It's been ten years now

Ten years ago today, I was in Austin, Texas at a literary convention. I'd get up in the morning, have breakfast, return to my hotel room to work on Enter, Night, come down for lunch, work on the novel until the evening, then have dinner and socialize with my friends and colleagues at night. Not the idea way to spend three days, but the writing process on that first novel was incredibly hard, and quite fraught. I still managed to leave Texas with some wonderful memories of the conference, but it could have been a hundred years ago as easily as it was ten. This photo is from the book launch that October with my dear friend, novelist Lauren B. Davis, and the legendary Haitian-Canadian writer Dany Lafferière.

Throwback Thursday, magazine edition: 4/22/21

Throwback Thursday, Magazine Edition: In 2007, The Advocate flew me to San Antonio, to interview Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, the first U.S. serviceman casualty of the Iraq war. Alva lost his leg when his unit parked in a minefield for lunch on the first day of the war—a tragic metaphor for the duration, as it would turn out. It was my first time in Texas, and I was struck by the tattered, sun-faded "W" stickers on the backs of pickup trucks. Interviewing Eric Alva about his new war—against "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"—was a profound honour, and it was the cover story of that issue. Later, during the writing, I got into a very, very heated discussion with a senior Pentagon press official regarding the condescending boilerplate statement about the non-role of LGBT servicemen and women in the U.S. military they handed out to every press venue asking them for a comment on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." It ended with me telling the official that unless they addressed the callous travesty of their official response to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in light of the literal first sacrifice of the Iraq war having been made by a gay Marine, I would frame the article harshly in that light, and take it as far as we could go in a magazine that was, at that point, generally accepted as the queer newsmagazine of record, quoted by Time and Newsweek, and elsewhere. As diplomatically as possible under the circumstances, an editor at the magazine suggested that I had perhaps gone too far in that interaction, and that my threat might possibly impact future access. The next day, the Servicemen's Legal Defence Network (SLDN) emailed the magazine that the Pentagon had inexplicably released its first-ever revised version of the boilerplate media response, adding a "promising" sentence stating that gay and lesbian service members "have the opportunity to continue to serve their nation and national security by putting their abilities to use by way of civilian employment with other federal agencies, the Department of Defence, or in the private sector, such as with contractors." In 2007, that passed for compassion. The piece was eventually a co-finalist for a GLAAD Media Award, and 2007 feels like several centuries ago at this point. Eric Alva remains one of my favourite and most memorable interview subjects—and I loved San Antonio.

Magnolias

 

A sudden gust of spring wind blew down the street, scattering magnolia blossoms, and a momentary burst of unearthly fragrance literally stopped me in my tracks. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. It was a momentary bulwark against plague, lockdowns, involuntary solitude, a culture of cruelty and suspicion, and the creeping winter-of-the-soul in which so many of us have been engulfed for more than a year. For a moment, it smelled like love, friendship, hope, possibility, and miraculous renewal. The scent feathered away, but the brightness remained like a warm handprint.

A gift in today's mail

 

In today's mail, a gifted 8-year old artist of my acquaintance sent me this beautiful rendering of Beckett. It's a given that I will treasure it always, and get it properly framed in due course. One of the truest things about homemade gifts from children is how much of the heart they put into things is on display. They haven't yet learned the social artifice of adulthood, so when the love is there—like it is here—it's a bolt of light, straight to the heart.

Ramadan Mubarak

 Alhamdulillah. 

A melodic sort of twitter, for a change

My brilliant godson Michael, who is 16, was born with an instinctive eye for beauty. He is as deft and skilled with a camera as he is with a football. An embarrassment of riches. He sent this to me this morning, and it was exactly the palate cleanser I needed.

For shame

 

Over and over, I've meditated upon the specific connection between anti-mask entitlement, and the sort of xenophobic, anti-Arab tirade displayed in this horrifying video from Florida—both of which are on display here—(complete with central-casting white female victimhood, and ending with a weepy "Please don't do this to me!" plea to the cops when they arrest her for terrorizing an Egyptian woman and her husband, who were just trying to shop.) The best I can come up with, regarding the connection, is a sense of nearly sociopathic entitlement, an expectation that literally everything occurring in their personal space should be pleasing to them—what they see, what they hear, what other people expect of them, where other people are from, what colour those people are, what they wear, what they say, who they are. When it's not pleasing to them, they've been taught, by politicians and churches, that their "rights" are being infringed upon, and they're entitled to act out in any way they see fit, and that doing so is wholesome and patriotic, even noble. And if it comes down to it, that they'll be acclaimed as justified for this obscene behaviour, and/or forgiven, whether it's murdering an unarmed person of colour in the street, or terrorizing one in a Walgreens. If that's "overthinking" on my part, so be it. It's a way of counting down from 100 until the craving for retributive violence eventually dissipates, because that's no way to be in the world either.

Throwback Thursday, magazine edition: 4/8/21

Interviewing 1984 Olympic gold medallist Alex Baumann in Sudbury, Ontario, in 1985, for Close-Up magazine. It was an almost-five-mile drive each way, and the pool area at Laurentian University was so steamy that day that the photographer's flash barely worked. Still, he got this gorgeous portrait for magazine, and I got my interview. A very long winter day, ultimately counted as win.

Throwback Thursday, web edition 4/1/21

"For his part, Harper’s age was a massive, inescapable truth told through the lens of the Nikon. The perfect coffee-colored eyes were filmy, set deep beneath heavy lids. His coat looked white in the sun. Still, Harper never looked more beautiful to me than he did at that moment. The entire history of eleven summers was there in his face, a face of vast kindness and dignity, and the pure essential sweetness that is peculiar to very old dogs.

"In one frame in particular, my favourite in fact, he’s standing on the edge of the dock with his back to me, staring out across the lake, caught between the water and the sky. Harper body is slightly bent, but still proud and upright. In that photograph, he resembles a very old lighthouse keeper on his final rounds, the last watch of the night."

—From "Life, Measured Out in Labradors," first published on 𝑆𝑎𝑙𝑡 𝑊𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝐸𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑 in January, 2017