Some Thoughts about Toronto's Architecture

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I have a friend who works at City Hall here in Toronto. He's in the heritage department of urban planning. Being from San Francisco, he often vituperates against the tendency in Toronto to level everything worth preserving in order to erect ticky-tack glass-and-concrete condominiums. While I agree with the spirit of his invectives, I think he goes too far sometimes in lambasting Toronto's architecture.

Granted, Toronto is not a city of architecture on par with Chicago, New York, Berlin, Barcelona or even Dubai. That said, it has experienced a little bit of an architectural renaissance, with exciting projects like the newly reno'd Royal Ontario Museum, the newly reno'd Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Ontario College of Art and Design. While there are some horrible glass obelisks going up, such as the Bay-Adelaide centre, and scads of unremarkable condos, not all of the new projects strike me as worthless.

Take the "L" tower, a residential/mixed use building planned to rise above the Hummingbird Centre, down on front street, for example. Its shape suggests a chair, which in my opinion is a coup of significance over function and decoration, two among several important traits of buildings. The chair is a piece of functional material reality, but one more traditionally associated with indoors. The indoors/outdoors dichotomy of urban space in this building is inverted in the design of a building to suggest the indoors through outward presentation. Plus, the smooth, rounded lines of this proposed building are a relief from the somewhat monotonous perpendicularity of the modern city.

Furthermore, as much as I have ideological problems with the operation of banks, the bank towers of Toronto are laudable simply for the buildings' adherence to each bank's brand design at large. For instance, the Scotia Plaza tower (on the right in the photo) is reddish, evoking the red of Scotiabank's logo. Built of reinforced concrete, with an exterior of red-toned Napoleon Granite, quarried in Sweden, cut and polished in Italy, the Scotia Plaza reaches far into the sky above the old Scotia bank building, the second tallest skyscraper in Canada. The two TD Canada Trust Towers on the left, part of the Brookfield Place office complex, feature windows of a greenish hue, fully consistent with their brand colours of green. Even the grey concrete has a light-greenish hue to it too, especially in bright sunshine. Finally, and perhaps most spectacularly, the Royal Bank Plaza features glass coated in 24 carat gold: almost 1 million dollars worth. Besides the significance of gold as emblematic of monetary wealth, when seen against a blue sky, the building also evokes the colours of the Royal Bank brand: blue and yellow.

A common design detail of all these buildings is steps. This is perhaps the dominant architectural motif in Toronto, and it is echoed in many more buildings than just the ones I've discussed here. It is especially clear in the photo. What is its significance? Perhaps it signifies what it resembles: the stairway. Stairs can symbolize the climbing of the social ladder, or they can visually symbolize the rags-to-riches narratives that abound with regards to large urban centres. As Toronto is Canada's financial capital, this reading rings especially true.

Another motif in Toronto architecture is the juxtaposition of old and new architecture. Examples include the old Scotia Bank building adjacent to Scotia Plaza; the façade of the 1890s-era Merchants' Bank Building in Brookfield Place; the old Stock Exchange façade enveloped by the TD Centre, which was designed by Mies Van Der Rohe; the One King West hotel/condo built on top of the old Dominion Bank Building (1914); and the Michael Lee Crystal, designed by Daniel Libeskind, built into the old Royal Ontario Museum. The old/new hodgepodge creates an eclectic effect that embodies Christopher Dewdney's concept of the metropolis as a gathering of coeval, but distinct, temporalities. Different periods of time coexist in coeval space.

This kind of preservation doesn't seem enough for my friend though. Then, a colleague of mine suggested that perhaps my friend has such a militant attitude towards preservation because he's from San Francisco, a geophysical area regularly rocked by serious earthquakes. As such, the culture of the architectural and urban planning professionals in San Francisco, in which he was immersed for a considerable period of time, might be particularly ardent about preservation considering the dangers to urban structures existing there.

The Uncomfortable Truth

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The Uncomfortable Truth


Precious stigma,
never forgiven.
The smell of fresh grapes gives way
to stale ones
worming around in his mouth
like words, but he feels
no giddiness anymore,
only pain lessened.

He shouts down passers-by with
an uncomfortable vehemence
as pigeons, doing their dance, disperse
in front of his venom:
his paranoid diatribe
urges them into flight
a grey, brown, and cobalt scuttle
that settles once I pass by,
head down,
avoiding eye contact.

And I don’t like what this says about me.

York's Disastrous Public Relations Policy

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By all accounts, the strike at York University has been hard on everyone directly involved, and it has been difficult for the families of those involved as well. As in most crises, however, it has not been equally difficult for everyone. For three months, I have withstood blizzards, minus double-digit degree weather, the stress of witnessing my colleagues physically threatened or attacked, and a steady stream of verbal abuse from a small, vocal group of undergraduates whose knowledge of basic grammar is lamentable. The president and senior administrators have avoided doing their jobs properly while being paid six-figure salaries, preferring instead to bargain through the media. The public relations section of York’s budget is at least twice that of the salaries of the striking workers, who do over 50% of the teaching at York.

Let’s look at the implications of this fact for a minute, and the rationale behind it. York seems to think that spending a vast amount of money on promoting the prestige of a degree from York, while spending as little as 7% of their budget on the overworked underpaid employees doing most of the teaching is a good idea to expand capacity. Well, let’s look at the results. A disgruntled workforce has initiated the longest strike in the post-secondary sector’s history, in Ontario at least. I know at least three extremely intelligent and talented graduate students that have dropped out in the last few months. Enrollments are down in most faculties. Has York’s strategy succeeded? Obviously not.

Like it or not, the public perceives education as the main function of a university, as shown by the tendency of media to emphasize the effects of the strike on undergraduate students. Granted, research is also an important function of our universities. However, considering the popular perception of the primacy of the educational function of universities, perhaps it is a better strategy to give graduate students and contract faculty a better deal and decrease the spending on public relations. As shown by the rapid rise of viral marketing and other forms of word-of-mouth and text-to-text marketing strategies, the field of public relations has changed dramatically. The money York has spent on advertising has basically gone down the toilet because of the resulting word-of-mouth discontent with it as an educational venue. Had the workers been satisfied with their contract, they would have been more prone to speak of York in glowing terms, and their social networks might have lighted up in York’s favour, rather than in their disfavour as the present situation has proved.

The obvious counter argument to this is that York is basing their pay of graduate students and contract faculty on norms for the sector. Maybe York should heed the rhetorical question my mother asked me whenever I told her I was about to do something bad because all the other kids were doing it: if they all jumped off a bridge, would you? Perhaps this strike can serve as a wake-up call for other universities.

Meanwhile, with class-action suits against York pending, where is the accountability? Senior administrators and some undergraduates have asked McGuinty’s government to intervene on their behalf. While I laud the simple act of becoming politically engaged, I think these undergraduates don’t understand the long-term implications of this intervention. Once they finally get their degree and enter the workforce, there looms this dangerous precedent of back-to-work legislation. The long sacred democratic right to negotiate working conditions through collective bargaining will have been forever undermined. Back-to-work legislation is by definition unconstitutional. These students are in effect shooting themselves in the foot in extremely slow motion. The wound will be no less painful when that bullet hits, though. And will the government hold York’s administration accountable? After all, they have massively mismanaged public funds.

I truly regret the negative effects of this strike on not only undergraduate students and my colleagues, but on the members of York’s staff, and the underpaid employees of York Lanes, the retail and service hub of the university, some of whose hours have been cut as a result of decreased business during the strike. The University has lost a lot of money from the decreased parking revenue. Tenured faculty no longer feel proud of their once mighty teaching and research institution. But you know what? I don’t regret going on strike. I know in my heart that my colleagues and I have stood up for justice and equity when no one else would.

The Geo-metrics of Agriculture

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Woof!

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Digital Technology, Memory, and Social Networks

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According to the Torah, God made Adam out of dirt or clay, so according to it humans are, on the most literal level, of the earth. Adam’s descendents have now forged their own neo-Adams out of silicon, the most common element in the earth, and copper. The genesis of artificial intelligence has a longer history than you might suspect. In 1642, Blaise Pascal invented the first calculator (mechanical of course), the abacus notwithstanding. It was made of wheels and gears, quite in line with mechanistic views of the universe circulating at the time, and heavily influenced by clockmakers. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, several different large analog and digital computers were developed, especially to decipher codes used in the war. After room-sized computers, came the personal computer in the seventies, which quickly revolutionized everything from business to hand-eye coordination as people started playing video games. The PC took a couple more baby steps that posterity will remember more as a moon walk as it made itself over in the form of the laptop and the palm pilot. In 1973, Canadian Martin Cooper invented the cell phone, which operates through radio waves. As many non-digital technologies digitized (cameras, phones, the walkman), humans stepped into the realm of cyborgdom. The primary or auxiliary function of many of these digital portable devices (DPDs) is memory. With all these gadgets decked out with memories of their own, that moonlight as accoutrements, has the human memory suffered? Or perhaps we shouldn’t be so pessimistic in the formulation of our questions and ask how our memories have changed since the popularization of these devices in globalized culture.

Scholars believe that in the middle ages, because of the generalized lack of literacy (a privilege or a burden, depending on how you look at it, borne by monks in seclusion), cultural memory, and history for that matter, was preserved in verse. Troubadours were the wandering historians, putting oral stories generated by different communities into rhyme and meter. Fast forward to 1875 when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in Brantford, Ontario, and made the first call from New York City to Chicago. As this new technology spread like a bushfire during a drought, people started memorizing or simply remembering phone numbers en masse to maintain their social and business networks. The rapid displacement of analog technologies in favour of DPDs has introduced external memory to our personal space. For many of us, this is a relief, as we don’t feel as compelled to perform the sometimes tedious task of memorization. Of course the minute we lose or misplace our cellphone, which also serves as a digital phone book, provided we haven’t transferred this contact list to four different DPDs (a task that is itself tedious and sometimes cluttered with frustration), we are in a serious muddle. A chain reaction of limitations on our actions is imposed on us from without; we feel a loss of agency, and only then do we realize the extent to which we are chained to our DPDs. During such a loss, we can experience a feeling of isolation, a sudden disconnection from our social networks.

While these devices have opened up new avenues for social networking, such as mass emails and online networking tools like facebook, which often reconnects people who’ve lost touch with one another – sometimes contrary to their better intentions – these artifacts of modernity don’t come without their knicker-knotting aspects. Whole new realms of techno-ethics and etiquette are arising, unbeknownst to some. Is there anything more infuriating than hearing a cellphone go off in a movie theatre, for instance? Mind you, it’s easy to forget to turn them off (unless there’s signs posted, in which case, there is no excuse at all), but there are people out there who seem oblivious to the world around them and actually carry on loud, long conversations during a movie, much to the frustration of many movie-goers. Then you have a debate raging over the place of cellphones in schools. As a teacher, I have experienced the frustration of students furtively playing with their cellphones during class. Yet parents assert their right to access their children at all times. This has produced the unexpected effect that children are losing their tenuous sense of independence. Cellphones have also made the possibility of cheating on tests and exams via text message that much more real. The classroom, a site to hone the memory, is not immune to the memory-proof digital commons land of cut and paste. The ease with which information can be looked up on the internet using search engines has made memory retention a somewhat quaint, even an archaic, talent.

There is a catch-22 lurking in the erosion of human memory at the hands of technology. It consists of remembering the ethics and etiquette of emergent technology, which is changing so quickly that it is hard to keep on top of appropriate usages and contexts. The instances of forgetting or simply being unaware of these ethics can serve as agents of social splintering rather than cohesion, generating conflict. The proliferation of mp3 players and musical phones has made the option of aural seclusion available in very public places, which can also result in an exaggerated sense of personal space and a sense of individualism that complicates sociality. While these technologies are touted as the answer to all our networking problems, they have the potential to alienate as much as cohere. Since their popularization, the boundaries between business networks and social networks have been dissolving, and work has found its way into the most private nooks and crannies of our life. We have entered a world of paradox, where our memories have been lulled into inactivity, and where we can cultivate spaces of isolation and yet be held accountable to our places of business as we change our babies’ diapers.

The phone number is practically the blueprint of short-term memory retention; perhaps it is no accident that its basic form is seven digits. Humans have evolved to remember seven items of information (such as a digit) for a span of about 15 seconds. To transfer these bytes of information into the long term memory, we have to work by imprinting them through repetition, translate them into images, acronyms, or use some other trick to remember them over long periods of time. To keep items in the long-term memory, we generally have to periodically retrieve this information to “refresh” it and keep it active. Now that many of us have DPDs, the necessity to memorize phone numbers has diminished. Phone calls are merely a matter of speeddialing or summoning the contact list, finding the right name and number, and pressing dial. It seems to follow that the diminishment of such an important skill in everyday life, the memorization of phone numbers, that keeps our memories active and strong, has the potential to drastically change our consciousness by making forgetting a more determining factor in our lives than remembering. Not only that, but to what degree are the benefits of new technology for social networks counterbalanced by socially divisive knowledge sets that develop between digital haves and have nots?

X-ray Eyes

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Bathysphere

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bathysphere1

bathysphere2

bathysphere3

Bad Writing Example #2

People who write for newspapers have a tough job; they have to meet constant pressing deadlines. A lopsided, lackadaisicle blogger like myself can write at his leisure, with pleasure. That said, some of the mistakes and misprints of newpapers are quite humorous, as those who are very familiar with this blog well know. The piece of writing that I'm about to lampoon is a quote, so I can't fault the journalist for it. It's a quote of a television producer, but it includes a typo that renders its horrendousness hyperbolic.

Here it is:

"The feeling is that historical Canadian history isn't what Canadian audiences want. It's important for Canadians to hear our own stories . . . But for now it's never been harder to do historial drama in this country." Kevin DeWalt, producer of "The Englishman's Boy" (The Canadian Press, Metro News, Monday December 3).

First of all, what the hell is "historical history?" Pleonasm anyone? Generally pleonasm is a rhetorical device used for humour, but something tells me he's not trying to be funny. And if that redundancy wasn't enough for you, you have the misspelled adjective "historial" repeated once more in the last sentence of the quote. Phew!

And now for a history of historical history.

I Love You

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I've had this poem
running around in my gut
for a while.

time, shortened
by needle pricks, waits
for no one

and this poem was
just not ready.

it's about this great
improbable love
i feel for you.

an apple, skin broken,
flesh popping with juice
as teeth joyfully cringe.

an ancient cedar tree,
stuck out of a
limestone cliff face,
something to hold on
to when I fall.

because we all do.

a vase, filling with water,
just before the flowers
sink.

a crocodile's tolerance
of the bird that cleans its teeth.

it hurts to realize how
much i love you.

like a lost meal it hurts.

but it hurts worse to
imagine life without you.

i would have no teeth
for this apple.

News from CUPE 3903 Picket Lines

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CUPE 3903 Strike 2008 Flashpoints.

The media coverage of this strike has been sorely lopsided so far. While the members of the union have taken culture and media production into their own hands, we know that the large audiences are in the hands of the big media corporations. So far, their coverage has been overwhelmingly biased towards the undergraduate student perspective that argues that the union is blockading their education.

On the newsclip that CityTV aired on November 6 on their website, they interviewed three undergraduate students, Union representative Graham Potts, and Alex Bilyck, York Administration’s Public Relations official. They spoke to no union members (or at least, they did not air the members’ viewpoints) whatsoever, aside from Mr. Potts. Of the three undergraduate students interviewed, one supported the strike, and two opposed the strike. The news clip ended with a fourth year business undergraduate lamenting his four year degree possibly lasting slightly more than four years, attempting to leave the audience with an emotionally charged anti-union stance. This attempt seems to have worked, seeing as over fifty percent of people opposed the strike in a three-pronged online poll that measured support, neutrality, and opposition.

In a Toronto Sun article dated November 7th, Alex Bilyck cited the hourly wage of Teaching Assistants as over $60/hr. While those with external/internal funding packages might approach that rate of compensation, this is by no means the norm or even common. To do a good job at teaching, the preparation and marking time often renders the ten hours a week T.A.s are compensated for unrealistic. Overtime payment is available, but it’s littered with a laborious paper trail that renders it prohibitive. According to my contract, I get compensated $29/hr, so the figure he cited is almost twice what I actually make. Furthermore, he said that the 11% wage increase over three years proposed by the union was unrealistic in these difficult economic times. He said that York offered the union 9.25% over three years, but the offer included cuts to benefits and professional development funds that increase the total compensation rate only 2.3%, which is not indexed to the inflation rate of 3.7%. That means in the end that the affected workers will struggle to make ends meet.

His reference to the economic downturn was a purely rhetorical flourish that totally ignores the fact that times of recession are times of boom for universities because people use the time to upgrade their knowledge and skills to be better prepared for subsequent economic upturns. Additionally, Bilyck is not an economist, and he has no expertise when speaking about the effects of the slumping economy on York’s revenues. Furthermore, history has shown us that the knee-jerk reaction of many people to a recession is to stop spending money. If York skimps on our wages, we have less money to spend, and therefore less money to stimulate other sectors of the economy, leading to a further worsening of the depression.

This transferral of blame for the stoppage from the Administration to the Union rings false on two fronts: it is contract faculty and Teaching Assistants who are largely providing the substative intstruction, and the Administration’s unwillingness to negotiate. While tenured professors lecture in halls that hold hundreds of students, substantial chunks of whom are surfing facebook and other unrelated websites, T.A.s and contract faculty deliver instruction in smaller settings, where learning takes place more effectively. This is not to deride the considerable talents of York tenured professors, but facts are facts. Also, the Administration’s offer of binding arbitration “is the University's way of avoiding negotiating with us. Binding arbitration is appropriate when there are one or two sticky issues holding up a settlement NOT when one party has hardly been negotiating at all” (Quoted from an CUPE 3903 email).

The Urban Rebus

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Way to go Obama!

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Good victory speech. Congratulations on your win! I certainly hope that you can be the change that you hope to be.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Artificial Intelligence

Think about it man! Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Artificial Intelligence. I want to get a video feed of that.

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Banal Sublime

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Love Poem

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Video Commentary on the state of the economy.

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Canada and the proverbial head up the ass

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Why is the Canadian public so enamored with mediocrity? After last night’s election results, I have been forced to return to this painfully recurring idea.

First of all, the election produced the lowest turnouts in the history of the country: less than 60% of the eligible voters voted. I guess mediocrity moves in a top-down direction. It spills out from the government and infects the public. If you don’t vote, you don’t deserve to live in a democracy. It’s that simple. So all you non-voters: do the rest of us a favour and move to Zimbabwe. Work is no excuse. There are laws that protect your right to vote. Your employer must give you three consecutive hours when polling stations are open to vote. I’m starting to be attracted to some rather ugly political alternatives because the voting public seems to have its head shoved so far up its ass, it can’t tell whether it’s night or day.

Second of all, how on earth, could you re-elect someone who just frittered away 300 million dollars in difficult economic times to hold an election, the results of which do not substantively change the political situation? Ok, the Bloc lost power in Quebec. The NDP gained seats (a minor victory, but not enough a glimmer of hope to overcome the pessimism ruling my typing fingers right now), and the Conservatives managed to make inroads in Ontario and B.C. and managed to “naturalize” their rule in Canada. Ugh. Gag me with a chainsaw. Seriously, though, the man even broke a parliamentry law he made to call the election too!

Third, it is the very policies that the Conservatives espouse that resulted in the credit crisis. The ideology of greed behind corporate tax cuts is the same ideology of greed that leads people to falsely inflate stock values, which in turn leads to economic crises. They rationalize corporate tax cuts by saying it creates jobs, it stimulates investments. Then why has almost every government that cut corporate taxes incurred a deficit? People lie; history doesn’t. Wake up and smell the history books people! Furthermore, we need more government control of pricing. There are too many people charging far too much for certain goods and services. This would create jobs in the government sector. It would also prevent people from spending too much money on goods they’re being overcharged for, leading to the need to borrow money, which in turns leads to banks lending money they don’t have, another cause of the recent credit crunch.

Lastly, what is the deal with immigrants voting Conservative? Stephen Harper has changed immigration so that it’s more difficult to get in the country than previously. Ask my friend’s husband, who is in Mexico because he can’t get a green card to come to Canada. He’ll tell you all about it. You’re voting and collaborating with a man who didn’t want you here in the first place!

Life is a Miasma of Pixels.

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Headlines from the Frontlines

Candidate: Jagtar Shergill

Age: 39

Party: NDP

Position: Registered Insurance Broker

"We need action on issues that matter to you and your family like jobs, health care and the environment. I believe in universal pubic health care. Treeatment must be based on a person's need, not the size of their wallet."

Dear Jagtar:

I fully agree, we do need universal PUBIC health care! LOLZ. Taken from the Oct. 4 issue of Metro news, Toronto.

News from Prison

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New Tactics of The Invisible Truth. A Laboratory of Poetry and News.

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So I've been messing around with my blog here, and I've attached an RSS feed, so you can now subscribe to my dazzling posts! I've also arranged to mail ten friends whenever I update my blog, so if any of you mind, then let me know, and I'll take you out of the mix. Information saturation is no joke! I've started embedding links in some of the posts as well, so if you see a word underlined, then that's why!

I've been experimenting a bit with writing poetry about specific trails I follow through the internet, but I've found formatting them a bit of a challenge. Therefore, I haven't posted any of these experiments. If you click the title of this post, it will take you to a site with people who are doing very interesting things with the intersection between the art of film and the art of poetry.

Also, I highly recommend checking out www.blublu.org, and click on the MUTO video link. Absolutely amazing video art. It is one of two videos that really overcame my inherent prejudice against video (even though I occasionally dabble in it too, as you can see). By dabble, I mean use short (less the 30s) clips shot with a mid-range digital camera, edit them together, and add music that I composed to the soundtrack, although one of the other videos in my archive included other artists in the soundtrack.

That's all for now! Until next time my friends!

The Growing Light

An Homage to Basho's Cicada

Pixel-hearted.

Why "Greening" is good for the Economy

Dear Lorne Gunter:

At first, let me pre-emptively forgive you for being named Lorne. I have a certain amount of sympathy for anyone who shares a name with Mr. Green, of some eighties wilderness show fame, you know, the show where they did terrible things to animals in order to make them do exciting things for the cameras. See, the show's name is so memorable I've forgotten it.

But really, in your article "Dion Ex Machina," in The National Post you make the translation "God in the machinery" for the literary device deus ex machina. Where'd you get your degree in literature? Phoenix University? I thought so. It's "God out of the machine," you idiot. I know you've been reading wikipedia lots lately, and you seem to have read the first paragraphs in wikipedia's article about neoclassical grievances with the device as a crutch for an intractable plot problem. But you neglected to consider the effectiveness of the device as used in enduring classics of the theatre, such as oh, say, Euripedes' Medea, which has survived, and been studied and loved since 431 B.C.; The Illiad, one of the cornerstones of Western snivelization; and good ole Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera.

I bet you thought you were clever when you applied this literary device to Stephane Dion's plan to reduce our carbon footprint. It's good that you demanded concrete details. It's bad you think "greening" is just going to cost money, and not generate oodles of wealth. Most economists I know predict that the next booming sector of the economy is the green sector, and they seem sure that it will match or surpass the dotcom boom of the late nineties. Moreover, all those coal-producing and gas burning and nuclear generating technologies you say are already entrenched will cost us far more in the long run than switching to green technologies. What was the cost of Hurricane Katrina again? Oh yeah, don't listen to the majority of scientists who link the greenhouse effect with such storms, they're stupid, right? Duh! Get with the program Mr. Gunter. Green technologies generate wealth; they don't just cost money.

Lunch with the Furies

I finished Salman Rushdie’s book Fury a couple weeks ago. I think living in America has ruined one of the greatest writers of our time. Fatwas, the occasional newspaper article aside, Rushdie has fallen into a creative abyss. Sure he can play with language, sure he can wax poetic, but as many have told me, that doesn’t necessarily make for a good novel. It was full of insight about modernity, including a knowing wink at certain postmodern philosophers like Baudrillard but ultimately it failed as a novel.

It lacked a strong story, seeming more like a character study of a retired academic cum a world-famous doll maker. It riffs on the anger simmering below the surface of everyday interactions, but it never moves beyond glibness. In this, it reminded me of Pico Iyer’s The Global Soul. The occasional philisophico-poetic reverie falls flat for a lack of a strong framework to hold it in both books.

There is mystery: is the narrator the mysterious concrete killer who has been serially murdering the women of economic illuminati families, or is it his self-loathing African-American friend Jack? But unfortunately Rushdie failed to make me care that much. This book is eminently readable, but its fragmentation comes off as more lazy than intentional. The narrator is not necessarily fully likeable, which is ok, but his transformation is accomplished through a corny love story, no matter how unusual the pairing.

The Glass Ceiling

A Poem inspired by the film "The Visitor"

Love is something that happens
to someone else.
Until it happens.
In which case we’re all involved.
The case in which we carry
our wounds –
scabs inside, fresh pus, blood,
plasma without –
breaks the moment we let
love inside
breathe.

Let love breathe, I say.
If it founder in impossibility,
it shows us how to try anyway
so our imps
of base feelings ossify
and only their scars remain.

Briefly, papers fall out of the case
creased, scattering in the wind.

You can chase them.

But if you catch one, look at it closely.

Words, bloodied and paled
on pages too barren for speech.

Signs, showing you the way
to forget. To fulfil promises
without remembering them.

Ba-lance-head

Elephant Island

An Homage to India

I have received an increasing number of readers from South Asia. I have long since received hits from Korea, mostly because of my stint of teaching English there. But an increasing number of people in India are visiting my website, and for that I thank them. This is a dedication to my Indian readers, especially those who may or may not be affiliated with the 50 million-strong Communist Party in India.

Please bookmark this page and come back often. I update it about once a week. Also, as usual, I ask that you please visit the sponsors listed at the top and bottom of the page. I put a lot of work into this blog, and these advertisements are a way to get reimbursed (however slightly) for this work. It really doesn't take that much time...

Thank you all.

One Line Missing

It's quiet nights like this, as bumptious
blue lights flicker across curtains suggesting
northern lights, on streets of narrow houses in a row,
with wind disappearing and the smell of sewers
weaving up into air above steel grates; it's quiet
nights like this that remind me of those evenings
of boredom on endless couches in front of televisions,
when hands slip into your
boxer shorts, bedspread allocating
a radius of warmth difficult to resist, and fingers find
the damp curvatures of desire,
torsos wasting away, growing alongside mould
in tv dinner packaging
cluttering the surface of a chestnut coffee table,
under the natter of roommates upstairs gossiping.

Turning on to Bloor, full of drunken celebrants
giggling, arms linked, lights glinting off passing cars,
I avoid the eyes of passers-by, and keep focussed.
This has to be done. It has to end.

Words string themselves together to make sense
of mental decay, of the lead weights attached to our
ankles, attached to each other, fixtures
on each other's walls, sconces hiding burnt-
out light bulbs, words that fill the silence
in which lives the fear that you will be relieved

by the cut line.

Competitive Salary!

So the Goodwill on Roncesvalles is hiring. They are offering a competitive salary. Competitive with what? How on earth can a salary be competitive? Ok, got it. It's the company that is competing with other companies. Right, they're just copying this grammatical idiocy from everyone else. Shouldn't blame them, right? Gotta beat that Sally Anne, you know. For those of you just hopping aboard the S.S. thrift shop, Sally Anne is the Salvation Army. Cuz your soul is in jeopardy, you know, and the poor are mostly fools.

Who really cares if your salary is competitive? The Indiana Pacers are competitive, but they suck. They round out the bottom of the NBA on a regular basis. My question to you, Goodwill, is are you winning? It's a battle for souls out there, and is your will good enough to hunt the top prize? Are you ready to round out your days with right hooks to your St. Vincent de Paul neighbours?

Jesus was a Pinko

Death in the Family

when you told me, i was unprepared
knife put down, pared apple rolling
across the counter, falling in the
sink.

she died on a tuesday

somehow the shock wears off enough
for tears to run their runneled
course down my face.

but this was a week later.

you ask me what happened
in that week.
i don't know.

novocaine routine. wake up.
miss breakfast. make coffee.
pee in the toilet. wonder where grief ends.
lie still. don't think too hard. it hurts.
sleep.

finally, fast broken, an apple's skin
parts under my teeth.
it's juice jumps up
into my eye.

my seeing-eye dog whimpers in the corner.

Turtle Soup

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The Happening

I went to see The Happening last night, courtesy of my rockin' dentist Arthur Kamin who gives me a $25 cineplex gift card every time I refer a client to him. Of course, I read the NOW magazine review first, and in hindsight, after having seen the movie, I wonder how in tarnation the reviewer missed the parodic elements of this movie. Not a new concept: this is obvious. It follows close on the heels (run for the hills!) of other apocalypse movies such as Cloverfield, 28 days later, 28 Weeks Later, The Mist, The War of the Worlds, and others. But really, who cares about originality when you can have knowing winks, intentionally flat acting to make you wonder what's the real difference between the zombies and the normals (there's none, really), and overly dramatic music that contrapuntally lambastes the banal repartee.

M. Night Shymalan has crafted an underhanded classic in my opinion. All the "bad aspects" of the film, he has somehow recuperated into a work of subtle parody. The NOW reviewer complained of a lack of story. What apocalypse movie has a "story." It's the end of the world for chrissake. People go crazy. Narrative loses its importance in the face of mere survival. The randomness of the beginning and end of this environmental crisis complements the vagueness of the title. Those that survive, like in 28 days later, have to reform the family unit along non-biological lines. While Shymalan breaks the rules of the apocalypse film by refusing to divulge the true cause of it, among the many explanations given, he favours one with a Janus-faced nature: one of ecological catastrophe, and a flaky, but grand plant response to imminent ecological catastrophe. It is telling that Shymalan opposes this explanation to the government conspiracy theory at the end, as shown on a TV debate between an expert warning of human hubris and a host who sides with the government conspiracy explanation, taking a facile fourth estate position. This is basically a confrontation between current left and right political tendencies. The left urges responsible ecological business practises, while ultimately, any conspiracy theory ends up serving the purposes of the Right, by making the government seem more omnipotent than they actually are.

I give "The Happening" three and a half out of five stars. Even though some people were complaining about it after the movie let out, it made people laugh with both ridiculous banalities and over-the-top gore, and at points it freaked them out. That said, Shymalan should stop trying to be Alfred Hitchcock. He's good, but he'll never live up to the master... Both this movie and The Mist owe a heavy debt to The Birds. Luckily, The Happening comes out on the correct and true side of the political spectrum, whereas The Mist has some disturbing rightest tendencies.

Here's what others liked about my blog

Here are the top three visited posts on my blog, at least for the last three months. I have provided links in case you're interested. Please bookmark my blog and visit often!

Drum Roll please:

1. http://theinvisibletruth.blogspot.com/2007/06/out-of-control-desire-to-win.html
2. http://theinvisibletruth.blogspot.com/2006/08/small-face-lovely-breast.html
3.. http://theinvisibletruth.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_archive.html

Have a ball!

Penguin Sculpture

Haiku of Bling

Tarnished silver ring
Reaches ear, tellingly clear
Waiting for its jewel

The Taj Mahal in a Bubble

My first piece of video art. (The other one didn't count).

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The Dance Part II

The Dance

The Guitar

La Guitar



I am the head held high, the invasion of aspirations to become part of the world, to catch up with its spinning; I will the mysticism of movement, the self-love of grace, the lovesick bliss of moons too subtle to behold; I move not only bodies, but souls, the emotions in them kicking and straining to the sound of fingers sea-sawing across ore dredged up from the earth and stretched into strings that sing into the anti-matter of the universe and draw out its anti. The air holds the memory of each of our positions for a moment before it disappears into the warm sheath of metabolism. I am the pleasure given unto people by the empty body of trees sacrificed to the health of a community, the dark cloud spreading around the head of the player, on which we can dance to remember the reasons we are.

Drawing by Cecile Carriere. Poetry by Trevor Cunnington. Copyright held by author and artist.

Goodbye Winter, It's Been a Blast

I'll never forget you.

Chance Meeting With An Ex-Boyfriend

Yesterday I saw you
on the street in front of my house.

no nostalgia, no self-pity, no anger,
no way to say circuitous affection.

your eyes are beautiful, but
opaque, blue sky hiding stars.

we both sported our weekend scruff,
wine bottle in my pocket,
friends on your mind.

you may think me solitary
but that's just the headline.

I don't think I fit through
your pupils anymore.

The Assassination of Space

The Day Time Stood Still

The Rorschach Language (for Gregory)

The band width rehabilitation:
a hand with palm leaves left the grapes
heaving. The grave egg
felt the sighing wasteland
bereaved. The landscape
is filled with goats
eating away soil-preserving
vegetation; get away at a space station;
this total recall never stops
like bad aspirin on convenience store shelves,
or in gas stations.

Feel the hand
of invisible vitaes, humours of the yet vitreous sand
settling down the bristle highway;
hustle the gristle off a chicken bone
in a vice, bursts forth, the marrow, a whistling
is heard, a train beckoning forth movement, the music
of regular repetitions; travel, the whip-poor-will's wail
makes the will flag, flap, brazen
over the sublime curve of lizards head,
tasting the air,
one-stop shopping for oxygen; the bar
that didn't take off; the ticket
that never exploded hampered our progress:
pilgrims bearing grim tidings and pilfered
plates, leaving no crumb of the milk and cookies
unturned, an unearned dollar is time wasted,
the representatives of submersion wield an
ace-in-the-hole; they fire the ancient
coercion, stoke the chimney.
No key to need a door above desire
hovering, the numina of unwarranted silence.

The Rorschach Language (for Gregory)

The absent-minded pen wreckons
shenanigans past due when a rainbow stretches
across the meadow,
a cross, a gaul, gothic enclosure, an apse that's a trap.

By traipsing, I meant positively the end of bored, part
of enigmatic processes of transformation
on your finger-tips, but now reach for your tongue,
to speak the punching fist
gut-punchers playing whist
lining up, about to embark on Red Rover
renovated on a darned onco-mice hair welcome
mat, come well, tame the impulse;
across meadows a porcine thing squeals into hollow
nooks and crannies, appearing to expand beyond every
possible comprehension, a damper dew of
consequences, bound to daub paint on horse-hair.

The doggeral in its lair wrests meaning out of your mind.

If my foot fell asleep while I wrote this poem,
would there be enough of you in it to claim it as your own?

Let's paint images of each other on the inside of each other's
eyelids. Not much for chums and romance, a ton of humungous
cameros throttling the mustard gas memorandom, as buzzardly
as random victims carry on victorious, we will sail away.

Before lewd layaways, laissez-faire time cushions,
we forgot how to fashion mitres, for mights, weights, and what-have-you?
a scepter of suspicion. conscience: If I were to put all of humanitee
on a pedestle, they would all fall under my pestle,
and I would grind their love out, some way, some day,
and even judgement shall be suspended
as the charms take effect. Arms will stand out of harm's way.
A medallion of home whispers the demos
to remonstrate on piers about the departure of monstrocities
and friends yet unattained,
they sing a hymn to you, back in the world of reference,
I'm having a good time. I strive for the good, or everyone thinks they do.
Things that are. The do that is. The is that does.
But my good, trespass as it will on its own disavowed lawn,
will dispense with showy lustre.

It will strive towards you, where two faces meet,
a vase holds a white and pink rose.

The you that knows, and that won the snow.

The Entropic Sublime

Metamorpho-sisterhood

Blog Thank Yous.

The Invisible Truth was featured on this website: http://www.publicbroadcasting.ca/archive/2007_07_01_archive.html

where you can learn more about arts, politics, and policy in Canada.

Thank you as well to my readers in Reston, Virginia. Don't think I haven't noticed your loyalty.

Bubbles

Windows to the Soul
After William Carlos Williams

To stay put
and let the world
travel through you;

to grieve the loss of love
as if life itself slipped
like sand
through your fingertips
during a grave silence;

to smell the burning leaves aching
into the sky;

to feel the sea creeping
through tickled toes;

to taste the freshly baked bread
rising from chimneys
of the corner bakery;

to watch sand, thrown
in ovens red hot and congealing,
spindled around pokers,
into blown glass;

to hear sparrows calling
each other through tree
skeletons;

to see the world
through
multicoloured
kaleidoscope glasses;

this is what it
must be like
to watch the sun rise
from the highest
landlocked point in your
hometown.

by Trevor Cunnington

Electric Current "C"

Photo by Trevor Cunnington

Dusk's Numb Perimeter

A dove feather's will.

She sits in her own world, alone on the brink,

held aloft by a dove feather, will.

Satin wraps a form that bellies inner strength.

For being alone demands unimaginable skill.

Her passion's unadmired, leaving dust in the air,

If only for a moment, there was someone else there.

Her beauty deserves more than darkness' kiss;

An unfettered heart laid bare.

Born in Fountain Inn, SC on Sept. 29, 1965, Frank
Blakely started artistic endeavors at the age of 4
when his mom made him draw a rose. He has been a
photographer, painter, author and poet; baker,
police officer,waiter and marketing director.
He lives now in Dallas, Tx, looking for the
love of his life.

New Canadian Poetry: Night and Day

Night and Day
by I.B. Iskov

A whole city of night

sprouts arms in all directions.

In the private landscape

stark and windswept,

hidden, light surfaces.

With the certainty of gravity

slices of sound

signal in the blue velvet,

anchor my senses.

I float in the gray cradle

with a feeling of lightness

as if my shadow could breathe,

I am free.

My feet follow long shades of caution

this craving for connection,

this desire for shine

rises with the sun,

transports my dream into the concrete.

In this noisy neighbourhood

I want to believe something,

trace the curve of clouds,

scratch beneath their surface,

fly beyond my vision,

be a star in daylight.

I.B. (Bunny) Iskov is the Founder of The Ontario Poetry Society. She is also the Literary Judge for Early Harvest, sponsored by Vaughan Public Libraries. Her work has been featured in many fine literary journals and anthologies, including Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, Surface & Symbol, Henry's Creature - Poems and Stories of the Automobile (Black Moss Press) and in North America Maple. She has several published poetry collections. Bunny is currently working on her second full collection of poems. She is married and lives in Thornhill, Ontario in a lovely two story house on a dead end street.

A New Chapter for The Invisible Truth

I've been in a little rut for writing lately. I know that a good cure for Writer's Block is to read. Then it struck me. If I opened this blog up as a platform for other writers to get some exposure, I would be reading good stuff, and getting unpublished good stuff out there for people like you to read. It's a win-win situation. I don't have to come up with as much content, I give other writer's exposure, and you get the variety of a literary journal rather than Trevor, Trevor, Trevor. Know that if you return, you will meet some new writers' quality material. It will spice things up around here.

P.S. Happy Pride Week everyone!

The Geography of Colour

The Capital of NOW is Aquamarine.

Information Leak