Art is everywhere, if you choose to look.
Lately, as the weather becomes a slightly more pleasurable each day, I am taking the opportunity to get back out on the streets of Toronto to observe what really happens here.
Last Thursday, on the way to an appointment, I was fortunate to notice something I had never seen before.
Just about any day you’ll find Ross Ward hunched over on Yonge Street tending to his art. The ‘Birdman of Toronto’ has been a fixture on these streets in various locations for well over a decade, and during each day he crafts, and sells, palm-sized birds.
Once only a hobby — this is now more than whittling — Ward carves out shapes of common birds from reclaimed wood. There is always a piece in progress, and always a small flock for sale on his concrete workspace.
Perhaps in our day-to-day journeys, we don’t look close enough at all the people. We don’t often observe enough to see art just happening here and there on our landscape. I’ve wandered this street how many times and only last week did I notice the man. I saw him again on the weekend.
Appreciating the beauty of his work, I bought a bird as a gift for someone . . . or maybe a souvenir for myself to one day remember my time in this city.
Couldn’t we all use more memorable hand-made art?
Perception
One more sentence, one more thought, one more
photograph, to seal the day, to put it all away for
a night. A restless night,
a night where I will struggle, I will not rest
not now, so again I am back to
one more word, one more sentence, one more
chapter. Ideas, bought and paid for, with everything
that I possess and all I do not have.
Credit then,
paid now, for what may be enjoyed later.
I am all over the place. If mindful, it is now more of
being hyper-aware. For should a minute go by, and
I miss a sound that may make all the difference, I will
perhaps spend a lifetime attempting to
capture that moment, and the one before.
One more idea, one more opportunity, one more
sentence. I think, at times, what keeps me awake
is the thought or image of what needs to be done.
It might be words, or a landscape, for one
often needs the other
to be fully complete, or
presented as I see them. I need to feel more.
I want to make my thoughts count. Perception. A
certain type of beauty, that, for some, may be rough
or disturbing, yet that, in itself, is a wonder that
keeps me awake, and will not rest, as I should. But can’t.
Insomnia: the word itself is dirty,
tarnished with realizations of what
happened, or will and might. I choose not to succumb
to a chronic belief that sleep alone will cure a life, but
instead decide to find the bounty within my darkness,
to make it come alive.
Should I find sleeplessness, I
will discover the challenge in this vulnerability, taking
the time, one more time, to reclaim it as mine with
one more chance, one more breath, one more
taste.
To seek out beauty, is to find it.
To continue looking is to find it again.
So while you sleep, or when you wake, come join me.
Be drawn, like gravity, to sidewalk shadows only neon
can know, nostalgic music screaming from passing
cars, and the silent click of my camera, or my voice.
The wind will whisper,
its drunken breath oozing the sensual scent of autumn,
subsidizing the nocturnal opus. Aided and abetted
by the din of sleepless traffic, the vacant streetcar is
a solo cello sustaining the deft melody.
The struggle of sleep is a physical need,
it robs you of thought, fills you with greed
for one more photograph, one more sentence, one more
kiss.
© 2015 j.g. lewis