Inducing jealousy in others

Long time, no post. Sorry. Been living a little too hard.

After BM, we went to Harbin Hot Springs and had aro­ma­ther­apy wraps and deep tissue mas­sage and a form of water-based shi­atsu they call watsu that’s like dan­cing in the warm spring with dir­ec­ted stretch­ing. And of course we just got to wander around and soak in the pools and hang out with each other. Oh, and shop for gor­geous silk cloth­ing made by this guy Evan.

Then back to SF for the Power to the Peace­ful free con­cert in Golden Gate Park, which I’ve read about for eight years but never been able to go to. Michael Franti was amaz­ing and I’m no longer jeal­ous that e_dan got tick­ets for the Mel­bourne show. Besides, I think I’m seeing Cat Empire with avid­scav­enger that night! (And sorry to SF-based folks, I meant to post here with a meet-up time but the world went a little crazy and we got there late anyhow).

The next day we had brunch with Doug’s daugh­ters and then flew to Toronto via Las Vegas. I could write whole tracts about the tack­i­ness of cap­it­al­ist cul­ture when it decides that gaudy gambling is its most likely sur­vival mech­an­ism but let’s not just now, ok? And we were only in the air­port for two hours! Flying in over the city felt like living the CSI open­ing cred­its which was kinda sur­real and made me think of buff­coat­lifter.

Turns out Toronto is having its world-famous Film Fest­ival so we’ve indulged as well as doing more touristy things like dinner at the top of the CN Tower. We saw Tony Gat­li­f’s new film Transylvania on Monday (not his best) and (pay atten­tion, hawk_eye) Alat­riste last night. Wow. Just wow. Intense, very viol­ent, very accur­ate as far as I could see. Not only was Viggo superb and the story tragic and moving and the cine­ma­to­graphy gor­geously based on Velazquez’ paint­ings, but Viggo and the dir­ector and other cast were there and David Cronen­berg was in the audi­ence and Viggo hugged him and it was all very excit­ing at the same time as the film was drain­ing and shellshock-inducing.

We’ve hired a car and are mosey­ing up to Algon­quin Park today then over to Mon­tréal to see qamar and mor­gan­jaf­fit.

You can see why I haven’t had time to write, huh?