Snug Island

Branching out

2011-03-05T12:57:00.000-08:00

So,

This blog isn't really doing much for the Internet.

If you're really that interested, you can find me on Twitter @SachikoMurakami, and I've just started a Tumblr at sachikomurakami.tumblr.com. And yes, there's always Facebook.

See you around, Internet!

Love,
Sachi

This, that, this that thisthat

2010-11-10T21:18:00.000-08:00

Me again.

So, Johanna Skibsrud's The Sentimentalists won the Giller. I met Johanna at Concordia, where I did my Master's*. I recall great parties at her apartment, where she'd show up after everyone else and casually throw around a few balloons and bowls of chips and suddenly everything was magical. Very different from my own experiences of party-throwing, which usually involved panic attacks (and heavy preparatory drinking). My neuroses aside, I'm so thrilled the prize went to such a talented and beautiful person and such a beautiful and deserving book. And hooray, hooray for small press! Gaspereau makes absolutely gorgeous books, all tactile and letterpressy. Apparently they can only produce a thousand a week so you might have to wait for your copy, but it is well worth the wait.

Let's continue with the theme of fancy friends doing fancy things. On December 4-5 at the Toronto New School of Writing, a.rawlings will be facilitating a workshop called EAR KNOWS THROAT. rawlings is a particularly cozy one. She's back from Iceland where she spent much of her time recording bubbling mud. Improvisation, vocalization, sounding, poetrying, I think this workshop is going to be so much fun.

As for me, I read in St. Catharines for the Grey Borders Reading Series at the end of the month.

Grey Borders Reading Series presents
lia pas
Sachiko Murakami
Domenico Capilongo
Mat Laporte

November 25, 2010
8pm
Pan Cafe
120 St Paul St, St. Catharines, Ontario

*Masters? Master's?

worst blog ever

2010-10-05T08:05:00.000-07:00

O hai.

Not only do I never update this, but when I do, all I do is tell you more about me, me, me. And never any pictures! I'm sorry, Internet. I think the light of the blogstar has left Sachi, maybe forever.

So, here's some more of the usual:

-If you miss me, I am at the Press Club (850 Dundas St West) every other Wednesday, cohosting the Pivot Reading Series.

-There's a review of The Invisibility Exhibit in the latest CNQ. I'm digging CNQ's redesign a whole lot, all Seth-d out. Check it.

-Three new poems from the work-in-progress are in the latest EVENT.

-I'll be reading, briefly, in Toronto at the Red Head Gallery as part of Poetry and Petri Dishes (Facebook event info here), a night of poems about Beauty and Terror.

Now, back to our regular scheduled program of silence.

Pivot returns August 11

2010-08-08T08:59:00.001-07:00

Pivot returns next Wednesday, and I will be your host. After careful reflection, I realized that the previous host, Carey Toane, was channeling the power of gods unknown to me when she ran the bimonthly series. I invited the lovely and talented Angela Hibbs to be my Pivot partner in crime. Join me in welcoming her and our fab readers next Wednesday! Hooray!

Pivot with Jill Battson, Mat Laporte, and Rebecca Rosenblum
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
8 p.m. at the Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
Hosted by Sachiko Murakami
PWYC ($5 suggested)

Jill Battson is an internationally published poet and poetry activist who is currently the Poet Laureate of Cobourg, Ontario. She was responsible for creating and running the successful poetry reading series The Poets’ Refuge and has initiated and produced many poetry events and was the poetry editor for Insomniac Press from 1999 to 2001. Her first book, Hard Candy, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award. She has written severalplays and solo works, libretti for two short operas. Dark Star Requiem, for which she wrote the libretto, premiered at Toronto’s Luminato Festival in June 2010. Jill’s third book of poems, Dark Star Requiem, was recently published by Folded & Gathered Press. Her blog is jillspoetbureau.blogspot.com.

Mat Laporte is part of an elite, one person task force called The Psychedelic Ninjas. Don’t talk about it. He hails from The Soo but has lived in many places including Montreal and Guelph, a monastery in the middle of a forest somewhere and Edmonton where among other things he sang in experimental punk bands Hypertext;theTongues, rotbottyrot and chomskyhash and started the spzw reading series. He is now doing an english undergrad degree at York University and is cofounder and coeditor of ferno house books.

Rebecca Rosenblum‘s fiction has been short-listed for the Journey Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the Danuta Gleed Award, longlisted for the Relit Award, and she was herself a juror for the Journey Prize 21. Her stories are have recently appeared in Maisonneuve, Room Magazine, and Canadian Notes and Queries, among others. Her first short-story collection, Once, won the Metcalf-Rooke Award and was one of Quill and Quire’s 15 Books That Mattered in 2008. Her second collection, The Big Dream, is forthcoming from Biblioasis and a chapbook, Road Trips, was just released from Frogs Hollow Press. Her blog is www.rebeccarosenblum.com

Don't judge me!

2010-07-16T04:11:00.000-07:00

They sent me the Proust questionnaire over at Open Book Toronto. I answered them with some anxiety.

I liked my sister and nephew so much I invited them to Toronto! I spent a good three days Cleaning All The Things, and then my nephew proceeded to pull everything out of its tidy place. I write to you, dear Internet, from among the Tinkertoys and bubblewrap and various Sharp Things that were supposed to remain hidden.

Go Sachi Go!

Back to Toronto

2010-06-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

Three weeks on the west coast went by in a hurry. Most of my time was spent soaking up as much nephew-love as possible. There were daily adventures. Did you see a little knight ordering a slightly larger pirate around? That would have been us.

Oh! Another highlight was cooking a birthday feast for my darling nernie Marian. She drew a picture of it here. Marian also inspired me to start my own shiny hoard. Photos forthcoming.

It's actually pleasant here in Toronto, and I am prepping for many literary hoppings. Here's what's up.

Wednesday, 30 July: PIVOT with Beverley Daurio, Guy Ewing and Elise Newman. I host.

Wednesday, 7 July: The Scream! I'm so pleased to be participating in the Scream Pub Crawl on the Wednesday, but check out all the other events, including a book-length dinner with Margaret Christakos. EEEEE! (Me screaming.)

Other news is fairly dull. It mostly involves me purging my home of all unnecessary items, leaving me with a few bits of clothing and a rawther large pile of books. Wish me luck.

West Coast cozy!

2010-06-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

Hey Internet, I'm in Vancouver chasing a toddler around. Right now he's piling up every pillow in the house on the couch, along with a loaf of bread, two sticks (one of which is his scepter with which he commands the wild rumpus to start) and a puzzle.

Me: Bootie, can you eat some more frenchie toastie?
Bootie: I'm busy, Such. I'm WORKING.

Other wonderful things about here:
-Clean, fresh, air. I keep taking deep grateful breaths. Between cigarettes.
-Vancouver Specials! I ogle them. A friend told me he saw some in Italy... origin myth poem is growing.
-WILD RUMUPS START! I've been out and about every day with my nephew blowing bubbles and being pirates and generally running amok. And then passing out with him at 6 PM.

Anyhoo, I'm missing out on Pivot this week but you don't have to, Toronto. Angela "Awesome" Hibbs is hosting.

June 16: Sue Sinclair, Nick Thran and Thom Vernon

Sue Sinclair has published four books of poems, the latest of which is Breaker from Brick Books. Her work has been nominated for awards including the Gerald Lampert & Pat Lowther awards and the Atlantic Poetry Prize. Sue is currently studying philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Nick Thran is the author of one collection of poems, Every Inadequate Name (Insomniac, 2006). A second collection, Earworm, will appear in 2011 with Nightwood Editions. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Thom Vernon’s novel The Drifts (Coach House Books/Northwestern UP, 2010) was released in April. He will be the July 2010 Writer in Residence at Open Book Toronto. Become a fan at facebook/thedrifts or follow at Twitter/thomvernon.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010
8 p.m. at the Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
Hosted by Angela Hibbs
PWYC ($5 suggested)

Real-time Bootie (tapping me on head with stick/scepter): Oh no! It's dark. It's DARK! It's not sunshiney. This is garbage! This is not garbage. I need ruin it. I'm ah... Ungh... My thing! My summer stick! This one not good. Sorry Sachi! You say that! Sorry! You say dat. Unghrgh. You not bad guy.

I am Pivot

2010-05-20T17:10:00.001-07:00

Carey Toane, delightful host of the Pivot reading series and tequila enthusiast, is moving to New York and has left the series in my hands. You can get the lowdown on the series by joining the Facebook group or checking out the Pivot blog. My first night hosting will be June 2 when I welcome Angela Hibbs, Jim Smith and Dave Miller. Do come! I'll be the one on the stage winking at you.

Pivot Reading Series with Angela Hibbs, Dave Miller and Jim Smith
Wednesday, June 2
8 PM
The Press Club
850 Dundas Street West
Hosted by Sachiko Murakami
PWYC ($5 suggested)

Work work work

2010-05-12T10:41:00.000-07:00

Here's what I'm doing right now between frantic trips to Body Blitz.

Influency thoughts

2010-05-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday I had the pleasure of listening to Gregory Betts deliver a paper on The Invisibility Exhibit for Influency, reading for the Influency group, and talking with everyone about the possibilities and problems that arise when writing about such a difficult subject. What an amazing group of smart, engaged people. I was asked some tough questions that I'm still wondering about the text. What does it mean to write a politically engaged collection of poetry? Is poetry the best course of action for politics? (Probably not.) What about the invisibilities in the text - do they replicate the women's absence?

For this, I had hoped that the absence of direct confrontations with the missing women would invite a space in which the reader would be forced/invited into further inquiry and consideration of what/who is missing. I often think about something Larissa Lai wrote in West Coast Line 53, an issue dedicated to representations of murdered and missing women: "To represent the violence reproduces it. Not to represent it repeats the erasure. A woman's body is never just a woman's body." That swirled in me as I was writing - how to address the violence without recreating the spectacle? I'm not sure if my strategy of turning the camera away from the "story" of the missing women was the best strategy - but then again, it's definitely not the only one. Someone asked if I felt ownership over the subject and I said, emphatically, no. I see the book as contributing to a body of work that thinks through the missing women, and that issue of West Coast Line is a good place to start. There are so many points of entries literary and otherwise into this discussion: Anne Stone's novel Delible (Insomniac 2007), or Shannon Stewart's Penny Dreadful (Signal 2008), or Bud Osborne's Lonesome Monsters (Anvil 2007); or the Hope in Shadows photography collection (Arsenal Pulp Press 2009) (especially in conjunction with Lincoln Clarkes' Heroines (Anvil 2002), or In Plain Sight: Reflections on Life in Downtown Eastside Vancouver (Talonbooks 2005)... It's a conversation we need to keep active.

I read from The Invisibility Exhibit for Julie Wilson's Curious Excess

2010-04-27T06:49:00.000-07:00

Hi Internet! Toronto is gorgeous today and I'm spending as much time outside as possible. Poetry-wise, there are many things in the works. Today on Julie Wilson's (@Bookmadam) Curious Excess project, I read a section from The Invisibility Exhibit. I think of this as the "news" section of the book. There's two cut-ups of news stories and meat wrapped in newspaper. Check it out.

The Invisibility Exhibit on Keep Toronto Reading

2010-04-21T07:23:00.001-07:00

Stephen Troister, BookNet Canada intern and lovely human being, recommends The Invisibility Exhibit on The Keepin' It Real Book Club for their Keep Toronto Reading series. Yee!

Readings galore

2010-04-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

When I moved to Toronto I was pleasantly surprised at the wealth of poetry readings in the city and all the different faces I would see at each one. Now April is upon us, which means a) the cruelest month is here b) it's National Poetry Month and c) Spring books are here. Here's a look at all the events I plan to attend this week. Note the key word in the previous sentence is "plan".

Draft Reading Series
Dani Couture, Michael Bryson, Ian Burgham, Ellen S. Jaffe and Mark Sampson
April 18, 2010, 3 p.m.
The Merchants of Green Coffee
2 Matilda St., Toronto

Plasticine Poetry
Beatriz Hausner, Luciano Iacobelli, Robin Richardson and Lisa Young
Sunday, April 18, 2010, 6 PM
The Central
603 Markham St.

M&S Spring Launch
Dionne Brand, Paul Vermeersch, and John Steffler
Monday, April 19, 2010, 6 PM
The Dora Keogh
141 Danforth Avenue

The Monthly Eggplant Reading Series
Erin Brandenburg, Dani Couture, Damian Rogers, and Melanie Janiss
Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 7:30 PM
Zoots Cafe
1438 Dundas Street West

Launch of Ian Orti's L (and things come apart) (Invisible Publishing)
Wednesday, April 21, 7 PM
The Dora Keogh Pub
141 Danforth Ave

Livewords Reading Series
Allan Briesmaster, Barry Dempster, and Angela Hibbs
Thursday, April 22, 7:30 PM
The Black Swan
154 Danforth Avenue

Apnea by a.rawlings

2010-04-13T08:15:00.000-07:00

I talk about "Apnea" by a.rawlings over at the
Globe & Mail. Shhh, she's sleeping!

Raven for a Lark fundraiser

2010-04-09T10:04:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting Elise Newman, who went through the Concordia MA just after I finished. We have a lot of mutual friends, and strangely I felt like I already knew her from seeing her pop up on my friends' Facebook walls.

Lovely and talented, Elise is staging Raven For a Lark at the Fringe this year, and on Sunday she'll have a soiree fundraiser for it. I'll be reading, briefly, along with Daniel Nemwan, Lisa Li, and Erin Fleck - and a bit from the show. I invite you!

Raven for a Lark Fundraiser
Sunday, April 11
Admission by donation
6 PM
The Central
603 Markham Street
Toronto ON

Another collaborative Olympic poem

2010-04-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Hey Internet,

Remember when we did that collaborative poem on the Olympics? That was fun. Want to do it again? Sure you do. I'm interested in how the lyric narrative can operate beyond its usual boundaries, so I want to write such a poem using your observations. Either in the comments or through email, would you kindly send me an observation of something you saw happen during the Olympics? Whether or not you were actually in Vancouver at the time doesn't matter. I'd like to create a sort of panoptical (not a word! not a word!) lyric observer, if that makes any sense at all. (Interesting collaboration, or running out of ideas for manuscript? Definitely the former.)

The Idea Machine

2010-03-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

A while back I created a text from Kenneth Goldsmith's Paragraphs on Conceptual Writing. I'm a big fan of uncreative writing, and the thought of uncreatively altering this text tickled me.

Also, this past month I've begun to get more interested in collaboration, what with the Olympic poetry, poems about Vancouver Specials I've got a bunch of writers responding to, and whatnot.

Finally, in my dayjob avatar as BookNet Canada's Marketing Manager, I came across BookOven's bite-size edits. This site, which I am fairly addicted to, gives you a single sentence of prose uploaded by other users to edit. I've seen Coach House Books on there as well as Ian Orti (a Snare Books author). Let me tell you, the grammarian in me loves this site.

So, to get to the point, I've posted the text of The Idea Machine on there to see what the Internet does with it. Please do something with it!

Influency

2010-03-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

Hello, all.

So, after being sick last week, I got hit by a car. Yes! A car! It all worked out in the end, because I spent most of the weekend in bed playing Final Fantasy I for iPhone. Eating bacon.

Tonight I am reading for Strong Words, as mentioned below, but first I am taking part in Jay MillAr's long poem workshop at his new Toronto New School of Writing. I blogged about it, briefly, over at Lemon Hound.

What else am I up to... Mostly working, working, working, and then spending as much time as possible in the various healing waters at Body Blitz. MY NEW FAVOURITE PLACE.

In the spring (god, it's spring NOW in Vancouver! Le weep!), I'll be taking part in Margaret Christakos' Influency poetry salon, this time as a lecturer. I talk on Carmine Starnino's This Way Out; Gregory Betts talks about The Invisibility Exhibit.

This is very interesting, for a variety of reasons, and there will be more on it, as it happens.

------

Influency 8: A Toronto Poetry Salon

April 7 • Introductory lecture

April 14 • Sachiko Murakami on Carmine Starnino’s This Way Out (Gaspereau)

April 21 • Carmine Starnino on Jacob McArthur Mooney’s The New Layman’s Almanac (McClelland & Stewart)

April 28 • Jacob McArthur Mooney on Susan Holbrook’s Joy is So Exhausting (Coach House Books)

May 5 • Gregory Betts on Sachiko Murakami’s The Invisibility Exhibit (Talonbooks)

May 12 • Susan Holbrook on Gregory Betts’ The Others Raisd in Me (Pedlar Press)

May 19 • Ruth Roach Pierson on Carolyn Smart’s Hooked (Brick Books)

May 26 • Carolyn Smart on John Barton’s Hymn (Brick Books)

June 2 • John Barton on Ruth Roach Pierson’s Aide-Mémoire (BuschekBooks)

June 9 • Registrants’ Intertexts and Closing Salon Party

The Puritan, Strong Words Reading

2010-02-23T09:13:00.001-08:00

Sachi OUT IN THE WORLD.

Words from the new manuscript: Three poems up at The Puritan.

Me with a microphone: At the Strong Words reading series on Thursday, March 4.

Strong Words No. 58

Featuring Sachiko Murakami, Mark Goldstein, Steve Venright and Jessica Moore

Thursday, 4 March 2010 at 8:00 PM
The Free Times Cafe
320 College Street, Toronto
PWYC - 19+

Our fifty-eight reading, and our third at our new home, will also be the first reading brought to you by our new curators Gillian Savigny and Malcolm Sutton! Join us for appearances by Sachiko Murakami, Mark Goldstein, Steve Venright and Jessica Moore. The reading will be "pay what you can" as always, and donations of new and used books in resale condition will be collected on behalf of the Book Ends program at the Toronto Public Library. Don't miss it!

O Lympic

2010-02-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

If you prorogue willingly
If your spirit says something other than go, go go
If suspending democratic rights allows you to cheer wholeheartedly for your country
If your country is represented
If its citizens are
If a red mitten, no snow
If you are prorogued without consent
If while cheering on your country you find yourself in contact with a citizen who disagrees with you
if neither of you own a red mitten
If poetry is a competition
If the world is watching you
If I am Canadian!
If the poet ends up on the podium
If you prorogue poetry for the duration of the Olympics
If your spirit does not involve the nation

Your turn. In the comments.

Vancouver Poet Laureate vs. Olympics

2010-02-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

Brad Cran, Vancouver Poet Laureate, did a very admirable thing yesterday, speaking out against VANOC censorship and speaking up for the arts. Given that the Laureateship (?) is a joint project of the City of Vancouver, the Vancouver Public Library (who have shown quite clearly how they, custodians of knowledge, deal with VANOC censorship), and the Writers Festival, I was surprised and pleased to see him get a little dissident.

From his blog post:

“The artist shall at all times refrain from making any negative or derogatory remarks respecting VANOC, the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Olympic movement generally, Bell and/or other sponsors associated with VANOC.”

I do find this to be an unjust attack on free speech but more importantly it shows that VANOC is misrepresenting Vancouver. Vancouver is the most politically progressive city in North America with a strong history of political activism which most Vancouverites are proud of. Rather than finding a way to celebrate these important attributes VANOC has gone the other way and tried to suppress them. As George Woodcock teaches us: our freedom as a city is a tradition that should be protected and we should not underestimate an attack on that freedom whether symbolic or otherwise.

and why he will not be participating:

As darkly comic as much of this is, I am still not anti-Olympics. For this reason I made two suggestions to an Olympic organizer. The first was that a Canadian poet read one poem each night on one of the celebration stages. The second suggestion was that they somehow incorporate Al Purdy’s great Canadian poem “Say the Names” into the celebrations. Both of these suggestions were rejected and I in turn declined their offer to publically appear during the Olympic celebrations.

Go Brad Cran!

Hibbs, Snow

2010-01-28T10:39:00.000-08:00

Snow first.

There's snow, here. Oh right! Winter. It's not over yet. I was hoping it might be.

That's about it for me. There's some excitingish stuff on the horizon, but I'll leave it at that, for now.

I did a tiny interview with Angela Hibbs over at Lemon Hound.

xo, Internet. My brain seems to be reserved for "work", these days.

Snare, BNC

2010-01-22T09:52:00.000-08:00

Why isn't she blogging here? Traditionally, this space is reserved for descriptions of my daily sandwiches. I've given up carbs (along with, it seems, all other vices except sweet, delicious, lifegiving coffee), so there are no more sandwiches. And thus no more descriptions.

Elsewhere on the Internet, on blogs less sandwich-oriented, I've a post up at BNC regarding ebook pricing impact on print formats . At Lemon Hound, I talk to Jon Paul Fiorentino about Snare Books.

Back to eating meat wrapped in meat.

Snug hounds

2010-01-14T17:49:00.001-08:00

Starting today, I'll be blogging on Thursdays for Sina Queyras' Lemon Hound. Other guest bloggers include Nikki Reimer and Nick Thran. Check check it out.

I started the day job this week. I'll be replacing the irreplacable Morgan Cowie over at BookNet Canada for a year. I've spent the past few days diving into data and metadata. Head's a bit swimmy but I'm learning a lot. My brow may be furrowed and sweaty, but I am quite happy. My dog is rather not. We became constant companions in October of last year, and we've barely spent an hour in separate rooms since then. Now I'm away for eight hours a day. Eight hours! Nobody knows how lonely she is. At least that's what she tells me when I come through the door.

Here is her little face after a long day of my nephew chasing her around the house screeching "I CHASE JUPER. I PULL JUPER'S TAIL!"

Nobody knows.

happy snug year

2009-12-31T22:36:00.001-08:00

More fascinating details of my little life:

Two new poems up at Forget. The first Vancouver/Special (or whatever it may end up being called--suggestions?) poems out there (more forthcoming elsewhere). Here's one about a hole, and one about building/unbuilding. I love the upside-down photo of the condo that goes with. I didn't even notice at first that it was reversed -- I just assumed it was the reflection of the buildings in False Creek. What does that say about me?

Review debate, Paul Vermeersch's take

2009-11-22T07:13:00.001-08:00

Paul's weighed in on the review debate raging over these internets, and I think he has some rather insightful and level-headed remarks to make. I especially like the term "literary autism".

Different modes of criticism have their own relationships with the idea of authorial intent: deconstructionists, post-structuralists, materialists, etc. Only the most rigidly fundamentalist critical approaches disregard "intent" completely. In doing so, they create large black holes in the reading of a text. They miss the point on purpose, so to speak. I dislike fundamentalisms of any kind, and that includes both critical and aesthetic ones. In poetics, at both the conservative and radical ends of the spectrum, you have those modes that fetishize their own kind of formalism to the detriment of (or even to the exclusion of) concerns about content. At either extreme these formalist fundamentalisms (say a revived take on the radical poetics of Oulipo or an orthodox approach to classicist meter and rhyme) you will find a kind of literary autism; the poems are toying with their physical minutiae, but they are disinterested in actually communicating much of anything. When such fundamentalists bring their aesthetic ideology (their dogma?) into the critical arena, they end up measuring poetries against it that aren't compatible with their criteria. Holders of this position cannot help but commit the fallacy of saying, "the non-traditional is bad because it is not the traditional" or vice versa.

Greekified Rome

2009-11-18T15:16:00.000-08:00

Not sure if I posted this before. Suzanne Hawkins in Vancouver used text from "Vision Quest 2020", a poem in The Invisibility Exhibit, for a short. Checkitout.

Snare 2009

2009-11-17T06:47:00.000-08:00

I love the look of Snare books. Classic design with an edge, and some damn fine writing, too!

Vancouver, another day

2009-11-06T18:45:00.000-08:00

Rounded off the author-function portion of this trip with a reading at Green College with Roger Farr and Lee Henderson as part of Oana Avasilichioaei's Translating the City series. Lee read from The Man Game right at the part where I stopped reading it on the plane -- how gratifying, just like storytime! Roger read from Surplus (warning, that's a pdf link), which got me thinking again about the strategies of the sonnet. There was a fairly lively discussion afterwards about what exactly it is that makes Vancouver so ripe for writing, and we talked mostly about the habit of Vancouver to tear itself down and rebuild so rapidly. It was a great jumpstart for my new poems--got some writing/thinking done this morning. Thanks to everyone who came out!

The past two days have been all about my wee nephew. We've gone to Granville Island to run around in the Kids Market and get him a (pretty bad, unfortunately) haircut, Chuck E Cheese for me to play a bit too enthusiastically for tickets (i.e. grabbing the big foamy mallet out of his hands to frantically whomp those pop-up moles), and swimming twice. With a ducky ("Swim, swim, DUCKY!") and a shovel, which he used as a paddle and me, his canoe. "Paddo, paddo, Sachi! OH YEAH!" And then "Jaji seep doodahbed, peeeeas?" he asked ("Auntie Sachi, might you enjoy sleeping in Judah's bed ce soir?"), and how could I refuse? Sachi seep doodahbed? OH YEAH!

Vancouver trip, day the second

2009-11-05T06:50:00.000-08:00

Morning cartoons? Special milk? Cereals in cup? Covers?

Yesterday I visited Calvin Wharton's Douglas college students in the morning, and Jami Mccarty's SFU students in the evening. The former batch are at the beginning of their writing endeavours, and the second batch a bit further along, I think. Both groups posed lots of interesting questions, and a few I've never even thought about. ("So, let me get this straight. The central image of this poem is a duck... with a firecracker shoved up his ass, which makes it fly through the air?" "Um, er, well, yes." "...How did they catch the duck?"). It was very strange, I must say, to have students ask several times what the "hidden" meaning of some poems were, or if they were "correctly" interpreting a poem. I hope I got through the point that this isn't really the best way to approach a poem, with your head bowed down like that at the court of Meaning.

Watch Great Pumpkin Sachi forever?

Vancouver trip, day one

2009-11-03T21:37:00.000-08:00

I arrived in Vancouver last night and hustled myself to my sister's house, where she wouldn't let me wake up my little nephew to snorgle him. I had to wait until morning, when together we perfected our awesome Jump and SPIIIIN move and created a Walkway of Pillows (at the end of which, of course, you jump onto the couch and fall over). It's amazing what a difference three months can make. When I left for Toronto he was saying things like "MAH? MAH?" (More? More?) and now he says, "Mama, two chocofudgies in cup, please." He's a little bossyboots now; my sister informs me when she is trying to get him to bed and sings him a night night song, he cuts her off with a pert "No, Mama. No sleeping. No 'la la la'". Tonight I tried to get him to bed and he kept rolling over and holding my face, coyly whispering, "Hi, honeeeey!" Eventually my sister busted in on us playing pattycake and the jig was up.

Stopped by the Talon office in the morning to pick up copies of my book and got my hands on, among other things, Fred Wah's Is A Door. Looking forward to reading it. Maybe I should start reporting back on such things.

I read to and rambled at a rather packed room full of Kwantlen university students, who were quite engaged and asked some interesting questions. I haven't had much opportunity to talk about the process and problems of writing The Invisibility Exhibit, so it was gratifying for me to think about my book in those terms. Many thanks to Matt Rader for inviting and hosting.

Now it's 9:30 and I'm pooped. I started Lee Henderson's The Man Game on the plane, and as much as I want to dive back into 1880s Vancouver bloodsport, I think I may just pile the cats on top of me and be, as they say, nigh nigh.

A little too tasty for my likings

2009-11-01T08:14:00.001-08:00

I've written fourteen new poems this week. To celebrate this, and Halloween, a holiday I prefer to pass in bed with hot water bottles and bad movies and snacks, I made the Most Delicious Thing Ever That I Can't Stop Eating.

Pecan Roca

one part butter (1/2 cup)

one part white sugar less a tablespoon, which you make up with corn syrup

vanilla

1 T water

Chocochips

Pecans

Salt

Roast pecans on a cookie sheet in oven at 300 for 10 minutes or until a little darker and, you know, roasty. Grind in grinder of choice to desired fineness. Add a fattish pinch of salt. Spread half on a cookie sheet covered in oiled foil. I used a little loaf pan because I wanted it to be thicker.

Melt butter and add sugar, corn syrup and water before it darkens. Boil gently, stirring constantly, letting it carmalize. Stop when it reaches the hard crack stage. I did this by having a bowl of ice water next to the pot, and flinging little lacy bits in off the end of the spoon. When they snap and are brittle (after about 10 minutes), it's go-time.

Pour onto pecans, smooshing it in a bit.

Allow to cool and firm up a bit, then sprinkle chocochips over. Wait patiently until they heat up, and then smear, satisfyingly, into a glossy, smooth surface.

Sprinkle the rest of the pecans over.

Put in freezer and wait impatiently to harden. Stab at with knife and stuff face. Hchom.

Back to Vancouver

2009-10-31T10:21:00.001-07:00

I'll be in Vancouver for a week. I'll be talking/reading as part of Oana Avasilichioaei's Writer-in-Residence program at Green College at UBC. Saw Oana last week at the BookThug fall launch, reading from Expeditions of a Chimæra with her partner in translation-pranks, Erin Moure. They are so goofy and smart! The best combination, if you ask me.

Vancouver: The Imagined and the Prospected

October 29th, 2009 | Posted in Events, Fiction, Poetry, UBC |

Green College Writer-in-Residence Oana Avasilichioaei hosts a discussion featuring poets Roger Farr and Sachiko Murakami and novelist and short story writer Lee Henderson on why so many writers are compelled to write about Vancouver: thinking and planning the city in the 21st century, under the weight of all that has been built, dreamt, destroyed, and built over again.

Event Details:
Date: Thursday, November 5, 2009
Time: 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm
Location: Green College Coach House, 6201 Cecil Green Park Road, UBC
Cost: Free

For more information, call 604-822-1878, or see www.greencollege.ubc.ca

Full Green College Writer-in-Residence program: “Poetry, Translation, and the City".

I'll also be visiting classes at SFU, Kwantlen and Douglas. Looking forward to it!

Especially excited to see my sister and my nephew. I may squoosh him to deathsies.

Matrix 84: The New Vancouver

2009-10-25T04:32:00.001-07:00

The new Matrix, with its New Vancouver Writing supplement edited by Anne Stone and moi, is out now. It's pretty fancy, let me tell you. One of my favourite pieces that made it into the issue is Nikki Reimer's "as long as you're not doing anything wrong", a circling and revising of accounts of the death of Robert Dziekanski at YVR. There's more delicious writing from Aaron Peck, Jacqueline Turner, Reg Johansen, Charles Demers, and many more. Go get!

she just wanted to be cozy.

2009-10-20T03:37:00.000-07:00

Last night I found four outrageously filthy plastic IKEA chairs on the curb, took them home and lovingly drenched them in bleach. Now we have four blindingly white "dining" chairs and can have people over for dinner. Hooray! They don't reeeally go with our mid-century living room (including a very fancy credenza and bookcase I picked up the other night for hundreds and hundreds of dollars below value, gloat gloat) but they are a vast improvement on the one plastic lawn chair left behind by the painter. Cozy times call for cozy measures, people. Expect invitations for pie and more pie.

Toronto is a fair amount of amazing. Here are some of my favourite things, so far.

Neighbourhoods. For every village or enclave Vancouver has, Toronto has ten, it seems. Every day while I'm tootling around looking for a dowel or a mug or some other thing desperately absent from the house, I manage to get lost and find myself in yet another neighbourhood. Somehow this always manages to be Monday, when all the shops are closed.

Literary friendlies. Everyone is just so nice, here. And there's so many of them, the writers. And more events than you can shake a stick at! (Shake shake shake.)

Macrobiotic vegan salad at Hibiscus in Kensington Market. So many little bits of antioxidanty things piled into a bowl! Much needed after nightly encounters with two types of pie.

Club sandwich and onion rings at the Lakeview. HCHOM!

Okonomiyaki from Okonomi House.

Leafy trees!

Here are some things that are less awesome (lawsome?).

Parking tickets. I think Toronto has a 1:1 ratio of meter maids per capita. I never get away with anything, ever.

Traffic. Where are all these people going? These two quibbles are my fault, I know, being a bad, bad driver.

Water? There is so little to remind one that Toronto is on a lake, since it's cut off by an expressway and another busy road thingummy, Lakeshore Drive. We looked at a place on King Street West and while the view of the lake was very appealing, the eight lanes of zooming trucks between the house and the water were not. I daydream often of Montague Harbour on Galiano (aka Snug) Island, my gorgeous white-shelled midden and its gnarled Arbutus where I spent many a happy morning heaving logs for Juniper into the clearclearclear water or helping Judah build Art out of pebbles and driftwood. Or Jericho at low tide with my sandals left miles behind me on a log, toes squishing pleasingly into the flat sand with just the right amount of give. Or wading into the water with my dog at the Kits dog beach and eventually just throwing myself in. Or seals spying on me beyond the rocks at Lighthouse Park. Or, or, or.

Absence of sushi. Heaving, petulant, Vancouver-spoiled sigh. Although, rather uncooly, I am sort of in love with the chicken katsu bento at Sushi on Bloor. During lunch it's $6, and they will give you a vat of tonkatsu for the dip-dippy if you ask. But order salmon anywhere and it's the pale, flabby Atlantic variety, always, and the rolls are big choking mouthfuls of badly dressed rice with little bits of non-rice items buried inside.

In short, it's not Vancouver. It's entirely itself, which takes some getting used to but I find myself being daily rewarded for living here. I am quite happy I'll be back on the west coast in two weeks for some class visits and readings and things, though, and then again for Christmas! But I'm enjoying myself here. Yis.

GG list, Coach House launch

2009-10-16T12:47:00.001-07:00

This is from the ABPBC website:

Of thirty-five books nominated for the 2009 Governor-General’s Literary Awards, English-language, ten are written by BC authors and nine are published by BC publishers. This high BC proportion of shortlisted titles is a testament to the quality of writing and publishing taking place in the province.

“This province boasts some of the most talented writers in the country,” says Andrew Wooldridge, Publisher of Orca Book Publishers and President of the Association of Book Publishers of BC. “This news should give the provincial government pause as they contemplate even greater cuts to the BC Arts community”.

Full article here.

Big congratulations also to Sina Queyras for making the list this year for Expressway. I'm very much interested in the avant-lyric, bridging the gap between "experiment" and "tradition", and Sina's work, I think, works questions about such a meeting very hard.

Attended the Coach House launch last night, and have been all day greedily reading Kate Hall's The Certainty Dream, Susan Holbrook's Joy is So Exhausting, and the new anthology of Canadian women poetry and poetics edited by Kate Eichhorn and Heather Milne, Prismatic Publics. Poetry is so tasty!

Vancouver Fancy?

2009-10-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I suppose it's my own fault for not getting my manuscript completed and published somewhere fast enough. But really, is anything my fault? Really?

Check out Charles Demers' new book with a good title. Although, mine would have had a slash in it. Hmph.

More arts cuts

2009-10-08T16:30:00.000-07:00

From the ABPBC press release:

Literary clearcut prompts quick response

B.C.’s beleaguered literary organizations are forming the Coalition for the Defence of Writing and Publishing in British Columbia one day after the Arts & Culture branch of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture & the Arts (Hon. Kevin Krueger) simultaneously removed all funding from the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia ($45,000), BC BookWorld newspaper ($31,000) and B.C. Association of Magazine Publishers ($20,000) via phone calls from its executive director Andrea Henning, on October 6.

“Thus far they have chopped off three heads,” says Alan Twigg, publisher of BC BookWorld for twenty-one years, “but indications are that more heads will roll.”

I was Margaret Reynolds' assistant at the ABPBC from 2006-2007. I put together programs like catalogues for teacher-librarians of BC-published books, Poetry in Transit, BC Book and Magazine Week, and marketing for BC books on BC Ferries. Margaret works tirelessly as an advocate for BC publishers. Every week she would be meeting with government funders, or upstart publishers looking for advice, or someone else in need of her wisdom, which she offers with patience and grace. The board and its many committees are volunteers who serve their fellow members and I have no doubt that the ABPBC has helped make the BC book publishing industry as strong and vital as it is.

Even with the economic climate, I'm still shocked that the BC government would go so far as to dismantle one of its own industries. It's awfully peculiar that BC books will continue to be supported by out-of-province funding while its own government pulls its support.

NO WAY OUT

2009-10-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

I'll be reading at the Ossington on Monday, October 25!

Monday, October 26, 2009
8:00
The Ossington
61 Ossinton Avenue
Toronto, ON

In the pre-dawn chaos of Halloween, Canzine, IFOA, and what is the fall book season, The Ossington proudly presents NO WAY OUT: an hour and ten minutes of the best poetry and prose you won't find at any red carpet gala by a thankless polluted lake.

(Not that there is anything wrong with ungrateful polluted lakes, or red carpet galas going on in October in Toronto).

Back to the lecture at hand: for these writers, and the literary-crazed audience at The Ossington, there is NO WAY OUT! There will, however, be snacks, books, and beverages. Dress up and win a prize! Author bios may or may not be announced during the reading, but distinctions will be made well in advance of each reader.

No Cover!

Featuring

Sean Stanley
Robin Richardson
Sachiko Murakami
Angela Hibbs
Stacey May Fowles
Spencer Gordon

More authors TBA ...

Hosted by Nathaniel G. Moore

New Canadian Library

2009-09-15T06:18:00.000-07:00

Being underemployed and spending far too much of that time on the Internet, I've decided to take on a very foolish mission: Read the whole New Canadian Library. This, it appears, is not a new idea, I know. So I don't know how much I'll be blogging about my endeavour. However, I promise to post all the dirty bits.

Sean and I have set up our office, which is both cozy AND snug due to the wall of books (read:friends) at our shoulder:

As he's an academic and I am supposedly a writer and we are constantly acquiring books, it was a bit sad to see that our lovely bookshelves only accomodated the books we brought with us from Vancouver. Happily, we have three inset bookshelves throughout the house and I am ever-scheming for more bookshelfiness. One of those insets is taken almost entirely up by the New Canadian Library, the complete set, presented to Sean some time ago for winning an undergraduate award at UBC for the best essay in Canadian literature. Not very useful for his field, but still I insisted they come with us across the country. Now they're here and taking up valuable shelf space. So, I plan to read the shit out of them. Embarassingly (but this is the place where I embarrass myself on the Internet), I have read exactly two books on that shelf: Murder in the Dark by Margaret Atwood, and Tay John by Howard O'Hagan. Given that I'm in Toronto, now, which seems to think of itself as more Canadian than Vancouver does, being at the Centre Of All Things, I plan to do my due dilligence and get through all the books. They've been arranged in order of publication. Somebody please talk me out of this.

Snugging along

2009-09-13T14:03:00.000-07:00

I'm enjoying myself very much in the Toronto. I've attended the Coach House Wayzgoose party (there is a photo of me quite glamorously eating a hot dog over at Open Book Toronto; one of my fancier moments, to be sure), read at the Art Bar poetry series, and today checked out some serious bookthugging at the Junction Arts festival. Lots of events to keep me busy this fall, including enrolling in Margaret Christakos' Influency poetry salon (can't seem to find a decent link to this).

More about ME and WHAT I AM DOING in the UPCOMING MONTHS!

-Reading at the Draft Reading Series in early October.

-Returning to Vancouver for several class visits and a panel at UBC's Green College on Vancouver writing.

-Continuing to be fancy.

Oh, and there's a short interview with me (by Sarah Douziech) in the latest issue of Ricepaper magazine.

Arts Rally

2009-09-09T07:21:00.000-07:00

I've left BC, but BC hasn't left me.

From the Alliance for Arts website:

CULTURE MATTERS – DON’T TORCH THE ARTS!

We call on all those who believe in the value of arts and culture in our communities to join a rally at noon on Wednesday, September 9th in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery to bring public attention to the recently announced, brutal cuts to our sector by the BC government.

Funding to the arts and culture sector has NOT been restored; the provincial government is planning to cut over 80% of what has consisted of only 1/20th of 1% of the provincial budget. No other provinces in Canada have reduced support for a sector that, according to government statistics, produces significant returns on investment. This is a sector that creates both social and economic capital. ART WORKS!

We ask you to consider the ways that arts and culture touch your daily lives at home, in the streets, your children in schools, community centres, on TV, your music, on the internet, in videogames and in theatres, museums and galleries. We ask you to think about culture as part of our individual and community identities, a way to connect with our diverse origins…with who we are today and with what we care about. Arts and culture are woven into the fabric of our daily lives. The arts are NOT A FRILL!

Our symbol is a grey and empty rectangle, a metaphor for a world without art and culture.

Please join us.

-30-

Media Contacts:
Brenda Leadlay: brendajoy@shaw.ca or 778-990-2690
Judith Marcuse: Judith@jmprojects.ca or 604-319-8436

Every nonprofit arts organization I have worked for relies on either BC Arts Council andor Direct Access Gaming money: Presentation House Theatre, Powell Street Festival, The Association of Book Publishers of BC, Kootenay School of Writing, to name a few. These organizations can afford only a minimal staff (usually consisting of the Executive Director, a Program Director/receptionist/office assistant/me) and maybe one other HRDC-funded summer student, if that; all other support was unpaid volunteer work.

It's easy to say that the economy is rough and the arts are not a profitable sector, but the government's own research has shown that every $1 invested comes back as $1.38 in revenue (via taxes). Please show your support for the arts by writing to your elected member.

SnugTO

2009-08-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

Long time, Internet.

I've moved to Toronto. What the what? I'm surrounded by boxes, getting dizzy from the fumes from painting our new ALL-WHITE house, and only ten minutes ago did I manage to assemble the couch, thus providing the only other sitting surface besides the mattress on the floor. Today, it's all about the allen keys.

We drove from Vancouver to Toronto on the #1, hauling our eighteen tons of books in a U-Haul. There was very, very, very little to see. I think there was some sort of rodent in Ontario, and a few deer in the Rockies, but other than that, all the wildlife was, er, forever asleep on the side of the road. Big skies, though; but you already know what Canada looks like.

News:
-The Invisibility Exhibit has been longlisted for the ReLit award. Yee!

-I'll be reading at the Art Bar poetry series in early September. I believe it is the same night as the bye bye Pages party, but I hope if you are in TO you will come out. Details to come.

The New Vancouver: Matrix Dossier

2009-08-03T08:43:00.001-07:00

Anne Stone and I are co-editing an upcoming issue of Matrix. Send me your poems, stories, photographs, and art that thinks about our beautiful, maddening city.

Matrix Presents Issue 84: The New Vancouver

Matrix Magazine is now accepting submssions for its dossier on the new Vancouver. The City as work-in-progress or postcard-perfect; city of cranes (the building kind) and herons (the flying kind); the Terminal City or the Gateway to the Pacific; home to the Downtown Eastside and the 2010 Olympics; it is a city of competing imaginations and many points of references/residences. We’re looking for prose, poetry and artwork that evokes your Vancouver: whether the work is of Vancouver, about Vancouver, or simply reflects an aesthetic or concern unique to Vancouver – we want to see it.

Poetry: 3-5 poems. Prose: 3000 words max.

Edited by Sachiko Murikami and Anne Stone

Deadline: 15 August 2009

Email submissions preferred: vancouver@matrixmagazine.org

Talonz

2009-06-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

Was lovely last night to attend the Talon spring launch. I am, somehow, still on Montreal-reading time, even after three years of living in Vancouver, and thus missed rob mclennan and came halfway through Adeena Karasik's very lively reading. Gary Morse was charming as ever, and I was especially tickled and pleased to hear alien lullabyes sung to me by bill bissett. Okay raging excellent! When he inscribed my book, he drew something that was determined to either be a puzzlesun or a catipede:

And, did you know that bissett was recently awarded an honourary PhD by Thompson Rivers University?

The folks at Talon also told me that the second printing of The Invisibility Exhibit is fresh off the presses, now complete with new fancy paper and GG-nominee stamp! Woot!

Very happy to see folk whom I hadn't seen for a while.

I'll be reading, very quite briefly, at the League of Canadian Poets' AGM award night dinner thingie, as TIE was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award (along with, among others, Johanna Skibsrud's Late Nights With Wild Cowboys and Katia Grubisic's What if red ran out, both of whom went through the Concordia grad program with me!). Fanceh.

Room Magazine poetry contest

2009-06-01T23:22:00.000-07:00

I'm judging Room magazine's poetry contest this year. Submissions are open until June 15. Ladies (who lunch, of the night, or otherwise) only, if you please.

Sometimes you have to be nigh nigh.

2009-06-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

On Galiano, visiting my sister and nephew. Today we practiced wading into the mildly icy Pacific and peeing into it. Or, rather, my nephew did. Is there anything more satisfying than a bare-bummed baby at the beach? We think not.

There's been a lot of beaching in the city as well. I've got a few irons in the fire, writing wise, which are slowly melting, melting. I've discovered the tasty that is the salade Nicoise. Read on Galiano last week at the bookstore.

...It was a bit of an epic journey. In efforts to Save Money, I was going to park my car at the terminal and walk on the ferry. Unfortunately, I got there about two minutes after they stopped selling tickets ("What do you mean, I missed the ferry? It's sitting right there. I'm looking at it." "It's too late. You missed it." "It's right there." "You're too late." &c with creeping fury). This wouldn't do, you see, as I had to read at 3, and even the long roundabout route would get me there too late. So, yes, Sachi DID get on a floatplane and fly to Saltspring and then back to Galiano. Why yes, she did have to buy two tickets to get privately escorted on the Galiano leg of the trip. And, yes, her dog did accompany her. Because that's how we roll, around here, when we're Saving Money.

Heard Alexandra Leggatt and Stuart Ross read from their new books. Lots of breathing. Lots of happy.

Diane, I'm holding in my hand a box of chocolate bunnies.

2009-05-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

The mood around here: le parfait boheme springtemps. Is that even right? Does it even matter?

I'm back in the city, and eating, and sitting in the sun, and figuring out things for Vancouver/Special and The Orphans (the first, poetry; the second, my attempt at a novel). I am surrounded by goodfeeling and blossoms and Special Agent Cooper and animals snoozing pleasantly. Thus, there is no news, really. But I thought I'd check in.

swineflu? really?

2009-04-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

Hello #Internet.

It's hard to want to post something after just having read an article online by a self-described "flu blogger". This person -- and I'm not even posting the link, you can tweet your way to it -- blogged about HN51, aka Avian flu, and when the Swine Flu (heh... heh... it's really insensitive of me, but seriously: SWINE FLU? You know. You all know.) broke out, they got overwhelmed by all the attention their blog was getting. And wrote articles about it that were picked up by Real Media. Seriously. There are people out there with blogs devoted to the FLU.

I'm sure one day an outbreak of Major Depression Affecting Poets will overwhelm the western world and the blogosphere and this blog will get some Major Attention, but today is not that day.

As such: I am moving back to the city this week.

Such is news, around here.

I made a really good mezze platter last night.

Sip tea. Write poem. Watch Sopranos. Night night.

Dreary Adult Topics

2009-04-05T19:56:00.000-07:00

Howyeh, Internets.

I spent a week in Montreal, the primary objective being to watch my dear friend Jani Krulc defend her thesis. It went swimmingly, and my Jans is now as masterly as I.

News, in brief:

-The Invisibility Exhibit was nominated for the Gerald Lampert award (best first book of poetry). Two ladies with whom I went through the Concordia MA program, Johanna Skibsrud and Katia Grubisic, are also on the shortlist. Hey, fancy!

-I'll be reading at the Vancouver launch of Carla Gunn's Amphibian on April 23 (details to your right).

-There are hummingbirds at my feeder all day, every day. HUM!

-I am likely moving back to Vancouver around June. Prepare thyselves.

le cozy sigh

2009-03-20T00:46:00.000-07:00

And really it was a wonderful tea. There was a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, for each of them, and then sardines on toast, and then buttered toast, and then toast with honey, and then a sugar-topped cake.

When life uncozies me, I throw myself under every duvet in my house and read Narnia books and eat hot buttered toast and drink cups of tea until I pass out mid-sentence.

I think I should have a Narnian lunch one of these days, somewhat akin to the Die Hard dinners I had a few years ago. Basically it would be huge tableful of HOT BUTTERED TOAST with accompianments. And little cakes. And endlesspotsoftea.

Back to dreary Adult Topics like real estate and poetry soon, I'm sure.

yamface

2009-03-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

Let's take a break from poetry to talk about food.

Remember November, when you were getting so excited about Christmas cooking, and pies, and potatoes, and things roasting cozily in the oven, and cups of hot tea sipped slowly under a pile of blankets by the fire? Remember that? That was a long bloody time ago. The thought of an August tomato, warmed by a sunbeam, held up to my nose with that sharp, earthy smell off the green pricking my senses has me drooling these days. Drooling at this moment, actually.

March is a pretty dismal month for produce. I find myself opening my pantry and scowling at the yams and potatoes sitting glumly in the corner. Bounty of harvest long past its sell-by date. I harumph at the thought of hot food. Give me something cold and green and spritzed with lemon, picked over lazily on a blanket on some green hill.

Every year I wait anxiously for the little flowers to assure me that winter is indeed passing (hence the line, however cheesy, "the snowdrops too will open." in "Two Women"). The other week I saw crocuses, just a tiny clutch of them, growing near a beach at my beloved Montague Harbour. After it snowed twice, I went back and anxiously looked for them, and all that was left was a sad squash of yellow.

Squashyface.

Ugh, squash.

In order to not get squashied by the thought of two more months of wintry food, I'm going to relive the highlights of the season, food-wise.

Baked potato. My sister's baked potatoes are the stuff of November dreams. She uses the tiny organic Russets that actually taste like something - sweet and creamy and not at all damp and mealy the way the worst Russet can be - and rubs them with olive oil before baking them. The skin gets very crisp and toasty, and then once they're split open - a full plate of them, for preference - they are smothered in huge gobs of homemade creme fraiche* with loads of crunchy salt and cracked pepper.

Chicken soup with matzo balls. I can now make this in my sleep. I cut the carrots in pleasing, unslanted rounds for maximum coziness, and always use thighs for utter tasty. Every time we eat it, my sister and I wonder why chicken soup is the hottest liquid known to man.

Chicken and mushroom pie. Does this need any explanation? Chicken, mushrooms (fresh crimini and dried chantrelle), loads of thyme, butter, cream. Put in pie. Apply to face. Repeat.

Chicken and mushroom Yorkie pie. I invented this when I seriously could not eat another pie crust. It began with making a mushroom gravy to go with the vat of Yorkshire pudding I planned to eat. Then one day I wanted the chicken and mushroom cozy without the pie, so I made Yorkshires in a 4" cast-iron pan, split them as they came out of the oven in all their puffy glory, and filled them. The rest was tasty.

Cauliflower rice. My sister (she has a name, Kimi) is a fan of the low-carb livin', and found this little number - as a substitute for rice, best eaten with something soppy - and we've never looked back. This is the method: Take a head of cauliflower, grate it, then cook in a pan with butter. Keep cooking and turning and wooshing it around so the steam (lots of it) escapes, and it cooks down into something crumbly, dry, and rice-like. I have been eating this non-stop with subji like saag paneer, so I usually add a generous sprinkling of black mustard seeds and a bit of the garam masala. NOM. NOM. HCHOM.

*method: add 2 T of buttermilk to 1 cup heavy cream. Leave out, lightly covered, in a hushy, dark space for 24 hours. Examine, taste, and marvel at why this tastes delicious instead of, you know, spoiled. Put in fridge. Eat with spoon. Wonder why you even ever bothered with sour cream.

can't say snugger than that

2009-03-17T17:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I just tried to make a phone call (to Galiano Island Books, to reschedule a reading) and this is what happened:

Bookstore person: Galiano Island Books.

Sachi: ark ark ark?

Bookstore person: Sorry? Who is this?

Sachi: ark Arkiko Arkakami. Ark arked ark vark.

Bookstore person: ...Hello?

Sachi: ark ark ark (great, heaving effort) EMAIL?

Bookstore person: ...I think you said email? [gives email address]

Sachi: Ark ooo.

I really hope my voice returns for Saturday's reading. Please note, also, upcoming readings on the sidebar over there --->. Ark ooo.

KSW reading

2009-03-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

I'll be reading with my dear friend Craig MacKie Saturday next for KSW:

Sachiko Murakami
Craig MacKie

Saturday, March 21, 2009 @ 7:30

Spartacus Books
684 East Hastings Street

The Bee

In the country called Deluminus there is a large patch of land barren of all vegetation. At one point there was a mill that stood in this place, but it fell into disuse and the equipment was sold. It was foolish to have built a mill there in the first place, as there are no trees to be found anywhere in Deluminus, but the project was bankrolled by a local man famous for his eccentric business ventures and special pig-skin bag that magically produced gold coins when commanded.

This man, owner of the famous and magically renowned pig-skin bag, hired one employee for the mill. A bee by the name of Con-Joshua, who was given a small desk that was set in the middle of the brown field. It is a hard life for a bee (who are normally such social creatures) to work isolatedly in the middle of a field. Particularly if that field contains no flowers. But Con-Joshua worked hard, and prospered.

- Craig MacKie

--

NEWS DEVELOPMENT (Sunday, September 18th, 2005)

Documents are fresh critics of at least six released promises.
Officials reach a deal, a hotline, a database.
Reliable statistic almost two months after the money, currently on hold, but

the delay was due to the need to develop related delays.
Another two months went by.
Waited round, required review in October. The reviews are necessary.

Responsible for release, she’s not moving.

The potential risk of the problem is real. The reaction is not.

The urgency deserved:
chastise liberal statistics:
five times more likely to die violent.

Who knows what common families deserve;
preliminary anecdotal evidence?

Suggest at least five hundred women respond.
Launch its sisters; a major dent.
Six women reported missing that we know of.
Every report and account. Measure Ottawa,
she stressed.

- Sachiko Murakami

--

SACHIKO MURAKAMI's first book is The Invisibility Exhibit, from Talonbooks. It was nominated for a Governor General's award.

CRAIG MACKIE is an honours student in sociology at Simon Fraser.

Matrix review

2009-03-09T15:40:00.000-07:00

Another review, this time at Matrix. Woot!

Stephen Hong Sohn review

2009-03-04T16:02:00.000-08:00

Hey, here's a review of The Invisibility Exhibit by Stephen Hong Sohn, Asian Americanist at Stanford. On LJ. Strange combo.

Writers and readers, lend me your facebook status updates

2009-02-27T13:25:00.000-08:00

And join the Coalition to Keep Canadian Heritage Support for Literary and Arts Magazines on teh Facebookz.

The Malahat Tractor Review

2009-02-26T13:41:00.000-08:00

I've been talking a lot about the DCH situation, and this came up quite a bit (from the DCH press release):

To implement this principle, the Government will:

[...]# continue to recognize the special challenges of certain types of periodicals (including farm publications, Aboriginal publications, and publications serving official-language minority communities).

They have made it clear, however, that lit mags will have their exceptional status revoked. Heritage senior media relations adviser Dominique Collin reiterated that bulleted point to Quill and Quire this week.

Please, people, if you care about Canadian literary culture, write to your MP, the Minister, your local and national writer's associations, your magazine association. Don't let Canada turn its back on literature.

Stephen Harper loves kittens at all times of the day for the purposes of loving them for their kittehness.

2009-02-23T22:01:00.000-08:00

Canadian Heritage has decided to "streamline" its funding for magazines by merging the Canada Magazine Fund and the Publications Assistance Program (see rob mclennan's blog for a full article). Less bureaucracy would not be unwelcome as CH is notoriously difficult to deal with, but what they are also changing is the minimum circulation requirement for funding. Five thousand. Five, thousand. Five thousand may seem like small potatoes to general-interest, commercially viable, populist magazines, but I have never heard of any literary magazine worth reading reaching anywhere those numbers in this country. This means that every small magazine and journal -- the ones who present what little literary production we have in this country -- would be excluded from a very substantial source of funding. I can't imagine this not having repercussions. Many of the few jobs in producing Canadian literary culture could become extinct. What else? Poets might find it difficult to find publications to place their poetry (because there wouldn't be any, or they would have to seriously slow down production as they would have to rely entirely on volunteers, not to mention lower page counts, production value, etc., and magazines with circulations over 5000 tend to not be very interested in poetry), and thus they wouldn't be able to get the 40 pages required for Canada Council Emerging Writer grants, or any publisher to notice them.

This is an incredibly bad situation for Canadian literary culture. It's difficult enough for lit mags to stay afloat as it is, but to have the government body that is supposed to protect and invest in the efforts of cultural producers basically tell those producers that what they are doing has no value seems to be not only a fiscal decision but a demoralization strategy. It seems perverse, that the Ministry would seek to destroy the very culture it is set up to protect.

I'm sure there will be some sort of organized action in the near future (as this plan isn't set to come into play until next year). The first response I've seen is Ryan Fitzpatrick and Natalie Zina Walschots' STEPHEN HARPER:

STEPHEN HARPER was started as the first magazine under new funding guidelines made by the Canadian Periodical Fund. We believe that the best response to these new guidelines is to try to produce a literary journal streamlined enough to meet the new realities of today’s publishing industry. STEPHEN HARPER has an official subscription base of 413 – each MP and senator in the Canadian government is a subscriber, including our namesake! As well, STEPHEN HARPER will be starting a list of unsubscribers (the SH! list) of people not quite lucky enough to be members of Canada’s own government, but who still wish to receive the light of STEPHEN HARPER into their heart.

Maybe this will be enough for everyone in Canadian lit to lay down arms against each other and stop squabbling for once.

Speaking of Sina

2009-02-23T13:50:00.000-08:00

The Invisibility Exhibit read by Erin Wunker over at Lemon Hound.

Sina Queyras' Expressway, JPF's Stripmalling

2009-02-16T23:32:00.001-08:00

I love Sina Queyras, her writing, and Coach House's ephemera.

Also I am very sad to miss Jon Paul Fiorentino's launch of his new novel Stripmalling (with really awesome graphics by Coach House's own Evan Munday). Maybe the JPF will make it out west...

UPDATE: Here's the trailer for The Way of the Smock: The Making of Stripmalling. If you have to be a loser, you might as well be an adorable one.

Go Jonny and Sina!

shameless snug promotion

2009-02-16T12:08:00.001-08:00

A few things regarding The Invisibilty Exhibit:

Featured poem at Geist in early Feb.

Noted as one of Five Best Reads in Vancouver Magazine's Best of the City 2008.

Vive le Fance.

snuggerview

2009-02-08T10:06:00.000-08:00

Here's an interview that rob mclennan did with me over the past few months. Fanceh.

Blog to stop the recurring unsnug.

2009-02-02T21:16:00.000-08:00

Is it cozy? Is it snug?

Everyone is sick. When I say everyone, I mean ME. And my sister and my nephew, but they're miles away, and the only one sick around here is me, so that's pretty much everyone. Around here. Besides my dog and my cat, and they just don't understand just how very sick I am. Well, have been. I'm a bit better now. But I was really very quite sick, you see, and it was very, very hard to be me. I won't go into details, because it seems to be a flu (or 'flu, as Nick would write it, as he writes 'phone), which is never nice to describe. But there was shivering and fevered dreams, and much moaning and demanding that the cat go make me cups of tea, which never seemed to work out.

See, this is why I have not been blogging. When your life is little, your blog is boring.

I've been writing a little, although it keeps hitting all these speed bumps. Like, Superbug/Norwalk/Ebola epidemics. Or, constant Reanimated Dad dreams.

I've been having this recurring dream for as long as I can remember. (I've written about this elsewhere, as clumsily.) I'm in a house, usually my grandparents' or my family's, and there is an area I've never been in because it is boarded up and secret. In the deepest, dankest area of this quarter is my dead grandmother, in some sort of suspended animation, so she doesn't actually start decaying until I find her.

Well, that situation -- walking through the house, noticing how everything is covered in grime and decay, the fish in the tank are not just dead but half decomposed and the tank is filled with algae, the house is covered in cat shit and vomit, cat hair, dust, spilled coffee on the tiles coated in black dust, and then turning the corner to find the impossible the body his body on the floor -- that's what happened in December.

Now my almost nightly dream is thus:

I walk into that room and find him and he gasps, wakes up, and is alive. Here he is, and all that was just a dream. But he's not quite alive, he's half asleep and mumbling and needs to be led around. I run around finding all the food he likes and movies he likes to watch and try to put him back where he might be happy, on the couch, cat nearby, a bad comedy on. And sometimes I can hear him from the next room with his crazy laugh, and breathing in the air and laughing it out again and I know that things will maybe be okay for a little while longer.

I know I should just be over it by now, but there isn't really an hour that goes by without this. Hence the silence. There's not a lot of poetry in me right now.

now or snugver

2009-01-15T00:05:00.000-08:00

Hello Internet. I have been trapped in the City. My mind turned to flotsam in the wake of my father's passing, but I have much recovered and reformed into The One Who Is Fancy*. Once I return to the Isle That Is Sung, I shall resume blogging. This happens, thank heavens, on Sunday.

In any case, I picked up Vancouver Matters at Duthie's, and found that all the things I have been thinking about for my new book have already been thought about. Which is rawther convenient, that I don't have to think too hard about anything. Please buy this book. It has essays on Vancouver Specials and other quirks of architecture and planning.

I am also finding, slowly, some good architecture and planning stuff, no thanks to you lot (except maybe Nikki). Possibly at some point there might be links, and more topical discussions about something besides sandwiches.

The best part of my week is yet to come, as the final BSG season begins on Friday. Superboduper happy squee!

*As long as she leashes herself to her sister and nephew.

opposite of snug

2008-12-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

If you know me, which, if you are reading this, you probably do, you know that it's been a bit of a difficult year for me. It began with a growing depression that had me crying at work in February that I thought winter was never going to end, and ended (God, please let the next two weeks pass without incident) with finding my father's body in his house at the beginning of December.

I am trying to focus on all the good things that happened this year, or that I made happen, or that people I love made happen for me. Obviously, my first book came out, and was well enough received, and it was honoured with a nomination for a major award. I received a grant to work on a new book, I landed my dream job (which I unfortunately had to leave rather frantically), I moved to one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I got the best haircut of my life. I got to live with my sister and my nephew and get to teach him new words every day. I was involved in his learning and usage of many of his words. Let's look at some of them now, because him and his words are the brightest moments of unsullied happiness in my life right now.

Gas: as in, we were at the gas station on Galiano, and he watched with me from the car his mother go into the store--a fairly distressing situation, right? And I said, "Don't worry Judah. Mumma's just going to get gas." And there was a pause, and he said, "...Gas."

So now when I put him down to bed and he cries for his mumma, I console him by explaining that she's just gone to get gas. And he pauses and says, "...Gas." And I think he understands, a little. It's worked so well that now whenever he has separation anxiety I tell him she's gone to get gas. This kid is going to have strange connections with separation anxiety and his memories of the oil crisis.

Muff[in]. Judah's been having "night wakings" for the past few months, and since we've been home in my sister's shoebox of a suite and I've been keeping very strange hours I have been getting up in the middle of the night to, oh, you know, put six coins in his piggy bank over and over again and massage his feet and make imaginary coffee with him. We were foraging in the fridge for food the other night and I found some muffins my sister's friend very helpfully had dropped off along with a vat of other frozen foods. I try to get him to say everything, mostly when I am dangling said thing in his face like a bit of beef jerky in front of a dog, which, you see, is the only way I know how to get anyone to perform for me. (Kimi's parenting sensibilities are of course entirely mortified by this, but I am Auntie Tutchie, not Mumma.) And he looked down at the linoleum with his little midnight face and whispered, "Muff." And then we ate two muffins together.

Muff[in] wasn't that much of a stretch as the night before we had seen something flying around the room and I said, "Oh, it's probably just a moth," and he flung himself down onto the pillow and fingered his toothbrush and breathed, "Moff."

He's pretty much the only thing making anything better right now. Little stinky bum that he is.

Yorihide Bruce Murakami 1944-2008

2008-12-07T17:30:00.001-08:00

A candle is made to become entirely flame.
In that annihilating moment
it has no shadow.

It is nothing but a tongue of light
describing a refuge.

Look at this
just-finishing candle stub
as someone who is finally safe
from virtue and vice,

the pride and the shame
we claim from those.

-Rumi

abbotsnug

2008-11-27T00:35:00.000-08:00

Condohype, a blog that mocks Vancouver-area condo ads for their empty marketing gobbledygook copy and strategies, noted this doozy today. Brooklyn, now a suburb of Abbotsford.

Brooklyn, Abbotsford.

Please go read Condohype immediately. I'm afraid it will disappear now that the Vancouver real estate market bubble has burst. Economic crisis or no, making fun of stupid shit is always, always funny.

snugwich.

2008-11-26T12:32:00.000-08:00

Yes, this is the aftermath of reading Shawna's blog and feeling like a complete philistine for not having any experience in perfume.

Here are some of my favourite foodie things.

Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt.

I like this salt for finishing -especially eggs, salads, and meats. The pyramid-like structure (so they tell me) makes it a very satisfying salt to grind between your fingers as you sprinkle. There's a lot of air in there, so you can sprinkle more liberally, which is always satisfying, but Diamond has a very bright, clean, sharpish taste, which can be distracting on mellow foods roasted long and quiet. It's very effective at bringing out the sweet in foods for that reason, too. I like, strangely, to grind it into a pretty fineish, fluffy powder for popcorn. Don't bother trying to get this into a salt-shaker (or worse, a salt grinder), as the pyramid-shaped flakes that crunch so satisfyingly won't fit through the holes easily and you will only get the broken, sad flakes out. Also you will be shaking the salt-shaker like a moronic salt fiend and eventually have to unscrew the top to get your fix. (This happened to me at Little Nest. Soft-boiled eggs, I think, need salting after every dip, and the restraint of their cute but pious shakers was infuriating.) A votive tea light holder, I find, make an excellent salt cellar.

For soups and stocks I prefer, as my sister the master stock-maker does, a more mineraly, grey Celtic sea salt. The stuff packaged as Fleur de Sel in those glass bottles with cork tops is, I think, ridiculous. The salt clumps into a huge salty rock because of the wide, useless cork (at least it does in damp Vancouver), and then you have to stab it with a fork and grind it down in a mortar, losing all the lovely flakiness.

And, also, my current favourite bread is La Baugette et L'Echalote's Sourdough Miche. They must use a ton of very burly starter because the air bubbles are huge, the bread is tangy and incredibly chewy; the chewiness remains even with toasting. My current default meal is this bread slathered with cream cheese and Bonne Maman's wild blueberry jam. It also makes amazing grilled cheese sandwiches; the sourness wakes up old cheddar in a very tasty way. And, yes, heaven on a plate when fried in bacon fat. Luckily, randomly, I can get it here on Galiano if I run to the market on Thursday before 11 AM.

Another current favourite is Terra Breads' pecan fruit loaf, known affectionately in my house as "Tea bread" (usually said with eyes opened wide in hopeful anticipation). I first met teabread on Bowen Island at Marian's cabin. Marian and I have over the years developed a snug and tasty vocabulary, including Endlesscupsoftea, hchom (the sound of greedily stuffing something into your mouth), etc. I think she, Kimi and I were all sneaking into the kitchen to slice thick pieces to eat, toasted or not, adorned with cheese-thick butter pats. When toasted the dried fruit starts just to carmelize and smoke, as do the edges, which contrasts with the dark, toothsome flesh of the bread, soaked through with butter. It is a sweet mouthful, and insanely moreish.

"not into buying snug at all, really"

2008-11-26T02:13:00.000-08:00

From Evan's Garden (Note shiny hair in facebook profile picture? It's the hair I always wanted, and now it's MINE):

Crowning Glory Shampoo Concentrate (couple this with the conditioning pomade and suddenly your hair is thick and shiny and fancy fancy fancy)
Velvet Fruit and Flowers Facial Scrub
Gossamer Lights Eyeshadow - Blue/Green/Gold
Eye Color Powder - Gold, Khaki Bronze, Taupe and Golden Sunlight
Rouge Samples Kit- 1 each of Rouges No. 1-6
Shimmer Face Powder 2 Sun
Foundation Cream - anti-oxidant cream base
Pure Mineral Foundation Powder 12 and 39
Eau de Parfum - Rose Enchantment

From Luckyscent (all samples, don't worry):
Indult's Tihota
Biehl parfumkunstwerke's al02, gs02, hb01, mb01
Amouage's Jubilation 25, ubilation XXV, Lyric
Profumum's Ichnusa
Parfumerie Generale Tuberreuse, Felanilla
Montale's Crystal Flowers, Intense Tiare, Black Aoud, White Aoud, Oud Queen Roses
Kai
L'Artisan Parfumeur's La Chasse Aux Papillons, Voleur de Roses
Parums 06130's Lys
Ginestet's Botrytis
CdG's White, Harissa
Parfums de Nicolai's Odalisque, Sacrebleu, Le Temps d'Une Fete
Parfums DelRae's Amoureuse

I couldn't help myself. I had a coupon for Evan's Garden, which by the way produces of some of the best organic picked-at-dawn-by-elves potions I've ever slathered on my face. My friend Marian introduced to my sister and I their witchy, rosey ways and now we are total converts. And Shawna made me jealous with her really interesting secret obsession. And I covet not only Snug, but also Fancy.

This, coming from the woman who went out in public yesterday wearing yoga shorts over leggings, a sweater and a very bulky handmade-with-love-got-back-in-the-breakup scarf. And the world's dirtiest, ugliest trainers. And regularly goes to get the mail in her thermal underwear. Covered head to toe in soot and mustard.

At least I'll smell a little less like pee.

hooga / snug

2008-11-24T20:42:00.000-08:00

Not that I'm really into buying lots of expensive things-- not really into buying things at all, really, these days-- but I happened upon Hygge & West today, and Hygge means COZY in Danish. And they make all their designers say what cozy means to them.

Cozy = second to snug, in case you didn't know. Pronounced, if you please, coh-see, and spoken with a shy, happy smile. As in, you look over at your nephew who, after a few hours of teething-induced pinchy fits, is snugged into bed with Hamu, Fish and Momo, and you think to yourself, "Ah. He just wanted to be cozy."

smells like snug

2008-11-24T13:23:00.000-08:00

My friend, academic, poet, book-hawker, and fellow blue heeler owner Shawna Delgaty has started a perfume blog. I have talked to this woman non-stop since 2004, as we are both pretty much always on the Internet, and had no idea she had such a nose. Such a nose!

Snugaway Jury

2008-11-23T23:19:00.000-08:00

Hey! Look at this! They like my line breaks, they really really like my line breaks! I am rawther tickled, actually.

I've been keeping busy kayaking and skipping stones and walking under a starry starry night sky and cooking, cooking, cooking up a tasty snugstorm. Juniper is currently warming my toes. I bought the coziest cabin socks evah today, and I will never ever take them off again. You can't make me.

The Long Awaited Snug

2008-11-20T09:48:00.000-08:00

Patrica Piccinini.

a.snug

2008-11-19T11:52:00.000-08:00

Internet, I've been busy. The divine Angela Rawlings was visiting Snug Island, and there was little time for blogging about sandwiches. You may, if Facebook lets you, view our adventures here.

I suppose we all know that I did not win the GG. I am actually happy I didn't, given the shitstorm that is erupting right now. I am thinking that people would find any excuse to throw shit into storm, and I am quite happy that the forecast on Snug Island is sunny and warm. It makes me very sad that a day that should be bloodlessly happy for Mr. Scheier is being shat on so violently. I hope he's turned the Internet off.

Seeing Ms. Rawlings was really energizing for me, and I have a poem or two getting off the ground for the new collection as a result. If anyone has opinions or resources about Vancouver Specials, Vancouver architecture, condos, Concord Pacific, real estate, city planning, architecture and poetry, or, you know, just wants to talk to me, please let me know.

There. I hope that satisfies Ms. Reimer.

snugspoon snugface

2008-11-11T09:34:00.000-08:00

Daito Manabe is my new boyfriend.

snug and tasty

2008-11-11T01:00:00.001-08:00

As per the previous post, much of my time as of late is taken up rewatching Rome. They are always eating something just out of camera, and it always makes me feel a little eleven o'clockish. I looked up Roman cuisine last night and found to my horror that most food would be covered in the Roman equivelent of fish sauce.

I think we all know how I feel about fish sauce by now.

Anyway, I just got to the scene where Octavian and Octavia are reunited after Octavian goes away and defeats Mark Anthony and comes back a different person (strangely his sister doesn't notice this), and they're sitting in his tent eating a big plate of olives and dried apricots, and I was all, right, that's it, it's mezze time.

Now I must document everything in this picture.

Clockwise from top left:

Brown rice and lentil salad with olives, feta, capers and pomegranate
Broccoli and cauliflower with the genius invention of this meal, pumpkin seed butter tahini-like dressing*
Hot festive union square nuts (butter, brown sugar, rosemary, cayenne, salt, black pepper, because I like it peppery two ways at once)
Pesto chicken salad
Apples and hearty crackers
Chickpea and tomato antipasto, sort of... Leftover soup without the soupiness, really
Grilled zucchini
Pate, cheese, herbed fromage frais and pumpernickel.

It's ok - I did like fifteen minutes of yoga right before making this.

Now, anyone that knows me (well, Kimi knows this, probably nobody else does) knows that if I'm stuck creatively the way back into writing is through food. That is, once I can get creative in the kitchen, I know that everything is starting to work again in that department.

Now to stuff face and watch another three hours of Rome.

*Pumpkin seed butter, lemon, olive oil, plain yogurt, zaatar, s&p

Snug Island: typical schedule

2008-11-10T22:06:00.000-08:00

8 AM - 10 AM Hear Kimi and Judah watching Annie clips on YouTube, fall back asleep to dreams that are more vivid and memorable than waking life

10 AM - 12 PM Rise slowly, check email, drink endless of sludgy black coffee, take antidepressants, eat toast, watch Annie clips

12 PM - 2 PM Judah naps, Sachi throws Juniper in ocean

2 PM - 4 PM Facebook, email, Google, Google, Wikipedia

4 PM - 5 PM Chop wood, prepare tasties

5 PM - 6 PM Trick Judah into eating three chickpeas and a nibble of sausage and two tablespoons of ketchup

6 PM - 7 PM Nap

7 PM - 8 PM Read or pretend to write

8 PM - 10 PM 30 Rock

10 PM - 4 AM Rome or Mad Men

Repeat.