The Voice of Youth: Stories from Idle No More

It was a Friday afternoon. I listened to the video above the morning of my phone interview with Rob Stewart. I had read that Idle No More was quickly becoming a global movement to follow Occupy with equal weight. It was time to dispel my own pipe dreams. I needed to see what may be the greatest current change movement for myself. 

It happened to be one of the coldest days yet in the brutal Calgary winter season when I began to ride my rickety bike south from the downtown core. Not only was it especially cold, but there was record snowfall the day prior. I tread forward, over the blinding snow, into the untended parkland trails ahead. Three hours later, I made it to my previously unknown destination: Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Calgary constituency. As soon as I saw the demonstrators, I was immediately shocked with disappointment. I stared, from my bike, over to the sparse crowd, filled with boredom and teeming with weakness. There were only a handful of people. The only time I attended  a demonstration previously, was when George W. Bush came to Calgary after his term as president. That was an incredible showing, one of the most emotionally exuberant and lively demonstrations I have known in Canada. I left, curiously pondering with a comic bent, "Do Canadians only protest in numbers when the issue is to oppose the States?" 

In the United States, where I'm from, I was a frontline demonstrator in anti-war marches to the Pentagon, "No War" rallies in Boston, and magnificent protests in support of Latin American resistance in New York City. A public demonstration is a place where the old and the young meet, to exchange hearts on a platform of free speech and free assembly with the naked flesh of human freedom. I stayed outside Harper's constituency only for a few moments, to place myself in the crowd, and continue on my way to a Metis friend's house to buy him coffee. The next day, my wife attended the more crucial demonstration. I've posted her brilliant story on Media Co-op.  

My Media Co-op Post: The Yellow Nation Represents At Idle No More

_________

The true war is now officially being fought in our backyard.

Things are lookin' up by (Kjarvik)

Before it is dark a light will shine through the clouds (Kjarvik)

May All Youth Live Free on Earth (Kjarvik)

There's nothing in your way (Kjarvik)

Heaven on Earth (Kjarvik)

__________

"Matter disguised as her unfolding paradise,
A genital incision, without

Brewed spawn all quaking and facing heart failure
With thick-rimmed glasses and a paranoiac daze,
A thin glimmer of repose
...

Useless triviality
In the maze of Puritanical property and stubborn consensual heavens
Drowned in blue time
...

Oceanward,
Where the thumb and nose meet at the spun wheeling whys,
Whose greed lurched from above the lily swamp and naked,
Pressed their white head to the diamond name"

excerpts from "Pulp Massage"

Basement Emptiness and the Great War for Alaska!

Moon Spots in the Forest, Winter by Arkhip Kuindzhi

I am seated across from my step-father, although I can not see him, he is grayer and older. His presence is sunken and lost in age. I reach out to him, yet he is distracted by the television as usual. We are on cushy, white sofas. I am drinking beer from a glass bottle. As the night gets dark, the ceiling windows illuminate with moonlight cast on the laminated wooden floorboards. He is asleep. I toss the beer bottle across the kitchen in the direction of the cellar door. As soon as I do this, I realize I have to retrieve this bottle. I head down the basement steps, only to find the basement completely empty. I have never seen the basement empty since we moved into this newly built home in 1998. The basement is my step-father's refuge, full to the brim with musical equipment, records, books, boxes and a weightlifting set. It is bare. I find the bottle amid other beer bottles swept asunder in the cobweb corners of the concrete foundation.

I find myself sporting an Eskimo jacket, though militarized. I am in the center of a battle field which slightly resembles my readings on the Great War; World War I. Barbed wire and trenches are masked by the deep snow. I sprint effortlessly across the tundra, murdering my enemies with broken pieces of wood, spears left without whittling, leaving a lacerated, dirty wound. I stick the wooden shaft beneath the snow in the hard-packed, frozen dirt as I would with a peculiarly serrated WWI knife used specifically to infect its victim. Suddenly, I face a formidable foe. As I swing the a vampire-slaying weapon into the torso of my enemy, he lifts his weapon, a broken wooden shaft as well, in a circular motion. I am impaled in the stomach with swift intention.

Bleeding and helpless in the open tundra, I become delirious. The enemy who's mortal blow has impacted my vital organs lies dead, as an insignificant speck of bloodless flesh and white cloth on an ocean of ice. I turn to face the horizon. Curiously, I am led into a domestic home. I find my way through a corridor. I am in an enclosed, outdoor court. A small altar rises with a light bowl at its apex. As I move with delicate strength, on the edge of my last breath, I approach the bowl. I want to see inside to its contents. Before I can see over the lip, I feel the presence of a man in the uniform of a soldier in the War of Alaska entering a side door. I wake.

Intentions for this space (2)

I will relay the imagistic and emotional planes as they are present in my dreams along with any research into dream psychology or my daily interactions with art in my local environment as they collide and sometimes resonate with my own opinions about dreams and their inner nature.

As an artist/musician/writer full-time I can take time as I wish to become embedded in “flexing the subconscious” or practicing dream. Added to that fact, I live in Canada which gets DARK during winter, perfect time to start delving deep into dream. My bedroom has no windows.