Kitchen Grilling

The other day I was in our kitchen grilling and had the screen door open to let the fumes out. And then I was kneeling to look out of the open screen part without the sun in my eyes, and I noticed the movement of a large grey racoon. He was lumbering like a red panda but also not unlike my cat, the one with the squirrel tail. I watched this fellow as he lumbered across the large garage roof and shimmied down the side of it to lift- I'd seen him do this before- to lift open the heavy lid of one of Toronto's standard issue garbage receptacles. I called Andre into the room, and we watched as he used his small white hands to lift the clamshell lid over himself and then sniffed at the white-bagged garbage within, but there was nothing delicious there. So then he moved on to the shorter, stouter green bin- the lid of which popped open like a present. It was full of delicious things; forgotten leftovers, food scraps and coffee grinds. We watched him do this, and pictured these things suddenly strewn across the asphalt, and Andre yelled "Hey!" so that the racoon stopped to look up. Then Andre stomped his feet so that it wandered over to the grass and reluctantly left us, behaving not unlike Lot's wife and looking over its shoulder.

The Reasons

When your neighbour does not say hi to you:

Why is that?

Maybe they are shy.

Maybe they are nervous.

Maybe they want to enjoy their cigarette.

Maybe they are watching you

and noticing the way you

do not lock the door to your belongings.

Maybe they are villainously unkind.

Maybe they were waiting

for you to say it first.

Two doors slam.

Wednesday Thursday

Red hair, green shirt day two.

Starting with egg, cheese, bread, meat.

The truth is:

There's no use in longing. Both ugliness and beauty mean nothing.

Silly Ol' Poems

Mean-spirited millet maker in
the kitchen stirring
the pot, spitting fire
spitting fits
of rage over events
of ten years ago
feeding her family on
ten years worth of grief and bad
left over feelings
she can't quite come to grips with.
In her mean spiritedness
Millie millet maker
gripes over the short falls of others
and how she's done
them wrong.

The Possessed

Since my husband Andre is taking Russian Literature and Russian Language (I'll call it 101) right now, I have a not quite insider's but sort of inner outsider's view of the crazy and marvelous world of "Russian books and the people who read them;" that being the subtitle of the excellent book "The Possessed" by Elif Batuman named for the story by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

One of the essays included in this collection was first printed in Harpers Magazine and Andre read it then; drawn in by the provocative question posed by the title "Who Killed Tolstoy?" The fact that one of his former Russian lit profs was a character in the essay only compounded his interest. For whatever reason, at the time I had ZERO interest in reading this essay.

When it was published in this collection and arrived at our bookstore though, I was immediately drawn in by the cartoon cover. (What? I like cartoon anything apparently.) And then within seconds of turning the page became completely captivated (captured) by the writing. This book is often hilarious, tongue-in cheek, and full of many interesting factoids, asides and straight-up gossip about the Russian writers we know and love and the surprisingly zany people devoted to studying them.

The following is an excerpt recounting an exchange between Isaac Babel's daughter Nathalie and Janet Lind; one of the organizers of a conference centred on her father's works:

"JANET," Nathalie said finally, in her fathomless voice. "IS IT TRUE THAT YOU DESPISE ME?"

Janet Lind turned to her calmly. "I beg your pardon?"

"IS IT TRUE THAT YOU DESPISE ME?"

"I can't imagine what makes you say that."

"I say it because I would like to know if it is true THAT YOU DESPISE ME."

"That is an extremely odd question. What gives you an idea like that?"

"I just think you were told that I'm a NASTY OLD WITCH."

"This is really extremely odd. Did someone say something to you?" Lind frowned slightly. "You and I have barely had any interactions."

"Even so, I had the impression- that you DESPISE ME."

This conversation continued for longer than one would have thought possible , given how clear it was that Janet Lind, for whatever reason, was just not going to tell Nathalie Babel that she did not despise her. Looking from Lind to Babel, I was struck by the nontrivial truth behind the Smiths song "Some girls are bigger than others."

After reading this book I've become obsessed with checking for updates on Elif Batuman's blog because I need a constant fix of her prose from now on.

Little Mac

They lived in a glass house lit up from inside with the filaments burning. Window coverings were flimsy and insubstantial; the light always got out in spite of them. It was carpeted in mauve in what looked like popcorn, and one could hear crunching under foot with every step taken towards the threshold of the first doorway, down the stairs of which one could find a large room this time carpeted in electric puddles; it was quite intricate really. Not what you would expect actually, from the outside looking in. The main problem in the glass house was that somehow all the light was constantly escaping, and the interior burned like a furnace and buzzed like a bee. It became difficult for living, was actually not life-supporting at all. It was like a planet too close to its own sun. The inhabitants would often need to flee out of doors. The glass was quite high up- suspended, and descent was facilitated only by holding onto and sliding down one of several ropes and ribbons which hung from it, giving the appearance of an airborne jellyfish.

She would often imagine a life set somewhere else. In something called Little Mac the name of a house her grandparents had lived in. It may have been the name of the house or the name of the street, regardless it sat in her mind quite solidly. It had no questions of itself, Little Mac. It was cute and small and made of bricks, planted firmly in earth with an even number of rooms; 4 or 6 or 8. It didn't matter which. Little Mac would have gardens and sensible window coverings. If she could get there, then Little Mac would be real and the glass house would be fantasy.

Depths

Let's be someone and try to figure it out.

Opera Like That

On Sunday, we went to see Otello performed by the Canadian Opera Company. And then someone died, and then someone else died. I think they call that a tragedy.

Insects fly, read.

The first books I can remember hearing true buzz about- The way I selected books to read back then was chiefly the pitch of their buzz.

1. Catcher in the rye,
   
2. Life of pi

My older and cooler cousin recommended Catcher in the Rye. I remember being unmoved by it, and shocked by all the swears! Number and severity of swears in literature was only going to increase exponentially the more I read and the older I got. C'est la vie. I liked it, because I thought I should like it. Nevertheless I was happy to be introduced to J.D. Salinger then, because I went on to read Franny and Zooey which I actually connected with at the time and still do.

Life of Pi; a former teacher was reading with her book club. I didn't pick up on any media hype, didn't know about the Booker Prize etc. Just a word of mouth pick - I also really liked the cover; bright red with a tiger's face. Then I liked that it was partially set in Toronto (Scarborough), then the questions it tackled, then the narration etc. etc. Yann Martel finally has a follow-up coming out; Beatrice and Virgil. Despite publishers' attempts to market it as "shocking" I'm really looking forward to it. I'm excited to see what he's been up to.

Books J'ai Lu 2009

This is the first year, I think that I've read any amount of books worth listing- the result of a full year of reading-goodness-working in a bookstore. Almost all of these were excellent reads, or at least fulfilled their purpose at the time, because I usually will abandon a book if I find that it doesn't hold my interest for whatever reason. The following are in no particular order.

1. Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
2. Manhood for Amateurs, Michael Chabon
3. Education of a British Protected Child, Chinua Achebe
4. The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk
5. Barney's Version, Mordecai Richler
6. Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro
7. Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli
8. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
9. Youth, JM Coetzee
10. Elizabeth Costello, JM Coetzee
11. What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell
12. The Confessions of Edward Day, Valerie Martin
13. Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
14. Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes
15. Brightsided, Barbara Ehrenreich
16. Nickle and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
17. Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro
18. What is Stephen Harper Reading, Yann Martel
19. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
20. Brooklyn, Colm Toibin
21. The Blue Hour, Lillian Pizzichini
22. Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
23. Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
24. This is Not a Book, Keri Smith
25. Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, Carl Wilson
26. French Women for All Seasons, Mireille Guiliano
27. The First Person and Other Stories, Ali Smith
28. Food Rules, Michael Pollan
29. Late Nights on Air, Elizabeth Hay
30. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
31. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
32. Things I Have Been Silent About, Azar Nafisi
33. Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963, Susan Sontag
34. A Blue Hand, Deborah Baker
35. Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
36. After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Jean Rhys
37. Somewhere Towards the End, Diana Athill

- All the ones that I had recorded or could readily remember, but the list may get slightly longer.

Little Crown

Little Crown, originally uploaded by _stringsong.

One of six drawings in a series. Pencil crayon and ink on found paper.