whose work I first learned about during a frigid February walk prior to breakfast at St. Peter's Abbey a number of years back. It was still dark, the road solid ice, our breaths clouding our way, and there I was, slipping with each step, listening to a writer talk about A Leg to Stand On, the first book mentioned in the article. I now own a number of books by Sacks.

I like the description of his office on the first page. I can't imagine using a typewriter, much less typing on yellow paper.

What a thrill

...to be reading John Metcalf's memoir Shut Up He Explained. It's a hefty hardcover and a great read thus far. Every once in a while I close the book just to look at it. The disbelief just won't go away. I still can't believe one of my beloved culverts is on the cover.

The box from Biblioasis arrived a short while back. It was far bigger and heavier than I'd expected. In addition to the cheque and copies of Shut Up He Explained, I was surprised to find the box contained a number of Biblioasis titles that I didn't have. Crossroads Near Somewhere by A.F. Moritz. Sparrows and Arrows by Chris Banks. Lyric and Elegy by Adam Getty. Straight Razor and Other Poems by Salvatore Ala. Time's Covenant by Eric Ormsby. The Properties of Things by David Solway. Solway's book is hot off the press and isn't on the website yet. What a gorgeous book! Biblioasis uses very nice paper for all their books. Beautiful colour, weight and texture. Beautiful ink. Beautiful fonts. These books are a lovely addition to my collection. I'm so lucky!

*

We're back home after a great road trip. Mind you, there was one incident that wasn't so great. We were driving along, minding our own business, and bang! I screamed and ducked. Saw a spray of fluid on the dash, the windshield. Fluid on the seat. I looked back and saw fluid on the back window. Fluid everywhere. It turns out H had a couple cans of coke under the seat and one blew up. What a mess! My coat was unwearable. My binoculars were gross. Everything we touched was sticky. Everything stunk. Yuck.

Road trips have really changed. On the way home we stopped in Prince Albert to fuel up and grab some lunch. While H ran into Safeway to buy some food, I sat in the car and checked my email thanks to Safeway's free Wi-Fi. I replied to a few emails and exchanged words about the latest Neanderthal news with a writer in Toronto and then off we went. I was still thinking about Neanderthals an hour or so later when a wolf ran across the road in front of us.