Melanie Janisse's Blog, page 2

Big Jo.

He was a lumbering gentle bear. He could be seen walking through the Eastern Market with his fabric shopping bag, rooting through mushrooms, heritage corn, local honey. His dungarees were cinched at his waist with a belt tied in a knot, as all of the buckle holes had been torn over time. The way he handled the produce was like a lover caressing his beloved. One by one his hand selections found their way into his bag. Silvery fish, damp bags of beef, tomatoes bursting at their skins. He never spoke to anyone and always finished his shopping with an egg breakfast at Louie's, his bear body spilling out on either side of the stool. It was to the point where the waitress simply knew what he wanted. Twenty years, every Sunday. His shopping bag on a neighboring stool, his eyes steadily reading a travel worn paperback book. The eggs were always the same, his coffee swirling in an old diner cup. He would linger here over breakfast amongst the clatter and conversation, and at the last possible moment, he would gather his things and begin his walk home along Gratiot. Follow this blog

Missive.

All human made objects have pragmatic origins. Hides turn into clothing to protect humans from the elements. Shelter is similar but one step beyond. Food is what is slaughtered or found in the wild. Art at its essence is communicative. Each necessity has interfaced with human elaboration suspended over our existence, laced with constant ‘innovations’, some which endure, others that fad out with contexts of cultural and social reality. Our objects are our archeology, our psychology and our complexity. They are a brail to the very twists and turns of the human soul. They are fetishes, failures, honest, reified, real and lies. They exemplify an array of guideposts through our collective iterations of reality as well as often being individual narratives that grapple with alchemy – making nothing into something, turning thought into object, contributing one’s own interpretation of the signs and symbols which surround us into something concrete to this third dimension. In this regard objects are the magic* that we as humans are capable of (we may interpret this as natural, talismanic, ceremonial, invocative, sympathetic, illusionary or divinative). It has been said in Vedic philosophy, that ‘we are what we think, having become what we thought’. Within this context, our world of things, speak to a complexity that is completely fettered to how we perceive and iterated by way of the function of transmutation. What we imagine, we create both collectively and individually. *Magic (definition Webster: use of means believed to have supernatural power over natural forces.) Follow this blog

Pat.

PAT She kept taking off to Mexico because she loved the colors of blue in the decorative tile. Up here in Toronto, she thinks all I have is a few brave souls who paint their houses light yellow or that grey the color of barbeques. That one seems popular right now. Oh wait. The other day I saw a red house screaming out like a fire engine. Was it on Palmerston? Well, wherever it is, congratulations. You've busted right out. In Mexico City she once saw a house that looked like a snail shell. Their couch was nestled in ferns. Houses in electric blue, powder pink. Ensconced in hand made tiles. They imbued her with a restlessness as she walked her usual Toronto streets. Everything here is so damn grey. She combs the streets for any indication. She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees a strange old coach house hiding just beyond some trees and the main house on Gladstone. The owner had whimsically put a weather vane on the top of the roof. For this she is thankful. Follow this blog

Pat

She kept taking off to Mexico because she loved the colors of blue in the decorative tile. Up here in Toronto, she thinks all I have is a few brave souls who paint their houses light yellow or that grey the color of barbeques. That one seems popular right now. Oh wait. The other day I saw a red house screaming out like a fire engine. Was it on Palmerston? Well, wherever it is, congratulations. You've busted right out.

In Mexico City she once saw a house that looked like a snail shell. Their couch was nestled in ferns. Houses in electric blue, powder pink. Ensconced in hand made tiles. They imbued her with a restlessness as she walked her usual Toronto streets.

Everything here is so damn grey. She combs the streets for any indication. She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees a strange old coach house hiding just beyond some trees and the main house on Gladstone. The owner had whimsically put a weather vane on the top of the roof.

For this she is thankful.

Josh.

http://forcefuse.blogspot.ca/

Josh

Josh, while being the kingpin of the photo scene has a bit of a receding hairline. It bothers him, and so he is often seen wearing hats. They tend to make him look a bit like a mid-nineties dj, but he decides that is the best of the two possible options. What else is there to do? He is looking out over the city from his loft window - why oh why did he buy into this place on Woodward? It seemed like a good idea at the time, changing city yatta yatta. That's funny, he thinks. It all pretty much looks the same from where I am standing. And I am prolly being laughed at for buying this stupid place. He looks around at the minimal furniture, the steel, the crisp lines of everything and takes heart. It all looks how it should to him. Slick ass. Pimp. I'm gonna have a huge party here soon, he thinks. Bang it up. The city shimmers out at him. He can see all the way to new city, where the Fisher Building stands out to him like a promise. Teeming with so many people, they built a new downtown to accommodate everyone. He's been riding high on the ruin porn thing. But wishes for the high rises of Hong Kong to take over like massive bots all at the same time. Chew up the city and organize the shit out of the place. Maybe leave some ruined buildings behind like strange colosseums. But then wait, wait. Follow this blog

LEMON HOUND: A few more questions regarding women, reviewing an...

Wicked. Very good. Necessary.

LEMON HOUND: A few more questions regarding women, reviewing an...: Here are the original four questions: 8m Lemon Hound   ‏   @ lemonhound   Reply     Delete     Favorite   ·   Open Does the l...

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Mortuary sciences

http://forcefuse.blogspot.ca/2012/05/...

DETROIT: Mortuary Sciences Building WSU.

MORTUARY SCIENCES. The sign blinks out to me from my very DNA. I think of my childhood, one filled with wheelchair races down the service ramp to the embalming room, the smell of orchids, the funeral flags all magnetized to a board in the garage where the shiny Cadillac hearse was housed. The closets with baby caskets, and the office my father and grandfather shared with the partner’s desk, blotters and papers. The santa claus costume hiding behind the heavy old door. I stopped believing in Santa Claus in a funeral home creeping around looking behind doors for ghosts, which I still believe in. I ask the women in the office for evidence of my family, for the lectures that my grandfather gave over cadavers for wide-eyed students in dark suits. People die at the most inconvenient times. When ones wife is lonely and deeply pregnant. In the early morning hours when your children are asleep. When you are achingly sad, confused, lonely. When you are full of joy and promise. My father would sleep with the telephone on his stomach, snoring but half alert for the call from the city morgue. 1. Collect the body. The family acknowledges it is time. The doctor. The city examiner. My father’s endless drives through the city looking for addresses. The things that he could tell you about some of the houses peppered through the city, peppered with loss, decomposition, tragedy, peaceful sleeping, passing. His life intersecting with the end of lives – a living breathing iteration of chaos theory. Forever altering the course of corpses, himself, others. My swingset, lime green, strung across our back yard in alignment with the cinderblock garage the housed the hearses. My little girl feet could touch the grey bricks if I got the swing going high enough. Cutting down suicide victims, collecting the powdery bodies of the aged from their nursing homes. The dark suit, white shirt, knotted tie. I used to try on the galoshes in the back flower room ready for the neat black dress shoes of the funeral directors for the bad weather, the muddy cemeteries. Collect the body, exhume it from the lives surrounding it, delicately, with decorum. Pry it loose from every narrative that bound it to this world. Listen to every story whose ligatures loosen. We as humans inherently know when to release our dead, and although difficult, we know it comes and we know what to do. The stories that line my father’s heart that fill the room as he lifts the body from its last position and onto the stretcher. Transfers made with his father, his brother, an apprentice. The slow and steady walk to the removal car with the body wrapped into the cocoon of the stretcher. Collect the body, the stories, the tears. My father’s heart forever altered, courageous. The ladies in their neat hats and powder colored suits soon lining his office to talk caskets, clothing, funerary arrangements. The transfiguration of humans from the throes of death to the business of burial. A deft human hand and heart willing to hold them through the late night tear-addled horror and also willing to give them their dignity after a night’s sleep. We the funeral directors take inventory. We account for everything we see. We touch every single place mindfully, with prayers in mind. We the witches ask for clearing. Did you know that not even death can save you from razor burn? Loosen up the stiffness of the body, because the muscles stop remembering how to release themselves. An old memory lost.

Crossings.