Unorganized Thoughts

It looks like I am on track for the fewest posts since 2012!  I may pick up the pace a bit this summer, but it is hard to say.  I've remained lucky in that I haven't caught COVID even though I've been going out to more events, and in many cases sitting with people immediately around me!  I am planning a mini-vacation in late May (Victoria Day weekend), and I don't have anything scheduled a week before, though that doesn't mean I can't get unlucky and test positive right beforehand (so I probably do want to get cancellation insurance*).  While I have been making an extra effort to keep going to the gym even as I've been going to one or two events a week, I probably will stop going in the ramp up to our trip as a precaution, though I may still go swimming.

It's sort of interesting that many of these events are hanging onto the vaccine passports and masking at least until May, whereas the TSO (with its very elderly subscriber base) has ditched everything.  An unwise move in my view.

It's been extremely challenging to watch movies with my son, as he has a lot of homework in his senior year, and I got home late on Saturday (after struggling with taxes).  Another day he was up for a short viewing session, but I went to the gym instead.  Anyway, we watched it in three separate chunks, but we finally just got through Mike Leigh's Secret and Lies last night.  I picked up something this time around I missed the first time (or just forgot), that she thought her first daughter was born 6 weeks early (and thus was from a different, i.e. not Black, bloke).  She had been so traumatized by giving birth so young (at 16!), that she hadn't even looked at her daughter and realized that she was biracial.  While I realize mixed children often look a bit more like their fathers, I still think Hortense's colour is a bit dark for a biracial child.  But a great movie that holds up well, even with a few cringey bits.  We may start watching Red Dwarf on school nights, esp. after his midterm marks are in, but there's no way we'll get through everything on this list before he heads off to university, especially if I add things like Secrets and Lies or possibly Pain and Glory, as he seems to enjoy Almodovar's general vibe.  I suspect next weekend we'll try to watch Hirokazu Kore-eda's After Life, which seemed to catch his fancy.  I might work my way through the sci-fi films on the list and then get back to the classics.  We'll see.

Even though there isn't that much going on, compared to pre-COVID, I still find things are double booked.  There are a couple of concerts at Massey Hall that conflicted with a concert at the TSO.  Somewhat amusingly, I thought I was going to see a play at Assembly Theatre this Wed. and thus couldn't catch The Magnetic Fields who are coming to town, but when I looked at the ticket I remember that the play was sold out (I guess because it is 50% capacity on Wednesdays?), and I shifted to the following Tuesday (because that Wednesday I'll be at Buddies in Bad Times!).  Despite the venue being less than ideal (out at the Canadian Expo grounds!), I'll go and see The Magnetic Fields tomorrow, which will be a first for me.  I don't think they tour in Canada much at all.  

Slightly more annoying was that I hadn't realized I had concert tickets for the TSO on June 4 and booked another ticker for Tapestry Orchestra's RUR on the same night.  Fortunately, it's a month out and they were able to switch to a different night with no difficulty but it was still embarrassing.  I'm generally more on top of things like that.

There haven't been any great art exhibits so far this year, especially compared to 2021, which was a real coup for the AGO.  I did get over to MOCA a couple of weeks ago and found out that the Toronto Biennial of Art was on with most of the venues being sort of clustered around MOCA, so I checked out that, though it wasn't as good as 2019.  I'm generally getting my art fix at the galleries: Bau-Xi or the ones in 401 Richmond.  I do like the Nina Amin show at Yumart.  It's up for a couple more weeks, though I doubt I'll make it back.  This was probably my favourite piece.  If I still had an office at work, then it might be worth putting up there, but those days seem long over in this era of hot-desking (which may be even more alienating than the open plan office...).

Nina Amin, Mystery, 2022

Anyway, I'm running out of steam, and this post is long enough.  I think I mentioned that I got through Crime and Punishment,** followed by Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday and then Arlt's The Seven Madmen, which is itself heavily inspired by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, as well as Demons.  Curiously, the seven madmen are never fully enumerated.  While there are five in the coven or clan started by the Astrologer (so six counting him), I think the seventh madman is probably Barsut, one of the Astrologer's early victims, but it could also be Ergueta, who ends up in a mental institution, but who isn't really that important to the overall story.  One thing that becomes clear from Cortazar's introduction to the NYRB edition of The Seven Madmen is that this is only the first half of a longer story, which is continued in The Flamethrowers.  This follow-up novel is not really that long, so I don't know why NYRB didn't just commission and publish both parts at once, or at least say they'll put out the second half in due course.  Anyway, after a fair bit of digging around, it turns out there is a translation available directly through River Boat Books.  This blog post talks a bit about how the translation came together.  Anyway, I ordered a copy that combines the two parts, and it arrived unexpectedly quickly.  I'm currently wrapping up Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, which I'll discuss later.  I was planning on reading something else, but I might as well read The Flamethrowers while the overall story is still fresh in my mind.  Then I was thinking of something a bit lighter like Fallis's Best Laid Plans, then back to the bleakness: Celine's Journey to the Edge of Night (which I've been meaning to read forever), Beckett's Three Novels (ditto) and perhaps Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy.  I'm assuming around this time I'll be in the States.  I may take the 2nd William Maxwell LOA volume and something else that's portable.  Anyway, with a few exceptions, my recent reading has been more rewarding/enjoyable than it has been for quite some time.  And with that, it really is time to bow out.  Ciao!

* It is possible that the US drops the rapid test requirement for fully boosted travellers from Canada by May, but I can't count on that happening.  We are in the middle of Wave Six after all.

** At one point, I had just about as much time left to read Crime and Punishment as watching to the end of season 3 of Slings and Arrows (which I will commit to finish watching with my son!), but it was just easier to find the time to read on the train or late at night.