May 29, 2007

Climbing on a bad hip and chocolate

Here’s a link to a travel article published in Sat’s Globe and Mail I wrote about climbing Croagh Patrick with the Puffin and granny/sister gang. For at least 15 minutes after the descending I considered acquiring an appetite for clambering and wandering about the place, but it appears to have diminished in favour of learning the Japanese abacus.

February 18, 2007

City in the turbine

So here’s something peculiar, there has been an explosion in the number of place to get your nails attended to. I cannot fathom where all these extra nails are coming from. If there was a population explosion … those nails would not be needing such extreme attention, just a pair of 75 cent scratch mitts. 

Along with the now familiar sight of big pits dug everywhere awaiting the pouring of foundations for half million dollar condominiums (often where rental buildings used to stand –I’ve counted three flattened in a few block radius from here) it’s becoming apparent that folks will only be able to drink coffee, get their nails done and have the choice of fourteen sofa shops. They will be unlikely to be able to buy a loaf of bread or pint of milk because of the way the city is changing. Jane Jacobs warned of the dangers of this.

It’s all part of the turbine that’s decimating the place in advance of the 2010 olympics. I love the luge and the bobsleigh like any other, but the socio-economic inequality and further poverty that’s a byproduct of this turbine is frightening: there’s no mention of plans for social housing, the cost of living is hopping up, the ordinary citizens are dodging swinging cranes and closed pavements while some property developer rubs his tummy. Sport should be for and of the people. They raised a flag to celebrate three years til the event. (To a chorus of nearby protests) The big sweeping brush is getting ready. To dispose of “eyesores”, to push people further to the margins, to create new cycles of poverty. The sport gets lost in all the click of powerpoint presentations, the bidding for marketing contracts, the building of audacious facilities. Yet the actual sport has far more incommon with surviving the adversity of the alleys in the city, gathering up empties. Nobody ever won the bobsleigh clicking on a computer.

February 4, 2007

Alphabetical inferiority complex

Glory be, glory be, L’alphabet, L’alphabet.

10.20am, during one of our peut-etre more seismically challenged days, myself and the Arabic language face a trial separation as I declare to bloke beside me I think I’ve reached the end of the road. We are being dunked into the pan of the alphabet and let’s just say there’s more carrots in there than I bargained for. Each letter has 4 different ways of being written depending if it’s at the beginning of a word, medial or final. Many of them look remarkable similar to begin with, so having felt a little faint at the sight of them all as singles, it’s unfathomable that there are now three different other versions that do not look a great deal like the isolated version. The purpose of the isolated version is still a mystery. Perhaps they are only used on tie pins or for decor purposes?

Every-time the teacher asks me a question she erupts in an affectionate set of giggles in anticipation of my answer because my attempts sounds a little more yodelling than the others. I do have the best arm waving though. But by the time I conquer ‘this traffic bollard is bothering me and can I have a shampoo and set’  arm waving may be out of vogue.

 Generally I feel I’ve been raised in an inferior language when I contemplate the complexity of this script and all it’s variations.

 I’m certainly overwhelmed but afterwards sunk in the library in literary ventures I find myself imagining writing that script and then begin to copy and practise the first six letters and find it surprisingly comforting like knitting or swimming must be if you’re good at it. I cannot understand why I am so compatible with it until it all makes sense. It’s written right to left, so it’s got to be in the left brain, which is where all my pigeons roost.