watching, for a moment, as the snow takes the form of the wind
(leaping) from a laden pine tree
a sworl, powder dust arching in on itself
into a brief formation of furrowed lines
and then falling loose to the ground
the wind masked again to our eyes
buffeting against our faces,
heading north up the valley while we ski south towards the highway, catching brief glimpses of sunshine through the clouds, wondering at dinner,
the wind become noise and draft again. Down on the highway some of us stop to look over the bridge to the lake and the peaks beyond, the sun's passing brings rich red and pinks to the peaks.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Christmas Poem
As we walk amongst the falling snow
Birch trees and Hawthorn bushes holding what snow they can,
cracked arms against the dimly outlined hills
our footsteps swallowed by the falling snow,
our mouths moving but silent through the snow
Our hours find each other until the hour, our hour, is still
like turning a page to find that the next is blank
and with our footsteps, our words will be swallowed too
all the glowing embers we've harboured within
will be taken like footsteps by the snow.
We talk softly, becoming indistinct through the snow
our eyelashes blinking back the flakes
falling melted like tears down our cheeks
taking some of the embers, some of the charcoal
- faint black streaks down our cheeks
falling with the snow
Figures walking along a snowy road at dusk
Trees bearing snow crooked against the hills
while next to them a silent river flowing south
snow flakes falling white on their toques and jackets
darkness grows, the snow takes their footsteps
and they take their feet,
each illuminated by the dull glow of embers their eyes
like dim lanterns they gather back to the house
- the footsteps are gone
our group has vanished, taking their embers with them.
Birch trees and Hawthorn bushes holding what snow they can,
cracked arms against the dimly outlined hills
our footsteps swallowed by the falling snow,
our mouths moving but silent through the snow
Our hours find each other until the hour, our hour, is still
like turning a page to find that the next is blank
and with our footsteps, our words will be swallowed too
all the glowing embers we've harboured within
will be taken like footsteps by the snow.
We talk softly, becoming indistinct through the snow
our eyelashes blinking back the flakes
falling melted like tears down our cheeks
taking some of the embers, some of the charcoal
- faint black streaks down our cheeks
falling with the snow
Figures walking along a snowy road at dusk
Trees bearing snow crooked against the hills
while next to them a silent river flowing south
snow flakes falling white on their toques and jackets
darkness grows, the snow takes their footsteps
and they take their feet,
each illuminated by the dull glow of embers their eyes
like dim lanterns they gather back to the house
- the footsteps are gone
our group has vanished, taking their embers with them.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Notes on Burroughs' Western Lands, art and salvation
Joe is tracking down the Venusian agents of a conspiracy with very definite M.O. And objectives. It is antimagical, authoritarian, dogmatic, the deadly enemy of those who are committed to the magical universe, spontaneous, unpredictable, alive. The universe they are imposing is controlled, precidtable, dead.
(The Western Lands, 59)
Joe saw cancer as just another milepost. Cancer came into its own with the Industrial Revolution, a cancer model dedicated to reproducing identical replicas on an assembly line. The analogy carries over to human cells and replication, as solid as auto parts, tin cans, bottles and printed words. Joe didn't give a shit about cancer. He wasn't there to save human lives. He was there to alter the human equation.
(WB TWL 61)
A cancer cell, a virus has no destiny, no human purpose beyond endless replication. It has no work to finish and no reason to die. Give it a reason to die and it will. The ultimate purpose of cancer and all virus, is to replace the host. So instead of trying to kill the cancer cells, help them to replicate and to replace host cells.
(WB TWL 60)
“Have you something better to offer?” Says a serious young scribe. “We know that mummification can ensure a measure of immortality.” He turns to Neferti. “And what can you offer that is better than such precarious survival?”
“I can offer the refusal to accept survival on such terms, the disastrous terms of birth. I can offer the determination to seek survival elsewhere.”
...
(Nef.) “To reach the Western Lands is to achieve freedom from fear. Do you free yourself by cowering in your physical body, for eternity? Your body is a boat to lay aside when you reach the far shore, or sell it if you can find a fool...it's full of holes...it's full of holes.”
(161-2)
Neferti and the Breather stand before a door of fossilized honeycombs...He will teach Neph to ride the smells.
“Stand there.” The Breather stands six feet infront of Neph and gives him a full breath of carrion. As instructed, he lets the smell come in. The feeling is like eating a very hot pepper or breathing smelling salts, a violent clearing and purging of the head, a lightness, a lift as you breathe death and confront his smell, his corruption, without flinching, for you are breathing in your death.
Breathe in your death.
Death you're in. Breathe.
You're in. Breathe death.
In breath. You are death.
(162-3)
Look at their Western Lands. What do they look like? The houses and gardens of a rich man. Is this all the Gods can offer? Well I say it is time for new Gods who do not offer such paltry bribes. It is dangerous even to think of such things. It is very dangerous to live my friend, and few survive it. And one does not survive by shunning danger, when we have a universe to win and absolutely nothing to lose. It is already lost. After what we know, there can be no forgiveness. Remember, to them we are a nightmare...
We can make our own Western Lands.
We know that the Western Lands are made solid by fellaheen blood and energy, siphoned off by vampire mummies, just as water is siphoned off to create an oasis. Such an oasis lasts only so long as the water lasts, and the technology for its diversion. However, an oasis that is self-sustaining, recreated by the inhabitatns, does not need such as inglorious vampire lifeline.
We can create a land of dreams.
“But how can we make it solid?”
“We don't. That's precisely the error of the mummies. They make spirit solid. When you do this, it ceases to be spirit. We will make ourselves less solid.”
Well, that's what art is all about, isn't it? All creative thought, actually. A bid for immortality. SO long as sloppy, stupid, so-called democracies live, the ghosts of various boring people who escape my mind still stalk about in the mess they have made.
(164-5)
(Breather) “I can jet my way about like an octopus. You see, I'm a reverse vampire. Take a little, give back a lot. More than they can use, in fact. Keep moving is my motto. Only way to live. Now, one-way grounded vampirism, worst thing can happen to a man. I mean maintaining a permanent image with stolen energy. Some run it into the ground hot and heavy, moaning in a bloodless desert. Others take a little, live and let live- but by the terms of the vampiric process they always take more than they leave. The error here is a fixed image.
“In fact, a fixed image is the basic mortality error, a ME that cannot be allowed to change, certainly not to change color...”
(158)
Two threads running through this, on the levels of this world and the next. Magic, alive, unpredictable universe contrasting with the authoritarian, controlled, cancerous one. Plays out through book as theatre around the set of the Western Lands, leading to a question of what is immortality going to be like? Whose immortality?
Artistic, creative types question immortality in the form of heaven, rich man's set. B raises fluid sense of immortality, based on loosing the fixed image, learning to ride the scent of death.
Here B.'s looseness, bid for immortality of magic, comes in context of revulsion to the controlling aspect but also other's attempts at art. This revulsion can be read as contortions of the subject, Burroughs as Burroughs in subjective reflection while the experience of Burroughs, shining moments of transgression, fluidity and dissolution, shadow passing over desert sands, alive, dripping into and drying up, quenched by subject Burroughs.
So the immortality, the Western Lands, that one can know is a fluid one, beyond senses of self and fixity in time and space, one that manifestly is already...
This raises the question of whether artists, those awake to the magic of the universe, will every be satisfied by the only type of being that can ever be achieved through this type of practice; that of the fluid, the magical, the momentary clearing.
This sense of salvation is in something like presence, in the awareness of mountains and rivers, it comes in riding 'with' presence. Burroughs appears to seek it through riding death, through becoming cancer, as if in an attempt to dissuade that which seeks to kill and control by becoming its poison...this is not the only approach though.
Also we can see in Burroughs the last throws of the artist in motion, pushing, carrying a movement on his shoulders, reveling in drugs and homosexuality while they still offered the resistance that enables speed, the will, to ground itself. “Speed needs both smoothness and a surface,” without the resistance of the surface, speed begins to lose itself in its own inertia, nihilism. Artists now facing task of addressing the clearing, perhaps art and zen, zart? Potential of increased stillness as impetus towards movement dies away?
eh? eh?
(The Western Lands, 59)
Joe saw cancer as just another milepost. Cancer came into its own with the Industrial Revolution, a cancer model dedicated to reproducing identical replicas on an assembly line. The analogy carries over to human cells and replication, as solid as auto parts, tin cans, bottles and printed words. Joe didn't give a shit about cancer. He wasn't there to save human lives. He was there to alter the human equation.
(WB TWL 61)
A cancer cell, a virus has no destiny, no human purpose beyond endless replication. It has no work to finish and no reason to die. Give it a reason to die and it will. The ultimate purpose of cancer and all virus, is to replace the host. So instead of trying to kill the cancer cells, help them to replicate and to replace host cells.
(WB TWL 60)
“Have you something better to offer?” Says a serious young scribe. “We know that mummification can ensure a measure of immortality.” He turns to Neferti. “And what can you offer that is better than such precarious survival?”
“I can offer the refusal to accept survival on such terms, the disastrous terms of birth. I can offer the determination to seek survival elsewhere.”
...
(Nef.) “To reach the Western Lands is to achieve freedom from fear. Do you free yourself by cowering in your physical body, for eternity? Your body is a boat to lay aside when you reach the far shore, or sell it if you can find a fool...it's full of holes...it's full of holes.”
(161-2)
Neferti and the Breather stand before a door of fossilized honeycombs...He will teach Neph to ride the smells.
“Stand there.” The Breather stands six feet infront of Neph and gives him a full breath of carrion. As instructed, he lets the smell come in. The feeling is like eating a very hot pepper or breathing smelling salts, a violent clearing and purging of the head, a lightness, a lift as you breathe death and confront his smell, his corruption, without flinching, for you are breathing in your death.
Breathe in your death.
Death you're in. Breathe.
You're in. Breathe death.
In breath. You are death.
(162-3)
Look at their Western Lands. What do they look like? The houses and gardens of a rich man. Is this all the Gods can offer? Well I say it is time for new Gods who do not offer such paltry bribes. It is dangerous even to think of such things. It is very dangerous to live my friend, and few survive it. And one does not survive by shunning danger, when we have a universe to win and absolutely nothing to lose. It is already lost. After what we know, there can be no forgiveness. Remember, to them we are a nightmare...
We can make our own Western Lands.
We know that the Western Lands are made solid by fellaheen blood and energy, siphoned off by vampire mummies, just as water is siphoned off to create an oasis. Such an oasis lasts only so long as the water lasts, and the technology for its diversion. However, an oasis that is self-sustaining, recreated by the inhabitatns, does not need such as inglorious vampire lifeline.
We can create a land of dreams.
“But how can we make it solid?”
“We don't. That's precisely the error of the mummies. They make spirit solid. When you do this, it ceases to be spirit. We will make ourselves less solid.”
Well, that's what art is all about, isn't it? All creative thought, actually. A bid for immortality. SO long as sloppy, stupid, so-called democracies live, the ghosts of various boring people who escape my mind still stalk about in the mess they have made.
(164-5)
(Breather) “I can jet my way about like an octopus. You see, I'm a reverse vampire. Take a little, give back a lot. More than they can use, in fact. Keep moving is my motto. Only way to live. Now, one-way grounded vampirism, worst thing can happen to a man. I mean maintaining a permanent image with stolen energy. Some run it into the ground hot and heavy, moaning in a bloodless desert. Others take a little, live and let live- but by the terms of the vampiric process they always take more than they leave. The error here is a fixed image.
“In fact, a fixed image is the basic mortality error, a ME that cannot be allowed to change, certainly not to change color...”
(158)
Two threads running through this, on the levels of this world and the next. Magic, alive, unpredictable universe contrasting with the authoritarian, controlled, cancerous one. Plays out through book as theatre around the set of the Western Lands, leading to a question of what is immortality going to be like? Whose immortality?
Artistic, creative types question immortality in the form of heaven, rich man's set. B raises fluid sense of immortality, based on loosing the fixed image, learning to ride the scent of death.
Here B.'s looseness, bid for immortality of magic, comes in context of revulsion to the controlling aspect but also other's attempts at art. This revulsion can be read as contortions of the subject, Burroughs as Burroughs in subjective reflection while the experience of Burroughs, shining moments of transgression, fluidity and dissolution, shadow passing over desert sands, alive, dripping into and drying up, quenched by subject Burroughs.
So the immortality, the Western Lands, that one can know is a fluid one, beyond senses of self and fixity in time and space, one that manifestly is already...
This raises the question of whether artists, those awake to the magic of the universe, will every be satisfied by the only type of being that can ever be achieved through this type of practice; that of the fluid, the magical, the momentary clearing.
This sense of salvation is in something like presence, in the awareness of mountains and rivers, it comes in riding 'with' presence. Burroughs appears to seek it through riding death, through becoming cancer, as if in an attempt to dissuade that which seeks to kill and control by becoming its poison...this is not the only approach though.
Also we can see in Burroughs the last throws of the artist in motion, pushing, carrying a movement on his shoulders, reveling in drugs and homosexuality while they still offered the resistance that enables speed, the will, to ground itself. “Speed needs both smoothness and a surface,” without the resistance of the surface, speed begins to lose itself in its own inertia, nihilism. Artists now facing task of addressing the clearing, perhaps art and zen, zart? Potential of increased stillness as impetus towards movement dies away?
eh? eh?
In the bath
Too Tall and the Cripple are sitting in the bath. Too Tall's talking about our culture's drive towards expansion, the will to power clothed in physico-mental spatiality and theres beeswax solid dripping down into the tub from hollow brass holders.
The bath's small and there's wood panelling glowing in the last of day's light but mostly just flesh pressed together, sunburnt, goosebumped, wet, dry, lucky.
She's wondering how there can be such a drive towards movement and expansion when things can be so still so good. The trixy insatiable will, driving, driving always past its destination, onwards.
The Cripple's wondering again if realization of the hollowness of our expansion might lead to a stepping back, a falling back on the fullness of experience...trough the window theres leaves blowing in the sun. Some lady's talking about beaches and freshness over violins in the other room.
The bath's small and there's wood panelling glowing in the last of day's light but mostly just flesh pressed together, sunburnt, goosebumped, wet, dry, lucky.
She's wondering how there can be such a drive towards movement and expansion when things can be so still so good. The trixy insatiable will, driving, driving always past its destination, onwards.
The Cripple's wondering again if realization of the hollowness of our expansion might lead to a stepping back, a falling back on the fullness of experience...trough the window theres leaves blowing in the sun. Some lady's talking about beaches and freshness over violins in the other room.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
wings of steel
pick me up wings of steel
pick me up and to the horizon we'll go
to skirt the earth's curve and touch down
where the buildings grow thick and tall again
city to city, the rest reduced to landscape,
photo fodder, cutblocks, snow patch
and distant mountain monoliths
while I press my forehead against double-paned windowglass
short on sleep, racing against the sun, hours
lost in pursuit of the sun.
city to city, only three in Canada, mountains, lakes
hinterlands all between.
and you're right Arthur, mediated or unmediated
is meaningless when one is talking about a continent
traverseed in the span of two shits, a tea and an orange juice
swilled to the tune of a movie that wasnt written
but shat whole and quivering out of the sphincter of the spectacle;
helpless, stressed, laughing, American girls
meet singing, strapping, grizzled Irish men
and nuzzle against each other, and...it was a romp.
take me up wings of steel, I'm already yours,
already stretched before birth onto your grid,
spun alike across perception and the subdued
grasslands of Mississauga...
pick me up and to the horizon we'll go
to skirt the earth's curve and touch down
where the buildings grow thick and tall again
city to city, the rest reduced to landscape,
photo fodder, cutblocks, snow patch
and distant mountain monoliths
while I press my forehead against double-paned windowglass
short on sleep, racing against the sun, hours
lost in pursuit of the sun.
city to city, only three in Canada, mountains, lakes
hinterlands all between.
and you're right Arthur, mediated or unmediated
is meaningless when one is talking about a continent
traverseed in the span of two shits, a tea and an orange juice
swilled to the tune of a movie that wasnt written
but shat whole and quivering out of the sphincter of the spectacle;
helpless, stressed, laughing, American girls
meet singing, strapping, grizzled Irish men
and nuzzle against each other, and...it was a romp.
take me up wings of steel, I'm already yours,
already stretched before birth onto your grid,
spun alike across perception and the subdued
grasslands of Mississauga...
Saturday, March 22, 2008
powell river 1
and out here i'm a speed machine too
culling away the inefficiencies
of hand and mind, seeing microsites, seeing code
loosing the hand and the clock
against the forces of agitation,
raven wings thick through the air above
watching from blowdown stump roots
I slow for a minute with you,
glossy feathers watching
eyes,
raven above leading the canoes,
echoing into my speed,
echoing through muted thoughts
stirred with thick wings briefly rustling
but i'm a speed machine today,
with shovel and trees, boot step step
i'm a speed machine again
and tonight i'll be tired, smoke flowing
out towards the bay,
texada mines and hunting eagles on my horizon,
coming back to complexity, decompression
until the morning, fleeing dreams
from the sounds of city morning,
into oatmeal and gathering towards the truck
riding sleep-heavy still along the boulevard
stretched all the way out around powell lake,
radio speed frequencies tuned to 42,
supressing sleep and the salmonberries
gradual acceleration of minds till we put our boots
step step towards the next
culling away the inefficiencies
of hand and mind, seeing microsites, seeing code
loosing the hand and the clock
against the forces of agitation,
raven wings thick through the air above
watching from blowdown stump roots
I slow for a minute with you,
glossy feathers watching
eyes,
raven above leading the canoes,
echoing into my speed,
echoing through muted thoughts
stirred with thick wings briefly rustling
but i'm a speed machine today,
with shovel and trees, boot step step
i'm a speed machine again
and tonight i'll be tired, smoke flowing
out towards the bay,
texada mines and hunting eagles on my horizon,
coming back to complexity, decompression
until the morning, fleeing dreams
from the sounds of city morning,
into oatmeal and gathering towards the truck
riding sleep-heavy still along the boulevard
stretched all the way out around powell lake,
radio speed frequencies tuned to 42,
supressing sleep and the salmonberries
gradual acceleration of minds till we put our boots
step step towards the next
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Bear Mountain Treesit Wednesday, Feb 13th
I woke on February 13th at around 6 AM to the sound of cracking and my brother Carl Stevens yelling, “they're here, the police are here.” I was sleeping a hundred feet in the air on Buttercup's old platform in the branches of a large gentling spiraling Douglas Fir. There were six of us at the treesit that morning, three in the trees and three on the ground.
The RCMP got the ground crew out first, within minutes I could see flashlights darting along the forest floor below, one after another. Soon I saw a group of flashlights appear around a tent near the bottom of my tree and officers illuminated in their lights pulled Jesse out of his tent and led him away in handcuffs. Still dark, I saw a dog lit by flashlight tearing apart a bag of my belongings at the bottom of the tree my platform was in.
As the light began to grow a group of police gathered round the base of the tree, shining flashlights up into my platform. No attempt at communication was made by the police and during this period they tied my rope at the bottom of the tree which disabled me from climbing down under my own power. Soon I saw my brother Kalanu, who had been in the kitchen platform, getting taken away in handcuffs by a group of RCMP officers and me and Luke, who was in the platform closest to Leigh Road, began yelling to each other, “BC Forests under attack, what do we do? We fight back, we fight back!” I found out later that no one but RCMP could hear us; police barricades were keeping media and protesters hundreds of meters from the forest.
As the sun rose, two RCMP agents began to slowly climb the tree towards my platform. The surreality of the moment; bulky crab creatures getting slowly larger on the trunk which was supporting me while sun rays illuminated the branches around me and green birds flitted through the canopy. My first sunrise in the canopy, I lay on my side and watched the light coming towards me. Already there were sounds of a chainsaw and bulldozers below.
This was it, the RCMP were calling and their call was insistent: world! World! This is our world! We will bring transformation to suit the needs of development! Get the fuck out of the way! But in my head I knew that the sunrise would fade but it was enough that I was part of the appreciation which spread through the treetops with the rays of light. Let them come I thought, the world is so deep that it can take SWAT teams, it can take assault rifles and dogs become machines, it can take bulldozers and upturned gravesites. Let moloch throw aggression into the world, charge through and pave it over, and still it will be there, flourishing, resplendent to those who can see. The depth of experience which rushes through us as we encounter the world can never be taken away from us.
As I watched the cops climb closer, hammering spikes into the tree every few feet, I remembered the night before as the treesit camp gathered around our kitchen fire pit and traded stories, laughing and learning from the fire. The mind cannot be controlled and regimented like space , our thoughts and our laughter, this is our strength as humans. And here is where those who love the world will always win, for every police occupation, for every interchange, for every straight line carved into the earth's surface, there is another moment of abundant existence. As developers and bureaucrats encircle our earth with survey tape and surveillance, we can find strength in rallying around the land which calls to us through fear and rootlessness.
After about an hour, the lead climber, Glen, an officer from the mainland specially trained in aerial extraction, reached me and I was belayed down. As I descended towards the forest floor I could see that the tree was surrounded by a couple dozen officers arrayed around the trunk in rings, fanning outwards. At the outside were officers with assault rifles and video cameras, positioned in order to have clear sight of the platform in case I had decided to resist, closer were RCMP with guard dogs and body armour. As I touched the ground I was grabbed by five officers and cuffed against the mossy tree trunk which had held my platform. It was announced that I was being charged with mischief and I was read my rights in the bright light of a video camera and led out of the forest by a half dozen officers.
The tee-pee which had been the communal center of the camp for months was almost gone and a team of workers were carting our belongings away into the backs of giant recycling trucks. I was put in the back of a police cruiser and driven to the Langford police station along Leigh Road, where I could see the true scale of the operation; both sides of the 200 meter long road were packed with logging equipment and the dozens of police cars and a mobile command centre the size of a small bus which were needed to transport the hundreds of officers I later learned were involved in the paramilitary operation. A barricade manned by police at the intersection of Leigh Road and Goldstream Avenue had been set up to restrain the small group of protesters who had gathered and I was lucky enough to see the protesters yelling shame at the police car which sent shivers through my sign as we headed towards the Langford police station.
The RCMP got the ground crew out first, within minutes I could see flashlights darting along the forest floor below, one after another. Soon I saw a group of flashlights appear around a tent near the bottom of my tree and officers illuminated in their lights pulled Jesse out of his tent and led him away in handcuffs. Still dark, I saw a dog lit by flashlight tearing apart a bag of my belongings at the bottom of the tree my platform was in.
As the light began to grow a group of police gathered round the base of the tree, shining flashlights up into my platform. No attempt at communication was made by the police and during this period they tied my rope at the bottom of the tree which disabled me from climbing down under my own power. Soon I saw my brother Kalanu, who had been in the kitchen platform, getting taken away in handcuffs by a group of RCMP officers and me and Luke, who was in the platform closest to Leigh Road, began yelling to each other, “BC Forests under attack, what do we do? We fight back, we fight back!” I found out later that no one but RCMP could hear us; police barricades were keeping media and protesters hundreds of meters from the forest.
As the sun rose, two RCMP agents began to slowly climb the tree towards my platform. The surreality of the moment; bulky crab creatures getting slowly larger on the trunk which was supporting me while sun rays illuminated the branches around me and green birds flitted through the canopy. My first sunrise in the canopy, I lay on my side and watched the light coming towards me. Already there were sounds of a chainsaw and bulldozers below.
This was it, the RCMP were calling and their call was insistent: world! World! This is our world! We will bring transformation to suit the needs of development! Get the fuck out of the way! But in my head I knew that the sunrise would fade but it was enough that I was part of the appreciation which spread through the treetops with the rays of light. Let them come I thought, the world is so deep that it can take SWAT teams, it can take assault rifles and dogs become machines, it can take bulldozers and upturned gravesites. Let moloch throw aggression into the world, charge through and pave it over, and still it will be there, flourishing, resplendent to those who can see. The depth of experience which rushes through us as we encounter the world can never be taken away from us.
As I watched the cops climb closer, hammering spikes into the tree every few feet, I remembered the night before as the treesit camp gathered around our kitchen fire pit and traded stories, laughing and learning from the fire. The mind cannot be controlled and regimented like space , our thoughts and our laughter, this is our strength as humans. And here is where those who love the world will always win, for every police occupation, for every interchange, for every straight line carved into the earth's surface, there is another moment of abundant existence. As developers and bureaucrats encircle our earth with survey tape and surveillance, we can find strength in rallying around the land which calls to us through fear and rootlessness.
After about an hour, the lead climber, Glen, an officer from the mainland specially trained in aerial extraction, reached me and I was belayed down. As I descended towards the forest floor I could see that the tree was surrounded by a couple dozen officers arrayed around the trunk in rings, fanning outwards. At the outside were officers with assault rifles and video cameras, positioned in order to have clear sight of the platform in case I had decided to resist, closer were RCMP with guard dogs and body armour. As I touched the ground I was grabbed by five officers and cuffed against the mossy tree trunk which had held my platform. It was announced that I was being charged with mischief and I was read my rights in the bright light of a video camera and led out of the forest by a half dozen officers.
The tee-pee which had been the communal center of the camp for months was almost gone and a team of workers were carting our belongings away into the backs of giant recycling trucks. I was put in the back of a police cruiser and driven to the Langford police station along Leigh Road, where I could see the true scale of the operation; both sides of the 200 meter long road were packed with logging equipment and the dozens of police cars and a mobile command centre the size of a small bus which were needed to transport the hundreds of officers I later learned were involved in the paramilitary operation. A barricade manned by police at the intersection of Leigh Road and Goldstream Avenue had been set up to restrain the small group of protesters who had gathered and I was lucky enough to see the protesters yelling shame at the police car which sent shivers through my sign as we headed towards the Langford police station.
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