Photo: Queen W. & Vanauley

Ryeberg Article is Up!

Hello all,

As previously mentioned, my first "curated video" essay for Ryeberg is now online. Enjoy.

Photo: Behind Clouds

Photo: Self-Portrait @ Queen W. & Augusta

Ryeberg

I should note that I've contributed a few pieces of work to an innovative website, called Ryeberg. The conceit of the site is user-contributed curated YouTube videos, narrated by personal essays on a variety of topics. I am in revision-mode currently, but when my stuff gets posted, I'll let you know. In the meantime, feel free to visit.

Fiction Excerpt: Cloud Species

I've labelled myself a fiction writer in my bio - I've certainly mentioned my writing here and there - yet I have never posted any work on this blog. Why? Well, mainly for fear of publishing something which would contravene most lit journals' definition of "unpublished". How am I getting around this? Well, at least for now, I am providing an orphaned excerpt - I don't know what it belongs to, so please consider this a "work in progress". Well...maybe I do know what it belongs to, but I think it's safe to upload it, for now at least.)

Cloud Species (excerpt)

Something made the hedge in front of the porch shake, as if shook by a hand reaching out of the ground. I would've leaned forward to look closer, but I was exhausted from the previous night. There – it happened again. I could hear dry twigs cracking. The morning sun approached my feet on the floor of the porch, the volume of civilization rising slowly around me: coffee grinders, piano lessons, radios. Yet I couldn't see a soul. I was alone, focused on the hedge, curious what made it move. I didn't want the sun to touch me yet.

She left a newspaper behind but I didn't touch it. It was sitting in the sun. She must have been up earlier than me. Perhaps she'd been up all night until now? I didn't want her gifts and I didn't want the troubles of the world to make rain from the cloudy anger hanging in my head. I sat brooding in a Muskoka chair asking myself what exactly I'd expected to have happened the night before, instead of what did.

It was a robin. It ran out from the hedge onto the yard, took one look at me, head cocked to the side, momentarily frozen. It was hunting. It seemed more threatening than I could be, sitting staring at it helplessly, drinking coffee like it was an antidote for paralysis.

I asked myself why I'd gone to bed so early. Why before then I'd drank so much, so quickly. Why I'd bothered making the trip if I was so exhausted in the first place. I couldn't answer any of it. I wasn't allowing myself to. It was like staring at long division on a chalkboard: I could see the numbers but didn't want to understand where they came from.

The bird carried on with its sweep of the yard, unconcerned by my presence. The sunlight crept closer to my feet, my head was stuffed with thoughts, a jumble of unconnected ideas which became words scribbled over each other, my coffee cup was empty and I knew I'd have to creep up the stairs in order to get more. Past her, sleeping. Sleeping, I hoped, alone.