Meanderings

Since being long-listed last fall for The New Quarterly’s 2023 Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award, I’ve been busy expanding my short story into a full novel. I’ve made steady progress since and am awfully close to finishing this damn manuscript. Over the last six months, I’ve committed all my available writing time to this book…hence, why this blog has been neglected for so long. I was, however, inspired this week to post something a little different: A selection of mental meanderings from my trusty note-taking app.

September 20, 2023

What’s meaningful? Meaning. What things mean. Why they are. Getting to the root of feeling and experience. Disentangling the encounter from the essence. Something of the big picture, but without losing sight of the constituent parts. My interest is an unadulterated vision. As such, I avoid aligning myself with any average. This makes me a disappointing companion in some ways, unless you’re interested in stillness, attention, and vigilant observation.

On the Ottawa LRT, from Tunney’s Pasture to Parliament Station

October 5, 2023

Narratives that promote “access to the middle class” and “widening the middle class” are inherently problematic. They unapologetically celebrate the existence and perpetuation of an economic class structure in our society.

Walking from Tunney’s Pasture to Juice Dudes on Richmond Road.

October 24, 2023

Rehabilitation and corrections is about replacing the role of culture and community in an institutional context. However, these two things don’t map onto each other well, and we try to force corrections to do the work of culture and community, we end up appearing disingenuous and artificial. In fact, we are in all likelihood being artificial and disingenuous.

Whereas community, family, and friends offer support, coaching, mentorship, and connection out of love and a genuine interest in your well being, corrections staff are paid to do so and are, as a system, only concerned with organizational outcomes, deliverables, treatment targets, and legitimizing professional practice.

Whereas culture delivers treatment, resilience, coping, accountability, teaching, and a framework for moral action that is delivered in the language and life narrative of its members, corrections best practice target populations and are concerned with maximizing outcomes for the greatest number of individuals, at the lowest cost, with the resources available, under the operational rules and restrictions imposed upon them.

Strolling around the city of Antwerp, Belgium

December 31, 2023

When we build our society around economic terms and aspirations, then we speak in the language of success and failure, class struggles towards economic and political autonomy, progressing along a wage ladder towards various forms of security. But if we, instead, recast the building of our society around ideals of virtue and the valuation of sacred trusts, such as the preservation of life, promotion of justice, and safeguarding the wellbeing of people and the planet, then notions such as excess, waste, luxury, equity, freedom, and responsibility all become cast in a new light. We are currently in a tug-of-war between two systems, one that views financial freedom as the quintessential indicator of good public policy and another that critiques the excess enjoyed by the few to the detriment of the many.

Somewhere in Ottawa

January 2, 2024

I find the persistent bigot who suffers from the entrenchment of old age to be endearing.

Walking from home to Bayshore Shopping Centre

January 22, 2024

An informed thought of the brain.
An irrational thought of the heart.
A conscientious and thoughtful impression of the heart and head, combining to give full expression to our humanity.

Somewhere in Ottawa

February 2, 2024

I’m stuck on Elevator D again, this lift is out of service. I must be frank, I boarded it quite low about the day. Perhaps the weight upon my shoulders exceeded max capacity. But surely, 18 people can’t weigh more than my despair?

The Arnon guy said, “Sorry, we’re at the elevator company’s mercy.” I told him not to worry, in that old Canadian way. I think I hear them coming now, though I’d hoped they’d take much longer.

I was just beginning to enjoy this life without a care.

Stuck on Elevator D at my office in downtown Ottawa

February 29, 2024

We have too many disposable people…that’s why we can get away with disposing of a few.

Conflict is an important part of building community.

Happy Goat Coffee, Westboro, Ottawa

March 1, 2024

I don’t want to be absorbed into the colonial bureaucracy. I don’t want to be pacified into impartial neutrality. You can’t buy my complacency. I’ll stretch my legs no further from this pavement, to take ascent and join the company of rulers who break bread with oppressors to maintain status quo.

My lunch walk around the neighbourhood

March 11, 2024

Let me steal your deformity
let me swallow your hurt
I would take the hit to save your life
I would dress you in this shirt
If I could draw out all your poison
to give you one more day
I’d do it in an instant

While wandering around MEC, Westboro, Ottawa

March 16, 2024

What gives you your dignity?

While volunteering at Chef Ric’s on Rideau Street

March 20, 2024

You know, the leaps and bounds of scientific progress, those paradigm shifts that take us from dogma to Darwin, doesn’t come about as a result of day-to-day research: lab rats following breadcrumbs until the cheese is known. No, those big breakthroughs occur as a result of active imaginations. Rogue minds steeped in the literature, who allow the combined power of cognitive computation and human intuition to extrapolate new models and theories. Expertise and experimentation are only part of the equation. Revealing hidden realities and truths beyond mere observation can only occur through a confluence of passion, obsession, art, and clairvoyance.

Lunch walk from home to Bayshore Shopping Centre

March 21, 2024

Today the bus hurtled toward my stop, seeming as though it would not stop, and it didn’t really. It sort of floated by me with the doors open, as if the driver wished for me to attempt at boarding while the bus was in motion. He finally did come to a stop and I boarded, and the driver glared at me, cold and bitter, like he wished he wasn’t obliged to serve me.

At my morning bus stop, on my way to work

March 23, 2024

She couldn’t stand the silence, wouldn’t even let the echo of her words clear the air before beginning again with her next round of empty ramblings.

At 2:38AM, I awoke with these words in my head