'The Canadian' (In Verse) - Layover

IV.

Douglas’s Banff:

7 people and 3 Chairs.

1 worn Couch

where

10000 bums have been.

My heyday was in the early 80s, my prime

teen years when

Everything had a new, firm, shiny skin.

Now my liver-spotted Carpets and

My drooping cushy Chair of my generation

Groans

Against the daily monotonous visits.

When will they all go home so I can retire?

V.

5° in July.

white, white blue water.

The reservations are for 9 but it feels like dawn.

swimsuit still wet from night before, clinging to bbody like a tongue on a steel post.

Put on a wetsuit,

they say,

No cotton, it will make you cold.

steel black wetsuits wet from months gone by

sweat, fear still dripping; like athletic shoes.

Did he say there were gloves?

On the boat.

Too much talk; must move, yah?

2 Daves; 4 boats.

We paddle fast; we don’t need to –

improves circulation.

Feet still numb; need ski heat pack.

It would break apart in water

someone shivers. Figures.

We hide behind the men in front,

not because we are 1870 women

they are only bunkers for the white white blue water.

“Portage Shotgun”

Dave makes up the names of sections of river long forgotten,

pushed out with the originals into the

white white water.

We see a sink hole,

Hole we yell

and we go down again into the white water.

The boat is rubber so it bounces back

bounces onto the top of an old school bus

no heat, radiator broken.

We change quickly, fighting against wet cold rubber that

sticks to our skins like leeches.

hard to find holes of pants, of shorts

of socks to cover the growing bubbles on our skin.

Here’s a hamburger.

Cold, but it silences the stuttering in the head.

VI.

Banff

17 souvenir shops and the same t-shirts in each:

Canadian flags, moose chasing humans, bears chasing humans, the evolution’ of the Canadian, mosquitoes, tents, ‘rules of hockey’, ‘why beer is better than women’, it’s all there – the philosophy of a nation for just $9.99. Or two for $10.

Sometimes there is a ‘50% Off Sale!’

Up to …in small print.

We take photos of the big black bear in ‘OK!Gifts’; he seems harmless.

A horn sounds and a concert begins.

‘Save the Bison’ in the square.

Pull up a plastic chair, and a hamburg.

Sweetgrass is for sale for smudging ceremonies, but it’s not doing so well:

2 for 1!

Double the smudging; double the spirit.

There is a dollar store around the corner, but you can’t buy anything there for a $1.

We buy a flashlight for $1.50, and a package of ‘tongue tattoos’. Try them out later.

Sun sets and the beer scent is stronger. You can take a taxi home, but the price in Banff is twice as much because the drivers dress up.

Banff: home of the arts.

'The Canadian' (in Verse)

I.

Burnt, curving steel outside my

            Ridged house of GLASS. 

Freight passes as giant walkers casting

Shadows on the passengers within.

One photo, two photo, three, the lineup

in front of the front pane

littered with the corpses of insects whose

unsuccessful migrations crossed a path of

hard iron.

Small feet explore the seats, the levels, the carpet,

The tables that shift and fall on top of an unsteady floor.

Newspapers a day old serve for lists, for countless re-readings –

I’ve already read that

 until

the News arrives at a future station stop, like water after a desert walk.

Meals, first sitting, second, third, called out along the tunnel so that one of three choices may be discovered.

Ten minutes of sunlight, of stepping onto solid rock and ground before the

Movement westward continues again.

II.

“TWENTY minutes!”

Where are we?

Hornepayne

Small, tanned faces and bare, brown feet climb down from the pickup at

The Home Hardware

There’s ice cream at a variety store, but the trailer isn’t working so you

Go inside to get it.

Small, thriving insects in the humid sun of Northern bedrock

Solid under the face of soft green

“All Aboard!”

III.

Old Winnipeg, centre of a nation,

With Louis Riel, son of French, English, Aboriginal

Embodying the circle of swirling life of East and West arms extending.

St. Boniface’s Staff, one of four windows into the spirit world:

Central Station, Star Forks, and the marriage bridge, pathways all

between our worlds and others.

circles, centres, ceilings, carriages of national symmetry

joining an already overflowing river of wild ducks, too small

from a Winter frozen hard for eight sky-like months.

Andrew Wright: The Ying and Yang of our World in Photography

Who hasn’t seen Rubin’s Vase: Is it a vase, or is it a silhouette of two people nose to nose? Nox Borealis’ and ‘Still Water’ series at the Thames Art Gallery in Chatham, Ontario this month.

Or the monochrome of the woman who could either be a ‘young maid’ or an ‘old hag’?

It is exactly that type of perceptual distortion that Ottawa photographer Andrew Wright is attempting in his ‘

Wright takes snow and water scenes, turns them upside down, and inverts them on the walls and floors to provide the inverse of the object being observed. What are we actually looking at? What is it that photography actually does? Is this photography?

What Wright does is certainly not traditional photography, as we know it. But if photography, or what appears to be photography, makes us consider our own viewpoint of the world, then it’s worth disturbing the perspective.

Wright’s ‘Nox Borealis’ takes an ordinary Arctic snow bank, turns it upside down, peels the edges off the wall, and asks the viewer, ‘What do you see? A snow hill, or a night sky? A snow bank, or outer space? How are these two sides of the World, in black and white, the pair of the other? How are they related by form when inverted? What is it about the image, the shape, that allows the viewer to see the other side of the phenomena?

Similarly, Wright’s sculptural photographs, ‘Still Water’, are the three-dimensional concave of what we might see in the landscape. Here, Wright distorts a photograph of a waterfall, only in the reverse direction and shape from its ordinary, organic perspective. Is it a fountain now? Is the other side of the water falling? What are we looking at now, and again, how is the image the ying and yang of the other? Why are they connected in this way simply by turning the negative upside down?

Look for yourself: how inverted is your perception of your own world in water?

NY, NY - 4. Sawaya and the Living Pavement

The best part of travelling is discovering small, unplanned joys during walks that you would never discover if you always had a schedule.

One of the things I love to do best in large cities is just walk.

Walk down streets, by shops, sit and watch people, meander through parks – letting the tactile experience of the world wash over me.

Today, we started out from the Guggenheim, where an Italian Futurism exhibit was on, but found ourselves poking into a Lego exhibit in a back-alley museum off 44^th called, ‘Discovery’ instead. This was a rich find. Nathan Sawaya, an ex-Manhattan lawyer, would come home each night from the office and unwind by building Lego structures of one kind or another. Soon, he found that he was spending more time making Lego creations than law articles, and chucked his law career to build Lego full-time! Law’s loss, was the art world’s gain because Sawaya’s medium for art, through Lego, is astounding. There are sculptures in his collection with over 80,000 pieces, and they range from fun interpretations of Whistler

to 3-dimensional portraits and abstracts.

Sawaya’s art is inspiring. It demonstrates what can be created with the fearless courage to follow and commit to work you truly love. As Sawaya says, "art nurtures the brain, whether made from clay, paint, wood, or a modern-day toy."
Happening upon Sawaya’s exhibition left a spark of joy in our NYC walk-about.

Making our way South, or downtown, from the Discovery exhibit and Times Square, we had time to enjoy a rare day of sunshine in the parks along the way. Union Square, for example, is host to a huge market, and any city worth its weight in gold makes room for green spaces and ‘market days’. If you live in an apartment the size of a walnut, you are going to want to get outside once and awhile. Diners and unexpected ‘bridges’

between buildings and streets south lined our walk. There were even birds out bathing in the freshly melted puddles, and drying in the sun. It was the first nice day to be outside.

This sunny, tranquil roam led us right down to the 9/11 Memorial. 13 years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, crowds of visitors still flock to pay their respects. We were stunned by the lineup, on a weekday, in the Winter, but entry is free (by donation), and what has been created out of the tragedy at ground zero is stunning. A marble cavern the shape and size of the each of the original twin towers has been dug down into the ground, and water now flows in a continuous cycle where fire and ash once were. The names of those who died in the site are listed around the edges of the tower pool, and the depth of the waterfall gives an immediate sense to the enormity of death at the Center.

There is also one, lone tree that survived the calamity, a pear tree, and it still stands, still growing, the middle of celebrity and fame now as hundreds of people take its photo.

Our walk back uptown was silent and retrospective, ending with a meal at the famous ‘Brooklyn Diner’, home to hundreds of celebrities and films,

and a “farewell NYC” with a ‘You Bred Raptors’ post-rock concert in the subway home.

NY, NY - 3. The View from the Top

The Empire State Building (ESB) was on the list of ‘things to see’ in NYC, and it didn’t disappoint. We were there in March, pre-tourist season, so there were virtually no lines at all, but I can imagine if one were to visit in the Summer months, the wait (even in the pricier ‘fast-track’ lanes) would be lengthy. I can see now why ‘King Kong’ just lost it, and climbed up the outside!

There were cattle grids lining all of the halls into the building: First to get up the escalator to the ticket lines; then to wait in the ticket lines; then to wind around an exhibit on ‘greening the building’ (which no one was interested in at all, but it took about ten minutes just to walk straight through); then to wait in line to the elevators to the 80^th floor.

There was a couple in front of us who had purchased tickets from a vendor out front, and lost their money on bogus tickets as it turns out. The lesson: Buy tickets online or from the ESB themselves.

There are two observation levels: the 86^th floor which, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, you can walk outside and view the city; and the 102^nd floor, from which the city view must be observed inside.

The 86^th floor has several elevators going up, but you have to stop at the 80^th floor first to read the history of the building of ESB. I think they should display the history of the ESB along the cattle grid so that the lines of patrons have something to read as they wait. It is wonderful to see that the ESB still retains all of the original art deco features – copper and marble designs both in the lobby and in the hallways. Gorgeous.

The preservation of the historic buildings makes New York a fabulous city to walk. Everywhere in Manhattan, the small details on the corners and windows of buildings hark back to a glorious age of women in fashionable dresses in horse-drawn carriages, and men in suits and hats.

At the observation levels, you realize the sheer volume of people crammed onto such a tiny island. How do they squeeze an 80-floor tower into the puzzle of high-rises that is Manhattan? Looking down on NYC, there is not an inch to spare.

All the more remarkable when you see Central Park from the top. There is one fifth of NYC covered in green! It is a good thing the Park is there too – at least all of that concrete has some relief.

There must have been 20 different languages heard at the top of the ESB as everyone tried to get their ‘Affair to Remember’ or ‘Percy Jackson’ shot of the NYC skyline. Our little amateur phones hardly did the view justice, but one thing we certainly could illustrate were the tired legs at the end of six sets of stairs, and an hour worth of standing time in lines.

A drink, a café, in a small quiet square (I’ll never say where) at the end of our day allowed us to contemplate the size and history of this diverse city.