September 12, 2010
At 11.20am Sept 12, 2010, I contemplated turning on the heat. Instead I put on a scarf and filled a hot water bottle and made a pot of tea. It’s been a while since I made a perfect cup of tea and I am surprised to report that this cup perfecto came from two Bewleys teabags. Then I remembered that the woman who gave me these teabags is my most musical friend and therefore I should not have been surprised at what they might brew.
The headache was on a 12 hour cycle. It woke me again at 3am until 7am. But so far today since 10am it is gone. It was a valuable experience.
At the height of the headache this question occurred to me: why do some people hate not just a person, but they hate ahead of that person, behind them and to the East and West of them. Rather than being told more of what you hate I’d prefer to hear why you hate, which, of course, is anywhere but ahead, behind, East and West. It’s the territory of Underneath.
September 12, 2010
situation to meet the situationists: a headache
Treatment for headache included a viewing of the following
“A video documentary combining exhibition footage of the Situationist International exhibitions with film footage of the 1968 Paris student uprising, and graffiti and slogans based on the ideas of Guy Debord (one of the foremost spokesmen of the Situationist International movement)…”
“You can feel people drifting through their city, you can feel them seeing their city in a new way” (seeing the city? or seeing themselves in a diff way? or seeing others in the city and thus themselves in a new way? I would query..)
“games played on urban sites”
“Play as creative activity”
“a tremendous discovery of talk, it was a month of noise”
Must read more on these publications and films when moins headache.
September 12, 2010
Saturday has been a five hour headache and counting.
I don’t get headaches.
It began, co-incidentally, during a v interesting discussion about cognitive science, the brain, the web and mortality with a stranger. This is no reflection on either the stranger, an amicable intelligent man, nor the discussion.
At one point I was tempted to ask people in the street for tylanol such was its ferocity. I walked into a mall, visually disturbed, held onto my forehead as I walked to the counter and bought a packet of relief. I actively wanted to hand my head over to them. Took one 400mg, then when stopped at traffic light minutes later scanned the packet to see how soon I could take another one, hoping it would be in 15 minutes.
I think Saturday’s headache may be a result of Friday’s pitter patter panic.
September 11, 2010
I definitely need to find a sting mat. At the rehearsal yesterday the concrete of the gallery floor rendered any of the more dynamic movements mercy-less. Ouch.
My partner, a visual artist, has often remarked to me that I don’t understand blah and blah about being an artist. (and sometimes blah and blah about being a male, but that’s a completely different blah)
These days I feel he may have a point.
I thought that when we participated in the window exhibition STORAGE together at BLIM last year.
I never realized quite the extent of how hard the labour of performance related art is. It’s a compelling experience though. And I am blessed to be working with Lori who is flexible and responsive and understanding: a true collaborator. And the instigator of this opportunity I hasten to add.
September 11, 2010
What a fraught and frazzled week full of haters it was in the world.
Part of the process of ageing should surely include dealing with one’s tension rather than foisting it onto others.
Perhaps it could be modified into the DNA code.
Yet it was also a week where I was shown great bravery and courage by someone very close to me.
And where I witnessed people being happy for each other and otherwise.
Thus the weather was mixed, a bit overcast with the odd burst of speckled sunlight.
September 10, 2010
Everyone is getting married.
Everyone is getting married whose lived together for 10 years to be precise.
Everybody is getting dogs.
Small babies who were in arms are now sprinting around.
I am becoming smaller than many of the children in my son’s class.
My son asked me to play some duets with him on the violin. Fiddle tunes.
My son never asks me to play violin with him.
My left wrist completely seized up after some hard-on-the-ears effort.
I agreed sour gummies were an inadequate compensation for his eardrums.
He taught me the first few phrases of The Boys of Wexford.
It is v difficult for this old dame.
The book I am reviewing landed. Finally.
Vit B may help memory loss. If I remember your name, then it works.
We have run out of cheese.
That’s how my world looked today.
September 9, 2010
Change one word.
Change one move.
Change all the people. At gymnastics my favourite coach has left to China and my other favourite coach has left to coach at a new club and the other gymnast who has helped me learn the rings has gone to medical school overseas. Disaster! My entire team of reliable males each Weds has disappeared to far points of the globe.
A new fella is helping me on the rings and he’s pretty radical. He did something tonight called a dislocation that I do not ever intend to do this side of 100. Plus he showed me some pretty violent swinging that was verging on crucifixion shaped and again I dunno if I’ll be hitting that tube stop anytime soon. I am quite jealous of his chin up move and am certainly going to pursue it. But how? The small matter of Posh Spice sized arms up against gravity and pretty ripped up hands need overthrowing.
Change one move.
Another coach tonight gave me a wonderful tip on my back handspring. I trained sooo long ago as a teenager, in the dinosaur era where they taught a sit and fall technique to the commence the move but that has now gone out with the bats. He said pike the legs and fall or just do it straight legged. Plus he said stick your chest up and back which is pretty easy to remember since it pokes out. What a difference. No more collapses. Well a couple. All my power from my legs was being lost by sitting too low, now instead it sends me back and longer. Yeah!!
All the way home I thought of how these tiny adjustments change so much, just as in prose a word in and out of a sentence can have this effect. I don’t have such a good editor’s eye. (Sound is v important to me though) I tend just to see thorns and blackberry bushes. I continue however to see the physical body and it’s movements as structure or I import from the physical body. Even now I can hear the snap of feet to the floor and thump of the arms and the final thump of the feet in a tumbling sequence. I hear a sentence in it. The last novel that I wrote the shape was formulated watching Judith Copithorne walk about delivering phrases at a poetry reading. She was not reading a poem like all the other poets were, she was offering words. Literally and physically.
September 9, 2010
There’s something redolent of BC Ferries around here these days, especially near the kitchen, just movements of loading and unloading and setting sail and returning to the same port. (kitchen sink).
We so enjoyed our summer, I think it was my favourite summer ever since I moved here, but that could be a tie for the summer we went every night to swimming pool when the outdoor pool was still there. That was summer I decided public swimming pools were terrific and I concluded must be even more fun when you can actually swim.
I even had a swimming pool baking ritual, but I have forgotten what it was. Some kind of lumpy oatmeal mound with currants in it which is extraordinary considering I cannot bake either.
Cue music from Grease is the word.
There was also a summer where I sat on a couch in San Francisco that was v comfortable — the competition is mounting now. And there was the summer Edel visited and we found that dead squirrel who carped it inside a plant pot at the beak of a hawk and well … yeah I didn’t do so well with that and poor Delly had to deal with the carcass while I howled.
An gC leat DDD?