late nights

just off the corner of my street is a street where just off the corner of it construction is beginning again. after 8 or so long months and 12 or so store closings we had a nice break of about 8 to 12 weeks where the street was full of snow and free of trucks. alas, the sun returned beckoning to forgotten projects and misaligned pipelines and this i walked along tonight wondering about the changes it had seen. the main! the Main! i get to live off of the main in this country's most curiously creative city. where no one works and spring is real dirty, and there are eyeglassed guys hanging off their balconies on your walk home, plaid shirts undone shirtsleeves rolled up yelling down to probably you, "we're all losers! we're all beautiful fucking losers!"


claire ellen oswalt

summer in the city

i like the murmur project. neato mosquito.


jen corace

"naked with summer in your mouth"

things i will miss about university: watching people write

seriously! i'm not really sure there are going to be a lot of opportunities to look at people's handwriting from here on in. no one writes anymore. sure, i am a letter sender and have letter sending friends, but i know them and it's not quite the same as being in a giant examination room watching the idiosyncractic ways people throw themselves into putting thoughts on a page. i really like people who hold their pens 'wrong'. i hold my pen wrong, it's nice to see other people who have refused to give in to all the people who claimed there was only one way. my dad paid me $20 when i was maybe 8 or so to write an entire page of one sentence holding my pencil between my thumb and forefinger on my right hand. i got the $20, but the incentive wasn't enough to change my habits forever. what did he expect? i am a performer, not a reformer.

there's a boy who sat in front of me during my exam this morning who's also sat near me in class a few times; he grips his pencil (only pencils, sharpened at his desk) in a fist. and he writes this way. i experimented, it is extremely taxing on your ligaments to grip with such force for so long.




so anyways. i have some things to say sort of in nostalgic retrospect of being done this degree (!!). geography and philosophy was a good combination...becoming familiar with ideas and the space where they might be applied...or something to that effect.

for me; i'm so interested in expression and identity - expression of identity. starting from what i'm going to dare to call 'first principles' and Ficte-ian pespectives on where i end and everything that's not-me starts; to the material embodiment of certain forms of identity in the landscape, e.g. ethnic identity, sexual identity...it's an incredible perspective to have gained to be able to (kiiiiiind of) start from the smallest most conceptual bits and extend outwards to what is tangible and 'real'. or at least sensational. sensations are a funny thing though because they're such a fundamental part of the smallest and largest bits.
the experience of sensational effects, expression of their affects.

i'm excited to put some time in thinking about canadian identity. notoriously undefinable - why are you canadian? there's a plurality so pervasive within the notion of a coherent canadian identity that it's even indescribable beyond saying that it is just that - a plurality. i'm especially especially especially interested in the expression of canadian identity through art. i'm going to spend some time with this now . that . i . am . done . SCHOOL!

to start, on a recommendation, i'm spending some time with al purdy.

________________________________

that's by emmanuel polanco

heavy

make something feel good again
balint zsako

my friend emma

has got an extraordinary voice
and a really good new song that she produced with my other friend kweku

let me tell you my friends, it warrants a listen:

emma frank

i am a-struggling with some aristotle right now, my mymy my. get me out of here.

un cadeau, la vie

i am struggling to try to stay present these days. i think i've said that three times to the same people in the last 70 hours or so. present present present.
i've at least got a handle on how managing nostalgia, which seems like a start. things just happen so fast in the immediate, getting sucked into fantastical scenarios usually implausible is seeming more and more like giving in & up. it would be really great to sort out a way to be adequately detached but not running or pushing the wrong things away.

being present also means letting go of feeling like an agent it seems... i have an Inuit friend who told me to forego planning since more often than not things spring up, there's a snowstorm or the ice melts earlier than you expected, and nothing goes the way you thought it might. why go looking for disappointment?

my friend anthony took these photos on clarke when he was in montreal a while back. we had breakfast and went for a walk. walking seems to be the thing i know best how to do with people visiting this city, likely because it's easier for me to think and be my most charming while on the move. i know it was a long time ago because we talked over eggs about the possibility of a conservative prime minister. oh, those were the days. it was anthony's birthday recently and he told me he'd been reading this. i remembered this here montage and thought i might show it off. hope that's okay.

anthony boronowski

comfort

i walk home alone past the dozens of people thankful for the warmth and asking for money, turn the corner onto my street and stop to have the most sensual experience, burst into tears seeing the crescent moon as big as in the movies, east at the top of my street.
in a city, nothing you touch is real, the ground is constructed and the sky can move you to cry.

oh to see us melt into all the cracks.