Small Pretty Scenes
Along Highway 7 is a herd of bison. It can make one do a double-take if not expecting it.
Give me a gnome where buffalo roam?
Taking the elevator to the 4th floor Rideau Center [to watch that Star Trek movie before we're the last on earth to see it; it was good enough] there were squirrels out on the rooftop gardens, popping in and out of the tulip beds. (Stairs up from ground level are on the south side of the terrace.)
A squirrel porpoised about thru the daffodils. Without thinking I asked to one in particular,
- how’d squirrels get to the 4th floor?
The lady behind me in line said deadpan,
- They were lowered from helicopters. They are Navy Seals in training.
I love how random and absurd and quick quipped that came. That someone should embrace that chance and just go for it with a stranger and then slip fluidly back into her first conversation.
The air is nearly sticky with blossoms
Give a listen to A Wonderful World by someone who calls himself Fretkillr. His acoustic blues jam in E with flatpick is also gorgeous. I probably watched 40 or so of his videos.
Speaking of sound…this afternoon, Christian Bök performs as part of the Tulip Festival at the Mirror Tent.
There’s something about moss for me. Lichens living in symbiosis. Indicator species of pollution. Their existence feels like hope. Memories of deep shade forests where the muggy summer can’t quite reach. Depths of birdsongs and rest of live faraway. My first poem that was declared exemplary was in grade 10 and about moss in part. The teacher posted it as the best of year. (Wonder if I can locate it still. ) Bliss resonates. It only is practical to follow the vibe.
Public art. What does the public do with it?
A couple weeks ago, this. People love getting their photo taken with this one. And kids beeline to it.
A little boy was pointing excitedly when going past this with his mom.
She asked him -what is it?
He said, – it’s a shhhculpture!
She smiled and asked him, – what do you do with a sculpture?
He paused, looked at the stairs of it and said -you climb on it!
She laughed at the same time Brian and I ldid. She looked up.
She said – yes, some people climb on it. How about we just look at it?
(He was good with that option too.)
The sign for it is on a cement post, a 45 degree angle plaque which a little girl realized was the perfect height for a slide. She slid down a few times and declared it a slide to her mom. Mom said, -I suppose it is.
Quote: “There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.” – Ernest Hemingway
Welcome to Poetry Month
I don’t expect to post a poem a day here as that would overstretch the indulgence of the fairest of you all, but for day one, a poem draft of this morning. (I add it as an image file because adding blank spaces in text in html is a pain.)
Article Link: reading is best way to reduce stress according to the Telegraph articles
Reading worked best, reducing stress levels by 68 per cent, said cognitive neuropsychologist Dr David Lewis. Listening to music reduced the levels by 61 per cent, have a cup of tea of coffee lowered them by 54 per cent and taking a walk by 42 per cent. Playing video games brought them down by 21 per cent from their highest level but still left the volunteers with heart rates above their starting point.
So, the lesson here is to do them all at the same time for maximum effect. 
In the City: The Spring/Summer Ottawa recreation guide is out and how impressive, this one instructor who seemed to be a renaissance man, teaching beginner traveller Italian, Indian-style lentil cooking, organic gardening, self-expression thru poetry. There he is again teaching racquetball and squash. This Bob MacQuarrie teaching at the R.C. Orleans has such broad interests and expertise! He must line up full time work teaching all these occasional courses. Then I realized the center is called the Bob MacQuarrie R.C. Orleans. Ah. Ah.
Quote: “Everyone should fail in a big way at least once before reaching forty.” – Al Neuharth
Enjoying it While It Lasts
Winter’s unsteadily retreating.
Squirrel’s making tracks
Seen in Ottawa: At the grocery store was a man talking business tones into his cell phone. A diaper-ager was in his cart. He stopped his grocery cart to take the call. He was saying something about stock. The little one was straining in a very low voice saying coookiiiiiiieeees…..coookieeees.
The ice is on thin water.
Seen in Ottawa: On the bus around town an elderly woman was speaking, I presumed Italian but listening in as a middle aged woman talked with her I realized they were both speaking English. The older woman just had a strong accent, even with her 14 years here. The local-accented woman was explaining that her family was in town for 3 generations! In this neighbourhood! (She heavily gestured with chest slaps to indicate her family, and talked loudly to be clear.) The Italian lady said, Me too. 3 generations. Me, my daughters, my grandchildren and soon great grand…
Location, Location, Expectation: Can you notice beauty when it comes at unexpected times? Remember the story from a couple years ago of violinist Joshua Bell (who the Washington post calls a virtuoso with “a Donny Osmond-like dose of the cutes”) who, on a $3.5 million 1713 Stradivari, in a subway station performed six classical pieces for nearly an hour as 1,097 people passed by. 7 stopped. 27 gave money, but didn’t stop. 1 person out of context recognized him.
From that same Washington Post article talks about how he got into music at age 4:
His parents, both psychologists, decided formal training might be a good idea after they saw that their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the pitch.
Seen in Ottawa: An ice floe floating downriver was held in place during a 90 km/h wind gust, as wind whipped sibilants through the pines and empty boughs, then as it relented the ice berg moved again. Street signs rocked and hummed, the tape holding posters to poles was a muted snare drum and loose bits of buildings clapped and knocked.
Most Uncomfortable Fact Learned Recently: The ignorant people have won. (Blooming moving language target. ) till, as in until, has been accepted into dictionaries. When did ’til become a marked archaic form?
Vid Link: McGuinty on This Hour has 22 Minutes [lol via CanCult]
Quote: “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art” – Andy Warhol
Overheard in Ottawa and Vancouver
A man who was being led by inches down the grocery aisle, being shown every soy milk and milk substitute, the female with him reading off the sugar and top vitamin contents. When I went past them and swooped up 3 of the almond milk containers, he perked up and said to her, “those ones are good!”
A boy on the bus was relaying to his buddies how his dad was riding him about drug use (in his opinion only idiots do drugs) and to get dad off his back boy told his dad he’s gay. Dad is freaking/dealing. Meanwhile by serendipity (in the boy’s view) his friend and him got into a tiff (my word, not his) and friend pulled a knife on him; he sucker punched his knife-bearing friend out cold. What a lousy fighter. And parents will be home soon. What to do with the body? He dragged it up the stairs to the bedroom. Dad came home, barged in and saw an unconscious boy on son’s bed. He’s going to play it up for a couple weeks, he says, maybe buy some skin tight jeans. (I’m so glad I’m not a parent of a teen.)
In Vancouver we saw two parents and two kids walking along the seawall. Dad had one child in one of those strap to the chest slings-thingees. Doing a sort of bouncy wave as he walked were the child’s hands, or rather the mostly empty dad’s big gloves on the child up to the elbow. Behind them the mom had stopped the stroller and was taking off her coat. The little girl in the stroller protested as mom tucked her coat around the girl, “but mom you’ll be cold!” Mom said, “I’ll be fine.”
At the site of the Olympic village…
Own that graffiti
Quote: “Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice.
It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.” – Reinhold Niebuhr
Pick Me Up Pics
Yesterday was dad’s 81st birthday. From the birthday visit, more pics from the trip…
Washboard, stomach not included. Liked the light coming in under the desk.
Brian and dad had a tailgate chat under the shade of the new shed/lean-to. Nearby volunteer potato and tomato plants in the dappled sun were lightly knocked by the toad coming thru. Already the first maples are starting to turn red.
The hydro pole has had no wires so long as I’ve been alive. The marks going up it seem less than I remember. When I was little I found dad’s old climbing spurs. I used to eye them and hear how he went up the poles and be told, don’t even think about doing that.
I settled for climbing trees, and up in haylofts and walking along roofs and climbing out the bedroom window for wee hours walks thru the forest and along the country roads.
If I went out the door the squeak in the floor would have caught me. As it was, as my mom loves to tell, a kind officer brought me home in the squad car. (But only once in those dozens, hundreds? of walks.)
The officer had informed me that it would make him worry too much to leave me out there walking at 2 a.m. and he’d have to bring me home to my parents for his comfort. He phrased it so nicely. My dad woke up bleary at a knock at an ungodly hour and had a baseball bat behind his back when the officer presented me. I really think letting me just walk back home and sneak back in the window would have been far less fuss and concern for all involved.
Ah, the stories Hub has to endure. I don’t think he minds really, he who is the miracle-maker-resetter-of-mom’s-clocks, the repairer-of-cupboard-and-what-have-you.
Blog Link: Cat adorableness slays
Tool Link:
The Polar Clock as widget or screen saver is visual clock so the point you are in the day, week, month, year are all in a graphic glance.
Quote: “Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee and I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.” – Robert Frost
