Category: Art

Beautiful day

It’s difficult, when you’re not an art historian or otherwise an art geek, to assess the value of seeing a real Vermeer or a real Rembrandt.  But it is supposed to be good for one, so I accompanied daughter Katie to the current exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery and was happy to be thrust 350 years into the past, when the current ideas about what constitutes the middle class were putting down sturdy roots. I looked into portraits whose faces bore the stamp of This is my Relation; I was struck, over and over again, by the beauty of details, clouds, ships, insects, trees; by the shine of the silver, the connections to the Dunnett books, and the pushing of art into places where it had never gone.  Why draw a dead and a dying horse side by side?  Why depict the interior of a synagogue (showing the mothers attempting to ride herd on their kids at the back of the shul)? Why elaborate on a new fashion of depicting happily married couples in a fantastic amalgam of backgrounds – he set amid his globe and his expensively bound volumes, she sweetly tugging at him to go into the garden for a moment?

It was the Art of Middle and Upper Class White Folks, writ large and small and in brilliant detail.  As a result, it is comfortable art.  Not challenging, not disturbing, not heartbreaking.  English contemporaries commented on the Dutch mania for everybody, from the greatest to the meanest, having pictures on their walls.  It’s pretty standard now, that your house isn’t a home until the pictures go up, and now I have a solid sense of where that notion came from.

Katie really enjoyed it.  She particularly enjoyed the paintings with trees, the detail and substance of them. We also agreed that the paintings on copper were the most beautiful, texturally.

I only played Art Troll once, forcing her to stand in front of the Vermeer, telling her that it was the first time in 50 years that a Vermeer had come to Canada and that she bloody well better look at it.

Then we wandered up and down Granville looking at the trendy shoes and clothes, I stepped into Tom Lee for a couple of packs of strings, we had a beer and cocktail (Sex on Wreck Beach, fancy that) respectively at Speakeasy, and headed out for Metrotown where she bought hair gunk and I heard the siren song of new smallclothes.  We parted at Edmonds Station.

Then I went to Planet Bachelor to hang out with Keith and Paul (Keith bailed on karate) and sing and play for a while.  Watched the 1929 documentary about the Peking (4 masted barque) again; I never get tired of watching that. I was very out of kilter and didn’t do anything very well; couldn’t remember lyrics etc.

Katie and I had a very good day, and I get some more Katie, greedy me, when she comes back today and I get my hairs cut.

Then she’s off to the PNE and I’m going to cut grass and tidy the kitchen and put away my laundry (finally) and start figuring out how to transfer the John tape onto another tape so that Phyllis can hear her son singing, and get ready for the small dinner party tomorrow night, which will consist of me, Jeff, Keith, Suzanne, Mike and Paul.

John’s interment in London is tomorrow.  Ruth and John and the kids will be going; I don’t know if any other relatives will be there.

Watched the Ellison doc last night

Dreams with Sharp Teeth is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.  Mike, Paul, Keith, Jeff and I had a glorious evening of pizza, beer, G&Ts, wasps drowning themselves in our drinks (this being August in Vancouver and virtually impossible to avoid), me printing out songs of mine for Paul to put in his songbook, me and Paul hanging the Japanese door hanging in the R. John Caspell Memorial Pinball Parlour, pinball (Great Finagle, but how much better that thing works when it’s level), bodywork, cheesecake and fellowship.

Dreams with Sharp Teeth is a must see if you’re into Neil Gaiman, BSG, or the English language.  The initial ‘interview’ sequence between Robin Williams and Harlan Ellison is PURE COMEDY GOLD. Also Richard Thompson does the soundtrack.  Once again, how much do I miss sharing stuff like this with John.

Now I am trying to wheedle Jeff into getting milk so I can make waffles.  I haven’t made waffles in ages.

Paul and I said to each other last night how much we missed small group ministry.  You think it’s Newage Nonsense, but it’s not – it’s major amounts of stress relief for your poor ol’ brain.  I remember the group meditations as being just about the only thing that kept me sane during a very trying period of my life.  Earlier in the day Paul came by and remonstrated with me about my lack of a rear view mirror on my bike (as well as to pick up the sewing kit, which is going back and forth between our houses like a sorry assed ping pong ball) and then he went out and not only bought one for me and installed it free gratis he got me a couple of really good bungie cords too.   All demonstrations of interest in my safety and comfort gratefully accepted, thanks.  As soon as the weather cleared in the midafternoon I went to get beer on the bike, and what an awesome ride that was, the temp being perfect, and the only hitch was when I tried to clear the intersection at Mary and Edmonds and nearly got crushed between two cars, and pulled a muscle in my calf.  It still stings – it’s a consequence of my ongoing L5S1 nonsense in my back, with the sciatic nerve pinging like a gas station bell – but I am taking painkillers PRN and otherwise ignoring it.

Also, I watched a DVD about church growth from a U*U perspective (man, it was interesting!) and had a long, interesting conversation with the minister.  Also, I practiced guitar for two hours and worked out the chords for Catnip on My Shoes, which I had never done before, so I can actually perform it in public now.

And here I was thinking I didn’t DO anything yesterday.

Bob Dylan’s New Year’s Day is done

I have always been much more fond of the lyrics than the tune on this one, but I don’t mind. …. I remember the day I wrote it… on the subway, coming back on New Year’s Day from crashing at Dave’s the night before.  Toronto seems so very far away from me now.  And yet thither must I go.

The landpeers are power washing the back deck preparatory to painting it.

I had lunch at Himalayan Peak with Hardeep, Trevor, ScaryClown and Robof9 yesterday, and hung with the folks in the cafeteria after that.  LTGW encouraged me to go to the 4:24 showing of District 9, but I wanted to get home and make dinner.

and now for some math tattoos.

Furbabies & Gilgamesh

This morning, while Eddie was grumbling the whole time, Eddie and Miss Margot played over the same little  stuffed mouse.  I am trying to train Miss Margot to run along a track (which is interesting, because once she has ‘prey’ in sight she’s indefatigable, like a squat and furry greyhound) and Eddie got into the act.  Then, grumbling still, he walked away.  Twice or three times this morning he’s bopped her on the head.  She never says a thing, just flops on the ground.  She’s 1/3rd his weight, it hardly seems fair.  Gizmo never hisses at or hits her.

Yesterday I wrote another tune.  The recorder was sitting in front of me. I recorded it.  What was so hard about that?  Why have I not done that before?

A zillion years ago Loki told me that the oldest story was the epic of Gilgamesh.  It’s been on my list of things to read since I was a small child.    The most recent reworking of Gilgamesh is by Stephen Mitchell, a noted scholar, writer, translator, and custodian of wisdom literature.  I heard about it when the book was released on the CBC and put it on my list; it seemed that finally the translation, or retelling, worth reading now existed.

Yesterday I went to the library, because the *^%&$$ ICBC finally got off its duff and sent me my address change, without which I would not be able to get an update to my library card.  I did so, and Gilgamesh was waiting for me; that and a number of other fine books and movies.

I highly recommend it.  I wish a really good animation studio would bring it to life; there’s no way you could do it as a live action film, in my view.  What a different world that was, even in the mythic retelling.  To read the flood myth…  a snake stealing the  plant of immortality…. to feel Gilgamesh’s grief when Enkidu dies…. to shake one’s head how the gods cluster round the first offerings after the flood – they are so hungry because their humans are all dead and there’s no one to make offerings …. to smile at the wisdom of the tavernkeeper Shiduri, taking shelter on the roof of her tavern when Gilgamesh shows up, not wanting to be killed by the powerful and crazed-with-grief man…. it was all very beautiful, and very strange.

I have had dreams about Uruk, the city of Gilgamesh.  I just didn’t know that’s what I was dreaming about at the time.

I had a productive and happy day yesterday.  I ran errands on my bicycle, and Jeff and Keith and I watched The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, saw Katie, and Paul briefly, and Mike came over for dinner.  Mike’s kilt came, so I gave it to him and he was VERY happy and immediately donned it. Best gag of the day – BOTH KIDS assumed we were watching Court Jester, because there’s Basil Rathbone in the same sets.  Anybody ever notice how Una O’Connor and Mildred Natwick look awful similar?  I didn’t until yesterday.  And Errol Flynn is among the hottest men who ever lived.

Anyway, if you like costumes, you have to see Robin Hood.  Olivia de Havilland’s gowns are swoonderful.

We watched Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (the documentary by Sam Dunn, which like his followup Global Metal, was awesome… and SO Canadian) and we celebrated Jeff’s birthday by eating barbecued chicken, and steak, and heart of summer salad with blackberry vinaigrette, and home made garlic bread, and bear claw ice cream.

This morning Jeff walked to 7-11 and they were OUT OF MILK.  Why?  Because their fridges were not able to maintain safe temps for dairy.  Kinda tells you what the last week in the GVRD has been like.  So he went to the other 7-11, which is a bit closer as it turns out, and they had some, and I made Jeff waffles and bacon for brekky.

Here is the recipe for heart of summer salad.

1 mango

1 small purple onion

1 tomato

1 orange pepper

1 red pepper

Cut everything into half inch pieces and drizzle either store bought raspberry dressing or home made blackberry dressing over top.  Take a tablespoon each of Tom’s blackberry jelly and olive oil and three tablespoons of vinegar, add basil, parsley and garlic to taste, then mix well.  If it sounds yummy, it is.

If I was making it in quantity I would likely add half an english cuke and more tomato.

Robert Longo’s All You Zombies:Truth Before God

Jeff gave me a book many moons ago called “The Gendered Cyborg” which is a bunch of feminist art critique.  I found most of the book incomprehensible (use smaller words, in context, puhlease), some of it actively offensive (in the ‘inhaling your own exhaust’ sense), and the rest of it mildly disturbing/thought provoking.  But if you want REALLY disturbing, check out this piece of art, which I think is one of the best of the 20th century.  And I never would have known about it if Jeff hadn’t given me the book.

Robert Longo’s All You Zombies:Truth Before God

As you may have guessed, zombies are much on my mind these days.

And the real world keeps getting more like a video game

Bruce Sterling pointed to this article.

Yesterday the pinball games came home from Victoria.  They are Xenon and Star Trek.  Xenon needs a lot of work a diode, Star Trek needs a diode is functional.  We’re going to get a brass plaque that says, R John Caspell Memorial Pinball Palace, seeing as how the pinballs will be in his old room.  More furniture came into the house, including my room, so I now am overstuffed with solid wood furniture, just the way I like it.

Chipper, you will remember that Xenon was a game you and Steve B useta play on downstairs from your place on King St.  Colin and Catherine, you will remember the Star Trek game as the game that went to Rhino – the same con where Jeff was Robert Bloch’s gofer.  Ah, the good old days.

Margot keeps trying to be trodden on.

I am contemplating the pile of work I’ve undertaken this year with some sadness. It is, after all, work.  But at least I don’t have to commute.

Watched the 25th Hour. Really, really great film; Spike Lee did an awesome job, and the cast is brilliant.  Lee is SUCH an actor’s director.  If you’re in a Spike Lee movie, you may not like him, but he WILL get a good performance outta you or die trying.  I am considering reviewing it.  My review is up on imdb.com

Hotter than the hubs of Hades.

Yesterday I brought 20 beers home on a bicycle.  Mike, you will be amused to learn that I bought 12 Bud Light Lime, having become addicted to them at your place.  (Mike, knowing that I’m a beer weenie, didn’t expect me to like them.  But Jeff and I both do, as it is lime flavoured beer water, and a damned fine thing on a hot day.)  I only had one bungee cord, so getting it all home was a challenge, but the house is downhill from the beer store, at least.

Song for today is All the Con Men I have Known.  A brilliant tune; it’s the one that gets me the most “That sounds like Joni Mitchell” comments (which frankly I find irritating while understandable) and I personally think the lyrics are among my best.  It’s just not an easy tune, and OF COURSE every goddamned verse has a different tune, because that’s just the way I crawl moaning across the floor.

Wreck yesterday

<snippets>

In the morning I loafed and lazed, squeezed in a grocery shop, and then reverted to dawdling and doodling; around 1 Mike came and fetched me in the convertible, and then we went down to New West to get Katie and Kashka.  (One half of the reality show girls).  Kashka is covered with ink from her ears to her ankles, including Betty Boop as a skeleton, which is freaky, because Betty Boop’s skull looks exactly how I would imagine Margot’s skull to look.

It was very pleasant on the beach.  There was a kicking breeze all day, and it was not from the usual angle, and pushed the incoming tide up the beach.

At first Mike tried to fly his approx 4 square meter kite but the breeze was so stiff he was getting dragged 10 and 15 meters down the beach, which I watched with the kind of chill consternation which is all you can muster when you’re feeling so mellow.  Then he tried smaller kites, which was much more successful, and provided us all with much in the way of aesthetics.

Liz, Kashka’s ex, joined us.  I’d met her when we were still living at the Augur Inn and really liked her; I still do.

As the tide came in (Mike always checks the tide tables and parked us WELL up the beach) the breeze shifted until it was straight onshore.  Surf’s up kids!  The girls were bobbing up and down in the waves several times – they’d come back out to warm up and then go back in.  I asked Katie if it was awkward to go the the beach with mom and she just laughed and said after ten years she was used to it.  And it’s been ten years since we started going as a family.

Odd, isn’t it?  I got in to waist height and let a couple of waves slam into me, because I wanted to say I had gone in and had some idea of the physical exhilaration of it all, but I’m 50, and the idea of trashing the bottoms of my feet and then having to climb all 407 stairs (counts vary!) had very little appeal, and at the end, the girls complained that their boobs had been thrown around so much they were all sore.  Mmmm… My kind of fun doesn’t have that kind of toll, but that’s just me being lazy again.  Also, Mike and Liz and Kashka and Katie all complained about how much salt water they swallowed.  Ick.

A man with t shirts and beaters went by; one showed a parody of a Starbucks logo with beers and WRECK BEACH instead of STARBUCKS, and the mermaid wearing sunglasses.  Kashka leaped up and said, “I want one!” so I obliged her.  I laughed, “All your mother’s many kindnesses to Katie are coming back for YOUR benefit, how annoyed Suzanne will be!”  But no probs, I’ll be seeing Suzanne later this week to catch up on the buzz.  Katie is living rent free at Kat and Kashka’s, so I am being politic.

I ate the best hotdog ever on the beach.  Those three jalapeños I added made for just the right amount of heat.

I wrote a song on Mike’s parlour Larrivée – no lyrics yet. Which reminds me I should pick up my guitar and make sure the tune is still there.   I believe so.

The GVRD but not the cops were on the beach.

All in all, it was a lovely, lovely day, and I got home around 7:45, very crisp around the edges. Tonight, off to see Patricia for the long promised Cavalcade of Cheese.

How’s that again?

Last night when I got home from work there was the same picture I’d left on the screen from the morning – it’s from a series of pictures Cousin Gerald sent me.  It’s of the underside of a dock in the wintertime. Margot walked across the computer keyboard and – I’ve not the faintest notion how – suddenly there was a picture of a person holding up a sign saying “Most of the things you worry about never happen.”  Bizarre.  Then she stood on the brightness key until my screen disappeared, which is a much less entertaining and more cat like thing to do.  Took me ages to figure out what had happened. All of these miracles would not occur if I just closed the darned thing up.

I am reading my grampa’s stories.  I am now up to the point where his family could have taken the Titanic across the ocean but left a couple of days earlier that it did.  One of his near relatives was so famous as a bookseller and antiquarian in England that a letter from America with his name, occupation and country on it – and NO other details – was delivered to him. I find it entertaining that anybody who really wanted to find me could do it in two steps on the internet, but the Post Office would be scunnered if somebody sent me a letter with my name, occupation and country on it. Mind you there was delivery twice a day in England then, and a little more enterprise among the employees.

He mentions another person from his childhood who noticed that the Greenwich Mean Time was off by two seconds one day and reported it by telegram.  He was right, and they said so.

My grampa worked in the Cadbury chocolate factory when he was a boy.

Eddie is eating and going outside again, so he has recovered somewhat from the cold Jeff gave him.  Mistress Margot is showing signs of wanting to go out.  Sigh.

The laundry list

Woke up at 2.

Eddie crying in my room again, but this time he let me pet him for about half an hour.

Could not for the life of me go back to sleep.

Did not want to go to work.  So…. tired….

Another commute to work in the drear rain, which magically transmuted to snow on the hill, and they are doing construction and thus diverted us onto a pathway that appeared to be clay mixed with greasy snow.  Almost fell four times on the way to work, again, the worst slip causing me to pull muscles.  Being diverted into a muck heap almost wrecked my shoes.  Complained to the site supervisor that where we were being forced to walk was a safety hazard, you bastard, have a nice day.

Got to work and everybody is asking me why I’m limping.  I wish I knew.  The last time I limped this much my back crapped out shortly afterward.  The pain in the top of my foot is worse when I walk and better when I climb or descend stairs, which makes NO SENSE to me. Why would flexing the foot hurt less?  The pain is markedly less when I do not wear footgear, which means I should hie me off and spend more money I don’t have on orthotics.  I used to get depressed when I was presented with yet another physical challenge, now I just set my jaw.

In the afternoon, Jeff got me at work and dropped me off at David Lam campus where – I had learned that morning – I was NOT going to get a contact lens fitting from my son but from a total stranger.  I stopped off in the campus bookstore and got Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, and a really cool flashcard book about human anatomy, then went to my appointment and then learned that all the grudgy hopeless feelings melted – all Keith had had to do was say I was his mother, and they swapped things around so that I could get the fitting from him.  Got fitted – it was damned thorough – and walked away with saline and two new contact lenses, which fit great and which I wore for about three hours.  My eyes are a bit gummy today, but not significantly more than they are in the mornings anyway.  As we were commuting back home together I read bits of Homage aloud to Keith and the two of us were killing ourselves laughing, because grim as the subject is (Spanish Civil War), parts of it are screamingly funny.

Then Jeff went to a job interview which went well and he can news about it if he wants to, and then on the way home my cell rang and it was ScaryClown, saying OMG new kitty I’m coming over (reMARkable what getting a new animal does for your social life) as ScaryClown is crazy mad insane for cats and then we watched the 1929 ship around the Horn documentary, with ScaryClown occasionally emitting phrases of stunned appreciation, amusement and awe (JUST as I expected).

Then I cooked pierogies and fed them and then we watched some Robot Chicken including one I hadn’t previously seen, and then I went to bed because I keep having insomnia.  Thankfully, not last night.  Miss Margot slept with me voluntarily last night (she got up to explore in the night and then came back to bed) and I slept until just before six.  So I actually feel like a human being this morning, and my son is showing signs of turning into a professional, and a friend stopped by, and tonight I gotta fetch la Margot to the kitty hospital and get her booster shots.

I hope to go swimming with the folks from Planet Bachelor tonight.  I may feel subpar with all these aches and pains, but I still have to exercise and walking is turning out to be problematic.  I mean, bus drivers are stopping between stops to pick me up, how often does THAT happen?

Oh, and I fixed my hat so it sits on my head better.

Oh, and Katie called me voluntarily and without asking for money.  And she asked me for my opinion about her hair, which is like asking Miss Margot for an interpretive dance on the Berlin Air-lift.  I said, “You’re twenty years old and stunningly gorgeous, do your hair however the hell you like!”  Now that’s what I call solid parental advice.