silent night

Christmas day,

Contentious numbing hangover, scented candles filling the home and an overflowing bubble bath where I placidly read a novel start to finish.
A slow cooking recipe, adding cool water to the initially relaxing soon suffocating bath, later, around page 86 running hot water to compensate for the dropping temperature.
Jacuzzi jets roar and words elevate in the burgeoning bubbles.

Herman Hesse's, Demian (1919) is a novel of equal delicacy and strength. Among other things about embracing duality and spiritual enlightenment. It moved me as I imagine a religious text does others. Beautifully crafted, short and sweet it brought tears to my eyes and earned a place among my favourites. I only wish I read this book when I was younger, it would have inspired me and it might have had an impression on my disconcerted self.

Pleasant Christmas day spent, I'm looking forward to bringing in a new year filled with growth.

Without Beata's Ears

the stars shine as always through
the window that divides the night
as always into a sublime symmetry
of dreams, is division our unequal half?
that which at once grants the wait and
the law, to conceal that future memory:
the event, still, lies beside our many fragmented a body.

could we perhaps deny a nod? if only
we could reward nothing, and play
down the impotence of its language; an item more
is less in our grocery list, a red rose
to lure the shame out in matching symmetry
with the shade that resurfaces as my fingertips
are led very astray

it's hard to mime the detective in remembering
the unseen which makes your total beauty
a totality, on your face often is a blind foreseer
who dances around the remnants of an ancient game,
the body language of loss, the mother tongue of all
the thought of touching you
a reminder of the impossibility to touch

my joy, dig deeper still, dig together apart
rewind the excursion to the mother who once
again pays you a visit, in the space of time
outside the division, remaining in
her favorite seat, a frame you hammered in
to all your hidden ears, I bow as to all lost shrines
where each visit awakens something of exile, mine, miraculously
untouched within, just as did I not remember ever leaving,
the stars that shine, and are seemingly lost, as we
blindly seem fit to praise the symmetry

Sina Fazelpour

'Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye;
 

That's all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and sigh.' 

-- William Butler Yeats

Scenes from the House Dream

David Hoffos is an artist based in Lethbridge, Alberta; he brings his latest exhibition (an apogee of five years of studio production) to Toronto. "Scenes from the House Dream", finds a temporary home at MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art). Hoffos sticks to his signature of employing old cinematic techniques. With his seventeen years of experience, he produces a truly unique and captivating exhibition.

Scenes from the House Dream, begins when you lift the heavy velvet curtain to enter the dark space and amalgamation of sounds, distant and close. The sign outside, right before you enter, prompts you to let your eyes adjust before continuing on. I diligently pause in the denseness. To the left of me, a small television garners my attention. Elevated on a stand slightly above eye level, the T.V plays a clip of fireworks, which seem eerie and displaced in this solitary environment; fireworks, celebrating what?

To the right against a wall I notice a small window containing a diorama, the first of many in the exhibition. I get close to inspect the scene "Circle Street, 2003" The fireworks behind me find a home, as they are reflected into the landscape from the T.V, they appear as if they are exploding in the night sky over the hills which are a backdrop for this quiet suburban street. Figures appear and disappear right before your eyes as they walk the lonely street. Hoffos uses mirrors in these works brilliantly to add depth and play with your perspective. I peer far to one side of the street in an attempt to see where the never-ending street leads me, but instead get startled by a faint reflection of myself staring back, as if to judge my voyeuristic ways.

I continue on to observe the bizarre yet inviting scenes behind the small windows; each one invites and captivates the viewer. Hoffos manages to invoke emotions we are all familiar with but seldom bring to the surface, let alone the public eye; intimate moments of human life where we find ourselves alone and contemplative and/or confused, with feelings of restlessness, loneliness, and detachment (from ourselves and our society). In "Airport Hotel, 2004" for example, we are invited into a hotel room. An attractive woman solemnly emerges from a part of the room and anxiously paces around; she pauses reflectively and looks outside her window to the dreary night time view of an airport, while sipping on an alcoholic drink. Hoffos’ work is a reflection of our contemporary society and quintessential modern condition. The soundtrack surrounding each piece is also very important and evocative.

While looking at these accessible and transporting dioramas, from the corner of my eye I am constantly aware of this man sitting at a small table observing the exhibition and its occupants, because of the lack of light I don`t have a clear vision of the subject which adds to my unease. I am not quite myself with the presence of this gaze. I become suspicious of the repetitive motions and upon closer inspection I can see the one who is watching me is not a man, but the projection of one (Absinthe Bar, 2004). A few more of these characters reveal themselves throughout the exhibit. They are interesting because the viewer has this guilty sensation of spying which makes one tense and easily jolted. Appearance versus reality is an important theme in this collection. The life size figures startle at first, but later make you feel as if you are in the company of ghosts, sharing their space, them observing you as much as you observe the exhibition

Another thing to take note of is the fact that Hoffos reveals the illusory technique, I believe this is intentional. He exposes where the enchanting visions come from with the numerous T.V sets positioned around the room. In doing so he successfully manages to shift the spectators thoughts from focusing on how it`s done, to why it’s done?

Scenes from the House Dream, is on until December 31st, 2010, at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, 952 Queen St W. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday 11 - 6 PM.

Eventually your street noise begins
to sound like music,
it soothes my melancholic ear
The descending lights of capitalism
mean nothing to me
I am not here

"i want you to be king forever"

.... i recently watched  "where the wild things are" by director Spike Jonze.... a nice family friendly film, and a philosophical film in its own right. It explores personal identity, which begins to take shape at an early age, as seen in this film with Max. It explores the psychology of loneliness and questioning of ones surroundings. shortly,  it is the story of a boy reveling in his imagination, rebelling against his "misunderstandings" ...... running away he faces the often arduous interactions within a closed group of people, the intricacies of leadership and the cost of selfishness. unfortunately,  I can say I have never been familiar with the book, but i did enjoy this movie, and oddly bonded with it. It resonated the pages of my childhood. I personified it .
It starts off with max building a snow fort by himself, talking to imaginary friends, as i often did in our first winters here.

When we came to Canada, I was six or so, we moved every year or two. My parents were non existent to me, literally selling their souls, working around the clock ( my mother anyways) My father........ displaced. My sister, ten years my senior, with the world on her shoulders, pushed away as much as possible but the family ties keeping  her "tied" to every situation. I was one of the only people she felt she could take negative emotions out on (unfortunate scapegoat). I can tell you not the best foundation for a relationship.

Moving so often, made it hard to make friends, it didn't help that i was shy and introverted, by the time they warmed up to me, or rather i warmed up to them, it was time to move to another city. This is where my artistic interests flourished. As a child, i found a way to express myself, escape myself, sometimes innocent, sometimes shocking and disapproving, probably to get a reaction.

as a child, I made things , I made boats and vehicles, using cardboard boxes, duct tape,etc. I enjoyed the creative process probably more than the finished product. I imagined these vehicles taking me away to amazing places.  I once attempted to built a tree house with my father's tools in a seemingly unassuming tree, in a suburban neighborhood, that adventure ended early with a distressed housewife calling the police.

Another time when i was eight or nine, I taped together buckets and pots to make a fashion dummy. I then took every bed sheet in the house,and sewed a gown, a beautiful fairytale gown , worthy of a princess. ( my family didn't share my artistic vision :/ my mother was the only one that was uncomfortably proud  )

I made friends, I would stitch them together, carry them with me everywhere, like a conscious. I would write and illustrate stories in private, always making myself the hero/antihero. My imagination was more than my best friend, it was my escape.

Max feels lonely, his imagination discovers this place where he is loved and accepted. For once he is in control, finally in control.. of something... He becomes king, king of the monsters he was at first afraid of.... At first they want to eat him, he convinces them of his "power" his "superiority",  of his childlike, invincible confidence,,  he is ready to be a leader, in his own world.


after max expels all his "supernatural" qualities in order to save his life. 
one of the creatures asks,

"what about loneliness?"
another creature adds
"what he's saying is will you keep out all the sadness?"


he goes through trials and tribulations with the pack(his new found temporary family) , at some point his boyish empathy says "I wish you had a mom"


not long after that he becomes aware of what he is missing at home. he decides to go back, go back to his family. Particularly his mom.

 one of the female creatures says:

"Don't  go!.... I'll eat you up, I love you so!"

cute and at the same time morbid line; (that i assume belongs to the book)

mother/child reunions inevitability tear at my heart strings,

 no matter how basic the matter. there will always be this void.

but,,as unexpected as it is, we should always expect it. (death)


you end up growing stronger because of it...


In my hermit childhood adventures , i would notice many things, I would walk around and take note of the precisely executed ant hills,the admiral  architectural system, watch them gather food to take back home.I would naively but genuinely feel bad to see a footprint crush their livelihood their whole "ant empire"


I would walk around with a bag of sugar as some sort of martyr, spilling a generous handful to every ant hill i saw.

Another time I gave a rather lonely and lengthy funeral to a crow i saw laying on the side of the street.
right now I may be disturbed by the notion of a ten year old girl digging a grave for a crow, but that was me so, what can i think?

i could say i don't know why i did these things, but ... much over a decade later i can make a guess.

i perhaps had a need to be needed....

and to be creative , to make "art" was a way to be in control of something that is entirely mine.

july and august continued

I discovered Czech writer, Vitezslav Nezval, while doing some light research prior to my eastern european trip and got into some of his poetry. One I am quite fond of:

St Wenceslas Square at Evening

Sun-tanned girls
Like dark church corners
Indistinguishable from the wall
Which they form
Under the lamps in which the wind whistles

Good evening unknown lady
Dressed in the smells of the yawning street
How I adore you how I love you
One more day and we shall keep our illusions
Prague is blending with all other cities
As you blend with all women
Each having its own subtly different illusive perfume



Published in Nezvals, Prague with Fingers of Rain, a collection of poems whose backbones are the streets of Prague. He was one of the most momentous avant-garde Czech writers of his time ( the first half of the 20th century), and a co-founder of the surrealist movement in Czechoslovakia.

 It was a nice surprise when someone suggested one of his books to me in Prague.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, a bizarre erotic, gothic, vampire, fairy tale, intriguing, and unlike most of his other work. Quite fitting with society`s recent fang obsession, here i will unabashedly confess to my childhood walking dead obsession. I was excited about this piece, I can`t tear away from the glamour and sexual titillation of vampires.

He wrote this novel in 1935 which was quite controversial at the time. Valerie is on the threshold of puberty. Blood represents life, the sight of blood usually represents death and in Valerie`s case blood represents sexuality and a step towards womanhood. Her week of wonders is implicitly her first week of menstruation. It`s extremely sexual and innocent at the same time, as is the experience with many young women including myself . You do need a strong imagination to revel in this book, which i am not short of. My imagination is what I have always had and taken comfort in. It`s a great surrealist novel as well as an entertaining gothic fairy tale. Well written, entertaining and open for interpretation.

I am also dying to see the highly acclaimed adaptation of the novel in the 1970 film by Jaromil Jireš ,  It looks breathtakingly beautiful.




this is the more mellow trailer

july/august reads

The Mighty Angel by polish writer Jerzy Pilch, I loved this book and finished it ravenously mostly in one afternoon, but at a light 150 pages it wasn't hard. My appreciation for this book probably has something to do with the familiarity of the alcoholic protagonist as seen with my long time fling Bukowski, both authors and their thinly-veiled alter ego writer protagonists were consumed by more than just alcohol, 
"Language is my second -- what am I saying, second -- language is my first addiction" (Jerzy, in the mighty angel)

but this protagonist and narrator (Jerzy) has poignant style all on his own, he seems to try and confront the psychological reality of alcoholism and the inscrutable reality after sobriety, while never losing that black humor charm

There is a whole chapter dedicated to quotes mostly from well known alcoholic writers. I enjoyed this.

september is fast approaching

i have been trying to get through some of the books i purchased in europe before the (eep!:/) school year starts.


i have polished off a few one of them being this,

after hearing much hype about her in poland, i was curious to read dorota maslowska's highly acclaimed debut novel. it's like nothing i have ever read. her style of writing is definitely very unique. poetic ramblings/observations and misadventures of her protagonist (nails) and his group of doped up politically burnt out friends living in a haze in eastern europe. the book is one long inhale with no comfortable release. i often found i wasn't able to discern reality from a hallucinatory  trip or nail's fabricated reality. i do regret not picking this book up in polish first. i was a victim to my lazy ways (reading in english is currently much easier for me than my mother tongue). i suspect it's close to impossible to render into english properly. her style of writing is so specific and the book is full of so much slang that must be much more relevant and humorous in polish. language makes up most of the novel. i suppose that's why the book exploded in europe and isn't as well received in north america. nonetheless i recommend this book, it's fast, colourful and pulls you into the amphetamine trip and the occasional funny inventions of communism and post communist life. not to mention the author was only 19!!! years old when she published this book. i have also heard good things (from the internet :/) about the movie which came out last year, snow white and russian red by Xawery Żuławski

budapest

we drove from poland through slovakia to hungary and the sights outside my window were dreamy to say the least.

dewy politics

bathtub renditions

running parallel at different speeds

krakow

from my babcia's garden in nowa sol, fragrant, colourful and tiny

fragmented city

like a moth to flame

illumination

prague

deer in the headlights, mobile parts attached to immobile men

collection of locks representing lovers

john lennon wall through  blurry eyes

definition of artistic expression

prague with fingers touching the moon

Peter Callesen is a contemporary Danish artist that recently garnered my attention, interestingly introduced to me at a work meeting. He has become fascinated with the minimal medium of white paper, and has become quite talented in working with this blank,crisp,white,and flat rectangle. He meticulously cuts, folds and glues it to build some beautiful compositions.My favourite and most note worthy of his works are where the remains of the cut and folded objects are shadows of their former self's. The (sometimes seemingly discarded) negative space forms just as a important of an image as the newly created positive space. I love his work, in such a minimal way he uses the positive and negative space to tell an interpretative story about the past, present and sometimes future of his subjects beautifully, by just using common (and frequently overused) 8 1/2 x 11. His Subjects attempt to jump out of their flat surroundings, to inflate into the space surrounding them. There is something tragic about these pieces as they are forever connected to thier former selves

here are some of examples

can i make it better with the lights turned off

past birthdays/past inside jokes

translations

"so tell me gypsy, you are a gypsy aren't you? right then, so then tell me gypsy, how are we to do business as brothers when you're a gypsy?"

...........................

"brother, brother please, i could ask you that very same thing, you're a gypsy yourself are you not? (laughs)
now take those palms and chubby fingers out of your shallow pockets and entrust them into mine (smiles and winks)"

Pajac cały jest drewniany sznureczkami poruszany

Mój pajacyk ulubiony

w starym pudle znaleziony
w prawo, w lewo się wygina,
ciut sprężynę przypomina.

Tata mi go podarował,
w wielkim pudle go przechował,
zrobił go zaś tacie dziadek,
słynny kiedyś "Stolarz Władek ".

Pajac cały jest drewniany,
sznureczkami poruszany,
może biegać, podskakiwać,
rączką machać, główką kiwać.

Gdy pociągam lewy sznurek
rączką prawą macha w górę,
gdy zaś ciągnę sznurek prawy
jest gotowy do zabawy.

Biega, tańczy, maszeruje,
śmieszne skoki wykonuje,
rzadko kiedy jest zmęczony.
mój pajacyk ulubioiny.

Śmieją się w przedszkolu dzieci
kiedy ciągnę sznurek trzeci :
wtedy pewnie odpoczywa
no bo tylko główką kiwa.

Dziś posmutniał pajac mały
bo się sznurki poplątały,
lecz obiecał kuzyn Jurek,
że rozplącze szybko sznurek.

danuta.d

"i rebel; therefore we exist"

Five powerful words that will hold meaning until the end of time, a constant driving force. What a handsome rebel Camus himself was, infidelities throughout both of his marriages, always fervidly arguing against the constitution of marriage, being an active participant in the political goings on of his country,  rejecting the label given to him as a proponent of existentialism. Regardless his past and my views on it, those five words somehow resonate with me and the remnants of my adolescent need to rebel against almost anything and everything.Revolting against religion at a very early age, dying my hair every colour of the rainbow for shock value (a meek attempt at individualism), body piercings for the same reason, sneaking out of my house for the very sake of it, finding refuge (through the painful trials of my adolescent years) in the most inappropriate music for my age. Upsetting my mother for what i see now as a need for attention. My teenage rebellion stems from rooted psychological issues with my family, my view on religion is the only thing that hasn't changed, time has only affirmed my inclinations of it and broadened my perspective. The rebels that exist today, the rebels that unite society is what interests me.The topic of rebellion has been echoed through the decades to the point of being a tedious and predictable topic of conversation, teen angst, women, jews, blacks, homosexuals and other minorities. I  identify with all of them and none at the same time. Does their existence create my rebellion? They fought/fight for something unrecognized by society. It's this strife for something that unites the victims, the need and want to be accepted and recognized, ironically it's this same strife that unites the victim and the criminal.They both rebel against something. I rebel, therefore we exist, it means we can only rebel, if there is something to rebel against. Whether you have internalized a set of social norms you feel the need to go against, or society has set standards you disagree with. Rebellion springs from everything that is individualistic in man. With rebellion has to come a certain awareness of yourself. This notion has created many inspirational thinkers of our time. My rebelion today has a more postitve driving force compared to that of my past, I rebel against the limitations others may put on me.I strive to be satisfied with that and not be the senseless reactionary I used to be.