Death, fires, futility, and evading Costco security
Landing in a lit mag near you
I think about death a lot. Multiple times a day, if I’m being honest. I think about how I might die, or how I might lose all of my loved ones, or what would happen if there was a natural disaster at this precise moment. How easily it might happen, what the fallout might be. If I love you, there’s a chance I’ve drafted a rough obituary for you as a means to calm myself down or nudge myself out of the morose.
But for how much I contemplate or anticipate imminent death, I don’t believe in accepting efforts to prevent death as futile. They may not always work, but it’s always worth it to try, to push yourself to your limit, rather than to wonder what might have happened if you tried a little harder.
It’s not easy. When I watched that girl with the blood-matted curls turn blue, jolting with the shocks, I couldn’t see beyond that moment. Hope seemed naive. But there’s power in not giving up, even when someone loses their pulse.
Which is all a strange way to say that my story Rushing the Landing has been published in the latest issue of The New Quarterly. It’s short, not super sweet, and it’s part of my process of thinking about the things we do in the face of futility.
You can read the story here or purchase The New Quarterly at your local bookstore (in Canada). And yes, the fact that my story is hiding on actual bookshelves in stores is wildly exciting for me.
“I would lurk outside the Costco near Rogers Arena, waiting for an Asian family to follow in so I could go eat samples without having to get my own card.”
- My friend, who is a genius
Seasonally appropriate CANCON
It’s hot in Toronto. So hot, in fact, that I’ve been acting like the titular asshole in the Denis Leary song, walking around in the summertime saying ‘how about this heat?!’ (I’m not proud.)
As we wade through heatwaves and near-biblical flooding in Toronto, I look west and, once again, see fire. In every other direction, I see divisive elections and spicy discourse. On these hot summer days, the heat radiating off the streets feels like flames licking at my ankles and it feels a little like a the city is on fire, and I am reminded of Tomas Hachard’s fantastic book City in Flames.
We spend the story alternating between Kevin and Sara, a troublingly relatable pair brought together by a bizarre dating app glitch. They try to maintain communication while Sara, a grad student living overseas, goes to questionable lengths to retain connection to the home city they share, as a barely-fictionalized Toronto erupts into protests and destruction following the election of a populist leader.
If you enjoyed shaking your head and feeling a bit sad for Marianne and Connell in Normal People but you also were like, ‘hm, this needs some subtle dystopian vibes,’ you’ll like this one. It serves as a nice reminder that apathy is not very sexy, resistance is not futile, and that timing is everything; people come together for shared moments, and sometimes that moment is enough.
If you read it, which I think you should because the book is good and the author is very nice, let me know what you think.
All of the above to say, may you always feel like you’re in the place you’re supposed to be, with the people you’re meant to be there with, and may you never falter when the need arises to save what you love.