We can't write a serious novel in the 21st century without acknowledging the inescapable self-awareness we're stuck with. The idea we're surrounded by falsehoods and lies. It's hard for the thinking person to believe in narratives. And yet we want some place to invest our belief.

Toronto is hard to capture in a few strokes.

Science is claiming ever more ground from popular stories of the kind we thought we weren't to believe in.

The real past can traumatize us, but so can the real future.

The idea that language can be recombined to create new forms, new things, is of course very old in poetry.

Paranoia can be a sign of a sanity in some circumstances, in some places and times.

There's some evidence that before events of mass trauma, even unpredictable ones, people begin to feel higher anxiety, often expressed in terms specific to the event.