riotheclown

Cinco De Mayo was super fun!  There were at least a dozen kids some of them only weeks old!

I had a really good time painting kids faces. It was held in a restaurant on College Street West restaurant. As always it took a bit of time for the kids to start lining up for face paint but I am happy to say I got to paint two green monsters, two sunsets, several flowers, a butterfly and a few princesses! I was busy enough I forgot to take pictures. These were courtesy of the owner.

Some one brought me a Margarita, delicious and highly alcoholic! So much for me trying to dance!. I stuck to my corner and just watched. This picture was taken by the host. The piñata was a tough one. Those kids were tired by the time it burst open!

One little girl told me that if her dad were there he would have been dancing. So I asked if he had to work and she said, "He's dead." She went on to tell me a lot about him. I asked if she was sad when she thought about him and she said she was happy because she could remember him and he was funny. I had a chance to talk to her mom. He died in palliative care in British Columbia fourteen months ago. She said the facility and staff were "wonderful" and made the grief much easier for her and her daughter.

I complemented her on her parenting. Obviously, she is doing well if she and her daughter are able to talk about it. So many adults don't know how to deal with death and grief and it leaves children lonely and confused. Often children feel they have to care for the surviving parent and never get to process their own loss in a way that makes it possible to remember the deceased or talk about them.

I am so often surprised and impressed by kids. When you get to talk to them as people (or as Buddhas) they can really blow you away!

I know her name but her show was EXACTLY the sort of show I can't really be bothered to see.  If I was at someone's house and they showed me their photo albums filled with pictures of graves I would be more interested in why they took them than the photographs themselves which is okay too. This has actually happened because for some reason I have known people who are obsessed with death.  Knowing a lot of artists over the years I have also met a fair number of artists who have made death a study.  Lisa Scarlett-Cruji has a book with the same name as her gallery show of many incarnations "How Did You Die?".  "How Did You Die?" is funny and clever. (Lisa is pure delight.  I am truly fond of her.  I miss her since she moved to Vancouver.) 

It appears that Patti Smith is very open and not "A Star" in her demeanor at all, but she is famous and that is why she got the west wing, cavernous and grimly dark to show her teeny tiny framed polaroid pictures. I start to make the trek around the room looking at one at a time and was so overwhelmed by dread I had to go and sit outside in the well lit gallery.

Dee continued on without me.  I was enjoying watching the three women and two babies who where sharing the leather benches with me. Dee came out.  A woman with rose coloured round, John Lennon glasses and short cropped white hair asked us how we liked the show and Dee said, "Not much!" to which I chimmed in, "I am having a bit too much of that sort of thing these days, I just found it oppressive."

I read the reviews this morning.  I tell you, not many shows of this ilk get reviews on the cover of the entertainment section of the Star. They were all generous. Obviously you have to be a fan, or of the era.  Dee knew better than I who she was and why it mattered.  We ran into the woman volunteer we spoke to earlier.  They spoke briefly about the 60's and having gay men for friends. There was a group forming around the large indoor courtyard. Patti was doing a sound check. 

I had to get going.  G.D. would be back (Y.S. was there to bring in her walker for her).  "Are we cool?" I asked.

"We are cool!"