Tag: calgary

“Healing” – Shagufe Hossain

Chelsea Rushton_In Which God is a Woman, part ii 300 dpi

It is not the same, the rain here and the rain there. Even though the sky is heavy with untold secrets the same way. Even though when the clouds breathe, they breathe tears. Even though it falls, as it does everywhere. It is not the same. I suppose it can never be the same in any two places. But it takes a while to know the difference.

People are people and places are places. But the earth breathes differently when water touches it, depending on where it is. Sometimes, touches make it shiver and shrivel away. Or don’t make it any more or any less than it is. And sometimes, touches make it come alive. You can tell how the water makes the earth feel from the way it smells.

It is the same with people. You can tell how touches make one feel from the way they smell. There is either the distinct fragrance of desire or the distinct odour of disdain. Or sometimes the distinct scentlessness of indifference that makes your feel like you have anosmia.

That is the worst of the lot. No stench. No perfume. Just scentlessness.
But it takes a while to know the difference. Nonetheless, it falls. Everywhere.

And sometimes, as it falls, it stirs a storm.

There is a storm in you and there is a storm in me.
You have blizzards that are icy. Cold. They stir broken pieces of glass that cut through the heart, leaving you wounded.

My storms are warm. They stir something soft. Clouds that melt, pour water. Heal.

Your blizzard is what you seek refuge from. Sometimes. My storm is what you seek refuge in. Sometimes.

I don’t know if your storm reflects my soul or your soul is reflected in mine. But there is a storm in you and there is a storm in me. And I hoped, maybe, if you saw the storm in me and I saw the storm in you, we would know some calm in each other. That is why I offered you my storm. So you would find some solace in mine and I would find mine in you. So none of us would have to hide. And both of us, maybe, would begin to heal.

 

these words by Shagufe Hossain were inspired by the work of Chelsea Rushton

“Caged” – Francine Cunningham

Chelsea Rushton_Vesper xiii 300 dpi

we’ve never seen the sunset,
just the reflection of it
on the mountains
our windows face

we could drive to the other side of the island,
i guess
we’ve talked about it
packing a picnic
blanket
all of it
but we’ve never done it

tonight, we sit on the patio
bathed in the noise of buzzing mosquitoes
loud and piercing when too close to the ear
the smell of citronella not helping,
it never does

the light fades on the mountain side
pink
gold
light and then dark green

when twilight envelopes us
we rise on stiff legs
hobble to the bedroom
silently undress
i don’t know anymore in which emotion we look at each others bodies
indifference, boredom,
maybe even hatred
sliding under stiff sheets offers
reprieve
and in the darkness our dreams take hold,

what wondrous things they are

 

these words by Francine Cunningham were inspired by the work of Chelsea Rushton

“Vancouver to Edmonton, 2017” – Erika Thorkelson

Chelsea Rushton_The Heart's Prayer

We’re driving back to the prairies for your niece’s wedding. Hottest day of the year and the truck’s AC is broken. The mountains are blue ghosts under a gauzy sky. On the radio, the news is bad. Riots in Venezuela, squabbling world leaders, white supremacists. Everyone wants more than they have, even if they already have everything. The air tastes like wildfires and cow manure.

My horoscope says to stay positive, but I don’t buy it. You say you have a headache and my brain sidles into worst-case scenarios—a stroke, a tumour, viral meningitis. To cheer you up, I sing show tunes, but I only know the chorus to “Good Morning” from Singin’ in the Rain.

I’m supposed to be navigating, but I never speak up in time and you never listen. I tell you to take the next exit, but you keep going straight. We have to cross a bridge and do a U-turn to get back on track. A couple hours later, after lukewarm sandwiches under anemic shade trees in Merritt, I ask you to pull over so I can get my bearings, but you’re already turning. Now we’re flying toward Peachland instead of Kamloops.

Peachland. Again!

I tell you to turn around the next chance we get, but the map says we’re locked on the wrong highway for at least 20 minutes. Voluptuous hills with sun-bleached grass rise and fall on either side, offering no shade. The air in the truck gets heavy. It’s pressing on my lungs, my jaw, my shoulders. We sweat in silence, waiting for the other to talk, waiting for the other to apologize.

My horoscope says to stay positive, but I’m with the stoics on this one. Our strength shows not in good times, but in bad. That’s when we learn our hearts are not petals in the wind.

Where we’re going, there will be a beautiful wedding for a young woman who’s already seen more than her fair share of grief. There will be a family who drinks a little too much but only argues over the rules for crokinole. Your dad will be doing okay since he came off chemo and got a better hearing aid. He will hear your voice for the first time in years. It will all be fine, but I don’t know that yet. I’d rather not take any chances.

I swallow and speak first, knowing it’s the best way past this. We’ve been on this road before, I realize; we’ll travel it again. We get better at it every time.

 

these words by Erika Thorkelson were inspired by the work of Chelsea Rushton

“Summer 2017” – Alex Leslie

Chelsea Rushton_it is supposed to be raining 300 dpi

The fire puts a hand into the earth puts down roots spreads underground interpsychic hillsides blooming all at once. As a child I watched planes open their stomachs make room scoop water from mountain lakes and limp across the sky rescue plans fleeing to the smoke several islands always I wondered, my mind reddening, where they were going

Here they are circling the death of seasons like buzzards around a house holding out for peace. Shadow images of horses running yellow running orange into the camera an RCMP officer with Caution tape looped around a donkey’s neck, uniform and fur burned together they float into the sky together perched in the belly of crisis the donkey swims through the murky heat tree sap boils in veins I watch the sky for planes water on its way

The shore is the only place without an evacuation order unless the ocean rebels. We are trapped between two extremes now, blue above black below. Overcast or clouds refugee smoke cover can’t tell the difference between migration and evacuation. My yard on the coast is full of birds screaming for sugar and wet. The sky is thick with endings none of them prescriptions for rain. Those planes when I was child always knew where they were going, they aimed for one hot spot on the horizon, rash in a green mountainside, when fire was fire not

Rhythm, the newscaster recites, the fire could leap, with no elaboration on this process and how it occurs. The way a fear travels from one mind to another. The way, when you look at me, I have instant recall of our history of eye contact. The fire lives most of its life in the air. Red hand plunged into the earth. Above, imaginary pastel world, drifting castle of rivers and trees, ignite like a stick of dynamite on a raft in the current. Just push off into the slipstream rage and watch it ride.

Here is the fire jumping and here is the mountain wobbling in the oven. Here is the blood-brown band between earth and now. The sky blistering in the background. The fire could leap at any time, the news anchor repeats. Where? Oxygen is unlimited travel. Breath dancing out there in the waves, soaring among the tidal pools of the ashen coast, skipping rocks through the windows of bedrooms

 

these words by Alex Leslie were inspired by the work of Chelsea Rushton

 

on park access in Calgary: “Green-Space”

 

00_4abandon36x36 (2)

1.5 million pounds of soil raised

to the 4th floor of Calgary’s CORE

shopping complex supports an inner-

city oasis. The Devonian Gardens

are open publically during mall hours.

Oil executives employed nearby

visit the green-space on lunchbreaks,

eluding the paupers of Stephen Ave.

in +15s returning to work.

 

As children we attended summer camp

at Lindsay Park Sports Centre,

belayed each other up its rock walls

shouted chicken on the high dive.

Kids today learn to play water polo

in a pool named by Talisman Energy.

Since 2002 the City of Calgary has

sold naming rights to the company,

20 years for 10 million dollars.

 

Fish Creek Provincial Park is the largest

urban park in Canada, abutting the

Tsuu T’ina reserve in the southwest.

Roughly 12% of the city is stewarded

by Parks Calgary, the highest ratio of

green-space per capita in Canada.

Rumors of a horse found dead

in Sikome Lake are merely rumors,

but a person did drown in its weeds.

 

Within the cemented waterways of

Century Gardens a man offers me

beans from an unlabeled can. He was

bitten on the leg by an unleashed dog

and chased into the park by police.

Concealed behind a bench and a

juniper bush, each donated by the

Devonian Group, we leave him sitting

in darkness atop the Brutalist landscape.

 

Later that year a decentralized dance-

party develops in Century Gardens,

culminating down the road under the

spotlights of Millennium Skate Park.

Despite the armed chaperones, shouts

emanate from a parking lot around

the corner at Mewatta Armoury. I try

to tell a girl she doesn’t have to go with

the guy gripping her by the shoulders.

 

Public gardens in Calgary are closed

from 11 pm until 5 in the morning.

When cops caught us hallucinating

after midnight in South Glenmore Park

(you in my driver’s seat, our drugs

on the passenger floor), they left

us with grins and a warning.

We were two blocks from where

I taught you how to drive a stick-shift.

 

After ditching my red Ford Ranger in

the grafittied enclosure for road debris,

we climb the dam on Elbow River. A

glassy reservoir reflects streetlamps

to the West as the artificial cliffs arc

down in the East. The capacity of these

sloping concrete channels have been

exceeded but twice, causing damage

to the riverfront properties.

 

All the black squirrels in Prince’s Island Park

will follow you along a path at dawn.

It must be a cold summer’s day

before cyclists and yoga seminars

arrive to claim the green-space.

Watch deer and geese retreat downriver

from a window of the Route 3 bus,

I’ll greet you soon in Votier’s Flats

with a cold 6-pack of beer.

 

these words by Kyle Flemmer were inspired by the art of Allison Gildersleeve