Nothing, like something, happens anywhere. "I Remember, I Remember" by Philip Larkin

When I was doing my masters degree, we were talking about death (one of those topics you always end up with - no irony intended) and what scared me most was the "not being", which Lucretius says shouldn't bother you -- you didn't exist for most of history and you didn't worry about that.  But now I know what it's like and I never want it to stop!  It's glorious (life, I mean)!  The professor, June Sturrock, directed me to Philip Larkin's Aubade (which means "morning song") which expressed exactly what I feel.  It's a lovely, terrible poem and does address that terror that he finds somewhat alleviated, but never cured, by the coming of the morning.  Take a look at it.

Most things may never happen:  this one will, 
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink.

My buddy from Kelowna did some internet searching and found an obituary for an old boyfriend of mine who called me on my thirtieth birthday and whose phone number I lost and so, couldn't phone back.   I've always felt guilty about it, because he didn't have a very easy time of it (of course, a lot of his troubles were self-inflicted, but they're hard to bear, no matter how they come) and I certainly didn't intend to be a source of sadness or regret for him.  The obituary was very sad -- it was short and didn't say much about what he had done with his forty three years and said he was survived by some siblings and "several friends".  I am picturing him now because Myrna sent me a photo of him to go with the obituary.  He was a thoughtful, gentle person and I wish I could talk to him once more and tell him about how I wanted to phone him back and tried to find out where he was after my carelessness about losing his number.

Rikki, don't lose that number
It's the only one you own
You might use it if you feel better
When you get home
(That's a song by Steely Dan)

With my lighnin’ bolts a glowin’ I can see where I am goin’ to be when the reaper he reaches and touches my hand.

I listened to the Arcade Fire song which was on that list. (The title of this post is from the song.)  I liked it -- didn't love it.  Listen to any of David Francey's songs, especially "Skating Rink" which should be on that list (ahead of "Seasons in the Sun" (yuck!) or anything of Celine Dion's singing {does she write songs?})

Every once in a while something just strikes you, doesn't it?  Last night, when the house was very quiet and everyone had gone to bed (even Daisy, my late night companion), I realized that I probably have twenty years left to live!  (Hence the quote from Arcade Fire's song.)  That's a lot less than I have already lived, and of course, they won't be as agile or frisky as the years I've lived already, since I have developed the aches and pains of late middle age (I'm 57, and nasty people point out that few people live to be 114!) although I will hopefully be increasingly wiser as I go along.

There are a lot of things I would still like to accomplish (they say that's good if you want to keep mentally and intellectually alert).  I'd like to get one of the novels I've written published (I've finished two to my relative satisfaction, but have made little effort to see if anyone would be willing to publish either one -- I know you have to be persistent -- I'm persistent in the writing, but not the sending out part -- and I know you can self-publish somehow, but that doesn't satisfy me).  I would like to visit China (maybe when I retire, if I ever can).  I'd like to walk the West Coast Trail (maybe that's my version of the camino).  I'd like to read the entire Remembrance of Things Past (there are so many things to read and so little time).

I'm reading a lot of stuff about the camino, of course, and it is interesting that along the way, you pass a cemetery (well, several) and at the gates of one of the cemeteries it says "you are what I once was, and will be what I am now".  That's scary and terrible, I think.

"If we go to war, we could lose all we've built." (Caesar, "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes")

I just saw "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes".  Wow!  I loved it.  We saw "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" last week in Kelowna and that gives the background to this new movie.  It is visually eye-popping (the scenes of the derelict San Francisco and the battle scenes and the subway and the tower -- all just stunning), and the performances are terrific (especially the apes!) and there's so much going on.  When they show the apes' camp in the redwood forest, it really reminded me of Animal Farm (because Maurice, the orangutan, is teaching the ape children things about ape not killing ape {which, of course, like Animal Farm,  foreshadows some of the terrible events that take place later in the movie}) and "Apocalypse Now" because the compound is very reminiscent of Kurtz's compound in Vietnam.  One of the surviving humans keeps his sanity by drawing and they show drawings in his sketchbook that underscore what happens in the movie and of course, there is that epic battle between good and evil in both the ape world and the human world -- good and evil in both worlds.

The character of "Koba" is the tragic one.  He was a lab chimp in his past and he carries the scars in his psyche and on his body.  He can't escape the pain that he has experienced and it manifests itself terribly and he bears the consequences for his actions, but you can't really blame him.  It always comes down to us, and our responsibility for the damage we inflict on the natural world.

I'm thinking I'd like to remember more clearly the earlier "Planet of the Apes" movies, but I think they wouldn't hold up technologically to this -- the apes in those old movies really did look like people dressed up and in these new movies (thanks to CGI apparently), the apes look like actual apes.  There is one scene between Caesar (the leader of the apes) and his son, Blue Eyes, which was beautifully acted.  Blue Eyes can't really speak but his face said everything and Caesar's face is also very expressive.  They didn't need to say too much to make you understand what they were feeling and thinking.  The essence of great movie acting.

The Way

Some of you know I'm working on a play about the pilgrimage called the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, which is a walk from a variety of points in France or Spain (it seems like you can choose where you start to a certain extent) to the shrine of St. James in the Cathedral in Santiago, Spain.  You don't have to walk, you can cycle and of course, there are no real rules, because you do it on your own hook, but you follow a basic route and get stamps along the way (like these events for kids where, if they visit certain places they get a stamp in a book!  Maybe that's where they got the idea!) and you push yourself physically and spiritually along the way and hopefully have an epiphany that teaches you something about yourself and your place in the world and the meaning of life.

I saw a movie yesterday called "The Way" which is about a middle-aged man (Martin Sheen) who embarks on the pilgrimage after his son (played by his real life son, Emilio Estevez) dies while trying to do the pilgrimage himself.  Emilio Estevez wrote and directed it and it wasn't a great movie -- it had lots of cliches, like the people he befriends along the way are representative types and the things that happen to them are things you are expecting long before they happen -- the loss of the backpack, the revelations of the various characters, the burgeoning friendships, everyone's personal epiphany, but it kept me watching, because it was beautifully filmed and I liked the music and it was sort of experiential, in that I feel like I know more about the camino now than I did.  I wouldn't recommend it.  If you want to see Martin Sheen in a movie, see "Apocalypse Now", which is also about a pilgrimage (a very different one) and is a stupendous performance and a magnificent movie.  If you want to see Emilio Estevez in a movie, see "The Breakfast Club" which is not magnificent, but is entertaining.  It uses stock characters, too, but the actors are really good, I think, and there's a lot of energy there that keeps things going.

Did I say I have been cast in a play called "Momma Don't Fly"?   I am playing Momma!  It is also about a pilgrimage, of sorts.  Momma and her daughter and daughter-in-law-to-be embark on a cross-the-USA trip to California to Momma's son's wedding.  It is a farcical comedy and Momma has another southern accent so I anticipate that it will be lots of fun to rehearse and perform.  Those days when I felt depressed about being in comedies because I WASN'T FUNNY are gone now.  I think, in my own opinion, that I'm much more likely to take risks now that I'm older and that is the fun of comedy (or one of them). 

Both Sides Now

Well, something's lost but something's gained,
In living every day.
"Both Sides Now" - Joni Mitchell

The CBC did one of those polls to choose the best Canadian song and the results are out.  I guess the list is a bit skewed because most CBC listeners are older, but the top five are good songs (although I'd be hard pressed to say they're "the best".  Tom Petty said, in an interview with Jian Gomeshi the other day, that it is ridiculous to compare pieces of art -- how is one better than another?)  This is what made the top five.  If you haven't heard these songs, give them a listen.  If they're not "the best", they're iconic and express something essential about being Canadian.

#1.  Both Sides Now - Joni Mitchell
#2.  Helpless - Neil Young (I believe I tried to sing this in class last semester.  Neil Young and I have comparable voices!)
#3.  Wheat Kings - The Tragically Hip
#4.  The Weight - The Band
#5.  Wake Up - Arcade Fire

I'm not familiar with the music of Arcade Fire.  Of course, I've heard of them, but I haven't really listened to them.  That's why these lists can be good, because they can encourage you to discover artists that you haven't paid attention to before.

I think there are a couple of oversights, but I didn't look at the whole list, so I imagine that these songs are further down, because they could not have been left off. Gordon Lightfoot's "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" is an epic song that I think really expresses the origins of Canada and how those origins help create the Canadian identity.  The same can be said for Stan Rogers' "Northwest Passage".   (I have looked at the whole list now and they WERE.  Stan Rogers and Gordo have songs on the list but not these songs.  Unbelievable!)   (I'm reading The Last Place on Earth by Roland Huntsford about the race to be 1st to the South Pole.  The Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, learned a lot about dealing with killing cold and remote treks through snowy conditions from an earlier venture to sail through the Northwest Passage, which he did.)

There's another list on the CBC site of "essential Canadian books" which is interesting to look at, but also doesn't include some of my favourites (like Anne of Green Gables, Lives of Girls and Women, all of Margaret Laurence's books, just to name a few, but then these are classics, I guess and the list I saw seemed like it was listing books you might not have read and encouraging you to try them over the summer).  I guess the idea of these lists is to get people talking and it works in that respect.

I'm off to listen to Arcade Fire!

And now for something completely different . . .

The surviving members of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" performed their final show together last night in England.  (Graham Chapman died in 1989.  Look him up in Wikipedia -- John Cleese gave him the best eulogy ever!)  I grew up on "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and my first performance of note (my English teacher said that "some of us had real talent" {that left him with an out -- was it me or someone else?}) was a knock off sketch with the character of "Timmy Williams" played by me!  They were an extraordinarily funny group -- of course, we all know the "dead parrot" sketch and the "ministry of funny walks" and the "complaint department" and the "world class twit contest" and the "summarize Proust competition" and so many more great sketches.  Some of you have performed "The Top of the Form Sketch" from In Character (and for those of you who missed doing it, I'm sorry, because it's a killer).  If you haven't seen any of these sketches, look them up.  They are belly laugh inducing and wonderfully inventive.

One of the funniest movies of all time is "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and as I recall "The Life of Brian" is also a laugh riot (although I haven't seen it for years).  All the Pythons are in their 70's and I guess it is hard to mount a show and perform every night (well, I know it is) so I understand the desire to hang up the fancy dress and the lumberjack suit.  The glory of nowadays is that you don't need them to keep performing because you can probably access most of their great material on Youtube.

We spent a few days with my buddy in Kelowna.  We actually saw flaming forest fires on the way there.  The fires were what seemed like inches away from people's houses.  What would that be like?  We had a super time swimming and talking (that would be Myrna and me) and go-carting and driving around in all Kevin's fancy automobiles (that would be the fellas).  Myrna is in this book club and they are reading a very complicated, dense and meandering book (called Infinite Jest -- I would say I was fairly well read and know quite a bit about books, but I had never heard of it, even though it is apparently some sort of big "cult" read).  She has taken on the reading of the book as a bit of a project, but she's not really enjoying it much and is afraid to comment on it for fear the other people think her comments are stupid.  I got a great idea for a story that I should write (but it's got to sit in my head for a while because I think it would be complicated itself) about this kind of Machiavelian woman who puts together this book club to read this complicated postmodern tome and gets the people to meet in a hipster bar (this part has actually happened) and the people are all really varied and you could include their posts about the book and the woman's initial invitation and you could even include parts of the so-called book itself!  Maybe this will be my life's work, if the government continues the lockout past the summer.  (I hope that doesn't happen.)

"We'll be friends forever, won't we, Pooh?" asked Piglet. "Even longer," Pooh answered.

We are going to Kelowna tomorrow, to stay with my friend, Myrna, and her family for a couple of days.  Myrna and I have been friends for over fifty years.  Most people think they will stay friends with people forever, but that doesn't happen very often.  It is quite an extraordinary thing and a great comfort at this time in your life.  Myrna is one of the only people I know who remembers my parents and remembers me through all the stages of my life.

When we were babies, our mothers were friends and introduced us at a playdate.  When we were just starting school, we were there for each other -- at the "Grade One party" when I was crying (didn't like social events, even then), the teacher said, "you know Myrna.  Do you want to sit with Myrna?" and I did.  Then on the first day of school, I heard hysterical crying from way across the playground.  It was Myrna and her mom.  Mrs. Patrick dragged Myrna up to me and said, "Myrna doesn't want to start school today, Jeanie.  Can she go in with you?"  and she did.  Of course, it hasn't all been sweetness and light.  When I first got glasses and showed up at school wearing them, Myrna ran up to me and said, "you got glasses!"  Yeah.  "You look so UGLY in glasses!" she said.

We've had our ups and downs over the years, but when push comes to shove, we're a constant in the other person's life.  I organized Myrna's second (and successful) wedding, she helped organize my mom's funeral.  Last year, she came out to see "Woman in Mind" -- very sweet of her.  Myrna has a real talent for keeping in touch with people -- she knows where everyone is from our graduating class (almost -- there are a few mysteries I'd like solved, but even social media doesn't seem to help there).