How Canada is a province and how being from Canada was once as exotic as being from Argentina, the Far East, or the moon. How being from Canada was once like living in the extended factory of the woods, and how the world was pulled up and pulled up again to fill hungry mouths to the east and south. How the old money solidified and beat itself into the hills and rivets of the earth. How the wind runs and pulls around your smooth fabrics, flapping in the wind: your arms, shoulders, neck.

In some bays filled with poisons, how they are also filled with fish and other things, little creatures latched onto themselves, plentiful and good to eat, but not good. In some plains, how cattle were forced out into the cold and the thick snow and made to starve, how the old, roving troupes of hard-furred winter-eaters were shot with long-rifles and revolvers and made to lie on the ground and die.

How one men came and the other men were already there and they both looked at each other, and one men killed the other men, in some cases, or robbed them and made them to live far away, in little barrier-towns. How one men put the adults in one place and the children in the other, and how one men touched the other men’s children while they were locked away.

How the whole men lived in a land-factory, how the earth was subjugated and made tame, and how all of the men laid foundations and set right-angles and grid patterns over all desireable land. How the whole men lived at right angles and tamed the world, and how they believed themselves tamed, though maybe not for a long time, maybe never.

The rain starts, as it has. A truck pulls out and groans across a stretch of road, echoing down the lane to the window. A streetcar does the same every ten minutes. Every ten minutes it is the same truck, the same streetcar, rumbling past the window, smothered under the same rain.

Humanity’s relationship with its interior “god”.

This argument does not presuppose or support the view that God does not or cannot exist. Instead, it speaks to the individual’s personal relationship with his or her interior “god” (as explained), whether or not they believe in the “formal” God—and completely independent of the question of His existence.

• What is most desired by humanity is what it cannot have, what it can only begin to articulate. In many cultures, this phenomenon is often described as, or with, “god”. When god becomes attainable it will mark the end of man.
• In this scenario, god cannot be obtained through perceived or spiritual attainment – he must be either caught or made. The death of humanity requires that god be transformed into something that can be actively called upon or used.
• This is the real collective “death wish” of society. We do not merely wish to die, or even desire that in passing. We wish to obtain god, something impossible to do except in extreme moments of selfless worship, through transcendental exercises (even activities, such as art) and through gruelling or particularly dangerous experiences— and never to use as a “tool”, independent of the specific activity.

How clever you are for remembering Tolstoy, Nabokov, and Carroll. Your story is better for remembering them, though it isn’t really much of a story. How interesting that you have eschewed entertainment or lasting images in favour of hinting (pathetically) at an essay you were too lazy to write. I urge you to write that essay, relate it to your experiences, relate it to a fictional story you made up in your head. Whatever you do, you must learn that fictions are not simple map-making, detailing all of the ways you are clever that you can (comfortably and uncomfortably) fit. The image must exist. It must be understood. A certain piece of it must be kept ambiguous, not for the sake of ambiguity or cleverness, but to keep the mind healthy and actively searching for god.

More on god tomorrow, if you’re interested.

This morning I was smiled at on the way to work, just for riding a bicycle. Later and unrelated I discovered a red dragonfly hitched a ride in my basket, flying off and resting on the pavement after I stopped.

“uh, uh, uh, I want to create something that motivates action during the most inactive portion of a person’s day, I want to create something that is so inactive and provides no physical reference point but that I can say ‘went viral’ which will perhaps distract me from the fact that the dissemination of my solution is worse than the problem, and causes young men and women to groan and scream and become afraid of their own brains.”

Let’s talk about the physical manifestation of your blog. It’s choking up my sink. When I wash my hands the water flows up to the top and spills out, splashing my pants and my legs. You will agree that it does not take much water to wash one’s hands. Let me tell you what it’s like to be old. When you’re old you confuse new and traditional media and you begin to think that a blog is worth a damn. Let me tell you a bit about your life. Your blog is not worth a damn. You are probably old (or you seem old) and you talk about your blog in old fashioned ways, like bragging to the bored girl you picked up at the bar, who is thinking of her old boy and how he never used to corner her with anecdotes about that time you cleverly dissected the metaphysics of the first and the second HULK.

I feel better about comics when I am not squeezing them out of my brain pustules. I don’t even know where those are or what they do or if they even exist, but it was terrible trying to squeeze them out of there. It’s not so much the ‘work’, it’s thinking about where the comics are going to end up. Art Spiegleman talks about that in McSweeney’s 27, his work is ruined or strained when he starts to think of something as ‘product’.

It’s just really hard to think of the things I post here as anything but. Maybe if I’m going to do comics I need to get a website without a comment system and ‘locked-in’ audience, I don’t know.

It is inspiring to read well-written books of literary criticism on subjects you know little about. Illuminated thusly, it becomes clear that Borges was a natural progression of the literary mode.

Meditation is the physical act of writing

Meditation is the physical act of writing

Meditation is the physical act of writing

Meditation is the physical act of writing

Meditation is the physical act of writing

Meditation is the physical act of writing