Nov 29
I’m listening to Kate Bush’s new album 50 Words for Snow and I’m really getting into it. Misty, the albums third track, is a song about a woman who makes love to a snowman. Classic. But this video is a 2 minute 33 second animation segment for the first single, Wild Man.
Franco con camera
Living in Argentina and being Canadian I’m lucky. Both countries support marriage equality and gay people are afforded equal rights. The way it should be.
This is not the case in countries across the world, including Australia and America where homosexuals must fight for legal inclusion. Let’s remember that it was only five years ago that George W. Bush was going to legalize discrimination by amending the American constitution to ensure that gays were forbidden from marrying and adopting children. A case for inequality would have been written into the constitution. A first, in American history.
That is how deep rooted hatred is for homosexuals in a country that loudly proclaims each of its citizens is born equal. Unless you happen to be gay. In the United States, gays are not permitted to visit their dying partners in the hospital because they are not considered family. A country fraught with contradictions indeed.
America may not be the civil rights leader it thinks it is but it can use some support from commercials like this to embrace equal rights for everyone.
I have no idea what the gay lifestyle is, but I can tell you one thing: It looks just as boring as the straight one.
When I meet people I find interesting I want to know everything about them. What their daily routine is, who their friends are, where they went to school, their favourite vacation destinations, etc. It doesn’t occur to me that most people would find all this boring, but there is such purpose and beauty in the tiny mundane tasks we carry out everyday that shape our personalities and make us unique.
It’s fascinating how uniform the human species is. Unfortunately too often it’s our differences that set us apart. I’ve always found the diversity of Earth attractive, an energy rich with colour.
There are times where I wish I could experience more, know more people, communicate more effectively, but my ageing body prevents me from escape. One day, when I have no choice but to leave it, I hope to learn the colours of Africa, to transform myself into the spirit of a Cheetah or Lion, or whatever.
To gain wisdom from a creature unlike a person is divine.
Our bodies limit us, but our minds are free to dream.
I have read almost everything that Margaret Atwood has written. These days I’m interested in her short story collections, having begun reading Bluebeard’s Egg I marvel at the intricate tales she has woven within its pages.
Atwood has been lauded enough, and there are many young writers in Canada today who require attention; I will not argue, like many of my peers, that there is currently a black hole of talent, because that is simply not true. If you look for talent, you will find it.
What Atwood demonstrates when I read an opening line of a story is the lost art of dry humour. In her body of work that spans almost five decades, she masterfully parallels wit with prophecy, eloquently displayed in her dystopian novels The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood. As she ages, her work progresses to other-worldly realms.
In Bluebeard’s Egg lies a short story called Betty, that reminds me why I love reading. Betty, observed by the young narrator, is a meek, sweet, unthreatening woman. In less than 30 pages Betty transgressed from a wife, to a divorceé to a singleton, to a woman dead from brain cancer.
What Atwood did was make Betty believable, in part because we have all known a woman like her. For me it was Lorraine, my mother’s best friend who I remember fondly, in spite of her many forgivable flaws.
But it’s not just a familiar character, it’s the gentleness of Atwood’s pen, the unflinching attention to detail and the unsentimental humanity of her prose that sets her a part from her contemporaries. She approaches her world with intricate observation, whether good or bad she reserves judgment.
Reading a good story is as comforting as cuddling up on the couch during a rainstorm and enjoying your favourite pinot noir.
It is, I’m telling you, it is!
Hello I'm Franco. I write about anything that interests me, which includes travel, my dog, my cat, television, radio, movies, music, you name it, I'm into it. I'm an annoyingly proud Canadian who loves to drink too much beer and stare inappropriately and uncomfortably at strangers. Don't get me started on anything political, because I get even more obnoxious.
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I possess great compassion and seek to be of service to others. 
