Unknown caller…

So de Kooning just gets up one morning, walks to his easel, and just starts to paint…

It’s what his hands want to do…

There’s nothing more and nothing less to it than the reason he started in the first place…

The compulsion to watch these colours and shapes and lines and strokes take shape in front of him…

So he paints and paints…

The people who see it can’t believe it…

It’s not just that the paintings are as good as when he was young…

The truth is that they’re something else, something new…

And the worse his disease gets, the less controlled, more spontaneous and fanciful the stuff becomes…

De Kooning makes the best work of his life…

Each day he gets up and sees his paintings from the day before, and of course, he doesn’t remember a one of them…

Doesn’t even really know that he is a painter…

He just looks at his canvases and sees what for him, was the most beautiful art in the world…

— In The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block

One of the things that I enjoy most about the Canucks website is the stories of the players when they were little boys,

and being in the NHL was the seed of  a dream…

I like hearing about how their fathers built ice rinks for them…

How their mothers would call them to come in for supper,

but they just stayed out in the cold,

and kept playing,

no matter what…

How all they thought about was nothing but playing the game,

and emulating heros…

When I ride my bike around the city,

I don’t often come across boys in back alleys,

playing road hockey…

But when I do,

I stop and watch,

forgetting all about what I’m supposed to be doing,

and where I’m supposed to be going…

And I take my time to enjoy the beauty,

and poetry,

playing itself out on asphalt,

with a ball,

a bunch of sticks,

a net,

and some happy little boys…

And because I’m wearing the t-shirt,

they know that I am the same,

only in a different container…

You and I, we're not tied to the ground...