North Head Lighthouse stands atop a rocky promontory a mile or two north of the Columbia River mouth. Long empty beaches flank the promontory to the north and south, interrupted only by the river that dumps its enormous load of water and sand forming the most dangerous river bar of the entire Pacific coast of the Americas. The Columbia drains an area as large as France, and the currents, waves, wind, and shifting sands at the river mouth create a tempestuous turmoil that has claimed countless boats and ships.
Once again I haven’t read ULYSSES by James Joyce. I tried but gave up. I am not ashamed because I am in good company, most of mankind that is. To save you the trouble of reading the first 30 odd pages, here is a synopsis. The rest of it would seem to be more or less similar.
Cowichan Bay is a small seaside village on the inland side of Vancouver Island. I often do small watercolour studies on site, but for a large painting I work at home from a photograph.
the photo and the blocked out supporthalfway donefinished product
I set up my stool on the sidewalk and was sketching when I overheard a pedicab driver who had stopped on the street behind me. He was regaling his clients with stories about the Empress Hotel, and how Churchill once gave a speech there, and how they have a Royal Suite, etc. It sounded like baloney, but the tourists were eating up. Oddly, earlier on my ride into town I found a commemorative series of slides from the 1971 Royal Visit to BC. The original price was one dollar, and I got it for 90 cents, still wrapped in the original plastic!
Last week Neil Young was in town to protest the destruction of our old growth forests. I wish he had come to my neighbourhood. Joni Mitchell has just been honoured by the US Library of Congress with the Gershwin Prize. At the gala ceremony they sang Big Yellow Taxi. However, despite how much the artists protest, we are still paving paradise for parking lots and luxury townhouses. At one time these houses might have been pink stucco, but now they have moved on to a soft palette of muted tones in beautiful fake wood siding.
This development is coming soon to my neighbourhood. In order to build it, they spot zoned 3 lots and passed a special bylaw for the developer. 50 trees will be cut down, despite the protests of the entire neighbourhood. This site is between a small lake and a hill that together comprise a nature sanctuary, and designated bird sanctuary. The official local area plan does not identify this corner as suitable for high density housing, but the city planning department chose to ram this through without consulting the public in any form. Each unit will sell for around one million. The rationale for this is that we have a housing crisis.
I am tempted to name the councillors who voted for this, but instead I offer them a poem, and hope they come to their sensesbefore it is too late. (Desperado. How I miss the Eagles and good music…..)
SWAN LAKE ELEGY
salesmen pitch the goods with well worn tropes selling a new Rome anthills for humans bigger and better traffic jams
sitting on my butt for five hours listening to fellow citizens protesting in vain environmental destruction bylaws flaunted common sense trampled I was thinking where are the poets?
we are too busy digging out from under the mountain of bullshit to notice that the world is being destroyed strictly according to plan as the chainsaws whine our oaks will crumple to the earth making way for the missing middle but the trees by the shoreline mansions and in the forests of Broadmead will still wave softly in the wind
life is short you might not live to see tomorrow better spend all the money you can borrow to hell with a few trees when I get my townhouse next to the nature sanctuary I will have my epiphany And then I will shout out Save The Trees They Belong To Me
nathanguitars 