Alberta Terminals LTD. HDR, 1st try.

Went to Alberta Terminals LTD. / Cargill Grain Towers on St. Albert Trail and just north of Yellowhead. Took some pics. Processed'em later as HDR images. COmpositionally I don't think the images are that strong, and some of the saturated colours are overpowering or off but for the most part I enjoyed my intial foray into the world of HDR photography.

Strangers I (Authority)

Strangers I (Authority)

...only observations, such as:

Such as?

Well, for one thing her ear was purple, her left ear, I think so-- I think she'd been hit. It was purple, so some sort of impact.

Such as?

(quickly, excitedly) A fist? A kick? head-lock? Baseball game? (pausing, more seriously, slightly embarrassed) No, I don't know. Wrestling? I don't know. (looking around, long pause) Have?-- It hurts to be hit in the ear; I've been, it really burns, and you can feel the blood-- and it really burns.

Her ear?

Oh right, maybe she was hit on a cross walk. You could probably check that. Maybe a car came into the cross-walk, taking her legs out from under her, (gestures, flat left hand flying perpendicularly towards right hand) like pushing her feet away, but sideways-- and she was jumping (looking up, imagining) jumping up and the car caused her to rotate, caused her left ear to smash into the hood. It'd have to be a car though. And everyone around would have told her that she was so lucky, people say things like that. But maybe walking home she'd be remembering everything, her her slow-motion hood-banging and crashing and what they said, their advice, and maybe she'd come to the conclusion that she wasn't really lucky, being hit by a car. Her ear.

(unscrews cola bottle, takes a small sip, twists cap back on) Oh!

Yes?

Her face, her, it seemed like an ape's. Well, not like an ape's, more like one of those sculptures made by forensics-- sculptors. The dead hookers and the neanderthals. I know it's not a nice thing to say. But she seemed to be made of clay and pig's teeth. Her hair was dry and curly and twisted, twisty-- powdery, light brown. I think she wore a jacket with a suede collar. I think her jeans were regular, blue. Her ass, I couldn't see for sure, didn't look very good. Nothing against her, it's just, her jeans. I don't know. And her coat maybe too. It wasn't very attractive.

This was at the VIA rail depot, 11pm?

I think she was waiting for her honey.

Infant Innocence by A. E. Housman

Infant Innocence
by A. E. Housman

The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;
He has devoured the infant child.
The infant child is not aware
It has been eaten by the bear.

Erich Fromm Interviews

Erich Fromm interviewed by Mike Wallace

Pt.1. Fromm on Man's relation to Work and Society:


Pt.2. Fromm on Love, Religion, Values, Freedom, Happiness and Democracy:


Pt.3. Fromm's defense of Socialism, praise of Marx, concerns for the future:

Little Shovel Pass, Jasper, w/ Kat!

The photos aren't great. See, I went on a hike with Kat (at her behest) to Little Shovel Pass, Jasper-- was amazing! amaaaaa...

The L.S. Pass is above the tree-line and I guess that's why the scenery is so impressive.

Whistling Marmots abounding up there, no good pics really, they scared me a bit-- b-b-b-bears, you see.

It is SO BY ME as going: Highly Recommended.

'Little Shovel Pass' is the 1st part of the Skyline Trail, which I really wanna do one day.

STILL IS

Upon upon, no, within within, came a pencil on the sill, the ledge of the tub.

The light was natural, your body, natural.

Left, the white ledge, your pencil rolled, correction: I threw it, correction: I lifted pencil up, I put pencil down. Into the water, under the water. You knew the water was getting cooler, the tepid zone between our asses-- 1 hour since. I think the water wasn't moving there, maybe our arms weren't flailing there, our hips weren't rocking there, and without the movement, the conjugation of warm waters into old waters never took place.

You sat up most of the time, between my knees, your legs folded impossibly close to your “chests”, or sort of lazily, reclining with our limbs free or layered.

The grey light filtering through the blinds, 30 degrees north then 200 degrees south, 'round the bend onto the left side of your face. You claimed to be able to make out colours in the low-light, the blue in my eyes. All I knew was grey, and darks and covered-whites, delicate hints and faltering hues of lips and areola.

Keeping kept, stretching my neck, up, peaking, straining briefly to see your breasts, as you leaned forward, differentiation or/and/of the trajectory of specific shapes.

I took the pencil out from the water, the graphite was wet and the wood was soft with water, pulp mill. I took the pencil, again, I took the pencil, and with you, I grabbed your shaded arm,
I wrote, “S T I L L  I S” vertically, perfectly, possibly crookedly, and the esses were my favourite shapes to draw.

That being surveyed slowly pulled back with a false effort but relenting you allowed a faint, silt-bleeding calligraphy, my response, a faded message about a pencil still working-- yes, mostly about the efficacy of sorry and soggy writing utensils but also a written acknowledgement of my own continued ability to drown and S T I L L feel bliss.

Lullaby by W.H. Auden

Lullaby
by W.H. Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's sensual ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find your mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

Charmed by accuracy (a brief recap of being so)

Charmed by accuracy

(a brief recap of being so)

I brought her a treat, well, it's a treat to me. Desert facsimile. A protein bar with chocolate appeal.

She seemed eager, “Oh!”

“Well, it's a protein bar, so it doesn't taste great”, I wanted, I tried,

but before the confession could come

she had the 'food-stuff' rectangle somewhere inside

I paused,

watching her expression, and with some expectation.

...

Pleasure perhaps?

Instead a slightly confused look and her earnest proclamation,

both precise and correct,

“It tastes like the shoe aisle in Zellers! The smell, it tastes.”

Exactly.

and with a giggle., I think.

Banff w/Kat

Acquainted with the Night
by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Ginseng/ relief

to you, “these. Arms. of. Mine.”
represent so completely.
But everything that's personally wrong with me
. I'd argue
the same force is corresponding on these,
so the natural fault isn't my own,
it's terrafatalistic destiny:
the gentle, kiss crush sound of peeling skin
sticky and sick from green, vinyl-backed, wheel-chairs
Like the sweet poison smell of quadriplegic--
they're not plastic? stinking with dew.

By our shared fever-dream,
these same-soil forces formed you,
shape-o-the-pinkie-toes are gravitational
gloop and also saturating basal shapes
of ginger and ginseng roots, homogeneously: thusly:
imagine the daintiness,
very baby red potatoes, the same
cutesy congenital force is required to create
blind eyes in both starchy veg. and meaty fetus
and the merely statistically stunted growth
of this male's delicate, no,
frail & protruding, wrist bones.

All of them carved in fluid.
Cut in the ice near the jackfish and the starry plankton,
close to genetic juggernauts like grandpas come before,
by the wiggling heat
of the swimming comma
the pinpointed apex
of cream, and mitochondria,
of romantic, rain-hollowed mouths, untragically agape.
steaming breath pressed with teeth to your cheek
revealing a sort of secret conception of Night,
not based on the sun and it's discreet spin
or a deeper faith in sex
not devoted to mere ease of friction
but the challenge of being wholly immersed,
the cavity of concordance

Heaven. Vanity. Tinnitus.
They all compete with our
Who's behind
false-cock sense of
blame and motivation.

The Rolling Stones: Out of Time

(I try and ignore the images and just listen. headphoney.)

about as perfect as music gets for me...
eyes a'flutterin'
dreamy sighs

King Midas Sound: Waiting For You

I highly recommend this dark, mesmerizing album by "King Midas Sound" (the members are Kevin Martin (The Bug), poet Roger Robinson and singer Hitomi.) It's so cool and exciting to hear artful music that's on the cutting edge. I could only find it on iTunes but it's definitely worth $9.99

oh, here's on the tracks:



vocal's only teaser for the first track, "Cool Out":

Cool Out from Tomas Leach on Vimeo.

Winter

Winter

one sky generosity,

difficult at times,

seals the edge of riverbank

borders falling into long horizons

diffused, the snow as fabric

frozen fractals

perfect shadows, each unfolding,

her cotton lines that continually sink

and rise by quantum conditions

the hundred thousand

a million

more

reasons dense,

loose, entrenched

within the heart

the soft geometry

surrounding

unhurried by nobility

unconcerned with beauty

her gift of gentle hypocrisy

of an apparently ignorant grandeur.

Sculpture

So this is probably the only piece from my figurative sculpting class that I'm happy with. (The pics of the piece, I'm not so happy with.) As for the sculpture there are still some lines that are quite "off" and my sense of proportion certainly needs to be improved but overall I'm pleased with how it turned out.

There is an energy in pure concentration that makes participating in art-making worthwhile-- the results, much to my surprise, proved to be of a secondary importance. The state-of-mind I attained while creating-- that sustained level of singular focus and awareness, was so wholly rewarding.

Edm Winte (2010): Flickr Set

"God's greatest gift is a teacher...": Emerson

God's greatest gift is a teacher & when will he send me one, full of truth & boundless benevolence & heroic sentiments. I can describe the man, & have done so already in prose and verse. I know the idea well, but where is its real blood warm counterpart... I may as well set down what our stern experience replies with the tongue of all its days. Son of man, it saith, all giving & receiving is reciprocal; you entertain angels unawares, but they cannot impart more or higher things than you are in a state to receive. But every step of your progress affects the intercourse you hold with others; elevates its tone, deepens its meaning, sanctifies its spirit, and when time & suffering & self-denial shall have transformed and glorified this spotted self, you shall find your fellows also transformed & their faces shall shine upon you with the light of wisdom & the beauty of holiness.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (Letters, 1, p.376)

thought to word, word to deed, deed to habit, habit to character

The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character;
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings...

As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become.

(from The Dhammapada)

---
One of my favourite teachings from my favourite Buddhist scripture. And yet another example of incredible wisdom within the doctrine of 'dependent arising.'

awake enough...: Henry David Thoreau

 

"The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical means, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us is our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor."

- Henry David Thoreau (Walden, page 81)

Avatar: Movie Review

So Felix was excited about seeing James Cameron's new movie, Avatar. I wasn't interested. He told me that I had to see it with him and that he'd pay. We went to the midnight showing last night. Super-nerds. I was kind of reluctant to go to a midnight showing because, a) I don't particularly like James Cameron movies, b) I was afraid of being shown in line to a midnight movie should CityTV send one of their city-beat reporters to do a story on Super-nerds/cultural phenomenon, and c) I didn't think there should be any urgency to see this movie, I mean, I could easily wait 3-4 weeks and download it for free and watch it on my TV if I wanted. But nope Felix pressed on. We had to see the midnight show.

Anyway, long story long, the movie's story is about what I expected. The good guys are essentially pure-hearted, connected-to-the-spirit-of-the-land, native indians and the bad guys are heartless, in-it-for-the-money-and-the-power, conquistadors. All of them, “cartoon characters”, or probably more accurately, in this age of Marvel movies, “comic-book characters.” SO, I guess I'm claiming: the story ain't much. Seemed like Disney, full of obvious foreshadowing and the standard, supposed-to-be heart-tugging tricks.

But if you're anything like me you turn down your inner-cynic/movie critic the minute you voluntarily view a “blockbuster”, you understand their purpose: money-spending, money-getting through the usual means of unapologetic escapism. So with that in mind I put on the 3-D glasses and witnessed what I think marks a necessary leap forward in CGI. I'm not sure how to explain it but I think that we're probably now, with the advent of this movie, only a few steps away(prob still a decade though) from the point in cinematic history where computer generated images and graphics become indistinguishable from “real” images. I mean, we're still obviously not there yet; every time I saw an Avatar-character's eyes the falsity of the image was clear--- and not just the eyes, there are many points where you can say, “nope” if you choose to, but I doubt that'll happen because you'll probably be too absorbed in the flood of exotic images properly created; those that push the envelope, that so clearly represent cinematic advancement.

If you can suspend you disbelief and get past the regurgitation of “Hoo-ah” marine-speak, or “let's go get some”-isms you'll be treating yourself to a genuine spectacle, the importance of which doesn't really lie in the manifestation of technological imagery today, but instead lies in the promise of a cinematic future where fantasy and reality blend seamlessly, thereby emboldening the craft of movie making and perhaps more significantly, lending itself to higher-concepts of the now freshly provoked futurists.

Run-on sentences aside--- purposely or not, Hollywood helped out art in a pretty compelling way this week with the release of Avatar.

8.14338/10 (I was gonna put a disclaimer stating that without the visuals this movie would be a 6.76633 at best but I think it's probably wise to take it as a whole so the 8-ish rating will have to stand. I guess I did disclaim, oops.)

(also the rating might be a lil higher because I saw the movie with Felix who was right into it and his gaiety paired with genuine, Ooh-ing and Aah-ing, added excitement to the whole affair.)