Saturday, November 1, 2014

Return to the ROM, Fashion and Politics

Museums and movies were the order of today, not to mention lunch with a very dear friend from long ago now living and working in Toronto.

ROM


I haven't seen the inside of the Royal Ontario Museum in some time but I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.

 


Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome were well represented, beautiful and evocative of another place and time:


The cultural displays were very brief, though - and I found the tiny one on the Philippines very lacking in...well, everything. It simply made the PH seem so far away, unknowable and alien. There was a pair of flip flops, a shirt, and a few hats. And some old black and white photos of people weaving baskets living in grass huts looking old and severe. Not remotely the Philippines I have come to know and love. No wonder many Canadians think of it as being so disconnected and far away in place and time, while for me it seems like just yesterday I was just there!

ROM display of the Philippines
The Philippines: as archived in the ROM
Seeing these woefully inadequate attempts at educational displays made me realize how desperately important it is for everyone to travel and see the world with their own eyes and not just take the word of experts and historians. There's so much more to people and life than a few artifacts. Here's my personal archive of a very much alive and non-dust-gathering-museum-artifact Philippines, to supplement the ROM display and also to indulge in a walk down memory lane!


Manila Bay
Facundo Street off Aurora just south of Arnaiz Blvd in Pasay City

Overlooking Coron Town, Palawan



Very energetic art by modern Philippine artists


My favorite bakery on Aurora Street in Pasay City.

Sampling the modern Philippine music scene.
Not something possible to skewer on a pin and put on display in a museum

Japanese Garden at the University of the Philippines.
With my own personal garden gnome!

Dancing the Tinikling at Barbara's -
not possible to do in a museum!

Non-dusty traditional hats on display on our heads, not behind glass cases.

Under a Dao tree at Biak na Bato National Park.

Traditional costumes worn by live children on
Facundo Street preparing for a Saint Day parade.
Sigh. I need to go back! Meanwhile, back at the ROM, I found great displays I'd like to one day take my nieces to see. A bat cave for the ones obsessed with Bat Man and bugs, and dinosaurs for the one obsessed with big scary monsters.

 

 
 





Later I caught a special exhibit at the DX (District Exchange) fashion gallery on Fashion and Politics. Among the interesting and thought-provoking items on display were Margaret Trudeau's simple wedding dress which she designed and made herself, and the clothes of her charismatic husband Pierre which inspired and alarmed the nation:
  
Also fascinating was the phenomenon of paper dresses - a fad that lasted about one year in 1967.

Yes, even Trudeau ended up on a paper dress, that fashionable man!
The highlight of my day, though was spending time with a very much living person and non-historical artifact, my friend Evan - a Canadian artist with no less than a book being recently published of his artistic legacy.

Evanus Tapperosaurus formerly native to the Great Lake Agassi region
now thriving in his adapted natural habitat, the region known as
Toronto-better-opportunitus artisticas.
 I ended the day catching a film at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Light Box - an indie thing starring Jason Schwartzman as an annoying academic novelist consumed by his own ego who pushes away everyone in his life who attempts to love him by being an arrogant little s@$t. The many shaky close-ups and jump cuts made people leave and I felt a bit nauseous as well. Not a very uplifting film but rather one that leaves you feeling mildly sick and very irritated. Wow. Not a very flattering review! But an honest one!

Flying home tomorrow but packing in all I can. It's not often I'm here so I make the most of it!







Friday, October 31, 2014

Halloween at the Opera

I'm in Toronto for work this week and like last May, am extending my stay for the weekend. Checked out of fancy schmancy hotel, checked in to old but clean hostel in sort of sketchy old area, had a wonderful dinner at one of my new favourite restos, bannock on Queen across from the old city hall building and tucked in next to The Bay building. Then headed to Four Seasons Centre for the last night of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Of course it wouldn't be a proper Halloween Night performance without a giant white gorilla in a bow tie!

Mr. Le Gorilla reading his program alongside other patrons.
Wine, Woman, and Song (l'Opera) for this bow tied gorilla this Hallow's Eve.
I can report that The Canadian Opera Company did an amazing job of this classic tragedy. I bawled almost all the way through. I don't think I've seen it since I was a child so the tale of love, abandonment, betrayal of innocence and loss took on new meaning. The set was spare and elegant, all pale colours of a classic Japanese painting. This time I noted the many Japanese elements Puccini had conscientiously incorporated into the opera motifs. I never before realized how amazingly strong Butterfly was - or how young - or exactly how insurmountable were the odds she was up against.

Plot summary tainted by my current reaction to this classic tale of uncaring, self-serving lust, unrequited love, cruel abandonment and escape by death:

A bigoted American soldier weasels his way into the trust of an innocent 15 year old Japanese girl from an impoverished family, agreeing to marry her (with no intention of making the commitment permanent), knocks her up, abandons her, and marries a wealthy American woman.

Butterfly, no more than a child (she's 15 for goodness sake!) married this asshole fully committing her love and her life to him, believing he will return to her as he promised. She bears his child, and counts every minute of his absence. When the cowardly pissant finally returns his new wife in tow, he doesn't have the nuts to tell her he has married another and instead gets the American Consul to bring the news. The Consul tries to convince the heartbroken now-18-year-old to marry a rich local or give up her child to Pinkerton's blonde wife to raise (god forbid a poor woman who has been used and abandoned by a man of stature dare raise a child on her own). Butterfly fools them all by choosing a third option: death by her own hand with the same knife with which her father killed himself at his master's request. "If you cannot live with honour," she sings, "you must die with honour." Or something depressing like that.

In the end the foolish and arrogant Pinkerton feels something akin to remorse but I think it's crocodile tears. This time I came away from this story thinking, what a cowardly SOB that Pinkerton was - as were ALL the men he represents throughout the ages who ever took advantage of a woman's sincere love, treated it like a game and abandoned her for some more advantageous match.

Bottom line: never trust a man and be prepared to be independent because you can't rely on anyone but yourself. There's the tragic tale of Madama Butterfly in a nutshell. Hope to find a comedy show in Toronto tomorrow after this - amazingly well performed and beautifully rendered major sob fest!

Friday, September 26, 2014

Climbing Things in California

Proper rock climbing gear at Panorama, ON.
Note I am wearing a helmet.
I started rock climbing about 11 or 12 years ago and though I don't do it as often as I'd like, I've never lost the yearning to climb new heights and see what lies beyond the summit. 

Fake-climbing at Pinnacles.
Not far off the ground. Really!

Every time I travel anywhere I do my research to see what's nearby that I can climb or scramble up to see some landscapes.

On this last California road trip with Clem, I didn't realize exactly HOW important to him it was that we hike at Pinnacles. I was mainly concerned with visiting Big Sur, the long-time nature haunt of notorious American writer Henry Miller, and annual retreat of my late thesis advisor.

Henry Miller in his Library.
Pfeiffer trail at Big Sur











I recall sending Clem a link about Pinnacles thinking "maybe if we had time." He had discovered the newly-minted national park of volcano cores on his own, however, and was hellbent on spending enough time there to get some decent height.

Getting some decent height.
I'm actually really high up - this was a scramble!
Climbing a stump - for now...


 On the way up we had to pass through a cool tunnel and had some fun taking shots and experimenting with lighting - or at least I had fun while Clem got frustrated trying to teach me about the subtlety of lighting while I was focussed on the more ham-fisted task of framing a shot. So much to learn about everything!

Lights, camera, action!
This shot turned out pretty well,
after I drove him crazy trying to get the lighting just so.
 The calm, cool and collected rockstar!






















Never mind the views: the rock formations themselves were incredible - spires standing on their own, giant faces and heads strangely formed by wind and erosion.



Here and there I spied the glint of silver bolts screwed into the faces and saw some traces of chalk and worn belay stations where climbers had been.


There are bolts on the rock face behind me.
Below is a worn spot, clearly a belay station.
We braved a few rock faces - Clem took on one wall in a way that sent my heart racing.

Climbing a bolted route freestyle - gulp!






"Get down," I panicked.

"I'm FINE," he snarled.









I resolved to get him connected with the Manila climbing community to learn to climb properly since he seems vertically inclined anyway...



Winding our way around and up, we finally came to a place of endless views.



And yet there was an even higher ridge to climb. Steps had been carved into the rock and flanked with metal railings securely fastened into the rock. 



On the way down, we were startled to see giant rectangular wings tipped with red drifting on the wind. "Condors!" said Clem. Indeed, they were, circling high, keeping to a particular ridge above us. Every time I glimpsed one and reached for my camera, they drifted out of sight. Finally we rounded a switchback to a flat area under a mercifully cool overhang of rock. Clem lay down and was almost instantly asleep. I sat back, camera poised to capture a condor, but I couldn't fight the sleep anymore either.

Extreme napping: on the edge!
We napped until a noisy family woke us up and we continued our descent. By this time we were out of water and it was still very hot. We resolved to take no more photos on the way down since we'd taken so many on the way up but of course failed miserably.

A musician with his head in the clouds but both feet firmly on the ground.
The best kind!

Finally we returned to the entrance and were happy to rest our feet but exhilarated for the experience of such an incredible landscape. We grabbed sugary pop and salty junk food to revive our energy and hit the road again. This time, Solvang: a little bit of Denmark in SoCal...


Next: books, shoes and Danishes.