HAVE YOU SEEN THIS TURTLE?

My photo doesn’t do justice to her details and glitter.

We went out today — E.g., Jack, Jack’s mum, Cai, and I. We left at 9 00 and returned just before suppertime. When E.g. and I got to our apartment, we found a zippered burlap bag, originally made to hold 10 pounds of basmati rice, hanging on the doorknob. Eh? Unzip, pull out a crumpled grocery store flyer. Unfold, find the prettiest little purple-and-green sea turtle. I’m pretty sure it’s resin-cast, but it’s very well done, made to look like string carefully glued over a wooden base, and it’s hand-painted and sprinkled with glitter. On its underside is a little picture hook to hang it on a wall. It’s just the same size as Seamus, the WWF sea-turtle stuffy.

There was no note. Who could have left it? E.g. guessed that Robert had come across it on his travels, but he doesn’t read my blog. It obviously wasn’t Jack and his mum, because we had picked them up and dropped them off today. What a delicious little mystery!

Our car lives in the underground parking garage. One of the things we had done today was get groceries, so we were coming up to get the bundle buggy when we found the anonymous gift. On my way back out with the buggy, I saw Coco, the German Shepherd, with her daddy Michael. Hmmm.

Michael and John were two of the judges for the Name-and-genderize-the-baby-sea-turtle contest. They don’t even own a computer, but they’re very fond of us; the other day they had given us a stained-glass rainbow flag. Their nextdoor neighbour is moving out, and they’ve acquired a few pretties from her. Maybe…

I think Michael must have seen me getting the groceries, because I was no sooner inside when the phone rang. It was John, asking if I’d found little Seamus.

“I thought it must be you guys! She’s beautiful! And her name isn’t Seamus; I think it’s Isabella.”

“Bella,” John mused, “that’s a good name.” It was then that I remembered that one of his nicknames for Coco is “Bella.”

What’s So Funny?

Sober Flemish guy in turban

When I was trying to learn French comme il faut, I found the hardest thing to understand was the humour. Prose is usually pretty straightforward: it tries to say what it means to say, and if you don’t get the meaning, the writer or speaker may have failed. But humour tries to say two things at once, and you must understand both of those things to think it funny; if you don’t get both meanings, then maybe you have failed.

For example, some of my fellow dogbloggers have been recently participating in something called the Pugbowl. The humour here is based on (at least) two elements. The first is the word “Pugbowl”, a pun in that it evokes the Superbowl American football championship, but in this case refers to a food dish, not stadium. The second element is that of inappropriate behaviour: it is questionable etiquette to sit in one’s chinaware, yet here are photos of doggies, large and small, with paws or tails in their kibble bowls. It’s not what you were expecting. It’s funny.

A few months ago, I wrote “An Art History Lesson” which reads like a vague encyclopedia article until the end. If you’re acquainted with Julie Andrews films, and are North American, you might think it funny. If you have a smattering of education in Church History, you might think it even funnier. If you’re British, one of the key words in the punchline won’t make sense. And now that you know that the story is supposed to be a joke, and you’re expecting it to be funny, it probably won’t be nearly as funny as it was to my friends who weren’t expecting it to be funny. Funny, isn’t it?

An Art History Lesson

The renown of Flemish artists of the 15th and 16th centuries attracted many later artists to Flanders, hoping to gain thereby either an increase in talent or a market selling to tourists. In most cases, these mediocre artists achieved little of either.

In the late 17th century, a monastery in Bruges decided to start purchasing these second-rate works of art. It was felt that by collecting and displaying the works for a small admission charge, the religious community could at once provide charity to the starving artists, showcase their work collectively in hopes of attracting patrons for those artists, and generate a small income from the museum fees.  

Three of the monks volunteered immediately to be guides to the new museum. Their friendly eagerness brought in many visitors, and the increase in revenues enabled the monks to buy more tableaux. Thus it went for five years, until it became obvious that a larger museum would be necessary.

Since the community didn’t have enough land for a bigger building, they appealed to their brothers in the abbey at Ghent, who offered to provide more spacious quarters to house and display the works. The abbot at Bruges further instructed the enthusiastic guides to transfer to the Ghent community and continue their vocation there. Overjoyed, the three monks soon followed the canvases down the road to the newer, larger museum.

And that is the story of the super-tacky Jansenistic expedited docents.

Symbol of the Turtle

 

About twenty years ago, I started joking that if I were a member of the First Nations, I would want to belong to the Turtle Clan because I carried my life on my back. When there weren’t books in my bookbag, there were groceries. For a year or so when there wasn’t a bookbag, there was a cloth baby-carrier. Over the past ten years, my bookbag has held binoculars and field guides; kitty nummies from the pet store; biblical Hebrew textbooks; one change of clothing for a three-week hostelling trek through England; a soft-sided water dish, and sometimes plastic containers of kibble mush, for outings with the dog; nursing shoes; office shoes; gym shoes; sixpacks of microbrew; and paints, paper, and pencils for art classes. Name a part of my life, and it’s probably been placed on my back.

Only sometimes does my bookbag seem a burden; usually it feels protective. It reminds me I have a life; it makes me bigger; it gives me warmth; it keeps my hands free. Once it even helped me up. When I tripped on the pavement and pitched headlong, my overstuffed bookbag caused me to judo-roll and be back on my feet before you could say, “Nice patches! You’ve been to New Zealand?”

A few years ago, my partner and my mum and I went to visit the Petroglyphs at Peterborough (Ontario). I stopped to read the story of Turtle in the interpretive centre. It seems that Turtle spent so much time at the bottom of the lake studying all the interesting things down there, that he was late for the job fair. By the time he surfaced, the Great Spirit shrugged and said there were no more jobs left. Turtle, somewhat miffed, overturned a few canoes. I read this, thinking, “Oh, crap! That’s me!”  — all the courses I’ve taken, all the jobs I’ve tried on for size, with nothing ever seeming to really fit. It’s enough to make me pretty grumpy sometimes.

But the grumpy turtle plods on. The grump crumbles away. Things that don’t fit slide off. No accumulations of wealth — oh, but the vistas I’ve seen! The things I’ve learned! The creatures I’ve greeted! The stories I could tell you!

Maybe Turtle is a storyteller.