i was supposed to be writing the most beautiful poems

I want:

- to get one (or two or several) of these prints and hang them on my living room walls, next to the more-realistic portraits of raccoons and deer stolen/borrowed from my grandparent's cottage. These are perfect. These are the kind of things I feel I would have made myself back in the eighth grade, had I been more artistically gifted at the time. That was during my "clever funny animals" phase: I used to cut out the heads of wildlife from the pages of my old Owl magazines, and then gluestick them onto the bodies of models in J Crew catalogues. I was way ahead of my time. Oh, wasn't I.

- to reach the day when the CBC's airing of Coronation Street is finally in sync with the BBC. Sadly, I don't think our Canadian shores will ever meet their British ones. Right now, it's early autumn in Canada, and early December on Corrie...early December of LAST YEAR. We are embarrassingly far behind, and, besides, bad things are bound to happen during the upcoming holiday episodes. Bad things always happen in Corrie Christmases; a murder, an affair, a fire at the very least. I just want to feel happy things at the same time the Street feels happy things.

- to get my pump (soon, pancreas, soon).

- to see Okkervil. I have been underwhelmed by the Toronto show calendar so far this fall; there's been little I've been looking forward to except for this, and even then it was only the tiniest spark. But now, I've reconvened: I've been wanting to see this band I love for a few years now-- that sad snowy winter of early '06 was defined for me by Okkervil River and only a few others-- and the chance has never revealed itself until now. So, I'll take the band gladly. I'll take Will Sheff in my arms and hug him until he pukes.

- a good place to run in Toronto. More trees, less creepy European men who whisper "beautiful" in my ear when I pass them on Bloor Street. I want the paths along the river that I wore down in London, I want them here. I want to find a lovely patch of woods, not that muddy rape-path in Forest Hill I stumbled onto last week. I want everything I love about other places to be consolidated in this place.

That's all.

Projectile Weeping

Last Friday night, David Foster Wallace killed himself at the age of 46. I didn't hear about it until Sunday afternoon, and it took me at least five minutes to fully register the news. Sometimes when famous folk die, us plain people often feel like we've been punched in the gut. It depends on the individual, and the context, but I'm willing to bet that we've all felt it before. It is slightly embarrassing to admit: that a person you've never met, were never going to meet, know next to nothing about, is long gone, and now their loss is plucking at the strings inside your own heart. I mean, it can't be real sadness, right? But, for me, the loss of DFW was a genuine gut-punch.

I read Infinite Jest last summer exclusively during my breaks at work. It took me three weeks and several re-starts and one library renewal to finish, but once I had slogged through to the end I felt the familiar twinge in my stomach: I knew that this book was going to be one of "those books" for me. His language play, his muddle of characters and time periods and content, and his often three-page-long run-on sentences were all difficult to get through, but as payoff the book made me reconsider where I wanted to head with my own writing. It encouraged me to take more risks with style, to think smarter, to try harder. In short, it made me want to be a better writer.

David Foster Wallace had the rare ability to impress and destroy and rebuild and entertain and touch, all in just one sentence. He was less a "writer" and more simply an artist, a builder of intricate webs of words and thoughts. He was one of the best voices of this generation, and I can only hope that other talented wordsmiths will take up his mantle in the years to come. Here's to a truly unique voice, a thousand perfectly penned pages, and a legacy of gut-punches. Rest easy, DFW.

"We're each deeply alone here. It's what we have in common, this aloneness."

big and dirty

I've been having trouble readjusting this September. Past Septembers have always entailed a jump back into the familiar: that old campus, that dingy transit system, those boys in striped shirts and girls in purple Western hoodies and too-early-in-the-season-Uggs, my roommates, my boys, my big beautiful oak trees. As soon as I got there each fall, and despite the lack of air conditioning in the various apartments I rented, London always felt like home. The city sucks, but it was always my Forest City.

It's been about two weeks, but Toronto isn't my Big Dirty yet.

Although, to be fair, it is pretty damn dirty.

This house of mine looked pretty nice upon first and second viewings, but as soon as I moved in I realized that every interior surface was actually covered in a thin layer of dirt and grime. The floors and the kitchen counter and the bathtub. The walls and the window-sills and the windows. The doorknobs and the baseboards and the front door of the fridge, even. I cleaned and primed and painted and fixed it up for five days straight, and it still doesn't feel like home. A few days ago I finally, finally felt a small flicker of comfort in this place-- something really small, but something noticeable. I'm hoping it'll snowball in time.

School is something else entirely. During the orientation "party" I slowly realized that my one fear about entering this program straight out of undergrad was being confirmed before my eyes: I am the baby. I am the youngest person in the group by at least two years, and even then most of these other people are closer to 30 than I am to 20. Quality in writing is often guaged by the life experiences of the author, and my fact sheet (young, suburban, cynical, straight, redheaded and pale like fucking Anne of Green Gables) isn't doing me any favours. I'm sure most of these people doubt I have the capacity to succeed at this, at this stage in my life. And I'm sure they wouldn't be suprised if I were to admit to them that, yes, I too doubt my potential and worry sometimes that I've started out too early. I haven't written The Great Canadian Novel yet and tucked it away in a drawer, and I haven't been published in literary journals or won large-scale writing contests. So what have I done? I've written a novel, a novella if you must, that took up most of a year and now takes up a substantial part of my heart (only a few people have ever read it, and only a few ever will, but I'm okay with that). I've spent four years emerged in this world of pretentious literary folk, writing out everything that comes into my head, looking for inspiration, trying and trying and failing and sometimes succeeding. This is the only thing I can do, and the only thing I really want to do. And that's a universal statement, right? Writing fiction can, and should be, ageless. Well, so long as it's good.

On the other hand, there's this:

"She's already a reality star and a fashion designer, but Lauren Conrad is adding another title to her crowded resume: Author.

Conrad, 22, has signed on to write a three-book series of young adult fiction for HarperCollins, the publisher tells PEOPLE. The books – the first of which is scheduled to hit shelves in the summer of 2009 – will be loosely inspired by Conrad's own experience going from an ordinary teen to a reality TV star.

"It's definitely influenced by my own life," Conrad tells PEOPLE. "The books are about a girl who moves to L.A. and stars in a reality show, so obviously there are some similarities."

So will Hills costars like Heidi Montag, Specner Pratt or Brody Jenner wind up as in Conrad's series? Not exactly. "I'm not trying to do a fictional story based on all my friends in my real life because their stories aren't really mine to tell," says Conrad, who has gone through many dramas on her MTV show. "Some of the characters may symbolize people in my life, but it is in no way calling anyone out."

Conrad's best gal pal and The Hills costar Lauren Bosworth has already been offering advice. "I run ideas by Lo and I'll ask for her opinion because I value my friends' opinions," says the budding author, who has completed the outline for the first book.

But not everyone in Conrad's life has been clued in to her plans to pen a series. "Honestly I haven't told everyone," she admits. "I've told my best friends and they have all been really supportive. Nobody was worried."

And it's enough to make me want to puke up all that cheap white wine I drank last night-- a Wednesday night-- while I pretended to work on my most recent novel idea.

Also, who knew they sold quilted Chanel handbags at Target? I sure didn't.

for digby

This is the greatest minute of video I've ever seen. I have just watched it six times in a row. Please. Please watch this. Please do this for me.




And...there. I just watched it again.

wish you didn't have to go, no no no no

My sincerest apologies to anyone reading this*.

*This, this summer, has been a four month long drought of creativity for me. I haven't been updating frequently (or writing at all for that matter), but not because I have been too busy for it. The opposite, actually. It's been four months of stasis, repetition, the same, the same, wait, something different?, no, actually, the same again, circles, circles and circles, circles without cracks. And it hasn't exactly made for the juiciest material.

I could put down in words my opinions on the Olympics (opinions including but not limited to: Michael Phelps' obnoxious dolled-up mother, the laughable coverage on NBC, dislocated elbows, etc), but nobody cares.

Or I could tell you all about these tv shows I've been watching with intense dedication (Skins, Mad Men), usually running through a single season in a single day, but everybody's already seen them.

Or I could brag about all the books I've devoured this summer during all my time off, but (surprise!) I've barely read any. Instead I go to the Goodwill by my house at least twice a week and search through its impressive book section, usually coming out with about three or four titles each time for $2 a piece, and then I take them home and stack them precariously on the dresser in my bedroom.

So that's my nutshell summer. My summer has been a stack of dirty used books that is always just on the brink of toppling.




Any second now.

ontario's --pit--.

I've visited countless cities (mostly east, never west), lived in about four (faux-London being the latest map dot), and only ever dreamed of one (my big British fantasy). Toronto doesn't count in my calculations. Toronto never counts. It's always been the city that's a short patch of highway and a subway ride away from me; sufficiently far enough away that it doesn't qualify as home, and yet close enough nearby that it doesn't hold any appeal as a foreign object. I love travelling to cities on vacation solely for the pleasure of throwing myself into an unfamiliar map and quickly untangling my way through it-- I had the New York City subway memorized in half an hour. It's taken me 22 years to figure out the TTC, and even then I still have absolutely no idea what goes on east of Yonge Street.

Toronto was never my city, my vision. Funny, then, that I find myself now about to fully commit to this civic space for the next two years (at least). I just handed over the rent deposit today. I've just adopted this place.

I spent about two months scouring craigslist ads, peering for annoyingly bright orange rental signs in windows, and calling landlords who were quick to give me rehearsed dismissals. Apartments were seen and discounted, apartments were frantically applied for and just as quickly given to other (better?) applicants (families with children, young professionals, junior architects and the lot). The process of apartment hunting in downtown Toronto--bearing in mind that my preferred area to live in is a relatively small rectangular boundary (there's no way I can live north of Bloor! I'll get stabbed if I'm south of Dundas! The world just drops off west of little italy!)-- proved to be harder than most. It was easier to get into grad school than it was to secure a suitable place to live in the city: ultimately, success at this task came down to a mix of being both "good on paper" and personable in person, and neither is particularly easy. We looked, and found, and tried, and lost, over and over again. Desperation dug its hooks into us. But then, we finally lucked out--very deep into the eleventh hour, I might add-- with an apartment that almost seems a little too west but will likely turn out to be perfect.

So a room, an apartment, a new home, an entire new city is now mine-- all it took was a few months worth of searching, and a lifetime of getting over my obstinance resistance to the T dot.

the pump.

Ever since I was diagnosed four plus years ago, my grandma has made it her mission to send me every diabetes-related piece of information she can get her hands on. She's sent me emails about "exciting new developments in stem cell research!" (they never actually come to be), and newsletters from the Canadian Diabetes Association explaining the difference between type 1 and type 2 (sorry, grandma, but I already know), and carefully snipped newspaper articles about the disease's rising rate (I know I know I know). Her information for me has never been particular informative to me-- save, of course, for the time I read an article in one of her old Canadian Living magazines about a woman with type 1 who didn't control her blood sugars carefully enough as a teenager (ergh) and then drank too much as a university student (oh, fuck me) and then, due to resulting complications, ended up completely blind before the age of 30. That little bit of information did hit home, actually. I started bawling on my grandma's couch out of sheer fear.

So, I was surprised when this news release came out yesterday and my grandma wasn't automatically the first person to alert me about it. My mom, actually, was the one who called and woke me up and frantically told me to googlenews my disease. And there it was. And it changed everything.

I became a completely different person the moment I was diagnosed with type 1 on that June day four years ago. The switch was instanteous. My biggest accomplishments up to that point-- most likely my good marks or high school running career-- suddenly paled, and in time they meant even less. Managing this disease requires effort and attention every day, minute, second of my life. It's my full-time job, and my forever burden, and the most important thing I'll ever do, but it's also the thing most easily forgotten. I've had friends who took years to realize that I have diabetes, and some friends who probably still don't know. I'm always hiding just in the background, pricking my finger and wiping away the blood, stabbing my bare stomach with a needle beneath the veil of a table, frantically drinking down a bottle of orange juice in the checkout line at ValuMart to make sure my blood-sugar low passes before I reach the cashier. It's a full time job that I'm not allowed to take even one second away from, because everything I do right now determines what will happen to me later: if I don't keep my blood sugars under control now, there will complications waiting for me down the line. They'll be there. Just waiting.

I've always known that there was a potential solution out there, but I always discounted it. Well, not a "solution" as such, but a means to help keep my blood sugar levels under tighter control with the push of a button. The pump is an ugly, boxy little device that looks like a perma-pager and constantly delivers a dose of insulin to the individual via a needle inserted under the skin. Did I mention that it looks like a pager from the '90s? I know that this little beast can significantly improve one's ability to manage their blood sugar, but the fact that it has to be attached to the body at all times seemed a little off-putting to me. That, and the fact that a pump costs upwards of $5000, along with $200 for monthly supplies (none of it covered by my mom's drug plan). Being a poor undergrad student and future starving grad student, the pump has never even been a possibility for me. I was happy to dismiss its ugly appearance because I knew I wouldn't be able to consider it, at least not until I was a grown-up with a good job and benefits. But know, everything is different. Money is no longer an issue. Good health is the only thing that matters. I know that I'll always give my disease the care and attention it requires, but it's so wonderful to know that there are options out there to make it easier for me. The provincial government has sent down this wonderful (free) piece of equipment from heaven, and it is going to change everything.

This is my deus ex machina.

An amendment to my last post.

I have a feeling that my love for "Asking For Flowers" will soon be supplanted by a few new releases heading our way come fall: the new Okkervil River and the new Karl Blau. These recent leaked tracks are giving me some warm and funny feelings. This could be it. These could just be the great albums of 08 that I've been waiting so patiently (actually, not all that patiently) for.

An ode to the only album I've truly liked so far this year

I have a very unabashed love of folk singers with throaty voices, scribbled lyrics, and guitars. I've crushed on many different musical genres over the years, but the only one I've ever been able to firmly dig my hooks into is folk (I'm using "folk" here as an umbrella term, only-- I guess I'm trying to pin down a feeling rather than a style). Maybe it has something to do with the cassettes my dad used to bring along on every cottage trip while I was growing up. I'm sure it has a lot to do with my tendency to attach myself to particular places, and the type of music that seems to surround them: urban is more exciting, urban is where I'm heading and what I need to learn to love, but I will always be a bit more rural at the core.

I have this clear memory of waking up at three in morning one snowy February day when I was fifteen. Rather than forcing myself back to sleep, I decided to waste the few hours I had left before school by nesting in the couch and blearily watching the MuchMoreMusic video flow. Nothing about it was memorable, but then there was this video by Kathleen Edwards on the screen ("Six O'Clock News", her first single off her first album, was the one), and for some reason it became a moment I would continue to remember. I remember that I was wrapped in at least two blankets at the time, one of them likely being the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sleeping-bag that technically belonged to the dog, but I was still cold. I remember that I had the TV volume down really low to keep from waking up the rest of my family, and that the snow heaps outside were turning slowly Tropicana as the sun began to rise. And the backyard was pretty, and the day was pretty, and the song fit even if her voice didn't sound all that polished. It was a moment where I suddenly forget that I was living in a filthy Toronto suburb, and truly believed that I was inside some beautiful rural morning. I desperately hate country music, but this wasn't that: this was just the country, in song-form. Everything fell together in a really delicate way, and it felt like I was home.

Her latest, "Asking For Flowers", gives me exactly the same feeling. The only difference this time around (apart from the fact that the the vocals are much less rough around the edges) is that she's moved on from waxing about rural rot and she's started singing about life experiences that ring even more true. It's always comforting to find an artist who seems to be moving at the same pace as you are-- in time, their songs become artifacts for you to claim. I'm lucky that Kathleen Edwards has yet to be picked up as a poster-child for mainstream Canadian folk. Sure, there was one song on the last album that got played on Mix 99.9 for a time, and then there's this new Polaris nomination-- but really, she's still an untouched resource. Good thing. That means these songs can still be mine to dust, polish, and hold dear.

"Six O'Clock News" meant something back then because it transported me to some rural place where I felt I belonged. The first time I heard "Sure As Shit" off this newest album, it also felt suddenly meaningful-- not because it took me somewhere else, but because it hit so close to home: while she was singing about "lounging around all day in a hot pink chenille housecoat", I was still wearing the wet terry-cloth towel I had been too lazy to change out of hours after my shower.

It's good, guys. I really mean that.

shuckerdoodles!

Sadly, I think I've given up words this summer in favor of video. But seriously: a Scrabble game show? Chuck Woolery* in his prime? This contestant who is completely unstoppable? It's a good watch, most definitely.



But wait! There's more!



*I used to have a mild crush on Chuck Woolery while he was hosting "Greed" during the post "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" era. It was a terrible game show, and he was such an asshole to every contestant, and he constantly screwed up his lines and stumbled around the set drunk. How adorable.