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[obiebryce]

Writing Prompts: 5/300

Give your city (or town or region) a new name that reflects what type of place it is, and explain why you chose that name. 

seriously? trying to give Toronto a new name seems like a futile endeavour. the list is already as long as it is controversial. 

T.O. - T. Dot - The 6ix

i looked up Toronto nicknames and apparently people also call it Hogtown, Queen City, and The Big Smoke?

ok.

i don’t know. i’m new here. 

i’ll stick to calling it what it is for me. multicultural, massive, mysterious. 

drakeville. 

home. 

for now. 

[obiebryce]

Writing Prompts: 4/300

Write a diary entry, dated 10 years in the future. 

hello. 

i don’t write in here nearly as much as i should. as a result, it’s a patchwork record of my life. a mundane documentation of individual days, important to no one but me. the i only time i managed to reliably keep a daily journal was when i traveled. 

23. naïve. wide-eyed, gave-a-shit, open-hearted. 

i still haven’t reread a single entry. 

so why am i writing again now? well. when i was a baby, my mom kept a daily journal. about me. a record of every sleepless night, every weird quirk, every precious moment. she gave me those journals when i was in my early 20s. a record of all the memories i don’t have, lovingly collected and packaged. for me. 

such a gift to read. to remember. each pen stroke, long dried, radiates love. 

i guess it’s my turn to start writing for you, little dude. 

welcome to the world. 

[obiebryce]

Writing Prompts: 3/300

What is your favourite work of art? What do you love about it?

have you seen Monet’s water lilies? i mean the ones in Paris. walk away from the Louvre, all the way to the back corner of the grounds. there is a building. an afterthought. it used to be a garden shed. 

“Musée de l’Orangerie.”

inside are two oval rooms. four paintings in each. special skylights diffuse natural light into the space. Monet wanted it that way. the shape of the rooms. the light. 

he knew what he was doing. 

in the first room, sunrise. the second, dusk. you just see blotches at first. purples. oranges. more shades of blue than should possibly exist. 

you feel before you see with Monet. “impressionism.” 

a peaceful calm. exhale. serenity. 

a soft, enveloping warmth as each massive painting becomes something. for you. just you. something different for each person. 

that’s what art does, right? makes you feel?

[obiebryce]

Writing Prompts: 2/300

Have you ever spoken up when you saw something going on that was wrong? Were you scared? What ended up happening?

a few years ago, the Catholic high school I went to banned Gay-Straight Alliance groups. “religious freedom.” dying dogmas that just won’t slip away quietly. 

i was appalled. we all were. my community, that is. of course, your community isn’t everyone. some supported it. still, most of us weren’t going to ignore a school that published a document saying homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered and contrary to the natural law.”

pfft. “natural law.” fuck off. 

so what did I do? i posted a fiery, passionate Facebook status. sent it to the school. that’s what millennials do. was i scared to do it? no. i didn’t do enough to deserve to be scared. i did something but it was passive. easy. 

students in my home town demonstrated. marched. rabble-roused. teachers quit. bishops recanted. “apologized.”

“religious freedom.”

“natural law.”

at least things changed. 

[obiebryce]

Writing Prompts: 1/300

What is your favourite way to spend a lazy day?

let me wake up to fluttering curtains and the soft sound of conversation from the apartment below. no alarms. just percale cotton and strips of sunlight fighting to fit through an open window. 

give me a book with musky, yellow pages and black coffee that could jumpstart a car. make sure you fill the cup up just a little too much. 

we’ll run errands that are fun rather than necessary. we can go to a fruit market and we won’t bring a grocery list. we can shop for leather jackets and never actually buy one. let’s go for lunch at that place we’ve been talking about going to for the last seven months. 

i would listen to something acoustic, something my dad would like. a glass of whiskey would be nice, too. give me an evening outside. 

just sitting. 

just talking. 

just being. 

[obiebryce]

[obiebryce]

And no faces were felt that day. 

when u get to hell & realize it’s Lit

[obiebryce]

The real Thoreau was, in the fullest sense of the word, self-obsessed: narcissistic, fanatical about self-control, adamant that he required nothing beyond himself to understand and thrive in the world.

Kathryn Schulz, “Henry David Thoreau, Hypocrite”  (via newyorker)

I still don’t have a clue what to think about Thoreau. I need to read more of his work. He seems to be remarkably divisive. I wonder which side my own wilderness experiences will place me on. 

[obiebryce]

“She drinks whiskey with her coffee

She buys the finest red wine

Tells me stories, oh glory

I just listen all night”

[obiebryce]

A convincing argument for dog hype. Could just be the coffee, though. 

[obiebryce]

Stuntin’

Stunt performer jumping two embankments in El Paso Tx Circa 1922

via reddit

[obiebryce]

Our album cover inspired by what we found on this blog…

https://akdk.bandcamp.com/album/synths-drums-noise-space

[obiebryce]

[obiebryce]

I feel this. 

This unemployment game is getting me down so I gave my resume a makeover.

[obiebryce]

TRIUMPHANT

Interstellar Soundtrack with Apollo 11 launch, actually intense

[obiebryce]

Ross River, Yukon.

Population: 352

Home of the Kaska Dena Council.

Ross River sits at the confluence of the Pelly and Ross rivers and has been a permanent settlement for a little over 100 years. It found its way onto maps thanks to the fur trade, but if you are to travel there today, you’ll find the remnants of the short-lived pipeline and road construction that happened during World War 2. A five minute walk from the town centre takes you to the river bank where two massive towers, more rust than metal, support a delicate wooden suspension bridge. The bridge was built to cradle a tube of American oil over the water below. When the pipeline was first put in, it simply laid across the frozen river. However, it was a nuisance for the locals who travelled across the ice on their dogsleds, hence the construction of the bridge.

Other remnants of industrialism are scattered throughout the town. Some are from the pipeline era: spools of cable, shapeless piles of scrap metal. Most seem to be from the mining years - approximately 1950 to the 1990s. The most common seem to be gas pumps. Today, there is only a single functioning pump, but there are at least three decrepit gas stations. It’s as if a great thirst for fuel has been satiated; that would be a first, wouldn’t it? Nothing’s been done to do away with these broken down, rusted over relics of construction, oil, and mining. As a result, they don’t feel like trash. Instead, the modern history of Ross River - or at least a small, physical part of it - sits in plain sight.

I found that the presence of the objects - the barrels, the pumps, the broken down vehicles, the bridge - obscured the older, richer history held in the land surrounding the town. Like the pipeline - the one that once obstructed mushers 70 years ago - industrialism (and colonialism) have hindered and obscured the history that has existed since long before Ross River existed on a map. The First Nations people arrived in the Yukon between 10,000 and 25,000 years ago. Where the town of Ross River sits has been a traditional gathering ground for the Kaska First Nations since time immemorial. It’s striking that 100 years of settlement have managed to hide more than 10,000 years of existence.

I’ve heard people talk about the alcoholism and abuse that is rife in Ross River. It’s not much of a surprise. The town has survived colonization, an influenza epidemic, and forcible relocation. Hell, they had to fight with the Yukon government just to be able to build a radio tower. These wounds take generations to heal. Each one is a pipeline that, instead of being lifted out of the way, swelled and burst, spilling pain and poison. Yet, during my visit, all I saw was resiliency, community, warmth, acceptance. These are the traits that have endured for thousands of years in Ross River. I hope more barriers can be lifted and the tired, inaccurate, one-dimensional narrative of broken Yukon communities can be thrown in with the scrap metal from decades past.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_River,_Yukon

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/yukon/

http://www.gov.yk.ca/news/history.html#The_fur_trade

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/kaska/

All photos are my own. 

[obiebryce]

Basically summarizes my first time surfing.