This is the first of two artist's posts, dealing with geographies and the idea of travel and navigation through the use of text, linquistic displacement, and appropriation.

From Robert Gibbings’ 1941 book “Sweet Thames Run Softly” (Readers Union Ltd., London, 1941. pp112-113) a home-made boat based self-illustrated account of a drift down that river. The author reaches Reading, Berkshire

BY ROBERT KNOWLES



“I would have made a drawing myself of this whole group of buildings, but for my innate laziness, which concocted the excuse that the sun was in the wrong position…After Mapledurham the face of the country is blemished with the marks of man, and if one cannot navigate that stretch of river by night the best alternative is a mild inebriation. I was unable to manage either, but I had the good fortune to synchronise my arrival in Reading with a river-steamer, and to watch the final acrobatics of four boys who had run a parallel course for several miles along the tow-path.

Their exhibition was the nearest thing that I have come across, in England, to that of the diving boys and other stray performers one sees in foreign parts. The four youngsters trotted along the tow-path as (...read more...)

By Michael Eddy



Hundreds of police advanced as a literal wall up the street, down the street, from all sides, scouring the pavement of the protesters and the passersby alike. My friends and I tried to hang back on some steps and watch the action, but were not spared. The police formed a huge corral with their bodies. They approached slowly and inevitably, their feet shuffling incrementally. They began to beat their batons against their shields in the simplest, most brutal rhythm. The spaces closed among the group of protesters, whose number now seemed so tiny; there seemed to be many times the number of police: hundreds closing off streets, forming support walls, growing by the busload. And yet they were getting so close that they became individuals, each with a different face, with its own pattern of sweat beads, noses and mouths, with their own capacity for laughter and smiles. They approached so near that people began to wonder if they intended on crushing us into a little ball; right there in front of the Just For Laughs theatre.

At some uncomfortable point, when bodies had begun to press together, the police stopped. We waited. To entertain myself I tried (...read more...)

By Michael Eddy

After a break, there was a spokes meeting in the basement of a building on Saint Denis. The space was painted by an unknowable number of hands, but my memory recalls that it was a black colour. The ceilings were very high and one descended a set of stairs to reach what at other times was a music venue. It had a cinematic, stage-set quality; in some sense that it was unbelievable that it was allowed to exist. Some authority somewhere, in their own interests, would have shut it down in the real world- so it came to me as a fragment of the imaginary, of movies. In another way, it absorbed or reflected the cliched imagery of subculture that was found in movies that catered to my generation, particularly the ones that had been adapted from comic books. The place was absolutely packed with people. Everyone sat awkwardly on the floor facing the small stage; we tried to stay with our affinity groups so that we could cast our votes together.

Before the details of the snake march were to be discussed, there was a call for any undercover police to leave or to reveal their identities. (...read more...)

By Michael Eddy



Having made it onto the island of Montreal before dawn, the bus was parked in a forlorn shopping mall parking lot on the Eastern-most tip. It was early enough in the morning that the sky was dark and cloudy and the grey air thick with suspicion. We were expected visitors. The bus was full of the group of mostly young people that was to be known as the 'Maritimes contingent'. After some hours the bus crept to a location on the side of Mount Royal. There was to be a meal in the park near where Tam-Tam happens. Above the treeline. Carrying backpacks, coolers and water jugs up the hill, we passed a gazebo where some figures wrapped in blankets were still sleeping.

A discussion: who was going to check in with the organizers at the headquarters downtown? Whoever it would be, they would have to be able to run; Two people. I opted for the task, and another guy, who was more experienced. We would hurry down and then hurry back up. Police would be picking up anyone from a certain demographic if their number was small enough. We slid away while the others ate oatmeal. There (...read more...)

By Lance Blomgren


Image: Doreyme

6296 Casgrain

The setting sun reflects off the landlord-gray brick apartment. You climb three flights of stairs past a steel barrel of aluminum cyanide and the remaining feathers of a dried-out pigeon. This is where your love of a good joke has gotten you: you live here now. You laugh/cough into your hand as you pass the next-door neighbour on the upstairs landing. He’s suntanning in an overly baggy pair of shorts. “Hey, have you seen my cat?” You make a facial gesture meant to imply gentle concern as you speak. “He’s been missing a couple of days.” The word from the rental agency is that the neighbour hasn’t adapted too well socially but is really quite pleasant, which is a polite way of letting you know his eviction notice is in the mail and he should be altogether avoided. Saying what is meant is becoming less and less possible in this environment. He dries his forehead with the t-shirt you’d hung on the clothesline the night before and you decide to drop this line of conversation. You are suddenly at a loss to accurately comprehend the image of his scrotum joined wetly to his thigh (...read more...)

By Lance Blomgren


Image: Charles Charles Chalmers

48 Haliburton

Until the orange juice hit the back of his throat, he had no idea how dry his throat actually was. How can I love you in the shape I’m in? He stood on the front balcony awhile to catch his breath, then walked through the many small rooms of the apartment to the back balcony. The architect of this building designed each room of the apartment to have its own narrative progression, like a story. Oddly, he placed all the narrative tension at both ends of the apartment, namely the balconies, rather than in the rooms themselves. This was the architect’s last building before committing suicide. The inhabitant finds him- or herself drawn to these structures, but at the expense of the rest of the rooms, which are rendered lifeless and anticlimactic. Coming in off the balcony, the present occupant finds himself strangely bored and disappointed with the interior as if, like a mediocre novel, the momentum of the apartment has come to an abrupt halt. He pours some more orange juice. Within minutes, he is drawn back to the balconies, the view of Mount Royal, the city’s sidewalkscape, staircases and frontyard (...read more...)

By Lance Blomgren


Image: Lance Blomgren


Today's entry contains language of a sexual nature. Eds

5170 Durocher

In this photograph, the two brothers are sitting on the sofa squinting. Wrapping paper everywhere. If this were a film their lips would be moving and they’d be talking at the same time. They’d be up to their necks in giftwrap. Already the face of the youngest is the face of someone with something to hide. There are small wrinkles around his eyes that he’s proud of. This photo records the moment when the idea struck him, If only there was a dictionary that would tell me how to act. He’s holding his breath. The walls seem to be squeezing in around him.

4863 Hôtel-de-Ville
Squatting with each leg on a side of the bathtub, she rubs her crotch up and down the length of his face in long slow strokes as he sits submerged in the tub. She’s still in her underwear and he can feel the wet heat of her body coming through the thin fabric, the dogmatic outline of her lips. The water is getting cold. He can feel his arms goosepimple, his skin pull into itself. The next-door neighbour is (...read more...)

By Lance Blomgren


Image: Charles Chalmers

Apt. D’Amours (2)

Woke up late to the sound of my own breathing. In the trailing moments of my dream I lifted the toilet lid to discover a cockroach log-rolling for its life on a stray turd. I kept trying to flush them down, but the water pressure was so low they kept floating back to the surface. Through the window I could see a Hydro-Québec worker climbing an electrical pole to fiddle with the wires. In certain positions as he was working, the man’s shadow fell across my bed. At these moments I could see his face, see that he was whistling.

The biology graduate student upstairs had pulled the livingroom curtains so the daylight wouldn’t interfere with the fact that her power had been disconnected. Earlier I had found her note under my door: Blackout Brunch—Dress Warm, Jane, #308. But when I arrived there was no food and certainly no other guests. Thick warm air. Running along one wall of her livingroom was a massive gray metal table that looked like it might have come from an automobile assembly line. The surface was covered with textbooks, flasks and beakers, and dozens of jars (...read more...)