blossom bites need bees

FoodCycles

2010-02-24T08:43:00.009-05:00

I wrote this article for an exciting new Toronto blog that should be up and running in the next few weeks. It's going to be a sort of farmer's almanac for the city - sounds good, no?

I decided to post it here as well, just in case there's someone still reading this.

This past summer my roommates and I took advantage of the large balcony off of my room in a house on Lansdowne Ave. and decided to experiment with a pretty significant potted garden. I put a hold on a copy of Gayla Trail’s You Grow, Girl at the library and patiently waited a long time for it to come in (Gayla Trail, resident gardening blogger extrordinaire is, not surprisingly, extremely popular amongst other Toronto Public Library users). I read the book back to front - because it was a good book – but also because I was terrified of screwing up the garden somehow. I don’t have much gardening experience under my belt and not being able to

coax bright orange flowers to come out of the

wrinkly nasturtium seeds I had bought at the Dufferin Grove Market seemed entirely possible. Fortunately, everything I planted eventually sprouted and lasted through the whole season bearing as they should, except for a few herbs and strawberry plants we picked up from the grocery store instead of growing from seed. In fact, bringing the balcony garden to life was so easy – and exciting – that it just made me lament. Oh, the things I would’ve planted if only I’d known!

Come mid-summer I was jonesing for some plants that required a little more of my attention so I decided to see if there were any WWOOFing-like volunteer opportunities available in Toronto where I could get my hands dirty and learn more about urban gardening. And that’s how I found out about FoodCycles! FoodCycles is a not-for-profit city farm on the outskirts ofDownsview Park, at the corner of Sheppard and Keele.Their mission is to create a space where Torontonians can come together to grow, learn about and get excited about food.

Successful initiatives with similar sounding intentions have been established in Toronto before; The Stop Community Food Centre started out as one of Canada’s first food banks and has grown into a large non-profit with a slew of interesting programs aimed at engaging their community around food, including an 8000 square-foot community garden at Earlscourt Park and a greenhouse at The Green Barn in the Artscape Wychwood Barns, not to mention the extensive network of community gardens connected through the TCGN.

But FoodCycles is a little different. It was started by a group of community gardeners in2007 unsatisfied with the newly implemented Green Bin program in GTA. It didn’t seem able to adequately provide compost necessary to maintain rich, healthy soil needed to support gardens in the city. So, they started out as a simple soil co-operative where people would have access to healthy, virile black soil, but became in inspired by Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Growing Power at a conference in 2008 and expanded their vision to play a larger role in the urban growers movement. They started out by building three greenhouses at the corner of Keele and Sheppard, setting up one as the ‘worm bank’, a large vermi-composting centre wherefood waste gets turned into healthy black soil chock full of worm castings, one of nature’s best fertilizers. This past summer in front of the greenhouses they planted a one-acre garden full of all varieties of fruits, herbs and vegetables. With this space, FoodCycles wants to ‘reach and teach’ people

in the city about growing good chemical free food and to provide employable skills and hands on training to youth in their community, not to mention nurturing urban agriculture in Toronto by improving access to healthy soil.

When I found them on the internet FoodCycles was right in the middle of harvest and eager for volunteers. Board member and project manager Sunny Lam enthusiastically greeted me by name as I rather cautiously (I was a little nervous, I have to admit) came in the back entrance of one of their greenhouses that first time. He introduced me to the garden coordinator Ashlee Cooper who set me up with a spade and some gloves and had me weeding some kind of chard within minutes of arriving. Because it was theirfirst season with the garden, there were huge amounts of fresh produce that needed homes, so us volunteers got sent home with a healthy amount of whatever we had been harvesting – for me that ended up being two kinds of radishes, dinosaur kale, huge and delicious heads of bok choy, cucumbers, basil, yum yum yum!

I managed to make it back to the farm three or four times before my harvest season ended a little early, something I was sad to see happen because I was having an AWESOME time with FoodCycles. Though the journey was a little long, it’s not hard to get there – the Keele bus leaves from Keele station frequently and will take you all the way to the corner of the park with not too much delay. I’m not entirely sure what they’ve got on the agenda for the coming growing season, though they’ve been keeping active during the winter having recently organized the Toronto screening of DIRT! the movie and running a composting seminaralongside Green Thumbs Growing Kids coming up on February 27.

Judging from their website it looks like they’ve been busy though; they’ll be officially set up as a city CSA this summer and fall - can you get more local than that?!

Given what I saw this year, I expect it will be diverse and delicious, full of varieties of tomatoes, radishes, brassicas and edible nightshades. But even more exciting is that they are getting the ball rolling to be able to diversify the project by beginning to raise bees with a unique Toronto flavour thanks to the diversity in plants around the city and tilapia raised on plants grown at the farm, with all fish waste going back to the earth so nothing is wasted (!!). Last summer they were able to supply to great Toronto eateries, Calico and Hot Yam, with produce and I bet they’ll be adding more in the coming year.

If you want to get involved with FoodCycles or get on board through a CSA share you can find out information here and here. Hope to weed with you sometime soon!

Sparrows in Sweaters

2010-01-23T20:01:00.004-05:00

Annette Messager

Oh, how I wish I get get to the Hayward Gallery in the Real London to see this exhibit.

freshly ground

2009-05-07T09:50:00.005-04:00

i drank too much coffee this morning. shit.

i think my body my explode.

in the meantime, i sit here browsing. it's been like 45 minutes since i actually did any work

i have so many rich babies to sign up for music classes!

betsy walton

comm-unity

2009-03-05T09:36:00.007-05:00

really incredible photography project by Richard Renaldi, "Touching Strangers".
he asks strangers to pose with each other, touching...in case the title didn't give it away.

there's a really striking sort of intimacy expressed through their discomfort that is so incredibly moving.

the post on in such a world where i found this is worth reading.

growing sprouts

2009-02-23T13:59:00.003-05:00

akasha rabut

via booooooom, which is so good

les mots

2009-02-10T10:08:00.008-05:00

andrea bowers

check this

manon de boer (has my secret namesake, but also) did this really fabulous john cage video piece that was at the kw institute during the berlin biennale that i feel nostalgic for and want to see again but cannot find. but i found that up there and it's a pretty wicked project. it reminded me of how i was talking about my dear friend leah yesterday who thinks so carefully about the words she uses thus sometimes coming at you with language that seems a little unusual, but almost consistently managing to say exactly what she means. the panoramic portraits project experiments with a new semantic relationship between the syntax of communication and pragmatics...maybe? it's definitely an interesting way to draw attention to potential that exists within a new framework of language that is combined with an important structural/visual component. useful for description. do we really want to get better at description though? maybe since the visual component allows for more interpretation within the way the language intends to be used, some mystery remains...hmm...

probably more important is how the internet is such an interesting venue for organization! ah! what a wealth of information about people; the bits they leave behind themselves, the stuff recorded by others, where it comes from, the relation to their physical existence in space, the removal from any necessary relationship to place. mapped together, is our internet presence the most accurate representation of us?

also, i updated this a little

my room has no heat

2009-01-17T13:28:00.004-05:00

zachary rossman

found one reason to like the extreme cold weather here right now - sublimation. the sidewalks are way less wet and slippy thanks to this underrated endothermic phase transition.

ps - my area of toronto was part of the 25% w/o power for the full 24 hours ending at 10 pm yesterday. it was chilly.

"food as Barbie"

2009-01-12T15:13:00.006-05:00

i went to the Ethnography Through Film festival at McGill a couple years ago with Leah and Gianna on the 'food production' night. i've talked a lot about the films we watched that night since then and i just just just found the one i thought was especially interesting, online. Our Daily Bread looks at food production in Europe using a soundtrack of massive machines that interrupt the food we eat on its way from seed/birth to our stomach and shots that mirror the best from films you'll probably recognize (i.e. the shot of the sunflower fields and that one above). the combination of which manages to humanize everything in the film except for the humans.

it's a really, really good film.

after we watched it, we got a warning from the moderator (or whatever we should call her...she was associated with the film history dept. at Concordia, I believe) about how gruesome the next film was. Le Sang des Betes is a doc about a slaughterhouse in France in 1949. fully scored and with jaunty narration, there's lots and lots of blood.

honestly though, all the sterile shots of modern day slaughterhouses you see in Our Daily Bread are much more disturbing.

for your viewing pleasure: Our Daily Bread, Le Sang des Betes

don't go to cholera

2009-01-06T16:01:00.006-05:00

a may-be-heart-breaking record of time

that ryan sent to me

also

going baldessari

(those are 2)

and the apostrophe engine

might be a good way to spend/waste some time before you get back to work

happy new year

2009-01-01T13:20:00.003-05:00

i'm resolving to come up with a resolution before the end of january

haris epaminonda

songs for time!

2008-12-28T01:07:00.005-05:00

!!!

can you beeee-lieve i've had a blog for almost a year!! well not really, but we're nearing the end of the year in which i started this blog. and it was certainly winter when i began. which makes me feel like representatively, a year. right?

so i am pretty excited about 2009.

for one, i will get to use my camilla engman calendar! finally.

i didn't have a calendar last year. but for 2009, i have two. and they hang side by side on a little panel (i don't know what the panel conceals. isn't that funny? i just realized that now. and i can't check because i'm at my parents' house. later.), and they've been there for about a month.

the other calendar is art from cape dorset. it's really gorgeous and a totally appreciable size. seriously. the size definitely influenced my purchasing of it, one frivolous afternoon.

the camilla one i have had since at least september. but it's been just sitting looking exciting, yet perpetually and mournfully closed on my bookshelf. a couple of weeks ago (i think probably when i bought the other calendar. that was a mistake actually. a mistake. i brought lunch to work, because i really can't afford to be buying all that food at lunch, but i got hungry at 10 30 and had brought something to eat, so ate it. but then i had a half hour for lunch, and no food. forgot a book so i thought i'd just walk up roncesvalles. accidentally drop way too much cash on unnecessary additional calendar from Another Story Bookshop [but they give you POINTS! towards new books!!]), i decided it was reasonable to start displaying the beautiful painting for january. maybe i can find it.

this is it!

at least as far i as can remember. if i was at home, i'd be sure. but i'm not.

for two, what's not to get excited about. a year to designate and commit and design and observe and something something something you'll mistake as profound.

so, x's and o's brothers, friends and lovers! to time!

hahaha

toasts' are lame.

and often uncomfortable.

always so goddamn sentimental. getting at me through the same angle as a standing ovation to make me burst into tears.

keeping everyone warm

2008-12-05T23:21:00.003-05:00

some

2008-12-03T12:56:00.001-05:00

here's a bit of that article

"That said, what I find most exciting about what is going on right now - beyond just getting rid of Harper, which is exciting in and of itself - is that we have this opportunity to show what proportional representation (PR) would look like, because all of this talk that this is a coup is a joke.

What is being proposed by this coalition is much closer to representative democracy than what we have right now, which is a government that has [slightly more than] 35 per cent of the popular vote in a turnout that was historically low, of 59 per cent of Canadian voters, which means that even though the Tories won more seats they had fewer actual votes than in the last election.

I think it is really important to talk about democracy, about what it actually means in this period. In some ways I think it is even more important than talking about the policies, because our electoral system is broken. Because of the Tories' extraordinary opportunism and terrible calculation we now have an opportunity to see a better version of democracy and see more people represented in government.

To me the best case scenario that could come out of this is, one, you get the coalition, and, two, the NDP uses this moment to really launch a national discussion about why we need PR and that that becomes one of the things that comes out of this crisis.

Now, they don't have the mandate for that right now, but we could come out of this with a national referendum on proportional representation. People might actually like it, which would be really, really exciting."

more excitement

2008-12-03T12:54:00.001-05:00

read this article by naomi klein for an actual informed opinion on what's happening with all of this (versus my emotions)

a note from our sponsors

2008-12-01T23:50:00.015-05:00

in light of the exciting and rather unprecedented (only in the sense that who woulda thought any of those old guys would actually have the gall to make a move on the Conservative's sad minority government) rallying behind our, remember, parliamentary democracy up on the Hill in Ottawa, i invite you to watch this incredibly wicked documentary on Hugo Chavez & Venezuela called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised .

to me it's like all of a sudden it seems that democracy here has managed to retain a shred of meaning despite the 8 year appropriation of the word by all nations, including this one, subscribing to the rhetoric surrounding the "war on terror". i'm wondering right now if the hijacking and subsequent attempts at redefintion of the term has moved people to forget that it has come along way since Plato. the brand of democracy we accede to, courtesy of Her Majesty (!!), is based on a document constructed in order to maintain a certain degree of fairness and representation in the supreme ruling of this country. which is where this very formal 'vote of non-confidence' procedure and possibility of a coalition government taking over the House is coming from. much to our surprise. or mine at least, because i'm fairly certain i've never even read the constitution. so sad. have you?

my roommate and watched a lot of news tonight, the best line was maybe Rex Murphy's nod to the 'separatists' being what holds together the propspective federal government.

though we are sort of not into this label for the Bloc. could we move on, please?

but seriously, this could be the smartest thing Gilles Duceppe ever does for Quebec; gaining the support and trust from Canadians still unnecessarily nervous about a separation that will likely never reach a number of yes-votes even close to the support garnered in 1995. all the while still maintaining the integrity of Quebec as a unique nation. maybe this is a unifying move!

and really. i cannot believe how Stephen Harper's slick move to get himself re-elected before people started getting really riled up about Obama being chosen as P.E. of the U.S and our own potential for 'change', is actually, actually and seriously, backfiring on him. eat that.

slow sunday snow storm

2008-11-30T12:21:00.005-05:00

apparently a big one is coming.

i'm finding too much to share today! thus requiring this additional post. so here are some MORE AWESOME THINGS!!!

aoyama hina.

yes! go look at more.

still on paper & knives; remember when i wrote about ed pien? accidentally stumbled into an opening of his last weekend when my parents were visiting and wanted to go to the birch libralato. and there he was! and so many of the things i like. he looked graceful. that was nice.

and THIS!

eric eley

oui oui oui oui oui

i have a great deal of familiarity with the universal transverse mercator system

2008-11-30T09:44:00.013-05:00

this is so awesome.
mario feese made 'air lines' using daily worldwide flight paths

chris harrison made this map of internet use & city-to-city connections

then they got put together at the ministry of type

you can buy a poster of mario feese's work. i think i would like one. i would stare at the delicate tip of chile and search for a faint outline of baffin island from my bed.

trees by mistake

2008-11-18T21:54:00.011-05:00

claire sherman

this is okay. it is in progress and so is everything you might find there.
edit #3: yes, you may click that this. i'm all over the place.

hanna konola

postscript

2008-11-16T02:37:00.003-05:00

you all liked this too, right?

the third night in three where the moon was full

2008-11-16T02:25:00.005-05:00

and nothing was still, and everything was happening, and all we thought we knew was only an image of what it may have been (if someone could remember properly)

**.**.***.**.**

kevin sayshi

i'm making a film about electricity

2008-11-09T22:46:00.008-05:00

olaf nicolai

break it down, sweethearts
electron concept orchestra - grazin' in the grass

and if you're like me, you want to continue to dance and be your hip self all night long; so see wfmu

eaten by the sea

2008-10-25T16:34:00.009-04:00

click.

unity of opposites and the associated systematic ambivalence in the nature of things gestures towards the importance of interpretation, i read and copied out of my encyclopedia.

photooftheday.hughcrawford.com

she worked at the factory because her mom did too

2008-10-11T01:31:00.005-04:00

and that's why she came over to my house with the secret ingredient for shortbread in December of 2001.

did you ever think that red and white might represent coming and going in this day and age. this way of gage.

i've melted 100 times already and the night's not even close to over. will we record in our histories that time began when we realized the potential for revolution? and hairspray? and packaged meats?

in norway i rode slow on trains and several ferry rides woven around fjords. i'm being swallowed whole.

the idea was to patch together a book

2008-09-29T19:10:00.010-04:00

i'm not gone yet. prepare to have your socks knocked off. these are from this post on the bittersweet art of cutting up books, to which i was directed to by drawn! and wow. magical. some very special things happening. i'm not going to say anymore because that blog already did such a good job.

Jacqueline Rush Lee

Brian Dettmer

Cara Barer

p.s. - the title of this post is a line from a poem worth reading by david berman called The Night Nurse Essays. forgive me if you consider this a spoiling but these are the last few stanzas of it:

In that case his final words may have been damaged,
dormant expressions clambering out of their graves
with dust on the unstressed syllables,

before he was rudely shoved into the lake.

Pulled down through the cool green chambers,
we like to imagine him struggling awake
and suddenly realizing
he was seeing rain
in its original uncut form.

waxing and waning and waxing again

2008-09-28T23:58:00.004-04:00

the other night i had this dream where someone pointed out how huge the moon was and somehow i knew even though i could see the whole thing that it was a new moon and not one about to wane. it was the opacity of the clouds in front of it that made me so sure that what i was seeing was trying to hide. it was big, low and seemed to be lit only slightly from the back. the next morning i woke up at 7 and tried to go for a hike in a grove of silver birches. i read the directions wrong and ended up at a provincial park on the escarpment that i traipsed through with soft feet because of the sign at the entrance that showed red circles around fires and tents but a big green one around a guy with a double barreled rifle. it seemed too early in the season to walk with such trepidation though i really wasn't sure. nothing happened. i did see a lot of quiet bees nestled under blossoms. so in related news, i've decided to start a new blog. time passes and sentiments change and somehow it doesn't seem right to be writing under the guise of apples and insects. not that it was ever really a guise. more like a particularity. in any event, the new blog is a project blog and less a vent space, which means i'll probably resurface around these parts now and again. it's a work in progress so i'll let you know when it's ready to go. i can't get that moon out of my head. my dreams have been so vivid lately.

100 things

2008-09-15T22:43:00.007-04:00

a few of them:

1. can you believe they want to make more cuts to the funding of Canada's arts & culture sector? while i was away this summer i met this really lovely Berliner in Dingletown (yes...), Ireland who helped me brood over what makes the Americas so unique. she called it 'pulling from the white,' the opportunity to actively be a part of our own history...we're so new. what helps more to unite a community or maybe even aid the creation of a cohesive national identity than arts & culture? maybe you should think about signing this petition or talking to your local representative of parliament.

2. here's a life artist i currently am really enjoying and laughing with. his name is marc horowitz and i like the things he does. i am not so sure about the library vandalism, but mostly just because i'm more often than not worried that some computer might murder the public library system.

3. today i played something on the piano that made me emote all over the keys.

4. i am going to canoe down this river in a year

dreamland

2008-09-12T23:53:00.002-04:00

sonja ahlers

sweet thing

2008-09-11T13:13:00.005-04:00

i can't lie, like a lot of other crafty people right now i really really would love to save up for a piece of Wiksten clothing. probably the Orchard House dress (see the sweet red thing below). realistically, the chances of me having that sort of expendable cash at the exact right moment another one of those goes on sale are slim to none. i very much love all of Jenny Gordy's designs. i want to sew so detailed! she inspired me to order the autumn Toast catalogue (all the way from the UK for freeeeee) which i am happy about because it is just the perfect combination of melancholy and pretty. and printed with vegatable ink on recycled paper. little things, right? little momentary recognitions of feeling happy.

hrmhrm.

in other news i just fixed up an old serger and i'm having a creative FREAK OUT!!!!

autumn in iceland

2008-09-09T21:38:00.005-04:00

i might drown in rain and falling maple leaves listening to this song by Ólöf Arnalds which you can hear too by clicking on the 'this' and downloading the first song by her off this other blog i have linked to the 'this'. but listen with caution; otherwise come spring there will be dozens of half frozen music lovers thawing with the snow and poking through the paritally rotten ruffage.

in other news, i wanted a piano picture for the last post and i wish i had found this one earlier
"salt & sea piano keys" - evan b. harris

i would write a song

2008-09-07T11:41:00.006-04:00

if i could do it so that i could start conversations about things i've known forever but rarely remember. should i release them one at a time or just put together a big list right away? one at a time would probably deliver a little more punch. though they're mostly soft things so such an aggressive turn of phrase is sort of an inaccurate way to speak about them.

1. sitting down at the piano and tired of playing but stay just touching and looking at it. you go to shut it but hold the key door (what are those things called?) hovering just above them so that you can see the numbers at the top of each key. yup, 88 just like there's supposed to be. someone said eighty-eight this morning and i remembered each key's red stamped number.

2. here's another because that was maybe a bad one to start off with. when was the last time you remembered that bears actually sleep for six months of the year!

3. i've now officially decided against the original gradual-release plan. what about caterpillars wrapping themselves up in a homemade cocoon and becoming something entirely different two weeks later.

4. blue whales are so so big.

5. there are cougars in southern ontario. this is not really supposed to be on the list but i forget the rest right now and just remembered about the cougar sighting in lindsay a couple of days ago.

self-portrait (I tried to leave you on the plane)

2008-07-25T22:29:00.003-04:00

instead i had a new friend look at my energies and take all that was left calcified on my diaphragm and kidneys with six shudders and a weird sort of smile.

where do all the birds go to die

2008-07-17T02:59:00.002-04:00

i wonder. all the urban critters really. it's not too often i glance down a montreal alleyway to see a bloated raccoon belly up between the garbage and recycling. where are they all hiding?

i had a lot of thoughts on death on my 15 hour train ride to croatia a couple of days ago. there's been more death around me then ever before recently...how can i help to not think about it so much? what an absurd response to life. but i've decided not to write about it anymore. maybe another time.

in other news. i wanted to clarify the rather flippant europe-is-so-europe comment. what i meant was, traveling europe on a budget is so traveling europe on a budget. a hostel in any city could be the same one somewhere else. same people as far as you can see, really. and once you've used up all your friendly european resources and have started to regret your methods of traveling (unplanned and random, limited opportunities to couchsurf) you are stuck with second rate hostels and people trying to get you on pub crawls. all the time. i would move to berlin or budapest but please, no more hostels.

going to a wine and brine

2008-07-14T15:28:00.005-04:00

yes, pickled cheese is available as a side dish to your pilsner urquell in the Czech Republic. and it is delicious.

liz you sure are hilarious and i wish you the best of luck with all your upcoming food endeavors. note: i probably am a liar with regards to toronto. second note: may live in sweet loft in montreal. won't that be a nice place to stay when you visit me? sub-second note: how sweet would it be if i transfered my skills to aux vivres?
i could whip up some vegelox for us when you stay with me. eh? eh? aux vivres miso gravy might trump fresh's if i may say so. if i may.

third note: i am ready to stop being in europe. it is so europe, you know what i mean? i am tired of defending and undefending canada, dispelling myths and all of that, taunted by americans with regards my accent, too many 18 year olds, etc. etc.
4th: going to croatia should be fun though. will avoid hills and all hidden land mines present.
5th: may pick berries on the west side of our-home-on-native-land for august + septemberish...any one looking for work? come with!
6th: swimming in confusing sentiment most of the time, i am. will anything ever straighten out. i sure wonder.

i've seen so much nathalie djurberg this summer.

change of title

2008-07-04T04:44:00.004-04:00

doing this today

rotozaza's: etiquette

carpe noctem

the beautiful blue danube

2008-07-03T05:18:00.003-04:00

budapest

...

2008-06-28T08:26:00.002-04:00

i am a fool! in heightened emotional states it would probably be beneficial for me to not attempt to do things like public writing. parce que

1. i wrote robert hopper? what the f. clearly meant edward.
2. i am not singing harmonies with john k.'s wife, i'm just getting old
3. obviously the doppler effect follows you around. you can't run away from physics. what i meant is that i've become really aware of it and it somehow keeps coming up in conversation and dreams.
4. fuck the big dipper. it's everywhere.

out of breath or out of key

2008-06-27T12:17:00.006-04:00

...i've been thinking about this post for maybe weeks but i just got some news that has sort of dampened my spirits - tied a stone to my heart and placed a water trough for elephants on my chest - so i'm not sure it will be quite as i planned, but i have 16 minutes to kill on this computer so this seems as good at time as any. better than most actually, given the fact that i'm actually on a computer.

there are some things that seem to be following me through all of this moving around. here's a small list:
- Edward Hopper
- the Doppler effect
- the ''space-time problem''
- the Big Dipper (this is not a new discovery)

there are others, but that will do for now. things just keep connecting themselves to others - i keep being surprised to find something i thought i just left behind in one place, right in front of me in another. maybe 16 minutes isn't very much time to get into all of this. last night some mancunian boy actually had the GALL to ask me, ''hey, what's your favourite thing?'' my favourite thing?? what a ridiculous question. well, i know but it really couldn't sound more new age or cliche. but it's definitely experience. i've just realized i'm addicted to every second like espresso. it's like i'm rubbing up against every moment, not like it's the last, but just for what it is exactly. i saw john k. samson in copenhagen - he's getting older and singing the harmonies for benediction with his wife now, which means i probably am too. and feeling all of these things for not the first time isn't disappointing, it makes me smile so hard and feel completely comfortable regardless of my situation in situ or transit. and we're dying we're dying we're dying, but it seems okay when you're living 100% life and not moments past or plans to come.

can't get this straight right now. everything the day's too small to hold seems like it might currently be residing just behind my hears or something.
oh well!
kiss my nose
and crack my toes
it's worth a try
to ignore my ennui

************

following up up up

2008-06-18T04:26:00.010-04:00

/LANDREFORM/

Rykestrasse (!)

orangutans fucking

'

at the Berlin zoo, which also had the best playground known to man including 3 (!) different extraordinarily bouncy and unsupervised trampolines and other fun things. see -

this computer is about to die, so no more except this one. i found budapest very supportive.

ber-rake my body, hold my bones, hold my bones

2008-06-13T11:32:00.003-04:00

alright so i spent a lot of yesterday in my own little flurry of thought provoked by finally gaining access to the weird feelings brought on by the \LANDREFORM\ piece (which was put on by KUNSTrePUBLIK e.V., fyi) i saw at bb5 the other night and i'm feeling really excited by most of it.

what do you think about this

yesterday while i was having a little nappy (after round 3 of really provocative kunst) i all of sudden thought about how much a part of the whole 'spectacle' the spectators were. hm okay let's see if i can really say what i want to here. i mean in a sense, we were all being mocked. the whole thing was so ridiculous, but you really couldn't help but want to be a part of it all as well, especially since you were being given the opportunity. i mean, certain parts of me really wanted to get in a car (the parts that were a bit cold and lonely, the parts eyeing cute artists, you know) and i definitely do not think that i'm in any sense better than the people who did gleefully ride around the circle over and over again. something about what went on there upon reflection seems to have made me feel like attention was being drawn to in the face of useless economic determinism and destruction how we are often too attached to our subjective experience to be conscious of the ways we are maybe bound first by apathy or something. hmm, that sounds like garbage. what am i trying to say.

well in the little artist's statement for the event it says, ''Bored by the wasteful tedium ofeconomic determinism, their exhibition project'' aims ''to generate hypothetical stratgeies of action,'' - hypothetical strategies of action. well, one strategy would be to continue participating and thus condoning corporate privatization of public space, like we did the other night, and do all the time when we decide to ignore when signs go up on old land in fallow, ''rezoned for commercial use.'' and since it made me weird and angry to see people so willing to be a part of it, it also left me alone to question why (besides really obvious reasons like the fucking nasty and unnecessary combustion going on).

desperately searching for meaning has kind of lead me to feel like it was maybe really good art. sneakily interactive and participatory, we became a part of the exhibition and perhaps gave it the meaning that was sort of implicitly intended.

holy shit, imagine i had spent this much time thinking about aristotle and kierkegaard.
honestly, though how could i. the whole brilliance of very bizarre contemporary art is that it comes to you from all sorts of directions, not limiting your intake to something too often limiting as language.

ALSO,
more exciting Berlin news. if anyone caught the hanne hukkelberg ref in the last post (probably only A. J.(e)R.C. would...haaaaa...) they might also be interested to hear about how i was strolling through what i think is my favourite neighbourhood in this sweet, sweet city, Prenzlauer Berg, when i glanced at my map to see that i was almost at the intersection of Knaackstrasse and...Rykestrasse!! then i remembered that the first song on that album is called Berlin and i though, ah hah! where is 68! so i trooped up and down the street, for no particular reason really because what could i do? knock on the door, ''Hello, Hanne? It's me, Emily,'' but alas, the numbers only went to 51. still, though. i hope she recorded the album around there, that would make it even better.

i have photos of both of these things but i can't be bothered to do any uplodading at this point.

plus, i'm about to run out of ti

dive into infinity

2008-06-12T04:54:00.005-04:00

after numerous (hem hem) requests, i've decided to write a quick little thinger on the w.w.w. from my current location in Berlin to provide an update for those who want to know but also! because i want your opinions.

first order of business! i love Berlin. knew i would. want to move back here. though i have to say, all this city jumping is really making me appreciate montreal and toronto because they are (in some, not necessarily aesthetic, sense) pretty comparably interesting and exciting places to live. with lots of bikers. not as many as in holland -

sidenote: was in south-east holland visiting my old roommate last week (fun and funny for a number of reasons, one being we ate with her quite-conservative-old-world-euro parents twice, where they alternated between carefully distanced sentences in english and gabbering in dutch, and her dad told me very important things like 'north americans are too stupid to work (with martine, at the university)' and vegetarianism is dangerous; perhaps that's why i look so 'peaky'...i suggested it had something to do with not sleeping in the same bed for more than two nights for close to a month.) but also! martine and i did quite a bit of biking and i made note of some important facts that contribute to holland having a larger population of bicycles than people - 1. they are huge, heavy, easy riding machines there - no one locks them to anything, they just lock up their back wheels and assume no one would be so silly as to exert the effort to carry such a machine very far, therefore finding a parking spot is not too difficult, - 2. biking is favourable because it is a seriously social activity - they ride very close to one another and chat and laugh and chat and chat and chat. i found this very stressful especially since i was using martine's roommate's bike which was of course much, much, much too large for me (tall dutch girls - it's not just a stereotype), my feet barely stayed on the pedals while i was riding.

- but still a lot.

anyways. i want your opinions, not on cycling through rural holland (which looks convincingly like southwestern ontario, actually) but on this ahem, performance piece i suppose, i went to my first night in berlin

so the whole point of me being in germany at this particular time is because the berlin biennale is on just until sunday, which i really wanted to come to so i could pretend to be a part of the international art community (can i be? i have been to a remarkable number of galleries in the past month) and see some hopefully interesting work. the biennale is being curated by adam szymczyk & elena filipovic and is called 'when things cast no shadow'. it's supposed to have this sort of day-night dichotomy thing, but i haven't really been feeling much of that besides the fact that things are going on both in the day and in the night.

i've been really enjoying myself, but blah blah i don't really want to go into too much detail about the good stuff because i want to talk about this thing i went to a couple nights ago! i got into the city around 5 30 and had planned to go to this opening at the Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum, an area between the old east and west of the city that is an 'urban wasteland,' if you will. broken pieces of wood and cement in a dry and sandy little bit of land, shoved between new high-rises and old duplexes. i guess it's been at the centre of a lot of property right discrepancies since the fall of the wall and now has been claimed by a small collective of Berlin artists who are using it during the biennale as an "ambiguous site [that] exemplifies specific dialectices of change and standstill in post-unification Berlin...an odd urban void that will stand as a temporary space of possibility and a test site for research," a "reminder of a dramatic past and also a monument to failed urban development in conditions of sluggish economic growth and as a locus of investor fantasies."

i'm really excited about it, i love the public movement to reclaim supposedly private space, i love how interactive this particular space is, however! this thing i went to was just ridiculous! and it was put on by the guys from the collective so i was un poco disappointed. it was called \LANDREFORM\ and was supposed to "resort" to the Woody Guthrie song 'This Land is Your Land' to generate hypothetical strategies of action. this is what it was. in the middle of this big useless field was a wooden teepee. around the teepee were 8 black BMW sedans attached to one another by white rope with red flags hanging from them in a circle delineated by pieces of broken cement. from the car radios was a sample of the song broken up about every three minutes by a buzzer or a voice counting down from 5. for probably 4 hours the BMWs drove around the teepee stopping every three minutes and idling while the people in the cars (observors like me) got in and out, taking turns riding around and around and around. gleefully hanging out of the windows and taking photo after terrible photo, waving to their friends, waving to strangers, drinking their 2 euro beers, smoking lots of cigarettes. being very excited when it was their turn to ride. about an hour and a half in, two of the artists lit the teepee on fire. and the cars kept driving around. and more people took bad photos.

and i stayed for a very long time, a little bit grossed out by it all. it was strange and egotistical and, i thought, an incredible wasteful use of the wasted space. 8 huge cars were running for like 5 hours, just driving around a fire (which was a beautiful fire, i have to say, and something about it was appealing with regards to this whole reclamation of public space thing), and everyone there felt a little bit famous when it was their turn to get in a car...strange. sick?

hm. actually i'm having some positive feelings about it all of a sudden.
maybe my reaction is sort of useful.
oh man.
i've actually been dying to talk about this for days, but haven't really met anyone that i thought wouldn't run away once i started moving my hands and shouting in a very excited manner about it all.

okay, actually, seems that i need to sit on this for a little bit longer.
please leave comments!!

postscript - need to write more later about the luxury of the body, performance art and the matthew barney "drawing restraint" exhibit i went to at the Kunsthalle Wien. i essentially had to be taken away by security guards when the gallery was closing. there's such a fine line between arrogance and originality in creative work like he's been doing for years. i have to say, i think you're probably just jealous if all you see is self-indulgence in his art. me lo gusta mucho.

miss most of you, but don't really have any desire to come home. come to me!

at the fork of the thames

2008-05-12T19:30:00.006-04:00

i am in the town i grew up in for the first time in a long time as if i'm here to stay. i moved out of my apartment in montreal and now have a two-year collection of stuff moved from rue de bullion and into my childhood bedroom. it's a little cramped. i'm not staying here, but i guess it's where i'm starting from again. i just drove my sister downtown and drove home along the only main street in this giant sprawling town a little nostalgically, looked at all the things (every one on that single street) i made sure to tell a friend about when he was coming to london for the first time. he said he felt close to me being here, which is funny and sort of sad to think about as i drive down the same street now with the radio off feeling more removed from my surroundings than a geographer should ever.

the other night, my last night in montreal sort of by surprise (moving was a complicated ordeal on a number of levels including when we actually intended it to happen), i sat on a couch in a new friend's place talking really closely and enthusiastically with emma. akua watched until she couldn't take it any longer and with a short laugh yelled, "You guys talk about yourselves so much!!"oh do we. we do we do. i do! so much. it never really occurs to me that's what's going on, sometimes my experiences are overwhelming and i can't stop to think about any thing besides how i'm feeling. how obnoxious.

you know what else is overwhelming right now? everything. the news. dusk. sickness. and i can't slow anything down to grab a hold of some, any, thing. i am living so much in the moment that i've hardly had a chance to sort out where anything goes. take my crowded crowded bedroom for one. my swollen heart and cold fingers for two. i don't really want this right now; that's what's whelming me. i really would've preferred to feel sure about something this May. i had kind of settled to let that be a boring job and expensive apartment in toronto, but now i've been given another opportunity to keep moving and how could i let it pass? experience! i just don't know if my rib cage is large enough to love more people fundamentally out of reach because of the spaces between us. meeting a person on the move requires so much of a commitment to being good with leaving them behind and i just really don't know if i want to do that anymore. i'm tired. i miss every person i've met and not been able to tuck into my pocket. if you are one of those people, please come over and we'll have some of the tea i bought to improve my circulation. i'll only try to steal you away if you want to come.

laura fayer

i went back to wipe it clean

2008-05-09T03:32:00.005-04:00

sometimes it's almost too much to see how long it does take to inch inch inch out of some assumed or more likely pretended bit of assurance. trust is so fickle, there might be more than one catch tied up in being sure of someone else. especially if you're not so sure yourself. don't you think? it hurts a little bit sometimes.

and my life became risky

2008-05-07T09:23:00.004-04:00

i am seeing everyone in these cracks.

i am pressing my hot hot chest against the cool tiles in the shower
i am leaving that him curled up comforted in my warmed bed and
letting my ears be grated by the electric violin in the metro
maybe thinking about how this
could have should have
been, not like this!
but how else.
supported by a base upon which i let the gin stand,
i am seeing

everyone

in these cracks.

benicia gantner

2008-04-27T05:27:00.003-04:00

it's the morning!

the keys, please

2008-04-25T02:26:00.002-04:00

"triple threat!" i licked my lips and ran my tongue across the scars left behind from the two times i have let someone pierce my lip for the sake of spontaneity and her friend (surprise!).
"we are," i savored each consonant, "cha-wri-pu-lee threatening."
i can feel all my motivation and creativity bursting from each crack between my pores, non-directionally and so, rather unproductively. i need a focus! to focus. phoe-kuss. locusts.
in large numbers they're triply threatening to some sorts of trees.
even the blazing breeze
and brazen bees aren't able to do much about that.

late nights

2008-04-24T00:30:00.004-04:00

just off the corner of my street is a street where just off the corner of it construction is beginning again. after 8 or so long months and 12 or so store closings we had a nice break of about 8 to 12 weeks where the street was full of snow and free of trucks. alas, the sun returned beckoning to forgotten projects and misaligned pipelines and this i walked along tonight wondering about the changes it had seen. the main! the Main! i get to live off of the main in this country's most curiously creative city. where no one works and spring is real dirty, and there are eyeglassed guys hanging off their balconies on your walk home, plaid shirts undone shirtsleeves rolled up yelling down to probably you, "we're all losers! we're all beautiful fucking losers!"

claire ellen oswalt

summer in the city

2008-04-23T09:43:00.005-04:00

i like the murmur project. neato mosquito.

jen corace

"naked with summer in your mouth"

2008-04-17T11:14:00.008-04:00

things i will miss about university: watching people write

seriously! i'm not really sure there are going to be a lot of opportunities to look at people's handwriting from here on in. no one writes anymore. sure, i am a letter sender and have letter sending friends, but i know them and it's not quite the same as being in a giant examination room watching the idiosyncractic ways people throw themselves into putting thoughts on a page. i really like people who hold their pens 'wrong'. i hold my pen wrong, it's nice to see other people who have refused to give in to all the people who claimed there was only one way. my dad paid me $20 when i was maybe 8 or so to write an entire page of one sentence holding my pencil between my thumb and forefinger on my right hand. i got the $20, but the incentive wasn't enough to change my habits forever. what did he expect? i am a performer, not a reformer.

there's a boy who sat in front of me during my exam this morning who's also sat near me in class a few times; he grips his pencil (only pencils, sharpened at his desk) in a fist. and he writes this way. i experimented, it is extremely taxing on your ligaments to grip with such force for so long.

so anyways. i have some things to say sort of in nostalgic retrospect of being done this degree (!!). geography and philosophy was a good combination...becoming familiar with ideas and the space where they might be applied...or something to that effect.

for me; i'm so interested in expression and identity - expression of identity. starting from what i'm going to dare to call 'first principles' and Ficte-ian pespectives on where i end and everything that's not-me starts; to the material embodiment of certain forms of identity in the landscape, e.g. ethnic identity, sexual identity...it's an incredible perspective to have gained to be able to (kiiiiiind of) start from the smallest most conceptual bits and extend outwards to what is tangible and 'real'. or at least sensational. sensations are a funny thing though because they're such a fundamental part of the smallest and largest bits.
the experience of sensational effects, expression of their affects.

i'm excited to put some time in thinking about canadian identity. notoriously undefinable - why are you canadian? there's a plurality so pervasive within the notion of a coherent canadian identity that it's even indescribable beyond saying that it is just that - a plurality. i'm especially especially especially interested in the expression of canadian identity through art. i'm going to spend some time with this now . that . i . am . done . SCHOOL!

to start, on a recommendation, i'm spending some time with al purdy.

________________________________

that's by emmanuel polanco

heavy

2008-04-15T21:28:00.002-04:00

make something feel good again
balint zsako

my friend emma

2008-04-14T22:37:00.003-04:00

has got an extraordinary voice
and a really good new song that she produced with my other friend kweku

let me tell you my friends, it warrants a listen:

emma frank

i am a-struggling with some aristotle right now, my mymy my. get me out of here.

un cadeau, la vie

2008-04-12T22:25:00.016-04:00

i am struggling to try to stay present these days. i think i've said that three times to the same people in the last 70 hours or so. present present present.
i've at least got a handle on how managing nostalgia, which seems like a start. things just happen so fast in the immediate, getting sucked into fantastical scenarios usually implausible is seeming more and more like giving in & up. it would be really great to sort out a way to be adequately detached but not running or pushing the wrong things away.

being present also means letting go of feeling like an agent it seems... i have an Inuit friend who told me to forego planning since more often than not things spring up, there's a snowstorm or the ice melts earlier than you expected, and nothing goes the way you thought it might. why go looking for disappointment?

my friend anthony took these photos on clarke when he was in montreal a while back. we had breakfast and went for a walk. walking seems to be the thing i know best how to do with people visiting this city, likely because it's easier for me to think and be my most charming while on the move. i know it was a long time ago because we talked over eggs about the possibility of a conservative prime minister. oh, those were the days. it was anthony's birthday recently and he told me he'd been reading this. i remembered this here montage and thought i might show it off. hope that's okay.

anthony boronowski

comfort

2008-04-11T01:09:00.000-04:00

i walk home alone past the dozens of people thankful for the warmth and asking for money, turn the corner onto my street and stop to have the most sensual experience, burst into tears seeing the crescent moon as big as in the movies, east at the top of my street.
in a city, nothing you touch is real, the ground is constructed and the sky can move you to cry.

oh to see us melt into all the cracks.

au coin de st-urbain

2008-04-10T00:24:00.000-04:00

100 things

but first! there are two doors on the balcony off my bedroom, the one that swings in just sort of rests against the one that swings out, which doesn't really close very well it just sort of shuts and hooks closed. it's usually pretty chilly, but now! it smells like spring and air! always! even with the garbage in the downstairs hall.
soon, i'm going to take that inside door off. and sleep with feet outside
and get cold and maybe wet when that big rain that needs to fall finally comes and washes montreal.

nathalie daoust

today's a divisble day

2008-04-08T14:45:00.001-04:00

where were you February 4/04?

oh god

2008-04-06T02:20:00.001-04:00

there are about 6 zillion other things more worth being sad about

purge of my purge

2008-04-05T22:10:00.000-04:00

trying to let go of a few feelings right now and finding this requires meeting them one last time as they escape my sensational lexicon, float away, dry bits of history left behind. it's like slow swelling warm light followed by hollow chest and upset stomach and me silently saying 'oh god this is sad'. should i look forward to or dread seeing the last one go? the answer is yes. which doesn't make sense, and is precisely the point. things are verrrry muddled these days, let me tell you. oh god this is sad.

chewing winter

2008-04-04T02:07:00.000-04:00

"I'm going to fucking kill someone tonight,"
he spoke loudly. His voice was heavy with poutine and I ignored him and kept walking home from the bar I felt removed from but had a good time at. I had thought, it's the funniest thing that I am here and stuck thinking about the things that make me feel bad although they're far away. And this time I'm not even sure of how to run. I had thought I thought and then I left because it was time and I was about to become obnoxious, speaking too loud. Everything seems off. I am on and not doing the right things. I don't understand the feelings I should use to create. Run run run run. Seriously? I am, too easy, once again. And it leaves me without very much.

kelly lynn jones

her work is beautiful, i'm on the ground still dissecting the details

sentimentality is a vortex

2008-04-01T23:49:00.000-04:00

"Emily," my voice said warningly.
I know I know, my mind replied, my heart sighed.

bertrand sallé

tell me anything you want

2008-03-25T00:09:00.001-04:00

kelie bowman

i like seeing movies in theatres

2008-03-14T23:21:00.000-04:00

i just saw 'up the yangzte' by yung chang. see it. it's been opening all over canada this past week. and it is so crazy.

it reminded me that i haven't seen 'manufactured landscapes' yet. this is one of edward burtynsky's photos of nickel tailings in sudbury. i was in sudbury recently. it's pretty bleak.

i also saw this crazy other nfb film this week called 'the invisible nation' and got un peu informed about what's been going on up at barriere lake. come to nfcm on tuesday for a public assembly at 6 00. midnight kitchen is doing dinner!

someway somehow

2008-03-11T11:46:00.000-04:00

i let myself get suckered real bad. and oh, it hurts.

david habben

"space is what we have here. in our personal life and in the land as well."

2008-03-09T11:45:00.000-04:00

last night after we made music for hours i had a dream that i dove into a warm familiar lake and swam around the whole thing on my back

and even though it was murky and warm with those soft bottoms we always found in southern ontario i ignored the shadows of water snakes and just thought about the satin feeling of water against my skin and how its temperature was the same as the air's

how awesome it is to lie in the water and look up at the sky
how i want to just hold my sensations above everything else and think about how that moment before you start to cry is almost like an orgasm

there were people on the dock looking out for me but they left me alone

___________________
that up there is by kiersten essenpreis.

and all the rooftops want us

2008-03-08T15:42:00.000-05:00

this is a long time coming
(i won't get it [write])

1. i forgot all about my senses until i had a moment to just stare out the window. i realized that inside my chest felt just like that dirty pile of snow. and that it was like i ate too much ice cream with too much speed and i remembered the way that november/march precipitation that is 1/2 rain 1/2 snow and assaults your forehead is the only kind that really stills you. i've been stilled, for the first time in months. that dirty pile of snow isn't a bad thing. the weight on your chest could pin you to one place and make all the decisions for you. its almost like a hug. being squeezed is sort of the same as being loved like you're new by someone who's old. for that moment that pile of snow brought down the swelling in my heavy heart. i'll take a hug.

2. i can't remember where i wanted to start. i finished my first draft. the initial effect was much less satisfying than i anticipated. now, since i've taken some time to breathe and stare out the window for so long it makes the people in the cafe uncomfortable [the grafitti on cinema l'amour says "sake bank sake sake"], it feels good to let go of guilt. can i ever tell you of the new ways i understand privilege [you, oh and everyone else who's already heard]? i am privileged, i get the privilege of talking to these people, they privilege me with their trust and i become privileged with their memories. to think of the relation to some people sharing some common experience that isn't mine as a 'privilege' implies so much more movement and action than i was prepared to gain. to be fit to understand privilege as a verb means acknowledging the relation between mass and motion. momentum. so much of the time you lose control of the direction. i don't know if this was where i wanted to go.

all of a sudden i do my last interview and hear of more hurting than i've ever known or known anyone to know and something like the motivation that used to keep me up all night drafting letters and petitions to divest mcgill's endowment funds from tnc's with ties to sudan has me telling her (she is so solid) i'll write the grant proposal she needs from inac to have things get started. i am privileged with this information. if you read my paper you will be too. but no one is going to. so why did i spend so much time doing it. there's no way i can leave with all these stories and just keep them between my ribs. oh shit.
oh. what am i going to do with all of this. oh what what what.
sake bank sake sake.

3. my friend ryan marr took this photo. two days ago was his birthday and i'm pretty certain he was kite boarding in aruba. happy birthday, my friend. sincerely, emily-the-envious.

i wrote 57 pages about some people here

2008-03-08T02:40:00.000-05:00

this isn't the right time,
but

what am i supposed to do with all of this?
sincerely,

who are these children that scheme and run wild

2008-03-03T18:45:00.001-05:00

dear:

i wish i could find some words left in my chest that i hadn't already dedicated to preservation in my flailing undergraduate thesis, alas i must save what i have.

i just spent all day creating a whole load of crap that is the essay i will hand in to my really lovely professor of that Aristotle course. really. really really, i would've loved to have done a good job, to have been to ponder for three days, but instead i crammed it all into one and quoted too many times instead of coming up with anything of my own. fuck it. now i am where i came this morning at 9 (the GIC, obvs) and stayed minus the time it took for me to see an adviser and hear about how i maaaaay not be able to graduate in may (i'm choosing to forget about this possibility for now), about to embark upon more writwritwriting, this time for the ole' dissertation, which looks highly inviting in comparison to the babbling litter i spewed all day on art imitating nature where a table was art and i was nature. nevermind. anyways. what? oh yeah, i spilled cold coffee all over my leg when my phone vibrated with a distracting text message. so i stink like that. and i'm going to be here for so long. and i'm hungry and want to eat akua's chili.

oops, look at all those letters i meant to keep to myself. i am right screwed now.

okay, anyways. i'm going fucking wild over maureen gubia. i like looking at the sketchbooks of people who can actually draw i pretend that's what i see when i look at the pages and pages and pages of words and eyeballs that fill my own notebooks.

i feel like swearing. my teeth keep coming to rest on my bottom lip.

dudes, i just realized she lives in guayaquil. oh my nostalgic bones! they ache and shake and make my heart quiver with all the intercostal vibrations.

it's funny actually (apparently i'm not done here), now that i know this i sort of see some guayasamin in the form (substance?) (all day with Aristotle) of some of her pieces. i wonder what it means to say guayasamin to an ecuadorian artist. i'm so new.

k, piece peace (maybe i could use a little bill to quiet me down)

(no, i think i just want to go home and play the piano)(i miss my piano!)(maybe i'll go home for easter)(need to have a real conversation with somebody)(stop procrastinating!)(shhh)

gold plated body cast

2008-02-29T18:46:00.001-05:00

irana douer

in holy rattlesnakes

2008-02-29T18:31:00.000-05:00

oh, dear matty cipov:

how i enjoy the way you capture the ambivalence with which i sometimes address my existence and the few times i strike my own eyes blank and mask mask mask all of the emotive hints and glances

yep.

is a frog's ass water tight?

2008-02-27T01:33:00.000-05:00

well, yah, for all youse without your tits up in the rhubarb

you're the kindling, still

2008-02-26T16:27:00.000-05:00

"michigan afternoon"

amy arntson colours water with watercolours and certain mastery. let's live by the sea for at least for a little bit. in one of those cabins.

dealing with this, that and the other

2008-02-26T14:09:00.000-05:00

i've just spent two nights in a cabin on the shores of the bay of fundy with several incredible people, one stray cat, one old cat dealing with a coyote responsible eye infection, two huskie puppies and one sweet dog that was rescued from a wrongful drug bust. everything i've seen and done feels like a story i'm about to write, but i wanted to wait to make something of anything.

neither my sweet friend kuey-bird (as her maritiming relatives fondly refer to her) nor myself own one of those fancy digital cameras, so we've come equipped with two disposables we picked up for $2.99 at the hardware store by our place in montreal and one role of film in my old nikon fg. disposables require the perfect combo of care less/full ness, so i sort of think that each photo will really be full of words, and i want to have at least those developed before i try to do much writing.

here's a list to aid my memory with any later expansion and development

- caleb's beat up trumpet and all blues mash-up that i listened to in an empty balcony, staring down at all the balding heads in paddy's pub
- and with that, aaron's approach to compliments/friend making, as well as the crochet hat resting on his ears to cover the head he shaved because of the lice his kids got hold of
- the speed with which the rumors flew that we were being invited to sing at the deep roots festival in september
- deb and fred's incredible spirit and stamina and sensibility and smiles and style and smoking and simple lives
- rohen's three year old vocabulary
- melted rocks in the bay
- wet air
- east coast idioms
- the times these idioms work better than the bumbling words we try to fill with relevant content

can i live in one of these cabins by the sea? warmed by a wood stove, with no locks on the doors?

don't deconstruct

2008-02-22T07:59:00.001-05:00

it's 7 59 am (i think my blog might think it's on the west coast?) on friday; this is the time i look forward to all week.

i seem to be a regular at places run by introverts, so my conversations with people who are not students are limited (we smile a lot and they know how i take my coffee, though). students are difficult because they want to talk about school and that stresses the part of me that's always thinking about writing my thesis. there are days that go by where i don't speak to anyone until one of my roommates comes home at 8. and that doesn't mean that i wasn't out all day too. winter in montreal is hard; it's so cold, a lot of peoples mouths are covered by scarves.

on fridays i work in the computer room at a women's day shelter called chez doris. and it's my favourite time of the week. i have the best conversations and feel like i'm doing something at least minorly useful. either no one comes in and i sit at a desk for three hours and read, and have to do that because i have to stay there for three hours and why not read. or people come in. and usually it's the same people. and some of them come in at that time because they know i'll be there; i have skill-sharing arrangements with two women in particular. i need to work on my french in a serious way - marie-claude is trying to sort out the internet (she was really curious about this facebook business last week) and hala needs to learn powerpoint to do a presentation for the preschool she works at. and i know how to work the internet AND microsoft office, and they both prefer to speak en francais, and so we help each other! and it feels so good to interact with people who don't know all my stories, don't expect certain moods from me. i really really enjoy it. i look forward to it all week. when 12 00 comes, i never want to leave. the people who run this place are incredible - they provide such an incredible service and the staff and all the women who come in are so kind and appreciative to one another.

hala has a ph.d and has been trying to get official immigrant status for eleven years. mc is from france and didn't know what "caps lock" meant two weeks ago. emily has a lot of love needing to be spread outside of her 5 closest friends.

also. i'm heading to nova scotia this evening. 44 hours on the train, 4 days in a small town, 2 in the maritimes' biggest. i can't wait to see the ocean.

my curiously apathetic peers

2008-02-19T20:45:00.000-05:00

has anyone noticed how there seem to be a lot of young trendy people sort of carelessly wearing animal fur this winter?

it's those damn hats. you know, the ones with the flaps that hang down over the ears and the one snapping up above the forehead. they're cute. and MADE OF ANIMAL SKIN! what sorts of animals? no idea. rabbit, maybe? fox? squirrel?

i feel like it's sort of passé to be any sort of activist with regards to fur. it's maybe sort of passé to be any sort of activist at all, but i think that's okay. weeds out a little insincerity.

weird how i know so so so many 'vegetarians' though. i want one of those hats, oh do i want one. but i won't get one. because i don't think it's right to breed rodents in order to kill them and steal their warm coats. especially when they're being bred for that purpose and living 12 to a 2 ft x 2 ft cage for their entire lives, with most of their matter being thrown in garbage cans behind suburban warehouses.

and you know what. i needed a winter coat this year and decided to go full out and buy one brand new from the bay's 70% off whoops-it's-already-snowing sale and i was seriously seriously limited by wanting a jacket with a hood sans-animal.

seems like most people aren't really thinking about fur-wearing these days. that concerns me.

sunny february

2008-02-19T10:27:00.000-05:00

"let's try a little harder 1" - Christa Dalien

+ 1 very positive experience
- 1/2 stressful situation
+ productive work
+ settling in my unsettledness
+ changing back to listener from talker
- bitter attitude towards my work
+ excitement now
+ excitement for tomorrow
+ still excited about my yesterdays

= emily the contented

i have been feeling really good lately!

shh

2008-02-18T10:25:00.000-05:00

i don't have much to say this morning. i like julie morstad. her tone is dark though its weight is light, and there's something cynically sweet about each of her drawings. i have no idea how to talk about art. also, a lot of my words are somewhere else today.

more paper, this time with glue

2008-02-18T10:17:00.000-05:00

"get out there from behind you part two" by mike swaney

floating snow can disguise big puddles

2008-02-17T21:00:00.001-05:00

today was beautiful until it all of sudden fell overcast, rained and the ground froze over.

i secretly love navigating the streets up town to my house in the winter. i like having to remember to be agile and on guard for all the obstacles threatening to take my balance away. when jumping over the giant puddles helps us pedestrians find camaraderie in the task of crossing certain intersections.

there always people walking in Montreal. that's nice about this city.

anyone lived in a pretty how town
e.e. cummings
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

that means no where i come from

2008-02-17T03:11:00.000-05:00

"Broken bottle," some guy said. I stepped off the last step outside the skeeziest bar on St. Laurent.
Duh.
Then I slipped on the hard pack.

"Just the person I've been looking for," I was in the bathroom looking in the mirror. It's funny when someone you're thinking about shows up in your own eyes.

Most nights, I sleep alone in a four bedroom apartment.

and if my hands stop working

2008-02-16T09:54:00.000-05:00

do you know what it is like to feel the weather in your fingers?
this most wintery winter is stuck in my joints.

my hands have been aching cold for weeks.
it sort of feels like my sense of touch needs glasses or something. when i start thinking about it too much i get worried about the strength of my heart. why can't it get the blood to my fingers?

i saw my friend chesley sing at the scrivener fundraiser last night with someone who i think might've been named chris. her voice is like spun gold. whatever that means.

brief detraction

2008-02-14T22:33:00.000-05:00

i want sweet distraction
and laughs

i wasn't cynical for a moment. it was refreshing. it doesn't do good things for the wrinkles between my eyebrows. i'm tired of this house. i'm tired of this place. i'm going to lie under my bed against the door to the porch and beside the heater. you can find me there in the morning. maybe. maybe i'll be out on the porch.

small satisfactions

2008-02-14T14:31:00.001-05:00

so i'm almost almost almost done a b.a. at mcgill and i'm having a very difficult time keeping on track with school. the inspiring and perhaps a little extreme motivation i once moved forth with has deserted me for some happy cabin in the boreal forest where sweet friends and oh-so-many crafts abound. it turns out it wasn't such a wise idea to just take three classes so that i could 'concentrate' on my thesis. i spend a lot of time drinking coffee in cafes, browsing through articles on IQ policy in Nunavut while skimming Aristotle's Metaphysics and recalling the effect of transportation on the urban form while Visconti was making Senso.

i.e. unfocused to the max.

so it occurred to me that it might be to my advantage to use this venue to write about things i'm thinking about...

or rather to encourage me to think about things by creating a venue for me to present any ideas i manage to come up with.

it seems more and more obvious as i grow older that (oh, my floundering ego) i am totally dependent on the satisfaction that comes with the recognition of the work i've done in order to facilitate any sort of motivation to keep working. and though i'm fairly certain there are at most three people reading what i write here (hyperbole?), this is probably the perfect place to write about stupid ideas that my friends are tired hearing about (they don't care - not because they're not the greatest friends, but because what i am saying is almost always completely irrelevant with regards to our relationship and their own fulfilling lives, and more about mememe [ick]), because at least i get to do so thinking that there's maybe one person skimming it.

i thought i would start with Aristotle since it's the last philosophy class i have to take and it's so much better than I expected, but i'm being a terrible non-contributive student and not spending anytime actually thinking about the things that i've been reading. i'll probably think via flying-finger-frenzy on here

but not right now because i just wrote an exam in the Canadian City, which didn't go well but i don't care! what a relief to not care. it's a second year class and the last one i have to take for my degree, so i'm just trying to make it through. anyways, blahblah small satisfactions, we had to write some definitions for which i was under-prepared. one was for "Cosmic city" (? no idea. i should Google it right now). i wrote

"Cosmic cities are incredible examples of well-planned urban environments constructed by terrestrial beings that may be viewed via the telescope available for public use at the National Museum of Astronomy in Quito, Ecuador. They have served as examples for the revitalization of the downtown cores of such great Canadian cities as St John's, Nfld. and London, Ontario."

my hand cramped, i smiled a secret smile, chewed on my pen and looked at the teacher who made eye contact with me and told me i could go even though he'd just made an announcement about having to stay for the last 15 minutes of the exam if you finished at any point from here on in. what a nice guy. i'm a fool. just two more months of school.

even the swans were bankrupt and blue

2008-02-11T22:21:00.001-05:00

though in one low period i may have turned to a base for a little support, never have i felt the need to investigate what crack is really all about nor do i know what Xanax is even for besides quick exits, and thanks to David Berman i think i have some inclination as to how it might feel to go that far without having to ever go that far. really though. American Water. what an album! nothing like a little Send in the Clouds...it's such a fine substitute for elbowing wooden doors and breaking plates for those of us belonging to the expressive-yet-lazy variety of dramatic humans.

a couple years ago when i dove into Silver Jews non-directionally (and really just because i read that incredible interview in Fader [summer...2004?]) i went full out and even bought actual air which i (whoops) haven't really gotten around to reading very much of still, but i really really like what i have read. i feel like a lot of his incredible lyrics kind of get lost in the awkward unfamiliar phrasing and a purposefully accentuated drawl of all the Silver Jews songs. not to mention when they are punched with a little Malkmus back-up. it can be very distracting.

here's a poem (is this illegal?):

Snow
David Berman

Walking through a field with my little brother Seth

I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.

He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.

Then we were on the roof of the lake,
The ice looked like a photograph of water.

Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.

I didn't know where I was going with this.

The were on his property, I said.

When it's snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.

Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.

We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.

But why were they on his property, he asked.

- from actual air, 1999

irrational love

2008-02-07T21:49:00.000-05:00

my romantic cynical emotional love gets spread around to nonsensical things/people who can't respond, thus minimizing the chance i will experience heart ache/break. not talking about loving things. talking about intense emotional attachment that mirrors real live loving.

i was sitting in a truck with 5 very serious Slovenian men, 4 Swedish heavy metal dudes, my dad, my brother and two guys who somehow scored jobs that allow them to ski backcountry powder all day, in the furthest corner of the vehicle smelling man sweat and secretly listening to Sandro Perri in one ear and i started to compile all the places i spend my love.

here is a rudimentary list:

- Francie from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- Lost Lake
- hay
- Nietzsche
- Winnipeg
- apples
- Lars von Trier

this doesn't make any sense. what a terrible list. what am i doing.

humans seek shelter elsewhere

2008-02-06T20:42:00.000-05:00

i didn't even realize, but we as people are completely excluded from that space regardless of whether we are being pursued by fiery beings - that space in the stairwell is reserved for fire refuge only (quick! in here fast! before that snake throws up on you, i think it's poisonous it already made hot betty and burnin' juan disappear! merciless!)

and don't even think about stopping here for a smoke

2008-02-06T11:18:00.001-05:00

so if you're seeking asylum from any sort of pursuers without fire, find somewhere else to hide, okay?

paper magic

2008-02-05T20:33:00.001-05:00

i sort of stumbled into Montreal's Musée des Beaux Arts exhibit of private collections last week. a breakfast date with my friend fiona kept me from spending any sort of reasonable amount of time looking at everything but one piece (lie: there were two other things i saw that made me go a little wild - 1) a wood-laminate chair by Frank Gehry and 2) a painting by Quebec artist Marcelle Ferron) by Ed Pien really struck me, it was this incredibly HUGE and intricate paper-cut sculpture probably a part of the same series as the one he's shown making in that link.

so that's cool, butttt even more exciting in the world of paper and knives is what Mia Pearlman (thanks design*sponge) is doing (that's "Whorl" in the photo). wow.

12000 ft above sea level in a loud tin truck

2008-02-05T19:06:00.001-05:00

what is going on, exactly?

she wondered. out of context, none of these actions seemed to move in the right direction.

sweet clarification

2008-02-04T23:15:00.000-05:00

conclusion: i am a romantic!! oh man am i a romantic.

also a cynic, imaginative and meaning-full individual, which is why this sincere affirmation of my romanticism is probably some sort of necessary leap forward towards self-security, lalala etc.

cynical romantics often form awkwardly romantic and emotional attachments to things and people who will respond limitlessly in the appropriate way, i.e. as far as the imagination of the romantic herself can conceive. this romantic has several awkward and perhaps unwarranted emotional attachments to members of the kingdom: plantae. case 1 - the apple. don't know where it started. actually now that i've written that, i have an idea.

my birthday is October 14. every few years this falls upon (Canadian) thanksgiving. imaginative cynics expect extraordinarily wonderful things to happen on their birthday, they never do and these cynics spend their birthdays in a heightened emotional state often reduced to tears at least one time during the day.

thanksgivings spent in a heightened emotional state when no one seems to understand how essential it is to simultaneously ignore and continuously acknowledge the momentous day of your birth when combined with family trips on the holiday Monday to an apple orchard just ten minutes from your house, provide a tremendous opportunity for self-absorbed and excitable little girls to run away from their family and hide amongst the Empire apples where no one dares to gently touch your shoulder or try to make you smile while you indulge in your annual Birthday Breakdown.

what a sentence! Empires are a notoriously understanding apple, and southwestern Ontario produces quite an outstanding crop in mid-to-late October. intent and certain concentration on apple-consumption during the drive home from the orchard was entirely necessary in order to avoid catching the eyes of my father in the rear-view mirror, because NOTHING would make me more furious then if he dared to make me laugh while i was busy being upset about how he and my mom were steadfastly ignoring me, the birthday girl. several years of perfecting this technique resulted in not only a beautiful relationship between me and these apples, but also a practical, efficient and careful method of apple-ingestion.

though it would be too much to describe this technique right now and i think it really requires pictorial representation, i'm faaiirrly certain it has to be the best way to eat an apple, for both the consumer and the apple itself.

i'm slowly centimetering towards the point of all that i've gone on about. and that is: the blossom bite. though a bite i have been committed to for years, i have only recently given it a name. not that it's mine to name. oh i don't know if i'm going to be able to finish this. this has been much too long and indulgent already. this is probably the way i'll continue to write though. oh ugh. oh but don't i need to be doing this anyways. the BB is the second to last bite i will take of the apple. the end without the stem, where the lovely and oh-so-important reproductive organs of the sweet apple blossom once performed may be bitten just to where that tough little shell around the apple seeds begins. and OH!! isn't it good! probably the best bite of the apple. certainly the best bite of any apples i eat. the blossom bite!

please, don't be scared. give it a try. you won't regret it.

blossom bites need bees. let's keep bees and save produce.

introduction: my name is emily and i've started an indulgent blog.