"Doc did a lot of good in his time..."

But let’s be fair. Doc did a lot of good in his time. He thinned out the werewolves in northern California, established a Brontosaurus preserve at the center of the earth and prevented an evil maharajah from hypnotizing the entire world.

Back To The Gore of Yore

Time Magazine, July 5, 1971

rudi krause | finding myself

I find myself looking out my back door

At the mustard plants that have taken over

Seedlings everywhere

I find myself on my hands and knees

Looking for a coin that must have rolled

Under this dresser

I find myself lying beside the road

Aching and bleeding and watching

People pass by on the other side

I find myself looking out over my wheat field

But really seeing only

The weeds

I find myself working in my father's field

Thinking of my younger brother

Having a grand old time in a faraway city

I find myself caught in a thicket of brambles

Afraid to move, afraid to bleat

Straining to hear the shepherd's footsteps

I find myself digging a hole in my backyard

To bury what my money-hungry master wants me to invest

I shall not participate

I find myself panicking as the flame gutters and dies

Realizing that the flask of oil is empty

And all the stores are closed

I find myself eyeing the slop in the trough

While the growling of my stomach

Grows ever louder

I find myself on the broad shoulders of the shepherd

Leaning against his neck, hearing his breath

On our way home

czeslaw milosz | readings

 

You asked me what is the good of reading the Gospels in Greek.

I answer that it is proper that we move our finger

Along letters more enduring than those carved in stone,

And that, slowly pronouncing each syllable,

We discover the true dignity of speech.

Compelled to be attentive we shall think of that epoch

No more distant than yesterday, though the heads of caesars

On coins are different today. Yet it is still the same eon.

Fear and desire are the same, oil and wine

And bread mean the same. So does the fickleness of the throng

Avid for miracles as in the past. Even mores,

Wedding festivities, drugs, laments for the dead

Only seem to differ. Then, too, for example,

There were plenty of persons whom the text calls

Daimonizomenoi, that is, the demonized

Or if you prefer, the bedeviled (as for "the possessed"

It's no more than the whim of a dictionary).

Convulsions, foam at the mouth, the gnashing of teeth

Were not considered signs of talent.

The demonized had no access to print and screens,

Rarely engaging in arts and literature.

But the Gospel parable remains in force:

That the spirit mastering them may enter swine,

Which, exasperated by such a sudden clash

Between two natures, theirs and the Luciferic,

Jump into water and drown (which occurs repeatedly).

And thus on every page a persistent reader

Sees twenty centuries as twenty days

In a world which one day will come to its end.

Czeslaw Milosz was a Polish poet who lived and wrote under the Nazi occupation in World War 2, but eventually fled his homeland when an equally repressive Communist regime took power. In 1980 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, saying he "voices man's condition in a world of severe conflicts." 

angels in the architecture | wings of desire + hawaii, oslo

Wings of Desire

Hawaii, Oslo

steve mcqueen | blitz / occupied city / 'i just do stuff'

Jul 1, 2024

Blitz 

upcoming Steve McQueen film, Nov?

Wartime London

Saoirse Ronan

Occupied City

recent doc, Amsterdam under the Nazis

from a book by his wife, Bianca Stigter

“I just do stuff. I don’t ‘transition.’ 

You can think about it all fucking day. 

Thinking gets you to the edge of the diving board. 

Then you have to fucking do it.”

photo | stageworthy

from the stageworthy website

photo | nancy caldwell | financial district

 

photos | dina livotsky | where the amish go on vacation

 

the new yorker | apr 17, 2018

st basil of caesarea | easter hymn

Today hell groans and cries aloud:

"My power has been destroyed.

I accepted a mortal man as one of the dead;

yet I cannot keep Him prisoner,

and with Him I shall lose all those whom I ruled.

I held in my power the dead from all ages;

but see, He has raised them all."

Glory to your Cross, O Lord,

and to Your Resurrection.

icon by ivanka demchuk

christian dahlberg | vancouver neon | cinemas

 

website

the closing of twu theatre | green hall

photo | michael pasche | carts

 

ides of march pencil holder

 

the indescribable essence of vinyl

 

"Is there anything under the sun that does not have an indestructible essence?" LS

tom waits | radio

When I listen to old field recordings, maybe you’ll hear a dog barking way off in the background. You realize the house it was recorded in is torn down, the dog is dead, the tape recorder is broken, the guy who made the recording died in Texas, the car out front has four flat tires, even the dirt that the house sat on is gone—probably a parking lot—but we still have this song. Takes me out when I listen to those old recordings. I put on my stuff in the house, which is always those old Alan Lomax recordings.

When I was first trying to decide what I wanted to do, I listened to Bob Dylan and James Brown. Those were my heroes. I listened to Wolfman Jack every night. The mighty ten-ninety. Fifty thousand watts of soul power. My dad was a radio technician during the war, and when he left the family when I was about eleven, I had this whole radio fascination. And he used to keep catalogues, and I used to build my own crystal set, and put the aerial up on the roof. And I remember making a radio on my first crystal set, and the first station I got on these little two-dollar headphones was Wolfman. And I thought I had discovered something that no one else had. I thought it was comin' in from Kansas City or Omaha, that nobody was getting this station, and nobody knew who this guy was, and nobody knew who these records were. I'd tapped into some bunker, or he was broadcasting from some rest stop on a highway thousands of miles from here, and it's only for me. He was actually broadcasting from San Ysidro near the border. What I really wanted to figure out is how do you come out of the radio yourself.

Photos for MAGNET by Christian Lantry

twyla tharp | on generosity

Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. 

If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help them out, 

you are in effect making them lucky.

This is important. It's like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune.

photo | ray h. mercado

 

ray h. mercado

edward hopper | compartment c car - 1938

 

angeline teay | empire of the son

 

@angelineteay

'that thirst for homicide which habitual bicycling so commonly produces' | new york times

 

new york times, 1894

aug 8 | the feast of the holy crossing

 

end cards

Citizen Kane / Joker

shirley jackson | response to a disappointed reader

 

gary nay | vancouver paintings

sunday services

the beach store

border town

beach grove store

morning motel

my night at the nat

real real gone

reflections

on the drive

it's just lunch

all paintings by gary nay

available at his website 

ishiuchi miyako : postwar shadows

 

isabella rosner | quaker names

 

ron reed | canada day in steveston

All the mixed feelings.

So Canadian. Mostly Chinese families, waving Canada flags and dressed in Canada T-shirts and Canada hats. South Asians in their teens and twenties with their dates. A few white folk, sprinkled in for contrast. A Japanese woman, gorgeous in a black kimono.

Food trucks and tents from everywhere. Baba's House Polish sausages and pyrogies. Another truck with Greek and Mexican food. The Namaste Indian food truck, Persian saffron ice cream from Cazba Restaurant, pancake breakfast for Ukrainian relief, southern barbecue, grilled cheese. Salmon from British Columbia. And Japadogs and Teriaki Boys. A world's worth of food arrayed in the Japanese Cultural Centre parking lot. 

The kimono woman conjured for me the memory of Steveston's fishermen, and their families who worked the cannery, rounded up after Pearl Harbor and interred far inland, far from the sea, far from the homes they could never return to. A friend once wrote a poem about the graduating class photos that lined the halls of his alma mater, Steveston High. Year after year, so many Japanese faces. Until the class of 1942. 

Canada Day. I've always been wary of patriotism, which makes me as Canadian as a Canadian can be. All the more so in recent years, and much more since May 2021, thinking of the people who lived here before we showed up and shoved them aside, and worse. I was sad not to see any of those folks there in Steveston on Canada Day, Musqueam or Tsawwassen or Kwantlen people. Maybe they were there, I didn't see everybody. But maybe not. There would be more than enough reasons for that.  

There was "a police presence," very Canadian cops strolling the streets, smiling, nodding to the people. I didn't see any guns. The Sikh officer with the beard, some other guys, a few policewomen, standing around in the shade of a tree having what I guess was a cop coffee break? Double doubles all round? Like the Boston Red Sox infield converging on the pitcher's mound in the bottom of the eighth clinging to a one-run lead with two Blue Jays on base, but much more relaxed. (Don't talk about the ballgame.)

A block down Moncton Street, kids gathered around a fancy cop car, a couple officers showing off all the gadgets. A few blocks north of beautiful downtown Steveston, one solitary guy patrolled the residential streets, writing enough parking tickets to offset most of the extra police department expenses for the day.  

My daughter's American friend asked asked if Canada Day celebrates the day we defeated the British. I thought that was charming. As Katie said, "a very American question." In more than one way. I responded that, no, it celebrates the day we defeated the Americans! (Red Sox - Blue Jays notwithstanding.)

But I was only joshing. That wouldn't be July 1, it would be August 16. Or August 24, though we really don't get to claim that one. Or October 13. All things considered, 1812 was a bad year for south-of-the-border dudes who picked fights with Canadians. But we've mostly gotten along since then. (We won't talk about the Women's Hockey...) (Which, by the way, was called "ice hockey" on a little quiz I saw today, a test to determine How Canadian You Are. Demonstrating that the quiz was cobbled together by a Yank. ICE hockey? There's not a Canadian alive who calls it ICE hockey. That's like saying "water swimming." Jeez.)  

(And also by the way, I must note that the test rated me as only 75% Canadian, because I scored only 18 out of 24 - an honest and self-deprecating admission which identifies me unequivocally as 100% Canadian, regardless of whether I've had a double double or been up the CN Tower. And the CN Tower, I must point out, is in TORONTO, which every Canadian in the rest of the country knows is NOT in fact a part of Canada. So the test was totally bogus.)

Apart from Aaron Wong's Elvis tribute, all the musicians I happened to hear today who weren't in the Steveston High School band were as white as I am, and at least as old. Probably singing their folk songs and playing their jazz in Vancouver parks and on Kitsilano coffee house stages half a century ago, long hair and bellbottoms, when they were the revolution. Now they just look like Old White Folks. Just like me. What we used to call "The Establishment." One fellow dated himself by mentioning Bobby Gimby's Centennial ditty, "Ca-na-da..." but it didn't sound like anybody in the crowd besides me had any idea what he was talking about. "Now we are twenty million..." Or the three white guys in the quiet little garden by the Steveston Museum - hey, the fiddler couldn't have been much more than thirty, a kid! - who played Irish tunes on Uillean pipes and the bodhran, and sang the tragedy of the Irish people, centuries of genocide and enforced famine and exile, and I thought, we really don't treat each other very well.  

But everybody was treating each other just fine today in Steveston. There was plenty of food to go around, which helps, and nobody was at war with anybody, not here, not right now, anyhow. Bygones were, apparently, bygones. So Canadian.

Tonight, fireworks bursting in the night air. Which won't remind most Canadians of bombs, or rockets' red glare, won't be mistaken for gunfire. Unless they immigrated from Ukraine in the past year or so, or from a major American city almost any time, or served in the Canadian forces to "keep the peace" overseas somewhere, sometime. 

All the mixed feelings.

sharon singleton | the dock-sitters

To sit on a dock which has 
walked out on stiff legs
twelve to fifteen feet away
from the weedy shore,
one board after another
reaching outward, drawing 
your gaze across the unblinking 
eye of the lake whose color 

deepens further out, to sit 

on this dock which seems 

to want to hold you, even 

rock you a little, to dangle 

your feet, whiter in the green 

cool water, to gaze down 

into that silent world where 

minnows eddy around 

your toes, where sand 

has agreed to be shaped 

by ripples of water, 

where reeds and water lilies 

witness to you as that 

which endures. To look out 

on that lake, as birds dip low, 

as quiet men in boats peer 

into the depths, cast 

their lines searching for 

what is shadowy, elusive;

to lie back on gray, splintery 

sun-warmed boards 

in the silence of light—

is to allow that tight band 

constricting your breath 

to loosen, is to quench 

your dire thirst for

the present. To sit

on such a dock is one 

of the forgotten beatitudes—

blessed are the dock-sitters, 

for they shall soon feel 

shriven, their humor restored 

and their pant legs 

cool and damp.

 

Sharron Singleton 

sixfold