My memoir group is moving from writing one piece at each online session to writing two, like when we met in person BC (Before Covid). All of a sudden I've been thinking of all these subjects I can write about! For today's meeting I'd written about joy, and I've already written about regret, next week's subject along with circuses. (Then I'll write about religious beliefs...) I thought about what I'd write while the dentist was working on my mouth.
On Thursday the History Meetup met at the Tim Horton Doughnuts near Bay & Bloor. (The previous place was too noisy: there was a band performing on the street outside!) Howard suggested the Imperial Pub so we'll go there next. I'm returning to the Toronto City Opera next month, which rehearses on Thursdays, so I'll be moving my Meetups to Tuesdays.
Preparing for the upcoming book club event, I read the Hans Christian Andersen story "The Angel." It was so beautiful that my jaw could have dropped!
I have a huge Chinese dictionary, and recently I've been going through it and writing each character down, including its pronunciation (both Chinese and in Japanese when it's used in Kanji), and a one-line meaning. (My computer can write Chinese and Japanese characters!)
I'll forget most of it, of course, but it's like this story from India I read online: a guru's student said "I've read tons of books, but forgotten most of them. What good has it done me?" So the guru gave him a dirty old sieve and sent him on a quest to bring him water from the river. But the water kept running out, of course, and the student had to return and say "I've failed." "No, you haven't," said the guru. "Look how clean and shiny you got the sieve! The books you read and forget clean your mind just like the water cleaned the sieve it was running through."
Lately I've been listening to symphonies and concerti as I write down those Chinese words. Grieg's A Minor piano concerto reaches out and grabs you! And Beethoven's third piano concerto in C Minor is one of my favourites too.
I just heard about how a Scottish lad called Rory verbally accosted pedophile Prince Andrew in the Queen's funeral cortege and got wrestled down by police while the crowd aggressively ignored him, singing "God Save the King." Now I know what happened after the kid said "The Emperor's naked!" Rory's my new hero. As for the crowd, the word "useful idiots" comes to mind. If you think Rory's impolite, consider that the funeral cortege for Belgium King's Leopold II, directly responsible for the Congo holocaust, got booed by working-class people in the Brussels streets. (I might have done it too, not just because he was evil but because he got away with it!)
I heard about an interview where the new King had said that NHS hospital staff should take a more "caring" approach. (So who's been working long, stressful hours, at the risk of their own health, to prevent Covid from killing even more people? Not him.) Really, sometimes Charles is inept to the point of being pitiful! And I say this as someone who admires the high ideals he sometimes expresses, and wants to give him a break.
Should the Dominion of Canada keep its "hand-me-down" monarchy? I've never supported it and I'm not going to start now. As far as I'm concerned, Canadian monarchists are the most fatuous people in the world!
Did you know that Charles III is the same title Bonnie Prince Charlie would have got if the 1745 rebellion had succeeded? (Oh, you did.)
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