Peak into Backyards... Take a Train Ride!

A short while back, I took a train home from a trip out of town. I like the train. I prefer it to the jolting ride and cramped quarters of a bus. There is something even nostalgically romantic about the train. It reminds me of the past, when train travel was the only way to go. Yet, this trip was different, I had an altered perspective, something on my mind.

I seem to have had Edward Burtynsky's images still resonating through my mind. With this mind-set, my view out the window seemed to focus on the endless detritus of our lives. It seems that we, as a race, prefer to dump our beat and sometimes unuseable belongings in the backyard. I was a witness to the backyard, the backlot, the empty lot, because, the train was there first. The tracks that criss-cross the land, for the most part were laid long before our recent buildings have encroached on this land. And because of this, any traveller is privy to the view of someone else's intimate life, looking at their backyard.

I saw piles of garbage, rusting hunks of cars, broken down play-gyms, roughly tossed lumber, and general disregard. It's not pretty. For the most part it seems that the design of the cities and our living on the land, has taken into account our habit of making garbage, by hiding it from view. Our streets are generally clean and, in Canada at least, most throughfares and busy streets tend to shy away from real industrial land.

We need to be reminded of our lives, of the impact of our living. Like Burtynsky's photos, a train-ride through some stretch of the land where you live, might show you more of what real life is all about, garbage, rot, and all.
- posted by the Tourist @ 14:19UTC - want to

 
Is There Beauty in Our Destructive Ways ?

Depends on your point of view? I visited the exhibition of Edward Burtynsky's photographs at the Art Gallery of Ontario last night. He describes himself as exploring nature transformed through industry. His large-format photographs are of man's assault on the planet. Images of nickel tailings, abandoned mines, active marble quarries, rail-cuts, garbage dumps, shipwrecking on the beaches all document activities and places which all of us are ultimately responsible for. By our desire for a 'better life', each of us is integral in the processes which are ravaging the earth. Surprisingly, for activities which are necessary for our way of life, we rarely see images of these things. Is this because of a conscious desire to wash our hands of any blame? If more of us are exposed to these images, would we change our ways?

How are these places portrayed? Besides the subject of the photographs, there is the distortion of perception applied by Burtynsky himself. I was immediately aware of not only the subject of the images, but of the way Burtynsky photographed them. The images are taken with a large-format camera, providing control over aspects of the photographic process which a normal 35mm camera would not allow. He is interpreting the places he photographs. His images provide no real reference point with which to judge scale. They are tightly cropped, providing no end, no limit, to the subject itself. For example we cannot tell if the marble quarries continue on forever, or end just at the edge of his photographs. Mountains are photographed without top or bottom, cutting of our ability to judge just how big they are. Even with humans in the image, it is difficult to say just how big things are. Besides the cropping, Burtynsky alters perspective in many images by utilizing the tilt and shift capabilities of a view camera. Thus his images, from near to far, are in sharp focus, again short-circuiting our minds ability to judge scale. Why the play with scale, with perspective?

Maybe Burtynsky's compression of scale, a deliberate act, is a way to engage the viewer into asking questions about the scale of human activity on the planet? It's difficult to view the images of compressed metal cans, piles on piles of square blocks of scrap metal, without feeling responsible for such objects through our daily use of canned objects. How often do we think about the final resting place of the can we took our beans or pineapples from? Or what about the tires we run our cars on? They wear out eventually, no longer usable, but do they ever disappear, rot away, or are we doomed to have piles on piles of tires in some rarely visited place on Earth? I can imagine a time, when we humans have to compete for space with our own refuse. If this is not an ecological disaster waiting to happen I don't know what is? More and more our daily lives utilize objects which, once past their usable life, do not rot away, but persist indefinitely. Inadvertently, we have become immortal after-all.

Burtynsky's images are beautifully captured, breathtakingly awe-inspiring, meticulously crafted, but I'm not so sure I can say that what he photographs is inherently beautiful. It all depends on your point of view. See for yourself, here. Sadly, his images on the web do not do full justice to his large images, hanging on a gallery wall, but maybe they will entice you to seek out more images of our human ways.
- posted by the Tourist @ 17:28UTC - want to

 
Future Thinking

I've been mulling over some thoughts for the past couple of days. They all stemmed from hearing the program "The Ideas of Stewart Brand" on Ideas (CBC RadioOne). Ideas is a program meant to expand, transform, and possibly perplex your mind on a nightly basis.

But, I digress. Back to Stewart Brand. Brand is a heavy-duty thinker, calls himself a futurist, and from what I gather has been thinking ahead of the curve of current ideas for some time. He's the editor of the Whole Earth Catalog in the late '60's/early '70's, has been part of the MIT Media Labs, and has got a few current projects on the go.

One idea I particularly like is the The Long Now Foundation, based on the idea that our civilization needs to develop thinking for the long term, not just the next couple of decades. How about more like the next 10,000 years! Using a "slower/better" approach as opposed to the current "faster/cheaper" style of thinking which is near all-pervasive in today's societies. The Long Now Foundation is actively developing a 10,000 year clock. Conceived by Danny Hillis, named the "Clock of the Long Now" by Brian Eno. The founding idea was to have it tick once a year, and have a century hand that advances once every hundred years, with a cuckoo that will come out once a millennium. It's being built to remind us that there is a future to plan for, that we must look beyond our narrow vision of time to try to perceive what may lie ahead for generations to come.

The Long Now Foundation has a few diagrams which help to show us the passage of time out of the context of our short human lifespan. For the most part we seem to have forgotten, or are unable to cope with, the idea that much of what happens with the Earth is in a time span which barely notices our own existence. An individual human life is next to nothing, the whole of human existence is barely discernible, the pace of Nature is exceedingly long! For us to maintain this planet in a livable form, we must adopt to the Long Now vision of thinking.

How did these ideas come into place? Maybe it was through extraordinary thinking by ordinary people or maybe it's just ordinary thinking from extraordinary people. Don't know for sure, but I had a laugh when Stewart Brand explained an idea-burst of his own. On LCD one evening, he walked out onto the roof-top of some building and looked down. Seeing the street from above, his mind traveled up to greater heights, imagining what this street might look like from 100 ft up, 200 ft up, 300 ft up, and so on. Then he wondered, "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole earth yet?" This got him to make buttons, with the above question on it, which he distributed to everyone he could think of, including politicians. It is believed that these buttons helped accelerate the making of photographs of Earth from distant space during NASA's Apollo program.

The second current program, Brand is involved in, is to document every life form on Earth in the next 25 years. It is estimated that there are 10 - 100 million species on Earth, yet we have only documented 1.6 million. This means we have been able to account for only, at most, 16% of the worlds organisms. Collectively, we know very little about the biology of our planet, either from a point of view of what exists or from the point of view of how it works. It's probably easier to say that we know next to nothing about how the world works, even though we seem to have advanced so far. At any rate, to see what is being done about our lack of knowledge, see the All Species Foundation .

Future thinking is visionary. It's likely also very hard work, but it is an activity which is necessary for us to undertake. It is in the best interest of this planet that we all learn to think in a bigger time scale.
- posted by the Tourist @ 20:21UTC - want to

 
What would you do to survive?

That's the question which is explored in the movie, "Touching the Void", a drama/documentary of the story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates and their epic climb and descent of Siula Grande in Peru. It's based on the book by the same name, originally printed in 1988. I recommend you start with the book, then see the movie. Both are incredible and complementary. For those who are visual, the movie will send shivers down your spine as you witness the incredible pain which Joe Simpson endures and ultimately survives.

But, let's get to the question. What would you do? It's tough, I think, for most people to know how they will really react in a life or death situation. When you are pushed to the wall, what do you do? It's rare in this day and age to ever come across a situation which truly asks you to put everything on the line for your life. Most of us live in a sheltered world. Indeed it is for this reason that some psychologists think that people are seeking out extreme sports. Dangerous hobbies are putting some of the adrenaline back into our lives. Even then, most of the time, things go as planned and catastrophe is evaded, at least for the time being.

But when it all falls down; the true tests arise. How mentally prepared are we to take action in the face of death? It's no joke, it's not a cliche line. For some, as in the case of Joe and Simon, this is exactly what happened. Joe was cold, pragmatic, he did what had to be done. He broke his monumental task into tiny achievable goals and just went at it, without getting emotional. Set the task down and get on with the job. Deep down, I think I am the same way. I come alive in emergency situations and I often take the lead when things just have to get done. If my life were on the line, I believe I would just get on with it. No sentiment, no emotion, just practical; asking "What do I have to do to get out of here?" How would you react?

While you're thinking about it, read the book, then see the movie, of a story that is so incredibly over the top you will not believe it really happened. As was said in the film, "The truth is stranger than fiction!"
- posted by the Tourist @ 02:43UTC - want to

 
An extra day...

So, we've got an extra day to spare this year. Yes, it's a leap year, so this Sunday, February 29 is a bonus for us. Of course, I don't often think of it this way. What is another day after all? But, maybe it's time to change my outlook, maybe I should examine what I do with my time!

I, like most of the rest of the human race, spend a lot of time -- wasting time. I anguish over the things I'd rather be doing and fret away moments that I could constructively use for my own self-development and growth, in whatever direction I desire. The whole point is not to have a concrete goal, but to attempt to make every moment meaningful. Easier said than done, when most of my daily life has been reduced to maintaining a bare existence. Performing the tasks that allow one to stay alive, but not necessarily live.

Living and being alive are fundamentally two different states and my goal is to be in the former state as oppossed to the latter. It's my life, it should be spent fulfilling my own wishes. This isn't a selfish view, although it could be taken as self-centered. Fulfilling one's wish does not necessarily mean that the wish is for the benefit of oneself alone. A wish may be beneficial to more than the individual who desires. My wish may harbor a fair dose of sharing, of including others. Who knows? What's your wish?

This year, we all have an extra day to think about what we are doing with our lives. Why not use it to contemplate, to evaluate, to redirect our lives. If you want to document and share that vision, join the others at a day in the life: the leap day.
- posted by the Tourist @ 03:15UTC - want to

 
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. ... In other words, I don't improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable
-John Steinbeck

Just meandering about in the electronic universe, trying to come to grips with my own life in some way. In that meandering I came across this quote from the site of Gavin Gough, a traveller, someone who cashed in his comfortable life to risk acheiving his desire. Cheers to him, my applause for following the dream.

Inside myself there is an itch, some burning desire, unexplainable as to the details, but the general jist of it is this; there is something within which I yearn to express. Somehow, I don't feel comfortable in the life I lead, there is more to my life than I am currently experiencing. I know it, my heart knows it, my brain knows it. Problem is I'm not sure how to satiate my own desire, because I cannot (as of yet) put my desire into words. It exists as a feeling, undefined, intangible. Not until this feeling becomes defined will I be able to walk its path or quell the fire within. Desire is a strange feeling. Burning desire is near soul destroying. How do I discover the unknown, sing into existence that which resides in the recesses of my soul?
- posted by the Tourist @ 14:40UTC - want to

 
Psychiatrists, politicians, tyrants are forever assuring us that the wandering life is an aberrant form of behaviour: a neurosis; a form of unfulfilled sexual longing; a sickness which, in the interests of civilisation, must be suppressed.
Nazi propagandists claimed that gipsies and Jews - peoples with wandering in their genes - could find no place in a stable Reich.
Yet, in the East, they still preserve the once universal concept: that wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.
-from The Songlines, written by Bruce Chatwin

It's an interesting idea! Chatwin spends much of 'The Songlines' discussing the idea of a wandering life and going so far as describing the settled life as the downfall of man. Man, he claims, must keep moving, or fall prey to a doomed life. There is, inherently, in us an urge to wander, to explore, to walk. Movement keeps us sane, it keeps us grounded, understanding of our place in the world.

I agree with this sentiment. I myself feel the urge to move, to travel and explore new places. It doesn't have to be exotic. I don't necessarily need to travel to far-away places to stay sane, although those trips definitely create a lightness in my heart, a feeling of invigoration. No, to stay sane, I just have to keep the scenery a little different. Change is good, moving change is better. To keep myself together, I just need to walk outside, take a new path, see the world unfold in front of my eyes in a new way. Look at something previously unseen.

It's the walls of our comfortable living that drain the life from the soul. Being inside a concrete bunker, with the artificial fluorescent lighting and re-purified vented air, is the downfall of man.
- posted by the Tourist @ 02:17UTC - want to