a novel

I’m a puzzler. Dump out the box and show me all the little pieces and I get hypnotized. Usually for hours. Watching the transformation of individual, incomplete pieces into a single image inspires me. So sometimes I find the illusion of a puzzle helpful when I think about life, especially my own life, and how all of my experiences fit together into a story of transformation. At times puzzles, and life, come easily: pieces of the same color and shape seem to fit together. There are coherent themes that guide me and life lessons that seem to run through and between different experiences, relationships, and adventures. The whole image forms fast and clear. And at times you find the puzzle pieces that, no matter how hard you try, don’t seem to fit the puzzle. The ones that seem to come from a different puzzle box entirely. Sometimes my life feels like puzzle pieces that don’t always fit together. This past year, for me, has been full of different pieces, each with rugged edges, in differen...

i joined the red and white throngs who celebrated canada yesterday. 144 years. people screaming, people singing, people with another excuse to get drunk. i wore read. red reminds me of another patriotic event. red, blue and yellow cloth blowing in the wind. the same cloth sticking to hot, sweaty, black bodies pressed tightly against the only white people in the crowd. the cinquantenaire. t'chad's 50th birthday party. January 11, 2011. an overwhelming display of military might: on foot, on tank, on horse, and even on camel back. an extremely sobering display of disparity and economic (and to my eye moral) discrepancy. flat screen tv's and bubbling fountains in the middle of a starving city where the majority of the population is without clean water or reliable power. memories like this made me sick to the stomach as i watched 'patriotic' canadians celebrate their freedom with alcohol and frivolity. and i wonder about sobering up our own drunken arrogance. i don't...