told you through the glass...

Its 2:48 in the afternoon. I'm sitting in my office at UofA listening to Album Leaf and watching the sun reflecting golden against the windows in the offices across from mine. I'm holding a book in my hands. An old book. A book that has survived the people who created them, bought them, passed them on to following generations. A book that has seen centuries and wars and disease and natural disaster. A book that has traveled continents and thousands of bookshelves to arrive in my hands right now. Its my job here to document this collection of books in images. I get to scan all the interesting parts of them and I get to photograph them in such a way that gives a sense of the book as a physical object. I like this job a lot. Sometimes it gets monotonous and boring yes, but for the most part, when I look at the images in these books and the knowledge written in them and read the author's name and see them through my camera, trying to get an angle that will make someone half a world away feel as though they are holding it in their hands, I am far from bored. Part of it is the books themselves. They're all manner of texture and shape and colour and they're beautiful to hold and look at and read. But what's more interesting to me is thinking about the people these books represent. The authors who wrote them, the noblemen who paid for their production, the printers whose hands were covered in the ink that pressed against their pages. And then I think about the people who bought them originally, whether they read them, whether they were simply collectors or people who spent a quarter of a month's wages to learn from it, for their children to learn from it. I think about who may have learned to read when they were holding this book or who had this read to them while they lay sick or dying. I think about all the people who have held this book before me in the past 200 years and I am overwhelmed. There's something very personal about history to me. I have a hard time explaining it, except to come back to Dorothy Livesay's poem "Eve" again and again. There's a line in it that I just can't separate from "In fifty seconds, fifty summers sweep and shake me". That's how I feel when I hold this book.

don't you feed me lies about some idealistic future....

Today (well, the past 24 hours) has been a day of both technology and brain failure. Last night while I was cutting an orange I sliced the tip of my thumb off. This isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. It's all wrapped up and should be fine, but it was followed by a sink full of blood and a lot of swearing. Also, in trying to keep it elevated so it doesn't throb so much, I constantly look like I'm giving a thumbs up. great. This morning I got my hair cut and right after took the train to UofA to being my new job. Unfortunately, I forgot the powercord to my computer at Patrick's and also took his keys accidentally. So I had to take the train all the way back downtown to switch. There are a LOT of stairs between his apartment and my office. A LOT, trust me. Anyway, i got down to the train station only to jump on the train that takes me to MY house, NOT patrick's. I got off at the next station feeling sheepish at becoming confused on edmonton's straight line LRT system. I got the cord, dropped off the keys, walked back down HUB Mall into the Humanities building got into my office and remembered my disc drive is broken so I couldn't install the scanner software I needed. Patrick found it on the internet and so I went to download it from there but discovered that my computer can't connect to internet without my UofA which I will be getting next week. So I packed up again, walked down the long HUB mall AGAIN and the seemingly 20 flights of stairs and over the 5 blocks to Remedy. Where all the outlets were full. Zee (the owner) saw the desperation in my eyes, got me a beer and an extension cord from the kitchen so I could plug in and download. Now I am finishing my Dos Equis and breathing and remembering that I've been able to enjoy the 10 degree weather in all my running around and that this will perhaps be the last nice day before winter. breathing. breathing. ... and hating technology.

with all your livin' on landmines....

Its 7:30am. I'm the only one up. The house is quiet and its still dark outside. The only light on is the one I'm sitting under at my kitchen table. I'm watching the branches of the tree outside sway in the cold wind and I'm praying it won't rain/snow for the wedding I'm shooting today.

But above all, I'm thinking about Hafiz. I'm thinking about that poem that talks about loving people. Well, lots of Hafiz' poems do that, but I'm thinking about this one:

admit something;

everyone you see, you say to them,
'love me'

of course you do not do this out loud;
otherwise
someone would call the cops

still though, think about this,
this great pull in us
to connect.

why not become the one
who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,

with that sweet moon
language,

what every other eye in this world
is dying to
hear.




I sometimes forget, but I need to remember to read poetry more often.

have you seen my ghost, staring at the ground...

I know, I know, I said I'd write more about those things I mentioned in passing in my last blog, but instead, something else is on my mind. I've been thinking a lot about overwhelming things. Well, not overwhelming necessarily, but just really really big things. There's been this quote from the book Gilead (which i haven't read in a long while) just stuck in my head. One day a month ago or so, while I was picking debris out of soul sucking subdivision skeletons, it just came to me. I wasn't trying to remember it or even thinking about anything related to it but it kind of imposed itself upon me. Since then, it keeps trying to make itself heard... both at moments when I need to think on it and at moments when I am simply making tea or folding laundry or waiting in traffic. It goes like this:

"Strange are the ways of adversity . . . My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience."

Since it has been a constant refrain in my mind, I've been thinking on it a lot. I've been thinking about what that means for me, what it means for the people I know, the time I live in. What it means for the past and the future and when I think about any of these things, I feel very very very small. Not small as in insignificant...in fact, just the opposite (but I'll get to that in a bit).

For those of you who don't know, I'm in a bit of a situation in this moment in time which has been a huge stress and frustration and pain to me. And there seems to be no explanation as to why I am here having to deal with all this. (yes, that's as specific as I'm going to get on my blog right now)
Anyway, this quote has been repeating in my mind and has started entwining itself with my process of dealing with all this. Over and over again, I come to the conclusion that there are so many things, so many movements, so many issues at stake that I cannot possibly begin to understand the answer to the question of "why?" I don't know if that makes sense. Let me try again.

I really like novels/movies/etc that have many different storylines/lives that eventually overlap in some way. For example, the movie Crash. It was pretty popular a few years back and maybe most of you have seen it. Anyway, all these different lives and stories seem to exist separately to the individuals within them, but the audience can see the smallest overlap of lives has important and unfathomable results. It's like that. I feel like its impossible to face unexplained adversity of any kind without feeling part of a greater movement. Of something that has a much greater scope.

I feel I am doing a horrible job of expressing this. But I will add one more attempt which may just be the last nail in this blog post's coffin...

I've been playing a lot of cards lately and I've been thinking its kind of like that. Kind of like laying a seemingly insignificant card for no real reason 8 hands ago and now seeing the implications of that on the turn at hand...but if you are the 7 of spades being laid, you never get to see or understand that you were laid then to ensure that the 5 could take home that last point later.

"My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience."

Okay. I'm gonna quit now.

Besides I have to go mark papers. Happy late Thanksgiving.

And hearts beat better in a bed when they're missed...

I have been thinking about a lot of things today. I can't write about them all, and I feel like they are deeper than I can make sense of right now, so I will just be listing them here as reminders for me to think about on their own more later to write about them better then.

- Carla Jessenia Dominguez Lopez of Varsovia
- No one is interested in something you didn't do
- "I'm just unlocking the door because patrick will be here in a few minutes"
- winter sky blue
- geese
- garbage

coffee black and egg white...

Yesterday I was at market with Patrick and found a type of apple cider I haven't had in years. When I was a kid my dad used to buy it is huge quantities because I liked it so much. They're just these little plastic brown jugs of syrup that you mix with hot water, but they're so so good. I bought a jug of apple cinnamon syrup. This morning, I made myself one and as I sit here at my table looking out at the definitely autumn day, the smell of the cider beside my computer brings me all the way back to sitting in my parents living room in winter watching tv and being really careful not to spill as I leaned over the coffee table, balancing on my knees to take a sip. Today is a different kind of day. Its not quite autumn yet, but the leaves are starting to go yellow on some trees and though its been 30 degrees all week, its only supposed to reach 15 today. The wind is strong and chilly and the hammock is almost continually straight sideways like a giant rainbow sail. Everything seems to be moving with the wind...the christmas lights hanging from the porch, the thermometer on the steps, the yellow birdhouse that isn't all the way nailed to the tree and sways in the mix of green and yellow leaves. Everything in my view is moving except for the stone buddah Jamie left on the porch that is looking out at the road giving a peace sign.
I'm gonna miss summer. If I had to pick a favourite season, summer would be it...but my favourite time of year is the couple of weeks between seasons...any seasons. Maybe the move from summer to autumn is my favourite though. The energy is so different than any other time of year. When fall turns to winter, it brings silence and stillness and retrospection. When winter turns to spring, there's a freshness about everything but it is kind of a transition of patience. Everything seems to be a waiting game. When spring moves into summer it feels like everything goes in slow motion. Afternoons of laying in hot sun, evenings that stretch into the night and light that lingers on the horizon long after you've expected it to disappear. But when summer transitions into autumn, there's a kind of electricity, and urgency, and energy that you can feel in the wind, in the cold morning air and in the sunsets that slide away in a hurry. I like Autumn, even though it ends in winter.

I'm gonna end this post here though because I went out to feel the bite of the wind and sun and when I came in, the smell of bacon and eggs had filled the house. Patrick is at the stove and its almost time for breakfast!

I'll leave you with this...

Song for Autumn - Mary Oliver

In the deep fall
don't you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the nedless
freshets of wind? And don't you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come - six, a dozen - to sleep
inside their bodies? And down't you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

all these places feel like home...

Each morning when I get up the sky is darker and darker. I always forget how quickly the season change comes up here. On Tuesday the leaves of the tree in my yard were still full and had turned bright bright red. By the time I came home from work that night it was almost bare. Now when I'm driving down to the shop in the morning I watch as the streetlights flick off in a row going south and the sun is just coming over the horizon as reach the top of the overpass where I can see the whole south east of the city. Yesterday was 33 degrees and today was 17 and rainy. Autumn is on the way.