A world of good

One film that I frequently ponder - sort of just gingerly hold in the same imaginative space that tends to give birth to fan fiction - is Rio Bravo. I've watched it near a dozen times over the years, beginning when I was around 18 or so, having learned back then that it was Quentin Tarantino's favourite film.

But more often than thinking about the story or characters, I end up thinking about what it is that makes the film so engrossing. Its "particularity of place" sneaks up on you; it doesn't need to compel. The film navigates its own fully wrought architecture with a continuous ease. Yet it is as though the entire film hangs on the hinges of that old door to the sheriff's office, opened and closed time and again. "Hey Stumpy, I'm coming in!" It has these quiet, insinuating rhythms; they develop into an almost blessed space, both blessed and dangerous. No other film really has this sense of place, of space: it is rarefied, totally set apart, and utterly unique.

I remember in the early minutes of my first viewing, wondering why this was Tarantino's favourite, even wondering if there was some other film by the same title, and that I might be watching the wrong one, when at some point that question was forgotten entirely, as I was totally absorbed in the film's space and time. The film didn't wow me or stun me: more unexpectedly, it came home to roost. When a film does that, it creates the greatest tension and suspense as well. One does not watch Rio Bravo. Rather, one slips into it, and at which point in the film one has slipped into it is impossible to say.

The film doesn't really begin or end. I mean, the film has a very satisfactory ending, but it doesn't end. Roger Ebert came close to describing what it was when he said in his Great Movies review, "The film is seamless...the 141-minute running time flows past like running water."

I say this too, as one who has always been put off by westerns, both film and tv. I have never been into the genre, and still am not. (And don't even get me started on Bone Tomahawk! Don't watch it! I wish I never had!)

Anyways, the reason I bring it up now is because I was thinking, there's lots of people quarantining, exercising mercy and kindness, and they have access to netflix, and maybe they haven't watched Rio Bravo before, and I'm saying, get down with your favourite drink and snuggle in and watch it. Even as "comfort viewing" it would be a boon.

But more, you may find the film opens up a part of your soul you didn't know was there. Trust me, watch the film.  It will do you a world of good.

The early days of the pandemic I was trying to fall asleep one night and just as I was beginning to slip I remembered I had done this drawing back in April 2019.

I lay there and said, "Huh, that's kind of strange". Some days later I looked up the drawing again. I had forgotten those breath-lines coming violently out of the mouth of that fear-filled face, and then I noticed that the formation of heads at the top make a sort of coronavirus molecule image, with sorts of protrusions. As much as I tell myself, "Ah, that's par for the course for art - it's a mystery!" I still recall the drawing once in a while and go, "Seriously, WTF?"

Then I started recalling other drawings I did in 2019 from when before the pandemic was even a blip on the radar. I've started titling them. LOL.

Plague Doctor

Crown of Death 

Snakes on a Plague LOL

There are others more generally leaning in that direction, like this one, and this one, and maybe this one?

Funny, too, when I did this drawing in March (found at this post), 

 

I had no intention whose face it was going to be. I was just drawing a face and seeing where it would lead. After I finished it, I said, "Huh, that kind of looks like Joe Biden." I mean, it doesn't technically look like him, but to me it has his "feel" so to speak.

So now I have titled that drawing "On Eagles Wings".

Anyways, I kind of have a crush on Kamala. It's all innocent. I know she's married. LOL. But man, especially that moment debating Pence, and she was like, "I'm speaking", I kind of just went head over heels. Which is why I love this meme so much:

LOL

And again, in that interview with the woman trying to peg her into an ideological corner (isn't it weird how the paranoia about someone being "socialist" is itself the rawest sort of ideological colonization?), asking her if she's going to act with a socialist agenda and so forth, and Kamala just responded by basically going, "BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!"

But the way she laughed, it was not at all condemnatory, it was not scorn-filled - it was just refreshing and life-filled. Both her and Joe (who I like and cannot help but liking - a good Catholic guy) have a certain ordinary...I almost want to call it a goofiness that is at the same time totally cool. Anyways, get ready for the chivalrous white knights to attack Kamala like 5000 times more than they attack Biden over the years because You Know Why.

Dancing in the waters of life

Ya can't do that! Dontcha know ya need aliens to help ya?!

I've been reading The Lord of the Rings again, and last night I finished the chapter Treebeard. I was pondering so much about it, as is my wont with every chapter, and this morning at Mass the first words from the first reading were, "Remember this, my dear brothers: everyone should be quick to listen but slow to speak and slow to human anger..." I immediately thought of the Ents, thinking to myself, huh, isn't that uncanny - and then lo, I heard the Gospel reading about the blind man being healed by Jesus, who says he can see people walking around like trees!

It was just so great. That's called providence my friends.

I also love how Jesus in that instance employed a kind of gradualism in healing the man. Also that he used the elements of the earth - dirt - pointing to the first creation while instituting the sacramental lifting up of matter in the new creation - the redemption of mankind.

Really now

Down tempo flying saucer hub cap analog drive across Canada in an old wagon of hope with wheel wells like Mars and loose tape distortion street beat bringing me back to younger days watching Rick Hansen on the CBC churning his wheels with outsize arms across the world and Terry Fox and Expo 86 and French Canadian Sesame Street and that guy - I don't who he was - who would take you to all his childhood neighbourhood haunts, empty playgrounds, clean sward and chain link, leap up on something very casually and very freely, and say this is where I used to play...etc. simple and seared in my mind. You will not capture Sasquatch on digital. Don't even try.

If any organically grown food is worth the extra cost, it is apples. Or if you can find a farm/orchard that grows them using just the dormant sulphur/oil spray that is fine too.

A sincere injunction. Even if you are not into buying organic stuff and don't even go for fruits or vegetables. Make cleanly grown apples a part of your daily diet.

When you eat the apple - at least one a day - make especially sure to eat the seeds - the entire apple core. But make sure you chew the seeds before swallowing them, otherwise they will just pass through your system.

Do not pay attention to the idiotic parrots on the internet who mindlessly blabber about how apple seeds "contain cyanide" - LOL - and therefore should be avoided.

Let's repeat: eat organically grown apples everyday. Eat the seeds in the apple, chewing them well. Tell anyone who says to you "Oh, apple seeds contain cyanide" to eff off.

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Also tell that to people who say, "Oh, figs have worms". People are so stupid. Any fruit that has gone overripe can and may likely have the larva of the fruit fly in it. This is especially true of overripe cherries and blackberries. You will know when a fruit is overripe, past its prime.

In fact, there is a smell the fruit will have that will tell you it has SWD - Spotted Wing Drosophila. And by the way, as an aside, while no one wants to eat the fruit fly larva, ultimately it really is only protein. It will not breed inside you. In other words, it will not "give you worms".

You want to know how this bullshit started with the fig? It's not because they have worms. In fact, they are less likely to have the fruit fly larva than other fruits. You want to know what happened? Some dumb schmoe opened up a spoiled fig that naturally had the fruit fly larva, and what did he see that sparked his imagination? Ever look at the inside of a fresh fig? The whole inside bears a certain resemblance to worms. (Though really to anyone who is more diligent and clear in his imagination the inside of the fig bears a certain fertile representation of sperms making their way to some nucleus.) Thus was born the whole stupid parrot fest about figs containing worms.

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"Oh, you shouldn't plant bee-loving plants where children are going to be playing." LOL. People parrot this ignorant bullshit as though having plants that bees love near where children are going to be playing is the same as putting hives of bees and wasps there. Bees are never more safe to be around as when they are foraging nectar and pollen from blossoms. A single stray bee is more dangerous than an entire host that is busy at work on some flowering plant. And a host of bees busy on some flowering plant does not make for any strays, because they have found flowers, and are therefore occupied.

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"Oh, putting coffee grounds into the soil will turn it acidic" - LOL. "Oh, you shouldn't bury meat or bones with your scraps in the garden" - LOL. "Oh, drinking raw milk will make you sick" - LOL. "Oh, the police in helicopters will descend on your garden if you grow opium poppies" - LOL.

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"Oh, wild pigs are rapidly multiplying in Canada - they're taking over!" - LOL.

I'm all for that. Sounds like lots of free food to me, and delicious food, thanks to Global Warming. If they become that invasive the government can simply say, "Go out and kill. Take and eat."

But I can imagine the Pork Industry wouldn't like that very much. They would spawn a whole lot of official-sounding bullshit on the public about how wild pigs contain cyanide and worms and will eat children and the cops will come and get you and shit.

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"Oh, this plant is seeding itself all over the garden - it's invasive!" - LOL.

Listen, I'm from the Pacific Northwest where the temperate rainforest climate is very conducive for invasive species, both flora and fauna. I know invasive. A plant seeding itself - or even aggressively seeding itself - does not make it invasive, alright? Be happy, and thankful, that you don't have to deal with horsetail, creeping buttercup, Himalayan blackberry, morning glory, Japanese knotweed, et alia - yes.

Be happy. And eat apples and the apple seeds.

Game of Thrones is over?

Huh, imagine that.

Love It

Love going to the Dollar Store, that last twilight outlet of the store rows, closest to the train tracks. 25 nifty brushes for 3 bucks. You pay that and more - far more - for just one brush at the art store or some ostentatious online Rusky outfit. "But, but!" LOL. Trust me - it's not so much the brush - though sometimes it is (especially with egg tempera) - it's how you use it. You can paint with just about anything. You have to bend that fork. In fact, it's the same with the fine brushes too - it's how you use them. The quality of an instrument does not subsume its proper and most fruitful use. It is the other way around. I love that arts and crafts section and the whole store with its Snickers and Mars bars doppelgangers. It's a place to dream in. Maybe it conjures that old A-Team feeling in me. Going to the Dollar Store is so Chestertonian.