Imitation as a Form of Flattery.

A very common maxim seems to be that imitation is the "sincerest form of flattery." Personally, I very much agree (with it, not whether it is common or not). I remember reading an article in The Walrus about drums, wherein the author mentioned how at a young age he would imitate the drumbeat of his favorite artists. Originality is very valued asset in our society; business relies heavily on this concept. Being original=success; originality leads directly into being successful. Innovations+inventions often lead to monetary gain. Yet there seems to be an under appreciation of imitation in the Western world (take this euphemism with a grain of salt) and what can be gained (here I am generalizing society as a whole, but its what I observe). By the author of that article imitating the drumbeats, he can perhaps perfect this style, and eventually explore his own creativity and originality. Artists are rarely considered to be plagiarizing when they attempt to imitate the world around them. Rather, it is hailed as realism and hoisted high into a style unto itself. Though that may seem to be a stretch, one can see the connection. For myself, imitation is a good "square one" to ground yourself in an established style, which (oddly enough), eventually leads into creativity and originality in its own right. Which the man would have you believe is the right path to venture upon.

Pretend you don't know me for just a few minutes. What would you think if you saw me on the sidewalk, going about my day just like you? Imagine a cold sidewalk bathed in luminous lamplight, the snow contemplating whether it should remain a liquid slush, or turn solid with the night time cold. Imagine yourself here, walking towards me, a stranger.

What would you notice first - my puffy blue coat, my unruly hair - or would you sense me first - hear my footsteps on the slushy snow. Or would you notice nothing, and let me slip right by? Would you nod hello or stare straight ahead...would you sense the energy and smile?

Pretend for a minute that you did smile. How might our lives be different? If we were no longer strangers, two souls walking just because. Walking to shake that restless feeling, to breathe the fresh air. Walking because there is nothing else to do. Tracing these streets on the palms of my hands, holding them together with every breath.

But no more pretending. We didn't stop, didn't smile. We just walked past each other, our thoughts too abundant for our minds. We kept walking, trying to reach that far off land of forgetting, that island of solitude forever out of reach. Walking the night through, watching the darkness pass by, unsure of where we're going but knowing its not to each other.

A Short Story About Sex

-we make our way back down the path. Careful not to stop off into the knee high snow on either side. The street lights hit our eyes and in an instant our brains disappear, replaced by a cloud. A moment becomes everything and time is nothing.

-now we can fuck in the truest sense of the word. I don't care who this person is. All I see are body parts, of both myself and her. I touch breast, she touches ass, we touch lips. Everything is where it belongs, personality is unnecessary. A cock and an cunt. Fuck the consequences, in this world of singularities all there is is the act.

-I run onto the subway, worried greatly by the dogs chasing me. they will be stopped at the door. luckily they only let humans on this thing. on this train we lose individuality. our fingerprints are cut off at the door. the tip nipped. finger bandaged nobody's stand siliently, all facing forward. we are semen, waiting to burst forth and soil the city. I look around and see tails attached to the middle of everybody's back. It is governing them, pointing the way, forcing the humans towards a goal, any goal. upon closer inspection these tails are not natural. someone put them there. who the hell would do that? sickening.

-upon orgasm I receive a moment of clarity. Her name is Michelle. we are sharing something. I know she likes me. well, she must considering what we're doing. this will be a mess I hope not to have to clean up. Things might be weird between us now. Fuck it. It felt good. I feel good. She looks good.


-we fall asleep within minutes of each other. We are sprawled about the living room. pillows and beds being shared by the group. sleep is attained, but comfort is not.

Adrift at Sea

Tonight I am drifting far from this bed.

Surrounded by objects soaked with memory and the smell of winnipeg. I can remember where everything sat in the tiny pink room in my mind. That lamp, those books, this flickering candle, belong somewhere else. They belong to a place where I've left my heart. They are trying to survive in this new land; severly different from what they know. My things are all here. Every book in its place, each picture looking back at me. Reflecting memories and smiles from a different time. These reminders keep me sane but also set me adrift.
Out on the sea, the only companion my lonely heart.

Tonight I will drift into dreams of that place. I will drift on the sea of remembering.

Clinically He Was Dead.

v.2


v.1

New Begginings

He's going to do it, tonight. for a few weeks Chris has been playing with the idea of telling Christie how he feels. This would not be some declaration of love, but rather him just saying saying how he likes her and hopes that she returns his affection.
There was a big group of people going to the closest bar to the school. Chris knew that he was going to have some private time to talk with Christie. this was because this had been happening quite often over the past few weeks. often when they would both go out with a bunch of people he would find himself in a corner, talking alone with Christie. Chris knows that he enjoys talking to Christie. he feels like he can be himself. she is beautiful, funny and willing to spend time with him, a rather important pre-requisite. they had a lot in common. the seemingly unimportant stuff, movies, books, music. But they always seemed to agree on these issues. They had often talked late into the night, discussing sexuality, faith, politics, pretty much everything. These thoughts had been circling around Chris' head for the past few weeks and that had brought him to right now, in a bar, looking across at the woman he wants to date.
Chris moved across the dance floor. Pushing the wildly pulsating crowd gently out of his way as he passed. his heart beating fiercely he moved up beside Christie.
"Hey"
"Hey Chris. How are you?" Upon Christie moving to face Chris the friends with whom she was talking moved on. they knew his intentions.
"I'm doing fine." (this might have been a lie) "how are you doing?" the beating heart inside him became stronger, harder.
"good. really good actually. I got a paper back today. I thought I bombed it but ended up doing really well."
"well, congratulations." There was a puase in the conversation at this point. slightly awkward but the perfect place for Chris to just dive into it.
But instead of the words of passion and joy he intended a groan escaped his lips. Chris brought his had up to his chest. There was a sharp pain there and it stole the words from him. His head filled with nothing, except the pain. This pain became clearer than any thought he had ever had. It ripped through the entirety of him. And he collapsed to the floor.
As he died Christie was beside him. Her tears dotted his face as he became colder. life escaped him. th grip on Christie's hand, at one point enough to make her scream in pain became weak, nothing. Chris' hand fell from hers and lay half open on the floor.

I have begun to scare myself a little bit. I have taken to writing as real as possible stream-of-consciousness, well I guess they would be poems, before I go to bed. the results are weird, dark and don't make any sense at all. here's an example:

she whispers to me
you are dead
it's ok, I am too
we grope for each other
in the dark
my voice is stolen
by her faith
maybe we'll find each other
we reach out
in the dark
the mud is thigh high
and our touch isn't pure
contact is stolen
a village inside a cave
a whore at the door
she lets us in
me first, her behind
under the rock
below no sky we are together
"you can stay as long as needed
but you must fuck always"
we leave after two months
no tragedy here

what the hell is that? I think the thing that bugs me the most about it is that it isn't very good. it just seems like emo crap. there is still that part of me that wants to just be naturally gifted at writing, for everything that comes out of my pen to be good. I don't really want to be great, well, that may not be true. but I want to be good. to the point where I could make a living out of it and do nothing else for the rest of my life.

Strange things done in the midnight sun

“There ain’t a single mosquito on the Alaska Highway… they all married and raising large families.” Pete the handyman has told me this at least 5 times already today, and twice that yesterday. He has a t-shirt and a bumper sticker of the same. Never fails to make him laugh though. He has a strange laugh… a few chuckles, followed by a wheezey high pitched giggle. “Big fuckers too.”

There are two kinds of information, according to Larry and Pete. Historical fact, which is actually more like local folk lore, and whatever you can make a tourist believe. “Tourists, they fuckin’ stupid.”

A middle aged man and is gaudy wife ask Larry if he knows what time it is.
“Oh sure. See that valley ‘neath that peak up there? Shadow of the peak tells what time it is exactly.”
“Wow. A natural sundial!” Says the wife, excitedly. “So what time is it?”
“Daytime. Can’t see no shadows at night.”
The couple is unamused.
Larry laughs about it all day, clearly anytime he is asked the time is the highlight of the week. “Those dumb fuckin’ tourists, don’t know nothing ‘bout nothing.”

"One time these two guys from Arizona, there up here to shoot some buffalo. they dont know or dont care we dont got buffalo up here, only wood bison. anyway they asked me "so pete we gonna get to see some northern lights up here tonight" so i tell em, "yep, i'll just go turn on the generator, let er warm up a bit and flip the switch on."

Pete takes me outside to tell me the names of the mountains.
“Now that one up there, she just got her name about 10 years ago. Ol’ Jack down the road there had a man working for him, name of Rabbit. Now Rabbit packs a lunch one day and heads up the mountain behind ‘Ol Jack’s place up the road there. Comes down about 4 hours later. “I made it up top” He say. “Buuullshit” Say Ol’ Jack. The next day Rabbit packs a lunch and heads up again, brings back snowballs, nails Ol’ Jack right between the eyes. Right between the eyes with a snowball in May! “Rabbit Mountain it is.” Say Ol’ Jack after he clear the snow away from his face.”
I can’t tell if this is local lore, or if I’m being taken in as the new city girl.

“Now that one all covered in snow still behind Rabbit, that’s Churchill Mountain. Named after an American President during the war, when the highway was built. Americans came through here to get up to Alaska, cause the shippin’ route wasn’t too reliable, with them fuckin’ German submarines out there. Yep, named after an American President, just like Mount Rushmore. Our own Mount Rushmore way up here. Just need to carve a few faces into the side.”

I don’t tell Pete that neither Churchill nor Rushmore were American presidents. Whether it was the mistake of the original mountain namer, or Pete’s relative knowledge of history outside the north, I don’t know.

“You go to college? I took a year of college, took forestry up there in White Horse, hadda drop out to support the family. What are ya takin? English? Whatdya study that for? You speak good English, I seen you reading around the lodge. Looks like you know English pretty good to me. People tell me sometime I don’t speak good English. I say, I ain’t tryin’ to speak good English, I’m talkin’ Canadian.”

“Speaking of Canadian, you ever study Robert Service up there in your university? Best Canadian poet in history. “There’s weird stuff done ‘neath the midnight sun by the men who work fer gold” Don’t come any better then that. You know anything better then that?” I almost say, “Yes. There are strange things done in the midnight sun the the men who moil for gold… you know, how Robert Service actually wrote it... But I don’t. I just smile and wonder if Larry’s version isn’t better anyway.

Hark! It's the Northland Calling

I built an inuckshook way up on The Wash today. (The Wash is the enourmous flats at the base of the mountain. There are miles and miles of Wash in every direction. The Wash becomes a massive river flushing into the lake, says Larry the cook. I asked him when: “Spring.” “When’s spring?” “When The Wash is under in water.”)

The Wash is ribbed like most of the mountains up here, looks like someone dropped the mountain into the middle of The Wash, and The Wash rippled out in waves, like a stone in a pond.

On the largest wave I built my inookshook. It stretches parallel with the base of the mountain and the highway. It’s about 10 feet high. I scrambled up, stones sliding out from under my feet unpredictably. I stood at the top for a while, looking out over the watch. Amazing how 10 feet can make such a difference in scenery. Then I started to gather stones.

It’s hard, though The Wash is covered in stones. Well, made of stones really. As though every year the mountain shed its outer skin in a serpentine manner to grow, and the dead skin makes up The Wash. This is not far from the truth, the melting snow and ice peels rocks off the mountain, and the rockslides of course. Made of stone, The Wash.

But for my inookshook I needed a distinct size. Something between boulder and pebble. I’ve only been here a couple days, not quite a boulder slinging mountain type. Neither though am I sissy enough to use pebbles. Impractical anywayall over at the slightest startle.

I gathered, flat, nothing protruding or bulbous, stones. Most of them about the span of my palm, but the base rocks I need to lift with both hands, tugging them out of their tetris arrangement that could be hundreds of years old. I attempt color scheme, but my palate is not large enough to be allow me to be aesthetically demanding. None the less I found an unusually yellow stone to place on the top, and a smaller white one on top. I give the stones beneath a little nudge. Seems sturdy enough. The North Wind has been fighting me like it was the sentinel of the mountain, and didn’t want me building at it’s base. (Word play alert: This particular range is in fact called The Sentinel Mountains)
Since the ‘shook stood up to the nudging and the wind (which took off my toque and made me stumble a few times) it seemed sturdy enough. Done.

With a real sense of accomplishment, I scrambled down the wave, studied immideate and distant landscape to make sure I could find it again, and started walking east through one of the troughs of The Wash. Actually I have no idea what direction I was going, could have been north for all I know. A compass certainly would have been a good investment. Walking back towards the Lodge anyway, I was pretty sure. I looked back every hundred meters or so, and as long as I could see the wave, I could see my inookshook, the white stone on top like a lighthouse.

A mosquito followed me back to the lodge, but never bit.