extract from: SLIPPERY PATHS & HEART SHAPED BATHS

Checking my rear vision mirror, I see cars tumbling towards me, the other motorists swerving to avoid the debris and then the carnage as they got caught by the ice. Just like the movies, I thought.  One by one they hit each other, then the concrete median. Torn car parts and car tires littered the freeway. Then came the sirens.

Numb, I pull over in a truck-stop.  As I inhale my last Black Russian  a stranger wearing blue jeans and a fur hat approaches, clapping. “Great driving skills, girl.” He emphasises the girl. “It’s a rental,” I quip back, hands still shaking. With my stomach still located somewhere between my throat and my front teeth, I know that I have to turn back onto the frozen highway if I want to make it to the border before dark. Closer to Kodak, closer to the 11th wonder of the world. The home of payday loans, cheap liquor, burnt out forests and honeymooners.

Pulled from my archive, Niagara exists for me, both as an episodic memory and as a construction. It occurs somewhere between a choke artists wet dream and a pilgrimage to an Orca. My Niagara is emblematic of the raw power and the sometime unsubtle delicacy of nature. It is born from story re-told, a story passed down and a story re-watched. Mind and computer now offering a do-over of sorts. The real and the simulated collide as I swim laps. I remember the bitter cold, the camera that went to the moon and the SkyWheel ride from hell.  I remember the lipstick on my cigarette butt, the vodka and coke. I remember the snow underfoot. The sound of the falls and the reflection in the glass.