Wind Blows Deeply

The most commonly heard phrase was “I just don’t get this one either.” All because we decided to send the early part of a warm autumn afternoon inside at the MacKenzie art gallery. What we didn’t get, and therefore spent quite a lot of time dissecting, was Ronald Bloore‘s exhibit. No, that’s not the guy they named the street after in Toronto (that’d be Joseph Bloor).
Ron is a member of the Regina Five, which also includes Ken Lochhead, Art McKay, Ted Godwin and Doug Morton. Apparently his early stuff was quite a bit of white on white paintings. Very abstract pieces. On display were a few newer works, having been done on masonite (i.e. oiled linseed).
My personal favourite was the one I shall call “Elephant” (it’s real name something like painting #23 but #23 is probably one that I “didn’t get either”). While I haven’t found the exact image, and although similar to No. 19, it appears to represent an origami elephant.
We also were taken aback when a tour-less tour guide, apparently eavesdropping on our bewildered conversation/analysis, asked if a) we were art students, b) did we come here often or c) were we familiar with the artist. Having replied no to the above, she herself became slightly bewildered — mainly because we had actually spent considerable time with each of his works.
After Bloore, just about everything else made “sense” — or at least it required far less interpretation. But then is less interpretation better?

Madeleine L’Engle passed away last week (Sept 6). I wrote about her a few months ago. Some have compared her fictional series starting with A Wrinkle in Time to that of Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series.

The picture above is of a Tesseract, mentioned in A Wrinkle in Time, and is essentially a four-dimensional cube. Four spatial dimensions, not three-spatial plus time. I can’t quite wrap my head around it. Fascinating stuff though.

I am definitely enjoying some new tunes by Rosie Thomas. Her similar artists page at Last.fm is highly enjoyable as well (think Sufjan Stevens, Neko Case, Amy Millan, Regina Spektor, Aimee Mann, Sondre Lerche, Feist etc).

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Yesterday I went to church. For most of you this isn’t surprising. What was surprising for me is that I resisted every minute of it.
Not in the sense of needing to be anywhere else. Not in the sense of questioning every bit of theology. I simply kept looking at my watch in hopeful anticipation of the end of the service.
Yesterday I did not want to be in church.
Yesterday, chances are that I felt obligated to be in church.
I know all about community, the need for it, the command for it. I know churches are made up of people and that people aren’t perfect, that people will hurt you, that people will let you down.
While I still am passionate about my faith, something has happened these last few months that makes me wonder where organized religion will fit into my life.