I didn't go to any movies this week. It's turned out to be the worst way to forget my ex, even though I'd rather not. Instead, my seester called me and invited me to the Picasso exhibit in town. Dammit. The last time I went to the VAG, I saw the Matisse show with my ex-girlfriend. For some reason, people like to talk about Matisse and Picasso in the same breath. I guess they were kinda like contemporaries, or they lived in the same area of France or something.
My friend Yumi is going back to Japan in a few days, and she asked me to brunch on Sunday. Since my sister abandoned the plan for a Saturday trip to the gallery, we decided on Sunday. Instead we went to visit my friendly neighborhood realtor who helped me buy my flat and we dropped off some papers for the deal on my sister's new place. The place he was showing was a townhouse that is part of a tower complex. The townhouses are totally hidden from the street and I was amazed to see them there. The whole place reminded me of the London flat in The Constant Gardener. I asked my realtor how often these places come on the market and how much the owners were asking. He said they come available quite regularly and the owners wanted upwards of $400K. Believe me, that is totally reasonable in my town.
We decided to do the gallery on Sunday. I darted around trying to re-schedule brunch and eventually convinced Yumi that if she wanted to see me one last time that she would have to meet me at 10:00a.m. It would have been so much easier if she had slept over. To make it up to her, and since she plans to travel to Spain one day with her mum, I asked her to come to the art gallery with us and learn about a Spanish git. Yumi hardly touched her omelette at brunch, and I started to get a little pissed but then I remembered she was treating me. I had arrived at the restaurant 40 minutes early to guarantee that we had a table. It was the only way we were going to crunch everything into the day. We had to be done everything by 2:00. I'm very organized and motivated when I want to be, and I didn't even need a Red Bull this time. I got a free parking spot and everything was peachy. The restaurant was practically empty when I got there but it filled up in less than 10 minutes. We received extremely prompt service and left.
I love the way Yumi has to climb into my Jeep. Come on, its stock but she still finds it necessary to grip the sport bar and use the side step. I can't really blame her, she had on some really nice boots today that made her butt look really good. She was sick of wearing trainers in the wet weather.
We drove downtown and parked near the gallery. We got there before my sister and her husband. Yumi is really shy and nearly backed out when I told her that she was going to meet my sister. She said she didn't want to bother her and her husband. WTF? The last girl I introduced to my family happens to be the same person who introduced me to Yumi. In her case, I was hoping she would come to my sister's wedding. She gave my sister a gift, but wouldn't come to the wedding. She said she had nothing to wear, but I think it was a fake excuse. It's probably a good thing though because she would have freaked when we were pulled over at a roadblock. The cops sent us on our way, but I can imagine that sort of thing would be freaky for my friend.
At the gallery, Yumi was trying not to fall asleep during the guided tour, but it was pretty good all in all. My sister and her husband left after the tour because he wanted some baby-making time and she had to work later in the afternoon. They should have stayed at the gallery. On the third floor in a different show, there is an installation of photos in a small room where the photos are on the ceiling and you have to lie down on a mattress to see them. I got down and nearly fell asleep myself. I tried to convince Yumi to join me, but she doesn't have sex in public. Prude? Maybe.
Yumi wanted to see Emily Carr's stuff so we went to the top floor, and another trigger hit me. I had visited Emily Carr's home in Victoria with my ex-girlfriend. This stuff just happens, six degrees I guess. Anyway, that didn't upset me. I mentioned to Yumi that I had seen the Andy Warhol exhibit many years ago, and the thing I remember the most is watching a video of Iggy Pop draw a portrait with his butt. His medium was crayon on paper, I guess I watched it because it wasn't immediately apparent that Iggy was drawing, nor that it was Iggy drawing, nor what exactly it had to do with Andy Warhol. I bumped into one of my old friends there. She was watching the video. I bump into her every couple of years. The last time was at church last Christmas. She's doing a thesis in Divinity and plans to be an Anglican priest (priestess?). I'm glad for her, I hope she does it. It's nice to bump into people now and then and see that they are doing something meaningful with their lives. Yumi had no idea who Warhol was, so I dragged her into the gift shop and rifled through his books looking for soup cans. All I could find were pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Mick Jagger.
It was getting close to 3:00 so we went for coffee at a place I had never heard of before, but Yumi knew about it. One thing I don't understand about Yumi is her musical knowledge. She is the same age as I, but she doesn't recognize songs like When Doves Cry by Prince, or really any songs from the 80s. I asked her why she didn't know pop music, she said that she HATED English. I asked her if she knew Alyssa Milano's "Kimi wa Sunshine Boy", a Japanese language chart topper from the mid-80s. She said no. I started to think that Yumi had never heard the radio before, but then Frankie came on and she grinned and pointed to the ceiling. "I know this song", she said. Jokingly I asked, "So you go to gay bars a lot, then?" She said she had never been to a gay bar. Likely story, even I've been to a gay bar (once) -- for the music. Apparently, Relax is a song used in Japanese TV ads. I shudder to think for what. I felt a duty to tell her the story of Holly Johnson and the impact he and his colleagues had on the London music scene in the 80s, but I kept it short. Yumi wasn't interested.
The clock was closing in on four, so Yumi and I went back to the Jeep, paid a sweet $4 for 5 hours of parking. Yumi told me that parking is $6 an hour in Tokyo, but its only $6 a day for earlybirds here. I drove her to her friend's place and only realized it when it was too late really: This was the last time I was going to see Yumi for a long time. I got a little sad, so I went grocery shopping and got a party-size bucket of flan. Actually it was a large format bag of white corn Tostitos. I polished them off in quick order before I knew it, and tried to move on. I guess it was good really. She was only supposed to be here for 2 weeks, but she changed her plans and ended up staying 2 and a half months. I offered to drive her to the airport, but I might have to work that day so today was it. I'm eager to take a vacation some time soon, and now I have a good reason to go to Japan.
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