Passer By

I can’t tell her I have a “charity only” gifting policy. She wouldn’t care about that anyway. And I can’t tell her that I raised $100,000 for subsidized housing in our city. She wouldn’t care about that, either. I can’t tell her that I care, either, because she wants actions not words.

But I do care and I want to give her money because there’s something real, not opportunistic, about her. But I can’t give her money; I worry about what she will spend it on. And when I have given food; it is often not appreciated. So I walk by, and I feel awful.  And she thinks I don’t care.

But I do. It hurts to see women on the street. I smile, but all she registers is that I walked past her and didn’t give her any money. This is life downtown.

Warren / Javert

My  hugely talented screenwriting partner as he appears in Les Miz at the Arts Club. He plays Javert. I am terribly proud to be his partner; we have different strengths and work excellently together.

I was hoping that he would have heard from (producer) Brad about developments with Télé Cinq when I saw him and the show yesterday, but he hadn't, so I am going to draft an email to Brad to ask where we are at in the development of our screenplay Uncle Gus' Monkey.

Beachtalk

Audio artifact: West end, Second Beach, Stanley Park; Aug. 9

• Whoa, dude, that’s nothing. This is buff.
• Love the new top style: You're rockin’ that tail.
• Check out this G.O.T. tattoo.
• Very cool, but whoa, I finished my sleeve.
• Way cool, dude, but I’m all that and totally ripped.
• Mine's the hottest bitch on the beach.
• The bigger the beard, the bigger the meat, you know?
• Talk nice to me baby. Earn it.
• My chick has thigh gap. 
• Fuck, Dude. Suck on those and you'll get plastic.  
• I’m totally wasted, man.

Sunday

This man, who drives a spectacular vintage
Rolls Royce, was walking his Macaw on
Granville Island.

This self indulgent old fart bought himself
a Missoni sweater today. His ex, Steve, got
him hooked on Missoni designs.

I went to see the Arts Club's Les Miz today and WOW! It is a spectacular production, and I wept and Warren's magnificent portrayal of Javert. And there was a young man playing Marius who is going to  be an incredible star. He is Sayer Roberts. 

I always thought poetry was the second dumbest form of writing—right behind curatorial exposition. But as I aged, poems I studied in school gained resonance with my life experience. Gerard Manly Hopkins gives a wondrous voice to how I feel about nature; his Pied Beauty and Spring and Fall to a Young Child chill me with their power and beauty.

It is the plight man was born for

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Those lines ache in me, from the end of Spring and Fall.

But perhaps the lines that have come to mind the most in my life are these from T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding:

We shall not cease from exploration


And the end of all our exploring 


Will be to arrive where we started 


And know the place for the first time.

Here’s how I see it: Adapt to the buildings going up and loss of ocean view or adapt to a new location and adapting to a new location involves moving, maybe twice, considerable expense and inconvenience and, in all likelihood, further distance from Stanley Park and its seawall. So I now feel disinclined to move.

Nighttime Bubbles

The little film above is of my aquarium. The point is the little bubbles of oxygen—there are bigger ones that you will see plus gazillions of teeny ones. They emerge every night from the grass growing on the bottom of my tank. It is spectacular to see.

•

This is my 945^th post on this blog—one of many blogs I have created and filled with stuff. This is the blog I have kept longest. It is modestly followed whereas one of my earliest blogs was very popular. That blog, Eye Candy, had hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of views per day. Now Tumblr and Instagram, not a blog, are the way to curate a site for images.

 •

The people who came to see my condo wrote to say they are passing. They were careful to say that it was due to the unstable view their son has of his future and nothing to do with my condo.  I felt relief when I got their message because I remain distressed about moving.

About Thursday

You never know….

Last night friend Jude emailed me to say that friends of hers were looking for a place to rent/buy for their son. She asked: Was it too early, or could they come to see the place. I said sure. That was last night. Well, this morning they were here at 10:30 am. I spent an hour with them showing them all the amenities as well as all the features in my place that I did. I think, they were impressed.

They are Arnold and Deborah, really very warm and open and lovely people. Their son is an actor and they live half of every year near Gordes, in France. We have lots in common and thoroughly enjoyed talking.

Then I went to lunch with friends from high school and had a wonderful time and had lots of laughs. They want me to be a co-host of our reunion party.

I came home and emailed the operational and legal stats of my condo. They gave me the impression they will be back with their son to see the place again. They are keen to move quickly, they said, and to work without realtors. I think they have a lot of experience with real estate.

Chris Hyndman

Steven Sabados (R) and Chris Hyndman.

Holy shit, people, you are seriously depressing me.

Well-known Canuck and “designer guy,” Chris Hyndman, has died. I ache for his partner, Steven Sabados, with whom he shared life and work. His body was found near his home yesterday and today the blogs I read are full of condolences—sadly, they are empty, clichéd, hackneyed expressions of loss.

Writing is easy when emotion is strong. That is how I have found it, anyway. But there’s a long list of B and C-list celebrities tweeting off their lack of writing skills in in response to the loss of Mr. Hyndman. It’s embarrassing.

And what’s with Tweeting your pain, anyway? Tweeting about Mr. Hyndman’s passing feels like the exploitation of the death to further the tweeter’s own celebrity to me. Why not write a letter to Mr. Sabados (care of the CBC) instead?

He was 49 years old and Mr. Sabados' partner for 27 years. How sad is that? Like I said, my heart aches for Mr. Sabados.