#366daysofkindness

I had the great pleasure of participating in a beautiful project that began in London by Bernadette Russell called #366daysofkindness.  In reaction to the London riots Bernadette has taken on the huge task of doing something kind for a stranger every day since August 2012 for 366 days!  A group of Torontonians gathered under the guidance of Matt Feerick to give her something back to say Thank You!  He challenged himself to do a random act of kindness a day, and then challenged us to do the same on June 16, 2012.


Please check out what Toronto did:  The Secret Act
For more about Bernadette's Project:  #366daysofkindness


If you would like to be part of the movement, do something nice for a stranger and then tweet


#366daysofkindness @betterussell

The Pocketology Collective took over the Danforth this summer for Art of the Danforth Festival.  They snuck onto the TTC, stood on a street corner, spent a lot of time in Rendez Vous Restaurant, the oldest Ethiopian cafe in the neighbourhood.  Not only did the collective collect a massive amount of stories that emerged from objects in people's pockets, but they developed a connection to the people that make up the neighbourhood of the Danforth and the rich culture there.

At LucScuplture on Greenwood, June 9, 2012 upstairs in a room people sat and listened to our sound installation piece:    Stories You Haven't Heard (from Woodbine to Greenwood)


Please click here to hear the stories and to find out more about us:
The Pocketology Collective

Please click here for information about our work at Art of the Danforth:
Pocketology at AOD

Coxwell Subway Station


and Rendez Vous Restaurant ...

Rachel Ellison and Stuart Torrance On Woodmount and Danforth

The Pocketologists on CBC's Here and Now

Through the Bay of Quinte
(spoken into a microphone while I drive)

I wonder
sometimes
where silence goes
does it drive through us like a sorrowed song?
does it lean into the shadows?
or does it come into you
during those nights

those nights ...
those nights ...

tiny raindrops fall softly on your rose-burnt back

across the valley
you see an open space
a lonesome tree
making some kind of statement
and then
to the hum-beat of the car ...
and the white lines on the road ...
to the "turn to a curve to the left" -- the fork
you follow, you follow because you're told to --
you follow because everybody is following this one road to the end of the Earth

if there was an end
if there is an end

And all these masses of people gaggling through the hum-drum!

That man at the bar he told me his life story.  His eyes soft brown.
His voice like a tainted song
He told me his country had betrayed him

A crow lands and flies across a Midland-truck driving East ...

Canada is where I need to be because there is no past, there's no history, no story
People come here to live and work, and that's great.


The car ploughs along the pavement


I was tortured in my country
and that is a tragic story
that story is what I cannot tell


I sat there, while the sounds of clinking coffee cups and people drank each others laughter.

I leaned in towards him at the bar my voice caught in silence

God! for Fuck's Sake I am so naive.  I don't know an inch of what it is like to be afraid that you really might not make it tomorrow, that you might not survive the night, that you might not see the next day, that you might not see the face of the people you call home.

Passing Lake Road. Still the clouds billow and shake.  If clouds could shake.
and all these people driving on the 401
The highway of my childhood
The highway that cuts through me like a vein
The fast road we used to call it

When will we get to the fast road?


We giggle and place our little feet on the window pane.

Where's the slow road?
The road where you take time to think
The road where you take time to stop
and listen
  ...

On the Highway to Montreal
(spoken into a microphone while I drive)


On the highway in County Northumberland
I think of how we all just pass through this Earth
how my father will pass through
how my mother will pass through
and how
these clouds billow above
the heron glides against the blue
and the little one follows her ...

The mist gathers in the corners of the trees
and on the highway the cars zip by
like the blood in your veins

And when I drive to Montreal
on this road, East, with the air in my lungs,
passing through cities like Port Hope ...

I wonder what it all means

I wonder at the culmination ...

thinking of the ends
and the new beginnings
my heart swells to the rhythm of some drum beat

and then I think ...
how incredible it is to be alive
and to know that you are alive.