I remember when I was a little kid and it seemed I was always in bed whenever it was dark. I believed I was missing all the good stuff, the magical stuff, the secret stuff…I believed the grownups could hardly wait for the kids to go to bed so they could get started on their mysterious, unimaginable fun. (Actually, in my family this was probably true.)
I do remember one time when I was about four years old and living in Montreal, my mom woke us up in the middle of the night and took us for a walk in our pyjamas and slippers. It was so shockingly strange that I’ve never forgotten it. I still remember the moon and the stars and the cool air and the quietness and the utter specialness of it all. My neighbourhood seemed completely different at night. My mom seemed completely different at night – happier, more alive, more fun.
So last night at the Lumière Festival I was watching the little kids and wondering if they were as awestruck by the magic of this night as I was all those years ago. Childhood is such a different set of experiences now…maybe this seems only slightly out of the ordinary to them. Maybe they get to stay up late every night and go for walks in the dark and maybe this isn’t even all that special or magical or memorable for them. But maybe it is. I hope so.
The one-night festival is held in Stanley Park, which is a big wooded park with paths on the banks of the Rideau River. I never even knew it existed before last night. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to walk there, and it was still light when I arrived so I got to watch the transformation from day to night. The paths through the park were lined with unlit lanterns of various sizes and shapes and degrees of complexity.
This mermaid is a lantern:
I was enchanted by all the little princesses around!
These two princesses are standing in front of an elephant lantern:
Boys can’t be princesses, and for some reason princes are just boring. But boys can be bumblebees!
This is a princess in a chinese labyrinth. Later all the candles in the paper bags were lit, and then I traveled the labyrinth too. After I finished it, I read the one-page explanation of it, and it was spooky. It said it was a spiritual journey – and the weird thing is, I experienced it as such, even though I didn’t know it was supposed to be, and even though kids were flying all around me like whirling dervishes. As I traveled through the labyrinth I found myself becoming intensely focused on someone I care very much about, who last week learned that her breast cancer had spread to her lung. And then a parade of the faces of everybody I’ve known who has either survived cancer or succumbed to it came floating through my mind. An old (chinese?) saying came back to me: Every person experiences two deaths: the first when their physical body dies, the second when their name is spoken aloud for the very last time. As I got to the centre of the labyrnth I made a vow to say out loud the names of my dead friends every day for the rest of my life.
Okay, that was a bit of a morbid detour, wasn’t it? Let me make it up to you by showing you this picture of an anonymous little princess and her family who would probably be mortified and might even sue me if they knew I was posting this picture on the internet.
That reminds me. Back in the olden days, before we had digital cameras, every roll of film would come back with maybe 3 good pictures on it. The rest would be varying degrees of bad. I would take the very worst pictures of my family and friends and put them in my “Ugly Family and Friends Photo Album.” Note, the people weren’t ugly, but these photos of them were god-awful. The only way anybody could ever see my Ugly Family and Friends Photo Album was if they voluntarily contributed a horrendous photo to it. But I digress.
How about some dancers?
These girls were part of a dance troupe of about 20 Chinese dancers. They were adorable.
This Krishna dancer danced to a story about seduction:
Okay, this dancer was absolutely fabulous. The drumming was great too. My photo does not do him justice. He was all hands and face. He had enormous hands and the little kids were mesmerized but freaked out when he got too close.
I loved this thing. The last time I saw a box fort this impressive was when I built one in the party room of my apartment building in Bayshore when I was 9. The kids were given headlamps to wear in this box fort. (Side note: It was interesting to watch how uncomfortable many parents were while their kids were in this fort. Parents today seem to have a major issue with their kids being out of sight.)
Once it was dark, all the lanterns were lit. I loved this clothesline lantern. I need to learn some more advance photographic techniques for night photography.
I was charmed by the teacup-shaped lanterns:
I just liked these girls, so I took a picture of them:
I ran into these creatures on the path as I was leaving. I’m not sure what they are exactly, but they were near a gigantic cheshire cat and a hooka pipe.
It was a long walk home, and I have to say there were some frightful creatures on Murray Street in the Market!
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