May 19, 2005

Sometimes a word written by itself stops making sense. Like calloused up there. It looks nonsensical without a context.

I am reading a book called "I am a Red Dress", I thought it was a memoir about mothers and daughters so my reasons for choosing it were obvious, but it turns out that it's about a queer performance artist coming to terms with her families legacy of violence and incest.

So suddenly it's a lot more serious then I thought, and intense, and reading it has been great but also incredibly difficult and sometimes I have to stop just to take a breather.

The author is from Toronto, her name is Anne Camilleri, and if you have a chance either go see her (I imagine it would be great) or read this book, which is also fantastic.

It's interesting, as always, to hear about a Toronto I didn't grow up in (working-class Italian). Her world was the whole area around Dufferin and Keele. Mine was north of of Eglinton from Bathurst east to Bayview.

A tangent :::

It would be really fun to build a literary map of Toronto. Walking through the cities many distinct neighbourhoods and saying; Here is the place that Shyam Sevadurai is talking about in "Funny Boy": This is the school that Susan Swan called Bath Ladies College in "The Wives of Bath": Here is Margaret Atwoods ravine, that sort of thing. A similiar map of childrens fiction would work too, I remember the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) featured prominently in many of the books I read while growing up.

Anyways, file under ideas for future projects, or writing exercises.

Here is a quote from; "I am a Red Dress". I don't have any idea how to introduce it.

I am hungry for a world where we love on another and ourselves, where we do not vest ouselves in beliefs that push some down and float others to the top. I 'm hungry for others who have lived this scourge and dare to want much more then simply getting by. We are not meant to be squeezed down, to be fearful - none of us, and one is too many.

I cling to hope because it's the only thing that makes sense. Hope is not an idea removed from our lives; hope has calloused hands, is hard at work.

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