the flooding-in of the real

In Montréal, the man who affixed the baggage-claim stickers to my suitcase handles said, "You’re checking these through to Sheridan?" This worried me. I thought perhaps I ought to ask him that same question.

On the flight from Montréal to Denver I watched Tickets, an Italian movie about three unrelated sets of characters traveling by train from Germany to Rome. This encouraged me - a traveling movie whilst traveling - what a good idea.

The Denver airport boasts a French Bistro. The view from Terminal C is colour-coordinated – tarmac-grey, rain-shadow parched grass, mile high cold blue sky and a thin strip of mountain – the perfect pallet for a Gore-Tex jacket. Two hours waiting for Big Sky Airlines flight 2593 to Sheridan is plenty of time to notice that tumbleweed are tossed about by the wind the same way empty Styrofoam cups are.

On the Beech 1900D every seat is a window seat. Every seat is also an isle seat. The co-pilot is also the flight attendant. There is no restroom or legroom on this plane.

There are more cattle in Wyoming than there are people. The drive from Sheridan to Ucross takes us through 27 miles of snow-dusted hills. S-curves on red-shouldered roads. It’s deer hunting season, but we see them everywhere. It’s adjective hunting season, but we can’t find enough words to describe where we are. Instead we talk about other places we’ve been, places this place reminds us of. This place reminds me of Tuscany west of Voltera. The hills there are called Poggi; they are similarly treeless and pubescent-breast shaped.

The population of Ucross is 25. The elevation is 4085. The Big Red Barn is an art gallery. The Ranch House is home to offices. We eat in the schoolhouse. We sleep in the Depot. We wake to Venetian blind sunlight lines and wonder for a moment if any of it is real. Whitetail deer graze in grasses the same green as our goose down duvets. A heard of wild turkeys forages in the cottonwoods. Perhaps we have died and gone to heaven. "Only, there must be some mistake… This appears to be the heaven for turkeys," says Karen Russell, author of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Knopf 2006.

"This is what travelers discover: that when you sever the links of normality and its claims, when you break off from the quotidian, it is the teapots that truly shock. Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey. Nothings shakes the heart so much as meeting – far, far away – what you last met at home. Some say that travelers are informal anthropologists. But it is ontology – the investigation of the nature of being – that travelers do. Call it the flooding-in of the real." Cynthia Ozick, "The Shock of Teapots," in Metaphor & Memory, NY: Vintage, 1991, p144.
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if the boots fit

The Ucross info packet warns to be prepared for mud and inclement weather. I have been agonizing over what boots to bring.

My favourite pair of boots are British. I've had them since 1999. They’ve been to residencies at The Banff Centre and The Vermont Studio Center, as well as to Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, Florence and Rome. I don't want to destroy them any further. My second favourite boots are French. I've had them since 1997. They are entirely plastic and yet somehow not waterproof. I don't care what happens to them, but they have a bit too much heal for traipsing down the dirt roads of Ucross in the dark. My newest boots are Spanish. They have too much heal for traipsing down the sidewalk in broad daylight - what was I thinking? And, Montréalaise that I am, I have Sorel snow boots for sub-zero winters and Italian knee-high leather boots for thigh-high skirts, but neither of those seems quite right for autumn wind-swept ranch roads either.

I can’t afford new boots and even if I could, what kind of boots suit dirt roads and the endless airports I will have to travel through to get to them? What kind of boots can be worn indoors and outdoors alike, are tall enough to keep wind away from ankles but loose enough to be not too hot on those occasional warmish fall days, and won't show the dirt? Last week it finally dawned on me that cowboy boots were invented for ranch conditions. Duh. And I already have a pair, bought used 1994 or so. I keep forgetting about them, so they've lasted well. The past few years they've badly needed repairs. This week I had them resoled. They look better now than they did when I bought them for a song a dozen years ago at a Jeanne Mance Street yard sale from a girl who was both leaving town and turning vegan.

Is it the height of cliché to show up in Wyoming wearing cowboy boots? Is it any better if we call them western boots? Does it matter that my western boots were made in Spain? Need I remind everyone that I was born and raised on a farm? Yes, apparently. Our farm was in eastern Canada but I still wanted western boots. My back-to-the-land father balked at the cowboy boot cliché. What did they know? Let me tell you, riding a horse in sneakers really sucks. You get no purchase in the stirrup. Which is a big problem when you're six and weigh in under 60 pounds. My best friend in the first grade was a boy named Craig. He wore cowboy boots. His father was a truck driver. Go figure. Craig hated his boots and I hated my sneakers so we traded footwear every morning. I wonder what ever happened to him. Converse One Stars?

These, the niggling concerns of a fiction writer, will not dissuade me from wearing my western boots westward. If the boots fit wear ‘em. Now there’s a proper cliché.
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Reading Gide

"Fiction there is - and history. Certain critics of no little discernment have considered that fiction is history which might have taken place, and history fiction which has taken place. We are, indeed, forced to acknowledge that the novelist's art often compels belief, just a reality sometimes defies it. Alas! there exists and order of minds so skeptical that they deny the possibility of and fact as soon as it diverges from the commonplace. It is not for them that I write."
André Gide, Lafcadio's Adventures, 1914
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Deleted Zines in Broken Pencil

My friend Nathaniel G. Moore wrote an article all about the mini-books I used to make before I stopped making mini-books for a while and then started again. Isn’t that awesome? Nathaniel really is irrepressible. Don’t even try repressing him. No, instead what you should do is go out and buy the new issue of Broken Pencil. You know, the magazine of culture and the independent arts. Issue 33. In his feature article – Deleted Zines: Digging the Dirt on Ex-Zinesters – Mr. N. G. Moore asks: Where Are They Now? Why Are They Now? Where For Art They Now? I know the answer to some of these questions, but I’m not dishing. Go buy the magazine. And look for my un-deleted and totally twenty-first century mini-books from a Distroboto machine near you.

Nathaniel G. Moore: http://www.notho.net

BROKEN PENCIL: http://www.brokenpencil.com

DISTROBOTO: http://www.distroboto.archivemontreal.org/

EXPOZINE: http://http://www.expozine.ca/
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Exited thoughts now long to travel

We had a flurry of out of town visitors this fall. All those folks who said they were coming Montréal this summer left it to the last minute. And they all came at once. We didn’t quite get to spend time with everyone who passed through town in the past few weeks. But we really enjoyed those we did see. The spare futon is folded up for winter now. In less than a week I hitch up the horses and head west to Wyoming.

iam mens praetrepidans auet uagari,
iam laeti studio pedes uigescunt.

Exited thoughts now long to travel;
Glad feet now tap in expectation.

Catullus, XLVI

I pulled my suitcase from the closet so my dog would get used to seeing it around. But so far I’ve put nothing in it. It’s hard to pack for six weeks in a place you’ve never been before. What to wear in Wyoming in November? Correspondence with the Ucross Foundation indicates that the weather will be highly unpredictable save in this one fact: there will be wind, lots of wind.

Where is Ucross? People keep asking me. It’s in Wyoming, in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains. Where’s that? You know in the movies, when the wagon trains are slowly advancing westward across the plains and then finally some mountains appear in the near distance? That's my idea of where Ucross is: on the ranch just before the mountains begin.

USGS Topographical map of Ucross, WY

Aerial Photograph of Ucross, WY

The Ucross Foundation website offers up this historical narrative:

The Ucross Foundation occupies a cluster of buildings collectively known as Big Red. The Ranch House is one of the oldest standing houses in the area and tepee rings on the hills hint at a much earlier history as first nation hunting grounds. Built in 1882, the Big Red Barn was a former Pony Express stop, and was on the stagecoach route that serviced Buffalo to Clearmont from 1891-1911. Having missed the last coach by 95 years, I’ll fly into Sheridan on Big Sky Airlines out of Denver. And now that the Internet has put the Pony Express out of business, I’ll rely on wi-fi for communication with the outside world.

The village that grew up around Big Red went through several name changes, eventually settling on Ucross, named after the original Pratt & Ferris brand. Here is a photograph of ranch hands taking a break at the Big Red Ranch in 1898:


American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming

So far, this is the only photographic indication I have of what to wear in Wyoming. See the seated guy with the beard on the bottom right? That's the look I'm going for. Minus the beard though.
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The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1

THE CAPE – a recent web art fiction – has been included in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1, edited by N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, and Stephanie Strickland, now available in CD-ROM format and online: http://collection.eliterature.org/

The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 features 60 digital literary works by: Jim Andrews, Ingrid Ankerson, babel, Giselle Beiguelman, Philippe Bootz, Patrick-Henri Burgaud, J.R. Carpenter, John Cayley, M.D. Coverley (Marjorie Luesebrink), Martha Deed, David Durand, escha, Damien Everett, Sharif Ezzat, Edward Falco, Mary Flanagan, Marcel Fr’emiot, Elaine Froehlich, geniwate, Loss Peque~no Glazier, Kenneth Goldmith, Tim Guthrie, Richard Holeton, Daniel C. Howe, Jon Ingold, Shelley Jackson, Michael Joyce, Aya Karpinska, Robert Kendall, Deena Larsen, Kerry Lawrynovicz, Donna Leishman, Bill Marsh, Talan Memmott, Maria Mencia, Judd Morrissey, Brion Moss, Stuart Moulthrop, Jason Nelson, Marko Niemi, Millie Niss, Lance Olsen, Jason Pimble, William Poundstone, Kate Pullinger, Melinda Rackham, Aaron A. Reed, Shawn Rider, Jim Rosenberg, Megan Sapnar, Dan Shiovitz, Emily Short, Alan Sondheim, Brian Kim Stefans, Reiner Strasser, Dan Waber, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Rob Wittig, Nanette Wylde.

The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 is an initiative of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), a non-profit organization established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature, headquartered at The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland, College Park: http://eliterature.org

AUTOSTART – A Festival of Digital Literature – will celebrate the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 in a series of workshops, discussions, readings and jams at the Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA on October 26 & 27, 2006: http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/autostart.html

WARNING: Cape Cod is a real place, but the events and characters of THE CAPE are total fiction. The photographs have been retouched. The diagrams are not to scale. Don’t believe everything you read: http://Luckysoap.com/thecape
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Ucross Preparations

At the end of October I head west for a six-week writing residency at the Ucross Foundation: http://www.ucrossfoundation.org Ucross is located on a 22,000-acre ranch in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains near Sheridan Wyoming. The artists-in-residence program operates out of the fully restored Clear Fork headquarters of the Pratt and Ferris Cattle Company, built in 1882. Only four writers and four studio artists are granted residence at one time. Some of my more urban friends shudder at the thought of such a rustic and isolated setting. I can’t wait. Preparations so far include: the purchase of a wind-proof/water-proof jacket and reading up on high-country geology. John McPhee says of Wyoming's topography: every scene is temporary, and is composed of fragments from other scenes. A perfect setting for fiction writing.

"Wyoming, at first, glance, would appear to be an arbitrary segment of the country. Wyoming and Colorado are the only states whose borders consist of four straight lines. That could be looked upon as an affront to nature, an utterly political conception, an ignoring of the outlines of physiographic worlds, in disregard of rivers and divides. Rivers and divides, however, are in some ways unworthy as boundaries, which are meant to imply a durability that is belied by the function of rivers and divides. They move, they change, and they go away. Rivers, almost by definition, are young. The oldest river in the United States is called the New River. It has existed (in North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia) for a little more than one and a half per cent of the history of the world. In epochs and eras before there ever was a Colorado River, the formations of the Grand Canyon were crossed and crisscrossed, scoured and dissolved, deposited and moved by innumerable rivers. The Colorado River, which has only recently appeared on earth, has excavated the Grand Canyon in very little time. From its beginning, human beings could have watched the Grand Canyon being made. The Green River has cut down through the Uinta Mountains in the last few million years, the Wind River through the Owl Creek Mountains, the Laramie River through the Laramie Range. The mountains themselves came up and moved. Several thousand feet of basin fill has recently disappeared. As the rock around Rawlins amply shows, the face of the country has frequently changed. Wyoming suggests with emphasis the page-one principle of reading in rock the record of the earth: Surface appearances are only that; topography grows, shrinks, compresses, spreads, disintegrates, and disappears; every scene is temporary, and is composed of fragments from other scenes. Four straight lines – like a plug cut in the side of a watermelon – should do as well as any to frame Wyoming and its former worlds."

John McPhee, Rising from the Plains, NY: FSG, 1986, pages 28-29.
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Expozine 2006

Expozine - Montreal's annual small press, comic and zine fair - is now in it's fifth year! This year's edition will take place on Saturday November 25, 2006 from 11 am to 6 pm, at 5035 St-Dominique, between St-Joseph and Laurier.

This incredible event brings together over 200 creators of all kinds of printed matter in both English and French. In the past five years, Expozine has grown to become one of North America's largest small press fairs, attracting thousands of visitors as well as exhibitors from as far afield as Chicago, Toronto, Ottawa, and Quebec City! This year's edition promises to be the biggest yet!

To reserve a table at Expozine, fill out the online registration form before November 1, 2006: http://www.expozine.ca. You may also register by phone by calling 514-278-4879, or in person at Monastiraki, 5478 St-Laurent corner St-Viateur, from Wednesday to Sunday from 11-5 p.m.

Expozine is also looking for sponsors. For information on becoming a sponsor: expozine [at] archivemontreal.org or call 514-282-0146.
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