The Hawk Lives

They took care of it until his eye healed and released him back to the wild last week.
Sometimes good things happen.

Birds of Prey in the City

A wounded specimen of this magnificent species - Northern Goshawk - landed, unintentionally I'm sure, on my doorstep this morning, and was taken to a wildlife rescue centre shortly after I called the city. I am grateful that we live in a city that cares enough, but the truth is this center operates solely on donations. If you can, call Toronto Wildlife Center and give them some money. They need every penny, and no amount is too small.

Hot Wheels - Watch this:

Nobel for Alice, Hurrah!

It gives me a little bit of hope to hear this morning of Alice Munro getting the Nobel prize. She well deserves it. After my great dismay in learning that evil Putin, a man who lives by the sword, is nominated for the Peace prize, the whole thing completely lost any credibility in my opinion. This restores a little bit of what is lost.
Here's a toast to the Great Alice, to Canadian Literature, and to all the people around the globe who live by their art. They make our lives richer.

A Song for Thursday: Michael Kiwanuka

Sweet voice this young man has:

Fashion Show on the Edge: Rick Owens

Now THIS is fashion to revel in. Watch all the way, it gets better and better and don't forget to look at the clothes.

Sherman Alexie - What a Fabulous Writer!

I'm reading a collection of short stories of this very good author, and the stories are indeed very short. Yet I find that occasionally I have to halt mid sentence and rest before I can move on to the next line, sometimes the power of his words is too much to bear. He is blunt and unflinching, looks into the lives of Native Americans and offers it to us so plainly it hurts.
It hurts not because we see the situations he writes about from above, or unrelated to other cultures as our circumstances are so very different; no, it hurst because on the basic level of human existence we all hope for the same things. Some of the people who populate his pages are damaged beyond repair, and some still have some hope. No matter where they are on their journey, he follows them around, and lets us have a peak.
Reading his stories is a humbling experience.


“I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well.” Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

“But none of them laughed as hard about my beautiful brain as I knew my father would have. I miss him, the drunk bastard. I would always feel closest to the man who had most disappointed me.” Sherman Alexie, War Dances.

JW Anderson - The Worst Designer of our Time?

I think so. His taste and style are simply terrible. I've blogged about his men in skirts before, and I feel his female designs are just as bad. Tasteless, shapeless things that are supposed to be witty but are just unbearably useless, completely unwearable.
See for yourselves, and make no mistake, these are men:




The women's designs are offensive to me on a similar level. Not because I'm a prude, but because they serve no purpose whatsoever - they are not beautiful, they are not pragmatic, they say nothing about the human form in all its glory. On the contrary, I think these clothes are mocking those who wear them, and that is the absolute worse thing a designer can do - to mock his customers.

House FUll of Flowers

How good to start a new year with a flower at every corner?




Wishes for the new year from around the table included fine words such as compassion, love, patience, peace of mind, clarity, music and art, togetherness, and of course, like every good pageant: World Peace.
Amen to all.

Poor Blue Jasmine (spoiler alert!)

I tend to not read reviews of movies before I go see them, I love the surprises movies have in store for me. I went to see Blue Jasmine knowing nothing about it except that Woody Allen made it and Cate Blanchett is the lead. So I knew nothing about the homage to Tennessee Williams but I'm so clever I recognized the story line as soon as the boyfriend bursts into a fit of anger and jealousy. Hey - I know this, I thought to myself, this is A Streetcar Named Desire all over again, and better except Marlon The Great isn't there.

What we do get here, rather than the lines of the old play, is a modern take on the fragility of the rich without their money. Woody is best in propelling drama with dialog like nobody else, in every one of his films, a dialog so brilliant you think the actors are making it up on the spot, not a single word out of place or superfluous. A rare quality in movies.
To his aid come the superb casting and design of sets, clothes, atmosphere so natural you feel you're a fly on those walls, be it in the beautiful Hampton's villas or in the hopeless desolation of a San Francisco apartment. It is a well made film, nasty and dark and perfect.

Woody Allen's a bastard, but he knows what he's doing, the bugger. I still think he is a pedophile and guilty of incest. Why do I go to see his movies still is beyond me. I shouldn't. He should have been writing in jail. That's the ugly life at work here - his crimes are not considered criminal because of his fame and because he never officially married the mother of his children. It doesn't change the fact that he married a girl he raised, 35 years his junior, the adopted daughter of his long term common law wife and mother of his biological children, he married the sister of his own kids. This will never be right, no matter how good a writer he is, no matter how he managed to convince himself, the girl, and the world that technically this is all just fine and dandy.

Wooddy Allen is not the first man in the world and surely not the last to be forgiven for serious bad deeds because of his talent, fame, or wealth. Such is the world we live in. Yesterday's news are fast forgotten, and the world moves on. I wonder what legacy he leaves the kids from his newly constructed family. He was writing their drama of a future even before they were born.
I just wish one day someone will be able to write something equally nasty and good about him, in his own style so the truth will be out there, for those who are seeking it.

The Big Ballet

The world of dance is not very nice or inclusive, traditionally. But every now and then someone makes a breakthrough that shakes things up and push the "refresh" button. Here is a group of Russian dancers who are the opposite of the typical svelte and lanky ballerinas we've been programmed to expect. They are BIG ladies, but they can shake it with the best of them. Presenting and example from The Big Ballet:

Reviving An Old Treasure

The Front Page, a diamond of a movie directed by Billy Wilder, shoots words at you at a speed of a racing car. You miss one, you missed the whole scene. It's the opposite of those TV shows of today where you come back to the same channel 2 hours later and the very same stupid faces stare at each other with "meaningful" looks that say nothing in particular. No, this play makes each and every word that's hurled at you count. Of course every other word is as foul as they come, and the characters are all bad - there are no good people in this screwball comedy. Everyone is stinking rotten, only for different reasons.
It stars Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau, fast talkers from a different era, back when actors knew how to use their eyebrows, before botox took that option away.
Half way through we realized we've seen it before, under the name "His Girl Friday". It doesn't matter, it's brilliant no matter how many times they'll make it over.

Unexpected Gifts

How nice it is when my appreciative customers just drop by to say hello or bring me a treat, or to tell me their latest escapades. I love that aspect of having a community shop. The best one last week was this: one of them is a great poet. He came over just to gift me one of his poetry books. This book is a beautiful thing: Two poets engage in a conversation that sheds light on their daily inner lives, across generations, genders and a wide continental gap. They come together in these pages to bring beauty and quiet contemplation to the rushed voices inside our heads. If we care to lend an eye, ear, thought to their short clear sentences.
The two are David Bateman and Naomi Beth Wakan.

Here is a little quote from the book "Pause":

no matter
how many words we say
to each other
the essence lies in the spaces between
the essence lies in the pauses

P.S. - The long Ships Movie Circa 1964

Don't bother. Awful stuff. Pure rubbish.
Truly disrespectful to the book upon which it is based. An anathema, in fact.
How can someone take a work of art and turn it into a preachy Christian snooze is beyond me.
Apparently a new Swedish produced movie is in the works as we speak. I hope they indulge in true Pagan bloodletting, slave-driving drudgery, lustful flesh, and show us the beauty of Mother Earth with proper cinematography while they're at it.
Why Swedish, when the vikings in this book are Danes, that is my question.

Books, Water, Skies - A Recipe for Happiness

These are the things I've always been partial to, since my childhood on my father's ships' decks (not his own ship, he was the captain). This combination still works to restore my sense of self: A good book, a sunny day in the proximity of a large body of water.
I've recently finished reading The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by Gerald Basil Edwards. It is a dense masterpiece which took me some time to get through, but well worth it. It was a privilege to spend time with the man in whose voice the book is written, a thoughtful kind and right-hearted man from the isle of Guernsey, who chronicles the changes of the small world around him, and leaves it in the end with only love in his heart. He lives his entire life in one house on the island, yet he never feels restricted. The way he looks at the people around him is timeless and soul-searching.


And now I'm on another long-reaching one, space wise: The Long Ships, by Frans G. Bengtsson. It is the story of the travels and adventures of a viking named Orm, told in a language so bemused and unassuming as to capture the imagination of a child, yet good enough to eat. Great fun. It could be a great adventure film. The fighting, blood, costumes and turn of fortune are perfect for the screen. In fact, there is an old movie based on it. A good one to spend the summer with.