Balls of Rice

Category: Travel

  • Why people don’t get it.

     

    The following was first published in ARCANE CONTEMPORARY ART MAGAZINE. Get a digital copy for less than $3. Support emerging art, writing, creativity, and friends. 

    Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art

    Four years ago when I was newly twenty and wandering around the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art) on a Wednesday (the only free) night, I never would have guessed I would be one day writing an editorial for a contemporary art magazine. At that time I would take in any free event I could, even pretending to be a med student to get into wine and cheese events for newly graduated doctors. I walked around the Museum, staring at puppets and massive formations of wool and plaster and paper and metal, and I accepted the production and the process, all the while thinking in my head, “I don’t really get it.” And it’s true, I didn’t get it.

    Even then I knew people who made art; my girlfriend at the time painted abstract and I supported her in the selfish way a 21-year-old boyfriend supports something he doesn’t understand. I was used to reading depressing non-fiction books about the state of humanity; I could only really conceptualize straight-forward, simple, concrete ideas. Facts, not interpretation.

    Being in Montreal I often met people who willingly but begrudgingly worked as bartenders and grocery attendants while their peers from back home were child-rearing and flipping starter-homes. Societal norms state that people working these jobs aren’t contributing to society because they aren’t contributing to the economy, and thus in many ways, wasting their lives.

    “Yeah, one day I’ll get a real job,” is a phrase you’ll often hear from self-deprecating artists when talking with their more financially advanced friends. According to the norms of the world of creation, these people are working shitty jobs to have money to attempt the visualization—the realization—of some vague subconscious dream, of the tip of some idea that they don’t even quite understand, of a new feeling they can’t express any other way.

    There exists a new IT-based world of maximizing human efficiency and output. It benevolently wants us to waste absolutely no time on the mundane tasks with which our parents’ lives were filled, therefore improving our lives. New apps that are changing the ways we date, travel, sleep, are the foremost leaders in this push to free humans from the reality of being human, and to bask in all the free time we’ve gained. We praise the brilliance of our new tech-soaked free-market—an evolution of every capitalist generation’s attempt at increasing the productivity of the commodity that is human labour and thus, increasing capital. When productivity and value is based on output and dollar figures, soon art and creation are considered sluggish, lazy, and slow. And that’s the point when people don’t get it.

    Simply put, contemporary art is difficult for people to understand because art isn’t trying to sell something. The ‘art’ that people consume daily is limited to drab bus advertisements for cellphone companies, ten-second internet videos hoping to go viral, or kooky TV ads for razors. Ads make you feel hungry, inadequate, anxious and therefore, sell you something. Art forces you to sit down to decide what you feel, which always ends up being more significant than the pedestrian emotions stirred up by an ad. Art may portray ideas, even attempt to sway peoples’ opinions, but it isn’t selling a product besides itself. It is a series of emotions and ideas put together with paint and paper, mud and wire, mouse clicks and colour changes, foot movements and choreography, words and phrases.

    What I now realize, what I didn’t realize when I was walking around the Museum in Montreal, is that it’s not supposed to be easy. You’re not being sold something, so you don’t instantly, instinctively know what you’re consuming. Getting it may mean taking thirty seconds to sit and stare at it, to actually think about its colours and composition and lighting and materials, to consider something besides yourself and your walk to your car, something besides the digital billboard flashing in your face. It may mean to reread, re-watch, grab a seat and continue to look at all the corners of a canvas until you feel an emotion, when you feel that emotion, whatever it is, then you may get it.

    But then again, maybe not.

  • Counter Assault

    We stood on the trail from the lake to our campsite, holding hands in fear of our premature deaths. What the fuck is that, I had wondered, an elk? It was a blondish brown patch of fur the size of a beach towel, stomping in the bush. It turned its body around for us to see enough of its shoulder to know that it wasn’t a charming, peaceful elk, but a medium-sized, overly curious grizzly. We backed our way down the path, jingled our keys and bear bells like distracted children at a Christmas pageant, trying to remember the advice from the Bear vs Human pamphlets. We spoke loudly, awkwardly. She recited poetry, I repeated it in booming baritone.

    Not to lose the feel of the mountains
    while still retaining the prairies
    is a difficult thing. What’s lovely
    is whatever makes the adrenalin run;
    therefore I count terror and fear among
    the greatest beauty. The greatest
    beauty is to be alive, forgetting nothing
    although remembrance hurts
    like a foolish act, is a foolish act.

    -John Newlove, excerpt from The Double-Headed Snake, The Wascana Poetry Anthology

    The fear of death brought the idea of practice into our minds. The more your practice it, the less you fear it. The next week, (although we saw no more quadrupedal omnivores on the trail) we felt stronger, more secure, more confident in grizzly country. But the pressurized can of capiscum in my back pocket, Counter Assault Bear Spray, may have been the source of that confidence. By the tenth time I see a bear, fear will be an afterthought and the Coghlin’s Brand Survival Horn that we bought for a sense of security will be even more of a prank.

    After nearly two weeks surrounded by a Matt Goud/Tim Barry/Ken Freeman/Allison Weiss tour, you learn to fear not death, but inaction. Don’t be afraid of dying, be afraid not to live, Tim would say most nights. A wasted life is worse than death. Not in a danceclub/yolo/butt-touch kind of way, but in a I’ve-wasted-enough-time-on-all-the-bullshit kind of way. These mantras ring throughout the art that most closely resonates with me. But ‘wasting’ is what needs to be discovered. What is living?

    The greatest
    beauty is to be alive, forgetting nothing

    I’m reading books about writers. Fiction books. Bohemian authors of San Francisco or Toronto talk about the noble craft and its apparent sexual exploits. Dry literature, to me, but classic to many. It somehow puts the fear in me. Not the fear of death, but the fear of running out of things to say that are worth anything, the fear of writing about writing; writing about extramarital affairs, writing about ‘cultural eras’. So here I am, trying to scare the fear away the only way I know how. With practice.

    I dream of quitting my day job to write. Drive across the country occasionally, wash dishes at the pizza place, sit in a grungy library facing a scuffed-up wall and do something as banal as ‘express myself’, being naive enough to think it might change someone’s perspective. But to me, not paying attention to your neighbour is a waste of both your life and theirs. Not living is comforts and distractions. Quitting to pursue a naive selfish dream of typing nonsense onto a dead tree or into a digital void, can seem like a waste. Is a waste.

    But it may also be a waste to isolate, to work 11 hours a day even in the vague name of social justice, to sit in a stiflingly humid bachelor apartment overflowing with hats, broken bicycles, interprovincial beer. So which is it?

    Not to lose the feel of the mountains
    while still retaining the prairies
    is a difficult thing…

    It becomes a lot easier to fear not death, when it isn’t literally knocking on your fire escape window, asking your deteriorating body if you want a huff. To have the privilege to even make this choice is what eats me alive like a starved grizzly south of the Crow’s Nest Pass. And these words are my only Counter Assault.

  • James E. Harper: 2 (Lyrics of the Month: April 2015)

    “A story has got to have a beginning, a middle, and an end,” James told me over the phone from his care home in his small city in Arkansas. “That’s it. I don’t care if it’s a song, a novel, or just a story you’re telling your friend.” He coached me even though we’d essentially known each other for three minutes.

    I met James E. Harper (a.k.a. Poet) nearly four years ago with a friend in downtown San Francisco. James was introducing himself to people on the street, selling his book of poems, three or four roughly photocopied pieces of gold-coloured paper, so he could afford to grab a meal or some hygiene products for his wife. He mentioned that more of his work was available if you searched his name on the internet. In doing so, I couldn’t find any writings, so I transcribed what he sold me and posted it here. He deserves credit for his work. His poems are powerful and real. Read them.

    As simple as it sounds, this is the writing advice I’ve needed for months, years perhaps. James’ advice, to simplify and be natural, speaks to why I find his writing to be worth noting. Honesty. No bullshit. I spend hours at the Bernal Heights Library, staring into the eyes of Antonio Banderas encouraging me to read, while I try to sort out the several dozen metaphors I have choking every story. When really, all the story needs is a beginning, middle, and end. I am mid-read of Crash Landing on Iduna by Arthur Tofte, a sci-fi paperback I found in a Wyoming truckstop for $2.99 with incredible cover art. In contrast to my overcomplicated way of thinking, it is the perfect example of oversimplified writing. Now to find the middle.

    Comments have been posted regularly to James’ poems on Balls of Rice over the past three years by people who also stopped to chat with James and searched his name upon arriving home. A comment arrived in February stating that James now lived in a care home, and included a contact number.

    “When you write something, you want to strike the chord. There’s a tuning fork in all of us, and you want it to feel like you’ve hit that,” he said. “If you haven’t lived it, you can’t write it.”

    I told him that I am a writer and that I was in San Francisco to finish a few stories, which were giving me some trouble. “It sounds like you are forcing it. You heard of that song, If It Don’t Fit, Don’t Force It? Well, that’s just it.”

    I hadn’t heard of the song. Now it is in my head when I need it most.

    Just waiting to hear the end of the story.

    If it don’t fit, don’t force it
    If it don’t fit, nah, don’t force it
    If it don’t fit, don’t force it
    Just relax and let it go
    Just ’cause that’s how you want it
    Doesn’t mean it will be so

    I’m givin’ up, I’m leavin’
    Yes, I’m ready to be free
    The thrill is gone, I’m movin on
    ‘Cause you’ve stopped pleasin’ me

    I can’t stand bein’ handled
    I’ve exhausted each excuse
    I’ve even stooped to fakin’ it
    But tell me what’s the use

    You’re tryin’ hard to shame me
    ‘Cause you wanna make me stay
    But all it does is bring to mind
    What Mama used to say

    I know there’ll be no changin’
    We’ve been through all that before
    I’m all worn out from talkin’
    And now I’m a-headin’ for the door

    C’mon stop your complainin’
    Someone else will come along
    You can start your life all over
    Sing her your brand new song

    You’re tryin’ hard to shame me
    ‘Cause you wanna make me stay
    But all it does is bring to mind
    What Mama used to say

    -Kellee Patterson, Turn On The Lights/Be Happy, If It Don’t Fit, Don’t Force It

  • Dead, or a Spider Bite

    Drive down Victoria Avenue in the work van. There’s Len crossing the street to get pot of coffee. And there’s Pat, the guy that helped me self-publish that book, standing at the crosswalk. Head south to drop someone off at home and there’s Kim, Sid and Scottie’s kid, walking home from school. A few blocks up, Jim and his grey beard are cruising on the bike, being slowed by a stiff headwind. Drive towards to the hood to drop off a few boxes at someone’s house and see Rocky cursing at a non-existent person in a downtown bus shelter, the closest thing to her own living room. Get to the hood and see Sonia walking down the street to her place. Holy shit, have I been rendered dead from a black widow spider bite on my tit, or is it just a normal day in a small town? Is this treasure-trail-like rash my death wound, or just a minor stress-related skin irritation?

    I have nearly died several times in my life, as have we all. Nearly fall off a cliff. Crash a truck in the mountains. Eat really old rice and feel your body seize up (regular occurance). These are days I celebrate and remind myself that I am indeed invincible, and that no matter how poorly I treat my body, how many times I bike home and can’t remember doing it, how often I put a cellphone in my pocket to fry my balls into ancient legumes, that I will survive, and survive forever.

    I took no photos of my unemployment, an idiotic attempt to live in the moment, but mostly to have less expensive garbage on my shoulders thus less reason for desperate locals to beat the shit out of me for something to sell on the black market. Now I doubt it really happened. That time I had papaya salad on an island, the time I biked 120km in two days between ancient cities, that time a monkey stole our bag of chips, were all fabrications of the mind. Did I grow up in the suburbs? Was there really several times where I had a girlfriend? I don’t believe a damn bit of it.

    Same job, same apartment, same old habits.

    Driving down Dewdney next time, if I see Rocky in the bus shelter, I will stop and ask her for verification of reality, because at this point, she knows as well as I do.

  • Bigfoot

    Photo by Eric Goud

    Bigfoot is real. I saw him, his pecker in his hands, last week at Big Sur.

    I was eating a breakfast burrito on the coast, overlooking the mist-covered cliffs and crashing Pacific waves, when several kilometers in the distance, there he was, squatting on a rock with his back-end hanging over the ocean. The Pacific Ocean, Bigfoot’s toilet. I was far away, so it could have been a walrus, a sea lion, a humpback whale, a rogue sequoia tree, or beach trash. Or, as I prefer to believe, Bigfoot relieving himself.

    When I told a friend of my sighting, she scoffed and told me what I saw was just an amalgamation of seaweed and driftwood, propped up by high tide and made look real through morning haze. She proceeded to show me a very recent UFO video from Kazakhstan. Real, undeniable proof.

    Another friend told me to watch out. That the wormhole of bigfoot and UFO videos is a dangerous place for people already uncertain about reality, which is a common symptom of anxiety. She then proceeded to tell me about the peaceful tenets of Buddhism.

    Begrugingly I have recently come to admit that what I saw was not, in fact, Bigfoot taking a shit. But rather, simply, my desire to see Bigfoot exposing himself to the endless wonders of the bright blue ocean. But if someone sitting next to me, looking at the same cliff at the same time, believed that they saw him, truly believed that Bigfoot was there, I would support their belief. The reasons they believed with conviction could have something to do with their eyesight, their hunger levels, the animals they saw in the forest when they were children, the movie they watched the night previous, the TinTin yeti episode they saw as kids, or previous sightings of Bigfoot himself. Their previous life events made them more likely to believe, and since Bigfoot’s existence is still truly an unknown, this does not make them any less rational.

    Most people’s beliefs are based on secondhand accounts, old books, or internet video footage. Stories told by credible friends over a bonfire. A belief based on a feeling they have that they cannot explain. The same for belief in ghosts, or the resurrection, or of yoga, or in science, or in nothing.

    Some create elaborate hoaxes—a tall hairy figure with massive strides saunters towards a body of fresh water to wash his/her own personal holes—but their commitment to false evidence does not disprove the existence of a bipedal woodland creature. Some, presumably most, film what they believed to be the outright truth, an accidental stumbling across the unknown. Discussions of incredulity of people’s beliefs, denouncing what some hold true, break down any level of human connectedness. But people’s absolute conviction in the existence of Bigfoot, or their utter insistence on the excessive nature of his legend—people’s certainty and what they will do in its name—will forever impress, entice, and scare me.

    Their desire to be part of something, whether it is the glorious triumph when scientists find the first Bigfoot skeleton in northern B.C. or by pointing and laughing when it is proven to be an elaborate folktale, is the same unexplainable, at times unproductive desire that is a side effect of the destruction of real communities, the same desire that concretes people to a sports team, a country, a tax bracket, a t-shirt company, that is, the human desire—opposite of Bigfoot’s desire to be solitary, separate, unseen, anonymous—to be part of a greater whole.

     

    I visited the Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. Wandering around, haggard and tour-worn, I noticed the disproportionate number of attractive women aged 20 to 25, the flags of their home nations pinned to their blouses, welcoming wayward, lonely travellers in dozens of languages into the many ornate buildings of Mormon history. I was drawn to the domed Tabernacle where an organ rehearsal boomed triumphantly, peacefully. There I sat, recent non-believer, truly thinking how lovely it would be to fall in love with a Mormon girl, accept the general tenets of her faith, and start a simple carefree life as a closet Mormon in some foothills town in Utah, the ‘Life Elevated’ state. Sometimes, like this time, I would be elated to hand in my anxieties, loneliness, my overthought, for the absolute certainty that some can hold, and the happiness and joy that comes with being part of the greater whole. But in order to do that, one must believe.

  • Thanks for having me

    Thanks for having me, name of entity.

    I have been a guest in your beautiful city/home/business enterprise/vehicle/venue for the past (insert number) hours/days/weeks/months, and I appreciate every moment that you allowed me to share with you. I want to ensure that you understand how thankful/tired/horrified I am, because if it wasn’t for my over-sincere politeness, and my participation in the event that you allowed me to be a part of, I wouldn’t be worth anything as a human being. I only value myself based on the collective whole that I am able to interact with, and therefore I am a part of an occupation/business/travelling musical group/fringe lifestyle in hopes of gaining credibility, like a resume that is perpetually wiped clean and becomes blank. I apologize for putting you out by standing in your way/asking you to pour me a beer/sleeping on the floor of your room for a week. I also apologize for constantly apologizing.

    Thanks for allowing me to sleep in your warm arms, (name of venue/park/hotel floor/couch/airplane/bus depot bench). Whether soundcheck bass drum kicks reverberated me to sleep, or whether the the cool coastal wind blew dog buttflakes into my nostrils, I wouldn’t have been able to function without you. You held me so close, with such concentrated tenderness, that I awoke with no idea of where I fell asleep just 15minutes/2hours/5hours/13hours previous. Such love and tenderness that suffocates time and space is a perfect example of why I throw myself into the arms of the unknown so regularly.

    Thanks for having me, sobriety/mental stability/healthy body. It has been a while since we’ve seen each other, and undoubtedly, with a immediate future in demanding employment, it will be a while until we see each other again. I have hopes that we will be able to be with each other in old age, that is, if either of us still exist by then.

    Thanks for having me, AT&T/every WiFi hookup/FaceTime/postcards/email services. If it weren’t for your gracious acceptance of my temporary embrace of your communicative powers, I would have missed the birth of a PeeWee/the gastronomical escapades of a friend/the afforementioned period of sobriety/mental stability/healthy body, however, the latter is debatable.

    Thanks for having me/thanks for putting up with me. Because for reasons I can’t quite figure out, I often have a hard time putting up with myself, and your moderate interest in me is encouraging.

    Thanks for having me, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style writing. With you, anything is possible and everything can be convoluted and unclear.

     

     

     

  • Lyrics of the Month: March 2015

    Bands with managers are going places.
    Bands with messy hair and smooth white faces.
    But you don’t believe when I say that it won’t be alright.
    Vans with 15 passengers are rolling over.
    But I trust T. William Walsh and I’m not afraid to die.
    But you don’t believe when I say that it won’t be alright.
    That it won’t be alright.
    Cause it won’t be alright.

    –David Bazan, Achilles Heel, Bands With Managers

  • LANDRULE

    Phakdichumpon Cave

    The crimson tide of communism flows north from Indonesia into the remainder of the ASEAN countries, conquering and destroying numbers of tribals with a roll of the dice. Tens of thousands are displaced, thousands others are killed. Borders are bolstered when resources exist enough to do so, and infiltrations continue based on economics and weather.

    These are the ins and outs of LANDRULE, the rip-off, digital version of the classic marathon board game RISK, where joke apologies are given when cultures are decimated, and homogeneousness is the end goal. When you have 44hours of van time in three days, such games and distractions and mindless mind-stimulation is necessary. We watch Band of Brothers, a Hollywood ‘tribute’ to the allies in WWII, then we pass the massive Samsung Galactica S7 to the next unshowered goon, pretend to conquer the world, one podcast at a time.

    In contemporary, middle-class terms, we are conquering the land. We burn fossil fuels and eat Peanut Butter Salted Nut Rolls to show our progress and civility as humans. In five months from Regina to Vancouver to Horse Creek to Yellowknife to Winnipeg to Thailand to Regina to Seattle to New York spanning amounts of time in which only microbes can thrive. Such life is not natural for the relationship between a person and a person, a person and their brain, a person and their butthole.

    Thusly, my original doubts of malaria and parasites and any illness that exists until it breaks me down like a lego wall in an air strike, have begun to become real fears. My body aches for a home that I don’t have. In joking desperation and boredom WebMD tells me that I might have meningitis or hepatitis or West Nile shortly after it asked me if my symptoms included ‘low self esteem’ and ‘poor personal hygiene’. Do you have a craving to eat ice, dirt, or paper? If so, contact our emergency health insurance provider immediately.

    It’s not natural for a body to travel this far, this quickly, someone stated when the golden glow of New York City invaded the night sky from 50 miles out. Feels like I haven’t touched the ground in 4 days. I haven’t, really. The snaredrum whispered in my ears from atop the pile of guitars, amps, t-shirts, warning me that it was about to land on my neck with the next bump in the NJ Turnpike.

    Fox News headlines digested during free hotel breakfast:
    Rudy Guiliani thinks Obama doesn’t love America.
    North Korea claims that ebola was biological warfare sent by the US to destroy the world.

    I am here to bring it home.

    LANDRULE continues.

  • Pizza Scurvy

    Disclaimer: This is not pizza from Vera Pizzeria. This is scummy Montreal metro pizza, which also has it's place.
    Disclaimer: This is not pizza from Vera Pizzeria. This is scummy Montreal metro pizza, which also has it’s place.

    I have oft dreamed of a world free from the bondages of currency. The ‘bootstraps’ analogy that no longer makes analogical sense would neither make societal sense because people would all have the same strapless boots, the same homes, and the same neapolitan ingredients in the fridge. Where no matter how hard you work, you get a piece of the pie. The pizza pie.

    I have oft dreamed of a job that pays me in pizza and beer but until recently I believed it was an impossible, utopian dream. I have found said job. I wear an apron, I swing my hips liberally to the hook-heavy anthems of Jenny Lewis, I spray, scrub, soak, sort, and airdry the cheese-grimed pizza plates of Vera Pizzeria, home of the finest pizza your pedestrian tongue (and undoubtedly mine) will likely ever taste. Contrary to my communist, currency-free compulsions, on busy nights where my free labour has been deemed as moderately necessary, I work hardest and get paid the least, a perfect microcosm of capitalism. In the name of that covetous progress, the human-crushing runaway train that it is, they have sourced a commerical dishwasher. And with the simple stroke of a pen, with the lease of a stainless steel washer that sprays with the intensity of a pissed off geyser at 150degrees centigrade, I have become obsolete.

    So with my severance package in hand (a bout of scurvy in my organs from a pizza-only diet), and my travel backpack on my shoulder, I will slither towards an early retirement. Savings were significant in the height of the pizza game, and my investments were sound, so with the wealth of a nation, the tropics call my name. I have long desired, for three years or more, to leave my home to see the homes of others, and now, ticket for Thailand securely in hand, visa for India theoretically in transit, this retirement dream will soon come to pass.

    I pack my belongings, patch the holes on my backpack, google trip plans when flashbacks of swimming in the ocean, drinking five-cent chai, eating dogmeat bring excited memories of the learned parts of travel. Then flashbacks of sweaty, anxious, late walks on the beach, the embarassed purchase of tacos from women squatting in the alley across from the department store, feeling responsible and justified when I get attacked on several occasions strike my memory.

    Hold on a second. People’s dreams change? Without them even knowing it? Until it’s too late? Well that’s some merited bullshit. Some ironic piece of formaggio pizza, light and bubbly crust on the outside, black and tarry on the inside. I’ve already bought a one-way ticket, already dreamed of the exploits and adventures of the trip for three years. Like a soon-to-be-wife with cold feet, always dreaming of the day she’d get married, but when the vows are written and the dress is tailored and the family has flown into town she realizes that this dream was what she wanted when she was 19, not 29. But she goes through with it anyway because, she figures, it’s still what she wants.

    Much has changed in my brain in the three years since I last was in a territory that I was not welcome. For example, I have learned that I have always lived in a territory that I was not welcome; The Dominion of Canada. I have learned that as a person of privilege, I am ignorant and blind to my privilege unless someone calls me out on it, and even then I’m likely too stupid to comprehend it. I realize that abusing this privilege by flaunting it and spending its savings unwittingly, I disrespect those who have no privilege, even if I attempt to be ‘socially responsible’ while I do it.

    I am willingly throwing myself into a situation to inevitably become the type of person I never want to be. As if I decided to run in party politics, or get season tickets to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

    The tenets that I used to hold dear and romanticize about my lifestyle—the learning about culture, and seeing new things, and helping where I can—now come off as paternalistic blather. I am a product of loving parents that worked hard to give me everything I ever needed, which, along with the technologial and economic progression of the west, has turned me into a skilless rube whose only ability is to pick up and go. As a ‘writer’ I use this as ‘inspiration’ for ‘projects’ and ‘essays’.  Previously my impulse was to I enjoy flaking on the lifestyles and traditions of groups of people far from my home that have been adversely flaked on by colonial forces for hundreds of years. Now, I’d prefer to do so at home, by myself, in a rundown house in small-town Saskatchewan where I can negatively affect only the people nearest me.

    I look forward to coming out of early retirement to rejoin the workforce and finally stop perpetuating the types of relationships I have come to realize as unbalanced and unfair. I look forward to squatting in a moldy, infested apartment, dressing like a true dishwasher thus embracing the motto, “Dress how you want to be addressed” and forever scrubbing the cheese off of pizza-related tools, all for the simple reason that I am too unintelligent to understand how to truly live in balance with other people, so I’d rather just rot.

  • Horse Creek 2: Unionize

    Camper Dreams The floor with a view The Union Carnival Off Season Chickens