The befuddling prospect of finding a new set of glasses, on a budget that wouldn’t buy a reasonable pair of leg warmers. How I am challenged! To understand exactly which glasses had travelled with me, since I purchased them at Betty’s (Grants) along the Quays near Temple Bar in Dublin and lost them somewhere between Nanaimo, Campbell River and Cortes Island, could be a good start.
Trevor Linden, the hockey man, has a nice set on the advert, but are they made of the lenses I lost in Campbell River Trevor? How come you’ve no real information in that advert! He just puts them on, takes them off, flings his hook and puts them on again. The language of spectacles needs translation for I cannot entirely comprehend it. Progressives, or not? + and – numbers and so on.
Today I tried to demystify the experience at the cheapo ready-made spectacle stand. I was very taken with the styles. A lavender set. Took the eye test. Cannot read the top 3 lines, check the number and put the matching specs on to … some very fuzzy rendition of a line of products in the next aisle so blurred they are a mystery. Down the numbers to the lesser value, same problem. I guess I did not mislay a set of reading glasses.
Back to the Optician route and the cost is that of a plane ticket to Paris practically.
14+ years Betty’s specs and I were united. This is a very costly divorce. Acrimonious. Might have to go back to the Quays to resolve this.
Today we remembered a life that was lived fully and bravely, but ended too soon. The small man offered Jean Sibelius on violin to the remembering. A duo of him and Grandma talking about her good friend Anna. Ah music, sometimes it cannot be toppled. And he so solid, so strong, such a whole sound so redolent of that whole life lived I began with.
Conversations with good people full of love and sadness. In a small community. In a remote place. Dear Land of Home.
4am rise, few wrong turns, Campbell River, polenta, eggs and pineapple. Violin live and Green Day all the way up the highway. The best egg I ever ate was in Karachi, Pakistan. The last place I ate polenta was NY. All eggs and polenta and roads in and out of rain showers lead to Campbell River.
How come we can’t drive in and out of rain showers in urban spots?
In Mayo there is no in and out with rain. It’s an equal tunnel. Windy too. Ever so windy.
Here we have come to remember someone.
Lovely rhapsody created by the wind up behind Nat Bailey Stadium last night. A tick, tick, clang on the flag pole, while the tarp was whipping it up. And a screen broadcast Japanese flag and adverts and green lights out to a completely empty baseball pitch. Are they advertising to the sparrows now? Targeting les nuages, tapping new overhead markets. I seemed to be the only one benefitting up there in the car park. A nice windy look out point during a storm.
I think this could be my favourite documentary ever Allen King’s Skid Row. Everything from the pacing, the voices, the wooden streak in it. There’s one shot in particular or series of them that I must go through and isolate. Here it is, completely here
Stupidity documentary here – riveting. (Not sure if it’s viewable outside Canada. If not will hunt for links)
In the pew for Hugh
Wonderful tense momentito outside Vancity Cinema last night at the Hugh Brody event. A man threw an absolute conniption at the ticket window, over what I am not entirely sure … Hugh was basically mobbed with viewers wanting to attend his film 1919 in a cinema the size of a square cutlery drawer. It’s a great cinema, as long as the city does not turn up. I love, being short, the enormous chairs, bit like going on holiday in first class cabin of a plane with the blessing of no take off, nor landing.
The display was worthy of an anthropology study. Not least when a man in the queue behind me was selected to go into the cinema with the greeting “are you on your own? it’s your lucky night.” Selected only cos he was a male alone! No further qualification! I had to search google images to ensure that the male who collected him was not Mr Brody. No he was not. But Mr B was spotted further up the pavement in another ticketty transaction with a bearded male.
Next time I attend Vancity or Hugh mob I am going to wear my testicles. The set that extend down to my ankles, so there can be no mistake.