SO VERY VEE VEE

Thee last post of twenty-twelve!

May you receive exactly what you deserve this NYE!

happyholidays...

Pleasant days to you, my friends.  

The world didn't end, and you've proved

To be

Perfect.

nicedice

In his article 'The Loss of Privacy', Umberto Eco writes of the new society being created within and by the internet, "Little by little we become exhibitionists, having gleaned that nothing can be kept confidential anymore and that no behaviour is considered scandalous".  And this, about the content that individuals voluntarily throw up onto the interwebs: "Exploring home pages shows us that many sites are set up merely to exhibit the site owner's squalid normality, if not abnormality".  The loss of privacy, surrendered willingly or otherwise, is not a sign of progress according to Eco.  That particular article was written in 2000.

In 2007, Emily Nussbaum wrote in her article 'Say Everything', "More young people are putting more personal information out in public than any older person ever would--and yet they seem mysteriously healthy and normal, save for an entirely different definition of privacy.  From their perspective, its the extreme caution of the earlier generation that's the narcissistic thing".  In the last year or so I became aware of the fact that there is a generation of adults alive now who have grown up with entirely new concepts of the personal and the public.  I realized this mainly through working with some guys in their early twenties for whom pressing buttons comes as natural as breathing.  My early twenties were spent romanticizing a kind of luddite-hippie-bohemian existence where everyone rolled their own and spouted poetry.

When I consider, as Nussbaum does in her article, my teenage self putting the fraught thoughts of my diary on the internet...-well it just would not have happened.  Now there are multitudes of folks who've had nude photos of themselves circulating through the inter-tubes for more than a decade.  Odd.

I am skeptical that these developments are indicative of a mass change in consciousness, but neither do I believe they are a sign of the apocalypse.

When walking with Pooder in the woods, it's obvious that the surrounding environment contains a plethora of signs, signals, and information for him.  His nose his mouse as he happily surfs an endless web of smells, sights, and sounds.

We have created a virtual environment in which we leave our tracks, claw marks, monuments, and excrement.  It can be a delight to decode and simultaneously an overwhelming tsunami of stimuli.

I'm aware that any misgivings I may have about the social media world are outmoded and pointless.  It has obviously 'already happened', and anyway--I may not pour my soul out on the interwebs on a daily basis, but ply me with enough intoxicants and I very well may tell you more about myself than you need or want to know!

Winter Comes to Elk Island

The snow came in one big dump.  In twenty-four hours the sky dropped fluffy white pillows all over the park.  A welcome and swift transition from greys and browns and grey-browns to angel food white with a singed golden crust.

My E.I. experience comes to its stunning conclusion on December 21st, 2012 (sometime around the end of the world, no?).  I've seen through a few changes; the necessary monastic-style life has done wonders for my waistline I must say.  Good food fresh exercise.  (The instructional video is forthcoming, dear readers).  Silent nights on the point have engendered a new love of the printed word and classical music, Vivaldi's Four Seasons in particular.

I finished Shelley's Frankenstein the other night--and lo, it was name checked yesterday evening on the final Massey lecture on the CBC.  It is now considered one of the first science fiction novels, and a sceptics warning on the dangers of science unfettered from moral and humanistic concerns.  I had no idea that Frankenstein's monster was a heart-hurt murderer.

The only thing that seems to be suffering is my ability to find the time to squeeze in my own writing and blog updates.  After work and dog walks and food preparation I have just about enough energy to shower the day's grime off me self...however I looked through my backlog of photos today and realized that there are some good ones locked in the vaults, and that there is adequate visual material to add my scintillating commentary to...so breath easy.  The final weeks before the end of the world, I mean year, will involve work, and catching up on a few things I've let slide since disappearing to Alberta.  And hopefully catching up with a few people I've not been in contact with (hello Christopher Eaket, if you're out there--I hope the southern states are treating you well!)

I think this November mustache is starting to go to my head.  Best wishes and talk soon, y'all.

Falleffects

Well fall is done with us it's safe to say...minus twenty degrees this morning at Elk Island.  The snow and the cold was in a hurry to get here...this post, of course, has been waiting a few days to get itself posted....

Halloween spent in Edmonton with a couple of old buddies, a booze-boogie blur punctuated by one of the oddest breakfasts I have ever had at a place called Red Robin's.  Cheers to you wherever you are now, Pedro--the most spaced out waiter in Edmonton.

This is what happens when 5 million is wiped off your stock portfolio in one day.

Reading A Moveable Feast by Hemmingway.  Economical prose suiting me fine as I hole up in the snow with the phrase 'fiscal cliff' bouncing around my brain...

Thanks/Giving and The Tawayik Trail

What am I thankful for?  Drawing breath on planet earth?

The traditional things of course: health, roof over head, food in guts, a job.

A partner, friends, family, a dog.

Fuller's London Pride.

 The opportunity to make as many mistakes as I can possibly fit into a lifetime.

 I am thankful for the kind of life where I can get up at four a.m. on a Saturday morning, drink tea and read Woolf, then walk the dog on a deserted foggy trail just as the sun turns the grey clouds pink.

 I am thankful for those moments where I can see my life as-it-is, not through glasses tinted rose--or lenses stained black.

 I am glad I live in 'interesting times'.

 I am proud to be a member of The Fellowship of Solo Dance Partiers, Lodge #23.

Fog and Frost

The first frost at Elk Island came with a nice white-out fog.

Here's conehead Pooder investigating a muskrat nest beneath the dock.  Poor guy has had the cone on now for over two weeks.  I'm thinking he'll need it on for another week or so.

Hayburger Trail

 So I'm riding my bike on the Hayburger Trail, wondering if my Elk Island sojourn could be considered a 'slice of Canadiana'--I mean I'm surrounded by beavers, moose, geese, elk, and bison.  My roommate is an Acadian called Reeshaard.

 I'm reading Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf.  Not as brilliant as The Waves, but she continues to be one of my favourite novelists...her descriptions of London town making me miss the metropolis as I listen to the coyotes howl somewhere on the Point.

 My new photographic series, 'Ambivalent Facial Expressions Whilst Cycling' continues...

 this herd below were lit by some great setting sunlight which I failed to capture.  They are

plains bison.  They roam the area north of Highway 16, while the Wood bison herd remain in the south.