Monday 29 April 2013

This Is What We Bought With That Hot September

I made it about 20 miles west of North Battleford and turned back. I'd slipped and headed for the ditch--driving snow, build-up in the passing lane, temperature 0 degrees--but managed to avoid it.
A couple of hours later I've selected the Roibas tea at Mc-Rob in Saskatoon. In a hurry to get on the internet, I passed everything but POETRY in the Mc-Rob stacks. The closest would be GROUND WRITING, if that's what I saw.
The damn highway. I took my snow tires off last week, knowing I'd rather drive the nearly 2,000 km to Edm and back on the summer tires.
Never thought of checking the weather or road conditions before leaving Regina at 4 am.

Tuesday 16 April 2013

Furniture

I felt like sitting in outdoor furniture--recycled plastic deck chairs, swivels and gliders by Ratana. I imagined them indoors.
(I think we must pause here to wonder at indoors, at in with doors, at doors for the line we cross. The out-of-doors, the door saleman cracking wise: I'm out of doors.)
Seated in the glider, I told the woman the chair was pricey. Well it's quality she said. Five-year warranty.
An hour later, I'm still thinking about it--setting up the glider indoors, at my place. I'd have to move a cabinet to make room.
Question is--and here I'm asking my many readers (that's your cue, uncle Peach and aunt Pit)--would you sit there?

Sunday 7 April 2013

I'm Waiting to Eat My Orange (Though Once Eaten, It's Not Much Good)


Just now over at the Y, I finally added an apostrope to MENS outside our changeroom.
Pretty soon I'll get to what's in the archive of Archive of the Undressed. Thinking like the orange, I wonder if the book is about undressing, as in destabilizing yourself, as in leaving the changeroom changed.
Well never mind that last bit, but Playboy is not the point of the book, although Jeanette Lynes in her intro, an essay called "Begin the Slow Peel of Elbow Gloves", makes much of her fascination with vintage Playboys--their founder and style and readers and women (especially those lost) and personal resonance. What we take off, and how, and what we leave on--on our bodies, first and last of all--is what makes up the thematic heart of archive. Formally, this happens via all manner of voice, rhetorical dynamic, fragment, found language, autobio snippet and so on until, in the end, the book itself is the performance we've lived all this time.
Something along these lines is what I'll run by my students tomorrow. They're the ones who have to write the essay.