Urban saturday

ever since listening to randall stout talk about the AGA, i've been jonesing to get inside the building. this morning, shannon set it up.

the AGA is as photogenic indoors as it is from outside, even on a dull day. i hadn't expected to see art, but two of the opening shows are mounted. the goya drawings were hard to focus on, given my excitement, but the karsh photographs blew me away. karsh canadians was the first art book i ever remember seeing in our house; karsh was the first photographer i knew by name. and here he was, along with everyone who mattered to the twentieth century. "who's that girl?," asked morgan (5). "that's queen elizabeth," i answered, "but it was taken when she was still a princess, nearly 60 years ago." "what about this girl?" "audrey hepburn. and look, morgan, that's pierre elliott trudeau, canada's most famous prime minister. here, let me show you this one." i knelt down and put my arm around her. "this is one of the most important people who's ever lived. he was in prison for 27 years, but when he got out, he ended racism in south africa." morgan's eyes widened in seriousness, and then she and her friend were off for another look at HRII's tiara.

as for me, i turned around the gallery slowly, gobsmacked. there was glenn gould, concentrating so hard you could hear him humming. fidel castro. helen keller. rene levesque. mies van der rohe. pablo casals, forever playing to that expectant stone yard. these images are so iconic you actually forget they're also somebody's photographs - that is alfred hitchcock, not a portrait of him. behind me someone said, "oh, man, i remember that one. that's levesque!" after a seeming lifetime of annie leibovitz's pictures of l'il kim and courtney love, it was really moving to stand face to face with nehru.

the building is complex enough that everybody could have their own favorite vantage point. "they should call this the eva peron balcony," said ted. mo wandered off to be alone with the northwest corner of the fourth floor. i like the juxtaposition of sharp angles with the whispery borealis. the scupture garden faces east, so unusual and interesting. i ran into people i've met through work, people i've met through shannon, people i've met through exposure. we got taken up to the fourth floor (not part of the official tour); we got to walk through the restaurant. the elevators are so new the stainless walls are still wrapped in plastic.

when we'd had our fill - who knows what time it was? - we repaired to the duchess bake shop for cappuccino and scones. (not mo, because a perfect saturday for mo always includes the laundry.) the sun was out, and it was nudging toward zero. ted and i got caught up at one table for two, while nat and susanne sat at another; when a table for four opened up, we reconvened there to talk about how to plan a good vacation. after ted left, the three of us headed across the street to thread hill, my favorite boutique. because today was a magical day, everything was 25-70% off. once nat and sus headed back to their puppy, i made my own way home, stopping at don antonio's for hot salsa and corn chips ("buenas tardes a usted," etc) and at hellas greek food for feta and olives, the sun still echoing gently off the 124th street walkups.

Assault

coming home from our soccer practice today, mo and i witnessed an assault: two guys hitting and kicking a third guy, punching him in the gut, kicking him in the kidneys, kicking him in the face -- the face! -- once he'd fallen to the ground, right on 124th street. it's the grossest thing i've ever seen in real life, though even now i have to say that witnessing the assault itself, through the vehicle's window frame, seems like something i saw on TV, it's so far beyond my normal experience of the world.

i still don't know what i feel. i don't know what the word is for that kind of shock (why us? why then? what if we'd left two minutes earlier, half an hour later?) and horror (two on one, the kidneys, the face) and relief (that it didn't last longer, that there were two cops a block down the road) and fear (that's our neighbourhood). distress, perhaps. dismay?

the assailants ran into an apartment building when we turned around, and the cops pulled up, and another car slowed. the police officers went after the assailants so for a while it was just the weird april snow falling on this thin middle-aged man lying crunched up and completely quiet in a driveway. other people stopped. a taurus-driving white guy, scrawny, with a big cowboy hat and a cellphone holder on his leather belt got to the victim first. then a middle-class woman in a minivan -- you know the one: well-kempt, solid, pleasant -- hurried over; she too had a cellphone, but when she realized emergency services were on the way she went back to the van for a fleece jacket which she laid over the victim. she wanted especially to find a way to use the arm of the jacket to cradle his head, which was bleeding. i was really touched by that. it was a good fleece jacket and you know she's not going to see it again, but she did not hesitate. a church lady, that one whose garden you'd never let your dog wander into, hung back a little way. she wanted to be sure the cops would "catch the creeps."

we stood around until more police cars came, and then the fire engines with paramedics and finally the ambulance. once the victim had been loaded into the ambulance another paramedic sprayed something onto the small pool of blood left behind on the sidewalk; it foamed like seafoam, but pink. then just the snow, and a long drive six blocks home.

Art love

two photographers i'm loving:
robyn cumming
miru kim.

Market value

i always mean to go to the farmers' market on saturdays, but the truth is saturday mornings seduce me into other things, like reading the globe and mail on the front porch, or catching up on wordscraper, or sitting on the deck feeding peanuts to the bluejays. the thought of navigating a crowd of smug edmontonian locavores is always enough to send me straight back to bed with a second cup of coffee.

come sunday morning, of course, i'm full of regret and find myself schlepping to safeway, which is always, always more depressing than anything i might have run into on saturday. i kick myself, resolving anew that next saturday really will be the day. cue weekly cycle.

but this saturday actually was the day, and and i set myself up for it by getting the right equipment: a new bike.

actually, it's not really new. i finally relieved my mother of her 1974 peugeot girl's bike and took it to redbike. "pimp my ride!" i said. (actually, testimony to the fact that i have truly become an old fart, i said "pimp my bike!." one of the guys corrected me.) they tuned it up, replaced the brake cables, and put on new wheels; when i picked it up i had them throw on a little black bike basket and a bell -- and then they charged me $122.85. just so you know i'm a moral person, i did argue with them about it at the till. i mean, the basket alone was twenty bucks. did i bring this bike in on free cable day or what? they insisted that was the right price, so for what i normally spend on coffee in a month, i had a whole new way to get around.

and boy is it great. it's heavy and black and substantial. it's cool. and it's fast. i've had mountain bikes for the last few years, and skinny tires make a huge difference. i love sitting more upright, too. it's what you want in the city, to be able to look about you a little. this is the first "girl's bike" i've ever had, having disdained them my entire life to date on the basis that -- well, that they're for girls. but i find the retro dropped bar actually quite charming. i can never find the gear shift -- it's down on the upright, not within thumb's reach at all -- and in any event there are only ten gears, not the 27 i have on my mountain bike, which is kind of a relief. i mean, seriously, what casual biker uses 27 gears?

best of all, it comes with an unexpected whallop of self-satisfaction. every time my heart thrills to my new commuter bike, i think, "it cost a hundred dollars! and it's recycled!!"

today was the big test: the downtown farmers' market. i dug out the ancient canvas panniers my mom offered me a few years ago, the ones i accepted mostly because of their ebay resale potential. they're heavy and black and perfect for the ole peugeot. i set off, feeling very cosmopolitan right from the start. but once i filled those puppies up with organic produce? shit. i was downright annoying. i mean, think of it. is there anything more virtuous than the lesbian loading duck eggs (less alkaline! more sustainable!) and heritage greens into 1970s saddlebags fixed to a recycled bike?

i can hardly stand myself.

Dirt, literal

at home i get dirty in a mild kind of way. i shower after a soccer game, say, because i'm sweaty. occasionally a day of yard work will leave me with dirt lines around my socks. but for the most part, i shower as a mode of refreshment and because, well, it's just socially coded that you gotta bathe at least every few days.

here, you shower to get clean. and even if you've only been sitting around the apartment in your boxers (not that anyone we know does that), you will need it, because this city is DIRTY. the second step of clinique's three-step skin care, the toner, was invented for places like this. you wash your face with soap and water, carefully. still, when you go to "sweep away the dead cells," as the lady at the clinique counter clinically put it, the cotton ball comes away dark. my eyes are constantly filled with grit, as are my ears. my shoes are filthy. my computer is choked with dust. after a day of walking about, my capri cuffs are carrying pantloads of the city and i have a tan line around my watch.

must go. we're on our way to the zoo with marcia's kids and mo needs advice about her shoes. "i'm just thinking my white shoes will get really dirty if i wear them today." you see what i mean?

Walking with marcia

we walked the breadth of the city, marcia and i. we didn't necessarily mean to, but we had rhythm, energy and curiosity enough that at each turn we just carried on.

we started in pretty palermo, with its two-storey buildings and big green trees. marcia and her family are staying in this part of palermo viejo, palermo soho. it's full of cute little shops and the dreaded yoga studio. mo and i are staying across the tracks in palermo hollywood. on the whole, our neighbourhood is rougher, yet gentrifying more rapidly.


we stopped at the museum of carlos gardel, the famous tango singer. i love museums organized around the cult of personality. on display was a telegram he'd sent from europe. just think: the person who typed that telegraph got it from a transmitter in europe who talked to a clerk who spoke with gardel himself!!

just beyond the gardel museum, in abasto, lies once, the jewish district. you can see it in the movie el abrazo partido. our part of once was the tailors' district, including mannequin row. we have no idea who uses these giant mannequins, nor who sells the clothes that would fit them.

once leads to monserrat and the back of the congreso we saw the other day. then lavalle opens onto the obelisk. the massive avenida 9 de julio separates monserrat from the central business district, microcentro. i love the way my little 35 mm crunches the skyline here. it's just how you feel.



san telmo, an older part of buenos aires. the sidewalks here are so narrow the buses brush your arm as they storm by.



finally, la boca, with its brightly painted storefronts. on the left is the store where i bought a football jersey for darien -- a BOCA jersey, of course. most of la boca is not tarted up for tourists. it's a working-class district and looks it.


of all the visual pleasures this day afforded, perhaps none was as exquisite as seeing marcia herself: watching her face as she talks, witnessing the way she moves through space. i got to see her think, and laugh, and inquire, and tell... we haven't had this much time together since before the twins were born in 2002.