Someone inside me will not get off his tricycle

Insomnia
Billy Collins

Even though the house is deeply silent
and the room, with no moon,
is perfectly dark,
even though the body is a sack of exhaustion
inert on the bed,

someone inside me will not
get off his tricycle,
will not stop tracing the same tight circle
on the same green threadbare carpet.

It makes no difference whether I lie staring at the ceiling
or pace the living-room floor,
he keeps on making his furious rounds,
little pedaler in his frenzy,
my own worst enemy, my oldest friend.

What is there to do but close my eyes
and watch him circling the night,
schoolboy in an ill-fitting jacket,
leaning forward, his cap on backwards,
wringing the handlebars,
maintaining a certain speed?

Does anything exist at this hour
in this nest of dark rooms
but the spectacle of him
and the hope that before dawn
I can lift out some curious detail
that will carry me off to sleep - 
the watch that encircles his pale wrist,
the expandable band,
the tiny hands that keep pointing this way and that.


The seemingly ever-increasing stress of moving means that I am getting ever-shrinking amounts of sleep. It's a really lovely example of an inverse relationship. Someone should make a math word problem out of it. Billy Collin's image is so delightfully odd and yet so apt. It is a perfect way to capture the insane spinning in circles that my brain does when it ought to be sleeping. Instead of sleeping though it thinks things like, "Call that guy about furniture delivery," and "You need to buy pillows, and sheets...and a mattress," and "How am I going to fit everything into my week?" And I eventually fall asleep thinking these things. I know I fall asleep because my alarm wakes me up, but it doesn't feel like I sleep. Instead it feels like one continuous thought, as if I could fall asleep in the middle of a mental sentence and wake up finishing it.

I think this picture is a kind of bridge between the poem and my mental state for me. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is a photographic representation of how my brain feels while the poem is a literary one and I feel as if the two are connected. These are the wheels of some farm equipment on display at Fort Edmonton. The brightly coloured nature reminded me of the slightly-juvinile characterization of insomnia's persona in Collins' poem. And the simple fact that they are a whole bunch of wheels connects pretty nicely with my always-on brain. Oh sleep, I miss you.

The Printed Word

I will never be a journalist. I flirted with the idea briefly, but I simply am not cut out for it. This doesn't mean that newspapers don't fascinate me though. The world of print media is changing so quickly and that excites me. The development of digital mediums for books, newspapers and magazines has turned the world of publishing a bit topsy turvy. It is going to be so cool to see how things develop in the next few years. I don't think books will die out any time soon. There is too much emotion invested the physical book. Maybe in a few generations they will fall by the way side, but I definitely don't see it happening in my lifetime. Newspapers and magazines are an entirely different can of worms though. There are so many fabulous online magazines starting up. The printed version is still going fairly strong though. Newspapers are probably facing the most challenges surviving. There are just so many other mediums by which to get news, and most of them are more immediate and up-to-date. Why read the newspaper when the stories in it are already 8-12 hours old and you've seen them online somewhere? It's all just so fascinating. I had a really interesting conversation with a friend last week about publishing stuff. That conversation, in conjunction with the Ballyhoo layout process, really made me certain that my life is headed in the right direction. I've also been finding lately that not only is the future of print intriguing, so is the history. I just did a presentation/paper on a book about the role of women in early periodicals and was truly fascinated by the topic. It would be really interesting to trace this kind of topic through from the advent of the periodical in the 18th century to contemporary magazines. Yeah, I'm a nerd. I know.

This picture is from Fort Edmonton almost a year ago. I never enjoyed the Fort when I was a kid. As I've gotten older though it has begun to grow on me. Funny how that happens.

Ten Things...A Single Place

One of the problems I face in trying to get as much photography time in as possible and also being a student with a part-time job is the inability to get to new and exciting places to shoot. There just isn't a lot of time in my schedule for excursions. I wish I did. Hopefully that is something I can change once I'm done this semester. Because I go to so few locations I often feel like I'm recycling images or showing a bunch of photos that are really similar. One of the nice things that this blog has enabled me to do is see just how many places the photos from a single location can take me. The number of ways to view the images from a single place is actually rather astonishing. For example, here are ten very different posts featuring pictures from Fort Edmonton Park:

1. Alias Grace
2. Childhood Memories
3. Now I'm hunched over a typewriter
4. Exuberance is beauty
5. Well, there ain't no strangers
6. Playing Games
7. It is worth our while just to be living
8. Daydreams of Sunshine
9. Luggage or Baggage?
10. I just want to DANCE

Alias Grace

     "In this new dream, I dreamt I was walking in a place I had never been before, with high walls all around made of stone, grey and bleak as the stones of the village where I was born, back across on the other side of the ocean. On the ground there were loose grey pebbles, and out of the gravel there were peonies growing. They came up with just the buds on them, small and hard like unripe apples, and then they opened, and there were huge dark-red flowers with glossy petals, like satin; and then they burst in the wind and fell to the ground.
     "Except for being red, they wer elike the peonies in the front garden on the first day I came to Mr. Kinnear's, when Nancy was cutting the last of them; and I was her in the dream, just as she was then, in her pale dress with the pink rosebuds and the triple-flounced skirt, and her straw bonnet that hid her face. She was carrying a flat basket, to put hte flowers in; and then she turned , and put her hand up to her throat as if startled.
     "Then I was back in the stone yard, walking, with the toes of my shoes going in and out under the hem of my skirt, which was blue and white stripes. I knew I'd never had a skirt like that before, and at the sight of it I felt a great heaviness and desolation. But the peonies were still coming up from the stones; and I knew they shouldn't be there. I reached out my hand to touch one and it hada dry feel, and I knew it was made of cloth.
     "Then up ahead I saw Nancy, on her knees, with her hair fallen over and the blood running down into her eyes. Around her neck was a white cotton kerchief printed with blue flowers, love-in-a-mist, and it was mine. She was holding out her hands to me for mercy; in ehr ears were the little gold earrings I used to envy. I wanted to run to her and help her, but I could not and my feet kep walking at the same steady pace, as though they were not my own feet at all. When I was almost up to Nancy, to where she was kneeling, she smiled. Only the mouth, her eyes wer hidden by th blood and hair, and then she came apart into patches of colour, she scattered, a drift of red and white cloth petals across the stones." (Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace 374-5)

I'm reading Alias Grace for one of my courses right now. It is a thoroughly engrossing book. It's based on an actually murder trial that occurred in Kingston, Ontario in 1843. In Alias Grace, Atwood explores the story of Grace Marks, who was convicted of murder at the age of 16 and sentenced to life in prison. If you don't know anything about the Kinnear-Montgomery trials then you should really look up some stuff about them because it is utterly fascinating. It was never known for certain if Grace Marks was actually a murderess, and it is debated whether she was actually insane or not. Atwood's novel is and incredible exploration of Grace and although it doesn't come down one way or the other on the issues of Grace's guilt and sanity, it draws readers into a complex web of events and people and is truly a compelling read. The passage above is the last thing I read today and the imagery stuck with me because it is so vivid and unusual and disturbing. This is Grace's account (as Atwood has imagined it) of a dream she had the night before the murders took place. That last image of Nancy dissolving into white petals that float amongst the blood-red peonies...it's chilling. It made me think of this photo though. I'm not sure whether this is actually a peony; it is in the peony gardens at Fort Edmonton, but it looks more like a giant poppy to me. Either way I love the intensity of the colour. I also like that it is kind of in the early stages of dying. It just makes it so much more interesting and gives it a different kind of beauty.

Exuberance is beauty

William Blake once said that "exuberance is beauty". I think this is often true in nature, particularly flowers. As much as I love tiny, little, simple flowers, my favorite flowers are inevitably ones that have a bit of exuberance about them. I love peonies and mums, both flowers best known for their incredible number of petals. This peony is from the peony gardens at Fort Edmonton which is probably one of my favorite features of the park. Peonies are just amazing because as they bloom they slowly reveal more and more layers of petals. They look different every single day because of this. Yup, definitely a favorite of mine.

I just want to DANCE

The sun decided to show itself today. The day actually turned out to be quite lovely. And, aside from a couple hours this evening, I wasn't bored all day, which was a refreshing change and means that I am currently way less frustrated than I have been as of late. However I have all this pent up energy that I'm not quite sure what to do with. I actually really want to have a dance party. In first year there used to be spontaneous dance parties in various rooms on our floor. It is just such a great way to blow off steam. They are way less fun by yourself though. I have been known to indulge in individual dance parties although they are more of the "imagine you're a rockstar" variety than the dance around like a maniac variety. Unless I have the house to myself. Then I will sometimes crank the tunes and dance around. Anyway. I really want to have a dance party right now. Or jump on the bed. Or something else exuberant and ridiculous.

I have posted a picture of these flowers before. They are one of my favorite flowers ever to photography because of how they are oriented. Because they hang towards the ground you have to shoot them against the sky and the brilliant orange against a clear blue sky is just perfect. I took this particular picture on Canada Day this year. Fort Edmonton is the only place I have ever encountered the particular flowers, which I think is a shame because they are very lovely. I like that the brightness captures the ridiculous energy thing I've got going on right now.

Playing Games

Have you ever been told that everything in life is a game? I hate this sentiment. I realize that in many ways it is true, but I hate it nonetheless. I think this is part of what is frustrating me this summer. I feel like if you make the right moves then you get the summer job, or the scholarship. If you don't make the right moves, if you role and eight instead of a twelve, you are stuck. It's like that board game, Trouble, where you had to role a 1 or a 6 to be able to move your little piece out onto the playing field and even then someone else could bump you back to the starting point. I had mixed feelings about that game as a kid. When I did well I loved it, but when I was doing poorly I loathed it. I was like that with all games. Still am. I'm a really competitive person, so I tend to be a poor loser. Anyway. I feel like my life has been one giant game of Trouble and this summer I just got sent back to the start and haven't roled the right number yet. No matter how hard I try I can't seem to get unstuck. Sorry that the posts the past couple days have been so frustrated and angry sounding. Do not worry. I've just become profoundly frustrated with several things in my life and that frustration has been compounded by boredom. This is a recipie for musing that aren't exactly cheerful in nature. Plus the weather has been gray and rainy which always makes me more prone to introspection and contemplation, which often takes a serious bent.

I took these pictures at Fort Edmonton on Canada Day. One of the rooms in the big house in the old fort had this chess board set up on a table. I thought it was cool so I took pictures of it.

Well, there ain't no strangers when you're swinging a hammer side by side

I am quite possibly one of the worst bloggers at the moment. Sorry about the lack of posts in the last little while, it seems that summer is actually harder to stay regular post-wise than the school year. Who would have thought? Anyway, I've spent the past few days painting my bedroom. I don't know that it was actually as long a process as it feels like it was, but the whole not being able to sleep in my bedroom and staying on the sofa bed downstairs thing made it feel like it took a long time. I was going from bright yellow walls with pink, blue, and purple stripes to white. In the end, 3 coats of primer and 3 coats of paint and I love love love the results. The color is called "Moon Rise", and it is basically white but has a bit of a silver tinge to it. It is perfect. I feel like I'm living in a blank canvas. It just has that same feeling to it that a new canvas or sheet of paper does: potential, endless potential and promise. It's fan-freaking-tastic. As fascinated as I'm sure you all are by my decorating endeavours, you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with a picture of a barn door. Well, I was scrolling through potential pictures and this one caught my eye. Immediately the phrase "barn raising" popped into my head (once again, it is a weird, weird place in there) and that whole working hard to make something seemed to fit with painting. Maybe? Am I stretching it too far? Maybe I'm just crazy. Regardless. Thinking about barn raising made me think of the Keith Urban song "Raise the Barn", thus the title (which, in case you are not a country music person, is the first two lines of the song). This barn is probably one of my favorite buildings in Fort Edmonton. I took this particular shot of it on Canada Day, but that certainly wasn't the first time it has made an appearance in a photo of mine. In fact, I used it as a background for some of Carly and Stuart's engagement photos. Now, despite being a city girl I am from Alberta and come from farming stock on one side of the family, so I have an inherent love of barns. Seriously. When I'm in a car driving along Alberta highways I always wish I could stop and take pictures of all the different barns we pass, all of which are in different states of dilapidation I know this barn isn't falling apart, so it doesn't have that particular appeal, but there is something about the color of the wood and that quality it takes on in the sunlight...I could take a lot of pictures of this barn.

It is worth our while just to be living when the pulses of nature are stirred

In Lilac Time

Lucy Maud Montgomery

When the hills in the distance are misty

With the hazes of shimmering blue,

When the birds sing with rapture at dawning

And the pastures are silver with dew,

When the skies are of sapphire radiance

And the apple tree boughs are ablow,

Then the lilacs hang out in the garden

Their clusters of purple and snow.

When a new moon shines after the sunset

In the heart of the mellow southwest,

And the winds astray in the meadows

Are bent on their summertime quest,

When the cherry trees down in the orchard

Are white as the robe of a bride,

The lilac trees here at my window

Are decked in their splendor and pride.

In the odorous hush of the twilight

The evening breeze steals their perfume,

Till the rain-freshened nooks of the garden

Are sweet with the breath of their bloom,

And at morning a bluebird a-tilting

On the tip of a tremulous spray

Pipes out in their thicket of sweetness

A madrigal buoyant and gay.

Oh! our hearts are atune with the music

Of summer and blossom and bird!

It is worth our while just to be livign

When the pulses of nature are stirred.

There's nothing so sweet as the joyance

That comes when the June breezes blow

And the lilac trees out in the garden

Are crowned with their purple and snow.

Sorry I've been so awful about keeping up the blog this week. I started this week thinking that I really didn't have all that much to do, and ended up going out or hanging out with someone here every single day until yesterday. Throw in some computer problems and presto, you have a week where Breanna never blogs. One of the things I did this week was celebrate Canada Day with some friends. It was actually a pretty fantastic day. Four of us went to Cora's for breakfast and then spent a few hours wandering around Fort Edmonton in the afternoon. Then, a bunch of us met up to watch the fireworks downtown and to hang out at Denny's afterwards. Anyway, this picture is from Fort Edmonton. I went through a period of time where I really didn't like Fort Edmonton. I think it had to do with the fact that I am not really a history buff (although I am coming to appreciate it more) and the fact that I associate it with childhood memories of really hot days that ended in major sunburns. Well, since I have come to actually enjoy some aspects of history more recently, and because one of my friends really wanted to go to the Fort, I agreed to spend some time there. Outside the telephone office (which is pretty cool) there were some lilac bushes that were still blooming, so naturally I had to snap a few shots. I've been wanting to pair some photos with Lucy Maud Montgomery's poetry for a while now. She wrote such beautiful and simple poems praising the beauty of nature in every season. It just seemed like the small, simple, beautiful flowers in the picture were complimented and enhanced by this poem. I love the final stanza, about being in tune with the music of summer. That is how I felt this week. Glorious.

Carly and Stuart's Engagement Photos

A couple of days ago I mentioned that I think a playground would be a sweet place to get engagement photos taken. And then on Saturday I mentioned that I just wrapped up a photography project last week. Well here is the reasoning behind both of those statments! For some of you these may not be new photos...but I'm sure you can deal with it.

One of my best friends in the world, Carly, got engaged to Stuart and they very sweetly (and perhaps quite bravely) asked me to take their engagement photos. Last fall we spent a Sunday afternoon at Fort Edmonton Park wandering around and taking photos. And then I took a million years to finish going through and editing them. Fort Edmonton is a fun place to hang out and has all of these sweet little places to sit and a variety of different opportunites for photos. Plus, Carly is a history lover so it seemed like an appropriate venue for engagment pictures. The day was gorgeously sunny, which caused some exposure issues in some of the photos, but also meant that Carly could show off her lovely dress and none of us were freezing and miserable (always easier to get smiling photos when no one is frozen). These are the pictures that I like the best from the shoot. It makes me feel all proud and professional to finally have these done.

Childhood Memories

Over Easter weekend I was thinking about some of the Easter traditions we used to have as kids. I remember going down to Trochu to spend the weekend with my grandparents and dying hardboiled eggs in various colours and waking up to a treasure hunt for our Easter treats. I miss that. Instead my Easter was filled with reading about whether Shakespeare's Desdemona is the classic abused wife or not (I am arguing she isn't just in case you were wondering) and about the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists (who I love to pieces but spending an entire day taking notes on them gets a bit boring) and writing reflections on postmodern literary theorists (which is confusing). Oh for the days of childhood, when everything was so much simpler. I think my favorite memories are of my brother and I dancing around the livingroom in the condo I grew up in to The Barra MacNeils or Micheal Card or the soundtrack for The Lion King. It's funny, I spent a lot of time when I was younger wishing that I could just be grown up and now that I am grown up I just want to be a kid again. Anyone else find that?

This picture evokes little kid feelings in me. I love amusement parks in general, but I have a soft spot for carousels (by the way, is there a difference between a carousel and a merry-go-round?). This is not because they are my favorite ride (although they are fun), but because they are so pretty. This particular one is in Fort Edmonton Park in the midway they opened a couple of years ago. It's a restored antique from the 1930s (I think it's the 30s) and is so cool.

Luggage or Baggage?

I love to travel. Part of the wonderfulness of traveling is living out of a suitcase. Now I don't enjoy the actual packing part because it stresses me out. I am what I call a "mood dresser" so I typically can't even pick out an outfit the night before. This makes the concept of picking out outfits for an extended period of time that use a limited number of pieces incredibly daunting for me. However, once I actually get the packing done, I love living out of a suitcase. It makes me feel like I'm on an adventure even if I'm just going to my parents' for the weekend. Plus I end up saving so much time in the morning since I don't have to figure out what to wear. Vintage luggage is great. I think the idea of packing in trunks and hatboxes is simply charming and if it was at all practical I would go out and invest in a great steamer trunk. In reality this is a horrible idea. Can you imagine trying to check a trunk on a plane? Yikes. Anyway, all of that is why I originally took this photo at Fort Edmonton last fall. Yesterday I was scrolling through pictures trying to decide what to post and came across this one and considered it in a whole new context. I spent Tuesday night hanging out with my friend Steph and we were talking about the excitement of new beginnings. One of the great things about moving somewhere that people don't know you is the ability to hang out with people who don't see you through the lens of your personal or relational baggage. They don't look at you and see the thirteen year old who was having a rough go of it, or the sixteen year old who bounced from guy to guy, or the person that once said that really mean thing to them because you were hurt and angry. Starting over with a fresh slate can be phenomenal. This isn't to say that I don't love having friends who have known me for a long time. Sometimes it's great to have people around you just get you, who have seen it all and aren't weirded out by your little quirks. I think it takes a special type of relationship to last for a really long time though. I don't know exactly what quality it is, but it has to do with the ability to not hang on to baggage or view people through past difficulties. Lasting relationships are ones where the past isn't forgotten, but you are allowed to grow and change. I'm definitely not perfect at this; I don't think anyone is. But that's the difference between luggage, the stuff you need to carry with you, and baggage, the stuff that needs to be let go. Sometimes telling the difference is hard. Sometimes the only way to get away from baggage is to literally get away.

Daydreams of Sunshine

As the weather gets nicer the frequency of my summer-related daydreams increases. Unfortunately this also coincides with an increase in my homework load and daydreaming is not a particularly productive use of my time. Oh well. It happens every year and I always manage to push through to the end of term. So, this picture just screams "SUMMER" to me. I took it at Fort Edmonton a couple years ago. Actually, these flowers grow sort of facing the ground and so I just stuck my camera under them and hoped for the best because my other option was to lie down in the dirt and given that there were other people wandering around I figured that might look a bit odd. However, I think it is kind of a cool picture. The sun and the brightness of the flowers complement each other nicely and I love how blue the sky is. Yup, this is pretty much the essence of summer. I just wish it was here already.