Stone stairs with backs swayed from centuries of feet look back at me from my memories, daring me to walk up. Every apartment I lived in over there was older than Canada
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Fascinating. It's funny how different people will respond to things differently. I would love to be surrounded by such deep history. There's so little of it here. Hardly a mark from the American Revolution left, and to think.... there were dozens of wars before the Revolution but nothing remains. The folklore in fallen cultures' eyes, Native Americans who speak of distant relatives long lost to smallpox and the first settlement wars. No scars, just memories, memories quickly fading. I wonder what this place will be like in another two hundred years. What kind of government? What kind of mentality? You are lucky to have lived in Scotland, and to have experienced such history and such places. Then again, you are lucky to live now in Canada. It's a place of such beauty and wild, such culture. We have that ancient history here, it's just different from Europe. Not material. It's a hardship kind of history. It's a sign on the side of the road that mentions the first township, talks about the first European settlers and their ethnicity, and reserves only a casual sentence to describe a longhouse Indian castle that once stood there.
Yeah. It's tough. That's another thing about any huge civilization, though. They all had a rights-deprived slave class to do the shit work and/or killed off the indigenous people. A society where everyone is free is a dangerous and unstable society. Every major civilization's history is a history of genocide.
Maybe I'm talking out of my ass there, though, and maybe my definition of 'civilization' needs a little revising.
I saw a good map in the Museum of Modern Art in London by this artist who does cartography as an art source. One of his pieces was a map of North America with no borders or or cities at all. Just land. Each river was labeled "Lost River" and each mountain was labeled "Lost Mountain" and each lake was labeled "Lost Lake", etc. It was all very official looking and unexpectedly powerful. I realized that I'd never seen a map of North America without cities or borders drawn on it. I became suddenly aware of how abitrary all those lines are.
He also had a map of the UK where he'd switched London and Edinburgh and all of the surrounding towns. That was neat.
He also had this GIANT wall piece of two-foot by one-foot cubes of plastic. Each transparent box had a block of styrofoam in it with a country's flag painted on it. All of the boxes were connected by thick plastic tubes. It was maybe ten by ten so there were a hundred flags or so.
It was an ant farm and all of the flags had been soaked in sugar. The ants were busy tunneling through all of the flags, eroding them over time. The flags were disappearing bit by bit and little chunks of styrofoam were building up on the bottoms of the boxes. Man, I loved that piece.
But I digress. I remember the scene in the movie LA Story with Steve Martin when he says "We're going through the historic part of Los Angeles right now. If you take a look around, you can see that some of these buildings are over TWENTY years old." That always cracks me.
I saw a map in First Nations carving store recently that had North America divided up into the tribes that were there before the settlers. The Iriquois, the Cherokee, the Kutenai, the Blackfoot, the Cheyenne, and hundreds of others. That was incredible.
Yes it is. Ah, delicious. I love your perspectives. That ant piece must have been incredible! As the First Nations piece must have been too. You are right, I think, about the civilization thing. It's something more people ought to be aware of...
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Maybe I'm talking out of my ass there, though, and maybe my definition of 'civilization' needs a little revising.
I saw a good map in the Museum of Modern Art in London by this artist who does cartography as an art source. One of his pieces was a map of North America with no borders or or cities at all. Just land. Each river was labeled "Lost River" and each mountain was labeled "Lost Mountain" and each lake was labeled "Lost Lake", etc. It was all very official looking and unexpectedly powerful. I realized that I'd never seen a map of North America without cities or borders drawn on it. I became suddenly aware of how abitrary all those lines are.
He also had a map of the UK where he'd switched London and Edinburgh and all of the surrounding towns. That was neat.
He also had this GIANT wall piece of two-foot by one-foot cubes of plastic. Each transparent box had a block of styrofoam in it with a country's flag painted on it. All of the boxes were connected by thick plastic tubes. It was maybe ten by ten so there were a hundred flags or so.
It was an ant farm and all of the flags had been soaked in sugar. The ants were busy tunneling through all of the flags, eroding them over time. The flags were disappearing bit by bit and little chunks of styrofoam were building up on the bottoms of the boxes. Man, I loved that piece.
But I digress. I remember the scene in the movie LA Story with Steve Martin when he says "We're going through the historic part of Los Angeles right now. If you take a look around, you can see that some of these buildings are over TWENTY years old." That always cracks me.
I saw a map in First Nations carving store recently that had North America divided up into the tribes that were there before the settlers. The Iriquois, the Cherokee, the Kutenai, the Blackfoot, the Cheyenne, and hundreds of others. That was incredible.
Ah. History's fascinating.
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