Monday, March 20, 2017

[how do you do your research?] unknowing.

I first accept that what I know — what I think I know, is likely wrong
I think I know that I know nothing at all
I like to think I know how to love/care/respect everyone as I try to learn
what there is to know —
but then I know that I cannot possibly know how to love/care/respect
                                 
                                 not right now
                                 not knowing how
                                                                               to love/care/respect my self

I must unknow to know.
and so I listen, I read, and I spiral into more
unknowing
questions build
but they are in the forms of punctuation only
BIG BOLDFACED curves hovering over
endless, expansive, overbearing black holes of
unknowing
deep breaths as my heart beats through my chest
and slows — how can I possibly know?
does my unknowing show?
can you please help me unknow?

Thursday, January 5, 2017

The Community Garden Conspiracy - Les Danyluk

The Community Garden Conspiracy.
Inspired partially by the presentation by Dylan and Amanda and the reading of Anne Boyer


After many many months of investigation and continuous under ground reporting, we have finally been able to shed some light on the Community Garden Conspiracy story.  Our investigative team has uncovered the true and sinister nature of what these so called community Gardens really are. The shocking news is that they are not “gardens “ at all but in reality, they are really in fact residential plant prisons.

While monitoring the construction of a number of these new modern design community gardens, we could not help but notice that in almost every case, always the first step in establishing a community garden space is to erect a giant perimeter security fence around the proposed space.  A cage in fact.


This serves a two-fold purpose, the first purpose of course is to keep the offending plants in, and now come on now we are not fools. Do you honestly think that we would go through all this trouble to build a facility such as this and then just let the plants get away? You have to give us a bit more credit than that, come on we are not as smart as we look you know.  And secondly the purpose of the perimeter fence is meant of course to protect the garden from the outside community itself. There will be no stopping to smell the flowers by the community at this facility, or at least not while I am on duty.


The next phase in construction of these facilities is to erect a number of separate rectangular structures that will be filled in with dirt. These are not garden beds why they are cellblocks, forms of solitary confinement and means of segregation. These are essential for the garden administrators to prevent and control cross-pollination and contamination between the different factions housed together within these garden walls.  


This helps to prevent gang violence and recruitment; it impedes the spread of hate literature and limits the sharing of information with regard to escape attempts, planned up risings and radical political protests.  The administration being so fearful of this occurring that they won’t even let the peas and carrots grow up next each other, like they had always done before.


Rumours abound that these imprisoned plants that are held in these unregulated and un monitored facilities are being subjected to genetic alteration, injected with chemicals, covered with animal feces and god knows what other inhumane tortures and conditions.


Why what other types of nefarious plots and plans do they have in store for your community garden? Colourless carrots, pod-less peas square lettuce or seedless sunflowers. (hey have any of you tried the new pit-less plums, Oh! My God they are horrible just pitiful ) So please don’t let the plaintive cries of the captive corn fall upon deaf ears maybe you too can live in a world where we are all free to roam just like out fruit compatriot the constant traveler the coconut.


One of the reasons I have taken this satirical view of the community gardens and the concept of caged food, as it is kind of a coping and defence mechanism. As the more I consider the term “community” the more confused bewildered and perplexed by the term I become. As it becomes more and more evident to me, that the term community is being perverted to now mean more than ever. To be a privatizing of the general public, that communities have become exclusionary rather than inclusive, a way to separate advance or promote a smaller private enclave of certain peoples separate from the general populous.  


For myself it is hard not to notice that in the area in which I reside, it is yes in fact a community but the only thing that seems to be common or unifying in this particular area. Is the ever so obvious observation of the ever popular and commonly occurring cage. I walk the streets and avenues of my community and am amazed by the fact that nearly every single yard, every residence, every vacant lot and every community garden except for one notable exception (the living bridge) is fenced. Some of these yards and lots are even fenced front and back and in some instances even the waste bins are caged. Of course this makes perfect sense considering the fact that we caged people who eat caged food with caged mouths would of course create caged refuse.


So instead of living in a more affluent secure “gated community” the only conclusion that I can come up with after living in my neighbourhood for six years now, is that I reside in a community of cages and community gardens do not grow communities they only sprout more cages.