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Hello friends,

Winter doesn’t seem to be letting up here in Toronto. The road in front of our house has blanketed itself with sleet.

I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold, for it compels the prisoner to try new fields and resources. —Thoreau, journal, Dec. 5, 1856

New fields and resources, here I come!

1. Slowly making my way through John Cage’s diary yet again

2. My new obsession is to draw masterpieces using crayons. Embracing my personal belief that, in childlike creativity, lies childlike joy.

3. Really taken with Mary Oliver’s idea of shadow companions.

4. Monica Vitti, the queen of Italian cinema passed away this week. I watched her in Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura and Red Desert. Both movies relied on her to give them the emotional foundation. She was spectacular!

5. In going down the rabbit hole of finitude, I came across witness by Borges. In this three paragraph short story the nameless protagonist laments, What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world?. Borges genius lies in how precise he is with his language and structure. Barreling down the end of paganism while quilting his story with poetic imagery.

6. The centennial anniversary of James Joyce, Ulysses happened on Feb 2, 2022. Joyce playfully mirrors his protagonist Leopold Bloom's journey with the Homer's epic, Odyssey. A couple of chapters in, Leopold is taking part in a procession for a dead friend. Joyce's Hades. And, in the ever shifting labyrinths of Hades I couldn't find my way out. I got distracted by Sarah Manguso, Onbeingness. Ulysses is going to be a longer journey than I initially anticipated. But, it has been lovely so far.

7. Started Sharpened Visions, a beginner deep dive into poetry. The course starts off with Gwendolyn Brooks's We Real Cool.

8. Truth is stranger than fiction