eventually,
you can't help but feel that most things are wrong.
and that nothing is very helpful.
things are loud, and go over and over.
nothing ever establishes any direction
and everyone is a fool.
the way an old talk-show host looks at a young guest,
- so, you also sing songs too.
good stuff. ok
that's a feeling that can make you desire
slow, quiet things.
things that work well, without any attention.
things that will still just be there
hangin' out for basically ever
just bein a real thing.
i mean,
is there anything more
than water,
just going on?
down - i guess?
You tell me a bird migrates to africa and i think good for that prick bird.
but this water is going to the ocean?
Hilarious.
Get the fuck out - it's water!
That makes no sense.
whenever you go to go to Niagara Falls,
you will always hear a child ask
... where does
the water come from?
parents are good people.
they have a hard job.
they are never ready.
they piece together distant thoughts -
I admire parents. Parents are basically doing improv.
Jack Chambers was a painter in London Ontario.
At 38 he was diagnosed with leukemia,
and he realized it would kill him,
he painted the hospital, by the highway
where he was born and would die.
he said -
"the object appears in the splendour of its essential namelessness"
which is actually what the parents should say to their children,
when they ask them about the water.
they are asking how the water is planned -
- how it is managed -
and it's not.
and that is a hard feeling.
go breathless pointing out hippocracies,
think about sex constantly or never.
read 100 books -
The water has been here the whole time.
It could not give less of a shit.
all our books are stupid-
get get good at things, or don't.
We're not part of what's going on.
I wish we were.
We're not.
maybe niagara falls is not a trip i'd recommend.
I took a tour of a landfill in my 20s,
this remains maybe the best thing that I’ve ever done.
i left that place absolutely *buzzing*
- like a poet in love.
my understanding of the world clicked into place,
and it never does that.
we are putting things
into a huge pile.
it's fucking hilarious.
it's like a cartoon.
that's what all the adults do.
that's what the serious people
and the government decided to do.
we really are goofs.
we're like teenagers,
you can't stay upset with us.
we're actually nuts.
bike up to a landfill,
watch a truck pull up,
dump things onto the pile
and drive away.
fuck man.
likewise,
a watershed
sounds like you're about to complain about something,
which is too bad.
because a watershed is a serious and cool concept.
On NFB there's an old children's film called Paddle to the Sea,
where they put a toy boat in Lake superior,
and then watch it flow through the Great Lakes.
it's a good watch,
it's also totally fake.
water in Lake Superior takes decades
to reach the St Lawrence.
actually, nobody really knows how many decades
a bunch of decades.
it takes a hilarious amount of time.
the water is goofing around the whole time.
the vertical-drop between Superior and Erie is a few feet - a small set of stairs.
it takes the water 30 years or more
it's sloshin-around the whole time.
you can't film that.
if Ontario was in Europe,
guys would have written poetry about Lake Huron
and you'd get made fun of,
when you forgot which way it flowed.
it's nice that in Ontario, that you can forget.
the best part, actually is a few minutes after niagara falls.
or maybe before it
actually, maybe I would recommend niagara falls.
be prepared, though.
hudson's bay
mississippi
st lawrence
- ignore water pollution,
for a sec.
we live short lives,
- and we should try and hold one beautiful thought -
and someone's always talking about pollution.
sometimes,
having a good sense of things,
means not listening to people
for a second
and we should teach kids how to tune us all out.
because it's just going on-
Watersheds are like prime numbers -
you can ignore them completely,
and they mean nothing,
until you stumble upon them, while deep in thought.
then you're like - ohhhhhh -
watersheds.
that's cool shit
one thing that helped me understand the great lakes,
was reading about penetanguishene road
in red:
this was one of the first long roads, ever in Canada.
it was cleared manually by teams of oxen,
- pulling trees out by force, all winter.
which seems like a lot of work.
remember that in 1812, Canada and America were fully at war.
- and Chicago would cannon-bomb you.
Today this shortcut exists, and is very boring,
it is called the Trent-Severn Waterway.
it's considered boring, even for retirees.
some of the locks are just operated by a pickup truck with a chain.
you can actually do this -
which I had no idea about,
until I saw the Great Loop Cruising website:
I'd love to do it,
but know I never will.
It takes a full year.
if you did that though,
would you get it?
- like, ah yes, the flow of the water. ah yes.
yes, i know.