finish line

o ho ho! she chortled with glee.

Just, just finished a short story that I wrote entirely in one evening. Granted, this evening ended at 1:30 the next morning, but still. Chortle.

There is a slightly delirious joy in finishing something. Especially when the story shaped up like magic and all you had to do was tell it. Why is there a pond showing up? Ah, now it all becomes clear. Who is this Baron chap? Oh, now I understand.

Lovely lovely lovely glee glee glee.

I'm sure that later, when I read it with the clarity of distance, I'll groan at the mountain of revising it needs, but for now, in the short moments before I go towards the land of nod, I am basking and chortling and would be rubbing my palms together if I weren't typing.

further opera delights

Highlights of The Rake's Progress:
1. Chi, who manages to steal the spotlight with her deranged Japanese fan girl impression. Who can pay attention to the heartsick yearnings of Tom Rakewell and Anne Trulove when Chi is frantically trying to get an autograph?

2. The names: Rakewell (the rake), Trulove (the one true love), Sellem (the auctioneer), Shadow (the Devil). Subtle.

3. The enormous grey-green balloon bloating out of the stage like something from a Jean Pierre Jeunet film. Bulbous and grotesque until it pops out of the floor to become... a Hollywood trailer!

4. Nick Shadow's brimstone moment. I was waiting and waiting for him to do one of those exits that you expect from any proper Devil character: sinking into a trapdoor with lots of mist and orange light, maybe some pyrotechnic special effects. And then, at last! There wasn't any orange light or flame, but he did strip off his Matrix style black leather coat to reveal an orange and pink unitard with little feathery bits fluttering on it, and sequins.

I loved Baba's voice, but on the whole, it's not an opera I'd see again. I can't remember a single melody and none of the music really made me feel anything.

I have a sudden craving for frozen yogurt. Why are there no Yogurt Land's up here? How gloriously fine would it be to have a large styrofoam cup of mouth-twinging tart yogurt topped with blueberries and kiwi fruit and mochi balls, maybe with a few shards of dark chocolate to finish it off. Why is frozen yogurt so little loved here? It may be cold, but you can always eat it inside, huddled by the vent of the heater.

in an operetta...

Am back from seeing The Rake's Progress. Am feeling strangely tired. Also have the Magnetic Fields song "In An Operetta" stuck in my head.

sing me the kind of song you hear
in an operetta.
in an operetta..

with twinkling harpsichord to accompany.

sing me the words i long to hear
out of violetta.
in an operetta...

tiddly-dum dee dum dee dum...

See what opera does to you?

to see and not to see

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. Bad puns on Shakespeare and all.

First off, what not to see:

August Rush. When I saw the trailer, I thought, how INCREDIBLY cheesy. But then I also thought, well, maybe it's one of those incredibly cheesy movies that somehow sweep you up in their flood of sentiment and make you feel all warm and fuzzy. After watching the scary gore of Jekyll, I was more than ready for warm and fuzzy. This movie isn't just cheesy though. It's ridiculous, sentimental, and unlikely, without the spirit to make any of it believable, even in a pastel-coloured, saccharine pop song sort of way. Exception: Freddie Highmore is adorable as always and there is this moment when, as the musical prodigy, he is jamming on an enormous church organ and it seems perfectly possible that he is the next Mozart. I'm partial to organ music though... It can be so gloriously moving, and I don't know if it's the sound or the spiritual connotations or what.

What you should see:

Olafur Eliasson's work. Aside from having an amazing name, Mr. Eliasson's work is sort of like the grown up version of exhibits at the Exploratorium, only with lashings of visual stun. I wasn't interested by the frozen BMW (except that I enjoyed watching people bundle up in the museum's grey fleecy blankets and troop into a giant freezer). My favourite piece was "Beauty," a dark room with streaks of light shining across a waterfall of mist pouring from the ceiling. The light made the water ripple and waver in the oddest ways. It looked like a surreal veil between dimensions, or a spiderweb in a breeze, or maybe a ghost.

Jekyll. BBC miniseries with the incredible James Nesbitt as Jekyll and Hyde. Some of the narrative seems a bit wonky and the American baddie has a dreadful accent (deep South on an alternate and mentally unstable universe?), but it's really shivery, especially in the moments of transformation.

Get Smart. I just saw the trailer for this movie and it looks amazing. Steve Carrell as an incompetent James Bond. Anne Hathaway as a beautiful spy named... Agent 99. Alan Arkin is in it, Alan Arkin! And Hiro. I've never seen the original tv show, so there's nothing to be disappointed by. It's all fun spy gadgets and explosions to look forward to. Did I mention Alan Arkin?

funny pictures

Am starting the day with freshly shorn locks (a mighty improvement in terms of comfort and ease over the hair that was beginning to take on Cousin It-ish properties) and a new (for me) and wonderful collection of comical illustrations from Cabanon Press. I like the one of the people reading on the beach. I also have a cup of Darjeeling tea and a pain au chocolat, so my morning is going very well, thank you.

(I started this early and then didn't finish till now, so, no I'm not actually having breakfast at noon.)

The thing I love about getting my haircut is the hilarity of the whole process. Wendy is my favourite Hair Dictator. She is one of those meticulously fashionable Asian women, with perfectly layered hair and impeccable makeup. I think she doesn't approve of my showing up in baggy corduroys and not a trace of makeup... She always asks if I "ever wear makeup" or if it's just today that I've been too slothful to put any on. I say that I'm wearing sunscreen and lip balm to pacify.

The actual cutting of the hair is the real treat. You're not allowed to cross your legs because that sets you crooked and disturbs Wendy's symmetry. Then she starts cutting off big hanks of hair (I'm always in for drastic changes) and you end up with a very ragged bob that she shampoos. Then comes the fun bit. She gets out a little pair of scissors and attacks your hair, leaning in so close that her face gets powdered with snippets. Each strand is examined, trimmed, checked again, and forced into submission. Then she rinses it to get rid of some of the little pieces that might be distorting the true shape of everything, and gets out the razoring tool and shears off miniscule pieces that aren't living up to their promise. It's an intense experience, but I have to go through the whole thing being careful not to catch Wendy's eye in the mirror or I won't be able to smother the urge to laugh. She's very very good, but also extremely funny in living up to a caricature and I don't think she would appreciate my laughing. It would mess up the hair.

bookshelf

Introducing:
Magnificent Books That Offer Succor When Inspiration Lacks

(from top on down)
THE MERCHANT OF MARVELS AND THE PEDDLER OF DREAMS by Frederic Clement. Gorgeous collage-type illustrations that suggest stories at every turn. Fairy tales or fairy-like tales especially.

AN EXALTATION OF LARKS by James Lipton. Sheer language wonderfulness, not just odd collective nouns. Also, tidbits of curious information.

A DICTIONARY OF FIRST NAMES by Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges. Indispensable for obvious reasons.

A DICTIONARY OF GEOLOGY by John Challinor. Dictionaries of specific terminology are often useful, especially when the entries have some torn off corners of historical stories. I also am fond of words like "lacustrine" (what lake deposits are to a geologist).

PERSONAL RECORDS: A GALLERY OF SELF-PORTRAITS selected by Margaret Bottrall. Enjoyable browsing. The compiler compares the experience of the book to walking through a portrait gallery, and the enjoyment is very similar. Snippets of letters and autobiography and whatnot don't give much depth to the portrait, but it's fun to imagine the person they conjure up.

BUTLER'S LIVES OF THE SAINTS. It's interesting to see what made people seem worth sainthood, especially in the older cases. Lots of gore and horrible deaths are easily imagined.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SUPERSTITIONS ed. by Christina Hole. My favourite "reference" book hands down.

A FIELD GUIDE TO THE LITTLE PEOPLE by Nancy Arrowsmith. The drawings in this book are fantastic. Somehow they manage cute and ugly and detailed and crude all at once.

also, THE ART OF MODERN CONJURING by Professor Henri Garenne. This one hasn't been useful yet, but it feeds my obsession with stage magic. I mostly bought it because the back advertises the illusions inside with many exclamation points: "Producing 200 Yards of Colored Ribbon from an Empty Hat!" and "Talking to a Living Head Inside a Bottle!" and etc.

er...

I KNOW that Pez dispensers topped with the heads of characters from The Golden Compass are something, I'm just not sure what.

I took a nap this afternoon. Didn't mean to, but I was reading a catalogue for Barnes and Noble when, suddenly, I start up and am halfway to the door before I realize that the knocking was not part of my dream, that my dream (something involving me being late) was not real, and that I had fallen asleep in a position that made my neck twitch. The person at the door was one of those magazine salespeople, but when he saw me, blinking oddly and disheveled, I think he lost his persistence.

Am slowly working my way out of the confusion that happens when you wake up without realizing that you've been asleep.