Summer has cooled off quite a bit and I’m wearing a light jacket as I sit at the terrace of the Trees Organic Coffee Shop on Granville Street, reading the Lord of the Rings in Spanish. Inside, two guys are jamming live on guitars and a mic. The sky is an angry shade of gray, its clouds blowing in from the southeast. I can see the Diamond Princess’ smoke stack at the end of the street. People wander past me, strolling down the city streets in a nonchalant fashion. No matter what day or time of the week, nobody ever seems to be busy, in Vancouver. They want to add a tenth planet to the solar system. Will all the horoscope gurus have to redesign their random prediction gimmicks? I might go to the movies later. If M. Night Shyamalan managed to come up with The Sixth Sense, maybe he also aced Lady in the Water. Or maybe not. This blog post is about nothingness. A lady walks by with a cockatoo on her shoulder. The bird is wearing a collar. Nail biter? The jamming inside has chaotic tendencies. It launches into high frequency hyperboles and leaves me behind. 101 languages are spoken around me. I wish I spoke Russian. I still love the USSR anthem. A young couple ventures into Birks. Are they looking for a ring? One ring to rule them both, and in the lightness bind them. An ambulance rushes by, loud siren screaming and heads turning. Some poor soul’s life might be hanging by a thread, or maybe they just got their pinky finger caught in a door. A person’s emergencies are another person’s bread. We feed on trouble. A society without trouble wouldn’t be able to sustain itself.

Time to go to work. Time to escape the grayness of the day, to get busy jamming on my own speeches like a trained parrot, juggling with languages, high on coffee, looking down at the diamond they board or the one they wear, at the city’s emergencies unraveling themselves, at life playing on its own big screen.

Time to fall asleep and dream of being awake again.

Time to be on time. While there remains some.

As done before in Cannes when I was a kid, and in Montreal, and probably many other cities, Vancouver holds an annual fireworks competition. It’s called the HSBC Celebration of Light and last Wednesday was the opening night, with Italy trying to redeem itself for Materazzi’s treachery.

Attempting to avoid the crowds, I opted for a Granville Island observation post, a bad choice as it turns out because the tallest fireworks barely made it up above the Burrard bridge. But it added a nice foreground to my pictures.

Along with an estimated 350,000 people, I watched and listened as the Italians dared combine the musical genius of Ennio Morricone with the tasteless rambling of Celine Dion. Ouch. Next is China, then the Czech Republic and finally Mexico.

Just back from the theatre.

Rarely do I jump on the computer to write a blog post as soon as I get back home, but… Yeah, I mean except on Fridays and Mondays, and Thursdays and Tuesdays. And on Saturdays too. And on most Wednesdays and Thursdays. Any way.

Thanks to Eva at work, I had the opportunity tonight to go see an advance screening of the upcoming movie Little Miss Sunshine. Wow. Arrived with in a bad mood, came this close to giving my ticket away to any one and leaving when I saw the line-up, didn’t expect much from the flick at all. Ended up joining the crowd’s applauds at the end.

The plot is simple. A totally dysfunctional family embarks on a road trip from Albuquerque to California in order for the daughter to enter a beauty pageant. The brother, inspired by Nietzche, has made a vow of silence until he successfully joins the Air Force. The gay uncle has just committed a suicide attempt and cannot be left alone. The grandpa swears like a street kid and is addicted to porn and drugs. The dad is unsuccessfully trying to get his 9-steps success method published. The slightly neurotic mom does her best to keep everybody together. And the daughter glides through all the chaos with a child’s innocence.

Put them all aboard an old Volkswagen minibus without a clutch that needs to be pushed to start in third gear, add a tight deadline, throw in some excellent acting, great music and you’ve got a recipe for quite a funny ride.

The movie is quite human despite all the laughs and the hilarious finale, at the same time dark and light, serious and innocent, morbid and casual. It reminded me a little of Lasse Hallström’s movies, but funnier and more outrageous. It’ll be out soon. Give it a try...

Today at Lonsdale Quay, I kindly oriented a trio of Swiss girls towards their Capilano bus and then boldly got on the wrong bus myself, overshooting my #229 by a mere 1. Once onboard #230, I unknowingly headed in the wrong direction, reading the free newspapers one can systematically find at the back of the bus, and didn’t realize my mistake until it was way too late.

So I went forward to ask the driver how to best correct my blunder; he turned out to be very helpful. For the next 10 minutes, the lad with a definite British accent entertained me with a long passionate speech about the city spending too much money paving the wrong streets while he raced frantically down Lonsdale Avenue, trying to catch up with bus #232 which would get me to Phibbs Exchange and out of trouble.

Doing so, he rushed right passed a poor lady standing at her bus stop and waiving at him desperately, without even seeing her, so focused he was on his target. We could make out the bus ahead of us but it kept its distance and stood a red light out of reach.

Finally, honking and yelling at slower cars in his way, the driver stopped right behind my bus, slamming hard on the brakes in a cloud of dust. I had my connection. I’d get to Lynn Canyon an hour late instead of two. Good times!

At Lynn Canyon, less people than on my last Sunday visit but still no way to have the place to myself. Yet the canyon is such a magical playground that it somehow needs to be shared. Lynn Creek’s water level is getting pretty low, most of the snow having melted from the surrounding peaks. But it retains its typical turquoise green color and is as inviting as ever.

The common picture here involves kids screaming playfully at the splash of icy cold waves, dogs running after pieces of wood and swimming around endlessly, and adults smiling condescendingly at all the fuss, their smile shrinking suddenly into a gasp when they take their turn dipping a toe into the stream. A few get brave enough to dip more than a toe and some even swim around for a moment, short of breath and heart pounding, trying very hard to keep that head above the chilling surface.

If I get there early - and I did today - I’ll climb up on my rock, the one that has the best seat in town, large enough to lie on but small enough not to be invaded by a horde of kids and dogs. And there I’ll watch the peaceful scene for hours, just going for a swim when I get too hot.

I don’t mind the cold water, really. After five or ten minutes in the river, I no longer feel it. That’s a great time to get out, just before the shivering appears. But it just makes it hard to stay underwater much longer than 30 seconds. Still, the very act of holding my breath and diving under, exploring the creek from an unusual point of view, carries me through space and back in time, to the pristine tropical waters of islands where the sun and the sea make life so simple.

While breath-holding underwater, I get a fleeting sensation that even scuba diving can’t beat; a feeling of instantaneous freedom, of flight, of eternity. An eternity that only lasts a few seconds, at best a few minutes, but where the timescale both stretches and shrinks out of control.

A second lasts forever, a stroke is an entire choreography, a kick a complete commitment. Instantly, I’m living in the present and aware of the smallest things, as Socrates tries to explain it to Dan in the Peaceful Warrior.

A first, while the effects of a slight hyperventilation last, before the excess of CO₂ takes over my calm and orders me to go up and breathe, there is a glorious peace, a moment of complete relaxation. A set of muscles that have been working continuously all my life finally get a break.

I am almost a fish. I’m alive only as long as my breath will last. I’m almost there.

I expect to pass through life but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do, let me do it now, as I shall not pass this way again.

Stephen Grellet, 1773-1855 e

Well, here’s a new toy to play with - I mean for me to play with, most of all. From now on, once again thanks to the new Web 2.0 standards, the links that appear within my posts will be using the Lightbox-like overlay technique so that you no longer have to reload the blog after checking one of those links out. You can now click on links and have them appear in an overlay window that’s fully navigable and then close it to come back to the blog.

Note: this serves as a fast pre-viewing tool of the links’ web page. Should you need to surf that page thoroughly or bookmark that URL, just right-click on the link in the main entry and choose « Open in a New Window » or « Open in a New Tag ».

Confused? Check out the link to Greybox or this one to my own Black & White gallery.

Monday was « Do the tourist thing » day. Courtesy of the fine folks at Landsea Tours, S. and I went for a day excursion to Victoria, the pampered way. Leaving at 8:00 am and returning around 9:30 pm, the full day tour was fun, simple and... free!

Victoria is a most colorful and flowered city and even though I’d never want to live there, it always tickles my shutter-itchy fingers. We finally visited the famous Butchart Gardens and were even lucky enough to spot a pod of killer whales from the ferry.

[Click on the photos to enlarge]

Recently reading a post in French by migrating miss lulu where she rightfully expressed puzzlement at hearing Zidane’s speech and the way he sort of justified his move in light of the provocation that preceded, I couldn’t quite agree with her conclusion.

I personally don’t think that the initial provocation and the reaction are equally evil, so for a friendly discussion’s sake, here’s my plea.

First of all, I must thank FIFA, Zidane, Materazzixm and football altogether for this great opportunity to practice my analytic view of the world, to flex my lazy humor muscles, to try and understand the actions of others and to actually use my few neurons for something else than the morning paper’s sudoku.

Granted, football isn’t the most intellectual of ‘em disciplines, but – even thought a lot of money is involved backstage – it’s still pretty much politic-free.

You see, football is tossed at us like a bone. « Go play and enjoy. » Exchange player cards, become an expert, analyze the teams, predict results, be a loud fan, express yourself. And forget that in almost all remaining areas of your life, you must shut up, follow and avoid thinking for yourself. When it comes to society and politics in particular, we are but slaves. Brainwashed, conditioned, manipulated. Our status isn’t that far from the human batteries of the Matrix.

Any way, back to our sheep (from the French « Revenons à nos moutons »). What Zidane was saying, I think, is that while we can’t excuse his own act, we should look deeper into the chain of events that caused it, as we should with everything else that happens in the world.

We address politics, wars, economy and our lives the way we address medicine: we try to cure symptoms regardless of the cause. And when one is sick, it’s too late to ignore the provocation of the virus and do nothing. We must react. When the aggression is violent enough, reaction is almost unavoidable. So why not try to prevent the attack in the first place?

All right. Reacting is bad. Zidane made a silly mistake. Period. But if we analyze any typical reaction a little further, we find that it is usually fast, dominated by emotions, often exaggerated, and rarely controlled. Does this justify reacting? No. But it humanizes it.

Let’s look at the provocation, now. Nothing fast there, in fact it is often planned long in advance. Emotions, if any, are deeply rooted and based on hatred and greed. Control is everything, it channels the provocation’s strength and guarantees its results. Provocation seeks but one thing, the devastating emotional response that will follow and grant whatever gain was needed. That, to me, is evil.

So if between the two I must choose, I will pick a reaction. Not to use it as an excuse but just because it’s the lesser of two weevils. And I will keep trying to grow beyond my reactions and upgrade them into actions. But until then, miss lulu, we are indeed still barbaric salvages.

Final note: And then one day, as individuals first and maybe even later as a race, maybe we shall finally evolve out of our aggressive nature and embrace Aikido’s philosophy which says that if someone attacks you, they have a problem and deserve your help with it. Aikido teaches harmony through a spontaneous use of energy to avoid conflict. Maybe our world is ready for a huge Aikido lesson. May the teachings of O-Sensei be heard and felt by all people as well as nations. We desperately need it. And don’t forget to bow when entering and leaving the world’s dojo...

A few early stars are already shimmering in the abyssal-blue Eastern sky, while to the west the ashes of a stunning sunset still glow within a distant high altitude cloud layer.

It’s a cool night in Vancouver. The man with a question walks at a brisk pace, irregularly stopping to setup a tripod and take snapshots of the fascinating city around him.

With each picture, a question mark. Trying to understand the world a little better through a never-ending series of still images, like as many pauses in a concerto exploding into its final crescendo.

Ultimately, the one answer he seeks to the only question that matters might or might not hide inside the immense collage all those pictures will form. They are more a means to an end. A support for reflection. A reminder to stay on the edge and look at the world from strange perspectives.

Seeking bizarre and unusual angles is only half the challenge; rendering and integrating them with the global picture is where the real poetry lies. And the same goes for questions.

The man hopes that his work can inspire others and remind them of just how great a little planet they have chosen for themselves.

And he thinks that maybe, just maybe, someone else will share his vision.

Does it matter that the Lookout seen from underneath the glass dome below appears to fit exactly into the upper circular frame? Probably not.

But what if it wasn’t a coincidence? What if someone had planned it that way, pushing the envelope of unnecessary aesthetics to an inspired level, wondering if some day a curious mind might actually look up and try to line up the two circles, satisfied for having contributed their modest part to the universe’s harmony, grateful for having been given an opportunity to show how everything in the world is interconnected?

Now maybe that’s a part of the man’s answer, right there. And he goes on walking and shooting, waiting for the answer to take shape with all the patience he can muster.

It might be a long walk. But there are countless pictures to be taken, and endless questions to arise…

I have finally posted the new panoramic view from the Lions in the Panoramic Gallery 2.