Tonsorial

Our pteropine intruder from the other night has me mulling over assorted bat-texts. Dickinson: The bat is dun with wrinkled wings Like fallow article, And not a song pervades his lips, Or none perceptible. Roethke: By day, the bat is cousin to the mouse He likes the attic of an aging house His fingers make a hat about his head His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead D.H. Lawrence: Pipistrello! Black piper on an infinitesimal pipe. Little lumps that fly in ... more

I meet with a CIBC banking rep to open a U.S. dollar account, and as we’re filling out the paperwork, she asks me where I’m from, whether I’m from Hamilton. I tell her no, I’m from the States, I’m a Permanent Resident here. (Only a few minutes earlier I’d handed her my PR card as one of my required forms of ID; I guess she forgot.) She looks at me in surprise and asks me why I don’t have one of those American accents.... more

A Three-Great-Lake Weekend: Laura and I have dinner on Saturday at a patio restaurant on the waterfront of a deep blue and spectrum-skied Lake Ontario. On Sunday morning, we drive west across southern Ontario, to Goderich, and eat a high-noon picnic lunch on a lighthouse-crowned hill overlooking a vivid blue-green Lake Huron. We kill a few hours at Pinery Provincial Park, roaming the beaches, soaking up UV rays, climbing dunes, collecting pebbles. Finally, we drive southeast to Port Burwell, ... more

Two months ago: We successfully repaint the walls, eradicating the previous tenants’ bad burgundy, bilious beige, and loathsome lime green, replacing them with the cool, mellow, stupefying neutrals we prefer. (The kitchen’s Flayed Ernie lives on.) We paint while listening to opera — several hours’ worth of opera CDs checked out from the library. Carmen. Tosca. The Fiery Angel. Matrimonial Figaro. Pavarotti and The Two Chumps. Pretentious, perhaps, but at s... more