My Time Under the Shadow of the Cross
Many years ago, in another life, I lived in a basement apartment, under the shadow of the glowing cross at the summit of Mount Royal.
I had moved to Montreal from my hometown, Ottawa, to study for my Ph.D. in theoretical physics — an endeavour I viewed as a first step in a long-term strategy to rise above my station in life. During my years under the shadow of the mountain I studied theoretical physics and mathematics with a singular drive that, looking back on the experience, seems almost frightening to me. I had very few friends and, as my years in academia wore on, I would have even fewer. I didn’t own a TV or a computer or a mobile phone. My days were occupied by my studies and, well into the evening, when my focus would finally break, I read poetry and fell asleep. Or I wandered the streets of Montreal aimlessly, hiked the mountain trails in the middle of the night, drank alone in dive bars.
At that time I was involved with a woman who I would, eventually, end up living with. The relationship was toxic and yet I stayed in that living situation for several years for reasons that seemed pragmatic at the time but now, looking back, seem hopelessly baroque.
My girlfriend back then was afflicted by a number of bizarre sleeping habits. She ground her teeth nearly every night (this condition is called bruxism, it turns out). When she was particularly stressed she would sleep walk, wandering around our apartment speaking gibberish and slamming doors. Many years later, it would dawn on me that her peculiar sleeping habits could be construed as a perfect metaphor for the pathology at the core of our relationship.
My upcoming magazine project, Bruxism, is a short prose-poem, illustrated with close-up images of decaying human teeth. The piece is set during the final days of that doomed relationship and is intended as a kind of study in the ways that things fracture and come undone under pressure: teeth, monuments, and love. The text, like the accompanying images, is meant as a kind of study in ruin and decay and fracture.
The Physical Magazine
The finished physical magazine will be very much analogous to my last magazine project, Baudelaire’s A Carcass. The printing and binding will be identical, since I’m using the same print-on-demand service. The magazine will be short: 24 pages, about half of those will be full page images. The total word count is a bit higher than Baudelaire’s A Carcass, but still there is an emphasis on visual impact and minimalism in the design, so you can expect a fair amount of negative space. As it stands the project is basically done; I expect that it will be live before the end of October.
