A Very Good Day for Turtles is a fantastic children’s story, which is now available for purchase from Lulu. Wondering why turtles don’t hurry anymore? Mr. Clark’s poetic fable of a few precocious turtles offers an answer. The illustrations, a Gomez/McLaughlin collaboration, enhance the story with their imaginative light and leave the lasting impression of playful myth.

I’m not just calling attention to A Very Good Day for Turtles because the people that made it are close to me (and I happened to have had a pet turtle as a child). I love the book and know its creators put a lot of care into it, which is obvious the moment you read it.

A Very Good Day for Turtles

“Ugly! Eyesore! How could people think it was a good idea?” A giant slab of concrete in the middle of the outer edge of the park. For shame, city! This was no sculpture, I thought.

Monument between Parc La Fontaine and Sherbrooke

Why preserve and move the edge of a utilitarian-designed building to the park? If the rest of the building had been demolished, why save this? What a hoax this artist made.

Every day I passed the thing, monument of ugliness. Every day, for months, I felt the same about it.

The other evening though, I had an aesthetic transformation. Over the course of approaching it, passing it from the sidewalk, and reflecting on it, I suddenly loved the thing.

Between the park and the rest of the city–this monument. The side facing the city is straight, segmented like an uninspired, generic modern building. A corner of its simple, mundane concrete at a right angle.

The side facing the park is jagged and uneven. It looks like it was torn from a larger structure. Or intentionally left unfinished. It has a slice of blue paint running through it as well.

Could the straight, uniform side represent the city it faces, while the jagged side represents the “nature” it faces? The monument appears as though it’s part of a larger wall, surrounding the park and framing the divide between human-made structures, and those of the non-human, chaotic natural world. But let’s not forget that a park, no matter how much vegetation it has, is planned by humans and can hardly be raw nature. Of course, even the jagged part of the monument is human-produced so this fits the metaphor of the site. That’s how I decided I’d fallen in love with this piece of art.

In fact for several days, I admired the thing whenever I passed it. Finally, I noticed a plaque nearby. Why hadn’t I ever noticed it before? It explained the monument, a gift and commemoration, and nothing to do with my new aesthetic reading.

Was I impressed that this monument could eke its way inside me and strike that shift in my perception? Was it a function of time and familiarity? I puzzle with this. Or have I projected the aesthetic transformation on to it? Can I love it in spite of the plaque or does the plaque require me to go back to the beginning?

I got something the other day.
After a glass of x knows what
and four men had to haul the
logs out of the corner, we
all might say we got something—
But really, it was I, I got it.

It started when the king fell
over. "No way to play chess"
	I said,
		referring mostly to myself.
But I hadn't pushed him
and indeed not a single other
	game had finished,
	so they said. I saw a
	few pretty close to that
	viperously invisible path,
		which just grows .

That's why I thought, I'd go
chopping—chopping up growth and piling it somewhere to use later.
	someone writes redly in books about that sort of thing.

The leaves fell, big, while
	I chopped.

Soon kings slumped,
	their strong trunks
	chinked, their roots grappling
far underground, supporting
what wouldn't need support.

Or did the roots hold
Earth to its spacey sheets?

I stacked the logs for later
as I mentioned, in the corner, and propped myself
	at their base, unsure
who else had seen them;
so many.
I heard the kings whisper,
"That was someone else's
strategy."

Starting this project, I had no idea where it would go.

Yet on days like today, I joke that I’m almost there.

No doubt I’ll make it, once almost there won’t be.

Happy birthday, me.

Share This ]]> http://www.phydeau.org/thirty-four-twenty-threes/feed/ http://www.phydeau.org/five-propositions-about-death/ http://www.phydeau.org/five-propositions-about-death/#comments Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:47:27 +0000 Joshua Chalifour http://www.phydeau.org/?p=111
1. Caught in a substance imperceptible to humans, like a spider-spun web (as their web substance certainly must be to insects). We go about our lives. One day Bill walks into the substance (the web) scarcely perceiving it. Months pass and he notices his struggle with increased workplace stress. It’s uncanny his desire for fried [...]]]>

1. Caught in a substance imperceptible to humans, like a spider-spun web (as their web substance certainly must be to insects). We go about our lives. One day Bill walks into the substance (the web) scarcely perceiving it. Months pass and he notices his struggle with increased workplace stress. It’s uncanny his desire for fried fat-laden food, ever greasier. Some people remark on his disinterest in physical fitness. Until the heart attack. People’ll say those elements caused the heart attack. But the elements didn’t. They were only indications of having walked into that invisible web—time experienced in a different scale from the predator—and the heart attack? The death bite. A possibility attested by the trap.

2. The air around my flesh, feels to me, indistinguishable from the way water around a fish’s scales, feels to the fish. I must constantly be wary of hooks.

3. God’s abattoir: Earth. Humans talk about an all-seeing, all-knowing, wise God. Of course, nobody understands why little Dana, the age-three tragedy of Brome, had to die of a particularly virulent flu. They’ll say that in God’s wisdom there was a reason. Marcus, age 102 on the other hand, lived a life of acme quality. He fell asleep Tuesday evening and never awoke. And the stutteringly handsome Vincent, back in the day, contracted syphilis—so efficient those sorts. God gets hungry. Or if not God, a few of God’s customers need nourishing. God claims it’s the most humane method of slaughter, which they believe. Humans get to go about living, relatively unaware of what’s in store. No one escapes Earth. But come time for a tender young dish, God readies the flu machinery. Customers demanding something aged to fashionable ripeness encourage God to dispatch more disease, swiftly and efficiently handling the stock.

4. Birdcall serves the ominous function of death siren. We get lazy, we humans. The birds singing, we enjoy or marvel. But there is one, always one designated per person. We let our guard down over the millennia. Birds know it. Birds stick around, calling, trilling, chirping, singing, etc. making us used to their sound. We lost our ability to hear only what we choose. We hear everything now, only selecting some things for consciousness. But we hear it all nonetheless! So there’s that one unique bird, paired with its person, just waiting for its moment. That bird may land or fly nearby. Maybe it’ll wait in a tree or build a nest by one’s home. The moment one hears its song, is the last. Hearing that sound affects one’s singular solo decrescendo into death. Do the birds cheer one another? Are birds satisfied or joyous in their duty? One must practise choosing not to hear one’s paired bird.

5. Waking and dreaming as states of life: the parenthesis between death and inverted potential. While the wakeful may arouse the dreaming, I’m anxious to encounter the counterpart of the wakeful in the inverted potential that accompanies my death.

Starting off in the distance, where the gelatinous ocean rose in spots and dipped in others, waves rolled. Each following another as it finally dispersed itself into the fine sandy shore. One wave followed another but each grew again in the same place. It was impossible to follow one and not feel it also somehow slipped back to where it started–rolling like stripes on an old barbershop pole.

She sat on her towel, partially reclining against her elbows. The paperback du jour (holding the misfortunes of an Indian orphan) rested patiently by her side. She’d read a quarter of it before inserting her bookmark, a fading taxi receipt. The sun beamed beautifully but not too hot. She chose not to go into the water. Even though she’d taken a dip before reading, she needed to stare a bit longer. Ocean air floated through her nostrils, surrounding her thoughts with particles of all that floated on the waves.

Sitting before the waves, she temporarily escaped her once beloved city, where people battered one another, vying for the most damaging words and protective positions. She focused again on the distance, exhaling a curlicue of breath. She left the breath to gather with other particles, which floated or submerged themselves in the divine varnish of blue eternity. And the city was gone. Her shoulders relaxed, sinking her maple neck deeper between their hammocked edges. The waves continued.

Last month she thought she loved her fiancé. This month his self-indulgent note confessing fear of the future was the last remnant she’d seen of him. After three years of adjusting to pink anarchy, weightlessness, and synchronized hearts, everything crashed and unravelled the instant he left. One day she was party to vibrant people and scenes, which now pressed around her in charred relief. The future she thought would come, vanished, so that she lived blindly into it. Still, sunshine reassured her, warming her cheeks before nostalgic tears could condense. She sat up, hugging her folded knees, and continued to watch the ocean.

——

Walking West along the beach, a man wearing a blue and white striped swim suit, stood in the foam. His feet chilled in the water thankful to be privileged and out of the unbearable heat. He watched the water curve around subtle sand waves. It flowed at a steady pace but glided back to its origin unevenly because of the terrain. Between watery sand and sun-dried sand, the waves improvised their line of rhythm. He looked upward, past the caramel sand, to the spread of people on the beach. Daydreaming, he wished he’d meet-

The vision of a woman resting on her elbows; she looked steadily toward the distance.

Walking some more, he considered her. Her story came effortlessely. She was by herself but shouldn’t be. She was only recently by herself, and melancholy. Was that her story? Actually, what the hell was he doing here? Why’d she have to recently be a loner? Why shouldn’t she be? Her, with that book at her side, he reflected, and not the smallest trace of interest in her eyes for anything taking place on the beach. Still, her blond hair fluttered feral in the salty breeze.

Reaching around to scratch his sweaty back, he hoped against sunburn. Some people happily holiday with nobody and nothing but a book. In her place, he’d be looking for adventure. The book would only be what, a ruse? No, not a ruse, she was honest. She followed her goals, which sometimes also led to adventure. She depended on no one, but everyone wanted to depend on her. The more they needed her the less they interested her. Her perfect man would be out of reach.

He picked up a tear-shaped pod of rubbery seaweed. As he shook the pod near his ear, he heard water rattle inside. He turned it in his hand several times, mindlessly, then took a step in reverse, wound his arm down, back, picking up speed, and arcing it at a sideways angle over his head, he released the pod toward the ocean. It righted itself aerodynamically and sailed over a wave, plopping below the surface. Though it had an air bubble inside, he lost sight and didn’t know whether or not it floated. He didn’t care.

He’d glance toward the woman to see if she noticed him. No, wouldn’t be any sign. He wandered further, keeping the water just above his ankles. Maybe she’d have dinner with him. After all, in spite of everyone else, they were on the beach, alone. She’d probably want company. Chances are she would’ve noticed him when he wasn’t looking. Besides, she probably didn’t have another book to read.

——

Why I left Lyle while he was asleep? Who knows.

Forget that, I’m on holiday. Before it gets unbearably hot, I must take in the beach. That cool breeze-oh, definitely my kind of beach. Nobody’s awake I suppose. Dreadful ringing still-that insane band last night-such fun. Ghost instruments. Crashing waves drown them out. Life should start and stop in waves. Emotions are so violent, and I des-per-ately need this holiday.

What a lonesome morning! Imagine though, a tall young man could walk by, his feet displacing insignificant splashes of water from that slim layer slipping over the shore. He’d be wearing a tight, blue and white striped swimsuit. His T shoulders tipping their perfect balance to the right as he skips stones he bends over and over to take from under toe.

He’d be alone. I’d want to meet him. Except no, he wouldn’t be interested in me. He’d see a woman instead. She’d be mind-your-own-business, lying on her towel and staring at the sea, all picturesque and unconcerned. This woman, oh, she’d be attractive of course. A starlet propped against her elbows, looking a tad deflated but relaxed. No! She’d be sitting forward, hugging her knees and staring at the water.

My man in the blue and white striped swimsuit would be interested but he’d try to attract her through disinterest. The coy ploy. It couldn’t be a ploy though: only the authentically shy really pull that one off. She’d stare into the distance. He’d perform for her attention. So Pavlovian. He’d probably believe she was lonely. And wouldn’t they each have absolutely regrettable vacations, full of dissipating time, unless they met. He’d tell her so, but not right away. Why she needs him for that? Who knows.

No, first he’d loiter (not long) (not long enough) at a neutral but noticeable distance, and consider the best way to get her attention, to start talking. He could ask if she’d seen any good skipping stones. Her answer wouldn’t matter. Puffing his chest, he’d leave, just walk right off to find some and then return later to gab banalities of whether or not he’d found any. Everyone knows the question simply doesn’t matter, it’s the contact. He’d ask, in earnest tones, why she was on holiday alone. She’d change the subject of course, but talking for a bit, his persistence would find her hurt answer.

There, I’m back to dwelling on love. Stop. I had to leave. Lyle couldn’t've dreamed we’d ever last.

Midnight lost its magic.
The parties decease without happiness
		just Boredom.

A skinny, unwashed boy yells at
	the wrong windows.

He'd serenade her if he
could find her.

Doesn't matter that he can't
since any other window'll do

I am not an expert at the following ten items. I am unlikely to become an expert at these because I bear no desire for expertise at these, much less much else.

1. Slavery without adhesive
2. Collecting litres of mud
3. Pirate ideas
4. Prognosticating the colours of life
   or the wailing songs thereof
5. Forgetting all the unwanted premonitions
6. Ice impermeable to slippery children
7. Commissioned murders
8. Round quarters
9. Neutral drugs that don’t even nudge
10. Alien statesmen that recite chaos as poetry

Ever thought about a typewriter? The kind of thinking where you separate it all out, making it type writer. Then go on with type, just on its own. Type, type is what you see right here, in front of you. It’s a type of type too. Times, probably. Times type. What type of thinking is that? The type you think all the time. The type that differentiates. Two verbs go with it. There’s the type that you read but before that you must type it, with your fingers. Well, if that’s what you’re doing, you could very well be a type writer typing a type of times type at a typewriter.

Tick tick tap…

She said "you come from the earth and you end in the earth."

I said "no, I came from the ocean and I'll end in the sky."

In the scheme of things, few people have the interest (or is it patience?) to delve deeply into the concept of “intellectual property” (IP). I think that is why IP regulation is among the most under-considered issues in public political discourse today. It’s difficult, in the snap of a soundbite, to make an easily understood and appropriately deep point regarding IP.

Recently, I sent a couple Canadian party leaders a letter encouraging them to make intellectual property regulation a well-recognized issue (that is, ensuring there is less of it as opposed to the DMCA-style direction it appears to be heading). I included a copy of Lawrence Lessig’s book, Free Culture, because I think he does such a good job examining many of the aspects of present-day “intellectual property” debates. The following is the text of my letters, slightly modified to read less like a letter. I wanted to post this for the sake of adding to whatever public conversation on the subject I can.

I believe the damaging concepts of “intellectual property” are pressing issues for Canada and no party seems to care enough to make it a priority. I’d like to argue that it should be a priority and if presented well, it could rally people around this neglected cause. Although “intellectual property” initially seems like a difficult concept to discuss, presenting it in concrete terms, with examples, and pragmatic solutions will make it of palpable import to

1. Canadian sovereignty
2. Canada/Quebec culture
3. Workers’ rights and well-being
4. Individual freedom
5. Canada’s edge in technology, science, and business
6. A Canadian vision of modern society
7. Respect for our own heritage

In the following, I’ll try to briefly state my view on those seven points. I think this issue could project a dedicated party into a unique position, galvanizing the attention of many voters.

1. Canadian Sovereignty

Barely bobbing in the shallow layers of several domestic media outlets recently, word is that Harper’s conservatives may attempt to increase restrictions on “intellectual property” access and usage. Usually, when I dig through the news I find that these are in response to various foreign pressures. Have people already forgotten the way Bev Oda was reportedly ready to sell-out Canadian cultural rights to regulations of industry representatives (and not necessarily Canadian ones)? Why hasn’t this conservative wound been continuously prodded by the other parties?

Recently, you may have heard of the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)-a Canadian project to provide access to copies of musical scores, which are in the public domain. Universal Edition, a publishing company in the European Union sent a cease-and-desist letter to the IMSLP because some of what it provided was not considered public domain outside of Canada. IMSLP, as a small operation, had little choice but to cave to the corporation.

In an increasing number of countries, modern copyright terms are overly lengthy. Intellectual property laws are nearing draconian proportions in US and some EU jurisdictions, which emboldens foreign companies to act in ways that affect Canadian individuals or organizations, thus impinging on Canadian sovereignty.

2. Culture-Canada’s Inferiority Complex and One of Quebec’s Great Imperatives

Canadians freqently make self-abasing jokes about our own culture. At least Quebec is constantly up in arms to ensure its culture thrives. Couldn’t “intellectual property” freedom be a lightening rod for support to improve local culture? Most federal parties certainly need support in Quebec. Why enact stricter IP laws that restrict the apprehension, distribution, even creation of our culture?

Artists, for example the Canadian Music Creators Coalition, tend not to favour extra restrictions. Artists inherently understand the importance of being free to play off of one another’s work and related work within our culture. Make the conditions right for our culture to grow and be disseminated, which more restrictive copyright, patent, and other “intellectual property” laws prohibit. We must have the freedom to apprehend and contribute to our culture, unrestricted.

3. Workers’ Rights and Well-Being

Company after company in information technology and knowledge work industries, science and research industries, etc. require employees to sign agreements about what amounts to the contents of their own minds. Read the agreements carefully-most don’t say it outright- but they can be understood in no other way. Those agreements often result in the implication that anything a worker comes up with, while under a company’s employ (sometimes whether on the job or not) automatically becomes the company’s property. This is a gross abuse of our workforce’s rights and well-being.

The realm of the IT world has a reputation of allowing people to make a decent living. Because much of the industry’s work product is formed in intangible electrons, perhaps nobody thinks IT/knowledge workers need help. The kind of damage occurring here is less immediately obvious than is the physical damage that can take place in other types of workplaces. It is subtle but it is severe. And it’s a template for other industries. It’s time for these “white collar” industries to lose their nice guy lustre and be exposed for the way they take advantage of Canadian citizens.

4. Individual Freedom

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of thought and expression. I doubt many people ever believed freedom of thought could truly be at risk, but it is. In addition, our generally accepted cultural freedoms are under attack. The notion that something exists called “intellectual property” implies it. It paves the way for people to accept that what takes place in a non-physical realm can be owned the same as physical property. A shovel can be stolen and there is one less in stock at the hardware store but a digital music file, like an idea, cannot-it can only be duplicated.

Following a road toward more restrictive “intellectual property rights” will eventually require us to stipulate who owns the rights of copyability for portions of every individual’s shared reality within our greater community. That may sound like alarmist and conspiracy-theorist talk. I know that it can take a lengthy amount of explanation to show how statements like the above make sense, to show that something like a sci-fi scenario of companies owning parts of peoples’ brains (much closer than it might sound) could take place, or perhaps to even introduce the word “reality” in popular political discourse. But there are ways to get these points across. Easy ones.

An invested political leader could incite passion via examples. Did you read the recent news article, where a father in the US wanted to take a photo of his children but was prevented because a company owned copyright to the image of the building that happened to be a part of where they were standing? How long before that attitude comes to Canada? Will we be allowed to take pictures of our children watching a hockey match if the team owner doesn’t give permission for reproducing an image of the players? It’s our experience after all, our reality just as much as anyone else’s.

What about a newspaper? Will it be allowed to publish a report and photograph of a strike taking place in front of a major auto manufacturer’s facility (and its trademarked logo) if the manufacturer doesn’t give the newspaper permission to publish the photo or print its trademarked name? How about the employee who signs on with his new job in a management consultancy. In his free time he thinks up a theory about how to improve work processes and writes a book about it. The company sues him because they believe they own the rights to those processes since they employed him.

How long before Canadians accept these things as commonplace and lose the core freedoms in our reality that are part of the foundation for all our freedoms?

5. Canada’s Edge in Technology, Science, and Business

The faster we develop new technology, the more we’re enthralled by it. This has positive and negative aspects, which are not within the realm of the point I’d like to make here. But new technology, science, and business can be better fostered without regulations that would be brought about by an “intellectual property” industry attitude favouring more restrictive “intellectual property” laws.

Fields of research in science, technology, and software development are faced with a patent plague. Patents are no longer used as incentives but rather as weapons of fear, inducing people not to follow through on ideas discoveries or not to follow certain lines of research and development that could be of huge benefit to society. Canada’s “intellectual property” laws must enable people to perform research unfettered by the fear of aggressive patent portfolios; to harness new technology; and to develop new, better, businesses, rather than prop up dead-end businesses that are unwilling to grow. This requires giving creative individuals the freedom to explore their innovative pursuits: the entrepreneurs, the artists, the scientists, and the programmers.

Think about when refrigerators became commonplace. Ice-delivery businesses either adapted to support the new technology, found a different business, or were overcome. Today, the many media distribution companies are like ice-delivery businesses. Recording distributors like major music labels take advantage of their power and money to influence politicians and adapt laws that preserve their dead-end business models. Instead, they should be adapting their models, replacing the old distribution of physical CDs, for example, with the new model of operating digital networks. The distribution medium changed but the companies haven’t. Tragically, instead such companies pervert the law and propagandize society in an effort to colonize our shared creative culture for their ends. Industry has transformed the positive engagement of sharing into a fearsome one called pirating.

6. A Canadian Vision of Modern Society

I think of a politician’s bind: the difficulty of both representing and leading simultaneously. Few political representatives are able to communicate a compelling vision of a path we ought to take. A vision representing Canadian interests by promoting our thriving, open-minded culture, is one that will help prepare Canada to address the difficult problems we face. What good is improving the lot of all members of society (Medicare, minimum wages, good public education, etc.) if our lives are miserable? Without fostering a culture that encourages creative liberty, I doubt we’d have the collective mindset to be capable of mustering great ideas like these.

The soul of all that we build as a society, is expressed in our culture. We must not allow a corporate oligarchy, foreign pressures, or the limited thinking of a few to limit that soul. The political party leaders out to present a vision of modern Canada filled with the best of our culture, philosophy, and learning, and alive with the elements introduced by people that have joined us from around the world. This society can thrive only when people are free of artificial restraints against apprehending our living culture, contributing to it, and sharing it.

7. Respect for Our Own Heritage

We must maintain our own access to what we have produced. What we produce, we must be able to preserve for the future of our society. Extending copyrights and other forms of “intellectual property” restrictions to lengths beyond a short and reasonable time frame damages our ability to respect our own heritage.

The physical media on which we’ve recorded certain types of our cultural artefacts or even scientific research, degrade over time. We need to ensure that these things are maintained and perpetuated. In the US for example, old films are disintegrating-companies that own the rights do not have the financial incentive to preserve them and nobody else has the rights to reproduce or disseminate these films. Thus, not only are people in the USA and the world deprived of the possibility to experience part of their shared reality in the present, but future generations will also be deprived of their heritage.

We are losing the context that so many of our inventions, like writing, have provided history. If Canada allows companies to lock away our culture, allows companies to take away Canadian citizens’ rights to our own shared reality by introducing increased “intellectual property” restrictions, then we show a gross disrespect to ourselves.

Finally,

Rather than allow conservatives to say that they are “modernizing intellectual property rights” or “protecting” the rights of artists, why not reveal such statements for what they are: harmful to artists’ creativity, harmful to the Canadian public, and a grossly offensive manoeuvre perpetuated by those that don’t care about Canadians’ freedoms.

I know there are many important things to take care of in and outside of parliament, for example, our environment, work conditions for a country of people at various income levels, Canada’s role on an international scale, etc. Still, we need a party that will also address the problem of “intellectual property” restrictions.

Corporate entities want to control the distribution and apprehension of all forms of our cultural artefacts. Music, movies, books, images, inventions, discoveries, architectural forms in public spaces, all of these things and more are being quickly sucked into a restricted zone of apprehension. In order to experience or reproduce these things, one increasingly must go through insurmountable efforts for gaining permission.

Our cultural artefacts, once made public, are by the nature of being public an integral part of our living culture. No artist, business person, philosopher, architect, scientist, etc. works in a vacuum. These workers gain inspiration and insight experiencing our shared culture, shared reality, which is infused with the very products of their creative labours.

Many political representatives would prefer to maintain the status quo, lie in the womb of industry, or to stick their heads under the ground, pretending the impossible safety of passed years still exists. We need political leaders with the foresight to present a concrete vision for improving Canada and leading to a better future.

Two fellows argued near a phone. One of them, greying hair, a turpentine diluted blue cardigan, gestured with both hands. The other rolled his eyes up and tilted his head sideways. He made fleeting eye contact and though not the elder, he was the taller. They spoke urgently, probably not clearly but I was too far away to hear. Their urgencies pushed through different happenstances. The taller one that often looked away, spoke less. Maybe he used shorter or quicker words.

The greying man raised his hands, hovered them somewhere between shoulder and head. Palms open and facing each other, they shook slightly in the space around his words. I think he asked for understanding, believing it’d be enough. Maybe he demanded a responsibility in full or he plead for the importance of one little family event. No saying.

The taller fellow, it turns out, wasn’t quite yet a man. Perched on stilt legs, his thick parka quietly bulged resistance around his torso. Birds puff their feathers to portray an image of dominance or the selfish impression thereof.

Finally, the tall one raised his hands in a gesture (probably unintentional) that mimicked the greying man. He didn’t look the greying man in the eye—just extended one leg in the opposite direction and followed it with the other. He stepped from the hip, in measures like a metronomic pigeon. His shoulders raised high and bent to incline the upper portion of the parka. He continued a few beats to the next corner. The greying fellow, resigned, strode away, his face empty and cheeks adroop.

1) Knock (together) on the side of a fishtank–they won’t mind, even at 2 AM
2) Puddles, immersive treatments to all the world’s puddles
3) Treat it to a bedtime story
4) Show the crook of your shoulder to a good friend and the slipper; then they’ll have something in common
5) Lie down outside someone else’s disco and watch the stars
6) Buy it a habanero pepper, on you
7) X-Ray its innards for signs of peppers (slipper’s consent)
8) Teach it basic piano theory
9) Perch it on the shoulder that does not house a parrot
10) Outline Peruvian buildings on white page halves but let it colour them in
11) Before and after photos
12) Mentally note the level of paranoia downstairs neighbours exude per squish on the squish
13) Name it after your first true love
14) The cavity behind a pomegranate seed feels fibrous, like bone, which gets you thinking about singing

He went around the side of the house and climbed over a broken fence. Climbing it was easy, the fence gave way, giving him way, and soon he’d stepped through enough waist-deep shrubs and weeds to gather their briars, hooks, and brown hitch-hiking bits from his pants for a bouquet of prickly plumes, which he tossed to the overgrown field. He set his bag on the ground, pushing aside some dead brown fronds. The field crowded itself, oblivious to the old endeavours of absent people. He’d work fast. Eyeing the sky, clouds were closing over the hills, ready to encroach on the old house. Everything was encroaching on the old house.

He unzipped the bag and lifted a solid, single lens reflex camera into the air. Digital never would compare to the uncanny accuracy of analog, which glaciated from molten instants of reality. Digital broke all that up into pieces. Every few months a company made those pieces smaller and more numerous, which would arrive to the applause of loving technophiles and neophyte consumers. He looked up, nervous. Not much time. Clouds furiously devoured blue. Tossing the camera strap over his head, he stepped from the bag and approached the side door.

The old house, unmaintained, was tending toward paint shedding; its wooden corners and even the door’s hinge had crumbled. It didn’t squeak when he pulled but rust rained. Rotten wood—the smell was strong before it escaped, he knew it right from the start. It had a barn, which trailed behind like a kid sibling. Except the barn was bigger. He considered it his find, though plenty of others remained throughout the Cape Breton countryside.

Entering, at first just black. He blinked several times. His pupils dilated and the black flooded away from shapes of reason. There were stairs, up, like a powdery skeleton. He wouldn’t try them. The kitchen had been ransacked a long time ago. Unopened cans of wax beans and corn, from defunct companies, lay on their sides. Cupboards, partially open, revealed a few remaining dishes and a lot of dust. The oven gaped out of habit. People used to feed it cookies or roasts but it wasn’t hungry anymore. He noticed the weak tendrils of light stretching from the window. It might be enough. His camera pointed toward the oven, he started snapping. The film advanced and he thought he may have captured the moment. He’d try a few with a flash for safety. He snapped quickly, hoping to catch whatever he could. He’d find out what was worthwhile later, after developing the negatives.

He’d picked up a lot of skill in the past years and made up for gaps in his professionalism with experimentation and quantity. Once in a while he framed that feral bastard image—the sort that astonished those unable to imagine such things issuing from his camera. As he turned toward the dining room, blades of grass bowed the air, moving as though their backs were stiff. They didn’t move much. Only three or four had been able to poke through the floor boards. Near a segmented foot of the table, missing a corner, some newspaper bit had papier machéd itself to a wooden plank. The grass would welcome that foothold in the near future. An overturned candle holder remained on the table but no plates. He snapped at it, the camera superficially recorded the scene like a first introduction. The photographer remembered he wanted to hike back to his car before the clouds let loose with what they would.

Taking cautious steps toward the door, something flashed from the corner of the adjacent room—just inconspicuous enough to almost miss his attention. He stopped. Turning to the missed room, he walked in carefully, not wanting to trigger unexpected collapses in the floor. He pulled off the lens cap, maybe the light would be ok. Though the room seemed mostly empty, he was sure something had reflected a bit of light. Then in a corner he saw, barely, dull shimmering. He walked forward, still aware of the unsure floor. After a few steps he stopped, heart pounding, and realized that something other than an old object in the midst of decay, emitted the shimmering.

A young woman stood there breathing quietly and appearing wary but not frightened. Her shirt was covered with many pieces of differently-sized reflective glass and she seemed sure of her place. The photographer put his camera aside knowing this would be a more involved discussion than those in which he’d politely ask if he could take a picture. Normally, he didn’t truly ask. He just said “Don’t mind if I take a picture, do you?” with his camera poised, ready. The rhetorical question implied automatic permission. The tactic seemed inappropriate for the moment. She stared at him. She didn’t smile. In her eyes, deeply far back, there was an undelineated question. He saw it and knew she didn’t or wouldn’t say if she did mind.

The room was under a somnolent spell. He gestured for her to come forward. Although he tried not to disturb anything, he’d taken little care of the house itself and didn’t have the impression that he was tresspassing. He didn’t think of himself as being unwelcome in her place. In spite of her presence, he didn’t think it belonged to her. But he didn’t think these things either. He just wasn’t conscious of the possibility, and so he didn’t worry. He didn’t think he was frightening her, not exactly. She stood in temperance and clarity without exuding fear. Usually people recognize fear in one another. It’s a contagion for some and a calling to others.

The photographer gestured, wanting her to step forward, away from the wall. He desperately wanted her in a picture. The light-starved house made the best of her shirt of mirrors. Its small fount of light flowing from the kitchen window reflected from her unusual shirt and brushed tentative touches at the walls. Though she moved slightly, the light occasionally touched the photographer. She didn’t come forward. He put the lid on his camera and gestured again. Giving up the shot might be the only way to get it, he strategized.

“Who are you?” he asked. She didn’t respond. “I’m Phil—short for Phillip” he continued. She stepped forward, unhurried. He noticed she was holding a blue sweatshirt in her left hand. It was the kind with a hood and zipper. It had been worn frequently. “I’m Phil. I thought this place was abandoned.” He said, hoping that the name repetition would impact, hoping she’d introduce herself. He was suddenly ashamed that he hadn’t knocked or called inside the house before entering.

“I don’t know,” she said in an absent-minded voice, “I don’t know what to call the place.”

“Do you live here?” He was coming to his senses and manners.

“I wouldn’t say that. No, it’s not mine, not my place.” Her voice trailed off half way through the sentence as though another thought occupied her. Phil felt relief, which surprised him because he hadn’t been conscious of needing relief.

He was dazzled by her shirt, which shimmered. “I, I’m just taking some pictures. I’m an amateur photographer. I’ve had a few photos published in travel magazines so I thought this might go with a piece on the local history’s undiscovered places.”

“I can see that.”

“I drove out from my hotel in town. I passed by the other day. This house, barely surviving, modestly bears its history. It has the right losses to make its character dear. That’s my hope, err that’s my hope if I can capture one or two good shots.”

“You think this is the character of this town? Of your visit?”

Eschewing a direct response, he continued “It’s not that I expect lots of people will suddenly come here on holiday. It would be the type of story that pushes a bit of adventure during the main trip, it’s an experience is all. People usually get caught up reading that sort of thing and then think they’ll have a surprise adventure just by going on any old trip in the area.”

“Not much surprise here.”

“You surprised me.”

She began putting on her sweatshirt. One arm draping it to the side, the other slid through the well worn sleeve, hoisting it onto her shoulder so the other arm could repeat the process. Suddenly she’d dimmed the shimmering mirror bits and was a dull presence in the corner.

“Permit me to take your picture?” His voice inflected more statement than question.

“Go ahead,” she said.

He alternated between several conclusions. She could be a vagrant. She was probably homeless and chose this house as a convenient place to sleep on her way elsewhere. She’d want money in exchange for the picture. How long had she been there? “And I thought the picture could be in that mirror shirt.” Phil replied.

“Does it matter much?” She asked.

“I’ve never seen one like it.” Needing to charm her, make her receptive to his way of thinking, he set about sharing ease through banter. “It makes an impression and speaking of impressions, if this house doesn’t belong to you, why are you here?”

He just wanted her photo. It had become essential to his trip so the closing clouds weighed lightly on his urgency. His imperative had shifted. He’d probably neglect her story, though the site of her would add gritty sparkle to the article.

“Your camera gives you reason, I however, seem to be at a loss.” She looked sleepy and spoke carelessly. She let on little, offering nothing. She looked him in the eyes but emoted neutrality and keeping his gaze steady, she dragged a brown, chipped chair that propped the wall or (vice versa) in front of her and sat as a neglected bureaucrat might, with indifferent purpose. “I’m a detail.”

Her uncanny gaze felt important but in its neutrality he was confused. Invested with one goal—he had to get her picture, dressed in the mirror shirt. Surveying the room, he noticed other objects. A hammer with its broken handle lay on the ground, broken picture frames were close, and a dust-ridden set of ancient headphone remains lay coiled in the dust. It didn’t take long to notice these items. But in the short span that he did, the woman looked different. Her considerable hair thickened slightly. Maybe it was the light. Not to be thrown off course, he asked for the picture again. “Would you stand in your incredible mirror shirt instead of the sweatshirt?”

“I could. I don’t mind. A funny thing is—I should tell you, when I wear that shirt, I feel like crowds of people are rushing past me. Do you know the feeling? Like on a busy street, where a crowd of everybodies goes somewhere at the same time.”

He got it—all the fragments of reflection surrounding her—a point of reference in the common gush of detail that was the house. It dawned on him that he’d taken many pictures. He savoured hopes of stark images, the broken characters of gone objects, and the uninvited views of loss that he may have framed. But these framed images would exclude real context. They’d lack the broken feet of the table they were placed upon, the cobwebs connecting those feet, the defunct duster sitting nearby, which once would have been used against the cobwebs, which would only have been noticed when sunlight hit them from just the right angle of the window and the boughs of the apple tree outside were being blown to the side, not blocking the sunlight. Instead the images’ only context would be the context he defined, it was his frame. All-of-a-sudden he felt himself a traitor.

Details implicitly entrusted their dimensions to him. Lifting the details’ existence, he passed their images to blank pages and walls. Those images—represented and rerepresented—on every repetition and viewing, their freshly vulgar presence strengthened the treason of one existence for the structure of another. But, he argued with himself, there were no laws or social pressures against pictures. Photo art was loved for its creative treason. Where most people did not or could not go, a few could quietly or quixotically trample and pass their tramplings off as revered artifacts. Occasionally money or museum walls represented such artifice. He was a traitor.

In the space removed from the edges of his clicking frames, scraps of house fell away like shreds of photographic waste from master cutsmen. Could he capture an image with more than his frame? Could he inveigle the space that would border it, potentially empty, with less emptiness? Even so, outside of the house, peoples’ experience of it would be, at best, a bit of essence, and at worst, counterfeit. Framing any image left no choice but to betray it as something new. He’d have to betray the objects’ presence, all their wonderful placement within the connections of context.

She removed her sweatshirt. The edges of her shoulders defined the room in glass, reflecting rather than absorbing as the sweatshirt had. The mirror shirt reflected the crossing wooden beams that spanned the ceiling. The mirrors tossed glimpses of the table, dirty bronze door knobs, curled magazine covers, the mute blend of chlorophylled greens that leaked from empty window panes, and walls. All shimmering upon the rhythm of her breathing. In reflecting borders of the space, her mirrors communicated. Fluid and slow, her movement suggested the desire of stasis.

“Maybe I won’t share the photos.” He offered.

“No, don’t neglect this place. It’s not just a ruin, not just abandoned, but also not just adventure.” She said. “Your pictures will be passed from eye to eye, people appreciating their edges and shadows. The house is falling. Trees and obnoxious weeds climb it, growing roots and branches and occupying it themselves.” Encouraging his haste, she continued “The rain is coming down and you’ve spent an afternoon talking to me. Now you’ll get wet as you leave.”

He uncapped his camera lens, raising it to his eye before her presence. The difficulty of framing her burdened him. How could he show this to a crowd so that in passing, people would not see the framing as anything but an absence? What did she say, her shirt, to them? Her mirrors revealed tell-tale leaks of his treason, every photo recording it for common knowledge.

Then he needed his photos, rapidly cast, clicked and captured, to tell her story, the story of the house. That which catches peoples’ attention at first, with luster, becomes familiar and covers its luster. People lose interest or don’t appreciate the details that originally stood forward. The old house, its history presented with details of adventure to unknown travellers ahead, would be like that. And perhaps that was what drove him to snap her picture.

“I used to follow the odd jobs truck down the street when I’d see it. My friends did too, we all went together. We’d run, skate, or bicycle as fast as we could to keep up. Usually it would pass us easily but we could see it far enough ahead that we could catch up once he stopped. There weren’t many hills in our town, at least not in the neighbourhood where most of us lived, nor in the downtown. It wasn’t the easiest, anyway.

On summer days, sometimes you could see something, like the blank space of the world was bending slowly up from the ground. We’d be so hot, not wanting to even touch the ground on our knees (the way children often do to examine an insect). You knew that it would be a lousy bit of luck if someone pushed you into one of those overgrown juniper hedges—somehow the scratching and their smell goes hand-in-hand with those hot days. If you’ve ever smelled a hot juniper you’ll know what I mean. I’ll always think of juniper as an unbearable torture for the flesh of a sunstruck day.

One day, we’re all chasing the odd jobs truck. We assume someone needed a fence fixed or something like that. His truck stops and he gets out, he heads into the house—doesn’t ring the doorbell or even knock. We were surprised because it wasn’t his house. It was Mrs. Kary’s. She was Junk’s mom but Junk wasn’t with us that day. Usually he’d be chasing the odd jobs truck just like the rest of us. Anyway, we waited for a few minutes. Since the odd jobs man didn’t come back to his truck quickly, we assumed he had a more difficult job on-hand.

We were curious enough to tunnel through the juniper in front of the Karys’ house. We managed, under cover of prickly juniper, to close the gap between the road and the side window of the house. After getting close enough, we craned our necks to peer inside. We saw the odd jobs man standing in front of Mrs. Kary and Junk. Mrs. Kary seemed to be holding Junk. Junk had what looked like a big hole in his right cheek. It wasn’t bleeding or anything like that, it was just a clean hole.

The odd jobs man licked Junk’s right cheek. He kept licking, over and over, while we watched. After a quarter hour or so, the odd jobs man moved aside and we all saw, Junk didn’t have that hole anymore. His cheek looked normal. Junk, trembling, looked like he kept silent. The odd jobs man seemed satisfied with his work, winked at Mrs. Kary, and stepped around Junk to her direction. She kept still. Methodically, the odd jobs man sat down at the piano and started playing. We couldn’t hear but Junk smiled, so it must’ve been good. Then he picked up his box of tools and left the Kary house.”

I keep a small, spiral-bound notepad in my left back pocket. No, I’ve kept many. I’ve done this for years. Looking back, I’m not always sure what I’ve written or why, but I save them. A collection of a few of the pages:

• 23 July 1998 - First words with the Fisher Space Pen. Do we need a new scientific method? This Saturday, Mary’s Birthday.
• 25 July 1998 - Find out the pronunciation of “Bogota”
• 8 August 1998 - Bitten by an unidentified bug. Moments later saw extremely large roach-like bug in the men’s restroom. Never seen such a thing. It played the disappearing act only moments after being sighted. The restroom was otherwise empty. Sounds: chairs scratching the floor. CDs: new Squirrel Nut Zippers.
• September 1998 - 25 divided by 8. 4 3 3 4 3 3 1 4
• 21 October 1998 - My eyes are dying.
• 29 October 1998 - Remember always that not every area of M.O.N. must be concerned with that ultimate universal nirvanic reality. It will be necessary even for parts to lead askew. Just as a good fictional work may have characters one abhors or a painting may be of ugly things but brilliant nonetheless. Sunday = Derek & Mike –> vision @ tilden w/assistance.
• 18 November 1998 - Look up the poet, Wallace Stevens
• 15 December 1998 - Why can’t she just say she doesn’t like him?
• 20 December 1998 - Intuition - Bernard Lonergan > insight
• 8 January 1999 - Nine slender eggplants or two small globe (2 lbs), parsley
• 12 January 1999 - Roberto Matta, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington
• 19 March 1999 - The failure of physics is answered by being. I need to find new communication ways–people don’t get it.
• 28 April 1999 - Protest against Occidental Oil, drilling in Uwa territory
• 21 August 1999 - The stage would have one row of three or four people each playing a theremin (sometimes synchronized–sometimes solo improvising) Behind would be a row of four to six drummers–all different sorts of tribal drums.
• 4 October 1999 - To Head Home

On the table top, and in the barely dark, dry and not imposing any urgency.

I looked at marbles today. Swirling lake reflections of spirals, cat eyes, and occasional small bubbles. A white background of no consequence, pushing through the imperfect glass. One marble chipped here or there. You touch such things by rubbing a thumb against the angular flat outsider of a surface. Leibniz, all making possibilities, as the glass clack gulps in unique bounce vibrations, echo through a human chest (following fingers that pushed the sparkling marbles against one another).

Not so much the marbles, white, and glass, but rather the ever more delicate sponginess of a bio corpus dei something or other, natively said. On the table top (as though they could have been marbles in a different contrast) against a neglectfully polished black background. Light twining like the intention of thought escaping beyond one’s skull. You touch such things by this intention but there is no more escape than there is skull. Patience on the tongue lasts for millennia; sometimes I look at objects without intention, though am content, for as long.

Addendum: Just noticed, in writing this last night (it came in the midst of writing something else, where it just didn’t fit) a phrase from the other writing seems to have crept into this. Why does that feel reassuring?

Four sets of photos, sketches, and text accomplished in four different Montreal parks (fifteen minutes each). First day of Spring.

On the night before, I slept very little to ensure I’d sleep the next night. That next night held a flight–an entire night mixed up with invisible hands batting our poor vessel about the sky.

Piano sound carries itself
winking uponaround three flights of interwoven logs:
    Trees petrified in
    preservation of paint and
    stoic service.
It floats into round-edged crevices,
fitting log upon, in log.

By morning I’d managed to clock, at most, two hours of catnaps. Crossing over an arc of land, through turbulence that mimicked some other arc of land (as though clouds mold themselves into, on such topology). I’d been packaged and unpacked in regular patterns.

Wooden beams cross more than the ceiling
across ceiling and walls and floors.

We all walked through the same long glass hallway and felt the sharp bite of cold between plane and hall. Came to some curves and went down stairs. I know the place was marked well or I wouldn’t have found my way.

Logs interconnect.
Stacked and crossed,
angling into the ceiling.
Through gaps in wooden railings:
				seeing Couples
play cards, chess, other games, laughing sometimes.

I think they might’ve needed a passport though. Pass port. A flight as port? Port to something. The customs room maybe. Was this a customs room, human port?

Families sit,
children exploring a hexagonal circumference
of fireplace,
roars, placidly.
They re-meet at intervals.
Toward the ceiling, heat climbs
in lax pursuit of piano notes.

This flesh and blood foreshadow–a special trick, and I started to guess about, and my limited memory of spoken French. It was my turn to pretend I’d woken from a full night’s sleep.

A man sits on a striped chair,
(red shirt rumpled in relaxation).
He'd have grand children.
His white-haired wife walks to the chair
		by his side and sits.
The two gesture to each other
before opening books--
dice tumble. Hockey sticks, skis, people pass through.

Quiet corners lack people. Sitting with a dim lamp to my left, It yellows the green marble table and reflects my white coffee cup. Nice white–best showing of coffee bean brown, barely separable from enfolding beams of wood–note.

Observing
is outside time
though the reflection
of woods
cradles all of us
before passage.

When he was a boy, he’d accompany one parent or another to banks, convenience stores, hardware stores, places queueing people to exchange money for whatever it was worth. He’d stand by the counter waiting to be noticed. Sensible, he waited in line, not interrupting, rocking from heel to toe to heel. Sometimes grownups pushed ahead and he continued to wait. Clerks didn’t know he was waiting, a part of the sequence.

Sometimes when his mother was paying, he’d stand on his toes hoping to catch a glimpse of the person at the other side of the counter. He’d see only the underside of the counter (its gallery of cherry, grape, and wintergreen-coloured stalactites) or the edge of its platform (fractured formica edges). He’d jump to get a better look but his mother eventually nixed that. Sometimes his father would say “my son would like…” but that didn’t help because he still couldn’t see the person. Even when they spoke to him, they talked to the top of his head.

He remembered when his eye-level passed the top of the counter. He liked the ball-bearing chains, which attached pens to the countertop–metallic snakes that forgot about friction. After being told not to play with them, he pushed their beads silently against his fingertips to feel roundness. Even once he could see across the countertop, he still had to reach, awkwardly twisting his shoulder to place money onto the platform. Finally, paying required concentration (the surety of adult action takes time).

When he was older and taller, he placed his hands comfortably on the countertop and spoke. The clerk noticed him out of duty rather than curiousity. With the countertop below his hands, he made eye contact, smiling with the courtesy of a small but genuine gratitude. She returned the smile while handing him the receipt for his groceries.

The Phy-d’eau wiki is resurrected as the Idea Toy Wiki. A wiki devoted to creating, collecting, publishing, taxonomizing, and discussing thinking organisms as well as their relatives: thought experiments, koans, tantalizing paradoxes, unsolvable logic mechanisms, etc. The goal is to develop a collection of work written just to provoke thinking without a defined end, thinking for the sake of thinking, insight, and awareness.

Why did I do this? Because these things fascinate me. I came up with a notion for “thinking organisms” in 1995, writing my first experiment in the medium, Idea Toy: A Game for Evolving. Based on that name and the general idea of what a thinking organism is, I thought it would be interesting to collect things of a similar nature (thought experiments, koans, etc. as listed above) and organize them in a wiki so that other people could contribute and discuss. Besides, the old Phy-d’eau creative works wiki seemed to have reached the end of its life.

Thinking organisms are, as the name implies, organisms that one creates purely as thinking. The term does not refer to organisms that think, rather “thinking” is used as a gerund. Thinking organisms remain within one’s mind where they grow and evolve as an organism might were it physical.

The purpose of a thinking organism is to engage the thinker, in ongoing thinking. A successful thinking organism continues to evolve as though on its own even while the thinker is not consciously engaged in thinking on it. When the thinker returns his or her focus to it, it seems to have changed or evolved so that now the thinker has a different insight on it or greater awareness of something in reality because of it.

A thinking organism should be apprehended in a basic form by the thinker, and then grow and evolve as the thinker spends time with it. Like a koan, thinking organisms are not intended to be solved. Thinking organisms are simply “presencing”.

A cold polished stone
lolls on my tongue.
I curl the edges,
rolling the stone to the center
cradling it in a
sway of undulating
taste buds.

My tongue spoons
this sip of scotch,
   rolling it
   like a flaming
   dollop of viscous honey,
down my throat--
	yellow and round
	an invisible note
	of buoyant Bosch.

One morning, driving along the river, outside my neighbourhood, I witnessed the rapid welcome of a brilliant, melancholy, antique cloud. It descended at an angle from the unlimited above, with its measure of a western direction. I wanted to stop. At 7:00 in the morning with no temperature, few people appear on the street. A homeless man, waiting for warm coffee forgot about warmth and stood to face the cloud. People steamed from doorways of vapour and pointed their heads to the sky–all looking at this visiting cloud. I wanted to stop. Its ambiguous form coiled in renaissance detail. In furiously cracking oils, it dripped controlled goose feather greys and fox browns inward. But the fury acted upon itself only for form and not malice. People watched fairy tales tumble to saturated rooftops. Street stones lightened their press toward Earth. The cloud hovered toward a sheet of sun that pushed the opposing flat expanse of concrete nimbostratus, which would swallow the awe. I wanted to stop but it was gone and I continued slowly.

• My wife is a professional at human emotions.
• Humans believe that which other humans tell them.
• James quoted Smith, saying a door in the hall lost its hinge pin.
• Smith agreed with himself while historically throwing a hinge to roving garbage collectors.
• If streets roam, their participants stray.
• 1906 infamously smoulders on the pages of records of hooligans and other street scoundrels.
• Because Earth requires the blankets of a thousand winter elephants, it ciao-ed to Atlas.
• Piano keys evaporate
• Beasts too, they finished evaporating mostly in 1906, but entirely, after halls were erected.
• The allowance of blanket beings has improved.
• Professionals agree that improvement used to be happier.