lone bush on the drive

the lone bush is unheeded 
in a small parking lot 
on busy commercial drive

its slow growth unimpeded 
for another year alone 
against the bright pink wall

reaching higher undeterred 
into the next year on and
up towards the summer sun

it will survive undisturbed 
for one more year to shape
itself into an elegant stance

then in the last year, an unhindered hand lopped it down to size,
stifling its natural growth and free organic will...

at least it belongs to no one, 

but for an occasional passerby drawn to the simple contrast of 
a lone green bush leaning against a pink brick wall on any sunny day



"An anti-master man, floribund ascetic."

Wallace Stevens
(from "Landscape with Boat", 1942)

in the beat of a heart...

in the beat of a heart...
we concede to the compromised evaluation of the other...
                                                                         
nailed to a tree

in the beat of a heart...

we lose the generalized compression of a charred life...

sprayed on a wall

in the beat of a heart...
we drop the controlled savagery of a fading smile...

staining the sidewalk

in the beat of a heart...
we evade a concentric descend into unrelenting love...

mere words on the page*



*the hand-scripted heart (text from "The Book of Knowledge, Little Reference Series Part I") is by Kim Kennedy Austin, exhibited in "Industry Charity Faith Hope", her solo show at the West Vancouver Museum, January 14 - March 7, 2015

beckwoman signs out...

in commemoration of a commercial drive original that blazed out recently...a store so claustrophobic with stuff that going in once in 30 years was more than enough...the legend of a beckman reclaimed as a beckwoman in full-on defiance of dated conventions...and in the end the text blisters remain on the smoked out windows to remind us that we will never see the likes of bespoke alibaba pants and customized black-out curtains from this mumble jumble cave ever again...
... or will we?

east van picto graphs

 contingent upon a new theatrical rendering

from west coast reduction, the stink continues...

mainlining to the sweet bone of contention,

locking the metal door behind irreversible lives...

 his popsicle head's off to the crewlest cut of all to

roll down the commercial grade of sharpshooters...

before they carve her up in her flattened state with

a farcical warning neatly drawn in driedberry blood...

in the mystical event that she is still missing nearby

such dis-missives must be obeyed beyond the pale...

and so must an elder legionnaire of foreign means

slump wasted on the back stairs of mitigated loyalty...

a piece of rust toast smeared with milk flames torn

from the corrugated trunk of her stomping grounds...

when does it stop for this whirring craziness to land

upon the concrete implications of a single domicile...

unwindowed

Norman is a friendly guy and his produce is as cheap as they come on the Drive, but you have to wonder about the concatenated neurosis that goes on behind this graphically barricaded window on the side wall of his building... 

the chains of light squeezing through the bars of nondescript darkness dangle in casual defiance of a blinded quarry...

a tall tree tally

 two weeks before Christmas and the seasonal betrunking of evergreen trees is well underway...

just off Commercial Drive this tallest of them all will not enjoy its regal solitary stance in a small private garden anymore...

silhouetted for one last moment against the pale winter sky before its silent majesty is no more...

*please save a tree this holiday season* 

the undriven Drive

I have walked Commercial Drive a thousand times over the many years that we have lived in this neighbourhood...and the energy and atmosphere is not so different as it was...

The changes in ethnic and age demographics are evident, as are the comings and goings of certain restaurants, cafes, and sundry businesses, but much have also stayed the same...

Look beyond the Starbucks and fast food chains, the busy pub-bistros, the encroachment of Main Street hipsterism, and we still have Norman's and Santa Barbara's bountiful boxes, the always helpful guys at the stuffed to the rafters Magnet Home Hardware and in the recently reduced by half in size Kitchen Corner, the full-frontal Italian kitsch of Calabria, the crazy stock-jam at Beckwoman's...

Yet, change is inevitable as owners retire, rents increase, buildings get renovated, and now with Grandview Park being torn up for a total makeover, the north end of Commercial will be somewhat sanitized to attract a different populace to come...

And as I walk down the Drive on another lovely end of summer's day, I find my appreciable bits and pieces still in their usual suspect places, albeit barely perceptible to most who pass them by...

this sign has been so forever there that you wonder what you can still possibly get for 4 cents...

one of the last "minimally abstract" patchwork walls that has not been "defaced" by officially sanctioned and government funded anti-graffiti murals of questionable artistic merit...

post of a million staples - an anthropic stitching of words and images now long gone...

vestiges of sloppy paint jobs and ripped off vine creepings on a side wall...

disintegrating address on a building in a similar state...

a shaded glimpse upwards provides a graceful relief from the street level visual cacophony...

the lost art of custom tailoring capitulating to the art of customized coffees across from the soon to be new and improved Grandview Park...

groundswell tags to claim ownership of their tiny patch of the unswept sidewalk outside Santa Barbara's...

and across the street, the old silent trees stand stoically as they rip up the ground around them, just as the tired ancient faces of Italy and Portugal look out from their dedicated cafes at the post-punk martyrs and enlightened ethnic food shoppers stomping and chewing their way down the Drive in droves...

marking my clark park:: part I

Clark Park...

where the buffaloes had once roamed...

where the salmon swam up a small creek...

where orchards fruited in the summer...

where Jean still lives in the house she was born in almost 80 years ago...

and remembers the crazy Russian family that ruffled the neighbourhood...

where we breathe in the green air from the old trees day in and day out...

and walk its shaded and meandering pathways...

and gather windfall branches for winter solstice warmth 

for many, many years now...

all because of a generous man named Clark who donated the land in 1889...

walking the drive

the Drive [Commercial Drive] is my neighbourhood shopping street...

I have walked up and down both sides of it now for many, many years!

that bowling pin sign has hovered above the corner of East 7th forever,

and incredibly, people still go bowling!

at the entrance to the stairs that lead up to Johnny 5's Billiard Club & Cappuccino Bar, which I have never dared to venture up, partly because I don't think a nosy asian woman would be very welcome in this what I imagine must be a time-warp macho-male dominated domain!

on the side of Norman's greengrocer, a produce institution on the Drive, giant red birds on a wire look down greedily in anticipation of discarded fruits and vegetables, mimicking the real crows and pigeons waiting on the live wires above... 

cozy apts

such a quaint term..."cozy"...from that long ago era when it connoted grandma's nest redolent with hot tea in a brown betty...
if it is ever used in real estate lingo nowadays, it would be just a snide euphemism for a cramped shoe-box!

random walls on commercial drive

make-shift "art gallery" on a disintegrating wall...

window art on East 2nd just off Commercial...

beware where you park, even if it is only for a dollar...

a poster for my son's first "Four for Four" show that he organized...[Half-Chinese is his very cool band!]