n. One who invents possible worlds.
My tentative plan to visit Israel has been scrapped since Avi mentioned here that
Americans, Canadians, and Brits are sometimes taken aback by the lack of availability of comic books when abroad. Israel , as an example, contains only a handful of comic shops.
Sorry, kiddos…
I’ve been sitting on this one a while, as you can tell. Broken up into parts for your convenience.
Transcribed from my journal.
December 24.
Well, here I am in a sandwich shop in the middle of Bruges, sipping hot chocolate and a little buzzed from the cup of mulled wine I had out in the square. The trip in was uneventful – train to London Bridge and then St Pancras International, then Bruxelles-Midi, then here. My hotel room is small but it’s all mine. It’s been months since I had a room to myself.
December 25.
I went off aiming for the Minnewater, but the cathedral bells drew me in and I ended up staying for the mass at Sintsalvatorskathedraal. No one else knew the hymns so I was all right there.
I tell you, the Catholics know how to do religion! First there was grand organ music and then a procession – a white-robed priest holding up a golden crucifix on a pole, then another swinging a censer. Then solemn young altarboys and altargirls in white with wooden crosses. Then solemn, nerdy-looking young priests, also in white. Then priests in cloth-of-gold with red crosses, wearing the crabby kind of expression that comes with not getting laid for about 50 or 60 years. Then one in cloth-of-gold with a mitre on, and a short man who despite not having anything on his head managed to emanate quiet authority. (Later, for some reason, he put on a red yarmulke.) [I went on Wikipedia later and figured out he must have been a Cardinal.]
Once again I intended to go to the Beguinage, but it was lunchtime by the time the service (Mass?) ended. Not as dull as I’d feared. I could catch a few words here and there [everything was in Dutch], and could tell what was a Bible reading and what was a rote reading or brakha, etc.
It being Xmas most places were closed – except – some ancestral instinct perhaps brought me past a Chinese restaurant. I couldn’t NOT go in. But my Chinese side forced me to order just about the only Chinese thing on the menu, ma po tofu. So there I was, eating alone (eccentric!) among my own people [the other patrons, who were probably Jewish], feeling ineffably at home.
After many wanderings through the cold, deserted medieval labyrinth that is Bruges on Christmas Day (the silence broken only by church bells and the odd horse-and-carriage towing tourists) I arrived at the Minnewater, a very pretty canalside park, even in the barrenness of winter. While watching white swans (their necks puffed up against the cold) and geese and hens and ducks fighting over crumbs, standing beside another tourist, I had the opportunity to try out a bit of my French: “Les oies, elles sont méchantes,” I remarked as a gray goose took a bite of down out of a fowl lower down the pecking order.
From the Minnewater it’s a hop and a jump to the Beguinage. The sense of peace and stillness there stays with me. Stark clean white-and-black buildings, the brilliantly green grass, the trees (all leaning slightly north) reaching way, way up. And everywhere little signs saying SHHHH which goes a long way towards explaining the sense of quiet…
Out again, coming across a walkway along the main canal, I began to follow it on a whim and followed it damn near halfway around the city! – I mean the “egg” of central Bruges. At some point I accidentally turned down along one of their canals and ended up back at the Markt.
Had a bite to eat there and later went in search of one of the beer cafés mentioned in Wikipedia, ’t Brugs Beertje. (Beer is bear. Ysbeer or ijsbeer – “ice-bear” – is polar bear.) Tried Stille Nacht while making small talk @ the bar with one of the locals. (Note: In Belgium – or @ least Bruges – bar staff serve you at your table, as in Canada – perhaps the practice of going up to the bar for everything is unique to Britain? Must investigate.)
By sheer chance I’d picked the beer with 12% alc. vol. & by the time I got home, tipsy, I fell straight asleep. Woke up early but decided for the first time in ages to sleep in the following day. If you can’t indulge yourself on Christmas holiday, when can you…?
______
See the rest of my holiday photos.
So next Monday through Friday I’ll be off on holiday in Bruges. I’m going on the Eurostar and staying in a decent-looking place that is not a hostel. I’d be super excited if I weren’t so tired. More later.
As usual, Jennie’s way ahead of me, but better late than never.
And for all your patience, here’s a gratuitous cat picture:
He is like an immense marshmallow. With paws.
On the plane, en route to Heathrow, too hyped to sleep. I’ve already realized I left behind my camera, battery, and charger — let’s hope they can be mailed to me.
We’re somewhere over the North Atlantic. There’s nothing to be seen but the wing outside the window, a few indistinct clouds and stars, and the faint, coppery spatter of city lights receding quickly behind us. It’s about halfway through the flight.
I stayed out all last night with Genna at Nuit Blanche. It’s bigger this year, more corporate, more coordinated. In a way, last year’s was more fun — we didn’t know what to expect, we’d never seen the city transformed like that before. But I quite enjoyed this year too, and found a few favourites.
Our first must-see was the Secular Confession Booth in Yorkville, a simple stall with a canvas divider where you could pour out your heart to the artist on the other side. I got a few things off my chest and felt quite purified. The other main Yorkville attraction was the installation in Lower Bay, but the lineup was far too intimidating! There’s something about a secret abandoned subway station that has mass appeal.
Two installations at the Eaton Centre also stood out. In the foyer outside Sears, people twisted and linked long balloons to create a giant, amorphous balloon pile. You could line up for a few minutes to play inside it, creating chambers and tunnels and skylights. From the outside the effect was that of a rainbow-coloured quivering amoeba, strangely fascinating to watch.
The other exhibit was at the Yonge and Dundas entrance. Astroturf, Christmas trees and a big ceiling-mounted LCD screen created the appearance of a forest meadow under a blue sky. At a long table strewn with printer paper, brushes and inkpots, attendees painted designs and pictures and then laid them out to dry in the grass. As the artist in charge scanned each picture in, it appeared in white fluffy cloud form, drifting across the screen/sky. People lay back on the grass to watch the clouds go by.
Over in Trinity-Bellwoods, one artist presented an exquisitely molded chocolate deer, which she then carved up on a table, Thanksgiving-style, and rationed out to passersby. It was good chocolate, too.
Of course, this was Nuit Blanche, so there were also lots of light-based installations: strings and blankets of stars, an illuminated swing in a playground gussied up with space-age furniture, a glowing white Buckyball-esque dome, streetlamps’ bulbs replaced with flickering reddish flame — lots of little touches that established the evening’s Halloween-in-September feel.
Quote of the night: We stopped in at Isabel Bader Theatre where they were looping a short, weird little clip of a deer and a wolf confined in a small white room. The wolf paces around, lolls on the floor, yawns, and watches the deer. The deer is very nervous. When the clip started looping again we left the theatre, and as we passed by we heard one man ask plaintively, “Where’s the carnage?”
Perhaps because the weather was very nice this time, Genna and I didn’t have trouble staying awake and on our feet all night. We spent the last hour watching short films outside OCAD, leaning back in comfy rocking seats, while the pot smoke from the guys two seats over washed over us.
I got back and showered and put on fresh clothes and crashed, and then packed and went to Word on the Street (to say good-bye to Becca) and then left. And now here I am, an uncomfortable mix of groggy and excited, rubbing my cramped knees and trying to sleep. I can see Orion outside my window. It’s beautiful.
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Come for the rock, stay for the klezmer.
