journal features

so nothing's changed in Calgary

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2004.11.17

too brown for Calgary schoolyards

Two 20-year-olds in Calgary were convicted of beating and urinating on a first-nations fellow who they - and three under-age friends - found sleeping on the streets. Having grown up in Calgary, where I myself was once spat upon for being an Indian, I'm sorry to see that nothing has changed in that miserable red-neck city. Hell, when I moved there I had no idea what was going when, at the age of 10, I had kids with Irish and Dutch last names asking me why I "looked funny".

And I'm white. I merely have brown hair and large features and tan easily, and when I was younger my features were more rounded (see the pic below, from when I was seven). I wound up hanging around with an Isreali, a Japenese, and a kid whose parents were from Korea. Needless to say, I hated the place, and my antipathy only grew with time.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot