Professional Writer

That's me! According to the Canada Council for the Arts, to be eligible for a grant, one must be a "professional writer" who has "a minimum of four texts of creative literary writing...published on two separate occasions in literary magazines, recognized periodicals (including general interest magazines), or anthologies published by professional publishing houses..." So, thanks to Grain (who just accepted "Happy Meat," my sex and death on an organic farm story), I have four stories published in more than two journals. When the stories will be published, well, that's another story. I also have a story ("Diving for Pearls") forthcoming in The Fiddlehead. Sometime, in the future....

In honour of being a professional writer, here's a picture of a lovely couple, admiring the man's writing. This is what The Professor and I do each day: gaze lovingly at each other's writing, because both are things of beauty.

Into Thin Air

Just read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. Normally, I hate non-fiction. Hate. It's boring; it's dumb; it's repetitive. Repetitive. No wonder non-fiction's so popular with the masses. Mostly non-fiction is a stretched out magazine article that shouldn't have been stretched out. This book is not. It's got plot, suspense, big words. It's what most fiction should be and isn't. I couldn't put it down, which I've said about other books, but not because it was easy to read. Because the story was compelling. As was the writing.

It creeped me out. And now I can't stop thinking about mountains. I'm dreaming about them. I've never seen a snow-capped mountain; I've seen Vermont's Green Mountains, but they're green, and not so tall. I gotta go see the Rockies at least. That and the Pacific Ocean. Maybe before I die...

Mount Everest is so high it's top cuts into the jet stream. Holy shit. About 1 in 4 people die trying to get there. And you need a hell of a lot of money to get there. At least $60,000. That's about 3 times as much as I make in a year. But now that I can apply for a Canada Council grant, maybe I should propose a trip? Then I'll write some poems. Big poems. The biggest in the world.

When people die on Everest, most of the bodies are left there. And 'cause it's so cold, those bodies stick around for decades. Imagine hiking on up a glacier, your brain's fucked up from lack of oxygen, and there's someone's lower torso from 1987. What do you do? Look away and keep on marching. Like war. And teaching.