What I’ve come to understand
is the [sic] there’s only one right way
to cook scrambled eggs.
– Paul Kita
All right then.
Saws and . . . envelopes?
The place and time? Chichicastenango, Guatemala in 2004, before I began documenting everything in pixels.
The source of the words? Cursive Spanish script painted in pale blue on the blindingly white exterior wall of a bricks-and-mortar store adjacent to the plywood-and-tarp outdoor market.
The speaker? A highly tentative me, reading aloud in Spanish-to-English translation mode. Questioning aloud, really. I mean, what sort of store sells saws and envelopes?
Against my expectation, my translation is bang-on. What *is* out to lunch is my business-school bias about what constitutes a coherent business model and whether it even matters.
Saws-and-envelopes: weird-in-theory combinations that work in boring old practice.
Years ago, while working on design/build proposals for public infrastructure — think hospitals and rapid-transit systems — I always dreaded the editing of the architectural sections. Their text was starkly different from, well, everything else from project management to engineering to administration. It was . . . (insert ominous dum dum dum here) . . . artistic.
They wrote about the feelings their designs would evoke (presumably), and the sensations their choice of materials would produce (improbably). They wrote about fitting into the neighbourhood, but used high-falutin’ phrases like “visual continuity with the a priori streetscape.” They wrote about how their curated colours/artwork/design-lines would reflect/respect/restore the sense of location/history/purpose. Or something like that.
My problem was that I couldn’t tell good writing from bad: It all seemed over-the-top to me. My impulse — which I had to forcibly suppress — was to dig it *all* out, root and branch.
On Thanksgiving Monday we said goodbye to one old friend and to one elderly aunt. We’ve moved past the stage where the only seniors we knew were our parents and their friends, and an occasional former colleague. Now we and our friends are seniors, even if we don’t quite think of ourselves as elderly.
Some of us seem well on our way to letting go; others are still going strong.
Straggling along the sidewalk en route to an amazing small-plates dinner, I fell behind as usual. How could I resist the view from the angle I had? It’s good I didn’t: the view from further along the sidewalk wasn’t anywhere near as amazing.
Without the advantage of being there in person, it might not strike you. Try it with all the bronze-ish colours flagged.
Was it the output of one brain or one design group? Did different architects collaborate across time to achieve this? Was it partly a function of the time of day? I’ll never know.
But, wow.
There’s something about sitting in a doctor’s storage-unit-sized waiting room an hour past my appointed time. “Waiting” being le mot juste and “room” being rather less apt, it’s not something good.
But at least a bathroom break — taken as much for a change of scenery as for any utilitarian purpose — gave me another face for my collection. A moose, I think, although I guess if you pulled those handles down, it would look more like a (slightly out-of-focus) spaniel. Or a beagle?
I rummage around the bottom of my purse and come up empty-handed. With growing alarm, I move my rummaging to the other compartment. No, there is no pen. How then can I scratch items off my grocery list?
It isn’t the first time I’ve ended up pen-less at the store, and I fear it won’t be the last. Even if I remember to check my purse before I launch, its narrow compartments make a visual inspection next to useless. I would have to pre-rummage to establish the presence of a pen, and dump everything out to confirm the absence of same.
This day, however, my annoyance (with my wandering pens, my forgetful self, and my unhelpful purse) lasts until I get home. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I think, “if the purse had an obvious place to stow a pen?” I stare balefully at its insides.
As the 2022 growing season winds down in the Ottawa Valley, some parts of the country aren’t quite ready to throw in the towel. The Left Coast, for instance, still has abundant greenery.
Some is right at eye level, backlit by the angled sunlight.
Posted: 2025 May 24
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
This space is available for other submissions.
