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.

Portfolio [2]

As I write this I am watching the may trees in my backyard sway in the wind. My grandfather planted them before I was born: one for each of my three sisters. Past them is our clothes line, the aging telephone wires, the dusty back alley. I feel safe. I feel at home.
I consider the installment of photos that I posting today. In contrast to the rich green out my window, the pictures seem especially dark, especially grimy. I wonder for a moment: Should I post these? Is it right to portray the city in such a dark light when the spring has brought just beauty? Is it fair to do this to my home?
I stop myself. This is the curse of feeling secure. When we are in times of plenty we like to pretend that the darkness does not exist. And by denying its existence we can never fully confront it. In the case of Canada’s colonial legacies (which I address in this portfolio) this means never truly questioning how we live and how we perpetuate injustice today.
It’s not that we should never be happy. Instead, it’s that we should never give in to the temptation of willful ignorance. I can take joy in the beauty of the may flowers or the dusty back alley, but I cannot forget that the land in which those trees are planted or which those roads divide was not my family’s to take. I can peer out at my neighbourhood with affection, but I cannot forget that there are people in this city who do not have the luxury of a place to sleep.
So while my photos may seem out of place amongst the excitement and beauty of the Edmonton spring, I post them as a reminder: let us not forget the injustices that are always being committed, despite what the view from our window may be.

This is the second installment of a portfolio featuring my own photos and the words of Dennis Lee and The Weakerthans. You can check out the first installment here.

Lecture Recap: Dr. Solomon Benatar and The Legacy of the 20th Century

A few days ago I had the opportunity to attend a talk on human rights given by Dr. Solomon Benatar. His lecture focused on the legacy of the 20th century and its impact on the current state of human rights across the globe. What follows is a quick summary of some of the key points for those who didn’t have the opportunity to attend the lecture.

1. The pursuit of knowledge needs to give way to the use of knowledge wisely.

The pursuit of knowledge should never be cast aside, but there needs to be research into how we can wisely apply the information we already have. Many of the technical / medical innovations over the past century have done little to improve the lives of people living in third world countries due to number of reasons, but inadequate research into application is one of them.

2. A shift from massive, blanket programs to focused, small-scale projects.

With the proper funding a well-guided program is the most effective way to improve the health of the third world. Blanket strategies need to give way to malleable tactics that can adapt to the specific challenges that each environment poses.

3. Re-envisioning of health as a not simply biological, but also social and political.

Our idea of health needs to be extended beyond traditional biological notions. Medicine is great at treating individuals but not populations. In order to help populations we need to extend our ideas about health to include the political, social, and technological aspects.

During the question period Dr. Benatar was asked where he places his hope. He replied by saying that he placed no hope in governments or corporations, only for ordinary people, “the people in the streets.” He called for an extension of the civic community that would put globalization to a positive use. In closing, he stresses that any treatment, just as in medicine, can be painful, slow, and sometimes it’s not successful; it’s an ongoing process that needs not only the correct diagnosis and prognosis, but also time and patience.

An Alley in Black and White

It's been too long since I've photographed this city, so I decided to do a photo essay this week. Well, that's what I intended to do. But photo essay turned into photo poem. I walked down a single alley, shooting with a single lens (50mm, f1.8), processed the images in a single tone (black and white), and gave each one a single word.

aligning

crumbling

monuments

directing

patchwork

prayers

threading

thoughts

opening

up

perspectives

combine

aligning crumbling monuments

directing patchwork prayers

threading thoughts.

opening up, 

perspectives combine.

Why So Serious?

I am a native of Deadmonton.  Every inhabitant of this city recognizes and acknowledges that name.

As I mentioned in a previous presentation, we are the self-proclaimed dead.  But why?  Who can we blame but ourselves if we think the city and its walkers are dead?  Why are we so sullen and serious about our home town and its apparent lack of vivacity?  Before death there is life - if the city is truly dead, she must have lived before.  Many have no fond recollections of Edmonton before Deadmonton.  I believe that Edmontonians are engaged in poor and ineffective coping strategies when it comes to the death of our home.

In a psychological study by Susan Folkman and Judith Tedlie Moskowitz titled Stress, Positive Emotion, and Coping, they monitored gay men whose partners were diagnosed with AIDS to assess coping mechanisms and their effectiveness after the death of the partners.  The "creation of positive events strategy" in which ordinary, fleeting moments were imbued with special meaning was judged to be an effective means of coping.  Of particular interest regarding this strategy was that the ability to find humour in the situation aided in the creation of positive events.  As stated, the "gallows humour" helped to preserve the loved one in a positive light.  By wallowing in our misery and boredom after the death of Edmonton, we are suffering for our poor coping (or lack thereof).

Additional research by Dacher Keltner et al. focused on facial expression and personal adjustment.  They pinpointed a particular kind of laughter called "Duchenne laughter" which involves a specific muscle and indicates positive emotions.  When interviewing widowed adults about their deceased spouses, those who exhibited Duchenne laughter were seen in a more positive light by strangers and were better settled and more comfortable with their current significant other.  If we feel lost, trapped, or ill-settled within our lives, it may be because we have failed to engage our orbicular oculi muscles in genuine laughter - we have barred ourselves from true happiness and recovery.

The long and short of it is: why so serious?!  Sometimes you just have to laugh - even if it's inappropriate.  By creating positive events, we can create the city as we wish to remember it.  Find the humour in the city!  We can preserve the positive memories of Edmonton through good humour, a positive outlook, and a heartfelt chuckle.

Photo by Cathryn Beck

Susan Folkman and Judith Tedlie Moskowitz.  Stress, Positive Emotion, and Coping (Vol. IX, No. 4, 2000 pp. 115-118).


Dacher Keltner, Ann M. Kring, and George A. Bonanno.  Fleeting Signs of the Course of Life: Facial Expression and Personal Adjustment (Vol. VIII, No. 1, 1999, pp. 18-22).

Detour

Apologies for the delay in posting, I spent a full day at the office yesterday and somewhere in between booking subscriptions and printing invoices, the post slipped my mind. You do get a double feature on this glorious Saturday, though!

This poem was written on a bus trip I took on one of those nights where I was feeling restless. Rather than take the 8 Millwoods to my house, I took the 1 Capilano all the way to its transit centre, just to see what that particular route looks like.

last night, I took the bus

40 blocks past my street

just so I could glimpse

the unearthly lights of Refinery Row

this no-man’s zone, this lonely home

like something from a science fiction comic book

that single place unknown

as the bus bumped through

the cool, blue night

and the orange staring street lamps

become a thousand seers high above me

I realized how little I know about these sidewalks

the fluorescent signs scream through the dark silhouettes

WE EXIST

like the child who screams

for want of a tender touch

for want of recognition as something beyond

a shell to be filled

with the invented stories of the sea

and all its monsters

Insulated City

Last week I looked at how space can impose a regiment upon our day to day actions, effectively pushing us away from chance encounters. This week I want to continue in the same vein, but with more focus on the relationship between living space and social interaction. The way I see it, and please comment if you feel differently, Edmonton forces many of its citizens to make the conscious choice of interacting with the city or remaining insulated from it.

Photo by Erika Luckert

Many cities offer a barrier between the personal and the social, but they do so through the use of distant suburbs, while Edmonton nestles them right into the heart of the city, creating pockets of insulation. For example, areas such as Garneau, Windsor Park, and Oliver, are sanctuaries that shelter their inhabitants from the daily frenzy of the city, ultimately allowing for a more gradual immersion into social space.

I like to picture Edmonton as a gradient--a smooth transition--rather than it being confined to the simple pairings of inside-personal / outside-social. Edmonton allows its residents to wander outside of their homes relatively free from social bombardment; however, this range of movement necessitates that Residents must consciously move towards a social nexus, instead of suddenly being immersed in one; the connection isn’t forced, only the choice is. In contrast, larger cities, or those cities with space constraints, don’t have outside space that is free from the bustle of the city; the instant you walk outside you are soaked with social stimuli.

The choice, then, to enter into social space is linked with the outside in these larger cities, while in Edmonton the outside still has some connection to the personal (sidebar: or maybe in larger cities the abrupt collision of personal space and social space causes them to spill into each other. Edmonton then would be reinforcing personal space by allowing a buffer to develop between the personal and the social...). Whatever the case, I think Edmonton embraces an approach to space that favours slow transitions over instant immersion. Next week I will be looking at the implications of this conscious, gradual movement into social space.

in-between places

My first contribution to Journal Edmonton was going to be a love letter to the city's secondhand bookstores. But as I wrote I took a wrong turn at the thought of online book-buying, which led me to consider what's missing (materially, locationally) from places like kobobooks.com and thebookdepository.co.uk, and eventually I got lost, somewhere in the idea of the distances — and how essential they are to place and narrative.

I don't have anything against ebooks (dear publishing industry, stop panicking! The codex is not the be-all and end-all of this thing we call the book!), but personally, I like to experience my book-buying binges with all five senses and the unpredictability that accompanies walking in the city. If you order a book online, there's no chance of a chance encounter — having an allergic reaction to the cat presiding over the second floor; walking past the Wee Book Inn and seeing that they have Neil Gaiman's ten-volume Sandman series on sale. If you're clicking, not walking, you're not going to be able to duck into Block 1812 (or is it 1912? I always forget) for gelato, or drop by Chapters on Whyte to say hello to your friends who work there.

Photo by Erika Luckert.

Usually, we think of the distances between places as something to be overcome, like the fifteen-minute LRT ride you slip your earbuds in to get through. But I think that distances also bring places together, in addition to keeping them apart. Distances force you to travel, and that travel creates a kind of narrative. Narrative is essential to how we make sense of places, especially conglomerates of dissimilar places like neighbourhoods and cities.

And this only happens in physical city space. Hyperlinks are, of course, a form of travel. You can check browsing history to stalk someone's journey online. It's kind of mind-numbingly fun to go on Wikipedia for twenty minutes and see if you can get from "chocolate" to "Jesus." But online, it's all instantaneous, disembodied travel, characterised by sameness — like hermetically sealed airplanes, like spooling up the FTL drive and blipping from planet to planet without getting to see the stars.

This is the geography of the web: when you travel it you naturally follow metonymic or metaphoric routes, moving based on principles of contiguity and similarity. It's easy to blinker yourself and stay within communities tailored to your interests. Physical neighbourhoods, though, have a sort of necessary heterogeneity: the gas station is by the yoga studio is by the DQ is by the elementary school, and these are all juxtaposed; they coexist.

In the city, there is always a chance encounter. You can take a wrong turn and discover someplace you've never been before — a place that might be outside of your comfort zone, but which you have to confront anyway, because you can't just click a back button. You can set out to walk a preplanned secondhand bookstore crawl and end up lost, thinking about in-between places.

What’s in a Home?

Home?

Despite the major news stories of the past few days, I'd like to return to a more minor story that may have slipped through unnoticed. On Saturday, twitter (follow us @journaledmonton) led me to  CTV’s article titled “Fire leaves man with nothing.” I must confess, when I discovered that the man in question was homeless, my first thought was, “leaves man with nothing? Isn’t ‘nothing’ all that he had to begin with?”

But then I realized I was wrong. A shelter built of 50 old tires isn’t nothing. It’s an engineering feat. And the candle lit inside of it (the one that started the fire) isn’t nothing either. It’s light, heat, and a little bit of flickering companionship. CTV’s article says that the man “lost all of his possessions,” and I can’t help wondering what those possessions might have been. A few more spare candles? Some food, saved for a hungry day? A well-read paperback?

What’s in a home?

Is it the things inside that make it? The security of walls, of being able to make everything else “outside”?

There’s the old cliché, home is where the heart is. And most clichés come with an element of truth. But there seems to be a truth in our architecture too – in our obsession with building homes, defining spaces to call our own. Do we need to draw a line in the sand in order to feel that we belong someplace? Do we all need some form of house to call a home, even if it’s a collection of worn tires?

In many ways, CTV’s article read much like any other news report of a house fire. Everything was lost, nobody was injured, adjacent buildings still stand intact.

My grandmother recently told me the story of her daughter’s vacation house burning to the ground. She had been there for the weekend, and when she saw the nearby fire spreading, she phoned her daughter, who was out, to ask what she should save from the house. “Nothing,” was the answer she received. Still, my grandmother took a few family photos off the wall as she left. Later, she found out that there were digital backups, and she needn’t have bothered. But that instinct was there – to save something. Some piece of what we’ve built.

What’s in a home, when it’s burned to the ground? Will that man go back, after the cameras and fire trucks have gone, and sift through the ashes? Will he search for something to save, or will he simply move on, and start building again?

Portfolio [1]

Dwelling among the
bruised and infinitely binding world
are we not meant to
relinquish it all, to begin at last
the one abundant psalm of letting be?
-Dennis Lee, “Civil Elegies”

Edmonton is a difficult home. As much as I have longed for an easy definition of that word, “home,” over the years I’ve realized that this city will not offer it. When I think of Edmonton I feel a mixture of affection and alienation, sentimentality and sorrow. I could never quite explain why until about 6 years ago, when one of my older sisters introduced me to The Weakerthans. Through their music, the band attempts to negotiate their own troubled relationship with Winnipeg. Lead singer John K Samson questions why he cannot forgive the “frameworks labelled home” and mourns his city whose streets will “never take [him] anywhere.” I have often turned to the band’s work when I feel overwhelmed by the city, the land and our relationship with it.

Then, this year, I was introduced to Dennis Lee’s “Civil Elegies.” Lee wrote the long poem in 1967, when he was struggling to understand what it meant to live in an “outpost of empire.” He examines how Canada’s colonial legacies have manifested themselves in our oppressive urban environments. Our cities are clogged with spectres of those “born in Canada” who “died truncated, stunted, never at / home in native space and not yet / citizens of a body of kind.” Canada has “specialized in this deprivation.”

Taken together, the Weakerthans and Dennis Lee somehow manage to express those emotions with which I have struggled my entire life. While they write about Winnipeg and Toronto, respectively, their words easily apply to Edmonton. Moved by their honesty, I set out to document my own experiences in this city through photography. The result is a short portfolio featuring photos I have taken as I walk through Edmonton, accompanied by lines from both “Civil Elegies” and various songs by the Weakerthans. While I took the photos with the spirit of these works in mind, none of them were taken to match specific lines. This is the first of 6 installments.

Lee, Dennis. "Civil Elegies." Civil Elegies and Other Poems. Toronto: Anansi, 1972. 33-57. Print.

Weakerthans. "Left and Leaving." Left and Leaving. Epitaph, 2000. MP3.

---. "This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open." Left and Leaving. Epitaph, 2000. MP3.