Cultivation

Brent Ledger in a column about collecting culture (a review of an anthology of Canadian gay poetry) in Xtra! May 10, 2007, invites us to meditate on the means of self-creation:

As much as history creates us, we create history. It's an act of force, determination and imagination. We make ourselves exist.

The last paragraph of the column references an anecdote about a missing library book but it can serve to reference the above paragraph about making ourselves exist:

It's a valuable reminder that culture doesn't happen by accident and a single careless accident can cause a major loss. If you want a culture and a space in which to belong, you have to coddle, curate and even create it.

Incubating, transplanting, and selecting are other tropes for the coming into being of cultural selves.

And so for day 155
18.05.2007