Conceptual art drains me. Sometimes the ideas are too complicated, cerebral for me to grasp. I often leave the gallery asking, “am I not smart enough, or is the artist over compensating?” Either way, the idea behind the object asks too much of me to care, and I am left tired and wanting.  Call me old fashioned, but I want to look at art and I want to feel something –– uneasy, moved, disturbed, uplifted –– I don’t care what, but I want to feel. Apathetic won’t do. Any accompanying material is there to support, enhance or debate my response. But the work should stand alone. And this is my issue with so much of the conceptual art we see today. That it doesn’t do that. I went to MOCA the other day, and I left feeling drained rather than full. The only work I was really taken by was South African artist, Dineo Seshee Bopape’s installation of crystals, herbs, dried flowers, seeds and stones. It was a meditative experience to stand so close to the work, an homage to indigenous people in Canada, and around the world. Tim Whiten‘s glass temple was exquisite, and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy Hiba Abdallah and Justin Langlois‘ funny and often bang on musings on disagreement. But overall, it wasn’t the experience I was hoping for. So, we live and learn. And each experience brings us closer to what it is we’re looking for. In art, and in life. The truth is, I’d rather spend an hour looking at Van Gogh’s swirls or Klein’s blue.

I read a brilliant piece in the New Yorker on the weekend titled The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture. The article explored the world of polychromy –– painting sculpture or architecture in colour –– and questioned Western ideals of beauty, ones rooted in an erroneous assumption that deities, leaders and war heroes were immortalized in pure white. It’s a fascinating read. To see colour reconstructions of ancient sculptures, ones I grew up studying, is exciting. Some find the colour lewd and gaudy, but to me, the pink and ocher and azurite brings the sculptures to life, and gives them a soul. As one scholar said, “nobody has a problem hailing Nefertiti as a spectacular piece of world art, and nobody says that it’s unfortunate that it’s painted. Because it’s not Western, it’s perfectly O.K. for it to be polychrome. But let’s not have it in our part of the world, because we’re different, aren’t we?”

It was Murder on the Orient Express that made me fall in love with the idea of train travel. Besides the small matter of a murder, everything about it looked so glamorous and romantic. The Venice Simplon still calls my name. If I ever climb aboard, I definitely plan on packing a lace robe and a tiara in my valise.

Some people have a knack of putting a positive spin on all matters. My swimming friend, Linda is one such individual. I know her from nattering in the locker room, and I find her attitude bright and grounded. Once in a while, we’ll bump into one another at the supermarket and giggle at how odd it feels to be conversing with clothes on. I like Linda. This morning, as I bemoaned the rain, she stopped me and said, “but Athena, the trees need stored-up water to make up for what they’ll lose through winter. A wet November is a good one.” I appreciated the reminder that we all need different things to survive.

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers,” Dorothy Parker once wrote, “the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of ‘The Elements of Style.’ The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” Once in a while, I open my copy of The Elements of Style, and I turn straight to the back, to the ‘list of reminders’. It’s there that I am grounded by Strunk and White’s practical wisdoms. “When using metaphor, do not mix it up. That is, don’t start by calling something a swordfish and end by calling it an hourglass.” “When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.” And my favourite, “avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy.” I have the version illustrated by the wonderfully talented Maira Kalman. Aspiring writers, firefighters or veterinarians, everyone deserves the favour that is the gift of this book.