Thursday, June 4, 2009

Challenge 1B.


This is one of the spots I work at home - the desk under the TV in the living room. There's usually some kind of cartoon or soap opera on (I don't really watch anything except news and weather).

It's not the most conducive spot for being productive, but it does allow me to multi-task: the kitchen is right beside it, I can hear the kids in the backyard, etc.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Challenge 1A.


This is my first response to the first challenge... I will have several more, as I do my work in a variety of places - I don't have one single spot where I do most of it.

This picture is a corner of the U of M Experimental Linguistics Laboratory, which was renovated and given to the department just a couple of years ago, so it's still in pretty nice shape and has nice new furniture. Unfortunately, there are no windows so it gets a little claustrophobic after a few hours. In the centre of the photo is the department's human skeleton (the real thing). I don't think it (he?) has a name.

Writing Studio

Oh my!

Culleton Macri Zurzolo Studios - Hail Storm



Tuesday, June 2, 2009

From the Archives: Toronto

Toronto, things are well
I'm essentially
Fake it 'til you make it
could not have found a better home
than here

But I can't seem to think
everyone and everything is a joke.

Now take me seriously here,
we all interact to certain
needs and wants,
that whether objective or subjective,
make us relate in the flow of resources,
sometimes equitably, sometimes not.

Weird names like political economy
and moral economy

A supposed repository of forward movement,
where man and women still fail in the simplest of ways.

Where jealousy and paranoia have undermined
of collegiality and order,
where self-trephination is the only reasonable method
of traversing the political farce
that is everyone ignoring
everything within the space
of 4 hallways and too many offices

Where I find opportunity
as I am
that has come with a tried,
tested and true praxis
instilled by roughly six-fingered others
thousands of kilometers
through irrefutable work ethic
and wow abuse.

The joke has a solution: Replace system relations
with human relations.

I'm talking here not of systems interacting,
as they surely do,
but of our interactions within those systems,
aggregate behaviour that violates.

By bringing human relations in line with system relations,
could we observe and possibly ensure responsibility?

Understanding that we should be proud in the Nation,
for we have understood the inherent natural competition
that logically precedes acceptance, fairness, discipline, and collaboration.

A way of being ruthless with creativity,
with pushing people to do their dreams,
to bring forth their conceptualization,
to be in accession with thee.

(The thing that is and ever will be)

So ride your snake and know
that we do more together than apart,
but love spares no one.

So for those that do not work and participate,
there is empathy, compassion,
but little mercy

(and it isn't me)

Is/Be

Monday, June 1, 2009

Toronto

Dark spaceships
are deploying
overhead

But in the city below

The veil of buildings
just want to say
hello
to me

Dark faces pass by
gracefully
in multicolor
cabs

I wave
at their
dark
silhouettes

And imagine
they're blowing
kisses
all the way
back
to me

As they keep
slowly driving away

It is
a premontion
of my death

Concrete still looms
flowers will
always bloom
along Spadina
avenue

What have I done?
I've turned
everyone
into a demon

Feet step softly
onto
cool
long
grass

where passion flowers lay
theyme, sickle, and hay

Now I've turned it
all around

Basil, finches, and sage

Even the garbage cans
look graceful at
six am

Will the grey buildings
say goodbye to me
when i'm gone?

When they don't
know me
anymore?