I like you people.

I don't know how this blog will keep up, but if you have tumblr and like feminism, Edmonton, the Mountain Goats, and books, welp. I am here.

we can bury our time capsule in a pothole

I just went for a walk, nominally to buy cigarettes, but mostly because I bought rainboots yesterday and wanted an excuse to walk/stomp in every puddle I encountered. Which is something you should try, by the way. You end up feeling powerful, in a way, especially if you're like me and have spent the past however many years avoiding them. "Fuck you, melting snow!" you can say in your head. Or out loud. Whichever. Anyways, the melting snow and all of the mud and dirt that go with it made me think that if I were to create an Edmonton archive, it would contain the following:

• a taxidermied magpie
• a Roll Up the Rim cup, found on the side of the road
• a broken snow shovel
• photographs of all our friends who've moved away, in memory
• a jar of mud from the river

And we could bury it all in a pothole and wait about fifty years until it gets covered over. All of that is to say, I really don't know what I'd put in an Edmonton archive. Considering that I'd like to be an archivist, you'd think it would be easy. But I actually have no idea. It's hard to decide what's important, isn't it? What seems like it would be at the time might not be, really.

 I keep thinking about that Pine Point documentary, too. I've been looking at the website, and he's got a whole digital archive there of things he's collected himself and from other people. And I really like that idea. I always make fun of scrapbookers -- because do you really not have anything better to do with your time than caption photos of your golden retriever with Comic Sans praises? -- but in a way, they're doing something good. They're collecting their own memories. Creating their own archives, as it were.

Really, I like the idea of personal archives more than official ones, even. Have you ever stopped in one of those dinky little museums you find on the side of the highway sometimes? Curated by an elderly woman who gets super excited when you come in because you're her first visitor in a week? Go in next time you see one. Ostensibly they're about a place, or an event, but a lot of the time it's made up of stuff people have donated. Personal stuff. Letters, photographs. And they put it there maybe because they want to help commemorate something, but also because people are terrified of being forgotten and there's something about sharing such private things. Back to the Pine Point thing -- this guy is so intent on remembering a place that's already been forgotten, really. Because there's really nothing left. Literally nothing left. And I've forgotten where I'm going with this, sorry. But there's beauty in that. I love that archives can be anything. Whatever is important to you, you can collect. I save everything, I love physical objects, my bedroom is a shrine to the past fifteen years. An archive of Sam, as it were. An archeological dig site, if I get lazy and don't clean.

Back to everything/Pine Point/memory, I think that's what I'm going to do for my presentation, actually. Make some sort of collective archive of people, of us, of their and our memories and thoughts about this place at this moment. Oh goodness. I just had a good idea. We'll see if it's workable.

ANYWAYS. I'm slightly drunk, so excuse any "wtf is she even on" moments. And last last thing, speaking of archives, the Provincial Archive is opening for the Rural Alberta Advantage tomorrow night, apparently. So someone said. You might want to check it. It really is fitting, after all.

I really do want to work in a basement for the rest of my days.

I'm on a bus, waiting for it to leave the transit centre, having an oh shit moment, not on a smartphone. this is simply an acknowledgement of the fact that i've forgotten to write one for now (blaming my very distracting boyfriend  mountain of essays to write), and i'll do it when I get home. even though it'll be late. SORRY.

I went on an adventure tonight.

I won't describe it in great detail, because it was one of those things that are really only interesting to those who take part, you know? Anyways, we went to the north side to look at a car, and got off the bus too early because someone pulled the cord before they had to and we're the kind of people who don't like to admit to our mistakes or whatever. So we ended up walking for about fifteen minutes through this slightly sketch neighbourhood, and it was like walking on the goddamn moon, because it was fucking cold and windy (which, as an aside, I can haz sunshine?), and there were windrows and ice craters, which are just hazards to balance-challenged people like me.

I felt like a tourist and/or an astronaut, s'what I'm getting at. I hardly go over there, and -- I told this story a couple of times in discussions today -- the first time I really did, they dropped me at the Clareview LRT station only to discover that my friend's friend had had the bumper stolen from his truck; it was so stereotypically north end that I couldn't help but laugh, shitty thing though it was. Today I was meant to serve as "protection" or some such, which...lulz, no. The point here is that I have the same stereotypes that so many others do. And walking through that neighbourhood made me realise again exactly how little of the city I really know outside of my bubble. I feel like a tourist on the north side, the south side, in the satellite towns. When I try to conceptualize them, I end up just filling them in with the places I do know, and (except in the case of the Safeway/TD banks thing everywhere, which is true), it's all wrong. And this is a strange city to be a tourist in (do we even get that many real tourists? Or is Daryl Katz going to give us a new boost in that way, too?), because...really? People want to visit? How odd.

In all seriousness, I think it's good to be a tourist in your own city sometimes, really. Getting out of your comfort zone, seeing things that happen elsewhere, well, isn't that the point of touristing?  I don't know that you can have a full understanding of a place if you haven't seen or experienced as much of it as possible. Degrees and kinds of understanding exist, obviously, but to get the most out of it you need to explore as much as possible. Do what you're interested in. You're a tourist, after all.

It also just occurred to me that Edmonton is two or three cities: what it actually, objectively is -- a city with a million people, thousands of trucks, and a lot of ugly buildings; the way you see it personally; and the way everyone else sees it. All of these combine on some level to create what the city is, overall -- maybe there's no uniformly "Edmonton" thing (and I don't think there is), and how we see it in our own minds and which...oh god, that just cycles back on itself, doesn't it? That'll teach me to try and blog at 1:30 in the morning. I promise it makes sense when you think about it, though. I'd almost say that how we perceive it is the most important thing, really, since perception does shape so much of our understanding.

After all that we ended up in Dairy Queen, having a Blizzard because that's what you do when it's cold and windy, obviously. And that was my fabulous adventure, with all the cute bits left out so you wouldn't vomit, guys.

Pine Point & Dead Cities, pt. one.

This came up on my Tumblr feed earlier today, and it seemed like an appropriate thing to share. It's an interactive documentary about a ghost town in the Northwest Territories called Pine Point -- it closed in the late 1980s and now, twenty years later, there's nothing left. Not even the buildings where the townsite was. I spent a lot of time thinking about this (and a good hour or so just researching ghost towns in Alberta), and I do plan on writing a coherent post, but for now, here's just the link.

Pine Point

take the green belt to your house

First, can I say that I really want to be outside right now? I've spent as much time outdoors in the past few days as possible, barring that miserable miserable snow day (which, oh my fuck, whyyy?) I've got to go buy galoshes this weekend, because all I want to do is spend hours walking around. Drifting, even. That's not what this is about, though.

I used to make-believe a lot when I was little. Faeries and ghosts and magic and Ogopogo and the whole lot -- it was all real. I craved the unknown and the unreal, had to seek out everything hidden (fast forward 10 years and I can hardly watch The Ring. Shut up.) I loved all the little places in my gloriously suburban neighbourhood that didn't quite fit the mold -- the "Spanish villa" at the end of the street, or the string of trees along the pathway that had gone slightly wild. They were more interesting than orderly flowerbeds, anyways. Grownup me doesn't believe in faeries or Ogopogo (ghosts are still up for debate, really), but I haven't really lost my taste for the places that exist outside the norm.

When I go wandering, I love taking back alleys and green belts, crossing fields, using paths instead of walking on the main road -- essentially, anything to avoid using the sidewalk. Partly because it feels like an instant adventure -- probably this is a feeling left over from pretending I was a voyageur -- but also because it's straight up more interesting and usually prettier. There actually aren't many alleys around where I live, but there are a few green belts, and it's weird, because the nature in there is so ordered, trees in straight lines and all that nonsense, but if it's done right (or you're in the right mindset), it really can feel as though you're outside the city. Even with the backyards all around, it's just more peaceful, quieter. We need those spaces, I think. It can't be all urban, all the time. So thank god for gas lines?

The alleys, too. I think I love them because oftentimes what's in there is overgrown from people's yards...it's really just accidental, an afterthought. And it sets off so well against the crushed cigarette boxes, hey?  I've seen everything from daisies to overgrown raspberry bushes in alleys, and really, it's that starkness that makes it appeal to me so much. It doesn't fit. It's rather like in Mike Davis' article, with the post-firebombed places where the flowers would spring up, new and in abundance. Life where you wouldn't expect it, I suppose. There's one in particular, not very far from here or the river, and in the summer it's just utterly filled with wild roses. The gravel on the ground and these beautiful pink flowers just above it...I really like the juxtaposition, I suppose.

Which is really what it comes down to, isn't it? What's really so appealing about all of this is how it contrasts with the ordered nature of our usual existence. It's a little beyond the ordinary, and to use a cliche it's often (literally, even!) off the beaten path. It's freeing in that sense. So go exploring.

I spend roughly three hours a day in transit, depending; as a result, it's where I get a lot of my thinking done  about such important issues as whether Jersey Shore is real or if we're all just being trolled by The Situation, or if I should stop and buy Mini Eggs (the answer is always yes), or how I can convince my manfriend to grow his beard and buy a kilt and answer the call of the Scottish Highlands, which, to my complete surprise, he's not really game for. But no, today I had an "oh shit I still have to blog" moment was thinking about what I'd learned in this class, and it ended up cycling back to the bus.

I'm one of those people who's usually tuned out behind headphones from the moment I leave my house until the moment when I absolutely cannot avoid interacting with someone. It's better this way, trust me. Anyways, a couple of weeks ago my beloved, noise-canceling, "I'm wearing these so you won't try to talk to me" headphones broke (snapped, actually, which...I don't even.) On the bus, of course. It was horrid, and since I didn't have time to get to the mall to exchange them, I spent about 10 days alternately fighting with a pair of Apple's piece of shit iPod earbuds and giving up and paying attention to what was going on around me.

It wasn't awful. I mean, the junior high girls talking about J.Biebz and R.Pattz didn't get any less painful. Otherwise, though -- being forced to pay attention to the people I'd never listen to was sort of a learning experience. The kinds of things people will talk about in public never cease to amaze -- I'm looking at you, girl on the 109 talking about her discharge over the phone. Buses move through communities, but they're also tiny moveable communities themselves, and seeing how they function can be kinda cool sometimes. It's also interesting to see how sound or its absence can shape a place -- I never really minded taking the bus, it was almost peaceful, until my headphones broke and I couldn't hide behind Owen Pallett anymore. But when they're taken away, well. Like I said, buses are interesting. I almost want to spend a few hours taking random routes, and just seeing what the people are like, how the buses change depending on the time of day or the destination.

I guess maybe what I'm getting at -- since it's 5:04 and I'm supposed to be posting this four minutes ago, which, sorrysorry -- is that maybe what I've learned the most in 380 is how to experience places and spaces in new ways, and that I should do it more often. I've got my headphones back, thank you dear baby Jesus, but maybe every so often I'll start leaving them off to see what happens and what I hear. Just not on the junior high bus.

When we exchanged maps, I was partnered with Amber and given a map of supposedly haunted places around campus and Old Strathcona, with a quick trip across the river to the Hotel Macdonald. THIS WAS REALLY GREAT, BY THE WAY. (And Amber, if you see this, I forgot to ask/tell you: are you making it public? Because you totally should.) Seriously, I love ghost walks. I keep wanting to do that one around here that they've got in the summer, but everyone calls me a loser and won't go. ANYWAYS.

What I mean to get at with this is that one of the themes of the map was the idea of places having a "dual history" -- the "official" one that everyone knows, the facts and figures and documented things, as well as the other one, what I want to call the colloquial history, the bits and pieces that aren't official or necessarily really there on record, but the stories and legends that everyone knows. I was thinking about it again today with the discussion of the Rossdale site and the fact that everyone just kept forgetting about -- or maybe in some cases, ignoring -- the history and importance of the place. Why? Going back to the dual history thing, I think sometimes that we forget the importance of the other histories, the off the record versions. And this is really rather terrible, when you think about it (aside: I need a synonym for think. Sorry.) The other versions of history are no lesser just because they're not endorsed by the public or the government or whoever the hell is in charge of writing horrible elementary school texts that pretend like racism doesn't exist...the people who decide what should be on record, in other words. The ghost stories I learned probably aren't on official record anywhere (the gruesome murder of a prostitute at the Strat, for instance? And her bloody figure? Probably not going on that plaque on the outside of the building.) I think Amber got at least a few of her stories from Barbara Smith's book Ghost Stories of Alberta, which is, yes, a collection of stories told by one person or a passed among a few over the years.

I think I'd like to see more things like this, really -- collections of the stuff that everybody knows, but isn't really recorded. Or maybe they exist and I just haven't found them? Either way, it'd be cool. And since we're on the topic -- do you kids know any such stories? I'd like to hear them.

PS. Excuse the lateness, dear hearts? I drafted this yesterday (really) and forgot to publish it, and I've just now gotten to a computer.

As someone who doesn't drive, I'm constantly at the mercy of ETS (and their perpetually late buses. Are they still late if they're never on time?) It's annoying, and it does rather prevent any kind of drifting. I went walking around campus the other day, trying to clear my head to write a paper, and it was really fucking weird, to be walking without any kind of direction or set destination. It's always like that. Edmonton is not a city meant for drifting, I don't think. Maybe if you want to drift between giant shopping complexes? Drifting at West Edmonton Mall? We're a driving city, for the most part, and it doesn't work. I move through Edmonton with a purpose, and that makes me slightly sad. The best way to know a city is to walk it, get lost in it, and it's difficult to do when you confine yourself -- on purpose or not -- to the same few areas.

I'd like to do more UrbEx, too. A friend of mine was showing me pictures the other day from when he'd broken into some abandoned building a few months ago -- I can't remember where -- and it was the best thing ever. Apparently there's an abandoned train tunnel around here you can get into fairly easily, and the walls are, naturally, covered in graffiti. I'd like to move through Edmonton like that more, on a mission to see New and Exciting Things.

My laptop battery is about to die, though, and it's Friday and we're going to go celebrate the start of break with beer, AND it's hard for me to be coherent right now, because something really lovely just happened. I might edit this later, if that's allowed? Are there rules about that? I'd like to expand when I can think clearly/rationally.

little houses on the prairie

So I'm trying to come up with a cool idea for a map that's not "here are the same ten places in the Garneau area that the rest of you are using too". The thing is, though, is that I go the same places as everyone else, even if my memories are different and all that jazz. I'm trying very hard not to be boring (hopefully I don't come off as trying too hard, y'know?), and honestly I wish I could like, hand over a list of 10 pubs or something and tell you to be on your merry way, because I think that could potentially be one of the greatest assignments of your undergraduate career. (And now I probably sound like the lush I'm not, excuse me.)

Anyways, in doing that I've gone back to thinking about places and why I like them or cannot stand them. I was having a conversation with someone earlier -- I don't know him all that well -- and we ended up talking for a while about the kind of places we'd like to live when we become Real Adults With Jobs and Lives. I have all these ideas about peace and solitude and 10 foot high hedges and rooms full of books and such, with an old oak forest out back or something. Not suffocating, but small. Protected. Everything he told me he wanted? Lots of space, or at least the illusion of it. And pine trees. Something about how growing up in this province can make you crave wide open spaces, I suppose. 

I didn't grow up there, but my people live in what is possibly the most miserable province in Canada for six months of the year. Possibly all year, come to think of it. Anyways, it's Newfoundland and it's stormy the whole fucking winter (cousins had two weeks of actual snow days last year), and every time I go back I'm kind of struck by all of these tiny little houses, especially when I go to the outports, sort of just there, on the rocks. Basically holding on for dear life. The trees are like it too. But the houses are all so compact, and homey, and that's why it appeals to me, I think.

Where was I going with this? Right. Open spaces. Trees. Mmk. I used to think I hated -- or at least, really disliked -- all the open space we've got going on up here. How you can drive for tens of miles sometimes and see about one tree in the middle of a field and that's it.  But I've realised over the past few months that it's not all that bad. I went skiing in Banff with my family over Christmas, and driving down there, for once in my life I didn't fall asleep as soon as we pulled out of the driveway. So I started looking at all of these fields going by, completely covered in snow, with these huge skies up above. And you know, they're actually kind of beautiful. I still feel completely exposed and rather uncomfortable around them. I couldn't live it. But it's really the same as it is back east: these trees, or these little houses, just completely exposed, clinging on. There's strength in that; it's kind of quiet, but it's lovely and it's there. (Alberta also has llama farms, and I am rather fond of that too.) I can appreciate that.

And that's what I'll keep in mind tomorrow and the next day and the day after that when I'm bitching yet again about how I can't wait to get the fuck out of here. If those trees can stick it out, I guess I can give it another go, right?

Rabbit Hole at the Walterdale PSA

Tomorrow night (Monday night), it's free for students. Just bring your ID. Show's at 8.

One of my best friends is stage managing it, she swears it's gouda. You should come.

"You think drag queens are "scary"? Well I think you're 14 and an idiot."

A couple of weeks ago, I got a text from a friend telling me that security had just kicked him out of a place...because he'd been making out with his boyfriend. Not in an OMG GROSS CHRIST JUST GO HOME AND DO IT ALREADY way, but as you do sometimes when you just can't help it. Implicit in all of this was that it probably wouldn't have happened had his partner been a girl. One summer night, too, saw me with the same friend and another guy we know, wandering around Donsdale on a drunken midnight Sobey's run (don't ask.) An Escalade started following us, for no apparent reason other than for its  bro-tastic occupants to scream "FUCKING FAGGOTS" at my friends. They followed us home, too, for the same purpose.

Neither of those friends are comfortable with holding their boyfriends' hands in public. I don't know. I'm a straight white girl, I can hardly pretend to really understand the gay experience in this town, no matter how many friends I've got who identify as some variant of LGBTQ or how many times I've been out with them. I know Edmonton's not perfect. The bros above are a pretty good example of some of the worst. My teenage brother prefaces hugging his dude friends with "no homo" and was the bad kind of confused when he saw I was reading a book about drag queens (I really hope this is all a phase.) But sometimes it's hard to tell whether these are just examples of personal prejudice or indicative of a larger problem. I think both. You can't have one without the other.

On the other hand, remember back in the fall when the Westboro Church people said they were planning on coming to protest the staging of The Laramie Project? I think the counter-protest was organised in something like three days, and yet when I went, there were a few hundred people there, cheerfully carrying signs (my own made use of the Sassy Gay Friend videos on youtube) and having a total fucking blast. Linda Duncan spoke, and so did Fred Phelps' estranged son. In the end, the Westboro crazies didn't show (apparently they hardly ever do), but it didn't really matter. The solidarity that night was the best thing -- it didn't matter if you were gay or straight or polka-dotted, you just wanted to support the cause, and your friends or your girlfriends or boyfriends or parents.

Again, it's not perfect. I've seen it be pretty awful, actually. But getting to be part of something like that is proof, I guess, of the fact that not everything sucks.

We used waste hours just walking around.

In the past few years -- since I started university, I guess -- I've come to realise a few things. That things aren't always black and white -- or conversely, that they can be. That beer really is delicious and should be consumed as often as possible. That I was really f-ing sheltered growing up, and that the suburbs are both good and bad. That the world is really very large, and my life is actually pretty small and inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things. And, yesterday, that bad things really do happen to good people. I could go on, but those are the most important.

I grew up -- and still live -- in one of those little neighbourhoods on the edge of the city, where the houses were all built according to the same five plans and almost everyone is white (seriously, and that holds true even now) and middle/upper-middle class and has some sort of smiling dog. Everyone's parents are still together, and half your friends have a cottage somewhere -- if you don't, you've at least got an RV or a boat or something. Vacations to Disney and every extracurricular you can imagine and the assumption that you'll go to university and get a decent degree (if you're a girl, a MRS degree should also be in the plan.) My childhood was spent riding my bike around quiet streets with my brother and the two neighbour kids who were remotely our age. 25 cent slurpies at Red Rooster and babysitting. There was nothing bad about any of it, unless you count scraped knees. Orderly and idyllic.

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that is that yes, I was one of the really sheltered ones. My entire worldview was my neighbourhood, my school, and any place my parents thought might be safe enough for more than five minutes. I had almost no concept of much outside of any of this until high school, when -- like half of you, I guess -- the world started to be too small. Branching out was necessary, spread your wings, whatever the eff else. And that was the same point, too, when I started to realise exactly how large the world was. My normal suburban lifestyle was really just like its houses, probably only going to go a few ways. Odd feeling, coming to that conclusion. (I don't mean to really knock the suburbs, by the way. It's good to grow up that safe. But when you manage to do something like get lost taking the LRT...well, there's probably a problem.)

That's why the Arcade Fire video was my favourite "map", I suppose. Because it's a visual representation of my feelings about the suburbs and growing up in them and how it might make you crazy some days and exactly how small and ordered my life really is. When it zooms out (which we all do, playing around on Google Earth, everything getting further and further), and everything you know gets smaller and less significant...it makes you think, I guess. (And there. An explanation other than just "I love Arcade Fire.")

"Edmonton" -- The Rural Alberta Advantage

Posting this was probably going to be inevitable (I love these guys so much), so I figured I might as well do it sooner rather than later. Thus: a song about Edmonton that -- if you hate this place as much as I do -- might warm the cockles of your heart for it at least a little bit.

From a session at Blackbyrd in 2009:

(In all honesty, I like this one better, but how could I not post the Blackbyrd version on an Edmonton blog? Exactly. I couldn't.)

Anyways, references to/whole songs about Alberta (and how people who live here/aren't here feel about it) were a pretty big aspect of their first record, Hometowns, and they do it in a way that actually makes this province sound kind of interesting. In my last post I mentioned how I sometimes get nostalgic for Edmonton even though I haven't left yet (and I know that still doesn't make much sense.) These guys usually manage to do it. And I'm just throwing it out there since they're coming back soon, but that drummer is insane and their live show is great. So. I hope somebody likes this and this post wasn't in vain.

(...they are, of course, based in Toronto.)

I don't know what I'd call "my" Edmonton, only that it isn't really home. I always think it's funny that you can grow up in a place, or be from there (for the record, I'm not -- we moved from St. John's when I was five) but still not think of it as being home. People make their own homes. Mine isn't here. And when you only live in a place (as opposed to loving it, or however you want to define home), it changes how you experience and inhabit it.

I don't think I can ever quite grasp the concept of Edmonton as a full-fledged "city"; to me, it's more like a collection of places I go and people I see. Whyte Ave, campus, downtown, the west end. Friends and the people I try to avoid. Even if I hate it for the most part, there are places and parts that make it bearable, that I might even love -- Remedy (where I'm at right now, actually, and if you've never had their chai, you're missing out.) The trails that wind through my neighbourhood and make it a little less suburban. Gallagher Hill during Folk Fest. That park behind the Safeway on Whyte, not that you get to know why. Even the mall (though that is definitely a love/hate relationship.) When someone from outside asks me to describe Edmonton, these are always the places that come to mind. Even then, it's less about the places than what I've done there; I always end up telling the stories, not describing the building.

And even though it's not home and I haven't left yet, I get weirdly nostalgic for it sometimes. I'm counting down the days until I finally leave, and there are days when I miss it already, the summer days at the Fringe or skiing in Jasper or everything else that makes this place worth it. Knowing that one day I won't get to experience this makes me miss it, I guess?

This is really disjointed and I'm not entirely sure that I'm properly articulating everything I wanted to say. Tumblr has ruined me. I don't know how to blog anymore unless it's commenting on a lolcat or a picture of Lord CHRISTian Bale. Oh well. Maybe next time?

I ripped off the title of a Woodpigeon song.

Because I'm that creative.