Have you noticed that when you finish at the computer, you linger on? I do. It has to do with the reluctance (I've mentioned this before) to make the transition to the next activity, or non-activity in the case of calling it a day and going to bed. It's not the decision to make the next move, its the compulsion to keep on sitting there and poking around. Or just to sit? I have often said that one of the talents a writer must have is the ability to sit still for long periods of time. I inherited the quality from my mother. Some might call it indolence but it takes practice and patience and yes, eventually, skill. it's not like the lethargy I have been suffering from over the last several weeks. It's more focused and much less negative. I've been at the computer and I mean the Computer - not my Little Mac but Big Mac - since about 4 a.m. and my tea is cold and it's time to go swimming, and still I keep on sitting here and I haven't even written my blog - until now. Is this a legitimate blog?

I remember my husband's comment when some friends took him duck hunting (this was in Manitoba) for the first time in his life. They picked him up about 4 in the morning and they drove out into the country and slogged through a wet marsh and hid in some sort of blind (?) (I don't know what I'm talking about) and sat, getting colder and more uncomfortable by the minute. One of them men said "Shhh!" They hadn't been making any noise, Bill thought. What was it? "Shhh," his friend said again, "listen! " They listened. They heard a chomping noise. "We're too late."

Late? Yes. The ducks were already feeding.

Bill decided then that anything he was too late for at five in the morning, he didn't want to do.

Sometimes I feel that way about swimming at 6. I love to swim. I want to swim. I feel better when I swim. But I hate to be late for swimming at -ooops - it's 6:03.

Gotta go.

I recently saw a new stage adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis and wrote a review for a couple of Icelandic-Canadian papers (in English). I was led into a comparison of another recent brilliantly staged production, Needles and Opium, by Robert Lepage. This is not for any review but for my own consideration. Both pieces are distinctive for their innovative staging that rivets the audience's attention, rivets and, in fact, diverts it. N&O is about a couple of characters who are stoned or high - and suffering, of course. The set is a room-size box whose walls and floor keep shifting according to the drugged perception of the characters. The actors are on wires as they sometimes defy gravity in order to stand on whatever wall/floor presents itself. The room itself is a kind of character, influencing the behaviour of the protagonists. The effect is dazzling but the dazzle wears off in retrospect. I realized that without that shifting set and the wonderful agility of the performers, the story wasn't much. On the other hand, though a believable presentation of a man who has turned into a bug is difficult, his pain and predicament are served by the set design, not overwhelmed by it. His bedroom, on a second level above the living room, is a box that helps the poor bug to crawl all over the walls and floor as he reacts in anguish to his treatment by his family. The actor doesn't have a wire but there are handholds all over the walls; his agility is marvellous and they don't upstage (if you'll pardon the expression) his human agony.

Robert Lepage gets A for his stage design but B for his story. Three-time winner of the annual Icelandic Theatre Award for Stage Design, Börkur Jónsson, gets A for the stage design but Kafka (and his adaptors) get A+ for the story. The bug wins.