Abrupt shifts
Wednesday delight here, John Adams nudging the old upstairs neurology. Inhale Phrygian Gates (1977). A drown to bounce.
Yahoy water in sight
A great victory has been achieved and I cannot believe it. Indeed I let out a raw bellow at the supermarket on learning the news…. the city has installed the pipe or bit of pipe and turned on the water at our community garden, after years of effort and rabble rousing to the city, we are going to have a metered tap !
I am ecstatic at this news. It is astonishing.
Thanks to the City who when challenged (repeatedly!) have demonstrated true commitment to public gardening.
Gardening Confidential
I’d like to recommend a watch of this Gardening Confidential documentary on doczone at CBC website. You’ll have to scrowl down and select it.
Look out for the 5 foot carrots grown in Manchester. I was particularly revved by the allotments. I think next to a washing machine, an allotment is something I would have true ambitions for.
Last summer I spent some time in a friend’s allotment near Dun Laoghaire and was so impressed by the incredible cultivation and the raised bumps of potatoes and all kinds of stuff growing in there. Powerful looking onions and cabbages and what have you. It was really like being in the presence of the divine, wandering about and admiring what people had cultivated.
One of the great pleasures of age has to be the appeal of other peoples gardens and the appreciation of the wonder of a sturdy carrot and a belly sized beetroot.
For the second of two nights at precisely 10.29pm I am aware that it is raining.
Yesterday’s 10.29pm weather event was immediately apparent to me because I stepped out of a pub, continued a conversation with my companion, dodging under the roofs along the street for shelter. The rain was vicious and had come out of no where. It had been such a mild night when I started out. My coat, of course, the good coat, has no hood on it.
(What kind of a coat is it? You might ask. It is the coat approved by the sister. It is an elegant coat seemingly. Oh the impractical nature of elegance.)
Tonight it’s another variety of rain, darting rain to yesterday’s decisive and impaling rain.
But then the view of the rain differs, even though the time is identical — 24 hours apart. I am looking out at it, not up at it.
I love to look up at the rain, I made a remarkable discovery once looking up at the rain. It’s impact upon me I have never forgotten.
Parataxis: walking the ride
Yesterday I walked Helen’s fine Parataxis map (for our planned May 1st event) and enjoyed the adventure very much. Esp. standing alone in my good black coat, obtained at my sister’s prompting last summer in Dublin, and reading aloud from Taxi! to no one in particular, into the city.
I was able to experience the difference within the past two days of being a flaneur (esse?) vs being an orator. I’ll give you a clue, it is way easier to orate.
I could not be more glad of my current crop of artistic ventures and the experiences and interactions they have given me. All of which would be nothing without the goodwill and generous input of my various collaborators. Thank you to them all!
The art and high of hoovering
There is nothing like the charge of hoovering. God be praised for the vacuum cleaner irregardless of its busted pipe. I am sure great thoughts and whole nations have been formed while doing the hoovering. That is how highly I rate it. It is the Everest of domesticity.
Mapping
The Parataxis map has landed! (Thanks Helen!) The event will take place May 1st on Workers Day.
I must go and walk the route and after yesterday’s adventure, Lord knows where I’ll end up.
This time, however, I will eat eggs before departure.
Yesterday’s events in London with the anti-cuts march bought back memories of the Poll Tax march of March 31, 1990 and era. (Are all bad ideas confronted in March?)
Today I continue my unearthing of the history of protest in Vancouver in the 1930’s.
In 1935 it was the reading of the riot act that was the weapon, today they have given up using reading as a weapon and resort to physical containment, ie. Kettling.
A birthday party for a woman, where a Stanley Kubrick film was projected without sound. At one point, my boys departed I sat and stared and tried to imagine the dialogue of this film I’ve never seen. I found something akin to a human version of Thunderbirds was all I could come up with.
Later and the bid to go elsewhere for dancing, but tired, I decided to press on instead to Rethinking the Human.