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bending_sickleDate: Friday, May 11, 2007 at 10:21 pm
While yesterday afternoon was spent over at MCarmen’s house – or, more accurately, her sofa – watching a double-ep of Dr Who and nursing a headache, this afternoon was a bit more active.
I went home for lunch, for once, though I bought a librito (lit. “small book”), which is a slice of pork cut in the “butterfly” fashion, down the middle so it’s almost split into two thinner bits, stuffed. (Survivors of McGill’s Rez. cafeteria may recall the broccoli-and-cheese stuffed and breaded pork thingies. Eeeevil.) This particular hunk of pig flesh was stuffed with more pig flesh (in the form of ham). It was yummy. I had a salad on the side, sans lettuce because I’m all out, which was…interesting.
Then I hopped of to Plaza Catalunya so I could walk down the Rambla and check out the ginormous statues they’d been talking about in the news. Curiously, I failed to see any of the sights promised and think I might’ve been on the wrong Rambla. (It’s quite a common name for pedestrian streets, meaning something like “stroll”, although Pl. Catalunya’s Rambla is like, The Rambla.) Slightly miffed, I carried on down the stroll, past the gerbils and the human-statues, the flowers and Michael Jackson imitator dancing the same old dance until I reached the art bit of the stroll.
A charcoal drawing of Robert DeNiro caught my eye, more for the style than the actual DeNiro-ness. (Technically, it’s called “(something or other) sec”, but it looks like quick charcoal lines with a little bit of smudging. The reason I liked it so much was that it reminded me of those ink sketches you find in old books, the ones made by etching a drawing on copper plates, flooding them with in and then stamping the image onto paper. This also has a technical “something or other” name.) The artist saw me looking and approached me. I, being in a good a sociable mood, decided to comment and applaud the style. We talked a bit about the style, the method and art in general. As the conversation came to a close, he gave me his card so I could look up his web page. What that means is that you all can now check out the web page of a painter named Fouad “Frank” Bousaada who sells his art and does portraits of passerbys on a street in Barcelona. Enjoy the wonder of the Global Village.
After that I went to Starbucks and read the end of Fragile Things, including the American Gods novella The Monarch of the Glen, noting for the hundredth time that I really need to learn more about Beowolf. (I probably won’t have to read the thing – not that I’d mind, really – because there’s a lovely “Upcoming Feature Film” aura about Beowolf.)
That taken care of, I scampered off to the bus station, waved to my bus as it passed me and cursed the fact that I’d now have to wait 15-20 minutes for another one. A young, possibly Polish, woman asked me if I’ve seen the 154 pass by, then sat down beside me. The bench at the bus stop started filling up. I was occupied writing a first-person zombie story in my head – as one often does - so barely registered an elderly man walking up. I slid over on the bench in case he wanted to sit down.
That was when life punched me in the arm.
Literaly. (If life is a cranky old man, in which case the ineffable plan is just as ineffable as it ever was, and E.E.Cummings is 3 thirds wrong.**)
I was punching in the arm by a crazy old man at a bus stop.
0.0 indeed.
After punching me – quite hard – he half-shouted “I’m angry!” and “They drugged me!”
I looked away and shied closer to the Polish woman, who looked at him, then at me, round-eyed, and said, “Did he punch you?” I nodded and tried not to attract the crazy’s attention. A bus pulled up, the 154, and the madman got on, then the Pole, who rolled her eyed at the man then gave me a wide encouraging smile which I returned.
Then, thinking about the utter randomness and unfairness of it all, wondering if maybe if I hadn’t moved he wouldn’t have hit me, I got a bit choked up, the chorus of Eisley’s “I Wasn’t Prepared For You” looping in my head.
No one should be randomly punched by crazy folk.
* The Doctor, in "An Unearthly Child"
** “Suppose” : suppose / Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head / […] / an old man 3 thirds / asleep
While yesterday afternoon was spent over at MCarmen’s house – or, more accurately, her sofa – watching a double-ep of Dr Who and nursing a headache, this afternoon was a bit more active.
I went home for lunch, for once, though I bought a librito (lit. “small book”), which is a slice of pork cut in the “butterfly” fashion, down the middle so it’s almost split into two thinner bits, stuffed. (Survivors of McGill’s Rez. cafeteria may recall the broccoli-and-cheese stuffed and breaded pork thingies. Eeeevil.) This particular hunk of pig flesh was stuffed with more pig flesh (in the form of ham). It was yummy. I had a salad on the side, sans lettuce because I’m all out, which was…interesting.
Then I hopped of to Plaza Catalunya so I could walk down the Rambla and check out the ginormous statues they’d been talking about in the news. Curiously, I failed to see any of the sights promised and think I might’ve been on the wrong Rambla. (It’s quite a common name for pedestrian streets, meaning something like “stroll”, although Pl. Catalunya’s Rambla is like, The Rambla.) Slightly miffed, I carried on down the stroll, past the gerbils and the human-statues, the flowers and Michael Jackson imitator dancing the same old dance until I reached the art bit of the stroll.
A charcoal drawing of Robert DeNiro caught my eye, more for the style than the actual DeNiro-ness. (Technically, it’s called “(something or other) sec”, but it looks like quick charcoal lines with a little bit of smudging. The reason I liked it so much was that it reminded me of those ink sketches you find in old books, the ones made by etching a drawing on copper plates, flooding them with in and then stamping the image onto paper. This also has a technical “something or other” name.) The artist saw me looking and approached me. I, being in a good a sociable mood, decided to comment and applaud the style. We talked a bit about the style, the method and art in general. As the conversation came to a close, he gave me his card so I could look up his web page. What that means is that you all can now check out the web page of a painter named Fouad “Frank” Bousaada who sells his art and does portraits of passerbys on a street in Barcelona. Enjoy the wonder of the Global Village.
After that I went to Starbucks and read the end of Fragile Things, including the American Gods novella The Monarch of the Glen, noting for the hundredth time that I really need to learn more about Beowolf. (I probably won’t have to read the thing – not that I’d mind, really – because there’s a lovely “Upcoming Feature Film” aura about Beowolf.)
That taken care of, I scampered off to the bus station, waved to my bus as it passed me and cursed the fact that I’d now have to wait 15-20 minutes for another one. A young, possibly Polish, woman asked me if I’ve seen the 154 pass by, then sat down beside me. The bench at the bus stop started filling up. I was occupied writing a first-person zombie story in my head – as one often does - so barely registered an elderly man walking up. I slid over on the bench in case he wanted to sit down.
That was when life punched me in the arm.
Literaly. (If life is a cranky old man, in which case the ineffable plan is just as ineffable as it ever was, and E.E.Cummings is 3 thirds wrong.**)
I was punching in the arm by a crazy old man at a bus stop.
0.0 indeed.
After punching me – quite hard – he half-shouted “I’m angry!” and “They drugged me!”
I looked away and shied closer to the Polish woman, who looked at him, then at me, round-eyed, and said, “Did he punch you?” I nodded and tried not to attract the crazy’s attention. A bus pulled up, the 154, and the madman got on, then the Pole, who rolled her eyed at the man then gave me a wide encouraging smile which I returned.
Then, thinking about the utter randomness and unfairness of it all, wondering if maybe if I hadn’t moved he wouldn’t have hit me, I got a bit choked up, the chorus of Eisley’s “I Wasn’t Prepared For You” looping in my head.
No one should be randomly punched by crazy folk.
* The Doctor, in "An Unearthly Child"
** “Suppose” : suppose / Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head / […] / an old man 3 thirds / asleep
