Monthly Archive

My short story, “Missing Things,” was chosen among Glimmer Train Magazine’s Top 25 finalists in the Short Story Award for New Writers 2009. By clicking the relevant link here you can see that I am not making this up.

I turned 34 this week. Aside from the after-effects of quite a bit of wine on Wednesday when my girlfriend and I went out to the restaurant, le Nil Bleu on rue St. Denis, I have been feeling in good health. I am not limping gasping squinting straining or croaking. Mind you, nor are a good number of people in their 70s.

I am not missing being younger. No sir. I remember from the age of about 12 I wanted to be in my thirties, and now all my dreams have come true.

Well, some of them.

When I was walking home from work yesterday, despite the snow and the cold – which strike me as having arrived prematurely this year – I stopped off at a bakery on rue Villeray and purchased a loaf of bread that was still warm from the oven. This, at 7:30pm. It made me very happy indeed.

Upon my return home, Banchi greeted me with a feline squawk for food. She wanted to eat the bread but I would not let her.

Five hours later, I only had about a ten-minute attention span for reading a book before drifting off into slumberland. I am currently reading Faubourg by Georges Simenon, and it is very good. I find the way Simenon reveals important plot points so natural and effortless – they just unfold in the course of describing what the protagonist , De Ritter, is up to. And boy is he mysterious, this protagonist. It’s clever how Simenon really gives you the sense of knowing who De Ritter is and yet not really knowing, all at the same time – and in a way that is intriguing and not frustrating.

Tonight I will have a bit of a shindig at my abode in Villeray. It is safe to say that tomorrow I will feel every year of 34. It’ll be interesting to see if my neighbours show up. Pierre has been contending with some heavy shit recently it seems – got harrassed by the ex-boyfriend of his sister, who is currently staying with him.  Some stuff I didn’t entirely catch about some custody battle. Apparently the boyfriend character also made threats against Pierre’s car.

Speaking of threats against inanimate objects, the other day on St. Laurent I saw a man shout “Colisse! Fuck you!” at his bicycle. Later, during the same outing, I saw a dog digging out dirt from around a tree and scuffing it all over the nice St Laurent sidewalk. That really cracked me up. I don’t know what exactly it was. Perhaps it was the contrast of sniffy snooty shoppers out shopping for their fancy clothes and whatnot, and this bull mastiff with no greater joy in the world than making a mess of that sidewalk.