On animal instincts

The wild horse lived in a field on a green Colombian mountainside. She’d been fenced in, but no-one could get near her. I walked by her every morning, on the way to town. She’d watch me, from faraway, ears up, tail swishing. So each afternoon I’d stop at the fence, a bunch of long grass from the gully in my hands. I’d stand and look over the hillside for about twenty minutes. Then I’d drop the grass over the fence and leave. Each day she was a bit closer when I rounded the path by her enclosure. Until one day she was two armslengths away, watching me unabashedly. And then one armslength. She stood, I stood. We regarded one another. I could feel her curiosity, the tugging desire in her to approach and feel a live warm body beside her, to munch fresh grass. Her head jerked up, as if she were trying to toss off the conflict in her like it was a loose harness.

And I knew what to do, as if she’d whispered the words in my ear. Slowly, like a stretch, I turned and faced the road. Ever so slowly I pushed the grass tips through the gate slats, still holding the bundle.

Sure enough, I heard her legs shift, her body heave, and then felt the warm tickle of her breath as she pulled at the grass.

And so you will forgive me for finding my animal instincts a blessing, for rejoicing in their subtleties, for following them carefully but surely as a mountain deer picking her way through the rocks. As though I were being led by grace.

On Disintegration

 The FIFA is actually the festival of films about art—which, in Montreal, delightfully, no-one confuses with a soccer franchise. I was most excited about the Anselm Kiefer film. Kiefer had an exhibit at the Contemporary Art Museum here about 5 years ago. I was captivated by his sculptures, particularly the one depicting a giant lead book with giant lead wings sprouting from its back. It seemed heavy and sad, despite the obvious symbolism.

The film did not disappoint. It let the cleverness, unexpectedness, and provocativeness of Kiefer’s work shine as sunlight through a clean window. But that metaphor is all wrong for today’s thoughts. You’ll never find a clean window in Kiefer’s maze of broken glass, concrete cubes, and metal sheets dappled with molten lead and dirt.

At one point, Kiefer mentions he likes imperfections, empty spaces. We see him flinging sheets of glass on the concrete surrounding a lead tableau. The fractured, the diffuse, the brokenness. Those things we avoid, see only to patch up or cover over, he forces us to look at them, think about them, marvel at them, grasp them without collapsing their disintegratedness. I’m reminded of the dazzling, shattered complexity of our current world. Wars are fought, not with armies but random little cells of rebels. Information is transmitted, not through a fixed number of newspapers or television channels but a multiplicity of organically, randomly interconnected internet sites. I cannot concentrate for more than 3 minutes on any task during my work day without being interrupted by my buzzing Blackberry.

What to make of this post-big-bang-style eruption of formerly packed particles into a million spots of light that has happened in the past 10 years or so? Confusion reigns, because our eyes are trained to see a music video as a seamless 3.5-minute flow despite the cut-a-second editing, because our minds yearn for perfect wholeness.

One of Kiefer’s tableaux, of the thick giant metal sheet variety, is textured with fissures. In the film, he pours molten lead and it runs along the cracks. Then he takes oversized plasters of molars and sticks them into the lead. “It’s the Greeks’ idea,” he shrugs, “they sowed teeth and harvested warriors. The legend of the Argonauts.”

Yes. Yes, how do we do that? How do we nourish ourselves in the multitudes of cracks, make ourselves at home in the brokenness, draw strength from the endless and unpatterned divisions, so that we rise up warriors?

On migration

Yesterday coming home on the 24 bus from Sherbrooke metro, I removed my earbuds to hear the conversation of 3 teenage kids standing beside me. I couldn't quite figure out what language they were speaking. After a few minutes, I realized it was Creole. Haitian kids, then. A rarity on the 24 bus indeed. For the first time, I realized how strange it is that with such a large Haitian population in Montreal I live near none of them. When the earthquake hit, a radio announcer said everyone in Montreal knew someone who was affected. There's a secretary at my work who is from Haiti, so I am no exception. But that's my only point of contact with a huge subculture in my city.

Cultural mixité was on my mind today, therefore, when I visited an art gallery exhibit at Parisian Laundry, in the Saint-Henri  hinterlands. Called Migrating Landscapes, it appears to be an illustration of the waves of immigration to Canada. The exhibit itself is not something that I will carry about as a provocative artistic treasure in my mind: blocks of multi-level wood stuck together, topped with elaborate strings of origami or little ceramic pots flowing into one another. I see how it visually describes the convoluted voyages people make to Canada, possibly even within Canada. There were some interactive features and videos of people reading short scripts about roots and identity, but these did not suffice to personalize or humanize the exhibit. It felt like a geological depiction of demographic migratory phenomenon. To me, migration is so intensely personal and wrenching it is almost a sin to emphasize the scientific aspects, especially in artistic productions. What is worse, the exhibit exuded the tired self-congratulatory "Canadian tapestry" tone. Unsurprisingly, it was part of the Canadian exhibit at the Venice Biennale. Yes, it's lovely that many contemporary Canadians originally sprouted all over the globe. To me, what is far more interesting and vital are the relationships and movements that occur once everyone gets here. I would much rather blocks depicting the ethno-cultural diaspora in Montreal, where and how communities mix, and when new communities form based on something other than country of origin. Of course, such an exhibit is not something we'd gladly send to the Venice Biennale. It is too painful to look at the pseudo-apartheid makeup of Regina, or the surprised looks on Plateau busgoers' faces when they hear Creole outside of a taxi rank.

On intimacy

When we last chatted, I was tripping over the keys to tell you about all the thoughts and ideas and fora for more thoughts. You were in the throes of emotional drama, you said. These past weeks have been quiet because I too was ravaged (savagely, I might add) by the drama that stalks us sensitive souls. Now the tears are all shed, I can peaceably lose myself in my thoughts. Bring a picnic, come along!

Walking through the park in the evening, I feel all the trees. It's hard to describe exactly how I feel the trees. But there - how to describe any sensation? I have spent a good many hours thinking about this part of myself. It seems so alien from contemporary Western culture. I have no vocabulary for it that doesn't make me sound a complete flake. Consequently, it's something I almost never speak of. To date, the best I've come up with is:  it is laughably easy for me to have an intimate relationship with anything. Anything. Trees are favourites.

Trying to describe it in my head, tonight, staring up at the leafiness, it came to me -- that it has to do with taking things on their own terms, approaching them in their own way. Like the horse I befriended in Colombia. It was wild, but bound in by a farmer's fence. No-one could get near it. It would watch us walk by every day. It didn't have the lazy look of a tame horse. It was alert. From a half-field away I could sense its curiosity. So one day I stood a long time by the fence, not moving. When I left, a half-hour later, the horse was noticeably closer.  This went on for a few days, each one she came a little closer. Then there was the day I could have reached out and touched her. But I did not. I pulled a few handfulls of long grass, from outside the fence, and turned my back to her. I rested my clasped grass-filled hands between two fence slats. Casual, as though I had forgotten she was there. And crunch, she carefully took a mouthful of the grass. Right out of my hands.

So--does everyone have such moments? Because it seems like it's just me, who nightly wanders the streets in a semi-elated state of sensual union with every element of my natural environment. I hear echoes, when people speak of ecstasy trips. I am too concerned with my delicate emotional balance to try it myself, but truly I don't think there'd be much point. Truly, all I need is a tree. Instead, I frequent raves with a bottle of water and a big smile. I actually feel comfortable interacting in this heightened way because everyone either is doing it too or doesn't care that I am.

Some day I am going to find an explanation of all this, or at very least an expression that makes sense to a portion of the population. Then I will carry it about in my head and take it out and point to it and say to people -- THAT. Welcome to my world. It's all like THAT.

And when I do find it -- you'll be the first to know.

I hope the sky clears, the seas calm, and you enjoy some smooth sailing through life soon. I am thinking of you.

On ex boyfriends

I dreamed I ran into my ex-boyfriend, who had sought me out to smile tightly and say, "The doctors tell me I'd be fine if only you had loved me and understood me."

On dictatoriship living

I went to an art exhibit last week called the Biennale. Their virtually incoherent website piqued my interest.

Crossing the threshold of the former Fine Arts Academy, a grand classical building on the corner of Saint-Urbain and Sherbrooke, I had no idea what to expect. Turns out it's a sprawling selection of contemporary Montreal visual artists. Works ranged from
: eyebrow-raisingly terrible (reproduction of a squalid apartment, the hyper-realism uncomfortably torn by the ten pieces of buttered toast lying on the counter),
: to stimulating (a white room, with white sheets covering all the furniture, and careful piles of confetti created out of the accumulated works the artist read for her museum studies masters degree)
: to sublime (a video piece about Turkmenistan)

Let's elaborate on the last one shall we? It's clearly the heart of the posting, as your knowledge of Central Asian republics' recent history probably has alerted you.

Truly, I have no idea of the artist's intent with the fairly long video featuring a soothingly repetitive, sonorous ringing soundtrack and long still shots of statues, empty boulevards, and meticulous grocery stores. The video intersperses quotes from a book written by a Turkmenistani civilian expressing her love, admiration and devotion towards the great leader with adjective-free quotes about Turkmenistan and some of the dictator's nuttier decrees.  

I was entranced. I sat through the entire loop (no-one else did). It wasn't til walking down the stairs that I realized why. That must be what it's like to live in a dictatorship, I said to my friend Olivia. When we hear about dictatorship living it sounds truly awful. Mostly we hear about repression, fear, and horrible treatment of dissidents. But the day-to-day, as a regular Joe, life must feel overwhelmingly stable, calm, predictable, quiet. Reports of North Korea note this. It is civil wars, well any war but particularly civil ones, that are chaotically awful. With a dictatorship, you do know what you're getting. It's suburbia, to the max.

The theme recurred tonight as I'm listening to -- nay, devouring -- a series of podcasts of the CBC radio show Writers and Company on contemporary Spanish writers. It's called Franco's Ghosts. Finally, I learn, Spain is facing its demonic past.

The podcast I'm currently listening to features acclaimed Spanish writer Javier Cercas. It's about a botched coup, which occurred after the handover of power from the King to a democracy (shortly after Franco's death). Francoists stormed into the Parliament and were going to kill the new democracy's leaders. Cercas' most recent novel is entirely about the coup, about the Francoists' desire for a return to order and tradition and the population's horror and fear at the resurfacing bile from their past.

I think you know I love Spanish history for its inspiring transition to democracy. Spain's shift is an interesting counter-point to the North African spring, as Cercas notes, because it was not the result of a revolution. Spain's revolution yielded, well, Franco (let's hope the North African and Arab states do better, although I doubt all of them will). Rather, it was a solemn handing over, a noble King actually going back on his word to a dying tyrant and putting his faith entirely in the hands of his people despite their bloody and undemocratic history. It is about choosing uncertainty and the belief that it can, indeed will, yield a better stability, a dynamic instead of a stifling one.

On Easter

This Easter, my take-away thought was: if I were Jesus, I sure as shit wouldn't have come back for you lot.