Mood: lyrical
You know, every time I watch the Olympics and the Canadians win gold, I suffer from anthem envy. Canada may be America's Hat, but "O Canada" has it all. Beautiful melody. Easy to sing. Lovely lyrics in English, French, and Inuktitut. (When playing it on guitar, I like to ham up the Quebecois "Blacque Jacque Shellacque" accent). At the risk of sounding like less than a real live niece of my Uncle Sam, I'm not fully on board with glaring red rockets and bombs bursting in mid-air and OMG U GUYS WHAT ABOUT THE FLAG IS IT STILL THERE? Must our national song be so explodey? And have a one and a half octave range?
I love everything about Canada: evergreens, politeness, modesty, Loonies, Timbits, boring politicians, drunken Celtic fiddlers, Anne Murray, touques, maple syrup that isn't artificially flavored Karo. As a matter of fact, I think I may secretly be a Canadian, trapped in the body of an American. A transpatrite. I understand you can get surgery to shrink your star-spangled stripes and have an artificial maple leaf transplanted. But first you have to go on a twelve-week regime of poutine injections.
But back to the Olympics. Aren't the medals cool? At first glance I thought they looked like microwaved frisbees, or that they belonged in a bowl of potato chips in King Midas' house, but the Dali-esque design has grown on me:
They're based on a large four-panel masterwork of orcas by a Vancouver artist, Corinne Hunt. The waviness is meant to evoke the oceans, and the mountains. Each medal is laser-etched from an individually cropped section of the painting, so they're all unique:
I understand that orca whales are a popular theme in paintings.
Speaking of marine creatures, last Sunday I was going for a walk around Back Cove after hitting the gym (literally...I walked right up to the building and smacked it), and this harp seal had beached itself about 20 yards from the path:
Harp seals aren't rare around here, but they're not common either. Mostly they hang out in Arctic waters, but they'll migrate south as the pack ice thickens. Their winter breeding grounds are in Newfoundland.
As you can imagine, the little fella (or gal) drew quite a crowd. We worried that it might be sick. I found myself standing next to a cheery bearded Australian marine biologist who seemed to know quite a bit about seals. He reassured everybody that the seal was OK, based on its behavior (it was lying on its side like Cleopatra, waving one flipper and flexing its tail):
"Oh, she's fine" he said. "Sick seals don't do that. I think she's either lost, or she just wanted to come in to the city and enjoy the warmer water and the sunshine, maybe take a little vacation."
"Well, it's the off-season now and not quite so touristy," I said, somewhat ironically (everybody had their cell-phone cameras out and was clicking away).
Now, you'd think that chatting with an Australian marine biologist with a scruffy beard would put me in mind of Diver Dan. Far from it. If anything, I was wondering what an Australian was doing so far out of his usual habitat range. Also, watching the crowd, I was remembering the episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza pretends to be a marine biologist to impress his girlfriend, and then they go for a walk on the beach and come across a beached whale, and George has to keep up the charade. He reaches into the blowhole and finds one of Kramer's golf balls. ("The ocean was angry that day, my friends....like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli.") Then I started thinking about how much I miss Seinfeld, and that I really should join Netflix so I can catch up with Curb Your Enthusiasm, but so many people want to see it that by the time it came up in my queue, the DVD format would be obsolete. Which reminded me of how decrepit and non-digital my television set is. It was a train of thought that didn't stop at Seachange, or much of anything else.
I'm not sure what the denouement was, but presumably the seal decided to head back with glowing heart to the True North, strong and free.