Life in LAX
Someday I would like to come to LA and actually take some time and enjoy myself.. have some fun.. go to a few spots.. walk around and see what to do and what to see..
There are two problems...one I never seem to have the time. Yes--- its true I am sitting here in the Air Canada lounge with four hours on my hand but thats not really a couple of days... its just four wasted hours. I neve seem to be able to shelve work and rock and roll for a while. Its not money, I find hotels cheap and life is short and so its not that its just time
The second perplexing roadblock is -what to do. The last thing I want to do is visit the tourist sites like I am a senior on a bus tour. I want to go to bars..see interesting people.. talk to people...go to interesting spots..eat in funky but delicious restuarants. Finding all of these great places takes time. The places change. I can't describe exactly what I am looking for so its hard to ask someone for help. Great experiences just happen, its hard to plan them, but I need a starting point. If you had a night in Los Angeles --- what would you do?
I think it can be summed up... Its LA dude... and I am in LAX for the next 4 hours-- story of my life... near the action but stuck on the edges
Lonely Saturday is just fine
Some days its ok to be alone. I was away all week for work and I came back to Calgary dead to the world. So Saturday feeling like a slug I dragged myself to my bicycle and rode to the Bow river valley.
We are blessed with a huge bike path system all through the feeder creeks and the rivers. It was cool today so the trails were empty.
I love that.. I ride alone..I enjoy the scenery, the chance to "free think", and the freedom of it all.
I think some days I don't think enough. Why am I against the war in Iraq but in favour of the war in Afghanistan. Am I being spun. The mountains really look snowy in the distance. I should set a goal for the number of times I ski this season, will the Toronto Maple leafs win the cup this year, I wonder what possessed that man to stab the infant in the head on the freeway in Louisiana...can I quit my job and start a business. ..
Yes I know that nothing was accomplished other than arriving back two hours later happily tired.
I think people denigrate doing things alone. I think it stops us from doing things. Culturally we do not get out and do things alone because of the stigma of "lonely and pathetic"
Of course it would have been more fun to have a sweetheart ride with me with a picnic lunch on the carrier with a cool bottle of white wine and a blanket for making love in the tall grass, but that Norman Rockwell painting is not the only picture in the gallery. If we wait for the perfect picture maybe we miss the art itself.
My lonely Saturday was just fine...
Beautiful Picture -- Coulor, Art, Simpler Times "tahiti"
painted by paul Gaugiun , one of the leading French painters of the Post impressionist period, whose development of a conceptual method of representation was a decisive step for 20th-century art. From 1891 he lived and worked in Tahiti and elsewhere in the South Pacific. where obviously this painting titles "Tahiti" was created. Although his main achievements were to lie elsewhere, Gauguin was, to use a fanciful metaphor, nursed in the bosom of Impressionism. (yes sports fans someone wrote that "nursed at the bosom") His attitudes to art were deeply influenced by his experience of its first exhibition, and he himself participated in those of 1880, 1881 and 1882. The son of a French journalist and a Peruvian Creole, whose mother had been a writer and a follower of Saint-Simon, he was brought up in Lima, joined the merchant navy in 1865, and in 1872 began a successful career as a stockbroker in Paris.
In 1874 he saw the first Impressionist exhibition, which completely entranced him and confirmed his desire to become a painter. He spent some 17,000 francs on works by Manet, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir and Guillaumin. In 1883-84 the bank that employed him got into difficulties and Gauguin was able to paint every day. He settled for a while in Rouen, partly because Paris was too expensive for a man with five children, partly because he thought it would be full of wealthy patrons who might buy his works. Rouen proved a disappointment, and he joined his wife Mette and children, who had gone back to Denmark, where she had been born. His experience of Denmark was not a happy one and, having returned to Paris, he went to paint in Pont-Aven, a well-known resort for artists. Eventually he arrived in Tahiti...
The painting itself is a beauty of colour and impact. The forbidden Fruit. the drawing of your eyes to the fruit itself. A masterful painting.
Hockey Morning In Canada
Hockey resurrects the spirit, the sweat washes away the tarnish and the cool air sharpens the senses.
Yes it was hockey morning in Canada. Some attend church Sunday mornings but I find my spirituality on the ice.
No I am not a hockey god or star of the game but I always want to be. I always want to be better even though I know that the downside is a more compelling argument.
When you are done and like today my shirt is soaked through and I can feel my heart still beating a mile a minute it I feel like I am on top of the world.. even though to be fair my play today was not only average but at a couple of juntures downright sloppy. I not only did not score but I cannot think of one play that was stellar and yet I feel fab.
Today was probably the last time this summer I will arrive at the rink in my shorts and sandals. Snow is a possibility for next weekend. Its funny, lots of guys say that they enjoy hockey more in the summer because they come to the rink in shorts. The only good thing about snow next weekend is that we are only 90 days from pond hockey..
yes.. the hockeyman loves hockey- go figure
Weighty problems........
I haven't exercised in three days. Why has this happened? I have kind of given up going to the gym. I will walk or ride my bike or play basketball in the driveway but I have to do something.
I know I am a much better person if I have sweated today. I know i feel better. Two days and I feel fluffy..
As regular readers have read my blog and know that I am fat and Forty seven so fluffy is kind of like "regular readers" only a shade of the truth.
I could rail against work and how I had no time the last two days but this as we all know is just whining-- its not reality.. I could be walking right now.. or jogging...I just don't have that exercise fever. its like procrastinating on taking medicine that you know will help you in spite of moaning and complaining of how it hurts. I need someone to call me for a game of tennis... or a bike ride..or a game of football...I need that little kickstart. Yes..I would play badminton... anything..
tomorrow is a crazy day at work but even on crazy days when I have the fever I take my lunch break and go to Stanley park and walk for a half an hour... when I am feeling my oats I run up the river bank to the top to show that I am still 15 years old.. I need to quit talking about it and rally what semblance I have of energy and attack something..
Body and soul..I need it...
This one is going up in my office...
On the right is Nahini ridge which was the hike of a couple of weeks ago and the valley is Nahini creek which is next up......
Nothing else to say...amidst the the wild and crazy times - walking in these woods lets me think...
America
I went to middle America this week... Chicago, Iowa, and Kansas City. You can still pay 65$ for a decent hotel in Des Moines. KC barbecue is a fabulous lunch but how do I eat that much every day... Those who read this already know I love Chicago.
The only bad part of my trip was on plane from Toronto to Chicago. I sat with a guy who obviously had a management job with a steel company.. Well dressed working on his laptop, blackberry toting 40ish management guy.
We started talking about the economy and the strength of it I made the point that I thought Alan Greenspan (former federal reserve chairman) was the most important american of the last 15 years. I just think that he managed to keep the world out of a deep recession and keep real wages rising.
The guy agreed with me that Greenspan had done a good job but then he launched into how great a job George Bush had done by cutting taxes. That cutting taxes was leading to prosperity. I don't understand that. He said that the deficit was manageable.. I said but look how much money you would have to make people's lives better if there was no war in Iraq.
This he did not like. He said that its a lot better to have the war over there than to have it over here.
he didn't like it when I asked him if he thought that the war was creating a whole generation of new terrorists like the soviet afghan war had created the last generation....
nope he didn't think so... "we " are showing them... nope..he did not beleive that there were no ties between Al Queda and Iraq.
I firmly believe these things... I think the war in terror in Iraq will create an exponential number of terrorists.... If I blamed america for the death of my parents and I am 16 --I would be a terrorist. I think that these kind of wars create arms in the wrong places.
I think that taking the war to Afghanistan was absolutely correct... you can't have camps to train people to come and attack us and get away with it.. you can' harbor a man who publicly claims to have sponsored a campaign of terror. But the war in Iraq? Nope I think George's administrator was still harboured emotions from Desert storm and lived the dream to the cost of many lives and billions of dollars.
The point is that there are many different view points. I am not sure how we get that way. Do we read different material... are our neighbors different? am I just a Canadian pacifist clouded by Canadian Media... .. I left thinking that the guy was just along for the ride and not using his mind to help the world-- but this is just the man in me talking...wanting to best him , or slash him..
This is the world.. many views, not enough judges to make decisions on what in really right, let alone what historically was right
