Camel Two - a personal review

It was Friday of the long Thanksgiving weekend and I was at the Shaw Center for Christian Community Day, the big annual school board powwow. I was sitting there with the lulled educated masses when my phone chirped. It was a message from Marie with a photo telling me I'd received a brown manila envelope with the University of New Brunswick logo embossed upon it. My heart flipped halleluja. It was my author copies of the new issue of Camel, the illustrated journal of narrative curated by Clarissa Hurley and my literary Wayne Gretzky- the great one, Mark Anthony Jarman. This issue has been the harbinger of many great things in my life as of late.  It was enough to be accepted for publication in it, but it had also been announced that the story was in the shortlist for the magazine’s Gilmer Prize. Being able to mention to shortlisted story when I write my literary cover letters is a huge affirmation for an emerging writer like me, so I was over the moon proud of being even considered. Reading that list, I found that I would be sharing a cover with Elisabeth De Mariaffi, Zsuzsi Gartner and lit phenom Jowita Bydlowska among others leaving me startstruck. But in it all, the greatest reward is that it solidified a friendship through correspondence with Mark Jarman, which is something I had never expected but now deeply appreciate. Thanksgiving, indeed.

I came home from the PD event earlier than expected to find the front (and back) door locked while Marie was out with a friend. To this, I shrugged and turned to trudge over to the Bridge Pub where I treated myself to a Perth Brewery Mocha Stout (nice!) and a G.O.A.T. burger. It wasn’t the greatest actually, but the goat cheese and 6oz chuck beef patty hit the spot well enough. Once Marie was home, I was able to tear into the envelope and hold the two copies in my hands. I was delighted at how very heavy and thick it was, always an indicator for the sheer volume of good stuff in it. At this, I made it my mission to spend this long weekend delving into the stories stuffed into its pages not unlike a good cabbage roll, some spice, some meat, some veggie healthiness, some things that might cause gas later but all in all a hearty meal for an autumn indulgence.

The next morning, I awoke early while the sun had yet to rise, had my first coffee then decided to take the air before diving into my reading. It's become cold now at the shallow end of October, so I threw on my tattered old work jacket, pulled my union toque over my cranium and set out for Strathcona Park just over the Adawe footbridge.

 As I'd hoped, the ducks were in attendance, dipping their silly heads under the water lofting their silly duckbutts in the air, as always, making me smile. There was no one in the park so I could sit on the embankment of the river soaking in the rich sensory orchestra around me without interruptions. I stayed until people started arriving and to preserve my good mood, I set off back home to start on Camel 2.

Proof - Elisabeth de Mariaffi

Winner of the first annual Gilmer Prize, Proof explores the contrast between public and private narratives. The story centers around a compelling murder mystery, reports of which a local newspaper must censor for public consumption, frustrating the rookie reporter covering the case. This creates a familiar scenario: a small town, seemingly idyllic, is shaken by a senseless tragedy while a macabre story unfolds beneath the surface. De Mariaffi skillfully navigates these two tiers, the public and private, ultimately demonstrating that the uncensored, ugly truth is more compelling than the sanitized version. The cerebral burn that I felt after reading it told me unquestionably why this story took the prize.

Father Eduardo - Elaine McCluskey 

In "Father Eduardo," we meet Anthony, a neurodivergent young man whose life revolves around his lucrative, yet isolated, stay-at-home job. The story's premise, as conveniently stated within the narrative itself, is that "life is a surprise party of the incongruous and the unexplainable." 

Anthony lives a rigidly calculated life, finding the randomness of the neurotypical people around him clashing with his concise and ordered world. He reacts without emotion to the crazy things that happen under his watch, offering chilled observations or annoyance when they arrive. Even when calamity strikes close, he still analyzes it with a cold remove. Behind it all the subject of a priest that Anthony’s grandfather once knew appears in the intrusive conversations he has with his mother, acting as a conduit into the familial complexities that Anthony actively ignores. However, the minimal mentions of the title character of Father Eduardo makes his inclusion in the story enigmatic. It’s never concluded what the priest’s actual relationship with the grandfather is, which brings up a lot of question marks in my head. I think more clues into the priest’s story might help, but perhaps McCluskey’s intent was to keep the subject buried in conjecture to illustrate the depth of the family’s historical mystery. If that’s so, then it’s effective, but I can’t help but feel that the character was left unattended and the story without closure.

Cult Film - Jowita Bydlowska

Jowita Bydlowska's work first caught my attention through the praise of fellow authors on social media. Intrigued, I read her novel Possessed, a dense, psychologically rich work layered with metaphor, where the lines between reality and dream were blurred. While Marie, who'd read the book first, found the enigmatic narrative frustrating, I was captivated by the challenge of deciphering its meaning. Bydlowska's "Cult Film" echoes the style of Possessed, featuring similar narrators and a shared commitment to metaphor. The story revolves around an obscure short film curated by two lovers, loosely based on the myth of Hades and Persephone. The narrative alternates between a film student's obsessive analysis of the film and the perspective of the woman who co-created it. As in Possessed, we oscillate between a dream state and real time though even the boundaries between the two remain a thin place. In the end, my mind was buzzing so much I wanted a second read, which always makes a story a keeper to me.

Meat Bingo - Darryl Whetter

Meat Bingo, a nonfiction piece, follows the author in their conversion from an ethically conscious young person to a gun toting middle aged deerhunter in order to preserve his late father-in-law’s gun collection. It’s a beautiful elegy for a good man as he faithfully maintains the family cottage property deep in la forêt acadienne in Nova Scotia. He approaches both tedious processes of applying to a gun registry and for euthanasia with a calm humour that never descends into the macabre or the satirical. Sometimes Whetter’s use of pseudonyms pulls me out of the story with question marks buzzing my head, but it's nothing sharper attentiveness as a reader can't remedy. All in all, it’s an engaging read, marrying two very different perspectives to coexist in one narrative and paying proper tribune to the good man his father-in-law was.

My Piece, A Hierarchy of Needs

The impetus of this story comes from the ice storm that once gripped the St. Lawrence Basin in 1998. Those that will remember know that it was a precarious situation back then, hanging by the thread of just a few power grids, the threat of long-term blackout looming with menacing possibility. It was through this near-disaster when my brother and brother-in-law hunkered down in my sister’s house to protect it from possible looters while the rest of the family vacated to somewhere that had power. Entertained by nothing more than a few bottles of wine and conversation, they led a nearly prehistoric existence for a few days before the power finally came back on and life returned to normal. Their experience intrigued me enough to start writing notes for a story. The resulting train of thought brought up memories of my father teaching me how to cut wood, stack it and get a fireplace going to warm my parents’ house for winter. Later it was me purchasing my own three cords of wood each fall and spending the winter chopping it all up into woodstove-sized bits for my own house. I fell in love with the whole culture of wood and it informed much of the short story as it was developing.

 As I considered what the intellectual milieu of the story would be, I started thinking about how mankind had emerged from the gauntlet of the Ice Age and whether or not we had the tenacity to do it again if things fell apart. I considered how our intelligence and creativity did much to help us get through, evolving through our technological advances and progressive ideas. I remembered a passage from one of Neil Peart’s books wherein Neil sat with a book of Aristotlean theory, attributing the reading of philosophy to drinking a fine wine. You take sips and consider it on your mental palate, letting the intoxication of thought ease through you. That scene worked itself into my story as I found it fit well as a comforting thought on the progress of our species.

When the story came together, I was very proud of the finished product and always considered it my favourite that I had written, if not the best. When I started submitting it to magazines, I was always surprised and somewhat dejected when it was declined. I edited it, revised it and workshopped it and still it never seemed to catch anywhere, much to my frustration. So it was a deep affirmation when the editors at Camel accepted it at long last, most of all because my favourite author, Mark Anthony Jarman, was on the panel that accepted it. Over the editing process, it was such a delight to have Mark offer suggestions, especially towards adding an end part that brought substance to an otherwise sudden closing. This, with the story’s inclusion on the shortlist for Camel’s Gilmer Prize, makes this story a huge source of esteem and pride. It will always be a glowing moment for me in my writing career.

Paintings by David Woods- 

David Woods is an artist with many awards and accolades for his work in the black community in Nova Scotia. It shows in the three paintings that are included in this issue. In the three, there are vivid primary colours arranged in an almost cubist style on the fringes of the frame while the colour becomes dark and in that darkness you find his human subjects, members of the community, huddled as family or as a series of masks collected within the urban surroundings. Like modern Inuit art or the early paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, Wood shows the spirit of community candidly placed in its environment, present, active and vibrant.

A Pearl of Great Price - John Metcalf 

I first saw John Metcalf at a reading at the Manx Pub here in Ottawa, which is also the time and place of my first true meeting ever with Mark Jarman. There was much adoration surrounding the man at this event, which brought together the Bookhug launch of Mark’s book of selected stories, Burn Man, with John’s birthday and the launch of a chapbook of his story, the same one I am reviewing, republished in Camel. I remember John reading a portion of this piece with an actor’s diction and to hear that voice speak of such things as a foreskin examination was just an uproarious treat. Many times during the reading, Marie and I looked at each other, mouthing ‘did he just say that?’. In print, you can sense the innovation that flowed from those halcyon days of CanLit when Metcalf started out, the same innovation that charts our progress today. The brave candidness and the deep descriptive passages fold into a great comic discourse between a man and his doctor, in the end taking the reader on a wild ride.

And So In Conclusion…

It’s only every so often that I feel like keeping a literary journal. There are times when I read one and none of the stories stand out for me and they never really ever end up on my bookshelf for keeps. Sometimes though, a story or two will resonate with me and I have an increasingly full shelf of such copies that I return to now and again for inspiration and entertainment. Camel does this for me from cover to cover and I’m not speaking from the bias of having my own story included, or my admiration for its editors. 

Every story is chock full of meaning for me. All of them speak to and for a part of me and this is what I find most special. Camel has a deep respect for tradition as well as an eye for modern innovation. I really do hope that it will succeed in Canada’s literary landscape as one oasis of strong cultural contributions.  I want to thank Clarissa and Mark for bringing all of these components together and I trust that future editions will be just as momentous. Camel is something to watch for, mainly because it means so much to the community and industry in which it functions. 

Here are some more pictures from my walks along the riverside trail...

GOOSEBUTT!!

from Charting The Minute Spectrum of Probability (Chapter 16 of LefTturn)

Life is like a pinball game. You strike the ball and depending on the angle you hit it, it can go anywhere. You could ring up a lot of points or you can end up in the hole. Sometimes the ball will just shoot right between your flippers where you can’t reach it and you lose. You lose a life. There are a lot of bells and whistles and sometimes music. Sometimes you’re the ball and sometimes you’re the flipper. Sometimes you’re the kid slapping the button that moves the flipper.

Sometimes life is a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book. You read the first few pages when you enter and then at a certain point you are faced with a decision to make. Then you make your choice and something happens because of that choice. It might be good. It might be bad. After reading along whatever scenario you’ve chosen, it eventually gives you another choice. This choice can change your fortune for better or for worst. You might be able to go back to the page where you made that choice and take the other option to see where it goes, but that’s against the rules. And in life, going against the rules has its own consequences and is not recommended. It’s a luxury you really shouldn’t utilize simply because it’s sleazy, not to mention cowardly.

Sometimes Life is like a haunted funhouse. You are completely in the dark, and loud scary things jump out at you without warning and you have to react. Sometimes you may pee your pants. Sometimes you will jump into the arms of the person closest to you. Sometimes that person might be a complete stranger or it might be the person you love most in this world. You might exercise the option to punch the actor in the face out of sheer self-defence, but this might end things really quick for you. But you come out of it full of adrenaline, laughing or maybe even crying. But there’s an end to it where you walk out into the light of the world with all its people and its sounds and you can look back and remember what you’d been through.

Life can be like a job interview. You’re given a set of questions and you need to come up with the best answers as quickly as possible. You will have no idea if you are giving the actual best answer while you are saying it. All you can do is hope that your experience is wide enough to cover all the contingencies. Experience helps. At the end of the interview, you will still have no idea if you will be hired or if you have bombed completely. If you’re hired, you get a phone call a couple weeks down the line. If you’ve bombed, you get no phone call at all.

Life can be like a game of cards. The outcome depends on how you play the cards the dealer hands you. This might make the dealer seem like they have some kind of power over you, but the truth is the dealer hasn’t got a goddamned clue what they’re dealing either. The power is in the cards and in the choices you make with them. The power is yours, Planeteers.








In the end, the choices are always yours. The choices might bring either rewards or consequences. You never really know which until after you’ve made your decision and the result comes into play. You might get warnings from people who have been through similar things before, or you might simply have a sense of prescience to figure out what awaits after you’ve made the decision.

Good or bad, the results of your decisions aren’t something that is handed down to you by any kind of providence. The results of your actions have always been there, just waiting for you to arrive at them. That said, there is no destiny, no path that lays before you that you can’t deviate from. There is only a string of good decisions that line up to read as a good life, or a string of bad decisions that end up in disaster.

We only know what we know. We can take events in our life as lessons and refer back to them when we need help making a decision. Mistakes are opportunities to learn and he who has not failed has yet to live. You only fail when you stop trying. You don’t score if you don’t shoot. You don’t win if you don’t play the game.

You know what you know. Knowledge, when you think of it that way, is like a flashlight when the way ahead is dark and invisible. You take what you’ve learned and apply it later, otherwise you haven’t learned a goddamned thing.

Things that might seem like cosmic intervention are really nothing but a happy alignment of circumstances. It might seem mindblowingly improbable, but that’s the thing with probability. It’s a spectrum. From impossible to certain, there are an almost limitless number of points in between. You can touch that rainbow anywhere. And when it’s good, you can revel in that goodness. You can be happy it happened. Indeed, happiness comes from happenstance.

You can chew on that one all day if you want.

Plans for a Summer

 “The sun is lingering in the sky, inching towards the horizon at the widest radius of the daily arc, stretching the day to its longest point. There is much tension in the air. Summer has arrived in growing increments of light, drawing dusk and dawn closer to one another and contracting night into a rushed compression of hours…”

That passage is from a new piece of flash fiction that I had written just last week about the shortening nights of summer. Summer has arrived. School is over and I’m on layoff from my educational assistant job. This morning I’m dealing with the aftermath of an end-of-year party with my coworkers, faced with piles of dishes, empty bottles and a mild hangover. It was a beautiful evening though, with much laughter and stories culminating in a fantastic light show from a troupe of fireflies that performed their nightly rituals in our backyard bushes.

It comes at the end of a frenetic month at work packed tight with summer liturgies, retirement parties, graduation ceremonies and play days along with the usual descent to the holidays, all things that make the end of the school year a gauntlet to get through, but at home there was a high point that I think will make a difference for my writing career.

Just as the month of June was starting, I received word that my short story “A Hierarchy of Needs” had been shortlisted for the Gilmer Prize put on through Camel, an illustrated journal of narrative published by Mark Jarman and Clarissa Hurley. I couldn’t believe it. I’d always considered ‘Hierarchy’ one of my favourites, but for it to be noticed was the greatest affirmation and being shortlisted for any prize is a powerful statement to have in your CV. In the end, the prize went to Elizabeth de Mariaffi for her story “Proof”, but I am taking this as an indication that I have some momentum building behind me.

So now, with all this urging me on, I can now springboard into the summer to tighten things up as well as get things started.

Though I will definitely read my books and take my walks, there is still work to be done. I plan to spend at least 6-8 hours a weekday working on something literary. The first task is writing this blog to report on what I’ve been up to, and then use it to update my website. Then there are submissions to be sent out, queries to send to potential agents, proposals to be mailed out publishers for my short fiction collection “O Anthropos” and an Ontario Arts Council grant application to be started.

On the novel front, I’ve secured my friend Jeanette Jones to edit “LefTturn” to find out what changes need to be made to bring it to the point where I can show it to a publisher. I’d known Jeanette for about ten years now and every time I’ve shown her one of my stories, she’s always understood exactly what I’d intended with them, always offering constructive criticism with her keen insight. I think she would be a great team member. Over last summer and since then, I’ve been working on evolving from rough draft to first draft and I now feel that I have something solid and “showable”, though still in need of deep revision. I feel good about the novel. I don’t have that doubt that sometimes plague writers when they finally have something resembling complete. I know there’s a lot of work to be done but I’m eager to do that work. I want to make this the main summer job, to get this novel ready to submit to publishers. It has a good story with good characters. I believe I’ve made a dynamic plotline with surprising twists and a great climax and ending. I think it will do well. I just have to do the work. I’m sure that with Jeanette’s help, I can get it in the shops soon.

Of course, Marie and I will still enjoy the summer. We intend to make this summer break into a two-month staycation, exploring and appreciating this beautiful area by the river. On July 1st we’ll bring our lawn chairs to Riverrain Park to watch the planes fly for the “parade in the sky” during the day and to watch the fireworks when night falls. We will take walks, ride our bikes, catch some outdoor movies with the Capital Pop-Up Cinema and share drinks and dinners at The Bridge Public House and the Working Title Cafe. We’ll also entertain. We’ve had some beautiful evenings already with people here in our home and we are open for more. 

Speaking of entertaining… I’ve said before how Marie and I want to plan a home salon for this summer. That’s still in the works. We’ve even come up with a name: “Frutch on the Rideau”. We call our home the ‘Frutch’ because Marie is French and I am Dutch. We thought we had coined a new word, but as it turns out, a frutch is actually a female river otter. Pair that up with our proximity to the Rideau River and the connection is easy. I can see a logo and a mascot coming out of it already! Soon I am going to start messaging some artists that I would like to have participate for an evening of culture and community. We are aiming for a date sometime in September/October, so I will be sending out invitations soon. If you would like to be included, you can let me know through Facebook or my other media sources and we can make it happen.

So that will be my summer. With those things out of the way, I can start the new school year, get myself one year closer to retirement, though we have two things in September coming up. First is a trip to Niagara Falls. Marie’s daughter-in-law is a tattoo artist and there is a tattoo expo on the weekend of the 20th of September.  I can use that trip to show Marie my old stomping grounds and connect her with where I grew up. It’s something I’m proud of. Other members of her family are coming too, so this will be a beautiful extended affair full of wine, reminiscing and new memories to create.  

Then lastly Mark Jarman and Clarissa Hurley are planning an Ottawa launch in September of the second issue of Camel which will have “A Hierarchy of Needs” included. If it happens I will be helping with preparations on top of reading that night. So many things are happening. It’s all part of a succession of happy events that continue to unfold even now.

You see, after New Years Day 2023, with the publication of three of my short stories, it started a string of beautiful and positive things in my life. I’d been keeping a journal of it all which motivates me to keep generating things to report. This is the momentum I feel but even with this momentum, I still need to work hard. Dreams need to become Plans. That’s the only way dreams come true. There isn’t any divine providence or stroke of luck that accidentally falls in your lap. It’s all legwork. It’s all putting yourself on the path to success. I’m not going to do a Tony Robbins motivational speech here. I just know what I need to do to get what I want in life. It takes work, and this summer is a grand opportunity for doing that work.

So be on the lookout for things from me in the future. I’m making news.

P.S. Here is a picture of our new kitten Wilhelminette or “Minnie” for short:

The Open Concept

So it’s all done. It’s all happened. We are safely moved into the new house. The one in the nice part of town just a few doors down from the river. The one with the wall to wall windows, the bathtub and the dishwasher. The deck that’s half the size of the house and the nice big backyard. We’re all settled in now. There are so many things that lend themselves to the beauty here. The way the many windows catch the light, especially the bedroom windows facing south. The expansive space of the open concept kitchen and living room. The warm ambience of the lights at night, the general sapience of my paintings and shelves of books. The aroma of Marie’s cooking paired with the sweet music of her singing.

In my last blog entry written when I was still in my second-floor bachelor apartment, regular readers will remember how I’d lost the trees that had given me so much pleasure in the seven years I lived there before my landlord had them razed for reasons that are still not apparent to me. That lot now is just a muddy parcel of bare earth. There probably couldn’t have been a more poignant sign that it was time for me to move. We, Marie and I, six months into our relationship, spent the Christmas holidays looking for apartments, having decided we wanted to cohabitate. We found a few units that were nice but, as the real estate market goes, they were snapped up quickly by other applicants, leaving us to surge on for other viewings. When we found this apartment, which is really the main floor of a house, we immediately knew we had to have it. I can tell you that the wait to see if our application had been accepted was torturous. But here we are now, and life is fresh and new.

It might seem like our relationship has moved at lightning’s pace and you’d be right. It’s true that there was a risk that we could be completely wrong for each other, where there would be some undisclosed flaw in one or both of us that would end up as a dealbreaker. Against the odds, no such flaws have materialized. Realistically, we are human and we have the requisite quirks that come with that humanity, but our puzzle pieces match together, quite miraculously, I would say. I now feel the last ten years are truly behind me, but maybe it’s a homecoming that goes back even further. Indeed now that I am returning home from work to meet Marie, sharing kitchen duties, talking and laughing through dinner then convening on the couch to watch an episode or two of Yellowstone or Love On The Spectrum, I am experiencing a homeyness, a hygge, a gezelligheid that I had not felt since living with my parents. It’s such a beautiful feeling. 

The only difference now is that this is all mine. Mine and Marie’s.

It’s something Marie and I have worked towards for quite some time, even individually before we'd even met each other. Now it seems to be paying off. It really feels like some kind of favour and grace is shining on us and we are so happy and grateful for it.

So when we feel such wealth, the most logical step is to share it. As the folk adage goes- “If you have more than you need, build a bigger table not a higher fence.” So we are willing to open our doors, offer our table, our chairs, our floors and our home. It’s true that the biggest joy I have now is having family and friends over. There is so much joy to be found in these events and the house lends itself to that. So now we have a plan to put that joy to good use.

A few weeks ago, Catherine Owen, a poet friend out of Edmonton had one of her home art salons, a series that she calls “The 94th Street Trobairitz”. She had long been interested in the concept of curated exhibitions of literature, art and music in her own home. Facebook photos of her events show happy patrons and performers appreciating diverse displays of art and the post-event comments are always glowing and positive. She does it partly as a service to the Edmonton art community and as an expression of love for her home which she affectionately calls “Delilah” and shares with her partner, musician Mucha Bee. Instilled with the same pride of place, I’d often thought of it myself, inviting other artists to do readings, showings and playing music in my space, even while my space was impossibly small at the time. Now it seems more of a possibility than ever.

I’d done it once before. It was supposed to be a poetry event in the loft of a bar called Sami’s in Welland, Ontario. It was my contribution to a series of events called the Niagara Literary Festival in 2011. I put myself in the local newspaper, posted flyers all around downtown and promoted it heavily on Facebook and invited poets who were all on tour at the time, from Hamilton, Ottawa and British Columbia.

No one showed up.

The other artists- one of whom was Catherine herself, having driven across the continental divide in a tightly packed smart car- they showed, of course. Rob McLennan, Gary Barwin, Monty Reid. They, and a couple others, all were there. Without an audience, we just ordered drinks, some food and read to each other, taking turns stepping up to the mic and sharing versions of our works. Because of them, one of my most humiliating failures were simultaneously one of the greatest nights of my life. We simply read to each other, drank, talked and laughed. It was wonderful and memorable.

So when Catherine posted news about her latest event, I mentioned that I would like to do the same. She was delighted to hear it and decided to make it the topic for Ms. Lyric’s Poetry Outlaws, her podcast which I listen to regularly and support through Patreon. In it and on the resulting Facebook post, she graciously mentions my name and presents some great resources for putting on a home salon paired with her own advice stemming from her own experiences and misfires. All of it informs me and inspires me to carry this idea through.

I talked it over with Marie and she loves the idea of opening our home for an art event. The open concept of our home would provide ample space for a small audience, especially in the warmer seasons where we can access our large deck and spacious backyard. So this is the plan. We are going to do this in the summer and hopefully again in the fall, inviting writers, artists and musicians to curate, read and put on performances in our home. I don’t yet know what I’m going to call it and am not sure exactly when we will make this happen. Rest assured that it will happen though. Keep your eyes open on my personal Facebook newsfeed and my business page: Kees Kapteyn - Author as well as keeskapteyn.ca, Threads, Blue Sky and Instagram.

This is going to be good!!