Here

Day 3

Woke early. Packed, grab a frittata on the way to the train.

Rode 328KM south to Valencia.

Train ride mostly uneventful. Sat next to an American stand-up comic with a sad sack story about losing all his money on his European tour. Didn't laugh once.

Another AirBnB, this one more "factory."

Walked just under 10K. Museums. Basilicas. Much porcelain. Grotesques and gargoyles abound. Delicious Charcuterie and the worst Martini I've ever had. Unimaginably bad.

I am older than the Font Del Túria, but it has me beat in beauty, poise, and bird shit.

I think Valencia is the most beautiful city I've ever seen.

DAY 2

Hit a few bookstores and am impressed with the Spanish editions. Wonderful paper, slick covers, great design. Once again wonder why British editions are so dreadful compared to other countries'.

Taifa Llibres is particularly wonderful, as is Libreria LA Central. Toronto just doesn't have stores like these. Killed by greedy landlords, Heather Reisman, etc. I consider picking up something I know cover-to-cover thinking it'll help learn the language. Jesus' Son? Silly idea. Brain is absolutely useless for learning new things right now.

Walk the streets towards Park Güell, see some great graffiti.

Spend most of the day in the Park and Gaudi's house. Am rather fond of his bedroom.

Head to Elephanta. Meet Anabel Caravaca and am charmed. Write a bad poem, which she takes. Stay way too long, but not long enough, unfortunately. Have to catch a train to Valencia in the morning. Will catch up with her online.

Head home to get some sleep. 11.3KM covered. Lightweight.

DAY 1

Direct from YYZ to BCN. Easy flight. (Aren't they all?) Arrive 10:36am.

SIM card. Sandwich. Metro to the AirBnB in the Gracia neighborhood to drop off my bag and get my key.

Marble stairs, 3 flights. The door is huge + heavy. Mariano shakes my hand, shows me the room, explains the fussy shower.

Head back out. Fantastic bookstores with gorgeously designed and printed books. Pick up a copy of Good Morning, Midnight. Walk. Beautiful architecture everywhere.

The busiest streets I've ever seen. Street corners that somehow aren't. Genius. Scooters everywhere.

Walk to Restaurant Casa Delfin for lunch. So good.

Lots of walking.

715PM — Grab a cocktail at Solange. Read from the Rhys novel. Inspired by a particular passage, I jot in my notebook:

A woman. A nice woman A nice, beautiful woman. A very nice, beautiful woman. It's going to be different this time...

People-watch. Think about working on the novel. Grab the bill.

More walking. Dinner on the rooftop of the Hotel Casa Fuster.

Work a bit on LVGR. Tighten:

I'd tell you I paid good money for the boy, but that's not entirely true because the child wasn't expensive and the money wasn't earned by honest work. I killed a man for it and the cost didn't even eat up what remained after seven months of party and drink.

My wife had always wanted a child and I had always wanted a son so the purchase quelled both our longings. But things change when you swap money for blood. Your life gets harder. Your luck turns. Things fall apart.

For my wife, punishment came as a cancer. For my daughter, it came as a curse, though she wouldn't call it that. "Clarity of identity," she'd say. Something I can never claim for myself. As for me, punishment's still coming, a vision on the horizon I fear is not a mirage.

Unlike my kid, I've never felt I had an identity. I don't know who "I" am or what "me" means. So unaware of what I did not know, I didn't even know I didn't know it. She made me aware of what I lacked, Siobhan. It's an Irish name. Chose it herself. We'd named her Steven, April and I.

1130PM — Head down to the street.

Youth chill in the evening air:

Midnight — arrive back at Mariano's. Total distance walked, 17.8KM.

I have a bit of a fascination with "time-tracking" devices that do not tell you the time. These days, I wear an Apple Watch Ultra 2 for health reasons. For many years, I wore a DURR.

What's a DURR? You wear it on your wrist, like a watch, and every 5 minutes, it touches you. Yes, really.

Here's how the designer pitched it:

It's an interesting thing to have something silently tell you that five minutes have passed since the last time it told you five minutes had passed. And yes, it does nothing else and the five minute interval is fixed.

My DURR looks like this:

The chassis and buckle are milled, sandblasted anodized aluminium. The strap is vegetanned leather. It takes a standard CR2032 watch battery. Mine's been kickin' for 10+ years, though I did have a few panicked days when I thought it was on the fritz. Turns out CR2032s have a high rate of failure.

When not using it to make me hyperaware of time itself, I used it as a navigation tool. I walk a lot and know how fast I do it. So, morning-wake-up, I'd look at a map to see where I wanted to end up. Then, I'd memorize a pattern of turns based on five minute intervals. Like this: 3 Left, 2 right, 1 left, 5, look for the tunnel, 2 right... This meant I would walk for 3 vibrations (15 minutes) and then turn left, walk for 2 vibrations (10 minutes) and turn right, etc. Obviously, this was not an exact science as I'd get waylaid by friendly dogs, people, buildings I wanted to photograph, not-friendly dogs, talkative prostitutes, curious locals, etc.

I'd usually arrive at my destination without again checking a map, though I never got there in the estimated time and rarely spoke the local language enough to understand road signs. The clumsiness of my method resulted in many adventures and many fantastic misadventures. I walked thousands and thousands of miles this way. In LA, in Spain, in Vanuatu, Cuba, the Dominican, and Toronto.

Only 700 DURR exist — 1000 were made, 300 of which didn't function. I regret not buying one or two more when I had the chance. They were made by industrial designer-artist duo, Skrekkogle, and if I remember correctly were about $150. The partnership has dissolved and the two men behind it have vowed to never make more. When I thought mine had died, I pleaded with one of them to let me know if he had any kicking around that he would part with... he didn't respond.

For a few years I tried to get industrial designers I knew to develop one with me on Kickstarter. They all thought I was nuts. Last year, someone else did exactly that and sold about a $150,000 worth. I initially funded the project but backed out, not liking the proprietary band (it's the only thing I don't like about my DURR); I wanted it to take a standard watch band.

If you're still confused how the DURR can actually be useful, here's some press on the Alpha version from The Verge. Mine was the Beta release. And here's a physician talking for a couple minutes about his own Beta release:

In the next Products I Love post, I'll write about the keyboard in my DURR photo: the WayTools Textblade, a truly remarkable device that never saw the light of day.

Santa Monica

Back home
I dream of the water
beyond the break
and wake older
angry at borders
that keep me foreign
and dry.

Did my wretched ancestors
who walked inward
abandoning shorelines
and settling centered
fear the power
tides gift me?

And will my absence
pull from both coasts
to my landlocked city
salt water so deep
as to drown
their evil
guiding star?

— July, 2017, Toronto

Your Call Pulses Through Me With A Glorious Dynamism

I've felt this wave before,
in Havana and Piles, too. 
You were with me, then,
and the water senses your absence.
I lay back and conspire with the tide.
The sunlit Santa Monica sky turns black and star-pricked.
I drift, whispering your name,
until I feel your faint but unmistakable touch.

— December, 2017, Santa Monica

It happened. That strange sort of serendipitous coincidence thing.

I contacted Elisa Gabbert for the first time to ask about the release date of the audio version for her new book. (Her previous collection, The Unreality of Memory, is genius.) I had considered doing this many times over the last few months but ended up doing it today. We emailed a bit, and then I looked at her website again, following links that led me to a NYTimes piece where she does a close read of Auden. In it, she writes of Brueghel's painting, The Fall of Icarus, which is mentioned in the poet's Musée des Beaux Arts.

Hours later, I'm on a walk, listening to an audiobook of Maggie O'Farrell's I Am, I Am, I Am and she writes about the same painting. I don't even care what the odds are. What I want to know is What is this?! What happened here? — And yes, I'm aware of pattern recognition and confirmation bias, but this seems beyond. Does it not? (Obviously, I need Gabbert to write about it so I can understand it.)

I am listening to the O'Farrell book, which is subtitled Seventeen Brushes With Death, because for years now I've considered a project called My Death Inches. I'll write about all the injuries I've suffered and how each inches me closer to death.

I had the idea while in Spain. I was wearing shorts and a straw hat. I sat down, crossed my left ankle over my right leg, and popped my hat onto my raised knee. The heat from my head had warmed the hat, which then warmed my knee. I wondered if that escaping heat — that transfer of energy — took some of my remaining life with it. I wrote a poem about it, and the poem made me think I should document my kidney stones and many fractures, my food poisonings and bike accidents and shower slips, the animal attacks, the overwhelming wildfires and crushing, lung-filling salt water, the broken glass, broken bones, and broken spirit.

There was the time I wouldn't stop crying as a toddler and the babysitter fed me rum to shut me up. I had to be rushed to emergency to have my two-year-old stomach pumped. Was my life shortened by this ordeal? Or the time M—— and I decided to try unfamiliar fruits each Thursday. That week was Mangosteen. I didn't know it wasn't ripe and I didn't know that unless ripe, it's all but impossible to open. The knife slipped, the serrated knife slipped, and cut the first knuckle of my left index finger to the bone. ("Bone white is very white," as Keanu Reeves says.) I should have gone to the emergency room, but: I didn't want the date to end. It wasn't even a real date. I don't think she was interested in me in that way. But I didn't want the night to end. Didn't want to say goodbye. So I held that finger under unbearably cold water as long as I could and M—— wrapped it in gauze as I grimaced and groaned. Then, we drank cheap plonk and talked for hours while the sun came up and the bandage filled with blood.

Obviously, I'm still alive. I didn't bleed out. I'm alright. You can't bleed out from a finger, no matter how deep the cut, can you? And it's pathetic, right? The whole thing — not paying attention while slicing is pathetic; neglecting the wound is pathetic; being so lonely you'd risk losing part of a digit or fainting from blood loss is pathetic.

Did that knife move me a little closer to death? Who can say? I do have a permanent lump on that knuckle. Twenty-five years later — tonight — I'm stroking it with my thumb. It has a tiny significance. What is that significance? Of what is it made? Is it misaligned bone? Severed nerve endings aching to reconnect? Or did my skin heal over and trap forever a manifestation of a memory of when I was so needing someone to love me that pain meant nothing — and, for the rest of my days, I could touch it and be back with M—— in that kitchen, both of us wanting to taste new fruit, but neither of us aware that it just wasn't time.

I used to own a great many books. More books than is reasonable for a person to own. You can see some of them in the photo above. Just under 1900 titles. In 2022 and 2023, I sold the vast majority of them, keeping just a small shelf worth.

I thought it would be interesting to occasionally do a post about one of the keepers and write a bit about how it came to be mine and why I've kept it.

The first title is Kenneth Rexroth's One Hundred Poems from the Japanese. I believe I purchased this copy from Iliad Books in North Hollywood, though it might have been The Last Bookstore in DTLA. Either way it was definitely in 2010, during my first trip to California.

I'd gone because a film director had read Chimera, a screenplay I wrote in 2008. He called and said he wanted to meet and talk about me writing a sequel to a hit film he'd made in 1990. (A film I'd seen in the theatre when it came out and that most people of my generation will have seen. Yes, I'm purposely being vague.) He told me he lived in Venice Beach and that I should head down.

I took the month of May off and flew down, staying in an AirBnB a few blocks from the director's house. To quickly answer the questions you're probably asking: nothing came of Chimera, my script that he'd read, and I never worked with him on a sequel to his film — or any other film for that matter. In short: he stiffed me. I spoke with him the day before I left Toronto — "Oh, yes, great, great. Looking forward to meeting you, Lincoln." — and then he avoided my calls for the entire month I was there.

I've been asked a number of times if I'm bitter about the experience, but the truth is that I'm thankful for him having called, as he motivated me to head to Los Angeles, something I probably should have done as a teenager or in my early 20s, instead of going to film school. I fell in love with the place and lived there for three and a half years spread out over the next ten. In all that time, I never did come face to face with that director, but I did make some great and lasting friendships.

As to the book of Japanese poetry:

For as long as I can remember, I've lived an unrequited life. This means I'm often thinking about someone from my past. I chanced upon the Rexroth book and opened to a random page:

In the empty mountains
The leaves of the bamboo grass
Rustle in the wind.
I think of a girl
Who is not there.

Nice. I flip again:

I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.

Very nice. Once more:

Others may forget you, but not I.
I am haunted by your beautiful ghost.

Sold!

If memory serves, it costs me $8.

Though I have most of my favorites from the book memorized, the thin trade paperback often accompanies me when I travel. I had it with me in Spain in 2017 when I was sending my own poems out to my Burning the Days mailing list. All those miles means it's pretty beat. It was dog-eared when I got it. It's water-stained now. I'll replace it with a hardcover first edition if I ever find one in person. (They pop up all the time online but I hate paying for $30 shipping on a $20 item.)

There is a sequel with the inventive title One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese, but I can't recommend it. Rexroth also did two volumes of poems translated from Chinese. Again, they don't strike the same chord as this original Japanese collection.

One Hundred Poems From the Japanese is still in print. It's published by the stellar New Directions and you can purchase it from Bookshop.org, Abe Books, or Amazon (Canada, US, UK), or maybe get your local book store to special order you a copy.

Years ago, I had a small stroke that caused me to reevaluate what I was doing with my life and with my work. Invitations to my next birthday party went out with a photo and readings of two poems, one by James Wright and one by David Whyte.

In the years since, a number of the guests to that party have told me how much they enjoyed the poems. Here they are, along with the photo:

Robert Pattinson reads a poem by James Wright

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Everything Is Waiting for You written and read by David Whyte

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I’d taken the photo post-stroke, while bathing in a client’s bathtub in Beverly Glen, her dog Bailey watching from the sidelines. For some reason, the framing of it reminded me of Alex Colville's work, so I later tinted it in his style.

Outside that bathroom, not far away, the Skirball Fire was having its way with Bel Air, the neighborhood that was literally across the street from where I was staying. I'd spent the morning feeding the chickens and cats and walking the dogs as ash fell from the sky. I'd become consumed by chaos and worry about when it would be our time to evacuate the neighborhood. (If everyone flees simultaneously, no one gets anywhere, so you wait until instructed.)

My client was incommunicado, so I'd taken it upon myself to load her SUV with what I assumed were her prized possessions, leaving just enough room for me and the pets. Thankfully, on the morning when the street's more experienced residents had predicted we'd have to leave, the wind changed and we were able to stay put. Though the fire continued to blaze, the flames never crossed that street; the ash never returned. I drew a bath to celebrate and re-center myself.

Unpredictably, with a glowing reference from that Beverly Glen client (neighbors conveyed my preparedness, which they witnessed through their windows), I started getting job offers from people living in danger zones with their pets. A year later I got calls from a couple in Malibu, and would have accepted the gig had I not already been booked in Santa Monica. While there, the Woolsey Fire scorched that beach-side town. I heard numerous horror stories from fleeing residents who'd moved into the Santa Monica Fairmont Miramar, where I'm a regular at the main bar. They literally had nothing left but the clothes on their backs. Then, I booked a 4+ month gig in Vanuatu during cyclone season which I completed without incident. Less than a month after I left, Cyclone Harold ripped through much of the South Pacific archipelago, including the property I'd been living on, sparing my clients and their staff and their buildings — which had been built to withstand cyclones — but laying waste to much of the greenery.

Today, I'm reminded of this bathroom photo and these poems and that birthday invitation, because someone shared The Poetry Atlas on Metafilter and used the Wright poem as an example. Want to know, exactly, where the hammock swings that the narrator is wasting their life in? The Poetry Atlas will tell you.

The second poem is by David Whyte, who's written and spoken many wonderful things. If you appreciated the line, "Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity," you will enjoy his book, Consolations, which has many such pieces of wisdom. One of my favourites is "Beauty is the harvest of presence."

(In my mind, I always link that line to one by Tom Stoppard: "Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late." Perhaps you also have lines or definitions that are forever-conflated? Do I digress? So be it. I digress.)

In What to Remember When Waking, Whyte tells the story of an ancient Irish tribe who no longer wish to fight — he describes them as "no longer wanting to have that conversation." So, when next they're confronted with battle, "they turn sideways into the light and disappear into the originality of it all."

Considering the "conversations" we're having, and reflecting on whether they're helping us be the person we want to be, living the life we want to live, can lead to some of life's great awakenings. Am I wasting my life in the right way?

After that stroke, I sold Good Music, my Toronto record shop, to a competitor, and made a promise to myself that I would no longer do things solely for money. I no longer wanted to have that conversation. Rather, I wanted to live a time-rich life. If that doesn't sound easy, I can assure you that it's absolutely harder than it sounds — for the most part, I've managed to do that while living in some interesting places, despite threats of fire, cyclone, or comfortable hammock.

I have what I believe to be a rare Carl Hansen & Son Hans J. Wegner catalog. I've scanned the pages for your edification...