i have to apologize for cussing, cursing, swearing (whatever your preference is) in class and on here. i'm not quite so boorish, i think, or angry. maybe i'm angry.
however, i think it's because i feel comfortable in this class that my crass street talk comes out. "did she just say 'crass street talk'?" yes, she did.
my most humble and sincere apologies.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
the tourist
my best friend is 99.99% sure she is moving to new york in a couple of months. the king of cities. the quintessential city. the city we all imagine when we think anything is city-like.
sometimes i think the way she walks through the city is different than the way i walk through the city. we don't see each other very often but when we do i feel like i step out of the act i put on with almost everyone else i know (with the exception of a handful of high school friends). her day looks nothing like my day. on our daily commutes we may cross the same roads, even visit the same locations, board the same train or bus, sit in the same seat, and never know it. her tour of the city is patterned, so is mine. if we were to exchange, we would be tourists.
when i told my sister about my friend moving away she said, "good. edmonton's too small for them." i felt about the same. as all of my friends slowly become adults (because i don't know what that is still) and move away (go home, explore, or visit) i realize that we all walk through the city differently because we're all tourists. perhaps it is idyllic, but they have these beautiful dreams with big settings. whether we achieve them or not edmonton IS too small for us.
edmonton is the cafe at the airport. it's a waiting city for those who dream big. can edmonton be personified with something more iconic or human? sure. but i think personifying edmonton as the 20-something dreamer seems just about right. for a long wait you find a table or a seat that is comfortable. you accessorize it with things that mean something to you, like the familiar worn-in coat you put over your chair. you eventually start to talk to people who are in the same position as you, waiting for their next flight. you start to enjoy their company and really start to listen to them. soon, too soon, your flight is called. though you've come to enjoy your stay more than you thought you would and you look back at the people you shared it with, promising to stay in touch, you board the plane with the returning excitement of your final destination.
sometime in the future as you enter the corporate cafe on the block of your new home city, a faint sensation of nostalgia creeps over you. you vaguely remember the people you spent your waiting time with and realize, with satisfaction, that you made the right choice. those people were bound by their own tours, not the cities or destinations to which their path brought them. intersecting settings are coincidental and you can try a bit to alter these paths but you cannot alter the path life's tourists are fastened to.
OR, as radiohead would say:
sometimes i get overcharged
that's when you see sparks
you ask me where the hell i'm going
at a thousand feet per second
hey man, slow down, slow down
idiot, slow down, slow down
sometimes i think the way she walks through the city is different than the way i walk through the city. we don't see each other very often but when we do i feel like i step out of the act i put on with almost everyone else i know (with the exception of a handful of high school friends). her day looks nothing like my day. on our daily commutes we may cross the same roads, even visit the same locations, board the same train or bus, sit in the same seat, and never know it. her tour of the city is patterned, so is mine. if we were to exchange, we would be tourists.
when i told my sister about my friend moving away she said, "good. edmonton's too small for them." i felt about the same. as all of my friends slowly become adults (because i don't know what that is still) and move away (go home, explore, or visit) i realize that we all walk through the city differently because we're all tourists. perhaps it is idyllic, but they have these beautiful dreams with big settings. whether we achieve them or not edmonton IS too small for us.
edmonton is the cafe at the airport. it's a waiting city for those who dream big. can edmonton be personified with something more iconic or human? sure. but i think personifying edmonton as the 20-something dreamer seems just about right. for a long wait you find a table or a seat that is comfortable. you accessorize it with things that mean something to you, like the familiar worn-in coat you put over your chair. you eventually start to talk to people who are in the same position as you, waiting for their next flight. you start to enjoy their company and really start to listen to them. soon, too soon, your flight is called. though you've come to enjoy your stay more than you thought you would and you look back at the people you shared it with, promising to stay in touch, you board the plane with the returning excitement of your final destination.
sometime in the future as you enter the corporate cafe on the block of your new home city, a faint sensation of nostalgia creeps over you. you vaguely remember the people you spent your waiting time with and realize, with satisfaction, that you made the right choice. those people were bound by their own tours, not the cities or destinations to which their path brought them. intersecting settings are coincidental and you can try a bit to alter these paths but you cannot alter the path life's tourists are fastened to.
OR, as radiohead would say:
sometimes i get overcharged
that's when you see sparks
you ask me where the hell i'm going
at a thousand feet per second
hey man, slow down, slow down
idiot, slow down, slow down
Friday, March 18, 2011
nature?! in the city?! whaaaaaaaaaat?!
this city's nature is huge and overwhelming. over the winter it blankets everything and over the summer it opens up the sky to reveal blues and pinks and peach and purple. this city is bipolar. man, it's biwinning. this is where the rabbits come in.
i have a special place in my heart for rabbits. i hear rabbit stew is delicious.
don't worry. jokes.
i do honestly love rabbits. they're so plentiful and resilient. we feed one (them?) during the winter. there is a window underneath the highly raised deck. my mom plucks out the window net and sometimes leaves cabbage or old hard bread outside the window (rabbits love bread). s/he(s) (because we don't know if there's several or just the one) munches away while we watch underneath the relatively snowless ground. sometimes we leave peanuts on the fence between us and the neighbors for the local squirrels. my dad's favorite birds are sparrows so he stuck a huge four by four in the ground and we put up two birdhouses, more to come. we're frequented by sparrows year round, finches in the summer, and the occasional erratic jumping of the warbler. throughout the summer we are ever vigilant for humming birds that are attracted to my mom's virus-like plants that don't stop growing and don't die until she believes it's time. then they wilt as if by command. in the fall i will hear a coyote start howling until he's joined in with the rest of his pack. or are they foxes? or are they wolves? we watch for tornadoes in the heart of summer and measure the height of the sun based on the height of the trees around the neighborhood. on calm still days i sometimes stare up at the cerulean sky and wonder if the things i see are just eye wiggles.
there's something kind of magical about the lives that make up what you think is a quiet suburban neighborhood.
and the rabbits. well. who hasn't slowed down to let a rabbit cross the road with the eerie, perhaps even uncanny, attitude of a human pedestrian. only to find out that it's a garbage bag.
Friday, March 11, 2011
coffee talk simulation
it's been a while since i've spent some time with my sis. we often get coffee together (or used to until school started this year) and as the caffeine enters the blood stream we become philosophers and poets and rebels bouncing ideas off of each other about art, about ideas, about life, about the future. then we go home and continue doing the things we said we had to change to be more complete individuals. this city just isn't good enough for us to be amazing.
last night i called home so someone would pick me up from the bus station. she told me she was going shopping and if i wanted to come. hungry and tired and wired, of course i said yes because we would have to have coffee. i didn't know how long we'd be but who cared, i was down for whatever.
she's going to buenos aries tomorrow where fruit is just ripening in the fall. am i jealous? certainly. but i realized as we were talking about living elsewhere (common topic) and travelling that we're tethered here. we're tethered because we haven't fully accepted edmonton. like after any tragedy where you have to come to peace with the situation to be able to move on. regarded as a necessary difficult time that developed you as a person.
ok.
done.
because of this class i've started to like edmonton. the winter especially. why fight against something which is fact, why endlessly struggle, why not adapt? "be like the water," says bruce lee. frozen water maybe. be like the snow. fall gently on the whitest of the highest of the city's towers. enter the crevices of the alleys, each back lawn, and graze the balconies of apartments. be carried along the lrt and bus routes by the exchange of students and businessmen. then melt into rivulets, into streams, into the rapids gushing into the river. then pelt the city with spasms of rain and hail in the summer. in the fall, cry. "autumn's here / it's time to cry now" sings hawksley workman.
i think i have learned how to walk and see a city. starting in edmonton of course. my perspective is changing and as i've still decided to go elsewhere after graduating i think that i will only be ready to leave if i feel like i've understood edmonton and seen it from its many monochromatic grey angles.
*
pretty hard (or easier?) to continue writing warm fuzzy things about edmonton after watching an hour of reports about the earthquake and tsunami in japan. edmonton, rejoice, for you are situated on a 668m elevated plateau!
last night i called home so someone would pick me up from the bus station. she told me she was going shopping and if i wanted to come. hungry and tired and wired, of course i said yes because we would have to have coffee. i didn't know how long we'd be but who cared, i was down for whatever.
she's going to buenos aries tomorrow where fruit is just ripening in the fall. am i jealous? certainly. but i realized as we were talking about living elsewhere (common topic) and travelling that we're tethered here. we're tethered because we haven't fully accepted edmonton. like after any tragedy where you have to come to peace with the situation to be able to move on. regarded as a necessary difficult time that developed you as a person.
ok.
done.
because of this class i've started to like edmonton. the winter especially. why fight against something which is fact, why endlessly struggle, why not adapt? "be like the water," says bruce lee. frozen water maybe. be like the snow. fall gently on the whitest of the highest of the city's towers. enter the crevices of the alleys, each back lawn, and graze the balconies of apartments. be carried along the lrt and bus routes by the exchange of students and businessmen. then melt into rivulets, into streams, into the rapids gushing into the river. then pelt the city with spasms of rain and hail in the summer. in the fall, cry. "autumn's here / it's time to cry now" sings hawksley workman.
i think i have learned how to walk and see a city. starting in edmonton of course. my perspective is changing and as i've still decided to go elsewhere after graduating i think that i will only be ready to leave if i feel like i've understood edmonton and seen it from its many monochromatic grey angles.
*
pretty hard (or easier?) to continue writing warm fuzzy things about edmonton after watching an hour of reports about the earthquake and tsunami in japan. edmonton, rejoice, for you are situated on a 668m elevated plateau!
Friday, March 4, 2011
openlessness
i kind of see living in edmonton as a commuter sleeping on the bus. i thought about this while crossing the river on my daily commute to the university. the girl sitting next to me was lulling in and out of sleep and i was convinced i would have to wake her up by the time we got to campus. however, she had raised her head before we approached with enough time to put on her gloves, hood, and mentally prepare for the cold.
we edmontonians constantly hope to find something uniquely characteristic about the city--something to be proud of other than our festivals and secret hot summers. we travel through the city attempting to slip into a blissfully complete experience of being within the city like within a dream. we want to have a complete story, a certain narrative without any confusion. we are so afraid, so very afraid, of recognizing the city as it is, accepting it as imperfect, and accepting our own confusion about it. perhaps it is that confusion we should embrace. maybe our inability to define it characterizes edmonton. we don't fully engage with the city because we can keep it at a distance in hopes of fixing it or leaving it. embracing it would mean we would be giving into it as it is. (maybe it's more of a broken and imperfect marriage rather than a bus drive.)
just the way the sleepy commuter never truly falls asleep, snoozing with some part of them resisting the dream, we never embrace edmonton because we are not strong enough to be vulnerable to the sentimentality of imperfection. our search to define it is fruitless, it just is.
*
a bit of a different vibe than usual. i also wanted to discuss how all those stories about edmonton seem like they have something about the dead, ghosts, haunts, etc. i am one of those superstitious atheistic weirdos who thinks you can feel ghosts of the dead in cities the same way you breathe polluted air. i noticed this in dieppe, france and vukovar, croatia. i visited these cities with very little background knowledge about them and before my parents told me about their histories i noticed some kind of hesitation, timelessness, paranoia in the cities. physical memories. invisible landmarks. a jelly-like silence--a silence so thick you can feel it. i attribute this to the restless dead which will eventually dissolve with people's forgotten memories. sure there are memorials or shelled out buildings but it radiates out so that you feel it before you see it. maybe off-topic though?
we edmontonians constantly hope to find something uniquely characteristic about the city--something to be proud of other than our festivals and secret hot summers. we travel through the city attempting to slip into a blissfully complete experience of being within the city like within a dream. we want to have a complete story, a certain narrative without any confusion. we are so afraid, so very afraid, of recognizing the city as it is, accepting it as imperfect, and accepting our own confusion about it. perhaps it is that confusion we should embrace. maybe our inability to define it characterizes edmonton. we don't fully engage with the city because we can keep it at a distance in hopes of fixing it or leaving it. embracing it would mean we would be giving into it as it is. (maybe it's more of a broken and imperfect marriage rather than a bus drive.)
just the way the sleepy commuter never truly falls asleep, snoozing with some part of them resisting the dream, we never embrace edmonton because we are not strong enough to be vulnerable to the sentimentality of imperfection. our search to define it is fruitless, it just is.
*
a bit of a different vibe than usual. i also wanted to discuss how all those stories about edmonton seem like they have something about the dead, ghosts, haunts, etc. i am one of those superstitious atheistic weirdos who thinks you can feel ghosts of the dead in cities the same way you breathe polluted air. i noticed this in dieppe, france and vukovar, croatia. i visited these cities with very little background knowledge about them and before my parents told me about their histories i noticed some kind of hesitation, timelessness, paranoia in the cities. physical memories. invisible landmarks. a jelly-like silence--a silence so thick you can feel it. i attribute this to the restless dead which will eventually dissolve with people's forgotten memories. sure there are memorials or shelled out buildings but it radiates out so that you feel it before you see it. maybe off-topic though?
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