Tag: amwriting

Leaves & Branches

4fd725e02e93dda6a65e345b539a1c2dFlywheel, 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 

DESTROY PARC LA FONTAINE

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take away the tourists, the hipsters, the families

take away the seniors

take away the guitars, the bongos, the singers, the accordions

take away the homeless

take away the flowers, and lock up the mowers

take away the blind, whose vision of the place was illuminated by the smells of spilt Cheval Blanc, cigarette and charcoal barbeque

take away the water- drain it away- and plug up the fountain with cement

take away the first dates, the talkers, the shy, the too-cool-to-drink-non-organic-juice kids, the sex workers, the second, third marriages

take away the coffee cups and styrofoam boxes, wine bottles and green tops of Kiosque Mont Royal strawberries

take away the drugs

take away the music

take away the lights: Gut electricity from dépanneur fridges

take away the curd from La Banquise

you can’t take away how the light of fireworks fell through trees: How the branches split apart the light to produce nets of shadow, bending phosphorous light to tattoo blue faces black. When we met under the leaves.*

colour by Mugluck  Parc Lafontaine, Montreal, 2013. Tous droits réservés Mügluck
words by Liam Lachance

e-mail me baby

legit

They wouldn’t have found each other on a PlentyofFish search. 

          IsabelleXoxx: looking for fun
          Franco-Québecois
          22
          Likes: movies that start with credits, lobster
          Interesting Story: virginity lost on picnic table
          Interests: recommending healthy food via Facebook, diving, watching people in cafés

          MarcusForLife: LIFE IS A ROLLERCOASTER OF EMOTION    😉
          Anglo-Albertan
          28
          Likes: bloopers at the end of a solid flic, lizards
          Interesting Story: lost v-card in Diddy’s limo #SWAG (!)
          Interests: kegstands, Micky Ds, BURNINGMAN ’08-’11

No, without a mutual dentist, they wouldn’t have met, let alone shared some seriously awkward first date dialogue: To Isabelle’s story on training her husky to defecate without a raised leg, our sly Marcus responded with yeah? Only touched one, really, at dinner.

        Oh?

        Oh, ha, no: It was on vacation.

        Oh.

As though being on vacation cancelled the fact that you had eaten a dog. Committed murder- but it was on vacation! In any case it wasn’t the stuff of those Hollywood movies between attractive white kids, but maybe that was the point: The desire to know how you could live like that, eat dog, kept them talking. Part personality-colonialism, sure- how cute, you’re so abnormal– but it worked, and they snapped together like puzzle pieces that need different shapes to fit. Pieces that wouldn’t have snapped online because they would have  ticked boxes to search for themselves. For dog-eaters. People-watchers.*

artwork by Jaci Banton