Category: Travels

Harmonious in the City

Katharine Asals2 Comments

Last night I went to the movies with my boy.

Downtown, city center, Times Square kinda vibe, Toronto style.

We saw an Oasis movie – not a great movie, but nonetheless a pretty glorious reminder of the spirit of Rock & Roll. I said to my boy, “it’s like, my Culture, that big stadium rock & roll scene”. Like I remember first going to massive concerts at Maple Leaf Stadium, drugs preplanned and at the ready, when I was 14. And then by 17 it was the smaller venue mosh pit punks vs skinheads scene, where you’d be ready to run if things got really rough.

Afterwards, we wandered the streets of downtown and talked music. I wasn’t sure he remembered the soundtrack from those early years, cause Oasis was just getting big when he was about two or so, but… sure enough, he remembers those tunes. And I’ve always been a sucker for a wall of sound played at full volume…

Now he’s an occasional music event producer himself – I mean he’s got a day job, but he and some buddies bring in some techno shows, so we were talking about how there were so many giants of rock & roll that came out of Britain…

He was saying in the techno scene also, that there’s a lot of really impressive “acts” that come out of the UK.

It must have been way back when we were living in Mexico City that Oasis was just getting big.

But I was kind of amazed that he remembered a whole bunch of the stuff I was listening to through that period from when he was still pretty little until maybe his early teens – the classic British sound got supplemented with a lot of more international sounds, including Mano Negra and eventually a bit of Manu Chao.

With my boy, eventually we settled in town in Toronto for a couple of decades and lived just up the alleyway from the church at the corner, and there was music all the time, music of all genres, a reflection perhaps, of the diversity of the city.

And somewhere along the way he got all grown up.

One of our more recent musical bonding moments was over this video STORM that I sent him.

He responded, “Oh, I used to be a big fan of Yung Lean”. Ahem. Used to be? I mean, okay it’s a lot about the choreographer and the director, but still…

Lens Artists Challenge – Harmony

Landscapes lately

Katharine Asals2 Comments

At the grocery store checkout today, I lined up behind a woman with a massive stack of stuff in her cart, 6th or 7th in line. There was only one cashier open out of the 8 potential spots, and an absurd line up behind the one open cash.

She turned to me, impatience percolating. “I can’t believe they have 8 wickets and only one cashier on”.

“Profits are up”, I answered. There’d been a headline in the papers just yesterday – better than expected profits this quarter. Easy to see how they do it.

She took a beat, as if shifting into second gear, the better able to tell me what she really thought. “The greediest family! The only ones greedier are the Walmart family”.

THIS is the landscape everywhere. Across this country, and from the sounds of it, most others as well.

In our neighbourhood, all three businesses within view are closing their doors. The bank of course, it’s just the branch; the Popeyes, also a bit of a regional franchise failure; and the cannabis store beside the Popeyes, well… hard as we all tried, they just didn’t survive.

During my summer out west, I heard jokes about how BC stands for “bring cash”. Plenty of struggles out there as well.

But it was summertime, and so it was time to kick back and enjoy the good weather, and we went to all the beaches up and down the coast – one afternoon of full on Pacific Ocean, but mostly up and down the Strait of Georgia.

Everywhere we went was breathtakingly spectacular. Just insanely beautiful.

But I realized there was one beach that stayed with me especially.

There was something about the proximity of the mountains just across the way on the mainland and the almost protected feeling of the waters in between.

Tiny fish darting at every step, seaweed waving lazily, crabs scuttling in all directions.

Something about this grove of Ocean and Mountains and primeval life forms gave me a sense of a kind of Birth of the World, or the Origins of All Species.

Swimming there I felt almost as if I was swimming in the dawn of creation.

This sensation was the most beautiful reminder of all the stages of the world – all the mysterious pre-human stages, the early human hunter-gatherers, and then the slow slow move to agriculture… and only just recently the massive shifts to industry, to technology, to predatory capitalism.

Nothing is forever.

We can dream a better dream any time we want.

Lens Artists Challenge – Landscape

The Journey

Katharine AsalsLeave a comment

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now,
you are arriving.

~ David Whyte