Mobius Collective North
pecha kucha. whitehorse 2010
Kirsten
hard is difficult
#1 I am exactly the same as when I was 12 years old. I don’t think anything of much importance has changed. I am still scared of the same things. I am still brave in the same ways.
I am going to try and talk about shyness and about openness and about learning to be brave, and show some very disjointed pictures I’ve taken.
#2 I took this picture on a bus in San Francisco last month. It kind sums up my approach to most social occasions, if not life. I told my friend Jocylyn that I was going to talk about shyness tonight. She said, “I don’t think you are shy. I think you reserve yourself for the moments that are meaningful.” She is both right and wrong.
#3 I like taking pictures of words. Words kinda save my life all the time. I met someone new this spring. I introduced him to my mother over dinner at a restaurant. When I went to the bathroom, she told him – apparently, with pride – that as a kid, I once read 40 books in a month. She told him I gave myself tendonitis from holding books.
#4 Why would she say this? This information might send a reasonable person running. On the other hand, she might be getting to the most important thing about me. I think my biggest life accomplishment is hidden somewhere in all the books I’ve read, and it will never mean anything important to anyone but me.
#5 This is a photo I took of Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Paris. Oscar Wilde wrote:
What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true.
#6 This is the Idiot Restaurant in St. Petersburg, Russia. I haven’t read The Idiot, but I googled it the other day. In a description like a Hollywood movie trailer, Google said Dostoyevsky wrote it to show that: in a world obsessed with money, power, and sexual conquest, a sanatorium is the only place for a saint.
#7 I took this picture in Alabama because it reminded me of one of my favorite Lewis Carrol poems. The Walrus and the Carpenter take a bunch of oysters for a walk and it doesn’t turn out well for the oysters. "It seems a shame," the Walrus said, "To play them such a trick, After we've brought them out so far, And made them trot so quick!" The Carpenter said nothing but "The butter's spread too thick!"
#8 I took this photo in a bathroom at a hospital in Vancouver. I love passive aggressive workplace notes. I think about the person who has to clean up this mess.
#9 I took this photo in Haines, Alaska, a couple of weeks ago. This guy’s name is Kev-gina. I can’t get that word out of my head. I watched Kev-gina for a long time. I saw him chatting up some women. It was working. Someone named Kev-gina can maybe even get laid.
#10 There are words on this packaging, but I can’t read them. I don’t need to read them to love this. I think that insane rabbit says more than words could ever say. I think these pappadums will taste good.
#11 I like extremes. I think that’s partly why I live in the Yukon. But I don’t know if we can ever bring back sanity. I took this photo in Florida. I would like to go back there and see if they got sanity back. But I doubt it.
#12 I took this picture at a gallery in Helsinki. When I first decided not to be too scared to write in public, I signed up to take a creative writing course at Yukon College. I felt scared to write and read in front of a bunch of half-strangers, Yukon government employees even, the way it is here. But then for our first non-fiction assignment, I wrote about my first blow job.
#13 I described it like this: I closed my eyes and attempted the procedure, moving my mouth up and down, feeling ridiculous and somehow solicitous, like a lifeguard coaxing life from a drowned swimmer. The image in my head was of a robin tugging a wriggling earthworm from the grass.
I shocked myself by writing about that. My friend Jack says I do things like that as an act of overcompensation, that it’s my way of broaching the wall between me and the world.
#14 These people are sunbathing in St. Petersburg, Russia. This photo was taken by me in April. It was cold and windy everywhere except along this wall. I want to be one of those people but I’m not sure I could be.
#15 This is a picture of me at my first public reading. I am reading a story I wrote. This picture is at the Banff Centre. Lisa Moore and Wayson Choy were in the audience. I was dying to get through. I think there were about 2 or 3 seconds when I wasn’t dying.
#16 The story I read at Banff was about love. This is a real moment that happened. I took this picture, in my father’s kitchen, many years ago. I always thought it had to mean something. I don’t know how to keep my heart from being broken. But I am trying to get braver.
#17 I’m getting better at letting awkwardness happen. And I’m getting better at speaking the truth out loud. I am getting better at seeing things, at noticing the moments that are meaningful, and maybe eventually, better at writing them down.
#18 This is a slug and a carrot on a rainy Vancouver street. How did they find each other?
#19 I took this photo in Northern California last month. There is clearly not enough going on in the woods. I am leaving the Yukon soon. I am moving to Fayetteville, Arkansas, two months from now. I am going to spend more time writing there, in what is right now to me the imaginary Ozark mountains.
#20 I am scared to leave Whitehorse. I think my inner self is getting closer to the surface here. I think I am finally turning into myself for more hours in a day and in front of more people. I am scared to leave Whitehorse. But I am going to try to take myself with me.
I am going to try and talk about shyness and about openness and about learning to be brave, and show some very disjointed pictures I’ve taken.
#2 I took this picture on a bus in San Francisco last month. It kind sums up my approach to most social occasions, if not life. I told my friend Jocylyn that I was going to talk about shyness tonight. She said, “I don’t think you are shy. I think you reserve yourself for the moments that are meaningful.” She is both right and wrong.
#3 I like taking pictures of words. Words kinda save my life all the time. I met someone new this spring. I introduced him to my mother over dinner at a restaurant. When I went to the bathroom, she told him – apparently, with pride – that as a kid, I once read 40 books in a month. She told him I gave myself tendonitis from holding books.
#4 Why would she say this? This information might send a reasonable person running. On the other hand, she might be getting to the most important thing about me. I think my biggest life accomplishment is hidden somewhere in all the books I’ve read, and it will never mean anything important to anyone but me.
#5 This is a photo I took of Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Paris. Oscar Wilde wrote:
What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true.
#6 This is the Idiot Restaurant in St. Petersburg, Russia. I haven’t read The Idiot, but I googled it the other day. In a description like a Hollywood movie trailer, Google said Dostoyevsky wrote it to show that: in a world obsessed with money, power, and sexual conquest, a sanatorium is the only place for a saint.
#7 I took this picture in Alabama because it reminded me of one of my favorite Lewis Carrol poems. The Walrus and the Carpenter take a bunch of oysters for a walk and it doesn’t turn out well for the oysters. "It seems a shame," the Walrus said, "To play them such a trick, After we've brought them out so far, And made them trot so quick!" The Carpenter said nothing but "The butter's spread too thick!"
#8 I took this photo in a bathroom at a hospital in Vancouver. I love passive aggressive workplace notes. I think about the person who has to clean up this mess.
#9 I took this photo in Haines, Alaska, a couple of weeks ago. This guy’s name is Kev-gina. I can’t get that word out of my head. I watched Kev-gina for a long time. I saw him chatting up some women. It was working. Someone named Kev-gina can maybe even get laid.
#10 There are words on this packaging, but I can’t read them. I don’t need to read them to love this. I think that insane rabbit says more than words could ever say. I think these pappadums will taste good.
#11 I like extremes. I think that’s partly why I live in the Yukon. But I don’t know if we can ever bring back sanity. I took this photo in Florida. I would like to go back there and see if they got sanity back. But I doubt it.
#12 I took this picture at a gallery in Helsinki. When I first decided not to be too scared to write in public, I signed up to take a creative writing course at Yukon College. I felt scared to write and read in front of a bunch of half-strangers, Yukon government employees even, the way it is here. But then for our first non-fiction assignment, I wrote about my first blow job.
#13 I described it like this: I closed my eyes and attempted the procedure, moving my mouth up and down, feeling ridiculous and somehow solicitous, like a lifeguard coaxing life from a drowned swimmer. The image in my head was of a robin tugging a wriggling earthworm from the grass.
I shocked myself by writing about that. My friend Jack says I do things like that as an act of overcompensation, that it’s my way of broaching the wall between me and the world.
#14 These people are sunbathing in St. Petersburg, Russia. This photo was taken by me in April. It was cold and windy everywhere except along this wall. I want to be one of those people but I’m not sure I could be.
#15 This is a picture of me at my first public reading. I am reading a story I wrote. This picture is at the Banff Centre. Lisa Moore and Wayson Choy were in the audience. I was dying to get through. I think there were about 2 or 3 seconds when I wasn’t dying.
#16 The story I read at Banff was about love. This is a real moment that happened. I took this picture, in my father’s kitchen, many years ago. I always thought it had to mean something. I don’t know how to keep my heart from being broken. But I am trying to get braver.
#17 I’m getting better at letting awkwardness happen. And I’m getting better at speaking the truth out loud. I am getting better at seeing things, at noticing the moments that are meaningful, and maybe eventually, better at writing them down.
#18 This is a slug and a carrot on a rainy Vancouver street. How did they find each other?
#19 I took this photo in Northern California last month. There is clearly not enough going on in the woods. I am leaving the Yukon soon. I am moving to Fayetteville, Arkansas, two months from now. I am going to spend more time writing there, in what is right now to me the imaginary Ozark mountains.
#20 I am scared to leave Whitehorse. I think my inner self is getting closer to the surface here. I think I am finally turning into myself for more hours in a day and in front of more people. I am scared to leave Whitehorse. But I am going to try to take myself with me.
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