News from Vanguard

Hello all, hope you are doing well.

I bring news from the underground. Vanguard had it's first two projects, and they were not spectacular failures, despite our best efforts. First up was the print sale. We managed to raise $160 bucks! Pretty good for an upstart group of "bleeding hearts" activists. I had a blast, had some great conversations, and met some great people. After that triumphant showing, we bravely set off on our next undertaking, ignoring the warnings of our peers and all common sense. This project was intended to promote, of all ridiculous things, sustainability and environmental concerns. Originally slated as a group project, to take place during the lead up days of the conference put on by Youth Action Montreal (the one with Al Gore and David Suzuki as keynote speakers), it was forestalled by the first two days of the conference being canceled, due to low registration (they were apparently charging $15o. Go figure)

Undaunted, our intrepid protagonists soldiered on, contacting Youth Action and R4 at Concordia, and proposing that, since most of the legwork was done already, why not take advantage of said work by incorporating it into your advertising campaigns? R4 agreed, and the posters were adopted. The original plan, was to have posters promoting sustainability, using all recycled and recyclable materials. These were to be done using stencils (cut by us), which would then be turned by workshop attendees into posters.

Since there was longer any workshops, and therefore no attendees, we did the posters ourselves. I printed 13 by hand, after having received a fair (great) amount of help cutting the stencils and gathering the materials and research. They were all printed on cardboard, cut from boxes that we rescued from the garbage's of local businesses (with permission of course). Each one was different, and each one was unique. I will take pictures of the posters and post them up here as soon as I've a chance to take them.

The posters by the way, will be used to promote a %1 increase in tuition costs, in order to introduce sustainability programs on campus, such as recyclable materials being used in the school cafeterias and stores etc. Madness I know. It is our intention to bring this same insanity to Dawson, as it seems to us like a pretty fun thing to try to do. You know for a laugh.

Other than that, we are hard at work plotting our insidious Vernissage and Book Launch, which will hitherto be referred to as "the incidents". We are shooting for the 25th of April at the club Les Minots, so if any friends, family or kindred spirits are interested in attending, don't bother, we don't want you there anyway. But if you must come, contact me for more details. Don't bother phoning, I don't actually go home anymore. E-mail is the best method for communication, although I can't guarantee that avenue will bring you any more success either. If any one's interested, we can also put you on the mailing list, if we must. Or you can check out our blog www.vanguardcoalition.blogspot.com, you know, if you have time to waste.

Cheers,

Matt X

P.S: Big love to my friends and family, you know who you are.

Meaning in Coincidence

It's funny, today I was having one of those deep metaphysical debates. I was saying how I felt like the things we do matter because everything is connected, and that otherwise, if everything is relative and arbitrary, then nothing we do matters.

Then on my way home as I was waiting for the bus, this guy comes up to me and asks if I know where the Hotel Du Fort is. He's slurring his wrods (heh visual pun), his eyes are bloodshot, and his breath smells of alcohol. I tell him I'm sorry, I don't know where it is. He asks me for a cigarette, I say I don't smoke. He says thanks anyways, and he goes to walk off. I stop him, ask him if he's okay.

He tells me he's from Boston, and that he was out drinking, got separated from his friends, and is lost. He's trying to find his hotel. He's obviously drunk, and is not wearing a jacket, even though it's snowing pretty hard. I don't want him to walk off, I'm afraid to let him go. I try to get him a cab, but he won't take my money. Finally, I turn to the person next to me in line, and ask if they know where the hotel is. They point me in the general direction, say it's 4 blocks away.

So I tell the guy, look I'll walk you there. He says no, but I insist. I'm afraid if I don't, he's gonna walk into traffic. So I walk about 3 blocks, and I'm a little worried myself, cuz I have no idea where this hotel is either, and I'm not sure if the person who gave me directions was just trying to get rid of us.

So I stop and ask directions again. The guys I ask tells me it's just a little bit further, then take a left. So we keep walking, at this point I'm asking this guy a few questions to pass the time. Turns out he came down here with friends from Boston, Massachusetts for his Spring break, cuz the drinking age here is lower. They went to Dundees, then to some strip clubs, and somewhere along the way, he got shitfaced, and something happened that separated him from his friends.

He tells me all this, surprisingly coherent despite slurring his words and apologes profusely,
thanking me for helping him out. I tell him it's no big deal, and I mean it, how could anyone let someone just walk off in that condition?

As we're walking, he almost walks into the street a few times, and I have to watch him carefully. Anyways, eventually we find the hotel, I tell the attendant at the desk what happened, wait to make sure he gets up to his room, then tell him to be careful next time, and go on my way.

So why did I tell you this story? Because I'm trying to say how great I am? No, I don't think I'm any better than anybody else, and I hope, that most people would do the same if they were in a similar situation.

So what's my point? Just this: let's say things don't happen for a reason, don't you find it just a little weird, that right after I finish having a conversation about helping other people, why I believe in God, and everything happening for a reason, I just happen to arrive at the bus stop just as this guy is walking towards that corner.

Now it's possible that somebody else would have stopped to help this dude, but then again it's the big city, and plenty of things don't get done that should. My friend was knocked down and hurt quite badly, to the point where she had to wear crutches, by people rushing from one metro to the next. After they knocked her down and basically trampled her, nobody even stopped to see if she was okay.

So yeah it's possible no one would have helped this guy if I hadn't been there, and maybe someone would have, who knows. What I'm saying is, isn't just a little weird that one of the few people who would feel compelled to help him, happened by right when he was passing where I catch the bus? If i'd left the school earlier, (I usually do, I catch the 10:30 bus or the 11:00) I probably would have missed him, but this time I ended up staying a little later, something I never usually do, and happened by just as he was exactly where I catch my bus. By being there at that time, I got to share in that moment, and he was potentially kept from harms way.

I'm sure people will tell you that you can read meaning into whatever you want, and
that coincidences are bound to happen eventually, but I've seen too much stuff like this, too often, stuff that just seems too ordered, too systematic, to not be part of a greater plan. At this point, it would take more faith and rationalization for me not to believe in this explanation than it would to accept the posibility that maybe there's more to life than just a random series of meaningless events.

Now I'm not trying to say either, that only someone who believes the same way I do would have helped this guy, nor do I think what I did was so great. To me it was the only choice I could make. But I know plenty of people who are athiests or agnostics who would have done the same. My point isn't that you need God to be compassionate (although I definitely think feeling a connection to your spiritual nature, a connection to God can help, otherwise why would I believe in it?). My point is, that to me this sort of thing shows evidence of a compassion based universe, where everyone matters, everyone is connected, and even seemingly random and insignificant occurences in our day to day lives are part of an infinitely complex tapestry of causality and design.

Matt X

One gun added on to the one gun...

Hello out there, whoever might be reading this!

Thought I'd post another Vanguard Piece.

This one's a three part piece (triptych, in art speak),
about gun control. I should have the next two pieces up
eventually...

Hope everyone's doing good out there.

Big love to my friends and family, Rena, Chris, Mandy, Joey,
Mom and Dad. Sorry I haven't been so great at the correspondence.
Thinks have been a little crazy in Matt X land. Hope to talk to you all
soon.

Matt X