Tib's Eve, also Tips* ~ and, by folk etymology, Tipsy Eve:
1. A day that will never come; never.
2. A day or two before Christmas.
· The Dictionary of Newfoundland English

so it's tib's eve - or is it tips, i said.
and n. said no, it's tim's eve.

in any case, it's in tim's downtown
that i'm remembering this. early morning,
warm mocha, and my corner by the window,
waiting for someone, watching snow, filling notebooks
full of yesterday as i always do

last night, waiting for n. and m. to finish work
i wandered west street, down to the millbrook
then back up by the glynmill inn,
making night photos again

steadying my camera on the staircase railing,
i photographed glynmill inn pond, a bowlful of water
lower than surrounding slopes, like the cavity left
by a campfire built on snow. the orange glow
of corner brook a smouldering coal,
the steam plume from the paper mill
like lingering smoke. just days ago
they closed the mill in stephenville.

trees black, coniferous or just branches
skeletal against brightly streetlit snow.
winter, the most monochrome time of year,
the season of extremes. even animals
migrate rather than wait it out, and undoubtedly
not all of them come back.

"we could not find a viable long-term solution"
lamented the spokesperson, black ink bleak
on newsprint the colour of birchbark.

yes or no, stay or go: the arguments
of factories, of families, of one-way tickets

gales of snow flicker
like flankers from streetlights, regaling trees
already necklaced with christmas lights
in the little park by the majestic.
speckles of luminous blue, yellow,
pink, green, gold: for now at least
there is still colour here

later, at sorrento's
m. says, when i was small i was
scared of black and white photos,
especially abbott & costello

this is the last time i will see them
before they leave for south korea.
and i think, at least spring
will bring back most of the leaves.

Margaret Bowater Park and the Sir Richard Squires Building, Corner Brook, Newfoundland & Labrador.

walking home slowly
on the longest night of the year,
snowbanks narrowing streets

threequarter moon (a fingernail
freshly clipped, cut to the quick),
pale pearly areola

my boots plunk wooden steps,
my door clicks open, unlocked.
i come out again with my camera,
locate a vacant lot, away from stray light

wait fifteen minutes in blunt cold
for the moon to re-emerge from a cloud

a passing van's single headlight
shuffles the shadows of a fence.
otherwise, the noise of stars: the pause
after a hand of cards is dealt

(in this winter air
wind tastes like tinfoil)

shadowy clouds gradually subside
like sediment settling in a pond,
and my mute moon, poker-faced,
pokes through

no tripod, so i stand
as still as possible, camera steadied
against my chest, feet far apart
for support, hold my breath,
hear the mirror flip

twelve seconds multiplied by silence

under barnacled moon, breath
compressed in my mouth, clouds
a flotilla of fishing ships,
it is easy to imagine i am underwater

this kind of silence
anticipates loss:

fogged film,
collapsed cardhouses,
stones crumbled into sand

dash 8, halifax to deer lake, probably forty people.
an attendant dispenses shortbread biscuits packaged in plastic
and a propellor shudders just outside my front row window.

several men in the back spend the flight joking loudly,
so upon landing a woman stands and jovially scolds,
"You crowd make some racket! Feels just like home on here."
"Where's home, my dear?"
"Morton's Harbour."

and instantly the entire aisle choruses
"All around the cir-cle!"

drifting rafts of st. lawrence ice,
like mirrorglass smashed, a precarious puzzle
nightly solving and dissolving itself,
shattering again in slow motion
with every sunrise.

i write this from a coffee-browned cafe,
a wooden chair by a window
where it snows now, a handful of dandelion fluff,
seeds to grow into snowbanks.
this morning, though, pale dawn yawned into a wide blue sky,
redeeming my sleeplessness with sudden purpose.
a beacon sun beckoned southeast,
waited between clouds for me,
then broke itself into yolk and eggshell
on the glittering river just as i arrived.

i gravitate to the old port for its wide open spaces
and (in december at least) uncrowdedness.
i navigate its quays camera-handed, photographing
fretted ice, the frivolous ballet of bird footprints,
crumpled-paper clouds, and five japanese tourists
who are curious about my camera
and ask me to take their picture.

afterwards i climb the belvedere
for a better view of broken dockside ice,
and notice my own footprints from above.

jen is right about the snow,
it remembers where you've been

like photographic emulsion,
impressing heaviness into shadow,
leaving lightness white:

footprints, fingerprints,
a dropped lens cap,

there is where i backtracked
when the sun broke out,

there is where the tourists posed
in a row for their portrait,

here is where a dizzy bird
disappeared

a montreal mitten map:

chatting with j. at o'reagan's,
folded preet's mitten into a map of newfoundland
(thumb the northern peninsula):
here is where i'm from.

later re-created my mitten map, and photographed it.
so, with apologies to the avalon and burin peninsulas:

five hour drive; we arrive in Little Harbour
by late evening, along a wavering road
paralleling the river's broad curve
until a final culvert funnels it into estuary.

three kids clambering out of a cramped car,
tattered books on the backseat floor.

narrow white stairs, and a screen door
where grandparents wait to greet us
with capable embraces, eyes squinting into smiles,
and chuckles calculating how much we've grown.

kids i don't know
walk bicycles past stacks of lobstertraps
as dad and i lug in the suitcases.

the richly bitter smell of turr
quickly fills a small kitchen.
a dinner of boiled roots (potatoes, carrots, parsnip, turnip),
and this ash-fleshed seabird, a delicacy
tasting faintly of oil and salt water.

someone brings in a chair from the hallway;
seven plates crowd a spindly-legged kitchen table
where tomorrow we'll eagerly upend and empty
a piggybank heavy with coins they've saved,
a year's spare change clattering, young hands
fanning for loons among pennies.

from the livingroom window we watch the river
swell with tide, while seagulls reel and squall.
sunlight glitters the faceted glass of a small chandelier,
and my grandfather's accordion in the corner.

fingers find the dangling cord, and a single bulb
throws shadows throughout the cellar.
i found a secret once, tucked between ceiling beams:
it fluttered to the floor, red as a cardinal feather,
and we unfolded, in awe, an unfamiliar prime minister
and a snowy owl: a fifty dollar bill. reluctantly
we turned in the treasure, and my grandfather laughed
at his forgetfulness, but didn't let us keep it.

i am someone who always knows
precisely what is in my pockets
(keys, pocketwatch, wallet, camera, hands)

night snow, needlelike, almost a mist
of mosquitobites suspended, sharp coldness
salting bare skin. i rarely wear a hat,
hair frosted with icecrystals, hands tucked in pockets,
my feet weatherbeaten, thickened
from roaming one road or boulevard too many.
montreal makes me sleepy, makes me wide awake
at the same time.

i keep seeking approximations
of wilderness: trees posed precariously atop tall buildings,
plastic owl scarecrows, acrylic landscapes in a gallery window.
i squint pigeons into bluejays, grayjays, an occasional peregrine,
and wander mont-royal alone, pretending it is possible to be lost.

i often contemplated camping out on the balcony, conjuring a bonfire
out of clouds and moon, streetlights marshmallows stuck on sticks,
and a midsummer wind whispering ghost stories of the city kind:
the bonelike snap of broken ice or broken glass, a plastic bag
made phantasmal by alleyway wind, wild bicycles rattling chains,
or skeletons of shopping carts marooned on traffic islands....

Making a lot of lists lately. Not just the ubiquitous to-do today lists and the unconquerable to-do eventually lists, but ambitious-yet-almost-useless lists like: every book I have ever read. Every movie I remember seeing. Every art exhibition. And so on.

My lists are open-ended, and compiled over time - I begin one in a flurry of memory, then append randomly as I remember. Starting a new list opens a floodgate in my head, then diminishes to drips as the easy memories are used up. I find myself mining my memory, occasionally digging up things I thought I'd forgotten about. The name of that fantasy book I'd read and reread as a kid, with the wolf on the cover (The Hero From Otherwhere, by Jay Williams). Or all those shows I helped install while working at the art gallery. I find them out, fill them in, feel satisfied afterwards. Pieces of a puzzle, or a scrapbook, or a map.

Chronological. A life broken down into nouns. Books, music, movies... games, too, and food (have tried / have enjoyed / should try). Recently I started people (everyone I have ever met). Why not? It's a lot, but it's a finite list. I might never remember them all, but each name jotted down is one less bit of data cluttering up my head, making the others easier to find. There's a certain release in writing everything down. Tidying my mind, making room for new things, and not having to worry about forgetting something once it's committed to paper (or a .txt file).

Amending on both ends, past and present - now when I finish a book, for instance, it's immediately added to the list. In this way, the sooner I start a list, the better. Making a list of every movie I have ever seen is easier now than it will be in 5 years, when there will be more movies to remember. The question becomes what to make lists of.

A list of lists (* = haven't started yet)

*possessions (everything i own or have owned)
*events (everything significant that has happened)
people (everyone i have met)
art (exhibitions i have seen / art i like / art to look into)
places (have visited / to visit / to revisit)
games (have played / have enjoyed / have finished)
food (have tried / have enjoyed / to try tasting / to try cooking)
movies (have seen / have enjoyed / to see)
music (have heard / have enjoyed / to hear)
books (have read / have enjoyed / to read)
things to do (today / tomorrow / ten years / twenty)

Blogging since 1988, baby.

errant solipsist
tencentsunset
nonpasserine (relating to or characteristic of birds that are not perching birds)
nonce
graycard
semicomma
soam srpis →
anomaly
speechballoon
maunder
transmissionline
aorta
oughta
oughtomatic
oughtful

I quit my job today. Open letter to friends:

Hey all,

I left today. Hoping I'll find more creative and captivating opportunities in this wonderful wintry city. I've been getting more and more frazzled at work in recent weeks and realized my brain just won't take any more incoming phone-ringing and misspelled scamfoolery right now. The visual artist and the web design geek and the (occasional) poet in me were all wanting out, out, out. I also need time to focus on my applications to grad school (I'll be applying to MFA programs at Concordia, NSCAD, and Guelph).

Sorry I didn't get a chance to say many goodbyes. It was a more or less spontaneous decision (though also inevitable in a way). For everyone still there, I'll miss you plenty, and e-mail is always welcome. For everyone who's left already, I hope you'll continue to keep in touch. I think one reason I hadn't left before now is because I kept meeting so many amazing people. That, and I was enjoying the reading time. But a year's been enough, and I need new horizons.

I realize that I am without contact info for many people I'd love to not lose track of. Feel free to forward this to anyone you think might notice I'm not there anymore. Not that there will be any empty chairs. ;)

Take care, and keep in touch,

Matthew

I wrote this more than a year ago, shortly after moving to Montreal. It was meant to be the seedling of a blog, but didn't take root. Though a lot has changed since then, it still makes a suitable starting point.

With all the whim and impulse that comes with moving to a new place, no job yet, and shiny new high-speed internet, what's an artist / addicted diarist / web designer to do? Why, start a blog!

So I've moved to Montreal. It's surreal to be here, no small adjustment from semi-rural Newfoundland. Accustomed to my cozy basement room, now I live on an eleventh floor; instead of trees ringing every horizon, a city clutters up the sky. Still, I adore the apartment so far, especially our balcony. One of my first moving-in purchases was a cheap fold-up camping chair, for writing outside in.

A balcony is a strange space, suspended amidst miles of city, yet sequestered from everything... flush with fresh air, and surprisingly isolated and quiet, it feels curiously like camping. Yesterday it rained, and the water pattering on the canopy reminded me of the sound of rain on tent fabric. On the eaves of the apartments opposite there are plastic owls, to keep pigeons away, and on the rooftop of a building to my distant right, there are evergreen trees. On a night when the city is particularly quiet, it wouldn't take much imagination to conjure up a lake, a cabin, even a campfire. Ambulances sound like loons.