Another Deat Poet - Adrienne Rich

I only discovered this treasurer of good words, Adrienne Rich, a few years ago, stumbling upon her while surfing the net for poems to dance to. I knew nothing about her, except that she was a marvellous poet. She died at 82. How lucky we are she shared her thoughts with us.

Final Notations
Adrienne Rich

it will not be simple, it will not be long
it will take little time, it will take all your thought
it will take all your heart, it will take all your breath
it will be short, it will not be simple

it will touch through your ribs, it will take all your heart
it will not be long, it will occupy your thought
as a city is occupied, as a bed is occupied
it will take all your flesh, it will not be simple

You are coming into us who cannot withstand you
you are coming into us who never wanted to withstand you
you are taking parts of us into places never planned
you are going far away with pieces of our lives

it will be short, it will take all your breath
it will not be simple, it will become your will

Here is another poem I posted last year.

Foggy Days

Last week as the air was getting warmer but the water and the earth were slower to soak up the heat, a great fog fell upon us. It was an incredible sight.
The bight light in the picture is a reflection of the sun on a huge building downtown, that is completely obscured by the fog, as were most of the high-rises east of University Ave:

Tie or Die

There is a large collection of ties here which I've decided to put into good use and display at the Gladstone Hotel Flea market this weekend.
They range from silly to elegant, $5 - $50. They need to find good necks to hang from.

Long Day's Journey Into The Night

What an appropriate title!
Boy, it was a long, excruciating play to sit through.
Eugene O'Neill's play is 70 or so years old, but as current as any reality TV show (disclaimer: I don't watch them). It a hard job to play , and despite it being very well done by the Soulpepper theatre crew, sitting through it, specially the first long act(1 hour and 20 minutes) is daunting.
At times I found myself hating the characters, afflicted with alcoholism and drug addiction and extreme selfishness, and wanting them to end their miserable life so we can get on with ours. I suspect that the real people, those who's lives this play depicts, wanted the very same thing for the most part of their life. It is an autobiographical play based on the author's own family life.
It must be tough being those people for the run of this show, night after night. I hope they pay the actors well.

Mad about Don

The wonders of FB - people all over the world apparently share this madness about the irresistible Don Draper. Women want to bed him, men want to be him. Check this out.

Happy Coincidences

I fell upon this exquisite piece of writing by happenstance. It is a short piece of a long poem, very long, by Stephen Berg - I urge you to read the entire thing, it's worth it. It's called Cold Cash:

"...on certain days a feeling overtakes me, sits like a happy dog in my belly, of being poor, of having nothing but friends and poetry and a warm place to sleep, and it occurs to me that intelligence of this sort is denied to those who cannot hear the crystal howling or see the milky souvenirs or experience the
despair of desire's baleful stare or know the soul's unyielding misery as it lies back letting its voice unfold the nonfactual snakes of light, of a destitute prompt unmotherly hammer driving in the nail, in the dirty unpainted wall of truth is beauty, beauty is truth, you know it and it's enough..."

Crystal Pite v. Wayne McGregor in Toronto

Last weekend I took my inquisitive and thoughtful boy to see 2 of today's contemporary ballet great names in action.
Crystal Pite is almost local, she's Canadian (Vancouver). Wayne McGregor is from away.
They couldn't be any more on opposite sides of the spectrum of good contemporary dance.
Their dancers are the best you could possibly want to work with. But the shows left a different aftertaste. Hers - you wanted to see it again when it ended after 2 long acts. His - you wished it stopped while it was going on. Obnoxious and contrived from the get go.

He was a dog of one trick, which we got the hang of after 5 minutes and wished we hadn't. It was cold and cruel and pretentious, both to the dancers and to the audience. He put the dancers on the highest volume of movement from the first second to the last, never letting up till the end. They moved in virtuosity but said only one thing about the human condition - to me that is what dance is supposed to do. He told us, for exactly 60 minutes and not very eloquently, that we are like dogs in a race even though we think we are more. I wouldn't be so harsh if he wasn't such a big name in the filed, and should know better.

Crystal Pite's, in contrast, was about creation and destruction, and about love created and destroyed carelessly, and hearts that can be mended with care. It was graceful even in violence, and strong when it was soft. The very last duet is the mark of a real artist at her best, of knowing what life is all about.