monocle de mon oncle

Hard day to be an American

2006-09-28T19:07:00.000-04:00

As I write this, I have my browser on CSPAN2, and I'm streaming the Senate roll call vote for legislation that gives the government the right to torture as it sees fit.

("Mrs. Landrieu... AYE, Mr. McCain... AYE)

What has happened to our country, when even saying "What has happened to our country?" has become a meaningless cliché?

("Mister Lieberman... AYE.")

The Democrats failed to stop this, and I don't know if it was a tactical failure or a moral failure, or both. And part of me wants to punish them for failing, but the smarter part of me knows that's futile. But 65 in favor of torture, and only 34 opposed. It puts a different spin on the statement that "the Senate represents the American people."

Am I only 34% opposed to torture, and 1% absent? Is my country?

(Mr. Nelson of Nebraska, AYE. Mr. Frist, AYE.)

Here in Canada, there has been little news of this, and no one has really asked me about it. I can only put that down to them being incredibly polite. As if they don't really want to come out and say, "So... your country is officially a psychopath, eh?"

In most cases, someone who is 65% psychopathic is more or less a complete psychopath, and a menace to society as well. But I suspect that those 65 could be broken down into more descriptive categories -- perhaps 23 cowards, another 28 fools, and only 13 who truly fit the description psychopath. But it doesn't matter, does it, since in politics as in life, "The wise man has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness; and yet one fate comes to all of them" (Ecclesiastes 2:14). So now my country is on the record as being ok with torture.

The ayes have it.

UPDATE: A good corrective to viewing this shit circus overly-apocalyptically was posted here.

Lost / hidden

2006-09-22T16:33:00.000-04:00

It's 4:27 pm and I am in my little apartment tucked away in a city I don't know, and nobody knows me. It is a reclusive, strangely safe feeling.

Outside the world whirls,

Patrios and its discontents

2006-09-21T18:22:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you read a post out there in webverse that you wish you could comment on, but you have nothing to say but "Right on."

This is one, for me at least.

The Wheel Club

2006-09-14T17:10:00.000-04:00

One of the more interesting places I have found in my neighborhood is a little bar on Lachine called The Wheel Club.

It is in the basement of a building, and has the cigarette-stained decor of your local VFW, complete with acoustical tiled-drop ceiling, and fake wood paneling.

It is a "Newfy bar," that is to say, its major clientele are from Newfoundland. Newfoundland is one of the maritime provinces of Canada, and from what I hear it is beautiful and hardscrabble. Newfies are a lot like Kentuckians: somewhat inbred, alcoholic as a rule, fiercely proud of their island, and eager to get off of it. They say, for example, that Nova Scotians are "Newfies who learned how to swim." (That joke only makes sense if you look at the map.)

Anyways Mondays nights at the Wheel Club are called "Hillbilly Nights." It is a sort of open mic, with the following rules: you can only sing country-western or bluegrass / old timey, and you can only sing songs that were written on or before Dec. 31st, 1965. The owner of the bar, it is said, has a fierce temper and an encyclopedic knowledge of country music; violating these rules can get you banned.

When I went, the clientele (as well as performers) were a pleasant mix of sextegenarians and 20-something hipsters, not much in between. The pool tables were mostly taken up with Indian sharpers. The atmosphere was congenial, and around 11pm they brought out plates of free sandwiches (egg salad or baloney, your choice), and sweet corn. Beers were cheap, as well; and the only "imported" one they had was imported from Ontario.

I have thought about maybe trying to perform at Hillbilly some night, but I need to do a little research to find the right song.

Dogs and geeks

2006-09-09T18:30:00.000-04:00

The thing I miss the most up here in Montreal are dogs. I spent the last several years surrounded by good fun pooches, and now I don't really have any way of doing that. My apartment is no pets, so I can't get one.

So I think I'm becoming sort of a dog whore. I see plenty of dogs on the street here, some cute, some not so much, but I have to smile and try and pet each one of them. Most people are polite enough to let me do that -- I think they recognize the look of a deprive canophile.

This morning I woke up feeling kind of blue and lonely, because I don't have but one or two friends here right now, and both of them seem to be awol for the weekend. And if I waste another whole day playing WoW or obsessively checking DailyKos, I think I'll go nuts.

So instead I decided to go find some friends. Since I'm a geek and get along best with selfsame people, I looked up the nearest gaming store, and walked there. It is rainy and gray out, and Montreal is a brown, grim place when you're all alone, so I was in a pretty bad mood by the time I found my way to Chemin Queen Mary, and the gaming store there. It looked like I would stay in that mood, because the only gaming going on was a bunch of kids renting time on the internet terminals playing WoW and Battlefield 2.

But as it turned out, I was in luck, and there was RPG player meetup scheduled for 2pm. So I killed some time until then, and then got into a decent 1-off GURPS game with some other cool geeks. So now I feel better, because I got some names and faces in my head of people who I can maybe hang out with in the future.

The moral of the story is you've got to go looking for fun, it won't come to you.

Buying weed in NDG

2006-09-01T00:14:00.000-04:00

So once I had dealt with the absolute essentials (rent, school, cell phone, internet) I began to regret not bringing some weed with me to Montreal. After all, I spent 10 years in Boston floating to the top of the weed chain until I could finally buy reliably decent shit for a reliably market price. And the truth is the Canadian border guards clearly don't give a shit about it... the secret hiding place that I have elaborately planned, only to abandon at the last minute (crack open my computer and stick an ounce in there) was ridiculous. They didn't even check my fucking pockets.

It's a funny thing, weed is one of those habits that you only notice when you don't have any. Or rather, when you spend all day waiting for the cable guy to show up... and you don't have any. So when I finally got online, the first thing I did (like any respectable 21st century citizen) was google "buy weed in montreal," and what comes up is that one of the best places to buy weed is N.D.G., which is exactly where I live.

So I figure the best thing to do is to go to the local Irish bar, and have a couple three very nice pints of Guinness, and be informed by a local that the way to buy weed in Montreal is to get the right phone number, and to get some delivered. But she doesn't have a phone number on her. "But," she tells me, "you live on Marijuana avenue, just ask around."

So I try to go home, but at this point I just can't let myself be dissapointed. I pass the Couch tarde (the French Canadian 7-11. It means, in French sleep late, and in English, couch 'tard, in other words, synonyms.) Standing in front are two young kids, fifteenish and tough, one's real fierce looking and the other is riding a bmx and I think to myself, those are the guys I should ask. But of course, I don't.

Instead, I have another plan: I go down to Rue Saint Jacques, to a strip club called Cabaret les Amazons. This place intrigues me because it is called cabaret les amazons, and I picture gigantic, one-breasted warriors pole dancing naked to exotic cymbal music.

This is not what it looks like.

The reality is that the beers are cheap, the cover is cinq dollar, and and there is a table near the stage, but the minute I sit down I'm scared of the orbiting bikini girls, plus it's tawdry, and makes me feel kind of lonesome.

Besides, at wasn't really what I wanted. My mind was stuck on something else, and if it couldn't have that, it needed something deeper, more carnel and profound than naked girls. I remembered how, on my way to the Cabaret, I had passed a restaurant, a greasy spoon, La belle province friterie. As in pommes frites: a (French) fry ery. Which means one thing, the one sick and depraved scratch for my deepest Faustian jones: poutine.

Mmmmm.... poutine....

(I will have philosophize on poutine more at some point.) Oh yes, it was $5.75, and a bowl of fresh deeply fried frenchfries, drenched in gravy, covered in cheese curds, and then drenched, oh yes, once more, in gravy. Poutine and puntang, the philosophers will never agree... which is better after five beers? At any rate, at this point a fresh bowl of that rates higher than looking at fresh-shaven pussies from a medium distance.

And so I left , and the poutine arrived, and then it was gone: the end of an evening. And yet, and still...

On my way home, I still can't just give up. And as I reach the Couche Tard on the corner, I see the same two teenagers, and I remember what I had heard, that I live on Marijuana Avenue. And I'm finally buzzed enough, so I say to the blacker of the two, "Are you selling dimes?" And he says, "Are you a cop?" And I laugh and open up my jacket, for no reason, and I say, "No, I'm an American. What will twenty get me?"

Twenty gets me two medium sized nuggets. And when it seems cool, the other kid tells me, "Yo, we got a number."

From the archives

2006-06-17T01:18:00.000-04:00

Here's a poem I wrote in 1997:

Solomon was wise and proud
And often times he had a crowrd
Of revellers, in his royal digs,
To sip the wine, and munch the figs;

And nothing fare escaped his gaze
(He had more wives than months have days)
Yet he himself could never sing
The sad, old songs of his father-king.

For ever sorrowful a thing
Was it for David to be king.

It is not so that every fall
Is by pride prepared withall,
And every bruise ordained to us
By God's objective calculus.

But rather, if we choose to live
Then bruises take and bruises give
Shall each of us, a-stumbling blind,
Illumined, if at all, from behind.

And so, as blessing and as curse,
I look to David as my nurse,
And not the glories of his son
Whose wisdom circumspect I shun.

And may God grant me strength to sing,
So strong as David, sack-cloth king.

Immigration

2006-06-15T19:06:00.000-04:00

So, I am working my way through the paperwork required to study in Canada. It is kind of a complex process: I need to file with Quebec to get a CAQ (Certificat d'acceptation de Québec pour études) and then with Canada itself to get a student visa.

It is not too difficult a process, but it has definitely forced me to start organizing my life a bit.

The most important political moment today

2006-06-08T23:19:00.000-04:00

was not about Zarqawi. It was about the Internet, that thing that we've all taken for granted. And about the way AT&T wants to turn it into a giant shopping mall.

Listen to Rep. Slaughter speaking about Net Neutrality.

Execution plaza

2006-06-07T13:27:00.000-04:00

This was painted by Iraqi artist Muayad Muhsin, and is called "Execution plaza." Doubtless it will not be as celebrated or villified as his picture of Donald Rumsfeld, but I find it a much more beautiful and tragic image. The blindfolded woman, literally petrified, is meant to represent Iraq. The way her body turns one way, and her head the other, captures the contorted fate of that country viscerally.

A somewhat trying day.

2006-06-06T23:31:00.000-04:00

I am moving to Montreal in two months, and I thought I had an apartment lined up. My one and only friend there is moving out, so I was going to take it. I went up last weekend to visit it, and it was ok, to be honest I wasn't thrilled, but it would do. So I filled out the application and faxed it in.

Then I came back home to MVP and a huge shit storm hit me involving shunning an ex girlfriend, a visit from my mother, getting laid, playing Dungeon and Dragons, and buying an ounce of kind bud, but not necessarily in that order, or rather not necessarily in order at all, transendent of simple sequentiality, a dense web of things that I have not yet fully disentangled... in short, I was not worrying about the apartment and its lease.

So finally today, the storm seemed to have passed. So I called the property management company to find out what was going on. I failed another French test, listening comprehension, and had to resort to what I think will become a good friend: je suis desolee que je ne peut pas parler votre langue. At least that was what I tried to say. And then they sent me over to the English speaking one, who explained that the apartment was already rented.

So I kind of freaked, at that point, quietly at least. The density of the previous weeks experience, I had plenty of reason to begin to doubt myself. I have been too lucky, taken it too lightly. The loss of the apartment, through my own negligence. And the inconvenience it will cause everyone.

Then for some reason, I remembered something I read in How to own the world, a spiritual guide that my roommate who is studying to become a ninja leaves in the toilet, by Steven K. Hayes:

"Examine all your choices.

If your days are filled with negative encounters, it is because somehow you have chosen to live around negative people.

If your days are filled with negative events, it is because somehow you have chosen to live in negative surroundings.

If your days are filled with negative actions, it is because somehow you have chosen to live with negative occupations.

If you do not take responsibility for the influences that shape your life, who will?

Make the choice to make a choice."

I'm not a ninja, but that last line resonated. Instead of being set back by this, I chose to take it as a lesson in mindfulness, and the inevitable consequences of its lack. Still we can only be mindful of so many things at once. So rather than condemn myself for the lack, I can simply choose to move on from here.

2006-05-09T23:17:00.000-04:00

This is my new ear ring.

theory

2005-11-30T18:57:00.000-05:00

"I am what is around me.

Women understand this.
One is not duchess
A hundred yards from a carriage.

These, then are portraits:
A black vestibule;
A high bed sheltered by curtains.

These are merely instances."

(Wallace Stevens, Theory)

This poem has such a wonderful thought in the first stanza. The image of a woman, of noble birth, moving away from the public spotlight, and losing her nobility. It also has that Wallyesque sound of proverb.

But also, to my ear at least, "carriage" has other echoes -- baby carriages, funeral carriages. Other places where "one is not a duchess," where the vain trappings of material life are useless.

Then, in the second verse, he takes that idea, and turns it around. If objects determine people, rather than the other way around, then we can speak of a tableau as a portrait.

To my ear, the "subjects" of the two portraits (plural) seem masculine (dark, solid) and feminine (light, hidden).

Yet, the first line still haunts me, "I am what is around me." Not "you" or "they." Part of me wants to think it is a single portrait, defined by two separate moments, or perspectives. There is, to me, the germ of a narrative in those two lines, but I cannot yet trace the connection between them.

paradise lost

2005-11-28T22:53:00.000-05:00

In the airport I picked up a copy of this:

Paradise Lost by Milton. (The print is by Gustav Dore.)

It's pretty intense stuff. I have been reading it on the subway, but I can only read a column or two before I have to close my eyes and rest.

you're still here?

2005-11-20T12:06:00.000-05:00

Good. Sunday is a day of chores, but I hope to get back to you tonight.

In the meantime here is something to look at:

"Ice flowers" -- a photograph by my friend Laura

born

2005-11-19T22:22:00.000-05:00

"I found between moon-rising and moon-setting
The world was round. But not from my begetting."
(Wallace Stevens, New England verses, 2)

Beginnings are so tenuous. But you've got to start somewhere. I turned to the help of my old friend Wallace Stevens. He gave me a good name for this blog, and so I thought I would let him open as well.

So this is my new brain space, it will probably take me some time to get moved in. We'll see.