If you can pack it, you can carry it
My mom used to say this whenever we went on a trip. All week I have been looking around at the stuff I have acquired and slowly cleaning out the excess: old clothes to Planet Aid, old magazines to the hospital and some things not worthy of anyone’s company were just discarded.
I found myself thinking: If you had an hour to pack your more cherished items and go, what would you take.
It is a decent and real exercise in determining the important things.
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My Nuit Blanche experiences turned into some of the same full on introspection. When I lived in Montreal, I was so isolated and found myself attending street festivals and night time activities with only a cup of coffee and my feet to navigate the city. This week I got to enjoy my own company as much as possible and it recalls those times, abet a healthier me. A friend was unable to stop by for dinner yesterday, another called from St-George on the off chance that I was free to attend the earlier Nuit Blanche activities with her and her husband. I stepped into Panic to visit some old and new friends, but was fidgety for more wandering and not Cure. The Bomb Shelter was a non-event with realism cluttered with “Give peace a chance” signs. It is as if the history rattles people so much that they have to cover it with a safety net of human connectivity. Such is the disturbing for some. The NFB films, http://www.archive.org/details/Operatio1955 and and cold war era propaganda: it made the noise of happy drunken chattering at midnight in a bomb shelter less, well, shiny.
Awakening the Electric Forest was my favourite installation of all with the haunting music and distortion. I wandered the crowded streets until about 3:00am when I was to pick up my partner in art crime. She had her store open and it was packed with customers. Shrug.
There is something entirely entertaining to be stone sober out late at night watching the art and people become the sketches of street-scape.
I want to wander more,
nh
