Archives of Innocence
Photography with letterpress, 2007.
Byrdland
Archival pigment print
and letterpress on cotton paper, 13" x 17.5"
2007, Westmount and Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
THIS WORK is an homage dedicated to my close friend Steven Kouwenhoven, who died in 1988 of cancer. We drove across Canada listening to cassettes of music in his tiny Honda Civic in 1986, the year I treeplanted in the British Columbia interior with old draft dodgers, still living as hippies, who had taken up residence there. Steve and I parted in Prince George, I went up to the interior to plant trees and then to Terrace, and he drove down to work in Vancouver, “the lower mainland”, with his uncle in the printing business; a generous man, whose plane I was given the priviledge to try my hand at flying over British Columbia's capital city, Victoria.
LATER I CAME DOWN from the interior by way of Prince Rupert, through the inland passage by ferry to Port Hardy. Its was my first encounter with the Pacific, and began to sense the reason for its naming. Longingly, I kept watch over the ocean for Orcas, but saw none. I hitched down the island of Vancouver until Nanaimo and took the ferry to the city of Vancouver, where I stayed once again with Steve at another uncle's home, painting houses as a second summer job and writing poetry. We spent the rest of the summer together exploring Vancouver and the lower mainland, and visiting pavillions at Expo 1986. We hiked to the summit of Mount Macdonald (known for having the longest train tunnel in the western hemisphere), a sublime adventure to its peak, confirming my collegial experience of reading Wordsworth and the romantic poets.
Dear STEVE, you were a bright light with whom I shared some of the best days of youthful discovery; from our love for music and concert going to sunbathing nude and oogling tanned women at Wreck Beach, thank you for being a friend. Thank you for listening; you really really listened and I still ramble on. I'm sorry I used UPS to send your poetry and literature books your parents gave me after you died. I had them shipped the books back to me in California. They lost everything; jerks. Long story, tell you later. I have yet to read Finnigan's wake in its entirety anyway. And your theology studies weren't in vain, buddy. I still love God.
The righteous perish,
and no one ponders it in his heart;
devout men are taken away,
and no one understands
that the righteous are taken away
to be spared from evil.
Those who walk uprightly enter into peace;
they find rest as they lie in death.
- Isaiah 57:1-2
