Definition

I have been asked to define my terms. What exactly do I mean by joy? Why this word?

What are it’s problems? It’s limits?

The dictionary can say one thing, as can our cultures and disciplines about how a word is used and what it means when uttered in different ways by different people for different purposes.

Is joy really that different from happiness and if so how? Is joy not just another attempt to individualize and commodify people’s desire to feel good and to be well? The Happiness industry 2.0. Or the self-care and mindfulness trend under a different guise.

Dictionary entries lead you from one word to another as sets of synonyms explain one another.

So there is what I mean when I use a word as much as what a word technically means.

Our language can be imprecise and clumsy, especially when my experiences and expectations differ from someone else’s — which they always do, the degrees shifting what is shared and what is interpreted, where the gaps are, where awkwardness and miscommunication arise.

I think what matters a lot is our intention as we select a word — consciously or unconsciously. The way we live out and use the words matters as much as their uttering or writing. The evoke a certain thing but they also guide an intention, a purpose, a way of being in the world.

Lulu Miller is weary of words and naming. I am being asked to contend with some of her concerns. But mostly I find words useful and beautiful. I look up words in the dictionary for fun, I think about what to say at important moments with care. Words are also about culture, how we make sense of the world. Their specificity, their options allow us to play and to understand. I want the world to make sense, I want to read enough things that I can feel safe and okay in the chaos. Words help me put the world in terms I can deal with, that feel both manageable and joyous, as well as daunting and scary.

I am working on accepting that my singular experience of the world is both lonely and something that I don’t need to share with another person. I don’t have to be perfectly understood to connect or share community with someone. This ineffable Rhiness will never be shared by another person. It is kind and mine alone.

But there are lots of other things I can share. There is enough overlap between us, enough shared expectations and experiences that we form rich relationships and interactions.

Transcendence and pockets

I descend the hill and reach the threshold entering into one of my favourite places. The pavement leads me past planters and then to a crosswalk. Striding across the road I leave hardscaping behind and enter the park. These former hunting grounds are lush and green. In spring and summer the heather adds in purple.

As I climb further and further up the hill I start to feel more and more relaxed. The stress of grad school, my worries about finding a job and making a way in the world, and the drama of group projects melts away. I find a spot to sit and look out over the city.

It’s beautiful and peaceful here. I feel apart from my life, my troubles, I can almost relax. I don’t go often enough but when I do go it is the best part of my day.

Edinburgh had no shortage of viewpoints, hills that offer drama and views, transcendence as Ingrid Fetell Lee puts it in Joyful. While I am terrified of heights and Ferris wheels are my personal version of hell I do get the idea of wanting to have a view, the joy of being above.

I think about Nose Hill and Crescent Heights in Calgary, places where you can take it all in, survey the world below you. Or hiking atop a ridge line.

Perhaps prospect and refuge theory and something to say about this, why these places feel so special to us.

Reading “Transcendence” I also wonder about the need we feel to escape our lives and the places we’ve built. Planetary urbanism/urbanization would argue that there is nowhere that is actually untouched, even that ridgeline in a national park. I wonder about the insistence that we are apart from nature, rather than a part of it; that nature is somewhere else that we go to recover from our lives and the awful design of the places where we live our lives. What if our everyday included more of these qualities? What if our culture was less brutal and something that we didn’t need to go forest bathing to recover from being a part of? How would our the everyday landscapes we inhabit look different if we hustled less and meandered more?

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It's everywhere

I’ve been reading Austin Kleon’s books, one of my potentially unreasonable library acquisitions — some of you hoard toilet paper, I freaked out about stationary and books. I know I won’t get through all of these but I feel better knowing I have some options while I am stuck at home.

He talks a lot about the creative process and I share his down to earth, process focused approach. Creativity isn’t mystical, it’s getting up every day and doing a small chunk of work. I’ve broken Set Your Watch to Moscow Time into sections and find that much easier. I can finish one chapter or one section of a chapter. I can wrap my head around that. And it adds up.

I didn’t get much writing done when I was having a lot of trouble sleeping for a few months in the height of job search anxiety but I’m back to it and hoping to find twenty minutes a day to work on it. If I do that I could have a submittable draft by the end of my program. It’s fun once I get the momentum going and stop thinking about how daunting the publishing process is. I want to keep working on it because I want pieces of myself that aren’t my coursework. I want to connect with that other side of myself.

I also want to just finish this project once and for all. I want to finish it within a decade of taking the trip so that I can move onto other things.

For now it’s the perfect thing to work on because I’ve finished a few drafts and just need to do edits and fill in gaps. Other things are in the gathering stage. I’m collecting quotes, ideas, facts, research, inspiration from different places and putting them into folders with the hope of gathering them together eventually. I’m not there yet but I’m working on it. I’m being patient and knowing that the things I come across now will become the books I write over the next decade. The second, third, fourth, fifths that come after Set Your Watch to Moscow Time and the lessons I learn working on it.

As I seek out certain things and want to collect them I start to find them everywhere. One of my top studio choices has a book about metaphors and stories as a text it is built around. I am working on a book about otters that is based around a metaphor/simile. I have a word document that is just quotes about metaphors.

I’m also thinking a lot about joy. It’s related to one of the metaphors in the otter book and I’m thinking of focusing on it for my graduate project.

For the first time in years I feel really good. Six years ago I started to feel more and more anxious while riding my bike. I was about to start my MSc in Urban Strategies and Design and was really into active transit. I was also broke so I rode my bike because a monthly transit pass was too onerous of an expense. I went from being a timid but relatively intrepid cyclist to hunching on the sidewalk with my bike perched on it’s kickstand frozen and unable to continue. I steadily became less and less able to ride a bike. I moved to Scotland and avoided biking with the excuse that they drive on the other side of the road but really I didn’t think I could do it. I went to Copenhagen and didn’t rent a bike because I was sure it would just freak me out a lot.

It felt like I was losing pieces of myself and that my world was getting smaller and smaller. Mental health issues that had been running in the background started to take up more and more space. The first time I went to therapy was to talk about my cycling phobia. It only took four years of doing exposures on and off but I can ride a bike again. I’m not worried about freaking out. I don’t spend more time walking my bike than riding it. Being on a bike and having it be a pleasant experience is a really simple thing unless you’ve spent four years working at being able to do it. Then it’s a big accomplishment. I am trying to enjoy being able to do this thing again, trying to relish the rewards of my work.

There are other ways my life is getting bigger too. Since being diagnosed with ADHD things that used to be overwhelming feel more manageable. I’m dealing with my to deal with folders instead of shoving things places because I have no idea how to cope with them. I feel calmer. I am actually finishing some of my projects.

I want to spend eight months thinking about joy, thinking about the small things that really add up to a good life. These are the types of things that I think are the answer to the problems we face. Joy isn’t frivolous. It’s an anchor, a north star, it’s the best of us. Now that I am looking for joy I see it everywhere. In the Schitt’s Creek behind the scenes episode on CBC, in a child playing soccer with his father at UBC, in running my hands through the tips of tall grass. It’s the feeling of gliding along main mall under the shade of aging oak trees with the wind in my face, my legs propelling me forward and my mind being at peace.

I used to walk up to the Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh in search of some respite from the stress of group work and my program. While I sat there perched about the city I felt like the world melted away, like my troubles didn’t matter. I think that’s a big part of what drew me to landscape in the first place.

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A blessing for the new semester

In the style of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text — an awesome podcast y’all should go out and listen to — I present a blessing for the new semester.

May your computer work. May your software not be glitchy. May the plotters smile upon you and be cooperative. 

May you have time for breaks, for rest, for meandering, for loitering, to pause, to wander, to get lost, to try things out.

May you be rewarded for your effort as much as your execution.

May you enjoy these moments. May you think I get to about this endless work on occasion in place of I have to.

May you remember why you wanted to do this.

May you lean into the discomfort of not knowing how to do it, of being a beginner, of learning. May I replace hesitation and research with diving in.

May you enjoy this time in this place with these people for there will be so little of it. As the song goes the years have seemed short by the days go slowly by.

May you remember this feeling of possibility and excitement at the midterm review when you mostly just want to sleep.

May it be a good semester, a good year.  

I pause to welcome a new beginning and reconnect with how I felt upon arriving at SALA a year ago.

Welcome back.

Point Grey Foreshore: Past presents and imagined futures

The maps I made for my presentation yesterday on my site at the Point Grey Foreshore near Kits Beach. The first is the indigenous use of the site pre-colonialism, then the street grid, lot lines and buildings. Next is flood predictions for climate change.

I have three artifacts

1.

A dashed line on a map representing what was here before Europeans arrived.

A trail that was compacted by the repeated passage of human feet. It was selected based on topography, the condition of the land and the needs of those passing through.

It was a trail selected by the desires and instincts of humans rather than the needs of commodification and measurement. It was collectively accessible and enjoyed.

2.

Second, the present through a more recent past, a colonial past, embedded in the shape that our streets, sidewalks and buildings take. A past that is inescapable in Vancouver and defines the form the trail takes today.

This is land that was parceled off. Right angles replaced the desire line. It was to be bought and sold, owned by individuals rather than something that was for all of us.

3.

A map prepared by the City of Vancouver about the future. It accesses flood risk due to climate change up to 2100.

It tells me that the foreshore and trail will be radically different in eighty years. Flooding will be far more frequent.

The trail and other areas making up our valuable public waterfront are under shapes telling me that more and more often they will be inundated until they are ultimately submerged.

Assuming nothing changes in their design and elevation.

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1.

First, this is a map from Visual History of Vancouver by Bruce MacDonald. It was published in 1992 and predates much of the mapping technology we use today. I accessed it online as an e-book rather than as a physical object. The map is less precise than the other two. I don’t know how much to trust the exact locations of the shoreline and trail but I’ll take his word for it.

In laying the trail over maps from today I am surprised to find that it is further back than I’d imagined it would be. Without the roads and form of today’s city it’s hard to place the features depicted by the map.

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During the time between when the glacier receded at the end of last ice age, leaving behind it the stunning landscape of the Burrard Inlet, and when European settlers arrived, Vancouver was home to the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Berelowitz, 2005).

They did not live on this site but there were waterfront villages in what is today False Creek. A notable one was at the current location of Granville Island (MacDonald, 1992).

This trail would have been a connector for those living in nearby villages as well as passing through the region.

It was selected and marked by the movement of feet passing along it, compacting the ground and restricting the growth of vegetation. Selected not by the lines of the grid but by the conditions of the landscape and what route made the most sense.

 

The trail and the land around it would have been collectively held. The UBC Indigenous Foundation writes, “Most First Nations did not believe that pieces of land could or should be owned by individuals—humans, along with all other living beings, belonged to the land. The land provided for humans, and in turn, humans bore a responsibility to respect and care for it. Many Aboriginal peoples understand this as a reciprocal relationship with the land. European settlers arriving in North America brought with them concepts of private property ownership, and the notion that humans could, and should, own land” (2009).

 

Vancouver is a heavily gridded city. Straight lines and right angles abound. They were a great way to buy and sell, to commodify and trade land.

In City on a Grid, a history of New York’s grid, Gerrard Koeppel writes, “The grid favours private interest over public convenience. The right angle values its interior space. Diagonal or nonlinear routes – dirt footpaths through an empty lot, curvilinear forms traversing natural topography – celebrate public space, the civic interest” (2015, xv).

 

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What we now think of as Vancouver, the street grid and lot lines, were created by imperial acts of measurement. The forest and waterfront were measured and divided using a device known as the chain. 66 feet or 20m long, the length and depth of blocks as well as the width of streets was derived from this unit of measurement (Berelowitz, 2005).

 

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In Dream City Lance Berelowitz writes, “The streets devised by the Royal Engineers and CPY surveyors was a highly effective, if somewhat crude way of subdividing raw land. It reflected the unsentimental military mindset of the British colonial imperative. Variations of it had worked across the Empire, wherever the British had set up shop in new territory. What it lacked in grace or sublety it more than made up for, in its authors’ minds at least, in its promise of commercial efficiency” (2005, 60)

 

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This act of surveying was largely an act of obliteration. Of forests, of trails, of past ways of using and accessing land.

There are a few remnants that break the grid.

Kingsway is a prominent example. It was the original trail used by indigenous folks that followed the “ridge line of the hilly landscape” from East Van to New West (Villagomez, 2008). It was retained and incorporated into our streets.

 

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2.

 

This recording is taken at one of the spots where the historic foot trail crosses with a place that is publicly accessible. Mostly it runs through lots and buildings but in this spot it intersects with a road and sidewalk, somewhere I can go without trespassing. Somewhere I can sit for a while and not be asked to leave.

 

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This spot is less peaceful than the trail. The sound of vehicle traffic is loud and noticeable. I can also hear people running and jogging. Their feet pad against the smooth and solid sidewalk. I can only hear the texture if someone is dragging their feet. I can also hear bikes and the rustling of the wind.

 

4.

 

My second artifact is a Google Maps satellite image embodying the condition of the site today and with it the street grid, lot lines and buildings that are a product of colonial surveying (Google Maps, 2019).

 

One of the waterfront homes on Point Grey Road recently sold for $12,300,000. Another further west on Point Grey Road sold for $17,800,000 (Zealty, 2019).

I cannot enter these yards, these homes. They are worth a great deal. They are a roaring success if your goal is to commodify land.

 

The map is finer and more precise than the previous map. I can zoom in and out. I can see many details of the site including the condition of the rocky natural beach and how it appears in the water. For me it encapsulates the changing nature of my site, the coming and going of tides, better than other current maps.

 

The first map recording the precolonial condition of my site reflects the tidal nature of the waterfront. It uses a separate colour to mark an area that would be shifting and changing. The satellite image doesn’t do this but does show the water, the path and the foreshore in a way others do not (Google Maps, 2019; MacDonald, 1992).

 

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5.

The only thing we can be certain of is change. We especially live in an era of rapid change and chaos. Our world is burning and there is an opportunity to critically rethink the way we have built our societies and the world around us.

My third and final artifact speaks to the future. It was prepared for the City of Vancouver by Northwest Hydraulic Consultants in 2014 to access future flood risks to 2100. A 1m sea level rise is predicted.

I personally think that’s a bit conservative but for the purposes of this assignment I’ll go with it.

 

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I have a final recoding taken from the bench closest to the east end of the trail.

 

The trail and beach have an uncertain future that includes increased frequency of floods and erosion. In the future, if nothing changes these spaces could become inaccessible. As the water rises less and less of the foreshore will be accessible to humans. The trail will face the risk of erosion and damage during flooding and king tides.

 

It’s still not accessible, another choice, another problem.

 

Perhaps if we claim some of the space currently occupied by those expensive homes, we could build an accessible and resilient place. Perhaps.

 

We are in the midst of a housing and climate crisis. There are costs to the choices we have made. All this individualism is hurting us and it’s hurting the planet. We need each other.  We need our public spaces. We can’t go back but we are in a moment where we can make new choices about how the future unfolds.

 

The trail we have now isn’t the same as it was but it’s still there. It feels different than the road and sidewalk where I sat to make my recording.

 

For now, I love this space. I am drawn to it. I would add my voice to the assorted calls saying that this is a place worth preserving. The decision not to do something is as powerful as the decision to do it. We can learn from the problems created by past decisions and do something different. We must.

It feels nice to be there. It fills a need I have as a human and it fills a need lots of others have too. To gather, to be around vegetation, to listen to the sound of waves rolling in, to experience surprise, wonder, joy and rest. These things can’t be monetized but they are vital and we need them.

There is beauty in those dashed lines.

Bibliography

 

Berelowitz, Lance (2005) Dream City. D&M Publishers Incorporated.

City of Vancouver (2014) Coastal flood risk assessment Burrard Inlet flood depts not including freeboard: Scenario 3 - Year 2100, SLR 1M probability of 1/500. Vancouver.

City of Vancouver (2019) VanMapp. https://vanmapp.vancouver.ca/pubvanmap_net/default.aspx [Accessed 2019.08]

Google Maps (2019) Google Maps. https://www.google.com/maps [Accessed 2019.08]

Koepell, Gerard (2015) City on a grid: How New York became New York. Da Capo Press.

MacDonald, Bruce (1992) Vancouver: A Visual History. Talonbooks.

Indigenous Foundations UBC (2009) Aboriginal title in Indigenous Foundations. https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/aboriginal_title/ [Accessed 2019.07.30]

Villagomez, Erick (2008) Vancouver’s deviant grids in Spacing. May 26. http://spacing.ca/vancouver/2008/05/26/vancouvers-deviant-grids/ [Accessed: 2019.07.30]

Zealty (2019) BC Real Estate Map in zealty.ca. https://www.zealty.ca/map.html [Accessed 2019.07.21]

Lollygaggle + meander

I’ve been thinking about rest a lot lately, as one does in this day and age.

One of the things I wonder about, though I do this less than I did first semester, is whether or not there is a place for me in design, at SALA, in landscape.

If I can’t give and give, if my body can’t take the strain and demands of a brutal educational pedagogy and design culture then what am I doing here? Do I belong in this field? Will people make space for me? Will I be able to make space for myself?

How do I deal with the demands of a program that often expects enormous sacrifices of physical and mental well-being in order to complete work on time and to the expected standard.

I have been looking at yoga classes, dance class, adult swim classes at UBC. They seem fun. They’re the type of thing I’d love to do, but I probably don’t have time for them.

My life for the next two years is SALA, is keeping up with the demands of my program.

First semester when we were overwhelmed and struggling with the work load we were told to manage our time as though a lack of organization was the issue at hand rather than the fact that it took me a long time to do basic things quite badly. I was a beginner, slow, clumsy, clueless. Instead of being told that it was hard and it took time to get faster I was told to manage my time.

This cut into time for sleep, self-care. Happiness.

It’s a problem in grad school in general but it seems like the culture of design is particularly brutal.

Which brings me to rest.

I learn better when I’m not scrambling to just finish my work but when I have time to make mistakes and meander, when I get to see my friends and take breaks.

My goal for school is to figure out what work has to be done and do it as quickly and seamlessly as possible. There will never be enough time so I minimize what else is in my life.

I was listening to On Being with Krista Tippet and she interviewed Ross Gay who thinks a lot about delight. He reads out:

Even though I subtly dosed in the late afternoon sun pouring under the awning the two bucks spent protects me, at least temporarily, from the designation of loiterer. Though the dosing, if done long enough or ostentatiously enough or with enough delight, might transgress me over.

The Webster’s definition of loiter reads thus, “To stand or wait around idly without apparent purpose and to travel indolently with frequent pauses.”

Among the synonyms for this behavior are linger, loaf, laze, lounge, lollygaggle, dawdle, amble, saunter, meander, puddle, dillydally and mosey.

Any one of these words in the wrong frame of mind might be considered critique or noun epithet Lollygagger or Loafer.

These words instead of being desirable or nice or pleasant are insults. If you do these things you are a problem.

All of these words to me imply having a nice day, they imply having the best day.

They also imply being unproductive, which leads to being even if only temporarily non-consumptive.

Delight ties in directly with rest.

You’re in a bit of non-productive delight, heads up.

Which points to another of the synonyms for loitering, which I almost wrote as delight, taking ones time.

For while the previous list of synonyms alude to time, taking one’s time makes it plain.

For the crime of loitering, the idea of it is about ownership of one’s own time, which must be sometimes wrestled from the assumed owners of it who are not you, to the rightful who is

In a world where we must always be on, where we must always be making ourselves useful, getting something done pausing and resting and doing nothing doesn’t get the space it needs.

I don’t need to manage my time better. I need breaks and rest. I need to meander and lollygag. I need a society that values those things more.