Things you never see in Hades these days

I saw this on the way to my morning art class. I never see classic Volkswagens in Ottawa; the weather must have dissolved them into piles of brown rust.

Sidewalk serpent

Cafe society II

The micro-macro-economist-barista makes me what looks like a feather atop of my mocha latte.

He turns the cup and tells me, as I exclaim over the image: "Here's a trick. You can get a Dr Suess effect."

He dips the tip of his barista-coffee-stirring-tool (not a euphemism) into a dark edge near the rim and adds two eyes.

"There's a even a way to make this an elephant…"

But he squiggles chocolate syrup across it.
"Now I'm defacing it."
"But I know it's there," I say.
"It's the artistic ephemeral moment," he smiles.
I return his smile.
"Very Buddhist."

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.

Life seen through a prism

Clicking on any of this photos will enlarge them.

Early on a Friday midsummer morning, I wandered out on the grounds of the First Unitarian Church of Victoria, waiting for Demeter to arrive.  I had arrived separately because I had just completed my last night in exile, in the spare room of this summer's failed house-sit.  Back at Demeter's condo, my Double Leo Sister and her family were packing up to depart, but Demeter and I had made plans long ago to attend the memorial service for a prominent church member who died in the aftermath of a stroke suffered while driving the Pat Bay Highway.

As I crossed the parking lot, I saw a sign marking a "memorial pathway".  There is a memorial garden, with a wall containing more familiar names each time I go to visit it, but I didn't remember this pathway.  The church moved to this location four years before I left Victoria, and in the intervening sixteen years, I've only caught brief summertime glimpses.  Demeter wouldn't be arriving for another fifteen minutes or so, so I climbed the steep dirt path between the ancient trees.

I spotted an Oregon Grape plant, which, despite its name, is native to this area.  Demeter planted it in our garden about twenty years ago.  The current owners uprooted it ages ago.

There wasn't much time to climb far, so I was soon in my seat, acting as interpreter to Demeter, scribbling notes in my small book when I knew she wasn't able to follow.  There is a sound system with a loop that usually works well, but this morning, we were listening to people who weren't experienced in public speaking, and grief-stricken to boot.

He wasn't a man I knew well, for all his deep involvement in church affairs. He was an avowed atheist - Unitarians range from reason-worshipping atheists, humanists, and agnostics, through ethereal and downright wacky Wiccan and Neo-Pagans, to the more traditional theists and Christians.  The last group were the dominant group in past centuries in the Unitarian Church, but are now very much in the minority, and of course, it was through Unitarian theism that I came to know his wife twenty years ago. 

I was deeply moved to see her singing passionately back to her church sextet, from her seat amongst her children and grandchildren.  

Did I feel I knew more about her dead husband after experiencing him through his family and friends?

Well, yes and no.

It occurred to me that a memorial service is rather like a prism.  People speak their memories, but the memories are refracted through personality, time, and perspective.  The image we get of the dead person may not match the image we had of him while alive.  It's not an inaccurate picture, really.  Rainbows aren't illusions; they're just light after it's been bent and sorted.

My hostess drove me back to her house to pick up my suitcase and take it back to Demeter's for my final week in Victoria.  On the way, we talked about the wide range of beliefs, and she declared that the only combination that she found "ridiculous" were Unitarian Christians.  "Well, the Unitarian Church started out as a Christian church..." I began.

I'm a Unitarian by birth, so I really should have known better, having grown up in a church dominated by very determined humanists and agnostics.  Besides, apart from being a Leo, my hostess is Dutch.

"No.  Christianity is belief in the Trinity. Unitarians are the opposite."

"But Christian Unitarians follow the teachings of Jesus..."

"No.  It's ridiculous.  We won't discuss it."

Sigh.

It's a panorama shot.  Try clicking on it!

The summer of the fire signs

I must have looked upset, because a guy wandered over from his gang of friends clustered around an illegal beach fire and offered me a joint.

It was sunset on an August evening fourteen years ago, and I was perched on the rocks below Dallas Road, weeping in the aftermath of what I came to call The Big Blowout, when my sister, the Double Leo, ripped into me over a chance remark about a slice of pizza in front of my bewildered and terrified daughters, then aged ten and six, and her three-year-old son.

It wasn't about the pizza, of course. I sat on my stony seat (literally - I hadn't accepted the kind offer of a toke), gazing out at the darkening Juan de Fuca Strait, with that ghastly feeling you have when you know the injury is serious, and you don't know how to staunch the bleeding.

I thought about the years of pussy-footing, of being cowed and intimidated, and I wearily decided that I couldn't sustain a lifetime of emotionally supporting my daughters (particularly one on the autism spectrum), my aging mother, and use up my precious empathy reserves on my high-maintenance sister.

This is by way of an explanation for the following tale of tizziness, because the scenario emerging this summer of 2016 was eerily and ominously similar to that of 2002: my sister and her family turning up unexpectedly and moving into the guest suite of my mother's condo for a few perilous days.  Back then, in the growing shadow of the Olympic Mountains, I came to the conclusion that my sister and I can't be under the same roof for more than twenty-four hours, not without a mis-step on the minefield that is my sister's psyche.

Perhaps it was fortuitous that fourteen years later I was impulsively treating myself to lunch at Il Terrazzo after beginning art lessons offered by a friend.  I ate a lovely risotto in the cool patio of my favourite restaurant in Victoria, then, lugging bags of art supplies, dropped by a stationer's to pick up birthday cards for the various fire signs in my life.  I was rather dreading a two-day visit to my mother by my sister and her family scheduled for the following week, inadvertently overlapping with my stay, and had quietly made arrangements with my art teacher friend to stay in her basement for two nights, for the reasons described above.  My friend had made it clear that she would need plenty of notice.

I came home in the mid-afternoon, worn out.  Demeter was out for most of the day for a special meeting of her book club, but her walker, which she uses for ferrying laundry downstairs, was planted in the hallway, laden with towels and sheets.  Had I not been so tired,  I might have wondered more about this, but I squeezed past, sank into a chair, and drifted in and out of a doze.

I was awake and finishing something on my laptop when Demeter returned and informed me that Double Leo Sister and her family were turning up that evening and staying for three days.  My niece had picked up some sort of bug which involved symptoms that didn't adapt well to a campsite.

I suggested my giving up the spare room, and when my mother vigorously refused, stifled my panic and offered to set up the guest suite, texting the Resident Fan Boy in Hades, who advised me to get out.  He remembers 2002 all too well.

I was scheduled to meet my friend the Choir Singer at a folk concert in Beacon Hill Park that evening.  Double-Leo Sister et famille hadn't shown up when Choir Singer picked me up and, seeing my agitation, took me for ice cream therapy before proceeding to the Cameron Band Shell.  While a Stevie-Nicks/Lindsay-Buckingham-type duo from Sooke sang standards, I retreated to the springy plantations near the public washrooms, and in desperation, called the hostess of our largely fallen-through house-sit, who had offered their guest-room at any time.

The offer was still good. Ironically, she's a Leo, too.

I returned to the bench, and vacillating between relief and trepidation, enjoyed the rest of the concert. Choir Singer friend drove me to the empty apartment.  Evidently the unexpected guests had arrived and gone out to dinner with Demeter.  My friend waited while I threw all my belongings into my suitcase and hastily scribbled a note:  I've done the math:  Four people in the guest suite - one bathroom; two people in the apartment - two bathrooms. . . .

Of course, Demeter walked in, just as I was wheeling my suitcase towards the door.  As expected, she looked disappointed and weary. Jolly-Not-Green-Giant-Brother-in-Law (another fire sign -- he's an Aries) soon followed, declaring that my evacuation was unnecessary, along with my niece (another fire sign) and nephew (an earth sign, like me, poor kid).  Double Leo Sister was downstairs in the guest suite, but we kept missing each other in the running between floors.  I pleaded that Choir Singer Friend was waiting to drive me, pointed out that I would be back in the daytime, and fled to the guest room of yet another Leo where I spent the next three nights, being very polite.

I also spent the next three days being very polite -- and making myself scarce whenever possible.

In short, I kept careful control of how much time I spent with anyone.  When you're surrounded by control freaks (and fire signs are, no matter how you feel about astrology), fences are the best defence.

Still waiting for this summer to ease up. What do you suppose my chances are?

Reflections at a Quaker Meeting

As Meeting begins, I see a chair.

It's a very ordinary chair, metal-legged, plastic-cushioned, such as used to be in countless business meetings and university seminars.

And as the Silence descends, I find myself wanting to sketch it.

The morning light hits the metal legs, and the reflections in the ancient, dark polish of the meeting house floor seem to dip below the surface in long, silver cones.  I sit, wishing I had the courage to pull out my sketchbook and try to capture it, knowing it's beyond my skills.

I've been taking my third session of art lessons with a friend who has taught both of my daughters.  This is the first time she has offered drawing, so I spend her two-hour classes trying to draw what I see -- and falling short, of course.  I rather like my creations, but am aware that I'm not really hitting her objectives.  This doesn't particularly trouble me.  In drawing, as in painting, photography, and writing, you are forced to slow down and notice details, and that's the point, isn't it?

Rather like a Quaker Meeting for Worship.

I don't have the gumption to haul out my sketchbook, but I do quietly pull out my notebook and scribble:  "Who polishes the floor? -  Surely they do it with love."

When I look back to the chair, the reflections in the floor have vanished. The light has moved on.

Seeing double (write of passage number forty)

One of the advantages of having a house-sit off Hillside - no matter how briefly - is the pleasure of clambering up into a double-decker. (The double-deckers only serve the university routes and the communities lying beyond Saanich.)

I'm not the only one who is delighted.  A little girl emerging from toddlerhood is thrilled, not only by being up so high above the streets, but by seeing other double-deckers streaming in and out of downtown Victoria.

"A big bus!" she cries triumphantly.
"An' annunner big bus! An' annunner big bus...."

She spots about a dozen before I get off.

Can't stop the viral videos

I gather this is the song of the summer.  I wouldn't know; I don't listen to those kind of stations.  The first intimation I had was this viral video a couple of months ago: 
Not sure where that six-year-old got the hip action, but heck, it's rather adorable.  (Just wish my house looked that uncluttered.)

Next, it turned up on my Postmodern Jukebox feed:  
I feel that Aubrey Logan is channeling Channing here.  It's that wide-eyed and rather surprised Carol Channing stare that does it for me. Also, don't miss Melinda Sullivan risking life and limb (well, limb, anyway) to tap-dance on the narrow lunch counter at about the three-minute mark.

Finally, while I was hiding out from the humidex in Victoria, this video brought it right into my laptop: 
This was apparently inspired by the viral video of Officer Tracy Turpin dancing on duty on Elgin Street during the Canada Day long weekend, and was widely shared in the aftermath of shootings involving American police.

Quiet desperation

The day after we learned that younger daughter's school had winked out of existence, things got just a shade more surreal.

I was in a crosswalk, en route to meeting Demeter at the public library, when a series of frantic texts from the Resident Fan Boy started arriving.  I got to a safe place on the curb to decipher them:

Just got back from town.  Younger daughter has disappeared with the Accent Snob.  Didn't take her phone and left the door unlocked. Crap.

Panic at a three-thousand-mile distance is even more futile than hysteria at close quarters, so I aimed for a light and jocular tone:

Learning curve!  Do you want to look for her?  And take some poop bags?

Looks like I have no choice.  She often does this to let him out to pee.  Oh damn

Obviously that's what she intended this time.  So what happened?

She could be anywhere and now she'll come back to a locked door.  Oh God.

I decided a phone call was in order. The Resident Fan Boy, a Virgo who had just flown in from Victoria the night before (a twelve-hour journey due to glitches and delays), had decided that it was imperative that he get to a downtown bank to pay a bill.  He had informed younger daughter before going out.  He would have been gone about an hour.  When he returned, not only did he find both his daughter and his dog gone, he found her purse containing her house keys and phone, and also discovered the Accent Snob's harness hanging up, which meant that she had attached the lead to the collar. We do that only when letting him out for a quick spot of relief. The RFB was now pounding the pavement, but unsure of the direction to take.

Maintaining my outward calm, I reminded him that younger daughter is familiar with the house alarm, and advised him to return to the house and set it, if he couldn't lock the door.  I also told him to phone elder daughter, who had accompanied younger daughter on dog walks the previous summer and could advise him on possible routes.

Hanging up, I proceeded to the library for my rendezvous with Demeter, not daring to tell her what was going on three time zones away until I knew more.  When she set off in search of a book, I darted into the children's section, where I could watch for her return while phoning the RFB for an update.

"Nope, no sign of her."

"Could she have gone to the park?"

"For heaven's sake, she'd never go that far!"

"How long has she been gone?"

"I dunno!  Half an hour?  The thing is, she's obviously taken him out front for a pee ---- and something happened...."

Painful pause.  From my hiding place, I could see Demeter returning from the book check-out.

"I guess you'd better call 911, then.  Keep me posted."

I set off with my mother in search of a place to drink. Demeter was suddenly thirsty and undoubtedly puzzled and hurt by my short replies and lack of suggestions. I was imagining booking an early flight home, and fought to keep my mind free of other imaginings.

At a small cafe, I texted while Demeter picked up her lemonade. The Resident Fan Boy was describing younger daughter to the 911 operator, who was almost as relieved as the RFB when younger daughter walked with the Accent Snob.  

She had taken him to the park.