When the stars threw down their spears
You know, I can’t help but feel as though this (academic) year will be an important one.
Finally, I’ve worked through all the administrative problems of being in English Honours for one-half of my Dual Degree and I’m in! I couldn’t be happier…or more frightened. I’ve been spending a lot of time this summer preparing for English Honours (reading books, papers, etc.) but I haven’t a clue how I’ll do in comparison with my classmates. Here goes nothing.
Summer really went by too quickly and although I hardly did anything worth mentioning, I did renew an interest in visual art! Visits to assorted art galleries in the States really fostered that love. Here are some I thought were worth sharing:
After the deluge by Yoshitomo Nara (2006)
Illustration for Milton’s Paradist Lost by Gustave Doré (1866)
La musique by Charles-André van Loo (1753)
Neat, hm?
Where the grass is really greener
Okay, so I love UBC and the AMS (where I work) but how is that we haven’t really come up with any viral videos?! Look and these two — one from l’Université du Québec à Montréal and one from Dalhousie University.
Which one did you like more? And more importantly, can someone at UBC get started on something like this?!
Edit: As if i weren’t already bummed enough to see that we haven’t got one, Johannes sends me this video from the University of Victoria UVIC (in Spain)! Come on UBC-ers, let’s get on this!
One thousand, two hundred and fifty-two
Groaning, shrugging to a tremulous, uncertain, unwilling
stop.
Footfalls on pavement echo, echo in the stillness of the night air,
Betraying expensively-kept secrets hitherto unknown,
The journey is well-trodden, the path well-known.
He passes by
The feline meeting,
Meeting by moonlight, mewing with murder,
Murderous intent, the secret
Consulation of familiars familiar.
He slips past open windows,
Melodies obscenely shared,
Hushed conversations,
Muffled whispers,
Silence?
And tonight, but nevermore,
One night only,
The footfalls on the pavement one last time.
All children, except one, grow up
Suffice it to say, today was a great deal more invigorating than I had expected. After a late start to the day (breakfast — or brunch, more appropriately), I headed off to the theatre to watch Despicable Me with L and A. Having bought our tickets (and then vacillating whether or not we wanted to sit in a dark, empty theatre so as to save the best seats), we headed in and claimed our Real 3D glasses.
I’m having a bad, bad day
If you take it personal, that’s okay
Watch, this is so fun to see
Huh, despicable me.
– Pharrell, “Despicable Me”
The movie, by all means, was great. The story was fun, the humour well-timed and (gosh darn it!) the orphan girls were so sweet! This makes me think that everyone ought to be forced to care for the young. Perhaps we’d have less villains that way? Behind our seats, a whole row was reserved for (what we assumed) was a birthday party. Hearing the children giggle with glee behind us wasn’t as annoying as I might have imagined — it was quite fun to have them behind us! (Too bad L was thwapped on the head by an overzealous child…)
After a rather long journey to procure a screen protector for A’s (new!) BlackBerry Bold 9700, we wandered over to Chapters where we discovered, much to our mutual pleasure, that we could have dinner together. We ate at The Boss (where I learned that I don’t actually know how to order beef in Cantonese…how do you indicate how well-cooked you want the meat?!).
Once full, we left the restaurant to a rapidly closing mall. We wandered over to a water fountain outside to wonder what we could do. I suggested we take a stroll in Central Park (despite my great fears of creepers running amok in the wooded areas). Off we went.
After dodging incoming golf balls from the pitch-and-putt and trekking through the verdant trees, we sat on a bench and noticed two people apparently shouting at one another. Perplexed, we gazed on to notice a man in a blue cape yelling to some people further away. Nosily, we inched closer and closer until…we noticed that it was a production! Outside! In the park! For free!
Enthralled, we found ourselves sitting on the grass (and swatting away the copious amounts of vampiric mosquitoes) and trying to unravel the storyline. As it turns out, it was a production of Neverland: Beginnings by Rainforest Theatre, a small local company. We watched with glee as Peter Pan was nearly wedded to the daughter of the pirate king and as we learned how Captain Hook gained (lost?) his eponymous appendage. With subtle amusement, we gazed on as one overexcited child-spectator inched closer and closer to the actors until he was actually sitting within the action, gazing upward and asking, “Can I see that?!”
I found it so magical that serendipity (and, admittedly, a reluctance to return home to do readings for ENGL 468) led us to a theatrical production in the ancient pulse of germ and birth. I thought I had encountered something out of Midsummer Night’s Dream! (But of course not. My appointment to see Henry V is this Friday.)
It is some indication of my great love for the theatre but I adored the way the actors interacted with the audience and with their surroundings. With little more than some light costuming, they created a world into which their children-spectators could be drawn by sheer charisma. And what is a more natural setting for a theatrical production than the forest?
The play finished and everyone dispersed. We headed over to P’s house to play poker briefly before I was summoned home with great displeasure at my waywardness.
And I could wish my days to be bound each to each with such wonder, joy and serendipity.
Someones that I never really knew
Three days ago, during Vancouver’s flash heat wave, my brother leaned over and remarked, pointedly, that a rather large and conspicuous insect had found its way onto the insect netting of my window. My curiosity piqued, I leaned over and peered at it curiously for several minutes.
And oh it was rather large, larger than I would have liked. But my natural revulsion towards insects (only developed since I grew out of infancy) notwithstanding, I felt a little sorry for the insect who seemed to be caught in the window netting and possibly a conspicuous target for an over-ambitious crow. As part of my weekly housecleaning regimen, I hastened to release the insect from my window netting, freeing both of us from our mutual discomfort. With a pencil, I had hoped to prod through the netting to loosen its grip so it would fall neatly into the bushes below. Unfortunately, it required slightly more vigorous action than that (I had to tap rhythmically on the netting until it finally released its group, poor thing).
And tonight, as I mounted the steps to my house, who should I find but the same insect! Of course, I thought to myself, I could be merely mistaken. What’s to distinguish one insect from another? But it was a nagging feeling.
Once inside, I examined the insect again. Lo! I should very much believe that it is the same visitor from three days ago!
And now I think that perhaps it is one of my ancestors, come to visit in the guise of a humble insect whom I did so unwisely reject from my presence. So tonight, I left it on the window netting, murmuring a brief apology for my rude lack of hospitality previously.
If I see this insect a third time, I will know then that it has not been a coincidence. But for now, I am cautiously optimistic that my ancestors have dropped by to wonder how I am doing and deeply mortified at my possible mistreatment of what could have been one of my early progenitors.
I think perhaps I will tell my grandmother this story. She will know best what to do.
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