Albertan poems on Hello Poetry

Aaron Mullin Oct 2014

I've always been in place,
in situ
Maybe (just maybe) ...
I'm sui generis?

When my lifeline intersected with spacetime on this continuum
I found myself moving toward a collision course with duality and non-duality
Moving towards a zero-point

What are we talking about?
Nothing (Rafelski & Muller, 1985)

As a geographer, the mimetic expression was dualistic
As one plane flowed through another;
as fiat lux flowed through Medicine Rock
I found wisdom

I further explored the duality @ this place
(also known as University of Lethbridge)

The U of L is an interesting duck

It walks like an Albertan university
It talks like an Albertan university
But one of these things is certainly not like the other

The U of L got its chops as a house of learning for the Liberal Arts
Follow those roots and you'll see conduits to another spacetime known as UCBerkley
U of L memetics share material memories from the birth of the Free Speech Movement (1964)

And as Arthur Erickson drafted up his plans for Canada's centennial gift to the Province of Alberta, I'm sure he would have been partaking in the pleasures of this particular spacetime

I'm sure at the very least that he was listening to Hendrix wax on about Castles

As Erickson designed this modernistic monolith called University Hall
There were influences such as Arthur C. Clarke and his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
He was certainly knowledgeable of the Blackfoot stories of the Old Man
And of course as an architect he would be versed in gravity and how built structures on a ***** tend to creep toward base-level
Strange but true, Erickson's first degree was in foreign languages

So what I see is Canada's premier architect wrote a poem for us in 1968
In a foreign language
And that poem would be expressed over the next forty to fifty years

Some of those primary poetic elements were:
Berkley, California
Hippie Movement
Creep (or gravity)
Base level
Blackfoot creation stories of the Old Man
Jimi Hendrix poetry and his savage musical genius

"and so castle's made of sand melt into the sea, eventually."

So let's reinterpret that line to be more U of L centric
(through my glossy apertures)

"and so monolith's made by man melt back into god eventually."

........ ....... ...... ..... ..... .... ... .. . zero~point . .. ... .... ..... ...... ....... ........

REFERENCES

in situ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ

sui generis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sui_generis

Spacetime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

Duality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duality

Non-duality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism

Zeropoint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy

Nothing: Rafelski & Muller (1985). The Structured Vacuum: Thinking about Nothing. ISBN 3-87144-889-3

Geography: Science focusing on places and spaces, on humankind's stewardship of the Earth, and on the inter-related problems associated with environmental, economic, political and cultural change. The study of spatial variation in both physical and human phenomena on Earth.

Memetics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

fiat lux: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Lethbridge

Medicine Rock: http://www.uleth.ca/artsci/first-nations-transition-program/medicine-rock-story-our-blackfoot-name

Wisdom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom

University of Lethbridge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Lethbridge

Alberta: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta

Liberal Arts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education

University of California, Berkley: http://berkeley.edu/about/

Free Speech Movement (1964): http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/FSM/

Arthur Erickson: http://www.arthurerickson.com/educational-buildings/lethbridge-university/7/

Jimi Hendrix: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Hendrix

Castles Lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jimihendrix/castlesmadeofsand.html

Modernism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism

Monolith: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith

2001: A Space Odyssey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_%28film%29

Blackfoot Mythology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfoot_mythology

Creep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downhill_creep

Base Level: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_level

Foreign Languages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_language

Poetry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry

Hippie Movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_hippie_movement

Creep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downhill_creep

Blackfoot Mythology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfoot_mythology

Jimi Hendrix: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Hendrix

Castle's Made of Sand: http://youtu.be/PiBF_hJ3sSE

Glossy Aperture: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/422001427554852688/
Also GOTO: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/877844/inferno/

Indigenous Science: http://www.wisn.org/what-is-indigenous-science.html

#universe #oldman #monolith #spacetime #insitu #suigeneris #fiatlux #zeropoint #blackfoot

JOELLE Sep 2019

Frenchy in Oil Country

The French language to you, was little more than an inheritance
It was the promise between mother and daughter that a grandchild ought to know the language they used

In Bonnyville, they occupy the church, the Sobeys, the liquor store with that butchered accent
The hybrid between Quebecois French and rural Albertan English - ugly, and indecisive

You don’t live in Bonnyville, where the French roam free
The French in Edmonton feels lost, almost unknown
Poorly funded buildings house these Franco-albertans - children with the same inheritance as you

Immersion becomes a ***** word,
worthy of contempt and disgust
All the French kids know each other,
forced to grow up together while being deprived of options
They all go to the same university - the small francophone campus which stands unimpressive in the only neighbourhood in Edmonton where stop signs say ‘arrêt’

Oil Country, home for the right and prosperous, they don’t like you
You, you’re Francophone -
Stuck up, ******, pretentious...
Besides, there are no such things as Franco-albertans.

What could you be other than an invented term by some lost souls?
You aren’t French enough -
Alberta is an English speaking province.

The time you went to France,
someone asked if you were French-Canadian
Before you could reply, your friends spun your story - something believable, commendable...
your parents, lived in Montreal, and moved to Alberta with their wholly French children

Your father grew up in Edmonton,
memorizing the parks and malls by name
while your mother lived on a dairy farm, living in french - the ugly acadienesque french.

But, to everyone around you, it’s much more believable that you are a stranger to this province.
Maybe you are.

#french #alberta #language #identity

— The End —