Tim McLaughlin

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Book Twenty

"Solutions will come to you while you are walking"

Was the best fortune I ever received out of a cookie. For a long time it was pasted on the wall of my studio, before being taken down and pasted into this book.

"December 24, 1999
the fog of the solstice is behind us once we enter the Fraser Valley and I can stand on the wharf at Cultus Lake and watch the sun set. My mind is a cinder, blown from a local chimney out, over the water."


The first month into the new millennium, the book records some perspectives from a three-year-old.

"January 8, 2000
We were driving down North road when E saw an airplane. 'It's pretty high up, isn't it? she said 'I bet you couldn't touch it unless you had really high ladder (pause) ... that moved.'"

"January 13, 2000
Second swimming lesson. The pool is always a memorable thing for a child – the smell of the chlorinated water, wet cement and slippery skin. The instructor takes all the starter children for a swim, she holds them under the back of the head and supports them as she tows them through the water. Then she returns them to the side of the pool as if they were fridge magnets."

"January 14, 2000
'Could you have a cage with only one bar? But maybe, if it was a very large bar, and it was a very small animal, and the animal stood timidly behind the bar...'"


It was my habit that, when I finally cleaned my desk, I would take all the ephemeral and notes, make a split-second decision as to their worth and the ones that were not discarded got pasted into a book. This resulted in a number of interesting references – often with missing sources. Two which caught me while browsing are:

 "I am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

 "As a fragment the incomplete appears in its most plausible form"
– Novalis.

Pasted into the book, they show a certain prescience towards being quoted twelve years later. 

Here is a list of books.