A Woman in Berlin (1954/2013)

The best known diary to have emerged from the Second World War is The Diary of a Young Girl (1947) by Dutch national Anne Frank (b.1929). Another wartime diary is A Woman in Berlin (1954/2013) by Marta Hillers (b.1911), who, until her death in 2001, insisted that her authorship remain anonymous.

Apart from some obvious differences between these two women, their books are similar insofar as their lives are determined by occupying forces. In the case of Frank, it is the German army; in the case of Hiller, the Russians who "liberated" Berlin in April 1945.

Below is a passage from A Woman in Berlin that was written on Thursday, 26 April, 1945 at 1100hr, the day before the Russians arrived in Bergmannkiez:

These days I keep noticing how my feelings towards men -- and the feelings of all the other women --  are changing. We feel sorry for them; they seem so miserable and powerless. The weaker sex. Deep down we women are experiencing a kid of collective disappointment. The Nazi world -- ruled by men, glorifying the strong man -- is beginning to crumble, and with it the myth of "Man". In earlier wars men could claim that the privilege of killing and being killed for the Fatherland was theirs and theirs alone. Today, we women, too, have a share. That has transformed us, emboldened us. Among the many defeats at the end of the war is the defeat of the male sex. (62)

Stairway to Brutopia

The concrete stairway at 1168 West Cordova.

Robust, no? All those years in truthy grey, then someone had the sad idea to paint it black -- a flat black -- to highlight accumulations of algae, moss and mildew.

In the 1970s Vancouver artist Eric Metcalfe drew on this location for a series of retouched postcards for his Leopard Realty project. It is, in my view, his finest moment.

In this era of vapid, decorative, up-with-people mural painting, wouldn't it be worth giving Metcalfe and his crew the keys to that stairway, in an effort to bring a little more realty to this fantastic market city?

ART MAKES US ...

... AMATEURS

with a K and an S left over

Bon Bombs

I am not sure when I first heard the words "bath bomb." It must have been a quarter-century ago when wars and their reportage were focused more on corporate mergers than on roadside explosions and aerial targets. Back then, if a person, place or thing was worth swooning over, we referred to them as "the bomb".

The events of 9/11 changed the way we think of bombs when its perpetrators allegedly hi-jacked and steered three fully-fuelled passenger aircraft into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

Now the word "bomb" is used to describe any number of things that imply a concentration of incendiary elements -- the most recent example occurring at a chocolatier on Robson Street a couple of blocks west of the Vancouver Art Gallery, where the Bombhead exhibition banner hangs like a dirty towel before an institution enslaved by the sound of its own unmaking.

Art Writing

An opening. I am at an art opening.

An artist had an idea, connected with a gallery, and it was decided that the work would be exhibited, that it would open and the public would enter -- until it closed a few weeks later and the gallery would lie quiet for a while before repeating the cycle.

I am sorry that Tommy's exhibition had to be the one to inspire this post, but knowing Tommy, he will understand. Pattern and repetition interest him, from factory work to the zoetrope to house music to the writing of code -- all of it "encouraged" by the hectoring voice of the master.

As for the mouth behind this master's voice, I recognized it immediately as belonging to Mark Oliver, who, in his late-50s now, might well be the original slacker -- if he weren't doing so well as a voice actor. Mark's show business break-through, he likes to tell people, came as a late-90s "ass double" for Terence Stamp.

Here is Terence in Pasolini's Theorema (1968):

Main Street

It was just one of those days. A change in the weather. A low-pressure system pushing the Melancholy button, and voila, there I was, parking the car at 20th and walking south on the east side of Main Street, eventually to 30th, where I would cross the street to ReFind, poke around and make my way north, on the westside.

ReFind is selling this oxidized copper candle holder for $149:

I know.

On my way back I noticed Liberty Bakery has filled-in that gorgeous blank space on the south side of its building with its name, broken down into syllables and stacked atop itself.

What a shame. Might as well put up a sign reading: LOOK HERE.

Spring Fling

When I was in elementary school (1967-1975), the Friday before the Victoria Day long weekend was Sports Day, an event that kicked off with a decorated bicycle parade, followed by a sprint, a sack race and an egg-on-the-spoon race for those in the younger grades and more team-oriented activities for those in Grades 4-7. We bought five-cent tickets from an onsite kiosk and exchanged them for pop, hotdogs and chips. Sports Day ended at noon, but because both my parents were away at work, I spent what remained of the day at the house of a friend's whose mother worked from home.

Somewhere between then and now it was decided that the Friday before the long weekend was interfering with families wanting to escape the city early, so Sports Day was moved to the following weekend. But by then Sports Day was deemed too exclusive, too competitive, which is fine -- not everyone can run, jump in a sack or walk slowly and carefully enough to keep an egg on a spoon from falling.

Because of this exclusivity, my neighbourhood elementary school came up with a fair -- the Spring Fling -- which takes place on a Thursday after school hours between 4pm-8pm.

Unlike Sports Day, the Spring Fling is located throughout the school. The gym is reserved for those in the younger grades (and their parents) who are still learning how to learn, while the adjacent outdoor plaza is a mix of food sales, games of chance and sales of "gently used" clothing. Inside the plaza doors are tables crammed with hampers and their bid sheets, while the eastern plaza functions as a place to eat and listen to "live" music, in this case a band of young vibraphonists.

When I arrived I was greeted by my nine-year-old friend Olive, who lives at the end of my block. Olive had won a cake and offered to share some of it with me. Even in its half eaten state, the cake was huge -- a dense sprawling thing topped with moss green icing, parts of which had been smeared away. Olive handed me a plastic knife and I cut a piece just big enough to keep her from feeling insulted.

On my way back I stopped to watch the Spring Fling's biggest spectacle -- the dunk tank. A source of humiliation in my era, the line-up for those willing to be dunked was twice as long as those paying for the chance to dunk someone. Part of me thinks this inversion, like the de-emphasis on Sports Day's exclusivity and competition, is a measure of how far we have come, while another wonders if the Fling's market-like atmosphere, with its prize cakes and dunkings, is only a reorientation of activities that many of us thought to be limiting.