The Blork Blog

I’ve finally made it into Geist magazine.

For years I subscribed to Geist, being the slightly odd Canadian that I am. During that time it occured to me that I should submit something to them for publication — after all, it is a respected magazine, and a nice place to see your byline. I studied their submission guidelines, worked on a few pieces that I though were appropriate, and finally submitted an essay about a crime scene I had witnessed in Montreal’s Quartier Latin.

They rejected it.

But I’m not bitter. Bitchy, yes. But not bitter.

What I eventually realized about Geist is that they didn’t publish my article because it hadn’t been painted with the Geist patina. You see, issue after issue, year after year, every article in Geist has the same sort of tone to it. It’s a quiet, somewhat intellectual, precise, measured, slightly quirky, and faux anti-establishment tone that can be quite enjoyable in certain doses, but after a while it becomes a bit monotonous. Every word, it seems, is precisely laid down just so, with just enough wit, and just enough irony, and just enough insight, to land it squarely at that precise balance point between a literary "little" magazine and a pop intellectual rag like Harper’s. The result is that all of the stories unfold the same way, at the same pace, with the same assumptions, and the same unsmiling smugness.

On the one hand, that could be a tribute to the magazine’s editorial consistency. But on the other hand, a monotone is a monotone.

Like I said, I’m not bitter, I’m bitchy.

But there am, in the current issue, through no effort on my part. A few years ago I blogged about the Insecurities Project, a quirky little project set up by New Brunswick artist Isabelle Devos. She was collecting samples of the photos that were taken at airport security stations just after 9/11, when passengers carrying cameras had to take a photo with it to prove it was not stuffed with explosives. It was a retarded idea which has since been rescinded. I heard about it on the radio and sent her the photo that the security guard at Mirabel airport snapped of me — with my camera — as I was about to board a plane to Mexico in February, 2002.

I had pretty much forgotten about that. But then someone mentioned to me over the weekend that they had seen me in the Fall 2005 issue of Geist (number 58).

Huh?

So I raced over to a newsstand and grabbed a copy, and sure enough, there I am on page 22. Geist did a small write-up about the project in their "Findings" section, and the photo of me is one of several that they’ve reproduced. Can you find me? (A hint: Panama hats are actually made in Ecuador.)

So there. Stick that in your Geist and smoke it. I knew I’d get into that magazine one way or another.

Incidentally, Isabelle Devos is going to auction off the whole collection on eBay on December 5 of this year. The item number is 7349766415.