A Story About a Coyote Story

I return to our table. The hitcher is chatting with our server. In the hitcher’s hand is a black felt pen and in her lap a sketch book open to a drawing of the ficus behind her. The server asks how long it took her to become an artist, and the hitcher says:

“I’ve always been an artist -- I was born that way. When my mother went out she would sit me at the kitchen table with a box of pencil crayons and a roll of paper and I would draw. Sometimes she would tell me a story while making my breakfast and I would draw what I saw in my head. But most times she didn’t and I just followed my hand, adding colours as they occurred to me. Sometimes the drawings didn’t look like anything, and those are the ones I remember best, but not the ones my mother kept.” 

“Abstractions?” says the server enthusiastically.

“You could call them that,” says the hitcher, returning to her drawing, touching it up. “But I’ve never liked that word. Abstractions from what, right? Like they started from people or buildings or landscapes and turned into something that didn’t look like anything?”

A couple comes into the lounge and the server leaves to attend to them.

“What were some of the stories your mother told you?” I ask.

“Oh, you know,” says the hitcher to her sketchbook, “stories from storybooks. Stories she had read to me so many times she knew them by heart.”

I watch as she blacks out the spaces between the leaves of her ficus, bringing the plant closer to her, as if into focus. She blacks out a few leaves and it looks as though a wind is passing through it.

“I remember one story,” she begins, her voice slow with concentration, her ficus now shimmering. “A coyote story about the arrow-trail that the Lower Earth People -- the Animal People -- a chickadee -- made with its bow and arrows to link them to the Upper World Land; how the Grizzly Bear was the last to climb this long line of arrows and broke it; and how the Lower Earth People who were already up there found everything -- all the food -- guarded and then, after suffering many suns, made their way back to the arrow-trail, only to find it was no longer there.”

“How did they get back?” I ask. 

“They jumped,” she says. “Sucker jumped first, thinking the blue part was water, but landed on the rocks beside it, smashing his bones into a million pieces.” She looks up. “That’s why suckers are inedible -- too many bones.” Returning to her drawing she tells me how Bat was next, but was so excited to jump that he forgot his wings and flattened out.

A moment passes. “And that’s why bats--?” I ask.

“That’s why bats are ugly,” she says quickly. “They used to be very handsome.”

Another moment passes before she holds up her drawing, moving it closer to her, then farther, turning it this way and that.

“What about Coyote?”

“Oh yeah,” she says, closing her eyes in concentration. “First Coyote turned himself into a pine needle, which fell fast. Then he became a leaf and floated gently to the ground. Then he returned to his own form.”

I recognize the passage. A recitation of the penultimate paragraph from Mourning Dove’s “The Arrow Trail”, which I read last week after I was introduced to Coyote Stories(1933) by a classmate, Mourning Dove’s great-granddaughter, Corinne Derrickson. “And after that?”

“After that,” the hitcher says closing her eyes again, “the Animal People were content to stay on earth, where they belonged. The breaking of their arrow-trail was the will of the spirit-chief. He did not want the Animal People bothering the people of the Upper World Land again.”

The first thing that occurred to me after reading “The Arrow Trail” was Genesis 11: 1-9, the story of the Tower of Babel. But in Genesis, God’s concern is not with those on Earth mingling with those in Heaven, but of a unified group whose tower would protect them not so much from another flood, but from another Act of God.

God writes:

“6. Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

7. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.

8. So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.”

In 2007, the theologian Theodore Hiebert offered a new interpretation of Genesis 11: 1-9, “arguing that the story ... is exclusively about the origins of cultural difference and not about pride and punishment at all.” I am not sure I buy that. Seems if cultural difference is valued, then why would it be predicated on the dissolution of something as positive as a group who came together to protect their families from floods and physically meet with the deity responsible for them. I share this with the hitcher.

“I don’t know,” she says. “The Bible was not a popular book in my house growing up.”

Nester's, Pier Mac Way, Kelowna, July 25, 5:45 p.m.

Today is a travel day.

Fintry Provincial Park

Okanagan temperatures continue to rise. To escape the heat, we gravitate towards water bodies and immerse ourselves.

Lake Okanagan is one such body, and Fintry, on its western shore, is a place to take its waters.

The picture above is of a lighthouse thirty feet from the beach and the three young men who climbed its ladders and jumped from it.

The Selling of Alphonso Davies

Earlier this week it was announced on CBC radio that the Vancouver Whitecaps "sold" their star player -- seventeen-year-old Alphonso Davies -- to a German football team for 20 million dollars.

Of course the player is not literally sold, like hockey player Wayne Gretzky and his contract were sold by the WHA's Indianapolis Pacers to the Edmonton Oilers in 1978, but the rights to negotiate a contract with that player. Whether this contract means the same amount of money, or more, for Davies and his agent has yet to be announced.

"I like that you can take a concept to an artist, and watch them rise to the challenge."

_______ is on the rise. That’s the general sentiment of the urbanites who flock there each year. They want the all the benefits of a big city without the costly rents and rat race. There’s also something to be said about living in a city where the creative energy is strong. ______ _____, an art dealer who honed her chops in ___ ____ at galleries like ______ ______ and what is now __________ ____________, recently made the move to the _______ area to open _____ Projects, a 4,600-square-foot contemporary art gallery located in the _______ _______ building on ___ ________ ______ in __________, ________, just a 25-minute drive from _______. _____ Projects opened with the group show developed with artist _____ ______ titled __________ ____— on view through May 26 —  which explores the themes of surveillance, labor, privacy, oversharing on social media, the unobtainable balance between work and life and mistaken identity. The exhibition features works by ____ ___, ____ ______, _____ _______, ____  ______, ________ ________, _____ ______, _____ ______, and ___ _______. I quizzed ______ on decamping ___ ____ for ________, opening _____ Projects and the premise of the inaugural show.

What made you leave ___ ____?

_______! I was drawn to the idea of coming to a city that’s experiencing a surge. I feel like I’m in the most exciting part of _______ right now. ___ ____ has become a very rarified place, especially in the art world. And I love it there, but you can get goosebumps here in a way that you can’t in ___ ____. I wanted to be on the ground floor of the culture. And my family is here. 

__________. ________ seems like an odd place to start a gallery. Why did you decide to open your space there instead of _______?

_____ Projects is not the first. I like to think we’re following in the footsteps of a rich tradition in the arts. _______ _______ was a pioneering gallerist based in __________ for 40  years, paving the way for contemporary galleries like ours.

How do you plan to make sales when you're not in a typical destination for collectors?

Well first off, ________ has a rich collecting community, especially ______ ______ (__________, __________ _____). These are people that travel the world to discover fine art and design. Collectors follow the art, wherever it is. Culture will always function as a cultural oasis—look at the community that rose around Marfa, or Miami Basel. You find that if you have work that you truly love, that speaks to you, that stands out to you, it’s not difficult to sell. That’s the barrier to selling art: your total belief in the work. I could sell these artists from a payphone on the side of the highway. Although I’d prefer not to.

How did you find the space? Why did you choose that space?

We wanted to be in the heart of the city! I was looking for something particular: big, and with the right light. The space you choose for your gallery can elevate the work. I wanted to find a raw space that I could design in the way that I saw fit. The _______ ________ building is a landmark, and I feel it’s special that we can be here, and tailor the space to our needs.

Explain the whole concept of __________ ____.

Working with artists directly is a big part of who I am as a person. I like that you can take a concept to an artist, and watch them rise to the challenge. Ideas are their medium, in so many ways. __________ ____evolved out of some of the thematic interests you see on the reality TV show, that in an art context are incredibly potent things to think about: surveillance, labor, privacy, oversharing on social media, the unobtainable balance between work and life, and mistaken identity. In fact one artist in the exhibition _____ ______ is frequently mistaken for the bass player from the stoner bands _____ and ___ ________.

What is that whole story with the fake review lines?

The press release is a gag. Another case of mistaken identity. I think the show deals with its heady themes in a way that's also humorous. That's what art can do, give a dialogue a new context.  

How did you select the artists?

The ethos behind the gallery is creating opportunities for _______ artists to show and sell their work and be put in context with established and emerging artists from hubs like ___ ____. Of course many of the artists I’m bringing with me are old friends from ___ ____, from when I showed them, or worked with them at __________. To be frank, I picked the artists with the work that I love. The work always comes first. 

What are some of the exhibition's highlights?

Well, I’m particularly excited to be featuring ________ _______. He’s from here. The gallery showed him at the ______ Art Fair, our first art fair, and we sold out the booth in its entirety. _____ ______’s also _______-based, and has some incredible new roller paintings for the show.

A small room behind a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

A lot of popping sounds these days. Especially at night. At first I wasn't sure what it was, so I recorded it and, after learning of someone who could listen to any sound and tell you what it was, sent it to her.  Here is her reply:

Gunshots from an Armscor M206 .38 Caliber Snubnose Revolver fired into two firm four-inch thick foam mattresses on the floor of a concrete room and recorded onto 1/4" tape at 7.5 inches i.p.s, transferred to a MacPro and played through Boss Audio NX654 6.5" 4-Way Speakers from either a 2010 Ford FIT or 2012 Toyota Matrix travelling at 35-40 k.p.h.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////