Mâlain Diaries 2

Mâlain Diaries 2

Why H &M? Why Aeropostale? Superdry, American Eagle or whatever it is today.

I don’t want to be a mass-produced, global

economy, stock-traded

widgetbeing.

I long for

pain traditionnel at a Boulangerie

   closed when you’re done work, and sometimes

   on Monday.

ancient maisons and floorboards where Molière, Voltaire, and Zola walked

   at 5’2” with no electricity.

carved balconies with sunset views over les montagnes

   no ascenseur for hauling groceries

    or my couch.

a quiet cappuccino in the piazza

  “€ 10 to sit”.

No £80 Abercrombie & Fitch for me.

No. Give me

$1 McDonald’s coffee; free seat,

elevator to the door

head room

light

inter-connected

   air

contact

shower-power

food that doesn’t lock its doors.

Bring forth thy hot-press heritage.

Mâlain Diaries 1

Mâlain Diaries 1

“She could tell you were English,”

he said to me accusingly,

ashamed of the obvious linguistic heritage,

the slight of being too-much-oneself.

<<Projet Réstauration>>

was the bénévolat work of our visit.

Ruins being rebuilt; scraping and

uncovering what once was shiny and strong.

“They don’t understand you. If you need to say something, just

tell me and

I will translate for you.”

They uncover the foundation walls first.

Ancient, once new, ‘no-fear’ walls.

Hardened stone that could still be seen through

Covered mounds of grass, like a wound

trying to insulate itself,

building protective layers around the core,

stop the damage.

Then they uncover cellars, deep within

we didn’t even know were there.

“I don’t know why you pretend to be French when you’re not.”

he says, he means, “You disgust me.”

Small bits of pottery shards, little glittering metal and

blue painted bone that can only be seen

once softly brushed for hours.

Held fragile as it has become through

neglect-worn years.

'The Canadian' (In Verse) - Layover

IV.

Douglas’s Banff:

7 people and 3 Chairs.

1 worn Couch

where

10000 bums have been.

My heyday was in the early 80s, my prime

teen years when

Everything had a new, firm, shiny skin.

Now my liver-spotted Carpets and

My drooping cushy Chair of my generation

Groans

Against the daily monotonous visits.

When will they all go home so I can retire?

V.

5° in July.

white, white blue water.

The reservations are for 9 but it feels like dawn.

swimsuit still wet from night before, clinging to bbody like a tongue on a steel post.

Put on a wetsuit,

they say,

No cotton, it will make you cold.

steel black wetsuits wet from months gone by

sweat, fear still dripping; like athletic shoes.

Did he say there were gloves?

On the boat.

Too much talk; must move, yah?

2 Daves; 4 boats.

We paddle fast; we don’t need to –

improves circulation.

Feet still numb; need ski heat pack.

It would break apart in water

someone shivers. Figures.

We hide behind the men in front,

not because we are 1870 women

they are only bunkers for the white white blue water.

“Portage Shotgun”

Dave makes up the names of sections of river long forgotten,

pushed out with the originals into the

white white water.

We see a sink hole,

Hole we yell

and we go down again into the white water.

The boat is rubber so it bounces back

bounces onto the top of an old school bus

no heat, radiator broken.

We change quickly, fighting against wet cold rubber that

sticks to our skins like leeches.

hard to find holes of pants, of shorts

of socks to cover the growing bubbles on our skin.

Here’s a hamburger.

Cold, but it silences the stuttering in the head.

VI.

Banff

17 souvenir shops and the same t-shirts in each:

Canadian flags, moose chasing humans, bears chasing humans, the evolution’ of the Canadian, mosquitoes, tents, ‘rules of hockey’, ‘why beer is better than women’, it’s all there – the philosophy of a nation for just $9.99. Or two for $10.

Sometimes there is a ‘50% Off Sale!’

Up to …in small print.

We take photos of the big black bear in ‘OK!Gifts’; he seems harmless.

A horn sounds and a concert begins.

‘Save the Bison’ in the square.

Pull up a plastic chair, and a hamburg.

Sweetgrass is for sale for smudging ceremonies, but it’s not doing so well:

2 for 1!

Double the smudging; double the spirit.

There is a dollar store around the corner, but you can’t buy anything there for a $1.

We buy a flashlight for $1.50, and a package of ‘tongue tattoos’. Try them out later.

Sun sets and the beer scent is stronger. You can take a taxi home, but the price in Banff is twice as much because the drivers dress up.

Banff: home of the arts.

'The Canadian' (in Verse)

I.

Burnt, curving steel outside my

            Ridged house of GLASS. 

Freight passes as giant walkers casting

Shadows on the passengers within.

One photo, two photo, three, the lineup

in front of the front pane

littered with the corpses of insects whose

unsuccessful migrations crossed a path of

hard iron.

Small feet explore the seats, the levels, the carpet,

The tables that shift and fall on top of an unsteady floor.

Newspapers a day old serve for lists, for countless re-readings –

I’ve already read that

 until

the News arrives at a future station stop, like water after a desert walk.

Meals, first sitting, second, third, called out along the tunnel so that one of three choices may be discovered.

Ten minutes of sunlight, of stepping onto solid rock and ground before the

Movement westward continues again.

II.

“TWENTY minutes!”

Where are we?

Hornepayne

Small, tanned faces and bare, brown feet climb down from the pickup at

The Home Hardware

There’s ice cream at a variety store, but the trailer isn’t working so you

Go inside to get it.

Small, thriving insects in the humid sun of Northern bedrock

Solid under the face of soft green

“All Aboard!”

III.

Old Winnipeg, centre of a nation,

With Louis Riel, son of French, English, Aboriginal

Embodying the circle of swirling life of East and West arms extending.

St. Boniface’s Staff, one of four windows into the spirit world:

Central Station, Star Forks, and the marriage bridge, pathways all

between our worlds and others.

circles, centres, ceilings, carriages of national symmetry

joining an already overflowing river of wild ducks, too small

from a Winter frozen hard for eight sky-like months.

Andrew Wright: The Ying and Yang of our World in Photography

Who hasn’t seen Rubin’s Vase: Is it a vase, or is it a silhouette of two people nose to nose? Nox Borealis’ and ‘Still Water’ series at the Thames Art Gallery in Chatham, Ontario this month.

Or the monochrome of the woman who could either be a ‘young maid’ or an ‘old hag’?

It is exactly that type of perceptual distortion that Ottawa photographer Andrew Wright is attempting in his ‘

Wright takes snow and water scenes, turns them upside down, and inverts them on the walls and floors to provide the inverse of the object being observed. What are we actually looking at? What is it that photography actually does? Is this photography?

What Wright does is certainly not traditional photography, as we know it. But if photography, or what appears to be photography, makes us consider our own viewpoint of the world, then it’s worth disturbing the perspective.

Wright’s ‘Nox Borealis’ takes an ordinary Arctic snow bank, turns it upside down, peels the edges off the wall, and asks the viewer, ‘What do you see? A snow hill, or a night sky? A snow bank, or outer space? How are these two sides of the World, in black and white, the pair of the other? How are they related by form when inverted? What is it about the image, the shape, that allows the viewer to see the other side of the phenomena?

Similarly, Wright’s sculptural photographs, ‘Still Water’, are the three-dimensional concave of what we might see in the landscape. Here, Wright distorts a photograph of a waterfall, only in the reverse direction and shape from its ordinary, organic perspective. Is it a fountain now? Is the other side of the water falling? What are we looking at now, and again, how is the image the ying and yang of the other? Why are they connected in this way simply by turning the negative upside down?

Look for yourself: how inverted is your perception of your own world in water?