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July 13

 

FEATURE LOOK IMAGE created and designed by Murray Toews. Thanks!

 

Murray Toews

I was fortunate enough to recruit Murray Toews as Visual Editor for Rhubarb magazine. He also contributed graphics, culminating in the 9 illustrations for each story in 9 Mennonite Stories, published by The Mennonite Literary Society in 2017. One email led another another email led to 100,000 thousand or more, and Murray bought extra storage and stored them all. We also started to collaborate on a life-long project I initiated called The Abject Alphabet influenced by Julia Kristeva and the Sad Phoenician, Robert Kroetsch, and hundreds of of abecedarians** 
(Entry 2 of 2)

1a : of or relating to the alphabet

b : alphabetically arranged

2 : rudimentary

by Murray Toews

With one significant difference sprouted by the crowding in of Covid, and my tendency to burst into tears during public readings. I started taping my readings, collaborating with Murray whose drawing degree combined with expertise in animation and multimedia were perfectly suited for what I was after. You can find A through F on YouTube and on this website.  I asked Murray to collaborate and assist with the installation and projections of LOOK show in Winnipeg, and then commissioned Murray to do a major art piece based on my work like the other artist in this LOOK show. These are his notes on the prep for his large trpytch.

* In  another bizarre coincidence running over my cups the term has also referred to Los Angeles based trio active in the mid to late 80’s. Chris Manecke (guitar, vocals, keyboards), Kevin Dolan (drums) and John Blake (bass) specialized in reverb heavy, synth driven post-punk songs. AND

** According to the original Catholic Encyclopedia*** B the Abecedarians were a 16th-century German sect of Anabaptists who affected an absolute disdain for all human knowledge, contending that God would enlighten his elect from within themselves, giving them knowledge of necessary truths by visions and ecstasies, with which human learning would interfere.[2][3]

*** An indication of how wrong unverified posts can be, though it is a bit of funny for real or declined Mennonites.

 

 

Exposing my thoughts and process (so far) on the Triptych for LOOK Show

(once exposed to oxygen, they fall apart)

By Murray Toews
July 5, 2022

Thoughts

Looking through years of emails, a narrative emerges from the shrapnel of thought. Like a collage, that once was a whole picture and now disassembled reality, is slowly being  hammered into another into a misshapen one.

I’ve watched a top that cannot/will not stop, a flurry of fragmented exposition firing out in all directions. I’ve begun to put a picture, or pictures, together that represent the totality of a person, moving through the jagged corridors of time.

My eyes are now closed and I’ve completed the triptych.

I wake up and try to recall my thoughts. 

I realize that it exists within an unresolved place, that has no space, that is unstuck in time.

Three panels should do the trick. Beginning. Middle. Ending. 

Structure is good…

Then.

Process

Three large panels, up to 4 feet in height. One might be an old window. 

I keep thinking of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Evenby Marcel Duchamp.

Hinged together, so that it can stand on its own. 

Also thinking of “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch.

Paint. 
Decoupage.

 

Found magazines, random images on the internet, downloaded.

Scissors and exacto knives, start cutting

Murray Toews is a “Deluxe artist” whose work spans the disciplines and media of writing, drawing, print, film, audio-art, interactivity and digital / analog hand-drawn animation that make use of thematic process-driven animation techniques that rapidly create animated shorts. He received a BFA first class honours degree with a thesis in advanced drawing from the U of M in 1992.

In 2004, he curated “Animator/Re-Animator” featuring Prairie animation with screenings in Canada and Japan. In 2012, his animated short Thought Camera, Reel One: “Circus of Objects” was the official selection for the NSI Online Short Film Festival and the 2013 Gimli Film Festival Manitoba program.

In 2018 he premiered “10 Years Before Happiness”- a subjective and allegorical autobiography seen through the youthful lens of intense emotion and surreality as he explores a personal landscape of shifting memory.

In 2022, he continues to produce and collaborate with a small group of talented cinematographers, writers, and audio artists to create short, animated and live action films as an independent artist and as the owner of an indie-driven media business called URBANSTICKMAN Productions.

 
I first got to know Victor through working at Artspace, in Winnipeg in the 20th century, and in several reincarnations and/or reinventions in the 21st. 
 
My work investigates visual mediums of drawing, sculpture, with performance, video, and installation. An artistic language featuring the body is the starting point, where I reflect on its relationship to materials to make new work. For this piece I will be working in a metal shop. The shop is called “north forge fabrication lab”  and it’s not a forge! I’ve wanted to work in there for a while,  and the piece I’m making for Lookshow is a perfect reason to try it. 
 

Nicole Shimonek

 

from MY BODY IN PARTS

MY SCIATIC NERVE

Clothes get on my nerves.
My sciatic nerve particularly.
My back is degenerate, like mortal
+ pestle grinding my cartilage to dust.
Pinched nerves make me squeal, any belt
or waistband draws the pain into my groin.
Be aware of the naked man, wresting spread eagled
on 400 thread count white privileged cotton sheets,
me filling the queen size with my nakedness and pain.

Victor Enns © 2022

KEN GREGORY

KEN GREGORY

I knew Ken, a frequenter of ArtSpace, where I worked for five years, well enough to nod and say hello. I was  aware of his eclectic art practice working with sound, installations and kinetic sculpture including participation in send and receive during my years at the Manitoba Art Council.  

I was fascinated with his departure, or rather I should say, his development as an artist by jumping in to the fire, and learning to smithy at the forge. A diabetic, he has recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. However it came to be he was one of the first artists I thought to ask before I even had any money to work on this show. 

I had an image in my head of a tire spike belt standing in for my messed up spine, and talked to Ken. So now we can tip our hats when I see him when we install his work with the rest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MURRAY TOEWS

Murray Toews - VUCAVUI was fortunate enough to recruit Murray Toews as Visual Editor for Rhubarb magazine. He also contributed graphics, culminating in the 9 illustrations for each story in 9 Mennonite Stories, published by The Mennonite Literary Society in 2017. One email led another another email led to 100,000 thousand or more, and Murray bought extra storage and stored them all. We also started to collaborate on a life-long project I initiated called The Abject Alphabet influenced by Julia Kristeva and the Sad Phoenician, Robert Kroetsch, and hundreds of of abecedarians** 
(Entry 2 of 2)

1a : of or relating to the alphabet

b : alphabetically arranged

2 : rudimentary

by Murray Toews

With one significant difference sprouted by the crowding in of Covid, and my tendency to burst into tears during public readings. I started taping my readings, collaborating with Murray whose drawing degree combined with expertise in animation and multimedia were perfectly suited for what I was after. You can find A through F on YouTube and on this website.  I asked Murray to collaborate and assist with the installation and projections of LOOK show in Winnipeg, and then commissioned Murray to do a major art piece based on my work like the other artist in this LOOK show. These are his notes on the prep for his large trpytch.

* In  another bizarre coincidence running over my cups the term has also referred to Los Angeles based trio active in the mid to late 80’s. Chris Manecke (guitar, vocals, keyboards), Kevin Dolan (drums) and John Blake (bass) specialized in reverb heavy, synth driven post-punk songs. AND

** According to the original Catholic Encyclopedia*** B the Abecedarians were a 16th-century German sect of Anabaptists who affected an absolute disdain for all human knowledge, contending that God would enlighten his elect from within themselves, giving them knowledge of necessary truths by visions and ecstasies, with which human learning would interfere.[2][3]

*** An indication of how wrong unverified posts can be, though it is a bit of funny for real or declined Mennonites.

 

Exposing my thoughts and process (so far) on the Triptych for LOOK Show

(once exposed to oxygen, they fall apart)

By Murray Toews
July 5, 2022

Thoughts

Looking through years of emails, a narrative emerges from the shrapnel of thought. Like a collage, that once was a whole picture and now disassembled reality, is slowly being  hammered into another into a misshapen one.

I’ve watched a top that cannot/will not stop, a flurry of fragmented exposition firing out in all directions. I’ve begun to put a picture, or pictures, together that represent the totality of a person, moving through the jagged corridors of time.

My eyes are now closed and I’ve completed the triptych.

I wake up and try to recall my thoughts. 

I realize that it exists within an unresolved place, that has no space, that is unstuck in time.

Three panels should do the trick. Beginning. Middle. Ending. 

Structure is good…

Then.

Process

Three large panels, up to 4 feet in height. One might be an old window. 

I keep thinking of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Evenby Marcel Duchamp.

Hinged together, so that it can stand on its own. 

Also thinking of “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch.

Paint. 
Decoupage.

 

Found magazines, random images on the internet, downloaded.

Scissors and exacto knives, start cutting

 

 

 

GRACE NICKEL

wound gives off its own light
surgeons say.”
Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband.

I met Grace Nickel behind my back. Five vessels, shorter vases perhaps,  under plexiglass to keep the gorgeous ceramics safely in view,  rested on the credenza in my Manitoba Arts Council office. I met many fine artists, high and low, gentle and harsh,  angry and charming,  during my years in Winnipeg. Grace’s work reminded me of a relaxation exercise I had been doing since the 1980s where the refrain “calm and serene” were heard softly. All I had to do in my MAC office was turn around and meditate

It was her sconces that next drew me to her work.  I am delighted that Grace has agreed to make two sconces, or sconce based sculptures, stand alone, and including light. She has started experimenting with clay thinking about bones and their fragility inside us. 

“A note to let you know that I’ve been reading the poetry you have sent and I have begun to create some sample “test tiles” for the light sconces. There will be bones (quite possibly some broken), and there will be an overall narrowness to the forms, just as our feet are slender, small bones combining to create the delicate base we stand up on. But something is still missing – cartilage perhaps? – a matrix-like substance or a webbed network that holds it (us) all together? The work will continue.

LATER

“Today I refined the wall sconces and put holes in them for hanging. It struck me that for this context it would be appropriate to have the metal rods and bolts that they will hang on be visible. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of metal pins, plates, etc. being inserted into peoples’

bodies and left there permanently. Many years ago my brother was in a bad car accident and they had to put several metal plates in his shoulder.* I couldn’t believe it!
I’ll talk to Murray about sourcing suitable hardware.

Today I’m envisioning these in a super delicate pink (matt not shiny) with black accents – like bleached bone found on the beach and not yet stripped and fully cleaned of its rotting flesh – too macabre perhaps?In the end the sconces will be attractive, yet clearly biologically-informed (not scientifically accurate by any means, but interpreted through my own artistic lens)I .Hope these are hitting the mark – they still have a long way to go before they are finished- painting, drying, and firing – with fingers crossed.

btww Victor,One sconce is approximately a mens’ size 11 and the other a mens’ size 13 – for your reference.Grace

Nickel’s biography here on our look show site demonstrates her achievements at home and abroad, far and near. This week she is at a rural Manitoba residency. You will see the work I have asked her for is a small part of a large and advanced ceramics practice. 

 

*Victor’s note: My brother had a bad car accident several years ago and broke his pelvis cross-ways. He has a huge metal wired into his pelvis.  I am screwed several places, and yes, even have a screw loose – in my foot.

 

SCARE MYSELF[1]

Even with M keeping me in bed it’s dark after ten even on Canada Day. Deefer Dog is shaking between us until he’s not and the bangs stop banging. I start my journey into the night my body and my mind insisting on separate rips. I wake as my arm sweeps the tall lotions off the night table on my first pass, and see my arm dislocated, barely attached to my shoulder and twice as long. Second pass I get the water and nearly everything else, struggling into consciousnes with a deep affirmatiion from M to put up my side bed rail to corral my chaos just enough to let her sleep and stop scaring the dog.  

I scare myself when I scream ten out of ten and a pain generates upside my neck bending over to take off my fake leg. The aftershocks in pieces of my mind send me to the hospital emergency, but only when I throw in the cxrying towel a week later. Taken, and taken seriously for a brain CT scan and an appointment with a doctor at the TIA ( mini-stroke)clinic. The vascular neurologist shows me my brain, unremarkable except for as small mass on my third ventricle. My body memory choses the day my son had his mass in his fourtth ventricle removed in an eight hour brain surgery to press rewind replay remember I scare myself.

The neurologist does point out one of my arteries to the brain is narrowing. Meditarraen diet he says, eat more vegetables! I nod in pain. I breathe, again. Then he moves down to the scan of my cervical spine. “Oh, my,” he says as I want him to speak, “your neck is horrible, horrible!” Those words, the word horrible exact as much as anything in this world that scares me everyday I open  my eyes. My cervical spine curves the wrong way and the small tab-like disks have crumbled like feta. Still me, parts of my body scare me.

The pain I feel belongs to me, something I’ve held as my own since I was a child. Friends, relatives even doctors, exclaim, “no idea how you do what you do so much with all your injuries and ailments, you are absolutely fabulous! I wish I could have such an interesting life. Considering all your challenges you are  absolutely THRIVING.” THis is why I neea new psych, to build some prespective; reality checks sure, but ignoring the tempatation to fervently believe my achievements outweigh my pain.”

How hard it was/is to explain to partners, families and friends,  that I could be in severe mental distress despite success dogging my steps. I am not worthy, I am unclean, I do not deserve to be let off the hook. So I dangle like a particple waiting for a psychistrist to take me down to listen when I scare myself.

 

[1] Borrowed from Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks

A IS FOR AMPUTATION

The picture by Greg Giesbrecht is when I still had a  left leg and no-one believed me…that the ankle fusion was not working. This  been posted in my Archives.

Surgical Preferences – Victor Enns – Below the left knee amputation April 5, 2018,  7:30, arrive at 5:45

I’m sure we share several assumptions, most importantly, that I come through the below the left knee amputation, with few if any complications.  So the few instructions below are for recovery. Please understand I give these preferences based on experience of what works for me. This will be my 12th surgery since I was a child.

  1. Pain Management. I have chronic pain, and I know having one foot in the grave will not change it all that much, though I do hope for some improvement. Pain is a huge issue going back to misdiagnosis when I was 14. Please, please provide
    *1b.Fentanyl for pain management for 24 to 48 hours following surgery.
    Diludid is second choice and has worked for my mother and sister. Tramacet is NO good at all.
    I am allergic to morphine. This was discovered post hip replacement surgery at Concordia and my heart raced dangerously. The second hip replacement, also at Concordia was incredibly difficult. Fentanyl was in the surgical plan that we understood one of my doctors had signed off on. The ward staff not convinced until the end of the day. Waiting after the second hip replacement is the greatest pain I have ever experienced, in the between 1 to 10 scale. There was no need for it at all. My recovery took a day longer as a result.
  2. Let me manage my pain meds along with the other nine meds that I have when I don’t need the Fentanyl anymore.I am allergic to many adhesives, if needed the expensive European ones won’t cause a rash.
    *2b. Percocet works on my current pain levels at 5mgs x 5 or 6, for 25 to 30% of the new lowest maximum of 100/day. I have my meds ready in blister packs and a vial for the Percocet and one for a statin I take to reduce my cholesterol. I will leave them in my son Theo’s possession and he will bring them when appropriate. I will sign any waivers if needed to take charge of my own medication. This is best.
  3. Theo Jerrett-Enns is primary contact and in charge of any decisions about my care
     if I am not able to make them myself. My daughter is second contact.
    3.b Bronwyn Jerrett Enns My paperwork indicates if decisions need to be made the power of attorney is consecutive. Theo works at Cancer Care Manitoba and can be at bedside in 10 to 15 minutes. My daughter works for the CRA  in Transcona, and it will take her longer to get here.
  4. Visitors:
    Anytime:
    Theo and Bronwyn, my siblings Garry and Margaret, relatives and friends Anneli Epp and Adelard Gendron, and & Robert Steinberg (my psychiatrist)
    Visiting hours, my third ex-wife, Lynn Chalmers and her daughter Jo, Greg Giesbrecht close family friend.
  5. Discharge: If the bed is needed I am willing to leave sooner, than later, provided I can be transported to Gimli Hospital, as a stop-gap before being on my own in my apartment with only daily nurses visits likely. Please call Matthew at In charge of Gimli home/nursing care. I have discussed this possibility with him. I am eager to recover at home and do have a good support network. I have no wish to be an idiot or compromise my recovery, and will survive another few days of hospital food before coming home, if and when necessary.Thank you. I deeply appreciate the health care me, and my family have received in Winnipeg.
    I hope my preferences are clear enough they can be provided to anyone who needs to know
    (I’ll take care of those who don’t really need to know) I will also provide a separate sheet of contact information.Signed Victor Enns ______________________   Date:_______
    Birth date 03/04/1955

from Sad Phoenician, by  Robert Kroetschread by Victor Enns

T

from Sad Phoenician, by  Robert Kroetschread by Victor Enns

BUTTERFLIES IN MY HEART

 

monarch butterfly


I just saw a monarch butterfly, and it’s not the only one I am likely to see this week. I’ve gone whole summers without seeing a monarch butterfly. This sighting reminded me of a poem inspired by an old friend who has just retired, Grace Paley for a reason I have forgotten at the moment, Chrisse Hynde from  the Pretenders watching the clothes go around,  and Les and Jane who must be the kindest Laundromat owners in the East Interlake.  

 

MY SLIGHTLY DEFECTIVE HEART
for Peter Dueck, Grace Paley,
Les and Jane and Chrissie Hynde

My heart is irregular and incompetent, still it keeps beating
all the time. Arrhythmia is what it’s called, that flutter, 
that irregularity. My friend said “just imagine,
you’re a lucky man, you have a butterfly heart.”

I’m sure his job doesn’t let him use enough metaphors, 
and I enjoy the thought, lightening up. Oh 
so much better to have a butterfly fluttering in my chest.
My heart’s incompetence is the incompetence of my aortic valve.

I swish I swash, my heart sounds like an old washing machine.
Listening, my general practitioner heard the sluice back
using his stethescope. Yes, sir, confirmed the ultrasound. 
Cradling my heart in my hands I urge all this blood

to keep circulating, a deep breath, my life assured
Astride a chair at the East Interlake Klean-All Laundromat. 
I swish, I swash, watchin the clothes go ’round,
beat that.

 

PAIN EATS MY BRAIN

I forget 

all the comfort
I brought to you last night
when your body turned
senseless

i forget the other night 
all the shudders  
blood rushing
to my fingers

~really? is all you need
to ask
this morning
overcast, pain

taking my hand, me
glad compassion
is my kind auto-pilot

when I cannot hold
onto my memory
even love escapes

pain
unfortunately
pours in.

INVENTORY (formerly known as STYMIED)

Can’t get this can’t have that
All I get is pain in no time flat.
Nobody knows my racing thoughts

My Beck inventory, no cartilage in stock.
Can’t get this can’t have that
all’s I got is this pain in no time flat
my spine and my shoulders my thumbs

my fingers my hips my knees my ankle
one left is the right for the accelerator opedial
I sit in my mother’s lap driving she lets me
hold the wheel, Camus relives his childhood

a passenger in 1960  there is nothing he can do
overpowered Facel Vega loses the road
slams into a tree  his auto-fiction complete
Nobody to know my racing thoughts

about my Beckett inventory. Yes,
I’ve got no no cartilage in stock, 
this pain allI own  in no time flat
I can get into that.

by Victor Enns, updated June 15

 

FALLING (formerly known as SUPINE)

Headaches are new, though each body part aches differently;
many recur at the same places I smear with Diclofenac
now pain is coming for me knob and tube not sufficientfor the load of electric sizzling up my brain like a lit fuse

connections are lost circuits drop no brakes Mr. Roller Coaster
to make decisions to choose a ride not for nothing
I start to fall to the ceiling my receptors reeling in my sleep
My vertiginous brain jerks my leg and arms before my face grinds spackle, I fall back I am sure now I am

on my back not taking flack, but flat, supine.
My right arm fondles my lamp shade, but I leave
the light off. These drugs not for nothing
 these drugs are taken so seriously you are not
supposed to take them at all. Methadone the new script.

Able bodied closed minded, in every business, trade, profession, or the arts friends I thought until I cried, and they turned away in disgust] prefer disabled people suffering quietly. Staying out of sight a good start; but prove missing or maimed limbs and body parts annually. For Christ’s sake   better be poor to qualify for assistance. Imagine the humiliation of proving you have absolutely nothing, human, animal, or mineral; to keep you alive,
pain your only companion. Suffering and the gutter
assigned with a trip and a push, there are better ways to die.[1]

 

 

By Victor Enns
May 14

[1] Cue King Biscut Boy singing TO POOR TO DIE

Treatment Plan for Victor Enns for review with new family doctor

NOTE: There shall be no changes in Victor Enns’ pain management treatment until he has a family doctor resident in Kelowna.

Current Treatment elements include:

  • Daily interaction with his wife Michelle Hewitt,a disability activist, and Ph.D candidate (observations, reality checks, wardrobe assistance,  reassurance and appreciations)
  • 15mgs x 2 OxyNeo (time release) 30 mgs daily
  • Tylenol three or four times a day maximum 3000 mgs a day
  • Diclofenac (10%) applied topically twice a day
  •  Cortisone shots as per imaging and if proving effectiveA 45-minute meditation (Body Scan, Jon Kabat Zinn), every day,
  • Monthly talk therapy until a psychiatrist can take him as a long-term patient
  • The use of a powered wheelchair to reduce pain in his shoulders, hips and han
  • Weekly water therapy
  • Massage
  • Journaling
  • Laughter, story telling no mater how Grimm (ha)
  • Rest as needed
  • Daily interaction with a comfort animal
  • Community care resources

This enables me to work four hours a day as a published writer and have a life.

This enables me to work and love, Freud’s definition of mental health.

UPDATED JUNE 14

DO ME SOME NEAR IMPOSSIBLE THING

Never  heard or seen,
before me. Awe shucks,
almost heard it, but I’m not wearing
my hearing aids. Nearly caught
a glimpse but I’m not wearing
my looking glasses,
so lie to me instead
I’ll believe you.

 

To BEAUTYthe blurred thumb

the  extra 5 milligrams with my bread and butter 
Allow my eyes to see the beauty of the afternoon
Early in June, green leaves are all here latest
brightest summer breeze drop seeds from the trees

Photosynthesis will go on life will go on, but the extra 5 milligrams
Is not enough to take me outside into the near summer air
my shoulders my hands unwilling to turn my wheels, I can see
I can know there is beauty without moving or getting high.

Behind the double-glazed glass, I look at all that beauty;
Beauty beauty all around (and none I can transcend),
see, look out the window like I do, the world
clusterfucks the sun too bright for a photograph

now look down, in my lap I clip beauty in the image,
beauty releasing my pain, my fear, my rage.

by Victor Enns 

Clip Dart 1

IMG_0468    

 

June 12, 2022

 

the icky headline ancd go right to the quote in David Macfarlane’s column in the Literary Review. 

What we have been, or now are, we shall not be tomorrow
Ovid.

David Mcfarlane made me laugh in his piece in the Literary Review of Canada I recieved today.  You can find the jokes yourself, but the best information in the column is [“Because]not wanting to look like an asshole plays a vastly underated role in what men choose to wear every day of their lives. For some it’s the only standard applied.” [1]

He refers to Kafka too, but Ovid says it best. That’s why memoirs, autobiographies are so hard to write mostly settling for the writer of the tale to be changed by the end, leaving the notion the pudding has set. Time for bed. Image above by the talented Murray Toews.

LOOK: Pieces of My Mind/My Body in Parts posits the notion that identity is constructed, reconstructed, deconstructed, reassambled with the hammering never finished. I’ve asked twelve Winnipeg artists to come as close to my work as they wish and create a new piece of art for a disability art instalation opening in Winnipeg on September 29 in the OUTPUT venue. The artists are Ken Gregory, Grace Nickel, Murray Toews, Andrea van Wichert, Leigh Konyk, Lief Norman, Nicole Shimonek, Leanne Zacharias, Chris “Mama” Bauer, Lora van Loewen and Jim Van Dusxen. 

It’s a way, I told someone, I can say 12 things at once and save time. Speak through others. Hmm sketchy. Really though pieces of my mind   sluice ideas, fragments, bible bits, ear-worms, Cohen verses, at a speed that makes my head spin. So for a few weeks my friends will make   it stop. Please, don’t pass me by. Come look at what we have to show you. There will  be merch, but  right now, you can help me not look like an ass by  donating  $100.00  which will also give you entry to my own website and back pages. I also sometimes include a poem of the day

[1] That’s the real reason Steven Jobs wore the same clothes everyday, saving time for the really big decision was a well wrought cover.       Mostly he was a nerd not  wanting to look like an asshole. 

 

 

For more information please feel free to check out www.lookshow.ca .

Ignore the icky headline ancd go right to the quote in David Macfarlane’s column in the Literary Review. 

“What we have been, or now are, we shall not be tomorrow. ”
Ovid.

David Mcfarlane made me laugh in his piece in the Literary Review of Canada I recieved today.  You can find the jokes yourself, but the best information in the column is [“Because]not wanting to look like an asshole plays a vastly underated role in what men choose to wear every day of their lives. For some it’s the only standard applied.” [1]

He refers to Kafka too, but Ovid says it best. That’s why memoirs, autobiographies are so hard to write mostly settling for the writer of the tale to be changed by the end, leaving the notion the pudding has set. Time for bed. Image above by the talented Murray Toews.

LOOK: Pieces of My Mind/My Body in Parts posits the notion that identity is constructed, reconstructed, deconstructed, reassambled with the hammering never finished. I’ve asked twelve Winnipeg artists to come as close to my work as they wish and create a new piece of art for a disability art instalation opening in Winnipeg on September 29 in the OUTPUT venue. The artists are Ken Gregory, Grace Nickel, Murray Toews, Andrea van Wichert, Leigh Konyk, Lief Norman, Nicole Shimonek, Leanne Zacharias, Chris “Mama” Bauer, Lora van Loewen and Jim Van Dusxen. 

It’s a way, I told someone, I can say 12 things at once and save time. Speak through others. Hmm sketchy. Really though pieces of my mind   sluice ideas, fragments, bible bits, ear-worms, Cohen verses, at a speed that makes my head spin. So for a few weeks my friends will make   it stop. Please, don’t pass me by. Come look at what we have to show you. There will  be merch, but  right now, you can help me not look like an ass by  donating  $100.00  which will also give you entry to my own website and back pages. I also sometimes include a poem of the day

[1] That’s the real reason Steven Jobs wore the same clothes everyday, saving time for the really big decision was a well wrought cover.       Mostly he was a nerd not  wanting to look like an asshole. 

 

 

For more information please feel free to check out www.lookshow.ca .

The psychoanalytic tradition is broadly divided between those (like Fairbairn and Winnicott) who saw the child as initially innocent, but liable to lose its innocence under the impact of stress or psychological trauma; and those (like Freud and Klein) who see the child as developing innocence – maturing into it – as a result of surmounting the Oedipus complex and/or the depressive position.[7]

More eclectically, Eric Berne saw the Child ego state, and its vocabulary, as reflecting three different possibilities: the cliches of conformity; the obscenities of revolt; and “the sweet phrases of charming innocence”.[8] In a rather different formulation, Christopher Bollas used the term ‘Violent Innocence’ to describe a fixed and obdurate refusal to acknowledge the existence of an alternative viewpoint[9] – something akin to what he calls “the fascist construction, the outcome is to empty the mind of all opposition”.[10]

 

 

June 3, 2022

I have just finished reading The PAIN chronicles cures myths mysteries prayers diaries brain scans healing and the science of suffering, by Melanie Thernstrom. It’s too big a book to read when you’re in pain. At 370 pages you’d probably be better off putting it on your Kindle or Kobo.

Reading this book created that sensation where I realized that what is being described is something I know and something that I believe without knowing that I know. It’s going to be hard to describe it the best I can do at the moment yeah suggest you read two particular chapters I feel like a Sunday school teacher or schoolteacher. One is called s called the “Scar hypothesis” from pages 170 to 172 which argues pain sucks serotonin in your brain, causing depression or making it worse. There is also evidence that cross references genetic pain and depression circuitry.  The other is on page 205 and 206 about the aging brain, pain ages you more quickly.

This brings me back to my hearing aids and the Reader’s  Digest story. First time I had evidence of loss it was 30% and getting worse. And no it wasn’t frock n roll but “we see a lot of this in older people.” I had just read the evidence that depression, for which I was and still am being treated,  causes premature aging, in the Reader’s Digest in the waiting room.

My poem “I pull the blinds” ends “I was such a precocious kid,”  published in Grain.

I HAVE PULLED THE BLINDS
Against the sun, she shouldn’t see me
like this, lying abed lying, my gouty toe
giving me what-for while my back sends
privileged information packaged as pain,
ribs my Dad counted to show his love,
tormenting me with his teasing
tickling not a strong enough word
repeating his own torments as the youngest
in the family all refugees getting off
the boat in 1926 he was eleven having little
to laugh about since 1919, but still he kept his cartilage
and his religion taking his place behind the pulpit
all of 36 like six other Franks before him
he did not complain much until he was 90
asking “why am I still here” a creeping question
many days now I am flat on my back, short a leg,
cartilage and religion long gone, pain in their place
me 65, pulling the blinds against the sun
thinking of the Velvet Underground, ruefully
remembering I was such a precocious  kid.

 – by Victor Enns

 

May 30, 2022
Welcome Nicole to Lookshow by Mrray Toews and Victor Enns. Nicole is one of about dozen artists making an art work for exhibit or performance based on my writing including Pieces of My Mind/My Body in Parts, opening September 29,  in Video Pool’s OUTPUT  Venue.

Nicole Shimonek

Nicole is a visual and multi-media artist. Her work is interdisciplinary, using drawing, installation, media, and sculpture to express concepts that are connected to the human experience through an artistic language that features the female body. She is an MFA graduate from the Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London and BFA Honours from the University of Manitoba. She exhibits and makes work through artist residencies, and curated and self-initiated projects. Artist residencies include the Banff Centre for the Arts, L’AiR international (Paris), Bow Arts Trust (London), Brompton Design District (London) and Artscape Gibraltar Point (Toronto).

Her videos and art have been exhibited nationally and internationally. In 2022 Nicole is an art instructor, mentor, administrator, set and sound designer and artist in residence at Luminous Bodies – the Human Body in Artistic Practice (Toronto). She looks forward to working on these new and exciting projects.

Her practice investigates survival experiences through materials – drawing, sculpture, performance, media and design.

 

MAY 23, 2022

LOOK encourages viewers to witness pain and suffering. It offers an alternative story, the space to open minds to difference and disability, from my infancy right up to my fourth marriage. It examines the roles of victor and victim, whether locked in a pain room or dissociating to find a reality comfortable enough to breathe until tomorrow.

Collaborator, visual, graphic and media artist Murray Toews joins me to illuminate pain, tears, shame, rage, broken bodies and minds. Visual artist Grace Nickel will return to make a sconce in two, and Ken Gregory is making a sculpture of a man’s spine and vertebrae distorted by disk degenerative disease. There may be angels. Leanne Zacharias will compose an “OVERTURE” for the show.  Michelle Hewitt, my wife, collaborates with me, through her work as a disability advocate.

Murray Toews and me have been making 15 minute videos as sponsored by the Abject Alphabet, for over a year. LOOK is an extension of this work. Meantime you can see Abject Alphabet so far on the Earth Mutant Network beginning in February and concluding with the premiere of letter F in March.

Victor Enns, January 2022

Here is how you can help! DONATE

https://www.gofundme.com/manage/lookshow-pieces-of-my-mindmy-body-in-parts

Face in 3 sections

 

 

ON DECK AT LARGE

Sometimes imagine at least one of Queen Victoria’s voluminous dresses are made by a time traveling Agnetha Dyck and a coterie of bees gone to London to see the queen. I slowed a little today looking for the quote that God was ill and created the world – made something, even if on the shabby side, to recover. Freud, Goethe, Nietzsche maybe?

Imagination lets you be anyone you want in England or Alice’s restaurant.

I am remaking my Always Breathe manuscript opening with manifestos and linking more closely to the Lookshow opening in Winnipeg, as early as September 29. I’m worried that five manifestos may be four too many, but I can’t cut any. Famous last words.  The Manifestos;   1. Always Breathe 2. Suffer
3. Create 4. Persist 5. Love (or be Kind).  

 

5. Love (or be Kind).  

I’m using the May long to pitch theLookshowfundraiser. I’ve posted on Facebook and Twitter as well as the GoFundMe platform. The 12 artists in the show deserve the best I can do for them.  IN this instance the artist have free access to my website, nothing too private to be locked away. I also send them writing, largely from a memoir taking shape called Pieces of my mind/My Body in Parts.  Murray Toews is responsible for the look of lookshow and artists wrangling. It’s easier because he lives in Winnipeg and knows the OUTPUT venue well. I live in Kelowna. The artists include Ken Gregory, Grace Nickel, Nicole Shimonek, Leigh Konyk, Andrea von Wichert, Lora Van Loewen, Jim van Dusen, Lief Norman. Composer and cellist Leanne Zaccahrias is writing an OVERTURE played live on the opening weekend, and Chris Bauer is preparing a drum/soundscape piece including “ready-made” instruments such as wheelchair wheels and other mobility aids, with graphic projections by Murray Toews. 

We need to raise money to meet our Canada Council for the Arts inspired budget who are well pleased  to see community support in as many different ways as possible. The $5,000 we raise will be for promotion, installation, and keeping the doors of the OUTPUT venue open as much as possible in October, yes, THIS October 2022. Once the show is down we will proceed to produce a “virtual gallery” as legacy and witness. 

My psychiatrist asked why I always wrote so many dark and depressing poems, often about my pain. Wouldn’t that just make my pain worse? I didn’t have an answer for him in that session, but did in our next session.

“Witness,” I said, “that’s why.”  Suffering people can see they are not alone, and the able bodied can see their health is a gift. My work is not all dark. I have gained a sense of humour since I lost my leg,  amputated and used for instruction to med students. I say I am donating my body to science one limb at a time. I’ve been criticized for laughing too much for the pain I claim, and not showing my suffering side. Well Lookshow is the answer. But if I didn’t have a sense of humour I’d have no sense at all. 

I’m not looking for cents, but dollars. Anything you can do is appreciated, and $100 or more gets you the victorenns9 smorgasbord now hidden behind Patreon pay walls. 

I just killed my first mosquito of the season. He was the kind of guy who killed seven mosquitoes with one blow. 🙂 

 

 

 

In the angel’s mind there are no angels that stop

 

 

FROM THE LETTERWRITER

2020 Via Rail
Dear

 

Do me some impossible thing

Never been heard or seen
before I have seen it. Awe shucks,
almost heard it, but I’m not wearing
my hearing aids. Nearly caught
a glimpse but I’m not wearing
my looking glasses, so lie to me
instead.I’ll believe you.

This Mental Health Week week letters went out to 12 artists for the Lookshow opening in ArtSpace (WFG Cinematheque & OUTPUT Venues) at the end of September. Murray Toews will lead the way in Winnipeg with Ken Gregory, Grace Nickel, Leif Norman, Nicole Shimonek, Leigh Konyk, Lora Van Loewen making visual images whether still and sculptural or moving on video-tape/digital loops. Composer and cellist Leanne Zacharias is making a work to be played and recorded as an Overture, and Andrea van Wichert will be directing actors (not yet confirmed) working with text written by Victor Enns, exploring his multiple disabilities as detailed in Pieces of my Mind/My Body in Parts.  More information mwill appearb regularly at the free www.lookshow.ca . Thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts for their support.

 

MAY 6, 2022

Are there such things as blog spotters? Irrelevant.I ‘m closing my eyes again because I’ve been looking at a screen all day and my eyes hurt because my new glasses have not yet arrived. That’s where I left off with the last that’s where I left off with the last blog. I’ve got lots of progress to report this week if not so much new text or video. Sorry. Let’s go for meds, after letting Deefer (d for dog) out. Deefer is adorable.

Artists
Grace Nickel, Ken Gregory, Victor Enns, Murray Toews, Nicole Simohek, Andrea Von Wichert, Leanne Zacharias, Lora Van Loewen, Jim Van Dusen, Leigh Konyk.

Disability Advisor
Michelle Hewitt, CoChair, Disability Without Poverty, Ph.D Candidate in Disability Studies.

Theatre Advisor
Debbie Patterson, Sick and Twisted Theatre Company

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

– F.Scott Fitzgerald

I sat on my glasses for the last time yesterday. They broke. Glasses have been a part of my life since I was four years old. I have been to the optometrist and had my checkup and ordered new glasses which will take two weeks just like in the old days. My mother realized there was something wrong with my eyes when she couldn’t teach me how to read. Thankfully she didn’t waste too much time in having them checked and glasses ordered from James Shane in Winnipeg at the Bay, which was my family’s beachhead in Winnipeg. Reading became a snap and an important part of my life.

I’ve been closing my eyes a lot lately, without really knowing why. I’ve been looking for a psychiatrist in Kelowna, but I’ve had the good fortune to find a psychologist in the meantime and I had a session this morning. Towards the end of the session I talked about closing my eyes all the time. And trying to connect it to some thing.

Then I remembered these lines from a piece called OUTTA SIGHT!

” What I’m trying to say is I don’t want to be seen like this.  I know, anybody I know doesn’t really want to know how much it hurts on a scale of 1-2-10.  My pain is only original to me. So I take my pain alone like so many others not being a burden making do, getting by and closing my eyes because I don’t want to see me like this either.”

Part of this story relates to my son Theo who, when he was three, covered his eyes and said you can’t see me. He became invisible because he covered his eyes. So the whole business of seeing and looking into somebody by looking into their eyes is of interest to my thinking.

So on the one hand I’m self-conscious about my disability, particularly my weight, and during my ‘cognitive variances.”  I’d prefer people not see me when I’m not at my best. This has been happening more often since I’ve become physically disabled. Covid has come just at the right time where it looks like I’m just doing what everybody else is doing instead of withdrawing from the people-y world. I’ve been fortunate again in finding a partner who also has a disability and also rather  be at home than out and about, who commented on losing service 0f our body and mind at the same time, “When your mind and your body both give out at the same time – total quitsville!”

I’ve just got this big Canada Council for the Arts grant which is essentially an extravaganza of showing myself and asking people to look, or more formally, let’s say it’s about identity, self-portraiture through the lens of pain, suffering and disability.

These are the two opposing ideas that I’m starting off with. On the one hand I’m closing my eyes a lot. On the other hand I’m writing stories from my life and I’m asking 12 different artists to interpret aspects of my life from my writing including my body parts and pieces of my mind and the pieces it’s in. I am delighted that I have found artists that will work with me and my conceptions of myself; or as I sometimes think, my several different selves.

For me it’s important for other people to look and see and hear different narratives of the disabled experience. There are as many stories and variations of living as a disabled person as there are disabled people. “If you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person” is a common saying,  because for Christ sake we’re all different!  That should be a basic understanding but it means people have to tolerate difference. In fact tolerate isn’t even a good enough word we should be able to do better than that,  be kind is getting there, be fair. Better or worse!

But in this instance, my story told using theatre, films, music, writing, videos and sculptures all showcase different parts of my life and my living. I have a cartoon that Murray Toews drew for me. I had a dream in which the doctors were pointing to the base of my spine,  where I have spondylolisthesis and said “see that’s where the hubris is coming in.”

 I try to remind myself to be cautious about my expectations either of myself, the other artists that are working on the show, and the people that come and see the show. One thing I can say about this though, it won’t be boring. The conflict between not wanting to be seen, to hide deformity, disability, my different body that people really have trouble looking at, which I’ve been writing about since 1979 actually, “all the picture people look the other way” (Jimmy Bang) and my desire for people to accept my differences so I am not ashamed will be dramatic.

For me the energy comes from creation. One of my favourite sayings is simply that desire creates all. And wanting to do something,  making some thing is the forge that I need to get dressed in the morning.

See my work progress. This provides documentation and notation about an installation plan for a gallery in Winnipeg. Should finances prayer met. The other option will be creating of a virtual gallery with a virtual installation that can be toured online.


THE PAGES THAT FOLLOW represent visions I had for an art installation in Winnipeg. I assembled some artists to help me make this show. As always I would write and produce the show, Murray Toews would handle his own contribution, of three horizontal door panels with drawings across them,  and serve as graphic and moving image chief of art direction and co-direct with me. I am 66 am the wheels are coming off. Well the left leg below the knee. More and more I depend on others. I believe in paying artists. Always. I had a good shot at a Canada Council Grant, but I asked for a lot of money and enough to animate 4 letters of my abject alphabet. Plus I am still finishing Listen Here, for which I was fortunate enough to have received a Canada Council grant in 2020. I have most of the manuscript complete except for the last three ghazals I am writing in response to Murray Schafer’s String Quartets. So maybe the next BIG project lijke this is called LOOK and LISTEN! with listening posts set up across the nation. Meanwhile this project goes into my archives, my back-burner, and this website as documentation of the show that never happened. Most of this has been dictated and spell checked, but the nonsense is purely my own. This show below could cost as little as $20,000 or as much as $50,00. Patrons welcome.

https://i0.wp.com/thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/steel-door-brick-wall-very-old-above-opening-30979126.jpg?resize=657%2C438&ssl=1

LOOKBOOKSHOW (Take 2) March 5, 2022

Para one
Dirty laundry. Build a clothesline, posts 12 feet apart that look like crucifixes, Barnabas and the other guy with the pulleys coming out of their bellies to hang the bed sheets on the bed sheets are white. Jesus got away.  The bed sheets can flap the bed-sheets can sound like they are flapping the sheets can be tied down for screaming/screening.

Para two
On the brick wall. Project handicapped simple. That’s a mistake of my mind. Symbol project handicapped symbol. I am worrying my neurologist did not pay enough attention to my scan or my medical history dismissing me too easily yesterday.

Para 3
Heavy metal door. A dent, graffiti.   The yellowish light from gray barnyard lamp reveals one of the graffiti to be an Angel trying to push themselves through the door but the wings won’t go.

Para 4
Jacob’s ladder. The door opens into an entirely new universe overgrown with a big tree in the middle of it and stairs Hewn into the bark barely accessible to even the most capable of climbers. There are doors off to one side and the other of the tree for the different levels of the building each landing has a story a very short 32nd video.  Sysphus is on the steps, having pulled a pluym out of bhis side

Para 5

landing one Fort/Da. Video monitor with a child throwing a stuffy toy into a wall. There is enough room on the landing for a basket of stuffy toys so that people can throw them against the wall if they wish to produce the bait.

Para 6
landing two shitty cunt piss .Monitor with a girl playing with a truck or tractor rolling them back and forth saying shitty cunt piss shitty cunt piss. Over and over and over.

Para 7
landing three “Ich Will Rein!” (German)  a little boy is hammering on a vintage white door with glass in it pounding and pounding shouting!ch Will Rein! . We hear faintly a piano.

Para 8
Landing 4 Burn down the House. Boy reaches for a vintage mother. Her dress catches fire. She turns to ashes a heap of ashes. See poem Burn Down the house.

Paranoid landing 5. You’re pulling my leg!
para 6 actually it’s if 6 was 9 it is
para 9 and landing 5 an operating theatre in the video a video monitor operating theatre a leg being amputated. para 9 – You’re pulling my leg!

para 10
landing 6 Lookshow, Listenhere. Glasses and hearing aids. Nothing to click away to see which is better, hearing aids much the same but on video again in 30 seconds. Possibly young boy opening the box classes come in in the mail and putting on a pair of glasses and smiling in his striped boy shirt. The hearing aids would be the 2nd 15 seconds and they would be impossible to fit properly lots of feedback as noise distortion in the first one until everything is clear as digital.

para 11 landing 7 “Spiel Mir Was.” (German) we’ve made it. One last monitor and you open the door and step inside the gallery.  SPEIL MIR WAS poem.

SO A TODDLER BED, STRAIR RAILINGS, MUSIC FROM CLAIR DE LUNE LOOPED

You  throw open the damn door, and we hear for today anyway.BRIAN FERRY apostrophe ask the musician Bryan Ferry’s version of the Neil Young song which has the chorus like a hurricane I had a big flashlight From his Concert  Video LIGHT FIRE EXPLOSION and you’re in the gallery. The lights dim as you step across the transom………

SO FAR BY NOON March 4 (Revised March 5)

 

2 pm March 4 (Revised March 5

 

 

INSTALLATION ONE  –  Who Are You

Field typewriter. Set up and working. Please type your name. Thank you for visiting the look show. There is a DVD player on the extension of the field typewriter which is attached to the first screen and screening opportunity. Short loops only. And each screening should provide some foreshadowing or direction to the next one. This is the only piece ready for lookshow. It’s a “ready made.” Found by Michelle Hewitt.

INSTALLATION  TWO – What’s going on here?
Discovery Strips There are three doors hung from the ceiling against the wall the far wall.
 By Murray Toews.

 The bottom two should be readable by someone in a wheelchair the top one would need to stretch. Ideally there would be pulleys unchains and people could raise and lower them according to their needs. So those are three doors what’s behind door number one and door number 2 door number three? Well it’s not actually let’s behind the doors it’s what’s on the doors. This is Murray taves his show and there would be three to four panels available for story or graphics or Dada or the German expressionism we both like George grows at Max erenst those kinds of things but perhaps presented us comic strips but very artful comic strips or a graphic novel this is really up to Murray for whatever he can do is 3 doors on the horizontal. 

INSTALLATION THREE – MY SKIN AND BONES

Naked picture of me and my skin. By Victor Enns, Richard Hines, Michelle Hewitt.
Large photo print framed in a metal standard type frame is have a poem that goes exactly with that  “Camera Shy”  that I could add to the end of this because it also talks about the dragon dogs the dark dogs the paradox paradogs and then we would have my knee disappearing into the bed in the dark with my ring finger showing against my black blackened crotch, we would have one of my back side shot as to how fat or obese I am new to put that on display and then there is one more so those four would be structured as if they were in a window with four panes the traditional farm for pain window frame to hold those smaller images of my skin

BONES: We have lightboxes. Next to the skin to two at least maybe three or four depending on space and how this would work they would be xrays or scans of my neck my back my hands and my ankle. And outside of the Richard Hines photo most of them are Selfies so this is by victor hands like the first one is by Murray Toews.

INSTALLATION FOUR – Brain bang

We have a high striker. This installation is to the left of skin and bones with brain replacing the bell at the top. People will be provided with a hammer and will be allowed to slam the pack up to bang the brain.

INSTALLTION FIVE – where the light gets out.

We have (broken?) sconces, by Grace Nickel; relevant to my heart and spine issues.
on each side of the pain room door.

See poem: MY SLIGHTLY DEFECTIVE HEART

INSTALLATION SIX  Pain Room

Room with a ragged door  and a pain room sign on it like the illustration that are graphic that Murray has already done a period there is a slot that you could move back and forth and again if you were to make this an interactive video that was that would be something that you can do say if you rang the bell you got to move the slot and if you move this slot open ypou see the sculpture by Ken Gregory and some rapid drumming by Chris Mama Bauer every time the slot opens inside the pain room you see the tire belt spike spike bell that’s what they’re called the entire spike belt ah to serve with this culture as the broken vertebrae are the vertebrae of the person in pain on his back. MURRAY TOEWS’ picture or larger redraw SHRAPNEL is featured in the room. We could ask Giles Hebert to donate some of his knick knack paddy whack.whacks in a shelf in the room.

INSTALLATION SEVEN

Tire Spike Belt + ironworks vertebrae by Ken Gregory.   My vertebrae & cry of pain      

INSTALLATION EIGHT  – BookCart

We have a library book cart. Each installation has bibliography with as many books that we can find that were part of the inspiration for the show possibly to serve instead of labels. Anyway this would circulate and it could be positioned and moved around from one exhibition from one installation to another.

INSTALLATION NINE – Bed-Ridden

We insert video screens into a hospital bed that can be raised up or down with any luck. Here we run Murray’s videos or any that have to do with being in a hospital bed some of which still would probably need to be made. But there is a store of existing material I think. I thought of making one of them into the pain room and that could work if we were short on space but if this is a virtual exhibition then we can have the pain room and three beds.

INSTALLATION TEN – Fatigue

We have art on bed sheets … We ask for submissions of artwork representing fatigue, or Commission a specific artist with an interest, (A vacant head trailling unattached wires on a pillow?) with that would run the length of a hospital bed in Bay number 2.

INSTALLATION ELEVEN Everything Slips me away

 A sound installation in  Bay 3 We have a voice over voice over of my mother speaking that phrase in low German that is essentially everything slips away from us and being dropped. So sound crossed from her voice (I may have on audio), or a female voice, with a cello based recorded composition by Leanne Zacahrias, possibly referencing or quoting  Prokofiev’s 7th Piano Sonata third movement, Robbie Robertson’s “He don’t live here anymore,” and “Body & Soul” by Coleman Hawkins.  

INSTALLATION 12 Angel Time

We have an Angel Sculpture trying to leave the hospital bed by the way of the ceiling and is stuck because he can’t get up, can’t get his wings through. THE END
THIS JIMMY BANG’S ANGEL TIME

The final stop for visitors.             

We have a transparent still under a cylinder maybe with a bit of copper on it as a joke with a manuscript inside which says look show on it and is the book of the show catalogue ideally I’d like to find a way for a person to experience this on their own alone listening to Leonard Cohen sing Avalanche or “I came so far for beauty”  you could change those two songs you’d have to get rights I think to play them add they’d be on a loop and there’d be the book and you press a button an at prints for you OK laugh laugh laugh laugh

MERCH: White Crying towerls, maybe with grommets for golf bags with ther words in envoi fount font saying

cry
cry
cry

 

ENDNOTES & ACCOMPANYING POEMS

 

Burn down the house

 

I  run.
Black and white
speed boots raise dust
from the acre garden,
me with nowhere to go
but  back in the house.

Mother better
be there. I  see
her now. She tugs
he Electrolux.

I slam
the oudoors
behind me,

reach hungrily
to mum in her  floral
print dress

again.  She moves to me
this time, catches fire.
I  see
her now

nothing but fire
between us,
ashes

remain.

        

 

CAMERA SHY

To photograph is to confer importance.
– Susan Sontag

1.
The photographer knocks, and I say come in.
My face does not know what to do in front of a camera;
my body long past
caring; only the surgeons,
planning their cuts, need to know.

2.
My angry fascination with the abyss,
with the edge, cutting or leading,
comes to this; I sit on the ledge
of the soaker tub, swing my legs
into the hot blue water, my back
hunched, my hands on the grab bars
lowering a body mass index close to obese.

3.
The photographer breaks up
with me, an inadequate subject
my face empty of expression
or nuance, nothing going on
the lens can see, no conflict

cameras attracted to danger,
nothing doing here,
my vacancy a flat effect,
only I feel the black dog paratroopers
drop behind my eyes.

 

Spiel mir was

 

says my dad to my sister
never father to me, always
dad without a capital my sister
always two sibilant syllables
at the piano, dad stretches
out on the couc

play me something, says my dad
one arm cast over his eyes
on the other hand, he fit
temples between his fingers
laying his glasses on the linoleum

my sister plays a waltz of Chopin
a bit of Bizet’s Claire de Lune
Mozart’s sonatas of stars and C
a lullaby of Brahms. I fall
asleep in my bed listening
from the top  of the stairs

 

MY SLIGHTLY DEFECTIVE HEART

for Peter Dueck, Chrissie Hynde, Grace Paley, Les and Jane

My heart is irregular and incompetent, still it keeps beating
all the time. Arrhythmia is what it’s called, that flutter,
that irregularity. My friend said “just imagine, you’re a lucky man,
you have a butterfly heart.” I’m sure his job doesn’t let him
use enough metaphors, and I enjoy the thought, lightening up.

Oh so much better to have a butterfly fluttering in my chest
My heart’s incompetence is the incompetence of my aortic valve.
I swish I swash, my heart sounds like an old washing machine.
Listening, my general practitioner heard the sluice back
using his stethescope. Yes, sir, confirmed the ultrasound.

Cradling my heart in my hands I urge all this blood
to keep circulating, a deep breath, my life assured 
astride a chair at the East Interlake Klean-All Laundromat.
I swish, I swash, watchin the clothes go ’round,
beat that.

 

Surgical Preferences – Victor Enns – Below the left knee amputation April 5, 7:30, arrive at 5:45

 

I’m sure we share several assumptions, most importantly, that I come through the below the left knee amputation, with few if any complications.  So the few instructions below are for recovery. Please understand I give these preferences based on experience of what works for me. This will be my 12th surgery since I was a child.

 

  1. Pain Management. I have chronic pain, and I know having one foot in the grave will not change it all that much, though I do hope for some improvement. Pain is a huge issue going back to misdiagnosis when I was 14. Please, please provide
    *1b.Fentanyl for pain management for 24 to 48 hours following surgery.
    Diludid is second choice and has worked for my mother and sister. Tramacet is NO good at all.
    I am allergic to morphine. This was discovered post hip replacement surgery at Concordia and my heart raced dangerously. The second hip replacement, also at Concordia was incredibly difficult. Fentanyl was in the surgical plan that we understood one of my doctors had signed off on. The ward staff not convinced until the end of the day. Waiting after the second hip replacement is the greatest pain I have ever experienced, in the between 1 to 10 scale. There was no need for it at all. My recovery took a day longer as a result.
  2. Let me manage my pain meds along with the other nine meds that I have when I don’t need the Fentanyl anymore.I am allergic to many adhesives, if needed the expensive European ones won’t cause a rash.
    *2b. Percocet works on my current pain levels at 5mgs x 5 or 6, for 25 to 30% of the new lowest maximum of 100/day. I have my meds ready in blister packs and a vial for the Percocet and one for a statin I take to reduce my cholesterol. I will leave them in my son Theo’s possession and he will bring them when appropriate. I will sign any waivers if needed to take charge of my own medication. This is best.
  3. Theo Jerrett-Enns (204) 794-7764 (cell) is primary contact and in charge of any decisions about my care
     if I am not able to make them myself. My daughter is second contact.
    3.b Bronwyn Jerrett Enns (204) 930-3270(cell). My paperwork indicates if decisions need to be made the power of attorney is consecutive. Theo works at Cancer Care Manitoba and can be at bedside in 10 to 15 minutes. My daughter works for the CRA  in Transcona, and it will take her longer to get here.
  4. Visitors:
    Anytime:
    Theo and Bronwyn, my siblings Garry and Margaret, relatives and friends Anneli Epp and Adelard Gendron, and & Robert Steinberg (my psychiatrist)
    Visiting hours, my third ex-wife, Lynn Chalmers and her daughter Jo, Greg Giesbrecht close family friend.
  5. Discharge: If the bed is needed I am willing to leave sooner, than later, provided I can be transported to Gimli Hospital, as a stop-gap before being on my own in my apartment with only daily nurses visits likely. Please call Matthew at 204-6421607 FAX 204-642-4924 in charge of Gimli home/nursing care. I have discussed this possibility with him. I am eager to recover at home and do have a good support network. I have no wish to be an idiot or compromise my recovery, and will survive another few days of hospital food before coming home, if and when necessary.Thank you. I deeply appreciate the health care me, and my family have received in Winnipeg.
    I hope my preferences are clear enough they can be provided to anyone who needs to know
    (I’ll take care of those who don’t really need to know) I will also provide a separate sheet of contact information.Signed Victor Enns ______________________   Date:_______
    Birth date 03/04/1955

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