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Anonymous Sex Diary, 2018
There were two bottoms in my life. One was in 2014 or so, the other was around this era. I was on a mission to sabotage and lacked a loving foundation to gently evolve. Everything was still crash, bang, boom! I like this anonymous submission because my voice is loud and clear. I want to live. I want to be true. It’s bold, solid writing. Some of the details are exaggerated, but it was all me. The Cut page
Humber Literay Journal
An exploration of love addiction for the literary journal produced by the Humber School for Writers.
Women in Clothes
I read that Sheila Heti was compiling a monthly digest email of emails of famous and/or well-known people for the rest of the world to read. I loved this idea because I have exchanged countless letters via email and some of my most compelling exchanges have happened there so I signed up to receive the digests. One of her emails suggested a dating scenario where she’d help interesting people meet each other and I thought it was real and wrote her directly to sign up.
I was set up with a writer in NYC and it didn’t go very well, but it did allow me to “meet” Sheila Heti and fill out the questionnaire for her collaborative book called “Women in Clothes”.
The Need for Pee
Funny that this quote was selected but it does accurately sum up my experience of change rooms.
Kiss and Make Up
I would probably disagree with myself now. I don’t care that much about wearing makeup when I’m out and about, nor do I care that much about people ‘seeing’ me though this was a pretty constant preoccupation most of my life. Getting older is kissing and making up with your younger selves.
Food Trucks
I wrote a magazine article about food trucks!
adbusters #80
During a writing program at Simon Fraser University, I began compiling notes I’d been saving for years, some of them just random thoughts about what it meant to be part of this new online generation, the meaning of identity, narcissism, etc. and this essay called “Quit Facebook” was born. adbusters published it and the online version went, sort of, viral. I was invited to attend a TV show in Italy (that never materialized) and was published all over the place, including Russia. This essay eventually ended up in a textbook for essay writing.
Quit Facebook (2008)
I think this is a good essay and its arguments stand the test of time. It’s also a really interesting “screen cap” of a new era. Its innocence is endearing and enduring…and I’ve gone on to quit Facebook several times since.
Big in Russia
A senior editor from L’Officiel Russia read the Facebook essay and loved it, decided to print it.
"Carmen Joy King" in Russian
Hehe.
emerge
I did a writing program at Simon Fraser University called The Writer’s Studio. It was a year-long mentorship program and it really changed my life. I met all kinds of other writers writing and caring about writing and caring about each other. I practiced reading in front of a crowd and got really confident. I wrote a very personal story from the heart and my fellow writers reacted emotionally to it. I loved my mentor Wayde Compton because he was sparing in his critique but warm, genuine and informed. He’s continued to be supportive a decade after I left the program. Amazing time in my life!
The Deal
It was a gift to write this while surrounded by supportive peers. It was a deeply personal story and attached to all sorts of shame, but I excavated it and told the truth and it was beautiful. I love this story.
adbusters #72
Before I became a corporate woman in her 30s, I was a girl searching for meaning in her 20s and adbusters was one of the places that helped me wrap my head around the inequities of the world. Getting published (after just ONE submission) was a dream come true. I was beside myself with joy. Hilarious that I later went on to work in advertising, but such is the beautiful nature of life ever changing.
A Piece of Garbage
This was inspired by a real dream that I had while in Japan doing a Buddhist meditation retreat. It was very vivid and embodied a phase where I was paying close attention to my dreams to better understand my waking life. The piece needs some heavy editing, but it’s lovely.
Street Corner Paper
Now defunct Street Corner out of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. I knew someone who volunteered there and they were kind enough to publish my poem about women.
Lilith Tells Gogol
I was reading a lot of different things to feed my writing, especially books about male and female figures throughout history. I guess I saw the women as empowered because, despite the shame attributed to them as sexual objects, they remained symbols of the complexity of femininity. And men seemed (to me) to be slaves to other forms of objectification as equally complex. And so who was at whose mercy?
I think it’s a beautiful poem and richly evocative.
“Lilith Tells Gogol”
Between her soft thighs
In the movement of her hips,
Which fly
Like unreachable kites
Like owls in the night;
The final prize.
Your hands which pound stamps
and pull reigns.
Your hands
Whose fingers history’s braggarts enslaved.
Whose hands reached out to beg entry
To the world I hold between my legs.
In the whispered secrets of hips,
A sacrifice of pride.
So at whose feet, I ask, did you lie?
my first publication, 2006
I love this. A local guy in Edmonton started a magazine he sold at farmer’s markets and other places around the city. He gave me a chance. It’s sweet.
walk with me
I was crushing HARD on a guy on MySpace and staying at my mom’s house over Mother’s Day. I was lonely. This was the first time in my life that I understood what it was to fall in love with someone’s ‘virtual’ image.
The Immaculate Will
I spent hours staring out at the forest behind the school where I was a teacher’s assistant in rural Japan. It was astonishing to watch each season there, it was almost like I’d never paid attention before. And something came to me one day in the autumn and it seemed to be about art and God and I needed to write it in a flash. I’ve edited it a bunch of times since this publication, but the essence of what I felt in that moment remains.
Flying To The Next Destination
Could be song lyrics.
26-year old me
This is so earnest.