Paint and raccoons...I love post titles like that, things you never thought would go together.

I have spent the entire day painting...with little concrete to show, it has been work on bits and pieces for another piece I am working on....and has been fun. I love it that my kids are big enough to tend themselves for long periods of time...and play with me too. Not at Polly Pockets either.

Eldest went on a sleep over last night and is EXHAUSTED...youngest has a friend over, the man is walking the dog in the hill, and I am painting away, and blogging while stuff dries...such is life with watercolour....I am working on a multi-media semi-sculptural painting, as it will not be purely two dimensional. At my painting class I have started on a painting of a Barcelona wall with a metal door rolled down over it and graffiti on top of the wall and doorway. The wall worked well...the door....meh, too dark and gloomy....so I am going to make it a real door....I will be slicing it open, gluing the entire mass to cardboard so that I can raise the painting clear enough to put things inside the doorway, indeed there will be a series of doorways, each painted and then a found object in the center middle....lets see if I can pull it off. I have been working on the internal doors, the cardboard mount, the stone trim for around the door....I don't feel any need to stick purely to a single painted sheet...it's fun to add and take away....we'll see how it goes.

This is a part of the trim for around the door that I will cut out and glue on.....



Jadepark who has a lovely, fascinating and beautifully written blog called "Writing under a Pseudonym" where I lurk regularly and comment infrequently, has just posted about seeing mice everywhere and what it could possibly be all about. I commented that this summer I was positively haunted by raccoons (along with an exponential increase in ocular bug suicides), and someone told me that if you see the same animal frequently, it means something...well, something more than frequent sightings...now this isn't entirely my shtick, coming in there alongside horoscopes and tea leaf readings, but I was curious so I did a handy-dandy google search and came up with this....

The raccoon is in some way the ultimate scavenger, able to open doors and garbage cans with his clever hands. Because of this and especially because of its mask, it is known as a bandit.
The mask, however, has a deeper meaning. It teaches us that none of us are quite what we seem, even to ourselves, that in our lives we can experience the freedom of many identities. This medicine helps us to assume and release the many roles we play.
Raccoon's lesson isn't that identities are negative, simply that -- just as this creature is dexterous with its hands -- so we can learn to be skilled at assuming identities with the same sense of appropriateness with which we choose clothes.


And this....

Raccoon: Clever, fastidious, curious Raccoons represent child-like qualities such as the need for play and "out of the box" thinking. With its tell-tale masked face, and tendencies for thievery, Raccoons masters of disguise and mischief.
Raccoon Animal Totems Facilitate:
Buoyancy of spirit, playfulness, light, airy fun feelings
Cleverness, unique perspective of thought that will lead to unique solutions to problems.
Luck and fortune, including ease in the search for finding what you desire

The change of identities rang home for me as I was in Canada at the time, and between the different job, house, language, culture, friends and responsibilities I do feel almost like an entirely different person though the fact that there were glaring spelling errors in the quote which I changed just for you all doesn't bode well for any sort of veracity they might be aiming to project.....the second one...well that didn't seem to have quite so much to do with anything...thought thinking outside the box could definitely be part of my job description....

Off to go and paint something else....hope your having a lively and lovely weekend.

Two things....

First....I watched the single worst movie of my life today...so bad it was good. Marrying Darcy. It was a trite, twee and fairly meaningless yet predictable romp through five peoples lives over about 20 years. Most of them sleep with most of the others, it was painfully badly acted and the sets and tech level were quite bad. I was saying to the man that it seemed to be something put together at by a bunch of university students...and it WAS! How it ever got translated into Spanish as well and subtitled....it really was almost good it was so incredibly awful.

Secondly, I found an all new use for a digital camera, for me anyway. I was up in the mountains walking the dog when a bug flew into my eye and died a thrashing and painful-to-both-of-us death. Now I don't know about you, but this happens to me a lot. Really, every month or so some poor fruit fly kinda job commits hari kari in my eye....I have not yet figured out why.

I digress....usually when this happens I am in a town somewhere, and as far as I am concerned the single greatest use for side mirrors is to assist struggling pedestrians with mosquitoes doing the back crawl in their eye...squat down, take a look and fish the little bugger out.

Now up in the mountains this is not an option. I had a brief debate about searching around for a piece of broken mirror. It would have been faster to go home and this HURT. So. Hmmmm, carrying a camera, all those glass lens jobs, maybe I can angle the sun the lens and my eye well enough to see in....well, you can guess that didn't work. Instead I had the brilliant idea of taking really close up shots of my eye while I pulled my eyelid down so I could locate the little gnatty thing...and it worked! I took a picture, reversed the camera, looked at the shot, located the beast, tried to remove him, took another shot....The thing is that by the time they have been flailing around in there for a while you start to loose track of exactly which bit of discomfort is the fly and which is where the fly was....I had to take quite a few photos, but I got the bug out.

I will not post the pictures. They were not pretty. If you want to see what it looked like, go to the mirror in your bathroom, stretch your lower eyelid down and out as far as you can and stand very very close to the mirror. Ugh.

SO, if you have your camera with you and gnats with a death wish come your way...you can thank me for this great tip.

Always trying to help.

A post that has been waiting for ages

I'm pretty tired and the day has been lovely and lively and nearly endless...so here I offer you a series of photos of the different type of motos there are. I feel pretty ambiguous about these machines. Kids can ride them from age 14 on, night and day, which is frankly insane...they're touring around the roundabouts with the giant trucks and *ssholes will jaguars....they die.

The idea of eldest on one in three years makes my knees go week.

By the same token, the idea of riding one myself has a certain appeal. They are so cool!



A girly bike..

Nice paint job! On the good ones you can store the helmet in the seat, and they all have this really cool clip where you can latch your bags or the top of your knapsack on so it doesn't slid off.

This ones catching some rays...

A beefier bike and a potential two seater

The yellow ones in behind are the official post office delivery vehicles...

The other style...a dirt bike. These are crazy annoying...they are incredibly loud and can go too fast, and the yobs on them do go too fast. Far to fast.

Rows of guy bikes. They have to carry their helmets, but that's cool, and they cannot carry anything on the bikes, so no errands are possible.

Nice comfy looking basic bike, it can take two easily...I like these friendlier ones that you can ride in a dress better.

A beat up bike....

This one is my favorite, by a long shot....SO COOOOOL!

We had a little excitement on the street today...there was a jack hammer running for hours and hours near here....it was severely annoying, but look what happened?

Sorry the photo's a little fuzzy, but my feet were getting wet. So were my shins.
I took the photo after the water was being turned off....it went up higher than that upper window and was thundering, rushing, roaring and torrenting down the street. The man had to go and get water from one of the local fonts and haul it back for dinner, just like his ancestors did for hundreds of years.

The water's back on now.

Barcelona

The Scottish football hooligans are in town. Help us all. What a singularly ugly group of louts. I had to walk through Plaça Catalunia today dodging drunken jerks at every step...praying only that people would NOT think I was British...if there is one day only I hope to look Catalan or anything other than British. Yee gads. They were all massively hung over as well. There are apparently 13,000 hooligans in town. OMG.

There was even one old guy bragging that he was here in 1972...when they came down and trashed Camp Nou where Barça plays.

If you want to see some photos of them in action..... go here and click on the fotogaleria called 'descontrol escocès' which means scots out of control.

SO as an antidote, I thought I would post these photos of some of the things I find lovely on my way down to class in the morning...









I took the photos early in the morning, and I love the play of light over the stones. I also really like the interplay of stones, bricks and concrete....solutions over many hundreds of years.

Culture vs. Nation

One of the things that has been smacking me in the face for the last few days is the difference between the maintenance of a culture and it's heritage as opposed to nationalism.

Does it happen to you that the same topic keeps coming up over and over sometimes?

Anyway, it all started when I was discussing Halloween with one of my students who is shall we say, quite nationalistic. He was polite and said that he was concerned about the maintenance of his culture and traditions, there is a festival the same night here normally but the kids frankly prefer Halloween. Now. This is not a simple thing. I come from Canada as most of you know, which is not exactly a nation that is aiming at world dominance, however we share many cultural traits with our neighbours to the south, whose government's aims about world dominance can sometimes provoke a little, um, hesitation in others. Halloween gets bundled into all of this political tension. The man I am talking to during this conversation has also been through a civil war, has had his language and culture banned and is still living within a nation he does not consider his own, and from which it would be against the law for the province to leave. It is, I am told, in the constitution of the nation, or whatever document fills that roll, that should any of the independent groups withing Spain chose to leave, they will be occupied by the military. And it has happened within these peoples lives.

A certain sensitivity to the maintenance of cultural traditions is understandable.

But

but

but....

where do we draw the line here between nationalism, which for me is frankly a dirty word, and preservation of traditions. Now, I am a Bahá'í which is a religion if you haven't heard of it as many of you haven't, there is a link there and on the side bar...anywhoo, one of the central principles of the faith is profound importance of our recognition of the unity of humanity while still maintaining, respecting and treasuring the richness of our diversity.

This tips easily into nationalism. Another friend here, also deeply nationalistic, went to London recently and was delighted to see the diversity there and the range of people who were interacting...I wish his English were better, or my Catalan, so that I could ask him more about how this all dovetails together in his head....I am not being clear here...he has also invited us as a family to join a local group celebrating and supporting some of the local traditions...even though we are Canadians. Which is lovely of him, they also need bodies...but still, his Catalonia clearly is a place that has a language, fiercely defends it's rights to maintain that language and culture, yet includes anyone who cares to join and learn. At the same time, he is offended that some people working in a local restaurant were paid the same as he is, he being both a local and a Catalan, but once we teased it out past the language problems, his issue was that many of these people cannot speak Catalan, and don't care to learn...if they learnt it, they should be paid the same. He believes, probably rightly, that he has more skills than they, and so should be paid more accordingly. He also wants to spend the summer in London improving his English and getting to know the place and the next summer in Paris for the same reason with French. He seems to be dancing the line between cultural protection and Nationalism smoothly, though some might well argue with him.

There are Catalans who believe that you are Catalan if you can speak the language. I cannot imagine in my wildest dreams, anyone considering me Catalan. My kids, maybe, me? Sorry, I cannot picture it. Ask me in a decade if we are still here, but for now? Seems impossible. Catalan-ness, unlike being Canadian seems to be more than a language and a locale, a piece of paper, here I am again trying to draw the line between culture and nationhood....it's a slippery place and narrow to wander through.

It's fascinating to explore though...

It is also fascinating to look at it through the window of the Catalan experience as opposed to the immigrant/native dynamic that we get in the Americas.

So, am I polluting the local kids by doing introducing Halloween or no?


......later.........one of the women I know here told me that her son decided that he didn't want to do confirmation, no problem with her. Then he said he wanted to do Hanukkah. She had never heard of it (That Spanish Inquisition thing was VERY thorough). He had seen about it in a movie and thought that any event that got you a present every day for ten days had to be pretty good. An open-minded and opportunistic kid. I did my best to tell her the story behind it, clarified a few details for her around the number of days, the fact that it was an annual event of marginal religious significance compared to most of the Jewish holidays and explained to her that the presents are usually small. Still, he may well think that it is a great idea. Again, an interesting intersection of cultures. One of the things that is new here is having immigrants in any number. For a very long time Spain was mostly a place of emigration. This is a new experience that seems to be largely welcomed with curiosity and friendliness. But this is, as you would expect, not universal.

.....later still.....one of the Mom's came up to me after school very happy about the party. Her daughter had had a marvelous time, and she took her pumpkin home with her which they used, lit, as a centerpiece for their Tots Sants celebration. She was quite happy to blend both traditions.

I think there are probably as many variations of the answer to this tension as there are people, but if we can find an ability to share an interest in and respect for the cultures that we meet along the way, coupled with an understanding of the importance to each of their own traditions we'll probably come out all right.

Hermits and art

We have a village hermit.

He's a young man who lives up in the hills, his hair is badly matted, although he is reasonably clean...at least he doesn't smell bad. He walks everywhere in bare feet and comes down into the town from time to time, for food, for work, to use the internet....

He is reportedly a young German man, with some English skills who came here in the past to go climbing. Since then he decided that life is too busy and crazy, too noisy, and cash-mad...and so he came here where the winters are less harsh and took to the hills.

Sounds tempting sometimes doesn't it?

Then again I think it might get lonely.

I came across him in the hills the other day in one of those door-in-the-hill places where the locals used to store I don't know what, everything from farming implements to wine and oil to arms and prisoners given what has gone on here in the past....

Now there is a hermit sitting in them keeping warm and dry.

I was kind of startled when I saw him...I had been past this particular doorway a week or so before, right after a strong rain...I had seen his footprints in the mud....no one else is barefoot and I had smelt a faint odour of wood smoke, but still I was surprised when I saw him there...the door was a little ajar, but there was no noise or smell...it was a warm beautiful day, so I peered in...I'm a little nosy about those rooms in the hills, and there he was sitting on the ground shirtless.

I had twin responses to it all, a mixture of concern that most women would have around a questionable man in a remote location, and curiosity...should I talk to him?

Instead I called the dog and walked on. I still am not sure if it was the right thing to do....but for now....it was.

On another note....my man seems to be improving, eldest to some extent.

On a third different note I brought the camera into BCN today because there were a few things I wanted to take pictures of to post but between the late bus and the cloudy weather, that didn't happen, so instead, you get an blow by blow of a painting I have been working on. After Nomad started up her art blog Poena I debated doing the same but decided that no, I would continue to use my doodles as blog fodder....I am not sure if this piece is finished or not...I blue tacked it up onto the wall to look at for a couple of days....here goes....








At this point I liked it, but knew it had a fair way to go, so I let it sit for a while and thought about what might work....so this is what I did last night....





Still thinking about it.

I overheard this today too, it was a child speaking...."I always thought of Mark Twain as a political type of person, didn't he invent communism or something?"
Adult, "No, that was Karl Marx"

Not too hard to confuse, huh?

Out with the youngest....

NaNoWriMo is on...National novel writing month or something like that and I would love to get that organised, but I have to admit that between kids, work, Catalan studies, the dog and trying to maintain a semblance of a relationship with my husband, let alone paint a bit, I am not sure that is going to happen. I also need to start Spanish...that said, if I was driven enough I would FIND the time for it, but well, guess I am not.

Youngest and I instead went into BCN today. Eldest is still hurtin' and the man is recovering...so it was youngest's choice of what to do...we went SKATING!!! It was pretty cool, they have a hockey rink in the ground floor of a building, and there were skate rentals...it was all fairly pricey especially if you are used to the free neighbourhood rink, but man we had fun. There was some mandatory safety wear, which seems a good idea, except that it was a pair of gloves. Yup, I had to cough up for a pair of regular knitted gloves...high tech safety wear. No helmets available, god forbid you might mess up your manicure though...very strange. We saw several children whack their heads pretty hard too, two on the ice and one slid into the boards...we are not looking at a collection of highly competent skaters here. No fingernails were damaged though I am glad to report.

Youngest caught on quite fast in fact. Especially since she went skating once last year, and then once about five years ago...she was doing a Klingon to the boards at first and by the time we left two hours later (oh my poor feet and abraded legs) we were whizzing around the rink, passing people and dodging incompetents. Now that doesn't mean she could do anything as fancy as stop or turn in any major way, but we had a good time.

No pics. Sorry folks. But the camera is pricey and bulky, BCN is a hive of thieves, and I wasn't sure of the security options...and the chance that I would fall and wreck the camera completely were pretty high....

After that we went and had a little food, the mandatory hot chocolate...that was a bit of a wash-out. The Catalan's make AWESOME hot chocolate, but not this café...though he did throw some chocolate milk in the nuker for us...it was kind of like the stuff you get out of the machines at arenas so it fit the bill. We also had sandwiches which were as always excellent and we stopped at a patisseria that would warm any one's heart.

Finally we went to the Antoni Tàpies foundation, which I had wanted to see, but youngest said was Booooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrinnnnnnnnnnnnnnng.

I liked some of his work, it is abstract and vigorous, and I love his use of just about anything that comes to hand in his paintings and sculptures...and the sheer size of the pieces...that said I am not sure how much I like his message...a mite grim, and his chosen pallet is a bit harsh and dour....



Tomorrow back to the grind....it has been a lovely weekend, but it is a shame that a full half of the family has been under the weather....ah well.

The girls also wanted me to show some of their latest work....this is Youngest's (8), she is very happy with how it turned out....



And in the multimedia category, Eldest's blue tack art....



I see a contest, or exhibition in here somewhere...a challenge of sorts in fact...let me think about the details, maybe we will have a blue tack art contest....announcements to follow...

Photography and food

A friend here asked why I took a camera with me so often...The obvious answer is that when I don't there are things I want to take pictures of....but the real answer goes further, and is also harder to pin down.

What do I like about taking photos...?

Part of it is definitely that I like sharing what I see around here with others...or gloating? I think not, sometimes it definitely feels like I am doing my own little show and tell. Sometimes that is certainly the point.

Sometimes there is an artistic element....I find beauty, and want to tease it out. Though I think my photography skills are such that I am definitely not creating Aaart, some of the images have turned out well enough that I am really happy with them, and I am gradually getting them blown up, printed and framed....

There is inevitably a certain amount of record keeping, though I tend to have to remember to do this, rather than want to...for instance at the Halloween party and at Birthdays...but it is not an urge like some photos I want to take.

Sometimes I take photos purely as note taking for possible paintings...effects of light, and the possibility for long study when I have time.

Sometimes I am simply so struck by the beauty of something that I feel compelled to try to - oh I hate the word capture, but it is what follows logically here - I feel compelled to grasp a glimmer of it. I am frequently disappointed with these pictures...

One of the other things I like about carrying the camera and using it often is that it does help to keep my eyes open to the beauty around me, even in unlikely places...painting does this too, but feeling the weight dangling off my shoulder keeps my head up and my eyes open a little bit more...and I like that.

So, in honour of this post, here's a bunch of photos I took today....

Youngest and I set out to make panallets...which are a tradition here at this time of year. Eldest helped as well a bit, but we were off, with youngest's remembered recipe from school as our guide.....

Here's the ingredients: pounded almonds, sugar a potato and cocoa...

First, boil the potato...

While that is going on, mix equal quantities of pounded almonds and sugar...some recipes call for 2 to 3, the three being the almonds....but this IS what they did with the kids in the school.

Once the potatoes are cooked, mash them...

Then stir, nay, knead them into the almond mixture....

Until it is all one mix....we used too much potato.

Make them into little balls and roll them in the cocoa, mix in peanut butter for a North American flavour, add coconut, jam, rolling them in pine nuts is very common here and very very good.

Now your supposed to put them into a 350 degree oven for five to ten minutes, but we don't have an oven...therein lies another post, so I put them in a cast iron pan on very low with a lid. As I mentioned, we had too much potato, so you can actually see them melting there. They shouldn't.

This is how some of the cocoa ones looked at the end. They firmed up when they cooled, and have a candy-ish texture that the kids love, but they are not panellets.

Now, in the midst of all this, youngest had decided to go out on the balcony and get some pine nuts out of some cones I had gathered, pound the nuts and make some panellets with pine nuts. Unfortunately something large, yellow and scorpion shaped scuttled out of one of the cones while she was working on them. Freaked her right out, so we don't have any pinyon panallets...I did have a mess to clean up as well as a scorpion search to conduct. I love it when my cooking is interrupted by searching for scorpions...it just adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the entire endeavour.......here I am starting to look.

No scorpion here...just a lot of fruit flies....

Ditto...

Well, I never did find that bug/insect/arachnid/whatever...so Chuck came out and did his I'm-a-Catalan-dog thing and started splitting pine cones for us to get the pine nuts out. That is until something else came out of one of the cones and he left too after a few panicked circles and some frantic sniffing. He retired to the living room to lick his wounds. Literally.

SO.

How about you?

Why do you enjoy taking photos?

Do you enjoy taking photos?...Esben, if you read this I'd love to hear your response....

Halloween part two, take three

Feeling a little calmer now....we'll start off with a couple of shots from my walk in the mountain with the dog...



To eat or not to eat....Not.



That's some fairly heavy duty armour isn't it!

Halloween....Lets see how this goes....

As I have said before, the whole Halloween fiesta went off pretty well. The first kids arrived before me! One of the Moms phoned the night before to ask if her daughter could come over straight from school, an hour early, as she had to leave early. It seemed a little strange, but what the heck. The second also beat me home, his folks just dropped him off at about 5:20 for a 6pm party....by the 6:00 start time there were a good 15 kids here. Nothing like a little free babysitting, no?

Two of the mom's stayed and helped which was a great think when you think about 40 kids all working on the first pumpkin of their lives with knives all at the same time. Thankfully no-one was wounded, not even a scrape. The finished doing all of the pumpkins, and the tombstone poems by 7pm. Egad. Then they all turned to me and asked what was next. Only two hours to go!

Fortunately one of the Moms had set up for the kids to trick or treat at her house and a neighbours, so off we went...in a big fat parade of gleeful kids. They stopped after the second house to eat, after which we went for a bit more of a wander around the village to show off the costumes, stopping on the stairs of the church in the main plaça for a photo op...nothing like a little devil worship on the church stairs. Keeps the priest in trim. We wandered a little further, then headed home for a few minutes of eating and chatting then the dreaded question appeared again, what do we do next? Clearly they felt there was a protocol to these sorts of events....so we went up to the terrace, OH, I failed to mention that it rained during the party, so we did the pumpkin carving with all 40 kids, some from grade six and pretty much adult sized, in my 10 by 25 foot living room...plus four adults. It was some crowded! Anyway, up on the terrace trying to light the pumpkins, but these are kids who are used to running through fireworks, and their idea of safety around open flame does not match up with mine. The other moms were just as darned scary.

The kids were holding the pumpkins, nay, hugging the pumpkins while peering down into the flaming center with their long hair and wildly inflammable costumes...I finally got them all to put the darn things down without anyone turning into a human torch...then they all wanted to carry the things downstairs. Lit. In the main part of the house. Small children in costumes labeled "keep away from open flame", tottering down the stairs in masks they cannot see out of with skirts that are too long, all with lit pumpkins in their hands. Even eldest was twitchy....we eventually got them all blown out.

The last one (who was second to arrive) didn't leave until an hour past the exit time...goodness gracious.

And my house? Beth asked how it was cleaner than in the morning....here's the trick. I cleaned the bathroom, fresh towel and soap cause that's just a nice thing to do, swept the stairs up to the apartment cause the parents would see that. I swept up anything that appeared as I moved the furniture around and that was that. With forty kids coming over, I am NOT cleaning first.

After they left, leaving a universal coating of pumpkin guts, pop, chips and dirt throughout the apartment (I found pumpkin guts on the wall near the ceiling today) I mopped everything twice...the bathroom got three goes.

- OK boys, ready, AIM fire, no?

By the time I was done all the furniture was back where it belonged, I had most of the decorations down, the kitchen was clean and everything was packed away....not everything, but there wasn't much left to do. Took about two hours.

Next year it we do it again, I will get the other mothers to all host a trick or treat, we'll be party central, but a longer trick or treat, plus I'll end it at 8:30 rather than 9.

*Phew*

Today was wildly productive...I went into town to do a bunch of bureaucratic crap, all reasonably successfully, I had a nice walk, found a great Turkish place for lunch, sat on the beach eating it, and then had the most amazing sea glass hunting in my entire life...honestly I could squat down on the beach and pick up 15 pieces of yellow and blue glass...I even found purple!!! It was amazing...I found everything in the picture in about 20 minutes...and I wasn't looking all that hard...there must be more!



Look at these pieces...interesting shapes, good size, good colour, particularily the two bi-coloured yellow pieces!!!
Wait a bit and you could see them as jewelry on my friends site!




Then the trip home was fairly clear.

Yahhooooo

Tonight is movie night..and the man seems to be recovering...eldest at the moment seems fine, cross your fingers please.

Halloween part two

Now I am stinking mad. I had a big long post and f*cking blogger autosave didn't save it. They said the saved it. I posted, there was an error message. I went back, re saved it. Then when I posted, all I got was the pictures and I had tried every freaking thing I know and the post is just plain gone.

OK. Not exactly a disaster, but as it is now 11:20 and I still have to walk the dog, I am not a happy camper.

Cheery prose about the party is rather tougher as well.

The re-creation is never as good.

I tried.

This simply will not come out right.

I will write another day, once again I am going to bed.

Curses on you blogger.

Here's the pics anyway. Mysteriously, they didn't get lost.