photojournal.

This first picture was taken by Bryna, standing on my desk chair as I lie there, writing my SSHRC grant proposal mired in tornado-strewn paper piles & books. This epitomizes my life as of late. I am enjoying school -- moments of academic ecstasy do come. However, I have developed a terrible, exasperated loathing with the process of writing grant proposals. Basically bureaucratic hoops to jump through, written in language drained of life; two pages of stilted explanation worth $17000. & knowing that every autumn of my academic life will mean writing these things in hopes of convincing the ever-stingier, science-business-centric government that my research is worth something, too... I don't know. Maybe it will get less arduous. But now it just seems a little ridiculous. To spend this much time & energy writing these things when one wants to be out there doing fieldwork. Not writing sterile summaries about why their project is super-amazing, blah, etc. & that's when I escape the paper-stacks & go walking until I reach the river valley:


& explore the little trails leading to the sandy banks, past little ravines filled with the twisted branches of viburnum, little jewel-red kalyna-berries against bleached branches, blue sky & the tarnished coins of the trembling aspen, coating everything copper, whispering. I felt so cozy, & so secure, I wanted to bury myself in leaves & have a nap, lie there just listening to the leaves... Air smelling of apples decaying, the spice of wet wood. When I reached the water, there seemed to be no one around on my side of the river, so I sang quite loudly, right there on the bank where I took the photograph. It was very satisfying, wind smoothing the off-notes, covering the roughness of my voice.

Further down and across the bank, I heard a man whistle, his dog splashing into the water. A lone rower sculled down the centre of the river, people walked along the edge, gravel slipping under their feet. But no one ever noticed me, even turned my way. I felt delightfully invisible -- as if when I looked across the river, I looked into a future or a past, and I was unseen because I came from another time. Or perhaps the silt swallowed up the sound, the wind pushing my song back into the woods behind me. It's probably best that no one heard.