Back from the Big Smoke

View of the CN tower and the Art Gallery of Ontario

I feel lucky. My flights home from Toronto were only 4 hours delayed. I made it home at 4 am yesterday morning. Walking through Calgary airport, getting my connecting flight, was a bit surreal. It looked a little like an emergency disaster shelter, crowded with many weary people trying to sleep on the floor, using their luggage as pillows. Some had been there for 3 days. It was extremely unusual for storm systems to be present across the entire country at once.

I'm always surprised in these mini crisis that people are so well behaved. People just sigh, get on their cell phones, complain to people who know them or go off to the airport bar and drink. The people at the boarding gate next to mine had to get back on the plane they just came off of and go back to the city they just left to get a connecting flight to Vancouver. Then a woman spoke up,"but this plane [referring to mine] is going to Abbotsford, [an hours outside Vancouver] Why can't I go on this plane!" I was expecting the beginning of a big scene. It also occurred to me, having averaged about 4 hours of sleep a night for the past week, you become a little like a hungry, mangy dog with a bone. That distressed woman could have slowly cut off my arm with a sharp, rusty metal file and I still wouldn't give up my seat on the plane. Hmmm... I think that imagery is a result from reading The Road during my trip. A brilliant book, hauntingly beautiful, but horrific and bleak, bleak, bleak.

During my trip I did manage to do one thing unrelated to my fathers death. My sisters and I went to the newly renovated Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). The space was redesigned by Frank Gehry, hosting an expanded collection. It was wonderful. The highlight for me was an installation entitled "The Index" by Montreal artist David Altmejd. It's a disco infused, kitschy Audubon nightmare, and I thought it was spectacular. But like all installation pieces, you need to walk through it to really experience it fully.

Looking at art from Rubens, to Picasso to pieces like Altmejd's, a selected scope of art history was at my fingertips. Contemporary art that (the proverbial) 'they' consider important can be summed up simply:
Large scale, obsessive created art pieces using common materials or objects, not art materials, remade into recognizable forms = iconic. There was sports bags and golf bags made into large totem poles, thousands of plastic craft beads made into a large curtained landscape wall hanging. Fine wire mesh that looked a little like window screening made into a replica of a bathroom. Although there was some big paintings, they seemed weak next to these other art spectacles. I thought it was exciting and pointless all at the same time, and if that feeling doesn't sum up living in the modern world I don't know what does.

Now I'm off to bake gingerbread cookies with my kids for the big red guy's appearance tomorrow. And honestly, I can't think of anything I'd rather do more right now. Simple pleasures.

I'm here but not here...

Snowmaggeden. The media loves their sensationalist tag lines and that's what their calling the storm here in the east. I'm in Toronto right now, typing from my sister's laptop (so no pictures for your viewing pleasure). I've been trudging through the snow today and while I think the intensity of the storm is a bit of an exaggeration, I'm a bit panicked when my plane leaves in 2 days I may get stuck sleeping in the Winnipeg airport before Christmas. Now if they could just divert the plane to Costa Rica for a few days... Any suggestions for ways to pass the hours at an airport? Maybe I should take the opportunity to learn origami or juggling.


I went to my father's funeral today. It was rough, but made a little easier by seeing childhood friends of family and being together with my siblings. Surprisingly, an old Estonian Baptist minister (almost an oxymoron, Estonians are notoriously moderate Christians, if at all) who was the only one available to do the funeral, made it easier by being a bit wacko. Very little talk about my dad, but lots of preaching for us to make sure our souls are saved. He was odd, with no talent for metaphors, a few were just too weird for me to remember. His 'loopiness', as someone remarked, made the experience annoying enough to distract me from much sadness. But I am grateful my brother, Victor and sister, Karin, spoke about my father, mentioning his amazing kindness and patience and I just want to hug them again for their wonderful words.

Grief works in strange ways. All week, I haven't been feeling much more than stress. I've been busy trying to prepare myself for the trip out here as well as prepare my husband for his brief adventure in single parenting.

Me to my daughters:
" Be good, make it easy for dad, but not TOO easy. I don't want him to think it's all easy. Ummm...you can beat each other up twice, and Olivia, never stop asking for a puppy."

I've been too busy and exhausted to grieve. I had 3 hours of sleep on Wednesday before leaving for the airport at 3:00am. Just before boarding I realized I left my drivers license in my other purse. The airline staff said they couldn't let me on, but could book me on a flight later the next day once I had my ID in order. Only then did I finally lose it - cried, sobbed, explained I had to get to my fathers funeral, and sobbed some more. So they relented. 11 hours later I arrived for what normally would be a five and half hour flight, but my luggage was left in another city.

Things are much better now, I have clothes, a toothbrush, the funeral is finished, I'm looking forward to going home and hearing the familiar sounds of kids screaming, the dogs barking, the hamster OCD'ing on his plastic wheel all night... I'll be back online, back to myself in a few days.

Thanks to everyone for commenting, emailing and phoning their sympathies, that meant a lot.

Waiting...

This isn't going to be much of a post. After urging others to post daily with me, I was a dropout in the December challenge yesterday. My mind has been too distracted. My 96 yr old father has been admitted twice to the hospital since yesterday morning. It isn't clear what the problem is yet, but it sounds serious, he is after all 96. Since it's on the other side of the country, there's nothing for me to do but wait for phone calls. My AMAZING sisters, Ingrid and Tiina have been keeping me well posted.

It's been a bit of a reflective day as well. My father has a constitution of steel. He's had TB, heart attacks, a stroke, prostrate cancer and has bounced back from all of that miraculously well to become his good, old mellow self again in record time. And mellow he is. When he was a boy, his mother saw him lying on the grass,looking down at something,completely motionless. When she went to him, he was staring at a wild strawberry, red ripe on one side and green on the other. He said he was watching the strawberry and waiting for it to ripen and remained there for hours. Sometimes, when I'm thinking about role models for zen like patience, I forget there has been one part of my life all along.

So as I'm waiting for some word from thousands of kilometers away, I realize whatever happens, all I wish for is for his comfort. 96 is a good, long life. If you were to choose the length of your life, what would you choose? Could you choose? Or would your thoughts immediately shift to how meaningful you make that life. If you were able to accomplish much of what you wanted and experienced the full joy and richness of life by the time you were 60, would you want to live to 110. These thoughts occurred to me yesterday morning when reading Edward Winkleman's blog post The Immortality Paradox. I've just started reading his blog, it' s a great read about art, the art world and the art market (high end). This post was more philosophical about post-human ideals, the conquering of death and extending life spans to 1000 yrs and the moral argument surrounding the desire for immortality. It's an interesting read, the comments even more so.

Slice of Life

I went cloud chasing today. Living sandwiched between mountains and an ocean, experiencing extremes in weather is common. It was a clear and sunny day. However, while driving around doing errands, my easily distracted brain noticed a big, white, fluffy cloud stretching across the ground down the hill. I suppose the other term would be fog, but I'm full of child like wonder today, so I prefer cloud. I dropped everything to go walk through it. Here's a picture I took this afternoon. I was cloaked in a white mist. A few hundred feet on either side of me, I would have been standing in bright sun. It was a completely surreal experience. I wanted to rush home and paint a huge picture with just layers and layers of buttery oil paints and try to capture this subtlety, but not today... there's groceries, dinner, kids to pick up and parcels to send away. Meh, maybe tomorrow.

And here's a picture of one of my daughters at her school's big Christmas concert last night. Yep, that's her in the red and black top. And I was so pleased with myself for arriving early, thinking what great seats we got this year....

Anyone?

I failed to post last night, nothing I would have written would have been coherent anyway, too little sleep in too many days. When I woke up this morning, I was confronted with my very first email requesting a temporary loan from Nigeria! I have been waiting and waiting for the honour of this scam in all the years I've been online and finally it came. I'm worthy of spam now. I'm SOMEBODY!

Unfortunately, not long after, my computer told me it had deflected an outside viral attack. It did this many times. There was a nano battle occurring right in front of me, so I assisted by using my power of invisibility - disconnecting the internet. Then I felt lost. Because a computer with no web access? What's the point? Free cell? Solitaire? So I wasted time doing that, to prolong the insane amount of things I have planned today. Now I have to get back to all those things.

I have a few posts planned for the December Challenge. But I'd like to use one my lifelines please. I'm asking YOU, reader, for ideas. Anyone? Keep in mind, I'm not above personal humiliation right now (to a degree). Topics that are off limits are: automobile things (because nothing bores me more) and team sports (same reason) and that's it, anyone?

OY! PA-LEESE...

I'm beginning my Christmas shopping for my kids this week. Luckily, righteous and diligent parents have saved me from making morally irresponsible choices. This holiday season major toy manufacturers have teamed up with the likes of Al-Qaeda and possibly SATAN himself to offer these outwardly innocent but insidiously dangerous toys. Take a look.

That clip was from Associated Press. I wanted to see updates from this news story so I fearfully explored that path of ugly stupidity and took a peek at ultra right-wing Fox New's take on the story. Not surprisingly, Fox News expands the doll's messages to include Satanic ones as well. And if you understand what they are from the video clip? then you're marked and you must BURN, WITCH BURN!

The power of suggestion is everything. Adults pick up many accidental little quirks in kids toys. Mike Mozart's humorous reviews of common toys demonstrates this point. This one's my favourite, how... HOW did Disney miss this before it went into production?!

The one case of true toy sabotage I know of is an act of genius in my book. In the early 1990's a group claiming to be the BLO, the Barbie Liberation Organization took 300 talking Barbie and G.I. Joe Dolls and switched the voice boxes before returning them to the store. G.I said things as, "I hate math" and "will we ever have enough clothes?" while Barbie said, "Eat lead, Cobra!" and "Vengeance is Mine!".

Mike Bononno was the mastermind behind the prank and went on to form The Yes Men with Andy Bichlbaum. They're activists, posing as representatives of the World Trade Organization, Exxon, Dupont and others to expose the true nature of 'The Man'. They call it "identity correction" and their weapon is elaborate satirical pranks. The Yes Men documentary is smart and gut-busting funny. Here's the trailer for it. Go rent it! Now I'm off to sleep to rest up before confronting the crazy Christmas Shoppers. G'Night.

**A big thanks to Andrea for the doll news clip (keep them coming!)

Peace and Quiet

Quiet Place

Ellen Sereda

A little doodle I did while taking a break from scrubbing the mysterious red stuff on the bottom shelf of my fridge today. It turned into a drawing that I quite like and is available matted in my Etsy shop. Now my Etsy widget on the side is symmetrical again (yay).

When you sketch purely from imagination as I was doing with this drawing, it's pretty clear that you're influenced by whatever is going on at that moment. In my case, my daughters were bickering for most of the weekend. After exhausting myself as a referee, I gave up and hid in the basement with my pen and paper and let them fight it out. My youngest has a new (only mildly disturbing) saying she uses when her older sister is squeezing her or pinning her down, "That hurts so much it doesn't even hurt anymore!" I should have bred more. In a big families, the sibling torture is nicely spread around, not so damn focused.

So I was craving some peace and quiet. Today, I also received some old photos of my parents and my family when we were all young. Both my parents escaped from Estonia during WWII. We grew up as part of an Estonian community in Ontario. My parents Estonian friends were close enough for my siblings and I to call them Aunt and Uncle, but our only true blood relatives in Canada were my Great Aunt and her family. Thanks to the magic of Face Book, my cousin has contacted me and has been sending old photos. I love getting them. As I was looking at them today I thought of old rustic, Estonian, woodsy like things when I drew the picture (the background is pure BC though).

It's interesting to see old photos of yourself that you've never seen before. Here is one photo sent today of me and two of my sisters with my great aunt. I'm the little, squishy one sitting down. Awww, poor me, cute but a little like a flunkie alien child from Village of the Damned. I would be posed for world domination if only I could find my other shoe...

Ocean Music - WIP

I sold a few things in my Etsy store and thought I really need to start adding more pieces. I'll be adding this little painting shortly. This is my daughter, who actually has started enjoying posing for me, so I'm taking advantage of it. I'm reworking this piece, trying to determine what I want for the background. I'm thinking the suggestion of a beach at night and cityscape in the distance. Basically Vancouver, which is where I spent the entire day today.

I would post some of my pictures of my escape from suburbia into the big city, but when I downloaded them, they were all blurry, except for this one...


I've never seen this picture before. It was no doubt, taken by one of my daughters, who DO understand technology better than me. This is my poor, old dog. It's the holidays and time to humiliate the pets. Gently placed hats allowed, garland and lights, no.

Forgive me, we had our weekly family movie night and today's screening was, Fred Claus. I'm still recovering. So I'll leave with a beautiful singer, Lior and his wonderful video done with silhouette marionettes. And yes, I've made peace with YouTube.

What to Put on Barbies Walls

Lucien Freuds' painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995) sold for $33 million this past May, a record for a painting by a living artist. I'm kind of wanting to use a mini version of it for the interior of the Barbie house I'm working on. But no, that is cruel. I'll give my daughters a Barbie house that is pretty and bright with no social statement attached. Also, I'm imaging that awkward moment when their friends leave our house and tell their parents, "...and their mom made them a doll house and pasted pictures of naked, fat ladies on the wall". Uh.....no

I've always liked Freuds work. He's known for his stark painterly portraits that never romanticize the subject. He paints flesh, exaggerating folds and crevices like some kind of figurative topographer. His painting of a pregnant Kate Moss is unlike the Kate Moss we're used to seeing. And if this queen was a 15th century one, he just might lose his head. He gets to the blood and guts of what people are, which is...blood and guts. To me, his art makes more accurate statements about the human condition than anything his dopey grandpa said.