National Conversation

and so the National Conversation ends with deep collective sigh which is quickly overcome by exuberance, giddiness, and most of all pride.

this is the one we were waiting for.

the Olympics served to send a message, to the world and most of all to ourselves. After some 150+ years of existence, this country is ready to celebrate its own. We are ready to see we love this place, we are proud of we are and what we are becoming.

Throughout these games, the greateast thng we learned, is that Canadians are finally able to love themselves. And love themselves with great bursts, without shame or apology. We are coming to terms with who are are. Often in young nations it takes this long to truly know who you are, what you are celebrating. It takes about a 150 years to figure out.

Today was the defining moment.

Mens Ice Hockey Gold.

This is the one, whether right or wrong, ultimately decided whether these games were a success or not. Winning the Gold in this event, means everything. It is the National Converasation. It has been the National whisper for a year, a National Murmur since August, the National undercurrent through the last few months, and over the last two weeks it has been the dominant conversation in this country and will be for some time.

Mens Ice Hockey Gold.

We went to the centre of the city after the game, I wore my flag and walked with my wife. My cheeks are sore, I haven't stopped smiling.

There were random high fives and hugs. Spontaneous cheers, chants and breakouts of the anthem.

So many people taking over Yonge Street, seas of flags, horns continously honking, people screaming, jubilant, reverent.

and by people I mean that, peeople. This city is the world. There are more nations of people here than anywhere else on this planet and tonight they came out, all colours, all types, ones that looked like me, that looked like my wife, that looked like neither of us except in our collective joy. They came to celebrate this place, this country, this promise. For all that this country is, for all that this city is a microcosm of, for all our tension, there is one thing that binds us from coast to coast to coast. There is one thing that each successive generation of this lands souls have been told and taught. Wherever they might be from, no matter who they are, we are held together by this game. This beautiful game that is our National Religion, our National Conversation, our National Connection. So wherever you are in the world tonight, I know you feel the same, you felt it tonight, you will take it with you for all the rest of your lives.

Men's Ice Hockey Gold.'

das vi dan ya

the americans, as they have a special charm for doing, seem to have woken a sleeping giant.

Like a lovely English tale I read some many years ago, we are normally a big friendly giant. Unlike the tale however, we are much prettier and nastier when we have been poked from our slumber.

nyet nyet.

soviet.


we are ready to take our throne back, please and thank you.

Friday cannot possibly come soon enough even if it were the next breath away.

-s

Ja Ja Canada, Nein Nein Allemagne

breathe Canada,
let it out
tomorrow we can hold our breath again
did you feel that wind? in your corner of the world?
that was a nation that just exhaled knowing full and damn well that tomorrow is really what will define
how long an entire country
can stop breathing


(yay Canada!
DA DA CANADA!
NYET NYET SOVIET!)

The Weather Report (what home once looked like)

once upon a time, in a land not so long ago, the scene outside my window would have been familiar. The chill in the air would have felt familiar in its dampness. For once upon that time, it used to snow in this place. Many a mountain, castle and fort were built from the snow that once fell. Weaponry was launched and even armies of snowmen were commissioned and modeled here. In fact, it used to snow o much in this place, that the little reminder we had of it today would not even require the armor we once wore as we opened our front door, furrowed our furious faces and trudged forward as every mighty citizen of this had before us.

Today, it snowed in this town. Once not so long ago but perhaps long enough, we would have scoffed at a snowfall like this, perhaps even sighed in relief at a mere 3-5 centimetres of snow. This town however is slowly forgetting what it once felt like and looked like to see the streets adorned in a fresh white coat, tufts of white hanging from trees. We forget how pretty it is to be caught in a moment gazing skyward as millions of shiny wet stars swoon to the earth.

As I walked home the short distance from the bus stop late this afternoon, I looked up and around and had myself a little linger. I felt the familiar, charming crunch of snow under my feet and I remembered.

a long time ago, i used to stay up late

and take naps on friday afternoons
so today i did it once again
i read some words that made me think it was in my head
watched a film that that made me wonder what it would be like for this place to empty
and in those silent hours of the early morning night when i took the air
from my piece of the sky, i remembered how i felt
how it was similar, familiar and fragrant with memory
it was never the same as always, each was always slightly different
yet those shivers of memory convinced me of their common inspirations
so i lay down my guard to take in the Dawn, to stumble into another
philosophy of love



in this essay i was reading tonigt, the title essay in book v. cigarettes by George Orwell, he has this quote about books that is essential to share with you.

It is difficult to establish any relationship between the price of books and the value one gets out of them. 'Book' include novels, poetry, textbooks, works of reference, sociological treatises and much else, and length and price do not correspond to one another, especially if one habitually buys books second-hand. You may spend 10 shillings on a poem of 500 lines, and you may spend sixpence on a dictionary which you consult at odd moments over a period of twenty years. There are books one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one's mind and alter one's whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later: and the cost in terms of money, may be the same in each case.

that was not expected...

at all was it?

we are lucky 87 is equal to the challenge

but let the hand wringing begin, let them gather

and arrange an immediate summit,

held my breath the entire time, i confess,

nervous, so nervous, gazing at my navel over and over

tomorrow they will shout from the rooftops,

it will be the greeting of the day that passes from all our lips

that was not fucking expected at all was it?




(to those who can't follow due to being in places that are not here, Canada beat the Swiss, but it took a shootout, 6 skaters, with Sidney being first and sixth and scoring on his second try. Canada also led 2-0 at one point)

The Bigger Story of the Olympics

Isn't the biggest story on the opening day of the Winter Olympics the glaring absence of winter conditions?

That there is a scramble to assemble snow in some places, that there are continuing blasts of fog and that the temperatures are temperate, is sobering.

In the most beautiful place on earth, British Columbia, the lack of winter so far, for this showcase of their province must be bitterly ironic.

But we are Canadians. We adjust. We do it politely, stoically, gracefully.

Happy New Year!

There are three New Year's for me in any given year.

First the Gregorian, the junkmail standard of everyday living. The clock so to say. The one where I meet everyone

The last is the vernal equinox, spring, the season of renewal, growth, beginning. Fresh, new, born again. Spring.

The middle one is today. Once upon a time, I was born today. It is my personal new year.

I just finished twenty seven. Twenty Eight begins today.

The love of my everything took me to find words today upon request made from a suggestion she made three years ago.

She took me shopping for books in many of my favourite nooks to get pages in the city.

Do you know how much I love this city. How much I love this place, being from this place?

Do I?


To see it over and over, from angles and levels, all those masses, those red red cheeks and frosty breaths, those towers and streets that bend and stretch out dn out like fingers to pull me in to the centre, come to get me wherever I am.

It was a cold day. Sharp, stinging. We walked. We rode those old trams. We walked and sought, walked and sought, walked an sought. We found treasures, treasures the more for their discovery and opportune appearances.

So my year will look a lot like this, I look forward to the construction, the liason, the memory. Most of all I look forward to the words. Always.

1. Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur - Mordecai Richler
2. Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler
3. The Enchantress of Florence - Salman Rushdie
   
4. Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie
5. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens
6. Candide - Voltaire
   
7. Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
8. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
9. Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser
10. A Complicated Kindness - Miriam Toews
11. Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
12. Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk
13. The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell
14. The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle
15. The Anthem - Ayn Rand
16. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
17. The Watch that Ends the Night - Hugh Maclennan
18. Two Solitudes - Hugh Maclennan
19. The Peterloo Writings - Percy Bysshe Shelley
20. Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government - John Stuart Mill
    
21. Books V. Cigarettes (a collection of essays) - George Orwell
    

Nick, another look

Sorry I didn't and haven't written sooner or lately.

Sometimes this life thing turns into this Life Thing.

Attention at those junctions of interference tend to interfere with the direction we were heading and divert our attention towards certain mystery in some still certain places.

I read your thoughts on omiyage and felt compelled to discuss somethings with you.

See i always thought that la souvenir was more indicative of a remembrance and de souvenir was more like to remember. I mention this because I think the distinction is important. If i'm wrong the next part is moot and mostly garbage, but if I'm right then there is an idea here you might be interested in, especially as you are living "so far" from home. (for the waljees, this thought by virtue of the common degree of separation, ensnares you as well).

I think the separation of remembrance vs. to remember is in the act of the memory itself. A separation perhaps of reflective and evocative. To remember is much more participatory act, a voluntary act whereby we give ourselves up to the thought. It is harder, stricter and far more defined by the objective search parametres and boundaries.

A remembrance however is something much more passive, hidden and reflexive. It is something that Marcel Proust so wonderfully defined as involuntary memory. In his first volume of A la Recherche Du Temps Perdu, there is the famous scene of the narrator eating a madeleine cake
and the flood of memory it brings back to him. The very secret of its combination gives it its very freedom. It is an aspect, a moment.

So the idea of omiyage is very interesting to me because what I took from the post is the idea of a poeple, a culture actively seeking to evoke. There is something so uniquely human and transient about that idea that makes me sigh. It's such a fascinating idea - trying transport the subjective in an objective manner. The formality itself of the act is worthy or special note and regard.

You mention how souvenirs, at least how we've come to know and value them are acts of clutter and perhaps items destined for the bin.

I'm not sure I agree that if I stick to my perspective on souvenir. I think if I hardline the French idea (as I see it) then it is more of a remembrance, something remembered. We get souvenirs for people because we remembered them and if they keep that trinket then we have perhaps transfered the act of remembering to them by association with the object. That association in turn one day, one moment will spark, and you will be confronted by an involuntary memory that is a deluge of personal and subjective evocations.

So what happens when one day from now you taste something japanese and all of a sudden takes you back to that moment when you first had it as someone gave it to you from a place you had been because they thought of you when they went that place. What is the nature of the involuntary and lingering effect of the omiyage as it carves it's own place in an individual psyche?

Thoughts?

p.s. you spelled centres wrong. I'm disappointed, you're representing the Leaf more than ever when you're all the way across this sphere.

p.p.s. we invited you to our superbowl party, not to be cruel but to always make known the open invitation should you have somehow found yourself on this side of the sphere by some magic, decision or confusion.

p.p.p.s. I think the desire and seeking of adventure is that as we get older and perhaps accept the boldness of our positions and thoughts, come to value those thoughts, perhaps we are actively seeking to live. Perhaps that too becomes more a participatory, voluntary but mingled with notions of erasing parametres and boundaries. It isn't the Fuck You rebellion of youth and the danger it seeks for dangers sake. It is the fuck you of knowing more and more what we want. I feel that wanderlust too. I feel that need to do more, see more, experience more.

I don't want anything.
I want it all.

peacelove freedomjustice

-s

And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all
-Neutral Milk Hotel (In the Aeroplance Over the Sea)