Oversion’s Weblog

http://oversion.wordpress.com/mandarins-july-1-free-feast-day/

Nice to return to work and be festooned with dramatic weather. It can make the world seem meaningful. From the information society to the gorgeous earth and galaxy, real days, so helpful. And the sense of messages from the depths of being, cloudman, cloudwoman, cloud mystery. hurray! 

Of course this morning I was checking how is the water outflow gulley pond just under 4400 dufferin north bus stop today. It was spectac-

ular – I saw a muskrat way down there just as it saw me, then picked up lots of other movement, family of six drinking from the water that just last week had been so polluted. 

Who knows what it was, I hope they say. Such a glorious scene, such a glorious day, 

Having just a bit of trouble getting any kind of practical response to a basic issue of reporting what appears to be toxic spill up in Downsview near work, or gathering much information myself. Delay renders it moot, and essentially means that anyone can flush anything through the natural water system of greater Toronto. Why pay for toxic waste disposal if there’s no ramification at all to just dumping out back? Plastic bags are a problem, other visible handheld waste, but industrial pollutants have to matter as well. Perhaps unseen and without getting back to me, they are looking into it, immediately east and Down, across the street from 4400 Dufferin. But it sure feels like it’s on some long list of spills to look into, and by the time they do, the tests will amount to random tests of years of dumping and spills. Thats always a valid excercize. But I’ve been watching this waterbody for some years now as it is beautiful and to the immediate right of the 4400 Dufferin bus stop that I use most weekday mornings, and the beige oily scum which plunged into the water on or the night before June 11 2009 was not in evidence previous to that. As I noted then, the brook that winds through the ravinelands passes under Dufferin right there. Water levels seem to me to have been up the last few years, and quite a burst of wildlife now precedes the continued veering of that brook over to the Finch Reservoir. Ive watched animals walk down to sip the water right where the beige oily scum is presently pooling. Their lives aren’t easy, being hit by the mad screaming traffic up on Dufferin, facing extreme heat and cold, shortage of food at times, the threat of disease. But suddenly having their water source poisined is rather hopeless, and extends to everything. 

In the morning I’ll take a jar in my backpack and collect a sample, bag it and put it in the fridge and phone some labs. I’m sure spills and dumping are fairly common. There’s every evidence for instance that private contractors are paid to dispose of numerous forms of junk and then just take it in the pickup truck around at night or weekends looking for any unviewed place to heave it out and drive away. Very clever! But I also think many businesses see through this and simply dump it out back themselves. Seeing this spill occur seemingly over night June 10,11, then recur anew again this morning, almost a week later, makes one anticipate watching the spill disappear as it moves down stream and enters Finch Reservoir, and next week, another lively burst of beige oily scum reappear. This photo from last week probably shows it a more intense juncture.

Does it look worth looking into? Perhaps they’re just not telling me they’ve looked or are looking into it. Perhaps many have reported it. Here in rapid selected thumbnail form some of many photos I’ve taken of this same idyllic scene in recent years.  

thats where it comes in from, the other side of dufferin from that

What the tube cat saw, or, 

How many goslings had there really been to begin with? A Tube Cat Tale, or, 

Canada Geese Take Over Ravine Cats’ Shipyard, All Remediation Fails!, or, 

What are the cats doing to that guy? 

I was on my way to lunch today, still wondering whats become of the many cats that live under the truckbed behind the x and y and z, (behind just about everything up there), and seeing how these cats many human friends have gone to yet further proective measure on their behalf, with ever more reinforced shelter behind the suspended truckbed, when again, no cats, and, the Canada Goose I daydreamed my way right into last week is there instead 

I circled round the other way to suss out the situation whole. Surely the cats are busy plotting somewhere, how can they raise their own young with these nerve-wracking giant birds living in the shipyard with them. The geese of course, to support my friend Michael Tweed’s concerns, also’d have every reason to trouble over the presence of a bunch of cats living right where they try to advance their gosling charges.

The truckbed gang, tubecat's crew

I suppose it’s all vividly a matter of of your point of view. As the son of a birdwatcher I suppose perhaps there were times when affiliation with cats might have seemed thoughtless. Every cat I ever had killed birds. But I just don’t see how a person can try to make eating life not crisscross thousands of ways. It all starts with eating specs, the process of digestion being possible, at the start of evolution. Once on land lizards et al ate vegetables mostly. Etcetra Etcetra, until you could go into any Korean restaurant and consume the most splendidly whole range of possible food, presented quickly and beautifully, with steam rising therefrom that is like an airborne broth! But this isn’t to distract us with our appetites as we look into this desperate setting for crime! 

Ahahhh ahhhhhhh aaaawhwaaah  - Tube Cat! Puffy, oh my. 

all but the guard dad goose ignore my antic hissing and gwackgwacks

truckbed catland from afar

"What will we do about these Canada Geese that have settled here?"

the cats resume their territory

the eyes of dark visions, sterling thoughts, and important decision making

Feral Leader, awesome Cat

A week or two ago the Saturday of the rainbow after a storm, Denis Casun turned up in the lineup behind me at the beer store on Spadina so I waited for him outside in the photocopy shop doorwell, and got his picture coming out: 

Rather than hurry off in the sudden deluge it made sense to visit the historic Wickett and catch up on things with the first period of the hockey game.

According to him the so called Turkey Vultures I showed him on the camera’s little screen are new to Toronto. Denis always partly flummoxes with his certainties, and according to him there’d never been a turkey vulture sighted in Toronto until 2002. Triply hard to believe, he says there are just 3 turkey vultures in Toronto. As we normally do in mid intersection or passing by elsewhere we argued: I said that with birds you see them or not, the same one or another one, and if there’s any, there’s more than several, but he said no there’s three. He walks ten miles a day outdoors and talks to a ton of people, so I don’t discount what he knows. That strange though to have 3 turkey vultures fly over work this morning. 

It’s all lost terminology. They don’t resemble either turkeys or vultures. My father in the mid 1950s was station with the then royal Canadian Air Force in Ankara, working as liaisson between Turkish and American forces, and on his days off birdwatched, in the desert, mastering remaining still so that the vultures would come down to contemplate consuming him. At 3 feet he’d shoe them off. They were vultures, they lived in Turkey. We were sitting out in the yard in 1997 and one afternoon I saw this huge bird glide over the yard and we discussed at length, my impression it looked like a vulture, or a flying turkey, or stork even, and he said it must have been a turkey vulture. But it didn’t look like that, which I prefer calling Moose Hawks.

The skinny black cat by the way, the unwell looking one from last week, seems to have settled upon life in the Jehova Witness parking lot, neither truckbed dweller nor full ravine cat. He’s looking better, but it is still not an ideal situation.

The food I put all around the area last week
quickly put us back on the route of his uncle
the gem cat, whose shining coat and
bear-like size inspires hope:

you write the title up there, the text in here and then click 

the square within a square to the immediate right 

of the phrase Upload/Insert 

Once you’ve loaded the photo, such as this one of my screen, a screen appears with various options, such as providing a caption, a description, choosing the size you want it to be (thumbnail, medium, full size, are the three that work well, “large” really means too large and don’t choose it, 

but most importantly, toward the bottom of that options screen, click on the phrase “Insert into Post” – elsewise it goes into the unknown background

myself with the sizeable dog Oblio

That’s size “Medium” – not the dog but the blog photo. Here’s some thumbnail size: 

When you’ve loaded all you want and written what you want look over to the right and click Publish – perfectly easy to edit or delete after, as wished

One for the ages, so much history going into it, like a symbol of where things are at at this late stage, almost symbolic. A Thursday evening at the end of May, 2009 of all the years, with chronic era displacement, colossal technological heaves across the bow of art and war, and science, the midge revolution, a kind of kaleidoscope of say, 1949 to the present, poetry, relations among people, developments of cities, questions like ‘what takes power, and what is continuously more pleasent but always defeated, juvenile headgame national politics versus verdant viral subtle thought, and choices in representation at the micro level. In short, a poetry reading, put on by the always likeable and always reasonable and always friendly and smiling bookthug books here in Toronto. Just to hear that Ken Belford was reading in Toronto was enough to sense all things were possible, upon first hearing of it months or weeks ago, a kind of ‘legend of the best minds sort of known of by that way poet and chanteur, whenawonce the feathers of the further birds were signalling this way, just days before, Mark Truscott and Kemeny Babineau were added to the bill. Suddenly a rare and immense occassion, once again. They are both, as we who so carefully swim in the lean waters of the notion of having dependents, fathers, besides being writers and publishers, genuinely devoted, so to get them out to do a reading and enter into a full fledged night in Toronto, it is something across months. As with many others present, and on Bathurst, a short walk from my building, on a night my usual confident arrival home from work to Dupont Station to collect my bike met ! like a housecat discovering his bowl is missing ! my bike had been stolen, ohhhh, i watched Law&Order with passion of that eveninghour! Ill-construing villains?! With 15 minutes to go in the episode, Kemeny’s voice broke the focus on th tv thru the window

with a Bandido’s Burrito large enough to split

Amazingly fresh spring air, electricity of a possible storm, like a memory of Canlit, we made our way to the local reading! And with such little premonition of just what an adventure it would be. 

jay drives up

truscott^belford

drumbolis strolls in

poems as intros

Jay has several inventive format altrations a show, and this one read poems of his own as approximate random introduction of each reader. A perfectly pleasent result. Each reader was then announced to begin in an already established calm poetry reading brocade of imagery and wondering. Truly believe Bathurst St put on a show to this effect as well as the whole city. 

And then there they were, poetry readings. Mark Truscott began with his very short ellipses and passionately read them, his breathing intense to get across what he was trying to. I thought it was quite successful, tho at one point, fairly early on, I suddenly recalled his west end gallery reading series was 90 minutes a reader, and, knowing Jay angles away from wasting a lot of time on breaks, suddenly thought 4 hours of reading could lie ahead, but no. Oddly, I found myself making up Truscott-like poems as I waited for the bus up in Downsview this aft. 

Mark Truscott at k6c

kemeny babineau at

Kemeny visually described a tree or vine to contextualize a poem

I sleep in his grandmother’s bed. My home seems so private. It could make me biased, but his poems this night were as alive spreading trees and night’s verdancy of intense growth and much unseen but sensed domain, bringing thusly the countryside south or north of brantford – reminding again a Stanley Cup Final at Gretzky’s, if there’s an afternoon game - 

And then Ken Belford, all the way from Prince George, one night only, on Bathurst, like a Springstein Townsend DiPrima Lander of a poet, trying, so trying to bring all that was possible for the first time to Bathurst ST  - some poems old, some utterly current, fine entertaining cosmological theories, 

showing on theoretical map where he lives

he lives just northeast of where he’s showing. Hmmm, take a break: 

belford drumbolis goldstein kaufman babineau

And hey, that’s no product placement. I was an Expos fan since they came to Montreal back in the 60s. I had no idea what baseball was, we didn’t get the station that well from Plattsburgh, a guy made of fuzzing specs would stand there, then Pop! Then all the static noise would increase, and I’d wonder, and resume ramping the dial to find the hidden cartoons, so when with great import it was said the Montreal Expos were on their way, as a seven year old well, all I could think about was zoning laws, state/business crossover in terms of liability, and the real effect of beer commercials on poetry, but whatever, soon after the season began there we were along the first base line. It was the names, the batting stances, and the great bird-like pyrotechnics of the pitchers on their little mounds, Mack Jones, in left field, like a prototypical power hitter, Jose Bocabella, the very definer of third base, and other great names, Stone, Steve Rogers, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, as the years went by. Jarry Park was alright, great poetry name and so, no, those Blue Jays in the photo are neither Scutaro nor Lind, and this cat is not named Guinness:

As soon as I entered this exciteable excellency of a fine and aptly named new friend was having a lively visit, between the old 30 bites means down and super important zips back and forths through the house, running through legs, leaping for flies, and peeling off poems from the crack in the door to be let back out, once in.

An enjoyable writerly evening. 

Life is not purely defined by success, is immune to perfection, if spring petals land quietly amidst soaring blazing guitar and one is briefly amazed, if the haunting abbreviated rage of a crow, or the bleak deafness of an owl, or the critically unacclaimed cloistered biology of the entertainment tonight vehicle fetish gun understanding – as if I could ever disagree with anyone quite that much – the eternal mind is forever neutral, impenetrable to mine or anyone else’s claims, and, as a Leaf fan, I say whether you are a jackoninetales like brian mulroney, or a classy clear minded well educated person of stellar values (polar oppositeness qua Canada) success and failure rates may easily compare with baseball pitching and batting averages, and you will have the instincts of a sparrow or trout ~ that right 

The Threnodies are tremendous. Who slipped that cd into my backpack over the last few months. So kind. Unless it was really them at Phog Easter Saturday night. CBC has high up Reggae “don’t have to be like that” so I’ll pause from the threnodies, not go off on such tangents. 90,000 blogs an hour were being newly made, at one point, the massive wads of text on them, all that writing advancing and developing language, language abilities, quickly becoming unfollowable, it was only when the blog movement gave way to the capricious allthingsatonce networks, that the blue jays and leafs and raptors and tfc but not the argos, finally began rebuilding. The conversations last night, really good ones, but with hints of Windsor and Vancouver image-du-humane did I really wonder how Toronto really does perceive itself, so comically, transcendentedly distinct from how it is viewed. We accept that. Every city is a collage of peoples from the whole planet, not all people are from St Jean, I know it must seem that way, and some have heard of Kelowna, somehow, but don’t remember the context. The male host of the party went to Rockets games growing up, and his BC bud actually literally supports Kelowna versus Windsor Sunday afternoon, la Coupe Meme, (Quebec may have been a lot smarter about what was up in WW1 but take your national hubris home if you think the Berniers and Bouchards and Montmouths – and the Bedards, *practically Depardieu Canadiens, the Montcalms and Quennevilles, and nihilists and atheists and supernatural occultic painters of bird habitat, the meaning of Cups,

Coupe du Meme? Don Cherry doesn’t know either. It’s surprising that my comments about Rufus Wainwright’s version of the sacred song Trailor For Sale Or Rent is greeted with the previously unheard version of Hallejula

…there is italics supernatural, musical coincidence, and true subtlety in every kind of food preparation

One could so easily flow into one’s home after a day’s work, let the world be, rest, think, and imagine the world, letting the infinitely exploding internet diaspora
thin out into contemplated occasions, or hop on the bike and go, which if one does, it winds up running late
and it is too late to fully write up the night, or load the photos, to combine the scene with the thoughts, so save it, save most of it, but echo bits
before it’s too late, – and save expanded discussion
for after having collected all of it, and ideally, after having read the book. An essay, review, soon…