24 March 2023 – The temperature is back in single digits, but never mind, it is almost spring.
I know this, as I approach Dude Chilling Park, because:
One, hardy crocuses are in full bloom…
Two, a hardy book-lover is sprawled on the grass with her must-read…
and, Three, the slackwire enthusiasts are back.
Once again, they’ve strung two lines here at the park’s north-west corner, and they are honing their skills.
The nearest bench is occupied by a couple of skate-boarders taking a break, so I lean against a tree. As always, I am dumbfounded by the coordination and focus this art requires.
Black Shirt is midway on one of the two lines, a little tentative in her moves.
She bails.
But moments later, on the companion line, her focus is absolute, and her moves are slow, controlled, and rock-steady.
End to end, Black Shirt executes a perfect walk.
I circle the park and, passing the adjacent tennis courts, notice that the Phantom Yarn Artist’s contributions to the fence are still intact.
Nearly intact.
This bit is the remnant of Dr. Bonnie Henry’s famous mantra from the early days of COVID: “Be kind, be calm, be safe.”
It’s the important bit, isn’t it? And always in season.
It beats a soft tattoo on the hood of my Seriously Waterproof Coat, and it makes gleaming magic of the every-day.
Fallen leaves…
garden rocks…
a stretch of sidewalk…
with puddle lakes & dancing raindrop circles…
a water fountain…
with its own dancing raindrops, real and painted…
chair circles in Dude Chilling Park, usually occupied & invisible, now empty & visible & admirable, a reminder of all the conversations, all the neighbourhood connections, that they (literally) support…
5 September 2022 – I’m cutting through Dude Chilling Park and see the celebrations: one, two, three.
All around the Dude: baby-shower preparations.
Over closer to Guelph Street, two young women wearing ankle bells, one of them holding a drum and explaining a few last details before starting their dance.
Down by Guelph and East 7th, two slack wires slung among the trees, and two intent young practitioners.
I back up to the park boundary and install myself for a moment on Bei’s Mama’s Bench…
for the long view.
Female slack wire artist, left foreground; baby shower, left distance; female dancers right distance (one each side of a foreground tree); and the male slack wire artist over there on the right.
Here we all are! Chilling with our Dude, this bright Labour Day morning.
8 May 2022 – “Artspeak” is the term that I (and some equally snippy friends) use to disparage gallery signage we consider unduly precious about the art they are describing.
This Japanese camellia blossom, recently dropped into this bronze hand, made me think about that term another way ’round.
Restore ‘speak’ to verb form, I say to myself: the power of art to communicate with the viewer.
More specifically, the power of some public art pieces to speak so powerfully to passers-by — everyday, you-and-me passers-by — that they become part of their community, adopted by that community, beloved.
My mind jumps a few kilometres east to my own neighbourhood park, officially Guelph Park, unofficially and pervasively Dude Chilling Park. Because of this bronze statue by Michael Dennis…
officially Reclining Figure, but unofficially The Dude who — just look at him — is chilling. We chill with him. We hang with him from our favourite park bench…
and we cuddle up to him with our picnic lunches.
The fact I enjoy seeing this kind of familiarity is… extraordinary. I respect art work! It is art, dammit, so admire with your eyes and keep your hands (and other bodily bits) safely out of range! And yet…
With the onset of the pandemic, The Dude became not only beloved, but comforting. The park was a safe place to visit, everybody carefully distanced, and, for the first time, I saw people sit on the plinth, creep into the Dude’s embrace. He is now regularly visited this way. He has never been vandalized.
Very similar story for another bronze sculpture, this one by Henry Moore: Large Two Forms, which for a very long time sat by the sidewalk at the north-east corner of the Art Gallery of Ontario, owner of the sculpture (and much more by Moore as well). Not fenced off, fully accessible, right there by a street car stop. Torontonians have a history of loving works by Henry Moore — this one more physically than the rest. Of course it featured in endless selfies! And of course people sat in its convenient curves, or boosted their children to slide through those curves, while waiting for a street car!
I took this photo in 2015, when the statue had already become seriously weathered — except for that bright patch in the middle, constantly burnished by hands and backsides.
Back to that camellia, dropped into a local bronze hand, right here at Main and East 24th.
The blossom caught my eye, as I walked past. How could it not?
A child offering a flower to a fire fighter… I read the plaque, later go online. This statue honours the BC Professional Fire Fighters Burn Fund, a charitable organization that does exactly what the name suggests — offers help to burn victims. My guess is that the flower is a very personal tribute, to one instance of that help and the difference it has made in someone’s life.
Statues and floral tributes. My mind jumps years and continents to land in Havana, Cuba, in 2009. I’m revisiting Habana Vieja to write a story for Outpost about the places that my habanero friends love best in their city. One example: the Plaza de San Francisco in general, and this bronze statue in particular.
The pretty flowers are now being offered to him, not by him, and on a regular basis. I just happen to pass by when the offering is an Ostrich Plume (aka Red Ginger, or Alpinia purpurata, and thank you to my generous Master Gardener friend, who identified it for me).
I remember lingering across the street, watching the community greet their Caballero. Again and again, passers-by of all ages slowed for a moment, trailed their fingers across his hand or stroked his beard.
17 April 2022 – Wisdom courtesy of Eeyore, who was always my favourite in the Hundred Acre Woods cast of characters (and as drawn by E.H. Shepard, thank you, none of that Disney nonsense). Not that Eeyore was even remotely in my mind, on either of the Friday-Saturday walks I’m about to show you.
But later, looking at photos with their various camera angles, two references came to mind. One was that corporate stand-by, the 360 Review: assess from every angle, not just a chosen few. The other reference, which amounts to pretty well the same thing, is the advice Eeyore gave a flustered Piglet and eaves-dropping Christopher Robin, back in 1928:
“Think of all the possibilities, Piglet, before you settle down to enjoy yourselves” (The House at Pooh Corner, chapter 6, by A.A. Milne).
I love it, I’m glad I remembered it. Because … that’s what we’re all doing, isn’t it? There it is, in your posts and mine: we bounce around, full of curiosity, we notice all those 360-possibilities, and we enjoy ourselves.
On Friday, heading north-west down an alley, my enjoyment is distinctly vertical. I’m captivated yet again by a line of H-frame hydro poles.
I look up …
and up …
and finally away, as my eyes track those wires off into the sky.
Saturday has me walking north again, but this time veering east not west, down to Great Northern Way by the Emily Carr (University of Art + Design) campus.
Where I look down, not up.
Construction for the Broadway Subway is all around my neighbourhood. This mammoth hole in the ground, nicely framed for sidewalk-superintendent convenience, will eventually become the Great Northern-Emily Carr station on the new line.
From eyes down to eyes up, as I pass Emily Carr. Skateboarders are clacking away on an unseen obstacle course to my left, while Kandis Williams’ Triadic Ballet silently unfolds on the wall screen to the right of a building entrance.
Just east of the university, in front of the Digital Media Centre, I literally do a 360 review. First, I am in front of this striking red heart. Striking, but awkward in its placement.
Then I circle around, and read Ron Simmer’s explanation.
I think it’s wonderful, and I no longer care about the ungainly placement. It’s all part of the vulnerable charm of this survivor (and the dotty determination of the man who rescued it).
On east along Great Northern Way, and then eyes all over the place as I head north on Clark Drive.
Below to my left, protective arched screening over the Millennium Line tracks, beyond that railway tracks with all those colour-block shipping containers rolling past; straight ahead, only slightly upwards, the Expo Line as it crosses Clark; and ‘way beyond that, very up indeed, those Coast Range mountains.
Plus — back to right here in front of me — an old-fashioned street lamp. Charming, and still part of the mix.
Nothing charming about the next bridge I cross, which I meet after exploring northward-then-eastward and finally back south again on Commercial Drive. The best you can say for it is, it’s functional.
Until you read both plaques. (“Explore all the possibilities…” Thank you, Eeyore. Got it.)
Plaque on the left announces the civic factoids of this Commercial Drive Bridge. Plaque on the right is a whole other, human story.
One last spin-around when I’m back in my own neighbourhood, as I cut through Guelph (aka Dude Chilling) Park.
To the north, the cherry trees that line East 7th Avenue (Kanzan cultivar, the Blossom Map tells me) …
while to the east, there are members at work in the Brewery Creek Community Garden, children playing on the swings, and over toward the south, a group of seniors just hanging out.
Meanwhile, on his plinth by the southern park edge, the eponymous Dude is also hanging out. Just chilling, right along with the rest of us.
I look back over my shoulder, catch this fresh new baby Kanzan blossom emerging from a mossy old tree trunk …
"Traveller, there is no path. Paths are made by walking" -- Antonio Machado (1875-1939)
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
"A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities" -- Rebecca Solnit, "Wanderlust: A History of Walking"
WALKING WOMAN 