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

Maine

I just came from staying in a 19th century farm house in Maine. It had only two light switches, the rest of the lighting made up of draped lines of Christmas lights, and rows of eclectic and well used candles. The doors were left open all day, to give freedom to the 15 cats and motion to the air that was so damp with heat. But the weather made the house smell thickly and sweetly of wood, and the open doors let the slow breeze coat me in a feeling of comfort.

...
When I am in a big city like New York I feel powerful and excited and safe, because I am allowed a youthful arrogance from being within the tiny, sanitary world created by and filled only with humans. When I am in the country I feel much more humble in, but simultaneously blanketed -with all else- alongside the divine.
(Most places in between the big city and the country I feel a strange fear. With no connection to the peak of human power or culture, nor to the connection to all living things, I am left to think only of a connection to other floating voids.)
...

The house had only cold well water, and so our baths were a bucket of it heated on the stove or a swim in the pond. Appearances are quickly forgotten as all blend into a movement with everything and everyone else. It feels good and healthy. I liked the morning chores the best. Learning to milk the cows in the morning cool, letting the calves drink water from the bucket, throwing the scraps to the piglets, gathering the beige blue white or brown eggs from the chicken coops.


To see where food comes from. To see it in all its disgusting and beautiful glory too. The dry cow teats, the straw and shit stuck to the eggs, the spiders and beetles and worms that get into the vegetables. It calls you back to gain perspective on the bleach clean, pasteurized nests humans have nuzzled out on top of so much rich and real land.

So it was a little bit of a shock then to return to the nearest town to take my bus to New Brunswick. I went to grab breakfast at a discount 'bakery' that was filled only with everything frosted and packaged. It suddenly disturbed me that I didn't need to wash the dirt off of my donuts before eating them. And why were they pink! It all looked like play food, as far removed as Simba is from a real lion.
But that being said, I do enjoy these small towns, especially when I am just passing through. Mostly because I am always astounded and impressed by the people's generosity and trust. When I asked the man at the greyhound counter if there was somewhere close to get a coffee, he told me that it was about a 15 minute walk but that I could take his truck if I wanted to.
"It's the black one out front. The keys are in there so feel free."

New Trip- Vancouver, New York City, Maine, Nova Scotia

I wonder if all travelers are seekers of innocence; longing constantly to be reborn, to be humbled, to see new things from fresh, naïve eyes. This is why I travel. When sedentary I naturally live safely. I stay close to those I love, and form a nest of my romantic world. This is warming, but if let alone too long it is a catalyst for twisting my mind into stark, fiercely set conclusions. And unfortunately, all fiercely set conclusions are safe yet terribly boring and ignorant and judgmental.

So when I find my mind scared and clinging to blacks and whites and ignoring all beautiful shades of gray, I set out to be humbled. I explore and ask new places and people to please shatter my conclusions. I feel this makes me strong enough once more to live openly. It is so easy, yet so awful, to stop believing. Especially to stop believing in the value of the world and ALL of its people.*

Time to be humbled and put in my place by the world and all its colors. Nature and strangers, children and pastures, come knock down the white picket fences that I’ve recently built in my mind!

* “In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love.” -Steinbeck

* “The most frequent source of anger is impotence. Hostility is jealousy. Destructiveness is a sign of impotence.” -Anais Nin

something a little different

Tomorrow is the big move day...oyoyoy
Nothing to say about it yet of course, it hasn't happened, so here's a little story I wrote instead.

The grass and the sky were white from July, faded from the intense heat of our summers. Our small town, with an overwhelmingly vast and simple landscape with only the flatness like endless space, and the occasional, unreachable cloud. People could only come out comfortably in the cooler night, when there was nothing to do but gather in backyards with neighbours for drinks, and more drinks.
And for us kids, times got shifted too. Cereal clanged in bowls across the town at five in the evening, playgrounds were crowded by dusk. We ran through ravines with our dogs guiding the way in the darkness. Our minds raced and our realities crumbled.
We became invincible.
So we rode our bikes down steep hills forgotten in the sliding winters. We conquered lakes, we neglected meals.
We were untouchable, and filled with ideas and astronomical plans.

I remember one summer, the one between sixth and seventh grade, my brother and I challenged ourselves to raise enough money to go to Disneyland the following autumn. We began passing through every swinging wooden gate to every backyard, asking the middle aged loungers for their empty beer cans. We attached a wagon to our dog Beatrice, and she trotted alongside us, wheeling the bags of bottles and cans.
When it got really late, more and more would be close to passed out on their dirty lawn chairs, eyes half shut, and fingers only loosely around their final cans.
It was easy. And at the end of each week our mother would take my brother and me to the recycling depot to put the cans and bottles in organized rows. We always sang, “Trash into cash! Trash into cash!”


The sign at the travel agent office that sparked this undertaking read “$299 per person for 3 days in Disneyland, kids fly free.” All we needed was $299 for mom and a few bucks extra for us, for cotton candy and a souvenir. But by the end of July we’d already found ourselves with close to $600 in our pockets.

When the second month of summer hit, the heat broke through, penetrated us, and filled our veins with lethargy whenever we were far from the lake. And since we already had more than enough money for our trip, we stopped riding our bikes from house to house collecting beer cans, and took to refreshing our thirst, and rotting ourselves out, with too many big gulps instead.
We had two hundred extra dollars to blow, and I’d never known that kind of cash before. It seemed unimaginable, since I could easily make my five dollar allowance last a week and a half.

But soon, somehow, it evaporated like everything else that summer, and we found ourselves spending the remaining $400 dollars too, on nothing, small somethings, instead of Disneyland.
Our mother made a big fuss about our wasted opportunity, but we didn’t mind too much at the time because I was 11 and my brother was 13 and he told me that we were probably too old for that Disney stuff anyway. We ignored when Mom said we’d regret it later.

But soon we all became distracted by the excitement and the dread of the approaching Autumn. The daytime heat and sunlight were beginning to lose their daunt. We became busied with different kinds of things, sharpening our pencils and writing our names on our notebooks, while the days became windier and the clouds snowballed across the low sky.

On one of these cooler afternoons, I was watching the clouds move grandiosely, when I noticed Beatrice, our dog, howling and whimpering nearby.

“Cut the racket, Bea, there’s nothing there. It’s just the wind rustling and the leaves crackling.”

But she came to my side slowly, and fell beside me in a heavy clump.

My God.

I’d never been so horrified. I screamed and ran to my brother for help. I was nowhere near capable of leading the solution to such a situation! But my brother became equally as terrified when he came, and so we called Mom to get off work early and drive us to the vet.

We were told that Bea had liver problems and needed treatment right away. The treatment was $400 and my mother said, “can’t you give a discount to a single mom?” and this made me embarrassed, especially when the vet said no he could not.
I remembered the money we had raised and wasted. I cried right there in the waiting room, and felt guilty for spending that money on nothing when it could have been used to save Bea. The roles reversed and it was now me embarassing my mother as I cried out, for all the waiting room to hear, that I hated money, and I hated myself, and my brother too.
But Mom told me to be please be goddamn quiet, with clenched teeth, and then just put the bill on her visa and we brought Beatrice home the following day.

That was the day before school started, and the weather was still warm but not too warm, and everything was going to be fine. How could I forget that we were invincible? And I fell asleep just fine.

But when I woke, my mom was on my bed and she touched my cheek and she told me, “Sweetheart, Bea died last night”. I was still half asleep, but I cried until I was completely awake.

That was the first time I realized the sadness of feeling powerless over a situation, compared to the agonizing realization that in some situations, everyone is powerless.

the end

hometime

It's been strange to be home. It's been hazy and unfocused the majority of the time, difficult to grasp. It seems to me that space can be as linear as time, especially when you're moving around a ton...or maybe space just latches on to time and follows its linear path in my mind.
But going back to places that I've spent certain times of my life at is like walking through a live stream of memory. What I end up seeing around me is the hazy love child of my memory of the place and what's actually there. It reminds me of dreams, when you know who everyone around you is, but physically they are nothing like how they appear in real life.
Actually, now that I'm writing this out, it doesn't really seem linear at all. It seems like every place is a big mess of everything that it has ever been or will be, and the more times through your life that you go there, the more you can see all that is there, from all time periods.
whoa okay that got kind of far out, but what I mean is that I don't find traveling back in space any less awe inspiring than traveling back in time.
I'm getting weary of all this space travel though actually (let's keep using that term because it's nice to sound like a galaxy explorer every once in a while). I'm thinking of putting some roots down. If Calgary treats me well I'll stay there for some time. Travel is romantic, but it certainly can be lonely. And in the end, a potted flower really is less appealing to me than a tree with sprawling, thirsty roots...Don't get me wrong, I will be a nursing tree, moss and flower covered, but I would like to keep my roots for a while, go to journalism school finally.

I found a nice quote in the introduction of a book I found at my grandparents house. It reads as follows:

"Growing up is like entering a jungle where some of the larger creatures look alarming and possible man eaters; and most of the smaller ones- like insects- go unnoticed. As one grows up, the jungle gets denser and denser and so, most likely, do you."
-The Countess of Ranfurly

I figure, if everyone's an animal, I think I'd rather be a tree. So wish luck to my roots! I will update in a week or two about how the settling in is going.

lots of love
Laura

oh and merry christmas and new year and things

Ooph it's been a while!
I'm still here in Wishart, though sadly I only have three weeks left here. I've decided to go home for Christmas afterall..I always come around...and then I will be living in Calgary for a few of these winter months. I'm nervous to leave this community and go back to the city, but I'm excited at the same time. I look forward to meeting a new community of creative young people, and to dance parties, and to nearby wine, and to having friends over for dinner, and to wearing highheels. And I can bring my new skills with me. I can still bake beautiful breads and sew myself skirts and can whatever's in season. Yes, I look forward to all these fast things, though I will miss the nightime walks in the dark...with only the stars providing light! and making me feel as if the road I'm on is the only thing strung through the galaxy like this, like a ribbon.
But Calgary will be fresh and keep me excited until late spring or so when I plan to head east. There is an old style maple syrup farm that does all the collecting by horseback in Quebec so I will probably be there around May to help with the main harvest time. Then I'm thinking of heading over to Nova Scotia to work with this family to learn how to make artisan cheeses.
Then after that, oh who knows! I've been thinking of going back to France and Italy lately. Maybe that will be a fall project.
Oh! I forgot to say! Tara's dad and I are doing a documentary for SCN about the outsider's view of Saskatchewan. There will be shots of the community and of me exploring old houses and fields, and then my thoughts and ideas will be dubbed over it. I'm also writing the music for it so that should be fun. I'll let you know when it's airing in case you're interested.


Okay, here is a little video from a week or so ago. It's of a pond down the street and some wagon wheels that I found. It's gotten quite a bit colder since then, but still not below -15, so that's nice. Yesterday they cleared the snow off the pond down the street so that we can start skating! I can't waitttttt



miss you all,
and hope to see some of you in Vancouver at Christmastime
xoxo
love
Laura

"This one's for you Floss"

 


 



 




 



 

exploring an old house

 

Though my surroundings no longer include galleries or venues, I find myself abundantly inspired. What I come across in these small prairie hamlets seems to be the essence, and holds the heart, of what so much modern culture attempts to capture. I feel what I witness here is living truth, that has grown from the beginning all the way to what it has become. It is not a contrived construction, based on an idea of something fashionable, over aware of its boxed in persona.
Wishart does not emanate an "old fashioned" feeling of community and values because it has fabricated an imitation. It is pure remnants of history, simply slower to fade than elsewhere.

 

When I roam the abandoned houses and ancient tricycles and beds, I see completely unpretentious scenery. It holds no awareness that its beauty relates to a romanticized ideal. It lays open and raw, in honest gorgeousness, rooted in the lives of those who have passed.
The wood on these old barns has not been skillfully sanded to look 'rustic', for example, but rather has been brushed for decades by cows searching for greener pastures. For years it has seen harsh winters and fatal droughts that have faded and broken its wooden panels.

 

What I am trying to get at, in my convoluted way, is that despite the lack of common displays of culture out here, I have never felt so inspired. I feel that it is finally life's original truths inspiring me, instead of replicas of replicas of replicas. Everyday my eyes frame a beautiful showing for me and I am forever grateful for the quiet in which I am able to absorb it.

Here are some pictures and a video of an old house I found. This is a very old one, without much remaining inside, and it is in southern Saskatchewan not in Wishart, but it is beautiful nevertheless. I will also do some videos of the more crowded abandoned homes here in Wishart soon.
For now, I hope you are all doing well. I miss you very much.

 



 

 

some more photos...

 

 

 

 


 

videos

just a tiny picture post

I just love all this family truck cruisin' and choke cherry picking. I've decided not to leave here for a while, I just can't, at least until the New Year. We're fixing up the empty house next door for me to live in and there's already a drum set in the living room (we started a band!) and we're setting up a painting studio in there too. Jeff's going to teach me to throw pottery, and Tara's going to teach me to sew, and the winter is going to teach me to love wood stoves and long johns.
This is a short post because I need to run to the cafe to help out the lunch rush, but here are a few pictures. The first couple are of Jeff, Freya, Ruby and me on our way to pick berries at the other farm, and the last three are Freya, Iso, Ruby, Chuck and me relaxing in my trailor.

xo
hope you're all doing well

 


 


 


 

Wishart, Saskatchewan

I have only been here for four days but am overwhelmed with where to begin this post.Everything works differently here. Doors are seldom locked, seat belts in the bench seat of the trucks are forgotten. Many things are borrowed, found, and personally invented or constructed instead of needlessly bought.
The father of the family, Jeff, bought his pottery studio from the town for two dollars, for example. And the mother, Tara, views her cafe more as a volunteer service to provide the town with a cafe (the quiet downtown strip has only a handfulof operating stores) than a financially profitable investment of her time. I have never witnessed such a strong community. Here it seems to be the residents who truly run the town. Meetings are held frequently and actually bring about change!

 
I've been learning so much. I've been seeing the freedom that comes with living away from cities; of having nowhere nearby to buy too many things, and no policemen in town. It's amazing to see people successfully governed by community and shared values.But I've also been learning to harvest, make jellies, juices, syrups; and I'm learning to make salsa and extract honey from combs, and ride a tractor.
And I'm learning to skim the top of the bucket of raw milk to get thick cream for my coffee, and the kids are teaching me to run everywhere and use plants for lipstick and laugh to the sky, on my back, with kicking legs.

 
They are sweet, sweet kids.
Two days ago I found that Freya, the oldest, had put a vase of sunflowers on my table and taped one of her paintings to my wall. They borrow my scarves to tie around their necks or in their hair while they take me by the hand to show me this or that. And Freya will braid my hair, and Iso brings me pieces of fresh honeycomb oozing and dripping with honey to share. They bloom with imagination and patience and it's inspiring.
 
But there's really so much that I don't know how to cover it all, or what to pick to elaborate on. Do I write about riding on the back of the truck with the girls, our feet dangling to the dusty ground? Do I write about the living skies that make me look up like a country dweller on a visit to New York City? Do I write of the stories of the town's legendary characters that are spoken around the dinner table, or maybe the abandoned houses sold for fifty bucks that are still filled with books and ointments and wood stoves from the thirties.
All I can say is that everything here inspires me, yet calms me. I feel nuzzled into nostalgia and am appreciating my grassy knees and dirt dusty sweaters. I will write about things with more detail and focus in a little while I hope, if I ever become less overwhelmed by this intense beauty and community.
 

I hope you are all doing well.
If not I recommend a trip to these prairie fields!
xo
all my love
Laura