Warm sunlight through low grey overcast, door open, cherry petals floating in. Eno's Another Day on Earth on the deck. A quiet, pleasant day. New Penguin Canada titles on the racks by the front door: Adorno, Negris, Mouffe, Auster, Pynchon, Bataille, & etc. I always get a kick out of receiving new books, of heaving the big cardboard boxes up onto the counter, sliding a key or a scissor blade down through the packing tape, spinning the box, slicing through one end of the taped lid, spinning the box again, slicing through the other side, and lifting out the crisp stacks of new books, all the while breathing in the fresh dry scent of paper rising from the box's innards. (A little bit of direct light now, illuminating one of the cherry tree's white branches, the front room's showcases, a half-empty Windex bottle, a roll of paper towel). The lovely immanence of things.

Other highlights? Learning from a friend who attended the Emerald City Comic-Con that my old critical adversary, Seattle-based comics writer Ed Brubaker, author of many excellent crime comics, and the noticably much less good autobiographical Lowlife, which I rudely but accurately trashed in The Comics Journal many years ago, is a bright pleasant guy who shares many of my reading tastes (Tim Powers; Philip K. Dick; Paul Auster; Ross MacDonald). The numerous smartass friends who forwarded high-res JPEGs of blood-engorged bedbugs in response to this morning's post. Chris Clarke's amazing tale of the white-trash woman downtown who, momentarily blocked by a garbage truck, hollered, "Hey raghead! Go back to fucking India!" at the truck's bald headed Japanese driver. Endless magnolias. The many volumes of Canadian Alpine Journal and Accidents in North American Mountaineering that arrived, unsolicited, on the story's heels. Brother dru, unexpectedly in the house, endlessly busy, with his stories of climbing in the Coast Range, and a level of visible amazment at the world that I couldn't duplicate in twenty lives (nb. "Rare Tree Octopus"). JPEGs from Toronto's Jennifer McMackon, an equally amazed and sincere individual, whose photographs are up next at CSA. Tolagson's #99, "The Great Wave," my personal vote for Best in Show. Forthcoming studio visit with great local "artist using painting" Arabella Campbell, in the company of my curatorial pals "Stretch" Harrison and "Father Time" Tong. Pete's trees; J.'s knotty, spiky prose; Latta's walls and tangled Michigan thickets. The 35 copies of S.'s catalog that moved in a single month over in the UK. My "graphite rubbings of landscapes" thunking out of the printer. Their soft silverpoint greys. The guy who, walking past the front door, announced to his friend, "That's the best bookstore in Canada." The pigeon couple who've taken up residence in the awning. Dominion Citrus Income Fund (DOM.UN), ticking along. And, speaking of pigeons, the one that just put its head through the door, sneaky-peted in across the lintel, and cooed.
- posted by cjb @ 6:07 PM