Shopping Carts in Ravines

I recently came across this deputydog post, Urban Knitting: The World’s Most Inoffensive Graffiti. (I can’t remember where I came up with the link, and it’s all over the net now, so let’s just claim it was Digg.)

They have examples from various places of various artists and teams of artists covering all sorts of public objects using knitting and crocheting. Here’s Carol Hummel’s “Tree Cozy” in Cleveland:

Next, Knitta Please is a crew that describes themselves as having had inspiration strike one day in 2005 while complaining to each other about all their half-finished knitting projects, proceeding to bomb the inner city and work their way up from door handles to public monuments.

A little closer to home (-away-from-home) for me is Lauren Marsden’s “Territorial Knittings” in Victoria, BC where she wraps street signs in almost imperceptible covers that match the official municipal font and colouration exactly.

I mentioned this trend to my friend Lisa and she informed me that something similar had taken place here in Toronto, at the Metro Toronto Zoo (images have disappeared from that archive webpage). This installation was by artist Janet Morton, titled “Early Frost”.

Torontonians may remember Janet Morton’s “Femmebomb” from Nuit Blanche 2007, when she covered the exterior of a West Queen West building in pink material, knitwork and buttons.

Of all the pieces I came across, I’m still most impressed by this one featured on deputydog: Jennifer Marsh’s “The Gas Station Project”, assembled around an abandoned gas station in Syracuse, NY, and compiled from a patchwork of pieces submitted by many artists in response to an open call Marsh put out.

The original gas station:

The completed work:

While this post was languishing in my drafts, waiting for me to feel inspired to knit the links together, Stephen Colbert got the jump on me. Last night (Dec 3rd) the Colbert Report featured a story about American political knitting artist Jerilea Zempel who was stopped at the border when attempting to re-enter from Canada on the basis of her “suspicious” drawings of an crochet-covered SUV. If you’re in Canada or the USA, you can watch the clip online by clicking your country name above… other places in the world may be S.O.L. unless you download the episode via bittorrent.

For more links, see the deputydog post, it’s a pretty thorough starting place.

When I reference Urban Hiking, what I’m thinking of in my mind is occasions where I’ve walked long distances through unfamiliar areas to reach a far-off destination (say, across a city) without ever having felt a sense of being lost but instead retaining a sense of exploration and enough focus to be charting the previously unfamiliar territory between my position and my desired destination. Part of my ability to do this is a keen sense for cardinal points, but honestly they sell that in stores and it fits in your pocket.

Here is an example from Aug 2, 2006 when I decided to walk home after a windy thunderstorm from Bloor downtown to Northern Etobicoke just using continuous course correction based on an awareness of directions and always choosing the path less familiar when presented with a choice.

Urban Hiking is fun, educational and exploration-based but has some more practical direct applications than the modern sport of Urban Exploration in places like warehouses (which is wicked) and storm drains (which seems to me like an unpleasant place to spend your time).

Urban Hiking is about assessing the often unfamiliar immediate environment for information (paths/potential paths) while remaining anchored in the broader geography.

With cardinal points, a sense of adventure and the ability to evaluate your surroundings for opportunities on the fly, it becomes irrelevant if you are unacquainted with your immediate location. You can avoid ever being lost yet still be constantly getting acquainted and discovering areas and experiences.

By retaining a conscious and lucid mind about your surroundings you can master their layout and choose routes through areas that avoid pollution (proximity to busy roadways), potential crime or physical obstacles. This allows you to choose your experiences-en-route as being as scenic or shortcut-quick as you desire.

Well, had some downtime there, so this post is slightly out of date now that the exhibit has closed… but oh well.

I was delivering flyers for The Power Plant (the art gallery) to various galleries and cafes and whatnot around town, which was pretty cool because I got a chance to check out all the little independent galleries around West Queen West.

One of these galleries is Mercer Union on Lisgar St. I’d been in only once before, during Nuit Blanche of this year, but this time I encountered something I was already familiar with but totally I hadn’t been expecting:

On display was Michel de Broin’s “Shared Propulsion Car.”

The thing is, this “car” is actually totally stripped down inside (the engine is gone, which is apparent from a quick glance through the window) and the seats have been replaced with four chairs, each with bicycle pedals, to create something between a four-person bike and a Flintstones car. In fact, the “headlights” glowing in that first photo actually have tealight candles burning away in them, as the car has no source of power.

I’d previously heard about this piece on blogTO when it was taken for a four-person test “drive” that resulted in a $500 fine which has turned into an upcoming trial.

I believe the woman working at the gallery said a court date of April 8th was set, and they and their legal counsel feel confident that the court will rule in their favour - i.e. that this is not a car and not subject to laws pertaining to automobiles, but rather that it is a decorated bicycle and just as legal for road use as much larger multi-person bikes.

These double-ad garbage/recycling bins are ubiquitous in Toronto, and in the lead-up to Buy Nothing Day 2007 an advertisement was switched out for a BND poster.

The poster originally included the Nov 23rd date, but this photo was taken a couple days after BND and someone had decided to wipe the date off once it had passed, leaving the rest intact.

The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip and ignominious defeat all over the world.

The Stock Market will never come back, our Armies will never again be No. 1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of our lives.

The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it.

Ouch.

Reading Thompson’s later writings, it’s not hard to see him moving towards suicide, although in the end it seemed like he was decided he was sick of himself, not the world, and that’s what did it.

Speaking of which… are you familiar with the details of his funeral?

A snippet:

Now the moment had arrived.

As “Spirit in the Sky” began blasting over the loudspeakers, even the handful of drunks in attendance sobered up. The massive drapery enfolding the monument was slowly pulled away, revealing the Gonzo fist at the top of the tower — two feet taller than the Statue of Liberty — a multicolored peyote button pulsating at its center.

Ed Bastian, a close friend, read part of the sacred text of the Heart Sutra in Tibetan, and a troupe of Japanese drummers began a choreographed ritual.

As the drums stopped, champagne flutes were passed around.

Then, at 8:46 p.m., more than thirty fireworks rocketed high above Owl Farm, bursting in the night sky illuminated by a nearly full moon. The cannon atop the tower fired, and Hunter’s ashes fell over the assembled guests like gray snow, “Mr. Tambourine Man” blaring from the sound system on cue. Hunter was literally all around us now, a destroying angel whooping it up with one final Rebel Yell.

Have you ever read The Conscience of a Hacker, AKA The Hacker’s Manifesto?

I mean, for me, it’s such basic internet reading that it’s not even worth speaking of… but an awful lot of the folks on the ‘Net are much newer to it than I, despite our mutual mass assimilation.

There was a time, telneting around bit by bit, that just the act of finding, collecting and sharing text files like this had an unspeakably powerful feeling to it. We were on to something BIG, and every tiny step in any direction was a wild breakthrough simply because it was into another unknown.

Well, if you haven’t read it, here it is… and yes, this is required reading for comprehension of the digital age and the people who drive it. 21 years later.

The Conscience of a Hacker

by
+++The Mentor+++
Written January 8, 1986

Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…

Damn kids. They’re all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world…

Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…

Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.

I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me… Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I’m a smart ass.. Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.

And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found. “This is it… this is where I belong…” I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…

You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.

It’s not so much about an approach to computer network usage as it is an approach to life in general, and I’m greatly saddened to watch what was such a respectable information-seeking elite largely devolve into pure-money cybercrime.

The dude I grabbed the manifesto copy from is much more the type of thing I like to see having come out of all of our chaotic K-r4d “wild west” sort of Internet upbringing… his site clicks through to say, “This page is completely out of date. I’m at Stanford working on my PhD now.”

I like the definitions of the word hacker that are posted on his site, in particular the highlighted one:
“One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.”

It’s awfully nice to be able to be living in a time where my personal computer is a beautiful, friendly and tight UNIX implementation (it’s called a Mac), and all this Web 2.0 stuff is just fabulous, super-colourful and twice as melodic… but to be honest, I miss the feeling of simply being at a prompt, of feeling like I’m actually inside a computer.

Especially a remote one.

It started when we were little kids.
Free spirits, but already tormented by our own hands
given to us by our parents.
We got together and wrote on desks
and slept in laundry rooms near snowy mountains
and slipped through whatever cracks we could find,
minds altered, we didn’t falter
in portraving hysterical and tragic characters in a smog filled universe.
we loved the dirty city
and the journeys away from it.
We had not yet been or seen our friends, selves,
chase tails round and round in downward spirals,
leaving trail of irretrievable vital life juice behind.
Still, the brothersbloodcomradespartnerfamilycuzz was impenetrable
and we lived inside it
laughing with no clothes, and everything experimental ’till death was upon us.
In our face, mortality.
And lots of things seemed futile then, but love and music can save us,
and did, while the giant grey monster grew
more poisoned and volatile around us,
jaws clamping down and spewing ugly shit around.
Nothing is the same.
So we keep moving.
So we keep moving.

Went off and got some hair cuts
Lookin wild and got all drugged up
Hopped a train into the night
Got a ride with a transvestite
Two boys in San Francisco
Two boys in San Francisco
Blasted off in a Bart bathroom
Those coppers woke us up
Motherfuckers woke us up

Two young brothers on a hover craft
Telepathetic love and bellylaughs

Storm the stage of Universal
Slim shine talk boy go subversal
Papa’s proud and so he sent us
Pounding hearts full and relentless
Two boys in London, England
Two boys in London, England
Climbing out of hostel windows
Wearing gear so out but in though
Come on kind and do the no no

Two young brothers on a hovercraft
Telepathics love and belly laughs

We went to Fairfax High School
Jumped off buildings into their pools
We’d sit down and grease at Canters
Run like hell they can’t catch us
Two boys in L.A. proper
Two boys in L.A. proper
Stealin’ anything that we could
Gotta sneak into the Starwood
Gotta peak into the deep good

I remember…
10 years ago in Hollywood
We did some good
and we did some real bad stuff
but the Butthole Surfers said
It’s better to regret something you did
Than something you didn’t do
We were young
And we were looking
looki-i-ing
looking for that deep kick…
Seen ‘em come, seen ‘em go…

(And I feel I’m getting close to you)

I’m a city kid.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada has always been my home and home base, without even a consideration of a question.

Although I’ve had partial / dual homes in other towns and cities, I was born in this city and have always been solidly anchored to it.

All other cities that I’ve visited (except for Brisbane, Australia, though I can’t explain why) felt like simple places, products of architecture and street plans, while this place felt not only like it was alive, but like it was alive within me as much as I within it.

I may spend a lot of time contemplating and discussing topics like the impact of genetic manipulation on global politics and the effect of media oversaturation on contemporary freedom of choice, but everyone’s stereotypes aside, I am actually from the ghetto.

Of course, no one recognizes that side of me at all, and most of my friends are totally unable to relate to some of what I talk about, or laugh if I use some of the slang that seems natural to me. I’m not at all trying to front, but I do feel the same desire to represent as most ghetto kids do, to even wear that piece of me out on my t-shirt.

Living with a single parent in an apartment building and area plagued by violence and drugs at the time when crack cocaine was burning at its worst through urban centres, I did encounter these things firsthand as much as a child could really be able. (The weirdest thing I recall is the parents trying to abandon their 18 month old baby at our door with a loud knock and a mediocre vanishing act.)

I didn’t really notice how bad things were, as I knew no different, but I did acquire plenty of street survival skills.

Dizzee Rascal says, “Stay ghetto if you must, just remember to get out,” and I have managed to develop and apply my intelligence and abilities quite successfully, and I am now in a position to choose to make my home just about anywhere in the world that I might want… and for the first time, the question is actually coming up.

The building just right of centre in the photo above contained my first home, and then, seven floors above that, my second.

This is less than one city block east of the Jane St / Finch Ave intersection, an area renowned both locally and internationally for its drug gangs and gun violence.

This hydro-electric tower field contained my first garden, in amongst other ghetto apartment dwellers’ plot allotments. I’ve never had as large a garden since, despite moving to better homes in better neighbourhoods.

(You may recognize this from the site banner at the top of this blog’s pages.)

Now, I’m serious about Toronto seeming as alive as any of its components…

A big part of this sense of life is the city’s intensely multi-faceted nature, being a loose interaction of possibly the most diversely-representative array of communities on the planet, rather than a one-piece cultural unit that can be easily controlled from above.

The urban planning and municipal management of Toronto provides absolutely nothing but the most basic framework in which the thriving subcommunities, subcultures and subclasses live, and it is their lives and actions which truly create this city… making this forest as much a living thing as any of its trees, flowers, birds (mostly pigeons) or squirrels.

For the most part, even the independent commercial interests seem to have an appreciation for the organic and noncommercial and respectfully allow space for it, whether consciously or not. Only the elected and corporate suitdummies curl their toes in rage at this unapproved life and culture.

Thankfully, the corporate city can’t come anywhere close to controlling this life, much as it would like to sanitize, homogenize and package it for corporate purposes. One look at a Toronto tourism campaign shows their inability to even comprehend it.

I say thankfully, because blessed experiences like the one below are found in every area at any moment, created by the connection between an openly-left gift and a perfectly-suited recipient.

Other places, friends may try to lift your spirits when you seem down, but my city will do it for me on its own. Feeling low one day, I took a walk by myself down Spadina Ave and got the warmest and most personal hug a cement surface could possibly offer:

Christopher loves you too, Toronto.

And Toronto can be easy to love…

…but lately, I find it’s looking increasingly less familiar.

Areas I used to like, I no longer trust.

Places that never seemed like they could be anything but playgrounds now feel dangerous to be in. In a short span of time, the urban theme park that Toronto had seemed to be has vanished or grown terribly ugly.

For the first time in my life, despite the attachment of ghetto roots and enjoying plenty of middle-class comfort here…

…I find it possible to feel repelled by Toronto.

And it feels healthy every time I do.

Toronto seems most beautiful these days when I view it from a distance, and I find it harder to find the same perspective from within its midst.

Is it just me, is it just the summer heat and the annual surge of crime and pollution?

If it were truly simply a matter of having gone too long without a vacation, then why does this feeling now grow rather than lessen when I take time out of town?

Is it really the city changing - or possibly something even bigger?

I have been finding myself increasingly engaged in the city that I thought I already knew inside-and-out through blogTO, and so perhaps a big part of this really is in the details of where I focus my time, energy and attention. Perhaps I’m seeing my lifestyle as out of line and projecting it on my environment.

The waterfront walking tour, as a random example, sounds like a great way to get out and do something totally healthy and interesting… but increasingly, I find myself not feeling like I want to be out in much of the city, while certainly not feeling like being cooped up inside either.

A vegetarian co-op house that my friend lives in has rooms opening up and it sounded like it might be a very healthy move for me for this school year. Now I’m hearing of recent swarmings occurring around that exact area of Bloor St, spanning blocks in both directions and including Dufferin Grove Park, one of my favourite in the city. It takes more than that to really scare me, I already live off northern Jane St, but it sure does still count. (14 young offenders were arrested in connection to the swarmings.)

Last year at Trinity-Bellwoods park, panhandling meant this:

This year at Trinity-Bellwoods, panhandling apparently means a five-person fight ending with a fatal stabbing (although I do think the ‘panhandler’ label is being misapplied here, this is how it’s mostly been reported).

I don’t know what the actual statistics are for violent crime this year in Toronto, but what ultimately counts for me is whether I see them myself.

As I said, fewer and fewer areas feel safe and comfortable to me, and everywhere seems to be increasingly populated with people I can’t at all relate to and in many cases don’t trust. The parties are all great from one perspective, but these days few parties of any type in this city - from rap music nights in big clubs to hippies frolicking at drum circles in Trinity-Bellwoods - manage to happen without a noticeable invasion of scumbags and infusion of drunken sexism and violence.

(Funny how, before the drum circle permits, I never saw this issue arise yet squad cars would drive right into the park to shut us down… now that we’re official and regulated, the cops don’t appear even though aggressive thugs show up and the police could actually be doing something useful.)

I’m sure Toronto is the thug capital of Canada, but it also used to be so much else. Where have the adamant and organized anarchists gone, who used to stand up to this sort of street-level scum as much as to our overseeing oppressors, those who were previously so quick to show up at neonazis’ doorsteps with a torch-wielding mob when they began harassing and attacking people?

No one should expect NEFAC types to be the counter-balance to the most powerful and organized of the wannabloods and wishwewerecrips, but the random thugs who barely even have friends are just as much a violent threat given their lifestyle commitment to the principles of lacking principles, seeking out violence and destroying as much as possible… I feel like most of the good people have migrated to Splitsville (a lovely sea-side township in BC), but maybe that’s just what it feels like during the smog-fog season in Hogtown.

Of course, the street shitheads are only a small part of the ‘con’ category. NEFAC’s traditional enemies are a much larger part, and while I see plenty of small-town kids rocking System Of A Down hoodies, unless System has some Factory Farming song that I’ve never heard, you guys don’t get it ’cause you can’t possibly really understand what it’s like to be subjected to the intense corporate brainwashing shitstorm that airs 24 hours a day in a city like Toronto, from every digital device, on every frequency, over every surface and in every environment. A quick look around this site will give you an idea what I mean - at the cottage, I dream about the cottage. In the city, I dream in product advertisements.

The worst I’ve seen in rural areas is that, though the capitalist propaganda machine doesn’t pay you personal dream visits, most of the people around you buy into the neocon wars wholesale and will loudly proclaim their importance and even hold support parades without ever offering any actual explanation for how domestic conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan could possibly be considered to be in the reasonable domain of control of Canada or the United States without white supremacy and global control being underlying principles. That’s awful, but that’s just ignorance, that won’t make you crazy like breathing Toronto airwaves does, where people are so consistently hit with brainwashing messages that they unthinkingly dedicate their entire lives to the addiction of acquiring and consuming the products that actually lie at the root of these capital-driven conflicts.

I’ve also noticed in my time outside the city that, although certain days the air may be so clogged as to actually be unbreathable (medically speaking), our tap water seems relatively superior. In Toronto, I’d never drink unfiltered tap water except when faced with absolutely no other choice (especially with the rundown my inside source Anton gave me on our minimalistic lake-to-tap purification procedures), but outside Toronto a bottle of T.O. Tap tastes like spring water in comparison to the weird-smelling stuff coming out the faucets in other cities and towns. Our local bodies of water are, of course, another story. A Stephen King story, to be exact.

Let me take this to a broader level for a minute.

I’ve wondered for some time if I’d be able to judge - unlike the frog being proverbially boiled alive - if my urban environment and place in this society were making the transition from thriving and progressing while being dangerously exciting to being simply dangerous, depraved and regressive in terms of one’s health (on all levels).

At times, I’ve phrased this as whether I’ll be able to judge when it happens, but high-tech/neo-philosophical hopes for sustainability and the elimination of the roots of social ills (such as poverty) have encouraged - or tantalized - the side of me that places trust in distributed sensible and scientific progress, most especially with the increasing inclusion of synergy and holism in realms of thought and discussion (both deliberately and, I’m even more excited to see, unconsciously).

There is an appeal to the rural commune, the back-to-the-land hippie concept (some such attempts having managed to outlast the ’60s by a good deal, surviving to this day), however there is also a great emptiness that I find I feel when placed in such a closed context. Even in smaller cities around Ontario, I feel a strong emptiness, not inside myself but in the environment. Totally silent night time streets bewilder me, and draw my attention to the key difference between somewhere like Kitchener/Waterloo and Toronto… K/W seems to me to be a set of defined city limits with a collection of buildings and people within them. Toronto feels alive unto itself, to the extent that it is thriving out of control, that it can’t come even close to being shut down by anything from nightfall to blackouts.

I’m very much a product and element of that living urban creature, of one of the ultimate locations of the new, developed world in terms of being able to succeed in manifesting anything one can imagine - and having started with essentially nothing, I’ve already managed to do pretty well (on my own terms) without having even really started trying. When I’m in a rural environment it becomes that much more obvious to me that whether I’m trying or not, my mind has a high-bandwidth connection to the world around it and while I may choose to relax at times, I am functioning most properly when making efficient and dense use of my time. (If you thought calling my input “bandwidth” was weird, be glad I didn’t go with calling my time “my cycles.”)

Obviously, though, the Big City Dream needs to be ruled out as insane when it goes inherently hand-in-hand with destruction of the local and global ecosystem, homogenization of individuals beyond the point of being capable of free thought, and every other thing I see happening around me to varying degrees in my current-day urban environment.

The first question is whether these are happening to increasing or decreasing degrees.

The second question is whether those trends are headed towards the breaking point of reaching permanent problems or solutions.

The third question is the number of times I need to re-evaluate my concept of where that breaking point actually lies in order to decide whether to sacrifice the benefits and theoretical possibilities of the modern urban lifestyle in favour of preserving myself, my knowledge, my resources and my social networks (as happen to be relevant) to switch to a lifestyle that is driven primarily by sustainability, survival and maintenance of true cultural value and places all other concerns second.

Well, I can immediately answer the third question - re-evaluation ought to be a perpetual process up to and likely even beyond the point that the time to make a decision has presented itself and passed behind. That’s a rule of the scientific approach that I apply to everything as much as I’m capable of doing.

I can already answer the first one, too, and the answer is “both.” I’m witnessing the collapse of global systems, both natural and artificial, in nearly every area I care to check into. Simultaneously, I’m watching scientific understanding and technological application race forward towards a point that may not only solve the commonly-considered problems that have typically burdened humanity, but also bring us forward into a new era the likes of which is ineffable in many ways to us now. And, futurist nanobabble aside, there is some reason to think that Toronto can hold a place far superior to somewhere like Detroit in a post-industrial, tech-innovation-based meta-economy (existing as a layer above the now internationally-distributed manufacturers, committing us very permanently to globalization).

Which happens first? Will we see solar energy systems built from technology that places them at a price cheaper than coal, solving the world’s energy crisis and encouraging every Western nation to get the hell out of the Middle East and only go back under properly negotiated, mutually beneficial terms? Or will the dirty nukes hit the still-operating nuclear plants that humanity’s collective blindspot has somehow allowed to be constructed all over the place?

Well, that’s the final (second) question, in a sense… we’re in first place and we’ve nearly won the race, but it doesn’t change the fact that our horse is on fire and we too are about to be engulfed in the flames that have scorched the track and killed everything left in our (flaming equestrian) wake.

It’s up to each informed and free-thinking individual to make a decision for themselves. The decision before us is whether we commit to holding onto the reigns of this lifestyle regardless of how likely a disastrous outcome appears at any given time, placing faith in society/technology/knowledge or even the precedent of erroneous human pessimism, or whether we instead establish a personal danger limit at which we’ll jump the sinking ship no matter what assurances we may receive that rescue is just over the horizon.

And what would jumping ship even mean? Does it really count all that much where your house is in the face of global collapse? Perhaps it means things more like a Wobbliesque general labour strike, or the more recent call, promoted by Adbusters, of a general consumption strike (a little more topical in a culture with no real jobs and too much spending power).

Expanding both sides of the sinking-ship-awaiting-rescue metaphor reveals that the difference between the two greatly parallels the difference between faith in technology and attachment to our natural instinct for self-preservation. The decision may in fact be the same as the choice between our knowledge and our instinct, and while it may seem foolish to ever side with the widely-known-to-be-ignorant human being over the accumulated nature of wisdom… our airplanes _do_ actually work, most of the time, and no one operating on pure instinct would dare set foot in one of those actualizations of insanity.

Might we actually have reached the point in our species’ development where our libraries, schools and information networks can consistently provide us with more accurate and detailed accumulated information than our evolution has left us? Or will it only appear that way long enough for the law of the minimum to come into effect when we slip up and mismanage a single key element, putting us permanently in our place and out of the picture?

Far more than in the past, I’ve been feeling like I’ve got one foot in the nuclear-powered boat and one on old-fashioned dry land - something that might seem like a neutral position to many people, but is definitely a conscious decision for someone born in the ghetto and it’s not at all my default.

I do know where I stand on the question of committing unthinkingly to this society - whether the plane’s engines are still running or not - and that’s “I’m capable of reading the reports and interpreting the stats for myself, and will most definitely be using my own brain’s capacity for logic to decide if the rest of you are totally off your heads and I’d be better off switching from veganism to wild deer.”

I’m deeply concerned by things like the NAU/SPP and our southern neighbours’ elite’s rampant globalized nu-fascist behaviour, but those are pretty hard to simply run from anyway. It seems better to me to be involved in the information streams, spitting back into their “out” tubes.

That aspect of global/continental politics aside, these days Toronto is the issue that’s coming in my eyes and ears and tightening up my stomach. My spidey sense only tingles in spurts, and most of those are tied specifically to Toronto (Driftwood gangsters firing guns at random, serial arsonist, Queen W going downhill). I do also know, in a much more detached and vague way, that things are not necessarily peachy-keen in other urban centres. American cities are struggling with being in America (a chronic condition), many of Europe’s major centres face problems that are unheard of around here, and Australia’s got its own upside-down issues.

Leaving Canada is very low on the likely-list for me, at least for a good while, and leaving Toronto is very low on the list too given that I’m attached to it in some very solid ways in terms of my social networks, my pastimes and, most especially and importantly, my education. All the same, in contemplating whether Toronto is still somewhere that feels like a healthy home to me (I grew up by Jane & Finch with crack dealers in the stairwells of my building, so feel free to be confused about this sentence) my mind naturally wanders to wondering about the other Canadian cities that have touched me enough to feel they could host me beyond a brief visit.

Crime in Vancouver sounds like it’s pretty bad, but Vancouver’s never been my destination of choice in BC anyway because, well, crime in Vancouver sounds like it’s pretty bad. I’ve heard similar things about Victoria lately, but I just can’t picture that in my head. Maybe I should go find out or something, considering my looong term plans have been aiming for the island for some time now, something I’m still holding on paper but reconsidering as I reconsider the entire scope of this location and lifestyle issue.

Calgary is apparently facing a rise in serious crime right now and finding itself short on police officers. I always thought there were enough cowboys to make that up, but maybe Albertans aren’t slangin’ as many guns as everyone makes out. Whatever, moot point, Cowtown is not my type of town - they are not nice to the cows, despite the name, and an organized recycling program is still a complex issue for them - and Canada’s right-wing heaven throwing its overflowing budget resources into filling the streets with cops does not sound pleasant.

Oh, and before you take this as a snowglobed Torontonian viewing Alberta through nothing but Toronto Star headlines, I’ll tell you that I’ve spent plenty of time there, have family there, and effectively lived there for more than one block of time when younger. I got my first driver’s license out there, I watched an oil storage tank explosion scar the sky with a massive plume of black smoke for the rest of the day, I went to indie band and hardcore punk shows, I subscribed to a local street zine thing that flopped after the 3rd issue… I am genuinely familiar. Oh yeah, and the Stampede, I try to repress that though.

Now Winnipeg on the other hand… I’ll admit that writing it off is just pure old-fashioned arbitrary Canuck domestic bigotry (well, and Venetian Snares’ very convincing audio essay).

Montreal, I don’t have a clue how they’re doing. Funny what a little language barrier will do, I hardly even hear about them in the big newspapers that most definitely employ translators of every stripe and have offices in every city. I’m very unhappily missing the anti-SPP protests as I type this, and thus missed the brief trip I’d planned to Montreal. Don’t know when I’ll be going next, and I haven’t been in a while and saw very little of the city the times I did. It certainly does have an appeal for me, though. I admit my firsthand inexperience, but I perceive it to be more similar to Toronto than the rest of Canada’s cities, while having a stronger European influence than an American one. If that’s even a little true, that’s not a difficult deal to talk me into. I bet I’d even get back the fluency that was progressively drained out of me from the time I was removed from French immersion and dumped into the pathetic-rote-memorization-excuse-for-a-French-language-education of the English streams.

As I’ve said, for now, I’m not going anywhere and these are all questions and thoughts towards decisions that can only be made some while into the future… but previously when I left the city to visit another place, whether far away or within the province, I would position myself relative to the 416 rather than simply in that other place, relative to it and myself.

For the first time in my life I’m able to conceive of myself as being independent from Toronto, and I’m enjoying the opportunity to contemplate my position not just in relation to Yonge & Bloor, but to the intersection of the equator and the international date line, or simply to the sun and the moon.

It’s a funny thing now that I think of it, although I’ve been thinking about the “jumping ship” question for years now and debating urban vs natural-communal, the “which urban” question posing Toronto vs X has never really been present in my mind. It’s not wise to let your first breakup change your sexual orientation, and perhaps I should play the urban field before giving up on society entirely, eh?

Well, not that I haven’t already “given up on society” in the lifestyle-anarchist, Crimethinc sense as it is. But that doesn’t determine my course from here, that’s just cultural existentialism, recognizing that by my own declaration I’m free to interact with the world on my own terms, rather than strictly and entirely within the confines of the lose-a-dollar-gain-a-dollar property acquisition system.

And that might just be the final answer I’m missing here, as it makes moot the premise of the second question.

Why put myself in the position of being a victim in the confines of urban society, or victimized by feeling forced to live in a tree on days I’d rather ride an elevator?

Why feel like I ever need to choose between such false dichotomies as The Kingdom Of Western Capitalist Life vs nature’s whimpering and wheezing temples of reality?

I’ve long rejected the ego-trip notion that humanity is anything that can be considered separate from nature, and I now reject the idea of choosing between nature’s evolutionary development and our own cultural/psychological development, as one is derivative of the other. A synthesis of ideas and abilities gained from all sides - along with a healthy round of rejections - is the only logical way to move from here and actually be moving forward.

As for me personally, where I’m at can be permanently described as ‘in my shoes, on our Earth.’ For those who I want to stay in touch with, it’ll pretty much always be possible to locate/contact me and see what’s up… anyone else, well, I’ll write things down and maybe you’ll read about it afterwards.

—

Alright, so all of the above I wrote while at the cottage, where I spent the last bit of my nearly a month out of the city in various places around the province.

Now, having had a chance to return to the city and re-imerse myself in it, this time selectively, I’m feeling far more comfortable and at home again. I feel alright in the sketchy places, and actually feel more comfortable around street kids and people… despite having been pretty deep into street culture in the first place, my time out of town being able to hitchhike and feel safe and being able to trust everyone around me openly has helped me to approach people here with less prejudice.

I’ve been specifically choosing to be around people who I know I care about and who care about me, and all of us seem to be working harder on living healthier lifestyles in our own various ways, addressing our own various problems and vices.

I think the lesson I learned about Toronto is that it’s exactly what you make of it, Toronto has just about everything and you not only can but must select specifically what parts of it you want to observe and engage in, in terms of your social networks, environment and behaviour/lifestyle.

This determines almost entirely whether the place is a very bad one, or a very good one, and I think my perception of it as a very bad thing was directly related to how messed up my lifestyle had gotten and how awful some of the people I was interacting with were.

Labour Day has felt like New Years Eve for me this year…
I’m pretty sure that - once again - I’ve never felt better.
It’s taken a lot of wrestling to integrate everything I learned at Om, but I think I’ve nearly got it under control… and for one of the first times since leaving my teens, I feel happiest being this age and at this place in my life.

Update: this Star article on how rural areas actually have higher homicide rates.