My friend has loaned me a book. The author is half-Filipino, just like my friend and me. I read it eagerly. It feels familiar. The author’s writing style reminds me so much of my friend’s, and I relish the glimpses of the suburban neighbourhoods we grew up in. I read it on the subway, standing […]
“Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know of grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera
When I say I miss high school, I miss writing terrible poetry in a notebook in a shitty coffee shop that was the closest thing to my house in the suburbs, the kind of coffee shop where someone writing in a notebook for two hours is strange. Wandering around secondhand book stores in Toronto, especially
Making bread on a cloudy morning, and the soreness in my forearms during kneading surprises me. How long has it been? I remember breakfast and quickly fry some leftover rice, garlic, crack an egg on top. I make the first cup of coffee after a long weekend of illness. CBC Radio is on in the
As of late: 1) A short story of mine, “Breathing Underwater”, was published at my friend Leesa’s new site WhiskeyPaper. It’s a really wonderful site, and I’m thrilled to be included. 2) My lovely friend Susanna and I are collaborating on a blog, Lumisilla Mailla, which means “in snowy lands” in Finnish. There are only
You can tell me anything you like about the value of output, of just writing without analyzing. But give me the minutes spent staring at the screen, walking around the neighbourhood, working loose the knots of a story that you feel might never give way. Despite the almost palpable stress of it, it makes me
More than a week later and I’m still at odds with my city. I venture out of my bubble and quickly return, soothing my jangled old-lady nerves in the ravines and parks and brick homes of my neighbourhood, my strangely sleepy neighbourhood that feels like a held breath. I’ve also been reading, photographing, writing these
We gather in the theatre to watch a live streaming onstage performance of a talk radio show, and we’re all laughing, everyone, almost the entire time. And that laughing becomes so habitual that I have the space to notice all the individual laughs all around me. I notice, for example, that others are laughing ha
My dog and I run through the rain, down the street I grew up on. Our feet are the loudest sound. I’m carrying a bag full of crab shells to dispose of in the garbage can at the end of the road, by the community mailbox. A family sees me do it and I imagine
An elderly man at the next till says cheerfully to the cashier, “Hallo Fräulein. Wie geht’s dir? Do you know what I just said?” She giggles and says no, and that it sounded funny. He takes it in good stride. I turn to look at him and he is smiling, wearing a cardigan I actually
