Sketches: part five

this post is the fifth in a series of responses to a child's notebook found at the Edmonton Reuse Centre

It's feeling pretty springy these days - every day I step outside in the morning, I feel a little bit brighter. It's amazing what a change in weather can do to your mood, or at least to mine. Still, I'm experiencing the same thing I do most springs in Edmonton - the feeling of dissonance between the signs of spring I see in the shops and those I see in the streets. Spring in my neighbourhood doesn't look like this sunny sketch. It doesn't look like the picture books full of budding blooms and green sprouts. Despite the warmth and the bright skies, there's a dismal quality to the slushy streets, and slogging through them. Here's a poem written yesterday, on my way home.

Cut Flowers

Lay her i’ the earth:

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring!

from Hamlet

There’s a dead squirrel in my alley this morning.

It lays there –

stoic

on a sheet of ice.

Coming home in the afternoon, I see it again.

Soggy.

This is what spring looks like –

wet and bedraggled

and even more dead than the winter it ends.

Sketches: part four

this post is the fourth in a series of responses to a child's notebook found at the Edmonton Reuse Centre

A number of the drawings in the notebook are sketches of dresses. I've been keeping those aside, waiting for some idea of what I might write about the set - I had the sense that they belonged together. Today, when I sat down at my computer, it occurred to me that all week long, I had been seeing the subject to pair with these dresses. 

Right now on the UofA campus, there's an an exhibit up called the REDress Project - all around campus, red dresses hang, empty, on hangers. They are a haunting representation of the many missing aboriginal women in Canada. It's the red colour that's the most striking - not the colour of mourning, but the colour of blood. Against the white and grey of Edmonton in March, you can't help but take notice.

Like these sketches, each red dress hanging from the trees and hallways is unique. Like each woman that the dresses represent. I like to picture the type of person who would have picked out each dress, and what occasion they might have been saving it for. In my mind, there are two women for every dress - the woman who owned the dress first (the installation is made up of donated dresses), and the woman who will never see the dress at all, but whose memory lingers somewhere in the scarlet folds. 

Two River Cities

two river cities-

“don’t leave out the sex scenes,” a

stranger proposes

I'm interrupting my Sketches series with something a little different today. The haiku above is just a preview of my experience, which I've written up as a short story below. You may recall that I posted a bit about psychogeography a while back, on Valentines Day. While I still haven't had a chance to walk my heart-shaped route, I did find the time to play another city-exploring game, inspired by this brochure on the theory of the derive. Without further ado:

 

Montmartre, Edmonton

Two river cities: I put Paris over Edmonton, and try to see through the paper – the North Saskatchewan and the Seine crossing each other and merging. I pick out a thumb tack – rouge – place its point at Montmartre, and press it through both maps. Then, I tear away the Parisian page, leaving only the map of Edmonton. The thumb tack marks my destination.

I like to go looking for a story – to map my way towards a plot and, in navigating, find myself in the middle of it. When I was in Paris, I took the metro to Montmartre, and, fittingly, my Edmonton route takes me on the LRT. I wait ten minutes for the train, knowing that in Paris, three would have passed in that time. While I wait, a man approaches me, wants to know the time (ten to two, or quatorze heures moins dix), and asks to buy a train ticket from me for $1.75. I turn him down – “I only have a pass,” I say. When travelling, I’ve been taught to keep my wallet hidden, and politely decline any requests made by unknown men: non, désolée.

At the point of the red thumb tack, there’s a small playground half-buried in snow. Perhaps the slide corresponds in location to a boulangerie on the narrow streets of Montmartre. Driven by thoughts of fresh bread, and too cold to write outside, I find not a boulangerie, but “The End Zone Pub and Grill.”

Two men stand outside the door, smoking. I pick my seat by the window, and a few minutes later, they come inside. They traverse the pub with a familiarity that reminds me I am a foreigner here; as they take six easy steps from the door to the bar, I see that the dark carpet is worn pale along their path.

I order a hot chocolate (chocolat chaud, I say to myself), and a small soup: chicken noodle. The hot chocolate is made from a mix, but they’ve stirred it well, and besides, it’s warm. I start to write.

The stereo plays some kind of thumping pop, the sort of thing that was popular in France when I was there. “You’re so beautiful, so damn beautiful,” goes the refrain. They listen to English music in Paris too – it’s très cool.

One of the men from outside sits down at the next table. His jacket is faux leather, worn enough that it could almost pass for real. After a few sentences, he turns, and asks me what I’m writing.

“A story,” I say.

“What’s it about?”

“It’s a travel story,” I decide. “About Paris.” Is that a lie?

He asks me if I’ve been to Paris, and I tell him yes, and when he asks what it’s like, I make a comment about the weather. I don’t tell him that, in a way, I’m in Paris right now. That I’m within walking distance of the Moulin Rouge. That really, so is he.

We talk for a while – the conversation of strangers, the first words you learn in any foreign language. Not “where is the bathroom,” but “my name is Erika, comment t’appelles tu?” He asks about school, about what I’ll do next. I tell him I’ll probably go down to the states to study. It’s a good idea, he thinks. “Up here in Canada, we need priests, but down there, they need people like you.” I’m not sure about the accuracy of his market analysis, but I agree anyways. When I reach the bottom of my hot chocolate, wet powder clings to the mug – I was wrong, I suppose, about it being well-stirred.

My soup arrives in a Styrofoam bowl – “sorry for the wait” – and the man offers me some advice about writing. “Live it, learn it, and make it exciting.” It sounds good to me, and he adds, “don’t leave out the sex scenes.” I laugh, and he raises his beer. “Cheers.” I think that those words will be the last line of my story, start thinking of French translations – chin, santé, à la votre, salut –  but he turns around to speak to me again.

“So did you fall in love out there?” He’s talking about Paris. When I tell him no, he continues.

“What are your likes and dislikes? I mean, what are your tastes in men?”

I’m taken aback and, awkwardly, I mention my boyfriend. He laughs. “I’m just flirting with you, that’s all.”

I laugh too, relieved that it’s been made explicit. He adds, “you’re beautiful, you know?” and I think of France, and the song that was playing when I came in. So damn beautiful.

“I’m single,” he says, “but I would marry you in a heartbeat.”

He goes back to his beer, and I try the soup that’s been cooling as we talk. I write with one hand, hold the spoon with the other, and when I’m about halfway through, the man gets up to leave, giving me a nod on the way out. I watch him walk out into the cold and across the street before turning back to my notebook. After a few more lines, I decide to leave the last chunks of chicken in the bottom of the Styrofoam bowl. 

Sketches: part three

this post is the third in a series of responses to a child's notebook found at the Edmonton Reuse Centre

It seems appropriate to put this sketch next - after all, the subject matter is similar to the last one I posted. This is the kind of sketch that became most common in my own notebooks as I got older - not sketches of mountains, but sketches crossed out. Of course, in my own notebooks, I knew exactly why I was rejecting a certain drawing. Here, I can be less sure. Was it because some of the shading strayed outside the lines of the mountain peak? Was it because an isolated mountain was less appealing to the artist than the previous trio? Was it because there was not enough room above the mountain to imply the sky by drawing clouds? Or was it because the artist couldn't quite recall the mountains with their pencil? Was it because, however much the tourism bureau may wish to make Edmonton a "Gateway to the Rockies," it's really a "Long-way to the Rockies," and it's easy to forget what the mountains look like. Edmonton is a prairie city, surrounded by farmers' fields and flat. But that's not to imply that there isn't a degree of majesty to the prairies too. I recall a short story by Henry Kreisel that I read in high school: "The Broken Globe," set primarily on a farm outside of Edmonton. The way he describes the "flat" that surrounds our city is something that can only really be justly evoked by his own words:

There were moments of weariness and dullness. But the very monotony was impressive. There was a grandeur about it. It was monotony of a really monumental kind... I also began to understand why Nick Solchuk was always longing for more space and more air, especially when we moved into the prairies, and the land became flatter until there seemed nothing, neither hill nor tree nor bush, to disturb the vast unbroken flow of land until in the far distance a thin, blue line marked the point where the prairie merged into the sky. Yet all over there was a strange tranquility, all motion seemed suspended, and only the sun moved steadily, imperturbably West, dropping finally over the rim of the horizon, a blazing red ball, but leaving a superb evening light lying over the land still.

Why is this not the picture of Edmonton (or at least the surrounding area) that tourism agencies promote?

One of the characters in "The Broken Globe" is a farmer who still believes that the sun revolves around the earth, and that the earth is flat. The protagonist, a learned man from the city, is baffled by this view, until he sees it for himself. This is the moment when the power of the prairies really sinks in - as the two stand on the land, looking out:

His eyes surveyed the vast expanse of sky and land, stretching far into the distance, reddish clouds in the sky and blue shadows on the land. With a gesture of great dignity and power he lifted his arm and stood pointing into the distance, at the flat land and the low-hanging sky. ‘Look,’ he said, very slowly and very quietly, ‘she is flat, and she stands still.’

Sketches: part two

this post is the second in a series of responses to a child's notebook found at the Edmonton Reuse Centre

My favourite part about this picture is that the clouds look just like the snow caps on the mountains, but flipped upside-down. I can imagine the picture beginning itself again, in reflection. The bodies of the mountains would extend upwards from what we now see as clouds, and perhaps a third cloud might be added, a darker, stormy one, which, upside-down, would be a mountain as well, the opposite odd-one-out to the white-capped mountain already pictured on the right hand side. It can be surprisingly freeing to disorient yourself - once you get beyond the initial fear that comes with being upside-down or in a foreign place, a more playful sense sets in. I'm thinking of the month I spent learning handstands in a modern dance class, kicking upward in small increments, with a wall at my back to stop me, and then later, vaulting up into a handstand in the middle of the room, and reveling in the dizzying disorientation. When my feet touched the floor again, I had no idea what I'd looked like in the air - maybe I didn't reach a handstand at all, maybe I only manageda 45 degree angle from the floor. But it's that feeling of disorientation that's more important to me - the same dizzying freedom that I find when I travel, after I've made all necessary precautions against pickpockets, when I walk down a street just staring at everything all at once. Is there a way to achieve that same dizzying disorientation, and the freedom that comes with it, in a city that you know so well as your home? Walking around the city on your hands might be one method - it could certainly furnish a change of perspective - but despite my practice at handstands, a city tour of that type is not within my capabilities. I find something similar when I walk with my camera though. Fitting the sights I know well into frames I haven't yet composed forces me to reorient, if not disorient, myself. 

What do you do to achieve the freedom of disorientation at home?

re: Sketches: part one

Artist and friend Maren Elliott wrote to me in response to my last post, and has graciously allowed me to publish her words here. 


Here's the image that she's talking about, which appeared in the original post:

Children are taught from a young age to hold crayons and pencils and recreate symbols that we tell them mean different things. In a way, these iconic North American children's drawings are like our notation

system- they are cultural. If you showed another child from a completely different place/time/culture these tulips they may not have even been able to identify what they are 'supposed' to represent.

Imagine a Blackfoot child from the 1500’s who would have perhaps known the same riverbanks as this mysterious artist. Would they have known what those shapes on sticks represented? If they saw the typical arrangement of a triangle-on-square that since childhood I have associated with the idea of home, what would they have seen?

We can only speculate. Perhaps both children, despite their different lives, watched the sun paint the sky as it sank into the melting North Saskatchewan River with the same expression of wondered delight on their faces.

by Maren Elliott

Sketches: part one

this post is the first in a series of responses to a child's notebook found at the Edmonton Reuse Centre

I'll confess, I'm not exactly sure how to begin. I've set myself the task of writing from these sketches, but I don't know just how to tackle it. I could tell you what I see in this picture - a sun in the top left corner, where every child seems to place the sun. Why is it that the sun belongs in the corner? I couldn't tell you, though I did the same when I was younger. The sun has a darker spot, its rays wisp delicately in the direction of the cloud, as though brushing it away from the summer day spread out below... I could go on, but really, I'd be just giving you what's already there. You can see the butterfly and the tulips - it's not abstract art, it doesn't need interpretation in that basic sense. And as far as children's drawings go, the content of this one is pretty traditional - I myself drew many of the sort. Tulips are a preferable sort of flower - easy to identify, and without the pain of too many individual petals. There's a reason this child didn't choose to draw daisies. 

But why do so many children choose to draw this scene? I'm speaking from my own experience here, as a native Edmontonian - why, when we see snow drifts for more than half of the year, do we draw the tulips, who only appear for a month or two? It's not a phenomenon unique to children, either. I've been searching for poetry about Edmonton, and naturally, a lot of what I've found references the river. It makes sense - the North Saskatchewan is pervasive. But winter is pervasive too, and still, every poem I've read about the river has talked about it as a moving thing. No mention of its winter stasis, or even of the alluring ice blooms that appear as the weather begins to chill in the fall. Maybe I'm just not finding the right poems. But in the middle of the winter, as heartening as a summer picture can be, I think a winter picture is more heartening still. We need more to remind us that winter isn't just something to suffer through - that there's poetry and art in this season as well.

---

Between writing and posting this, I came across a bit of poetry that disproves my statement - a stark stanza about the river in icy times. Here it is:

The river runs past us - wearing the debris of snow, in spring.

It pushes ice up its banks with a terrible weight

rips roots from the ground, demolishes bridges,

washes out the footpaths that steal through

the valley like varicose veins.

[from Lisa Martin-Demoor's "City of Champions"] 

 I still stand by the last line that I wrote though - we need more.

 

 

 

Found Notebook

As I mentioned in my last post, one of the things I picked up in my trip to the Reuse Centre was a not-quite-empty notebook:

Most of the pages inside are blank, but about ten have pencil sketches that appear to be the work of a child. In flipping through its pages, I thought it might be fun to use some of the child's sketches to illustrate and inspire my posts for the next little while. Sort of a dialogue between me and the anonymous artist - what do you think? Watch for the first of the series, coming your way soon!

The Reuse Centre, or, Fun Finds!

I've been meaning to check out the Edmonton Reuse Centre, and I finally got around to it! For anyone with a crafty inclination, this place is a must. It has a stash of all kinds of exciting things - from books to old CD cases to scrap fabric to stationary. All the items are donated, so if you're cleaning out your house and want a good place to send some stuff, consider making a trip down there. You can check their list of accepted items to see what they'll take, and what you might be able to get if you're hoping to pick up rather than drop off! "Buying" at the reuse centre is super simple too - for $5, you can take as many things as you like!

To give you an idea of what you might find, here's some of the things I came home with:

• an HDMI cable, brand new
• some small notebooks
• these neat swan-shaped candle holders:

I would have come home with a lot more, but I traveled there by train (another perk - it's conveniently located right behind City Hall) so my carrying capacity was limited.

Perhaps the most fun I had there was in speculating about other peoples lives - it's intriguing to form a perception of someone (or of a city) by what they cast aside. One of the notebooks I picked up was not quite empty - it had a few sketches in it, evidently made by a child. Watch for more on those in my next post!

Smile!

It's Friday, and next week's reading week, so there are smiles all around the UofA campus. Here's one that caught my eye. 

Loving the City

I stumbled across this a while back, one Edmontonian's method of exploring the city: trace a circle onto a map, and then try to follow it on foot. an odd idea, but immediately intriguing, because it presents the challenge of moving circularly in a gridded city space.

It's based on the theory of psychogeography. If you want the technical definition of the term, feel free to peruse the philosophical works of Guy Debord, but here, I'll note a more applicable definition, from Joseph Hart:

psychogeography is "a slightly stuffy term that's been applied to a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities. Psychogeography includes just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."


I first encountered the idea of psychogeography when I found this inspiring brochure based on the derive (meaning, literally, to drift). If you're so inclined, take a look at it to find a collection of other "playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities."


All of this is a roundabout way of coming to a proposal that I have for you: it's a Valentines Day activity, inspired by Andy Woodruff. And don't worry if you're one of those who celebrates Singles Awareness Day instead - this one's for everybody. 


Instead of tracing a circle onto a map of Edmonton, how about a heart? See how close you can stay to the actual shape, and see how such an adventure might bring about a love for this city that you didn't know you had. 

If I get a chance, this is the map I intend to walk (I had fun searching the map of Edmonton for a natural curve to nest my heart into)

If you take my suggestion, or try any of the other psycogeography methods that I've mentioned, please, let me know. Consider documenting your experience with photographs, or writing a guest post for Journal Edmonton based on your findings.


Happy Valentines Day!

HUB Mall

Anyone who has frequented the UofA is likely familiar with HUB mall - the long corridor of greasy fast food joints and cupboard-like student residences. Originally, a skylight stretched the length of the roof, but it has since been covered over. Here's my haibun-reflection on the space at night:

HUB Mall, 8:17 pm

Upward, there are halogen projections in place of the sky: dim purple. The northern lights are brighter – did the architect know that? Did he title his display “dim borealis”? Did he also know that northern lights, in these parts at least, are usually green? That they usually move? The only green under the static purple light is the lacquered insides of cupboard doors; the only movement is that of people crossing from neon fast food signs to laminate tables. They look down. There’s nowhere else to look, really. The few exterior windows are made mirrors by the dark outside, so that all I can see is my own face, skin a purple tint.

light glances

from the glass face of my watch

a star

An Edmonton Contest

This isn't a post so much as a mention, really, but I wanted to point out a contest that we're running over at the Edmonton Pipelines Project right now, which I think is neat enough to be cross-posted on this blog. We have some historical photos of Edmonton, and we want to know where they were taken. Even if you haven't been around here long enough to recognize the locations, I think it's pretty neat to see pictures of the past. The contest is on facebook. Did I mention there's prizes?

Stadium LRT Station

This blog has been dormant for quite some time, but today, I'm returning to it. I thought, when I stopped posting, that I didn't have time, that I'd find other ways to entertain my Edmonton ideas. To a certain extent, I was right - I'm always about as busy as I think I can handle, and I've been studying Edmonton in a more formal context, through my work with the Edmonton Pipelines Project. But every few weeks, I get an email saying that one more person is following Journal Edmonton's inactive Twitter feed, and every so often, I see or think something about this city that doesn't fit into my more formal work. And now, coming up on the domain renewal for this page, I've realized that I just can't let it go. So here I am. I'm writing on Journal Edmonton again. I'm not committing to a set posting schedule or frequency; I'm allowing myself to return here as often or as seldom as I wish. I hope that you (whoever you are) will do the same. If you find yourself inspired as well, please consider submitting your words and images - I'd love to publish them here. Lastly, if you find yourself reading, and enjoying what you read, please comment! Tell me what my words remind you of, what I missed, why you're reading JE. When I hear back from readers, I tend to be more inspired to post.

Summer Time

Summertime seems to leave me without much time. Somehow, I'm managing to be busier this summer than when the university is in session. In my hurried moments away from my work, I tend to forget about the city that's out there. And I don't want to forget about it - I want to take more time this summer to explore, not less. As such, I'm going to take some summer time off from blogging. I may show up now and then to share a photo or write a thought, but over the next two months, I'm going to do my best to spend time living in the city, and not necessarily writing about it. I hope that, as readers, you will be inspired to do the same. If there's nothing new here to read, I can assure you that there is at least something new to be seen - so go out, and see it. And if you see something that strikes you, think about writing it too. Journal Edmonton accepts submissions!

Wrapping up the Graffiti Theme

For the past two weeks my posts have centered around the topic of graffiti – I wrote in reaction to a particular piece of graffiti, and I shared a collection of graffiti-images from around the city. The theme wasn’t deliberate, but now that I’ve realized that it exists, I feel like I should write one more thing on the topic to round it out.

So, graffiti.

Though I’ve never been a graffiteur myself, I must confess, I am attracted to the art – that is, when it’s actually art. I’m not a fan of tagging, as it has more of a cluttering effect on the cityscape, as opposed to the brightening and enlivening feeling that good graffiti, well-placed, can bring. But when graffiti is artistic, I think it begins to give the city a language of its own – a language that the streets can speak, one that everybody hears.

I like the natural juxtapositions that are created when you place art on a concrete face – you cannot remove the art from its environment, because the environment is part of the art. Likewise, graffiti interacts with other graffiti – I’ve often wanted to piece together some story or poem using only the words and images of graffiteurs, and to find, between the words of so many hands, some city story.

I wonder what that story would say. I would hope that there would be more than just the illegible, unpronounceable names of casual spray-can wielders. I would hope that there would be some bit of concrete wisdom, or maybe a string of words just confusing enough to reveal their own clarity.

Graffiti

graffito, n.
Forms: Pl. graffiti

A drawing or writing scratched on a wall or other surface; a scribbling on an ancient wall, as those at Pompeii and Rome. Also, words or images marked (illegally) in a public places, esp. using aerosol paint. [OED]

 

 

   

Portfolio [3]

Q: When is a bus stop more romantic than a moonlit fountain?

I came across this question in a parking lot at the UofA, and knew immediately that I wanted to answer it. You see, I can think of plenty of times when a bus stop becomes romantic, and as for moonlit fountains, well, to be quite honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one, except in a movie, and that doesn’t seem to count. So, here are a couple bus stops that I can call to mind:


Near the Emergency entrance at the UofA hospital, a man sits with a white cowboy hat on his head. In his hands are six more identical hats, but in brown. He places them atop the first, so that his head becomes a hat-stand for the collection. And he sits, and waits for the bus.


In my neighbourhood, several of us stand, waiting. We squint into the silence of the morning sun, searching for a bus. Then, there is the sound of a squirrel skittering up a tree. In an instant, our heads turn, but the squirrel is already gone. We return to waiting.



As I begin to write answers to the graffiti artist’s question, it occurs to me that this isn’t so much about answers after all. I think the real reason that I was drawn to this question is that it speaks to my affinity with this city – we don’t have much in the way of moonlit fountains, but we do have plenty of bus stops. And I don’t think there’s anything particularly romantic about either of those things, until you decide to look. When I walk through Edmonton, I’m looking for ways to make those bus stops and street signs and sidewalks and skyscrapers and storefronts seem romantic. Or, if not romantic, then intriguing, mystifying, comforting, [insert adjective of the day]. It’s about finding something a little bit extra, about asserting your own needs over your city space, and finding ways that the existing space can meet with your desires.

That said, somebody else did feel an answer was important:

A: When the company kept is paramount to any scenic view

Motion

Gusty, blustery, and tempestuous - this past week has been a whirlwind for me, both in the weather and in my writing. I'm having trouble sitting down with one thing at a time, and I can feel myself being thrown in all directions even when I'm inside, safe from the wind. As I was trying to write my way out of the whirlwind and into a blog post, I recalled this piece, which I wrote some time ago, sitting in the Starbucks on Calgary Trail. Somehow, it seems appropriate for such a windy time. It's called "Motion."

“...a body with no net force acting on it will either remain at rest or continue to move with uniform speed in a straight line, according to its initial condition of motion. In fact, in classical Newtonian mechanics, there is no important distinction between rest and uniform motion...” ("uniform motion." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 12 Dec. 2010)

The cars move past at such uniform speed that I wonder if it is them that are moving at all. I imagine myself sitting here, sliding sideways in this coffee shop while the rest of the world stands still, and I wonder how long it will take me to go around all the way, whether I’ll even make it all the way around.

A silver car speeds up, passing the others, and the coffee shop stops moving. I stop moving. I become an inanimate point, and the world revolves- not around me, but outside of me, beyond me.

The only other stillness I can find is a scattering of pigeons perched on the telephone wires, and I wonder if they are moving or not.