Anodyne
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
 
Recent reading:

Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
Jeff Wall, et al., Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews

Both completed on the ferry to and from the island. A 16km. walk, in flat grey light, from Duke Point to Departure Bay with the camera, with a brief stop in downtown Nanaimo to correct a striking pricing decision by one of my competitors. On up the road, framing Stewart Avenue magnolias, backpack about fifteen pounds heavier. "Ka-ching," says perennial hiking companion Rose T. Cat, delighted to be out again after months in the house. 248 pictures taken, 220-odd promptly trashed on the ferry on the way home. Survivors: two cedars, two ghosts, one magnolia.

The uncanny sense, the whole day, of stalking through the background of one of Pete Culley's pictures: drainage ditches, skunk cabbage bright and pungent at the water's edge. Gravel trucks, landfills, condos hammered up out of the forest. Beer cans, plastic bags, toilet-paper streamers. A rabbit bounding along the side of the Duke Point Highway. Sawdust, plywood stacks. The sad Arbutus Book Exchange, its proprietor snoozing away on the couch with a paperback propped on his chest. Magnolias, cows. Trailerparks. Blossom. Subway, Tim's, $1.149 gas.

"Fuckin A!" shouts a baby wigger in a frayed Bulls jacket, spraying spit in a long continuous downward stream.

- posted by cjb @ 9:50 PM


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