Yesterday I visited, sort of, my dad at the assisted living facility next to the McDonald’s and across from the mall in Kingston’s west end. I’d rather I didn’t have to.

During the pandemic agents wanted to be paid for showing their listings to out-of-town buyers who had an agent waiting in the wings. These days the tactic is almost always a simple cash grab.

There are real estate agents in the next novel - a couple of real jerks and a lot of wonderful people, just like life. There are also a series of micro-fictions at various stops along the way, moments to take a breath, to laugh or to gasp. This is one of those.

I have my sister’s ashes in a green velvet bag I keep in a cupboard next to the spare bottle of scotch, the vacuum cleaner, and a box of fig newtons.

My daughter flew to Los Angeles not long ago. I worry about my kids, at the best of times, of course, but these are not those.

Every room, every home, has a story. Occasionally it’s a true story. Here, not so much.

Families are complicated. Philip Larkin had his own ideas: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.” I’m still trying to make up my mind.

This was taken a week ago, a friend riding past and we were outside, waiting on the mail, the coach from Gananoque.

In general, the way things fall apart is more interesting to me than the way they pull themselves together…

The Clearing is a moving and quite profound installation piece at the Agnes (but only until November 9, so dig out your runners and get going!)

As I attempt now to fill the gaps, to decide what sort of life I’ve had, what sort of father I’ve been, whether I’ve left a positive or negative impression, I will have to decide also whether I trust my memory not to lie to me.

I am sitting in the near-dark listening to the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died in 2023. Thoughts here on him, then, as well as Andrew Miller, and the Brooklyn band, Geese.

I came across this version of one of Echo & The Bunnymen’s very best songs while texting tonight with a friend, swapping reminiscences about Roxy Music and Natalie Merchant, Belle and Sebastian.

An abandoned cottage half an hour north. Hidden behind conservation lands, it feels both compelling and dire.

My job is to help people move, to iron out the creases. To understand just how rumpled that process can be is to be able to help better. That’s the idea, at least.

Another microfiction, a way of placing myself in the world, trying to make sense of it.

My dad has dementia, and moved at the end of 2024 onto the assisted living wing at a local retirement home, a place that he occasionally enjoys and mostly despises. Mostly I despise it too.

More than a few of us lace up and swing hard most days, as if an army would bury us, given an unguarded moment to aim for.

I recently likened a house to a Manhattan loft. The property felt cosmopolitan, urbane, as if it might have been drifted to town on steel cables strung beneath the mother of all choppers…

I was a late convert to the benefits of staging a house. But I do know the difference between my brain and my brain on drugs.