Sidewalk patio of the Just Us Cafe — Wolfville, Nova Scotia

Caucasian male, late 20s, with brush cut, sunglasses perched on top of head, and wearing black fleecie.

You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe, Christopher Potter (Knopf Canada)

Page 59:

It’s Not About You

Not at first did the gods reveal all things to mortals, but in time, by inquiry, they made better discoveries. -Xenophanes

Our understanding of how the contents of the large-scale universe are arranged – as a hierarchy of stars in motion – is the result of hundreds of years of scientific investigation. Whatever the scientific method has become, it was not always as it is now. It has evolved over time, in tandem with our understanding of the universe, and doubtless will continue to evolve as our understanding of the universe deepens. Science and the universe are inseparable.

My first birthday was five days after the moon landing, but my mother always liked to brag that I took my first “giant leap” before Neil Armstrong. My father, in his excitement over the Apollo 11 mission, took photographs of our bulby television set. Sadly, the pictures all failed, the screen turned to a murky green in the blinding Sylvania flash. It was cause for deep disappointment. You have to understand, he was a Navy man. He was a flight mech. in the Korean war, keeping the planes going, testing them by day, but never flying by night, never completing a mission because he was colour blind. He was nineteen.

Ami McKay

Read Be Seein’ Ya. Thanks for three great years!

~~~

Caucasian female, early 30s, wearing grey track suit, riding home on 84 bus down 4th Avenue. The Book Warehouse bag contained two items and she was thoroughly engrossed in reading about the art of long-term world travel.

Vagabonding, Rolf Potts (Villard)

In reality, long-term travel has nothing to do with demographics — age, ideology, income — and everything to do with personal outlook. Long-term travel isn’t about being a college student; it’s about being a student of daily life. Long-term travel isn’t an act of rebellion against society; it’s an act of common sense within society. Long-term travel doesn’t require a massive “bundle of cash”; it requires only that we walk through the world in a more deliberate way.

This deliberate way of walking through the world has always been intrinsic to the time-honored, quietly available travel tradition known as “vagabonding.”

Vagabonding involves taking an extended time-out from your normal life – six weeks, four months, two years – to travel the world on your own terms.

But beyond travel, vagabonding is an outlook on life. Vagabonding is about using the prosperity and possibility of the information age to increase your personal options instead of your personal possessions. Vagabonding is about looking for adventure in normal life, and normal life within adventure. Vagabonding is an attitude?a friendly interest in people, places, and things that makes a person an explorer in the truest, most vivid sense of the word.

Vagabonding is not a lifestyle, nor is it a trend. It’s just an uncommon way of looking at life – a value adjustment from which action naturally follows. And, as much as anything, vagabonding is about time – our only real commodity – and how we choose to use it.

Are you a vagabond?

As Walt Whitman says in “Song of the Open Road”:

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

Monique Trottier

Kits Beach Starbucks, outside table — Vancouver, B.C.

Caucasian male, hipster, with shaggy blond curls poking out from under fedora, wearing jeans, plaid shirt (urban plaid), and drinking a vente triple-shot espresso.

The European Colonial Empires: 1815-1919, H.L. Wesseling (Longman)

Page 6:

The company system was encouraged, because the administrative costs were borne not by the state but by those who made the profit, namely the traders. In England various overseas trading companies had been founded as early as the 1560s and in 1600 a British East India Company was created there as well. In 1648 it established its headquarters in East India House, not far from the harbours and docks of London. In 1657 this undertaking received a charter and became a joint stock company. Its activities focused mainly on India and China.

The pretentions and stereotypes of my neighbourhood prevail in many ways, yet I do think this fellow was thoroughly enjoying his book.

Monique Trottier

Eastbound, Bloor and Bay

Black woman, mid 30s, with long dark hair, wearing floral silk jacket, and grey dress pants.

Bottomfeeder, Taras Grescoe (HarperCollins)

Page 262:

The frozen pollock blocks are then sold to converters, such as Newfoundland-based Fishery Products International, or Gorton’s of Gloucester, which saw them into patty-sized portions (meaning a single patty can contain the flesh of several fish). They are then breaded and prefried. Alaskan pollock goes into 90 percent of the three hundred million Filet-O-Fishes McDonald’s sells in North America every year. It is also the main ingredient in the fish sandwiches sold by Arby’s, Dairy Queen, and Burger King.

Her first job was working the night shift in the drive-through, just her and a newer hire who was convinced on his first day to grab bags of air from storage once he was done taking pickle inventory. Years later, when she came into his computer store with a problem with her hard drive, he took his chances that she wouldn’t have access to a magnet powerful enough to do any real damage.

Enter the Revenge Lit contest, judged by Dan Wells (Biblioasis), Terry Griggs (Thought You Were Dead), and yours truly! Contest closes June 12, 2009. Crazy good prizes!

Northbound, Spadina streetcar

Asian male, mid 20s, wearing black zipped jacket, faded black jeans, and brown boots.

When Germs Travel, Howard Markel (Vintage Books)

Page 8:

Medical historians often study how responses to disease are socially constructed or shaped by nonbiological factors. We attempt to gather as much data as possible about a particular era’s social institutions, cultural perceptions, daily activities, and other variables to re-create a complete sense of the past. But such an approach often overlooks the patient’s actual experience with illness. Disease is socially constructed until you happen to find yourself in bed with one.

The woman in the cubicle next to him is a blonde. Her hair is long, and shiny, and never out of place. Her face is rotund. She takes long weekends. He’s turned to ask a few times, all but out of seat, then thinks better of it. Perhaps an email would be more work appropriate. Maybe a card. Not that long ago, she was a brunette, with short hair, and fine features, who showed up early, and stayed late.

(Originally published April 21st, 2008)

Church of the Holy Trinity

Caucasian male, 60, with grey hair and mustache, wearing black pants, black T-shirt, and blue silk shirt, surrounded by a semi-circle of audience members.

The Jesus Sayings: The Quest For His Authentic Message, Rex Weyler (House of Anansi Press)

Page 110:

The image satirizes religious pretension with a counterculture sense of humour. For Jesus, spiritual awareness is not something to boast about. It starts with the smallest seed, invades highly structured society like a weed, and provides protection for innocent creatures. As we assemble Jesus’ most likely original oral teachings, we can start here, with the lowly mustard seed.

Once a week, yellow school buses lined up outside the elementary school. She watched from the tarmac, clutching her hopscotch puck, as the buses filled front to back, the neighborhood’s children dangling their heads and hands out the open windows. She waved as they pulled away, her best friend bouncing and clapping, en route to the promise of free bibles and doughnuts, and a 25¢ treasure taped under the seats of 100 lucky souls.

30 in 30: Jeramy Dodds reading from Crabwise to the Hounds. Buy it here.

Spadina streetcar platform

South Asian woman, early 30s, with chin length black bob, wearing tweed pageboy cap, grey turtleneck sweater, and green knit scarf.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris (Little, Brown)

Page 55:

And so it was. But that didn’t stop me from wearing it. Though pear-shaped, my artificial bottom was not without its charms. It afforded me a confidence I hadn’t felt in years and gave me an excuse to buy flattering slacks and waist length jackets. While walking to the grocery store or post office, I’d invariably find myself passed by a stranger who’d clearly thought he was following somebody else: Little Miss January, or Pamela Anderson’s stunt double.

The fit mistress put her at ease in an instant. She barely blinked, measuring her like a tailor, not a mention of the scarring.

***
20 poets for $8.00? It’s true!

Visit Authors at Harbourfront Centre to purchase tickets!

Open Stage Night

TONIGHT, 7:30pm, Brigantine Room

Line up for this lineup!

Oana Avasilichioaei
Catherine Black
Clara Blackwood
Kyle Buckley
Dani Couture
Asher Ghaffar
Jason Guriel
Jennica Harper
Angela Hibbs
Ryan Kamstra
Jp King
Michael Knox
Jacob McArthur Mooney
Alison Pick
Alessandro Porco
Johanna Skibsrud
Meaghan Strimas
Angela Szczepaniak
Natalie Zina Walschots
Zoe Whittall

Spadina streetcar platform

Caucasian woman, mid 20s, with wet, long brown hair pushed back by glasses, wearing long brown coat, and small leather backpack.

The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell (Anchor)

Page 20:

There is something magical about films. The person you are looking at is also somewhere else at the same time. That is the condition of a god. If a movie actor comes into the theater, everybody turns and looks at the movie actor. He is the real hero of the occasion. He is on another plane. He is a multiple presence. What you are seeing on the screen really isn’t he, and yet the ‘he’ comes.

If she didn’t answer her phone, he’d worry she’d fallen asleep in the tub, and skip out of work to check in on her. If she did answer her phone, he’d hear the noise and know. The phone continued to pulse and glow against the sticky table top, a fresh beer released from a stranger’s fingers into hers.

***

Enter the CBC Book Club contest!
Winner receives signed copies of this year’s Canada Reads contenders, plus a tote bag!
Follow along for details @seenreading.

Northbound, Spadina and Queen

Caucasian woman, late 20s, with long brown hair, wearing black coat, orange scarf, red knit cap, and carrying a large canvas book bag.

The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, Michael Pollan (Random House)

Page 114:

Yet it turns out that it is some of the bitter, bad plants that contain the most powerful magic — that can answer our desire and alter the textures and even the contents of our consciousness. There it is, right in the middle of the word intoxication, hidden in plain sight: toxic. The bright line between food and poison might hold, but not one between poison and desire.

She idled, hands at 10 and 2, and loosened her grip on the wheel, skin stretched tight in a mountainous ridge across the top of her knuckles. She pried two pieces of gum free from the foil pack, and popped one into her mouth, the other fumbled by the gas pedal. She undid her seatbelt and reached out toward the mat, her foot off the brake, retrieving the second piece of gum with less effort than it takes to drink and drive.

Eastbound, Bloor and Yonge

Black woman, early 60s, with grey hair, wearing black coat, black skirt, and simple silver chain.

Silence of the Songbirds, Bridget Stutchbury (HarperCollins)

Page 94:

The proliferation of sun coffee has not just hurt birds and other wildlife; it has been a disaster for many rural coffee farmers in Latin America. The financial gains for increased productivity of sun coffee are offset by the cost of fertilizers and pesticides, and the increased labour needed for the intense  maintenance of sun coffee, which requires year-round attention.

They’ve met every Wednesday morning, for sixteen years, at the bench in the parkette near the end of their street. One brings homemade bread, another jam. The third brings hot tea and brandy, their broad laughter echoing in the courtyard, soaring up building brickwork alongside the unflappable song of their bird friends.