25.12.08
A FEW WEEKS AGO, I was sitting in the emergency room of a Montreal hospital, waiting, as one does, and resisting the urge to cry. There was no conversing with the quiet student next to me, rocking herself in her pain, or with the elderly man in hunting checks, his chin slumped on his chest. We waited in silence. How alone we were together, each with our individual agitation and physical crisis, listening to the clash of incoming gurneys and the swoosh of the passing mop. Read on…
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24.12.08
WHAT MISERS LACK, I’VE COME TO BELIEVE, IS FAITH IN THEIR OWN GENEROSITY. Faith that if they take the trouble to give, their gift will be welcomed. Faith that a generous impulse will bear some kind of fruit. Read on…
23.12.08
MY ENTIRE FAMILY BATHES IN SCIENCE. My mom studied math at university, my dad, brother and brother-in-law are engineers. One of my sisters is an MD, the other is a biochemist. In CEGEP, I studied sciences too, but I quickly realized that becoming a doctor, engineer or programmer wasn’t for me. I barely passed the science courses; I even begged a physics teacher not to fail me, swearing I was going to study literature at university. But I still had to convince my dad. Hours of weeping and gnashing of teeth followed. Read on…
22.12.08
IF SOMEONE WERE TO WALK UP TO ME RIGHT NOW and say there are no barriers at all, what do you want for Christmas? I’d ask for a flight to New Mexico and a lift to the Santa Fe Institute, to an adobe-coloured building perched on a tree-shrouded hill where the elusive novelist Cormac McCarthy is an unofficial writer-in-residence. I’d like an hour with the author of No Country for Old Men and The Road. I can imagine the conversation, it would be simple and to the point. Read on…
21.12.08
THE YEAR OF MY FORTIETH BIRTHDAY wasn’t a happy one. My grandmother, the only person in my family who was anything like a loving parental figure for me, died after a long illness. I was stuck in my job, an artistic underachiever, tired and fat. Recent back trouble as well as a perfect storm of grey hairs, wrinkles and — er — a dramatic reduction in glandular elasticity, had brought home the reality of imminent physical decline. Read on…
