Monday, December 22, 2008

We walked the Unsilent Night through downtown Galt tonight. Eerie music, lightly falling snow, and no wind. Dad and I managed to steal enough CD's to recreate the experience on our own (the effect is created by overlapping tracks of specially composed musi). The creator describes it as a "free outdoor participatory sound sculpture of many individual parts ... played through a roving swarm of boomboxes carried through city streets. Bring your own boombox and drift peacefully through a cloud of sound that is different from every listener's perspective." There weren't enough boomboxes, but we still heard some of the sound, some of the time, and the weather was kind to the event. I think the sound sculpture will help me concentrate during my school work and exam studying next term. If I even have exams! I didn't have any this term, and it was real nice. I write about this because the main event of yesterday I still find too traumatic and heartbreaking to examine. I finished East of Eden, and it left a deep impression on me. I can't compare it to Grapes of Wrath, I probably still like Grapes better, but I feel much more emotionally involved in Eden right now. I can't talk about those people, they are still too dear to me. Oh, my heart.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

None of the last 20 people to visit my blog were in Halifax

12
IrelandBray, Wicklow
13
GreeceAthens, Attiki
14
SpainMadrid
15
UkraineKiev, Kyyivs'ka Oblast'
16
SpainTorrevieja, Comunidad Valenciana
17
BrazilCuritiba, Parana
18
MalaysiaKulim, Kedah
19
VenezuelaMaracaibo, Zulia
20
SwedenEslv, Skane Lan
When I sit down to write these days, it is to write about my dog. Emails, blog entries, personal journals, he is in all of them. It isn’t that I find him to be of inexhaustible interest, but his constant puppy presence completely overtakes my thoughts, whether I am reading, writing, brushing my hair, or trying to sleep. He demands persistent sensory stimulation, and I am the only one who belongs to him enough to provide this service. The sense he most enjoys exercising is that of taste, so I am always on edge, waiting to hear the crunch of his teeth on my mother’s plants, kindling, or Christmas ornaments so I can spring into defensive action. But I do think that if I could capture his idiosyncrasies, they would be worth writing about in earnest. It is delightful to watch him prancing through the room with some new object in his mouth. When he has kidnapped a sock from the laundry pile, or a slipper from under the bed, he walks quietly with his head down, because these favourites he knows are forbidden to him, and his moments with them are borrowed time. This private joy lasts only until he is noticed and chased to justice. However, when he has some new object in his mouth, something he has never found before, he can’t know for sure that it is forbidden. He trots around with the object like a flag, testing the waters. He is bluffing, hoping the confidence with which he carries himself will trick us into letting him have that banana, or the fridge magnet. What could you humans possibly want with this CD, he says with his sparkling eyes. Just let me take care of it.