tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16124730966029572812024-02-08T05:33:47.205-08:00TORONTO MYTH - A collaboration with pictures by Lee Ka-sing and text by Gary Michael DaultA collaboration, with pictures by Lee Ka-sing and texts by Gary Michael Dault.Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comBlogger116125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-17693714449645236972017-12-12T20:21:00.000-08:002017-12-14T09:48:47.341-08:0020150428-2575 (fish)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here's a Macro-fish. I just re-watched the film of Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale, and "micro-fiche" (fish) are on my mind. This Piscatorial Borealis, each staring blue eye like the planet Saturn, looms like a sunset--but an angry, toxic sunset, maybe a thermonuclear sunset. Little fish in domestic, hospitable aquaria (with waving aquatic plants) are charming. This florid Gas-giant is an Armageddon dream-killer. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-76437987493554087432017-12-10T18:36:00.000-08:002017-12-14T09:47:43.138-08:0020170527-5430 (cross-section)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">This giant tree, cut and abandoned, visually evokes (I wish it didn't) Yoru Iwatani's runaway Pac-Man game, born in Japan in 1980. The tree, an arboreal Pac-Man, finally stilled in sylvan death, visually re-offers the P-M's massive snapping jaw, re-imagining the endless chomp-chomping of its ravaging, insatiable e-jaws--iconic jaws for our greedy, disaster-capitalist times. A tree felled is a violation of natural law--like a beheading.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-64569833399487937682017-12-09T05:56:00.000-08:002017-12-09T12:32:12.630-08:0020170610-6085 (shadow)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Shadows mummify us all. In raking light, skin turns into a pebbled beach, our faces look like tree bark. High shadow winds through us like the broken staircases in abandoned houses. We are eaten by shafts of careless, unplanned light.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-41541596874471644852017-12-09T05:54:00.000-08:002017-12-09T12:26:53.014-08:0020171128-2177 (on road)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">The dreamy, indolent idea of the open road that leads endlessly to nowhere or anywhere ("dreamer's highway" as Big Crosby calls it in the film Going My Way) is irritatingly compromised by a big truck lodged right in front of you. It's like a rough menacing open hand that yells "Back off!" Some years ago, in 2007 I think it was, I published a slim volume of poems called Southwester. There was a poem in it called "Trucks." Here is the entire poem: "So many trucks on the 401 / It's like driving down / the main street / of a town that's moving with you." The only trucks I ever liked in aggregate were the ones in the 1978 Sam Peckinpah film, Convoy, with Kris Krisofferson..</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-40153457066501500152017-12-05T19:51:00.000-08:002017-12-07T06:21:26.548-08:0020171018-0991 (leaf)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">City leaves, exhausted as décor, are dying now against the sky. There is a long dry pause before winter, when the big money snowflakes finally begin to fall, easing the city's hungry heart, muffling its memory. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-12137511540254251432017-12-04T18:22:00.000-08:002017-12-07T06:19:19.427-08:0020171125-9772 (water)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">One day there will be no more water at the end of the civic tunnel, the pipeline we thought was everlasting. He thought about the water’s end, dreamed about the very last drops in the reservoir—two tiny yin-yang amoeba, the little fishes of final moisture.</span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-52647283625973651882017-12-04T15:33:00.000-08:002017-12-05T14:53:28.896-08:0020171007-0421 (machinery)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Every machine, at its centre, is a deep blue bucket lowered like a bathysphere into the abyss of our desiring minds. We fancy our machines to be compliant extensions of our unappeasable needs, but each has a howling Moloch face. Each one is Saturn devouring his children. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-1506926317713475892017-12-02T19:19:00.000-08:002017-12-03T14:26:29.318-08:0020171202-7059 (root)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Roots inch through the city, undermining strip-malls, overturning condos, until, in the end, they tighten into nests--the songs of building. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-56867868843406393022013-03-15T19:46:00.002-07:002017-11-29T09:11:49.422-08:0020130224-88 (support)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">All girding is industrial muscle-flexing, all piers, pillars, staunchions, thrust up against a lowering sky, like a strong man heaving his barbells up to heaven. A pier’s gridding and strapping (see the aerated Eiffel Tower, still breathing through all its iron lungs) is its tendonizing, the corded mapping of the flow of its rusting energies.</span>Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-41514921315010345302013-03-15T19:45:00.000-07:002017-11-29T11:50:49.775-08:0020130113-121 (unicycle)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is a fallen unicycle (throwing a uni-shadow) or, no, perhaps not, perhaps (rather) it’s a (rather) wounded astrolabe, no longer able to read the courses of the winds and the stopgap stars. </span>Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-3056897758288638752013-03-15T19:40:00.000-07:002017-11-30T20:48:13.848-08:0020091229-25 (tower)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">The pen-nib tops of these two stylo towers—possibly broken off, possibly snapped away—make them a ruin. All broken, ruined towers are lodged, in our now reorganized memories, as cataclysmic towers, huge cloud-cutting architectural machetes, meanly milled swords of Damocles, no threat now only pain.</span>Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-78734507518079573362013-02-07T15:25:00.001-08:002017-11-30T20:47:37.148-08:0020121216-120 (ladder)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sublunary ladders impress you with what they know, and are extensions of surprise. But the topless ladders of the mind, leaning for support against clouds of unknowing, dissolve every certainty you had, leaving you as skinless as a raindrop.Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-52682777605164953952013-02-07T15:24:00.001-08:002017-11-30T20:50:21.762-08:0020100504-174 (moving)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Out the window, things go by in a milky rush. Telephone lines, pulled like violin strings, grow hot as copper while you watch. I cannot leave this world when there is so much left to do.Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-36388530951685254932013-02-07T15:21:00.004-08:002017-11-30T20:54:33.455-08:0020120818-16 (construction)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Our stresses fail us. Our struts bend like stalks of wheat. Will we never leave off the construction of intricate, prickly compositions in small spaces? All they do is heat up, like spices ground in a mortar.Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-87583387057043431592013-02-04T13:38:00.000-08:002017-11-30T21:00:51.077-08:0020081025-48 (walkway)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Inasmuch as a boardwalk keeps the lake from lapping up the city, it also reconstitutes the city as a cage. Do we not hate that the parts are not equal to the whole?
Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-51102218005906712932013-02-04T13:36:00.000-08:002017-11-30T21:03:59.676-08:0020130113-231 (tree)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's a swimming moon caught in the net of the trees, along with shoals of thrashing stars.
Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-34689361950091437042013-02-04T13:32:00.002-08:002017-11-30T21:07:18.119-08:0020110909-6 (unicycle)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A unicycle on its side--a Duchampian abandonment--is a glyph of defeated ideals. Methinks it hath the falling sickness.Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-33160853531876822622013-01-29T13:08:00.003-08:002017-11-30T21:09:06.862-08:0020121216-116 (wall)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Every city is a crenellated city. There was a time when we all knew this, and joyfully strolled atop the city’s walls, keeping the countryside on the left and the cityside on the right. We were as springy as insects on leaves. Today there are no boundaries, and we walk the streets in all directions, leaving behind rusty footprints. Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-42583077220720157712013-01-29T13:05:00.000-08:002017-11-30T21:11:15.118-08:0020130113-87 (mountain)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Beyond the city’s rim, outside its residential rings and traffic slots, there is a bald mountain where nobody in the city ever goes. It rises wearily through simmering waves of exhaust, offering itself as the first laic church of extra-metropolitan relations. Nobody ever goes there.
Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-49435451468608157872013-01-29T12:58:00.003-08:002017-11-30T21:13:37.039-08:0020120817-104 (heart)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Here is the pitted heart of the city, torn like an old tooth--a wisdom tooth--from dry gums, and lifted into the light. Do you not know the city is leaking wisdom through every excavation?Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-15210745707921857182010-08-19T06:11:00.001-07:002017-11-30T21:18:18.165-08:0020100305-7 (boot)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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An old boot for Oedipus with his one good leg. "How unsearchable," writes Maurice Maeterlinck, " is the darkness out of which we have just stepped" (not to mention the darkness into which we are about to pass).Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-17503435757866573022010-08-19T06:10:00.001-07:002017-11-30T21:20:58.249-08:0020100502-3 (telescope)<a href="https://xpia10.com/tmyth/20100502-3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://xpia10.com/tmyth/20100502-3.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 750px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 750px;" /></a><br />
Nobody sees the sky in the city, the smoggy stars tangled coldly in the brittle tops of trees, the mattress overclouding that presses us to the sidewalk. Old telescopes are an oblique memorial to the days of vision past.Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-90750884043420950812010-08-19T06:08:00.000-07:002017-11-30T21:26:09.105-08:0020100314-22 (luggage)<a href="https://xpia10.com/tmyth/20100314-22.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://xpia10.com/tmyth/20100314-22.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 750px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 750px;" /></a><br />
Such a hulking object to be carried into place like a storm cloud (it's been everywhere)! Here's a poem to the secret handled space, the portable closet: "from the bed of the street / come / came / these clouds / so plumb / it was impossible / not possible the street / had not steered them / impossible." (Jacques Roubaud, in The Form of a City Changes Faster than the Human Heart (Dalkey Archive Press, 2006).Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-55615309328894295452010-07-26T05:53:00.000-07:002017-12-01T09:42:25.136-08:0020090722-6 (dialogue)<a href="https://xpia10.com/tmyth/20090722-6.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://xpia10.com/tmyth/20090722-6.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 750px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 750px;" /></a><br />
Here's a tiny weary pilgrim, an urban supplicant, in earnest confrontation with a sidesplitting Sphinx, who, now, in these trivializing days, is an oracle-as-stand-up-comic; she fancies her riddles (the Sphinx is female) to be hilarious: "What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening?" Yuk yuk.Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1612473096602957281.post-68207467888175753612010-07-26T05:52:00.001-07:002017-12-01T09:43:32.639-08:0020091217-5 (cola)<a href="https://xpia10.com/tmyth/20091217-5.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://xpia10.com/tmyth/20091217-5.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 750px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 750px;" /></a><br />
Well, the venerable old calligraphic flourish is finally getting eaten away by its own acids. What once was Holding Hands is now Letting Go. And as Coke goes, so goes the country.Lee Ka-singhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17328903073756531477noreply@blogger.com