this week i

worked from a cubicle, published on what it has meant to close the medicare donut hole.

drove downtown, knocked on david's door, seven fifteen.  ruffles growled, recognized, broke the skin of his tail wagging against the walls, bloodstain on my chest.  marcie rolled tortillas, five of us drank coffee on the second floor porch in the summer morning, shirt mostly dry before 9 a.m. arrival.

cooked sugarless chai tea, banh mi.

caught up with ciciley, she costumed a commercial with her grandmother's pendant, left a voicemail.  well? /clears throat/ where are you? are you alive? what's happening?  we went to australia. i had kangaroo. they wouldn't let me take him home.[eom]

8/30

this week i

flew to washington, stopover south of the cn tower.  joe already at my father's house, we talked about him, and the nature of the universe.

called kristina, visited for her workday with chicken, black beans, rice.  "remember when you only ate meat at embassies?"

featured in chuck grassley's letter.

took the train to riya's new house, fort lee.  she cannot stay still, as it should be.

watched howard done got himself all married.

nursed a dawn newark hangover.

8/23

this week i

sat on the chicoutimi porch, big empty buses drive by on the regular.  no ticks this far north yet, but plenty of marches aux puces.

toured two old french papermills, ancestral slurpees in hand.

watched the quebecois fringants, in town, then around lake roberval.  cowboys all the way down.

drove to the end of the fjord for one summer day.

8/16

this week i

made one more trip to the eastern ontario dog park.

loaded the hybrid for the saguenay river valley.  my trail name anthony bear bell damico

unpacked in a northern summer shack.  we ate late poulet saint-hubert the first night.

hiked all day along the fjord.  matthew fed ruffles wild blueberries.  i learned the french "ouais" (pronounced whey) matches an english "yeah"

8/9

this week i

paddled down the gananoque river with an american longtail in the middle.  he stood on all fours, keeping us off balance (like those two dogs), then settled into the hull.  we spotted three beavers or one beaver three times, disrupted a flock of geese.  matthew steamed the husk of his canoe mold with the bouilloire, next morning coffee tasted of wood shaving.

put the in in why!  get it?  get it?

drove down to kingston for one night at the barcade.  ninja turtles, daytona usa, then a real car u-turn for a five dollar shake.  that's five dollars.

read the pocket atlas of remote islands..

when the beagle leaves the lagoon, darwin writes, i am glad we have visited these islands: such formations surely rank high amongst the wonderful objects of this world.  years later he would come to the conclusion: the tree of life should perhaps be called the coral of life

the rainy season lures them out of their holes.  every november, 120 million crabs reach sexual maturity and make their way to the sea.  a red carpet spreads over the island as they crawl over tarmac and thresholds and climb over walls and rock faces, thrusting their shells sideways on their two strong pincers and eight thin legs, heading for the ocean to cast their black spawn into the waves just before the new moon.

not all reach their destination.  their enemies are everywhere.  no one knows exactly where they came from.  the yellow crazy ants simply appeared one day, brought in by visitors.  the invaders are only four millimeters long, but an army of them is a destructive force.  the ant populations coexist peacefully, and their queens have made a fateful pact: together they form united colonies; a superpower, an empire.  behind each of the three hundred queens follows a gigantic army of workers, with long, bendy legs, slender yellow trunks and brownish heads.

they build nests in hollow trees and deep cracks in the earth and keep scale insect to produce the sweet honeydew they feed on.  they move at lightning speed, changing direction every few seconds, and are always ready to attack.  their victims are the booby and frigate bird hatchlings in their nests and the red crabs migrating to sea.  the crazy ants spray formic acid on to their fiery shells.  first the crabs are blinded, then they lose their bright colour, and three days later they are dead.  it is a war on christmas island

8/2