Janus: Two-Facing

I found him king-of-the-castling on August 17, 2014 atop a newly arrived mound of rubble.  This view is toward open water.

A ten foot clips-on-bike-shoes slippery scramble to leave a note on that shard of orange brick on his pedestal.

Oh, you are too cute to
ignore even if it means
clambering over this
pile of deconstructed
city to get to you!

On his other side, the side looking toward the city, I left this note

Looks are deceiving,
yes? At first glance from
the other side you’re
simply cute up here.
But from this side
your rusty hair does not
obstruct your view either —
forward and back
like Janus as you stand
here in the present. I
admire this about you.
It can’t be easy seeing
that much, being rooted
here. Or does it provide
you with some hold on
absolution?

And only one week later.

From August 17 to October 12, 2014, Janus experienced numerous alterations, semi-deconstructions, reconstructions and witnessed a sinister incursion. On each occasion my response was written on some suitable surface at hand.

And now, backtracking a little to the day of the incursion.

On this late August day the ride along The Spit entry road was unusually quiet. No birdsong, no cormorant squawk, no wind rush sound in my ears — so quiet in fact, that I could hear the insects singing. Not a single rabbit scampered to safety just ahead of my front wheel, when so often at dawn there could be twenty or more successful dodges between us.

The point, where I did most of the creative instinct tracking and writing was hushed. Suddenly, THUMP, that distinctive hollow sound of heavy objects striking ground underpinned as The Spit is by rubble and its air pockets. I stopped, breath held, silenced as if obedient to some instinct.

I crouched. A little hidden and wrote.

Stunning, sobering
the dark force of him.
I heard it first, one clunk as something hit the ground.
It felt somehow notice-worthy when normally such noises out here only register.
Slowly, ever so slowly moving across you
searching eyes
until he spotted his next victim
so sadly thorough and complete his work. I saw him moments later sitting
roadside
bare footed, alone — perhaps the victim of a chaos governed broken heart.

Looking up every couple of words to keep my eye on him I suddenly felt a deep shift . You know the split -second moment - that impossible to put into words eye-lock instant. I moved very slowly keeping him at a constant distance thinking, ‘He is without wheels, I have my bike. Stay. I can outpace him .’ And so, we inched keeping that gap steady between us, our eyes not meeting again, mine averted for fear of triggering something unpredictable in him, something more powerful. Despite my bravado, foreboding allowed no further writing that day.

He appeared and disappeared only once into the path leading up to the lighthouse. On all of my subsequent visits that path has never again looked quite so beautiful, mysterious and sinister as it did on that day.

I remain altered by that encounter. It was more information about The Spit than I wanted at such intensity. The guys from 2012 target practicing were enough.  To this day, I cannot unknow their impact or his presence, his methodical determination, taking his time e v e r   s o  s l o w l y,   ever so deliberately until every single creative act was razed. 

But then again, The Spit is impartial and deeply dimensional, wild and unpredictable. It holds the tension of opposites with such grace. It has never been my intention to change it (as IF I could) or to avoid this truth. The Spit’s contrasts and mysteries are what draw me. Best to remember this.

●

I had another rule for myself:  not to rebuild anything that has been altered or destroyed. But I was attached to this one. It occurs to me as I write today, that I must have needed to soften the blow of that assault from the week before.  I did a little restoration work, just a little.

And left this note.

…with the hope
that this is as good
a reconstructions as
Humpty’s might have been.
You are just too good to let go.
Hold on! Hold on!

Until October 12th, when only this remained.

The granite slab on which I had written to Janus at our first meeting was laid, writing side visible, on his concrete block pedestal. I added this to the existing text.

The thought of you still
lingers here — so it seems
that someone has remembered,
has held your thought in this saved note.

By October 25th, all traces of Janus, his pedestal and his rubble mound had been bulldozer-obliterated. The Spit had grown a little and it was time to begin again.

And for us, you and me, until next time.

The Stealth Art Collective

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The Artist and the Cookbook

I told this story to a few friends who said I should have posted it when it happened, that you would have liked the story about the synchronicity that sent The Spit  to Austria.  Better late than never?

In early 2019, Galerie Centrum in Graz, Austria found us.  This is how.

Going way back to what seemed like minutes after WWII, my newly married mother was leaving Austria. As a parting gift, her mother gave her a beautifully bound and illustrated cookbook by Katharina Prato.  To understand the importance of this book, think Austria’s Julia Child (a hundred years before Julia) meets Irma Rombauer (The Joy of Cooking).  Besides its significance as a kind of cooking Bible, the cookbook was given to her the last time my mother would ever see her mother.  So, now you have an idea of how devastated my mother was when the shipping crate that carried our belongings was looted while travelling by rail from Quebec City harbour to White River Ontario.  She often mentioned that cookbook over the years, mourned its loss and the connection it had carried.

 Many years later, I found a copy of the cookbook, (right publishing date, but not nearly as beautiful and illustration rich as the original) through an online Austrian antique bookseller.  I had the book restored and a case made for it and then presented it to my mother. Eventually she had to transfer to a nursing home.  What to do with that Prato cookbook?  Recycle bin was NOT an option.

The first return on a Google search was a culinary competition in Graz, Austria named for Katharina Prato.  A sign, yes? Graz is the culinary capital of Austria -- perfect home for the book.  I had forgotten to delete my automatic signature with link to this blog, before sending my email inquiry.  It turned out that the lead organizer of the event was a curious person and became enchanted with our Leslie Street Spit.  He also happened to be a close friend of the curator at Galerie Centrum, who in turn was a curious person and became enchanted with our Leslie Street Spit.  The exhibition opened December 26, 2019.

A few exhibition images:

Until next time. Stay safe and be careful out there.

The Stealth Art Collective

Retrospecting

A moment in the sun, in The Star.
26 December 2019

https://www.thestar.com

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Good Night Little City, Time, and a Victory.

It’s cold out there but the wind is behaving. 

Today my warm-weather biker self is wondering at this nut case who is out here in November.  I’m dressed in so many layers, I feel like the Michelin Man. 

As soon as I see that yellow gate closed across the Spit’s entrance, all things except my determination slide out of my head.  I push at the chained gate to widen the gap a little more, enough to squeeze in myself and my bike.  Already this is feeling deliciously illegal. 

There’s not a single soul on the inner road, well, human soul.  A monarch caterpillar beats a path across the road in front of me. Out of transformation time, he’s made his commitment. I’ve romanticized the monarchs. Now I remember how tough they are and am encouraged to think he’ll make it.

He stops.

I slam on the brakes. 

He needs a little help to safer ground.

On the bike again, I’ve convinced myself it’s only cloudy, not anywhere near twilight. 

Focus! Pedal hard. Keep warm.

Wait, just a sec, off the bike — checking in on the situation with the Magnificent Pile and I take as usual, more time, a lot more time, unmeasured time.  That’s the trouble out here, time passing becomes like when I was a kid, back before there was time.

I rationalize that it will be okay since I’m already so near The Little City, I can just push the bike those few metres along the rubble cliff.

Okay, camera, check.  Pens, check.  Phone. Do not forget the phone, in case.

And then, surprise! Not only is The Little City still here, it has grown again.  Just look at that thing! 

08 Nov 2018

The nerve of it!
How can the sun be
going down already?!
And me here with
no bike light.
I could stay here with
you mini metropolis
for the longest time —
waves breaking rhythms
on your shore.
Oh sigh — best I move on
with my nearly cold-stiff
fingers and my complaining
pen. She’s right I guess
the light fades minute
by minute now and
it’s a lightless 45 to home.

The mother-implanted apprehension of being alone in the dark in a remote place begins to surface as cold and wind and dimming light increasingly penetrate my fixation.  I am so far from the relative safety of the paved inner road. I climb over the rubble cliff edge, pack up my gear and begin to pick my way. Sometimes I ride a few feet, sometimes I just cannot see enough and am forced to dismount.  Anxiety ratchets up.  Finally, fear by now in my throat, I can make out the inner road. 

Anxiety down a notch.  Back on my bike, knowing the road is predictable, if you don’t count the potholes, and there is a sliver of moon after all.   I remember I’m an adult, not that overly admonished adventurous tomboy I once was.  Well, I’m hoping maybe still the tomboy.  Perhaps I can get her back.

I trade anxiety for exhilaration.  If I could ride no hands, I’d be throwing my arms in the air.  At the top of my lungs, I yell into the night, something defiant, victorious, and not printable. And then I laugh out loud, really, r e a l l y, loud.

This part, surely this part of today’s adventure is what I was supposed to live. 

Good night, Little City.

Until next time.

The Little City (continued) - at October 2018

And so, the next month, The Little City is beckoning.  What a great downtown to go to for an introvert like me! 

This day I feel that familiar urgency to get there.  It’s already October and I’m running out of time – again.  I hear the cicadas.  It’s a warm day but not the choicest time to be courting. It’s October for crying out loud!  They must be in a muscle flexing frenzy propelled by season’s end intuition. I wonder at their urgency and how it is related to mine.  Their melody precedes and follows me onward from about halfway along the inner road.  I’m missing something. 

Of course! Nothing is ever just one thing. I figure that like any sectioned orchestra, the grasshoppers, perhaps day-night confused katydids, legs bowing on wings, may be contributing to this symphony.  And then there is the breeze with its foretelling undercurrents sighing over my ears and the lapping of wavelets once I get near enough.  I think how I will miss this concert. For months.

And there it is! I’m snapped out of my symphonic reverie.  I know by heart the above the rubble cliff landmarks by now.  I’m here. Slam on the brakes, ditch the bike, a few steps, peer over the edge. And, YES!

Today, despite a bit more sprawl, The Little City exudes its enchantment without letting me drift to real-world urban reflections like last time.  I am particularly motivated to hold everything Spit-magical today.

A new tenant:

And that little blue beach glass heart, the pen is claiming as a tribute for its ink. What a diva!

I leave this:

09 October 18

A linear page today
to echo your linear
orderliness.

Your ability to inspire
growth is, well is,
astonishing
considering your precarious
foundation.

My guess is that your sturdiness
depends on respect
and
admiration.

It doesn’t hurt either that you
have tucked yourself in here
below
the rubble cliff.

Do you plan to wander
to the sea?

Until next time. 

The Stealth Art Collective

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The Little City - August/September 2018

I first came upon it a few weeks ago ─ barely visible from a distance and unidentifiable.  It kind of telegraphed a sense of order, just enough to pique curiosity. 

Like so many things on The Spit, it was worth the trek along the sand, pebble, rubble beach in my clip-slippery bike shoes to get there. You don’t have to go that way.  It’s just that my curiosity drove me onward without considering less complicated alternatives. I was already on the beach below the newest incarnation of the Magnificent Pile trying to get a shot of it from the lake side when I received the ‘telegraph’.

And then:

I left this tucked into the back, facing the rubble cliff:

Here it is, a little easier to read:

26 August 2018

A swan pair flies
overhead.
He’s in front, honking to her.
Is it to make sure
she is still there?
She’s not answering from
her nearly
beak-to-tailfeather
position.
Or is it the other way ‘round?
She, then he?
And then there is you,
small city of wonder…
Oh, and another swan
alone this time,
the honking not quite
so confident.

As distractingly wonderful
as those three were,
you are here beside me,
a begin-again
experiment
in
harmonious high density
living.

Ten days later:

For a moment I am transfixed by the encounter of this Google Earth likeness. I am a benevolent introspective giant here.  The impending sky, the juxtaposition of the rubble cliff and its meaning, with the orderly elegance of the vulnerable little city, and the promise that it might offer, all held in a single gaze.  A small shiver of recognition passes through me.

7 September 2018

Hello again, hello,
charming city of
harmony
with your perfect
value scale balance:
white to grey to black
and
back again.
You’ve grown so, and now
you have yourself
an orange brick
delimitation.

Keeping out
or
keeping in?

Perhaps a frame to show you off
to best advantage
by
its colour difference
and precision placement.

‘Ah, you cannot know the
answer’ says the pen. ‘You
can only guess and spill my ink
with your speculation.’
‘You’re wrong.’ I say ‘It’s only play.’

Some days I love not knowing
answers.

Also on this day, the tower builder arrived and was instantly hard at work and keenly focused just down the way.  The temptation to approach was huge.  But I knew that knowing would change everything.  And so,

07 September 2018

I thought I was
unshakeable
in
my commitment to
anonymity.
Today is a little shaky.
The pen is sniggering
at my distress.
The builder is over there as
I sit safe-distanced
by the little city here.
Shall I leave this note page
here or there?
There, would only be
a sort-of half
revelation.
Is there such a thing?

I visited the little city again the other day.  It has developed urban sprawl with low-rise additions at its periphery. Still charming. And yet somehow its magical intimate ambush eroded with this suburbs hint toward real-city evolution. There it was, a nudge toward the commonplace world I inhabit and me, deeply reluctant to leave enchantment behind.

Until next time. 

The Stealth Art Collective

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Ostraca, Ekphrasis and the Magnificent Pile Part III !!!

Yes! Three exclamation marks for Part III. It is the beginning of so much more to this story. This time I broke a rule I have kept for 10 years -- the one about staying anonymous.  Although, I only bent it a little.

Here’s what happened:

Since the towers were so obviously (to me) the work of the same creative mind and muscle, I wanted to play fair: a) ask permission to use my photographs of the towers on this blog, and b) ask whether the builder(s) would like the work credited or to remain anonymous.  I left a note:

The hoped-for answer arrived in a day.

The builder is Robert.  The imagination, the design, the engineering and execution make him an extraordinary artist. He was too modest to self-identify so, I’m taking identification license. Robert, the builder, is an artist. Better ─ artist-engineer.

Within a few days, the Magnificent Pile, had changed its crown to this:

From the lake side

From the land side

And Next to it, Robert had flung:

Although it was considerably smaller than the tower, it had so much energy at its heart, enough to hold its own next to all that grandeur next door. 

I left this:

3 June 2017

Oh what a THING you are today
With your First Nations Eagle heart
     In pride of place.
Your improbably graceful curls and curves
Who knew that concrete blocks and bricks
     can sway
     can dance
     can undulate so?
The Romans and the Greeks have nothing on you.

In return, Robert sent these:

Credit:  ©Robert Zunke

Credit:  ©Robert Zunke

Credit:  ©Robert Zunke

Until next time. 

The Stealth Art Collective

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While We Were Absent

Just before my long hiatus I received this beautiful image "Poem in Ice" taken January 1, 2015 from Kris Ito.  It makes perfect timing for a small digression from 'The Magnificent Pile'  and a perfect bridge, for beginning again.  Thanks Kris!

January 1, 2015 © Kris Ito

Here it is in October 2014,  freshly written and left at my favourite talk-to-The-Spit site – below the lighthouse, a little over the rubble cliff edge.

To The Leslie Street Spit,

Almost mid-October now (I’m glad all your notes have gone – too much to read!)
Thanksgiving weekend to be more accurate.
No matter the amount of wiping, your surfaces
still bleed the ink.  It’s just too cold for the dew to
release on this breath-visible morning.

It felt imperative today, absolutely appropriate, to
come
and
thank you for your existence, your magic,
your small-gap revelation of the universe,
a little like Oz, not the sham of him. It’s the glimpse
behind the curtain…a moment so brief, it can be
easily missed.

Creative spirit and instinct mingle here. I’ve not seen it
so clearly anywhere else before.  I love you for this
and for all you draw from the natural world, from
the human world, from me and the pen.
You are indeed a temenos, a holy place, in the best
possible sense.

Thank you for the slim edge that you are, where the
natural and the deconstructed built worlds dance –
and the monarchs, this morning, so many exquisitely
beautiful monarchs.

With profound appreciation,
                               the pen and the camera and me

'til soon.

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Spit-love and Wild Art

 

Our Spit-Love story’s anniversary is today, ten years today. A good day to begin telling our story, yes? And I am delighted to be the one in our small collective of artists to tell it.

I’ve noticed during our time together ― The Spit and mine ― that most visitors, especially the camera bearing ones are interested in this urban wilderness for its wild life, the conservation efforts. Visitors without cameras might be carrying fishing equipment if you are out early enough to catch them, or they are earbuds wearing walkers and joggers.  Oh, and the cyclists. 

The results of a Google search confirm this.  Compared to recreational and wild life interests, there is relatively little to be found about wild art, about the creative instinct and its dance with us on The Spit.  This has pride of place on the Stealth Art Collective’s list of what we love and what excites us about The Spit.

In the beginning using photo documentation, our purpose was to track the creative instinct as it reveals itself in the spontaneous, anonymously made artworks to be found there.  We’ve not been to another place where you can get this close to a clear uncompromised view of the creative instinct at work. 

In this wild, messy urban location, there is absolutely no incentive to make art: no curator, no art enthusiast to please, no critic interested, no formal institutionalized setting for display. Certainly, no prestige. Urban-world ideas of what is precious and valuable and conventional definitions of what is art  are impossible to apply. And, except for once in 2014 ―  that’s a story for another time ― there are no financial rewards, and yet…

I had experienced The Spit for years before 2008 but on April 14 I saw it differently. At the furthest point, below the lighthouse I saw this:

I felt a shift in perception. It was one of those rare experiences when the universe seems to open her curtain just a little to reveal something important, enlightening, some truth. 

And so it was the first day of the next ten years. 

Immediately we made a rule of conduct.  If we were tracking the creative instinct, then we could not intervene, we would only document what we found.  And just as immediately, we broke our rule. Not our fault. The creative instinct coaxed us to play.

There was something irresistible about crowning it with a stone spine. Perhaps it was for us a way of marking the beginning of something significant.  You never know when something is beginning until hindsight kicks in. We’ll return to this fine rebar creature in its many incarnations later in the story.

Until next time. 

The Stealth Art Collective

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