I dreamed that I bought a building.

My building was on the harbourfront in downtown Corner Brook, which is geographically impossible. A commercial building, worn clapboard, brown paint peeling to reveal more brown paint. A single floor, doors in the centre of each side, small windows, a wheelchair ramp, a handmade sign over the entrance. A parking area on the right, a guardrail by the water. A paved road winding past the front door, a hill across the street full of yellowing grass. A pile of melting snow where the parking spots had been recently plowed. Salt air.

I dreamed the whole process. A tiny ad in the newspaper, a grainy photo of the place. Thinking oh, that old spot, wouldn’t that be fun? All of my friends are buying houses, so why not. A lowball bid on a lark. Then the phone call, the unanticipated win. Putting down the phone and thinking, What am I going to do with a building?

In my dream I updated Facebook: I BOUGHT A BUILDING. Congratulatory comments from friends. Oh, you bought a house! No. Oh, are you starting a business? I don’t think so. Then why did you buy a building.

I drove over to meet the building. The proprietor was a tall man who seemed ready to retire. Oh yeah, he said. We used to wash dishes. But the IGA put me out of business. They can wash dishes faster than we can. We toured from room to room, pushed open tall dark wooden doors. A dimly-lit hallway, old wooden furniture with dust in the cracks, little rings of lace under the lamps. Through a doorway and suddenly we were in a small, well-lit diner with tables and red upholstered seats. A tired-looking waitress tidied up tables after some final small gathering. There were water glasses on the tables, almost empty. The waitress pushed through swinging doors into a kitchen, carrying dishes. A basket of homemade buns on the counter by the cash register, with a little handwritten note saying: Take these home. Thank you for buying our building.

We used to do breakfast, the proprietor said. Really good breakfast here, pancakes and waffles. In my dream I felt guilty about having never been there for breakfast. There isn’t anywhere to get a decent diner breakfast in Corner Brook.

I said to the proprietor, Let me ask you a question. Just off the record, not legal advice or anything. The truth is, I’m not much of a businessperson. I’ve never bought a building before. I guess my question is, what am I supposed to do? What is required. Do I have to sell all this stuff? Do I have to wash dishes? Does it come with anything? Do I employ anybody? Should I tear the building down? Can I live here?

I don’t remember any answers. I remember looking up at an ornate hanging lamp and thinking, I can start an artist-run centre. Then imagining someone swinging from the lamp and thinking No, that won’t work. The noise would bother the neighbours. Maybe a studio. I remember thinking, At least during the next election I can let the NDP use it as a headquarters. It would be a good location for that.

Rereading a flurry of journal entries I wrote about a year ago, just before leaving Halifax. A patchwork collection of missives to myself, some typed, some handwritten, full of tiny details from a time when nothing was really happening. It was the start of summer, though, and everything seemed significant; I pulled details from poems or from coffeeshop observations, and applied every finding to myself, reading too much into everything. Each entry is a little prism of detail that has served its purpose, like a cancelled postage stamp.

What do you do with old journal entries? I wrote many of them as I was preparing to move, during which I dusted off and organized ten years of old journals. I stacked them in order, labelling each notebook with the start and end dates and where it was written. The oldest are thin exercise books in barely-visible pencil, which gradually evolve into hefty art-school scrapbooks thick with spilled ink and loose drawings. Since then my journalling has mostly migrated online, with a few pocket notebooks full of ponderings from Montreal and Halifax.

I sometimes imagine there is a book of poems buried in there somewhere, as if I have already done most of the writing and only have to excavate it, brushing off the excess. At other times this strategy feels shortsighted and sentimental, and I resolve to make new things instead of indulging in self-archaeology. But then what are the journals for?

From one year ago today, just before moving back to Newfoundland:

“I think in Corner Brook I will work on writing. Corner Brook is conducive to writing; it is full of memory for me, and people there are such storytellers. Something about the accent, too, brings writing out. The place in the voice. Recording overheard conversations on paper, a kind of photography of language. I still feel guilty about living in the house that John Steffler used to own, two years ago, and hardly writing a word while I lived there. I really felt for a while that writing was something I had to let go of to grow in other ways. Have been going through my walking notebook and research notes for Interchange, November 2007, and am starting to see it now as a work in itself. Scanned all eighty or so pages and sent them to B. to see what he thinks. Maybe presentable as-is, handwritten pages with scribbles, with footnotes and photos and maps from the same month, a sort of dossier.”

I have been back in Corner Brook for ten months now and this is the first writing I’ve done. So it’s been a slow start, but we’ll see where this blog goes. I suppose this is one good use for old journal entries, as seeds for blog posts. But what do you do with old blog posts?

I’ll post some of those walking notebook pages soon.

Mid-June and I am in the middle of many things. Working regularly on a content management system for The Humber River Basin project, as well as several freelance web design projects, so I’m spending quite a bit of time tinkering with WordPress code. A day spent designing and coding never feels wasted, and is considerably easier with an open window, good music, and a cup of tea or two.

Part of what I really enjoy about web design and writing code is the way that each previous project builds on the last; each time I start a new site or WordPress theme I am building on previous work, so each ends up better than before, and I’m always learning how to do new things. For the projects I’m working on now, I’ve been looking into creating customized options pages for WordPress themes, and using custom post types to make it easier to create separate types of content for clients. I’ve also been updating how I code and style some common elements like search boxes and tag links.

Setting up this blog is something I’ve meant to do for a while; I’ve had various blogs on this site, but haven’t had a space to post about art exhibitions, web design or other professional practice stuff for a while, so this is for that. More importantly, it will also be a space for sketches and notes as I work on Make No Wonder, a game art project for which I have received a Newfoundland & Labrador Arts Council grant. My photoblog has been mostly gathering dust since I got back to Corner Brook… I have some photos to add, just haven’t had a chance to put them up yet.

I also plan to post code snippets, links, and other stuff I’d like to have around as a reference for myself and others. I’m going to retroactively post some stuff that happened over the past year, too, so that there is a record of it somewhere.