The world has become
a spectacle of absence,
a radiant inventory.

— "Radiant Inventory," Christopher Dewdney

We spend so much of our lives seeking and finding. I've decided to pay attention for a while, and see what else turns up.

.   .   . 

[2001.07.08]
At the Cape there were signs posted along a stretch of road — messages scrawled on paper plates. One said, "Being home." Another one, which had blown to the ground, continued, "will be sublime." ¤

[2001.05.04]
The art of losing isn't hard to master. ¤

[2001.04.30]
In Mavis Gallant's short story, "An Autobiography," Erika, the narrator, observes a little girl who starts out convinced of her own version of an event but gradually revises it to please an adult who insists on another version. As Erika notes, "the corruption of memory had set in." That is the frightening and amazing thing about memory — that is does shift. With this understanding that representations may change, I've been striving for moments of clarity that could compensate for or stem the multiplying losses of memory. I go from each to each, like glass beads on a string, imminently shatterable, and some, just shattering. ¤

[2001.04.27]
I am beginning to suspect that my particular usage of "patio" and "cottage" and all that it should evoke — especially when deployed as verbs — is indigeneous to Ontario. Not sure about "two-four weekend." These words are key in my lexicon for leisure. Something is lost in the translation. ¤

[2001.04.06]
When I was in my early twenties and a voracious student of English literature, I'd make copies of poems and sections of books I couldn't afford to buy. Over the years, I kept these sheets of paper, which eventually took on the significance of that time in my life when I had to choose, food or books, and found a compromise. I treasured them. Now I have a bustling folder of papers, and it still doesn't seem right to throw them away or place them in a blue bin in hopes they really will spare a part of some tree. So in hopes that they'll be read again, I'm recycling them, like this: a poem here, a poem there, scraps of paper left in and around Back Bay and the South End of Boston, slipped inside books in stores and libraries, Lorna Crozier's Sex Lives of Vegetables in the grocery aisle, Dorothy Parker's "Unfortunate Coincidence" springing out of a bar menu, various Atwoods tucked into the pockets of friends, gifts to be found later. ¤

[2001.02.21]
Misfortune cookie: "Man who makes love on hill is not on the level. ¤

[2001.02.12]
On the way to the Houston airport, going home. I'm tired and I'm impatient. Everyone has wanted to touch my red velvet coat. I've lost my favourite lipstick, the one that tastes of lavender and sage and familiar kisses. "You are from Japan," the cab driver says. I don't give him the answer he is looking for, and the conversation ends. I turn up the volume on my CD player and let the music thrum.¤

[2001.02.04]
Suddenly, this sheet of paper comes back into my life. I unfolded it, read it, and have somehow already forgotten where it turned up. It was something I wrote after brunch with friends at the Sunset Grill in the Beach two years ago; it's about recognizing rhythm and ritual and appreciating small graces where we find them, and it ends like this: "I know that sounds so plain, but that's all I want, Belgian waffles or toast and blueberry jam." ¤