alternative value, meteoric theft...

what's that you say? four inconspicuous words now conjoined in a blithely unplanned title. In some way that is correct, I use this method as an exercise in writing, some would say it is an exercise in relieving writer's block (but since I don't believe in the ill-fated WB then I can't / won't admit that). The above title was attained by randomly picking four words from the MSN Canada home page and then putting them together into a somewhat cohesive idea (ideal?) ---- but now the trick is to make a real poem or story from this idea:

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As you can see the results are a bit blank now... but there is no need to panic, at some point I will edit this again and you'll see what happens to this row of bon mots.

seriously inured...

On a monday morning, procuring fate, I pledge not to peel your hopeful succulent Valencia orange with such sterness or solemn quailing (is that a word? or perhaps, just a bird?). Yet another revelation came to me on a deep grey Sunday afternoon, I said, smiling, (not a smirk either, but a real smile), and it was then that I realized that perhaps I've had the wrong attitude when it comes to my pursuit of writing and / or my quest of athletic achievement. And I think it is best summed up by a chortle and a giddy wink of these bottomless blue eyes, and it is here that I say, "don't be so damned hardened or severe."

There should be no disillusion in the efforts.

Yesterday the narcissistic yet lovable Julia paraded her cheerless confident "cold" into the cafe where we drank herbal tea and perused the latest edition of The Fiddlehead (a literary magazine from those wily valleys of New Brunswick, especially wily this issue - see page 77, wink!). Her illness, a minor detraction from her usual poised personality, she said, would not deter her from a long day at the library and even a mountain bike in the brisk late-autumn late-afternoon. She's a soft-tail you know, not a roadie or a tri-gal, so she doesn't always appreciate the quibbles of the pavement. Yet she passes above it all with the glazed spinning of a sanguine championness, and I, awe-filled, slack-jawed, straight lipped, rough and raw renegade???? had an instant of epiphanic manifestation; And so I now vow, in all consequences of living, to beam instead of frown.

Do you think perhaps it will make an optimistic difference?

the blue arrow

Is this the sign? Is this the shape and the colour that I remember? Is it you, the one that arches across this glazed screen like an unforeseen cloud enveloping a pre-winter escape?

Once, when we were acquiescent and still, we huddled in an embrace that only a divinity could inspire... and you said you could hear a voice, and what you heard you thought was the residue of the darkness that had separated us, and you thought this blindness might return, that the light and all of its colours weren't real, that the messages you felt like hearing would be taken away, obliterated like a mud-hutted city beneath a flood of poignant, carpeted bombs. Yet you dreamed... and I swore to you within that dream that I wouldn't let you be fooled, and I told you how inevitable it was that we would find each other again, and you said you knew it was only a dream, and that what I said was just wistful and sentimental, and you wanted to clutch something more real, and you wanted to grab hold of that which passed above you: an arrow so blue it couldn't have come from either of our skies...

what is that, a yellowish-gold and radiant circle?

I believe I actually saw the sun this morning... there it was, alone, and rising abashedly above the indurate buildings on Bloor Street. And there I was shivering in the first real signs of wind chill, that which crawl beneath one's neck. Oh to be somewhere warm, shirtless, somewhere in the midst of ordinary sweat, somewhere along the coast...

another Klima

So, this is not a reference to the former left winger Red Winger (shoots left, right Irving!) what did you say, A Player for Owen... who? alas Pan Irv, I have no idea what number Petr Klima was, an odd one I think (37, 39) or something uncommon... mais, I digress, this Klima I refer to is a book called A Summer Affair written in the early 70s, and revised, it says, in the mid 80s. I think, on the whole, I like this book better than the first one, although parts of NSoA (see previous entry) were more brilliant... anyway I'm also attempting again to read Anil's Ghost, Ondaatje, and even though I'm only 30 pages in I feel it will be a struggle to finish. There seems to be something less tragic in it even though it's all about tragedy, however I will try not to quit...

Onto other more important news, like my own literary career, it is, how you would say stalled? trodden on? although some more positive-minded people might say it is stable, or even a punctilious calvacade towards pasture... Louis? Yeah so, my manuscript was rejected again, even though it contains, many fine things, thank you, I know. I guess it is now time to spray the infield --- let bygones be bygones, let sonnets become sonatas, ponies become peonies, accents turn into ascension --- enough! what's with all the equestrian references? It must be time to ride off into the dark grey horizon that has plagued my city for the past week, at least it hasn't rained yet today. Perhaps tomorrow my thoughts will be a little more pellucid, clear... long live your endurance -- mes amis, Mika.