Posts

Showing posts from 2016

Time Passes

Image
Winter beach, Jinshatan (Jeanne Pope) It seems a long time ago since October 1 st , since my last swim. It is now November 20th, and the world has changed. However, we tend to forget that the only permanent thing in life is change …as my friend* Stanley Lewis, the Montreal sculptor, would say.   *See appendix. Change For us Montrealers, Leonard Cohen died. It is at times like these we mourn together, an old friend. He was our Main Mascot. Our legend.  I was sent this poetic photo of his house on Marianne, Montreal, by my daughter, Alyosha: Cohen's magic (Alyosha Pope) I met him once, in 2006. After Stanley Lewis’ death, we celebrated with a show on his life as artist, in the Lambi Club, on the Boulevard St. Laurent*. Cohen had been asked to attend, as he was in town,  and an old friend of Stanley. He didn’t show up. 12pm, we were packing things away, and I went down stairs to have a breather. A small rain fell, a squeegee punk* lent against the lam

October 1st. The Last Swim and Beijing Film Academy

Image
October 1st 2016 On this day 67 years ago, Mao Zedong - 毛 泽东 - officially proclaimed the People’s Republic of China.  A new country was born, a new era, a new philosophy. Mao addressing the nation (Wikipedia, public domain) Woken up by firecrackers at 6am. Skies half open as crimson flares, like shrapnel-sculpted rose petals, pound upwards in the skies. Across the street, in the flats opposite mine, there is sudden morning activity. I see into kitchens and living rooms, as they can see into mine . . . like a living dolls’ house, and oddly, rear windowesque, active voyeurism, is not intended, but one cannot divert one’s eyes. Flats (photo by Jeanne Pope) For some reason, like the Dutch, the Chinese do not seem bothered about shuttering up their homes. A few children smudge noses against the windowpanes, watching the puffy residue that stretches out smoky fingers, this way and that. The effect of entire neighborhoods celebrating National Holiday with firecracke

Fish Tales and Film

Image
Chinese mid-Autumn Festival – zhōng qiū jié - started with the fat full moon on 16th September in Pisces, and fire crackers on each corner, exploding. Then China eased into moon cake festoons and family rituals for the next three days. Some stay at home, but many Chinese people like to travel, and many come to Shandong province in eastern China, where I have the great luck to live - at the far edge of town, by Jinshatan Golden Beach – to get the last of summertime and the still warm sea. Jinshatan, 1935, courtesy of Mr Mountain-Shan On the16th as the party opened, the waves were breaking madly, having eaten part of the fishing village up the road in one huge bite; gone. I went to film that night, and all that was left of the three small homes were baby pumpkins clinging to the sand and earth, their roots like tiny veined fingers burrowing down into the flimsy soil, as if they knew that, yes, their time was up too. Everything washed away, washed clean. Tomorrow the pum