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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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"O Wild West Wind, thou breathe of Autumn's being...."
- Shelley
I have been seized with that restlessness, seasonal melancholy that brings in Autumn.
The leaves have not yet turned, but there is the shortening of days, the lengthening of shadows, the quick chill in the morning that never dispels itself....
It is Autumn.
And there is the wind, blowing from the west, earlier than the wind of Shelley, but the same. It always arrives here earlier, truly summer only lasts until the end of July, then the light changes, the shortening of days becomes more pronounced, there is that rush to finish those countless chores of summer....
TO explore, adventure, travel, live, each day growing shorter, quicker, more and more noticable.
Until it's September and Autumn is here, perhaps not on the calendar, but it's here. Dark still at 6:00 AM, chill outside, leaves and branches from the trees, still green, begin gathering on the lawns. There is the full harvest moon hanging bloated in the sky, low to the horizon, the next time it appears there will have been frost....
It is Autumn.
Strange, it fills me always with sadness, yet is my favorite season. It conjures, evokes within me memories of returning to University, of fresh acquaintance and old souls gathering in the halls, of finding new classrooms.
Of warm coffee in the morning, pretty girls whom you will know by the end of semester, the romance of libraries and of cozy winebars, live theatre, haunting music played late on the radio. It heralds winter, and you can see through the still green lawns to the frozen ground, to trees with barren fingers reaching up to the sky, to cold graves shoveled through the snow.
It is the colour of burnt sienna and raw umber and smells like freshly ground coffee, old leather and red wine, it's the bracing cold of early morning before the sun has arisen, early snowflakes melting upon your cheek, it's the smell of rare perfumes and burning leaves, it's the taste of pumpkin pies and crabapples, it's the hope, always, that this year it will be different, this year will be the one....
There is the sadness for the memories of loves that have failed, romances fallen by the wayside, people stolen away by death or circumstance, it begins the season of gathering and preparing for winter, the gestation of ideas and ambitions until more sunny and fortuitous times are upon us....
It is Autumn, and when you go outside the wind, the sun, remind you of how soon it will be here, how soon it will be winter, and somewhere in my soul there's an archtype, an understanding that with each season my own days are numbered....
It has been postulated that time is an illusion, that everything that has happened in the universe has happened all at once, for an instant and an eternity, and what we imagine to be time is a distortion of our senses that brings to us only what we can understand, a necessary evolution (if that can be applied here), and so we are forever in the womb, in the embrace of our lovers, in the cold earth beneath us...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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Then there are the other reasons for collecting. Not just memories or souveniers, but objects as inspiration.
From top left and clockwise: Seashells, locally found amber, antique ivory chess piece, Palindrome Cork (1991, Ravenswood), large piece of amber with insects entrapped, neolithic flint, crystal skull, seashells, snuff bottle (contemporary), hand painted from the inside, row of dinosaur teeth, plastic reliquary containing the plastic reproduction of a saint, mailbox plate.
A small selection of the ornaments on my shelf. 1991, a good year, the logo (3 interlocked ravens) and the date contain a certain symmetry. The snuff bottle, meticulous Asian craftsmanship, to sit with a single brushed hair and paint the bottle through the narrow opening, finer antique examples cost in the thousands of dollars. The Ivory chess piece, knight, a stream of associations -> Parsifal and the Holy Grail, The errant knight, the odd move, the knights tour. The crystal skull and plastic saint, cheap bits of forteana, amber with insects (visible through a magnifying glass), tangible worlds within worlds.
Right: Fossil Nautilus(ammonite?) shell.
And the Nautilus, the golden mean and proportion as simply laid out as possible, underlying mathematical principles for growth and development, fractals, time....
Left: Georgian Keys
Keys, of course, access to secrets, initiation, antique keys because the new swipe cards, microchips and passwords somehow lack poetry, the keys as an object themselves are beautiful, rusted and patinated iron, ornate patterns hand cut to fit the lock.
Above: Brain Coral, buddha, buddha
And Buddha's, I need more of these, the finer Indian bronzes, the pantheon of Gods contained in a printing box shelf...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2019
I've taken this collecting thing a bit far. I mean, to see my place, it's packed to the rafters, overflowing with stuff.
Stuff, as in, not especially valuable stuff, probably most of it worthless, but my stuff. Boxes and boxes and boxes of it. It's been over a year and I sitll haven't unpacked.
Most of it is worthless, junk, but sentimental. With everything there is associated a memory, the 1930's vintage Rolex Oyster Observatory, junk, but the memory, the surprise of finding it in a Value Village in the southeast of Calgary. The 50's 16mm film camera, the realizing of it's potential, the quick reframe of thought at a garage sale, from "What is it" to "I have to have it....". And so on and so forth. The dinosaur bones, small fragments, memories of Drumheller, walking in the badlands. The native artifacts, walking the local rivers at sunset. An antique ivory chess knight, memory of an antique shop in Greenich, that, the keys, the bones, coins, crystals, all serve to jog the imagination, archived, preserved inspiration, a moment of time, recent or long ago, held captive and displayed in a series of old wooden typeface drawers, themselves a souvenier.
On the shelf above my desk...2 Coins, Roman, (Maximus & Trajan), coin, chinese (15th century), pendant (chinese), cheap rock crystal skull 1" across, a lead soldier, 3 18th century keys (the rest on a shelf elsewhere), 2 native beads, many stones with holes through them picked and thought too neat to be discarded, 2 fossilized bison teeth (1 from Crowsnest Lake, the other picked along the Bow), a pine cone, many sea shells, a nautilus, postage stamp, lock, piece of amber with insects....
The objects, they're only the landmarks on the journey. The physical signposts.
Other people fill their houses with warm memories of Ikea and smooth talking salesmen. Well dusted kitchens, scrubbed floors and orderly bookshelved. Mine is packed with junk and memories.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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It's an instinct, this treasure hunting.
And the garage sale season having passed, a short season this year, hampered by finances and transportation, the instinct seeks its outlet.
I take the children to a riverside park in the neighborhood to look for stones for their rock tumbler.
And sorting through the gravels, the abundant pebbles, we're surprised to find an old indian bead.
Small, perhaps an inch and a half, with a perfectly bored hole straight through it.
And it triggers the instinct.
There are no buried treasures in Alberta, well, very few anyways. There's the Lost Lemon Mine, if you credit the legend, and undoubtedly more than a few mason jars filled with farmers life savings buried under fence posts, but there's none of the classic treasure hunting raw materials, gems, gold, sunken ships.
But there is history, in it's way a sort of treasure.
Before I go too much further I should note that it's illegal to look for archeological artifacts in Alberta. If you see or spot an archeological artifact you are supposed to call the provincial museum and leave the site undisturbed. All artifacts are property of the state.
Now, on paper this is ideal. It speaks to our highest and noblest selves, our shared history is our shared property to be preserved for future generations.
But like many laws that at first glance look good on examination we can discover that it lacks both teeth and foresight. We think nothing of building entire neighborhoods (In Calgary, think Bowness, Crescent Heights, Mount Royal, Hawkwood, and many, many more) over Native sites. We build highways over them, farmers rearrange the stones on their field, taking apart medicine wheels, teepee rings, burial grounds are buried beneath parks, golf courses and basements. The vast majority - over 99% of the paleo and archeological history of Calgary - lies buried under suburbs, or has been churned by bulldozers and ploughs destroying any contextual value the sites may have provided.
We turn a blind eye, or excuse it with "You can't stop progress".
Which is true, but laws that allow and encourage laypeople to collect, document and report finds and artifacts would would save much of this.
No government could ever afford to staff a province or even a country the size of Alberta with the number of archeologists we would need just to keep abreast of progress. Of the expanding highways, cities, suburbs, oil sands.
It is, upon examination, an idiotic law that is in its way far worse than having no laws at all. The kind of law that is intended to reassure the people that "we're protecting our history" when in fact we are systematically destroying it. Destroying it through ignorance, through "Let the experts handle it", through progress and neglect. Presumably countries that don't have similar laws have no valued history, you only need to look at countries like the US or Great Britain to see how their lack of competent legislation has destroyed their history....
I digress, but I will return to this theme again and again.
So we discover the bead, and search through the gravels but find nothing more, some fossils, other stones that might look good polished, but that is all.
But the seed is sown.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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It had to happen. I knew, hoped, waited patiently for the day, and my daughter has come back from her vacation and retrieved her cat.
I was worried, perhaps they were having too much fun without him, perhaps they'd just let me look after him for the rest of the summer, what if they had an accident and Pumpkin became my ward?
I was right, somewhat, they were back, but in no rush to recover their cat. But a deal's a deal and finally after much negotiating they showed up to reclaim him.
He looked a bit confused, like he didn't really want to go, but I went out of my way to help him into his carrier...
Finally.
I mean, and I know it's true, this is entirely a matter of personal prejudice. 100%. For some reason I just didn't click with him. I liked him, well enough for a cat, although he annoyed me with the games he played with Princess, sitting in the front doorway with his head lowered and growling so she couldn't get in, staking out my bed so she couldn't curl at the foot...
Sometimes she'd just have enough and there'd be a fight, she'd win, he'd back down, go and hide, but usually she'd just avoid him. Couldn't be bothered.
He's a good cat. True, weighing in at over 20 lbs he might be considered a trifle obese, but what's that? He was affectionate. If you like that.
And by affectionate I mean this is a cat that should be brought round to cancer wards to cuddle with terminal children. They'd love him. They'd never have seen a cat like this before, and could spend their days cuddling and petting him and marvelling at the resemblance to Garfield (less, of course, Garfield's meagre wit)...
He'd love it too. Being petted all day long, the center of attention...
2 weeks I've had him. Evey night he surreptitiously slips into my bed, bringing with him that unwiped-cats-ass smell, his matted fur with the bits of kitty litter clinging to his butt...
If you got past the unchanged litter box smell there was another smell, "Highlights" they call it in the cologne industry, of damp wool overcoat.
I have to wash the sheets on my bed.
Every night he'd sit in the living room, pretending to be sleeping on the sofa while I worked on the computer. And when I was done I'd shut it down and try to stealthily slip past him, he'd continue pretending to be sleeping while I brushed my teeth, but when I went to the bedroom I'd find him already curled up on the bed. Looking at me expectantly. And when I lifted him, shoved him over, he'd crawl back again, head-butt me, try and sit on whatever book I was reading, try it again and again until maybe I'd give up or maybe he'd just give up and poke his head under my arm as if he were reading along....When I was done reading it would be time to play, he'd purr loudly and writhe obscenely upon the bed, like an expectant lover, on his back, legs splayed, on his side and batting my face with his paws, licking my face, my arms, my hands and my feet....
It was disgusting.
If I was up late he'd come in, mew to distract me, bang his head upon my arm (there was no way he could leap upon the desk..), try to climb into my lap and be petted. If I let him he'd sit in front of the computer as well, (having to reach around his ponderous bulk to the keyboard), put his chin on the desk and gaze boredly at the screen, occasionally using his paws to swipe at the keys or mousepad....
He definitely thought he was a person. And I can totally see it, although I'm stumped wondering who....
Occasionally he'd go outside. Not often, just once in a while. Sitting in the garden sniffing flowers, as if trying to convince me there was a poets soul there.
Or mealtimes, going to his dish, from behind his fat frame and striped tail made him look like a giant racoon....
In the kitty litter box, or half in, as he never could fit, not at all shy, scratching the litter all over the hall before searching me out, mewing at me to be petted some more, brushed, tickled....
He was insatiable.
I wish I could say that I'd miss him but somehow I'm glad he's gone. It'll be a lot more peaceful here. And there's Princess, sadly neglected, when petting her always aware of his suspicious, hissing stare from across the room. Head lowered, eyes big and glowering.
Goodbye Pumpkin!