Hello Gentle Reader,
The province of Saskatchewan has styled itself The Land of Living Skies, the statement often featured on the provinces trademark green lettered license plates. Many Canadians often giggle to themselves when they see and hear this statement coming from Saskatchewan. For those unaware of Saskatchewan, it is one of the two only landlocked provinces of the country; rich in agriculture and natural resources (potash and uranium); and unapologetically rural. In its staunched identity for being rural, conservative, and valuing good ol' family values and traditions, one would most likely find inspiration and real-life basis of the mutant families of "The Hills Have Eyes," or the Sawyer/Hewitt family of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre film franchise. Looking past the provinces desolate rural landscape of an all-consuming nothingness, desolate villages and hamlets teetering on oblivion with a population of quite literally 40 people or less, one will find a province whose devotion to a football team (the famous Saskatchewan Rough Riders) is contagiously evangelical in scope, to the point where fans adorn themselves with mantels and headpieces crafted out of watermelon. Having traveled through Saskatchewan on numerous different occasions, and having visited and stayed with family in the province—both its edge of the world southern portion, with its expansive endless prairies, punctuated with a reprieve of rolling hills and coulees, before returning to all consuming nothingness of space and sky (there's something to be said: the abyss is not an eternal blackness of emptiness, but rather the endless nothingness and sameness of the great North American prairies droning onto the horizon); as well as the provinces northern solitary dark boreal forest and hidden lakes, like jewels and oasis within the evergreen shadows—I would still summarize all journeys through Saskatchewan as poetically desolate and uneventfully boring, to the point one could use a road trip through the province as a form of enhance interrogation technique. There are only so many abandoned barns, salt and peppered ghost towns, zombie houses, and freewheeling tumble weed a traveler can tolerate as the only highlights of the infamously bland landscape. It is also for these reasons, Canadians snicker when the uninitiated inquire about the 'exotic,' components of Saskatchewan, as its name would suggest. When researching (and hoping to see further translations) the Icelandic writer, Gyrðir Elíasson, and his work, I found myself smiling when reading about the premise of one of his untranslated short stories, Breffritarinn (roughly translated as: "The Correspondent,") where the main character spends the entire story receiving and responding to correspondence from around the world, which includes Saskatchewan. Perhaps it’s the parochial nature of Saskatchewan that makes the province in its own way fascinating. Both its unchanging scarcity and its intimate village like urban centers, summarizing its all-consuming nothingness and its smallness. There is something, however, to say about the skies that hang over the prairies.
The topography may embrace its otherwise conservative and stoic ideals of being unchanging, consistent, and lifeless; but the skies, the skies are mercurial in form, light and temperament. Dawns blossom to life in the streaming water colours of pink, lilac, orange blossom; while sunsets burn with molten intensity, clouds of blood clotted red, blazing yellows, fiery oranges; while evanescent dusks of russets and jaundice yellow fading into rich blues. Clear blue sky's stretching across the land in singular perfection, within the hour, however, a flock of clouds graze overhead. By tomorrow the conditions will have changed, and the tyrannical heat baking and scorching the earth will find reprieve when a storm system whips through, with the amnesty of rain, but at the cost of a thunderous tantrum and forked lighting striking out. When it comes to the prairies, the weather station is a frequent source of both information and conversation. The cover art of Ted Kooser's poetry collection: "Weather Central," immediately comes to mind. Those ancient televisions framed in their carved wood, receiving the broadcasted weather report in static and muted (if any) colour at all, glowing within those wood paneled cavernous rooms, of cigarette yellowed carpets and November autumnal brown upholstered furniture. The ability of the skies to change its scenography, through the spectacle of the weather, chameleonic and chimeric clouds, a palette of colours escaping definition and imitation, and shifting moods, there is reason enough Saskatchewan has styled itself The Land of Living Skies. This is perhaps why I often attribute and imagine hot air balloons existing, as if naturally, on the prairies.
Hot air balloons have haunted my imagination and memory on and off over the years. Growing up on the periphery, that is: a small village close enough to the big city that its light pollution and proximity are tantalizing to tease, while being far enough (and I quote my parents in this decision) to ensure that its morally corruptible influence was out of reach, always meant that a journey, visit, or drive into the city was an anticipated affair. Lately, I've been reminded of an advertising hot air balloon that existed on the very edge of the city, its simple primary colours available to be seen, with the corporation's name written across it. Yet that balloon became a defining feature of the landscape of my childhood. Just like the city's skyline with its office tours reaching for the clouds and the sky, the balloon became a hallmark of the city, a disembodied autonomous limb floating over the outskirts like a sentry. In weary and sleep filled eyes, I would spot it lighting up in the early morning sun, while the western sky behind it, remained night bound. It could clearly be seen in the bright fullness of the day, hopeful and welcoming, a buoyant still figure. In the golden hour of the day, as the sun began to set the balloon became a black silhouette, occupying a state that was both romantic and dreamy. At sunset, a glow and aflame against the molten coloured clouds of the evening. During dusk it vaguely existed, but the traces of its figure still whimsically spotted in the last embers of the day, a mere flicker of an internal flaming glowing in its entrails. While on bright moonlight nights and even during the wintery light pollution, it cast a haunting figure. Its ubiquitous presence was taken for granted however. One day the balloon was gone. Its departure didn't even register in my young mind, as the trips to the big city were so infrequent, and so eventful unto themselves that the balloons absence went without mourning. Now only later, however, do I remember the balloon, thanks in part to Mavis Gallant's short story collection: "Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris," – whose cover art endearingly depicts two individuals walking on the embarkment of the Seine, a bridge, and in the distance the titular balloon. This came about during an interesting conversation with an old friend, who couldn't remember the name of that Canadian writer: "the one everyone forgets. She lived in Paris, wrote about a balloon maybe?" he said, which was enough information to invoke and remember Mavis Gallant.
Having never read Gallant's collection: "Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris," I cannot provide any comment on whether or not a balloon made any appearance within the stories housed within the collection, but I can comment with certainty, that it will contain all the acute observations, crystalline prose, and the expatriate perspective of that otherwise cosmopolitan flare of a bygone era, which became defining features of Mavis Gallant's work. Despite this, the hot air balloon portion of the title resurfaced frequently in the subsequent days. First taking shape of the balloon from my memory, that amputated bauble drifting in the city limits, companion to the city's skyline. This memory and image mutated over the course of a few more days, becoming a curious image and thought. Upon further reflection that advertising balloon stands out in its singularity for being the only hot air balloon I had witnessed in my mortal life. This confirms that my life has remained in the periphery. Always at the margins. In the wings. Just on the outskirts. As someone once put it: a life left stranded not only in the shadows, but in the shallow end of the pool. Despite this realization, the hot air balloon has found itself exiled into the past. The balloon remains a bygone symbol that whimsical dream like invention introduced into reality. Not tragic like the dirigible. The balloon was man's answer to the sky. A trojan cloud, providing us the mode and means to propel to the heavens with such a casual and graceful pace, and look down upon the earthly realm with a bird's eye view. Since these initial flights, air travel and even space travel have become more sophisticated and utilitarian in scope and deployment. All the while, the balloon remains, existing as both daydream and leisure. It drifts and floats rather then flies. Rather then being a mode of transportation, it becomes the space where people can be amongst the living skies, correspond with the clouds, and enter into the illusion of exile that freewheeling state disembodied from the tethers of gravity. When I ponder the title of Mavis Gallant's short story collection, the balloon harkens back to an otherwise bygone age, one which required the balloons sense of whimsy, playfulness and character to rise above the ashes and wartime scars left behind by fascism. A distraction of existential uncertainty. The balloon to me, has begun to fill my mind with further ponderings and reflections. Some lives, have what can only be summarized as, little dignities. The thirst for life arrives when the body is old and running on tired blood. The hot air balloon cannot do much. The chance for exile and emancipation from one's own existence on the periphery may have long since parted; but the balloon can—for at least the moment—rise above the shallow end of the pool, and in such a small instance of only mere moments, one breathes new air at new heights.
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M. Mary
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