Bali 8- Bits & Pieces

Here are some bits and pieces about Bali which will have to do without whole essays.

Rice Fields
The terraced rice fields have been one of the most glorious sights in Bali. Surprisingly, because of the tropical climate, we see rice at all different stages of life - brilliant, bright green baby shoots, mature rows of plants in water, goldy-green plants heavy with grain about to be harvested and light brown stalks sitting in the finished fields. Flocks of ducks are ushered into the fallow fields to eat insects and algae and to fertilise. Some of the ducks have red or blue paint marks on them to distinguish them from their neighbor's - like the sheep in Ireland. At sundown we see people with flags on long poles herding the ducks out of the fields - very funny to watch as they waggle along on their quacky way.








Satellite Dishes
Satellite dishes point straight up rather than tipped at an angle. Peter tells me this is because satellites are placed over the equator so that their position doesn't change as the two poles tilt their way thorough the year. A geosynchronous orbit.

Balinese Food
Balinese food is delicious! We took a cooking class and learned to make a tempe dish that used 14 different spices. Three of them I'd never met before. One was fresh turmeric - you cut into the ginger-like root and it is bright orange inside! The tempe is very different from what we buy in health food stores at home - I am much more convinced by the tempe here. The main cooking oil is coconut which is also used, of course, for its milk and shredded meat. The only odd food surprise has been that much of the fruit is flavourless. Not true of papayas and watermelon, out of which they make lovely juice. We have learned about a new fruit called snake fruit. It is crunchy and its husk looks very like a snake skin. For some reason I get a big thrill out of learning about new fruits. Cacao is not native to Indonesia - brought here by the Dutch; but there are many cacao plantations. Chocolate trees! If you have a sauce in a restaurant meal, it is often served in a little dish made from a banana leaf. The most exotic thing we've eaten is banana flower - yup, the flower from a banana tree!



Sidewalks
If there are sidewalks in the bigger town and cities, they are often broken with gigantic holes going to who knows where. They have great ups and down at steep angles. If you try to walk and look at the same time, you do so at your peril.

Women and Construction
We have seen many road work crews of women labourers. Usually they are shovelling gravel. Yesterday we passed two women at a construction site each carrying 25 bricks on their heads!

Education
The state pays for elementary school, though not for secondary. Children all wear uniforms - shirts and then shorts for the boys and skirts for the girls. School starts at seven in the morning and is often over by eleven. We see lots of young kids driving motor scooters to and from school.

Frangipani
There are frangipani trees everywhere. The fallen yellow flowers have the most fragrant, glorious scent. The Balinese use the flowers in offerings and just as a beautiful decoration to line a path. Don't you love saying the word 'frangipani'?


Sent from my iPhone


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Location:Ubud, Bali

Bali 7 - Other People's Religion

I walk through the jungle and come to a stairway leading to a series of huge stone archways receding into the distance. Great flounces of bougainvillaea flowers cascade down the sides. Strange stone creatures - fierce cats, snarling dragons, laughing demons - guard these entranceways. Inside, more steps rise to shrines covered in tiers of thick thatched roofs. Every corner post has a guardian carved into it. Statues are wrapped in black and white checked cloth and covered with gold tasseled parasols. Each direction I turn there are the faces of demons or gods laughing at me. The air is filled with incense and always there are offerings of fresh fruit and flowers in intricately woven palm baskets.















Have I arrived onto a set of an Indian Jones movie? No, though this is definitely where Hollywood found much of its imagery. Where I am is in Bali visiting one of many temples. Bali is primarily Hindu, though the Hinduism is mixed with Animism and Buddhism.





Bali is the size of Prince Edward Island. There are hundreds and hundreds of temples in Bali and that's not including the temples in everyone's house or compound. There seem to be non-stop ceremonies - weddings, cremations, temple birthdays. A festival to invite the gods down to visit; another to see them off again. We see women constantly weaving palm leaves to make offerings and men building yet another bamboo structure to hold the offerings. Both men and women have grains of cooked rice stuck to their foreheads and necks - signs that they have just come from a ceremony. Groups of boys march through the streets of the town banging drums accompanied by a two person Barong puppet - a serpent/lion/dragon creature. The set up of the houses and compounds is all done in a particular alignment to the sacred mountains of Bali. Many of the temples are built around sacred trees. Traffic intersections and public parks have gigantic concrete statues of gods from the Ramayana. The glorious Balinese gamelan music originates in the temples as does much of the exquisite Balinese dancing.









Clearly religion is a very central and dominant force in Bali. On one hand, I'm flabbergasted by the amount of time and resources given over to worship. We have heard that sometimes people's jobs are affected by the amount of time required by the social and religious obligations. I wonder about the person who wants a different way of life. On the other hand I'm greatly admiring of a culture where art and beauty are so firmly woven into the central fabric of the society via the religion. I'm also struck with the general demeanour of the people. To the outside eye there is a marked easiness and a confidence about the Balinese. I wonder if their religion is the source of this contentment.


Almost by definition other people's religions are difficult to understand. Twenty nine days here as a tourist is giving me only the merest glimpse into a very different and ancient belief system. A belief system encompasses all of how you see the world. Much of the meaning here is far beyond my ken. Yet, I find connections: I too have my demons, though I haven't given them such concrete forms as the Balinese. I understand the idea of a daily offering. How can I not be awe struck by a culture where you can reach the ears of the gods with the spiritual act of flying kites!




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Location:Batukaru Mountain, Bali

Bali 6 - Motorcycle Mama

Desire is a great motivator. When my nephew, Sam, was a baby I was intrigued watching him learn to crawl. Crawling is a complicated sequence - you've got to get yourself up, get all those limbs coordinated and then not be too scared to hit the starter and take off. If you do fall, you've got to pick your self up and get moving again. Watching Sam, I realised that it was desire that persuaded him to overcome such obstacles. In his case it was usually desire for a particular bright and shiny toy across the room.

I have never ridden a motorcycle in my life - I think I've been on the back of one twice and even that made me nervous. At 57 I certainly have had no plans, no fantasies even, of getting on one of those dangerous, life threatening machines. So what was the bright shiny toy that got me onto a motor scooter here in Bali for three days in a row?

The first day we did it I wanted more snorkelling and the only way to get there without paying $30 each for an unnecessary boat ride was to rent a motor scooter for $5 a day. (Thriftiness as desire?) I was terrified. I'm still convinced that the only thing that kept me upright were my clenched fists and my teeth firmly sunk into my lips! I was shaking with fear. On the way back I calmed down enough to begin to notice the view. I was surprised by how beautiful it was. I really must have been scared on the outward bound trip because I hadn't noticed all kinds of scenery. Peter finally got my attention from behind and pointed out that we'd gone the wrong way! No wonder it was so beautiful - we were off the tourist track along the coast and had gone up a lovely green valley. Terraced rice paddies climbed the hills. Houses, chickens and villages went by with no advertising. Suddenly a new shiny toy appeared! If I could overcome my fear of motor scooters enough, we could explore some more of these tiny roads going up into the hills.









Today we took off early and headed up towards the (inactive) volcano living to the west of us. There was about ten minutes on a main road which had a new flavour of terror, but then we began to climb up the mountains. We took turns onto smaller and smaller roads. So beautiful! Palm trees and jungly greens. Small compounds with chickens and children and beautiful flowers in front. A man walking a large pig on a rope. Fields of rice, corn and beans. We turned onto one small road and came suddenly to a road block. A bamboo gate across the road with about seven men in attendance all wearing red sarongs and red head scarves. They indicated we should turn around and go back. We did with no hesitation at all. But what was it? Construction? A ceremony? Police something? One of those unsolvable mysteries when you travel to foreign lands. Eventually one of our roads turned into a dirt track. We weren't up for that, though we saw a Balinese man come down it with two huge containers of petrol on the back of his motor cycle. We passed a temple where many motorcycles & scooters were parked outside. A quick peak on the way by revealed a large group of people preparing for a ceremony- weaving palm leaf containers for offerings and building bamboo structures to decorate.





Was I still scared? Oh you bet! Not quite as terrified as the first day; however I never exceeded 20 kph. I coasted down the (big, steep) hills gripping the brakes on and off in jerky stutters. Poor patient Peter stayed behind me and kept saying loving supportive words of encouragement each time we stopped. (You didn't have the brake lights on nearly as many times on that hill.)

So it's Motorcycle Mama! I'll add one note to that appellation. As we interact here with people in the tourist trade - wait & hotel staff, drivers, guides and salespeople, we're often referred to as Mama and Poppa. "Poppa will have the grilled fish and Mama the tempe satay." Or, trying to sell us some ginseng tea, "Poppa strong, make Mama happy!"

I've never thought of myself as a Mama, let alone a Motorcycle Mama, but hey, traveling expands all kinds of horizons.


(And CF, maybe I'll be joining you on the open road!)


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Location:Amed, Bali

Bali 5 - Snorkelling!

First time ever snorkelling and I'm hooked like a fish! But fish like I've never seen before. There were so many things I didn't know and hadn't seen.


Even though I've been told that the white pieces of coral one sees on someone's ornament shelf along side pretty shells and ceramic bowls were dead and just the bones of the creatures, still, it didn't really sink in. The truth is, I've held in my mind's eye a picture of a coral reef as a tangle of white boney shapes with some fish swimming through. Not a garden of shapes, colours and textures! The ones that surprised me the most were the big flat table corals, like giant mushrooms spreading out. There were shapes like fans and snaky tangles with hairy bits. Then the brain corals looking for all the world like brains and spongey things and weird blobs of all sizes. The corals were red, green, purple, lavender and many subtle gray-browns. I was very surprised that they weren't all connected. I thought that was what a reef was. Instead I could see the sandy ocean floor. And then the fish! Of course I've seen lots of tropical fish in aquariums, but what a thrill to see them living their fishy lives right there in front of me! Amazing shapes and colours. Neon blue, stripy yellow and black ones, fish with beautiful curvy fins, fish in large schools - oh my oh my! And then everything surrounded by the most beautiful turquoise sea.





















I felt as if I was in a dream world. Along with what I was seeing, was the lovely sensation of floating in the sea. It is all so amniotic. Fairyland of a different sort. (There are many Fairylands in my consciousness!)

I think what I liked most was the delight of something so new and different. It shook up my sometimes jaded eye.

Tech Notes and Credit
If the technology is working properly you will see some wonderful photos here of the coral reef I've been describing. It was great fun chasing a fish to try and photograph it - often the subject swam right out of the frame just as I clicked. As you can imagine, many were deleted. Although the pics here are the ones that I shot, I must give credit to Peter for researching and organising the technology for us to do this.


We are using our Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5 with an amazing housing made by Panasonic specifically for this camera. We call it the Carapace. It allows us to manipulate all the camera controls underwater and has (as you can see) this amazingly clear plastic right in front of the lens. It also has a superb gasket sealing the whole thing. Glorious piece of technology.

Speaking of Peter, if you aren't already doing so, you might enjoy reading his take of our Bali trip:

http://uhclem.livejournal.com/


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Location:Amed, Bali

Bali 4 - Fairyland (Deconstructed)

I like to breath in the countryside of a new land when I travel. It is as though I don't quite understand what I'm seeing until I've had a sense of both the natural world of this new place and its cultivated agricultural sister. I walked with my mother in Spain in the mountain villages of Andulucia - sweet air filled with almonds groves and honey scented yellow broome flowers. In Ireland there is all that open space of turf bogs, fields of grazing sheep, interspersed with stone walls, farms with white cottages and villages with pubs called Finnegan's.

While we've stayed in various flavours of urban settings here in Bali, we've also been exposed a little bit to the countryside. Yesterday there was a long visit to the jungly wilds of a botanical garden, which felt like walking through a Rousseau painting - big leafed plants flopping about, orchids, palms, bamboo, bird of paradise flowers and many plants I only know in their potted versions. The most extensive exposure has been a marvelous day spent bicycling with a guide through 32 kms of rice fields and villages.


I was not at all prepared for the Balinese rural countryside. As we bicycled through the main road of villages, I was amazed to see high walls on either side of the road. Not waist high walls to keep livestock in, but two metre high walls that you can't see over! A number of generations of family live together in these compounds, and then the compounds are strung together with no gaps between the walls. Sometimes there is a shop selling noodles and pop bottles full of petrol which opens onto the road and there are dogs and chickens and children wandering around, but the walls still dominate. Inside the compounds are a number of buildings, some with a roof but no walls and a temple with walls but no roof. The temples have many tall square towers. These are the compound shrines. Sometimes they have statues of gods or demons in front of them, though often there is nothing (to my eye) inside. They always have fresh offerings with flowers and incense. The outside of the shrines are usually wrapped in gold or black and white checked cloths. Over top are ornate, brightly coloured parasols. So what you see cycling down the road are high walls with towers wrapped in pretty cloth and umbrellas sticking up. Then, because it is the holiday Galungan, the street is decorated with (as mentioned in Bali 2), miles of bent bamboo poles decorated with punk haircuts of coloured rattan. And, because of that same holiday, this is an auspicious time to get married. There were many compound entranceways done up to the nines with loops and frills and archways made of rattan and woven palm leaves.








In between the villages are the rice fields - mostly bright bright green and stepped into different levels. I always thought rice terraces were to do with maximising the land on hillsides. These fields at different heights are to do with an elaborate irrigation system where the water flows from field to field. Every field has a shrine. Scattered about between the rice paddies and in front of the walls are beautiful flowers. I saw a giant poinsettia plant (with no Christmas decorations near it)!


What did all this Rousseau jungle, ornate whimsical decorations, wrapped towers, stone dragons and stepped rice fields look like to me? Fairyland. It seemed like a magical other world. Exotic. Mysterious. Eastern. Oriental. Other.

So let's just deconstruct that a bit. (Some of you will know that I'm starting graduate school in the fall - just getting the post modern, critical theory engine revved up here.) All right, I know that real people with complex lives that include television and motorcycles live in those villages; that working in rice fields is a back breaking way to scrap out a meagre existence; that tourism with all its ills offers an economically better lifestyle. So where do my images of fairyland come from? I was read many fairytales as a child - Hans Andersen and the Brothers Grimm as well as tales from around the world - Chinese, Russian, Indian and other stories. Many of the illustrations in these books were by an Irishman named Harry Clarke. Lush, patterned images with swirls and curls and saturated colours. He was very influenced by Art Nouveau, Art Deco and the French Symbolist movement. (Thank you Wikipedia!) All those Europeans making the East exotic. "Orientalism" as Edward Said called it (though he was referring to Western eyes looking at the Middle East, not south east Asia, nonetheless, the term still stands here.)

Middle age is an odd time. I see my exotic fairyland and at the same time I see my deconstructed Orientalism. Do I see truth? I'm guessing it is all just layers of seeing.


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Location:Ubud, Bali

Bali 3 - Intricacies

I spent much of last year drawing trees. They are surprisingly difficult to draw as all that foliage is a messy tangle to wrestle into some kind of order. Obviously one can't draw every leaf - you'd go mad. Artists have solved the problem in different ways. Draw the overall shape of the tree and imply the detail; give a bit of detail in the foreground and imply the rest. Much Indian and Balinese art solves the problem by stylizing the leaves into simplified repetitive patterns. The patterns then bump up against one another to make gloriously intricate designs.

Today we visited a museum which showed a lot of what is called modern-traditional Balinese art. I think what that means is traditional subject matter (mostly narratives from the Hindu story cycles, the Ramayana, the Tantri Kamandaka, (no, I'd never heard of that second one either) and folklore) using more modern techniques. I liked best the black ink ones from the 1930s. These older images showed very little perspective, though there was enough shadow modelling to show a tree, tiger or demon as 3D. But what I really loved is how every part of the image is covered in pattern. The water has a pattern of waves, the leaves are shown in a pattern, the tiger is all repetitive pattern, the god of a thousand heads (so cool!) has a myriad heads turned into pattern and then there is random pattern filling in any left over spaces.


And speaking of pattern, there is the intricate wooden carving - how do all those curlicues and swirls work together? Stone carving too, though now much of that is cast into concrete. I was drawing a dragon-demon from a concrete entrance way this morning and was amazed at how all those stylised pieces of wing and horn fit together. And, supreme amoung pattern, there is the fabric. Batik, ikat and modern prints everywhere. For sale, yes, of course, but many men and women still wear beautiful sarongs. Here the patterns are layered over and over one another in a riot of colour and design.











So have you ever tried to put different patterns together? These are so formal, so complicated and done without Photoshop! What a mind, what a way of seeing the world that can produce such complex intricacies. I'm in awe.


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Location:Ubud, Bali

Bali 2 - A Silver Lining with Monkeys

It had seemed like a good idea. The brochure said it was going to take us to good snorkel places, introduce us to sea turtles, show us a hidden beach, walk us through a magnificent temple and end the day with a grilled fish barbecue watching a beautiful sunset. It sounded like a deal to us! (The fact that the brochure was the garish product of a large corporation, offering 10 different packages and was clearly (in hindsight) aimed at a different kind of tourist than us, slipped our notice.) The beach was crowded with noisy boats; at some point the young boy steering ours at high speed stopped it up against 20 others and pointed into the water. "But where is the reef?" said Peter looking through the glass bottomed boat into some cloudy green water. The boy indicated over there and over the side we went. The best thing I saw were some divers learning how to use their equipment underneath me and one lonely blue and yellow fish. No coral, no groups of fish, no sea anemones - nada. Very disappointed and a little pissed off, Peter, I and the young Singaporian couple who had taken the same bait, climbed back into the boat. The turtles were even more of a swize. By the time we had met up with our (very pleasant) driver again, the 4 of us were none too happy. The next stop was "Dreamland' , a not so hidden beach where surfers played and the tourist industry is building huge villas. Peter did have fun getting knocked about by the waves and I liked the people watching. Finally the temple, with busloads of other visitors.
So what was the silver lining? The most interesting part of the day for me was driving around southern Bali seeing how people live. That and the monkeys.
The driving is crazy - high speed and narrow lanes with millions of motor scooters swooshing around between cars, buses and trucks. Children and dogs play precariously close to the road. There is a great humble jumble of life occurring just a few feet back. Houses and shops have their fronts open during the day so you can see the bottles of pop being sold, the women cooking and the concrete forms being poured. There are many billboards advertising many familiar products. To my surprise, lots of the signs are in English. I'm not sure if those are just for the tourist trade, though I saw a hospital listing all its departments in English, so that didn't make sense. Amidst all this commerce, people were putting up the most fanciful, glorious decorations - huge, flexible bamboo sticks which bend over the street like lampposts and were covered with bent ribbons of rattan in Dr. Seuss like crazy, spiky arrangements. These are in honour of a religious holiday starting today called Galungan. So, I liked the drive.





And how could I not like the monkeys at the temple? Gray, furry monkeys walking around, grooming one another, having sex, nursing babies and generally watching the world go by. All looking like reflections of ourselves, only with longer tails. We had been warned to leave our hats, bags and eyeglasses in the car. There were three young women walking just ahead of me when I saw this monkey suddenly set his sights on them. Lickety split her foot went up and Mr Monkey had her flip flop off in a second! And he wasn't giving it back; he just sat there with the purple flip flop in one hand and the nice piece of yellow banana in the other. We figured the old woman who sells the banana and the monkeys have a deal - the monkey steals the flip flop, the woman makes the sale and the monkey gets the food!
In the end a very interesting day; just not the one I had expected.


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Location:Southern Bali

First Impressions

Remember geography lessons in grade school? Angles of the sun, solstices, seasons and the equator? Here I am very close to the equator at 6 in the evening of my first day in Bali and it is starting to get dark - how can this be? The sun is up for 12 and down for 12 - equal all year around. On what seems to me to be a hot summer's day, it is very odd for the light to disappear so early.

The 20 minute drive late last night from the airport to our hotel was strange and dreamlike. I saw weird, round buildings with frilly edges rising out of the darkness. Palm trees flickered by in the city lights. Like Vietnam and Laos, the only other parts of Asia I've been to, there were stores with big garage doors that open onto the road. The most dramatic sight were two huge statues in the middle of roundabouts: one was a gigantic depiction of Krishna driving a chariot with five dynamic, fiery horses pulling in all directions; the second another huge god carrying two fallen bodies. Nothing staid, pompous or still about these two.

And this morning I draw the curtains and go out onto the balcony to see steep rooftops covered in thatch, carved lattice work on the edge of the roof, lots of palms, flowers and greenery. The smell of charcoal and incense and lots of birds singing. Oh that feeling of anticipation and excitement about new and different to come!


Still jet lagged but too excited to sleep, we go out this morning for the first look around. Frangipane and bouganvilla flowers are everywhere - yellow for the former and cascades of magenta for the latter. Many people persistently ask us if we want to rent bikes, motorcycles or taxis - I remind myself Bali is a mostly tourist based economy and people are trying to make a living. What strikes me most is that every shop, every entranceway, every temple, every everything has an offering. Little or big, these are beautiful arrangements of flowers, leaves, fruits and sometimes incense in bowls or small bamboo easily made baskets. There is often no water, so they are just made anew each day. How amazing to be in a society where people weave such beauty and meaning into their daily lives.





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Location:Sanur, Bali

The Value of Art

On the first day of my exhibition, Tree of Life, I sold my image, Cherry Blossoms, to a woman who had never bought a piece of art before.

Some people buy art as an investment. One day Artist X might (hey, gambling is about risk too) become famous and abracadabra, lots of money is made. But there is more than one kind of value.

When I was a girl, my mother gave me a small wedgewood vase for my birthday. You know traditional wedgewood: neoclassical imagery - an 18th century fantasy of ancient Greek women and children in toga-esque gowns flowing in white relief over a dusky blue background. Images a romantic girl would love - and I did. As well as feeding my dreams of fancy ladies preening, my mother was also teaching the glorious lesson of feasting my eyes on beauty.  As a young teen, she once gave me two posters - a Chagall and a Braque - the art to see in the world was getting more complex. And on my 21st birthday, she asked me what object of hers I would like as a gift. I said, "The Goya print" - an image of a captive man writhing in tortuous chains. Like my mother before me, finally, in my thirties, I put it in the back of a closet because I found it way too graphic and painful to look at. At 21 did I really not understand that the image was straight narrative - Goya chronicled the horrors of war  - as well as working as metaphor? Somehow I didn't. I hung the picture next to Bosch's Christ Carrying the Cross where Christ is surrounded by a sea of seething, grotesque, distorted humanity. I can't quite access anymore what it was that my young adult self got from looking at this pain. (At the same age I also thought grungy bars were about REAL LIFE.) With all these gifts, my mother taught me about the value of art.

I like living with art. I have a marquetry piece – it is of a floating boat constructed from carefully cut veneer shapes made by Ontario artist Stephen Haigh. I never tire of this picture. I float with the boat. Sometimes it reflects back to me an existential aloneness. Sometimes I delight in the 'trick' of the wood grain being the misty horizon line. In our kitchen is an acrylic painting by now deceased Ontario artist Kathleen Brindley of a glorious bunch of beets flying through the wild blue yonder. It conjures for me the same joie-de-vivre that Kathleen had, despite her hard life.

I could see that the woman who bought Cherry Blossoms loved it. She spoke of how hard it is to do things for herself. Once, in a time of prolonged gray, winter misery, she had called up a friend and, very spontaneously, gone for 4 days to the Bahamas. There she swam with dolphins, felt the sun on her skin and remembered that the life of Life was still there. She said that my painting gave her the same feeling.

There were a number of transactions between the woman and I. One of them involved money; another occurred on a different plane. I took a piece of my vision and with craft and experience, I wove it into my painting. Living with Cherry Blossoms, her Seeing is a little deeper, a little richer. That's value.

Obsession

My studio mate asked me a few days ago if I was relieved that all the artwork was finished for the show. Yes! The fear that I wouldn’t make it is behind me; there is all the other work to do – photographing and cataloging, organizing the food for the reception, more invitations to send out and today, hanging the show. So yes, I’m relieved, excited and looking forward to the next chapter. 

But there is another side to this story as well. The truth is I already miss the obsession of working on the show. It is a little healthier than some addictions, but it is still an addiction. When I am in the grip of obsession, I know what I have to do in the morning. There is a force that is steering the boat and I am just along for the ride.  I’m having supper, I’m thinking about the next piece of art. I wake in the middle of the night gripped by the next coat of varnish/soft gel that has to go on. I’m looking out the car window at trees and thinking about new ways to capture their forms. I love this feeling. I love the amazing power it has. I worked 12 hour days for almost 6 weeks straight. When I’m possessed I do yoga every morning, eat healthier and get to bed on time. All that matters is the art. The rest of the world barely exists.

And that, of course, is the problem – the rest of Life. I fortunately have a loving, supportive partner who not only puts up with my emotional disappearance but also aids and abets me with delicious meals and taking over the household management while I am gone. But you can’t say it is a balanced way to live.

So I am returning to the complexity of Life. Now it is time to figure out how to cook again with a broken foot and crutches. While I was possessed, I hardly noticed that I was disabled!. I’ve just  taken in that the seasons have turned from spring to summer. I begin to read the paper again. My long suffering friends will get phone calls, my dog will get more playtime. Most of all Peter will no longer feel he is living alone.

Healthier, but I sure do miss the Force.

Exhibition in Toronto

Click on invitation so that you can read it! And here are the details in case you don't:

Diana Meredith @ Red Eye Studio Gallery

Tree of Life

An exhibition of new mixed media digital art

Reception: July 8  4:30 - 7:00 PM

July 7 - July 25, 2010; Wed-Sun 12-5

RedEye Studio Gallery

The Distillery District

Case Goods Warehouse

Building 74 (east of Balzac’s)

55 Mill Street, Toronto

T: 416-366-3393