the northwest corner

+ i finished don delillo's running dog and finally started to re-read george melnyk's new moon at batoche.
to note, this is the first book that i have re-read this summer.

i typed "george melnyk batoche" into google to see what would come up. i found a review from quill and quire that described it as an "intellectual autobiography," how lovely. then a lot of book selling websites. then a link to this website, something i wrote in 2006, september, about how much i wanted to read new moon at batoche again. well, august 2008, ok. but i've held on to this book for nearly four years now as one of my favourites, a book that i claim as a fundamental inspiration, a book that gave me a lens for the world. and this is always the fear, four years later, is it true, and yes, moreso than i knew. most of the tools and ideas i use to understand history are drawn from this book. the language is mine, somehow. i managed to internalise the style and pace along with the kernels and now, this is who i am.

i have waited almost as long to read sharon butala's lilac moon for the first time. that fall, 2004, the first paper i wrote that i was proud of, a comparison of george melnyk and sharon butala's views on the west, using melnyk's magpie and tortoise: regionalism in the two wests as a frame.

+ i read running dog in a day. i read a lot of it today at buntzen lake. i hiked up into the woods to hide and sat down on a log and read my book. i worry about the gluttony, i worry about 'bingeing,' as it were, on books, on favourite authors. but i find books that i'm desperate to read and i leave them waiting, sometimes for years, because i know i'll always have something waiting, something wonderful. this is the first summer that i've really indulged myself.

i read on my lunch breaks now, and i've never done that before. i take a book with me everywhere, i always did, but only now am i really making use of them.

+ i listened to yo la tengo, and then nothing turned itself inside out in 2001, 2002. walking across east van from downtown to commercial drive, walking down pender and then venables, it was something to do. and then in the fall of 2002, waiting for the bus, going home, my last semester as a student, my last semester going to class and going home.