The Cavalry

Granny Val has arrived and has taken over the business of keeping us alive. Meanwhile I languish in a muscle-relaxant-and-codeine stupor on the couch. Thank you for your invitations!

Categories: Ash

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A Funny Thing Happened On The Way Down From Monday

Let me enumerate a few more of the "funny" things that have happened to me this week:

- Giant rash on my neck. My throat chakra is very angry. Must be all the screaming from which I'm refraining. The rash arrived on Tuesday, a product of the stress and related bullshit surrounding the hard drive crash. It truly looks like all the bile I have inside has been thrown around my neck like a bumpy red scarf. It's AWEsome, trust me.

- IPod connector to the car stereo, broken, for no reason. Part of it still stuck inside the cigarette lighter hole. Not putting my fingers in there, me. So, no Sloaner Songs in the car. Which leads to a lot of complaining by Ms. "Mama First I Want The Chain Song, Then I Want Kids In America, And Then Bad Reputation And Then Soak Up The Sun" herself. I've been singing "Unravel" to her over and over.

- Probably best of all, I threw my back out last night. I have been reduced into a hobbledy, bent-sideways, shuffling-along & groaning cripple. As I type, I am sitting on the couch, a bag of frozen beans on my back. Seems I've badly strained a ligament in my hip. Joy. It's a long weekend, and no one had any proper massage appointments open. At one point in the afternoon I was in such pain that I was hyperventilating and sweating, with the spasms blooming through my torso like contractions. I thought I was floating outside my body. It's been great.

- I'm currently between sizes, with just about nothing to wear. But I did have one pair of jeans I can use to leave the house. Note the past tense. Last night, getting undressed, the top button popped off. I stood there looking at the busted button, twirling on the linoleum. And had to laugh. My last pair of pants? My last pair of pants had to be a sacrifice on the altar of this week, too? Obviously there's no rock too small to turn.

I would say "well, it can't get much worse", but this week the universe has been very creative at finding new and untapped ways to make things worse. It's one of those weeks where I really shouldn't've been leaving the house at all, just hiding under the bed and petting the cats with glazed-over eyes. Would've been better for everyone.

Hey, have I mentioned that Turner's out of town for two weeks?

Categories: Ash

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Unravel

Been thinking about all kinds of loss. Have been humming Bjork's Unravel for the last few days. The people in the Lindsay Park showers definitely don't know what the hell I'm singing, judging from the looks.

,br>
While you are away, my heart comes undone
Slowly unravels in a ball of yarn
Devil collects it, with a grin
Our love our love, in a ball of yarn
He'll never return it

When you come back we'll have to make new love
He'll never return it...
When you come back we'll have to make new love
He'll never return it...
When you come back we'll have to make new love


I also recently came back to the Pet Shop Boys.

There's a great line in What Have I Done To Deserve This where Neil Tennant is singing to camera for these lines:

You always wanted me to be something I wasnt
(Dusty Springfield:) You always wanted too much, oh, oh
Now I can do what I want to - forever
How am I gonna get through?
How am I gonna get through?

On the "now I can do what I want to..." part, he's looking, looking, looking straight into the camera and then just before "forever", his eyes flick down. As a teenager I was stunned by this part of the video. I've thought about it for years. In my sheltered Bonavista existence, I thought, "Oh dear. He's glimpsed the vast cavern of loneliness that is the trade for that freedom, but he's stubborn, so he's taking it anyway." It represented the representation of awesome loss.

I've just re-watched this video for the first time in probably fifteen if not twenty years. I am now a jaded adult and my verdict is: (Jon Lovitz voice) "ACTING!"

(Um, yeah. Post-hard-drive-loss asshole in full force here on Spiller Road, today.)

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What Would Neil Patrick Harris Do?

Too good. This was the only good part of my day, yesterday (the hard drive containing my portfolio work, four and a half years of archives, and all of Sloane's baby pictures fried and died yesterday morning). Enjoy the bliss of NPH, on me.

Categories:

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At Turner's Presentation

Also from a few weeks ago: we were invited to spend a few days up at the Banff Centre, enjoying the views and dinner buffets, courtesy of the Festival speakers' series.

Sloane was surely Turner's most charming audience member. When we came into the auditorium Sloane saw the screen and pronounced for all the hall to hear, "Oh Dada! Look! It's your book, Dada! That's your book!" Twitters and smiles all 'round.

Categories: GeoHope | Sloane

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Does She Got It?

So. Sloane is a child of mine, which means that various of her great- and great-great-grandparents were professional musicians.*  From both sides, her one grandmother can play a mean Scott Joplin rag and the other is an accomplished choir singer. So it stands to reason that she might end up with some musical ability. When I took this photo up in Banff a few weeks ago, I said to Turner, "If she ends up even remotely competent at an instrument, we can pull out this picture and say: it all started here."



Sloane Lantau, Mt. Stephen Hall, Banff Springs Hotel. January 2008.

*Which, of course, meant that all us grandchildren were subjected to years of hopeful music lessons and various other attempts to coax out of us the latent - very latent, as it turned out - talent that surely slumbered in our genes. John Bristowe, a natural percussion genius, was denied drums and in their stead provided with a trumpet, and later, piano lessons. He got just good enough to get bored. And Viki Bristowe, blessed with fabulous pipes, never took actual serious training, and in the limpid teenagerdom we all suffer, ended up thinking she wasn't good enough or something, and never persued her voice. I hear Alanna's also pretty impressive with the singing. The rest of us... well, I dunno. I took piano and flute and can read music (though only in the treble clef), but certainly I was never much of an actual musician. So it went with most of us Bristowe grandchildren.

Categories: Sloane

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Meryl Streep

Today's minor obsession procrastination distraction is Meryl Streep, an interest rekindled last night after I caught the last 2/3 of Out Of Africa on television. I love that movie, so much so that I cry basically all the way through it. Fabulous.

And I loved finding this quote by Meryl Streep, in a Q&A somewhere online:

Get a good education,
know as much as you can about everything,
and listen - and look at the world - you know - feelingly.

And this, even moreso:

Integrate what you believe into every single area of your life.
Take your heart to work, and ask the most and best of everybody else too.
Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth
-- don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.

Beautiful!

Categories: Olden Days

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The Wizard Of Oz

Brucio gave Sloane The Wizard of Oz on dvd for xmas, and in the last two weeks we have watched it many times.

We have had many plot clarification-type discussions, including the "Howcome that lady wants to take Toto away from her?" conundrum. And the "...Who... who's those boys Mama?" That's the Lollypop Guild, dear. "Oh. Howcome they give Dorothy that big sucker, Mama?" puzzler. And of course never forget the ever-popular, "Howcome the Wizard left her there Mama?" Well lovie, the balloon got away and he couldn't steer it back to pick her up. "Oh no. Now she'll NEVER get home!"

While you might think the Wicked Witch of the West would be the scariest part of the movie, the scene that gets to Sloane is the one where the apple trees scold Dorothy for picking their fruit. I think it's scary because the tree actually slaps Dorothy's hand besides looking mean and frightening. As in, the tree actually enters the physical space of and interferes directly with Dorothy, striking her. If you think about it, the Wicked Witch of the West never actually even touches Dorothy, just comes in real close and points her green finger and makes threats and cackles. When she's got Dorothy trapped in her castle, she never even says that she'll kill her. The scene involves the Witch turning over the famous hourglass, and she points and says, "See that? That's how long you've got left to live!" Just enough mental distance from the concept of actually killing Dorothy to render it unjumpable (and therefore palatable) to Sloane. Brucio reports that he saw Oz in the theatre at about 6 years old, and at that age the Witch's threats and whatnot were sufficiently graspable to the 8-year-old mind for the character to embody capital-S "scary" for years to come.

In the end she's melted anyway, an incredibly satisfying revenge in toddlers' opinions (among those we've sampled).

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s of course I only saw The Wizard of Oz once a year at most, usually sometime around Christmas when it would come on television. I remember very clearly seeing it in Thunder Bay, in the basement of our house on Parkway Drive. I might have been four years old. I'd seen it before, because I remember the excitement and anticipation as we watched the sepia Kansas scenes at the beginning. Sloane's going to grow up knowing it backwards. Strange to only be in my thirties and already be thinking, for the thousandth time as a parent, "Wow... well, back in MY day it wasn't like this at all..."

Current favourite lyrics, from the Lion's song "Courage", in the corridor outside the Wizard's chambers:
What makes the Hottentot so hot? Who put the ape in apricot? What've they got that I ain't got? ...Courage.

Who put the "ape" in apricot. That kills me.

Categories: Olden Days | Sloane

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