Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
Author: Allegra
Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.
Beyond the Edge is an excellent documentary about Hillary and Everest. Recommended.
I did a shop this morning; while out a katydid crawled over the visor of the MR2 and waved its long green feelers and googled its googly eyes at me. I ejected it from the vehicle.
People in New Westminster amaze me. One stood in the middle of a crosswalk and laboriously blew his nose.
I dropped of my library books (yay, no fines) and also all the alkaline batteries we’ve used in the last six months. I feel happy about keeping them out of the garbage stream.
Sandra posted a pic I sent her of the Chanterelle mushrooms; it’s at the FAQ part of her site. I am also thinking of her these days; a mutual acquaintance is a professional German translator so maybe since all of her best customers are German tourists we can get her site translated.
I am getting fairly nasty arthritis pain and loss of mobility in my finger joints; practicing each day does not improve it, but I’ll lose all my skillz if I don’t keep on it. I’ve been practicing almost every day for a year now and everybody including me can tell. Bless Interfilk for sending me to Georgia! I had such a good time. I’ve got Conflikt 8 to look forward to… I’ve never missed one!
Paul took me walking in Oakalla (otherwise known as Deer Lake Park) yesterday. It was a simply gorgeous day, and we saw a green frog sitting up in one of the little ponds next to the walkway. Thanks be, they’ve put in a portable potty in the parking lot on the Royal Oak side, I sure needed it as I was exiting the walk. Then back to Geekhaus for beers on the back deck. Paul brought jello! it was a welcome respite from the heat. I got the ceiling fan fired up in my room and it’s been much more pleasant sleeping… most mornings these past two weeks I’ve woken up collared in sweat, bleaugh. I swapped parsley salad and nuts for the jello.
This morning I’ll be off to a late breakfast with my friend Sue.
It’s been absolutely sweltering here in Vancouver, but some things are great….
The dogwood is in flower again, astonishingly, all over; it shines in the sun.
Still all happy about Guardians of the Galaxy. It won’t be as much fun the second time but I am looking forward to it.
Saw Zero Theorem, a film by Terry Gilliam, and it’s interesting. I liked the end and thought it made sense, Jeff was kinda meh about it.
Finally finished Europe Central; I’ll be heading back to the library today after my dentist appointment. I’m having a filling replaced. Not looking forward to it.
Paul and I are supposed to get together and do something exercisy today. Maybe we’ll swim in Katie’s pool cause it’s damned hot for a walk unless we’re going up in the hills to hike.
Right now all the doors are open … we’re trying to cool the place down since it’s like an oven in here even with the air conditioner.
…. Jeff and I went to the opening day of Star Wars on June 24 1977. It was a glorious day, and from the first moment to the last, we were enmeshed in it. Jeff went on to see it in the theatre at least half a dozen more times – I’m pretty sure I saw it once more on the big screen.
And until today, we haven’t seen a science fiction / fantasy / superhero movie which came even close to grabbing us and taking us someplace cool. We just cleared the door back from Guardians of the Galaxy.
Just go see it. Guardians of the Galaxy has everything your heart longs for in a big summer movie. Characters you can invest in; a plot so full of cheesy holes it’s like a big slab of Swiss; whacky universe destroying technology; dancing; a tongue in cheek soundtrack; talking raccoons; stentorian villains; crash landings and lots and lots of hilarious dialogue. Lots.
Tre and Battery came over yesterday and we laughed and talked and drank beer and broke out the pinball machines for the little guy. Very pleasant afternoon, and Jeff and I love that they never call first. We’re either here and happy to see them or away and sad we missed them. It’s like slipping back into another era, when it’s good that friends drop by.
In about twenty minutes we’re going to jump in the car and guh help us PAY for a movie. But 10 am on a Sunday sounds like the perfect way to avoid the crowds; Guardians of the Galaxy is supposed to finally be ‘the summer hit’. The fan reviews have been AWESOME. We shall see.
I am working on the novel still… it’s still fun after all.
Keith called yesterday (how good to hear his voice) to basically just check in. Happy sigh. If it wasn’t so oppressively sticky and hot, I’d say my life was a big old dream.
A lovely time filking yestreen at Tom and Peggy’s, Cindy also in attendance. I got to sing soprano for most of the evening, which is fine if I’m not singing loud.
I hope everybody has a happy pride day! or not.
I light a candle for pOp, and he knows why. You have a visit from Jeff to look forward to, and once he’s back I’ll come out and see you.
Got a call back from an employer NOT A FRICKIN AGENCY. I have to wait another week.
Saw, and loved, Edge of Tomorrow (stupid name, good movie though; it’s Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day.)
Jeff and I have been permanently ruined by A Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. Mr. Nosepuller told us to pay attention to the recreation of the couple, and now it’s in every single thing we watch.
It’s all about a fannish party that gets a little, uh, surreal. The first two verses are more or less as it happened, and then it goes into the stratosphere of implausibility and meta. Well my momma lived next door to Bela Lugosi – he kept trying to give her cigars – and I was too polite to say, “I think you’re lying,” so I said, “Alan, I think you’ve been working too hard!” He said, “No, she really DID live next door to Bela, call her in Ft. Lauderdale and you will see!” I thought, I gotta think of something to one-up this puppy, so I dug down deep in my memory (and said)
“I was seen by our Royal Queen in my crib when I was less than a year! And she leaned right in, and she cooed so loud, my auntie and my grandma could hear! And then… they misspelled my name in a newspaper clipping, if I clap my hands it appears….” and he said,
“That’s real nice, but it cuts no ice, cause Bela Lugosi is the king around here (Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiiii Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiii)
Drunk woman interrupts: “Well I shared a cab with Sinead O’Connor. I could tell she’d kill for a smoke. I said, “As soon as we get out and hit the sidewalk, we’ll go someplace quiet and crack some jokes… wish ta hell I could remember, what she said, it was a cutting remark and she cut me dead -”
(Allegra sings the chorus) “I live in mortal fear that we’ll run out of beer, but Bela Lugosi is the king around here!” (Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiiii Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiii)
Extremely high and goony woman interrupts, “Well I want you all to know I had an alien’s baby, and everything came out fine, but the eyes, and when she smiles, all her teeth are a little bit pointy, and she never seems to be the least bit surprised. I showed her “Plan 9 from Outer Space” – she said, “That’s IT, I give up on the whole human race….”
Allegra exultantly sings the chorus, “HAVE NO FEAR, SOMEONE BROUGHT MORE BEER, And Bela Lugosi’s still the king around here….(Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiiii Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiii)
So now you know the backstory for this song I wrote about 20-25 years ago, just after I met the gentleman in the first verse, whose mother DID live next door to Bela Lugosi.
We braved the Vancouver morning rush hour to get to the Tomahawk, the lamentably named Vancouver institution which has been serving breakfast since 1926. It’s also directly upwind from a mosque – how tired they must get of the smell of swineflesh cooking. It was lovely; we got to eat outside in a lovely arbour, hemmed about with nicely draped weeping sequoias and enlivened with the cheeping presence of a white crowned sparrow. The food and service were excellent, but since it involves driving across town in rush hour to do breakfast, we won’t be doing that agin except for very special occasions. Like Jeff’s birthday.
On the way we got treated to the excrementally bad signage (go right, no not here you idiot, ignore that previous sign), being forced to stop in the Cassiar tunnel, and you KNOW how I feel about being forced to come to a standstill in a tunnel, and the ludicrously self important driving of many, many miscreants. We stopped off at one of Jeff’s clients’ place of business on the way back to save him a trip and I got a little work done on the novel.
Jeff enjoyed Dead Snow II – a Nazi zombie movie sequel that was, so I’m given to understand, more inventive, scarier and funnier than the first. Zombies using a length of intestine to siphon fuel? Clever people, these Germans.
Sandra informs me that her cat, Shadow, has been stomping around the house calling me, which is funny because all I did was take pictures of her butt and skritch her a few times, also I did the doorwarden cause you have thumbs thing a couple of times. She is a magnificent beast, and a mighty hunter, which when the cabins get varmints is a good thing.
I made a meatloaf! It is so garlicky that vampires two counties away suddenly feel ill at ease.
Both Katie and Jeff are really feeling their trip up and down those dashed stairs at trail 6. Today I’m going to go to Katie’s place and go swimming, after I get in my five hundred words.
Yesterday the three of us saw the Lego Movie…. It’s really loads of fun, and I laughed almost as hard the second time. Liam Neeson’s Good Cop/Bad Cop is still hilarious; as the Good Cop he sounds like a leprechaun on nitrous, and as the Bad Cop his growls feel like they’ve been torn from the bowels of the earth.
Watched a really good zombie movie the other day called Chrysalis. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this tender / violent film was not it. It toyed with a lot of zombie movie tropes without feeling false or taking itself too too seriously, and I just plain enjoyed it. When I went to IMDB (and I can HEAR JEFF’S EYES ROLLING FROM HERE) the movie gets righteously panned, with one review praising it. I, however, will keep the memory of Penelope sleeping with her axe (ekshully a hatchet) for a long time, and it never got so gory I couldn’t watch it.
There’s nothing wrong with asking for what you want, but he isn’t actually asking for what he wants. He is listing, with brutal clarity, all the reasons his relationships ain’t been so swell so far. He’s also saying, not in so many words, that despite his youth, he is frozen in his conception of himself. He’s also saying, not in so many words, that he wants someone he’ll never argue with because she comes pre-loaded with all the things he THINKS he wants. And wouldn’t you just know it, what you want and and what you think you want and what you think you should want are not all the same thing. I can’t do anything but feel sorry for him; his self-conception is a tragedy, and his inability to understand how his list of demands might be seen is a farce.
This is the best novel I’ve read since the 40 rules of Love, and it’s a really really different book. I am finding it enthralling reading. (Except for the typos, and there were a couple of doozies). Historical characters – snared in conflicting loyalties and pushed to the snapping point time and time again, broken on the wheel of tyranny -command attention from every page. Superlative. His prose has the effortful grace of a bird of prey taking off. He calls Hitler ‘the sleepwalker’. Yesterday I watched a documentary on the death of Stalin for more background.
Hymn sing yesterday at Tom and Peggy’s was wonderful, and I took a cilantro salad based on the one Sandra taught me. (oh god, the food she fed me…. it was amazing, stellar, eye popping, wonderful). Two bunches cilantro wash the hell out of them pick them over and chop. One rinsed can kidney beans, make em yourself if you can. A cup of walnuts, broken up. Rather more garlic than you would think necessary, minced. Lemon juice all together maybe three tablespoons. No salt, no pepper. I’m also going to try this with parsley.
Jeff and Katie went to Wreck Beach yesterday. I would have gone, but I put out my knee somehow and every time I go up and downstairs my eyebrows bob up and down and I puff and blow in a most elderly way.
I read mOm what I wrote in Madawaska and she laughed in all the right parts. Now on to more serious bits. It can’t all be waltzes and comedy.
It has been yonks since I visited the library… I picked up two doorstops, one being the really excellent William T. Vollman novel Europe Central, which is an examination of totalitarianism as it affects the creative mind, set during the period just before and during WWII. Some reviewer or other said you don’t read Vollman for the plot but for the individual sentences, and he was absolutely right. Vollman is a powerfully strange individual, but his depiction of Kathe Kollwitz was so amazing I looked it up. I am looking up much of what he references on the internet and going to some strange and dark and eerie and interesting places. He’s also, like Dunnett, a portrait painter and polymath and this impacts the work. Good times.
I also picked up Part II of the Mark Twain autobiography, but the way it’s put together really sucks and it weighs 5 kilos if it weighs a gram, so I put that one down, even though some of the anecdotes are killer.
Last night filking with Cindy and Tom and Peggy; tonight Birthday Celebration with Mike M and friends; tomorrow hymn sing, back at Tom and Peggy’s. I just love singing Frobisher Bay with those folks. I took Peggy hazelnuts as a thank offering.
400 words on Tarot for Atheists yesterday. If I ever get finished with the introduction it will be one of the strangest pieces of atheist literature ever written; I know I’m saying the right things in the worng way, and some of it simply has to be cut but like most writers I don’t edit myself worth a darn. Also practiced lots.
Keith double booked himself for his own birthday party a while back so Paul and Jeff watched Internet’s Own Boy without him, so there, and had barbq chikn.
There was a certain amount of ugliness at both ends of the trip – I came home day before yesterday – but I’m going to take the high road and not whine about it since it all came right in the end… always a hazard of complaining live, you may look like an ass in real time rather than recollecting the horror with a suitable amount of alcohol to hand, speaking of which, there is none in the house.
It’s a rainy and overcast and not particularly warm day in Vancouver. The alternator is starting to go on the MR2 so Jeff will be babying it until he has a chance to get it fixed. He’ll be off to visit the folks sometime soonish, within the next week, and I’ll be doing the walk on thing to visit them shortly thereafter.
Today, a Costco run. I’ve already applied for all of the interesting looking jobs; now to map out some kind of more useful job hunting plan than I have at the moment, as it is entirely too passive.
I was thinking after we came back from brekkie (steak and eggs… should you care) that I don’t feel like working on George today, so it will be Tarot for Atheists.
I’ll be off to Ottawa tomorrow and flying Tuesday. It has been superlative, but it’s over. Sandy has been the kindest and most welcoming host imaginable, and I really don’t want to go home, except of course I want to catch up on Longmire and I miss Jeff and Miss Margot.
