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I am working on another collaboration with Isabelle Arsenault. Here is a tiny glimpse…

Isabelle’s art fills me with so much joy. There are so many layers of beauty and so much intelligence. I want to live in her drawings, wear them, carry them everywhere I go.

More rain, more flowers…

I am finding my feet again after a big deadline, walking and biking around the neighborhood, trying to shed my tunnel focus by taking in the peripheries. I am unplotted and unsprung. It’s catch-up with the world (and reading) time. I spent two hours with The New Yorker this afternoon.

Two pieces really affected me. Both are highly personal accounts of premature death. The first is a passionate and beautifully-written piece by Francisco Goldman titled “The Wave,” which ran in February 2011. Goldman uses intricate flashback sequences to recount the death of his young wife and the talented writer, Aura Estrada, who died from injuries sustained in a swimming accident in Mexico in 2007. Aura was only thirty when she died and Goldman has done such a magical job of conveying her exuberance and offbeat spirit that I ached for having never met her. (Goldman’s book length tribute, Say Her Name, has recently been published to rave reviews and will definitely be on my summer reading list.)

The death recounted in Aleksandar Hemon’s “The Aquarium” (published in this month’s issue) while somewhat less sudden, is no less painful to grasp. In November 2010, Hemon’s nine-month-old daughter Isabel died of complications associated with a malignant brain tumor. The aquarium in this piece refers to that atmospheric and existential separation between the world of the well and the world of the ill. Even as Hemon conveys the feeling of being isolated in his devastating vigil, there is a feeling of tremendous fatherly love spilling over. This is a very soulful and moving read.

“It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time,” Milo laments near the beginning of Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. “[T]here’s nothing for me to do, nowhere I’d care to go, and hardly anything worth seeing.”

This classic story, which follows Milo on his legendary adventure into the Lands Beyond, is a beautiful fable about creativity borne of ennui and is possibly my favourite children’s book ever. I’ve just learned that Knopf will be releasing a special edition of The Phantom Tollbooth this fall to celebrate the book’s 50th anniversary. It will include several essays from authors and artists. Here is a link to Michael Chabon’s introduction (printed recently in the New York Review of Books.)

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/apr/21/michael-chabon-phantom-tollbooth-wonder-words/

On Saturday, I had a text from my friend Nobu saying that he missed hanging out and when could we get together? I immediately texted him and said, how about now? He texted back and said, okay! Shortly after, we met up at the Toronto Comics Art Festival. Yoshi (my eldest son) joined us for a sweet and fun afternoon. Easy peasy friendship. How often does that happen?

I adore Nobu for many reasons but one of the big reasons is that he is a force of artful goodness. He generates amazing ideas all the time and he somehow manages to get 50% of them off the ground. This is an incredible percentage in my opinion!

This year he gave me a beautiful limited edition book he wrote and self-published called Tracy Walks Slowly. It was inspired by the late actor Tracy Wright and it’s quirky, lovely and very Zen.

Another project Nobu has launched with happy results is Choir Choir Choir! This singing group (of sixty or so people) practice every Wednesday night in Toronto’s Kensington market. They rock! They harmonize! They are spreading good vibrations throughout our city. Nobu is the dancing conductor dressed in white. Enjoy!