i guess it's the things you think you know best that reveal themselves as the least recognized.
the five elements that i have recognized even though i was already aware of them, without wanting to sound too kitschy, are the four uncivilized elements: water, fire, earth, and air. stick around til the end to see if i make any fifth element allusions by saying the fifth is love.
water. edmonton's water. we have so much water. the river, the snow, the ice, the moody rains, the many aquifers deep underground the periphery of the city.
earth. sand and clay and gravel that we'll never be rid of no matter how much we clean and brush and sweep.
fire. the sun, whose depressions haunts our half-years.
and the air. the big sky. the open sky. the pregnant sky. the blue, the grey, the white, the pink, the orange sky. sky sky sky sky sky. our magpie dominated sky, relics of our dinosaur past. our menopausal sky. the sky whose small changes we watch like the attentive, slightly neurotic, husband of a critical yet silent wife.
this is clearly different from the elements we've been discussing in terms of mythic power. the power of these objects to convey and remind us of our experience is what makes them important, but they're only emblems, totems, rooted in their physicality. all of it is passing and transient and no object travels with you once you die. or, more specifically, we're transient. much more so than the books i scar with barcodes at work. 1875. 1852. 1829 was the oldest so far.
memory. is the fifth element. ok, so it's close to love. love is rooted in memory. i know, i know, this is about as dangerously cheesy as cheetos, but run with it for a second.
memory is important to every city. why do rome and paris have to have the monopoly on this idea? without our memory, without our experiences, the city would be empty concrete and plywood shells without the memories we've given them. why do so many people come back? and why do so many find it hard to leave? because the memories we have of edmonton are personal. they haven't had time to become globally collective. we have a vested interest in the privacy of these memories. they're not about revolutions or bloodbaths or kings or celebrities, they're about the time my friend fell and dragged her boyfriend down who in turn brought down someone else with him on the ice in front of the garneau pub. they're about the many times me and my best friend drove around in the "love wagon" blasting our friend's recording of disturbed gibberish and pretend picking up pedestrians. they're about the time i got high sitting in a car seat on top of a mud hill with something like a boyfriend. watching the silent thunder of an approaching storm. they're about the time we got so angry about the rain on the ferris wheel at k-days that we reached a moment of exhilaration, said "fuck this!", and started jumping in the puddles once we got off--marking one of our fondest memories. one carny shouted at us, with a smile, "ARE YOU CRAZY?!" "YES!" we shouted back. they're about the first snow fall that you watch under the morbid glow of the orange lights.
trevor anderson said that he and his friend promised to never show edmonton in the summer. even if he did, no one would ever believe him. our summers, our memories, our loves, they're too personal for the rest of the world to fully understand. we share chuckles and glances, a secret code, that the world outside our winter gates won't fully comprehend.
what else is there to say about edmonton? it's already been said by another edmontonian.
I read all the blogs for this class in google reader, which neatly stacks up new posts in a reading list, and marks them as read as I scroll over them. But this comment is not an ad for google reader - I only wanted to mention that when I first read this post, something resonated about it, so I marked it "keep unread" so that I could return to it later and figure out what it was that I liked so much about it. Later is now - I'll see if I can articulate why I'm drawn to it.
ReplyDeleteFirst, your anecdote at the beginning - it was the right mix of slightly confusing and more intriguing for me to read it twice, and the second time, to understand. And I actually like that you didn't explain directly how the anecdote relates to the rest of the post.
The elements - I have a historical fascination with them, so I was instantly curious to see what you would do with an overdone idea - I wasn't disappointed. I love that fire becomes the absence of that element, in fact, the pain that is drawn from our memory of it. Which brings me to memory - your fifth element. Yes, memory does tie neatly into what we've been talking about in class, but I think I'd agree with it as a fifth element even without that context. And I like how you talked about the 'privacy of these memories' - not sure if 'private' quite encompasses it, but Edmonton does seem to be a very personal city for each of its inhabitants. I've taken to referring to this city as 'My Edmonton' when I'm writing commentary on it, simply because I don't feel I can speak for anybody else's version of this city, even though it may be built on the same land. You nailed it with your second-to-last paragraph. 'Even if he did, no one would ever believe him.'
And with your last line: "What else is there to be said about Edmonton? It's already been said by another Edmontonian." That speaks to what our class has been doing collectively through these blogs I believe - we have been speaking about this city as Edmontonians, and that in itself has created remarkable diversity in perspective. A diversity that I'm coming to associate both with 'My Edmonton,' and the city as a (not-so-generic) whole.