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
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
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.”
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
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
Friday, August 28, 2009
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."
Friday, August 14, 2009
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
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
Monday, December 29, 2008
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
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
