These are strange times, friends. I’m writing this editorial from my writing space in my Montreal home, more than a week after the Quebec government asked the general public to practice social distancing to slow down the spread of the coronavirus and COVID-19, the illness it causes. We are in the midst of a global pandemic and we have been inundated with new phrases and words: “social distancing”, “flattening the curve,” “self-quarantine,” “self-isolation,” “self-monitoring,” and so on. (I challenge you, dear reader, to use some of these words as a writing prompt!) I have been using the internet to keep in contact with the outside world and to keep up to date with the news yet I’ve also been doing my best to distance myself from screens and social media to spend time with my family. It’s been challenging, I admit, to find the right balance. Read more →
Instructions
When I say yellow,
fold yourself.
Lose count of geese.
Measure seeds
by placing them between your lips
and humming. Read more →
Fig. 1 and Fig. 5
bloodwork is normal
bloodwork is normal
bloodwork is normal Read more →
Bigger and Gentler
When we first started dating, the ten-year age difference was really difficult for Dev, as was the fact that I was married. “Hey, don’t mention your in-laws around Maria, okay?” Dev made me promise the week before she arrived from New York for a conference. He wanted to ask her to collaborate on a project and didn’t want her thinking he was “a shitty guy.” Read more →
Everyone Keeps Me
I’m six years old when I’m propped up on a stool and covered in a barber’s cape in front of my entire elementary school for my first haircut. Volunteers for a charity carry large bristol boards into the gymnasium, all wearing matching white tee shirts with logos involving scissors and hair and hearts. The gym fills with rows of kids, and a choice few are taken to sit in a row near the front: two girls from kindergarten, one other from grade one, another in grade three, a boy from grade eight. I offer my permission slip, and a volunteer—herself with short hair and bangs—pumps the chair up with a lever, raising me high enough so the kids in the back can see. Read more →
The Burn
I found myself travelling to South Australia as a buyer for Mark Anthony Wine Merchants—nice work if you can get it, as the song goes.
The position with Mark Anthony’s, which I no longer hold, was acquired partially thanks to a Wine Lovers Magnetic Poetry kit I picked up at a yard sale along with a croquet mallet and the game Operation that incredibly had almost all the tiny plastic body parts except for the funny bone. During my interview I mixed and matched the words I’d spent the weekend making haikus with on my fridge Read more →
The Emergency Exit Is Closed: Find Another Way Out
The first fire escape was developed in 1784 by Englishman Daniel Maseres: a rope, attached to a window, anchored to the ground with a heavy wooden platform from which one flee from a burning ledge. In 1877, R.H. Houghton created knots tied into a rope to create a flimsy mock ladder. Then Philadelphian Anna Connelly invented the iron fire escape bridge in 1887, which connected buildings to each other, allowing those in a burning structure to safely hop over to the next. Read more →