The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

It's late to be reading it. I could have been more inspired reading it back when I was 18 and reading Kerouac as well and trying a lot of that shit for the first time. But still. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. What it makes me think about now isn't so much 'Man, how do I open those doors for myself and prop them open for a while?' but more just about sub-culture. The newest thing on the edge. How did the Beats turn into the Heads, and what was before the Beats? Who is on the edge of the edge right now, and pushing further? Even at the turn of the century, there must have been that group of people taking it where it hadn't been yet, doing something different. But if the current sub-culture is technology-based, if it's about metal implants and genetic modification, I'm not so interested. Maybe that makes me the same in a 2007-type way as the suburban work-a-daddies horrified by the Day-Glo bus driving through their neighbourhood. I don't know. The kind of edge I want to push towards involves free living, directed by intuition. Going where it goes. Where is the most current sub-culture on the literary and intellectual edge, and going further? That's what I'd like to know. Maybe if I take off somewhere warm for a while, with my backpack and sketchpad and a novel-in-progress, find a good surf beach to kick back on and throw around a lot of ideas with whoever's there, maybe that's my Day-Glo bus. I'm hoping. Discipline leads to prolificacy. Prolificacy leads to innovation, and that, ultimately, is what I'm going for. Innovative expression of the things everyone already knows but hasn't put into words or pictures yet.

Actually . . . It's Nicaragua

I've decided to go to Nicaragua instead of Spain, at least to start. Originally I thought I would move to Spain and live there, indefinitely, so going in January was okay because I figured that way I'd be all set up with an apartment and a job by the time the nice weather came around. Spend the shitty time of year getting set up. But. Now I'm thinking I'm going to be doing more of a travelling type trip instead of actually moving somewhere. I'm going to apply to the UBC Creative Writing MFA program again next November. I see myself back on the west coast not too long from now. This is a time to just travel and hang out before moving back to B.C. and getting serious about writing, in Vancouver.

The idea of moving to a big, expensive European city at the coldest time of year, and having to start looking for work and an apartment is not exactly appealing. I want to go somewhere warm. I want to travel. Nicaragua it is.

Nicaragua. I'll go there with almost nothing. I'm not bringing my laptop or a strict rewriting schedule. I'll go where it takes me. I'll write, for sure, poetry, creative non-fiction, short stories if they come up. And I can draw as well. This will be a time of major raw material. I can refine it later. That's what I'm bringing -- pens and paper, sketchbooks, pencil crayons, that kind of thing. It'll be hot. There'll be volcanoes and steamy, wet rainforest, and lagoons and waterfalls and flowers and whitewashed buildings. Beaches and reggae and surfing. Little villages. And the spirit of a people, that I don't know yet but will.

This is a great choice. It feels right. If I want to go on to Barcelona after that, I can. I have a potential guiding opportunity in Europe for Butterfield and Robinson that can apparently earn me $3000 or more per six-day trip, and the trips are scattered, here and there. That would definitely get me by. It's falling into place.

Which Brings Me To You

I'm reading this book I found on the library display shelf, Which Brings Me to You. I was pretty skeptical checking it out yesterday. Couldn't quite tell what kind of book it would be. It's fiction, a series of confessional letters between two people who met briefly at a wedding. Looking at the premise of the book, and the cover, and the two authors' photographs, I thought maybe I was checking out a beach read by mistake, like one of those Shop-A-Holic books or the Nanny Diaries or whatever.

But this book is great. The writing's really fresh and funny. At one point the woman's describing her parents' perception of university culture. She says, "A pair of art professors lived on our street. My parents treated them like they were giraffes. If they didn't mow their lawn or take their garbage around back, my parents forgave them with a kind of shrug that seemed to say: Can't blame them. They're giraffes after all. God bless 'em, they only have hooves."

Describing his first time at a shooting range, the man writes, "It shocked me how much the gun wanted to move. It leapt about in my hands, like a heavy fish." I can feel that gun even though I've never held one. He tells the woman "Beauty is the cure of the weak." Not a cure for weakness, but the cure of the weak. I like that.

These two authors have given me way more than I was expecting. It's still light reading, for sure, but crafted and funny.

Street Art in Toronto

This summer I was in Toronto for a writing course at Humber. My brother took me all over the city, showing me everything, and I really got into the graffiti and murals. This first one was in a bathroom stall; it's my favourite. I love how it's only a few simple lines, but it defines a complete image.




Bikes on the street. I thought it was cool. Maybe it's a courier thing.




This was from a whole maze of graffiti-covered alleys. Probably has a name, but I forget.





This was on West Queen West. Great street name. Did they do this on purpose, the doors?



Oh, and this. More for the personal significance than for the artwork. Ten years ago, when I was just getting into the outdoor industry, my friend Jono from Outward Bound Australia wrote this quote on a eucalyptus leaf for me. It was the first time I'd seen the quote, and it hit me hard. I proceeded to propel myself full force into the outdoor industry, my dream, and went right to the top, everything I could imagine. Now I'm done with that. My new dream is writing. On the last day of my Humber writing course, Wayson Choy handed out quotes. I got the Goethe one. It's relevant again to me in a whole new way. I'm beginning again.

Introducing . . . Guy Studly!

Yep, here he is: the one, the only -- Guy Studly! Lennie and I were at a garage sale, and this dude was in the free box. Best score ever. You snap a beer in and he holds it for you. I named him Guy Studly for the Garage Sale initials.

I wrote this while I was at the writing workshop in Toronto: "I'm taking him with me tomorrow, whether they're ready or not. Guy Studly, my shirtless beer can-holding mannequin, can just as easily hold my can of Coke in a non-drinking environment. We'll be out there on the wall, me and the cool kids. We're the ones not wearing our name tags. We're the ones throwing around terms like parallel structure and rhinestone removal. You know, the Wayson Choy kids, oh goodness yes. But oh my. Now you know too much about me."



In the end, Sarah and I took him kayaking. Here he is doing what he does best (above).



Here he is way out of his element. I made him a paddle but he can't paddle worth shit. He'd rather just hold the beer can, hold the beer can. Guy Studly though, man, he can get away with anything.

Home

It's definitely autumn now. I like this picture, from the baseball diamond near my place. Over the tracks and through the woods and there you are.