leahbobet | Entries tagged with torontophilia

The weather's broken here in the T-dot; it's been cooler and sunshiny with bouts of Crazy! Rain! for added flavour for the past few days (which, might I add, is really lovely when we have all the windows open at home: it sounds like you're in the last treehouse outpost of civilization during a very Bradburyesque green end of the world). My two-week-long bout of insomnia hasn't broken just yet, but the cool weather's helping: I've managed to sleep some the past few days. Not enough (wah!), but enough to work:

The window table at Aroma is mine. I will unhesitatingly cut all trespassers.

The edit has progressed into chapter four, which is a land of mostly fairly focused and isolated notes, one of the major systemic issues, and then one tricky interconnected thing that sent me back and forward in the manuscript to construct and seed a consistent rationale for a whole line of conflict that's better than because I said so. I think it works now. I'll check for soundness on the next pass.

I've also hit the point where there are a few things I need to ask my editor about: wordcount inflation and clarifications on some notes and the like. I shall bundle them up in a package with an attractive bow and e-mail them over tonight.

Otherwise, things we have been doing?

Went to a workshop in Kensington last night that was half identifying culinary and medicinal herbs that grow randomly in the downtown core and half making salve out of them; the workshop leader was, coincidentally enough, someone I went to elementary school with (see: the Only 500 Player Characters in Toronto theorem). They're doing another one on canning and pickling next month, and that's on the calendar. Afterwards, watched Proof with Dr. My Roommate, which was a startlingly chewable and amazingly well-written movie, and managed to finally deliver a late birthday present to a friend, who seemed to (yay!) really like it.

The autumn concert ticket pile has been started. Just two shows so far, but consider this to be a nice solid foundation for the fifty-floor skyscraper I'm planning.

Planning for the Most Epic Housewarming in the Universe has also started. A couple days of my time are going to be spent test-cooking party snacks very soon.

Did a stack of additional notes on Indestructible while I was feeling it the other afternoon, and have roughed the structure of the first few scenes. There is a thing in the file which could be the first line. It could not. First lines delineate and circumscribe so very much about a book. They have to be chosen with ultimate care.

Put in some work towards getting the September issue of Ideomancer ready, which will be coming to that website over there near you on, well, September 1st. I'm really pleased with the TOC on this one: it's thematically solid, but really nicely varied in terms of style and genre. We just bought a raft of really good poetry, too.

There is a cabbage as big as my head in my fridge, from last week's farmshare. Dinner tonight will be cabbage rolls. Apple coleslaw or Waldorf salad may also be in my future. It depends if I can get some decent apples on the way home.

Speaking of which, my battery has maybe 10 minutes left on it (and the downside of working at Aroma is that the plugs do not, how we say, plug), so home is where I'm going. More tonight, maybe, if my concentration keeps.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Coffeeshop music

It is a long weekend here in the Workers' Paradise of Torontograd.* I am listening to the latest random countdown of best songs of whatever long on the radio and playing silly Flash games and eating pierogies while the roommate (Tick superhero name: Dr. My Roommate) steams a bunch of swiss chard in the kitchen. There is a Shadow Unit DVD extra brewing at the back of my head.

S'all good.

Have been out and about a lot this week: saw two movies (Inception, which was deeply cool and chewy but maybe not as mind-blowing for me as other people found it, and Salt, which is a very silly place and let's go to Camelot instead), went on a boat cruise through the Toronto Harbour and around the islands, had my final inspection for the old apartment, and handed over the keys. Battle Moving is officially over. I can't describe how much better it feels to only be responsible for one place of residence. I have this notion I may never go east of Yonge again unless there's a friend's place involved.

And for tonight, there is beef I need to do something with (a sort of adulterated basil beef object is being plotted), farmshare beets I need to do something with (anyone have any good recipes?) and words to write.

Back to report later if that turns out. With my metrics or on them!

*It is always a workers' paradise when you get days off.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: 102.1 The Edge

July 21, 2010 Progress Notes:

"The Closet Monster"

Words today: 1350.
Words total: 14,900.
Reason for stopping: Draft! And right on wordcount target.

Books in progress: Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies; Nick Hornby, Juliet, Naked.
The glamour: We have a farm share! All the way until November! I picked up the first batch today on the way home from work: rainbow chard, green beans, heritage bell peppers, new potatoes, salad greens. Many leafy greens will sauteed for great justice (and dinner) tomorrow night. Probably with sesame oil and a bit of chopped garlic.

Today was not working out so well until I scored the farm share, which then led me to think things about salmon and white wine mustard sauce and brown rice, and then I suddenly had this wonderful dinner on my plate and it was sunny and lovely outside, not too hot or muggy, and I was full of nice food and had all evening to kill. So I went to Aroma and wrote until I ran out of battery, for alas, they have good coffee and croissants, but their plugs do not work. And then I came home with a few hundred words to go, changed into pajamas, and finished this draft. So in sum, I'm already living up to my use-name of Writes-In-Coffeeshops again, but the coffeeshops in this neighbourhood are much more plentiful, and definitely nicer to hang out in besides.

And here's a picture I didn't take: Walking along Bloor on the way home, laptop in my tote bag and the patios full of people, just breathing in all the chatter and the sweet green-grass summer evening smell and the bit of woodsmoke that always comes off the pizza oven at Hey Lucy and makes you feel like you're up north at overnight camp; a twentysomething guy on a bike went barrelling down the street, sitting up straight, arms out, balancing like a unicyclist, with the biggest, happiest shit-eating grin on his face in the history of ever.

I started laughing in the middle of the sidewalk and nearly walked into a bench.

Good save, day. We pulled that one out of the gutter real nice. Go team. *g*

Goodnight. :)

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Broken Social Scene -- Almost Crimes

Home, as of about an hour ago, despite tornado warnings, torrential rain, and one serious weather-enforced stop in Kitchener. Nothing's broken in the two blocks between the subway and home. Things were really, really quiet. I don't know how things are looking by the office, which was pretty much ground zero, but which knew it was going to be ground zero.

We'll see how things look tomorrow. I have some errands to run down on Queen Street.

Before I go run myself a bath and pour a glass of wine and try to wash two days of constant adrenaline out of my mouth, just to put this out there: This is really upsetting to me. It ranks high on the list of things that could happen in the world that would upset and frighten and hurt me. I get that to some people it's a hypothetical, that it's something that happens far away, that it's just things or it's a brick in a political platform, and I get that some people have different coping mechanisms.

To me it's very real, and for a variety of reasons, it's intensely personal. Intensely.

I'm asking everyone to please be considerate of that. I'm feeling severely wounded and vulnerable here, and it makes me snappish. Until things have settled some, until I at least know that the people and things I care about are where I left them, until I've had a chance to go down to the river or something, being considerate in this space would be appreciated.

Current Mood: distressed
Current Music: Stars -- In Our Bedroom After the War

I don't know how to wrap my head around this.

I'm out of town right now, in an exceedingly nice hotel room with a view of Windsor, Detroit, and the river between. Back at home, in my city, in my neighbourhood, there's this happening.

They're rioting in my city. There are cops firing rubber bullets into the crowd outside my office and arresting people face down in the grass in the park where I eat my lunch. There are SWAT teams on the paths of my university. There are police cars burning out front of my favourite movie theatre, a couple blocks from

bakkaphoenix, and the stores on Yonge where I checked in on Thursday to try to get a mirror for the new apartment, some tights for work, my groceries, have had their windows smashed in. There are pictures all over the internet of violence, destruction, anger. I've been refreshing the #G20 Twitter feed here for an hour or two. I'm pretty sure I've annoyed my friends by staying in to do that instead of coming out for dinner.

I can't stop looking. I want to cry. I am crying.

I've been trying to intellectualize this, trying to process it all day; to write something here for you that would communicate the worth and weight and heft of how this feels, to write about how a building is not just a building, but a node of experience and memory; about neighbourhoods and what they're made of, their tacit social contracts and how the Annex tastes different from Church/Wellesley feels different from the Beaches; about how I dream the Don River sometimes, swim it in my dreams or watch it run like lifeblood under the Bloor Viaduct, joke about how years of drinking unfiltered Toronto tap water has bound me to that river like sympathetic magic or a geas and now I'll never be able to go somewhere else for good, lest I wither and die.

I've got nothing. I have nothing wise or pointful or calm to say. There's no art in my fingers right now. All I want to do is wail.

The overriding theme, which I`m sure my mother would disagree with strongly if she read my LJ? I should have stayed home. I am a big fucking traitor.

I really, really want to go home right now.

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: none

Leah, where have you been for the last 48 hours? Well, Internet, I'm glad you asked. It's NXNE, and I have been Seeing Bands.

After Aurora's goodbye party at

bakkaphoenix on Friday (it was her last shift, and she's worked there seven years) I headed over to Dundas Square for the free Sloan show. Sloan! The TTC was irrevocably messed up, and I missed probably half the set, but the half I did catch had songs I knew and liked in it, so I could bop around a bit and sing the set back to the band. Got...I think Believe in Me, The Other Man, Money City Maniacs, Coax Me, some other stuff I can't remember before and around those.

I'm not sure how I feel about Dundas Square as a concert venue. It's a little too distributed; it bleeds into the street, and there are still the billboards and ads and stuff getting in the way of things. I can't quite get the feel of a room there, and it's hard to get into things.

On the other hand, yesterday's proceedings?

Olympic Island is a perfect concert venue.

Okay, you do have to get across on the ferry. And the ferry was packed. And as we all know, the island is another nation unto itself, because that's the only way to explain how expensive a beer is ten minutes across the lake. But oh man, perfect day. Incredible day.

The stage setup is festival-style: a nice big grassy field you can congregate in to dance in front of the stage, as well as nice big shady trees off to the side where you can just sit between sets -- or sit through sets if you're so inclined -- and veg and chat. And since the island doesn't do regular concerts, they don't have a regular promoter, so the food available wasn't the usual Pizza Pizza and crappy beer: it was local restaurants with booths like you get at the literary festivals. Dinner was spendy, but it was also this awesome veggie burger on a real-bakery whole grain bun, with miso and fresh veggies and a cob of roasted corn. Nom. And you could see clear across to the city, and everything smelled like lake water and cut grass and sunshine, and the mood of the whole thing was just so very happy and chilled out and friendly. I looked up in the middle of the BSS set at the setting sun, and light was just spiraling through the clouds.

Did I mention it's a perfect concert venue?

I didn't get over there until about 4pm, since it was pouring earlier in the afternoon (successfully waited that out) and I took some time to get myself together to go. I ended up not actually taking the Centre Island ferry but the Ward's one -- for non-Toronto types, there are three ferry docks on the island -- and walking in, which was hot. And nice. And hot. This means I missed the Toronto Revue and Timber Timbre, which kind of sucked since I'd wanted to catch The Beauties, but eh. They're local. I can do this another time.

Lindsey and our third person (friend of hers) weren't scheduled to show up until just before the Broken Social Scene set, so I had a few hours to kill. Serendipitously, I ran into my friend Mike, who you may remember from previous concertgoing reports, and several of his friends, and ended up hanging out with them.

Danced through the Beach House set, and then sat in the shade eating dinner and chatting through the Band of Horses set (and they play a really good set, I was just hungry). And then more people showed up and Broken Social Scene, who is who we came to see, was on. So we went and elbowed into the crowd and danced some more:

That is about the only picture I got. I was busy with the music thing.

I've never seen Broken Social Scene live before, but I get the feeling it was a pretty typical set for them. They brought out all kinds of people who used to be more regularly associated with the whole project, like Leslie Feist and Emily Haines, which, okay, I admit made me squee a bit. I got about 50% of my "please play this!" list: they did Lover's Spit and Fire Eye'd Boy and Cause = Time and Almost Crimes (yaaay), but no Backyards or Her Disappearing Theme or others.

A lot of people left before the Pavement set, including a bunch of the people we were with, so a couple of us stuck it out, found a good spot, and finished it off. Pavement's funny; one of those bands I remember from around the edges of the stuff I used to listen to in high school. I recognized a lot of songs in there, but I couldn't name you a setlist for my life. Also, well, I was probably a little dehydrated and exerted out and whee! at that point anyway.

We managed to get onto the second ferry back, and I went home across the lake, under the stars with wind in my hair, feeling kind of icky with sweat and sunscreen, insanely thirsty, reeking of secondhand smoke of several varieties, legs aching so much I couldn't keep balance, and totally, absolutely, completely happy.

That is how a festival concert is supposed to be, my people.

The result of this is that I was way too tired and achy this afternoon to go see Spookey Ruben (blast), and so that is the end of the Weekend Where I Watch All The Music.

Next year, I'm going into training or something before NXNE. And I'm doing it with a plan. But either way? Squee. :)

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Broken Social Scene -- Art House Director

June 14, 2010 Progress Notes:

"The Closet Monster"

Words today: 500.
Words total: 11,900.
Reason for stopping: Went out to shuttle things to the new place and then drink beer on a patio. Like you do.

Books in progress: Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote; John M. Ford, Web of Angels.
The glamour: Pretty copious: managed to make bread, redye my hair to its brilliant blue colour in time for the New Pornographers concert tomorrow night and write words before heading out this evening. This is what we call a good use of my time.

Okay, the patio was not actually Mexican; it was the Victory Cafe, home of both really stoned waiters and the best mac and cheese in the city. I just thought the line was funny. So there!

Managed to move over some extraneous dishes and the wire basket thing that's going to be our pantry, mostly by the good graces of

theshaggy, who valiantly carries heavy things for and/or with me. We retired to the Victory after, had food and beer, and watched the sun set through the trees out on the patio. There was a grey and brown kitty who spent some time perched behind me on the railing inspecting some nails that weren't hammered in all the way, but she apparently didn't want to appear on film.

After that, we stopped at Greg's for ice cream (cinnamon and sweet cream, one scoop of each, thankya) and meandered homewards. I can tell I'm still a little out of shape from the ankle thing -- there's a bit of a blister coming up on the sole of my foot -- but it's a nice night for a walk: warm, breezy, a little bit humid but not much more.

I have a really good life. Maybe I don't say that enough. But yeah: I have a really, really good life.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Snowblink -- Human Nature

Cleaning house today, in preparation for the inspection they're going to do tomorrow of what needs to be fixed in here before I move out. This would have been easier if I'd had water this morning, or yesterday night, or Friday morning, but we do what we can with the tools that we have. Also: the way the pipes in this building suck goats, rocks, and something vegetable will shortly no longer be my problem, because I am moving, and so there.

Otherwise? It is sunshiny here in La T-Dot. The horrific busy season of the Dayjob ended officially on Thursday, and I have had more sleep and fun and nutritious food in the past three days than I've had in the past three weeks. I feel stupidly, wonderfully better for it. Have, since Thursday afternoon, been to Mother's Dumplings (nom), hung out with the horror types at CZP's summer titles launch party, saw Cory Doctorow at the Merril, walked home at midnight in the kind of light rain that's nice and not icky, had fresh-squeezed lemonade, embarked on a shopping expedition for ridiculous sparkly things with

ksumnersmith, saw Splice (predictable movie, but not bad movie) and had Vietnamese with

theshaggy, and most importantly, slept in.

It appears to be summer.

I also have a colossal sunburn on my back from going out to the island for the Dayjob Annual Staff Picnic on Friday and getting sunscreen everywhere but said back. You can see the exact line of my sundress painted out in red on my back. It doesn't actually hurt at all, so I don't mind too much, but we may revisit that opinion if/when it starts peeling.

We wandered off from the picnic in the afternoon and took a walk through Centreville, which for the non-Toronto types is a little kid's amusement park and zoo in the middle of Centre Island. They have a lot of giant aggressive ducks in Centreville. Take a look at this mean bastard and the squint in his eye.

Also, they have peacocks. Which are beautiful, and have a cry that sounds like a small child yelling "Help!". This is maximally freaky, especially when you aren't expecting it.

It was hot out. We couldn't find ice cream, which is what we'd gone wandering looking for. But we were on the beach, and the lake was warm, and so.

I cannot explain to you how good that felt.

And these are the fables on my street.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: The New Pornographers -- These Are the Fables

Things purchased so far this weekend, in order of acquisition:

-- Brown indie designer hoodie with a bit of Bathurst and Queen silkscreened onto it;
-- Cute little indie designer black and white floral quasi-babydoll dress;
-- The annual dyeing-of-the-roots to get my blue streaks back into shape, plus haircut while we were at it;
-- Books! Karin Lowachee's The Gaslight Dogs and

truepenny's Corambis, specifically;
-- A blue feathered fascinator which sets off my streaks really nicely;
-- The layaway deposit on these. Yes. I know. I'm insane. I have no idea why I just did that and I'm not sorry.

[Poll #1547045]

That said, it's a beautiful day in Torontoville. I think I want to go find a patio to sit on. And drink something. Something girly.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: birds chirping outside

February 3, 2010 Progress Notes:

"Untitled Toronto Story"

Words today: 150.
Words total: 150.
Reason for stopping: Time to sit back on the haunches and circle this one too.

Darling du Jour: It comes in by water.
The city comes in by water and lodges in your skin. You never see it coming. It's a lifetime of quick showers, drinks gulped from the backyard hose, a face tilted up into the rain on a summer afternoon. By the time you switch to filtered water it's too late: there's lake silt and river-blood sunk in your bones, and no matter how you duck between the snowflakes and boil your cooking water, all is lost.
You will never realize the extent of your contamination until you try to leave.

Mean Things: I'm not actually sure yet.
Research Roundup: The Font de las Canaletes in Barcelona.

Books in progress: Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye.
The glamour: Dayjob in extremis, the murder of a decent amount of annoying paperwork of all stripes. And I made a cinnamon bread.

This, I think, will be part of a diptych with "Stay".

I am cannibalizing an older part-drafted story for this one. It wasn't going right, or going anywhere, and I have a terrible urge tonight to write about my city and the love I bear it. Everything I have on the go is dark, or plans to be, or has darkness running underneath it like a river of ice, and I want to write a love story. Insofar as I ever write love stories. Well, insofar as they're ever clean.

Work earlyish tomorrow. I bid you adieu.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker -- Me vs. Us

Yeah, I've been quiet this week. It hasn't been a great one here at the Casa: two funerals to attend, ongoing water problems (nothing says "I love you" like stepping into the shower in the morning, turning the taps, and having nothing come out), no writing, and a resultant general malaise. Emo writer has been emo. Luckily, going out to Lesley Livingston's totally excellent book launch for Darklight last night -- and the prospect of some Winterlicious dinner reservations -- seems to have dealt with most of it. Heading out to the market for good cheese and pierogies should hopefully put paid to the rest. Regular service to resume shortly.

That means I'm going to unload on you all the bits and bobs of story news that piled up while I was off contemplating skinny jeans, long bangs, and mine own navel.

TTA Press, which publishes Interzone, is having their favourite stories and art of 2009 readers' poll. "Miles to Isengard" is available for voting if the spirit so moves you, as are other stories like

eugie's "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast". Which I enjoyed, thankya.

Lois Tilton at IROSF (which appears to be closing next issue) reviews "Mister Oak": mostly a summary and "A fanciful fable." She also reviews the December Ideomancer, without complaint.

Last and maybe most interestingly, "The Parable of the Shower" appears to be getting Nebula recs, or so say my SFWA-member spies. I am bemused and interested by this! Beats the hell out of me! But if you're so moved to throw more of those on the pile, this appears to be a good time to do it.

(Yes, that is the most award-campaigning anyone will ever get out of me. Still Canadian here, people.)

And with that, I still have no pierogies or parmigiano reggiano (and learned A Lesson last night about trying to make alfredo sauce with inferior parmesan byproduct. Never do this) and need to take myself to St. Lawrence to rectify that shit. And buy some yeast. Because I'm out of bread too, and we can't be having that.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: New Order -- Turn My Way

January 6, 2010 Progress Notes:

"The Closet Monster"

Words today: 700.
Words total: 4400.
Reason for stopping: Out of tea. Out of plot. Game over!

Books in progress: Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, and Selected Stories.
The glamour: Not a lot, actually. I got home cold in that way you just can't shake, and finally had to retreat to the bathtub and soak for an hour to get warm again. Yes, I am a born and bred Canadian girl. No, I do not do cold weather well.

Today after work I made pilgrimage to Tap Phong with

ginny_t to ogle piles and piles and piles of really inexpensive kitchen stuff and have a nice, satisfying materialist binge. Luckily, a nice, satisfying materialist binge at Tap Phong only really costs you forty bucks and includes virtuous things like five million kitchen sponges, a cheap saucepan to melt candle wax in for purposes of candlemaking, a tagine pot-like object so we can eat off dishes at work like a civilized person (tm) instead of warming stuff up in battered tupperware and hoping for the best, a tea tray (also for work), a replacement for that ceramic soup spoon we broke, and a new teapot.

New Teapot has already earned its keep. Aside from costing me four bucks ($4.00 CAD), it has a very nice little mesh cup thing that you put the tea in and suspend into the pot proper, a good grippy handle, and holds three or four mugs' worth. The spout isn't great, but I will consider this to be New Teapot's nod to Wabi-sabi.

I was greatly pleased and nipped down to Furama for a box of tasty Chinese bakery buns to express my pleasure. You know, while I was in the neighbourhood and stuff. Like you do.

Some reviews are coming in, and there's some other announcey stuff to do, but I will save that for tomorrow, when I'll be more awake and you guys will probably be...awake, period.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker -- P.S. I Can Change

From today's Toronto Star:

The hard driving, florid-faced Sam McBride (1928–29 and 1936) was a swaggering, two-fisted, red-blooded mayor who would beat up councillors he didn't like. McBride would knock aldermen around the council chamber, or pin them up against walls, even swat them with sheaves of documents.

...two-fisted mayor.

I will buy a whole pitcher for the person who draws me a Sam McBride: Two-Fisted Mayor comic.

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Music: Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker -- Drop Around the Clock

A picture I didn't take tonight:

Standing on the southbound platform at Bloor station, 1:00 in the morning, full of pineapple and blueberries and chicken, wrapped up warm in my elegant black wool winter coat and blue beret. To the left of me a sweet-looking guy explains to his friend how he and this girl are just at the same places in their lives, just moving together, how it feels inevitable. The walls are bright where the white tile is and dark where there's some credit card ad painted black in a wide banner, and the light glitters a little off the metal pillars. And across from me, on the northbound platform, two guys are sitting on one of the red benches playing guitar.

The one on the left is playing chords and singing in a voice that's raw and rough and gorgeous, and the one on the right has his guitar flat across his lap, black trenchcoat shoved back, and he's fingerpicking with frightening accuracy, all the while leaned back casual against the station wall. They're jamming without looking at each other, just circling in and around and through this one song, and nobody's particularly watching; everyone's just taking it in, and I absentmindedly start to dance, shuffle my hips, do a little turn on the ball of my foot--

--and the train comes in.

Happy Longest Night, m'dears.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Queen -- Under Pressure

November 24, 2009 Progress Notes:

"When Your Number Isn't Up"

Words today: 300.
Words total: 1600.
Reason for stopping: It sweated me tonight. And the teapot's empty.

Darling du Jour: O'Shaughnessy Drug opened early on weekdays for the red-eye crowd: gamblers and confidence men and tired cleaning women in faded blue dresses, slurping coffee before the trip uptown.

Mean Things: Botched suicides and bad, sad, tired neighbourhoods.
Research Roundup: What magnesium smells like, 1940s chewing tobacco brands, 1949 crime stats, 1940s cleaning woman uniforms, Rita Hayworth (photo reference).

Books in progress: A.M. Dellamonica, Indigo Springs.
The glamour: Dayjob in extremis. And then some pasketti. And sending a story acceptance for Ideo, which is always fun.

Okay, I don't know how long this'll actually turn out to be? But I think it gets its own tag and icon now. Backtagging/iconing will commence shortly, and let's all be thankful for the miracle of the Internet, which lets me find good 1940s photos for my icons. I still need to dredge up another one or two good melancholy, Tom Waits-esque rain-at-midnight fedora-pulled-down noir songs for the soundtrack, but it'll probably keep for another night.

All other news is scattered and quotidian: I have a pomegranate, and it's misty enough out that I can't see past a block out the window, and I'm inexplicably homesick for decades I never lived in. My kingdom for a brownstone apartment above College Street in 1947 or so, with hand-painted store signs and double-ended streetcars and good hats back in fashion.

The homesickness might be the fault of the pomegranate. They're good for things you can't have, or aren't even sure why you want, or which live in black and white.

Heh. I am become maudlin. Guess that's a sign to call it a night.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Tom Waits -- Alice

Today was a psychotically busy awesome crazy totally awesome day.

Was up way early, after really not enough sleep at all, to head out to Stratford and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival to see the closing performance of Macbeth. Reason I had to do this urgently? It's Colm Feore as Macbeth and Geraint Wyn Davies as Duncan. Yes! Pierre Trudeau murders Nick Knight* for the throne of Scotland! How could I not see this?

It was a little more of the declamation style of doing Shakespeare than the naturalistic style, which I prefer, but the change of era/setting worked: they did it in a 1960s sort of Central African setting rather than the medieval Scotland. I wasn't sure about this initially. But it really, really served the text well, and illuminated some things about said text for me that I hadn't actually fully realized before, so I'm thinking that move was a total success. The staging wasn't that interesting in the first half (went up to about Banquo's ghost at the banquet) but they did some things with quick changes, wardrobe choices, flitting back and forth between places/times while retaining actors onstage, lighting, and establishing place with four flatscreen TVs mounted on the pillars of the stage, with various scenery or stuff on them, that really made the stage design a totally active part of the experience in the second half; something that really informed the production.

Also, the guy who played Macduff brought me to tears in the good way. And the guy who played the Porter was freaking hilarious. Hats off.

From there, made it home at 6:30 or so feeling tired, a bit travel-smelly, and with ultimate low blood sugar. After eating and shower, I wasn't sure if I was actually going to make it out for Halloween tonight, but

ksumnersmith,

dolphin__girl, and

cszego persuaded me out of doors. Sadly, I didn't have time to make my superawesome Halloween costume idea, so I just threw together some stuff from the closet (including the 1920s Girl Detective Death Hat) and achieved a creditable Raymond Chandler Femme Fatale/Girl Reporter thing. Apparently I do own bright red lipstick and it actually looks good on me. Fancy that.

Mostly we nosed through Church St. and then down to Queen and John, looking for somewhere we could go dancing. It was late enough that the lineups were huge and Sarah eventually had to head home due to early work tomorrow, but a bit after midnight I fortituously ran into Friend Mike, who tipped us off about a party the Silver Snail was hosting nearby. And that was an awesome party. We danced our butts off. I saw both a friend from the Star Wars lineup who I haven't seen in four years at least and a guy I did theatre with in high school, who I haven't seen in at least nine. I had a gin martini and held it sassily in my lace-gloved Femme Fatale/Girl Reporter hand, which was a life goal for this evening in this costume. We know where we're going next year.

Packed it in around last call, not sure whether the streetcars were running because it was either 2am or 1am, and while the TTC usually runs until 2am, we weren't sure how they were counting that tonight. We ended up walking up Spadina** and finally catching the Vomit Comet*** homewards. And it is a lovely night and cool, and there were still bunches of people on the streets laughing and chatting and singing, and really, this was a good day and I love my town.

And now it is the second hour between midnight and one, which only comes once a year and is a kinda special hour for me. I'll explain it one day. Or won't. Either way. But I am tired and happy and my black lace gloves are all covered in gin and need washing badly, and I must wrap this up and take myself to bed.

*Oh wow, and in looking those links up I just realized that Geraint Wyn Davies played Bill Davis in the Trudeau miniseries. That's...just kind of gloriously fucked up.

**Okay, for me it was a little more weaving than walking. It was a strong gin martini. It went to the head.

***For those who are Not Torontonians: the all-night Yonge Street bus. Many, many people go home from clubs on it every weekend. Hence the name.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Soulsavers -- Ghosts of You and Me

While we're on the topic of Gothics, anyone up for a staging of The Turn of the Screw at Campbell House?

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: el dayjob grande
Current Music: typitychat

Just home from a literal full day at Word on the Street, which was fun and interesting and happy-making as usual. I got to see a whole bunch of people (partners in book-festivaling

ksumnersmith and

thesandtiger; occasional partner in on her lunch break

dolphin__girl;

cszego and Lorna Toolis at the Merrill Collection table, and Allan Weiss beside it;

delta_november and

jo_etal for the first time since Worldcon;

jack_yoniga,

kelpqueen,

davidnickle, and Claude Lalumiere at the Chizine Press table; Stephen Geigen-Miller and Greg Beettam for like the first time in forever). This is good, because I have been hermiting like a hermiting thing since Worldcon and it was good and refreshing and fun to see my peoples.

There was Eggs Benedict and vanilla rose white tea for late lunch. And there were books.

The haul:

Utopia: Towards a New Toronto, Jason McBride and Alana Wilcox, eds.
The City Man, Howard Akler (For my small-yet-growing collection of books set in Toronto.)
Lemon, Cordelia Strube (Because hey, I like about 75% of what Coach House Press puts out.)
Faces on Places: A Grotesque Tour of Toronto, Terry Murray (This was five bucks and is about gargoyles. That is awesome.)
This Will All End In Tears, Joe Ollmann (graphic novel)
Xeno's Arrow vol. 1, Greg Beettam and Stephen Geigen-Miller (also graphic novel)

This filled up a tote bag in a comforting kind of way. I went pretty local and CanLitty this year, but hey, that's what Word on the Street is good for. I am left slightly sweaty and with that good pull in my legs from all the walking, flush with reading material, and fully pleased with my lot in life.

Now? I think I shall go find some novel or other that needs poking. Tonight is a night for words. :)

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Matthew Good -- Empty's Theme Park

This has not been a good week. Hell, this has not been a good three weeks. But that is not what I am here to talk about. What I am here to talk about is this:

( This year's books, so far... )

#46 -- Maggie Helwig, Girls Fall Down (in progress)

I'm not even finished this one yet, but. But. I am blowing off three genre books, one by a very good friend, for this little literary edge-of-fabulism thingie printed on lovely ridged paper, and doing it gladly.

Thing is, this is one of those times where I'm not sure my total fatuous love for a book actually translates into a recommendation.

Someone recommended me Maggie Helwig, and I think it was either for the prose style or the feminist threads running through. Neither of these things are why I am in love with this book. Why I am in love with this book is because it is set in my Toronto, which is very different from the Toronto next door or that of someone who lives across town. I recognize the houses in it on description, bits of Kensington or Bathurst and College (

dolphin__girl, there's a whole half-chapter down the street from your old place). I can trace the landmarks, and her landmarks are to a certain degree also my landmarks; our important places, the ones that actually make a person's city, overlap. I keep chuckling just a little, and it's with recognition.

This is a book about my city. And, well. That doesn't translate unless we have the same city too.

But for me, at least, this is like rereading parts of Minus Time (which I did this week) or the first section of In the Skin of a Lion or parts of Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask or even Ellen/Elena/Luna, which I haven't reread in years. It's like finding someone else in the secret club of people who somehow, without ever meeting, inhabit the same space; are passing through the rest of the world just a little out of phase, but out of phase on the same frequency, so you can see each other solid as you walk by.

It's like coming home.

I really need to write more of the Toronto stories sitting half-outlined on my hard drive.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: The Arcade Fire -- Crown of Love

August 23, 2009 Progress Notes:

"Highway" (rankest working title)

Words today: 2050, although not all of that is actually today's. I had about 700 of it here and there over the last month, but apparently neglected to log that.
Words total: 2050.
Reason for stopping: Draft.

Books in progress: Daniel Rabuzzi, The Choir Boats.
The glamour: We went to the Festival of South Asia this afternoon, which netted me a skirt, a completely awesome mendhi on my left hand (the henna's still on, and looks wonderful; I'll take it off and hope it's dark enough before bed), butter chicken, gulab jamun, and an Indian limeade in an old-style glass bottle. Unfortunately, then undisclosed body parts staged a godless mutiny and I had to go home, pop a lot of Advil, and nap until almost nine.

Oh well.

As per the last post's metric, nobody pooped on my shirt, so the day was still a net win.

Current Mood: achy
Current Music: Thirteen Senses -- Into the Fire

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Fiction and Other White Lies

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Drowning Nor Waving

This girl's life among the electrical lights

Entries tagged with torontophilia

You need a lot of tags when you don't post for two weeks.

Le week-end.

I think it's almost time.

In our bedroom after the war.

(no subject)

Magic light until tomorrow night

I'm on a Mexican pati-oooo.

Cities in circles drawn perfect, complete.

The evidence is really mounting against me here.

Love it grows on trees. Fall is once a year.

Reviews. Foodporn. Slightly awkward self-promotion.

If my circles were cubes, I'd be building.

Taking on the Great Depression...with his FISTS.

This is our last dance. This is ourselves.

a murder of silhouette crows

Halloweeeeeen.

Ooh hey.

Word.

Cities. Mine, and yours.

And you may ask yourself, where does that highway go to?