Bright illusion

 This year, our online Advent calendar has a Nordic theme, so we're particularly aware of Santa Lucia Day. 

So, yesterday evening, after my daily drop-in to visit Demeter, I decided to make my way deeply into darkened Fairfield, the sun having vanished by 4:20.  

The further south and east I ventured, the thicker the illuminations, bright arteries of colour spreading out of both sides of Linden Avenue.

A fashion this year appears to be multicoloured nets of bulbs, draped over shrubbery, or the sides of porches.  Others have taken long strands of lights and wrapped them several times about bushes.

As I passed one house, I seemed to see an animation at the top of a side entrance -- a man of dots of light, rather like the final moments of Peter Gabriel's famous 1986 video of the song "Sledgehammer":

 

I soon realized it was someone hanging a criss-cross mesh of lights up, the colours following the contours and extremities of his body as he reached for the hooks.

After pausing at the intersection where Linden meets Chapman, I turned further east, passing simpler strings and angles.

Looping homeward, I encountered explosions of decorating dynamite. Here cars were stopping -- headlights, unfortunately, left on high-beam -- and children, barely tall enough to make a sillhouette, chattered excitedly and gazed.

Dazzled, I returned to the relative dark of Fairfield Road, where I was cheered to see our single string dangling above the patio.

Welcome to the glass house

Elder daughter, who is on her way back to Hades, is a fan of Tim Minchin, who has released this bitingly funny - and I do mean "ouch" - video, as a harbinger of a new album and the new year.

The album looks promising. The year?

Let's be careful and kind out there.


By now, we thought that there would be jetpacks and flying cars,
Robots to do the cleaning-up for us,
And help with the shopping.

We'd all be famous for a bit,
That's what Andy Warhol said,
Thought we'd all get our coloured heads,
Well the truth would rock him.

He would be surprised to wake up and find that we have weaponized humiliation:

In the future, everyone
Everyone will have fifteen minutes
Fifteen minutes of shame
Fifteen minutes when they are unforgivable.

Pick up your pitchforks and your torch;
We'll go hunt the monster down,
But keep an eye out for uneven ground;
We'll turn on you if you stumble.

Don't need perspective or a heart;
Leave humility at home.
Welcome to the glass house; hope you brought your stones!
Are you ready to rumble?

I'm scared to write anything that might upset my tribe.
Never mind, 'cause in the future, everyone will have fifteen minutes
Fifteen minutes of shame,
Fifteen minutes when they are unforgivable
Irredeemable
Inexcusable
Scum
Fit only to be strung up in the village square.
I will see you there!

I am scared to say anything that may be taken the wrong way.
But, *$#% it, baby!
In the future, everyone
Everyone will have fifteen minutes,
Fifteen minutes of shame,
Fifteen minutes when they are unforgivable,
Irredeemable,
Inexcusable...

Moon chaser

I walked fifteen kilometres today. One of the Resident Fan Boy's cousins is in town, and since the RFB is at work, I was escorting her.

For that, and a number of reasons I don't wish to discuss, I was making my way home through the dark streets. As I reached the corner of Cook and Fort, I looked east and nearly keeled over.

An enormous peach-coloured moon was rising over the hill. Of course, all I had was my phone, but I snapped and snapped anyway, chasing it up the street. This is the best I could do, shading the glare of the street lamps with the telephone poles. The orb is still blurred, and not nearly as clear and certainly not as peachy as it was.

I'm exhausted. G'night.

Those hallways

I've probably mentioned this before, but I used to have a friend who marketed !2-Step teeshirts and greeting cards. My favourite was a pair of staring white eyes against a pitch-black background with the caption: "I know that when one door closes, another one opens, but MAN, these hallways are a bitch!"

I loved it because you don't need to be recovering from an addiction to find yourself in a dark corridor after a door has slammed shut.

The door will open. Or another one will.

Hello, I must be going

I hurried up Vancouver Street on one of my last evenings of this year's Victoria visit. It was an achingly beautiful August evening, full of golden light and memories.  I was, after all, passing through my old neighbourhood.  When I last lived in it, my children were tiny.

I was on my way to the Blue Bridge Theatre's production of Animal Crackers: a) because Blue Bridge does pretty damn good theatre - many of the actors have impressive CVs - and b) because I've adored the Marx Brothers since I was seventeen.  Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and (sometimes) Zeppo helped me survive high school.

During my final nightmarish spring of secondary education, I was staying in the dorms at the University of Victoria for a brief, province-wide drama workshop.

Our teacher had summoned us to a late-night reading of the riot act about drugs and alcohol at the conference.  (This was rich; said teacher was a notorious party animal.)  I had decided that, having partaken of neither, I was too damn tired to sit through a hypocritical harangue after a day of workshops and performances.  I was one of the few without a room-mate, so I was drifting off to the soundtrack of Duck Soup, when someone came hammering on my door.

It was Arty, a diminutive redhead in my sister's grade, whose voice had not yet changed.

"What is it?" I called out crossly.
"Mr Carr says you gotta come to the meeting."
"I've gone to bed, Arty.  I don't drink."

Pause.  The Marx Brothers were warbling "All God's Children Got Guns".

Bang-bang-bang.
"Are you coming?"
"No, Arty."

Pause. Oh hidey-hidey-hidey-hidey-hidey-hidey-ho....

"Please?  He says you gotta...."
"F*#& off, Arty!"

People told me afterwards that Arty was seen forlornly drifting into the meeting, muttering:  ". . . and she told me to f*#& off. . . ."

(About ten years later, Arty was killed in a freak accident involving something like a wood chipper.  I used to know the details, but frankly, I've preferred not to think about it.  Poor Arty.)

I shook off the past and entered into the past offered by The Blue Bridge Theatre's production of Animal Crackers - a version of the 1920s where there was swing-dancing.  Odd.

As in common in these days of little funds for the arts, most of the actors doubled up on roles with the exception of those playing Groucho (RJ Peters) and Harpo (Britt Small).  Wes Borg, playing Chico, also appeared briefly as a bum.  Like Harpo, the ingenue male lead was played by a woman, presumably for her dancing skills.  But you know, it's not like anything in the Marx Brothers' universe made a helluva lotta sense to begin with.

The play featured the elements that Animal Crackers is known for:  "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" with "Hello, I Must Be Going"; the "strange interlude" sequence -- and several elements that aren't from Animal Crackers:  "Everybody Says I Love You", which featured in the Marx Brothers movie Horsefeathers and "Three Little Words", which didn't, but like the other ditties, was a Kalmer and Ruby composition.

During the first act, I was grateful to not be seated in the front row, as they became Groucho fodder.  However, I was seated alone in the second row (it was a preview night), and as the lights went down at the end of the intermission, and a romantic duet began, Groucho plopped into the seat next to me.
Oh gawd, I thought.
"He's not bad, is he?  Sounds just like Michael Bublé." (This was a running gag.)
I nodded agreeably and wished he would go away.

At this point, Chico came hawking popcorn down the aisle, and shot a bag at Groucho.  I noted that not a single kernel had spilt, and gingerly pulled one loose when Groucho obligingly held out the bag to me.  I ditched it after he loped back on to the stage.

The extravaganza ended with a dizzying pastiche of parodies from recent Broadway blockbusters -- after the first curtain call.  Groucho appeared at centre-stage and declared:  "One of the advantages of being dead for the last forty years is that I haven't had to see any of these!"

I wished, once again, that younger daughter could have seen this.  She would have loved the singing, the dancing, the costumes, and the physical humour.

I managed to catch the 10:30 Quadra and set off at a race-walk from Pandora.  This had been a golden fifteen-to-twenty-minute stroll at 6:30, but now Victoria had turned into a spooky ghost-town, no one on the streets but the homeless trying to sleep against shop-fronts, and an occasional dark figure that seemed to be trailing me by half a block.  I made it back through the shadows to Demeter's in ten minutes.

I am telling you, I must be going.

Things that go bump (and scrape) in the night (and early evening)

Dear Oh Deer
Originally uploaded by rayvensmoon

The Teen-cats have not mended their ways. I've sort of passed the point of worrying myself sick over them, as so far they're turning up in the morning, hungry and mildly indignant that I haven't let them in sooner. Say, by getting up at 3am...

I've got other things to worry about. Last night, after reading younger daughter to sleep with Little Women, I sat quietly on her bed, making sure that she had descended into dreamland deeply enough to risk turning the lights off. That meant it was quiet enough for me to hear the bumping and scraping against her window. Which is on the second floor. With no trees nearby.

I'm not thrilled about being alone in a house at night at the best of times, let alone a large house on a semi-rural cul-de-sac past eleven in the evening. I listened incredulously for several seconds then struck up the courage to raise the blinds.

Nuthin'. I nervously prepared myself for bed and made the rounds, shutting all windows on this chilly night, and mulling over how much I hate going out into the black front and back yards to fruitlessly call for the Teen-Cats. In addition, I'd forgotten it was Garbage Pick-up the next morning, so had the extra pleasure of collecting the contents of the various bins, transporting them to the ill-lit garage, then, having discovered that I've forgotten how to open the garage door, hauling two large cans back into the house, down the hall and out into the dark driveway to the curb. I spotted one, then two cat silhouettes in the yard across the street and softly called before realizing they were too large to be Winsome Teen-Cat. (I'd corralled Ginger Teen-cat earlier.) Another movement caught my eye, and the ghostly shapes of a doe and her fawn hurried into a space between houses.

Eventually, fatigue overcame my night-time terror and l lulled myself to sleep with the local rock station, waking up each hour to hear how far they'd gotten in their Led Zepplin documentary.

I checked the side of the house this morning to see what was under younger daughter's window. Just a makeshift kind of shelf for kindling --- although if a man stood on it, he might be able to brush the window with his fingers. Or machete....

Early this evening, I went out back to hang younger daughter's swimswuit on the line and startled a doe grazing on the other side of the house. She galloped to the chainlink fence, leapt like a gazelle (or a deer, actually), and hung herself up on it briefly before limping into the Shasta daisies. I watched as she clopped unevenly across the road to munch on the neighbour's lawn. I understand the deer are a nuisance to gardeners, but I do hope she's all right.

You don't suppose she leapt on top of the kindling shelf last night, about 11 pm, do you?