Charity?

An RSA Animate talk on the problem of charity, by Slavoj Zizek. He's gives me permission to feel good about my misanthropic "soft" apocalyptic vision. Ahhhh. Thank you.

Tom Waits? Faustus? Jephthah?

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus retells Faustus with a twist of Jephthah (Judges 11:29-40). The story is biblical, or epic, in proportion. The old magician (the father? God?) has made a deal with the devil (Tom Waits!) for eternal life. For this (which becomes a horror rather than a blessing) he must give his daughter, at the age of 16, over to the devil. Why he makes this selfish wager, that is what makes him the kind of person that will make such bonehead deal, is left unplumbed. We do find out that he believes (naively of course) that over time he will find a way to undo the deal and keep his daughter safe. To quote another great screenstar: "What a maroon!"

Well you can guess how it plays out. And you'd be right. It's an entertaining enough movie. Tom Waits is worth seeing, but the film is locked into its own devices. Having chosen the back story, Gilliam can't find a way to us in to care about it. Even as Parnassus offers similar deals to other souls, in an attempt to appease the devil, and we are presented with a listing of the ills of humanity, they are too societal. Certainly we have a problem with stuff, with ambition, with greed, etc, but why do I  have this problem? Why do you? And since the movie's not about me or you, well then it might as well plumb the characters it presents. But this film doesn't. Everyone does what the book says they should do, in flat and predictable ways. The film might have been interesting if we'd been give some sense of why Parnassus (other than blind love) wishes for eternal life when given the consequence of losing his daughter's soul? Why doesn't Valentina run off with Anton, even though she says she'd like to? Why does Tony use a charity as a front to launder gang money? Instead these are simply trotted out as back story, to explain a character's actions, rather than offering an opportunity to illuminate the character him/herself.

The answer to all this might be that when you have money to spend on effects, you will spend that money on them, rather than on writing, which means the plot (and it'll have to be a simple one) rules (even if you are Terry Gilliam). This is how you make a Hollywood movie. Plot, plot, plot. Celebrity, celebrity, celebrity (Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law). Effects, effects, effects. What usually makes a Terry Gilliam movie interesting is the way he uses effects to create a setting that makes the plot feel new. Then he engages memorable characters in real-life dilemmas, in these other-worldly settings. His great movies - 12 Monkeys, Brazil, The Fisher King - do this in most excellent ways. Since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas however, Gilliam seems to have lost (or forgotten, or ignored) that a compelling character is necessary in any sort of narrative project. If people are supposed to care, and not simply be bamboozled a la Avatar they need to be anxious for the people they watch. As long as we fall in and out of love and getting beaten in a bike race, we will be compelled by the drama of watching someone in these sorts of common dilemmas. Even the Bond and Bourne series understand this.

Zen and the art of the late night bike ride home

First, it is easier to be zen about things if things happened to go well in the goings on prior to the ride home. That said, you don't have to have competed successfully, you just have to have been well while competing. Yes you can compete and remain in the zen zone. Free yourself to lose, it will happen more often than not. Accept a win as a grace note rung in the universe, with your DNA's resonance in mind.

Second, it is important to disregard the weather, except to take its measure. That is, if it's raining, prepare to get wet. If it's windy, prepare to work a little harder. All these elements are tests that may elevate your spirit. Be thankful for each of these opportunities.

Third, accept whatever happens as nothing more and nothing less than whatever happens. If your bike light falls off of your jerry-rigged system to keep it on the handlebar, be happy that your hand was nearby and you managed to grab it before it fell to the pavement. If the light had fallen to the pavement, be happy that you'd then learn what it's like to ride home along a dark highway.

Fourth, the darkness is the same day, just without the sun's light.

Fifth, be grateful for every car or truck that passes you and gives you a full lane when they do so.

Sixth, take the time, when you arrive home, to clean up your wet and muddy bike. It deserves the attention, and your bed will wait. I have concluded, over the years, that it's better to clean a bike sooner rather than later. Caked and crusted mud and grit that is dried on is more work to remove than when it's wet.

Seventh, clean yourself before you crawl into bed. Who needs to wake up in a sand box?

Rode to town, to ride with the ABEs from Altona to Gretna and back again along the Trans Canada Trail (Have you noticed that Trans America sounds more nasty than Trans Canada since that recent film? How could Trans Canada sound nasty? We've been travelling down Trans Canada thoroughfares for decades.), and then rode home, after ride wrap-up festivities. About 36 ks total.

  

Fear the reaper

If you've seen the movie version of Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (you should read the book) and if you pay attention to style, you'll be reminded of "Natural Born Killers." Unlike the film version of Fear and Loathing (an adaptation that provides a visual montage of some scenes from the book, but does not provide you with the cut and direction of the book), Natural Born Killers stays focussed on the message. The film is a cogent, frenetic, violent, and loving anti-fantasia of what America is, what it exports, and what it could become.

(To be clear, I had not, until yesterday night (this morning) seen this movie (originally out in 1994 - it's 16 years old!) and a Bill Murray interview I was reading mentioned his cameo in Zombieland and Woody Harrelson and Natural Born Killers and I thought, I guess I should watch that movie ... so yesterday I did.)

After killing her abusive father, and her trembling mother along with him, Mickey rescues Mallory from the stereotypically way over-the-top (Married with Children?) lower-middle class family nightmare. This release sets them off on their journey together. They are both father and mother-less, and without this anchor, they fall prey to despair and revenge. In short, Mickey and Mallory Knox rampage across the countryside killing. They are in love with each other. And they kill. They kill for a variety of reasons. Some people, they say really don't deserve to live. Some people are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes they kill with a shrug of self-preservation. For the most part they kill because they aren't convinced that living or length of life is all that consequential. That is, we all will die, so what's the point of worrying about when?

Eventually, as is the way in America, they get caught, incarcerated, interrogated, packaged, commodified, and celebritized. This is one of the central themes: America's main industry is to package things, anything, for sale. American is one giant retail chain. A commodity-seller with sights on getting rich on someone else's gullibility (or necessity, whatever suits). Into this morass Mickey and Mallory inject some moral clarity with the business end of a shotgun, or handgun, or rifle, and so on.

Visually and aurally this film is wonderfully difficult to take in. The camera fidgets and squirms. The backdrop is as often a montage of history panels and dream sequences as it is "reality". Which illustrates the point: we all live and act in the context of our families and our society. We cannot escape what they say about us, and what we say about them.

In The Sibling Society poet Robert Bly observes that Western society is a culture of adolescents. Parents are absent, either physically, or emotionally, from the lives of their children. Even when parents are physically present, they are as ill-disciplined pleasure seekers as their children. So we are a culture of siblings, with no adults around to run the show. This seems also to be the premise of Natural Born Killers. Combine a lack of loving supervision, with a heaping measure of a culture born of, and raised on, violence, and you just might get a disaffected, nearly incapacitated, person. If this doesn't result in Columbine, it might spawn Gordon Gecko (reincarnated as Lehman Brothers, et. al), or the guy asking for spare change in front of the MTS Centre. The ultimate result of this absence is the individual's alienation from community, and the loss of the fellowship that comes from good work (this point needs developing, a la Wendell Berry, but I've no time right now).

This film is unflinching in its observations. Brace yourselves if you haven't seen it.

Death does not arrive to sit in your easy chair

Yesterday we watched Departures, the winner of last year's Oscar for best foreign language film. Although it's a better show than a lot of the movies that come up for Oscar consideration, it was no masterpiece.

Departures makes no pretension to be anything bigger than a well-mannered rom-com, except that the main character prepares dead bodies for the casket - he encoffins them. Never mind that we meet him as his personal dream to play cello in a great orchestra evaporates, and that his subsequent freeing of himself from this dream is complicated by his accidental (and somewhat comical) falling into this new occupation, we don't really get to understand, or care deeply for him. We more closely connect with his new boss, the aging encoffiner who also got into this work via the back door, and now lives a pleasant, but lonely life. Here we have a man of will, and who cares little for what others think of his work, except that they think that he does it well. Here we have a man who has insight into people, and though he manages his emotions stoically, he negotiates overwrought situations with a calm sensitivity that causes his clients to respect and thank him deeply. He is that person who you underestimate, even scorn, until you watch him work. Then you wonder why you'd been so blind to his skill. But he's not the centre of the story. Nor is his relationship with his young conscript really at the heart of it, though it could, and should, be.

The story is about the loss of the father. And it is about the relationship between father and son, but this theme only skips in and out of the storyline. We are distracted by the main character's trouble with his own marriage, and with his self-esteem, and with the odd encoffining situations these two get into. In this it reminded me of Sunshine Cleaners (also a movie about cleaning up after death). That's not a bad thing, but Departures has more on the brain than Sunshine Cleaners. It just can't seem to focus on it.

At the end of the movie, when the main character finally confronts the father that deserted him, what should be the most affecting scene, is more of a curiosity. We've never met the father so we don't know how to care about him, or hate him. The main character's anger about his father is too quickly overcome and, frankly, things just all come together too easily. It's a nice movie. Compared to most, I'd even say it's a good one. But the best foreign language film? There are a lot of foreign films out there. And a lot of them are better than this one.

Next up: Natural Born Killers (a little contrast anyone?)

Short ride today: 32 ks (to the 75 and back) Avg 30.10 kph Wind NW 30+ ks

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

I read Carson McCullers' novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, this past year and it's memorable and brilliant for several weighty reasons. It is not a plot-driven thing. Though it mostly follows (and wonderfully draws) the main character, Mick, a young girl just coming into adolescence, it also chronicles the lives of the many others who swirl around her. McCullers writes in the traditions of other great southern writers, like William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. Her gift, I think, is in the portrayal of women, particularly young women. Which is not to say that she isn't adept at portraying other characters - in particular she is deft with children, or child-like personalities.

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, the feature story (a short novella actually) of a collection of seven stories, is a classic of southern writing, and a solid exemplar of McCullers at her best. In it Miss Amelia, a very strong and independent young woman, eschews the help of men and becomes a well-to-do "force of nature". She collects rent, makes and sells the best moonshine, and doctors the sick in the small town she "dominates" and cares about. In conventional southern style, the pleasant, if not a bit odd, rhythms of this life are immediately challenged by the arrival of a destitute misfit, a hunchback claiming to be a distant relative of Miss Amelia. To the shock of the community, she believes him and takes him. Thus begins both a time of wonder and awakening for Miss Amelia, but also triggers events that will lead to her inevitable decline.

(Continued (on July 26, 2010) after a night cap at Ted and Darlene's ...)

McCullers' stories are all about love and longing - for life, for the weak, for art, for music, for the body, for a lover. In "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud," the closing story of this collection, the male main character speaks to a 12 year old boy, in an attempt, it appears, to save the boy the inevitability of misprised love. His argument turns on the following passage:


'And what do they fall in love with?' ...  'A woman. Is that correct son.' ... 
'They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax. Can you wonder it is so miserable? Do you know how men should love? ... 
The boy sat small and listening and still. Slowly he shook his head. The man leaned closer and whispered: 'A tree. A rock. A cloud.' 


The southern writers have this sense of the immensity of nature, and our self-imposed alienation from it, in common. Faulkner, McCarthy, O'Connor, and McCullers fill their stories with this heady presence of  landscape: rain, heat, trees, flowers, ponds. There are characters that work around it and characters that struggle against it, but those characters who accept that they are merely, and most fully realized when they are, a part of this greater whole, those characters thrive, in the spiritual sense. They understand their place in human society. They appreciate their time in the world. They live naturally in their own skin, loving their own people, and caring for them when that is what's required.

I highly recommend this book of stories, as well as the novel: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Rode 52 ks (to Emerson and back). Wind SW 17 ks. Avg 31.43 kph.

Snake!

So what do you do if you wake up in your Winnipeg apartment and find a snake (a constrictor about 3 feet long and better than an inch thick) nestled in your kitchen sink? You leave. You get on the bus and head for the St. Norbert Farmer's Market. Then, you call your Dad, in Altona, and say "We really need your help!" which, while true, doesn't really make for a practical solution to the problem. So you call a friend who has a snake or two, and knows something about handling them, but she only gets off work at 2:30 PM. Well you end up going back to the apartment, calling 911 and getting a cop to come out (a cop who hears the call and comes because he thinks it'll be an interesting assignment) and rustle the thing out of the place (it had moved up onto the counter when he got there). Apparently it was a baby Boa Constrictor (like this one). Whew! You can watch a CTV newscast about it, right here!

How do things like this happen?

The bird in the woodstove (fiction-ish)

This, for instance, is an honest situation. If you have a woodstove, with a chimney that a bird can fly into, and, say, fly down (this only happens in summer and fall - or at least when you're not burning wood in the stove) and then get trapped in the stove because, for some reason it doesn't think to fly back up. Then you have a kind of an honest problem. Things are at stake. More for the bird, no doubt, than for you. But let's say that you're in your study, and you start to hear noises that sound like a kind of scratching (of course you don't hear it as flapping at first, because you're not anticipating a bird flying down the chimney into your woodstove) or even whispering. The first time you think it might be a largish mouse, in the wall. This is annoying and, after waiting, hoping for it to end, which it doesn't, you stand to find the place in the wall where "the little pecker" (inadvertently you use a better metaphor) is at work, and as you home in on the sound you realize that it's coming from the stove. Then you understand pretty quickly what the problem is. You look around the room. How's this going to work, you ask? The bird will fly out when you open the stove door and fly out into the room. It will fly toward the light, not dark openings (although Lord knows how it decided that flying down an ever-darkening chimney was a good idea ... As the de-motivational poster says: "It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black." ... but perhaps birds', maybe all animals', drive to survive is a drive that's akin to the human sense of hope - that force that drives us ever onward in what can only be seen, afterward, as a dead-end.). What to do? You look around. Inspect the situation. And then take the following action: You close the door to the room. You go to the screen door to the outdoor balcony and you open it - you prop it so it stays open. You hope that it will take a few minutes for the mosquitoes and flies to notice this gaping opportunity, and then you open the woodstove door. Nothing. At first. You peer into the blackness of it and there, standing, is the traumatized (it would appear) sparrow. As you see it, it sees you, and it launches itself high to the middle of the room - toward the light. "The light!" you say, and you stride over to the switch. Even before you get there though, the bird sees the other, larger, light and flies down and easily clears the room. "Damn!" you say. "Cool!" And you close the screen door, and settle back in to your writing.


The light! I ask you then, what am I? To that bird? What am I? This is an honest question. If you ask the bird, if you could ask the bird, and then you did, and it understood your query, and could answer, what would it say? Am I a god? But then I'm an equivocating being for, inadvertently, I've built a bird trap, a kind of birdy hell-hole, from which only I can release said birdy. Am I a god? What kind of god? You see? This is an honest situation. 


I propose that honest situations pose questions for which you will find no satisfactory answer. I can feel good about releasing the bird. Relieved that birdy didn't get overly confused in my room and shit all over the place. Relieved that birdy recognized the greater, better light, and flew away. But like the fish that you suspect gets caught more than once by the same hook, will birdy fly back down your chimney, anticipating the release - the release and rescue of that birdy, an action that that birdy has no chance of ever enacting himself? 


Currently the cat is mewing at the door. She wants release too. Again, I'm (ie. the human in the room) the only one who can provide this for her. Of course I'm overstating it, but these are honest situations that illustrate my situation. Feeling responsible for managing a problem that I had no intention, nor much awareness, of creating. It's an honest situation.  


Rode 46 ks today, to Letellier and back, and averaged 34 kph. Wind was from the West at about 7 ks. 

So ... why are kids so randy these days?

I don't know. Cell phones?

Isn't it good to eat and drink with friends?!

Here's a bang by bang account of the day:
- Soccer practice from 7:15 AM to 9 AM
- Go home
- Make coffee and waffles
- Drink coffee and eat waffles
- Read a story from the New Yorker
- Write
- Free a bird from the woodstove (not kidding!)
- Write
- Pick up the truck (from Sparky's of course)
 - Cut green beans for freezing with Bekah
- Meet with Lois and Armin to talk about the future of Rhubarb
- Eat supper with Lois, Armin, Joe, & Margruite
- Talk, sip, laugh, sip, talk, sip, laugh, muse, answer many major questions ...
- Go to Gallery in the Park for the opening (get there late)
- Talk to people about art and other sundry, importantish (if you will) things
- Go home
- Watch a few minutes of Garden State with Sara and Eric (hilarious! why not! "How did I do?")
- Search desperately for Ryan Ginter's email and not find it
- Remember that Ryan is a Facebook friend - Whew!
- Blog (about all of the above)
- Tell myself that I have to remember to contact Ryan
 - Message Ryan
- Read (after blogging - obviously this is yet to happen, you'll just have to trust me. I'm reading a story by Carson McCullers as you read this ... probably ... or sleeping ... or it's tomorrow, and who knows what's happening? I could be golfing with my curling team!)
- Sleep
 - .

Great day(s) for riding

It was a great day for a ride, so Genevieve and I rode from Altona to Walhalla (via Gretna, Neche, & Leroy), and then back to Neubergthal. That's 110 ks. It took us 3 hours & 40 minutes. We averaged 30.02 kph.

The CMU Hot Pursuit Team did significantly better. They beat their projected time of 84 hours by about 15 hours, riding from White Rock, B.C. to Winnipeg in 65 hours, arriving at 2:01 AM this morning. The aid of a strong Westerly talewind from Calgary on down didn't hurt. They passed Arvid Loewen at Swift Current at about 4 AM yesterday morning. Arvid was expected in Winnipeg at about 1 PM this afternoon.

Wow! That's some riding!



July 20, 2010
Watched Tristan and Isolde with the kids. What are these kinds of movies? Histories? Can't be. Remakes? Not really, but that's closer. Revisions? More or less.

So here's what this film is: a significant diversion from the original story "Tristan & Isolde" that's about as "factual" as Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. That is, it's a story that we wish were real, but know better than to believe it. It's a legend. But what are the screenwriters doing when they disregard a whole whack-load of the source material, and re-conjure the story in some other way, all the while leaving the original title on it? Is this kind of like stealing the franchise? What if someone decides to rewrite say, the Gospel accounts of the trial and death of Christ and ... oh yeah ... Well that's it. THAT DOES IT! It's all fiction people! EVERYTHING you see in the movies. I don't care what they say about JFK! Or The Lord of the Rings! Or The Life Aquatic! IT's. ALL. FICTION.

There. Now that that's been cleared up ... How about them Jets?! 

Rode 54 k to Rosetown and back - Avg 31.43 kph. Wind 15 k NW.

Goin' for some hot tubbin'

Thanks to the magic of neighbours, Cornelio and Mary, it's just a hop, step, and a jump, a one, two, tree, and we're there. Cornelio is the master of great deals. He is also a man of surprises. A man who loves hard work, followed by significant periods of leisure! And so, without further ado ... we're off, to his hot tub.

I know it

You've been looking at the list of books I'm reading, and it's not changing, and I'm not reviewing any of them, and you're wondering if I actually do read. Or if I've just listed them (eclectic as they are) for show. Well, I suppose, you're partly right. You always will be. But today I finished reading Dick's Eye in the Sky.

First published in 1957, this novel does what Dick's stories always do - unsettle us, show us ourselves in a new way, comment on who we are, and what we might become because of it. The premise here begins with an accident involving the "proton beam deflector of the Belmont Bevatron". The story involves eight people who were touring the facility during the accident, and are injured because of it. Scientist Jack Hamilton, and his wife Marsha, are at the centre of it. Hamilton is the centre of the narration. Although this accident opens the novel, Dick steps away from it - kind of steps over it - and, without announcement the reader is ushered into a world that, at first, looks and sounds like a slightly scientifically-advanced version of the late 50s. Marsha is accused of being a communist sympathizer, and this puts Hamilton's work at the security sensitive lab in jeopardy. As Jack and Marsha try to deal with the uncertainty this accusation brings, we realize, as Hamilton starts to realize it that things in the "world" are just not right. Things are off-kilter. Over time Hamilton along with the others, come to realize that the "world" they are in has been adjusted by the bevatron accident. In fact it appears that they are, all eight of them living within the skewed reality of one of their own consciousnesses - and so they must confront the wonder, paranoias, biases, and foibles of that personality. Once they understand this, their task becomes to determine whose world they are in, and then to find a way to snap out of it - either by having that unique consciousness self-destruct, or by destroying it themselves.

Through this vehicle Dick explores not only the flaws of various personality-types, but also the possibility that we create the world in our own image. That if we think that people are out to get us, we will experience that they actually are preying on us. If we abhor disorder and chaos, we will create order to eliminate it. And so on.

That would, it seems to me, be enough of a project for a sci-fi novel, but Dick adds a topical, political layer - McCarthyism, or, what Orwell coined as thought-crime. The story begins with the accusation against Marsha, and Jack's questioning of his own loyalties. Who deserves my trust? Who should I stand beside? Why? He is tempted to leave his wife to keep his job, and to show his patriotism. He is tempted to disregard her protests at the thin evidence presented to him to build the case against her. Although during the middle passages of the novel this theme appears to be dropped, it is picked up again by the end. And then you can see it's presence throughout.

Again Dick suggests that no matter what technological advancements we devise, we will be subject to the flaws and limits of the human situation. We are, each of us, petty and uniquely cruel. Any one of us, if we could, would lord it over others and impose our own whims over those, even those we love. And in this he suggests what should be obvious: we are best when we allow variety to thrive, both in our gardens, and in our communities. Homogeneity in thought, taste, and politics is a nightmare, not a utopia. The "eye" of conformity must be confronted. The dangers of a dis-integrated world of individuals is a dream compared to the nightmare of the "borg".

Rode 56 ks (the Rosetown loop): Wind WNW 30+ ks, Avg 30.02 kph.


July 17, 2010
Yesterday I rode 27 ks: East to the Marais, and then back home. Wind ESE 30+ ks. Avg 31.54 kph.

I kept the ride short because we headed into the city for dinner with Ron & Sandi, Terry and Rhona, and Roland and Aniko. There we celebrated the success of the Himmelbleiw furniture exhibition and catalogue. We also discussed how Hungarians are unrepressed (and perhaps insane), while Mennonites are repressed (and perhaps insane), why Winnipeg is greatest in its smallness, why CBC Radio failing utterly - losing its most loyal, core audience (and who's going to save it, because we know that Stephen would rather like to see its demise), and how to pronounce kilometre (KILLoh  MEter ... not KILLawe MUHter), and why (you'll have to ask Ron about this, but it has to do with being consistent with the way we say "millimetre" and "centimetre").

And thanks to Rhona for her honest ramblings on the ride home.

A good time all told

Colds. Definitely a part of the human condition.

Still battling a cold. You know what that's like. You're not really sick. You'd probably go in to work and endure. But when you're off work for the summer (ahhh the teaching life) the thing somehow takes a hold of you and slows everything right down. You stay in bed too long. You get up and pity yourself. You wear the easiest, crappiest clothes you've got. You don't do anything that you know will make you feel better, because you don't have the energy. These are the dumb things you tell yourself. This is the human condition. Like water ... what's easiest ... blah blah blah. It took me three hours to make coffee, try to figure out whether I'm flying to Ontario with my dad for my Uncle Pete's funeral (see yesterday's post), and then settle down to write.

AAAAANNywaaaAAys. I did get some writing done (not this writing, but some other writing) and, you know, "got somewhere" on a story. Is it also the human condition that, given license, we'll take it? Just asking. I gave myself some license. The story needed to move. Suddenly it's moving, buuuuut it's going to make some readers uncomfortable. I guess that's really okay. That's really the way it is. That's really a question I needn't ask. I know. Every time I ask it the answers seem so obvious - both the good ones and the wrong ones. Then I regret asking. So this time the asking is rhetorical. The human condition. Who needs it.

I'm reading a different New Yorker piece of fiction everyday - they're great. (A big thanks to Lois for supplying me with the issues she's finished reading - she's the one with the subscription). You can just trust that the editors have had the best to choose from (actually they only publish work they've solicited), so it's rare that it's a dud. Pretty much every time I get this great sense of serendipity - like the story is exactly the story I should be reading at exactly this time (usually I begin while sitting in my outhouse for the morning necessaries). Today's story was from the Jan 18, 2010 issue: "A Death in Kitchawank" by T. Coraghessan Boyle. It included a canoe. And a violent, accident death that did not involve the canoe. Although, given the title, when they built the canoe, and then the kids playing around in it, and later the main character, Marsha, getting stranded in the middle of the lake in it, you're just always thinking that that's how it's going to go.

I love non-foreshadowing. Anti-foreshadowing. Death should come by the bootstraps. You should have to reach down and work for it. I think that's how Uncle Pete would have felt. It must have been awful for him though. Dying of a bowel infection at the age of 84. Is it ever elegant? Thank God for morphine. Thank God for death too.

Rode the Letellier loop: 52 ks Wind N 30 ks Avg 30.63 kph.

While I live, I remember

These are the last words of the film, "The Beaches of Agnes," (Les plages d'Agnes) by Agnes Varda. What are we but memories and mirrors? she asks. This film maker who documents life - her life and the lives of those around her - makes this a kind of revue of her life and her work, and the work of her late husband, Jacques Demy, also a filmmaker, of the French "new wave". Even though I've only seen one of her films, Vagabond, I found it an interesting retrospective of European cinema and art, from WW2 forward. She also spends time, during the late 60s and into the 70s, in America, on the West coast. In real life she was the unassuming watcher, and she brings that reality to life in her art - in film and in photographs.


My Uncle Peter (Penner), my Mom's oldest brother, died today. He was in his eighties. I found out when we got home, after I'd seen the movie. Uncle Pete and Aunt Marie were favourites of ours. Whenever we'd travel out to Ontario, those summers back-in-the-day when Dad would take two or three weeks away from the store in Winkler, we'd end up at their place. (Now, I can hardly imagine what kind of angst Dad must have lived with, leaving that store (details, details, the devil's in the details - even in a Christian bookstore) in the hands of the staff that we had working there back then - whew! A leap of faith if ever there was one.) But Dad wanted to go back to visit family - even though Mom really was more comfortable at home - so we made the trek back to Port Rowan, etc. every summer, from 1972 into the 1980s.

For most of those summers we'd stay nights at Pete and Marie's. We'd sleep in the basement of their reasonably large bi-level, with a kind of daylight basement. (You could walk outside, through a screendoor, from the level where we slept.) Pete and Marie's place was just about a mile from Grandpa and Grandma's place - you'd travel down a kind of medelienja to it - which was also a mile or so from the farm that Dad owned for 27 years.

Every time we went back it was a reminder of where we were from. It was like returning to Canaan or something. Pete and Marie's place was mostly a strawberry farm, although he had other crops too. And he kept things neat. The place really seemed to run well. My cousins Elizabeth, Peter John, Lyndie, and Barbie were also cool. In a few ways. They were just different from the other cousins, more confident, more set, more joyful. Now I see it as them somehow reflecting Uncle Pete's difference.

Uncle Pete never went to church. The rest of my Mom's family were devout, as was my Dad. But Uncle Pete had given it up a long time ago. Something had happened way back that turned him right off of it. Still I don't think my Dad had us stay there because he was trying to "win" him back or anything. I'm pretty sure it was because of early on in Dad's life in Ontario (he was in his late twenties and the war was over), and Uncle Pete was there to help get him started with his farm, when, I'm assuming, others weren't. This was important to Dad. He mentioned it a few times. And since he's a devout, church-going man, I think it might have bothered him that the relative who did not go to church was the first to stand up and help him get his farm going.

I have memories, but I can't find stories right now. There were the rows of strawberries to be picked, the gravel drive that surrounded the house and sloped down from the front to the back, the dirt lane that led to Grandpa's place, that cavernous L-shaped metal machine shed - was there a motorbike, a go-kart, a garden tractor in there that we drove? And Uncle Pete's eyes. His grin. His "well if that's what you want to do, then you ought to just go on and do it" sense of life.

Uncle Pete seemed not to need people. I now he did. I'm guessing he was, deliberately, a lonesome man. He did things his way, and he was happy with that, for better or worse. These could all be my own fantasies and pretensions by now, but these memories are real to me. Uncle Pete was that guy who wouldn't take any shit, who would let you know if you screwed up, who'd tell you why you screwed up, and how you shouldn't do it again. But he was also that man who would be the first one around to help you fix it - to help you stand up again and keep on going. No strings attached. He was a man wary of people who attached conditions to love and loyalty. I suspect that's why he stopped going to church.

He was a solid man. For what it's worth I wish Aunt Marie, Elizabeth, Peter John, Lyndie, and Barbie my condolences and well wishes and at this time.

The birds

Like furies the killdeers rise from the tall ditch grasses to harass the rider as he passes by. Swooping and calling, the male taunts him, berates him, occasionally he plays hurt, holding one leg up and skipping along the highway, always away from the tall grasses. The complaints last for a quarter of a mile before one lets up, satisfied that the predator has been cleared of the nest. Then red-wing black birds take up the project. Sitting on hydro wires, every other span, as he pedals by they too take up with the chorus. They wheel and flare above him, annoyed and annoying. The rider can't help but be annoyed too. Though it does him no good to curse them, though he knows better, though he sees them as beautiful in their vexation, he cannot stifle this irritation that rises in him as he rides.

"One day," he says aloud as he is harangued yet again. "One day you and I will sit down across the table from one another, and I will explain that I have no appetite for you, your partner or your eggs. I will explain how these dive-bombing runs aggravate me." He will go on to say, in some way, to these birds, that, for him, this sort of activity is making it more likely that he will return with a rifle and play the immature boy looking for any reason to pull a trigger. He will attempt to explain that, for him, these self-protective antics have an ironic effect. Of course these two male birds, perching side by side on the table across from him, at a comfortable outdoor cafe on a warm summer's day with a moderate breeze from the South will, each of them, cock a head to one side, or the other, and chirp and sing. It will be a kind of a shrug, to be sure. A shrug to accompany their inevitable, steadfast indifference, and reassurance that they will not change what they do for anything or anyone.

"You are not wanted," they will say. "You do not understand what we do. We do not thrive on your admiration, or your annoyance. We simply ask that you go your own way. That you leave us to ours."

And he may smile then, if he knows what's good for him, and, knowing that his sense of irony can have no truck or trade with their inexorable task, he will tip his hat, if he wears one, and rise to continue on his way, riding. 

Ride:  32 ks (East for 16 and West for 16). Wind SE 30 ks. Avg - 30.59 k/h.

Folk Fest review

We got back from the festival at about 1:30 AM this morning. Tired. And I've got a cold - sore throat, running nose, etc. Poooor baby. I'm trying all sorts of remedies: chicken soup bouillon (a hard chemically cube in foil), real chicken soup broth, mint tea, lemon herb tea (herbs from the garden), and, well, it's just not making much of a difference. So I don't have a lot of energy to do this.

Since I spend the weekend on one stage, my Folk Fest recommendations come from that experience and the main stage stuff. Here are the artists from whom I bought, or will buy, a cd or two:

Andrew Bird closed the festival on the main stage. I'd never heard of him. It's hard to categorize his music. He's an accomplished musician (mostly violin) who uses looping technology to fill it out. His work is significantly more developed than "Final Fantasy." The music is atmospheric and the lyrics are philosophical. So what's not to like?

Depedro played a concert on our stage, and then one on the main stage. If you like Calexico and Alex Cuba, you'll like Jairo Zavala (that's his real name). And he's a pretty cool guy to boot (lives in a small village in Spain and is a father of two!). Great burns!

Moondoggies, from Seattle, meld great three-part harmonies with a loud, rasping guitar sound (through a Vox AC 30) and a Rhodes piano. Grunge pop? The melodies are catchy and the songs are about love and broken hearts. The best!

The Wilders play like they know what they're doing. And they do. This was probably the most together and pro-sounding foursome I saw this year. Every one of them were confident and controlled players, and they played together with the energy of abandonment. If you like straight up Americana country, it does not get better than this!

Their song, Hey Little Darlin' won Best Americana Song in the Vox Populi poll of the 8th annual Independent Music Awards.




There were a lot of great moments. That's the way it is with live music, and it's a bit harder to make your picks for cds. These are the four I'm betting on. The girls bought The Swell Season, who put on a pretty good main stage show. I really liked Del Barber and Shane Ghostkeeper too, and may buy those cds too. Misses? (ie. acts I'd have liked to see and missed): Sam Baker (although we talked backstage about books and engineers and english teachers and Mennonites), Gordon Downie, Bo Ramsey, Greg Brown, Tao Seeger, Delhi 2 Dublin.


Anyway, there it is, in a, as they say, "nutshell".

The Internet (fiction ... virtually)

The man decides to stay home from work for the day. He feels he deserves a mental health day, even though such a civilized option is not specifically outlined in his contract. He phones in to explain that he has a bad cough, and that a cold is imminent. Everyone understands. Then, indeed, he makes himself a cup of tea, and several slices of perfectly toasted rye bread, spread with butter and strawberry jam, and he sits at his computer and begins to surf (as they say) the internet. 


It's been a few weeks since he's used the internet for something other than work, so it takes him some time to find a site that he likes, but at last he settles for an interactive one on which he can share himself with others like him. 


As I've noted, it's been a few weeks since the man has spent time on this site, much less any site, so it takes him some time to recognize certain things that, surely, you or I would pick up on much more quickly. For instance, as he updates his status it takes him some minutes to notice the "chat" button in the bottom right of his screen. When he does notice that it indicates that there is one person to chat with, and that this person calls himself "the man" as well, and wants to chat, he smiles to himself and clicks, and types, "Hey! Having a good day off?"


"Yup" the man replies. "It's been weeks since I spent time online, and I felt I needed a mental health day, so I phoned in sick."


"Hey," the man replies. "Me too! Exactly!"


"Well now," says the man. "It's good to meet someone who thinks like I do!"


"Indeed," says the man. And the two men chat like this for the entire day, allowing for lunch, snacks, and the occasional bathroom break which, of course, they both ask for at exactly the same time. 


A more symbiotic relationship could not be attained. So much so that the man decided to phone in sick again the next day. His cough was really much, much worse.


The ride in (to work to pick up a fax, and then fax it back)     Temp 24'C Wind 35 - 40 ks SW
The ride home                                                                       Temp 24'C Wind 35 - 40 ks SW

See you at the Folk Fest? (I'll be at Snowberry during the days.)

He goes back even farther (fiction)

To the playground and the swing. The slide. The blue sky above. White wisps. Cigarette butts. Those kids who played to hurt one another. Those kids. That day that he wanted to play with them, but couldn't stand up, walk over, to ask. Sitting on his banana seat. The purple Sprinter. New from the Coop store. His first new bike. That he chose from the line-up, leaning in a row, one on the other. A phalanx of rubber and chrome, just past the electronics section.

Now he can't get off of it. Can't get up to walk over to the slide. To those kids, loosing themselves from the top: feet first, head first, back, stomach, backwards, forwards. Then climb back up again. He can't get up for all the wrong reasons. Reason. Fear. The fear those kids do not have. That fear that hits when you love yourself too much. So he waits. On the edges. Till they leave. Then he rides over, climbs the slide, looks around for anyone watching. Waits. Then lets go.

More fiction (excerpt), Ants & Spiders, and more housebarn!

The rain had long ended. The night was cool. They'd, both of them, imagined together and each alone that there might quiet, or awkward silence, after. They'd been told there was sin in it, and they'd believed it. Till now. Till now they'd, each of them, believed that this moment would be for them only, for the time being. For the instant. And after, they, each of them alone, imagined a tremendous falling off. A regret. A great sacrifice they would give for one another, a gift for themselves, and then, an end. They'd, each of them, weighed the cost. Weighed the possibilities. The options. They believed they were entering, and then exiting, the garden. Neither of them talked with the other about it. Neither expected that the wondrous truth had been that there was in fact no expulsion. Hand in hand afterward they walked. Shoulders, hips, touching, caressing. Smiles and remembrances. Evidence given, and later found: grass and thistle.

This morning, while writing in my favourite corner, I noticed an ant, on the floor, dragging around another ant, which appeared to be dead. It looked interesting to me, so I got my digital camera to catch it on video. When a spider showed up things got interesting!

Around 2 PM this afternoon I went for a ride to Blumenort (and back). I love that village! There are a number of housebarns (well mostly just houses that were formerly attached to barns) that are under renovation and modification there. And I really like what some of them are doing with windows to upgrade them. They look great and with the gable ends facing the street, remind me of how attractive and functional that arrangement is, compared to facing a full bungalow length of eavestrough - and then a garage. What a boring aesthetic that is (My apologies to all of you out there with one, surely enough they're pandemic. What are you gonna do?!)!

The wind was WNW 20 ks, gusting to 30 ks. Distance: 43 ks. Time 1 h 12 m. Avg. 31.98 k/h.

In the Western sun (fiction (excerpt))

Then she'd step forward into him. She'd look up, he'd look down. They'd stand for a second, for an hour, like that on the front stoop in the humid air, and then he'd step back down a step, change hands, take hers, and they'd walk. Down the street. Then left. They'd walk for ten or fifteen minutes. Who could tell? They'd stop at a swing set in the park. The mothers and fathers and their children. They'd move when others came. He'd pick up the basket and they'd walk over to the teeter totters. They'd laugh and bump and fly. She'd almost fall off once. She'd bruise her ankle, her red hair shimmering in the Western sun. It'd be too busy there, then, in the park. Too many people to say hello to. Too many to notice. Too many to smile and half-wink. They'd walk separate then, for a time, hands dangling aimless, open, lost, finding a pocket, front or back. They'd keep it that way until he'd say, "I have an idea." And she'd say, "What?" And he'd say, "Follow me." And she'd say, "You think I won't?" And they'd set off at a run. 

-----

After watching "A Sunday In Hell" yesterday night (which I highly recommend - see the link in yesterday's post) I was strangely inspired to test myself. After all, if Eddy Merckx can do it, why not I. Yup. Will delusions never cease? Merckx would have ridden what I rode today about 20 minutes faster - his one hour record, on a fixed gear is 49.431 ks! Be that as it may, I did ride today. I set out into the Western sun at just after three. The heat and humidity were pretty high - it was at least 28'C with humidity that felt like 90% or more. I'd just had something to eat so I didn't think I'd need anything but water. I wasn't wrong about that. But I'm not sure that just water was enough.

I rode what some of us call "the Letellier Loop". In the future I believe we'll call it the "Windfarm Wander" or some such clever thing. Those St. Jo guys have already got signs up, proudly proclaiming the presence of that which is yet to come as if it is already fully there. Some delusions know no bounds.

Anyway, when I started the wind was about 12 ks NW, but I was foolish to think it might stay that way and push me along. By the time I got to the 201 it was coming in pretty much fully from the South, and at about 20 ks. So much for that advantage. At about that time I also realized that it was hot. Damn hot. And I was going to have to ride with a cross wind, or into the wind, for the rest of the ride. Isn't psyching yourself out a wonderful thing?!

I made it in spite of myself. Averaged 30.37 k/h for the 53 ks, which I rode in 1 hour and 49 mins (including a turn around to go back home to get a second water bottle).

Waiting for tomorrow

So I just wrote about 300 words of fiction that I was going to post. I was thinking about starting a serial story that I'd work on over the summer. Maybe try to do a few. Not so easy. I mean I can write a few words of a story, but then to be committed to it ... well the beginning better be good. So I'm not convinced yet. When I get a good start you'll know it. But for now I'd say that the heat's getting to me. A friend said this afternoon that it's a good day to stay inside. If that's true, then in Manitoba there aren't many good days to be outside: too hot, too cold, too many bugs, too windy. What are we doing here anyway?

Which might be a question the guys who ride the Paris-Roubaix might ask just when they're just under two-thirds of the way through a great day of riding, as they begin to ride "the hell of the north." Every Sunday, in Spring, since the late 1800s, they still do this crazy thing. Here's a link to "A Sunday in Hell". A documentary of the race, as it was in the middle 1970s.

No riding today for me. Totally wimped out. It was the heat. Tomorrow will be a better day.

23rd Anniversary

We've made it an irregular tradition on this day to mark it with some physical exertion. (I will make no jokes along this line.) Last year we embarked on a reasonable, exploratory paddle along the Buffalo Creek. This year we decided a bike ride was in order, despite the 30'C day (with a humidex of 40'C). 

We loaded the bikes into the truck and headed off for Pembina Valley Provincial Park. While I've ridden a bit of offroad, Margruite ... not so much. These trails are quite challenging, and a lot of fun, but our lack of practice, and the significant heat, bagged us after about an hour and a half. Margruite endoed once, but other than the heat and the difficulty of the trails, it was a great ride. So great that we forgot that we'd taken our camera along to document it. 

We remembered the camera, after we were done ... quite done. These pictures of the aftermath tell the tale. 

After supper we watched Notes on a Scandal with Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, and Bill Nighy - three great actors. But the story! Yikes what a crazy idea. Hopefully not a harbinger of anything to come! 

I was a bit surprised at the positiveness of the reviews. I mean they were really positive. Certainly the performances are great, but the storyline felt a bit too forced and dependent on coincidence. Of course it's fiction (based on a novel by Zoe Heller), so coincidence and contrivance are the name of the game, but my taste is that I'd like the set up to work toward something, I don't know, meaningful. This show gives you suspense, depravity, obsession, acrimony, crazy-time-ness, without blood or skin. So it must be trading on meaning right!? That's what I'm looking for anyway, if the eye-candy isn't, you know "popping out" at you. What do we end up with? The crazy old woman takes a hit, but she's not out. The crazy old woman comes around for another swing. One reviewer called it a "fresh script". If "off the high branches" is fresh, well then I guess it's right off the tree. But having tasted of it, this fruit is not one I'll be tempted to pick again. 

     

End of the year

Today we came in late, cleaned up, said good byes, thought about what was done and undone and what cannot be undone and, left a bit early.

Ride in        Temp 16'C Wind SE 24 ks
Ride home  Temp 24'C Wind SE 33 ks


June 29

CONGRADUATIONS!!

Today was a big day! Here is Sara receiving some cash!

And here is Sara receiving her diploma!

Will the fun never end!??

Do you remember your graduation? Mine? Well it happened in the big bergie church in Winkler. And ... somethin somethin somethin ... some people talked and ... uhhh ... oh yeah ... the other guy (the guy the teachers chose instead of me - you see back in the day at the old GVC the teachers chose the valedictorian based on some kind of a "speech off" between the two of us, and my speech was, I guess, not quite the one they wanted - I don't know. I think I still have a copy of the speech I wrote. I think it was, perhaps, a little too edgy. Maybe a little too honest?) gave the valedictory address.

The point is, who remembers much of this stuff at all? Really! Who of us really cares about it now? Still, on that one day, when you live it, it seems like absolutely the most important day of your life, ever. And later, when you look back on it you think (at least I hope you think) what was all that about? I hardly remember a thing that was important about it. Okay, to be fair, now that I'm writing this I do remember standing outside of the church, after we'd tossed our mortar (Mordor?) boards to the sky, with friends, and then taking pictures, and squinting into the sun, and then getting into cars as quickly as possible with our dates to go to Winnipeg and ... yeah ... not much for safegrads back then.

I tell the kids, if you end up, a few years out of high school, looking back at those years, thinking, "Wow, those were the best of times!" then you should probably re-evaluate what you're doing right now. High school should not be the best of times. Hopefully it's not the worst of times, but it simply can't be best. It can be tolerable, I suppose. Even memorable in some way. But it shouldn't be great! Well, maybe right now it can be, but not later. Not after a few years. High school, like that bad haircut in your grade nine picture, is something you can't wait to grow out of. You can't wait to turn the page.

During the grad banquet, after the ceremony - which was themed "A Night in New York" - someone came by to return a copy of The Catcher in the Rye for Sam, one of the grads. I looked at the book, this version with a lookalike of the original cover - with the carousel horse on it - and thought of Holden and smiled. I said to Margruite and Sara, I hope Sam understands what this means. I got up a few minutes later to find her, and say thanks. When I find her I say, "What a great time to give me the book!" And she says, "Yeah, no kidding eh!" Then we grin at each other and say "See ya." Well, I wanted to go home to give her another 10% on the course just for that.

High school is ironic. High school is a three dressed up as a nine. High school is a place where young people are forced to be with people that they might rather meet and talk to somewhere else, and they have almost no choice but to work with them. ... well I guess that is a little like real life, but ... . Don't misunderstand me, I like my job, and I find it's fulfilling to work to make the experience reasonable for as many kids as possible. But for too many people, high school is ... heavy. I think it's the "one-size fits all" thing that's a problem. And I think we're trying to make it work a little better for more kids. But after a day like today, the best thing is that there are a few more people freed to find something their own size.