mardi 29 juillet 2014

'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.

jeudi 24 juillet 2014

'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.

lundi 14 juillet 2014

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?