Green and White with a Touch of Hot Pink --- Day 8/10

Walk: Deck Planting Errands
Distance: 4 miles, stairs, stairs, stairs, yoga stretch

Ciwt began again on her deck today.  This time just green with a few touches.  Her thought is the green will be more hardy than her various attempts at flowering shrubs. Ciwt had high hopes for them.  But in spite of their descriptions they've all gotten spindly and ragged after just a few months in the San Francisco wind and fog. Tough means tough out there.

Cats are checking it out; paws and fingers crossed.

Between Storms and Good Flix -- Day 8/9

Walk: Trader Joe's, Union Square, General errands between storm
Distance: 3.5 miles, yoga

Ooops, left over picture (ha) from when Ciwt lived in the midwest and needed to do some quick errands between storms.

Knock, Knock... Day 8/8

Walk: AMC Kabuki (Us)
Distance: 2 miles, Yoga



The last time Ciwt saw a Jordan Peele movie it took about two days for it to totally sink in.  When she walked out of Get Out she knew she seen something brilliant but didn't appreciate for those two days how brilliant it was.  Now she's home from Peele's second movie ever, Us, and has that same sense: Something important was on the screen but not enough time has gone by for her to fully grasp what it was - if she ever does.

On the preliminary level she knows the beautiful Jupito Nyong'o is an incredible actress, Winston Duke is a hunk (and a good actor), the visuals of Us are stunning, Peele is a highly original and intelligent filmmaker, and she thinks his 'Us' might be the very same as Pogo's (which she'll leave crytic for the moment).

Seduction* --- Day 8/7

Walk: Marin Driving Day, PGCC Book Group (The Piano Tuner)
Distance:  Nada  

The word for this book is seductive.  The lush scenery, the intrigue, the never quite knowable characters, the uniquely gorgeous piano and the refined writing all seduce, sometimes to good and educational effect, sometimes not.  Ciwt's book club liked The Piano Tuner and found it very discussable.

* The Piano Player takes place largely in Burma.  Here is that country's word for seduce: သှေးဆောငျ.  

Too Much Leaping, Not Enough Centering --- Day 8/6

Walk: A.C.T. (The Great Leap)
Distance: 4.3 miles, small yoga


BD Wong, Tim Liu, Arye Gross, Ruibo Qian in Lauren Yee's
                 The Great Leap at A.C.T.

Sadly BD Wong, one of Ciwt's favorite actors, had an understudy playing his part in The Great Leap today. And the understudy flubbed his lines at least three times Ciwt caught.

So, that is the bad news about Ciwt's play experience this afternoon.  The medium news is the play is okay(ish).  Yee displays a great understanding of the game of basketball so the repartee is right on, but she takes a shot at coupling that with 1.Tiananmen Square, 2. Mao's Great Leap Forward, 3. a dead mother, and 4.  teenage angst.  Even one of those couplings might have been over Yee's head, but all four makes for many attempts but few shots through the net.

The good news was the economy of the stage set.  

Doctor, My Eyes --- Day 8/5

Walk: de Young Museum (Monet: The Late Years)

Distance: 5 miles

Claude Monet (1840-1926), The Japanese Footbridge, 1899, o/c

Claude Monet (1840-1926), The Japanese Footbridge, 1923-25, o/c

Here we have the same Japanese Footbridge at Claude Monet's home in Giverny painted by him some twenty years apart.  We also have one of the reasons Ciwt could not be a docent.  If she were, she would need to present the lower painting as a marvel of old age daring, an entirely new and laudable way of painting invented by one of the world's most famous and talented artists in his final years. In other words she would need to present/educate along the lines of museums and those who sell and collect art.

But what Ciwt actually sees and believes is the case is the deterioration of Monet's eyesight and therefore talent, particularly after 1908 when he first wrote his doctor My poor eyesight means I see everything as through a fog. In the ensuing years Monet became blind in one eye and, even after cataract surgery, legally blind in the other.  In the year he was painting the lower work (1923) he wrote his doctor the following:

I went through bad days of nerve pain or other, fortunately, calmed and passed by pills.  Apart from that, I see less and less, with or without dark glasses.  The excessive light that we have tires me so much that I am obliged to confine myself in the darkness of the room.  Today, I have had strong spins in the center of the eye itself, and, moreover I always have the sensation of having water in my eye.

               Monet in his bed wearing the protective dark glasses he wore
                       continually for many years in connection with worsening cataracts

Besides on his blindness there is more research available on Monet's late years, none of which indicates he was intentionally embarking on a revolutionary breakthrough in his painting style.  As Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post wrote "..over time Monet grew old, selfish and cussed."  And good for him thinks Ciwt.  From his early twenties on Monet worked assiduously overcoming enormous artistic, personal and financial obstacles to create - invent really -  great, truly revolutionary work that is beloved the world round.  Ciwt thinks don't lionize him with dubious breakthoughs; instead honor his tenacity and true human struggles with advanced age.

A Home Not a Ship --- Day 8/4

Walk: Fort Mason, Ghiradelli Square, Union Square
Distance: 5 miles

So one reason Ciwt doesn't get on airplanes very often is the abundance of attractions right here in her very own city.  Today on one of her favorite walks up and over the hill from Fort Mason to Ghiradelli Square she realized she had never gone to the San Francisco Maritime Museum on the water there.  So in she went in and found an array of quite good crafts created by sailors

Turns out many sailors - on board and on land - adapted their maritime skills (ropes, rigging, sighting, ivory, music, etc) to making folk art, fancywork, early photographs, paintings and other art forms.

Ciwt's favorities, no matter who makes them and where she sees them, are always the detailed miniture models of ships, or, as many a salt has called them, homes.  

Next Stop Please(?) --- Day 8/3

Walk: Cinema Club (Transit)
Distance: 2 miles, small yoga

Ciwt's Cinema Club movie today was Transit.  Ciwt is going to borrow fromWinston Churchill's description of Russia,* to say it is like a coincidence inside a coincidence wrapped in a coincidence.  Subtly, quietly the enigmatic and unexpected lurks around every corner of Transit throughout all of its 101 minutes.  Personally Ciwt was absorbed in the ongoing suspense, but, beware; many of her Cinema Club audience members reported being bored, bamboozled, angry or completely checked out.  So perhaps you would like to transit right through to the next movie.

* "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia.  It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma..."
                                   Winston Churchill, Radio Broadcast, October 1, 1939