TERRY’S BIG WATCH, Part One: A Child’s Horror Story
(Not for children)
My friend Terry has a BIG WATCH. It stares at me from his wrist and scares the livin’ bejeesus outta me. Even though Terry is a big guy, it even looks big on his big wrist, it’s that BIG. TERRY’S BIG WATCH shows up in my dreams. Well, not my dreams, my nightmares! Because any dream that includes TERRY’S BIG WATCH is frightening as hell. TERRY’S BIG WATCH has a big bell inside that goes off every night at midnight and every day at noon. Stupid watch can’t even tell the difference between twelve midnight and twelve noon. But it is BIG, I must admit that.
TERRY’S BIG WATCH is as big as the moon, the full moon that is, not that skinny punk moon that lies back in its Lazyboy chair and smokes Gauloises. For you kids, those are French cigarettes. I once had a dream that TERRY’S BIG WATCH learned to smoke French cigarettes. It would sneak into the bathroom when Terry was asleep and light up. Then it started sending signals to the moon out the window. TERRY’S BIG WATCH has two hands so it sent its signals in semaphore. At 12:50 a.m., it sent U. At 2:45, it sent R. At 5:45, it sent B, and at 6:20, TERRY’S BIG WATCH sent G. TERRY’S BIG WATCH sat on the toilet in the bathroom and smirked. U R B G. Ha, ha. U Are BiG. Everybody thinks I’m big but that moon is really big. Then TERRY’S BIG WATCH went back to bed, stinking of smoke.
The next night, when TERRY’S BIG WATCH sat on the toilet smoking his Gauloises, he looked up at the moon. The moon must have five hands, TERRY’S BIG WATCH thought, because it’s signaling a PENTAGRAM. A Pentagram!? That’s the sign of Satan! TERRY’S BIG WATCH hurried back to bed immediately and never smoked Gauloises again. So now TERRY’S BIG WATCH knows what it’s like to be frightened. But it’s SO BIG, it still scares me.
TERRY’S BIG WATCH, Part Two: The Second Week of Creation
On the 8th day, God created TERRY’S BIG WATCH and said to Himself, ‘It’s about Time.’ He saw that it was Good, well pretty Good anyway, well maybe just okay, but it was definitely BIG.
On the 9th day, God created a donut. Staring at it, He said to Himself, ‘It looks good enough to eat,’ so that’s what He did and it was very Good.
On the 10th day, God created a stripper named Marcia and He said to Himself, ‘I’ve really done it this time,’ and He gave her a little push and she spun around the pole, and God said, ‘Hey, this is really Good!’
On the 11th day, God created a library book that was exactly twelve days overdue and He asked Himself, ‘How did I do that? Well, anyway, it’s still Good.’
On the 12th day, God created a library, returned the book and paid the fine, having also created a librarian and several quarters with His own head on them, and they too were Good.
On the 13th day, God received a call from the librarian who told Him His quarters were no good and God asked Himself, ‘What have I started?’ and He realized that it was a Good question. Looking at TERRY’S BIG WATCH, He said, ‘Time for a rest again’ and it was Good. He smiled to Himself, ‘Another Good week.’
TERRY’S BIG WATCH, Part Three: The Third Week of Creation
At the start of His third week, God sat with His chin resting on his fist. He checked TERRY’S BIG WATCH, like a frying pan on his wrist, and decided to get started.
“This week,” He said to no one in particular, “I’m only going to create things that are striped. I don’t know why. Do I need a reason?”
He started with a zebra but wasn’t happy with the result. It’s Good, He thought, but not Good enough.
So he tried a tiger and said, “Wow – I love the colour – that’s really Good.”
Then He made a barber pole and announced, “From now on, all barber poles will be striped. Do I need a reason?” He thought He might call Marcia the stripper in to twirl around the pole but thought better of it. “No, that’s Good enough.”
Then He created a painting by Mondrian – but he wasn’t happy with the stripes going one way and tried stripes the other way and then He realized it wasn’t striped anymore. “Well, still Good.”
He checked TERRY’S BIG WATCH. “Better hurry, week’s getting on.”
He then made himself a pair of striped pants, and had to create a mirror to see how they looked on Him. When He checked in the mirror, he decided the mirror counted as something striped, at least momentarily, so he saved himself some work. But when he saw the striped pants in the mirror, he gasped. “Gack! I look like a sixties hippie. Not so Good.”
God realized it was the last day of the week. He knew the day because TERRY’S BIG WATCH is so big it has a calendar too – not just one of those tacky digital calendars that give one day at a time but one that shows an entire year’s calendar on the face. TERRY’S BIG WATCH is that BIG.
He couldn’t think of anything striped and then he remembered. Striped Bass. “They’re striped, right?” He had all sorts of trouble with his watercolours running in the water but finally got it perfect. “That’s pretty Good.” So he took the striped bass and threw it into the sky where it swam among the stars, happy enough. Doesn’t look right, thought God. Then He smacked Himself in the forehead, nearly knocking Himself out with TERRY’S BIG WATCH. Right, of course, water. What was I thinking. I’ll put it in a lake.
God wiped his hands together. “All done.” He checked TERRY’S BIG WATCH. “Just in time.”
TERRY’S BIG WATCH, Part Four
I saw TERRY’S BIG WATCH again last night. If anything, it’s Bigger. It appears to be growing, like a waxing moon. And it shines brighter than ever. I’m still afraid of it. I used it at the dimly lit restaurant last night to help me read my menu. Just leaned a bit to my right while Terry had his own menu raised and I let TERRY’S BIG WATCH shine its light on the words: llingcod (whatever that is), salmon, pork belly.
Later I realized TERRY’S BIG WATCH had sunburned the right side of my face. Terry wore TERRY’S BIG WATCH like he was carrying an enormous machine on his arm: like the huge front wheel of a penny farthing bicycle, or the steering wheel of a Mack truck, or a frying pan so large it was used on the Western Front to fry eggs for an entire battalion at one time.
It’s still Big, TERRY’S BIG WATCH, and terrifying. It’s as if a hundred Swiss gnomes had poured out of their RV parked on the main square of a southern Italian town, climbed the church tower and disassembled the clock there. The tower clock hadn’t worked in five hundred years, its hands stuck at 11 o’clock (like the letter T in semaphore). But the townsfolk figured the clock was correct twice a day which isn’t too bad, so they never bothered to fix it.
The Swiss gnomes took the future TERRY’S BIG WATCH home to Zurich and reassembled it, but it still didn’t tick. “Junk,” they said. “Crap.” And shipped it off to New York. The Statue of Liberty saw it coming on a ship across the ocean and, being French, had an orgasm. Terry found TERRY’S BIG WATCH at a market on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and when he attached it to his thick wrist – guess what, it began to tick as if it had fallen out of Eternity into Time. That kind of magic always makes my legs shake.
TERRY’S BIG WATCH is still ticking, even when Terry sleeps, so that’s why TERRY’S BIG WATCH is still frightening (and it’s still Big too, or even Bigger maybe.)
TERRY’S BIG WATCH, Part Five
I saw TERRY’S BIG WATCH again last night. It keeps appearing out of the misty night like an apparition of frost, and I think it’s growing. (Terry’s growing too, but that’s another story.) He didn’t wear his butt-less chaps which was very disappointing but he did wear TERRY’S BIG WATCH. There it was, clear as black on white. Not even digital this time but the old analog deal. It had teeth too, like the duck hearts we ate.
Duck hearts; now there’s a subject worth biting into. Listen closely: there’s a duck heart still beating inside TERRY’S BIG WATCH. It’s marinating in Time, like all of us.
Look, there’s a duck passing overhead. I’m feeling empty-hearted. Terry looks at TERRY’S BIG WATCH. It’s one minute to midnight. God has disappeared from this story. It’s well past the first week of creation. Terry checks the calendar on TERRY’S BIG WATCH. The pages keep turning. Maybe it’s the last week of creation. I see a long nap in all our futures.
But, luckily, TERRY’S BIG WATCH always makes me laugh. It’s so damn big. It’s one big laugh, like a ponytail on an old hippy, who keeps spinning like a dervish trying to catch that whip of hair as it passes overhead, like terry’s big watch, in which the hour hand is trying to catch the second hand (or vice-versa) as it spins through Time, faster and faster, but we’re so drunk on duck hearts we don’t know if it’s spinning into the future or the past. We’re all dancing, dancing like Fire Monkeys on Chinese New Year, firecrackers going off in our pants.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Saturday, July 7, 2018
Short Essays on Film: On Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, Nostalgia
This is film as the art of contemplation. Tarkovsky, here as elsewhere, employs long, lingering shots that ultimately suggest that the story isn’t created there on the screen but in the viewer’s imagination. For most modern viewers seeking fast-paced entertainment, Tarkovsky’s approach could be maddening, eliciting a painful feeling of boredom. But for a viewer who can settle in and is willing to spend the time required, without recourse to speed and flash, a Tarkovsky film can be thoroughly enlightening and entertaining. Nostalgia is just such a film. When it first came out, the New York Times reviewer, Vincent Canby, said that this is a film in which “nothing happens”. It’s true – nothing happens, and it’s marvellous.
Though the plot is fairly straightforward, the approach is not. Russian poet, Andrei Gorchakov, is in Italy to research the life of an 18th century Russian composer who had lived in Tuscany. Andrei employs a beautiful Italian translator, Eugenia, who falls in love with him and ends up leaving because the poet rebuffs her advances. Before this, they travel to an Italian village to view frescoes by Piero della Francesca in a Tuscan convent where the Madonna of Childhood is visited by young women hopeful for a child. In the village, Andrei meets Domenico, a rather mad prophet, who asks the poet to fulfill the task of carrying a lit candle across a mineral pool to save the world. Throughout, time is used by Tarkovsky as a tool of free association – scenes don’t necessarily follow in a linear order.
Every frame in the film is a painting by Caravaggio or Rembrandt or Titian. If Caravaggio were a filmmaker, this is the film he would shoot. In one of those long takes that Tarkovsky loves, we see two bottles standing in the rain, slowly filling with rainwater as the two main characters walk about, talking. As in many of his films, the rain is falling indoors, in an old rundown house in the Italian countryside where Domenico lives. Although Tarkovsky would likely deny it (‘rain is rain,’ he said), for me this recurring image of indoor rain suggests the fecundity of imagination, the richness of inner worlds and dreamscapes.
A film by Tarkovsky is much like a long poem, with its recurring images that resonate with each other in a kind of visual rhyming. (I’m reminded of the Odyssey’s repeated refrains about the ‘wine-dark seas’ and ‘rosy-fingered dawns’.) In Nostalgia, these images include mirrors (that often reflect the two main characters), circles, rain (as already mentioned), a dog, a child, mist, a ruin of a church open to the sky, lit candles. Even background sounds have their repetition: rain again, dripping water, clocks, ringing phones, voices, bells, and so on.
In some sense, everything is inverted in this world: rain falls indoors, churches are open to the sky, out of nowhere a large dog suddenly appears in a hotel room.
The echo or resonance of several of these images and visual rhymes is subtle and intriguing. A round mirror in the hotel bathroom is later echoed by a bicycle wheel which is echoed by a high empty window in the church ruin which is echoed by the rising sun. All these circles are roughly the same size on screen.
Many of the scenes in this film are stunning. In a chapel, a young woman kneels before the Madonna of Childbirth as she intones a prayer that reveals her longing for a child. At the end of the prayer, she pulls open the lower portion of the Madonna’s robes, suddenly releasing dozens of small birds on the air.
Tarkovsky is a master of scenes that incorporate his favourite images. In another scene, the police have rescued a family in the village after seven years of entrapment in their house by their father and husband, the mad Domenico, who fears the craziness and absurdity of the world. Once outside, the mother falls to her knees and kisses the earth. Right next to her, a full bottle of milk is chugging out its contents onto the ground. Milk appears as a significant image in every Tarkovsky film.
In another scene, Andrei takes an afternoon nap in his hotel room. We see him fully clothed, asleep on the bed. On one side of the room, the shutters have been opened wide and a heavy rain falls into thick foliage outside. On the other side, we see into a bathroom with the round mirror on the wall and a bentwood chair with a circle at its back. Suddenly, inexplicably, a large dog hurries out of the bathroom and settles on the floor next to the bed. There has been no indication that a dog was lurking in the bathroom. Is this the arrival of a dream? Perhaps.
In another, later scene, mad Domenico has gone to Rome. We see him giving a speech about mankind’s need to return to a simpler, less selfish way of life. The thin crowd appears to include escapees from an asylum. As he speaks, he stands on the hindquarters of the horse of Marcus Aurelius, a famous statue on the Piazza Campidoglio in the heart of Rome. At the end of his speech, he douses himself in gasoline and self-immolates, falling to the ground to the sound of a barking dog. Domenico, in flames, rolls to the feet of a person holding a sign which reads ‘Tomorrow is the End of the World’. The end of the world is, of course, another favourite Tarkovsky theme.
In the final scene of the film, we see the Russian poet and the dog sitting on the ground, a pool of water before them. Three thick, candle-shaped reflections can be seen in the pool. As the camera pulls back, we realize they are sitting inside the roofless church open to the sky. The reflections in the pool are from three empty windows high up in the church. We notice that everything is inside the church: the poet, the dog, the pool of water, a country house, the countryside. This being Tarkovsky with his interest in the spiritual life, the message here seems clear to me – not just the church and its contents are sacred but the entire world is sacred. Nothing is excluded.
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
The Morphing of Fellini
In the final scenes of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), the journalist, Marcello Rubini, (played by Marcello Mastroianni) has gone with a crowd of revellers to the beach near Rome to greet the dawn. His face shows the ravages of the all-night saturnalia he has attended, which clearly depicted the decadent lifestyle led by him and his companions. As they walk along the seaside in first light, Marcello glimpses across an estuary a young girl with her family, a girl he had met earlier in another context. The beautiful girl is the absolute image of innocence and purity. He calls to her across the intervening water. She recognizes him. She puts her hand up to her ear. She can’t hear because of the roaring of wind and the waves pounding the shore. She calls to him. He can’t hear her either. Eventually, faced with the impossibility of communicating with this figure of innocence, he shrugs his shoulders, gives up and rejoins his dissolute friends.
In the final scene of Fellini’s later major film, Fellini Satyricon (1969), Encolpio, the main character who has been exploring the degraded and dissolute world that was imperial Rome, is heading to the seashore with a young black friend. They hope to catch a sailing ship, whose masts and rigging can be glimpsed projecting above the sand dunes, and thence travel away to new worlds hopefully untouched by the decadence, depravity, and corruption of Rome. They long to begin life anew. As they walk, they pass a number of older patrician men sitting in rows on the benches of a small outdoor amphitheatre. All these men are staring straight ahead at the camera and chewing, chewing, chewing. The looks on their faces appear blank and debauched. They are consuming the corpse of their colleague who has died. He was a powerful landowner who willed that his associates could only inherit his holdings if they actually consumed his flesh after death. So, in their hunger for wealth, they are willing to debase themselves entirely. Meanwhile, we see the pair of young friends walking past, the lithe black man dancing and gambolling about, and shouting, ‘Vita! Vita! Vita!’.
The difference in these two endings seems to signal a significant change in Fellini’s view of the world. In both films, he explores decadence: first in modern Rome and then in ancient Rome. Both films end at the seashore. However, La Dolce Vita (the irony of the title is noteworthy) appears to conclude with a clearly negative, perhaps even nihilistic, image – his character’s inability to communicate with the world of innocence and life. The journalist shrugs his shoulders and gives up, his voice swallowed in the turbulence of wind and wave. He is lost in the tumult of life. On the other hand, in Fellini Satyricon, although he has again explored debauchery and decadence to the full, even noting the cannibalism of the patricians, Fellini ends with a life-affirming shout to the heavens.
In the final shot of Fellini Satyricon, one of the most beautiful conclusions in film, the little sailing vessel and the two young characters morph into still images of an ancient fresco on a wall. The message is clear yet subtle: these two vital young men escaped, sailing away into a world more innocent and humane, full of promise and possibility. A world full of life.
Monday, January 8, 2018
Memorable Scenes from Ivan’s Childhood by Andrei Tarkovsky
• The opening shot: a beautiful blond-haired boy, Ivan, stands by a tree, looking at the viewer through the greenery. The camera slowly pans up the tree to the very top and gives us a view of the boy walking away.
• Later, a view into a small stove, its fire raging; in the background, the sound of trickling water.
• Two beautiful children, Ivan and a young girl, sit on a truck loaded with apples. It’s raining and the camera closes in on their rain-soaked faces. The apples are slick with rain, as he chooses one and hands it to her. Later, some of the apples will spill across a beach where several horses come to eat them. (Rain is another visual trope in Tarkovsky’s films, the rain that is life-giving and fecund and the rain that washes away and erases memory and the past.)
• A warplane projects at an angle out of the earth where it crashed.
• A close-up of a man’s hand carefully placing two eggs, some chunks of dark bread, a piece of cheese on a cloth.
• A beautiful young woman, a nurse, with dark hair and ivory skin stands in a forest thick with straight white birches.
• The sky reflected in a swamp; distant flares falling from the heavens at night.
• A strange metallic cross, with several circles at its centre, stands crookedly against the sky.
• This film seems to represent and commemorate the murdered childhoods of millions of children during World War II, including the lost childhood of Tarkovsky himself.
Sunday, October 15, 2017
Short Essays on Film: Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice
On the Spiritual in Film: Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice
Andrei Tarkovsky was arguably the most spiritual of filmmakers and The Sacrifice is, without a doubt, his most spiritual film.
A number of Tarkovsky quotes attest to the importance of the spiritual in his work (all quotes from Sculpting in Time):
“With man’s help, the Creator comes to know himself.”
“Art must transcend as well as observe; its role is to bring spiritual vision to bear on reality...”
“It is obvious to everyone that man’s material aggrandisement has not been synchronous with spiritual progress.”
“Artistic creation demands of the artist that he ‘perish utterly’.”
“Self-expression ...is ultimately an act of sacrifice.”
“The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”
“In the end everything can be reduced to one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love.”
“...in the final analysis, the artistic image is always a miracle.”
And finally, this startling quote that sounds as distinct and puzzling as a Zen koan: “Not knowing is noble, knowing is vulgar.”
Despite his lifelong interest in icons and the Russian Orthodox Church, I suspect, by the tenor of the quotes above and from his films themselves, that Tarkovsky’s interest in the spiritual had little to do with religion. Especially in The Sacrifice, he appears to be addressing or conjuring a spirituality that was alive in human beings long before Christianity, or Islam or Judaism or the Greek and Roman gods, or Buddhism or Hinduism or even animist religions. His idea of the spiritual was something inherent in the individual human being, a longing to go beyond the self, a longing for sacrifice. Perhaps this vision was first celebrated in the caves of Lascaux and Altamira and other Paleolithic sites, in which it was clear that the life of the spirit was not separate from art or from the material world as it exists before our eyes. Of course, this spirit can manifest under the banner of any religion but any particular religion is not its ultimate source for its ultimate source can only be the human heart.
In The Sacrifice, the paterfamilias, Alexander, discovers that he can only save the world, and his child and his family, from nuclear annihilation by sacrificing himself. This sacrifice turns out to be more psychological than physical. He needs to break down completely his idea of who he is; he needs to ‘perish utterly’ in Tarkovsky’s words. The vehicle that delivers this breakdown is a ‘white’ witch, a woman who works in his house. He must have sexual relations with her in order to alter fate. But this act destroys all his masks. In the end, he watches as his house, consumed in flames, comes crashing down.
While Tarkovsky claimed he did not employ symbols in his films (when asked about symbols, he stated that “rain is rain...the Zone is a zone”), the burning house clearly represents the end of Alexander’s world: his relationship with his family, his former life, all that he holds dear, his personality, all that he stands for, even his own mind. In the end, he is driven off in an ambulance, presumably to an asylum. For, in our times, it is considered pure madness to sacrifice oneself for the benefit of the world.
Tarkovsky wrote, expressing the ultimate dignity portrayed in The Sacrifice: “...love yourself so much that you respect in yourself the supra-personal, divine principal, which forbids you to pursue your acquisitive, selfish interests and tells you to give yourself, without reasoning or talking about it; to love others. This requires a true sense of your own dignity: an acceptance of the objective value and significance of the ‘I’ at the centre of your life on earth, as it grows in spiritual stature, advancing towards the perfection in which there can be no egocentricity.”
Andrei Tarkovsky was arguably the most spiritual of filmmakers and The Sacrifice is, without a doubt, his most spiritual film.
A number of Tarkovsky quotes attest to the importance of the spiritual in his work (all quotes from Sculpting in Time):
“With man’s help, the Creator comes to know himself.”
“Art must transcend as well as observe; its role is to bring spiritual vision to bear on reality...”
“It is obvious to everyone that man’s material aggrandisement has not been synchronous with spiritual progress.”
“Artistic creation demands of the artist that he ‘perish utterly’.”
“Self-expression ...is ultimately an act of sacrifice.”
“The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”
“In the end everything can be reduced to one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love.”
“...in the final analysis, the artistic image is always a miracle.”
And finally, this startling quote that sounds as distinct and puzzling as a Zen koan: “Not knowing is noble, knowing is vulgar.”
Despite his lifelong interest in icons and the Russian Orthodox Church, I suspect, by the tenor of the quotes above and from his films themselves, that Tarkovsky’s interest in the spiritual had little to do with religion. Especially in The Sacrifice, he appears to be addressing or conjuring a spirituality that was alive in human beings long before Christianity, or Islam or Judaism or the Greek and Roman gods, or Buddhism or Hinduism or even animist religions. His idea of the spiritual was something inherent in the individual human being, a longing to go beyond the self, a longing for sacrifice. Perhaps this vision was first celebrated in the caves of Lascaux and Altamira and other Paleolithic sites, in which it was clear that the life of the spirit was not separate from art or from the material world as it exists before our eyes. Of course, this spirit can manifest under the banner of any religion but any particular religion is not its ultimate source for its ultimate source can only be the human heart.
In The Sacrifice, the paterfamilias, Alexander, discovers that he can only save the world, and his child and his family, from nuclear annihilation by sacrificing himself. This sacrifice turns out to be more psychological than physical. He needs to break down completely his idea of who he is; he needs to ‘perish utterly’ in Tarkovsky’s words. The vehicle that delivers this breakdown is a ‘white’ witch, a woman who works in his house. He must have sexual relations with her in order to alter fate. But this act destroys all his masks. In the end, he watches as his house, consumed in flames, comes crashing down.
While Tarkovsky claimed he did not employ symbols in his films (when asked about symbols, he stated that “rain is rain...the Zone is a zone”), the burning house clearly represents the end of Alexander’s world: his relationship with his family, his former life, all that he holds dear, his personality, all that he stands for, even his own mind. In the end, he is driven off in an ambulance, presumably to an asylum. For, in our times, it is considered pure madness to sacrifice oneself for the benefit of the world.
Tarkovsky wrote, expressing the ultimate dignity portrayed in The Sacrifice: “...love yourself so much that you respect in yourself the supra-personal, divine principal, which forbids you to pursue your acquisitive, selfish interests and tells you to give yourself, without reasoning or talking about it; to love others. This requires a true sense of your own dignity: an acceptance of the objective value and significance of the ‘I’ at the centre of your life on earth, as it grows in spiritual stature, advancing towards the perfection in which there can be no egocentricity.”
Friday, August 25, 2017
Short Essays on Film: ‘The Bell’ Chapter of Andrei Rublev
In the eighth and final chapter of Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, ‘The Bell (1423-1424)’, we are introduced to the character Boriska, the son of a master bell maker who has recently died of the plague. When the Prince’s men come to the village looking for the bell maker, young Boriska convinces them that his father gave him the secret of bell making on his deathbed, though this is a lie.
Boriska is allowed to begin work on the project and puts all his youthful energy into it, working himself into a frenzy that saps his strength. Everything depends on the bell. The Prince, who has provided silver and copper for the bell, has made it clear that if Boriska fails and the bell cannot ring, then the young bell maker faces beheading. The bell is Boriska’s great creative project, he bets everything on his ability to remember how his father made bells. At the same time, he must trust his own creative ability. The bell is also Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky’s film itself. In the end, Boriska succeeds, the bell rings out over the countryside, Tarkovsky’s film is complete. Andrei Rublev, the icon painter, finds the young man almost comatose in a field; he holds him in a scene reminiscent of the Pieta, Boriska weeps, he is spent, utterly emptied from his great effort and the pressure and stress of completing the bell. Like a film, making the bell involved a multitude of hands and helpers, as well as resolute, continuing effort and a trust in the creative. But Boriska is too wasted to celebrate, he can only weep in the utter fatigue of his fulfillment.
The chapter ends with a long steady shot of burnt lumber, a tangle of blackened wood. Boriska, and Tarkovsky, have burnt themselves to the core in order to accomplish their task, their great work.
The Epilogue that follows depicts a series of extreme close-ups of Andrei Rublev’s icon paintings, some resembling worn frescoes and others still vibrant with colour. The final icon reveals the face of Christ the Redeemer. As the camera slowly pans the image of Christ’s face, the sound of distant thunder can be heard, accompanied by the refreshing, cleansing, fertile sound of a rainstorm. The icon fades into the image of four horses standing by a river in the rain. We see the rain falling heavily, several of the horses swishing their tails. All is completed and fulfilled. All will be renewed.
Certain works of art are best understood and appreciated when one comes to them in one’s mature years, after a lifetime of experience. Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, I believe, is one such work.
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Notes on Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev
• Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, Andrei Rublev (1968), set in medieval Russia of the 1400s, tells the story of a famous icon painter while subtly addressing the role of the artist in society. The prologue of the film depicts a man being chased by a mob in half a dozen boats. He lands his own boat, runs up a hill, climbs the tower of a church and, bizarrely, harnesses himself into a rudimentary hot air balloon that looks as if it has been assembled out of large leather bladders. He then takes off, hanging under the balloon, and escapes. He is thrilled and excited to be flying above the landscape but soon comes crashing down to his death. This Icarus figure (the fact that he uses a balloon and not wings is absurdly humorous) has no narrative connection to the rest of the film but sets the theme – the artist might take flight and escape the mundane world at times but, in the end, he and his works will always be brought down to earth. But, as Tarkovsky mentions elsewhere, “art would be useless if the world were perfect,” adding that for the artist to venture forth is more important than ultimate success or failure. As Canadian poet Don McKay writes in his poem, ‘Icarus’: “Icarus isn’t sorry.” Icarus fails in the end but the artist must attempt to fly.
• Scenes in The Bell section of the film, in which a multitude of characters are constructing a huge bell for a church, are reminiscent of certain paintings by the Breugels, Elder and Younger – distant views of landscapes crawling with workers, priests, animals and nobility on splendid horses.
• An earlier chapter of the film shows a small group of people (seven or eight) in the medium distance in an empty church. They are depicted at various distances from the viewer, all facing the camera. The tableaux and choreography here echo certain scenes in Fellini’s films, particularly the final scene of Satyricon, in which the patricians sit facing the camera, chewing away on the corpse of their wealthy friend.
• A film with a fragmented narrative, such as Andrei Rublev, suggests, perhaps even demands, a fragmented essay.
• The film is also a homage to horses. Horses gallop everywhere through it, much like the automobile would be ubiquitous in a fifties film about New York City. The Tatars, shown invading Russia at that time, ride extremely lively horses throughout, some kicking out their back legs in exuberance as they gallop about the town they have attacked. Near the beginning, Tarkovsky shows a horse rolling about on its back in seeming delight; another scene (in The Raid section) depicts a horse trying to negotiate its way down a flight of outdoor steps and falling over the side railing, landing upside down. The horse is immediately speared in the breast by a Tatar soldier.
• The film is filled with striking images, some of them horrific, some humorous: a cow rushes madly about a peasant woman’s house, its back in flames; a jester flips upside down, pulls down his pants and reveals a face painted on his bare ass; an artisan has his eyes gouged out; another man is tortured by Tatars by having hot metal from a melted down crucifix poured in his mouth. Later, cool relief is provided by the camera dwelling on an extended close-up of the wind tossing leaves on a tree.
• Rain, like milk, is another image repeated in many Tarkovsky films. The short final scene of Andrei Rublev – a frieze of four horses on an island in the medium distance standing in the rain – is one of the most beautiful in film. The horses are calm, flicking their tails or nodding their heads. Thus, this film, about art and artists, ends on a note of transcendent beauty.
Friday, July 14, 2017
Tarkovsky and Milk
Tarkovsky and Milk
In Tarkovsky’s film, Stalker, there is a domestic scene that takes place in the dwelling of the main character and his wife. The couple have been arguing about his plans to leave their domestic situation and their child to go off to explore the mysterious ‘Zone’. On the kitchen table stands a full glass of milk that somehow is knocked over during their argument. Tarkovsky spends a lot of film time watching the flood of white as it expands, covering the table and dripping to the floor. The spilling of milk here, I believe represents a break in the warmth and bond of their familial relationship.
Scenes of spilt or splattered milk also appear in the films Andre Roublev, Mirror and Nostalghia, as well as in Tarkovsky’s later, and last, film, The Sacrifice.
In The Sacrifice, a well-off extended family has come to their country house on an island in Scandinavia to celebrate the sixty-fifth birthday of the family’s paterfamilias. While the family and the maids are momentarily absent from the scene, the camera explores the spacious dining room of the house in silence. Against the wall stands a tall sideboard with shelves. Near its top shelf rests a capacious glass milk jug. As the camera scans this domestic scene, unexpectedly the silence is fractured by what sounds like a pair of jets flying low over the island. As the jets approach, the entire house begins to shake, the tall sideboard with it. As they are heard passing overhead, in a scene that is one of the great images of twentieth century filmmaking, the jug teeters and falls to the floor where it shatters, the explosion of milk covering the wooden floor.
Soon after, the family hears on a radio broadcast that something extremely disturbing and cataclysmic is about to happen in the outside world: all-out war and possibly nuclear holocaust. Looking back, the viewer can see that the scene ending in that white milky blank is suggestive of the finality of a nuclear explosion.
How fascinating that Tarkovsky uses milk for this scene, milk being a symbol of nurturing and fertility, domesticity and life. This is a perfect contrast to the idea of nuclear annihilation which is diametrically opposed to that sense of tender vitality.
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Short Essays on Film: Arrival
Short Essays on Film
The Question and the Message in the film ‘Arrival’
In the film ‘Arrival’, the Quebec director, Denis Villeneuve, poses an intriguing question. The aliens have arrived on earth but ‘Arrival’ is much more than a sci-fi thriller or a science and tech orgy, like so many recent films on the same or similar subject.
The question that Villeneuve has the character played by Amy Adams, a linguistics professor, pose is this: If you saw what would happen in your entire life, past and future, would you change anything? In the context of the film, Adams sees a future in which her baby daughter will grow up and, as a young woman, die of a ‘rare disease’ (which might be some form of cancer). Of course, she doesn’t choose that her child not be born at all. Clearly, she realizes that the joys of life include the other side which we define as pain and suffering.
But it’s an absurd, impossible question. We can’t change anything about our lives. We certainly cannot go back into the past and alter events that have already happened. And, as for the future, we might think we have the free will to choose what direction things might take but we are fated to make those choices that free will allows. In other words, fate and free will are the same. This is not quite the same as saying that free will is an illusion, for we are free to make choices but how we act on that freedom is fated. (Some might call this karma, but that’s another subject.) To realize that they are the same is to answer the question, No, I wouldn’t change anything in my life, past or future. I can’t change anything and I choose not to change anything. The image that arises for me is that, at the moment of death, we enter the mirror and realize that that moment is the perfect moment to die, that is the moment that, somehow, we choose.
All of which brings us to the question of Time. In the film, Adams is attempting to communicate with the aliens but nothing clicks until she realizes their language isn’t linear and temporal like ours. We go from one word to the next and the end of this sentence is in the future until it arrives. And then it’s in the past. And that relationship with language affects and determines how we think about Time. However, the aliens have a different view of language, and a different relationship with Time. Their language, like their sense of Time, is circular and holistic, not linear.
Past and future exist in the present. Let’s examine that. The present is nothing more than the process of the future becoming the past. The past no longer exists, the future does not yet exist. But, the truly shocking thing is there is no fixed moment called the present, there is only this process of future becoming past. Nothing to fixate on, nothing to hold onto. And yet, this process is always happening, future in every moment is becoming past. That shooting star never stops, never burns out. Because it isn’t fixed in a distinct, isolate moment, the present is eternal.
The Question and the Message in the film ‘Arrival’
In the film ‘Arrival’, the Quebec director, Denis Villeneuve, poses an intriguing question. The aliens have arrived on earth but ‘Arrival’ is much more than a sci-fi thriller or a science and tech orgy, like so many recent films on the same or similar subject.
The question that Villeneuve has the character played by Amy Adams, a linguistics professor, pose is this: If you saw what would happen in your entire life, past and future, would you change anything? In the context of the film, Adams sees a future in which her baby daughter will grow up and, as a young woman, die of a ‘rare disease’ (which might be some form of cancer). Of course, she doesn’t choose that her child not be born at all. Clearly, she realizes that the joys of life include the other side which we define as pain and suffering.
But it’s an absurd, impossible question. We can’t change anything about our lives. We certainly cannot go back into the past and alter events that have already happened. And, as for the future, we might think we have the free will to choose what direction things might take but we are fated to make those choices that free will allows. In other words, fate and free will are the same. This is not quite the same as saying that free will is an illusion, for we are free to make choices but how we act on that freedom is fated. (Some might call this karma, but that’s another subject.) To realize that they are the same is to answer the question, No, I wouldn’t change anything in my life, past or future. I can’t change anything and I choose not to change anything. The image that arises for me is that, at the moment of death, we enter the mirror and realize that that moment is the perfect moment to die, that is the moment that, somehow, we choose.
All of which brings us to the question of Time. In the film, Adams is attempting to communicate with the aliens but nothing clicks until she realizes their language isn’t linear and temporal like ours. We go from one word to the next and the end of this sentence is in the future until it arrives. And then it’s in the past. And that relationship with language affects and determines how we think about Time. However, the aliens have a different view of language, and a different relationship with Time. Their language, like their sense of Time, is circular and holistic, not linear.
Past and future exist in the present. Let’s examine that. The present is nothing more than the process of the future becoming the past. The past no longer exists, the future does not yet exist. But, the truly shocking thing is there is no fixed moment called the present, there is only this process of future becoming past. Nothing to fixate on, nothing to hold onto. And yet, this process is always happening, future in every moment is becoming past. That shooting star never stops, never burns out. Because it isn’t fixed in a distinct, isolate moment, the present is eternal.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Bad Wines (1)
Most wine reviews talk about the good wines, the ones people enjoyed, or they simply rate them on a scale of numbers or stars. I'd like to occasionally warn people off from certain wines, either because they are plain bad or don't live up to the price charged.
Here's two wines that I think you should avoid:
1) Red Hill Estate, 2014 Pinot Noir, from Australia: at 23.95, this wine is a total rip-off. No smoothness, rough, very disappointing.
2) Chateau Fonreaud Listrac, 2010, from France; it's hard to believe they charge 44.75 for this wine as it's nothing special, dull, flat; for a seven-year old wine, it had little character and no flavours left; again, very disappointing especially at that price.
Be forewarned!
One recent wine that I enjoyed (and at a good price) was a Cabernet Sauvignon from Lander Jenkins (Round Hill) (2014); smooth and with a touch of oakiness but not too much. A good deal at 19.95.
Here's two wines that I think you should avoid:
1) Red Hill Estate, 2014 Pinot Noir, from Australia: at 23.95, this wine is a total rip-off. No smoothness, rough, very disappointing.
2) Chateau Fonreaud Listrac, 2010, from France; it's hard to believe they charge 44.75 for this wine as it's nothing special, dull, flat; for a seven-year old wine, it had little character and no flavours left; again, very disappointing especially at that price.
Be forewarned!
One recent wine that I enjoyed (and at a good price) was a Cabernet Sauvignon from Lander Jenkins (Round Hill) (2014); smooth and with a touch of oakiness but not too much. A good deal at 19.95.
Sunday, May 22, 2016
New York City
New York City: The Good, the Bad and the Otherwise
In the past three years, my wife and I have visited New York City three times: once in the fall and twice in the spring. What follows is a compendium of my thoughts on those visits, the good, the bad and the otherwise.
Let’s begin at the heart of the heart, the core of America – Times Square. What a tawdry, manic display of humanity and humanity’s production. This canyon of overexcited capitalism, flashing its pants off, blinks repeatedly in frenzied hyper-oblivion. There’s nothing like Times Square, nowhere that would want to emulate Times Square, with its squads of scammers, its brands flickering like thoughts in the mind of some hectic Leviathan. I’ve always been a little shocked at how small the actual square itself is; in fact, it’s hardly a square at all; just a widening in the streets, more vertical than horizontal in its brazenness.
Nearby is the theatre district. We’ve seen four plays in the past two years: Matilda, Something Rotten, Les Miserables and A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime. Matilda was by far the most entertaining, although all the plays (three musicals) were highly professional with accomplished actors, imaginative staging and some fine singing. All except Matilda fell down a bit in terms of actual storyline and pizzazz and energy, which is what you want in a Broadway play.
I’m always struck by the theatres of Broadway, all the ones I’ve entered displaying what could be called a dumpy elegance, as if their heyday took place about fifty or sixty or more years ago, when the fixtures and seats and ceilings and chandeliers were still shiny and new. And each theatre offers that peculiar fellow walking about with a box strapped around his neck as he calls “water, wine, candy”. There’s something oddly American and juvenile about that combination. Do you really need a candy bar in order to enjoy a Broadway play?
The theatres are surprisingly close to Times Square. After the play, we walk back through the flickering, commercial maelstrom. I can’t help but imagine that Times Square will one day make an intriguing ruin buried deep under the sands of the future, or forming a weird chasm under the ever-rising seas, all its energy and display squelched and silent.
At the very centre of Times Square, at the hub of the heart so to speak, stands a blockhouse that turns out to be a US Forces Recruiting Station, a bracing reminder that all this brash capitalist hoo-hah has at its centre an outrageously bloated military establishment, skilled at ‘sucking in the suckers’ (in Times Square vernacular) of the right age and temperament. There’s a sad desperation in the atmosphere of Times Square, and the recruiters know that the most desperate youth will eventually throw up their hands in exasperation and defeat, and join the Army.
A few short blocks from Times Square one discovers another world entirely. Bryant Park fills a city block off one side of the New York Public Library’s main branch. Down one side of the park, a double promenade of towering plane trees (that tree so typical of large cities around the world) provides shade for an outdoor reading room. Rolling metal racks display books and magazines that users can borrow for free and read at small circular tables. In the middle of the park, a few steps take the stroller down to a spacious open area also filled with small tables at which lunchers can lunch. At one end, a fountain plays, much to the delight of toddlers pursued by their mothers who push empty strollers strung with water bottles and diaper bags. On the other side of the park, a pleasant carousel filled with brightly-coloured, smiling horses turns, and one can find a stand that offers a variety of board games to borrow and play at nearby tables. (“Boggle anyone?”)
At the far end, beneath the walls of the library, on this day, a dozen passersby have stopped passing by and taken seats in folding chairs with pads to listen to a pianist playing classical and jazz. Free entertainment, and she’s good too.
Nearby is the most pleasant public toilet in all of New York City (if a public toilet can ever be called pleasant). As one enters the sanctuary, one is greeted by a large vase filled with fresh flowers. Depending on one’s gender at the moment, one turns right or left to the bathrooms. In the men’s room (the only one I have visited), a smaller vase of fresh flowers sits on the sink. The bathroom is relatively clean. On the wall above the sinks is displayed a list of rules including such admonitions as ‘No shaving’ and ‘No standing on the sink’. Why the latter regulation would be required, I have no idea. In any case, the Bryant Park public toilet makes everyone feel welcome and special. It restores my faith in humanity, quite an accomplishment after Times Square.
The generous human touch continues at the entrance to the massive public library, fronted by two guardian lions, who look as if they could be reciting in unison Shelley’s poem, ‘Ozymandias’. Before one takes the final bank of stairs to the entrance, there is found a patio with long tables that contain art supplies inviting the public to take a moment and create something. Pads of paper, and boxes of coloured pencils, crayons, and pastels are on offer. I sit and write a quick love note to my wife. I hold it up for her to see and she smiles.
Inside, the helpful elderly lady at the information desk informs us that readings and talks take place weekly in the spacious entrance hall. That day’s reading is by Geoff Dyer (Zona, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi), a British author I know well, having read many of his books. Unfortunately, we can’t stay to hear him. But I’m disappointed to discover that the library bookstore and gift shop carries no books by him and none by the other authors featured in future weeks. Another typical disconnect in the writing/publishing/book-selling world.
A few more blocks away, we come to Radio City Music Hall. We have been informed by friends that a fascinating tour of its Art Deco interior is worth our time. The building again displays that slighty frumpy air of yesteryear that I felt in the Broadway theatres. Lovely paintings, sculptures, a fascinating jazz-themed rug in the lobby, huge bathrooms with twenty-two urinals (I couldn’t resist counting them) and a foot-pump hand dryer which feels like something out of the great age of steam. As history goes, it’s not Rome, or even Paris, so it all feels a little worn around the edges, a sad atmosphere of what was once brilliant now being kept up by money but not old enough to be a ruin, yet. I’m interested to learn that the pistons that lift the stage, still ancient (for pistons, that is) were used in the design of US Navy aircraft carriers, for raising and lowering decks. Again, that ‘steam age’ echo.
Another few blocks, and we come to MOMA. Only New York City museums are so well known that acronyms alone can be used to identify them. For those truly in the dark, MOMA is the Museum of Modern Art, and the Met is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of my favourite New York poets, Frank O’Hara, used to work as a curator at MOMA in the fifties and published a collection titled Lunch Poems in which he described walking about the streets near the museum on his breaks. Sweet, lovely, ordinary, everyday poems that don’t hurt anyone. He died young, run over by a dune buggy while sleeping overnight on a beach on Long Island.
In any case, the MOMA doesn’t emanate that ‘age of steam’ aura that seems endemic to midtown Manhattan. The MOMA feels crisp and clean, efficient and always up to date, with its pleasant sculpture courtyard displaying massive works by modern masters and its hip, minimalist restaurant with panoramic views of the city.
We wander into the museum, ready to gorge on modern art. The first thing that catches our eye is a show of silhouette art in the lower level. It’s not the main show that attracts (Ernie Gehr, Carnival of Shadows), but a short film from 1922 by Lotte Reiniger based on the well-known story of Cinderella. The story itself, of course, is a fairytale cliché but in this case the fact that it is so well known works in its favour. Reiniger, in a fascinating and extremely early example of its type, actually shows the activity of the artist creating the imagery. We see the pinking shears cutting out the shapes of Cinderella and the Prince, as well as the ugly step sisters and the pumpkin coach. These black silhouettes with serrated edges are used in simple but entrancing ways to tell the story, through minimal movement of the cut-outs and characters. Altogether it’s utterly fascinating. We stand and watch the entire thirteen minute film.
We also explore an exhibition of contemporary Japanese architecture (A Japanese Constellation: Toyo Ito, SANAA, and Beyond), for which we had high expectations and which turns out to be disappointingly dry (for us non-architects, anyway). Instead of clear, sparkling photos of the various buildings on their final sites which are represented in maquettes throughout the exhibit, someone decided to run video flashes of the finished buildings on a kind of fuzzy wall material. All rather inchoate and ambiguous.
Another intriguing show, titled Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty, feels slightly out of place at MOMA as it’s not all that modern. While investigating the huge show, I think often of my mother, who used to love the ballet dancers painted by Degas. For her, they stood out because they highlighted her favourite colours: turquoise and pink. The most overwhelming image I get from the show is the rather odd contrast of naked women in baths, some in weirdly contorted positions, and overdressed men in top hats. (The 19th century was surely the Age of the Vest.)
A more playful show we see displays the work of Belgian artist, Marcel Broodthaers, who turned from poet to visual artist at age forty. In a telling comment on the low popularity and meagre sales of his poetry, in his first solo exhibition as a visual artist, he encased a stack of unsold copies of one of his poetry books in plaster, turning it into a sculpture. Broodthaers constructed humorous sculptures using piles of empty eggshells and mussel shells, and dabbled in early versions of installation art and conceptual art in many of his pieces. An altogether enjoyable and mischievous artist (and a fine poet, too).
Our preferred hotel for all three of our recent visits to New York City is the Belnord on West 87th Street, between Amsterdam and Broadway (recommended by my brother and his wife who accompanied us on the first of these visits). The Belnord’s location is its greatest feature. A few blocks from Central Park, down pleasant tree-shaded streets in one direction, and close to Broadway and its useful Number 1 subway line in the other. The size of the rooms in the hotel makes me think of what life must be like for caged battery chickens. Three of our rooms could fit inside a typical Holiday Inn hotel room and stumbling over one’s partner by mistake is a constant danger. On a later visit, we opt for a slightly larger room on a higher floor and feel as if we have graduated to a suite in the Waldorf Astoria. But the Belnord is, above all, clean and efficient and serves our purpose.
Another advantage is its proximity to a number of serviceable restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One we tend to frequent regularly is the French Roast at the corner of Broadway and West 85th. Not as pricey as many of the midtown eateries, it nevertheless serves excellent french toast, a huge bowl of cafe au lait (cafe latte, which should be the same thing but in Italian, is a different coffee here, served in a glass). Lunch and dinner are good, and I can highly recommend the Coq au Vin which seemed to include an entire half a chicken.
But when we want to splurge for dinner, we go to the Cafe Luxembourg, off Broadway on West 70th Street. The small restaurant is always packed, and for good reason. The Farroe Islands salmon (the islands are between Norway and Iceland) is to die for, perfectly cooked with a slight crust on the outside and flaky and tender within. This time it’s served on a bed of spring greens, which includes fresh asparagus, morel mushrooms, leeks, radishes, arugula, various lettuces and little edible flowers, all surrounded by a moat of watercress puree. There’s enough variety and amount in this green bed that no starch is required to complete the meal. Somehow, the bed of greens and such is filling enough. The waiter doesn’t look aghast, like a Parisian waiter might, when I order a glass of light-bodied red with my fish. We finish with an apricot crumble that is sweet heaven in its freshness and simplicity. Then, a glass of Vin Santo from Chianti, tasting lovingly of the oak barrel and with a slight caramel colour akin to a light brandy, to complete the conquest of our hunger, followed by the long walk home.
The Cafe Luxembourg gives away a most unusual postcard to advertise the restaurant. This small postcard might stop any self-respecting mailman in his tracks before he slips it through the mail slot. The image depicts three young women standing at a white-tiled bar, bottles lined in rows before the mirror in typical bar fashion. All three women have black hair, of varying lengths. The one on the right holds a cigarette down by her thigh. Only the woman on the left has her head turned and is looking at the camera. The other two face away from us. All three women are stark naked, except for low-heeled black shoes. They are not perfect Playboy specimens but fetching enough. The combination of bottoms is intriguing, all different: the girl on the right is slightly chunky, the one on the left somewhat thin. The one in the middle, with short hair, a prominent earring and her left hand on her hip, reveals a bum that is absolute perfection. I suppose they are having a Pernod while waiting for a table. Who knows?
Central Park remains one of the wonders of New York City. The fact that it still exists, despite the near-priceless value of the land, is astonishing and shows true vision among the many administrations that have ruled the city. Of course, the residents would simply not stand for any yard sale of its holdings. The park is constantly used by New Yorkers. It is not simply a bauble, pleasant to look at from a 28th story penthouse, but welcomes residents and visitors in droves. Joggers, walkers, sitters, dog owners, Frisbee players, old, young and stroller-bound, and so on. A true cross-section of the city comes here every day.
The intriguing aspect about Central Park, designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, is its complexity. Riddled with ponds and lakes, winding paths, playing fields, a few small outdoor auditoriums, a puppet theatre, sculptures and so on, one can always discover some new pathway or garden. On our third visit, we take our usual route to the Met, walking from our hotel along West 87th Street (past the ‘pocket garden’ near Columbus Avenue, but more about that later), up to Central Park West. We enter the park from West 86th Street and saunter along beside the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir (named after her because apparently she often jogged alongside it) across to Fifth Avenue and the Met.
On our return from the Met, many delightful hours later, we decide to take a different route home and enter the park from the other side, south of the museum. On our twisting way we discover the Shakespeare Garden, a lovely patch of flowers and shrubs that offers occasional signs in the greenery with quotes from Shakespeare plays that mention flowers or plants. The path twists entrancingly down a small hillside, filled, in this season, with tulips and other spring floral plantings. A wooden bench invites a few moments’ contemplation.
The previous spring, our timing was lucky, for Central Park was at the height of its gaudy flowering on our arrival. It seemed every other tree in the park -- cherries, wisteria, magnolias – was blooming with white or purple or yellow blossoms, the floral plantings were at their most ebullient and the park fairly throbbed with spring energy and loveliness. Even the sweating joggers had smiles on their faces. I have never experienced a park where such expense and attention is given to the plant life. The horticulturalists of Central Park are green-thumbed gods, the true children of Chloris, Greek goddess of flowers and the spring.
This visit to the Met is my third attempt to obtain access to the Chinese art section. My previous attempts were frustrated by periods of renovation and a special event ‘for members only’ from which I was excluded. But at last I am admitted and, as my luck has turned, the Met has two exhibitions on offer that interest me: Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the Met Collection and Celebrating the Art of Japan. We spend the better part of a day exploring these two magnificent shows.
I’ve always had an attraction to traditional Chinese landscape painting, characterized by depictions of the vastness of nature with minimal human presence, often referred to as ‘rivers and mountains without end’, and this show displays a number of traditional works. One, among many, that stands out is a painting on a fan, by Anonymous. Early Spring Landscape depicts an ancient scraggy tree leaning out from a mountain cliff. The background is simply empty space. More than half the painting is blank. What daring it must have taken for the artist to use space in that way.
A description of another painting, of two finches, points out that the eyes of the finches in the painting are given a touch of glitter through the application of a minuscule dot of shiny black lacquer. How true to life to represent the eyes of birds in this way. In another, a monk holds out a begging bowl that has sprouted flowers, a marvellous metaphor for I know not what, but I like it. Two quotes from the ancient Chinese, among the dozens of wonderful landscapes, attract my attention: “Prove superior wisdom by remaining silent” (a saying that reveals a deeply intelligent meaning with a remarkable economy of words, thus actually attempting to practice what it preaches), and “Clouds paint the bamboo a deep green”, a splendid poetic phrase from Deng Yu. The exhibit also includes a contemplative courtyard, with shy but real fish in its little pond, and structures with typical, traditional Chinese designs.
The Japanese exhibit contains contemporary art as well as traditional works of Japan. Arguably the most fascinating work is a small deer constructed entirely of glowing glass globes of various size. That in itself is intriguing but a close look at the description mentions that this imagined deer is built around a real deer that has been subjected to the indignity of taxidermy. (What an odd word, ‘taxidermy’ – anything with the word ‘taxi’ in it echoes repeatedly in New York City.)
Among the many wonderful paintings, screens and sculptures, I come across five or six 17th Century examples of the Zen Ox-herding pictures, a favourite classic work in the Zen tradition that depicts the journey a practitioner might take from normal life to enlightenment and beyond, and ultimately back to the ordinary magic of the everyday, all through the eyes of a boy herding an ox. I wonder if the Japanese could tell the same tale, using, instead of an ox: a fish? a monkey? a cicada? an atomic bomb? Or if New Yorkers could do the same with Yellow cabs: the Zen Taxi-Herding pictures of NYC.
A final thought: because the Japanese spend so much time living with and observing seascapes, it seems to me that they excel at depicting water and waves; and because the Chinese spend so much time looking at landscapes, their artists excel at depicting pines and bamboo.
On our last day, for lunch we decide to purchase pork buns at Momofuku Milk Bar on Columbus Avenue. The week before I had seen Steven Colbert sampling this treat on his late-night show and the ‘bar’ is only a few blocks from our hotel. It is also around the corner from a lovely little pocket park we have rested in a number of times along West 87th Street. We purchase drinks and our buns (one veggie, one pork) and stroll over to the park.
The pocket park is found in what was formerly a narrow empty lot between two three-story residences. It consists of two outdoor tables with chairs, several benches and a meandering garden of trees, bushes and flowers (tulips, etc. in this season), always well-kept and relatively clean. A few people are present, a couple eating lunch at one of the tables and two ladies working in the garden. We find a bench, pour the hot sauce on our pork and veggie buns and proceed to gorge. After a while, we move to one of the now empty tables and ask one of the gardening ladies about the park. Soiled white gloves on her hands, she informs us that the park used to be simply an empty lot littered with broken bottles and debris. When the city decided to repave Columbus Avenue, they asked the local residents if they could park their heavy machinery in the empty lot for two years. In return for this, the city would clear the lot, lay down some soil and give it to the local residents to use as they wished. The locals turned it into a garden, which is kept up by the people who live in the neighborhood, including the two ladies with their hands in soil on this lovely day. There is something charming about this arrangement. It seems as if this is the same mentality that keeps Central Park alive, as if this little pocket park were Central Park in miniature, the seed of something vast and pleasant that bespeaks a sense of community and the always refreshing, revivifying quality of the natural world, right here at the heart of one of the world’s great urban complexes.
So, maybe the heart of New York City, the heart of Manhattan, the heart of America isn’t manic Times Square after all. Maybe the heart is Central Park, and this little pocket park too, and the hearts of people in a community, no matter how large or many in number or wherever in the world, who want to live a life that always remembers the power of nature to heal and help us relax and breathe.
In the past three years, my wife and I have visited New York City three times: once in the fall and twice in the spring. What follows is a compendium of my thoughts on those visits, the good, the bad and the otherwise.
Let’s begin at the heart of the heart, the core of America – Times Square. What a tawdry, manic display of humanity and humanity’s production. This canyon of overexcited capitalism, flashing its pants off, blinks repeatedly in frenzied hyper-oblivion. There’s nothing like Times Square, nowhere that would want to emulate Times Square, with its squads of scammers, its brands flickering like thoughts in the mind of some hectic Leviathan. I’ve always been a little shocked at how small the actual square itself is; in fact, it’s hardly a square at all; just a widening in the streets, more vertical than horizontal in its brazenness.
Nearby is the theatre district. We’ve seen four plays in the past two years: Matilda, Something Rotten, Les Miserables and A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime. Matilda was by far the most entertaining, although all the plays (three musicals) were highly professional with accomplished actors, imaginative staging and some fine singing. All except Matilda fell down a bit in terms of actual storyline and pizzazz and energy, which is what you want in a Broadway play.
I’m always struck by the theatres of Broadway, all the ones I’ve entered displaying what could be called a dumpy elegance, as if their heyday took place about fifty or sixty or more years ago, when the fixtures and seats and ceilings and chandeliers were still shiny and new. And each theatre offers that peculiar fellow walking about with a box strapped around his neck as he calls “water, wine, candy”. There’s something oddly American and juvenile about that combination. Do you really need a candy bar in order to enjoy a Broadway play?
The theatres are surprisingly close to Times Square. After the play, we walk back through the flickering, commercial maelstrom. I can’t help but imagine that Times Square will one day make an intriguing ruin buried deep under the sands of the future, or forming a weird chasm under the ever-rising seas, all its energy and display squelched and silent.
At the very centre of Times Square, at the hub of the heart so to speak, stands a blockhouse that turns out to be a US Forces Recruiting Station, a bracing reminder that all this brash capitalist hoo-hah has at its centre an outrageously bloated military establishment, skilled at ‘sucking in the suckers’ (in Times Square vernacular) of the right age and temperament. There’s a sad desperation in the atmosphere of Times Square, and the recruiters know that the most desperate youth will eventually throw up their hands in exasperation and defeat, and join the Army.
A few short blocks from Times Square one discovers another world entirely. Bryant Park fills a city block off one side of the New York Public Library’s main branch. Down one side of the park, a double promenade of towering plane trees (that tree so typical of large cities around the world) provides shade for an outdoor reading room. Rolling metal racks display books and magazines that users can borrow for free and read at small circular tables. In the middle of the park, a few steps take the stroller down to a spacious open area also filled with small tables at which lunchers can lunch. At one end, a fountain plays, much to the delight of toddlers pursued by their mothers who push empty strollers strung with water bottles and diaper bags. On the other side of the park, a pleasant carousel filled with brightly-coloured, smiling horses turns, and one can find a stand that offers a variety of board games to borrow and play at nearby tables. (“Boggle anyone?”)
At the far end, beneath the walls of the library, on this day, a dozen passersby have stopped passing by and taken seats in folding chairs with pads to listen to a pianist playing classical and jazz. Free entertainment, and she’s good too.
Nearby is the most pleasant public toilet in all of New York City (if a public toilet can ever be called pleasant). As one enters the sanctuary, one is greeted by a large vase filled with fresh flowers. Depending on one’s gender at the moment, one turns right or left to the bathrooms. In the men’s room (the only one I have visited), a smaller vase of fresh flowers sits on the sink. The bathroom is relatively clean. On the wall above the sinks is displayed a list of rules including such admonitions as ‘No shaving’ and ‘No standing on the sink’. Why the latter regulation would be required, I have no idea. In any case, the Bryant Park public toilet makes everyone feel welcome and special. It restores my faith in humanity, quite an accomplishment after Times Square.
The generous human touch continues at the entrance to the massive public library, fronted by two guardian lions, who look as if they could be reciting in unison Shelley’s poem, ‘Ozymandias’. Before one takes the final bank of stairs to the entrance, there is found a patio with long tables that contain art supplies inviting the public to take a moment and create something. Pads of paper, and boxes of coloured pencils, crayons, and pastels are on offer. I sit and write a quick love note to my wife. I hold it up for her to see and she smiles.
Inside, the helpful elderly lady at the information desk informs us that readings and talks take place weekly in the spacious entrance hall. That day’s reading is by Geoff Dyer (Zona, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi), a British author I know well, having read many of his books. Unfortunately, we can’t stay to hear him. But I’m disappointed to discover that the library bookstore and gift shop carries no books by him and none by the other authors featured in future weeks. Another typical disconnect in the writing/publishing/book-selling world.
A few more blocks away, we come to Radio City Music Hall. We have been informed by friends that a fascinating tour of its Art Deco interior is worth our time. The building again displays that slighty frumpy air of yesteryear that I felt in the Broadway theatres. Lovely paintings, sculptures, a fascinating jazz-themed rug in the lobby, huge bathrooms with twenty-two urinals (I couldn’t resist counting them) and a foot-pump hand dryer which feels like something out of the great age of steam. As history goes, it’s not Rome, or even Paris, so it all feels a little worn around the edges, a sad atmosphere of what was once brilliant now being kept up by money but not old enough to be a ruin, yet. I’m interested to learn that the pistons that lift the stage, still ancient (for pistons, that is) were used in the design of US Navy aircraft carriers, for raising and lowering decks. Again, that ‘steam age’ echo.
Another few blocks, and we come to MOMA. Only New York City museums are so well known that acronyms alone can be used to identify them. For those truly in the dark, MOMA is the Museum of Modern Art, and the Met is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of my favourite New York poets, Frank O’Hara, used to work as a curator at MOMA in the fifties and published a collection titled Lunch Poems in which he described walking about the streets near the museum on his breaks. Sweet, lovely, ordinary, everyday poems that don’t hurt anyone. He died young, run over by a dune buggy while sleeping overnight on a beach on Long Island.
In any case, the MOMA doesn’t emanate that ‘age of steam’ aura that seems endemic to midtown Manhattan. The MOMA feels crisp and clean, efficient and always up to date, with its pleasant sculpture courtyard displaying massive works by modern masters and its hip, minimalist restaurant with panoramic views of the city.
We wander into the museum, ready to gorge on modern art. The first thing that catches our eye is a show of silhouette art in the lower level. It’s not the main show that attracts (Ernie Gehr, Carnival of Shadows), but a short film from 1922 by Lotte Reiniger based on the well-known story of Cinderella. The story itself, of course, is a fairytale cliché but in this case the fact that it is so well known works in its favour. Reiniger, in a fascinating and extremely early example of its type, actually shows the activity of the artist creating the imagery. We see the pinking shears cutting out the shapes of Cinderella and the Prince, as well as the ugly step sisters and the pumpkin coach. These black silhouettes with serrated edges are used in simple but entrancing ways to tell the story, through minimal movement of the cut-outs and characters. Altogether it’s utterly fascinating. We stand and watch the entire thirteen minute film.
We also explore an exhibition of contemporary Japanese architecture (A Japanese Constellation: Toyo Ito, SANAA, and Beyond), for which we had high expectations and which turns out to be disappointingly dry (for us non-architects, anyway). Instead of clear, sparkling photos of the various buildings on their final sites which are represented in maquettes throughout the exhibit, someone decided to run video flashes of the finished buildings on a kind of fuzzy wall material. All rather inchoate and ambiguous.
Another intriguing show, titled Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty, feels slightly out of place at MOMA as it’s not all that modern. While investigating the huge show, I think often of my mother, who used to love the ballet dancers painted by Degas. For her, they stood out because they highlighted her favourite colours: turquoise and pink. The most overwhelming image I get from the show is the rather odd contrast of naked women in baths, some in weirdly contorted positions, and overdressed men in top hats. (The 19th century was surely the Age of the Vest.)
A more playful show we see displays the work of Belgian artist, Marcel Broodthaers, who turned from poet to visual artist at age forty. In a telling comment on the low popularity and meagre sales of his poetry, in his first solo exhibition as a visual artist, he encased a stack of unsold copies of one of his poetry books in plaster, turning it into a sculpture. Broodthaers constructed humorous sculptures using piles of empty eggshells and mussel shells, and dabbled in early versions of installation art and conceptual art in many of his pieces. An altogether enjoyable and mischievous artist (and a fine poet, too).
Our preferred hotel for all three of our recent visits to New York City is the Belnord on West 87th Street, between Amsterdam and Broadway (recommended by my brother and his wife who accompanied us on the first of these visits). The Belnord’s location is its greatest feature. A few blocks from Central Park, down pleasant tree-shaded streets in one direction, and close to Broadway and its useful Number 1 subway line in the other. The size of the rooms in the hotel makes me think of what life must be like for caged battery chickens. Three of our rooms could fit inside a typical Holiday Inn hotel room and stumbling over one’s partner by mistake is a constant danger. On a later visit, we opt for a slightly larger room on a higher floor and feel as if we have graduated to a suite in the Waldorf Astoria. But the Belnord is, above all, clean and efficient and serves our purpose.
Another advantage is its proximity to a number of serviceable restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One we tend to frequent regularly is the French Roast at the corner of Broadway and West 85th. Not as pricey as many of the midtown eateries, it nevertheless serves excellent french toast, a huge bowl of cafe au lait (cafe latte, which should be the same thing but in Italian, is a different coffee here, served in a glass). Lunch and dinner are good, and I can highly recommend the Coq au Vin which seemed to include an entire half a chicken.
But when we want to splurge for dinner, we go to the Cafe Luxembourg, off Broadway on West 70th Street. The small restaurant is always packed, and for good reason. The Farroe Islands salmon (the islands are between Norway and Iceland) is to die for, perfectly cooked with a slight crust on the outside and flaky and tender within. This time it’s served on a bed of spring greens, which includes fresh asparagus, morel mushrooms, leeks, radishes, arugula, various lettuces and little edible flowers, all surrounded by a moat of watercress puree. There’s enough variety and amount in this green bed that no starch is required to complete the meal. Somehow, the bed of greens and such is filling enough. The waiter doesn’t look aghast, like a Parisian waiter might, when I order a glass of light-bodied red with my fish. We finish with an apricot crumble that is sweet heaven in its freshness and simplicity. Then, a glass of Vin Santo from Chianti, tasting lovingly of the oak barrel and with a slight caramel colour akin to a light brandy, to complete the conquest of our hunger, followed by the long walk home.
The Cafe Luxembourg gives away a most unusual postcard to advertise the restaurant. This small postcard might stop any self-respecting mailman in his tracks before he slips it through the mail slot. The image depicts three young women standing at a white-tiled bar, bottles lined in rows before the mirror in typical bar fashion. All three women have black hair, of varying lengths. The one on the right holds a cigarette down by her thigh. Only the woman on the left has her head turned and is looking at the camera. The other two face away from us. All three women are stark naked, except for low-heeled black shoes. They are not perfect Playboy specimens but fetching enough. The combination of bottoms is intriguing, all different: the girl on the right is slightly chunky, the one on the left somewhat thin. The one in the middle, with short hair, a prominent earring and her left hand on her hip, reveals a bum that is absolute perfection. I suppose they are having a Pernod while waiting for a table. Who knows?
Central Park remains one of the wonders of New York City. The fact that it still exists, despite the near-priceless value of the land, is astonishing and shows true vision among the many administrations that have ruled the city. Of course, the residents would simply not stand for any yard sale of its holdings. The park is constantly used by New Yorkers. It is not simply a bauble, pleasant to look at from a 28th story penthouse, but welcomes residents and visitors in droves. Joggers, walkers, sitters, dog owners, Frisbee players, old, young and stroller-bound, and so on. A true cross-section of the city comes here every day.
The intriguing aspect about Central Park, designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, is its complexity. Riddled with ponds and lakes, winding paths, playing fields, a few small outdoor auditoriums, a puppet theatre, sculptures and so on, one can always discover some new pathway or garden. On our third visit, we take our usual route to the Met, walking from our hotel along West 87th Street (past the ‘pocket garden’ near Columbus Avenue, but more about that later), up to Central Park West. We enter the park from West 86th Street and saunter along beside the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir (named after her because apparently she often jogged alongside it) across to Fifth Avenue and the Met.
On our return from the Met, many delightful hours later, we decide to take a different route home and enter the park from the other side, south of the museum. On our twisting way we discover the Shakespeare Garden, a lovely patch of flowers and shrubs that offers occasional signs in the greenery with quotes from Shakespeare plays that mention flowers or plants. The path twists entrancingly down a small hillside, filled, in this season, with tulips and other spring floral plantings. A wooden bench invites a few moments’ contemplation.
The previous spring, our timing was lucky, for Central Park was at the height of its gaudy flowering on our arrival. It seemed every other tree in the park -- cherries, wisteria, magnolias – was blooming with white or purple or yellow blossoms, the floral plantings were at their most ebullient and the park fairly throbbed with spring energy and loveliness. Even the sweating joggers had smiles on their faces. I have never experienced a park where such expense and attention is given to the plant life. The horticulturalists of Central Park are green-thumbed gods, the true children of Chloris, Greek goddess of flowers and the spring.
This visit to the Met is my third attempt to obtain access to the Chinese art section. My previous attempts were frustrated by periods of renovation and a special event ‘for members only’ from which I was excluded. But at last I am admitted and, as my luck has turned, the Met has two exhibitions on offer that interest me: Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the Met Collection and Celebrating the Art of Japan. We spend the better part of a day exploring these two magnificent shows.
I’ve always had an attraction to traditional Chinese landscape painting, characterized by depictions of the vastness of nature with minimal human presence, often referred to as ‘rivers and mountains without end’, and this show displays a number of traditional works. One, among many, that stands out is a painting on a fan, by Anonymous. Early Spring Landscape depicts an ancient scraggy tree leaning out from a mountain cliff. The background is simply empty space. More than half the painting is blank. What daring it must have taken for the artist to use space in that way.
A description of another painting, of two finches, points out that the eyes of the finches in the painting are given a touch of glitter through the application of a minuscule dot of shiny black lacquer. How true to life to represent the eyes of birds in this way. In another, a monk holds out a begging bowl that has sprouted flowers, a marvellous metaphor for I know not what, but I like it. Two quotes from the ancient Chinese, among the dozens of wonderful landscapes, attract my attention: “Prove superior wisdom by remaining silent” (a saying that reveals a deeply intelligent meaning with a remarkable economy of words, thus actually attempting to practice what it preaches), and “Clouds paint the bamboo a deep green”, a splendid poetic phrase from Deng Yu. The exhibit also includes a contemplative courtyard, with shy but real fish in its little pond, and structures with typical, traditional Chinese designs.
The Japanese exhibit contains contemporary art as well as traditional works of Japan. Arguably the most fascinating work is a small deer constructed entirely of glowing glass globes of various size. That in itself is intriguing but a close look at the description mentions that this imagined deer is built around a real deer that has been subjected to the indignity of taxidermy. (What an odd word, ‘taxidermy’ – anything with the word ‘taxi’ in it echoes repeatedly in New York City.)
Among the many wonderful paintings, screens and sculptures, I come across five or six 17th Century examples of the Zen Ox-herding pictures, a favourite classic work in the Zen tradition that depicts the journey a practitioner might take from normal life to enlightenment and beyond, and ultimately back to the ordinary magic of the everyday, all through the eyes of a boy herding an ox. I wonder if the Japanese could tell the same tale, using, instead of an ox: a fish? a monkey? a cicada? an atomic bomb? Or if New Yorkers could do the same with Yellow cabs: the Zen Taxi-Herding pictures of NYC.
A final thought: because the Japanese spend so much time living with and observing seascapes, it seems to me that they excel at depicting water and waves; and because the Chinese spend so much time looking at landscapes, their artists excel at depicting pines and bamboo.
On our last day, for lunch we decide to purchase pork buns at Momofuku Milk Bar on Columbus Avenue. The week before I had seen Steven Colbert sampling this treat on his late-night show and the ‘bar’ is only a few blocks from our hotel. It is also around the corner from a lovely little pocket park we have rested in a number of times along West 87th Street. We purchase drinks and our buns (one veggie, one pork) and stroll over to the park.
The pocket park is found in what was formerly a narrow empty lot between two three-story residences. It consists of two outdoor tables with chairs, several benches and a meandering garden of trees, bushes and flowers (tulips, etc. in this season), always well-kept and relatively clean. A few people are present, a couple eating lunch at one of the tables and two ladies working in the garden. We find a bench, pour the hot sauce on our pork and veggie buns and proceed to gorge. After a while, we move to one of the now empty tables and ask one of the gardening ladies about the park. Soiled white gloves on her hands, she informs us that the park used to be simply an empty lot littered with broken bottles and debris. When the city decided to repave Columbus Avenue, they asked the local residents if they could park their heavy machinery in the empty lot for two years. In return for this, the city would clear the lot, lay down some soil and give it to the local residents to use as they wished. The locals turned it into a garden, which is kept up by the people who live in the neighborhood, including the two ladies with their hands in soil on this lovely day. There is something charming about this arrangement. It seems as if this is the same mentality that keeps Central Park alive, as if this little pocket park were Central Park in miniature, the seed of something vast and pleasant that bespeaks a sense of community and the always refreshing, revivifying quality of the natural world, right here at the heart of one of the world’s great urban complexes.
So, maybe the heart of New York City, the heart of Manhattan, the heart of America isn’t manic Times Square after all. Maybe the heart is Central Park, and this little pocket park too, and the hearts of people in a community, no matter how large or many in number or wherever in the world, who want to live a life that always remembers the power of nature to heal and help us relax and breathe.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
New Poetry
A new collection of my poetry will be coming out in September 2015, titled Hermit Thrush (Quattro Press). A launch date in Ottawa will be announced by email. Here are a couple poems from it (Enjoy):
Poets of Old China
Gentle eccentrics,
they wore brocade robes in the city,
rags in the mountains,
bureaucrat hermit bureaucrat
again, hermit again,
in and out of exile,
riding donkeys up and down the peaks
from retreat to capital and back
In forest or court
they grew mad for language,
every stream a tongue
never still,
every mountain
a lovely woman’s spread wide open
heart –
old masters weaving
with the sigh of wind in leaves,
stunned by the view,
drunk on ink.
Running in from the Garden
“… Bloshford was operated on for hernia by a French doctor
who left a pair of gardening gloves inside him …”
– Monsieur, Lawrence Durrell
Leave a lotus inside me
pale blossom, white hot
like a trembling moon
in a swamp
on a still summer night
Leave a copy of the Odyssey inside me,
something to read on my travels,
blood flowing beneath sails,
pages turning in the wind
Leave a sleeping woman
inside me,
when I turn she turns with me,
when I wake, she wakes
Leave a poem inside me, don’t tell me
whose, make it a surprise but make it good
Leave an egg inside me, or a seed,
or a child,
something that grows and changes
and reaches out
Leave an atomic clock
inside me,
a second heart,
a mirror pointed at the sky.
Poets of Old China
Gentle eccentrics,
they wore brocade robes in the city,
rags in the mountains,
bureaucrat hermit bureaucrat
again, hermit again,
in and out of exile,
riding donkeys up and down the peaks
from retreat to capital and back
In forest or court
they grew mad for language,
every stream a tongue
never still,
every mountain
a lovely woman’s spread wide open
heart –
old masters weaving
with the sigh of wind in leaves,
stunned by the view,
drunk on ink.
Running in from the Garden
“… Bloshford was operated on for hernia by a French doctor
who left a pair of gardening gloves inside him …”
– Monsieur, Lawrence Durrell
Leave a lotus inside me
pale blossom, white hot
like a trembling moon
in a swamp
on a still summer night
Leave a copy of the Odyssey inside me,
something to read on my travels,
blood flowing beneath sails,
pages turning in the wind
Leave a sleeping woman
inside me,
when I turn she turns with me,
when I wake, she wakes
Leave a poem inside me, don’t tell me
whose, make it a surprise but make it good
Leave an egg inside me, or a seed,
or a child,
something that grows and changes
and reaches out
Leave an atomic clock
inside me,
a second heart,
a mirror pointed at the sky.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Thursday, January 9, 2014
10 Best Movies - a personal and therefore totally eccentric list
1) Satyricon - Fellini
2) The Sacrifice - Tarkovsky
3) Seven Samurai - Kurosawa
4) The Third Man - Reed
5) Apocalypse Now - Coppola
6) Lawrence of Arabia - Lean
7) Fargo - Coen
8) Touch of Evil - Welles
9) The Seventh Seal - Bergman
10) Casablanca - Curtiz
2) The Sacrifice - Tarkovsky
3) Seven Samurai - Kurosawa
4) The Third Man - Reed
5) Apocalypse Now - Coppola
6) Lawrence of Arabia - Lean
7) Fargo - Coen
8) Touch of Evil - Welles
9) The Seventh Seal - Bergman
10) Casablanca - Curtiz
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Two poems from new collection: Listening for Silence
Cathedral of Chartres, Built in Silence
A few sounds linger:
masons tock granite, carts creak,
men grunt under loaded hods –
even the warblers cease their singing.
A workman sneezes,
those nearby look up – what a strange and marvelous noise.
The consumptives too try
to do their part,
swallowing their coughs.
The architect carries a board
and a knob of charcoal,
quick to sketch
what before was spoken.
Thirty-thousand labourers
hear thunder rumble
miles across the plain
and a nearby brook
unable to curb its babbling.
Seventeen Things Difficult to Accomplish
(A poem inspired by the first book of poetry – Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom by Sung Po-jen)
Capture a plum blossom in high wind
Carry the ant’s load
Hold the butterfly this side of the fence
Keep pace with the arrow
Know when the leaf will let go
Separate the sea from the tears of fish
Grow younger and younger
Keep the bee from its flower
Empty emptiness and count it
Split the wind in two
Stop the moon from shrinking
Prolong a night of love
Read the cloud entirely from beginning to end
Swallow a laugh
Retrace your steps in the river
Picture your face without a mirror.
A few sounds linger:
masons tock granite, carts creak,
men grunt under loaded hods –
even the warblers cease their singing.
A workman sneezes,
those nearby look up – what a strange and marvelous noise.
The consumptives too try
to do their part,
swallowing their coughs.
The architect carries a board
and a knob of charcoal,
quick to sketch
what before was spoken.
Thirty-thousand labourers
hear thunder rumble
miles across the plain
and a nearby brook
unable to curb its babbling.
Seventeen Things Difficult to Accomplish
(A poem inspired by the first book of poetry – Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom by Sung Po-jen)
Capture a plum blossom in high wind
Carry the ant’s load
Hold the butterfly this side of the fence
Keep pace with the arrow
Know when the leaf will let go
Separate the sea from the tears of fish
Grow younger and younger
Keep the bee from its flower
Empty emptiness and count it
Split the wind in two
Stop the moon from shrinking
Prolong a night of love
Read the cloud entirely from beginning to end
Swallow a laugh
Retrace your steps in the river
Picture your face without a mirror.
Short Book Review: A Perfect Pledge by Rabindranath Maharaj
Narpat, 55, and Dulari live with their three girls and one son, Jeeves, in the village of Lengua in Trinidad. Narpat, an East Indian in constant conflict with his world, is a cane farmer with high ideals and great ambitions. He runs for village council, wins and helps the local farmers win full title to their land. His endlessly prickly personality, however, keeps everyone at bay. Next, he plans to build his own cane factory so the farmers can obtain a just price for their crops.
This is also the story of Jeeves, the youngest child, who loves his father despite his failings, and we learn how deeply the old man has affected the character of the boy. This is also the story of rural Trinidad itself, a rich tropical world of red mangoes, bats, insects, pineapple, coconut jelly, cucumber stems and eccentric characters. The city and the government always lurk in the background ready to control Narpat’s life. Narpat’s struggle often takes the form of stringent dietary restrictions (no sugar, no oils, no fats) and resistance to most of the trappings of the modern world, such as television and movies. Narpat, whose motto is “Even if I have to die in this field, no one will take it from me,” is a fully realized character, at times likable, but more often maddeningly self-righteous. The three daughters, however, are almost indistinguishable from each other. Altogether, this abundant novel, with its peculiar Trinidadian English dialogue (“What sort of work your father does do, boy?”), proves to be a rich feast of place and language.
This is also the story of Jeeves, the youngest child, who loves his father despite his failings, and we learn how deeply the old man has affected the character of the boy. This is also the story of rural Trinidad itself, a rich tropical world of red mangoes, bats, insects, pineapple, coconut jelly, cucumber stems and eccentric characters. The city and the government always lurk in the background ready to control Narpat’s life. Narpat’s struggle often takes the form of stringent dietary restrictions (no sugar, no oils, no fats) and resistance to most of the trappings of the modern world, such as television and movies. Narpat, whose motto is “Even if I have to die in this field, no one will take it from me,” is a fully realized character, at times likable, but more often maddeningly self-righteous. The three daughters, however, are almost indistinguishable from each other. Altogether, this abundant novel, with its peculiar Trinidadian English dialogue (“What sort of work your father does do, boy?”), proves to be a rich feast of place and language.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Book Review: The Perilous Trade by Roy MacSkimming
A fascinating exploration of the past sixty years in Canadian book publishing, with lots of anecdotes and detail.
In the past sixty years, Canadian writing and publishing has come of age. This fascinating story, subtitled ‘Publishing Canada’s Writers’, is well told by Roy MacSkimming, a former publisher and author himself, through numerous anecdotes and profiles of the major players involved. This literary who’s who focuses on key luminaries such as the gentlemanly John Gray of Macmillan, the forward thinking Marsh Jeanneret of University of Toronto Press, and Jack McClelland of McClelland & Stewart, perhaps the most renowned of all Canadian publishers. The author turns what could have been a dry history lesson into an often riveting read. For example, the delirious story of Canadian publishing in the sixties, a time when small presses seemed to bloom overnight, is told in a chapter titled ‘Printed in Canada by Mindless Acid Freaks’.
MacSkimming researched his subject thoroughly, conducting 99 interviews with Canadian publishers and writers. The story of the astounding rise of children’s literature is a highlight of the book. Award-winning publishers such as Tundra and world famous authors such as Robert Munsch (his little book, Love You Forever, had sold an astounding 17 million copies as of 2002) have made kidlit a beacon of hope in the tough business of publishing. The book drags slightly near the end when the author discusses the endless financial problems of publishers and the devious machinations of government bureaucracies, but all in all, this is a fine and fair survey of what just might have been the golden age of Canadian publishing.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
TERRY’S BIG WATCH, Part Three: The Third Week of Creation
At the start of His third week, God sat with His chin resting on his fist. He checked TERRY’S BIG WATCH, like a frying pan on his wrist, and decided to get started.
“This week,” He said to no one in particular, “I’m only going to create things that are striped. I don’t know why. Do I need a reason?”
He started with a zebra but wasn’t happy with the result. It’s Good, He thought, but not Good enough.
So he tried a tiger and said, “Wow – I love the colour – that’s really Good.”
Then He made a barber pole and announced, “From now on, all barber poles will be striped. Do I need a reason?” He thought He might call Marcia the stripper in to twirl around the pole but thought better of it. “No, that’s Good enough.”
Then He created a painting by Mondrian – but he wasn’t happy with the stripes going one way and tried stripes the other way and then He realized it wasn’t striped anymore. “Well, still Good.”
He checked TERRY’S BIG WATCH. “Better hurry, week’s getting on.”
He then made himself a pair of striped pants, and had to create a mirror to see how they looked on Him. When He checked in the mirror, he decided the mirror counted as something striped, at least momentarily, so he saved himself some work. But when he saw the striped pants in the mirror, he gasped. “Gack! I look like a sixties hippie. Not so Good.”
God realized it was the last day of the week. He knew the day because TERRY’S BIG WATCH is so big it has a calendar too – not just one of those tacky digital calendars that give one day at a time but one that shows an entire year’s calendar on the face. TERRY’S BIG WATCH is that BIG.
He couldn’t think of anything striped and then he remembered. Striped Bass. “They’re striped, right?” He had all sorts of trouble with his watercolours running in the water but finally got it perfect. “That’s pretty Good.” So he took the striped bass and threw it into the sky where it swam among the stars, happy enough. Doesn’t look right, thought God. Then He smacked Himself in the forehead, nearly knocking Himself out with TERRY’S BIG WATCH. Right, of course, water. What was I thinking. I’ll put it in a lake.
God wiped his hands together. “All done.” He checked TERRY’S BIG WATCH. “Just in time.”
Monday, January 7, 2013
TERRY’S BIG WATCH, Part Two: The Second Week of Creation
On the 8th day, God created TERRY’S BIG WATCH and said to Himself, ‘It’s about Time.’ He saw that it was Good, well pretty Good anyway, well maybe just okay, but it was definitely BIG.
On the 9th day, God created a donut. Staring at it, He said to Himself, ‘It looks good enough to eat,’ so that’s what He did and it was very Good.
On the 10th day, God created a stripper named Marcia and He said to Himself, ‘I’ve really done it this time,’ and He gave her a little push and she spun around the pole, and God said, ‘Hey, this is really Good!’
On the 11th day, God created a library book that was exactly twelve days overdue and He asked Himself, ‘How did I do that? Well, anyway, it’s still Good.’
On the 12th day, God created a library, returned the book and paid the fine, having also created a librarian and several quarters with His own head on them, and they too were Good.
On the 13th day, God received a call from the librarian who told Him His quarters were no good and God asked Himself, ‘What have I started?’ and He realized that it was a Good question. Looking at TERRY’S BIG WATCH, He said, ‘Time for a rest again’ and it was Good. He smiled to Himself, ‘Another Good week.’
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
TERRY’S BIG WATCH: A Child’s Horror Story
My friend Terry has a BIG WATCH. It stares at me from his wrist and scares the livin’ bejeesus outta me. Even though Terry is a big guy, it even looks big on his big wrist, it’s that BIG. TERRY’S BIG WATCH shows up in my dreams. Well, not my dreams, my nightmares! Because any dream that includes TERRY’S BIG WATCH is frightening as hell. TERRY’S BIG WATCH has a big bell inside that goes off every night at midnight and every day at noon. Stupid watch can’t even tell the difference between twelve midnight and twelve noon. But it is BIG, I must admit that.
***
TERRY’S BIG WATCH is as big as the moon, the full moon that is, not that skinny punk moon that lies back in its Lazyboy chair and smokes Gauloises. For you kids, those are French cigarettes. I once had a dream that TERRY’S BIG WATCH learned to smoke French cigarettes. It would sneak into the bathroom when Terry was asleep and light up. Then it started sending signals to the moon out the window. TERRY’S BIG WATCH has two hands so it sent its signals in semaphore. At 12:50 a.m., it sent U. At 2:45, it sent R. At 5:45, it sent B, and at 6:20, TERRY’S BIG WATCH sent G. TERRY’S BIG WATCH sat on the toilet in the bathroom and smirked. U R B G. Ha, ha. U Are BiG. Everybody thinks I’m big but that moon is really big. Then TERRY’S BIG WATCH went back to bed, stinking of smoke.
***
The next night, when TERRY’S BIG WATCH sat on the toilet smoking his Gauloises, he looked up at the moon. The moon must have five hands, TERRY’S BIG WATCH thought, because it’s signaling a PENTAGRAM. A Pentagram!? That’s the sign of Satan! TERRY’S BIG WATCH hurried back to bed immediately and never smoked Gauloises again. So now TERRY’S BIG WATCH knows what it’s like to be frightened. But it’s SO BIG, it still scares me.
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