The dog’s eyes are unfocused. Standing outside the cafe, she looks up hopefully each time the door opens. She is chocolate colored so I take to thinking of her as “Chocolate.” Her leash is tied to a cable that secures a newspaper box to a traffic sign post. Just out of her reach, a fire hydrant sits ignored. She paces back and forth a bit nervously, sitting once or twice for a moment but then standing back up and walking around. She walks and stands with her legs a little splayed out like a puppy, as if she is unsteady and has to work against tipping over by mistake.
Although she is scruffy the way older dogs get sometimes, she is still very beautiful. She has sad eyes. Chocolate is also so very obviously mellow that almost everyone who passes by stops to pet her. She accepts the petting with a minimum of interest and no wagging of any kind. She angles her head up under each petting hand to get a sniff in, impulsively. Chocolate is distracted. Around her neck is an old fragment of a knit scarf, tied in a knot. Probably it was knit by her owner. It is the kind of thing a cat would never put up with. The scarf is discolored with age and clumpy like a dreadlock and I wonder if it bothers her. No doubt she would enjoy a good scratching under it. A passing man with a toy-like pug runs into someone he knows and pauses right by the newspaper box for a conversation. As the people begin to chat, the pug and Chocolate greet each other nose to nose for some preliminary sniffing. She is still distracted and maybe not interested and begins smelling the man’s shoe instead. Meanwhile, the pug circles around back to sniff Chocolate’s other end. Then, completely unaware of their spontaneous coordination, the trio solemnly execute a slapstick gag. The man backs up, forcing Chocolate back, and as a result, the pug. They all move ponderously in reverse like linked train cars backing slowly around a curve. Once or twice the pug seems to get more of a snoutful than he wants. And then it is over. The man is still involved in his conversation. Chocolate is still distracted. The pug sniffs intently but eventually loses interest himself. A minute later, his conversation over, the man seems to notice Chocolate for the first time. He pets her goodbye and pulls the pug along after him. For Chocolate, the minutes continue to drag.
“Ladies? Imagine you are Atlas!” cried their dance instructor. This coming just after they had arranged themselves as the Three Graces.
Millicent discarded her momentary annoyance at how Mrs. St. Ruth always shouted “Ladies” as a question. Actually it was Claire who had pointed out the quirk one day as they gossiped about their teacher. Claire found it amusing. Now Millicent noticed it every time. She could feel Claire smirking behind her.
She told herself not to think about that and instead she imagined being Atlas. As she tried to get into character, she realized that she didn’t know much about Atlas. He was probably one of those Greek gods. “I hope he’s not being punished.” thought Millicent. “Not like that one god who brought fire to man and then was bound to a rock and every day a bird came and tore his heart out and ate it.”
In her mind Millicent pictured Atlas. There was a brushed chrome statue of Atlas on each of the front corners of a new building downtown. Each stood on a stone corbel and seemed to be using his corner of the building to help him support the weight of the world, which he held over his head.
“Atlas: bare-chested, powerful, enduring.” thought Millicent. “I would be his Amazonian Queen.” Millicent imagined herself six feet tall, with a quiver of arrows strapped to her back and carrying a bow taller than a man. Her dark hair would shine in the sun as she strode barefoot, hips swaying. She would wear a jeweled girdle, and straps made from the skin of a giant snake would hold a breastplate to her bosom. The songs of her sisters would echo through the hills. She would be beautiful. Men helplessly trapped by their desire to conquer her would come from every land and she would imprison them until the day she had an army large enough to shoulder the world and free her Atlas. Only then would she let Atlas kiss her.
“Millicent? Focus!” cried Mrs. St. Ruth.
Yesterday we went to see the Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble play at the Portland Chinese Classical Garden and it was very entertaining. I’m a big fan of the Chinese Classical Garden. They have everything a person could want in one place. Fascinating architecture, bonsai, a huge pond with fish, a beautiful garden, and a great tea house in the Tower of Cosmic Reflections (pictured below.)
The Ensemble was very good. They play more “traditional” Chinese music, and also seem to be interested in all kinds of music. They introduced every song with a description of what was to come. The selections varied from a Chinese war epic penned in 202 B.C. to “Oh Suzanna”. I would liken the concert to about any traditional world music mix CD. It will most likely contain things you will enjoy and other things you might not, and different people will find that they like different things. In this case the balance was well over to the “good” side.
They were very earnest and enthusiastic and put on an excellent show. For the record, there are more shows and different bands at the Garden coming up. Check them out here.
(I remember at the Montgomery Station in San Francisco there used to be an old Chinese man who would play his erhu for change. An erhu could probably best be described as a kind of Chinese violin. I used to stop and listen to him every once in a while. He didn’t seem to follow any rhythm and actually sounded very much like a howling cat, but sad. To me, at best, it evoked Chinese calligraphy, with lots of purposeful bold strokes, hooks, and finesse. But it sounded awful. I always suspected that I lacked the cultural experience or vocabulary to appreciate what he was up to with that instrument. Either that or he was really bad. It’s funny but I used to be shy about listening to him and would always stand somewhere he couldn’t see me listening.)
“Oh dear. I tried to keep a dream journal once, but soon realized that I was a woman of small dreams. I found that I could only keep it up for a week, filling page after page with inane details. Here’s a sample. ‘…spent what seemed like hours outside a door waiting for someone to come out and ask me in. Luckily there was a chair. Also there was a cat nearby sitting on an enormous Persian rug. He knew me but was not feeling friendly.’
“Night after night of circuitous errands and vague misunderstandings with men I’ve never met before. It became too much. Oh of course every once in a while I would have a fascinating dream where I was an assassin or was eaten by a huge animal, but those were few and far in between.”
April 20, 1929
This blog entry is in answer to Final Girl’s call: “HEY, INTERNET, STOP BEING SUCH CYNICAL EFFING DOUCHEBAGS BLOG-A-THON!” Click here to visit her site and see the post that inspired this blog entry.
My goal during this post is to deliver a love bomb about Louis Feuillade’s “Les Vampires.” IMDB link here. Netflix link here. Shot in 1915, this is a series of short silent films chronicling the (mis)adventures of the notorious Parisian criminal gang Les Vampires. Here’s what I love about it:
* I love how when one of the villains is struck by a new opportunity to do evil, that they gloat over it. For a long time. Visually.
* I especially love when Irma Vep does it.
* Speaking of Irma Vep, I love Musidora as the evil Irma Vep. In this screen cap the background supplies her with an Art Nouveau halo while she plays the part of an angelic maid. Look at her. We are almost fooled.
* I love how Mazamette (the sidekick) is such a natural comedian, and how he breaks the fourth wall and hams it up to the audience.
* I love it when a heated two minute conversation between Guérande and Mazamette (our two heroes) with tons of gesturing, pantomiming, and making faces ends up being something like, “Mazamette confesses he got lost.” in the intertitle (intertitles are where in silent films a frame is displayed which has some dialog or narrative information in writing.)
* I love making up what they’re actually saying in my head.
* I love how the film is tinted to denote dark or light. Having a character in a scene walk over to a light switch and turn the tint of the film from blue (denoting dark) to sepia (denoting light) is really delicious.
* I love how naive these films are. A person could say that the worst thing about these films is that they were working in an exciting new artform, and the best thing about these films is that they were working in an exciting new artform.
* Mmmmmmmmmmm. Poisoned pens, sleeping gas, secret passageways, hypnotized dopplegangers, and an ill-fated ballerina in a bat costume.
* I love the sense of composition in the cinematography.
* I love that we live in a world where people care enough about this art form to preserve, restore, and distribute something like this that has an admittedly small audience.
I love old films, and I love very odd things. Les Vampires is both. If you like old films you will love “Les Vampires.” You will also love “Ella Cinders” with Colleen Moore. Now STOP BEING SUCH CYNICAL EFFING DOUCHEBAGS, YOU INTERNET!
My friend Lorna has been teaching art classes at Collage on Alberta Street. On Sunday I took one of her “Child’s Play” classes where you sit down with 15 post card sized blank pieces of canvas and spend four hours doing something creative with them.
It was fun. One great thing about the class is that all the materials you need are provided. Of course if you want to show up with your suitcase full of paints you can, but you can also just show up in your studio grungies and paint. Lorna did a great job instructing, and everybody in the class made some nice pieces. Two pieces I made are shown above.
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