empire, empire (and a few lost bags,

The third and final entry on our UK adventuring [see parts one here and two here].

Tuesday, Oct 2

Our first and only morning in Oxford: nother day, waking slightly past when Christine has wandered off to her morning-conference and I slept for a bit, worked in the room until check-out, when I aimed to leave bags and walk a bit, at least, exploring the city.

Heading off from the hotel, I asked the young hotel man for assistance, given my gout-y-ness. He inquired as to how I was doing (Christine had inquired the night prior about medical things, given my gout-y pills I left at home are only available via prescription), and I told him I was pretending I was feeling better. Foolish, perhaps. He commented that I was stoic (Very stoic, sir, he said.) and quoted Kipling. Well, sir, he said, as Rudyard Kipling, I think it was, said… And then he proceeded with a lovely and hefty quote that left me quite stunned, for reasons including a) a young lad who quotes Kipling, let alone anything? He seems far too well-educated to be carrying my bags. 2) Who the hell quotes Kipling, nowadays?

I felt as though my stunned silence left him with the impression that I might have been, well, simple.

Hobbling away from the hotel, I found stamps and postcards, and even discovered a wee bookstore that held a couple of items I picked up, including a new edition of Al Purdy's Poems for All the Annettes (I was curious about the Steven Heighton introduction). Amused, as well, that such a thing would be sitting in a bookstore in Oxford, of all places.

Hobbling further south on my gout-y foot, I discovered Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum, known as "the world's first university museum." Not knowing anything about any of that, I wandered inside, appreciating that the museum was free, and started searching around, immediately stunned at not only the wealth of artifacts held in the space (the density of materials was incredible), but the fact that so many artifacts that in other venues might have been held under or behind glass, were simply not. I could have (but didn't) simply reached out to touch items that were thousands of years old. My god.

Step into one room, and its feudal Japan; another, Victorian England; a further, ancient Greece or ancient Egypt. The space was incredible and I completely want to get back there.

And do you think this German painting looks a bit like Christine?

After an hour or so, I made my way to the gift shop, collecting some postcards and books for the children. Did you know the museum makes its own gin? How many museums make their own gin? Madness. I saw something about King Harold's cache of coins, so post-lunch I wandered into a further room upstairs to see coins from the largest cache of ancient coins discovered in England.

As well as some tools for book-making, which I thought Christine might appreciate.

I slowly made my way back to the hotel, where I figured I would work for a bit, wandering through the church grounds next door.

Once at the lobby, by the roaring fire, with laptop and tea, I amused myself by writing silly postcards to people. At least two got the entire letter to King Haakon from Monty Python’s “Biggles Dictates a Letter” sketch. Especially exciting once I realized I had two postcards left over from the Isle of Skye, where we saw at least one business named after this infamous King Haakon (right by the ruins of the McKinnon clan castle). How was I to know at seventeen that knowing more history would enrich my appreciation of Monty Python? (Well, it probably wouldn’t have been that hard to figure out, had I bothered.)

Eventually, Christine returned from her conference, having enjoyed her two days hearing most of the lectures on paper, books, conservation thing-whats, and we made our way back to the train into London.

Upon landing in London, we made our way (I hobbled) back to a different hotel at King’s Cross, one that ended up including no elevator up three flights and no workable internet (as well as a shared bathroom), so we turned straight around after leaving bags. Christine beelined for the British Library for an hour’s research, and I found a pub with WiFi. Well, eventually. One that required a cellphone, so waitress #1 offering her horror that I didn’t have a cellphone (unhelpful), whereas waitress #2 eventually came over and offered her cellphone so I could sign in (helpful), which meant I wasn’t trapped there, awaiting Christine without any opportunity to work and even inform her. Bah and bah. BAH. I checked email, worked for a bit, strolled through some of our reading. Christine returned, and we ate food. We tipped waitress #2 quite well.

And, once back to our closet-room (nearly as small, by the by, as the sleeper on that train down from Inverness), there wasn't even an episode of Top Gear anywhere. Bah.

Wednesday, Oct 3

Feeling as though she needed to get a bit more work done at the British Library before we left town, Christine wanted to first-thing get a couple of further hours of research, which meant a first-thing breakfast, and hobbling our bags down into the lobby before heading out. I walked her to the library, and made for a couple of used bookstores, before we aimed to meet up again around 11:30am.

We sat outside for a few minutes, awaiting the 9:30am opening of the British Library. We sipped our Americanos and watched the fluttering of birds and people, throughout the courtyard. We wondered: what might our children be doing? Five hours ahead: most likely father-in-law and his wife entertaining Aoife, as they waited for Rose to finish her day of school (we were getting quite eager to get home at this point).No: five hours behind. It's so easy to lose track of the whole thing.

As I wandered, seeing this sign at the gate of the Library, which seemed entirely appropriate for Christine's research.

And then this glorious little tidbit, on a wall close by. I see you, haiku_bombs.

Given I was aiming for two close-by bookstores opening at 10:30am and 11:00am, the fact that I got lost for a while wasn't necessarily the worst thing, and I saw some local things that were pretty cool (but I was pleased to finally figure out where I was going). Once discovering both bookstores, I sat some forty minutes with coffee and notebook, flipping through poetry titles (MC Hyland, for example) and sketching out lines here and there. And coffee, made by a German student who came for schooling and stayed, who asked how long have I been here? (As though I had moved to London, perhaps).

The bookstores were curious, and interesting, but I left with little. I had really been hoping for some poetry titles by Salt publishing and/or Salmon publishing and/or Shearsman Books but not a single one, which surprised me, honestly. There was plenty of faber and faber, a couple of Eyewear, some Penguin, etcetera, but nothing that really jumped out at me. Some Karen Solie and Ken Babstock titles I already had. I picked up an issue of Granta, which is always worthwhile, for the sake of a Miranda July entry (discovering it was an excerpt of her novel, The First Bad Man, which I still haven't read).

Upon reconnecting, Christine and I collected our mound of luggage, and made for the train station, for the sake of a night in Amberley, West Sussex, to stay with her friend Ruth (who we visited in the British Library during our honeymoon) and her husband John. We were worn down, so our plans to visit West Dean, where Christine schooled for her conservation work, didn't quite pan out. Ruth, who schooled with Christine, had been a conservator at the British Library for a number of years, before going into private practice, so she worked while Christine and I didn't really move for a while, which was quite good. Eventually, we sat quietly with gin and tonics, and watched the sheep wander the hills behind Ruth and John's wee house in the village.

And the evening, then, where we had a fine meal at the pub.

Thursday, Oct 4

Woke from an email from Westjet, informing us that our plane was two hours delayed. Given we were up at 7am for such, I went right back to bed. The fog was in, holding our plane, it would seem, on the ground. At the airport, finally, further delays. Delays. Once on the plane, an hour or so on the tarmac, making five hours in total of delay. So much for catching our connecting flight from Halifax, we thought. Nothing worked, our machines were dying, both of us needing new cords for our de-charged laptops. Bah bah and BAH.

Did you know you can purchase ice cream from machines in the airport at Gatwick? That was nice, at least. We were amused, in part given we actually visited the original factory for Ben &Jerry's in Vermont a couple of years back [remember?]. Attempting to get rid of a pocketful of change from machines that refused it, eventually forced to use further credit card action instead. Bah and BAH.

At least I got some work done on the plane. Attempting to return to whatever it was I was working on before we had left. Editing through my manuscript of short fiction, scribbling and scribbling and scribbling. At Halifax, they gave us vouchers we had no time for, immediately having to run to collect bags (mine had been lost by then) and return through customs and security to get right back on the same airplane, a plane which was four hours delayed as well. When we landed in Ottawa, Christine's bag had also disappeared (it was returned two days later, but mine, as of Tuesday, still hasn't been discovered, which means losing not only clothes, laundry, shaving crap and lots of books, but the three books I purchased for the children, including the two from the museum in Oxford; BAH AND BAH).

We were home around 8pm, some four-plus hours later than scheduled. Aoife was out, but Rose ran laps like a hummingbird, excitedly telling us all the things she had done and said and heard and done and made and EVERYTHING (they had even made 'welcome home' banners they'd put on our front window [photo taken the following morning]).

THANK YOU SO MUCH to mother-in-law Karin McNair, and father-in-law Steve McNair and Teri McNair, without whom we could not have done any of this trip at all. The wee girls were very happy to see us. We are all still a bit tired, though. 

Matthea Harvey, If The Tabloids Are True What Are You?

THE STRAIGHTFORWARD MERMAID

The Straightforward Mermaid starts every sentence with “Look…” This comes from being raised in a sea full of hooks. She wants to get points 1, 2 and 3 across, doesn’t want to disappear like a river into the ocean. When she is feeling despairing, she goes to eddies at the mouth of the river and tries to comb the water apart with her fingers. The Straightforward Mermaid has already said to five sailors, “Look, I don’t think this is going to work,” before sinking like a sullen stone. She’s supposed to teach Rock Impersonation to the younger mermaids, but every beach field trip devolves into them trying to find shells to match their tail scales. They really love braiding, “Look,” says the Straightforward Mermaid, “Your high ponytails make you look like fountains, not rocks.” Sometimes she feels like a third gender, preferring primary colors to pastels, the radio to singing. At least she’s all mermaid: never gets tired of swimming, hates the thought of socks.

Brooklyn poet Matthea Harvey’s remarkable new poetry collection is If The Tabloids Are True What Are You? (Graywolf Press, 2014), a work thick with full-colour photographs and artworks throughout by the author. One of the smarter and more playful of American poets I’ve seen playing within the structure of lyric narrative, Harvey’s previous books of poetry include Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (Alice James Books, 2000), Sad Little Breathing Machine (Graywolf, 2004), Modern Life (Graywolf, 2007) and Of Lamb (with illustrations by Amy Jean Porter; McSweeney’s, 2011). The poems in If The Tabloids Are True What Are You? are witty and whimsical, displaying a pop culture sensibility and wink to the camera, each composed in that nebulous boundary between lyric prose poem and postcard story. There is something of the pop culture sensibility in Harvey’s poetry similar to works by Montreal poet David McGimpsey, Toronto writer Lynn Crosbie, or even American writer and filmmaker Miranda July, pushing an earnest and knowing irony through tales of the hilarious, fantastic and impossible (and sometimes, perversely and desperately sad), especially in poems with titles such as “CHEAP CLONING PROCESS LETS YOU / HAVE YOUR OWN LITTLE ELVIS,” or “PROM KING AND QUEEN SEEK / U.N. RECOGNITION OF THEIR OWN COUNTRY… / PROMVANIA!”

USING A HULA HOOP CAN GET YOU

ABDUCTED BY ALIENS

We’ve never taken anyone

buttoned up and trotting from point A

to point B—subway to office, office to

lunch, fretting over the credit crunch.

Not the ones carefully maneuvering their

whatchamacallits alongside broken white lines,

not the Leash-holders who take their Furries

to the park three point five times per day.

If you’re an integer in that kind of

equation, you belong with your Far-bits

on the ground. We’re seven Star-years

past calculus, so it’s the dreamy ones

who want to go somewhere they don’t know

how to get to that interest us, the ones

who will stare all day at a blank piece of paper

or square of canvas, then peer searchingly into

their herbal tea. It’s true that hula hoops

resemble the rings around Firsthome, and that

when you spin, we chime softly, remembering

Oursummer, Ourspring and our twelve Otherseasons.

But that’s not the only reason. (Do we like rhyme?

Yes we do. Also your snow, your moss, your tofu—

our sticky hands make it hard for us to put

things down.) Don’t fret, dreaming spinning ones

with water falling from your faces.

It’s us you’re waiting for and we’re coming.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Harvey’s If The Tabloids Are True What Are You? is the way she has intricately blended and incorporated her poems into her wide array of artworks—including photographs, collage, erasures, needlepoint and tiny installations—into the collection. The artwork is an integral part of the work (making up more than half the book), and blend intricately with the poems, as opposed to being merely decorative or added-on (which so often happens, unfortunately, when artists/designers attempt to blend writing and art). There is almost a coffee-table book sensibility to what Graywolf has done with this book, if coffee-table books could be stunningly brilliant, smart, subversive and strikingly original (which, predominantly, they are not).

Miranda July, It Chooses You

LA is so many things, but it is also a company town – almost everyone I knew worked on movies, at least part of the time. Which made it hard, almost rude, to resist the rules and rituals of Hollywood filmmaking; I was grateful to be a part of it, in a way. And in another way, I was desperately trying to remind myself that there was no one way to make a good movie; I could actually write anything or cast anyone. I could cast ghosts or shadows, or a pineapple, or the shadow of a pineapple.

I find it increasingly difficult to discover prose that really jumps out at me. Sometimes I get lucky, but not as often as I’d like. A couple of years ago [see my post on such here], through an issue of McSweeney’s, I discovered the stories of American writer and filmmaker Miranda July, which immediately took me to her short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You (Scribner, 2007). A few weeks ago, I ordered her follow-up, It Chooses You (McSweeney’s, 2011), a collection of interviews she conducted with people who ran ads in the PennySaver. As the back cover writes:

In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing the screenplay for her much-anticipated second film. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the PennySaver, the iconic classifieds booklet that reached everywhere and seemed to come from nowhere. Who was the person selling the “Large leather Jacket, $10”? It seemed important to find out—or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay.

Who are these people July interviews? Michael, selling a leather jacket, and in the midst of gender transformation. Andrew, selling bullfrog tadpoles, who manages to do far more than his teachers have already decided he is capable of. Pam, selling photo albums of people she doesn’t know, so their lives aren’t thrown away. What strikes is the ordinariness of each of their stories, and the incredible richness of each of them, far more compelling, optimistic and heartbreaking than any fiction. What strikes is just how real these real people are, and the care in which July attempts to open and respect their stories, even if, in one case, she doesn’t entirely feel safe (each interview is conducted with photographer Brigette Sire, who has photographs throughout the book). In It Chooses You, July doesn’t think about the screenplay she’s supposed to be writing, instead focusing on painting a series of portraits, all of which include her, just inside the frame. And then there is Joe, selling Christmas card fronts:

Miranda: Are these grocery lists?

Joe: Yeah, I shop for seven different widows and one widower – they can’t get out of the house. I’ve got one jacket that I wear when I go to the store. It belonged to a policeman I knew that got shot and killed, and his brother gave me his jacket. He says, “Every time you go to the grocery story I want you to wear it.” Well, I go at least four times a week, times thirty-five, thirty-six years. I must’ve worn that to the store, oh, three or four thousand times, and my wife has had to repair it. But now it’s almost beyond repair.

I very much like the idea of a distraction project, one that you work on while you’re really supposed to be doing something else. Part of the benefit of such a project is that it allows the back of the mind to continue working on the main project in unexpected ways, without the conscious mind getting in the way. Part of what strikes about July’s strange and utterly charming prose is in just how personality-driven the work seems to be; you go along with the narrative simply because of how much you identify with the narrator, no matter what might be happening, said or thought.

Although this project is very much about other people, interviews with those whose ads she has answered, more and more of her own procrastinated project manages to seep its way into the text. There is something of the journal entry to this book, as July writes deeply intimate moments and thoughts in-between edited selections of interviews, notes she has composed as small snippets, scraps and sentences of her life, both outside and in filmmaking, mixed in with the words and lives of random strangers, each of whom are attempting to sell something through the PennySaver. There is something, too, reminiscent of Guy Maddin's collection of selected writings, From the Atelier Tovar (Coach House Books, 2003); even when you aren't working, you are still, and even constantly, working. As she writes to open the section titled “Beverly / Bengal Leopard Baby / Call for Prices / Vista”:

Movies are the only thing I make that puts me at the mercy of financiers, which is partly why I make other things too. Writing is free, and I can rehearse a performance in my living room; it may turn out that no one wants to publish the book or present the performance, but at least I’m not waiting for permission to make the thing. Having a screenplay and no money to make it would almost be worse than not having a screenplay and maintaining the dream of being wanted. At times it seemed that I was only pretending the script wasn’t finished, to save face, to give myself some sense of control. And on a more superstitious level, I secretly believed I would get financing when I had completed my vision quest, learned the thing I needed to know. The gods were at the edges of their seats, hoping I would do everything right so they could reward me.