Cookery has long perplexed me, there was some reassuring listening to Ruth Reichl’s tales of her mum’s cooking. Myself and my son just roared laughing at this. So it had two listening innings. Three in fact. One where I described it to him, and he insisted, but let’s find it, I want to hear it and he hunted, bless him and he found it and we listened again. Intergenerational to intergenerational. Pass it along.

This evening I cooked yet another disastrous stirfry that smoke rose up from alarmingly and polluted the place. But it was comforting against the backdrop of those sceals. Some made to cook, others made to eat and disaster.

Here it is

Wiseman

Some quick notes on Frederick Wiseman’s La Danse.

• Sacrifice: the pain, the feet, the lower back, the pain, the feet, the bunched up toes, the pain the feet the scissor’d jetes.
• Dancers: “half nun half boxer”
• Every individual sequin hand sewn on costumes. Every shoes sprayed with paint, wigs made, tools made, everything made, made, made. Every eyebrows attended to on an individual basis.
• Extremity of the body in all its possibility. Extend. Extend. Extend. Minimalist fat so we can see every muscle where he starts and where he ends.
• Are legs really that long?
• silence
• Feeding the five thousand a la Bernada Alba. Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
• Man repairing the roof with plaster.
• Moments. Single Moments. Establishing shots that repeat or situate being the string.
• Clocking in: The dancers heads move past the posters, door opens, bag on shoulder.
• Precision and pain.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9khElEVt-Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

rhotic 16

Ding,
Nollaig Shona duit cailín deas agus go hálainn
Tá súil agam an lá joyful mhaith an am Rahoots cócaireacht an turcaí le seacláide, ceapaim go raibh sé Mheicsiceo.
Gorm a bhí an lá go hálainn agus foirfe do siúl.

Oiche mhaith.

The odd thing about the toilet was the womens’ was out of order and it was necessary to use the mens except the door opened in with no lock and the cubicle had no lock and unless you had a leg as long as Pippi Longstocking it’s fairly clear what would happen. The unfortunate thing over the WC was there was so much graffiti to be read and so the women must wonder whether it was scrawled by men and women who had one leg extended and one arm above their head to do the sketching.

Nabbed a book yesterday as a pressie for someone entitled Left Wing Intellectuals Between the Wars. It was the between that landed my fingertips on it. So many books before the war, and after the war, never seen anything between.

Watched a bit of Port of Shadows last night, great moment where the soldier hitches a lift in the camion and shortly, the driver has barely said a word when the soldier informs him he talks too much! Then later the soldier has a drunk latch onto him on the street a few cuts later and the drunk hides him from the passing army officers.

Today outside the 7-11 a man handed a guy who was down on his luck a massive lump of steak inside a sealed bag. The recipient held the door open and we talked briefly about the meat. Have you somewhere to cook it? I asked him. It’s already cooked he said triumphant indicating the man who gave it to him. I turned and the fella was smiling broadly. He’d a box on the roof of his car and I realized he probably just collected the box of cooked meats from the post office, split it open and doled it out to the fella stood at the door.  Who knows maybe the fella’s father or mother is a farmer and sending him a good quarter of a cow for his xmas? In anycase it’s lovely to be trapped inbetween such a gesture and to share the remarking and the smiles as we all marvelled on the bag of meat and it’s arrival.

Earlier in the day I was down on E Hastings Street, meeting one of my favourite people in the world at a Rubby caff. On the walk back within one block I must have had 4 spontaneous conversations with people passing or remarking. Spontaneous conversation is not my most common experience in this city. Sometimes it is the people who have the least, who are the more generous with words and thoughts.

Oh dearie

How distinctly un Marcel like. It’s criminal to have knitting disasters when one is knitting in response to recessionary xmas. I can honestly say I am not sure what happened and how those peculiar humps appeared on the Dr Who tie. An immense tragedy especially given the man its intended for does not wear ties, and will likely be unpersuaded further if presented with this creation.

You have been warned!

True scale of the entire tragedy below