Cucumber

I could swear that's what I heard the cabbie just call his mate, and though it is surely not his nickname it really makes a good one.

It has been a day of misinterpretations - from the morning's failure to do laundry to the double-take of a book in the window en route to work: How one can mistake "The Agony of Fashion" for "A Year in London" I don't know, but there (as they say) you have it.

Cucumber. Heh. A glorious summer's day, fitting now that the marvelous month of June is once again ours for the taking. These are the days that will happen to you, Walt says, and so they shall. Lots to accomplish in the next 30, so much that it feels a bit momentous, with my year's big hearing, the countdown to the launch of Shakes-by-the-Sea and the fundraiser (ack) and even a commitment to join the gym (!). Grand possibilities in store, stories (even and hopefully) especially as they start with the annual Idol, the really REALLY big draw, Apple Blossom, and into next week's long awaited venture to George's Island, beautifully timed for Krapp's second tape. Finally ready to go in-the-volved.

This airport bus is moving tremendously slow - but what me worry over the driver's plain idiocy, I'm not catching a flight, just picking up the car. We'll see how well he comports to his schedule disspassionately. 'Tis a good word, comports.

Sitting in the shade at the back as we proceed across the bridge a feel an on-looker over a mediocre spectacle. I confess it is amusing even as it grows tedious. More soon - for the sacred June 5 is close and with it the first nip of Don Julio 1942 is nigh. Something worth waiting for.

Tomorrow, then. Funny we are always so confident that it will come.

The very butcher of a silk button

BENVOLIO
Why, what is Tybalt?

MERCUTIO
More than prince of cats, I can tell you. O, he is
the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as
you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and
proportion; rests me his minim rest, one, two, and
the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk
button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the
very first house, of the first and second cause:
ah, the immortal passado! the punto reverso! the
hai!

BENVOLIO
The what?

MERCUTIO
The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting
fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents! 'By Jesu,
a very good blade! a very tall man! a very good
whore!' Why, is not this a lamentable thing,
grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with
these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these
perdona-mi's, who stand so much on the new form,
that they cannot at ease on the old bench? O, their
bones, their bones!

.."Who stand so much on the new form, that they cannot at ease on the old bench". Simply marvelous. A veritable bevy of phrases has the master. And it is a delight to see. The postcards travel as quick from Toronto to Halifax as they do a Paris. If only the cheap flights. But time enough for that. And the waiting makes it more exciting. Friday night in Halifax with the attendant companion shall be one of smiles and enjoyment. And a relaxing weekend of bliss.

For without, we note this with alack, our man impeded. Let last year not be your last Indyfield, good sir. Next May may prove the one.

More in Sorrow than in Anger

Looking back recently, the writing here's fallen off to a caution flag's pace, tokenly reappearing near the end of each week to express basically the same thing - the sparse yet optimistic beatings of a spirited but weary heart at week's end and its dreams for the onward journey. Repetitive, necessary tonic, redundant, as you like it, what you will. There is thought that as the summer weather finally arrives, more positive changes could or should be made. Small changes to patterns of behaviour both therapeutic and conventional in nature. Yet another checklist of things you can say to do, since there seems the strength and will and means to do't. Oh, but for those most powerful of English words - And Yet.

For comfort zones remain difficult glass floors/ceilings to crack - even true lovers of spontaneous heroics prefer randomness according to a particular reference point, I'd wager, whether it be Gorman's search for 54 other Dave Gormans or Hawks' quest to play the Moldovan footballers at Tennis. How these particular forms of insanity arose is no great matter. The excuse is all. And so is continually chased. All you need is the right line in a book on a wall in a pub on a street in a small town to get the process going. If times like those make it all too evident that life is being lived right, what does that say of our failings at other times when it is not?

All this just more meaningless jibber jabber for a Thursday, I suppose, as I stare out at the tugboats and the clouds moving slowly past the window, balls of cotton high above and off to the right and heading south. No reckonings today. But I do think the persistance serves its purpose. For dreams with dates set out in the distance, there are times when you are allowed to curse the horizon, if only in the real intent is to hasten your approach to it.

Manana mas, as we like to say. And rightfully so. Me gusta Fridays.

Too flattering sweet to be substantial

"They always say time changes things. But you actually have to change them for yourself."

So said Mr. Warhol, and how apt is that. Enough to displace the master from all but the title this week. From the same webpage on this googlish TFI afternoon is also found this gem from Pearl S. Buck: "Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked." Wise counsel. And in addition I need to keep reminding myself how decisions made today are going to lead me to what is (what needs to be) next.

Pirates of Penzance tonight - after a hearty dose of Rum and Cokes, surely. I must win me the draw ("I paid my four bits to see the high diving act and I'm gonna see a high diving act!") to set the stage for White Point.

It is a grey old day in Halifax, and I find myself questioning: what is it about the lingering effects of Thursday night hangovers that make me want to drink again so quickly on Friday afternoon. I blame DJ Phil, but should note I wouldn't want it any other way. I hope I see him just one more time, somewhere, before we're gone.

Perhaps.

"Of a Mingled Yarn"

Another Friday of the usual blarney... sampling of the cheaper of the two Don Julio tequilas of Mexico. Relaxing and waiting for what's next.

Second Lord
Hath the count all this intelligence?

First Lord
Ay, and the particular confirmations, point from
point, so to the full arming of the verity.

Second Lord
I am heartily sorry that he'll be glad of this.

First Lord
How mightily sometimes we make us comforts of our losses!

Second Lord
And how mightily some other times we drown our gain
in tears! The great dignity that his valour hath
here acquired for him shall at home be encountered
with a shame as ample.

First Lord
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and
ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our
faults whipped them not; and our crimes would
despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.

The Whirligig

On the Macdonald bridge - looking across and in to the office windows.

See, the thing that is great about Fridays is its openness to spontenaity and adventure. Thursday nights often set the stage, and you are left with a pleasant haze of a hangover that invites more of the same. Work that isn't due that day can wait until the Monday, and the weekend ahead seems an age.

Which is how I find myself sitting in this cab on my way to Toronto for no good reason whatsoever. Because of some wholly unrelated jazz that arose at Canada Post, actually.

Where I will stay, who I will see to be determined. Just content to be on the road, a little tired but fired up, as the radioman says in his celebration of "no pants day"

As I wrote earlier to Gongshow, fucking wanderlust. You gotta love it. Although all things considered, I'd rather be in Barcelona. But there is faith that Shakespeare's "Whirligig of time" shall bring in its revenges.

Enjoy your TFI out there. Every Friday from 4pm.