The Poetics of Resistance: Myths of India and Freedom

"Let us arm every song with dreams, in the time of war..." written by Kabir Kala Manch, in support of all artists silenced by imprisonment, poverty and ignorance in India and throughout the World

"Watch carefully,
Poetry burns quickly
Spreading like a forest fire.
Watch more carefully,
Poetry can stir people..."

excerpt from Telugu resistance poet, Varavara Rao, written while in solitary confinement in Secunderabad Jail 1985-89 - republished in Towards a New Dawn

Poetic practice, as a creative tradition in the life of a poet, opens the doorway to perennial creativity through which one may pass towards great, unseen and yet mysteriously innate gifts of passion and truth, gifts of fulfillment and love. SoJourn(al) is truly and essentially about one affirmation, that it is RIGHT to dream and that Dreaming is a Universal Right of not only humans, but of all beings. In the technocratic & plutocratic society of demonic habitual tendencies, towards the mechanization of action, thought and identity, the human qualities of patience, wisdom and devotion are best revealed in the outrageously uncommercial activity of pure poetic invention. Yet, as in the base & fleshly example of sleep, still the metaphor endures, let sleep sleep & dream dream! 

Become dream while the dream is dreamt & known & felt & seen & causing one to rise with the memory of desire & unrest, that the earthly facade of waking is insufficient to fulfill the ecstasy of creative imagination and the waning birth of intuitive creativity, instinctual and whole. Living & ecological self-awareness is the birthright of each human being, as a holistic affirmation attuned to the entire life of all creation, and including all of Earth, in one breath, where especially clear today, as in the interconnected & interdependent worldly techno-communing of peoples globally careers through timeless instantaneity. 

So, each and every life is equally without circumference as with omnipotent centre, as it has been throughout time. In the archaic sphere of psychic knowledge accessed through inborn trust and the sacred flesh of entheogenic presence, all are to be encouraged and passed through the body of the dreamer. Eyeless and seen through self-enacted visions of trust in the inward journeying of mind as matter, experience is simply the wave-form space of sensation in the subtle & internal creative nature of all manifest and unmanifest. The dreamer embraces the nameless mystery of sound & light in its pure & transcendent non-duality of formless emptiness, still forming the pathless direction of each individual stepping on self-made ground. In Algonquin, Sakahàn, to light a fire. 

Continue reading SoJourn(al) for an upcoming article with Unsettling America on the work of Japanese-Samoan artist Shigeyuki Kihara, currently showing artwork at the National Gallery of Canada's "Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art" exhibition, "Fa'aFafine: In a Manner of a Woman" co-written by the Dream Author with Vi An Diep, who shares perspectives on immigrant narratives in relation to indigenous art, theatre-music composition and notes on life as lived by a wildly independent, self-sustaining and vibrant artist of sound, art and love. 

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Emerging from the subterranean byways and thoroughfares of New York, City of Time and Sleepless Courage, Island of All That Is on the shores of America’s worldwide seduction and misplaced trust. The earth howls with tramcars funneling like the charnel trains that veer off and into the silent womb of industry. I walk, heavy with longing, through the unsteady street-side core.

Bird's Eye View of New York City and Environs by John Bachmann

A tidy man notices my ponderous walk, and gifts advice. “To the cafes and hearts,” he moans, irascible with derelict gravity. So, into the consumption I fade with stories of words, with the blank gush of pages unruffled by eyeing hands that stop and see. Yet, the nonplussed wires of change dissipate in the hammered trespass of independence and freedom. I, artist of days and nights spent afraid of death, linger in wallowing holes of unmentionable fortuity as the stares of reason and being break open the head of belonging.

Portrait of artist Karnakoski by Aalto, Ilmari

I cower, defeated into the dark, abysmal aftermath of slavery. The unwelcoming hordes brush past through fissures of smiles and skeletal eyes that careen past my deepest trench. Wavering in the thinning light, I angle around a bent door. The quality of my flesh sinks and curdles with undiminished emotion, with unparalleled fear. I move my hand to the knob, and it opens to opacity, pitch as the darkest matter of universal night. And in I walk, careful to the point of careless.

Death's Door by William Blake

A soundless and gentle presence invites, lowering my knees to the imprisoned, peopled earth. I move with a silenced throaty pause of recognition. Before me sits an extended family of Cree and Blackfoot Canadian First Nations: a lost band of Indian people. Condemned to an underground home, they offer a homely cup of sweet-grass tea. At first sip, steeped in incredulity, my tongue quakes with repose. I speak. “Thank you, Creator.” They bow, and with an opened palm, reddened and browned by the ruddy dearth of light. An elderly woman offers a gift from the people, her smile and dress more brilliant than the gift of sunlight. She hands a wooden sculpture of an ancient elder, with eagle feathers, bundle and headdress, draped in the glory of the Buffalo.

The Indian in his Solitude by N.C. Wyeth

Emerging again from the subterranean underpass, like waking with the memory of a dream, once so displaced with sorrow, now right with order and mind. I eagerly and joyfully share the vision of a totem, materialized in the palm of my hand as a brilliant sculpture, as a wish-fulfilling boon of the People of the Creator. And above-ground, even in the lush awe of the sun, isolated fragments of individuals and nations bleed with the blood of the First People an ignorance, a deathly drowning from within. The soft, modest and lightweight presence of the wooden holy man is nothing to their clouding eyes, to their opaque suits and flushed skins. I am ignored, and so return, only to find the once-known Native shelter, bare of all humanity.

Cave Painting - Bhimbetika (India) - Jumping Horse by Nikhil2789

Alone, with totem in hand, do I rise again to stand in the midst of such delusional darkness as above-ground, in the sky of a damned and cruel society? The uncivilized wade in the laughter of innocence and fame. All the while, the First Peoples dive deeper into inhuman insanity, into eternal retreat in this night of eternal war, while the paradigms of hate move ashore with quickened pace, and the First Peoples burrow, entrenched ever more in the quicksand fate of a lowly paradox. And the wooden man cries, as my palm rests on the burying earth.  

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the forthcoming album "Evocations: district.Columbia" is an experimental narrative sound art exploration into the text of the collection, "district.Columbia" releasing the first single, "New America" to incite the forthcoming album on the inaugural day of Aboriginal Awareness Week in Canada is auspicious and serendipitous in its symbolic import as an album whose narrations were triggered by an inner voice of resistance while in Washington D.C. where I began to dedicate myself to the literary vocation in light of my own personal development in the commission of truth, as in the social justice of 9/11 and Truth and Reconciliation truth commissions addressing political and historical-religious misinformation.

my creative work is in keeping with a lifelong demonstration to voice silenced histories, in honour and recognition of the atrocities committed against first peoples of the land, whose history, while older and more enduring, while land-based and unfathomably rich, is snuffed out by the dominant settler narratives of media and education that continue to ride the oppressive waves of war, colonization and assimilation in the ongoing struggle for american freedom that continues to this day.

"Evocations: district.Columbia" is a sounding directly from the heart, unmediated by the delusional independence of exclusive american identity, for an end to the war on freedom



a narrative of resistance. re-writing the language of american history, to translate the poetics of protest into the harmony of life. here, "New America" is a sound art exploration on the theme of visioning an "exit strategy" in the war for America, in de-institutionalizing and reclaiming the name of the land through the act of breath and proclamation.

using two frame drums (16 & 14 inch diameters) i recall the great conundrum of american life through the sound of modern frame drumming techniques together with a evocation, vocal sounding, on the re-history of colonial ecology into an awareness of self and environment, recognizing, respecting and regarding the singular devastations of american disunity in the wake of 500 years of ongoing struggle.

resistance is often most deeply traversed by artists, creative voices, purified in the air of one new proclamation of independence yet to be heard apparent on the pages of dominant history, and it will not be written, but vocalized, orated, and beaten from the face of a drum.

The chapbook, "Realizing our OBJECTION" is a selection of the first five poems from the larger collection, "district.Columbia". These pieces are reflections on the initial invocation by Percy Bysshe Shelley from Queen Mab, which reads, "For when the power of imparting joy / Is equal to the will, the human soul / Requires no other heaven."

In the context of Realizing our OBJECTION, the meaning is that the artist essentially promulgates the DIY spirit of heartened resistance as the shared co-unity of meaning for all people who identify as "people" and not the maelstrom of mechanized and monetized identities that waver in the brush as the incendiary & violent pages of human history, aflame in the eye of the seer who rewrites self as the self of all kind. "Realizing our OBJECTION" is a critical literary effulgence of a truth, that to be human in today's world is the central coin of resistance art.

Realizing our OBJECTION by Rusty Kjarvik

The Value of People: Voices of Struggle and Creation in Western Canada

Crystal Lameman - Conference 2013 from Public Interest Alberta on Vimeo.

"Enbridge is so poor all they have is money." Wet'suwet'en hereditary Chief Na'Moks of the Tsayu (Beaver) Clan

"Living in an impacted community, in the frontlines of the Tar Sands, we get so caught up in our own issues that we forget about human beings, Indigenous people on a global level." Crystal Lameman of Beaver Lake Cree Nation on Treaty 6

The crowd cheered to the tune of ejecting the filthy rich from Calgary proper, the"most unequal city in the country" according to the University of Alberta’s Parkland Institute. Well over a hundred people crowded into a sold out hall at Parkdale United Church on a favorably tepid spring night. The beginning of the 11th Annual Public Interest Alberta Conference, “Fighting For Our Future: People Power versus Corporate Control” opened with investigative journalist Linda McQuaig, author of The Trouble with Billionaires. In a bygone era, the audience would have grabbed pitchforks on their way to Mount Royal Village.

McQuaig began by invoking the economic history of Canada. 1940-1980, also known as The Golden Age of Capitalism, when economic growth was widely shared, crystallized in the “social contract” to curb classist polarization through high taxes for social programs. “That’s the period of greatest economic growth in North America that we’ve ever had before or since,” said McQuaig. “Average income was doubling every twenty years.” The result was a society looking forward to increased leisure time.

Before tax cuts for the rich became an institutionalized affair, public wealth was palpable. “There was no trickle down,” McQuaig said referring to the propaganda of the 1% in favor of neoconservative economics. “In fact, there was a gushing upwards. All the income gains since 1980 have gone to the top ten percent, and particularly, of course, the top 1% and the top .01%.” Factoring in the inflation, the median income in Canada is lower than it was thirty years ago.

Where did leisure time go? The Conservative government of Canada has set the retirement age back two years. “That economic dividend went entirely to the top 10% and the top 1%, that’s where you’re leisure time has gone,” McQuaig pointed out assuredly. “Economic equality, the progress has been stopped dead in its tracks.” One solution is a wealth tax, especially in Alberta where the Heritage Fund is $16 billion in comparison to Norway’s at $700 billion. Federally, Canada saves exactly zero dollars for a rainy day.

Research on a “millionaires tax” by The Globe and Mail illustrated how a one percent wealth tax imposed in Canada by 2020 would cover all federal and provincial deficits. The Deloitte Centre for Financial Services projected the number of millionaires in Canada to rise to 2.5 million by 2020. Yet, in contrast to Linda McQuaig’s warning to Albertans that the rich will leave if a wealth tax is implemented effectively, what she did not warn is a far more sobering possibility. “But it’s easier to defer taxable income than to move,” Neil Reynolds wrote on October of 2011 in The Globe and Mail. “When you levy disproportionate taxes on the rich, you serve eviction notices on the poor.”

Referring to the income of the American sub-prime mortgage beneficiary John Paulson, “In what moral universe is that hedge fund manager worth 82,000 nurses, in what moral universe is he worth even one nurse?” McQuaig exclaimed to a bright wave of laughter and applause. “Today’s corporate elite and wealthy elite, has not only the power to wreak havoc on our lives, but to actually destroy the planet, because of the modern technology and the human capacity now for destruction.”

READ MORE (4580 words) @  Public Interest Alberta, The Media Co-op, IndyMedia & Readers Supported News

LEARN MORE @ Tar Sands Healing Walk

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“What’s that smell?” I could see his thoughts writhe like a cold snake. My bedded flesh, wrapped in fallen hair besmirching the unwashed blanket coiled around my nude body. Eyes went crooked. Noses were covered. I stepped barefoot over the austere, carpeted floor, civilly, in line. The teller remained a smile, famously in keeping with the workaday service kitsch of probable positive personality. My own face with mirrored emptiness. “Next.” I bloomed overfull, with gold coins. Prosperity is a mark of weight and valor.

Earthbound by Evelyn De Morgan

“Be stilled.” The Earth shrank under dim folds of burly disgust. The masculine prowess burrowed in the vainglorious poverty of inhuman disguise. Artifice and loss, nature spun with fire and bones fleshed with greed. Concrete paralysis, the wading gush of darkness floods this garden of hate. Alone, I scan the tramcar, brushing past the ire of misbegotten wards, floundering hands warmed in the blue flame of intimate ruin. Silence grounds, but for the rumbling dirge of the railway, clattering like a mad skeleton, of deadly fear. A ghastly presence, my reflection, I turn.

 Casella Rail Stuttgarter Platz by Otto Schmidt

Of large girth, unknown terror unseen, unheard, the unassuming weight of an unreal body: HER. A heavy-set African woman of eyes, sitting, a rock entrenched in my spectral pallor. Looking through staring eyes, the mutual end of oceanic reflection. Hitting through to rock bottom, as the ocean-floor seethes with the volcanic murder of all that rests atop the ground of life, I saw through to a fear; unknowing. There is a fear beyond the nerve, beyond the knock of bones, and the bristle of hair. I have seen her, and vanished before a breath.

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The album, "Evocations: Exotic Settlers" is an evocative musing on the sound language nestled deep within the poetic substance of orated selections from a collection of works under the same title. In continuity with the theme of "exotic settlers", the album is an experimental narrative-sound art exploration into the imagination of a journey of settlement, both archaic and modern.

Here, voice soundings are mixed with one instrument at a time, to convey a sense of the traveler, whose light pack is ideal for the road ahead, and whose voice traverses the simple grandeur of sonic revelry from a single instrumental accompaniment.

Themes of travel are juxtaposed with settlement, both in the settlement of tradition and ecology, and the inner and outer journey to that destination. To settle on one instrument at a time is a metaphor for the inward/outward experience of settlement for the migrant, who eventually becomes an "exotic settler".

Exotic Settlers charts the journey of experiencing the naturally transformative process of ending a period of transitional residence, and beginning to live in one place exclusively. Questions of home, travel and what is foreign are approached creatively through a lens adjusted through self-reflection on these themes, which led to my own "settlement" within. As I have become more permanently resident in a specific place, I have realized that earthly geography flows with the transient impermanence of nature itself, and that the only true settlement is in one's heart.

Exotic Settlers by Rusty Kjarvik

Sleepless Children of Dream: Composer Vi An Diep Invokes Taoist Grace

"When you sleep your angels stay awake my children

The bombs will kill and destroy

Guns will take my life

Midst the noise and chaos

I will sing this song during your last breaths on earth

Carry you to your next journey far away from this hell

Then I may die in peace"

Lullaby to Dying Children during the Vietnamese War by Vi An Diep

“Be careful what you water your dreams with. 

Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. 

Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. 

Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.” Lao Tzu

“Sometimes I feel like the elephant in the room,” says composer and musician Vi An Diep. She is one of more than 20 artists involved in creating Elephant Song, the newest work by Green Fools Theatre. The “pay what you can” all-ages shows will feature an elaborate set for life-sized hand, rod and shadow puppets. The centrepiece of the production features both live and electronic music by Diep, a local artist who immigrated to Calgary from Vietnam two decades ago. Elephant Song is inspired by Diep’s life story, and her music reflects the way humans relate to the natural world.

Writer and director Jennie Esdale has worked with Diep since 2005 (Dancing on Water) and says she always wanted to do a show with Diep as the centrepiece. The story follows two sisters separated during the fall of Saigon. Diep, a refugee, arrives in Canada and teaches herself to play the zither. Through her music, she conjures the life of her sister, raised in the jungles along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia. Rescued by an elephant, the sister embarks on a harrowing journey in search of a lost calf. Along the way, she saves as many elephants from the perils of modern dangers as she can.

The story mirrors the emotional bonds of an elephant family through a human story, and both share a common theme: displacement. “Elephants are like humans in that they form close bonds with their families,” says Esdale. The separation of two sisters by the strife of war is reflected in the devastation of an elephant family by illegal hunting. “Just like humans, when an elephant loses its family it forms a new family,” she adds. “Elephants share an emotional range close to humans — the audience can relate to the elephants through the human element.”

Before writing Elephant Song, Esdale travelled to Chang Mai, Thailand, eventually meeting a woman with land that’s dedicated to an elephant sanctuary. Inspired by this activism,Elephant Song takes place along the Mekong River in Thailand and Vietnam, which is part of the natural habitat for Asian elephants.

The play openly addresses the role of humans in elephant endangerment. Actor and puppeteer Nicola Elson, together with the Calgary Zoo, will provide opportunities for audiences to become involved in elephant conservation.

“The artists can represent the work of the people on the ground, the conservationists and scientists, but at the end of the day we are not the foot soldiers,” says Dean Bareham, actor and set designer. “There are a lot of people who don’t like zoos, but the fact is that zoos actually do a lot to conserve endangered species.”

Elephant Song delves deeply into the emotional landscape of both the human and elephant characters. Set design, supported by music and mise-en-scène, is crafted with an appreciation for the fascinating visual and aural communications that elephants use, including both sign language and low-frequency vocalizations. “Live puppets exhibit the relationship between the humans and the elephants, and the shadow puppets represent the inner world of the elephants,” says Esdale. “Emotion through story can be more persuasive than facts, as it can inspire hearts and minds.”

Diep’s music cultivates introspection, inviting audiences to reflect on the inner worlds of human life. “The act of physically creating a sound connects people to their own feelings and from that they relate with the rest of humanity. That’s the role of music,” says Diep. “Jennie was able to listen to my story and feel the sentiments and elaborate on it in a way that is accessible for any audience.”

Central to the production is the dan tranh, a steel-stringed Vietnamese zither, featured in both puppetry and live performance. Diep’s instrumental artistry draws from a rich Vietnamese-Chinese heritage, with respect for a cultural preservation that is in harmony with the conservation of nature. “The instrument is a part of the immense heritage behind me,” says Diep. “The Vietnamese dan tranh is the only thing that really links me to the natural world and the heritage of Vietnam.”

The above article, "Elephant Song: Composer Vi An Diep performs semi-autobiographical puppet play about wildlife conservation and immigrant heritage" first appeared in Fast Forward Weekly on May 16, 2013 and later in The Media Co-op 

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have a ball by RK 

the music of life by RK

early spring by RK

red hiding by RK 

when i grow up by RK

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the exotic settler, has become unsettled by the music within, the rhythmic unity of creation instantaneously awakening the dreams of exploration to contented and rooted being that is beyond and before settler intuition, yet speaks of one at their furthest point 

cast astray by the weary exhaustion of travel and the toil of vagrant survival, at our most distant from any sense of self or environmental recognition, yet the voice within provides a means and path by which we may discover the foundation of life within and without and throughout all wherefores and times 

all faces of belonging in the deep runnel of ground churning and swooning with each and every step planted firmly before sitting, to meditate on the self as energy thoroughfare through which sky and ground meet in the cloudy visions of a creative mind at work, entranced by the muse of his own beckoning, the internal void voices VOID! 

Aloud! the name of god, from faraway lands, in the echo of valleys whose echoes resonate to beckon the voice to intone and invoke throughout and within and from and as the windpipe of the valley itself: Allah, is called, where in Arabic, the expression "ya" is used to call out with vocative interrogation, in this way, to see the meeting place of space and sound, of sky and ground, within the human taste for the call to nowhere now!

Four pieces herein envision and voice the foundation of character as Love, the unsettling settlement of dualistic harmony. The holistic fruition of light boundless and earth trembling. The boom and flash of awe and rust, coalescing at the frayed tip of the hangman's rope, blooming a new head of lore and myth. Words are eyes from heaven. 

The second piece, "allahlelujah" is also featured as a sound-art exploration on themes published herein, on the sacred mess of beauty at its core a seed nestled in the crooked ribcage bust of an itchy nude breathing the hoarse and callous gargle of raw touch and the healing blood that runs from a reddened face hot with night  

Finding Place in Another

Persian Jewry and the Art of Peace: A Sound Vision of Coexistence

A Time for Peace from yuvalron on Vimeo.

Why think thus O men of piety

I have returned to sobriety

I am neither a Moslem nor a Hindu

I am not Christian, Zoroastrian, nor Jew

I am neither of the West nor the East

Not of the ocean, nor an earthly beast

I am neither a natural wonder

Nor from the stars yonder

...

My place is the no-place

My image is without face

Neither of body nor the soul

I am of the Divine Whole.

I eliminated duality with joyous laughter

Saw the unity of here and the hereafter

Unity is what I sing, unity is what I speak

Unity is what I know, unity is what I seek

...

Beloved Master, Shams-e Tabrizi

In this world with Love I’m so drunk

The path of Love isn’t easy

I am shipwrecked and must be sunk.

Rumi, translated by Shahriar Shahriari

Judeo-Persian Literature: HERE and HERE and HERE

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CALGARY - This year, the Persian New Year (Nowruz) on March 20, marked another day of global significance: the ten-year anniversary since the American invasion of Iraq. The hotbed issue, still on the map, is WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction), the bane of nuclear energy. The decade of remembrance also reflects European Union sanctions imposed on the Iranian economy. While Iran is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which implies non-proliferation, disarmament and the right to peacefully use nuclear technology, the potential use of nuclear weapons by the Iranian government is crux of the diplomatic standstill.

In a visiting lecture to the University of Calgary, Dr. Alan Dowty, Professor Emeritus and expert on Israeli politics from the University of Notre Dame, pointed out that Iran-Israel nuclear aggression in the Middle East has the potential to end the Non-Proliferation Treaty. “Canada has foregone the right to use nuclear weapons, so they have an interest in non-proliferation. Israel would join [the NPT] if the Arab-Israel conflict were resolved.” Dr. Dowty told The Media Co-op. “There is actually no way to conduct polls in Iran, so there is no recent social science research and no way to know what percentage of support base the Iranian government has.” In today’s world of globalized democracy and worldwide communications, public support, or lack thereof, is among the most consequential paths toward conflict resolution, and therefore, the greatest threat to government hegemony.

In 2006, 67% of Israelis believed in an attack from Iran was certain. In 2009, the poll fluctuated dramatically, where 79% did not think Iran would attack Israel. A poll published in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz confirmed that now only 27% of Jewish Israelis support an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. “In 2009 the poll shifted dramatically but the polls themselves are hardly reliable for consistency. A different wording in the question could change answers by 20%. At the time, in the top positions of military defense represented in the Israeli government, the opinion was that an attack on Iran is implausible,” Dr. Dowty said in an interview with The Media Co-op after his recent March 18 lecture at UofC.

Diplomatic negotiations taper out as talks enter into a “full fuel cycle” right to enrich uranium. The line between nuclear facilities for energy purposes and military purposes is based on a thin margin of uranium enrichment. The Iranian government has converted 40% of the uranium enriched to the 20% level (the most threatening part of the existing stockpile) to an oxide for medical use, limiting their weapon capacity. “They blinked, they are aware they're being watched closely,” Dr. Dowty closed his lecture. “Are they serious? We'll know in the next few weeks. We'll see though, I said this last year.”

Originally published by Al-Monitor, Jerusalem Post seconds the investigation on Iran’s diverted nuclear energy resources. The article closes remarking, “With inflation and unemployment soaring and the value of the Iranian currency halved since a year ago, the vast majority of Iranians have tightened their belts to celebrate Iran's new year - or Nowruz, the nation's most important holiday.”

The Jewish Holocaust underlies much of the political negotiations on the topic of nuclear war between Israel and Iran. The Holocaust is part of Israeli policy. Netanyahu once compared the Allied failure to bomb the train lines to Auschwitz in WWII to the current standstill with Iran. Israeli politicians often compare Ahmedinjad to Hitler, an infamous Holocaust-denier. “The truth is that a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat of the State of Israel,” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said during his 2012 Holocaust Remembrance Day speech on April 18.

Last month, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird made his way through an unprecedented tour into the countries to speak with political allies regarding “extremists” and “radicals” in the Middle East, specifically Jordan, which is receiving nearly half a million refugees from Syria, Iran’s ally in the Middle East. “I’m fascinated by the Arab world,” Baird is quoted in The Globe and Mail, before boarding a plane to become the first Canadian foreign minister to visit Iraq in 37 years. Yet, in Canada, the Iranian community continues to pursue a pluralistic vision of the Middle East and its emigrants both in the public and private sphere.

Recent Canadian immigrant and former history professor and senior researcher at the University of Tehran, Calgary resident Manijeh Rabieie shared with The Media Co-opabout her work. “Beginning from 2000-2003, I began to conduct research in Jewish communities, looking into their civil centers, their synagogues, their schools. I have prepared 70 articles and a book on the Jews in Iran. The government in Iran denied publication of all my work related to Jews.” The story of the Jews in Iran reflects a widely misinterpreted theme in Middle East affairs regarding religious identity, ethnicity and political rhetoric. “Jews and Christians are traditionally protected in Islamic law. Though the Jewish community has to lay low,” Dr. Alan Dowty confirmed with The Media Co-op. Dr. Dowty had once tried to attain a visa to Iran to conduct social science research as a visiting scholar. He was barred due to his extended residence in Israel.

“The Jewish community in Iran has lived in Iran for over 2500 years. Judaism is at the root of ancient culture and religion in Iranian history. Every culture in Iranian history was influenced by Jewish history. In a sense, we are all Jews,” Manijeh Rabieie told The Media Co-op. “Their schools and hospitals are segregated. Under the current Muslim government they are subject to many forms of abuse. Although there is currently a Jewish MP in Iran, the Jewish community can not take part in politics.” The presence of Jews in Iran precedes Muslim and Arab culture. Political rhetoric naming the Israel-Iran crisis as a religious conflict undermines the underlying social fabric of the Middle East.

Manijeh Rabieie plans to publish a paper to educate the public regarding the historic relationship between Persians and Jews as one people, and how this is related to peace. Rabieie said to The Media Co-op, “The conflict in Iran between the Jewish community and the government is not based on foreign policy with Israel, it's an internal problem within the society based on living under the oppressive government. The government sees all Jews as Zionists. This is not true. Iranian Jews are as Iranian as anyone else in the country, it is their culture, it's there home, that's why they remain.”

A deeper understanding of the Iranian society as a whole reveals more about the current Western paradigm and how the West views Iranians and Muslims of the Middle East, than it does about Iran itself. Recent winner of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, Calgary-based author and journalist Marcello Di Cintio spoke withThe Media Co-op on Iran, Nowruz and how the West continues to demonize Muslim culture. “Rhetoric on Iran has gone way up around the world. The nuclear program and Israel's fear promotes scary talk not backed up by facts,” Marcello Di Cintio said. “I think when we shut down embassies in Iran, it's more to do with standing in solidarity with Israel position. My biggest problem is this a symbolic action. ‘Now you can't get a visa to visit your family?’ That's ridiculous. Closing the embassy, is that our way of bringing down the regime? It's a symbolic action that has consequences on people that have done nothing wrong, that's what bothers me. I don't think people understand Iranians in Iran.”

Last month, Marcello Di Cintio wrote a short post on his website, Elsewhere, regarding his reflection with a local book club after revisiting his 2006 book, Poets and Pahelvans: A Journey into the Heart of Iran for Nowruz. Much of the content echoed what Marcello Di Cintio remarked for The Media Co-op. “There's a vast canyon between government policy and actual life. When we make decisions what does that actually mean for people who do not live in suits?” said Di Cintio. “Sanctions are not going to change things. To me, those are symbolic. You think the West hates Ahmedinijad? Iranians hate him more. It's the job of the journalists to report on government policy, and to report what the politicians are saying. They don't have time on the ground. I'm attempting to fill the void.” The Persian New Year, Nowruz, the biggest holiday in Iran, is still a non-Islamic celebration. Nowruz predates Islam.

"It’s a public holiday in parts of the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe. Thanks to global migration it’s now celebrated worldwide…It’s a non-denominational holiday…It predates modern politics, modern states and the squabbling that comes with them. This is a secular holiday…You might hear a lot about Iran in the next twelve months, its leaders, its politics, its policies, its threats, how the world reacts to them. Hey you may watch a popular film like Argo and decide that all Persians are barbaric and archaic and evil enemies of the West. Well, if you really want to get to know the culture of Iran, Persian culture that is, the literature, the family values, the poetry, the positivity, the progressive sides, and the romance, then get to know Nowruz…Here’s hoping for a peaceful and positive period for all.” Jian Ghomeshi broadcasted on CBC on March 20.

As Persian New Year also celebrates the vernal equinox, coincidentally the Jewish spring holiday of Purim commemorates the story of Esther, a Jewish woman who married King Ahasuerus of Persia. Canadian politics, throughout most of the 20th century, reveals a history as anomalous from the present as a Jewish marriage to the Persian head of state is to the world of today.

In 2003, more people took to the streets in Calgary to protest the American invasion of Iraq than any public demonstration since World War Two. A fully community-funded organization at the University of Calgary known as the Consortium for Peace Studies was founded based on popular opposition to the war in Iraq. “If the Iranian people want to change the Iranian government or their situation, that's their prerogative, but if they want to change it simply because foreign powers are making their life miserable, then I don't think that's legitimate. That's just war by another means,” said George Melnyk, director of the Consortium for Peace Studies to The Media Co-op. “I would like to see Canada develop a balance where we have more neutrality, where we're not always looking at military solutions, not always taking a strong stand to support the Untied States or Britain in whatever kind of military actions they want to take. I'd like us to have another aspect to our lives which has been completely lost.”

Professor Melnyk recently published a paper entitled, Canada and Afghanistan - Peacemaking as Counterinsurgency Warfare, a Conflict in Terms. In this paper, Professor Melnyk outlines the paradoxical rhetoric of militarism together with propaganda related to national self-image in Canada. "Because Canada refused to participate in that war [in Iraq], it has been argued that it felt compelled to offer its services in Afghanistan," writes Melnyk. As Canada adopts new policies that effectively change the image of the country, the political leadership in the West (of both the world and of Canada) overrides traditional democracy. “The Canadian government, by being involved militarily in Afghanistan, of which I am critical, see Iran as the enemy. That's what happens in war, you define an enemy,” Melnyk told The Media Co-op.

Canadians are faced with new decisions and choices as government becomes increasingly self-serving and exclusive in both its military partisanship abroad and political representation domestically. “What we have is a Federal Government based in Calgary, and very powerful in Alberta. And it is pro-military, and anti-environmental. These guys are now reflecting more of the West, between Saskatchewan, B.C. and Alberta are totally energy related,” said Melnyk to The Media Co-op. “The more anti-environmental it is, the more pro-military it becomes, they are part of the same package.”

The Consortium for Peace Studies awarded the 2013 Dr. Arthur Clark Research Fellowship in Global Citizenship to sustainable housing expert Jorg Ostrowski, for a project that focuses on development in Iran called A New Silk Road of Peace. “We have a completely different approach than the Harper government. Our approach is not to get involved in this debate, this political debate between Israel and Iran. Our position is to support those people who are building people-to-people relationships,” Professor Melnyk told The Media Co-op.

Recognition for the great wealth of intercultural heritage is an increasingly important area for growth and discussion as civil society moves forward in organizational solidarity. “It is so critical to counter western threats of war with Iran. Together, as a human family with a team of visionary professionals, we can build unity and demonstrate collaboration, explore other lands and respect their traditions, seek education and understand other perspectives, work for common security and build a lasting peace, for all species and our common environment and world heritage,” Ostrowski shared with The Media Co-op via email.

Still, with all of the activism in Canada to facilitate social stability in Iran, for democratic diplomacy in the Middle East, and lasting peace, there are countless who continue to suffer unjustly in Iran. As residents of Canada, active in working towards greater democracy and justice, the focus remains ever on the plight of innocent civilians. While the Canadian government works towards the proposed resolution of the greater evil, i.e. nuclear conflict, the gap between civil society and government widens due to the growing pertinence of foreign policy. It is becoming more and more clear to Canadian residents that with every government measure to protect Canada and other Western nations, including Israel, from a nuclear conflict, the costs of war by another means begin to show its ugly face.

"Persian Jews and the Iran-Israel Crisis: Canadian Civil Society Works Toward A New Year of Peace and Understanding" previously appeared on The Media Co-op

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ruins of ruins by RK

the entrance is the exit by RK

dan tien sky by RK

old world taste by RK

belly of the ultra modern beast by RK

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"turning over the ashes of the Unnamed" is a piece commemorating the Indigenous struggles of Latin America. Initially, the writing process is based on experiences in Yucatec Maya communities. Recently,  the sounding was recorded while following the tragic cycle of intermittent, and ultimately, futile justice in Guatemala to reconcile its genocidal history. The track is featured on the Sound-Art EP "Evocations: Exotic Settlers"

In nearly every traveller's experience, the settlements of (un)civilization often provide an impermanent, temporal space even for the most autonomous of vagabonds. Especially in my experience, the piano has been a portal through which my sojourning meets the firm legs of tradition. In this union, both the ephemeral and everlasting are bonded under a greater mystery of the always passing, transient truth, elevating us to a higher sense of travel as mutually relative to the foundational ground of human tradition. Memory and history seed the pangs of movement with the brilliant emanations of creative ingenuity and inspired reflection.

So, in this track, imagine the traveller, or "exotic settler" chancing upon a piano under the weary heel of an empty horizon ahead, and the spiralling beauty of tradition below. "turning over the ashes of the Unnamed" is featured in the new self-published chapbook, "The Deceived Plane"

"The Deceived Plane" is a six poem chapbook on themes of social failure, the unsustainable psyche of Western Man, devolving at an insuperable pace through the mire of good intentions.

Beginning with personal irreconcilable defeatism in the breakdown of the Western family, towards a psyche of madness and the unwilling expansion of selfish ego into greater realities of the imagination, spirit and creativity.

Yet, each of the six poems reveals and awakes the deleterious mind of foul vanity with a brushstroke of unitive spirituality. The wake of greed pulls back in a tidal rush of release, and so these poems offer the ingredients of a raft on which to traverse the open oceanic beyond.

The Deceived Plane

Dreamers Reconcile with Harsh Truths: S. Sudan and the Music of Memory

One thing that keeps me pushing these painful stories; the dreams I have. Sometimes, like, the voices of the dead that I have seen would tell me don't give up, keep on going, because sometimes I feel like stopping and not doing it, because I didn't know what I was putting myself into. (Emmanuel Jal, 2009)

What are your hopes and dreams?

I want to fly an airplane.

What else?

I want to be able to study in the daytime. And in the morning. And I want a day that I can just live…so I can build my house…where there aren't any problems that could destroy it.

Emmanuel Jal, age 9 (War Child)

On April 8, the Peace and Reconciliation Conference in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, began an unprecedented step forward in the nation’s history. On Monday April 15, South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit suspended the conference indefinitely. Besides the $885 million contributed by the Canadian federal government to Sudan for humanitarian assistance between 2006-2012, many of the 4 million plus South Sudanese displaced have resettled in Canada to remain active in community rehabilitation. Activist groups, both based in South Sudanese communities as well as larger Canadian social organizations continue to sustain the meaning of reconciliation not only as an example for South Sudan, but for the globe.

            The most pressing issue with regard to reconciliation in South Sudan is creating an inclusive society where larger social participation is grassroots-oriented. In a country with one of the lowest literacy rates in the world, with over sixty unique spoken languages, democracy is a precarious notion for most. In an open letter to South Sudanese Vice-President, Dr. Riek Machar, David Mabior Atem of New Sudan Vision wrote:

Healing those long inflicted wounds against one another cannot be dealt with in 3-4 days as well as top down approach instead of bottom up approach…Another added advantage of beginning at grassroots level is the flexibility of language (dialects), which can result into high interactive and productive engagement.

            Dr. Riek Machar launched the official opening of the conference, which trains 200 peace and reconciliation mobilizers. “The newest nation on earth has embarked on a journey of healing for the national reconciliation,” the Sudan Tribune noted. Dr. Machar had also been married to British aid worker Emma McCune. International recording artist Emmanuel Jal, winner of the 2013 Calgary Peace Prize, had been rescued from Waat, South Sudan by Emma McCune as a Lost Boy. Jal took refuge in Kenya, eventually leading him to the UK, and Canada. Emmanuel Jal’s acceptance of the Calgary Peace Prize on behalf of all South Sudanese marks an especially significant moment in the common reconciliation efforts of Canada and South Sudan.

            “He uses himself as an example in his storytelling of how hard and difficult and long it's taken for him to begin the process of healing and of reconciliation with his former enemies, and that's the story that he told,” Consortium for Peace Studies director George Melnyk told The Media Co-op. “He's also very careful to not critique the South Sudanese who made him a child soldier.” The Consortium awards the Calgary Peace Prize to global visionaries working towards peace, beginning with Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba in 2006. The Consortium is currently the only post-secondary Peace Studies initiative in Calgary.

            James Nguen, founder of Biluany Literacy and Water project, responded with deep concern in an Op-Ed piece in South Sudan News Agency, decrying the indefinite suspension of the Peace and Reconciliation Conference in Juba. “This unfortunate development shocked everyone in South Sudan and around the world. There were no further details why the project was suspended,” Nguen wrote to The Media Co-op via email. “If people reconciled, then there will be no petty tribal raids which the past 8 years cost South Sudan government and the international community millions of dollars.”

            Although the Second Sudanese Civil War, which ultimately led to an independent South Sudan, started in 1984, the world did not respond until 2004. The political situation in Sudan, and now in South Sudan as well, is very complex and is steeped in both European colonial history as well as Egyptian foreign policy. The legalities of genocide with regard to reconciliation have remained unparalleled in controversy ever since the United Nations adopted the Genocide Convention in 1948. “There was a genocide in Darfur, and there was genocide in South Sudan from the beginning,” James Nguen said to The Media Co-op. “In order to secure the CPA [Comprehensive Peace Agreement], they could not force Al-Bashir to step down without confidence that his successor would respect the CPA. Only one of the three agreements of the CPA was met, which included peace agreements with Abyei, secondly, and Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains as a third agreement.”

            The outstanding agreement to respect the right to self-determination with the people in the Nuba Mountains has especially intensified on the issue of genocide. Global activism in solidarity with the Nuba people has followed in the wake of the independence of South Sudan in 2011, including the End the Nuba Genocide Coalition. The only area not consulted in drawing the new national border, Abyei, is directly impacted and holds outstanding land disputes. Abyei territory is a priority for the Juba Conference.

            South Sudan’s independence was “the most significant redrawing of the map of Africa since the colonization,” Angel Batiste, Area Specialist with the Africa and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., noted, before introducing the lecture, Cultural Heritage in South Sudan in November 2012. 

            During the Calgary Peace Prize events this March, Emmanuel Jal raised eyebrows concerning the latest news from South Kordofan, where another genocide in Sudan seems to be taking shape with unprecedented momentum. “UN people down in Sudan are saying there’s a possibility that in South Kordofan that the genocide there could be worse than in Darfur,” said Jal to an eager crowd at the University of Calgary on March 1, 2013.

            The diaspora is truly integral to peace activism for South Sudanese. “They actually support their family members more than even the government does,” Jal told The Media Co-op, referring to the diaspora of South Sudan and their role in the reconciliation efforts ahead. “If you’re educated, if you have a degree in whatever form, don’t go home to look like you’re going to be employed by the government. You go there as an employer. Go there and use the skills we have there and establish something, because the country is still new. Whatever you touch will prosper.”

            Since late last year over sixty genocide scholars and anti-genocide activists initiated a letter writing campaign in response to the genocide atrocities in the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains. These letters have fallen on what South Sudan’s leading independent news source, South Sudan News Agency has called, “absolute silence”. The Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), founded by U.S. President Obama specifically in response to the lack of U.S. governmental initiative towards preventing crimes against humanity and genocide, became the most important, and also most unresponsive, target audience. This April, South Sudan News Agency published the latest letter, sent to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. An excerpt from the letter reads:

We never expected, though, to have our letter (and now letters) go unanswered… when we, scholars of genocide studies and human rights activists, fail to receive a reply to a letter that we first wrote back in December 2012 and have now sent five times to four different individuals affiliated with the APB, it, indeed, feels as if the APB and its focus/work is little more than “a sideline in our foreign policy.”

             Similarly, in recent news, the only head of state in the Americas to be tried for genocide crimes, U.S.-backed Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, saw amnesty on April 18 after the current Guatemalan president intervened to have the case annulled. “It was the first time that any nation had been able to use its domestic criminal courts to try a former head of state for genocide,” said investigative journalist Allan Nairn on Democracy Now!

            Despite ineffective government intervention, independent non-profit and charity organizations, spearheaded by leaders from South Sudan, continue to work towards a sustainable society through reconciliation efforts. Biluany Literacy and Water Project, a development initiative led by James Nguen based in Calgary, has been active for over three years in building wells and providing educational resources in South Sudan. “There is no sustainable infrastructure in South Sudan, and without a lot of assistance from the international community, trust cannot be rebuilt,” Nguen said to The Media Co-op. “The greatest struggle is to represent ourselves, to know who we are as one community. The war eroded our cultural values, our history, our society.” Nguen recently partnered with Gua Africa, the charity of Emmanuel Jal, to fund well development and to organize a conference in Canada to mirror the Peace and Reconciliation Conference in Juba.

            Since winning national independence, other organizations in the Calgary area, home to the predominant South Sudanese community in Canada, are working towards reconciliation. South Sudan Peace Building International Foundation Inc. (SSPBIF) is one among them. Secretary of the SSPBIF Kuir ë Garang is also a prolific multi-genre author of six books. “People in South Sudan tend to regard literature as ornamental, they don't see how it can help relate people, to help people find relations between one another, so they can get together and have mutual understanding through education,” Garang told The Media Co-op. “Through literature, we can better represent ourselves. Now up to 70% [of people in South Sudan] are dissatisfied with their government.” Garang is currently working with a publishing house and bookstore in Juba to open a forum on multiculturalism and diversity for professional writers from Canada and South Sudan.

            Rural South Sudan is reputedly the most marginalized and underrepresented, effectively causing the need for grassroots inclusivity in Juba’s Peace and Reconciliation Conference and beyond. Resource conflicts both at national (oil exploitation) and grassroots (cattle raiding) levels have been at the root of social disorder in South Sudan. Augustino Lucano, a South Sudanese migrant from the Equatoria region living in Calgary, shares an unrivalled success story in bringing together divided rural ethnic groups and organizing incipient meetings with government representatives.

            Lucano received personal permission from South Sudan MP Joseph Lokodo Kolombos to open a peace center in his home region of Equatoria after presenting to the MP a research paper inspired by an Initiatives of Change workshop. “The problem is that people in rural South Sudan are still very divided, they do not see a way to live together yet with the whole nation yet,” Lucano said to The Media Co-op. Lucano, a member of the Didinga ethnic group, lost two brothers in conflicts with the neighboring Toposa people. “The Maaji peace centre is located in the middle of Didinga and Toposa land, in a flatland valley, where both tribes can meet peacefully,” Lucano conveyed to The Media Co-op. “So far there has been no raiding at the peace centre in Maaji. First, it was necessary to establish the peace centre where resources could be shared, and then we can discuss reconciliation.”

             In February 2013, the South Sudanese Minister of Wildlife’s visit to the Maaji Peace Centre drew tears from elders and children alike who had never before seen a car, no less a government car. “It showed how marginalized these people had been in the national developments, and also that the government was starting to establish a relationship with rural people, including them in the dialogue of the upcoming Peace and Reconciliation Conference in Juba,” Lucano told The Media Co-op.

             2013 is quickly becoming a year of unprecedented global reconciliation movements. The Peace and Reconciliation Conference in Juba is especially significant to Canada with its direct relationship to the activism of the Canadian diaspora of South Sudan. With the first head of state in the Americas having faced genocide charges, a more intimate link can be made with Indigenous peoples’ history in Canada. Will Canada renew its role as a global human rights leader in the wake of mounting genocide awareness around the world? Ongoing debates in Canada, spurred by Idle No More, emphasize reconciliation with First Nations as an inclusive reconciliation with humanity. 

This article previously appeared for The Media Co-op on April 29, 2013

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the road to rome is paved in bones by RK

madness by RK

the human rabbit hole by RK

old west art by RK

papercut & stoned by RK

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conjuring a sense of the once roaming herds of mammals that lit upon the open horizons of our once naked landscapes - the frame drum evokes a sacred connection to our mammalian evolution through a heartened soul brethren with large mammals, and our precarious evolutionary stability as one of the most vulnerable types of living creatures on planet earth - in the piece, i speak of the charge of the electric pole of patriotic industry over the breadth of our continent as the sacrifice of ourselves, as male-female witch, burned on the flagpole of national identity, a sacrifice brought about by the all-devastating silence of voice, speaking of a way of life not bound to the dominant settler society, yet existing now only in negation to the sedentary ecology of consumerism and vacation, with regard to the lost history and memory of our true selves in communion with the deeper movement of life as we once knew it



Placed Anonymity, like the chapbook, "A Sick Society Amuck" is inspired by the words of Jiddhu Krishnamurti, iconoclastic spiritual philosopher, who said, "truth is a pathless land". Truth lies in the anonymity of place as is, without meaning, as a river is in essence meaningless until commemorated by a name and story, whether of scientific or folkloric mythologies.

in a pathless land, how do we come to know the land, or know what is true, HERE? that exploration is the foundation for this four poem chapbook, eventually culminating in collectivist thinking, to aspire towards a basis of unity evading the muddled institutionalization of creative freedom

Placed Anonymity

Sky IS the Limit: Sustainable Architects Transform Our Militarized World

"If all of the soldiers in all of the armies in all of the world were to put down their weapons and pick up tools and start making sustainable housing for all the people in the world, life would just begin on this planet." Michael Reynolds, Garbage Warrior, on Democracy Now!

Jorg Ostrowski and his wife Helen are two trained architects who have trail blazed sustainable housing in Canada and around the world. On April 20, Jorg opened his home on Scurfield Drive in northwest Calgary to the public, in celebration of Earth Day, for RecoSolutions, offering free tours on sustainability. “All of my projects since 1972 have been sustainable,” Jorg wrote via email. “We have built with rammed earth, straw bale, stack wall, double log, EcoStuds, prefab, Blackie Block and stick built. I have given ‘hands on’ workshops on rammed earth and straw bale in various provinces, including a 6 day workshop for the David Suzuki Foundation, in BC.” 

Arriving at the doorstep beneath the iconic sunray-painted awning above the front door, Jorg announced, “Transportation is part of the equation,” pointing to two automobiles in the driveway. Behind the Smart Car is a VW Golf that is converted to run on waste vegetable oil as part of a continuing R&D program. Recent trips to Vancouver and back, and cross-country on other excursions have cost zero dollars. People often donate vegetable oil. Japanese restaurants are reputed for the highest-grade waste vegetable oil. "The goal is to download electric and thermal energy into batteries, grid and slab," Jorg wrote. 

Along the outside porch, the most noted sustainability measures are various blue water bins collecting rainwater that goes into a cistern able to store enough water for many months, based on low consumption and average rainfall. An apparatus below the front porch is shaped like an oversized foghorn with a square container fitted inside with a cooking pot. The solar cooker concentrates enough sunlight that even in -25 Celsius on a clear day, the inside temperature rises to 100 degrees centigrade.  

Inside the home, a large office space to the left leads down a short hallway to a cozy living room reception. About ten people attended the ecoTour at three o’clock in the snowy afternoon under unlit LED lights, also fitted throughout the home. With over 140,000 guests so far in its 20-year history, the Alberta home/office is unique in Canada for not using city water, sewer, gas or furnace. The ecoHouse is heated by passive/active solar, internal heat gain and left over waste as backup. 

On any given month, schoolchildren will graduate from the ecoTour given by Jorg Ostrowski himself, chock-full of architectural knowledge (the legacy of a career spanning four decades beginning with an M.I.T. graduate education in architecture) and an astounding display of hands-on examples for small-scale, local sustainability. Beginning in the living room, natural light pours in from all angles, especially south-facing, including an “experimental window” featuring unrivalled five-pane krypton-sealed glass. On the coffee table, a seemingly unimpressive array of likely architectural samples is strewn about. As conversation ensues, each item reveals itself as highly innovative environmentally friendly material or technology, including organic wool carpet, flaxseed Marmoleum flooring, recycled newsprint insulation, and solvent-free adhesive, motorized airtight damper, and the latest LED lights, among many others. 

The moral of the story: making the home airtight is the key to conserving energy. Utilizing natural heat sources like the position of the sun, and even body temperature are integral and often underwritten in the dominant modes of contemporary architecture. A centerpiece of the home is a traditional fireplace and oven common to many European and Asian traditions, known as a Russian Stove, Korean Ondol or Chinese Kang heating systems among many other names. The fireplace is used for central backup heating and cooking, including for heating water. After priming the central heating mechanism before a recent month-long trip during the winter month of March, the empty house only lost about eight degrees centigrade without additional oversight. 

From the living room through a concave hallway into the kitchen, numerous plants line windows and vegetation of all kinds hangs from the ceiling. A beautifully set deadfall tree acts as a post for second floor beams. Allowing live trees is important to continue to absorb CO2. Especially abundant are aloe plants for their exceptional capacity to purify the air and provide a natural source for glyconutrients and medicine. The energy mainstay of the kitchen is the refrigerator. Used for only about six months in the year, an indubitably pragmatic cold closet replaces the need for a refrigerator in the cold climate, substantially reducing kilowatt-hours per year and extending the life cycle of the very energy efficient fridge/freezer right beside it. 

Next, Jorg leads the ecoTour into a personal office space, where small portholes, reminiscent of a ship’s cabin, line the wall. Behind the glass at least six examples of alternative insulation are exhibited, including sheep’s wool, an expensive though probable example. Around the house, vents are fitted to facilitate heat and air circulation, and air-to-air heat exchangers minimize heat loss.

The middle of the home features the dry compost toilets on both levels, with the upstairs fully functional for guests. The system is “not perfect” said Ostrowski, although an exemplary means to recycle human waste, and in addressing a crucial need for water management in mainstream housing infrastructure. All biological waste goes into an engineered multi-purpose year-round composting chamber, combining 3 critical household operations.

1. Major blue box recycling centre and deposit box of the house to receive all biodegradable waste, including all human and kitchen waste                                                                                                                                    
2. Major water conservation equipment to save 200,000 litres of drinking water per year (family of four)                                                                                                      
3. Fertilizer plant to produce healthy earth, and compost tea, a great liquid fertilizer

"In summary, although not perfect, it is the stomach of the house, quite efficient and critical to the sustainable future of the planet," wrote Jorg.       

Upstairs, bedrooms are designed for accessibility. Two smaller rooms on one side have a connecting doorway, to facilitate spatial linkages for small children and potential opportunities for bed & breakfast hospitality or simply an office-bedroom combination. The master bedroom is flooded with natural light from a panorama of south-facing windows tastefully mirrored, with ceiling windows, two hallways, and a catwalk built of metal grating above the living room, offering a distinctly interconnected ambiance between the master bedroom with the rest of the home. Ventilation above the center of the bed draws from the central, water-based heating system. An antique tub is installed in the adjacent ensuite, with consideration for recycling the work and material required to reuse such conventionally obsolete fixtures. With adequate attention, there is natural light enough to grow tomatoes aplenty on the windowsills. A small addition alcove to the master bedroom, located above the greenhouse, provides much needed sanctuary. 

Outdoors, solar panels are fitted on ground level around the ecoHouse with mind to wind, dust and snow that often collects on often poorly conceived roof-installations. Ground placement allows optimal accessibility in maintenance, and effectively the highest degree of energy output. 

All in all, RecoSolutions was a lesson in successful, off-the-grid sustainable housing within the limits of a major city in North America. With a single prime mover, such as the 70 HP power mechanism used in the VW Golf to provide heat and electricity for a long-distance car ride, over one hundred homes in the likelihood of Jorg Ostrowski’s ecoHouse can be sustained. These homes not only sustain renewable energy sources, but also reduce the risks of outgassing from chemicals in standard building materials, contaminants in public water and damage from power outages. Furthermore, the ecoHouse can facilitate the production of energy, exporting power back into the grid. 

The lack of sustainable housing development in Canada, especially when so willfully and ably illustrated as in the RecoSolutions ecoTour in Calgary, only adds to the shameful prerogatives of national priority. Helen Ostrowski, who co-organizes events and activities at the ecoHouse, also active with international development work in the Philippines, China and most recently Iran, among others, commented that when they were starting out in the 1970s, there was no opportunity for young people to be involved with sustainable housing in university programs, or in applying environmentally friendly architectural products as today. When they had built their ecoHouse nearly twenty years ago, the city of Calgary was uniquely open to their alternative housing development with respect to their work as two highly trained graduate architects, active and recognized in the field.    

At the end of the ecoTour, a very intelligent participant was flabbergasted that mainstream society continues to neglect the most important of these very simple and doable measures. Western lifestyle identifies human settlement first and foremost through consumer values. Modern human life is defined by consumerism, and is inextricably linked to the catastrophic waste-chains of urban and suburban housing. In the normative social and political agenda of North America, human existence depends on consumerism. True productivity and actual development does not merely contribute manufactured material to the growing waste stream but reciprocates human life with natural energy cycles.  

In the growing petro-state policies of the federal government of Canada, energy consumption far outweighs energy production. Without public awareness campaigns such as the RecoSolutions ecoTour, ignorance perpetuates the consumer mode of being as the only way of being. Yet, in this the same world as that of increasing urban sprawl, one energy/grid independent, sustainable ecoHouse illustrates how human beings also produce energy and give back to what Jorg named as the three most important points of sustainable living; clean water, healthy earth, and reusable energy. 

On June 1 and June 8, the Calgary ecoHome will be open for public tours.
Please see the Calgary ecoHome website, ASH - Autonomous & Sustainable Housing Inc. AND/OR Contact Jorg Ostrowski at ecojdo@gmail.com for more details. 

This article is also published on The Media Co-op & IndyMedia

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Authentic Greenwash by RK

The Point of Return by RK

Sky Paint by RK

Empyreal Intersection by RK

Gloom & Hollow by RK

Urban Landing by RK

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"I drank in the stupor", founded on the original Latin meaning of the word stupor, as, 'to be amazed or stunned,' the piece draws from an experience during the Day of Lady Guadalupe in Mexico, where I observed my future wife from afar as she street performed music in a city square. The overshadowing presence of Lady Guadalupe breathed the immense breath of the goddess of compassion Kuan Yin, through her Chinese zither music, and both protectresses mirrored their gaze through mine, visually and aurally with a searching heart bursting and blooming with the stupefying gift love. As French writer and philosopher Paul Valery said, "Love is being stupid together."  

Listen in to a sound art vocalization-exclamation of "I drank in the stupor" on my newest album, "Evocations: Exotic Settlers" on www.menachem.bandcamp.com, featuring an epic wave of shakuhachi improvisations. 


In two parts, A Sick Society Amuck features twelve pieces, and three original art interpretations on the theme and collection "Exotic Settlers". Four of these pieces were published in the 29th issue of Steel Bananas Quarterly "how in the year of the rabbit, the pure still need things," "I drank in the stupor," "interpretive direction," and "where is the mind in life?" 

The phrase, "sick in a sick society" is based on the spiritual wisdom of Jiddhu Krishnamurti, who said "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." So follows various observations and expressions supporting and steeped in this wisdom of seeing. Many of the pieces are satires equally on personal and collective health related to addiction and nationalism, where both divide and dismantle the health of human consciousness, which requires holism. Complementary themes of travel and history juxtapose subjection with abjection. 

A Sick Society Amuck by Rusty Kjarvik