Return to Canada: "Park"

 Return to Canada: “Park” 

The day before we left Ottawa:

     We picked up Uncle Albert at noon. He seemed none the worse for wear. If anything the enforced rest had been good for him: his voice was stronger, he leaned less on his cane, the tremor in his hands was almost unnoticeable.

Shirley Wiitasalo, Park, 1992
https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artwork/park

     “Two things I want to see before we head out,” he said, “the cathedral where you did - and didn’t - pray for me” and across the street in the museum just one painting - “Luc said I should see it, ‘Park.’” He’d had Luc write down the artist’s name, “Shirley Wiitasalo.”

So, we did those two things.

     Especially after the runaway baroque flurry of the church, the painting has a peaceful look, but as if something in it is about to break. It may be in the way the shape of the tree in the foreground mimics the shape of the lamppost in the distance, so the winded tree looks more solid, the stolid lamppost more fragile. When I turn away, I will hear behind me glass breaking on pavement, the fizz of something electric hitting wet ground. When I turn back, there will be something bilious where the edges between yellow and green have gone out of focus.

     I looked at Uncle Albert, sitting in the chair we hired just to push him from the ticket desk to this one painting. “Reminds me of Harold Altman,” he said. “He died of heart failure.”

The next morning we set out for Sudury where landed what one the largest meteors ever to hit the earth, burrowing 9 miles into it.

08.26.17