Understanding is love’s other name

The first time I saw liquid rock lick the ridge of a volcano, my synapses exploded as understanding shot into place. I thought, this is how we thought up highlighter orange.

It’s not that magma is so bright a red as to be unimaginable, but that we only know the potential brightness of red because we’ve seen magma. We can only know what we notice.

Paying attention is the greatest act of love.

I knew the figure of the ocean before ever seeing one; I knew Lake Winnipeg, thalassic in its expanse.

It looks more like the ocean than the Pacific inlet I live against now, Vancouver with its North Shore and its cities upon cities and tankers upon tankers.

The tenth-largest freshwater lake in the world, it smiles from ear to ear across the horizon. Eagles and ravens ride its shoreline, all 1,858 kilometers. Pickerel and pike fly its float. Its watershed reaches from central Alberta to the Great Lakes to Wisconsin, covering one million square kilometers. It is home to nearly one quarter of the country’s population.

Rushing into the water, like only the soggiest rom-coms might dream of approaching a lover, we kids would hit the splash at full speed, arcing our knees above the waves to maintain speed as long as possible as we descended into deeper and deeper water, seeing who could run the farthest before eventually toppling into its aqueous embrace. Humans do not have skin receptors for sensing wetness, only temperature: splashing in was, at first, a shock of cold; then, a slow warming, a ritual. A remembering of what it means to grow close again.

For over twenty years, the Gimli International Film Festival (GIFF) has saturated the shores of The Lake That Looks Like The Ocean. Gimli is a small Icelandic settlement within the bounds of Treaty 1, Manitoba: Anishinaabe territory.¹ Every July, films running the festival circuit grace not only the movie theatre, but also the Unitarian church, the Lutheran church, the gathering room in the New Icelandic Heritage Museum, and the beach. I faithfully return each July for my annual cinematic Nordic spa, watching up to five films a day in cool, dark rooms, sunning on the sizzling shimmering sand in between.

This year, like every year, E. coli warnings don’t stop people from diving in.

Katia and Maurice Krafft loved each other, but I suspect they loved volcanoes more. Field volcanologists at first, then filmmakers and educators, they traveled the world together for decades, studying volcanoes via observation. Their favourite thing was to watch the eruptions, previously-unimaginable spurts of red gushing up like fountain-esque tears of a magma baby living inside the earth. Rocks arcing high into the air, chunky metal suits protecting their noggins from flying magma bombs. Astronauts on Mars, while Mars throws a tantrum: that’s what they looked like.

If the tin man wore a space suit, silver shining in contrast to the threatening red backdrop. Or, in the case of  grey eruptions—much more dangerous than those of effusive red—their white coveralls would emerge from the dust, coated head-to-toe in dusty ash. The kind of ash that buried Pompeii. The same kind that burst from Mount St. Helens, claiming their volcanologist friend, David Johnston. The kind of ash that would eventually claim them.

Lake Winnipeg is dying.

Lakes, even those bodies as large as Lake Winnipeg, are not impervious to aging. Currently, the lake that is the water in Lake Winnipeg is eutrophic, or hypereutrophic, indicating high levels of phosphorus. High levels of phosphorus, caused by agricultural runoff and other anthropogenic sources, cause algae blooms. Algae blooms—“atogun” in Anishinaabemowin, meaning “thwarting life”—cover the water surface, block sunlight, eat up all the oxygen, and choke life out of the lake.

Fishers know the lake is not healthy, because they remember when it was. Fish pulled up on the ends of lines are speckled with black flesh, tumors bulging as if trying to detach themselves—fish that are sadly thrown back.

GIFF is unique in its rural setting. Leaving the cool, dark, immersive experience of a film theatre, you are reborn into the bright hot sun of a beach town in July. You hear waves lapping shore (never more than a few blocks away), wind in aspen trees, crickets chirping, the dying buzz of mayflies, the occasional teen ripping around in a pickup truck, but overall, a sonic landscape filled with natural elements. We feel safer in such places; our nervous systems are attuned to the peaceful chirps of insects and birds, not the rev and drone of engines. Research suggests these soundscapes make us feel more connected to the natural world—to the lake.

Water does not stay where it was when you first met it—the water of Lake Winnipeg is not Lake Winnipeg, per se, but the water that currently gathers in the basin we call Lake Winnipeg. Water flows into Lake Winnipeg primarily via the Red, Winnipeg, and Saskatchewan rivers; smaller flows come from the Poplar, Berens, Pigeon, Monigotagan, Dauphin, Fisher, and Icelandic rivers. Residence time in the Lake is between two to eight years. Afterwards, it continues to the Nelson River (nevermind the simultaneous processes of evaporation and sublimation, which occur at increasing frequency as air and water surface temperatures rise over time). 

Maurice and Katia fell in love with volcanoes after becoming disillusioned protesting the Vietnam War. Facing the horrors of humanity—our self-absorption and pettiness—they found mutual solace in the hot mouths of earth: a different kind of violence. Existential pursuits are dangerous, but less so than detachment, nihilism. Volcanoes? Dangerous. Love? See: volcanoes.

The film is a love story in which we never see a kiss, a held hand, a shared meal. Proximity is hinted at only by the markings left at their death site; we know they died side by side.

Instead, we see volcanic explosions that colour passion. Crests of magma evoke a carnal beating of the heart. There is eroticism in flowing lava, dirty hands, the intimacy of getting as close as possible to something, no matter that it might melt your film and video equipment.

Director Sara Dosa says: “Volcanoes became our language of telling a love story, and we thought that was truer to Katia and Maurice’s story than if you ever actually saw them kiss.”

I didn’t grow up knowing clear water; the water I love is cloudy, brown, disappearing our limbs beneath its surface. The name “Winnipeg” comes from Cree words, “Win” (muddy) and “Nipi” (water).

One sunny, childhood day, Dad dipped into the shimmer and re-emerged, the glint of his gold cross suddenly missing from his chest. He dove and dove trying to recover it—my stoic father, who ignores his mother’s Christianity and refuses to tell border guards where he was born and never speaks to me in Greek and chastises me for crossing my forehead and chest while passing a church.

The wet shine of his skin, suddenly soft and pink. His matted chest hair, reducing his body to its mammalian nature. The desperation and repetition of his dives, showed me for the first time the vulnerability and innocence inherent to having a fleshed body upon this rock of earth. I secretly watched from shore as the curve of his spine arced in and out of the water, patriarch suddenly as slight as a loon.

Each night, movie attendees gather on the shoreline to watch the beach films, projected on an eleven-meter screen erected directly in the lake. Viewers dig themselves makeshift seats in the sand. Feasting mosquitos gather. Waves lap. Frogs chirp. Credits roll.

Water memory—the ability of water to retain a memory of substances previously dissolved in it even after a series of dilutions—has been debunked as a scientific concept, but serves as a poignant metaphor. Even if the water that lines the Gimli shore of Lake Winnipeg doesn’t hold the memory of the words of the films, the sounds from the shore, we can say with certainty that the people attending the film do carry these things with them as they continue on with the parts of their life that are not at here.

What is science but a quest to understand? Shot on 16mm, composed almost entirely of archival footage taken by Katia and Maurice, Fire of Love is a love letter to mystery, curiosity, wonder, and pursuit. Silly at times, vulnerable at others, scientific throughout.

An experiment in feeling small, yet wanting big outcomes: ultimately, after watching tens of thousands of people die unnecessarily from volcanic eruptions, Maurice and Katia sought to educate the world about volcanoes—how to assess threat, when to evacuate—and help nations avoid catastrophe. Explosive risks might be made less dangerous by understanding, which—in a time before drones—was attained through relationships, through familiarity.

This is not a climate film, and yet—how could it not be? Vanessa Machado de Oliviera, in her book Hospicing Modernity, describes how humans must come to think of ourselves if we are to change our trajectory on this earth: “cute and pathetic.” Maurice and Katia might say: “cute, pathetic, and in love.”

To love something is to be taken by its mystery, to seek understanding. I would swish the waters and watch floating sand bloom into smoke, as if by magic. A lake that looks like an ocean is an altar for mystery, holding countless lost talismans, obscured by the muddy waters. Miranda July, narrator of GIFF’s Best Picture winner, recites Katia’s journal entries:

The unknown is not something to be feared; it is something to go toward.

I climb upon you to understand you.

Curiosity is stronger than fear.

Understanding is love’s other name.

Fire of Love (2022) was directed and produced by Sara Dosa. It screened at the Gimli International Film Festival in the summer of 2022.

jaz papadopoulos (they/them) is a queer, first-gen writer, educator, and interdisciplinary artist. They are interested in horticulture, nervous systems, erotics, critical theory, and romance. A graduate of the Cartae Open school, Jaz is also a Lambda Literary fellow and an MFA graduate from the University of British Columbia. Follow their work at @scrybabybaby on Twitter or vimeo.com/jazpapadopoulos.

1. Treaty 1 encompasses the lands of the Anishinaabe, Anishininewuk, Dakota Oyate, Denesuline and Nehethowuk Nations, and is the homeland of the Metis Nation. Gimli specifically is within the confines of Anishinaabe territory. The city of Winnipeg is also in Treaty 1, wherein multiple Indigenous languages––including both Anishinaabemowin and Nehiyawak––are spoken.