The Making of Collages (4)

From August 6, 2010 (4)

The Making of Collages (3)

The Making of Collages (2)

This begins a series of collages--for the next two weeks--made in the winter and spring of 2010. Each collage became, for me, a point of meditation, an insight into the post-modern age.

Each collage is a visual cut-up. The narrative running through our minds of how the world is constructed, how it works, is ended by tearing it into pieces. The random re-organization of these pieces gives us a new narrative, a new insight into how things work.

A longer introduction to The Making of Collages can be found in the posting of last June 28th.

At the Rose Garden (2)

At the Rose Garden

Trees on UBC Campus (3)

Trees on UBC Campus (2)

From August 11, 2010

More rowan trees...

From August 9, 2010

From August 9, 2010

The rowan tree tells us to embrace the future and our vision of life

Rowan trees in Vancouver

You don't see many rowan trees in Montreal but they are common in Vancouver. The abundance of the rowan berries and their deep orange colour make it a particularly visible tree, it stands out among all of the other trees. And it must have always stood out from other trees, it was important to the Celts who gave it added significance as a source of divination. The rowan also suggested to the Celts the presence of the divine in the mundane.

Often, when the unconscious mind makes itself heard, it is when we have passed through a significant time in one's life, a time of change, or insight, or struggle. This may happen when we become aware of messages from dreams, or some other experience occurs, a series of synchronistic experiences, a period of creativity, or an experience of the divine, of God communicating to us. Perhaps we are not aware of the significance of what is happening when it is happening, but it is clear later on that one has passed through a important event in one's life. This is what the rowan tree suggests to me when I place it in the context of what I have written and done this summer, it confirms to me the psychic importance of this summer.

Despite even my own expectations and idea of myself, I have always embraced the future, believed in the future and believed in going where life may take me. I may seem fairly conservative but that's my persona; in fact, I have not really lived a conservative life at all. I have had an introverted and mental life, a life of creativity and deeply felt emotions, a life of poetry, teaching, partnership with my wife, family, and a lifelong relationship with God. The rowan tree, whether fully grown on a residential street in Vancouver, or not much bigger than a shrub on Spanish Bank Beach also here in Vancouver, reminds me of this lesson in life: we need to embrace the future and speak our vision of life no matter how few people agree with us. This is what life is all about if you want to live fully.

Dream Journeys: Greenpoint

Dr. William P. Morrissey, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NYC

Greenpoint

“Are we in Greenpoint?” I asked, looking
at maps of Brooklyn.
Once I looked at old photographs of Greenpoint,
it was prosperous then, and now I leave
the room I am renting for a tour of the area
on my bike. I recognize the buildings
and monuments but they are all larger
than expected. There is city hall,
dirty from years of car and truck exhaust,
then an empty lot where grass seed was being watered.
I enter a tunnel leading to where my relatives
lived in Greenpoint; there is a large church
at the end of their street, the church roof
has collapsed. Two men
stand on a crowded street corner,
“The air here is bad,” I say to them,
“as soon as you leave the tunnel
it is smokey, polluted, everything here
is run-down, poor.” One man says
he’s moving a few blocks
to get out of the area.
I think of visiting the church,
what is left behind.

After Monet

Two short videos of the effect of light on water. Both filmed at the Nitobe Memorial Gardens on the campus of UBC, July 11, 2010. Homage to the master, Claude Monet (1840 - 1926).

Dream Journeys: The Journey Home

4) Bleak House

This will always be Bleak House to me,
Dickensian in its silence and shame.
A place where
I retreated
to a second floor room
and lay low,
as animals do when
they are being stalked.

What binds us to
our silent jailors?
They are shadows or a mirror
cracked diagonally, held
in its wooden frame by dust
and the weight of glass shards
wedged together. A single breath
or movement would disturb
this broken mirror,
send it crashing to the floor.

But these relationships survive;
none of us want to end the complex
arrangement of shards of mirror
resting on broken mirror;
we are dependent
on each other
to maintain the hope
that one day
we might find love.
We stay afraid and alone,
become liars, dissemblers;
even if we escape Bleak House
we still have our secret name,
written in invisible ink,
in a passport: Castrato,
Benedict Arnold, Fools’ Pope.

Dream Journeys: The Journey Home

3) Oxford Avenue

I arrive at Oxford Avenue
where I grew up;
at the front door
a man’s corpse
sits in an upright position,
as though he had died
in the midst of pausing
to think or remember something.

We come and go all day
and I worry about a neighbour
discovering the corpse,
there are already flies
circling around his head
and I need to do other things
than worry about his being discovered.

Later, a sheet is placed
over the corpse, as one would cover a sofa
or armchair for the summer months
when away in the country,
or how I remember
the furniture in Grandmother’s
living room, a white sheet
on the maroon couch.

We come and go all day
but he remains at the door,
a sentinel or sleeping guard
to remind me of something I’ve forgotten.
I worry about the smell,
the flies, the signs of decomposition,
and the police arriving.

When I return that evening
he is gone and I am relieved:
but who was this corpse?
Could he have been Father,
or someone I have forgotten
or never knew, the white sheet
a shroud, like a body
found in the frozen north,
preserved by the cold,
lips pulled back, grinning
yellow wolf’s teeth.

Shamanic animals for suburbia

Here are some shamanic animals for people living in suburbia, found in Zeller's at Oakridge Mall in Vancouver.

Dream Journeys: The Journey Home

2) Visiting Great Aunt Edna

I return to Girouard Avenue
to visit Great Aunt Edna,
the only one of three elderly sisters
still alive and residing
at Grandmother’s flat.
She was Grandmother’s
youngest sister, a Sweeney
who married a Taylor
and lived only blocks
from where I now live,
with her husband Bert,
and Howard, their son,
who had some grievance
against his parents
and moved far away
from Montreal because of it.

But first the car’s gear shift
comes off in my hand
and trying to repair it,
I crawl into the car’s body
to screw the gear shift
back in place,
and discover the car
is a wooden vessel,
a web of slats
covered with plywood,
almost paper thin
for lightness.

We arrive at the Girouard Avenue 

flat to find garbage cans
by the curb. Aunt Edna
is not home. Inside there is
a third story staircase
I didn’t know existed;
it has windows facing the street.
The rooms off the stairs
are bright with natural light.
I wonder if they are heated
in winter or if sunlight
is enough to heat these rooms.
There is no sign of anyone here,
how quiet and serene
to walk through these empty rooms,
where three old ladies lived
and now only one remains.