Gardiner Ave.

I've been wondering what to do with words

in relation to photographs

in relation to seeing.

I thought writing on location

would be WRITING on location, not

shooting the puddles, the effects

of overnight rain. I got the idea

from re-reading Gardiner

as rain dreg and going there

to collect what the dregs

might be.

Houses of Haultain 7

Houses of Haultain 7
Originally uploaded by TagHill

Not a great photo--crooked, the light too harsh and all, but I'm going with this blog entry directly from my Flickr site, home of 180 Hillsdale photos, including the seven Houses of Haultain.

What goes on in these houses includes:
Garbage day.
Woman walking by with one child strapped to her chest and at least one more in a stroller wide as the sidewalk.
The sidewalk itself split and lifted.
Just down from here a house for sale. L-shaped living room, a fireplace angled at the crotch of the L, kitchen on the other side of the walls, two bedrooms and a bathroom, basement steps leading down from the back door.
Rain earlier, bright clouds now.

So far I've chickened out, but sooner or later I'm going to use my little digital to compose a panorama, images linked, of this row of houses on Haultain.

But as I say, not when the light's so harsh.

Road Trip

In June I drove to Edmonton to see my friends off to Europe.

And catch my son's act at the Edmonton Improv Festival.

He and I walked by our old apartment (top left).

A few days later I slept by my sister's pool in Kelowna.

Under the solstice sky, which had all the answers.

My three sisters and I spent 48 hours down the lake.

I tipped my cap to the sky.

   

Then I drove home.

Jose Saramago

I dug reading Saramago in Portugal.  Sitting below the statue in Lisbon so prominent in the Ricardo Reis book (the statue that's prominent, not me).  Intepreting with him the Lisbon skies, the streets, the water.  Enjoying the wryness of the voice in any page (any strange Saramago page).  Trying to write like him for the fun of it: _________. Being cantankerous correctly (a sentence he would never write).  I love his respect for Pessoa too.

Fans of fooling with history enjoy his The History of the Seige of Lisbon.  In it a proofreader inserts the word not at a crucial point in a narrative of the Crusaders and the famous seige at the heart of national stories in Portugal.  And falls in love--yes you fans of love, he doesn't forget about you.

The bulk of a Saramago book was a companion the many times I reached into or from my backpack, removing a piece or replacing one.  If I think about what those days were like, five to six months ago already, I think of that fabulous writer.

So he died the other day, had been sick.  It is said that his good-bye was placid and serene.

How I Damn Near Bought a Kayak Last Night

Jubilee avenue was Lake Jubilee when the storm hit.  A couple with my last name, but no relation, had been trying out kayaks during Product Demo nights and had taken one home.

It was a tandem model, perfect for paddling Lake Jubilee, about four feet deep.  At first they kept to the street, that late afternoon, but after a while paddled right up to neighbours' front doors.  "It was tippy," said Gladys later.  "People handed us hot chocolate."

This went on until sundown when they swung the kayak around and tracked north over Langley then west for the last time.

Davey

This little guy lives closer to hearbeat and breath than most of us.

Tomorrow, then. Straight to Jubilee.

I've been wondering for several minutes how to get back to work.  Deleting now about from between minutes and how is as far as I've gone.  And turning up the volume on my random five cds.

Last week I attended my son's convocation in Vancouver.  In breaking our joint two-week abstention from liquor of any kind--this was the night before--we wondered if arbitrary goals meant anything.  Depends on the context in which the goals were set, is the sensible answer, isn't it?  (The process of composing pieces of poetry might be one context for usefully arbitrary goals.  If not, I'm screwed.)

On the way out to Vancouver on the plane, anticipating that conversation (which we'd begun on the phone), I read the June The Walrus cover to cover.  About three quarters of the way through I came across commentary about Micah Lexier that began by quoting Igor Stravinsky.  I didn't write it down--something about the generative and liberating powers of arbitrary goals--but I did clip it and pin it to his bulletin board when he wasn't looking.  (Poor guy--he gave up his bedroom for me and slept on the couch.  Then after work he was heading across the line to the Sasquatch music festival until today.  He won't spot the clipping until tomorrow, I'm guessing.)

So, I know my Hillsdale work is not done until, among other things, I've written on location on every one of its streets.  I'm working backwards alphabetically; a version of K, for Knowles, is my May 20 blog entry.  What I particularly like about that idea is that it ends with Anderson, my boyhood home, where we moved in '61.