andsoon.ca

This is probably the billionth time I’ve drawn this painting this year:

Last year I decided to build a bed. I’d never even used power tools before, but it turns out it’s really not that hard to do. I found a great guide for how to build a platform bed from Ana White’s blog, and used this template: http://ana-white.com/2012/01/plans/hailey-platform-bed

I made the queen size version, and only spent about $100.00. I followed the directions pretty closely, but I was lucky enough to get my hands on some old and gorgeous wood from a horse corral, and tacked that on the outside of the frame. I also made my own headboard out of the same wood, I just stacked six good pieces on top of each other and reinforced it on the back. I stained the spruce wood with a walnut stain and sealed the barnwood with a clear coat, turned out pretty good!

These are some of my favorite books. Some are old. Some are new. Some are red. Some are blue.

Gilgamesh
Homer – The Iliad and The Odyssey
Virgil – The Aeneid
Michael Cervantes – Don Quixote
Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment
Herman Melville – Moby Dick, or The Whale
Nietzsche
Nabokov – Lolita
Edgar Allan Poe
J.D. Salinger – The Catcher and The Rye
Jack Kerouac – On the Road
Thomas Pynchon – Gravity’s Rainbow
David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
Haruki Murakami – 1Q84
Ginsberg – Howl
Christian Bok – Eunoia
John Glenday – Grain
Robert Hass – Time and Materials
David Mitchell – Cloud Atlas
Charles Taylor – The Malaise of Modernity
The Voyages of Jacques Cartier
Leacock – Canada
 

White it the air
Outside it’s been coming down for days
and days and days. It’s nothing but
pure white out there, white in the sky,
white is the ground, white it the air,
white white white. Driving to work I
see a helicopter that comes so close
to ground that it just seems like
some silly toy, but it
disappears back into the white
soon too, barely realizing it had ever
almost left it. And who can tell me
just what is the source of
so much white? I hypothesize that it is
Moby Dick blown to bits at sea, Ahab’s
great-great grandson with a torpedo shell,
a horrific Nantucket Nor’wester
strewing the incredible evidence
even to here in the land-locked prairies.
Obsession would be destroyed in
some magnificent catharsis like this—
a great explosion to decolour a canvas.
Or perhaps this is the result of some
proud deity’s tantrum instead? Sheets
of loose leaf paper scattered, porcelain
plates smashed among ivory pigeons
and alabaster polar bears. I can’t see
past five feet up there anyways, so
what difference is it to me if it’s heaven
or helicopters, pigeons or polar bears?
Maybe they are rearranging the moon
for our next eclipse or adjusting
horoscopes or hiding the little red ball
up their sleeve while we are distracted
with these dancing half-shells of coconuts.
I worry that when all this begins to melt
I won’t be able to build an arc fast
enough and it will flood the Earth all over
again and then it will only be good for those
hardy polar bears. But, of course,
that could be wrong since of all those things
the white could be, I’ve never seriously considered
simple frozen water. Too easy. Too simple.
And so it is with lamentable loss of aplomb
that I witness this melt away with,
as it swells the banks of the river,
and then not with a bang today,
but with a whimper tomorrow
into the waters of Hudson Bay
which I will call the incredible ocean
if you will.

Here is a smattering of great poems written by other people:

Robert Hass is one of my favorite living poets. He was the Poet Laureate of the U.S. in the late 90’s, and this collection won a Pulitzer. Not bad.

ROBERT HASS – ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE’S POEMS

In one version of the legend the sirens couldn’t sing.
It was only a sailor’s story that they could.
So Odysseus, lashed to the mast, was harrowed
By a music that he didn’t hear — plungings of the sea,
Wind-sheer, the off-shore hunger of the birds —
And the mute women gathering kelp for garden mulch,
Seeing him strain against the cordage, seeing
the awful longing in his eyes, are changed forever
On their rocky waste of island by their imagination
Of his imagination of the song they didn’t sing.

 Kate Hall was my favorite Canadian contribution to the Griffin nominees in 2010. This poem is great. Plus she’s Canadian!

 KATE HALL – THE LOST-AND-FOUND BOX

We are waiting for the claimants to come. You would like to
keep the purple umbrella. I would like to keep the orange
tree. We’re both hoping no one will claim the blue beat-up
dictionary. The dead won’t give anything away. They care-
fully pick through the big pile of junky objects while we
crouch reverently in front of it. A crowd is fighting over the
morning star and the evening star, but there’s only one star
in the box. It’s stretched thin between them. Fault lines are
emerging. People approach from every possible angle.
Secretly, we’re hoping for disaster – a chaotic free-for-all so
we can make off with as much as our arms can hold. At the
door, George Herbert describes an orange tree to the admis-
sion clerk. As Herbert glances around, I step in front of it and
wave my arms like branches. I feel a little bad because he
wants it for God, and I just want it for myself.

John Glenday was also a 2010 Griffin finalist (international). He lives in Scotland and works as an Addictions Counsellor. Isn’t that great? He’s also been to The Banff Centre. In fact, it was a google search of his name that led me here in the first place. Grain was one of my favorite collections in the last few years. 

JOHN GLENDAY – THE RIVER

This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks

of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.

Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way

with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea.

Clair de Lune
Wikipedia says
Clair de Lune is french for
“moonlight.”
It may refer to
the third movement of
Suite bergamasque by
Claude Debussy,
a piano depiction of
a Paul Verlaine poem,
it says.

It is (the poem)
about
your soul
and how it is better when
mixed with
moonlight—¹
²

It is interesting to note
(it says)
“Clair de lune” was originally titled
“Promenade Sentimentale.”
This is also the name
of a Verlaine poem.
It is nice to know that
Debussy liked poetry too.

1. The poem is not exactly about this.
2. Actually, the poem is exactly about this.

“For
small erections may be
finished by their first architects;
grand ones,
true ones,
ever leave the copestone to
posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything.
This
whole
book
is
but
a
draught—nay,
but the draught of a draught.
Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”

— Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)

This print is by the exceptionally talented Tom Neely. It is over five feet tall in real life. Ink on paper. He makes comics and paintings. His website is called i will destroy you. Santa, if you are reading this, all I want for Christmas is this. I did try to draw The Whale . . . but this is incredible. You should definitely click that picture.