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From "On This, the 100th Anniversary of the Sinking of the Titanic, We Reconsider the Buoyancy of the Human Heart" by  Laura Lamb Brown-Lavolie (Week 5)

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From "On This, the 100th Anniversary of the Sinking of the Titanic, We Reconsider the Buoyancy of the Human Heart" by  Laura Lamb Brown-Lavolie (Week 5)

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"To be honest, I told Titanic, My honey’s leaving town soon and I’m afraid it’s gonna wreck me, so I dove down here.

Well come on in, Titanic said, but I’m not sure I’ve got what you’re looking for.

So in I climbed, through a window between two rust stalactites, and began to pace her great promenade."

I imagine here that Laura Lamb is diving into her own poem, the Titanic, and I can see the crusty walls of the one-great ship, now buried deep beneath the ocean surface.

"When I got to the Turkish baths, I sat on the edge of a barnacled tub and watched weird crabs scrabble at my feet."
Overwhelmed by the pain of her love leaving her, she has come to take refuge inside shipwreck, and I can see her sitting inside the old tub, barnacles grazing her skin while looking out at the creatures that scuttle about.

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If anyone was watching you, they would think that you were crying because you're cutting onions. But though the onions sting your eyes, you're really crying because you just learned that one of the ways to say "I love you" in Irish is by saying "you are my music"- (mo cheol thú), after listening to a reading of “Song” by Tracy K. Smith. It's okay to cry at beautiful things, it just makes you a bit of a sap.

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Reminiscent: Fireflies at dusk carrying the essence of the sun

Await: Chimes that stand still before the wind kisses them and asks them to dance

Immaculate: A forest unaware of the existence of apes

Serene: Watching safe as the thunderstorm exerts its power outside

Lawless: Boots that take a running start before plunging into the rain puddle

Putrid: Waves of the permian ocean carrying carbon and death

Curious: A kaleidoscope hidden in an antique dresser

Perilous: An imitation toadstool in a foragers basket

Still: Sap clinging to a conifer

Wisdom: A warm egg that knows just where to crack

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She does not mind that I am almost as furry as her, and I aspire to grow skin as thick as the pads on her feet.

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I tend to think of my hair as a relatively unchanging characteristic about me, but it isn't. From the time I was born with a head of thick, dark, almost-black-hair it has curled up, straightened out, lightened to almost blonde, darkened and taken on red tones, then evened out to my current wavy light brown. I wish I had taken yearly hair trimmings from an early age so I could see the different ways it catches the light, and how the texture and thickness changes as the years go by. I could look forward to the day when my hair will lose all its colour, and I wonder whether it will turn grey, white, or peppered, imagining how my wrinkly fingers will run across the clippings of hair from the many past versions of me.

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Watching My Octopus Teacher was the first time I had ever seen a lobster swim. It turns out, they don't actually spend most of their time sitting stacked on top of one another on the ocean floor with rubber bands locking their claws shut. In fact, they are quick swimmers, using their tail to propel them backwards with powerful thrusts. When I was little I asked my mother if I could adopt one of lobsters that lived in the seafood section of the grocery store, before she informed me that they were there to be eaten, but only made me want to adopt ALL the lobsters.

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An internet man named Tim Urban went to a Russian shaman, who decided that he needed to "fix" Tim Urban's head. The recorded result is a 48 second video that I have watched countless times. The shaman is not gentle, but I am so relaxed by the sounds and motions he produces as he fixes Mr. Urban's head. No ASMR video has affected me in the way that this low-quality travel vlog video has. The jangling of a handmade contraption, the loud ringing of the bell, the scratching of the scalp while Russian dialect flows-Visceral.

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Being Abused By a Siberian Shaman (Wait But Why in Russia)

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Capturing Impermanence (Featuring a Scrap of Red Cabbage)

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Capturing Impermanence (Featuring a Scrap of Red Cabbage)

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I was captivated by the refractions trapped in the ice that froze inside the cold-holding at work. I almost wanted to take the chunk of ice and stick it in the freezer so it wouldn't melt. Instead of holding onto things, we can record their essence through words and pictures. Also, why is it called red cabbage if its leaves are purple and it colours water blue?

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"I'm a shy sleeper," my friend said, and the phrase just stuck with me. Sleeping people cannot be shy, but she meant to say that she does not like people watching her when she sleeps. The term "shy sleeper" seems to evoke a kind of adorable bashfulness that makes me smile to think of.

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I happened upon a painting by Michael Sweerts, and was delighted by the humour with which he painstakingly painted a portrait of himself sticking a finger in the nasal canal of a skull onto canvas. There is a mischievousness about it, as though he is making light of death. I was even more delighted to know it had been painted in the 17th century. It's easy to think of the past and have words such as "elegant" or "distressed" or "conservative"- anything but "humorous", but I think humour is as old as humanity. It's something of a comfort.

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The Most Beautiful Sound I Have Ever Heard

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The Most Beautiful Sound I Have Ever Heard

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An egg shell gets pushed into the crack against the wall where the warmth of the stove slowly dries it out until it is hot and brittle. Then it falls onto the floor, and it shatters as though made of the most delicate crystal, and then tinkles like a fairy's laughter as it's swept across quarry tile and into a dust pan.

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I stopped on my walk home one day to find this curious looking fruit appearing on the trees by a parkade. I couldn't identify it for a while, before learning that it was called a kousa dogwood berry! And it is edible! The skin was bitter and its texture strange, but the inside was sweet and soft, though it was filled with many large seeds that felt like round rocks rolling around on my tongue. I think it's interesting how unknowingly oblivious we are to the edible plants that surround us.

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I saw it on the sidewalk, a perfect little ball of moss. It fallen from a tree during the hard rains. It was the same kind of moss that I walked on bare-footed as a child. I decided to take it home and let it live in a large glass jar that my aunt was going to recycle.

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Tigers and Rhinos and Wine Stains (Week 2)

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Tigers and Rhinos and Wine Stains (Week 2)

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•I did not plan to pick up any stones at Granville Island, but when I saw these tigers eyes I could not resist picking out one of each colour. Now I (falling under the Zodiac sign of the Tiger) marvel at how the earth repeats the same intricate patterns in countless different iterations.
•I printed a large image of a rhinoceros from an old book, the artist of which did not quite know what a rhino looked like. I got the edge wet and now the right side of the picture has blossomed into two watery dendrites. I did not know that lurking within the beige and rust coloured ink of the rhino were bright pinks and yellows.
•My green moranta has created a new leaf for itself, but rather than the pale green markings it usually has, this one is painted with deep maroon. I think this is the plant's expression of delight with the many daily mists I have started to give it

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I remember the birds with tinkling chirps
I remember pattering rain from warm-grey clouds
I remember the soft, velvety skin of a little reptile
I remember wondering why this one didn't run away as the Costa Rican lizards like to do
I remember gratitude for the small lizard accepting my gift of water-soaked moss

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He hardly seemed bothered by my presence, nails clacking nonchalantly on the kitchen tile. It was as though he was saying "Oh, you're here," before taking a tour of the living room. I wonder if it was an evolutionary failing of his cognitive faculties that prompted him to wander inside an open door and into the confined quarters of a human family. Sometimes animals get curious about the habitats of humans too, I suppose. I also forget sometimes what a privilege it may be considered by many to be able to consider a peacock a household nuisance.

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I would feel uncomfortable before when reading lyrics or poems I did not immediately grasp. I have since learned to take more time with them, rereading them, looking at the author and thinking what they might be wanting to convey. Every word did not stumble upon the page by accident. It was selected and set. Despite a concentrated effort, however, I cannot figure out what Ada Limón means by "white and taffy" in Instructions on Not Giving Up, but rather than shrinking from this discomfort I will instead embrace it. (If anyone knows what she might mean by white and taffy, however, I welcome the insight)

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Between the things that exist and the things that don't; purple swallowtails and blue flamingoes, school busses led by sky sails as Ms. Frizzle takes her children through a football field of oddities. Is this a fig nestled in a lotus flower? A heart shaped tree? If air were a solid, the buildings would have clouds fused with the mortar and I would go there to bask in the sunshine

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When I would go out at night when COVID first hit, I would often look at the Orchard Commons building windows. There would be a few rooms lit, mostly at the bottom, mostly standard white light. Now when I look up I see many windows lit with coloured LED's. Some of them change colours, but for the most part a single colour persists. I wonder what it would feel like to sit in purple.

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Back to campus from the summer break, I discovered a yellow potato hiding behind my produce bowl. Rather than rotting, however, the potato took neglect as an opportunity to grow. I couldn't bring myself to throw away the sprouting spud, so I left it to its own devices, checking on its progress every now and then. I think it looks cool.