Two Loves: Pee Wee & Dot

Pee Wee's Playhouse was heaven to watch. Sigh.

It’s odd to diarize here a life that is as dull as mine. It’s been almost two years since I renounced travelling and four months since my last creative project ended and so far, walking has filled my time. But now the weather has changed.

Reading is great. I love reading, but I feel a little like I rot when I read. I find it very hard to sit still for any length of time. That is why both reading and watching TV is so unfulfilling for me.

The best part of today: Reading a bit about Dorothy Parker. Here are some of her more famous quotes:

•          “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”
•           “Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.”
•         “Tell him I was too fucking busy-- or vice versa.”
•          “You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.”
•          “It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.”
•         “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
•         “I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”
•        “If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised.”
•        “She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”
•        “Living well is the best revenge.

Oliver Sacks Dies

I have adored this man for decades.

Oliver Wolf Sacks, 1933 - August 2015.

I love Daniel Radcliffe.

He’s funny; he never appears to take himself too seriously in interviews and he is strikingly handsome with those huge heavily lashed eyes. He is also very generously talented. With his every utterance and with every aspect of his deportment, he is credit to his parents who (in case you have not noticed it) appear to never appear in public with him.

Regardless how he is cast—in a musical on Broadway, in quirky independent films, in the high drama of Equus, on Saturday Night Live and in his public persona—he always excels when the work lights are on and off.

His accomplished and unblemished type is rare—there are Hugh Jackman and Meryl Streep. And achieving this status in a world with Twitter/Instagram/Facebook is a particularly noteworthy accomplishment.

Late Saturday Afternoon

We've had incredible wind—the strongest windstorm in ten years. A tree was down across Nelson Street, just at the end of my street, the causeway through Stanley PArk was closed down, the P.N.E. was closed down, races were cancelled and power is out to 400,000 homes.

Meanwhile, I see improvement in my aquarium's algae bloom. I suspect tomorrow it will be much clearer and totally clear by Monday. I am so relieved. I love my tank and fish.

I was due to attend a party tonight but bailed due to the weather and a lung treatment.

Saturday Morning.

The sunset last night.

Rain, rain, here to stay; at least until next Wednesday. I am not inspired to walk and am at the boredom's threshold. Hence the reading that is so difficult for a person who likes hand-eye coordinating things to do. I have considered jigsaw puzzles and continue to contemplate how I can work with beads.

There's baking. But then there's that expanding waistline. Today I found an interesting website that has everything one needs for casting. It has transparent resin that would allow me to cast light-conducing things to bead but I would need a studio for that kind of work.

I am reading a novel by a Canadian of whom I have never heard or read a thing. I continue to amaze and shock myself. But first: Off to the Saturday Farmers' Market just two blocks away. It is one of two I enjoy. The other is six blocks away on Thursdays. See why I didn't move?

Friday

I cannot hear the verdure chorus that must be happening this morning now that our long-awaited rain is here. I hear the water on the road outside and I see windshield wipers going on the cars outside. They haven’t had any action since April. And I see umbrellas adding circles larger than sunflowers to the garden across the road.

Today I am buying a Green Killing Machine (GKM) because I have an out-of-control algae bloom going on in my 60-gallon aquarium. The GKM is actually an ultra-violet light in a circulating pump that will kill all the algae spores in about 48 hours. My poor fish have been living in a slime soup for over a week because all other efforts (matrix carbon, Clarity [a binding chemical] and water changes have not worked.

Photo Dump #2

I've revived an aspect of my first blog that was mostly disparate imagery found on the web. I have been visiting Tumblr sites a lot and seeing gorgeous images and so I have decided to re-post some of them. People on Tumblr appropriate without attribution, so I can't tell you much about the images I find except that they are beautiful. I live for beauty.

Yay! Rain is Coming!

It is a prime corollary of economic theory that as the supply of a resource diminishes, the value of that resource increases. Hence my savoring of each moment of the day because today was probably the last day of “real” summer. I walked the seawall bright and early in the morning and then went to the beach.

Tomorrow we are predicted to begin a week of rain. It welcome. I passed two dead Sequoia trees on the boulevard of 16^th Avenue today. There are dead trees and shrubs everywhere due to the four months of sunshine.

There is still fabulous weather ahead, I know. We almost always have a spectacular “Indian Summer.” Besides, I have all the clothes I need to keep up my walking regardless of the weather.

Wednesday: A Walk Through Shaughnessy

Fungii. 

Hydro substation.

Dîner en Blanc

More like dîner ennuyant to me.

I cannot believe how many people want to get all dressed in white and have a dinner outdoors together.  Many do, and they seem to have a great time but I could not be less interested. Why would I want to pay to enjoy an elegant picnic for which I have to do all the work and dress completely in white? The directions are Nazi-like in their demands about dress.

I have far more admiration for the people here who organized a dinner en noir in a park on the East Side. I have little admiration for copyists and derivative invention.

Dîner en blanc began in Paris in 1988. I think it should have stayed in Paris and other cities should invent their own events. Why wasn't Vancouver's, at least, Dîner en la Mer or Dîner en Bleu?

Fads are epidemics of conformity, the antithesis of originality. How do you take pride in being part of a fad? Does participation in a fad not say that you are bereft of creativity and uniqueness?

Why not have a picnic with friends in a park or at the beach on your own?

Okay, you can call me a curmudgeon. I don't mind. I hope they all had a good time.

About Tuesday

In about 2,500 square feet of space on East 6^th Avenue, here in Vancouver, I am a celebrity—at least right now, I am. That space is Convergent’s offices and I had to go there yesterday to pick up some of my birth mother memorabilia that I had lent to them.

It is quite something to go into a building where there are lots of busy strangers are working hard and having all of them expressing excitement about the progress of my screenplay in their development process.

This morning I awoke with a clear vision of a Christmas morning in the Tyrell home when I was a kid. It’s sixty years later and still it induced a severe stress reaction.

The pleasure and pain of one's past.