The Politics of Dismay
13 Jan 2012 5 Comments
in Politics
Two very troubling episodes this week…listening to the debates over the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project, and the discovery of the video of U.S. soldiers urinating on the corpses of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Even though these are unrelated events, I cannot help but draw comparisons in terms of how dominant culture approaches the world. It degrades it.
Regarding the pipeline, industry and business are using the same rhetoric of assurance they have always used when they want public support for development and job creation. In addition to the economic argument, they’ll minimize risk by saying it is unlikely that there will be a catastrophic environmental disaster. I actually heard one interviewee on CBC Radio say the odds of such a disaster were 1 incident every 15,000 years! What a ridiculous statement. We haven’t been drilling or shipping oil for that long. That is just a stupid way of framing the issue. How many serious accidents have there been since companies started drilling and shipping crude oil? Too many to tolerate. Do the corporations – like BP – ever get shut down because of the environmental damage they have caused? No, they just get fined, and the fines, in their cost-benefit analyses, are cheaper than safer practices or encouraging tighter regulation. I am also alarmed yet unsurprised by the way that opponents to the project are being dismissed as “radicals.” Fifty First Nations Groups, ordinary citizens, and Robert Redford – radicals?
The military incident exploding in the media instantly had authority figures, such as Hillary Clinton going into damage-control mode. Of course the episode is being labelled “deplorable” and “unacceptable,” because it absolutely is. However, it is not an anomaly. We’ve seen this type of behaviour before (Abu Ghraib). Isn’t it better characterized as a symptom of a world in which people are assassinated without due legal process (Osama Bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi)? A world which tolerates – even encourages – people to party in the streets and celebrate when they learn of an execution, even torture? Is it really that far of a leap to urinating on corpses? There is something much deeper that is wrong within Neo-liberalism, and we need to take a serious look at what we are becoming. Both the environment and human beings are being pissed upon.
Absence Explained, 2012 Embraced
04 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in My Life
I did not take an intentional hiatus from blogging, but rather had a Fall season fraught with emotional and physical difficulties. I continued as usual with my visual journal, but unfortunately my blog dropped off the map.
My Nana died just before my 50th birthday. Her ashes are now sealed inside her favourite English teapot.
I’m still sorting out my own health issue and will be having a surgical procedure sometime over the next couple of months.
Our dog Chica was diagnosed with Cushing’s Disease and now has a plethora of health issues, although she remains a spry 13 year old with no idea that she’s sick.
There’s more – much more – but why dwell on it? Despite a few months of grief and upset, I remain extremely fortunate and privileged. And I threw myself an amazing 50th birthday party that was a Facebook phenomenon (although since I’m not a Facebooker, I cannot independently verify this fact).
Here’s hoping 2012 is bright and promising.
SPARC Radio Museum – A Hidden Gem
19 Sep 2011 1 Comment
in Field Trips
What a fabulous place the SPARC Radio Museum is! It is on the Riverview Hospital site in Coquitlam. SPARC stands for Society for the Preservation of Antique Radio in Canada. And have they ever preserved! The museum was founded in the early 1990s. If you are curious about technologies of the past, either scientifically or aesthetically (or both), you’ll love it here. Don’t expect a pristine museum setting: this is more like a picker’s dream: dusty treasures, radios stacked five feet high, rooms packed full of nostalgic items like vacuum tubes – too many places to look to see everything in one trip.
This museum has workspaces, a functioning broadcast station, morse code recordings, thousands of radio shows, records, and tapes, early TVs and phonographs, wax cylinder recordings, old posters, very knowledgeable volunteers, and they restore vintage radios too. There are rooms set up with military equipment and memorabilia, and a replica of the radio room on the ship the Carpathia; this room also includes the radio from the Empress of India.
I’ve included a few pictures to tempt you. It is well worth the trip. Admission is free (but leave them a donation because they’re working on a shoestring budget). SPARC has limited hours so check first; their website address is: http://www3.telus.net/radiomuseum.
Age Appropriate Hobbies?
18 Aug 2011 3 Comments
in My Life
No, I don’t believe in such a thing. I am nearly fifty years old and one of the things I love to do is search for vintage metal truck toys, such as the one pictured here. I prefer not to spend more than ten dollars on an item. I cannot answer you when you ask why I collect them. I like the way the paint has worn off to reveal the bare metal underneath. They’ve been heavily used and have visual reminders of their own histories. They look cool on the shelf. Does it matter why? We should pursue our visual interests and pay attention to where our attention is drawn. There’s a reason why we’re captivated by certain objects or why we become nostalgic when we think about particular categories of things, even if we might not ever know what that reason is.
Art Conjures up Real Creature
18 Aug 2011 2 Comments
in My Life
I decided to try making a linocut recently. I started with a simple idea. An owl. Using the tools with the required delicacy was a challenge, but I wasn’t unhappy with my first attempt. I’ve included a photo of the print here. More significant than the represented owl, however, was an actual barred owl I spotted the next day on a branch twenty yards from the back gate of my complex. It was the middle of the afternoon and the magnificent creature was a marvelous sight. How do owls manage to look so nonplussed, so majestic? While I didn’t get a picture of the owl, I did take a picture of one of its feathers found on the ground nearby.
It seems that my representational homage to the owl conjured up an owl in reality. I felt really fortunate. I even went and got one of my neighbour’s kids to come look at it, and then two of the tradesmen who are replacing our gutters. One of them asked: “how can that be a bird, it doesn’t look like other birds?” I thought it was quite amusing when his coworker looked at him as if he was an idiot and said: “there are millions of species of birds…think of a penguin, think of an ostrich!”
The next linocut subject must be chosen carefully if this is the effect I am to expect. Maybe a bear or a deer, but certainly not a cougar.
Re-reading My Favourites
26 Jul 2011 1 Comment
in My Life
I’ve been re-reading some of my favourite novels, including Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton and Graham Swift’s Waterland. The first examines the relationship between history and fiction (and their interpenetration and contingency) and the second explores history and human affairs using metaphors of land reclamation. Both are deeply moving and extremely well written. Next will be an older book, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a novel investigating immigration and the rise of unionism in the United States.
I once took an undergraduate English course at the University of British Columbia. It was on the post-World War II British novel. Some of the most excellent books I’ve ever encountered were on the reading list for that class. I remember the instructor’s name was Graham Good. He certainly was good at picking books!
The Visual Journal (a Lifelong Process)
22 Jul 2011 2 Comments
in Journaling
Twenty-six years ago, when I started to keep a journal, I broke in that intimidating blank page with this quote: “The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself” (Anais Nin). You see, the only people I knew that kept journals (which to me sounded loftier than the teenage-tinted word “diary”) were literary figures like Anais Nin and Virginia Woolf. Only later did I discover Frida Kahlo’s diary along with those kept by many others. And only recently has visual journalling entered the mainstream, becoming a staple of blog entries, how-to books, and web pages.
My very first entry, in April 1985, when I was twenty-three years old, reads: “I will now begin my journey to the spiritual island within myself…” I laugh at this line. To think that I once believed this was possible, or that the process, which has become lifelong, would be “spiritual” in nature, rather than intellectual or emotional. That it could ever have a destination. If I were to use one word to describe myself now it would certainly not be spiritual. Perhaps I would use the word curious. At other times I might use the word troubled or contented or engaged. Such are the ups and downs of the daily and the quotidian. I approach everything by absorbing it cerebrally; feeling only comes later. Because for me, older and wiser (?) now, it is only knowledge that will save us. Because only action informed by knowledge is responsible and effective when faced with the incomprehensible.
I’ve included a photograph here of over two decades worth of visual journals, fifty two of them! What on earth will I do with these as I get closer to old age and death? Have them buried or cremated with me? It has always been the writing of them, not the reading of them, that has been significant. The creation of a place for reflection, for venting, for processing, for writing poetry, drawing pictures, making collages…I really don’t know if I’ll ever read them in any systematic way, if I read them at all.
The past always impinges on the present; there is no escaping it. Events, trauma, joy – all find their way into these pages. The need not to lose anything is strong, if unrealistic. So strong, in fact, that if it didn’t get written down, it’s almost as if it didn’t actually happen. Is that the appeal of this almost daily ritual? The documentary impulse, the fear of emptiness or of an imprecise and/or degraded memory?
Have these books become more of a burden than a relief? Excess baggage? Or do they still serve that purpose of helping me gain access to a deeper, more complex, more interesting world? I oscillate between viewing them as an encumbrance and a treasure trove. But I know I cannot stop filling them. They are now inextricably wound up with my sense of self, they have ensnared me as if they were an external force compelling me, rather than a trajectory I am responsible for setting in motion with purpose and strong intent.
Artists’ Sketchbooks and Visual Journals
11 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Journaling
I found a site with some fantastic sketchbook pages. Very inspiring. http://sketchbob.com
I’ve put this under my links. The creator of the site also writes about the creative process.
There is also a new Lynda Barry book out entitled Picture This. Here are a few tidbits:
“You have to be willing to spend time making things for no known reason.”
“Doodle is a name I dislike for a kind of drawing I love.”
“What if drawing was a way to get to a certain state of mind that was very good for us? And what if this certain state of mind was more important than the drawing itself?”
Lessons to spur us into action.
Is it Possible Not to Buy Anything New?
27 May 2011 Leave a Comment
in My Life
I just spent two days at a workshop on sustainability at which I announced I am going to try not to buy anything new. Now I know this is going to be an imperfect system, so “try” is the operative word here. I’ve already done this a lot with clothes. It started because I hate sweatshop labour, but since I live in an urban environment, consignment and thrift stores are abundant. Furniture is also an easy used purchase (I love vintage things and antiques anyway).
However, right away I can identify a few obstacles to my plan. When a person has, as I do, two uniquely flawed eyes, that person has to purchase properly made prescription lenses. Strike one. Years of wearing used shoes have caused me to have serious foot problems so now, if I intend to be able to walk for the rest of my life, I need to buy specifically designed new shoes. Strike two.
Unless I grow all my own food, food must be left out of this equation, including pet food and alcohol (although at least I can buy local at farmers’ markets). Pet toys and supplies are another thing difficult to acquire used and you have to be careful about fleas and disease. Our garden seeds itself more and more each year, so perhaps I can one day dispense with buying plants and flowers each spring. I guess I could take up guerrilla gardening. A lot of the garden decor comes from thrift shops, and all the back yard slate came cheap from the demolition man.
Strike three really involves those things that are impossible to avoid: light bulbs, batteries (although we have a recharger), paper products, household cleansers (although we could learn to make our own), etc.
Of course it is always okay to buy new if it is hand-crafted and sustainable. This makes buying things like soap, scarves, and socks easier though more costly. I have yet to meet anyone who can boast excellent homemade beer.
If any of you out there have any tips, I’d appreciate some pointers!
Tracks, Traces, Stuff
09 May 2011 Leave a Comment
in My Life
The weight of stuff can be heavy and oppressive. Clutter in my environment can mirror the chaos in my head. However, discovered and surprising things pull on me. Odd items found on the beach (I’m working on a photo project of Things I’ve Found on the Beach), things scarred and weathered by life and the elements, those are the types of objects I mean. It’s not nostalgia – I’ve never seen the items before - it’s the idea that they’ve come from somewhere else with information, data, in the form of rust, barnacles, decay. Or it could be the tracks left in the sand by animals or machinery. We occupy space and that space is shared with organisms and with objects. The most provocative and unsettling sculptures are often those made from society’s detritus, the cast-offs, junk, discarded and unwanted.
