Dear Diary (The Fully Illustrated Summer Vacation Collector’s Edition)

Dear Diary, Market day. I love markets of any kind. (And thankfully, the more practical minds of our little party have lists, determination and efficiency in hand, so I can wander aimlessly, loitering over whatever suddenly strikes my fancy.) While diligently photographing dry goods and what have you, overheard someone say “Now that doesn’t make sense!” Convention of language or no, it suddenly struck me that wouldn’t it be a good world if the sense of things was somehow contained in their substance, like the seeds in a fruit. But no, we have to work making sense. We have to plow it like a steep field, burrow into it like miners or patiently build it brick by brick. Quite a job. One seller had boxes of used paperbacks. Fifteen cartons of German, one of English. The same proportion of slightly sad expatriate northerners seem to haunt southern climes, as though life in countries with more sun was somehow closer to some Eden of the mind. As though the meaning of life could be plucked from a tree…

I’m truly hopeless abroad. I was staring in rapture at cleaning products, simply because Greek has no “J” sound. ( “Did you remember to get the soap?” “Oh, I’m sorry, I totally forgot, but did you notice how they spell “Ajax” here?” Hopeless. Even supermarkets make my imagination soar.) Dear Diary, Did my (truly unpremeditated and wholly unintentional) good deed for the day. Real barbers are practically non-existant now in Switzerland, having been replaced by hair salons and stylists where even walking in the door costs you 30 dollars, so a visit to a proper old-fashioned barber shop was not to be passed up. The shop, chair and the barber are about the same age, and there is no knowing if they all will be there next year, so… As I was getting trimmed, a German couple came into the shop. Former hippies, the husband with a fringe of unruly grey hair poking out from under his cap. “Is he getting his hair cut that short too?” asked the wife (our friend, who had his hair cut just before me gets it reallycropped, just this side of shaved). As the scissors snipped, the wife worked on her husband, “See how good that looks, you should really get it cut like that.” Afterwards, we were sitting at a café terrace when the German gentleman emerged, to be immediately mobbed by all the females in his group of friends, hugging him, running their fingers through his hair, until his wife hauled him away rather proprietorially by the arm. Catching sight of us, he ran over, beaming, with what must have been his first real haircut since ‘68, and pumped my hand, thanked me profusely, and sped off. His wife gave me a lovely smile. I felt very much the coiffed conspirator.

At the barber shop, and… the new me: trimmed & tanned. (It won’t last, nothing much ever does…)Dear Diary, Everyone in our little vacation expedition is unreservedly immersed in something creative, so boredom is not part of the program. It is totally enchanting to be with people who are unexpectedly vocalising, composing, drawing, singing or playing music.

Sketching the landscape (with accompaniment on the low whistle).Dear Diary The other day, someone mentioned using “broken English”. Well, how careless of them, I thought. They should have been more cautious. Here one goes, handing English out to all and sundry, and some people are simply too careless and the first thing you know, it’s broken. “Hey, I lent you my English and you broke it!” I wonder what kind of glue and tape it takes to fix that sort of thing… on the other hand, my own English is worn and tattered. I don’t take very good care of it myself. Dear Diary, Did Tolkien ever consider olive trees for Ents?

Dear Diary, Cicadas fill the daylight with their incessant chorus of chirping with an admirable zeal that leaves not a silent moment from dawn to dusk. In the end, it as much part of the landscape as the sun In the evening, the cicadas fall silent, and the mosquitos appear. The latter inspire much less lyricism, and more sudden slapping, repellant and after-bite lotion. I suppose poetry in nature is largely based on whether it bites us or not… Dear Diary, I hereby declare that hamacs and sketchbooks are eminently compatible. In fact, they should come as kits, or boxed sets, one hamac with each purchase of half a dozen sketchbooks. (That’s always the trouble with art shops, no imagination…)

Capricorn, transformed into Aries when the horns got out of hand. Virgo, one of the 11 sketches in my ambitious and likely never to be completed plan to do the remaining signs of the zodiac. (All I need now is some sponsorship, preferably from a hamac manufacturor…Dear Diary, The serenity of of the stone face on the abandoned church struck me forcefully. Suddenly imagined a land where inscrutable stone visages of unknown provenance indicate to men where they may build places of worship. When the temples crumble, the faces remain. Serene. Eternal. A flight of fancy, of course, flying in the teeth of history and archaeology, but it seems every face I see is in reality two, or a multitude, whether they be metal, stone or flesh. I can’t see any face without being stirred, reassured, disturbed. (Thankfully, my wife dragged me away – it was hot, and there were groceries in the car – or I would have sat down, unmindful of everything and written and sketched until the ice cream pooled in the trunk of the car.)

Dear Diary, Watched a water-worn boulder in the waves today. (Friends and family put up with these sudden absences of mine – there in body, but in spirit… who knows?) Polished white and steel-blue stone, water made of turquoise and amber. After a while, it was impossible to tell which was which – the one always in motion and the other, immobile, but with millenia of motion engraved. Seeing something of beauty in nature is akin to picking up beautiful pebbles along a beach. Bright-hued, gleaming, sublime. Trying to paint or capture that beauty is like watching them slowly dry until the picture you’ve done is nothing more than a fistful of dusty grey stones. The best pictures are ever in our minds…

Dear Diary, Delphi! How clearly I recall alternately writhing and slouching in my seat as I was force-fed classical history and art in high school. Thermopylae, Homer, Marathon, Plato, Parnassus, Ionic, Doric and Corinthian – terms that quickly formed a cultural ratatouille in my mind, an indigestible lukewarm soup of putative periods, pediments, battles and philosophers. I retained none of it. (Remember, I grew up in the depths of B.C…. our graduation reward was a field trip to Vancouver. Small wonder our knowledge of history could have been measured in teaspoons.) How hopeless it seems now to teach anything you can’t wander through… The site was filled with familes – adults diligently exclamatory with guidebook in hand, youngsters alternatively sprinting head or slumping in pockets of shade. (Culture for the young seems to involves constant and abrupt changes of pace, albeit with an admirable and constant resistance to absorbing the smallest bit.) How amusing that thirty years should pass between my introduction of ancient Greece and this enlightening morning stroll. Finally I have a window on the Mediterranean from the dim Northern tower where my mind usually dwells. I am slow to learn any culture, but I can feel the breeze off the Middle Sea. Every step through Delphi is a stone on which I can patiently construct my little edifice of imagery and interest. Another tower, with a little more sun to warm the walls. (I of course purchased a poster of Tournaire’s fabulous if somewhat fantastical rendering of the sanctuary and did a lap around the stadium for good measure.)

ind dances, spun by the wind, flecked by spray. I follow it awkwardly, leaving the best footspints of all: the kind the waves smooth away. (When nature is pleased with us, it hides our tracks.) Those are the only marks I would happily leave on this earth; the ones wind and waves can erase.

MYTH & MAGIC CALENDAR 2007 This fall will see a Myth & Magic calendar in the shops. More news about where it can be found (I hope more or less everywhere) as I receive it.

AS SEEN ON TV For those of you who get CHUM: BookTelevision Highlights August 2006 Lord of the Brush Take a journey into Middle Earth with famous Canadian illustrator John Howe, a small-town boy who grew up to become the artistic designer for the film trilogy of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Trekking from Canadian shores to Swiss mountains to French castles, Lord of the Brush tracks Howe’s inspirations for his incredible work. Friday, August 18th at 1:00pm ET / 11:00am MT Rebroadcast Sunday, August 20th at 7:00pm ET / 5:00pm MT When I was in Toronto, we also shot an evening show for the Learning Annex, hosted by Caitlin Sweet, who, when not posing pertinent questions and endeavoring to maintain a serious mien throughout my bumbling attempts to answer, is also a novelist, mother of two and staunch supporter of her singer/songwriter husband Mike. I’ll post broadcast times when the show is due to be aired.