Lately

The past few months have been filled with courses taken. I've been stocking up on all kinds of motivation:

*Creative Magazine Writing, with the inspiring Daniel Wood;

*Master Fiction Workshop, with another great writer, Nancy Lee;

*Women's Chorus, with the lovely new mama, songstress Miriam Davidson.

And looking down the road, I see a Digital Photography course in my future, and a summer full of travelling and writing.


Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self- consciousness.
~ Aaron Copland

Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
~ Pablo Picasso

Overloaded

My pal Tony, over at the CWC posted this great piece today. In it, he muses:

"You reach a certain age, and you begin to wonder how come you never paid attention before, why you never noticed that with each change of season, your life becomes less and less about living, and more and more about something else."

Then I just popped over to The Tyee, and found this great post from James Glave, in which he writes:

"I want my experiences and places and purchases to feel honest, comfortable, deliberately human-scale, authentic."

These subjects are also on my mind of late, and I wonder: Is a collective western-world shift occurring?

The view from here

As a short person, I’ve always been aware of my surroundings and how things are not made for me: office chairs never fit, cupboards are always too high; items I want at the supermarket or the library always seem to be on the shelf I am just inches shy of reaching.

Perhaps because I come from a highly wheelchair-accessible city, or because I have many friends with limited mobility, when I travel I’m often conscious of a city’s lack of accessibility. For instance, last spring in Montreal I was deeply disappointed by how wheelchair unfriendly the city is; only becoming aware of it whilst hauling some cumbersome luggage from the train to the metro.

But Kevin Connolly’s recent photo project has me reflecting on some things I don’t regularly think about. Connolly, a 22-year-old Montana artist and athlete was born without legs, uses a skateboard as his main mode of transport. His perspective from his close-to-the ground camera lens, documenting how people look at him, is a reminder of what we often don’t consider:

"Aside from the enjoyment of working on a challenging photo project, I also got the chance to skateboard some pretty crazy locales. Tokyo and Zurich were probably my favorites due to the immaculate sidewalks. However, most of Europe posed a problem that I hadn't considered upon leaving: cobblestones. Those evil little buggers…tore my skateboard apart and created a terrible racket anytime I would go anywhere… I've never seen such nasty cobblestones as those in Romania."

(Image: Kevin Connolly)

Les inspirant langues de Tomson Highway

The strongest aspect of English for me is that it’s the world’s foremost intellectual language, it comes from the head. The French language comes from the heart, it’s an emotional language. And Cree is a visceral language, it comes from a third part of the human body, a part that’s forbidden to be talked about in English. It’s the garden of joy, of pleasure, from which the English language was evicted 4,000 years ago — to put it in theological terms. It’s hysterical. When you speak Cree, you laugh all the time. Every syllable is a kick in the arse. So when I want to laugh, I speak Cree. When I want to make money, I speak English. When I want to make love, I speak French.

The full interview

A story for the year of the rat

You wouldn't want me, standing here, to tell you, would you, about my friend the poet (deceased) who said, 'My heart has followed all my days something I cannot name'?

The Door, by E.B. White

Bees

Photographer Adam Makarenko's miniature/photo bee projects are mesmerizing.

Recently awarded the American Photo of the Year, "[i]n this project, Makarenko created a detailed imaginary world -- a 'pseudo garden of Eden' he calls Langstroth Range, located in Canada's Yukon Territory."

A grey mood

There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons--
That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes--

~ Emily Dickinson (No. 258)


Renowned Vancouver architect Arthur Erickson said of his favourite medium: "Concrete is the marble of the 20th century." His creations are anywhere from fascinating to confounding to starkly beautiful. But his contributions to this city, one socked-in by grey for much of the year, sometimes simply overwhelm.

It's the 21st century, is our future to remain grey?


***

The Gray Areas of Jasper Johns
By Carol Vogel

February 3, 2008

ONLY one artwork hangs in Jasper Johns’s all-white Caribbean home here. It’s a nearly nine-foot-tall canvas in three sections: a harlequin pattern that cascades down on the right, a series of colored circles on the left, and a montage of gray encaustic brush strokes in the center. Two overlapping wooden slats are attached to the painting.

Full New York Times article