The weather continues to heap its wrath upon Bella Coola valley. A local state of emergency has again been declared because of impending heavy rain.
I have been watching what’s happening with the various weather systems that have been hitting the area in recent weeks, by looking at the radar and so on. But disatisfied with my inability to clearly read the data, decided to follow the advice of a former fisherman and checked out the maritime (sea) forecast. It said waves would measure 3 metres high. I wonder if there is a recorded shipping news for this Coast that one can listen to?
It perplexes me that so little attention is given to atrocious weather events in other parts of the province (ditto the fires this summer), but I suppose the goegraphic distance is a factor, I’ll chose to believe that over disinterest.
Apres un petit mishap with the car keys remaining inside the car while the car was locked up, myself and the small had a lengthy waiting adventure for BCAA in the dark on a side street this evening. The small male insisted on singing Bee Gee’s songs (Saturday Night Fever being the culprit of this inspiroid — hmmm Papa indeed…)
I wished the Bee Gees had written songs with much longer verses.
We did meet an interesting cat with a short tail.
Afterwards I reflected that this sense of being stuck would approximate to what might happen in the event of an earthquake (saying you survived and all)
November 2010, buy Taxi! month
November 2010 is an important month. It is the official month in which every right thinking person who has not read the great Vancouver novel Taxi! will recognize the loss in their life this gap provides and will click over to lazarapress.ca and invest $10 whole dollars (+shipping) to fill this hole.
Then you can all report your subsequent euphoria to haveyoureadtaxi.blogspot.com where I will happily upload any testament to it (decency laws apply)
If you haven’t read Taxi! you have not read. If you voted for Barack Obama you need to read Taxi! If you didn’t vote for him you also need to read Taxi! If you aren’t qualified to vote for him you need to read Taxi! If you support a hockey team you need to read Taxi! If you know how to spell Vancouver, you need to read Taxi! (Coming soon the You need to read Taxi! catechism)
In January I hope to bring some interventions to the world to express precisely how critical it is to read Taxi! Watch out for those reappearing Taxi! ranks….
Today I witnessed a horrible accident between a car and a bicycle. The cyclist was thrown very high in the air and the sound of him being hit was something I hope never to hear again. I hope whoever he is, he has made it without too severe injuries. It looked very violent. I keep seeing him over and over. It really shook me up. But I was impressed how all the drivers jumped out of their cars to help him. The concern was immediate. People were with him, talking to him, encouraging him.
Cyclists need to cycle defensively. They are up against metal. And this is an unfair transaction when something goes wrong. I try to give cyclists space on the road I don’t like to overtake them. Probably because for years I was a cyclist.
Yesterday I was able to find vitamins for my aural heath but unable to locate a potato masher in a large store that sold everything from socks to air conditioners, pans to live lobsters. Glasses to orthotics. But no potato masher. I am beginning to wonder if a potato masher looks different in Canada from what I am used to. Since I have never owned a Canadian potato masher and have instead many bent forks.
Friday night with Scooby Doo, knitting, curry, Green & Black’s caramel chocolate (divided par deux), a spot of Pinot Gris, cursive handwriting practice (who invented such a bonkers script, so glad I did not encounter it as a child) and enfin Gertrude Stein, while wearing three cardigans. Sign of impending, snug, reclusive winter. Most comforting. Recommended.
The diminished amount of literary criticism and the increased emphasis on book as singular act, marketing and hussling outsourced to writer (pimping also recommended, judging by current Canada Reads nonsense) results in the wondering of whether fiction writers are no longer seeing their work as part of a continuum. That something came before it and something will follow it and along this continuum the interrelation of other work might be a valid considering and that your book has a life beyond your creation of it. (and the reckoning on whether you did a good job or not)
Reviews are deemed good or bad based on some misconception that their only purpose is to sell books. Reviews are not intended to be the decision maker of whether someone should buy and read the book, (eg NP buy it or skip it daftness) they’re a piece of writing in their own right, in relation to a considering of the book. A consider of and along, within and out from the book. They are not the bloody hammer at an auction.
I could read criticism that some may consider harsh on a novel I appreciate, it does not detract from my experience of the particular novel, it merely gives me other considerings on that novel, which I welcome. It enriches my experience with the book. I welcome anyone thinking intelligently about literature because in reading people who probe intelligently on literature I also learn to be a better writer.
A demoralizing gymnastics class last night. My progress is being hindered by weak (read: elderly) wrists! I have had to seek something called Tiger Paws which are expensive high end wrist supports, funded by an Amazon cert from a generous friend (god bless him, god bless him…!)
It was the first time I was forced to acknowledge that what my body may have done 25 years ago, it may never do in the next 25 years! You simply cannot get away with hurling yourself around in the same, said manner unscathed. This is so crushing until about 40 mins after the class ends. And then not so because there’s so much else that’s great about getting older (an appreciation for the finer things in life such as the hot water bottle..), well I cannot right this moment list what’s great about getting old, because I am trying to recover from spending someone else’s money in such an extravagant way, but give me three days and I shall be back on the pro-middle-age bandwagon.
A few further snips from said handbook mentioned below of 1972 vintage. I enjoy the singsong frank tones of these instructions…helped by the sprinkling of cheerful adjectives…
“There are handsome chairs which, if you lean too far back, topple over and you can be a WCB accident statistic.”
From the three good rules section: rule number 2.
“Learn from experienced men around you. They’re experienced because they’ve been around a long time. They obey the safety rules.”
From Alcohol and Drugs section
Drugs? Not hard drugs like heroin or soft drugs like marijuana — they’re illegal and lead to real trouble — but the drugs you get from a doctor, the prescription drugs. What about them?
…. and, of course, mixing alcohol and drugs is deadly. There is probably no quicker way to go.”
Digging holes in 1972
From Have a safe day: A handbook for safe living (1972. Published by 3 organisations inc Workmen’s Compensation Board of BC !)
P9 Excavations. (part 1)
When a man works in an unsafe excavation he may be digging his own grave.
Every ditch more than four feet deep must be shored or flared. Excavation and shoring must be done at the same pace.
Be careful when digging in wet soil, sandy soil or clay. Vibrations, even from passing traffic, can bring the walls tumbling down. Exit ladders should be in every trench and they must extend three feet above the ground level.
Proper crosswalks should be built over trenches. men should never jump across.
Excavations must be barricaded and well marked to prevent persons from falling in.
I’m not the only one struck by #18 miner – Estaban Rojas emergence. He’s on the front page of tomorrow’s Irish Times in this photo (AP/Hugo Infanto)….
OK am confusing miners. It may have been #18 since #20 is going to start a vegetable growing business and there was no vegetable growing hint of #18. #18 Estaban, according to the records was not hugged by his mama but by his partner of 25 years, who must have been the woman hugging the Virgin Mary teatowel instead of the flag.
Exit of miner #20 (44 anos) was the most moving I witnessed, though his was also the only exit today that I caught. His mother (?) was stood clutching a teatowel of the Virgin Mary, as opposed to the Chilean flag. He exited the human thermos and sank to his knees and engaged in a lengthy, devout looking prayer before he did owt else or muttered a victory cry. The mama, if in fact she be his mama, might a been his Mrs, gave the Virgin Mary a shake and a further clutch, until he was finished, whereupon she hugged him, with the instinct and impetus of a rugby tackle.
I had my eyes on a set of 5.99 curtains and asked the small male his opinion on the colour. He took a very dim view on them, the dimmer his view, the more my attachment to the potential of these curtains increased. I couldn’t understand his strong resistance to a very average yellow / orange shimmery curtain.
His final words on the matter gave something toward an explanation …
“They’ll make us look religious,” he said.
Next Post
I have had several waking dreams. It’s where I cannot decide whether I was awake or asleep or somewhere inbetween when I had the particular thought. Or perhaps I had the thought in a dream and it chased me into the kitchen — awake.
In anycase one was that my hoover was no longer working or had disappeared. It was such a sudden shock, because I am peculiarly fond of hoovering. (The repetition? the immediate result? the upper arm power? the constant living with shite carpets?) . I turned it on last week and nothing! Horror! Except the feeling I had already experienced this in a dream. Then I realized I was putting my foot on the wrong button. But the shock dreamed and lived was replicated.
Roy Arden bequeathed me my first Canadian hoover. It is no longer with me. I am three hoovers on. My second hoover came from a popular and successful Vancouver sushi restaurant from back in the eighties. It was an industrial log looking item. The current one was an alley rescue and has a cracked pipe dilemma.
The other was a sculpture vs hotel room (or dowdy rooming house) dream where a bunch of sculptures installed into the walls of each room of a hotel sent the public into a frenzy where they would occupy the rooms for months on end — competitively — to be near these sculptures having no need or reason to stay in the rooming house. The sculptures were from the Made in Japan series I’ve featured photos of recently, but there was one in particular that preoccupied the masses. It is called Ben or Ben Gem or some such. People became fixated on Ben and began removing parts of the sculpture. In actual fact though Ben is not part of that series it’s from an earlier series by the same artist Jeremy Isao Speier.
Eventually the hotel or dowdy rooming house sought to capitalize on this interest so they asked the artist to create a single entire room of sculpture embedded into the walls behind perspex or glass (like the fish and so on at The Aquarium). As soon as they unveiled this singular intended piece, the interest completely ceased and all the people pouring in, turned away and the place was then quiet thereafter. It was a bit like a flash mob dream.
I will write a short story out of it, I think.
Myself and the small male have been attentively watching the emergence of the miners. The realm of what’s happening and how we are able to partake — distantly — is curious and extraordinary. The unknown and unknowing factor of watching the paramedic head inside the human thermos and guinea pig his way down the hole without flinching .. . and the return journey bringing the first of the 33, well we had become deeply acquainted with that metal hole shaft and never thought anything would emerge from it. There’s also a strangeness to the public witnessing of it all, in that the families grief and anguish is by virtue of the situation, is so raw and public. I wonder whether the collective witnessing helps or intrudes and how that will effect recovery or adjustment.
I began to think about the people who sent them down there in the first place and whether sending people in this technological age into the centre of the earth is really a sensible or necessary idea. Who was witnessing them being sent into an unsafe mine? Tomorrow many workers will enter other unsafe mines, again, unwitnessed.
The euro streaker?
And sometimes the audience hop up spontaneously inspired. By the Godly Eurovision experience….and consistent 30 year Eurovision hairstyles (2010)