The Park

 

  If you leave my apartment building and head right on the back street, past my favourite street food vendor (open 6 p.m. To 10 p.m.) and through the swerving scooters, you'll see the park I go to. It's not huge and, other than the nighttime yellow lights and the section of canopied trees, it's not dissimilar to all the little parks in every corner of every other neighbourhood in Taipei.

      I go at night.

     And there's always a group of dog owners that assemble around 10 or 11 p.m. to let their pups roam and fight and play with each other. Next to them are the groups of teenagers huddled in whispers and guffaws under the nighttime shadow of the gazebo, and next to them are the three old men, dressed in sweatpants and old undershirts, doing their stretches, but mostly just chatting. And next to all of them is me, sitting on the pond's bridge in awe of the mix of so many ages and activities in one public place.

     Because despite Canada's obsession with public space, we don't really have any parks like this. We've definitely got parks that are bustling with people, but they're either populated solely by children under eight years old, or so tremendously sprawling that no matter how bustling, the visitors never ever have to interact with each other. The parks here are different. They capture the heart of what I imagine all the Canadian urban planners who beam about "public space" have in mind.

     I feel like we definitely all want to want public space, but we have a hard time ditching our heavily engrained habits of privacy and isolation. I was listening to an interview with Zadie Smith the other day on CBC's Writers and Company (I recommend it), and she touched on her observation that Western goals seem to revolve around the desire to become increasingly isolated. We go from a school bus, to a transit bus, to a carpool, to a taxi, to finally having our own car, just as we go from our family home, to a home with friends, to a home with a single partner (and that home, of course, is bound to have a big backyard so no community park like this is required).

     So when I'm here at this park at 11 o'clock, and it's stretching at the seems with conversation and activity from people of every every age, I can't help but feel like Canadians have gone astray somewhere. Though I could never give up the majority of the freedom and privacy that we gain from our ways, we really do lose our sense of spontaneity, flexibility and openness by shutting strangers out.

     I've decided it's kind of like lucid dreaming. From afar, it seems like lucid dreaming would allow for the best dreams ever. But in reality, having complete control of a dream would be limiting. It would stop the dream from reaching those farther, more surprising and mysterious places. So, for now, in all my reserved and irrepressible Canadianness, I can only sit in this neighbourhood park and watch this group of adults do the cha cha with the help of a boom box and an inspiring lack of self consciousness. But I do have high hopes that this park will eventually teach me to let go of some control, and open my life to that farther, more mysterious dream.

A spirit saving day trip to Bowen Island with Susanna and Kevin

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

a visit home

Visited home last week. It always stirs me up in all kinds of ways, good and bad.

F-18

Feeling chaotic in the brain today, I spent the majority of the afternoon working on an F-18 HORNET model fighter jet. Hunched over the coffee table, squinting my eyes and snipping 1/4" plastic pieces from their packets, the world became small and simple and full of order. Suddenly all that existed were these white and smooth objects that I knew would all, eventually, come together perfectly to create a beautiful, tidy jet airplane.
And it made me laugh. Because humans lust so intensely after life, and yet when we are confronted with life, all fluid and messy, we desire just as intensely to strip it dry in the name of order.
So then of course, when my jet was all built, all perfect and clean and adorned with precise decals, it still did not fly. For all its beauty and order, it had no life. And isn't that just the funniest dilemma.

Portrait Canada

Hello, I'm setting out on a Canadian trip this summer to work on a series of multimedia documentary projects that I feel will help represent the far to reach places of Canada's national identity. If anyone knows of anyone doing something pure, interesting, and/or innovative in our country, please let me know. I can be reached at laura_fethers@hotmail.com. Here is a piece I did that I'm going to be using as a start point for the project. The quality will be poor on blogspot, but I hope it will give an idea of the kind of stories I'm interested in pursuing. This piece would be accompanied by an article as well.
-Laura

Bus from Calgary to Vancouver

When the bus started up, grumbling all low like most heavy greyhounds, she started up too. Seemingly unprovoked, she started swearing at a man she did not know on the bus. She spat the ugliest words in his face, you wouldn’t even believe, and everyone rolled their eyes and thought, “There always has to be one crazy on a fifteen hour bus ride, doesn't there.”

She was maybe 35 and dressed well, all in black, but had sunken cheeks and jagged movement. I guess you could say something seemed off about her, and not just because she was yelling 'nigger' at a total stranger. The bus driver eventually got her to sit down though, and everyone sank back into their seats and sleepy minds.

Five hours later we stopped at a rest stop, with a backdrop of spiked, snow-topped mountains against the bright, midday sky. People lounged on the grass, ate corn nuts from the gas station, and tried to remember not to make eye contact with the "crazy lady." I guess I forgot to do that because she came and sat down beside me and told me she was sorry.

She told me she thought the man had said that she smelled, but then realized he could have been talking about someone else, that she was being irrational.

“I’m not well,” she said. “I shouldn’t be travelling. I’m too sensitive.”

It turns out she has AIDS and was only on the long bus trip to Vancouver to visit her ex-boyfriend in the hospital. He's had 11 heart attacks since September. She told me it's hard for to travel, and that she's only left her apartment about 20 times this year.

“The nurses think it’s ok I don’t leave my apartment,” she said. “They say it’s good that I don’t go out and get drunk or do drugs like lots of the other people. But I’ve forgotten how to socialize. I take everything so personally.”

We walked over to the road together and stood side by side, looking at the mountains. She had a cigarette in her hand, and I had a bottle of water in mine.

“I only have three years or so to live,” she said. “I wish I could apologize to that guy, but the bus driver told me to leave it alone.”

We stared at the mountains, and they stared back at us, and then it was time to get back on the bus.

As we walked back she put her mp3 earbuds in her ears and looked at me with a smile,

“I just LOVE Elvis.”

An Ode to the Old

Getting sick and losing my voice this week really made me slow down.
Sometimes you run so fast, and run so fast, and it feels good because you think "Wow I didn't know I could run like this, I'm invincible!"
But then you stop, and your body aches with all the world's exhaustion crammed into your pencil thin bones.
And when you're holding your bones in your arms you think back to yourself running and realize you don't even recognize that person.
Running so fast, you got lost in a current.

I still can't decide how I feel about the current.
On one hand, it feels free and wild to run so fast you can only be fueled by intuition. The problem is that when you run fast in life, the intuition that is guiding you is less yours than it is the current's.
I guess we just have to be sure we dive into a current we believe in before we sprint.

Maybe that is why people build nests, especially as they get older. Our lives get busier and crazier, so we build up walls of things and people we love to keep us on the right track as life sweeps us away.


I want to post a conversation between an elderly a couple that I overheard yesterday. Listening to old people talk always makes me zoom out and look at life stripped to its core. Life is actually incredibly simple, they make me realize. Us young people especially just like to spin webs and webs of mess around everything. Funny we are.

Here is the conversation:

Man: Were you serious when you said I should quit chess?
Woman: ...What?
Man: Were you...serious when you said I should quit chess?
Woman: I didn't say quit. Just don't overdo it

*pause*

Woman: Best soup I ever had.
Man: What's it called?
Woman: Potato
Man: That's a good soup

*long pause*

Man: Funny you like sermons but you don't like lectures

*pause*

Woman: When I turn on the radio, at any given moment I get an ad. On Sunday I heard one that was completely insane.
Man: *laughs* I saw an ad on the television the other day that said it would make you look younger.
both: *laugh*
Man: Well it's 25 to 3, there goes our bus.
Woman: bye bye bus

*Man turns to me and says:*

Man: Does that thing have internet? I always imagined you would have to have a lot of paraphernalia to get internet. My computer is pre-internet, from 1991. But it's pretty good. I can't have a cell phone though. My doctor says no one with a weak heart should use a cell phone. I don't think anyone with a ...strong heart should use a cell phone haha!

Woman: I think that's a bunch of baloney.




photo from: old-photos.blogspot.com