Call me Ishmael.

There were plush dark wood floors and mouldings, but also these hairballs all over, big as tumbleweeds, human and animal hair mixed up with leaves and dryer lint and god only knows, and not just in the corners behind the shoddy furniture. Everywhere was piles of yellowed newspapers and nearly finished cups of tea and the smell of must and old man pee.

I remembered hazily how I had been drugged and left here. To get help. You know, because of the deep November dread I had fallen into. But I couldn’t find a nurse or doctor anywhere.

The house didn’t make structural sense. There were a patchwork of old staircases leading to half-floors or to dank alleys of nowhere and anyway I couldn’t figure out where I was going. Or the way out. Or why I was crawling.

Behind one heavy door I found a smiling doctor dressed in clean green scrubs. He was bent over four bloody naked bodies, covering them with white sheets. But the sheets were too small, and turning crimson, and blood was pooling darkly on the floor. There were all these big lethargic buzzing flies and this meaty smell. He shhh-ed and waved me away.

I saw some other strange things, too.

After a while I glimpsed some sky, and followed it up some stairs to a half-finished renovation. Out of nowhere was most of a gorgeous hemlock deck, with a dusky view of a hayfield and, just behind, some dark sleepy woods. It all smelled so fresh and new. But when I climbed out to enjoy it, this renaissance nerd in full black and copper jousting gear started racing towards me on a fierce black horse. He said get the fuck back in that house, you stupid little animal.

I've been drinking way too much coffee lately. I don't know what that's all about- its like I want to get as close to a panic attack as possible. I've been pushing the envelope as far as coffee goes. But one place I figured out where you don't want to be on the teetering edge of existential dread is the Halifax Shopping Centre.

Anyway, none of that is interesting news but the thing is, yesterday's mall odyssey was punctuated on either side by a nun happening! I've already laid out my top three nun happenings here. But this was number four.

It was a gorgeous day, and like I say, I was caffeined to the gills. So I'd sidled up to this old nun in the bus stop, looking to exchange pleasantries or whatever. But she was already engaged in conversation with another woman about how long they had been waiting.  "At least we're not waiting down at the Uniacke Square stop," remarked the seated woman. "Nothing but Boogaloos down there!"

My little nun seemed to take a moment to reflect on that. "These days," she said deliberately, shaking her head, "you can find Boogaloos most anywhere." Eventually the Number 7 Bus picked them up while I waited slackjawed for the 80. Boogaloos?!



I walked back home from the mall to work off my dread and soak in some crisp fall air.

At the grocery store around the corner from my place, my last stop, there were all these young nuns peppered around. Must have been some kind of convention somewhere? Anyway this real ginger-headed teen nun with a huge forehead pimple and the loosest grey duds was behind me in the lineup. I was leafing through a Cosmopolitan in the lineup to find out about these newly invented hetero-normative sex positions. (By the way this month's is the Bad Girl Issue - "For Sexy Bitches Only".) I don't think she was reading over my shoulder when she fainted? 

She fell backwards, somehow really slowly, settling out like a dull grey puddle. Her zit was twinkling down there under the fluorescent lights. A batch of nuns came to her rescue, along with an awkward teenage Superstore Employee with a walkie-talkie and a soul patch. And anyway, she seemed fine after a few seconds.... Maybe she had seen a Boogaloo?

On Halloween I am going to crash your stupid hipster party.

I am going bust in all abrasive. I am going rub you the wrong way with my rough hoodie exterior, all steel wool, broom bristles and cheese graters. But then maybe I’ll want to roll over and offer you my warm belly? Because I am going to be so soft, so pink and so strokeable, lined up and down with velvet, silk and fur.

On Halloween I am going to take my inner hedgehog to the next level. (Or sea mouse?)


-
Yes I KNOW~ I am OLD now. But Halloween is still my favourite. Mushrooms, leaves, and jaunty jointed cardboard skeletons. Heading straight into the terrible abyss of November with fake blood in our mouths and pockets full of trick or treat. Also: candy!

I can't believe I'm going to see The Boss in concert next week!



In 1978, the year that I was born, Bruce Springsteen was the hottest male specimen on the earth.

I just read that he's been playing full albums from the old days on this leg of the tour. See, its gonna be a long time, maybe even forever, until he tours with the E-Street Band again. He's played all of Born to Run a few times, and the full Born in the USA, and even my favourite album of all, Darkness on the Edge of Town, in the past few weeks. I am real excited about this.

Anyway, I'm driving all the way to Philadelphia with a few friends to see him. We're gonna stay three there nights in a sketchy hotel and eat the bread and peanut butter we pack.

I've never been to Philly! Actually I've never really been anywhere in the USA. Have you been there? So far I know I want to see a boxing match, some blues, and the Mütter Museum. I am also dying to take a side-trip to Atlantic City. What else should I do? Any hot tips? Keeping in mind that we are broke-ass....

I could live on a boat, I think. I know the ocean ain't nothing to fuck with. But rocking and rolling over the awful depths gives me a deep steady calm I don't get other places. How did Ishmael put it... It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation.

Okay so we weren't out on the high seas exactly, but still.

We got to McNab's Island at dusk, after a ridiculous "sailor's delight" sunset over container ship terminals, grain elevators and cruise ships. We put our anchor down aways from the beach by Hangman's Point and piled in two shifts into a lonely little dory, holding the dog tight to keep her from jumping out.

On the Island, we walked in the dark under a misty moon, exploring old abandoned garrisons and underground tunnels, visiting a graveyard, keeping our eyes open for ghosts but seeing only the white tails of deer jumping through the tall grass.

Waiting on the beach for the dory, waves splashed the shore, buoy bells knocked in the distance, and the fog horn blarghed. A friend rowed back for us from the sailboat through the indistinct grey sea and sky, his back to us, invisible until the last minute.

Back on the boat we made pasta, played cards and drank whiskey into the night. We slept in the cradle of the sea's swell at the mouth of Halifax Harbour. I dreamt of balancing acts and jellyfish and um, Adrien Brody? Anyway everything is gonna be okay.

Sometimes those jangley feelings still come back. Mix those restless autumn blues with too much drinking and not enough exercise, I guess. Then throw in some lawyer conversations about your upcoming trial, and for good measure, watch a bunch of people trapped behind locked doors in a burning building on the big screen. It is stupid and embarrassing but there it is.

What I do when this happens bad, is first I make a mix CD. I take all those funny feelings and mix it into a sort of story in my head and then find songs that fit and flow.  (You can download the mix here (side A/ side B), for a little while.) Then I write out some kind of silly weird predictable story while I listen to it. I kind of can't help it.

This latest one is a sort of vampire story. I dunno why. Maybe because I've been watching True Blood, and it has been so disappointing, except for that lush and promising intro sequence. Maybe also because of a skeezy "Vampire Lust Erotic Fiction Contest" where you can win sex toys!

You can read it here, on this dark rec-room of the internet, part of a fun new secret project I am working on with my best pals. FUN.

... Happy First Day of Fall!

I missed my prom. I spent that night learning new ways to get it on from a hot and dusky Costa Rican in a campground washroom. So in retrospect it was kind of a prom-night time, I guess? But I did go to the prom party the next year to see what I had missed.

This prom night, out in a gravel pit by Country Harbour Mines, was yet another special time in my teenaged life.

The prom queen was Rachael T.  She went on my schoolbus - something I spent three hours riding each school day.  Rachael used to spice up bus life by giving secret beejays under a bouncing jacket. But when she turned sixteen her mom let her drive to school with her little sister in a nice red Honda Civic. One time she passed the bus as we drove alongside Lochaber Lake. We were all catcalling and teasing the busdriver but then as we watched, the shiney red car flew right past us and into the lake! They got out okay- wet and cold but seemingly unshaken- and rode the bus with us the rest of the way to school. 

Anyway, one magic moment from the prom party will endure my whole life.  There's Rachael, a good 8 months pregnant. She's throwing tree-sized logs onto an already massive bonfire at the edge of the pit. In her teeth she's gripping a Gatorade bottle filled with Bailey's Irish Cream. Back lit by the huge flames I see her tumescent silhouette, looking efficient and unflappable, chucking logs with both arms, and throwing her head back to get the liquor down her throat.

September's cool, clean smell has got me all restless. Already. And worse this year than usual. I am tossing and turning at night, trying to scheme a life in the woods with goats, raspberry bushes, and a woodpile... but how to make my $700/month student loan payments? And why can't I stay earnest and happy at my perfectly fine do-gooder job?

I have farm blood I guess? (Or is it the self-destructive blood from the other side of my family?) Oh and also dumb expensive degrees.

Speaking of the family farm -the weirdest thing! Saturday was a big hurricane-dregs rainstorm and I wanted to hear some lamenty music, so I ended up googling for gaelic tunes. And what the frig, the second page I clicked on had a bunch of mp3s of my dear departed Grampy singing! Some anthropology student recorded him along with a bunch of other old Inverness County farmers back in the eighties.

It is so weird and wonderful, hearing his trilling old voice coming out of the internets! I can't stop listening to him. He makes me so yearny and sad.

I wasn’t allowed to meet you while you were alive. Mom, your first cousin, says you used to hit on her all the time.  You’d say, “It’d be incest, but it’d be alright.”

There are so many people from Mom’s family I've never been able to meet. You were the rocker cousin though. Just over in New Glasgow. I always wondered about you. I bet we had some music in common.

You died of cirrhosis of the liver yesterday. You were yellower than your house, that’s the word. No surprise, that, said Mom.

Your wife of 37 years, she laid you out and put you in your favourite Beatles tee shirt and she braided your hair like Willie Nelson. Then you died. Your hair was snow white and down past your ass was the word.

There is not going to be a wake or a funeral or anything. But your wife – she’s some hard, but she’s a hoot is the word – she cremated you and is gonna take you on tour. She said you never got to go on the big tour together in life.

Sometime this fall there is gonna be a concert in New Glasgow for you. To kick off the tour. All kinds of bands. I'm excited about it!  I promise to be there (unless it is at the same time as Bruce Springsteen in Philly- I got tickets and I bet you’d understand?).

Its just before eight in the morning on Highway 101 and the sun is bright and low. My cheap mall sunglasses don't cut the glare and I'm squinting hard. The rental car, she's tiny, but she's got guts.

I'm on my last 500 clicks of a careening 1600 km trip around the coast of Nova Scotia. Tim Horton's coffee is shit. I like my coffee black but this needs milk to get it down the hatch.

I work for an environmental organization but I love to drive fast, baby. A waste of dinosaur bones, I know. I'm driving the way you can only drive when you are alone. I'm headed for the butt end of this province to meet some fishermen. The price of gas, its killing them.

I'm dipping in and out of cottony fog patches, passing sedans and tractor trailers. I'm listening to Mos Def at volume 32. Quiet Dog Bite Hard.

Hah
And we don't stop
See you rock to the rhythm we don't stop
So you maintain the rock and you don't stop
You keep up the rock and you don't stop

My nimble blue Suzuki Swift is racing one of those Volkwagen bugs kitted out to advertise Red Bull. A massive can of caffeine and red syrup stogged into the back end, jutting into the sky. I'll pass him, and then right behind me, he's passing me on the inside or some shit. We're locked in heated battle and I'm making great time.

I'm a few cars ahead of him when traffic stops. I settle behind a flatbed truck loaded with gleaming copper pipes. They are piled just so. There is a right gruesome accident ahead, airlift helicopter circling, jaws of life being employed. We sit in the line for half an hour or more. Eyes glued on the twinkling emergency lights.

The vehicles slowly turn out of the long line up and head back to the nearest exit. I've lost the red bull racer in the shuffle somewhere and head into a little place called St. Croix, to fill up my coffee at an Irving and change up the music and find my way back to the highway.

What with all of the gentrification, houses are being ripped apart up and down my street. The one across the way looks like an old wet paper bag. You can see right into the backyard through the holes.

This morning the demolition made a noise that reverberated through my window and into my body. It was some kind of grinding crack that jolted me onto a wet, black roof across town. I felt cold rain and smelled shingles and smoke and the position of my body there, jumbled and wrong.

At this point, I had jumped out the bedroom window and broken my hip and heels. I had drug myself out of the way with my forearms so Pete could jump too. As he dangled from the window a minute, his pants fell down, and he was half naked to the knees. I remember laughing- it was so funny and sad at the same time, Peter being a private and dignified sort of fellow.

The landlords had recently petitioned to have the building demolished but had been rejected by the city until they could figure out if it had heritage value. Anyway, I am getting to the grinding crack.

We waited a long time on that roof. The first "emergency response" on the scene was this handsome rookie cop I had seen the day before at the hospital (I had cracked my fingers in the same bedroom window that morning, groggily trying to shut out construction noises.) He was chaperoning a prisoner with a bloody hand or something but he was all wavery and breathing heavy, and eventually had to call in a replacement because "he wasn't great with blood and gore." Did I laugh when I saw him again!

My bones and I are shivering there on the shingles. Finally some firefighters arrive on the scene. It is all black smoke, cold rain, ladders and hoses and they don't see me lying there. This is when that grinding crack happens - as they drag their ladder over and across my already broken leg, twisting it around backwards.  I don't remember the pain. I just remember my eyes and mouth going wide. I remember this giddy, sickening rag doll feeling. I remember finding it kinda funny too, like some kind of Charlie Brown in the rain moment.

It is a sticky, listless summer in Halifax. My hair stays damp, my clothes too, and the backyard is an unstoppable fucking jungle. The strawberries are warm and I'm crushing them one by one, watching the juice drip down...

I've been reading The Conquest of the Useless and I'm scared that the voice in my head is turning into Werner Herzog.

This past Friday just before dusk I hobbled over to a bus stop after a day of standing on tradeshow concrete downtown. I was all shakey from not eating anything but timbits and trap shrimp all day and the awful scrape and click in my hip and I sat next to this hobo that looked kinda like Charles Manson.

He asked me what I was listening to and I said, Neil Young. It was On The Beach, which is a perfect album for muggy hopeless days in June - and he seemed really into it so I offered him an earphone. We sat there, quiet in the fog, listening to the song "Motion Pictures" and staring out towards the old grainery by the shipyards. 

Well, all those people, they think they got it made
But I wouldn't buy, sell, borrow or trade
Anything I have to be like one of them.
I'd rather start all over again.

Soon into the next song, the bus came, and he stayed behind on the bench. It was all sorta weird and sad and nice.

I have been making a little story using Twitter.   I'm not sure how it will end yet.

How "web 2.0" of me or whatever. Or inappropriate.

http://twitter.com/whiskered

Romania is a broken and beautiful place and I had the most best fun. I got a kitschy vampire t-shirt that says Love Never Dies and a tiny bit of a tan and I'm not scared of anything anymore.

Last night at a house party, there was this conversation about the smell of poor people. 

Cigarettes and febreeze- that was the agreed upon smell, though others chimed in with mixtures that included cabbage, motor oil, litter boxes. This doll-faced girl in designer tights was like "Oh God, the smell of cheap," snarling her nose in disdain.

I've heard this conversation before, though only lately. And yeah, I know the smell. Perfectly well.

Jeez man, how is it that I know so many upper crusties? PS FYI they smell like fine linens and gin and tonic.

The other night I saw the new Wolverine movie. This one was extra retarded, by the way. But it was also kind of awesome because the pirate version we had didn't have the special effects done. So like, when Wolverine gets knocked off a train or something, he turns into a spinning grey CGI turd. Superhero powers are all about the wires, and explosions are opaque yellow circles.

I guess I'm just more into villains, underdogs, and mythical beasties.

Which must be why I'm headed for Romania in a few weeks?  Not only is it pretty cheap, this country is full of stuff that fascinates me. Wacky communist history, complete with nutso dictator! Raggle taggle gypsies! Bears and wolves and gigantic wild boars! Horse logging! Caviar! And ummm, vampires? Holy shit am I excited.

A reckless adventure was long overdue.  And I am never gonna get a tax return like that again.

That snowstorm the other day really got to me, you know?  I mean fuck, seven centimetres of snow after finally playing outside without my coat and with honest to goodness afternoon stoop beers? Fuck.

And then the last two nights, I've been interrupted over and over by awful, unspeakable dreams and sweaty nightmares that won't end properly. Cobwebs, man. Hoary ones.

So today when the sun peaked out I took off all of my clothes and jumped into the frigid, inhumanly sincere ocean. Here:



It was violent and breathless and I let the shock break me down. On the way out, the water felt like cool silk and the sun felt warm on my skin, even at 4 degrees. And I strolled along the shore like a naked goddamned April fool.

Right now I'm reading the book I wish I wrote. It is The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams and it so bleak, funny, and weird.  I don't want it to ever end. There are these insane turns of phrase. And these awesome little moments, like a scene in a restaurant where the waiter is wearing white plastic gloves:

"Have a nice remainder of the rest of your life," the waiter said. "Gotta cough." He turned away.

I remember when I was in grade nine I heard this FurnaceFace tape, Just Buy It,  and I got the same feeling. I was like, damn, that was my idea for a band! I had borrowed it from this boyfriend who wouldn't kiss me. I broke up with him after four whole months of that. I don't really listen to FurnaceFace anymore...

Have you had a book like that? Or album or other made-up thing?

Amidst the ice and rain and stupidity of these last dregs of February, there are also some warm and fuzzy things. 

Like naps in the tub. And someone to wake you up before the hypothermia.

Like odes to the lowly clam.

Like a mild-mannered policeman in full uniform reading aloud the sauciest parts of a bodice-ripper. His face pink, his shoes shined and rocking shyly back and forth. His commanding voice describing a young virgin shepherd succumbing to the advances of a dirty Scottish rogue. (All for a good cause.)

Like the mild and forgiving kind of hangover that makes every song on party shuffle send you half-mad with pleasure.

Like used books arriving in the mail. The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams, A Little Original Sin by Millicent Dillon, The Log of the S.S. Mrs. Unguentine by Stanely Crawford and Pirate by Fabio.

Like squid sex?  

Like tomorrow is March, man. March!

It was just innocent, joyful sex noise. But it nearly got both of us killed.

( hot as a fever, rattling bones )

In conclusion: sex, death, love, weirdness. Happy Valentines Day!

I just switched to four day work-weeks. The idea is to give myself some time to get bored. To nurture my dark side. To write things that don't aim to contribute to the public good. No clams, no beaches, no swordfish even. Just my indulgent baloney.

I had my first Friday off yesterday. I filled my day full of other fun stuff but I did sit in a corner and write for two hours first thing in the morning. It came out kind of earnest and true though... it may take time to re-cultivate my depravity.

I don't know if it is finished. I never know when things are finished. It is pretty short and I'm not even sure if it counts as a story. But I sort of wanted to share it anyway.

Click below to learn way too much about you and your boobies.


( Gristle )

I have been having this dream lately, where I'm sort of bored at a party. I take a big drink of water and then let it pour out through the bottom of my mouth and down my chin. And it rushes all down my neck and spreads all down my chest and I am such a soggy mess. Each time, I wake up giggling madly. I love this dream, am I crazy?

I have been having no-booze Januaries for the past few years. They make north end house parties nearly unbearable but are really good for reading five excellent books and going to yoga sixteen times. They also tend to make my Februaries full of reeling gin-soaked revelry.

Other good kinda stuff:

* I get to work on a fishing boat for ten cold February days.

* I finally published two reports this month. One of them is enormous and one of them is glossy.

* My boots are warm enough this year.

* I might move away from Halifax later this year for nutty adventures, and I have no idea where (except, let it be written: not Toronto, Calgary, Fort McMurray or Vancouver.)

* But if I don't that's okay for now, because I'm in a lovely little lull.

* The apocalypse is gotta be coming.

I’m sitting here in Lequille by a wood fire and a big picture window, on the shortest day of the year. Outside there is snow, spruce trees, and miles and miles of quiet. I just got inside from my favourite chore in the world: piling junked wood. Here I am afterwards with my feet up, drinking a late afternoon beer I dug out of the snow. There is a yummy smelling stew in the slow cooker,  a fluffy orange dog warming my feet, and I’m gazing outside, watching “snowmageddon” approach.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’m a goddamn Christmas card!