launching . . .
Airplane Mode
I’d like to apologize to you specifically for giving you that half-assed hug the other day when I ran into you at the airport. I was uncomfortable and irritated because smartberrytm was almost out of battery even though I put it in airplane mode for most of the day and I was trying not to lose it after showing my boarding pass, and I was also trying to get my belt back on and not be accused of smuggling creatorswatertm through the security checkpoint, and then — surprise — there you were. If I’d had time to sort of, you know, smartberrytm chat you first and think this entire interaction through and be the person I want to be instead of the person I am, I would have looked you in the eye, walked into your breath, and felt the heat of your body against mine. I would have brought my arms up to your chest and then just paused so our faces could find each other, so our skin could just get used to things. You would have kissed my forehead because I’m always smartberrytm chatting about that. We would both look down, but you’re taller, so you’d look down onto me. My arms would surround you and mostly we would both be glad. The End.
aww miigs. kwe. i know. i love that part too. no, no, i totally meant that. #muse #love #connection
so #awesome. #whew. #Airplanemode
#635 likes in the first min! #bestseller #art #ndnlit #worthit
love. Xo
there are two thieves in this tent frame
there are two thieves in this tent frame
stealing back red bodies
savage desires
things we can’t speak of
mii go aaniwi: despite everything, i am doing well
we are burning shame & guilt
with the moss & paper birch
while i’m shaking & leaking injury
hoping you won’t look
mii go aaniwi: even when you are gone, i carry you
you whisper kwe on the stairs,
and i feel good, enough
you show me brown holding fragile
and i feel safe, enough
mii go aaniwi: we are carrying the hard parts,
but they don’t weigh us down
my old one taught me to make kindling this way
slicing off thin splints, but not all the way
my old one taught me miigwanawe
“it’s always how you really are,” he says just to me
mii go aaniwi: your empty isn’t as empty as you think
we are thieves that feel better in the same room
because of everything, we are doing well
we are thieves stealing back ourselves
even when i am gone, you carry me
we are thieves, cradling our ruined
we are carrying the hard parts, & they lift us up
there are two thieves in this tent frame
your empty is never as empty as you think
SITUATION UPDATE
Situation Update #1
Banff is flooding in the middle of summer because it will not stop raining because of global warming and probably this is the new reality. There’s a mudslide that’s closed the Trans-Canada Highway. It is falling into the Delusional River. Revenge Creek is eating homes. The rescue helicopter is constantly flying overhead, taking photos near as I can tell. All the trails and roads are closed.
Situation Update #2
Doing a writing residency right now is stupid. I don’t know how to manage inspiration, grant writing, and booking time off to write six months in advance. It’s a fucking disaster.
Also I’m not really a writer and I don’t know how I wrote those other books or why John published them or why people read them. People should know I’m a fraud. Plus residencies are for rich white people and who the fuck am I to be here. I have no business being here.
I feel like a traitor.
If Frantz Fanon walked into this architecturally designed hut at the Banff Centre for the Oil Arts he’d be so fucking disappointed in me or else he’d love me for validating Black Skin, White Masks. As if Fanon gives two fucks about me.
Plus there’s always pressure in a residency. Like the bus from the airport is the starting block and once you have your room key the starting pistol goes off and bang.
Fuck, I can complain about anything. Really, I can’t stand myself.
Plus, the flood. Write what you know. And it’s a flood.
Situation Update #3
I’m reading Settler Colonial’s twitter feed because he doesn’t miss anything, and so of course he’s tweeting exactly what racist Canadians tweet when one of our rez’s gets flooded — relocate Calgary.
The conditions during this flood are still 90 percent better than conditions on many reserves.
Honestly, I enjoy white people’s mega-tar-sands-industry homes getting sucked into the river. I do. It just seems fair.
Situation Update #4
There are a lot of natural-disaster tourists here who have never been happier. They are going from one area of the town to the other, taking instagram photos of high water. So am I.
I just googled the water treatment facility in Banff and learned that it is high on Tunnel Mountain. That’s good. We’ll have drinking water! Or we could just open our mouths and tilt them up.
Floods are mostly great, except for that Bible one and that Nanabush one. People don’t often get hurt. They are naturally occurring events. They remind us of the power of the land and the power of water. But the reminder never sticks. David Suzuki is trying to rightly connect this event to climate change, because of course that’s true, but really Canadians don’t give a shit. I like how hard he tries though.
Situation Update #5
One person has texted me to see if I am ok. One.
Situation Update #6
Maybe I should text people I know that are in Calgary and see if they are ok.
Is that too forward? Too boundary-pressing? Breaking the texting boundary? What if they cringe when they get my text and are all like, FUCK it’s a white-collar disaster.
Kindness is a goddamn art.
Situation Update #7
I met my partner during the flood of the century in 1997 in Winnipeg. I know. Super romantic. We actually met at a bar and we were kinda drunk. But whatever. The flood was on and so were we.
So this flood reminds me of that flood, but there are key differences. Winnipeg, you know how to sandbag. There are stations, there are hundreds of volunteers, the bagging of the sand takes place in the same place as the sandbags are needed, and people know how to architect sandbags into amazing triangular walls of steel.
Here, it’s different. There is one sandbag-filling station at the dog park. There are eight people there but they don’t want more volunteers. People are loading their fifteen sandbags into the trunk of their car and laying them on their lawns with big spaces in between them.
It’s driving my partner insane. He keeps yelling: “THESE PEOPLE DON’T KNOW HOW TO SANDBAG. THESE PEOPLE DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO IN THE EVENT OF A FLOOD. YOU FUCK UP A FLOOD IN WINNIPEG, YOU NEVER GET ELECTED AGAIN.”
Situation Update #8
Sled Island Music Festival is cancelled. It seems like they were real troupers at the beginning of the flood, sticking performers in movie theatres, but now the entire downtown core of Calgary is evacuated, including them, so it’s all over.
No Jesus and Mary Chain for Calgary.
I was Jesus and Mary Chain’s biggest fan in grade ten. I did an english project on their lyrics, and if you read their lyrics, that, my friend, is no easy task.
Also, the zoo is evacuated. Everyone has been asking: What about the zoo! It’s on an island! I’ve hoped to never have to endure the Calgary Zoo, so it wasn’t a question I was asking. The big cats have been moved to the courthouse jail cells. Metaphors melt away during floods.
/> Situation Update #9
I’m reading another writer’s twitter feed because he is trapped in Canmore and writing for the national post. That fucker. Making money off this tragedy we’re stuck in. Except Naomi says that is what natural disasters are for when we’re trapped in capitalism. He seems frantic. It’s worse over there, though. Like they could run out of coffee. And actually monster homes have fallen into the river and there’s water on the first floor of his hotel.
Situation Update #10
This flood is really just inconvenient. It’s like being trapped in a natural-disaster theme park.
It’s also my fourth flood of the century and I’m not even half a century old.
There is something about these kinds of natural disasters that makes my mind always try to think of the smartest response. So I imagine that I’m the one that stockpiled the particular item — toilet paper, gas, bottled water, matches — that everyone suddenly needs. That I’m the one that thought ahead and was prepared. This fantasy is always tempered by a desire to not be the one that’s living in a bomb shelter with six thousand cans of tomato soup. I can’t imagine myself selling toilet paper to some desperate rich white person for twenty-five dollars. I’d probably just give away all my stockpiled stuff, revelling in how “just in case” finally fucking paid off.
Situation Update #11
You’re supposed to stay away from the river. It isn’t even a river anymore. In some places it’s a full-fledged lake and other places it’s a waterfall, only the water doesn’t drop so the fall doesn’t stop, it just continues. It’s that angry.
Well, the river isn’t angry at all. It’s just doing what it does when three hundred millimetres of rain falls into it during spring run-off.
It looks like chocolate milk. Some old guy that’s lived here for thirty years and drives a bus to Vancouver for Brewster says that when the snow melts into the mountains the river is like a coffee with too much milk for one week. That’s what we’re seeing.
I crossed the police tape with all the other tourists to see Bow Falls. It isn’t a falls anymore at all. It just looks like the rest of the river.
Situation Update #12
Safeway looks like it has been ransacked. There is no bottled water and no toilet paper. I make a mental note that in a disaster situation those are the two things to buy up in great quantity, even though only one of them is essential.
No one has ever died from a lack of toilet paper.
Also we are running out of gas. But that’s ok, because there is no place to go, because all the roads are closed.
Apparently gas trucks and food trucks from Calgary are going to come once the mudslide gets cleaned up. They are going to route them through Fernie.
Situation Update #13
Aboriginal Day at the Banff Centre has been cancelled due to the emergency situation and the weather. CANCELLED.
Thank fucking god. I was dreading us being the only NDNs in the crowd of eight hundred white people. It was going to be humiliating, but I was going to put on a brave face for the kids.
Situation Update #14
I am imagining myself being interviewed by CBC on the “Aboriginal” perspective of the flood. First I imagine the interviewer trying to lead me into saying shit like, “Mother Earth is so powerful. The water is so sacred. White people shouldn’t build their houses upon the sand.”
Then I imagine myself getting all aggressive and trying to get them to see the double standard in reporting flooding in Calgary and not reporting flooding in say Attawapiskat.
But they never get that. Because it’s inconvenient for them we’re not dead.
The whole scenario doesn’t even make sense, because the CBC only wants our opinions on corrupt chiefs, child poverty, and conflict within the AFN.
Situation Update #15
Jonathan Goldstein is in cabin number four. I tried to brag that around a bit with my friends but nobody knew who he was.
Then I bought the cheaper e-version of his book I’ll Seize the Day Tomorrow, in case I run into him on the path. Then I could say, “Hey. I read your book. You’re the WireTap guy.”
Then I listen to a bunch of This American Life episodes. Then I go to DNTO and listen to all those stories. Why don’t I write for them? Well, because I have a fair amount of contempt for all the middle-class white people huddled around their radios listening to that shit. That’s why.
Then I read his twitter feed. He’s tweeting about being in the bush in his underwear drinking dimetapp. I watch for actual evidence of that. I believe writers should do the shit they write about. Also I wonder if safeway is out of dimetapp yet.
Situation Update #16
I think I actually hate writing because I hate sitting on chairs.
Situation Update #17
I just heard a bird sing because it finally stopped raining. If you look up, though, we’ve probably only got about ten minutes.
Situation Update #18
You’d think the Christians would be building a big ark. It saved the world the first time, according to them, so really, if churches had arks all ready to go, “just in case,” then that could be a real help in situations like these. HEAD TO THE ARK IMMEDIATELY. HEAD TO THE ARK IMMEDIATELY. Plus you could bring your pets and for sure they would make a separate compartment for NDNs and race traitors. But woah, woah, don’t get all liberal on me, the separate compartment is perfect. No one wants to be stuck on a goddamn ark with a bunch of extra-self-righteous Christians because they called it, you know, with the ark. Again.
The Nishnaabe, though, we didn’t waste time building an ark. Because why? In a flood there are, like, trees everywhere and what’s funner than riding the rapids on a log, and why not live in the moment instead of living inside just in case.
That’s right, Dad, I just used the word “funner.”
My god, I wonder what artist cabin number two is doing. I think she’s an old white poet. But her artist cabin is a BOAT and she’s in a flood. I bet her process is fucked right now.
Situation Update #19
Situation update #12 from the Town of Banff just came in and holy shit that fucking other writer has another column.
The gist of the update is this: All the roads are still closed. You can leave going west, but there is a high chance of mudslides so you can’t be guaranteed to get back. You’re never going to get to Calgary again. It says some other things, but nobody proofread it so it’s hard to understand. STAY AWAY FROM THE RIVER.
There is a guest book in the artist hut where people write sappy things about how amazing and productive and inspiring their residency was. I hate guest books. I’m thinking about writing “You are on Blackfoot land” on the next ten pages of the book, forcing people to flip through it before they can add all their gratitude. Gratitude is so contrived.
Situation Update #20
I want to be the kind of person that is good at making the best of a bad situation. We’re not in a bad situation, but still, it’s good practice, because I’m not actually a person that is good at making the best of a bad situation. What I am good at is satire and sarcasm, which I tend to use to make good situations bad. How hard could it be to make things go the opposite way?
I start by stating all the great things about this very moment. The sun is sort of trying to come out. The bird I heard a few pages ago is back. But it’s feeling forced because it’s not actually how I feel. Most of the time I think I actually feel nothing. Or I feel anxiety. It’s pretty rare to have a good feeling. It needs to be a pretty overwhelming good thing that’s happened for me to have a good feeling and even then I can’t maintain it that long. Good feelings are fleeting.
I’d like to find out if this is normal. It seems like perpetually happy people live in some sort of state of denial, constantly orgasming into the next moment, and happy people rarely do anything I think is important. Mo
stly they are annoying. Well, happy people do make great parents. I think that’s true. Sometimes it isn’t annoying to be around happy people. Sometimes it is possible to get swept up in whatever denial they have going on.
Situation Update #21
Uh oh. THE OTHER WRITER is a retweeter of compliments. May have to unfollow.
Situation Update #22
Getting old sucks. If you talk to old people, really old people and regular old people, they will tell you: aging is a painful betrayal of the body and the mind. So I’m thinking that one needs a plan. I’m wondering if old people think of this — that really, past age seventy-five is the time for smoking, drinking, and drugs. You’re going to die soon anyway so the health warnings don’t apply. Plus I can imagine there is a lot of anxiety in being close to death. Smoking and drinking manages that anxiety. Plus all your friends are dead or dying and you’ve always embarrassed your kids no matter what you did anyway so why not. It’s an untapped market.
I know we like to think that by seventy-five we’ll have everything all figured out and be happy and at peace. But that’s not true for twenty, thirty, or forty, so why would it be true for seventy?
Situation Update #23
Watching what’s happening in Calgary on TV. Tons of help. Watching on twitter and fb what’s happening in First Nation communities like Morley. Nothing. No help. Help would be a federal responsibility and the feds spent all the money on litigating against First Nations and on surveillance.
Situation Update #24
I think that what I am writing is stupid, but there’s no capacity here to write about anything else. Last night the power went out. First there were rumours that a transformer exploded and the RCMP was involved, but then it turns out they were just trying to divert water away from the transformer, and it got wet and blew up. Immediately, authorities put out an extreme water conservation alert on twitter; so extreme, they asked people to call their non-twitter friends to inform them not to wash anything or take showers. This alerted me to the fact that when the power goes out in Banff, they can’t process water. There is also no water tower.
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