flemmings | (no subject)

My younger brother got married in December '88, in a Catholic service in a Catholic church. The music was all Mozart, and very nice too. Except I'd been doing intensive Japanese studies that fall-- literature (even though in translation), language, film. Since September my mind had been in some misty grey brown place, Buddhist Japan of the medieval eras, black and white Japan of the 50s & 60s directors. I felt oddly odd out of sync with what should have been very familiar territory-- the religion and architecture of my childhood and the classical music of my 30s. It all seemed a little... overdone. Too many colours; and of course, too many notes.

This apropos of having gone to a Taizé service last night to see how Anglicans do the meditation thing. They 'invite' the bell, which is nicely Buddhist. They also emphasize that you're nobody till Somebody loves you, which er well is the reverse of the Buddhism I've been reading lately, for sure. I might have been more appreciative if I hadn't discovered, half an hour before, that the antibiotic drops I'd been taking pre- and post-op expired in March 2011, which cataracted me had read as 2012.

The Church of the Red Eamer is a (long) block away from the Towering Dungheap of Mammon at Bedford and Bloor. The Dungheap contains a swanky Bank of Montreal with no outdoor ATM and no access after hours, which alone is reason enough to hate it-- quite apart from the people-friendly bank it abandoned a block away at St George, and the lively restaurants and pubs its new building displaced. In line with that, Mammon now boasts a Shoppers' Drugmart, an absurdly overpriced drug chain that swallows up independents.

But only Shoppers' are open on Sundays, so I dropped in and consulted the absurdly young female pharmacist on duty. Who assured me that expiry dates on these drugs mean the stuff is good for another six months or so. Relieved that I wasn't about to develop an infection, I thanked her and silently wished her a better position.

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Incidentally and at a total tangent - if you were buying a present for Gouen when in an alternate Victorian world, what might you think of getting him?

(Sorry. Am attempting a second volume of the Library story. So far my best thought is a book of original Occitan sonnets, but while that has antiquarian interest, I'm not sure it'd appeal to Gouen's actual affection for poetry.)

Can Gouen read Occitan? ^_^

I mean, a chanson de geste ought to appeal to both the warrior and the scholar, but it might be a bit dry for the Romantic-leaning Gouen; whereas I'm told the more emotional Occitan pieces have an awful lot of emphasis on the domina (or dompne, isn't it?) which would confuse a dragon no matter whose settei he happens to be in.

To interest him I think you need some kind of surface simple poetry with packed depths, the kind that echoes Chinese poetry. Alas, all that occurs to me is Gerard Manley Hopkins.

I was afraid of something like that, but thank you for confirming it. :)

(Gouen is a contagious character. He gets around.)