It is important not to confuse ‘blog’ with ‘blag’ which is a ‘robbery, esp. with violence.’
Once you have written your book, you can become anything: merchant, murderess, inn keeper - for your life as a novelist has been secured, if only in this single iteration. You can glue a dusty moustache to your face and rename your pets. You can declare I hate Scotch and will drink only Zywiec. You can drive out to the airport and say one way to Arizona will the desert flowers be in bloom? You can become a shouter, a brawler, even a blagger. You can undertake a whole new set of skills. Please, my garden. Here, my window dressing. There, a rhubarb pie. Forgive me, your spleen. As the writer is constantly spying on those they love and those they love less; as the writer takes dutiful notes and spits and howls for Faulkner and Mann and Woolf; now, the writer can abandon all of these slave-like habits and adopt new ones. Medical school! Circus school! A silent protest. Call me Palomino.
It is a particular afterlife, the afterlife of making a book. There are no harps. No persistent light. Instead, it is populated. Populated by people with questions. There is more time in cars. There is less muttering. There is more proper attire. There is less scrawling across grocery lists: his hands were hard as branches. The obsessions are different.
In my office today, as we approach noon and somewhere horses are sleeping standing up, I have books behind me. Piled on the shelves. Notebooks. Black ones. How their stacks are headstones. How ‘Stunt’ came of them. How one hundred notebooks make a single book.
Yesterday, I went to the art store and I bought more notebooks. Black ones. Four of them. 9 by 12 with a ringed sleeve so that the page lays flat and open. In my arms they were a reunion. High heels in the wet grass of a cemetery. They were on sale. Something is taking shape in my mind and like the familiar tug of illness, it is pulling me away from all those other things I might have been. A flight attendant, a lecturer, a fetishist. Even though I wear my pilot goggles and my knapsack full of water to combat the forest fires, even though I drink Zywiec and want Arizona and call the cat Fool, I cannot deny the dark seed starting to define itself. Again.
When I stall in some habit of reverie before paying for the notebooks, the art cashier says, ‘Are you finding everything you need?’
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Dey Blogs. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Dey Blogs. Sort by date Show all posts
Dey Blogs - #2
These are stories about men in love, sports and flowered neckties.
There is a couple. They live in a yurt in the desert. He is a monk. They made a vow never to stray more than fifteen feet away from each other. If she goes to the washroom in an airport, he stands by the entrance. If they cannot be seated together on an airplane, they do not get on it. If he has a persistent, knocking shot of brilliance in the middle of the night, they both trudge the one hundred feet to his study. They wear robes. They do not have running water. They have many disciples. He has been shunned because the other monks presume the relationship to be sexual. There is a photograph of them in the wind not touching.
A man with a scar and the middle name Galore sent me a letter about wrestling, ears and Church rectories.
The other night, a man at a bar said when I walked in: I bet she can read look she wears glasses. And when I sat down almost beside him, he asked what is your favourite sport? I hesitated. Sports are something other people do. The man had a round face the colour of concrete. I said windsurfing. I did not say that it was because once I had windsurfed across a lake when I was twelve and thought I might lift off. (An uncle did the same route while holding a glass of wine. An aunt did it in her white bra and underwear.) The cement man said I worked for the guy who invented the mast, guy made a fortune. The mast joins the sail to the board. This: like the printing press, like gunpowder. The cement man did the inventor’s bathroom in his house on Poplar Plains Road. All of the fixtures were 22 carat gold. When I was a child and heard carat, I heard ‘carrot.’ Like you?
Last night I had the If I was rich conversation with a man in a hallway in a suit and what I guessed was an expensive tie. He had fruit in the bottom of his glass. I told him that I if I was rich I would have an art collection and a place outside the city that I could retreat to. He wanted an island. South. But vacations made him restless. He could stand a few days at most. This morning, I thought about If I was rich again. Answering the needs of our families went unspoken. Now I would buy time. Time to read a thousand books that loom like intimacies I did not chase down but should have.
There is a couple. They live in a yurt in the desert. He is a monk. They made a vow never to stray more than fifteen feet away from each other. If she goes to the washroom in an airport, he stands by the entrance. If they cannot be seated together on an airplane, they do not get on it. If he has a persistent, knocking shot of brilliance in the middle of the night, they both trudge the one hundred feet to his study. They wear robes. They do not have running water. They have many disciples. He has been shunned because the other monks presume the relationship to be sexual. There is a photograph of them in the wind not touching.
A man with a scar and the middle name Galore sent me a letter about wrestling, ears and Church rectories.
The other night, a man at a bar said when I walked in: I bet she can read look she wears glasses. And when I sat down almost beside him, he asked what is your favourite sport? I hesitated. Sports are something other people do. The man had a round face the colour of concrete. I said windsurfing. I did not say that it was because once I had windsurfed across a lake when I was twelve and thought I might lift off. (An uncle did the same route while holding a glass of wine. An aunt did it in her white bra and underwear.) The cement man said I worked for the guy who invented the mast, guy made a fortune. The mast joins the sail to the board. This: like the printing press, like gunpowder. The cement man did the inventor’s bathroom in his house on Poplar Plains Road. All of the fixtures were 22 carat gold. When I was a child and heard carat, I heard ‘carrot.’ Like you?
Last night I had the If I was rich conversation with a man in a hallway in a suit and what I guessed was an expensive tie. He had fruit in the bottom of his glass. I told him that I if I was rich I would have an art collection and a place outside the city that I could retreat to. He wanted an island. South. But vacations made him restless. He could stand a few days at most. This morning, I thought about If I was rich again. Answering the needs of our families went unspoken. Now I would buy time. Time to read a thousand books that loom like intimacies I did not chase down but should have.
Stewart Blogs - #1
Writing is the easy part for me, compared to reading my work in public. I have long had a fear of public speaking. When I was a private investigator, I often had to testify in court. I would be a nervous wreck for weeks before, even though I knew that 99% of the time it was settled out of court and I would not have to testify.
I joined Toastmasters a few months ago to get help with this and it has really made a difference. I still get nervous, but it is getting better. Having to give a speech in front of the people in Toastmasters gave me confidence. A speech is even more difficult than reading from a book. So I am happy that the readings in Montreal and Toronto went so well for me.
Not that writing is easy. I used to write when I was on surveillance. I had hours of time alone and loved it. I would listen to the radio or write. Of course if you are going through something difficult in your life being alone all the time isn’t good because you end up just making yourself crazy. I didn’t like it as much when I left the road and went into management. I wasn’t used to spending 8 hours with people and no time to write during the day. I like people, I’m social, but I have always needed lots of alone time, even as a child. I grew up in an apartment. We had three bedrooms and I can’t believe how selfish I was, but I demanded that my younger two sisters and brother share a room, while I had my own bedroom. And I can’t believe my parents gave in to me. Maybe because no one wanted to share a room with me. I always wanted pets but we weren’t allowed to have a cat or dog in the building so I had hamsters or mice and they would run on their wheel at night. I also decorated my room in a manner that would deter others from wanting to share, for instance I had doll heads hanging from the ceiling and many stuffed animals which I would line up around the edges of the bed at night so that the thing under the bed couldn’t reach me. I still don’t feel comfortable with my legs or arms hanging over the bed even though I know that there could not be anything under there, for one thing, I use that space for storage so there is no way anyone or anything could fit.
I’ve always lived in my head, daydreaming, and at night I have many dreams and nightmares. Writing is good for me in that way: to connect with others and to get outside myself.
People are always saying to me that I should write about my life and all the things that have happened to me, but maybe I just don’t want to yet, I don’t know. I was always a private person, although that is changing now.
For instance, when Kulsum introduced me at the Toronto reading she mentioned something I had written about how you have to have a sense of humour to be a Private Investigator with IBS. For years I was embarrassed about having irritable bowel syndrome and didn’t want anyone to know, but obviously I had to let the people at work know I had it.
Imodium is my drug of choice, what can I say, it was the only way to get through the day stuck in a car on surveillance. Clients don’t want to hear that you lost the subject of the investigation because you had to leave to go to the washroom.
People at work would often make jokes about it but since I can be very self deprecating they thought it was okay and I realized that talking about it is better than the stress of hiding it because stress just makes it worse.
I have written about it, one of the stories in my book is about a woman with diarrhea. I don’t remember saying that thing in my bio about being a literary proctologist. That sounds so strange, maybe I did, I don’t know, I have a bad memory.
At the Toronto reading, Claudia Dey, who is incredibly sweet, when I told her how nervous I was giving readings said that she gets nervous, but we are all human. And all humans have to go to the bathroom, so why not write about it.
I joined Toastmasters a few months ago to get help with this and it has really made a difference. I still get nervous, but it is getting better. Having to give a speech in front of the people in Toastmasters gave me confidence. A speech is even more difficult than reading from a book. So I am happy that the readings in Montreal and Toronto went so well for me.
Not that writing is easy. I used to write when I was on surveillance. I had hours of time alone and loved it. I would listen to the radio or write. Of course if you are going through something difficult in your life being alone all the time isn’t good because you end up just making yourself crazy. I didn’t like it as much when I left the road and went into management. I wasn’t used to spending 8 hours with people and no time to write during the day. I like people, I’m social, but I have always needed lots of alone time, even as a child. I grew up in an apartment. We had three bedrooms and I can’t believe how selfish I was, but I demanded that my younger two sisters and brother share a room, while I had my own bedroom. And I can’t believe my parents gave in to me. Maybe because no one wanted to share a room with me. I always wanted pets but we weren’t allowed to have a cat or dog in the building so I had hamsters or mice and they would run on their wheel at night. I also decorated my room in a manner that would deter others from wanting to share, for instance I had doll heads hanging from the ceiling and many stuffed animals which I would line up around the edges of the bed at night so that the thing under the bed couldn’t reach me. I still don’t feel comfortable with my legs or arms hanging over the bed even though I know that there could not be anything under there, for one thing, I use that space for storage so there is no way anyone or anything could fit.
I’ve always lived in my head, daydreaming, and at night I have many dreams and nightmares. Writing is good for me in that way: to connect with others and to get outside myself.
People are always saying to me that I should write about my life and all the things that have happened to me, but maybe I just don’t want to yet, I don’t know. I was always a private person, although that is changing now.
For instance, when Kulsum introduced me at the Toronto reading she mentioned something I had written about how you have to have a sense of humour to be a Private Investigator with IBS. For years I was embarrassed about having irritable bowel syndrome and didn’t want anyone to know, but obviously I had to let the people at work know I had it.
Imodium is my drug of choice, what can I say, it was the only way to get through the day stuck in a car on surveillance. Clients don’t want to hear that you lost the subject of the investigation because you had to leave to go to the washroom.
People at work would often make jokes about it but since I can be very self deprecating they thought it was okay and I realized that talking about it is better than the stress of hiding it because stress just makes it worse.
I have written about it, one of the stories in my book is about a woman with diarrhea. I don’t remember saying that thing in my bio about being a literary proctologist. That sounds so strange, maybe I did, I don’t know, I have a bad memory.
At the Toronto reading, Claudia Dey, who is incredibly sweet, when I told her how nervous I was giving readings said that she gets nervous, but we are all human. And all humans have to go to the bathroom, so why not write about it.
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