journal features

a visit in Osgoode

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Osgoode, 2002.12.27

Today my mum and I rented a car and headed out to the Ottawa-area bedroom community of Osgoode for a visit with my dad's brother Ulli and his family. The girls, now 14 and (nearly) 17, are frighteningly grown and accomplished and trilingual and whatnot. The elder one is an actress and is dating already (sometimes I forget that I'm in my fourth decade, but not at times like this!), while the younger intends on being a lawyer and is active in sports and wanted a home page when I offered.

They live in a home that was built by its only previous owners, and which is quite lovely. They have two great big poodles, to which I didn't react with any of my usual sniffling and itchiness and eyes watering. Just wheezing.

It was good to see them all again. I must sit down and write a thank you.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot