To all of you needing vocabulary instruction emulating means: “If you emulate something or someone, you imitate them because you admire them a great deal.”
Sons are traditionally expected to emulate their fathers. [VERB noun]
Synonyms: imitate, follow, copy, mirror.
I do admit that I admire Emily Carr a great deal, that I would love to mirror her accomplishments and her sheer perseverance, although she did loose it for about fifteen years when she stopped painting because she was ahead of her time, particularly in British Columbia. . There is a rather profound statement contained within Charlotte Gray’s The Promise of Canada: “By looking inward she gave us (Canadians) outward identity.”
Gray reveals why she chose Carr as a subject in her book The Promise of Canada. “I asked myself Why Carr recently as I stood in front of one of her best-loved works, Scorned As Timber, Beloved of the Sky(1935) in the Vancouver Art Gallery which now holds the bulk of her paintings. The canvas shows a long spindly tree surrounded by brutally logged land, reaching up to a pearly, pale sky painted with undulating circular strokes. The scorned tree could almost be a self portrait for this artist—-her solitary single-minded reach to self-fulfillment while the landscape is desecrated around her.” (page 100).
I do admit my life is a little different than Emily Carr’s. Yesterday I was walking down Mainland in Yaletown and heard a voice crying out to me.
She: Alexis!!! Its you! My friend and I follow you on Instagram all of the time. You are hilarious! Can I take a selfie with you?
Me: Of course, I would be honored!
She: I am going to send it to me friend right away. She will be so impressed!
Me: Wow! I am almost going to cry, I am so moved.
Then I walked to the corner and this car pulled up and Boris started talking to me. He put his data in my phone and we exchanged texts last evening. It was hilariously funny. He accused me of flirting with him and I responded:
Me: This is silly!. I am old enough to be your grandmother but I love laughing with you. You are so much fun!
He suggested coffee sometime this weekend. We shall see. I am going to Writer’s Resource at my precious Vancouver Public Library, a mere three blocks from my home. Now I am sure Emily Carr NEVER was texted by a guy called Boris. She did have a monkey called Woo but that is not the same. Boris is much cuter.
But here is some pathos. (Pathos (/ˈpeɪθɒs/, US: /ˈpeɪθoʊs/; plural: pathea; Greek: πάθος, for “suffering” or “experience”; adjectival form: ‘pathetic’ from παθητικός) represents an appeal to the emotions of the audience, and elicits feelings that already reside in them.)
I was walking along Robson Street and heard a musician by the name of TeeJay from Victoria. I stopped to listen to him and decided to take a video, then place it on Instagram. The song he was playing, I later learned, was Higher Window by Josh Thomas. The video is marred because listening to the words I suddenly, and very involuntarily, began to howl in pain. The video is on Instagram alexismctwit It was an amazing encounter. TeeJay said he seldom (if ever) played this song AND that his Ex began to weep at the exactly the same place in the song. Who or what caused me to howl? Not the usual suspects is all I will say. But I went on with the day. Some people accuse me of having “ups and downs”. Those are people who only have downs or are in a state of permanent numbness. (By the way, I am not bipolar. I have been tested, honestly that is true) The words that occasioned the pain? How perfect we were meant to be. Our warm and silent symmetry.
