Hot Ice and Wondrous Strange Snow

I saw "A Midsummer Night's Dream" last night at Bard on the Beach.  It is such a lovely venue for theatre and the production was full of energy and colour . . . and raunchiness!  The costumes were terrific -- kind of a mashup of farthingales and leather boots and bustles and flowing metallic see-through fabric.  I loved all the fairies (Puck had this great Billy Idol kind of sneer and he wore a bright bustle-skirt but carried it off with real masculine vivacity) and the young lovers were great, especially Hermia (who was very crisp and gave you a sense of a volcanic kind of energy under tight control) and Lysander (who was a nice foil to Hermia -- more languid and fluid).  The big fight scenes were terrific -- really physical and exciting and creative and all over the stage and full of intensity.

I liked the incursions into the audience -- Puck watched the rude mechanicals' rehearsal from a seat in the middle of the second row -- he climbed over people and plunked himself down, causing a little frisson among the audience members -- always fun for everyone, even the audience members who don't get to sit near him.

They achieved the forest with a bunch of different umbrellas, some were mesh that cast nice shadows like a gobbo would, and some opaque -- I didn't love that.  I didn't like the tendency of some of the actors to use modern phrases in throw away lines.  It doesn't fit if you're throwing stuff in, especially when you've already said it in the way you're acting (like when Bottom asked Philostrate what she was doing later -- we already knew they'd made a kind of connection).

I must say I really didn't like Bottom at all.  Scott Bellis played him and he is a very talented actor, but he chose a kind of Austin Powers sort of persona with the clothes and the walk and the accent which I don't think worked at all.  He had a very red nose (I guess because when Thisbe is crying over his dead body,  she says "this cherry nose"? because I don't think there is any suggestion beyond that that Bottom is a drinker) and buck teeth (which, I guess, suggests the donkey and Austin Powers) and mutton chop face whiskers and he was just a buffoon.  There was no soft side at all.  My favourite speech ("I have had a dream - past the wit of man to say what dream it was . . .") was just lost.  It meant nothing, because he really hadn't had an experience of magic and love and romance -- he was too much of an idiot to have an inkling of anything special except himself.  I appreciate that Bottom is egotistical, but I think there is enough dimension in the character that he can have a sense of something greater than himself and the lost note that he can never recover.  Shakespeare always gives us that -- something beyond the obvious.

For Bottom's transformation, they used a metal cage as his donkey head, which I hated.  It reminded me of the movie, "1984", and the cage that has the rat inside and that made it have this horrible menacing quality, which really curtailed the sense of luxurious romance between Titania and Bottom.

And I didn't find the "play within the play" that hilarious.  I liked Quince, Snug and Snout and their roles in the play but I felt like the others didn't catch their characters either as their actual character, nor as their role in the Pyramis and Thisbe play.  There were parts that were funny, but it wasn't the laugh riot I think it should be.

But criticisms aside,  it was great fun to see and also great fun to go with a couple of experienced MSND actors who had lots of great insights into the production (some of which I've used here), so thanks for thinking of me when you were planning your outing!

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain

We've been having a "staycation" for the last little while.  Yesterday the boys and I saw "Twelfth Night" with Boris playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek.  Of course, Boris was terrific as he always is.  I'm thinking of doing the play this year at school if we ever get back to normal.  It is a lovely show and I got lots of great ideas by watching this production, although I don't plan to copy it at all.  That wouldn't be kosher.  They had a beautiful water feature on stage and I was very envious -- how charming it was to hear the water ploshing as the play unfolded.  When Orsino walked in at the beginning, I thought he should be in a silky smoking jacket and be a bit languishing and oily.  He's a bit of a silly fellow, anyway.  And wouldn't it be good if Feste had sort of a standup comedian attitude?  The whole Cesario thing opens up a great "yes-no" kind of romance.  Orsino is attracted to Cesario, but how can that be?  He thinks of himself as a man's man.  He could be really conflicted and in denial.  But Olivia's not in denial -- as soon as she sees Cesario, she knows what she wants.  But Viola is conflicted.  She needs to keep up the disguise, but she's not interested in Olivia.  It would be lots of fun to really play with the idea of identity -- what we think of ourselves and how we see others!

I feel sorry for Malvolio.  He is an irritating guy, but they really humiliate and torture him.  I think we should be a bit ashamed of ourselves for laughing at him earlier in the play.

Today we went on a tour of the Seymour Watershed.  We got to go up and see where our water comes from.  It was fun -- we saw a lovely big bald eagle in a tree by the dam and had a walk in an old growth part of the Seymour forest and explored the river and saw the baby fish at the hatchery.   I am always gratified by the volunteers that run places like the hatchery.  The man who spoke to us knew a lot about salmon and you could see he really cared about them -- certainly I am grateful that there are people like him to take care of salmon and the streams where they grow and spawn and live part of their lives.

Tomorrow, we're going on our traditional "transit trip".  We will take the bus, the skytrain, the seabus and the West Coast Express in a circle tour with a stop at the Lonsdale Quay for lunch.  We've been doing this trip since the boys were tiny and it is always a fun outing.  These are fun and fairly inexpensive things that you can do with your family right here in our own community.  The Watershed tour is absolutely free (sponsored by MetroVancouver) and you get a bus ride up to the dam with a guide and activities along the way.  It's well worth it.  All you have to do is go on the Metro Vancouver website and sign up.

Goldfish dumped by Coquitlam pet owners become invasive species

This is a headline on the CBC this morning.  What is wrong with people?  Firstly, if an animal or a plant aren't already living in an area -- they don't belong there!  You can't just dump it because you don't want it any more!  Secondly, if you think you're setting it free, you're not.  It will likely die a terrible death of starvation or be preyed upon by the animals that do survive where you've dumped it.  But often, like with rabbits and the fish that the story referenced, the poor creature has time to mate and produce offspring that screw everything else up.  Finally, when you buy a pet, you're responsible for it.  Before you bounce off to the pet store (and you shouldn't get a pet from a pet store -- get a pet from the SPCA -- they have all sorts of animals, not just dogs and cats -- or from a reliable breeder), really think about whether you are willing to commit yourself to pet ownership.  Dogs live at least 15 years, cats 20 (if you keep them inside so they are safe and don't prey on songbirds), some birds can live as long as a person!  (Orlando, my brave little cockatiel, lived 30 years!)  So you should think about it as seriously as you think about getting married or buying a house or what career you want.

And don't get an exotic pet.  They are stolen from the wilderness often at the cost of many others who die in the capture or in transit.  A dog is a great pet.  They're smart and loyal and loving and they encourage you to get exercise and they are therapeutic and a good companion.  But you get what you put into it.  You have to make an effort.  I have never had a cat but my sister had her cat, Topper, for over twenty years and she loved him and he was beautiful and sweet and provided her with a great deal of joy.  And they have lots of cats at the SPCA.

"theft was as a splinter in his heart"

He saw the moonlit nursery every time he spoke his cousin's name; he blushed at nothing; he sometimes pinched himself, or uttered an oath, at the memory.  For although a man is judged by his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done -- a judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem.
                                                                  The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton

I finished my project, which was to read this book by Saturday.  I found the plot rather hard to decipher -- everyone was scamming everyone else, it seemed, and although by the end, I knew who was bad and who was good (not possible in real life, in most cases, but in this book, two of the characters were really terrible people and the rest were just weak or flawed), I would be hard pressed to describe exactly who tricked whom and how and where the gold came from and who deserved the profit from it.

But I really enjoyed the read.  It was like reading Wuthering Heights or something -- it starts with quite a detailed description of one person, who turns out to be a minor character in the actual story.  We see things through his eyes at the beginning, but then it gives the story from a variety of viewpoints.  It was an epic, sweeping story and I felt like it was a combination of "Unforgiven" and "Bering Sea Gold" and Wilkie Collins and Emily Bronte.  I have to take it back to the library tomorrow so I'm rereading the beginning, now that I kind of know where it's all going.

You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem. (Jorge Luis Borges)

This is from one of my most favourite pieces of writing called Inferno, I, 32.  It tells about a leopard who, in the 12th century, is seen by Dante and inspires him.  It talks about our purpose in life.  It is a very moving vignette and I think about it often and wonder about it and look to it to help me understand what happens to us.

Robin Williams died today.  He was a great artist but I guess that didn't save him.  I think the people who say that he was selfish and that he had everything, so why would he do this, don't understand the horrible nature of depression.  It is hard to soldier on every day for those of us who don't have to deal with that black dog and we can't know what took him to that dark and horrible place.  I can't say anything profound, just that I'm so sad that such a great actor, such a funny and sensitive performer, couldn't keep going.

Inferno, I, 32

From each day's dawn to dusk each night a leopard, during the final years of the twelfth century, beheld a few boards, some vertical iron bars, shifting men and women, a thick wall, and perhaps a stone gutter stopped with dry leaves.  He did not know, he could not know, that what he longed for was love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things apart and the wind carrying the scent of a deer.  But something in him was smothering and rebelling, and God spoke to him in a dream:  "You live and will die in this cage so that a man known to me may look at you a predetermined number of times, and may not forget you, and may put your shape and your symbol in a poem which has its necessary place in the scheme of the universe.  You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem."  God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and he understood the reasons, and accepted his destiny;  but when he awoke there was only a dark resignation in him, a valiant ignorance, for the machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of a wild beast.

Years later Dante lay dying in Ravenna, as unjustified and as alone as any other man.  In a dream God declared to him the secret purpose of his life and his work;  Dante, filled with wonder, knew at last who he was and what he was, and he blessed his bitter sufferings.  Tradition has it that, on waking, he felt he had been given -- and then had lost -- something infinite, something he would not be able to recover, or even to glimpse, for the machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.

When the moon is in the seventh house . . .

We trekked out to Aldergrove on Saturday to see the Perseid meteor shower (you've got to get out of the city lights in order to really see the night sky) and put up the tent and have a fun time.  Metro Vancouver does all kinds of events like this throughout the year in different parks and they're all fun -- go on the Metro Vancouver website or get their "Check It Out" brochure.  The events are often free and sometimes for a minimal charge ($2.00 for this one and you could camp all night and there were all sorts of activities to do -- there were a bunch of telescopes set up and storytellers and demonstrations of how gravity works and things like that).

Unfortunately for falling star viewing, the moon was HUGE.  It was a "super moon" which means that the full moon phase coincides with the moon being close to the earth, so the moon looks a lot bigger than normal.  And it was super bright, too!  And when the moon is super bright, it's hard to see faint stars or lots of meteors.   But we did see a few.  It was the noisiest camping I've ever done -- there was a real tent city and people everywhere.  But we arranged ourselves in our lawn chairs and sleeping bags and just stared up at the sky and the whole tent city ooh-ed whenever a meteor streaked through the sky.

The highlight was seeing Saturn in the telescope.  You could actually see the rings.  What would it have been like for Galileo to see that for the first time?  (I think it was Galileo.)  What would you think?  Something you thought was a perfect sphere turns out to have these bulges on either side.

On another note, I stumbled on Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries at the library a couple of days ago in the express book section.  Have you ever read an express book?  The library puts books that are in great demand there and you can take a book out for a week, but after that you pay a fine of a dollar a day.  If you know anything about The Luminaries, you know it's a huge tome and also that it won the Man Booker Prize in 2013.  So this is my project for the week.  It is set in gold country in New Zealand in 1866 and it traces the mystery of a dead man and a opium addicted prostitute.  It has a bunch of colourful characters (I'm having trouble keeping everyone straight -- in this respect, it's like a Russian novel) and makes a number of references to astrology which I don't understand at all, but it reminds me of this tv show that Mike and the boys loved called "Bering Sea Gold".  Everyone's mucking for gold and it's down and dirty and the characters are trying to feel each other out to get a sense of who's telling the truth and what everyone's agenda is.  I can picture everyone with dirty fingers (just like the characters on "Bering Sea Gold") and messy hair and world weary faces.  So far, I'm finding it pretty compelling stuff -- you look up from the book and realize you're not in Hokitika any more!

Invitation to envision another world

The history of nature is not always and only a lament; it is also an invitation to envision another world.                                             J. B. MacKinnon

We went to the Museum of Vancouver yesterday to see "Rewilding of Vancouver" which is about how the land on which Vancouver sits was, until relatively recently, a wilderness and how unwelcoming it can be for the plants and animals which used to call it home.  Vancouver was called the largest clearcut in BC.  When you think of it, and drive through along the Broadway corridor to get to the museum, you realize how unimaginable it is to think of all that land covered with great big trees and streams and mosses, but it wasn't that long ago that cougars and bears and elk roamed what is now the streets and avenues and urban landscape that we could call a cement jungle.

But as J.B. MacKinnon says, there is hope that we can turn things around.  Beavers are staging something of a comeback, moving down the Fraser River and staking out new territory in suburban and urban environments (like the Olympic Village).  I believe there is a creek in Vancouver that recently saw the return of salmon for the first time in about a hundred years.  Coyotes were first observed in the city in 1982 and look how well they've done!  It was a great display that showed videos of places like Lighthouse Park and Beaver Lake in Stanley Park and the whale that came up into False Creek a few years ago and salmon swimming upstream.  The destruction of Sto:lo hunting territory near Chilliwack, and the life size model of an extinct sea cow (we always eliminate the big animals first, the exhibit says) are juxtaposed with an artists' rendering focused on how we could share the city with wild things (photos of people in a shop looking out the window and seeing a grizzly bear strolling by on the street {and a warning light saying not to go into the street when the light is on because it indicates the presence of the bear}).  I really enjoyed all of it, from the taxidermy displays of animals like wolverines and deer to the fire ants (very tiny but fierce).  There are other cool things to see in the museum, too, like recreations of homes from Vancouver's long past, artifacts from events from the city's history and cool interactive stuff like the juke box.  It's worth a visit and then you can go down to the beach afterwards for a snack and a lounge in the sun.

I will say it's pretty tough to entertain a fifteen year old and a twelve year old.  Both boys took turns being annoyed, irritated or embarrassed by their poor benighted mother, and by the end of the day, I thought there wasn't much point in taking them along -- I wanted to see the "Rewilding Vancouver" exhibit, but maybe they didn't.  But once we were home, they seemed to have enjoyed it more than when we were actually there.  They had stuff to say about it and told their dad it was good and interesting. 

Mike has been transferring video tapes of the boys onto DVD's and I mentioned to Anthony that he was much more enthusiastic about everything when he was a little boy.  He agreed and shrugged.  I'm so glad I'm not a teenager.