Flywheel, clutch disk, crankshaft. Breaking it down to understand why it worked the way that it did. No, not how. Fan belt, rocker arm, alternator. You will itemize the parts, yes, all of them, for the project, with a brief description of their function, yes, every one, and how they affect the engine when it is running- it’s the logical place for us to start the class. Wise words from Telford, AUTO 1102A. Breaking down a family photograph to figure how odd shapes fit. Black palms smudged a hand-drawn draft of the 2010 Camry 2.4 litre, fingerprints smearing a tin hood, near a dent from the past winter. Bent, imperfect. Her mother out for the weekend, the garage cold, a window might have been left open, or the furnace had stopped working, but she wasn’t sure, and who was to blame her.
Her friend left when the heavy work was finished. Alone, with cylinder separated, she considered how their tastes were so different, seeing that their brains were formed under similar variables, having grown up in the same neighbourhood- over two fences- with similar families- alcohol holidays, massive debt- leaned on the same desks- MPS, NGDHS, The Gonq- and dated the same guys- straight white drunks. Twice, they dated brothers.
She liked Buzzfeed, her friend: Reddit. Maybe that was it. Her friend liked Vine, her: Youtube. Her: Gmail, Dropbox, Wikipedia. Friend: Yahoo, iCloud, Google. Mac? PC. Samsung? iPhone. Identical wiring soaking up different images and words to influence different tastes. She dropped the box wrench. She played out the thesis, considering how it explained her friends’ preference for pubs (from watching Arcade Fire and Chvrches videos) while she preferred the club (Drizzy VEVO).
Separating fan belt from crankshaft pulley, she compiled a list of things she had learned from the internet in 2013:
1. Haters own keyboards
2. Miley Cyrus invented grinding
3. People are happy on Facebook
4. All Americans own pistols
5. All gay people are white
6. All black people can dance
7. All hipsters rock beards
8. “Québecois” means “Franco-Québecois”
9. “Anglo-Québecois” means “quiet”
10. Traveling makes you intelligent
11. Lizard people are a legitimate concern
12. Over 6,000 Québecois-white-tailed-deer were hit last year
She put aside the blueprint and tore out a new page
Things Learned Independent of The Gonq Buzzfeed Wikipedia Facebook Youtube Friends & Parents
words by Liam Lachance
colour by Naran Jalidad
wordandcolour 
2 thoughts on “Leaves & Branches”