Saturday, December 30, 2006

veselykh sviat'! & a musical gift


{sunset, riverlot 56, dec.26}


{waxwing fluttering, elm tree 76th ave - 115st, dec.30}


{sunset, pine tree & christmas lights, the acreage, dec. 25}


{aspens & birches + blue sky, riverlot 56, dec. 26}

Here are some songs to sample, a sort of best of 2006 in no particular order. I've tried to provide mp3s for as many as I can, but I'm having some technical issues, so some are missing or linked to other sites where you might hear the songs. Nevertheless, enjoy! Please let me know what you think... If you would like a mix cd consisting of a similar musical mélange, do let me know, it could perhaps be arranged.

1. Lion's Jaws -- Neko Case (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood)
2. Lived in Bars -- Cat Power (The Greatest)
3. Scenic World -- Beirut (Gulag Orkestar)
4. On the Radio -- Regina Spektor (Begin to Hope)
5. Green Grass -- Cibelle (covering Tom Waits) (The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves)
6. Wild Sage -- The Mountain Goats (Get Lonely)
7. The Modern -- Frida Hyvönen (Until Death Comes)
8. Willow's Song -- Isobel Campbell (Milk White Sheets)
9. For the Turnstiles -- The Be Good Tanyas (Neil Young cover) (Hello Love)
10. Chinese Translation -- M. Ward (Post-War)
11. Emily -- Joanna Newsom (Ys)
12. Ramblin' Man -- Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan (Hank Williams cover) (Ballad of the Broken Seas)
13. Golem Hora -- Golem! (Fresh Off Boat)
14. Parentheses -- The Blow (Paper Television)
15. Hypnotize -- Ani Di Franco (Reprieve) -- hear the track streamed here
16. I Was A Lover -- TV on the Radio (Return from Cookie Mountain)
17. Put in a Penny in the Slot -- Fionn Regan (The End of History)
18. Listopad 2004-oho roku -- Haydamaky (Ukraine Calling)
19. Benton Harbour Blues -- The Fiery Furnaces (Bitter Tea)
20. Vincent and Theo -- Jacob Borshard (The Last Brontosaurus) -- can be obtained here in its entirety on Jacob's webpage
21. May be the last time, I don't know -- Ndidi Onukwulu (No I Never) -- listen to a sample here
22. Springfield (or Bobby had a shadfly caught in his hair) -- Sufjan Stevens (The Avalanche)
23. The Gates of Istanbul -- Loreena McKennitt (An Ancient Muse) -- you can hear a snippet here
24. Mountains -- Sparklehorse (Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain)
25. The Ukrainians -- vitaminsforyou (The Legend of Bird's Hill)
26. Pieces of Sky -- Beth Orton (Comfort of Strangers)

I could make another list of other music I have been saturated in over the course of the year that was not produced in 2006, but that would be even longer...


Monday, December 18, 2006

language change (poem)


{little weed-skeletons over the ice, north saskatchewan}

{north saskatchewan riverbank, looking north to hawrelak park}

language change (in progress)

“we used to speak / a different language / i wasted my breath / on words soon forgotten / left unattended / they're moving their feet -- but nobody's dancing” – low, ‘like a forest’

speaking to eachother
now we find ourselves unintelligible.
you’re not listening, yer not
lissening
, yuar nalissineng
there is so much accusation
but really i do hear you
you just sound like a bird
singing with water trapped
in a cold little throat –

through glottochronology
we can see how
time has elongated my vowels.
since i moved across the river drift
became inescapable.
visiting less & less & less
soon i found new names for things:

first for the tamarack,
then the blue-jay
then the pinecone
then slowly through these
lexical half-lives
i began to pronounce other sounds for
such universals as attraction
& compromise
& lust.

now when i speak
i am calling upstream to you,
into the past, against a current
with a tongue weighted down
by delta silt
& the words all waterlogged
just float further away –

banks erode slowly
& we filter differently
through the gravel bars, the eddys
& oxbows that can’t quite be bridged
without translation –

never thought we’d be
such stubborn monolinguals,
not then. though
it could still be argued,
really, that we still speak
dialects of the same language –

yet we insist that
our mutually intelligible ancestor
has passed away, one
wrote her down
& now we’ve become too proud,
too politicized
to admit, acknowledge
that maybe we still
understand –

perhaps in the future

some linguist
will want to study us,
reconstruct our old tongue,
recreate that proto-speech
with its slippery soundchanges
& forms & asterisks,
study the strange dialects
that arise with movement
& the lessening of someone’s
love.


Thursday, December 14, 2006

pomegranates.


Last night I was watching Bryna cut up a pomegranate {see above} & it made me dream about pomegranates... I was in a kitchen that was not mine, & I was chewing palmfuls of the seeds, then spitting them out into my hands, & smearing the juice on my nightgown. It was quite bizarre, with little pools of red juice all over the floor. I am not exactly sure what this signifies -- I know what may have provoked the images, obviously, but the eating-spitting-smearing is not how I usually interact with pomegranates. I like to eat them in pilaf or just by themselves. My only theory is that I was Persephone, you know, & I suddenly realized if I ate all the pomegranate seeds it would be winter forever. So I thought that I'd spit out a few, to keep the season a little shorter, perhaps, because my mother (& I'm sure, many other people) would be disappointed if winter lasted toooo long....

Speaking of pomegranates, remind me of when I was in Grade 2 & brought a pomegranate for show-&-tell, but it was almost gone by the end of the day because I kept it in my desk & kept stuffing the kernels into my mouth.

Pomegranates also make me think of Loreena McKennitt, who I just discovered made another CD! She hasn't done that in nearly ten years. So, so lovely. Her music always reminds me of being 14 and reading The Golden Compass series & faerytale books late into the night & listening to her music & crying because some of it was so thoroughly gorgeous & writing poems that sounded too much like Yeats & hiking in the snow in Jasper at Christmas & dreaming about someday wandering across Scotland or taking the Trans-Siberian Railway across the Urals... & just being a strange little 14-year-old, but in a good way. The really idealistic, hopeful sort of way, being lost in the things that I love.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

you are worth hundreds of [waxwings]


{tree of waxwings, 112st & 77 ave}


{waxwing silhouettes in an elm tree}

When the universe wants to send me flowers, it actually sends me birds.

Not bouquets but flocks, of bohemian waxwings -- even though they aren't usually seen until later in the winter... But they were there, all darting & undulant in little dark waves... Last Friday at 78 ave and 112 st, & the Arts quad at the university, in late afternoon sun the colour of pomegranates, between the elms & spruce & mountain ashes, weaving all over the sky. It's impossible to be too sad when I hear that soft sreeeeeeing of waxwings surrounding me, or I'm feeding a chickadee sunflower seeds from my mittens.

& here is a little mix of some of my favourite bird songs for your listening enjoyment. Just follow the links to download the mp3s. They're on YouSendIt & should stay fresh for about a week.

Eels -- I Like Birds (Daisies of the Galaxy)
Neko Case -- Maybe Sparrow (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood)
Sparklehorse -- Hundreds of Sparrows (Good Morning Spider)
Paris to Kyiv -- Ta i Vylitala Halka (And the crow flies off...) (Fragmenti)

Monday, December 11, 2006

baba lessons


{kitchen window frost ferns}


Yesterday my mama & I made holubchi with my uncle, out at the acreage. We never made any cabbage rolls for Christmas last year, the last time we made any my baba was still alive. She couldn't make them, then, but she could direct us, observe us -- just as she'd sit in a chair in the garden and watch us pick the cucumbers and dig the potatoes, we'd hand them to her & she'd brush the dirt off, admire them.

It was so good to talk about her yesterday, standing in the kitchen at the acreage, sun on snow, listening to my mama and uncle tell stories. About her, her cooking, their youth. We knew we had made the cabbage rolls properly because soon the house smelled just right, just as if we had recreated her kitchen... warm rice & onion, & buttery bacon for the rolls that won't be eaten on Christmas Eve... & from peeling the sour cabbage my hands still smell a bit like vinegar & spices. Baba hands, folding up the wet papery leaves into fat little nestly pigeons, holubchi.

This is what I mean by living memory. How this kind of active reminiscence -- the conscious remembering of a person's tradition -- is a sort of continuous resurrection. I feel so grateful for for this nourishment, physical & spiritual.

* * *

Holubchi (Cabbage Rolls)

This is a recipe that has never been written down before, but I shall try to explain how my baba made these tasty morsels. If you believe that you don't enjoy cabbage rolls, it's likely because you have happened upon either a commercially made variety or a homemade but sadly misguided little holubchi that was made boiled limp without sour cabbage or love. Those are not my baba's cabbage rolls. You will like these, because they are tangy & comforting & decidedly un-soggy winter food of goodness.

I will describe how to make enough to feed a small army, but you can easily half this recipe.
For the filling, you will need about 4 cups of rice to about 7 cups of water, in a very large pot. You should do about half water, & half chicken/vegetable stock for the best flavour... You can cook the rice the way you normally do it, but for a little less time -- it should be slightly undercooked, a bit crunchy, so as not to get too soggy when the rolls themselves are heated.

While the rice cooks, mince two onions and sauté in butter until nice & translucent. Once the rice is (under)cooked, mix it with the onions in a very large bowl.

When made without meat, holubchi are one of the 12 dishes of Sviata Vechera, the Ukrainian Christmas Eve Holy Supper. If you like to eat meat &/or these rolls won't be eaten for Sviata Vechera (which is meatless to honour the sacrifices of farm animals), feel free to add bacon. You can get what my mama says are 'bacon ends' or you can get 'normal' bacon and cook it up in butter until it's not too crispy, then crumble it up & add lots of fresh ground pepper to the mix.

You should also have procured two nice-sized heads of sour cabbage. Apparently some people are afraid of sour cabbage, & like to steam a normal cabbage til it is just soft enough to peel -- you can do this, but I highly recommend the sour one, which you can find in grocery stores fairly readily. Around here you can get a brand called Kissel which is suitably tangy. Usually the core is removed too, but if not, you should do that first. Then, start peeling off the leaves, rinsing them in cold water to remove excess vinegar. If the leaves tear, don't worry. You can 'patch' them up as you're rolling. Put any tiny pieces aside for 'scrap', and then cut the larger leaves in two so they are palm-sized, & trim the hard stem-part off. Let the leaves sit in a colander til you're ready to roll. (That's a bad pun, yes, but my family loves bad puns, so I'm keeping it there).

Rolling holubchi is a fine art. If you do it well, your skills will be celebrated far & wide, you know. (People still rave about my great-aunt Nancy's tiny, elegant holubchi). However, even larger, more unwieldy cabbage rolls still taste delicious. Take a cabbage leaf in the palm of your hand (most leaves curve a little, let the curve fit with your hand). Place a heaping spoonful of filling in the middle & roll the leaf tightly around it, folding & tucking in the sides. (You can also spread the mix thinly over the whole leaf & then roll it). Place the roll in an oven-safe dish with the ends of the leaf tucked down. Repeat until all your cabbage is gone. If your cabbage leaf has holes or tears in it, just place a small thin piece (from your scrap pile) on the inside of the role to cover it up. (Save any other cabbage scraps -- you can chop them up, fry them in butter with any leftover filling & fresh chopped tomato...)

Now, you can take your holubchi & immediately freeze them to oven-bake later, or you can cook them right away. You'll need to make some sauce -- my baba used tomato soup from a can, slightly thinned with some tomato juice. You can use stewed tomatos, too. Season your sauce with more ground pepper & some Hungarian paprika, & pour it over your cabbage rolls. Preheat the oven to ~350 degrees fahrenheit & cook covered for about 1 & 1/2 to 2 hours til the cabbage is nice & tender. I todi, ïzh, ïzh! Na zdorovia!

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

podvijne shchastia!


{me, feeding a chickadee in Hawrelak Park -- picture taken by Bryna}

Because I have written precisely 17915 words in term-paperage over the past week or so, I shall just leave you with this:

Me (going x-country skiing) + chickadee (eating little black sunflower seeds out of my mitten) = (super extra) happiness

also, now I am finished papers, so I can ski & feed birds whenever I want.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

nazca lines in a totally different cultural context.


{eiffel tower at dusk}


{carrousel across from the eiffel tower}


I'm not exactly sure what happened to November, but apparently just over a month ago I was wandering around Paris. It still seems a bit surreal. But I do have photographs to prove it, pages in my notebook with writing in it (see below) ... & also little tins of tea in my cupboard that you just can't get here...

Mp3 goodness for your downloading enjoyment: Ne Me Quitte Pas -- Regina Spektor (Songs)
It's a sweet little song on a lovely album -- "I love Pa-ris in the rain!"-- though a little difficult to obtain. It is at CDBaby, though.

* * *

nazca lines, paris.

(oct. 29/2006)

i)

tonight i see paris from the sky.

pushed up against small bubbles of frosted window i see the swirling arms of its galaxies, illuminated spirals of streets reaching out to hold trees & farmhouses in long glowing tendrils, letting the light spill into the darkness: nous existons, nous sommes ici

it’s not that one light gleaming in the darkness, rather in small cobblestone breaths between lampposts there is a flickering absence of light. a girl on the steps of sacre coeur, eyes darting birds scattering the fog like black stars, a man by the metro melting in his fading suit leaving the pool of his tattered hat

& a woman with the duct-taped antique accordion who serenades us for change,
those bellows pushing everything together pulling everything apart –

ii)

dans belle paris, la ville de lumière the night before i left
i was told some were lighting candles to remember

those boys – run down by police, electrocuted in a city power station – those boys, who said they were unseen, that no one noticed, no one knows –

& in the east they were burning buses in anger, as everything swells in them
though the seine has never been so serene –

& now their quick firelight licks ruins, twists down the labyrinths past the filigree eiffel lighthouse searching far out beyond suburbia, lights streaming out into the darkness

but no one answers this bright silence, buses in flames to make
their own break in the dark –

iii)

i’m flying over paris,

watching its electric nazca lines intersect the night as it sleeps sprawling long spidery limbs over that scintillant l’île de france –

& they’re lighting candles, burning buses just to illuminate their presence so they won’t disappear, because everyone is afraid of that dark –

& on the metro the woman with the duct-taped antique accordion serenades us for change, those bellows pushing us together

& pulling us apart –

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

tri krasyvi richi


{cat & magpie footprints}

This is a lovely blog. Such a lovely thing to make a part of one's routine -- to resolve to think of this every day -- & Clare's (the blogmaker) combination of profound & sweet & simple things.

& so discovering her blog recently has provoked me (despite my ridiculous academically-induced overwhelmed-ness, my worries about what seems like everything, my body doing strange things, etc etc) to be extra-mindful about lovely things, like these things (among many):

(yesterday)

-- seeing Ndidi Onukwulu sing (with Madagascar Slim) at the Winspear last night -- her voice that goes on for kilometres in all directions, filling that giant-birthday-cake space... dancing so whimsically with a red dress & a tambourine that Bryna & I wanted to take her home to make dinner with us, because we knew she'd be an excellent kitchen-dancer...

-- seeing a coyote wandering along the bike-path along Saskatchewan Drive late last night, glittery streetlight eyes, confused by the houses. I wondered where it was going...

-- how I feel in the cold. I love wandering around all bundled up, like how little birds fluff out their down (feeling so fortunate for this warmth), the blue glistening of the snow, sliver of moon frosted to the sky like someone's tongue stuck on metal. How fresh the air is, how every cell feels so alert & crisp when breathing, & breath-clouds condensing hoarfrost lace on the silk threads of my scarf.

(today)

-- hearing a professor in my department lecture this afternoon. so good to remember other people can be so enamoured with ideas...I liked how he refused to talk about 'theory' & called it a toolbox, each 'theory' a caliper of a different sort, for fitting something a little different. (multiple epistemologies!) & seeing him so excited about what he was talking about -- metaphors & tropes as links to human cognition. & the metaphors he used so carefully, craftily...

-- speaking of metaphors... suddenly understanding something, because your thoughts have found their way into a metaphor that makes such perfect sense... I'm not sure how to explain it, it's such a part of the way I think about things. But just the idea that the 'poetic' is such a part of my constant process of understanding, it's not something separate...

-- feeling so warm towards people -- such warmth & goodness. total appreciation & gratitude for their kindness. that is all.


Sunday, November 26, 2006

vichnaya pam'yat'


{баба, у садочку}

Анна (Мигович) Пехник
22 лютого 1915 - 26 листопада 2005

Вічная Пам'ять

When she passed away, I felt like I was suddenly, swiftly grown up; her generation is disappearing, my parents are aging & suddenly here I am -- there is so much I carry, so much in my hands. & I know that I must remember, because there will be a time when no one else will. I think of her now, and feel that through my actions perhaps I can resurrect her. In a year, I've learned that I need to become her kindness, to embody that generosity -- be as warm as her, warm as the gold heat of beeswax, to become what I have inherited from her so it will never disappear.

In the cemetery today we said prayers, brought food to rest under the snow-covered flowers & candles that wouldn't stay lit in the cold wind. & we take comfort in the belief that no one is really gone, they still live with(in) us. Родина -- живі, мертві, і ненароджені; a family is the living, the dead, & the not-yet-born.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

baths, archimedes, square one, & other tangents.


{little pond reflection in the Jardin du Trocadero}

Last night, I was evading paper-writing, by sitting around in the bath, not really thinking about anything in particular... or at least trying not to mull over my paper... when suddenly I had a whole story in my head. Fully, completely formed, all unravelling out of my head in a way that was as linear as a decidedly-less-than-linear story could possibly be.

This is really quite odd for me, considering I've been working on this same short story for over a year... but in about three seconds, I knew the whole story. It was all there, well-wound yarn. Everything I didn't know, all the things I was unsure about (reasons why this story remains in a cocoon instead of being written) suddenly were quite apparent. It was rather odd, but it struck me as highly amusing, because this whole having-brilliant-idea-in-the-bath made me think of that story about Archimedes, & you know, yelling 'Eureka!' & leaping from his bath-tub when I finally had the revelation about floatation...

& I didn't run naked through the agora of Athens or anything, but remembering Archimedes, instantly reminded me of a television show of my childhood, Square One, because they had a song about Archimedes, that got stuck in my head then & surfaces sometimes...

& in fact, they had a lot of songs, educational ones about math, you see. & really, I've never been terribly interested in math at all... math, for me, is much like a constructed language like Esperanto -- certainly a feat to create & develop a system like that, but ultimately it can't hold my interest because it lacks a culture, a history behind it... etc etc. It's just a system. It communicates something, but it doesn't express a lived reality. Well, maybe for some people, mathematicians, yes, their entire worldview is coloured by math. But not me. & not most people.

Anyway, before I further digress, Square One was rather clever. & it did teach me some things about math that I still remember (like the magic number nine! & that 'a million is big, but a billion is bigger! one thousand times one million, that's one billion...') in a way that is even more humourous now because I understand the jokes better now, the intertextual cultural references. Like MathNet. & MathMan, & all the parodied music styles & videos they used... (like Late Afternoon with David Numberman, etc.)

which, I discovered, are archived here... the picture quality isn't amazing, but the songs are there, & that's the important thing. So I can relive how "it all comes back to nine!", or maybe re-watch part of the MathNet episode where the little budgie bird squawks out the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence & helps solve the mystery.

& that's the story about how having a bath not only inspired me to keep working on a short story that's a year old, but also brought back childhood pop-culture nostalgia. Sometime I'll have to write about Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, because that show/game had a far more compelling effect on me as a 10-year-old, as you probably already know... I wanted to be on that show so badly! But you had to be American... bah.

I need to write my paper...

Sunday, November 19, 2006

the midday sun at midnight


{cheremshyna/pincherry tree by st. basil's}

In my haphazard perusal of the internet, I have discovered there are a number of sorts of blogs. Some are full of photos, which I like to call phlogs; ones with writing, I call wlogs; ones with music are mlogs. Until this post, I have been keeping a phwlog... but now that I have obtained the capability of linking mp3s, I now have a mphwlog (which looks amusingly like a word in Welsh...) This I am rather excited about, as I can foster the spread of musical goodness to even wider spheres, hopefully...

I shall try to post things that are rather obscure, perhaps even more esoteric than the things I usually put on mixtapes I make, things that perhaps wouldn't be found so easily otherwise. Good little musical morsels, yes.

I'm using YouSendIt to host them, so just click on the links which shall take you to a page where you will see a button that says 'Download Now!' & you will do so. At least I hope you shall.

* * *

I suppose if I had a theme today it would be Scottish folk-ish singers... who have been my night-time music over the past week... Cozyness, yes. Both reinterpret the songs in very contemporary ways, taking the sparseness of the traditional arrangement & making such gorgeous, swirling textures out of them.

Isobel Campbell, I'm sure, you may know as the cellist & one of the vocalists from Belle & Sebastian... or perhaps from her solo work, Amorino, or Ballad of the Broken Seas, her album of creaky, country-ish duets earlier this year with Mark Lanegan. She very recently released an album called Milk White Sheets, which is filled with reworkings of traditional British folksongs. "Willow's Song" is hypnotic & spiralling, & though sometimes her voice can be a little maddening in its fragility, here it blends so nicely with the medieval-plucking strings & persistent echoey drumbeat, piercing flute...

Isobel Campbell: Willow's Song (Milk White Sheets) mp3

& Alasdair Roberts' central-Scottish accent comes through all gentle & I want to curl up in a ball all day in the aural equivalent of flannel sheets. There is something so comforting about the timbre of his voice, wintry & warm... It makes me wish I could invite him over for tea, & ask him to teach some me songs... & I'll drink lavender tea, & get very sleepy so he'll still be singing as I fall asleep in my chair. "I Went Hunting" is a song about a shapeshifting gosling-woman, also very swirly & encompassing & full of his sweet vowels.

Alasdair will have a new album, The Amber Gatherers, out in January; you can read more about it, & hear a delightful song called "Firewater" if you go over & pay a visit to this blog here.

Alasdair Roberts: I Went Hunting (Farewell Sorrow) mp3

Saturday, November 18, 2006

bird-words.


{self-portrait, singing by the river}

According to Sakha belief, language has its own ichchi, or guardian spirit; it is animate & intrinsically potent. These tyl ichchite, or word spirits, give the act of speech power to fulfil the meanings of the words. Speaking unlocks, uncages; you release the word, you release its spirit.

"Spoken words turn into a prophetic bird that flies according to the meaning of the words uttered and retells the original words." Aleksei Kulakovskii, Sakha writer

Monday, November 13, 2006

lanterns (poem)


{4 o'clock light on the north saskatchewan}


{frozen pool on the riverbank}

* * *

lanterns
(poem partially formed)

walking home from
the train station one night
i, sudden & spontaneous,
start to sing.

i don’t know if i’m afraid
tonight, stepping along soggy curbs,
traversing some slippery uncertainty –
or if i’m just thinking of her again,
my grandmother:

who always sang her way
down from the fields
on summer evenings
so fearless – no flashlight,
only songs:

& here i am,
singing these tiny streams of light,
spitting out the notes,
words like tiny candle-lanterns
floating out into the fog

& oh
i sing like no swallow!
but these notes
are still so spherical, soft
beeswax flowing
from the mouth
of the unseen sun:

phrases like yellowing braids
of the weeping birch,
golden words of a mother-tongue
papery palatals palpable,
gliding over leaves,
fossilizing on slick black asphalt

& the sweet crackly hum
of her voice now
broadcast into the mist, waves
coming back to me like prayer –

kudy ty ydesh? where are you going?

i always knew
she was never afraid of the dark,
herding those cows down cloudy
mountainsides, muted bellows
echoing like trembita –

& her protection now
little notes woven
into woolen mittens,
the warm glow of windows
in old stucco buildings

& my breath like her breath, like
steam on the panes, i sing
up my front steps

oi, de ty? where are you now?

fog whispers like a teakettle whistle

she is dancing home with the cattle
over the bridge on the lymnytsia
free now
& i am her lantern
sung from memory

i am not afraid now--
the light constant & steady
now
every time i open my mouth.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

white blood cells


{ice floes on the north saskatchewan}

On a walk a few days ago, I watched the river freezing -- the sound of the floating clusters scraping & crunching their slushy edges was like loud & creaking sighs, the little ice floes in the river like white blood cells in cold bluish plasma, swift & clean & I thought of his marrow again, prayed for some sort of benediction, for all the lymphocytes to become strong bones, freeze up healthy like white birches bleached & shining in the frost & sun.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

latynka


{this is from the 'je t'aime' wall in parc des abbesses, paris, where 'i love you' is written in a vast variety of languages. 'nalligivagit' is in inuktitut -- south baffin, or nunavik dialect i believe -- even though traditionally it would be written in syllabics in these areas...}

A topic quite popular (& controversial!) in language planning & language issue debates lately focuses on the use of script. It's not really a new topic -- the usage of a particular writing system to distance or align a language or nation with another has been going on for a long while... I can think of a number of examples, from Atatürk's plan of 'modernizing Turkish' by writing it in Latin instead of Arabic... the fact that Serbian and Croatian are mutually intelligible by both linguistic and language-speaker account, yet Serbians write their language in Cyrillic because they are Russian Orthodox, and the Catholic Croatians use the Latin script.

Or, last summer, while teaching English, my Azeri students showed me their new dictionaries in a modified Latin alphabet -- to emphasize ties to Turkey & distance themselves from the Cyrillic script of their Soviet history.

& of course, with Inuktitut in Canada right now, there are many voices in the Inuit community discussing the worth of using syllabics. It's a complex situation, especially since those in the Eastern Arctic use syllabics whereas those in the West (speakers of Inuinnaqtun) use the Latin alphabet. Speakers from various places all over Arctic Canada speak of a switch to the Latin script as a way to modernize, to make the use of technology easier, a way to relate to other world languages, and a way to distance themselves from a writing system not invented by Inuit, but by missionaries. Peter Irniq, former commissioner of Nunavut, openly supported a switch to the Latin alphabet at the recent Études Inuit Studies conference in Paris... yet many speakers contend that syllabics are important for Inuktitut. Besides being an easy-to-learn, efficient system (despite the r/q debate, etc), they support the idea that the script IS an Inuit thing, part of their culture. After all, it's been used by Inuit for over 100 years; it's irrelevant to them who originally invented it.

On the delightful website Omniglot.com, one can peruse detailed descriptions of pretty much all the alphabets & alphabetical variations in use in the world, past & present -- & it is here I came upon a new innovation for Ukrainian -- the Euro-Ukrainian script!

The page explicitly states that the purpose of the alphabet is to align Ukraine with the rest of Europe, to highlight the language's similarities with other Slavic languages using the Latin alphabet, and -- perhaps most crucially! -- to distance Ukrainian from Russian, which uses the Cyrillic script. This is the first I've heard of this particular script, though the idea of creating one isn't new at all. I was instantly reminded of the poem "Latynka", by Andrij Bondar, posted here in both English translation & in the original Ukrainian ( in the Latin alphabet).

"one of my friends thinks
that if we switch to the roman alphabet
our people will steal less
and immediately
our messy byzantinisms
our obnoxious sovietisms our endless ugro-finnisms
(sorry ugrics, sorry finns)
will disappear and something will snap in our heads
– and “voila!” we are part of europe"

It's really quite a poignant poem that I feel really captures a certain desire some Ukrainians
have to feel "part of Europe", to be really seen as "European" and all that connotes -- but yet,
despite their yearning to shake loose from the Russian/Soviet sphere, associated with Cyrillic,
they value the tradition embodied in their alphabet, what is distinctly Ukrainian:


"if every living ukrainian poet
writes one poem in the roman alphabet
it will be possible to make an anthology
of contemporary ukrainian poetry written in the roman alphabet
what a pity that Ivan Malkovych won’t be able to write a poem
about the crescent moon of the letter є
and the slender candle of the letter ї"


ї & є are both letters unique to Ukrainian, they are not found in the Russian script... & besides making a point
about the distinctiveness of Ukrainian Cyrillic... I think he also stresses something fundamental
about writing in a certain script -- the aesthetic impact.

I love writing Ukrainian in Cyrillic -- I associate it with many positive things, like the Old Church Slavonic letters
emblazoned in gold on the ikons, my baba showing me how to write а-б-в with an old scratchy pencil on scrap
paper... the certain flow the handwriting that makes me think of embroidery. However, I can appreciate some people's
desires to switch. I never grew up under the Soviets, I don't live in Ukraine now, caught in the midst of political struggles
that are constantly trying to realign the country with the E.U. or with Russia. I understand how the script can be used as
a powerful political banner, too. & thus I appreciate the eloquence of Andrij Bondar's poem...

Saturday, November 04, 2006

sweetness of the light


{les nuages, rue st. germain... samedi après-midi}
"Amélie a soudain le sentiment d'être en harmonie avec elle-même.
Tout est parfait : la douceur de la lumière... ce petit parfum dans l'air,
la rumeur tranquille de la ville...
La vie lui paraît si simple et limpide qu'un élan d'amour...
comme un désir d'aider l'humanité la submerge tout à coup."***

(Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain)

I really need to watch Amélie again, to see if I can recognize some
of the places, now...
Also, I need to remember to think about things that are simple & sweet
& generous & good.


(Photos from Paris are slowly finding their way up to this site here. )

Strange to think one week ago only I was wandering
along le Boulevard Saint-Germain
in the late afternoon, with peppery crackers,
Boursin & a bottle of Orangina for my supper,
taking pictures of cafés & clouds & churches...
feeling like an insouciant little alien & that
strange little travelling peace...

Thursday, November 02, 2006

happy feast of all saints, a day late.


{ste. jeanne d'arc, cathedral notre dame}

I am just writing this morning to note that I am back from the conference in Paris, still recovering from the jet-lag time-warp & wholly immersed in paper writing... I am still very much in the midst of trying to process my Parisian escapades, & just exactly where I was & what I was up to last week...

I also must note that I've been putting things in this blog for a whole year now. When I started it I was actually intending for it to be read by other people, but I really don't know how much that actually happens... regardless, I will continue to post, create an archive, even if maybe it ends up mostly for myself.

So soon I will have Paris stories. Meanwhile I will finish my paper on belonging & identity in the Post-Soviet Arctic... whilst listening to the Budapest Chamber Orchestra play Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik... which takes me right back to Grade Three, Four, Five... which was always the piece that played the first week of school as we'd read our books in the morning as classical music played over the intercom for 15 minutes. (next came Vivaldi's Four Seasons...)

So when I hear these strings & cadenzas, it's all crunching leaves & dried-apple smell, pencil shavings & eraser-crumbs, the feel of torn library-book pages under my fingers sticky with pomegranate seeds that I would hide inside my desk to nibble on during class. I remember one of my most favourite teachers, Mrs. Schreiber, who would always let us continue to read for a whole half hour, & would play more music for us. This was my favourite time of day. It was delicious, being able to sit there, just read, no interruptions... (I realize this sort of time is completely lacking in my life as of late... alas)

I'm getting quite carried away by this very random reminiscence, but really, it sort of summarizes the awkwardness of my elementary school years... glued to my books & my maps, engrossed in music. (Not much has changed...)

I spent those years often treated as a curiousity, freakish spectacle by my peers, but I think due to the indulgence of my teachers, I turned out okay. They supported me being a strange little bird, & this has certainly stayed with me... they gave me classical & Enya cds & their old National Geographics & books of world mythology, let me write really really long stories in language arts class... they encouraged my creativity, my elaborate projects & constant questions. They never tried to 'normalize' me, & for this I am really quite grateful. Those years could've been a lot more traumatic were it not for them.

I really need to track them down, Mrs. Schreiber & Mme. Mageau... I would like to see them, thank them -- tell them what I'm up to now. I think they'd be quite amused.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

kalyna poems


{kalyna berries in the river valley}

{fallen kalyna, in the river valley}

Apparently the theme of the week is berries... It seems that my current favourite thing to do when I should be doing schoolwork is concoct poems interwoven with Ukrainian folk songs, inspired by the lovely kalyna-berries growing everywhere in the woods down in my part of the river valley.

Kalyna is the Ukrainian word for the high-bush cranberry, 'viburnum trilobum/opulus' in Latin, or 'anepeminan' in Cree (which inspired the naming of the Pembina River). These bitter little berries are medicinally very useful; as respiratory and digestive tonics, skin cleanser, menstrual discomfort, and even as a preventative for arteriosclerosis and to treat tumours.

It is a rather multivalent symbol as well, evoking remembrance & longing & liminal spaces between child- & adulthood & love of all forms & beauty & (female) sexuality -- in folksongs it often directly refers to a young woman, or sometimes even a homeland, a beautiful place remembered from childhood.

There are two folk songs that are part of this piece; one is little fragments from a song simply called 'Kalyna', and the other is 'De je moja myla?' you can click on the footnote-numbers & find the translations at the end of the poem, and then click them again to return to the poem-line.

I think songs about love triangles must form an entire sub-genre of Ukrainian love songs. In my use of 'De je moja myla?' I should note that I played with the gender-marking in the lyrics... usually a male sings the song, all wistful for his female love whose run off with Ivan, but the voice in my poem is female.

* * *

de je moja myla?[1] (kalyna)

de je moja myla?
hej, vona vzhe zaljubylasja v ivana..[2]

1.

oi u luzi kalyna[3]

in the breathing green membranes of leaves between us
there was too much tenderness

sweet innuendo pressed up against your shoulderblades
like riverbanks rising off the bed –

my palms kneading those knots
growing on your spine hard as beetroots,

your sweetly sticky temples a closeness to curl around, cocoon of dusk.

i leave my fingerprints all over the white webs of unseen skin
& this is when i always want to tell you –

but every time my ears burn dull red like smashed cranberries
when you speak about that crow-eyed boy who

made you sing like a swallow, sway
& you ran down to follow him

at the feast of john the baptist when the river swept the bridge away –

hej, vona vzhe zakokhalasja v ivana..[4].

2.

svit kalyny lamala[5]

i ran down to the river & stood in the whirlwind of leaves,
watching bonfires leap in the bucking trees, ash blossoms, falling snow –

when i saw you, the storm-trees were heavy over our heads
with the weight of bush cranberries

red as bitten lips, drops of blood on white linen nightshirts
that you had been wearing in his bed

made of mallows & periwinkles & a wasp-nest of nettles
& i feel them prick as i hold you

now under the red moon, red june with all the swallows
diving over the crumbling banks –

hej, vona vzhe je zaruchena z ivanom..[6].

3.

ta v pochechku skladala[7]

cranberries fall, blood drawn out of the heavy air
i hold your hands as the breeze sways the terrible vertebrae

of larkspur like the blue lightning of your mother’s eyes –
remember how our mothers said to us, ne jizh kalyny[8]!

gathering berries after frosts to make that medicine
that could cure anything! colds & tumours & haemorrhages, everything

except a heart bloated, water-swollen pericardium,
drowning in the problem of the body, &

the one it cannot have –

hej, vona vzhe vyjshla zamizh za ivana..[9].

4.

taj na khloptsi morhala[10]

i tried to kiss you once, i think it was in a dream –
your lips parted, red boughs split by sweet words

but then your mouth shrivelled up leaving crumbs
of communion & ash on my tongue. & that’s when

the swallows came & picked you up, carried you
swarming & singing & diving over the banks

to where he was waiting, somewhere beyond
the water, back in some heavenly springtime –

so i called back those flocks, called them
to a heart hanging on the reddened branches:

overripe cranberry with no one to taste it, so
let the swallows peck it, let it stain their hungry beaks.





[1] where is my beloved?

[2] hey, she’s falling for ivan...

[3] oh, in the meadow there’s a kalyna

[4] hey, she’s fallen in love with ivan...

[5] she plucked the kalyna blossom

[6] hey, now she’s engaged to ivan...

[7] she placed the blossom in her bouquet

[8] don’t eat the kalyna!

[9] hey, she’s now gone to marry ivan

[10] and winked at the boy...