Tempests and Teapots
Dec. 1st, 2004 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleThe story of a vacation, in too little detail and too many parentheses.
The long room, The Tempest, teapots, art museums, and travel.
I came to work this morning, and my colleagues were full of questions about my vacation. "What part of Montreal were you in?" I have no idea, and it's probably a good thing they can’t read my mind, because I was only thinking of that long room when they asked me. (Want to go back. Want one of my own.) Tourist guides don't mention the part of Montreal with the dolfin quilt, and the dimensional warp caused by draining the time-travel bookshop too quickly. (I'm not sure it's always there. Dimensional warps can be unreliable that way.) But it's the best part of Montreal.
It's full of books! And Papersky! And Rysmiel, who was a very pleasant surprise for me to meet. And Zorinth and MaryLace. And books. And books. And books. And good tea. And endless conversation about books. And if I haven't slept so well in more than a year, it must be because I haven't managed to surround myself with sufficient books yet. (I'm working on it. I went to the time-travelers' bookshop. And gleaned Papersky and Rysmiel's cull shelf. Though I found the astonishing bit of old Tey somewhere else altogether.) The wind howled just outside the long room, and I was safe and warm inside with bare branches over the window, and shelves of poetry at my feet. Mary Renault wrote more books than I ever knew existed, and they were all behind my head, and I still slept like a toddler.
There is a great deal more to The Tempest than I thought there was. (I always thought there was a lot.) Madd Harold is a genius. If you’re in Montreal this week, see it. And if you’re anywhere it's possible to see any Madd Harold performances (I think he's setting something up in Toronto) you should go for it. They should invite him to Stratford. I'll post more about this when I have more time to think about the impact of the play. For the time being, I'm still stunned. The acting, the staging, the dance (omigod, the dance!)...it was the edgiest production I've ever seen. (Edgiest production of anything. I can say this so confidently because I've never seen any other Madd Harold productions. Utterly brilliant.) I mean "edgy" in the sense of messing with play/reality boundaries and in the sense of sexual aggressiveness. Trying to explain what I mean by "utterly brilliant" reduces me to sputtering incoherence and wondering if maybe dance is the best way to express some things. As I said, I'm still stunned.
Every hour or so, just about when most of the people I know reach for coffee or pop, and I start feeling thirsty and wanting a drink of water, Papersky will say something like, "Hows about a cuppa tea?" This has led her to quite a collection of teas and teapots, some of which are really quite charming. The last full day I was there, we found a little shop on Notre Dame (Avenue? Rue? Something like that.) Half of it was full of teas and teapots, and the other half was full of marvelous little decorative things. Unlike most decorative stuff I've seen (especially in this price range), this was actually well-designed and well-engineered If you filled the little teapots with tea for a doll party, a child with small hands could pour from them without spilling. It even looks like some of the little animals might actually live if they were to be magically animated (modulo the usual toy issues with digestion and reproduction.)
I like pictures that can hold a charge of story. Abstract art very rarely appeals to me. Art deco does not appeal to me. (I keep looking at the pieces and thinking they'd be so much nicer without the stupid fiddly bits. Which are rather the point of art deco, as I understand it.) Papersky and MaryLace and I spent a day at the art museum in Ottawa, and we had a wonderful time. There are a great many pictures which seem to have been painted with one story in mind, but they have such rich detail that we could pick out more stories from the background. (Or sometimes from another context, as when a portrait was recognizable as a character from Farthing.) I'm sure Papersky and I were a great trial to MaryLace and the museum staff, especially with our reinterpretations of some of the religious paintings.
The bus trip to Montreal wasn't bad. The bus trip home was pretty unpleasant, just in terms of motion-sickness, fatigue, and delays. I didn't have any difficulties at the border, at all. I guess I just look innocent. Some of my fellow passengers were questioned at great length. Crossing into Canada, I was listening to the peculiar things the border guard asked the people ahead of me in line, trying to figure out appropriate answers. (What's the most expensive thing I have with me? My glasses? My dental appliance? Maybe my coat, if I hadn't bought it on sale, and if it hadn't depreciated.) Someone who asks about "alcohol, tobacco, firearms, or drugs?" in one breath doesn't seem to be asking about anti-seizure meds (prescribed by one's doctor, provided by one's local pharmacy, carried along on vacation in moderate quantity) or anything like that. But they didn't ask me any of that, just looked at my passport, asked where I lived and how long I'd be staying, and sent me through.
On the way back to the US, the line took very much longer, though hardly anyone was on the bus. A very young woman was taken off to another room, presumably to be searched, while I was talking to the US border guard. She had dark skin and expensive clothes, and she looked like an undergraduate. I was rattled enough by the guard hustling her off to forget all about the chocolate in my suitcase and answer "Did you buy any alcohol? Tobacco? Food?" with babbling about having had 3 tangerines, but they were a gift, I hadn't bought them, and I'd started eating one of them but didn't know if he needed to count the partial tangerine. He told me to go away. A long time later, the girl got back on the bus. She looked rumpled and tearstained. She looked at me and flinched -- maybe because she couldn't bear to be stared at; maybe because I was reading _In Conquest Born_. Maybe she remembered overhearing the nonsense about the tangerines, which now seemed hopelessly bitter. I wanted to offer her something, some comfort or reassurance, an apology for my country. But all I could do was look away, as everyone pretended she could have privacy to pull herself together. The bus started up again, going south, going home.
The long room, The Tempest, teapots, art museums, and travel.
I came to work this morning, and my colleagues were full of questions about my vacation. "What part of Montreal were you in?" I have no idea, and it's probably a good thing they can’t read my mind, because I was only thinking of that long room when they asked me. (Want to go back. Want one of my own.) Tourist guides don't mention the part of Montreal with the dolfin quilt, and the dimensional warp caused by draining the time-travel bookshop too quickly. (I'm not sure it's always there. Dimensional warps can be unreliable that way.) But it's the best part of Montreal.
It's full of books! And Papersky! And Rysmiel, who was a very pleasant surprise for me to meet. And Zorinth and MaryLace. And books. And books. And books. And good tea. And endless conversation about books. And if I haven't slept so well in more than a year, it must be because I haven't managed to surround myself with sufficient books yet. (I'm working on it. I went to the time-travelers' bookshop. And gleaned Papersky and Rysmiel's cull shelf. Though I found the astonishing bit of old Tey somewhere else altogether.) The wind howled just outside the long room, and I was safe and warm inside with bare branches over the window, and shelves of poetry at my feet. Mary Renault wrote more books than I ever knew existed, and they were all behind my head, and I still slept like a toddler.
There is a great deal more to The Tempest than I thought there was. (I always thought there was a lot.) Madd Harold is a genius. If you’re in Montreal this week, see it. And if you’re anywhere it's possible to see any Madd Harold performances (I think he's setting something up in Toronto) you should go for it. They should invite him to Stratford. I'll post more about this when I have more time to think about the impact of the play. For the time being, I'm still stunned. The acting, the staging, the dance (omigod, the dance!)...it was the edgiest production I've ever seen. (Edgiest production of anything. I can say this so confidently because I've never seen any other Madd Harold productions. Utterly brilliant.) I mean "edgy" in the sense of messing with play/reality boundaries and in the sense of sexual aggressiveness. Trying to explain what I mean by "utterly brilliant" reduces me to sputtering incoherence and wondering if maybe dance is the best way to express some things. As I said, I'm still stunned.
Every hour or so, just about when most of the people I know reach for coffee or pop, and I start feeling thirsty and wanting a drink of water, Papersky will say something like, "Hows about a cuppa tea?" This has led her to quite a collection of teas and teapots, some of which are really quite charming. The last full day I was there, we found a little shop on Notre Dame (Avenue? Rue? Something like that.) Half of it was full of teas and teapots, and the other half was full of marvelous little decorative things. Unlike most decorative stuff I've seen (especially in this price range), this was actually well-designed and well-engineered If you filled the little teapots with tea for a doll party, a child with small hands could pour from them without spilling. It even looks like some of the little animals might actually live if they were to be magically animated (modulo the usual toy issues with digestion and reproduction.)
I like pictures that can hold a charge of story. Abstract art very rarely appeals to me. Art deco does not appeal to me. (I keep looking at the pieces and thinking they'd be so much nicer without the stupid fiddly bits. Which are rather the point of art deco, as I understand it.) Papersky and MaryLace and I spent a day at the art museum in Ottawa, and we had a wonderful time. There are a great many pictures which seem to have been painted with one story in mind, but they have such rich detail that we could pick out more stories from the background. (Or sometimes from another context, as when a portrait was recognizable as a character from Farthing.) I'm sure Papersky and I were a great trial to MaryLace and the museum staff, especially with our reinterpretations of some of the religious paintings.
The bus trip to Montreal wasn't bad. The bus trip home was pretty unpleasant, just in terms of motion-sickness, fatigue, and delays. I didn't have any difficulties at the border, at all. I guess I just look innocent. Some of my fellow passengers were questioned at great length. Crossing into Canada, I was listening to the peculiar things the border guard asked the people ahead of me in line, trying to figure out appropriate answers. (What's the most expensive thing I have with me? My glasses? My dental appliance? Maybe my coat, if I hadn't bought it on sale, and if it hadn't depreciated.) Someone who asks about "alcohol, tobacco, firearms, or drugs?" in one breath doesn't seem to be asking about anti-seizure meds (prescribed by one's doctor, provided by one's local pharmacy, carried along on vacation in moderate quantity) or anything like that. But they didn't ask me any of that, just looked at my passport, asked where I lived and how long I'd be staying, and sent me through.
On the way back to the US, the line took very much longer, though hardly anyone was on the bus. A very young woman was taken off to another room, presumably to be searched, while I was talking to the US border guard. She had dark skin and expensive clothes, and she looked like an undergraduate. I was rattled enough by the guard hustling her off to forget all about the chocolate in my suitcase and answer "Did you buy any alcohol? Tobacco? Food?" with babbling about having had 3 tangerines, but they were a gift, I hadn't bought them, and I'd started eating one of them but didn't know if he needed to count the partial tangerine. He told me to go away. A long time later, the girl got back on the bus. She looked rumpled and tearstained. She looked at me and flinched -- maybe because she couldn't bear to be stared at; maybe because I was reading _In Conquest Born_. Maybe she remembered overhearing the nonsense about the tangerines, which now seemed hopelessly bitter. I wanted to offer her something, some comfort or reassurance, an apology for my country. But all I could do was look away, as everyone pretended she could have privacy to pull herself together. The bus started up again, going south, going home.
