Wow; found or rediscovered a fairly serviceable list of my freelance articles on my profile for what is now Xtra. Many articles are lost (hundreds, in fact-years' worth of freelancing) due to the LGBTQ1+ Pink Triangle Press publication's rebranding and changing domain/website names and lack of archiving, but these ones are findable, at least.
Here you can find my profile.
The boy and my partner have the cold-like symptoms of you-know-what. The Covid Omnicron strain, or a bad headcold. Headache, chills, upset stomach-those sorts of symptoms.
They say you should assume that anyone with these symptoms likely has Covid and to isolate for ten days.
There are no more PCR tests (the rapid test you take if you have symptoms) available in our city. Ottawa Public Health is no longer taking calls or providing individual guidance, as they are overrun.
We are looking at isolating for ten days. Christmas in my hometown, where we were going to gather to honour the memory and Boxing-Day-supper tradition of my recently deceased sister, is essentially cancelled. We are staying put.
Suffice to say that I have had it with 2021, with Covid, with my sister dying of cancer, and any other aches and pains this bastard of a year has wrought.
We always have our own Christmas here, before travelling Christmas day, at least, so we have that, and each other.
So, here is one of many reasons Canada's John Candy was brilliant. In "Home Alone", the 1990 Macaulay Culkin vehicle of debatable merit, Candy portrayed Gus Polinski, the Polka King of the Midwest, in a cameo. Polinski kindly gives Kate McCallister (Catherine O'Hara, another Canadian great) a ride home to check on her abandoned son. Their exchange in the band's van incudes this wonderful bit. Gus explains that he was indeed, ah, forgetful with one of his kids.
(I had originally included the transcript, but think this post is better without. I could tell you, or I could show you. And with the clip at a mere 49 seconds, you could do worse trying to improve this abysmal year.)
So, merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy solstice and happy everything. And don't leave any loved ones behind, eh?
Here's the scene.
Ah, there she is or he is, or they are. With cold yet dextrous fingers, I capture a fraction of the moon's waxing gibbous beauty.
I won't kiss and tell, but I will mention a good note, a literal one, to nearly close out desultory 2021.
In the freelance writimg business, there still exist pro book reviewers such as myself who shop around pitches for reviews they want to do umtil the right editor answers "Yes". I got this reply after some follow up.
"This review sounds great and I'm definitely interested."
I have tried to be articulate, I really have, but I think I am in too much pain to blog much anymore, at least for a while. I externalize my pain, through frustration and anger and moodiness and acting impulsively, ritualistically, but it lurks still, on the periphery, waiting. Might be time to pull back and let this blog go fallow for a while I try to come to terms with my grief, or whatever the hell it is I am attempting to do.
I used to take pictures of the moon, sepulchral, luminous, transfixing, displacing me and my thoughts, my ideas run amok, like one one of my characters far afield over brook and fallen log.
Used to wander the streets at night, down by the river, down the street by an apartment with golden-glowing windows, like liquid welcome in the night.
Also used to write and used to lose myself in flight of fancy.
But now I have stopped snapping shots, stopped meandering, stopped writing, so that all that remains, as the tide pulls out, are my ideas.
And they are fine ideas, perhaps superb ones, enough even for dreams, for stories, maybe even novellas or books, but I can only play with them and turn them over and not help them realize their true shape.
It's grief, I know, but not the kind you see in so many films where characters burst into weeping. It's deeper. The tears are a release of the sadness, an expression, not the bereaving itself.
I used to feel this stress and mournfulness in my hips and stomach. Now this heaviness has moved up to occupy my shoulders, my chest, my head. You think you know about sadness until you lose someone you love . Then all you've got is this weight in your stomach, this pull, this leadenness, as everyone treats you as though you are fragile as glass.
