Jun 16
lindsayrgwattRandom riots, vancouver
Last night I sat on my deck and watched one of the most incredible sights of my life unfold.
The slowly setting sun painted the city’s skyline in gold and orange. The city was silhouetted against an opal blue sky and mountains tipped with the last vestiges of a long winter. Crows cawed as they grouped for their nightly flight east; the sound was balanced by the gentle rush of white noise from the waterfall in our building’s amenity garden.
Convoys of angry police vehicles streamed across the Burrard Bridge as the smoke from various fires hung over the downtown core. Police helicopters circled overhead and occasionally one of their search lights would cut through the smoke like a laser.
On television pundits kept wringing their hands and rhetorically asking “how could this happen here?” while appearing genuinely stunned.
It was an oddly mesmerizing experience and one that I hope to never see in Vancouver again. Except that I’m pretty sure I will – and it won’t take another playoff run to make it happen.
-
Riots are funny things. A riot itself is a complex system with hundreds or thousands of actors involved; predicting when a riot is going to occur is remarkably difficult. You need a group of people (100,000 people watching a hockey game ought to do). Alcohol as an accelerant helps. But more than that, you need a reason for people to riot.
And what reason could people in Vancouver have for rioting?
After all, if you ask anyone in Vancouver if they like the city, they’ll tell you it’s the most awesome place on earth. The mountains. The beaches. A forest in the city. An incredible food scene and some of the best coffee in the world. Hell, it’s got everything but sarcasm.
But it’s also got one problem: if you’re a young person in Vancouver, you may not live a life that’s as good as your parents.
Before you tell me that I’m on crack and run me out of the city, some numbers.
Let’s do something any self-respecting Vancouverite would never do, and compare the city with Toronto.
According to Statscan, in 2006 there were about 2.1 million people in the Vancouver metro area and 5.1 million in the Toronto metro area.
If you were a full-time worker in Vancouver you took home almost exactly $54K versus almost $61K in Toronto.
The Vancouver worker is also a very different beast than the Toronto worker. Torontonians are more likely to be in manufacturing or finance (13.2% of workforce vs. 8.4% and 6.9%/4.8% respectively) whereas Vancouverites are more likely to work in a hotel (7.8% vs. 5.6%) or a hospital (9.2% vs. 7.9% – that difference is almost all nurses), in a school (7.1% vs. 6.1%) or a construction site (6.3% vs. 5.3%).
Toronto’s driven by its wealth of small to large manufacturers and the fact that it’s home to all of Canada’s major banks. Vancouver is much more tied to tourism, real estate and government services.
Why is this important? Well, people in Vancouver don’t only make less money, there’s less potential to make money.
In a city like Toronto where there are lots of companies, you get new types of jobs that just can’t exist in Vancouver. Want to work for a product design company? Investment banker? Insert your high-end, niche business of choice: they can only exist when you’ve lots of head offices.
Anecdotally, this is why if you’re a business person who works in Vancouver, your non-Vancouver friends always ask you “what do people do there?” and “why are there no jobs?” Statistically, about 1% more of people in Toronto’s workforce are considered to be “senior or specialist managers”.
Jobs in a hotel, on a construction site or in a school or hospital are great jobs, but they don’t offer you the same potential as other ones.
Those “Toronto jobs” are more meritocratic. If you’re really good at what you do, you have a chance to be disproportionately rewarded for what you do versus everyone else. You have opportunity; the downside is that it’s a highly competitive world.
If you’re a teacher or a nurse, your pay is fiercely regulated and no matter how good you are, you simply won’t earn beyond a certain amount. (However, your job security is nice and high)
All this talk of income is a little crass, so let’s look at the yin to income’s yang: cost of living – and in Vancouver it’s currently out of control.
Check out this chart from Canadian Housing Price Charts:
Look at Vancouver! We’re number one!
As you can see, housing prices are at an insane level – up almost 50% in a little over two years with a gap that’s widening vs. the rest of the country. Moreover, this trend holds across the city. The national papers are full of stories about Chinese buyers frothily overbidding on places in the West side of town, but prices are crazy everywhere. If you want to move out past Commercial Drive (a beautiful neighbourhood, but a long drive to the beach), you’re still looking at $800K for a two bedroom free-standing house.
Crack Shack or Mansion indeed.
We’re likely in a bubble, but who knows when it will end and that’s little comfort to the people who actually live here.
Housing prices are important because they’re the single biggest purchase most people will make and they’re key to what has always been a part of the Canadian experience: work hard, save money and buy a house to raise your family.
In Vancouver, this is breaking down.
If you’re a young person considering a career as a nurse or construction worker or teacher or hotel clerk you can pretty easily predict where your income’s going. And you can see that it’s going to be near impossible to live in Vancouver with anything close to the standard you thought you would.
You’re watching part of your life slip away.
The life you took for granted growing up.
The life you were always told you would have.
And that’s what takes us back to the corner of Georgia and Hamilton and a few fans starting to burn a car.
The widening affordability gap in Vancouver is not an excuse for a riot (For the record: I think every rioter should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I applaud efforts like Identify Rioters) but it helps to explain why the riot started in the first place.
There’s a constant tension in Vancouver: it’s the fact that this is turning into a city that’s only affordable for the very rich. You feel this tension when college-educated people talk about being unable to buy a home. You feel it in the constant conversations people have about the price of things (a disproportionate share of time in Vancouver is spent talking about money; eavesdrop and you’ll see). And you feel it when condos open in the middle of nowhere and start at north of $300K for just over 600 square feet.
This tension in the system seeks a release and yesterday’s loss to the Canucks afforded it a chance. I suspect that’s part of the reason why there was so much looting in this riot vs. the one in ’94.
I’ve seen this before, too. When I was in France in 2006 there were massive riots by youth against the government over their future. There are parallels between that one and Vancouver yesterday.
Hopefully, the city will consider this when they try and figure out how to prevent future riots. This is not simply going to be a matter of dispersing crowds and cracking down on alcohol consumption, rather it’s going to involve Vancouver thinking about what type of city it really wants to be – for all Vancouverites – and making that come true.
Dec 31
lindsayrgwattRandom
Over Christmas I had the chance to grab coffee with my most literary of friends and we got to talking poetry. Specifically, my lack of knowledge about it due to a high school curriculum that consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare’s poorer plays and witless rhyming couplets.
I said that I’m willing to give it a second chance, but that I had absolutely no idea where to begin. This led to a slew of recommendations that I’ve decided to share with the interpipes community.
So here, without further ado, is a selection of recommended poems. Before sharing them though, a note on how to read them. JB recommends the following three rules to get the most out of each poem:
- Read them out loud
- Read slowly
- Follow the punctuation, not the line breaks. If there’s a line break, don’t stop: keep going until the next comma or period
Here are the poems:
High Windows
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Break
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives–
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
Break
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark
Break
About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately
Break
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
Source
Sad Steps
Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.
Break
Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There’s something laughable about this,
Break
The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)
Break
High and preposterous and separate -
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,
Break
One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
Break
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can’t come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.
Source
Toads
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Break
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That’s out of proportion.
Break
Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don’t end as paupers;
Break
Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
they seem to like it.
Break
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets – and yet
No one actually starves.
Break
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff
That dreams are made on:
Break
For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,
Break
And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.
Break
I don’t say, one bodies the other
One’s spiritual truth;
But I do say it’s hard to lose either,
When you have both.
Break
Source
Annus Mirabilis
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
Break
Up to then there’d only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Break
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
Break
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
Source
I Shall Forget You Presently, My Dear
I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
Break
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,—
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.
Source
Intention To Escape From Him
I think I will learn some beautiful language, useless for commercial
Purposes, work hard at that.
I think I will learn the Latin name of every songbird, not only in
America but wherever they sing.
(Shun meditation, though; invite the controversial:
Is the world flat? Do bats eat cats?) By digging hard I might
deflect that river, my mind, that uncontrollable thing,
Turgid and yellow, srong to overflow its banks in spring,
carrying away bridges
A bed of pebbles now, through which there trickles one clear
narrow stream, following a course henceforth nefast—
Break
Dig, dig; and if I come to ledges, blast.
Source
What I’m doing here
I do not know if the world has lied
I have lied
I do not know if the world has conspired against love
I have conspired against love
The atmosphere of torture is no comfort
I have tortured
Even without the mushroom cloud
still I would have hated
Listen
I would have done the same things
even if there were no death
I will not be held like a drunkard
under the cold tap of facts
I refuse the universal alibi
Break
Like an empty telephone booth passed at night
and remembered
like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted
only on the way out
like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand
into strange brotherhood
I wait
for each one of you to confess
Source
Look at this
look at this)
a 75 done
this nobody would
have believed
would they no
kidding this was my particular
Break
pal
funny aint
it we was
buddies
i used to
Break
know
him lift the
poor cuss
tenderly this side up handle
Break
with care
fragile
and send him home
Break
to his old mother in
a new nice pine box
Break
(collect
Source
Kitty, Sixteen, 5’11″, White, Prostitute
“kitty”. sixteen, 5′ 11″, white, prostitute.
Break
ducking always the touch of must and shall,
whose slippery body is Death’s littlest pal,
Break
Break
skilled in quick softness. Unspontaneous. cute.
Break
Break
the signal perfume of whose unrepute
focusses in the sweet slow animal
bottomless eyes importantly banal,
Break
Break
Kitty. a whore. Sixteen
you corking brute
amused from time to time by clever drolls
fearsomely who do keep their sunday flower.
The babybreasted broad “kitty” twice eight
Break
Break
–beer nothing, the lady’ll have a whiskey-sour–
Break
Break
whose least amazing smile is the most great
common divisor of unequal souls.
Source
Filling Station
Oh, but it is dirty!
–this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!
Break
Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.
Break
Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.
Break
Some comic books provide
the only note of color–
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.
Break
Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)
Break
Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO–SO–SO–SO
Break
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.
Source
In The Cemetery
“You see those mothers squabbling there?”
Remarks the man of the cemetery.
“One says in tears, ”Tis mine lies here!’
Another, ‘Nay, mine, you Pharisee!’
Another, ‘How dare you move my flowers
And put your own on this grave of ours!’
But all their children were laid therein
At different times, like sprats in a tin.
“And then the main drain had to cross,
And we moved the lot some nights ago,
And packed them away in the general foss
With hundreds more. But their folks don’t know,
And as well cry over a new-laid drain
As anything else, to ease your pain!”
Source
This Is A Photograph Of Me
It was taken some time ago
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
Break
then, as you scan
it, you can see something in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
Break
In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
Break
(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
Break
I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.
Break
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or how small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion.
Break
but if you look long enough
eventually
you will see me.)
Source
Deaf-Mute In A Pear Tree
His clumsy body is a golden fruit
pendulous in the pear tree
Break
Blunt fingers among the multitudinous buds
Break
Adriatic blue the sky above and through
the forking twigs
Break
Sun ruddying tree’s trunk, his trunk
his massive head thick-knobbed with burnished curls
tight-clenched in bud
Break
(Painting by Generalic. Primitive.)
Break
I watch him prune with silent secateurs
Break
Boots in the crotch of branches shift their weight
heavily as oxen in a stall
Break
Hear small inarticulate mews from his locked mouth
a kitten in a box
Break
Pear clippings fall
soundlessly on the ground
Spring finches sing
soundlessly in the leaves
Break
Break
A stone. A stone in ears and on his tongue
Break
Through palm and fingertip he knows the tree’s
quick springtime pulse
Break
Smells in its sap the sweet incipient pears
Break
Pale sunlight’s choppy water glistens on
his mutely snipping blades
Break
and flags and scraps of blue
above him make regatta of the day
Break
But when he sees his wife’s foreshortened shape
sudden and silent in the grass below
uptilt its face to him
Break
then air is kisses, kisses
Break
stone dissolves
Break
his locked throat finds a little door
Break
and through it feathered joy
flies screaming like a jay
Source
History Of A Tough Motherfucker
he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,”not much
chance…give him these pills…his backbone
is crushed, but is was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he’ll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he’s been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there…also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off…”
I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn’t eat, he
wouldn’t touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn’t go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn’t work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I’d had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough
one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.
“you can make it,” I said to him.
he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn’t want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.
you know the rest: now he’s better than ever, cross-eyed
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left…
and now sometimes I’m interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,”look, look
at this!”
but they don’t understand, they say something like,”you
say you’ve been influenced by Celine?”
“no,” I hold the cat up,”by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!”
I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he’s relaxed he knows…
it’s then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.
he too knows it’s bullshit but that somehow it all helps.
Source
Update: my second most literate friend has sent me another great poem that needs to be added to this post:
Mirror in February
The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed — my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy –
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.
Break
It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.
Break
Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.
Source
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