The Dream of Turtles, An Underwater Cave and Dolphin...
Evening, we're watching across the lake, the western shore, between two cliffs a pasture, a rick of grass from beneath which are crawling dozens of turtles to the water. There's a stable against the left, or south cliff, in which a couple of peacocks are watching, the light is everywhere a uniform deep blue, beneath the south cliff I can see a faint light issuing from an underwater cave, and I want to swim beneath the water and explore, it's unseasonably warm here for this time of year...
Now a dolphin, swimming in the lake, playful, intelligent, rising out of the water on it's tail to chatter at us, swimming closer to play,...
...and L**** is explaining to me that the dolphin will die, it can't survive here, her mother is a marine biologist and she would know, besides, there was an earlier one and it died as well, and she explains there's a well intended young hippie girl across the lake that brings them back from the coast, but she doesn't understand they won't live...
We take the dolphin, heavy like a large dog, putting it L****'s jeep set out to release it at the coast, I hold it in my arms...we have to stop at gas stations and restaurants to feed it (canned tuna), keep it wet, eventually come to a village built upon a swath of river gravels in a deep valley, the river deep blue and raging against dark brown gravel dunes, and I'm wondering if they've been prospected, they're promising....a man in the village tells us of the last dolphin, he saw it die, it wasn't pleasant, I consider releasing it into the river here in the hopes it can swim to the ocean, but realize it won't make it, the river's too swift, raging, there will be hydroelectric plants and dams, it hasn't a chance, and I realize that it's Christmas day and I'm already 7 hours away from spending time with my son and daughter, am angry at L**** for dragging me along on this, at the dumb hippie that caught it, we can take the dolphin back to the lake and release it there until I have more time to properly rescue it, L**** is upset, she wants to rescue it now, but I'm being entirely remiss in my duties as a parent and so she reluctantly agrees to return it to the lake...
(Xmas in Edmonton, remarkably vivid dreams and comfortable sleep on air mattress. Only remembered this one...)
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- Category: Dreams
Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies
I had to take the daughter for Christmas. A 2 hour CGI circlejerk that involved very little of the Hobbit and far too many irrelevant, inane and unnecessary details. Of course, if you're trying to pad a single children's book into a Wagnerian Trilogy, that's the way to do it. But really, really, what a load of bollocks...Tolkien would be rolling in his grave...
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- Category: Film
Gauguin and Bonnard
A couple of interesting articles on a couple of recently recovered paintings by Gauguin and Bonnard. Following an art theft in '70, they were acquired for $30 in 1975, the paintings are currently predicted to sell for over $50 Million dollars at auction now.
Note the language used by the media to describe the "discovery" of the artwork - "Extraordinary discovery of 'Fruits on a Table' painting which hung on a factory worker's wall for decades before being found by Italy's art police" ... there are worlds to be read into "factory worker's wall" - as if it were some miracle that a factory worker should recognize or value art, esp. art of this caliber. The class hierarchy at it's worst, a far better leading line might be "Canny Factory Worker acquires Gauguin and Bonnard for $30..." or other such, but we regard the appreciation of "fine art" as a provenance exclusive to the "educated and rich".
Links: The Telegraph && CNN (the byline at the end is of interest...) && BBC. Note the fact that CNN doesn't lead with "factory worker"....a rare chance to applaud them for reporting the "relevant" news that doesn't reinforce negative class stereotypes. I would suggest shaming the BBC and The Telegraph, but it's Britain, and they are so far into 1984 that it doesn't matter.
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- Category: Found
The Wreck of the Madagascar
Some two tonnes of gold from the Australian Gold Fields went down with her. Reckoning at a conservative $1000 per ounce, the wreck is now worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $70,548,000 dollars.
Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_(ship) and here: http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?56749.
Abundant more sites exist for the curious.
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- Category: Lost
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