February 23, 2012

65 is the new 65

OK, boomers, let's not be self-congratulatory. Yes, we look and dress more youthfully than our parents did, we try to do gym, walk or jog, play tennis, travel and walk up to a café in Montmartre without getting winded. Etcetera.

But sixty-five is not the new forty-five. Sixty-five is hips and knees on the front burner; cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar and hormone levels and cataracts are flashing yellow lights. Small talk no longer involves sex (teens to early twenties); sex, work, pregnancy, childbirth and children (twenties-thirties); work, weight, schedules, money and children (forties); work, weight, operations and grown children (fifties).
It's about age and survival.
Sixty-five is early old.
You creak, you lose things, you need a remote-control key-finder to find your remote-control key, you can't find your thirty-two different passwords. You're a mess. But you're surviving.

Looking forward to the cool new 70---hey hey! 

(Ouch, just threw my shoulder out).

February 14, 2012

VERSOIX GOES VIRAL

My favorite little quai in Versoix has became an on-line hot-spot, as photos of a car (actually, as you see there are two) went viral.From a big spread in the Tribune de Genève to the International Herald Tribune to various websites, and my brother assures me, to the hard copy of US News and World Report. 


Cold enough to be hot, and in the minus five plus wind (equals about minus 12 wind-chill factor) this weekend loads of tourists were slipping around on the sheer ice, gawking and snapping or simply hanging in the picturesque scene worthy of the best snowscape fantasy. Below are my iphone pix.








February 5, 2012

Faux-Naïf Art and the ICU

The glass screen in the waiting room for Soins Intensifs stands there, translucently opaque with colored patches visible from all sides.  There are tables and chairs, a receptionist in a booth, piles of plastic cups and liter bottles of mineral water to prevent dehydration and a disinfecting kit with instructions--Cantonal Hospital paraphernalia.
The screen is a childlike production, no doubt commissioned to present those who wait with a Positive Pastorale:  happy green horseman (no apocalypse), spiral suns, a couple of shepherds with sheep or a goat, stars, moons.  A faux primitive frieze, colors glazed in. An undulating sea. Or is it sky? Both? A cow, perhaps a bull, peaceful as Ferdinand. Dove-like birds in French blue, oddly chicken-clawed. Stick-like pine trees. People in affirmative reds. The cows could be blue and the horses green.
The colors have been chosen with post-Expressionist élan:
life can be summed up in poster paint primaries and simplified figures.
Matisse did it, Picasso did it, why not (and I check the bottom right signature) Gilbert Mazliah?


For days a very dear friend was struggling in the ICU.
For days we occupied the antechamber between visits.  I couldn't help looking at the screen every day, sometimes skeptically, sometimes with irritation. There it was, with its splash of symbols in happy colors: 
too damn cheerful, too....naive!


But it seemed to be saying:  look at this world and take heart!
And I heard that.