Glenn Kubish

The structure of modern life, Carey has said, is that we are being watched. And that we are watching. Lately, I have been watching Cascade Mountain and a few of the buildings at the Banff Centre via the centre's cool  webcam . I check it out in the morning, I guess, to try to simulate the thrill of getting that first view of the mountains when actually lucky enough to be in the Rockies—and disciplined enough to get up early. Occasionally, I use it as a momentary emotional escape hatch out of an office tower meeting pushing an hour that should have been 30 minutes. You get the picture. Laundry out there For a rectangular image that sits on my laptop, the webcam screen is, in a way, enlargening. Typically, when we get back from a vacation, whether to the mountains or wherever, I return resolved not to submit to the tyranny of the now visible. And to remember, for instance, that at this exact moment there are people walking into the Safeway on the corner of Robson a...

There is a terrifyingly beautiful feeling waiting for me in the Rockies. Quite what it is I have never been able to make stand still. It sometimes feels like merciful obliteration. I mean, the Rocky Mountains take no notice of those passing through, need nothing from those passing through. They are a quiet, powerful other. * By contrast, the urban landscape makes demands of me. It orders me to read this sign, read that billboard, read this digital screen. Read, read, read. And that reading makes noise in my head. And being the reader, I am tricked into believing the messages need me. In the mountains, there is no such fraud in the quiet trees.                                                                  ********                             ...