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news
August 16th, 2020 - different world, same life
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Hey there loyal MilesAstray fan,
Welcome back to my newsletter. Now, where was I? Last you stalked me, I was in Montreal, living under a duvet of snow. One pandemic later, I’m surfing heat waves on the other side of the Atlantic. Much has happened, but not too much. Let me give you the gist:
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my Corona diary
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While Corona changed the world, it didn’t really do much to mine. I’m a home office hermit with or without apocalypse. Of course my cave got invaded by some munchkin who used the virus as a pretext to quit the office life and pester me 24/7, but that was mostly pleasant. What else? With all non-essential stores closed, I didn’t miss the shopping I don’t usually do. My nightlife ambitions underwent the short journey from slim to none. Dining in could finally be justified without an ounce of guilt. And then there were the Corona classics, like empty toilet paper shelves, which were mostly amusing. There was beauty too – carless streets, a downtown rabbit, changes in mentality, solidarity. All in all, I was lucky.
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Montreal
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Thanks to relatively low case numbers across Canada, Montreal got away without a strict lockdown and so I roamed the city free as a bird, while the birds above seemed to care very little about humanity’s new order and hardship. Unlike many others, I didn’t experience a phase of heightened appreciation or creativity per se, given that nothing much had changed for me, but I did finish up my glimpses book proposal and sent it out to publishers (wish me luck, knock on wood, or whatever superstition suits you best). I want to take my art back to the real world, where it came from – away from the screen with its often empty-feeling digitalism, towards a renewed appreciation for tangibility, and I hope some will move with me along that desire line. The book as a paper vehicle is supposed to give my content a lift back into this simpler and more natural direction.
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Montreal
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La Prairie
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I left Canada a couple of weeks ago and was surprised by how smoothly that went. A little too smoothly maybe. I had brought an extra hour to the airport to accommodate the vigorous scrutiny I expected, but YUL looked like a ghost town, just without the tumbling weed. Nobody asked me questions, nobody took my temperature. Same (lack of) procedure upon my arrival to Europe. I’ve never been out the airport door faster.
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now what
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Now I’m catching up with family and friends in an undisclosed location I call home, somewhere in this galaxy.
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glimpse: JOURNEY | In the end, the journey wasn't all that much about traveling.
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glimpse: GOLDEN GREEN | With a harvest so golden green came the luxury to forget for a moment, forget about the previous year’s drought and those floods the season before that. Their pay was not measured in labor, sweat, dirt or time, but in luck, existential luck, and so their fate was never fully in their own calloused hands, but in the hand they got dealt by the capricious mother of all, queen of spades.
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photos | essays
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BLACK LIVES MATTER
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE
"PLEASE I CAN’T BREATHE.” Who polices the police? ONE RACE HUMAN RACE. HUMAN RIGHTS AREN’T DEBATABLE. I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND BUT I STAND! USE YOUR WHITE PRIVILEGE TO END WHITE PRIVILEGE. SILENCE IS VIOLENCE. see more
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photos | people
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Human Shake
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what a fine blend we are
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This collection is a blender, so watch out that you don’t end up in it one day. see more
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where to next
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France.
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Au revoir,
Miles