“Black and Blonde” (Preface)

 

The Internet is a wonderful thing. Without it, I would never have been invited to become a member of the 21^st Century Poets—an online group of writers who started a forum wherein we posted bits and pieces, chatted back and forth, and generally communed with others of our ilk. It was a small group, more of a cluster, really, but boy, did we jam up cyberspace with our bounty. The forum was a safe place to exchange ideas, ask for reviews, assistance, advice, and assurance on things we had already done, and experiment with things we wanted to try. It was the most convivial, supportive, and creative group I have ever been a party to, and I miss them all—except Nicole, who was a founding member and remains my sister in propinquity—dearly. Nic might even remember this story, posted in installments as I wrote it, with neither revisions nor any idea of what was going to happen next.

 

At the time, I was writing the Julian stories and watching reruns of Miami Vice. Ter and I have all five seasons on DVD, since we were too busy living life on Friday nights to be home for the series in its heyday. It was more inspiring without commercial breaks, anyway. I adore what Don Johnson did with Sonny Crockett, and since I am usually inspired by actors, rock stars or both, I decided it would be fun to write a vampire with attitude.

 

Enter Ariel Black, a blood hunter as different from Julian Scott-Tyler as burlap is from cashmere. He’s cynical, savvy, abrasive, and cursed with a set of morals that most of his kind abandoned long ago. His world also differs from Julian’s in that he operates among knowing mortals—vampires are an emerging reality that we are just beginning to accept. Black has figured out how to live among us without posing a threat, but when a determined mortal woman shows up with a proposition for him, he is forced to reconsider his position …

 

Part one of eight goes up tomorrow. Enjoy.

Bibliography (Part 2)

“Dangerous Women”

It’s the latest anthology edited by my hero, George R.R. Martin, and his buddy, Gardner Dozois. A collection of stories about … three guesses and the first two don’t count. I requested it for Christmas and am not quite halfway through the content. Some of the stories are longer than mine, and the book itself is so heavy I can’t read it in bed without risking a concussion. I don’t generally read anthologies—the last one to be acquired was “Warriors”, edited by the same pair to the same hefty result—but the subject matter is one dear to my heart, being a bit of a bad girl myself … in my dreams, at least.

There’s no set definition of what makes a woman dangerous. She doesn’t have to be a whip-cracking, gun-toting, chain-smoking dominatrix out to seize control of an industrial empire. She can be a danger to herself, as well. She can be an unstable mother, an insecure wife, a downtrodden daughter; or she can be a fledgling sorcerer without a mentor, a secret agent, a queen regent, or the unassuming cover for an infamous bounty hunter whom everyone refers to as “him” or “he”. This book is stuffed with tales that span the spectrum, though so far I have yet to happen on a heroine in the grip of PMS. After all, that’s when I am the most dangerous.

I’ve written a lot of female characters over the years. I thought Génie/Janine was the most dangerous of the herd, but then I remembered a story I wrote in 2001 so, in keeping with the theme, I’ve carved it up for serial posting starting this Saturday. Working with it again after all these years, I believe that the most dangerous woman of all is probably the one who holds a man’s heart.

The things we do for love …

Food Porn 2 - Pasta Borgia

Flour

Butter

Milk

Hot mustard

Aged white cheddar

Bacon

Green onion

Salt/pepper

Pasta of choice 

Fry up the bacon and crumble into bits. Set aside (and no snacking!)

In a small saucepan over medium heat, make a roux with the flour/butter; add milk and stir until thick. Add salt and pepper, mustard, cheddar, green onion and whatever bacon bits are left from illegal snacking.

Cook pasta as per directions on package.

Pour sauce over cooked pasta and toss to coat.

Serve with baby tomatoes, more bacon bits and more green onion as garnish. 

* * * 

While this is in no way an original recipe—a zillion variations are doubtless unique to a zillion home cooks—Ter and I christened it “Pasta Borgia” because it’s killer yummy.

The greatest challenge of going gluten free has been what to do about pasta. We ate a lot of it in our day—pasta with red sauce; pasta with cheese sauce; pasta with pesto cream sauce; pasta with sausage, peppers and mushrooms; pasta al forno (dubbed “al porno” because, well, nothing in our house is ever called by its proper name) … the list seemed endless when we realized just how many of our favourite dishes contained noodles in one form or another. Linguine was a staple, as were penne and fusilli. Ter made a veggie lasagne that was so good I never missed the meat. Spaghetti, rotini, farfalle, fettucine, vermicelli, you name it, we had it in our pantry.

I know, I know. There are sundry forms of gluten-free noodles. We tried a few. Yuk, blech and erg. Noodle consumption for the better part of the past year has been at Asian restaurants because the best pasta requires durum semolina. Yet Ter’s passion for pasta has dwindled not one whit, so she’s persevered in the search for a GF brand that will at least try to fool us in ways the competition has not.

She found one at our local healthy food store. It’s not cheap, but it’s edible. And it comes in baby shell form! That was our favourite shape for Pasta Borgia – and now that we’re able to eat it again, we’re likely to take on a similar shape ourselves.

Oh, who cares? Mangia!

Smarter Than the Average Bear

He may not be smarter, but he’s far cuter. Moon Pie decided to hold Ter’s reading glasses hostage the other day; we were running around getting ready for work—always a bit of a circus—and he pounced on her purse when our backs were turned.

His enthusiasm reminded me of being a kid and believing that work was better than school because you got paid for being there. Every kid plays at being a grown up. Conversely, too few grown ups play at being a kid. Moonie gets to stay home and play all day, but I guess that gets old after a while. I wish I could remember those days. I disliked school for the most part. Almost every report card from grade five to twelve features a teacher’s comment along the lines of “Ruth would do so much better if she would apply herself.” I was obviously rich with potential (aren’t we all?) and highly unmotivated—except in English, of course. I reckon I’d have done better if I’d been healthy and thus less preoccupied, but I could be wrong. I simply did less well in subjects that failed to appeal.

I regret some of that, now. Math will always inspire an Ugh!, but I must harbour a closet engineering gene because physics has become more fascinating as I’ve grown up. I can grasp concepts of space/time/energy etc. that have Ter gaping at me in astonishment, yet the most significant thing I recall from physics class is shooting light through a prism … and I’d likely have forgotten that little item if Pink Floyd had chosen different cover art for Dark Side of the Moon. Still, with naught but that tiny experiment to my credit, I understood the concept of trans-warp beaming as defined in the Star Trek movie from 2009. I couldn’t possibly write out the formula (which doesn't exist, by the way ... yet), but I totally saw how it could work. You aim for a set of coordinates at a point in space X number of parsecs or light years or whatever from where you are now, compensating for the speed at both departure and arrival points. The tricky bit is figuring out where the arrival site will be, given that it too is moving at warp and could change speed/direction en route. Firing a bullet at a moving target at breakneck speed while blindfolded was a good analogy as expressed by Montgomery Scott, but the entire thing made complete sense to me.

Easy.

I think.

Even math, when I get past the ugh, has become a test of skill. I’ve relied on my calculator for so many years that I’ve begun losing my ability to add three digit figures in my head. Panic ensued on that discovery, and now I’m adding my invoices by hand … then confirming with the calculator. After all, I work with taxpayer dollars so accuracy is key. It’s hardly the same as beaming Captain Kirk from the Romulan Narada to the Enterprise during a high speed space chase, but the fundamentals are pretty much the same.

I think.

Suffering for Art

Unless you count emails at work, my plan to write daily isn’t going very well. You might count the goings on in my imagination, I suppose, as there’s always something brewing in there. I am more productive if I get the scene/story ordered in my head before I tackle the computer. Going in cold rarely achieves ignition.

I wonder why I do it at all.

At the beginning of January, Erin Morgenstern posted a piece on her blog that struck a chord. She intends to write her follow up to The Night Circus in 2014, but expressed some doubt about how to accomplish it. She’s much happier with life now than she was then, so liking the world outside her head is interfering with the world inside her head. She finally confessed that she started writing to escape a sadness that no longer exists. At the beginning, she wrote to escape.

So did I.

My arthritis was diagnosed shortly after I discovered the joy of creating my own stories. I loved to read, as did (does) my whole family, but for me, writing took that pleasure to another, all-consuming level. After delivering the good news to my mother and me, the doctor added the bonus info that I’d have to cut back on the writing, as the physics of it were likely to cause more problems than the disease alone.

That very night, I started writing a new story. I recall nothing of it except that it was as much an act of defiance as of creativity. I had dabbled with words since age ten. At thirteen, I flung my arms around the practice and held on for dear life. From then on, writing was my escape, my sanctuary from a world where the struggle against pain reigned supreme. For years, arthritis was my real life and writing was how I coped with it. I actually did let up in my twenties, when the worst seemed over and my life got happier. I still use it as a coping mechanism, but overall, my inner world is darker and scarier than my outer one.

I understand what EM is saying. Great art, be it literature, music or painting, is often born of the artist’s suffering and subsequent urge to escape some form of pain—a broken heart, a broken child, a broken faith. Time and again, I’ve heard poets and musicians say their best work was done in their darkest moments. Happily, it’s not set in stone that beauty must come from pain. After all these years, writing is my habit as much as my escape. At times, I don’t even think about it; I just do it. Whether it began as a hidden part of me or it arrived later to save me from my angst, it’s very much a part of me now. If I had to stop, I’d as soon stop breathing.

EM says she must learn to write while she’s happy. She’s so gifted that I’m sure she’ll succeed. As for me … I’ll leave the suffering to my characters. I’m fine without it.

The Importance of Tea (Part VII)

“Serenitea”

A treasured day off. After two weeks of recalibrating to the office routine, I have a day to myself … and I’ve given myself permission to indulge. The Ocean Room is warmed up, I have Nicole’s new story to read, and yesterday I bought nine handrolled balls of peach momotaro—a blooming tea that tastes of fresh peach and cost a king’s ransom. Never let it be said that I don’t know how to care for myself; I don’t always do it, but when I’m drained and need Ru time, I make it count. As Cal Leandros has said, “Desperate times call for criminally overpriced tea.” A fortnight of work following vacation probably doesn’t classify as “desperate times” (not by Cal’s estimation, anyway); however, my batteries need charging in a big way. That’s close enough for me.

I have brewed a pot of China gold, Nic’s story awaits, and I have the rest of the morning in which to enjoy both. Perhaps this afternoon, I’ll take the Canon on a photographic flânerie, then flake on the couch and listen to a vintage Alan Parsons album from start to finish. Tales of Mystery and Imagination seems to fit the mood. Now that I’m done with Shade, my mind is turning toward another project, but there’s no pressure. Not today. Today is all about the moment and being in it … one drop at a time.

Creativity Rules

Ter is an artist. I am a writer. In the days before we joined the ranks of the pension prisoner, we lived and breathed creativity. It happened spontaneously, with little warning. Inspiration was everywhere, in music, in books, in movies. She painted portraits of rock stars and I wrote about vampires who looked like rock stars. Her portfolio challenged my manuscripts for storage space in our basement apartment but still, we created. I learned to write by reading my favourite authors. Ter collected art magazines featuring articles by and about her favourite artists, and once in a while—more frequently then than now—we went to museum exhibits and local art shows. A portrait exhibit in Vancouver was particularly enjoyable; I got a bigger kick from watching her inspect the brush strokes in a Sophie Pemberton work than I did from seeing a Van Dyck of Charles I in the flesh.

My practice at an art show is to wander with an idle eye and wait for something to leap out at me. There are always things I like or will agree that’s nice, but a real sock in the belly is what determines whether or not I will part with cash. I am usually looking for something that impresses me as much or more than anything Ter has produced, and it’s rare that such a piece presents itself. Portraits of any ilk are few and far between. Portraits of her caliber are fewer still.

For that reason, I will always remember Sandra Jean. She hung amid florals and still lifes and seascapes and landscapes at a community art show in Sidney. I’d been strolling through the exhibit, scouting for anything that wasn’t a floral or a still life or a seascape or a landscape, and suddenly there she was: a woman with long dark hair and haunted green eyes gazing out of the frame and right through my heart. I stopped dead in front of her and forgot to breathe. I just stood and stared, transfixed. I would have her in my house today except that she was not for sale. The card named the painting and the artist, and there was the cursed red dot that meant I could only take the memory of her with me, because cameras were not allowed and I didn’t have mine with me anyway.

I showed her to Ter. Whether or not she shared my passion for the painting, she understood the nature of it. True art should incite an emotional response in the viewer, right?

So you’d think.

Ter was working at an art gallery/framing shop at the time. The girl she worked with was studying for her art degree and, as it happened, had framed Sandra Jean. The artist was the subject’s mother, and it turned out that she had captured a recent loss in her daughter’s life—I think a divorce but can’t recall for sure. As far as I was concerned, the artist nailed it to the wall, but all the framer had to say was how this was wrong and that should have been different and on the whole, the painting wasn’t that great.

If it wasn’t that great, why do I still remember it? Why did I want to buy it at the time? Why was I so dumbstruck by her beauty that I didn’t notice all the little things that were wrong? I guess if I’d brought my carpenter’s level and a plumb line, I might have seen that her neck was disproportionately long or whatever else the educated eye had plucked out, but all I cared for was how I felt when I met her sad, sad eyes.

The first rule of creativity is that creativity has no rules. Sandra Jean was proof. Follow the rules and you’ll end up with something that may impress the rule makers, but won’t likely impress me.

Food Porn

It helps that I live with a foodie, but even as a teenager, I’d tune into PBS on Saturday afternoon to see if Julia Child was making dessert. I recall coming home from grade school in Quebec to be greeted at the door by my wee sister proclaiming I’d “just missed the funny man” on TV: Graham Kerr, so dubbed because he made my mother laugh out loud with his stories and kitchen antics as The Galloping Gourmet.

I remember most recently when Food TV was about cooking rather than competing—lately the schedule is jammed with killer cooks and wannabe chefs duking it out over who can create the frilliest cupcake. It’s the only time culinary programming has made me sick. It’s no longer about the food or teaching technique; it’s the fall of the Roman Empire, gladiators in aprons wielding machetes and trying to emerge victorious by cutting down the competition. I didn’t bother to check the schedule for holiday programming after catching an ad for Christmas Dinner Wars or some such nonsense—no hope there of a heartwarming ode to the communal Yuletide feast.

It’s taken 30-odd years, but now I’m back with PBS on Saturday afternoon. Ter and I do the laundry and drink tea while watching Cooks’ Country, Lidia’s Italy and Cooking with Nick Stellino. Ah, the bliss of comfort food and how to prepare it. The joy of taste tests and small appliance appraisals. Programs hosted by personalities who don’t outshine the ingredients (though Stellino is hilarious). Better yet, there are no cutthroat cookie queens or desperate donut decorators out to sabotage their neighbours at all costs. It’s all about food and helpful hints—what food TV should be and actually was when it started.

On Writing

Shade’s story is finished—for real this time. I wasn’t wholly happy with the ending of the first draft, so I gave it a few days and finally accepted that it needed more work. I did the hard copy edit at the same time and played with titles, none of which I liked until I glimpsed one this morning. I’ll wear it for a day or two and see if it fits as well as I think it does. If so, yay. If not, sigh.

In his most excellent book On Writing, horrormeister Stephen King dispenses a trove of advice on, well, the obvious. I generally shy from how-to books on creativity, since I believe that creativity has no boundaries and so many of these manuals state hard rules as the only way to success. While that may be true in the intellectual world, in my heart, I believe that the artist must follow her instinct and develop her own style unhampered by the fear of not following the formula. I once tried to write a formulaic romance. Into the third chapter, the characters were running off the page in all the wrong directions and I was bored enough to let them. Needless to say, it went no further than those 2.5 chapters. That’s when I decided to write what I want to read rather that what others may want to read. The formula romance market is huge and I could make a killing in the genre, except that I don’t want to write stuff that makes me roll my eyes. When I read a few romance novels in preparation to write my own, my eyes behaved like drops of spilled mercury. I knew what I had to do, and I had a template to ensure that I did it … but I couldn’t make myself or the characters do it.

I have great respect for romance writers. It’s way harder than it looks.

Anyway, On Writing is more autobiographical than instructional, which makes it far more helpful to me than any of the “How to Write Whizbang (Insert Genre Here) Fiction” manuals. One of the hints within is to drop a “finished” project into a desk drawer, ignore it for six weeks, then go back and look it over. If there are flaws—and there will be—that’s when you’ll be able to see them.

Naturally, I don’t wait that long. I buff and polish as I go (big mistake), and if there’s a structural problem, I usually know it right away. The end of Shade, for instance. I had promised myself to get it finished by the end of my Christmas vacation, so at 5:45 p.m. on January 10, 2014, I typed “The End” and breathed a big sigh. I had done it. The story was told.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. It was mostly told. I knew the ending was too abrupt and needed more work to tie up the loose ends—that means more envisioning, imagining, and composing—but I wanted to be finished by the deadline. A stupid self-imposed limit could have resulted in a sub-standard product. As it happens, it only needed half a page more, but I wanted so much to meet my goal (I hate that word except in hockey, and then only when it’s my team scoring one) that I ended the story prematurely. And I knew it. And I tried to deny it. During the course of last week, I made myself feel better by rephrasing the original commitment from “finishing the story” to “finishing the first draft”. It satisfied my ego, which is now only mildly miffed at a short delay in the cool inspection. Ego appeased, I was free to add a couple of vital paragraphs and now I can honestly say:

Shade’s story is finished.

I think.

Shootout at the Rodge

everybody grab a partner

Holy cow, what a bout at Rogers Arena. Two seconds into the Calgary/Vancouver finale to Hockey Day in Canada, every player on the ice except the goalies got into a fight and when the penalties were assessed, 176 minutes were assigned, including four game misconducts. The Canucks’ coach lost his mind and started screaming at the Flames’ coach, the players on either bench were chirping back and forth, the guys in the penalty boxes continued verbally abusing each other after the doors closed, and it took me forty minutes to get the dinner dishes done because Ter kept yelling at me to “come and see this!”

It was unbelievable, if only because no one in the game was wearing a vintage Flyer jersey. It got crazier at the end of the first period, too. The Vancouver coach was seized outside the Flames’ locker room, apparently intent on berating (or worse) the Calgary coach during the intermission. This set off the talking heads between periods; one guy was so upset that he couldn’t focus on anything else they might have discussed about what hockey had been played so far. Eventually, the teams did settle down and the game progressed, but with the shortened benches on either side, it was like watching two periods of playoff overtime when the guys are so tired they start tripping over the blue line and bumping into each other. They were tied 2-2 at the end of regulation, and still tied after 5 minutes of 4-on-4 OT, so appropriately enough, they went to a shootout. Vancouver won in the fifth round.

I could only imagine what my younger older brother must have been saying. The Canucks are his team. They were mine, too, last night, because I really dislike the Flames, but I must hand it to them—they gave us a darned good show of “ we went to the fights and a hockey game broke out”. It was wild.

Some form of league discipline is likely to be delivered to the Vancouver coach for his behaviour. Whatever he was doing in the corridor between periods had everyone up in arms. Even I can’t figure out what the heck he was thinking. He might have been choked at the visiting team playing their fourth line at the puck drop, which resulted in him having to send in his goons … The saddest thing is that one kid had been called up from the minors to play his first NHL game, his folks had flown out from Ontario to see him play, and he got tossed from it in the first two seconds. I still can’t get my head around it. In the old days, stuff like this happened all the time; they say the quietest room in the league was the visitors’ locker room in Philadelphia (oh, yeah, babe), and though scraps and staged dances are sprinkled throughout an 82 game season, for the most part, bench-clearing brawls don’t happen anymore. Philly is still the most penalized team in the league, but that’s guilt by historic association. It might also be untrue after last Saturday night.

Was it a good game? Yeah, it was. I loved it. No peace-loving beatnikery here, boy. I have a dark side. I also disagree vehemently with hits from behind and deliberate attempts to injure; fights don’t cause injuries the way sticks and knees and numbers-crunching do. I love the speed and skill of a fast forward, but I also admire the third and fourth line players, the guys who don’t score that much but can motivate their team by causing a ruckus or pulling the other guy’s jersey over his head. Saturday night was a tad extreme, and I do feel bad about the kid from the minors, and I cannot condone the coach’s conduct, but it was fitting that, in a day of celebrating the great Canadian game, the final match was a shootout in the wild, wild west.

Not My Bliss

My guru hero from "Kung Fu Panda" - Master Shifu

How’s that acceptance gig going, Ru?

Er … well …

2.5 hours into my Monday and I’m yelling at a co-worker: “Do you know how many New Year’s resolutions I’ve broken since I got here? Including the one about not yelling at you anymore!”

I like my job; really, I do. I like the people I work with, truly. I’m part of a supportive, cooperative, dedicated, talented group of adults who get important things done despite the powers that be, and I’m proud to be counted among them.

But this is not my bliss. I spent my vacation living life at my own speed in my own environment with my own peeps. After the holiday hoopla was over, I found a rhythm that matched Nature’s daily cycle. I was productive, I was happy, I was … okay, serene will never apply, but I was pretty darned close to experiencing ongoing inner peace. I actually felt able to re-enter my office world and not lose my cool.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Extenuating circumstances? Maybe. Full moon follies? Sure. Fourth quarter crazies? As usual. Then Ter mentioned the pendulum swing. She and I both wanted to slit our wrists after two days back at work. The third was the tipping point. We were tired at the end of it, but we were also more optimistic about surviving the rest of the week. We’ll make it ʼcause we always do. Humans are nothing if not adaptable, and much as I hate, loathe and despise waking up before I’m ready, I am finding my rhythm again.

Acceptance is next.

The Milkman's Son

before the Leppard show in 2005

According to my mother—who should know; she was there—it was a dark and stormy night. The pipes at home had frozen and flooded the flat. My older older brother, a toddler at the time, was staying with his maternal grandparents, so rather than help Dad clean up the water, Mum went into labour. She says she was still cold at the maternity hospital, but at least she was dry, and at the end of the night she had her second little boy, my younger older brother, the self-proclaimed Handsome One, so she figures all was worth it.

On paper, he doesn’t fit the family profile. Four of five kids were born in September. He was born in January. Four of five kids have green or hazel eyes. His are blue. Four of five kids have brown or black hair. His is auburn. In fact, he looks so much like our maternal grandfather that a family resemblance to the Greigs would have to reveal itself in personality … and I’m unsure that it does. His deadliest charm is his sense of humour – razor sharp, lightning fast, screamingly funny, and practically identical to the wit of our mother’s father.

Hmmmmm …

Wedged between my older older brother and my older sister like the jam in a sandwich cookie, he was, quite simply, the brightest splash of comedic colour in my growing up. Six years lie between us, so my earliest memories are vague. I remember a fairly active temper, mostly when I was goading it, but when there was laughter in the house, he was usually in the middle of it. He and my older sister were the perfect comedy team, recording their own radio shows on the old reel-to-reel in the basement (he asked me to provide Indy racetrack sound effects for one skit). He taught me to tackle him like a football player on the front lawn. When he wasn’t putting together models of them, he was downstairs with his pellet rifle, shooting at pictures of old WWII airplanes. He took me to my first hockey game (the Victoria Cougars vs the Medicine Hat Tigers) and drove me to the record store so I could buy my first Elton John album. He’s the headbanger in the family, gunning his electric guitar like a Sex Pistol while my older older brother favoured the folksier acoustic form of modern music. He’s crazy-ticklish. And he’s a one-man Goon Show, able to mimic any of the characters made famous by the British radio troupe of yore.

Actually, I can voice a mean Bluebottle, myself. My brother and I carpooled with Dad for the course of a summer in the early 80s; Dad drove, bro and I bantered in non-stop Goonese. My (our?) father is not a morning person, so getting him to think of cracking a smile is monumental. On those mornings, he’d sometimes take the role of ultra-slick Grytpype Thynne or the frazzled Major Bloodnok, and we’d howl with laughter all the way to town. Those hysterically happy rides to work would never have happened without my younger older brother.

A lot of good times would have been missed without him. The family trek across Canada in 1971. Riotous suppertimes when my arthritis was brand-new and raging. Attending a Def Leppard concert in 2005. Trash talking hockey with his son and recognizing his deeply affectionate nature in his daughter. I don’t recall any serious moments with my younger older brother. I’m afraid that if we tried one, we’d both burst into tears and drown in each other’s arms. A mother lode of passion is packed pretty deep within us; if avid support of our respective NHL teams isn’t hint enough, I suspect that our similar senses of humour are employed in precisely the same way for precisely the same purpose: to deflect and disarm incoming missiles that might otherwise reduce us to emotional rubble. I think sometimes that he and I are more alike to each other than we are to any of the other sibs – that’s why it seems appropriate to wish him a happy birthday today in a language I know he’ll understand:

YING-TONG-IDDLE-I-PO, bro!

Acceptance

This moment sucks. So how do I find joy in it? How do I drum up enthusiasm for the relentless pounding behind my left eye?

I don’t. I take Tylenol and a nap, and hope that it’s better when I wake.

It isn’t. In fact, it might be worse. It’s one of those hormonally-based migraines that last thirty-six hours and peak at 5 on the Richter scale. Not enough to make me barf, but enough to make being awake unpleasant. It also gets me to thinking about the downside of being present. There are some moments where I’d rather be anywhere else but where I am, when hearing a cheerful “be here now” is less likely to make me grateful than it is to make me a murder suspect.

One of the principles admonished by spiritual guru/philosopher/consciously-aware smart guy Eckhart Tolle is a threefold number that can be applied to every crappy moment/event/situation in life:

If you can change it, do so.

If you can remove yourself from it, do so.

If you can do neither of the first two things, accept it. Accept that the moment sucks and accept that it will pass. Good, bad or indifferent, no moment lasts forever. Perhaps the most helpful thing you can do in a so-called helpless situation is allow yourself to feel ripped off – denying fear of a root canal or anger with an executive decision will only make it worse. Don’t dwell on it, but don’t deny it, either. Accept how you feel and move on. You may feel better for it – I certainly do. I cannot change when the Flyers are losing a game. I can quit watching, or I can accept it and be happy that I’m watching them at all. That’s the other thing Professor Ekkles has done. He’s broken acceptance into further opportunities for presence. Once you accept the moment. you can:

Be enthusiastic; and/or

Find joy; and/or

If you can do neither of these things, then acceptance will have to do. Ironically, it takes more strength to stop resisting than it does to resist, but accepting what you cannot change can actually empower you. Letting go is liberating.

Back to the thirty-six hour migraine. When the Tylenol/nap attack fails, I do what I can to live with it. My ridiculously-priced green tea is always comforting, so I brew a tumbler and cradle it in my hands, sipping slowly and savouring the sweet grassy flavour. I compose this post, squinting at the computer screen as I collect my thoughts. I talk at Ter, who is having a day herself; we don’t complain, but we bolster each other through our respective sucky moments, finally admitting out loud that “it is what it is” and moving on despite the lure of continuing to whine.

And then, as it always does, the thirty-seventh hour arrives.

Back to Work

Shade’s story is finished. I wrote for three solid days and got it done on Friday. A hard copy edit and cool inspection are the next steps before I decide whether to “publish” it; right now I’m caught between letting it go and revising it to death. There’s an odd sense of emptiness when I return to the real world from my own. I was so consumed by the story last week that I was basically useless around the house; I kept dropping things or bumping into Ter or forgetting what I was saying while I was saying it. I’m still kind of useless in those ways, but now it’s because I don’t know what to do with myself.

Fortunately (?!), I’m back to work tomorrow. I won’t say I’m tripping-over-the-moon delighted at the prospect of squeezing back into the 9 to 5, but I can say that my vacation was successful in that I got the break I desperately needed and feel somewhat ready to tackle the challenges of the fourth fiscal quarter. I have a new penguin calendar and a new coffee cup and a whole new bulletin board to fill with pics and quotes to get me through the year. Ter came with me to the office yesterday and helped me to prep it for 2014. This year’s theme is “wouldn’t it be fun to …” and I have a new bunch of coloured gel pens and Sharpies to make it more vibrant. Ter started it off by writing “Dobby was here” in deep purple ink; after I quit laughing, it occurred that I should invite people to scribble their own quotes if they like. My office has more of the playroom than the professional aspect to it anyway. Stuffies and Star Wars figurines will do that.

I am not looking forward to getting up at 6:00 a.m. when I’ve been sleeping until 7:30 these past weeks., but I’ll get over it. My main challenge is Ter, who is so convinced that Monday morning will be a gong show that she’ll unwittingly make it so unless I can use the Force to counter it. Our work environments are so different that I can’t blame her for getting her angry on before she gets there, and while I may envision myself greeting colleagues with enthusiastic vigour, who am I kidding??? I am not a morning person and Mondays can be brutal.

They can be. They don’t have to be. It’s up to me which way mine goes.

Wish me luck.

Clotheshorse

trying it on for size

Four days to go and the thing I dread most about going back to work is deciding what to wear. I’ve been in hoodies, jeans and sneakers for the past three weeks, with the infrequent foray into a brassiere for public appearances, but starting Monday, I’ll have dress up and do my hair and wear earrings and proper shoes and bother with makeup again. Ugh. So much work for so little return.

I do myself a disservice. I can look pretty snappy when I want to, and looking good does help to boost my self-confidence, but I cared so much more for fashion when I had better legs and no back problems. These days, my work wardrobe passes as “business casual” and I’m able to get away with wearing running shoes because I have chronic back problems; however, I am aware that the battered Nikes are closer to retirement than I am.

Shopping for clothes is a dismal endeavour. I see countless possibilities when I’m not in the market and can never find anything when I am. I went shopping earlier this week, walked into a store and promptly forgot what already hangs in my closet. It’s hard to match items when you can’t remember what you have to match them with! And thank the gods I had my cool inspector with me; I asked Ter if the tawny sweater I’d chosen would work on me and she swiftly recommended the oatmeal instead. Then we went to Mark’s because I’ve been hankering for a pair of their bottle green cords since last fall. I should have bought them then, but Christmas shopping took precedence and I hoped they’d go on sale after Boxing Day.

My size is average, which means there’s rarely anything available in my size. I hoot at tags reading “4/32” – that’s a size 4 with a 32 inch leg. I’m sorry, but anyone I know who’s size 4 with a 32 inch leg also has an eating disorder. Anyway, Ter found the bottle green cords, they were on sale, we located a pair in my size (that should have been my first hint), and off I went to try them on.

I was immediately cast back to my youth, when my wee sister and I would crowd into a change room together and get each other’s opinion. I remember once nearly being escorted from the store because we laughed so hard we almost peed ourselves. In the change room at Mark’s, I kicked off my sneaks, slipped out of my jeans, and immediately suspected something odd when my foot was almost too wide for the pant leg. A little persistence won out, mostly because I have fairly skinny legs, but once I was in and zipped up, I looked at my reflection and damn near cracked myself up.

I looked like nerdy Howard Wolowitz in Big Bang Theory, the engineer who is 30 years old and wears a boys’ “large”! I hadn’t noticed the label - the pants model was “curvy/skinny”, which means made for someone not built like the Grinch. So I peeled them off and gave up.

We were both in a wardrobe-enchancing mind, though. Ter picked up a gorgeous top that Moon Pie decided would work extremely well with his natty blue scarf … too bad it’s not in his size.

Going for Gold

Team Canada - 2010

The Canadian men’s Olympic hockey team was named yesterday. No real surprises, a couple of disappointments, and at least one derisive smirk – but while I could go the Leaf fan route and downplay the team’s chances in Sochi, I’ve decided to get fully behind them and cheer until they reach the Finnish line. Did I say Finnish? I meant finish. Silly me; still smarting from the world juniors. Anyway, who knows? Despite naysayers and injuries, past stats and increasingly skilled opposition in the Games, the Canadian guys could very well win gold! They have to believe it going in, else why bother? And we have to believe it, too. Expecting failure is a good way to ensure it … though I hope Carey Price is the starting goalie over “24 second Lou”. Pittsburgh played in Vancouver last night; before the game I wondered if Sidney Crosby would skate up to Luongo and say, “Am I gonna have to save your a** like I did in 2010?” Ter replied that such trash talk wouldn’t be terribly captain-like, and after a short debate about what constitutes unsportsmanlike conduct, she suggested that the classier comment would be something like, “I’ve got your back, buddy.”

Which is why she’s a cut above me in the realm of hockey fandom.

The discussion was moot in any case. Luongo is out with an ankle injury for 1 to 2 weeks, so Price’s chances are looking good. I hope he crashes and burns tonight, though – les Habs are in Philadelphia and the Flyers are on a roll. They beat New Jersey last night, 3 - 1 in regulation.

In other news, I’m on pace to finish the first draft of Shade’s story before I go back to work in five days. I have a few significant scenes and the ending left to do. I’m hoping the former will lead the latter into writing itself, as it’s not immediately clear to me how this story will be resolved. It’s taken me months to get this far, so obviously patience is the key. Patience, and me trusting the muse. I don’t even know what to call it – a romance, a mystery, a fantasy, or what. No title yet, either. Tiny details designed to distract me from the greater work, so before I get hung up on the trivial, I’d better focus on the main event.

Kind of like Team Canada will have to do for the Olympics.

Bee Here Now

One summer day, I watched a honey bee collect pollen from a flowering bush in the garden. I initially paused to inspect the bee itself – accustomed to fat fuzzy bumblebees, I saw something resembling a wasp wearing a furry jacket and wanted a closer look. How diligent the bee was, given the size of the bush and the territory he had to cover. I studied his technique for a minute, vastly impressed. Then I noticed something else. He wasn’t the only bee in the bush. There were lots of honey bees harvesting pollen from the flowers; I just hadn’t seen them at first. They certainly hadn’t arrived after me – I would definitely have noticed an approaching swarm (and likely not stuck around to welcome them). They simply came into consciousness as I stood still.

The Honeybee Observation occurred a few years ago, but the lesson has stayed with me. I’m always jumping around from thought to thought, bouncing back and forth between the past and the future. No wonder I remember less and less; I’m rarely present enough to retain anything from a given moment!

How much more will I see if I stop and look? How much more will I hear if I take more than a second to listen?

Slow down. Stand still. Pay attention. Be amazed.

Blog Art

part of my kit currently getting the most work

Tomorrow’s post is about honeybees—and I only offer that tidbit because it inspired today’s post.

Many of the photos put up here at CR I have taken myself, especially since the arrival of my beloved Canon. Others obviously originated elsewhere, and I’ll happily give credit where it’s due if I am ever caught. I’d give it up front except that I rarely know who took/drew/assembled whichever photo I choose to complement my musings du jour.

But back to the honeybees. A post about honeybees is well-served by a picture of a honeybee. Problem there is that, no matter how harmless to humans or vital to the ecosystem they are, honeybees are still insects, and insects of any ilk make my toes curl. I actually found a pic that would have suited, except that it’s a picture of a bug and after some (okay, not that much) thought, I decided to go with the cutesy option and find a cartoon.

Photos are easier to use than cartoons, mostly because many ’toons are visibly copyrighted and a watermark wrecks the effect, i.e., the best drawings that Google found were armed against unauthorized use. So I puzzled for a bit, then, just as frustration began to bubble, a little voice suggested that I draw my own picture.

Well, why the heck not? I can draw. I must be able to, else why would I have an arsenal of artistic weaponry in my writing room? Drafting pencils, coloured pencils, pens, felt-tipped markers, art erasers (I go through a lot of those), paintbrushes – if it can be found in a grade school student’s desk, I have the grown-up version in mine. A sampling is pictured above (photo copyright by Ru, 2014)

So I did it. I drew my own honeybee. Tune in tomorrow for the great unveiling. Though, truly, I’m sticking with the writing gig.

Sunrise

December 26, 2013

Living where the sky meets the sea, I’ve developed a real appreciation for the sunrise. I’m hardly obsessed enough to drag my butt out of bed at 5 a.m. in summer, and it’s often too rainy in winter, but if I happen to be awake and the morning happens to be clear, I will park on the sofa in the Ocean Room and await the spectacle.

Some cloud is best; you get a dynamic pre-show ahead of the main feature. It will start with rich, rosy red clouds melting into a coral sky. Stark bare branches are sketched black against it. The water will be pearl blue. The colours will shift, lightening here, darkening there … and then a bright orange glitter will spark on the horizon. I’ll watch as the spark gradually swells to a blazing gold toffee penny. The clouds will be bathed in gilded light. The water will catch fire. It will hurt to look, but I’ll keep looking and marveling. I once believed that sunset was the grandest time of day, that twilight beat the dawn for beauty and magic. That was before I experienced what a clear morning brings.

I know what makes the sunrise so spectacular. I understand about the tilt of the earth as we orbit the sun and how shooting light through vapour can rouse every colour of the spectrum. It’s about physics and astronomy yaddayaddayadda.

I call it magic.

Salad Days

Monday – spicy chicken Caesar (no croutons)

Tuesday – tuna salad on iceberg w/celery and green onion

Wednesday – spring greens with deli ham, boiled egg, baby tomatoes and cucumber

Thursday – spring greens with bacon, pineapple and red pepper

Friday – baby greens with chicken, dried cranberries, almonds, cucumber and red grapes

Saturday – Greek with lentil chips and tzatziki

Sunday – spring greens with pear, pecan, and feta cheese

Gee. How can you tell that I’m done with festive feasting?

Bibliography (Part 1)

 

“The Night Circus” – Erin Morgenstern



I wrote nothing, yesterday. I had just finished revisiting The Night Circus, and trying to produce anything in the aftermath seemed futile. It’s one of those stories so brilliantly told that I am at once inspired and intimidated. All I really wanted to do after closing the cover was burst into tears and gush about how wonderful it is. Magical. Alluring. Poignant. Misty. Melancholy. Beautiful. Dreamy. Colourful. Dazzling. Romantic. Tragic. Sweet. Stark. Fragile. Masterful. Gorgeous. The adjectives are innumerable. I rarely happen on a novel that I want to read more than once. This one, I suspect, will become an annual event. It deserves to be read over and over and over again.

My first run last winter left me breathless and in awe. This time, though I knew what was to come, I was able to comprehend it better and that made for a richer experience. It’s like a glass box full of jewels, glistening and intensely-hued, so mesmerizing that you can’t look away. You want to lift the lid and inspect every facet, to see how the light plays off the surface and reflects on your skin while you hold it. She writes with an elegant simplicity that sets you right in the scene. Her description of a dining room where the candlelight is “deep and warm and bubbling” just sends me. There’s a poetry, an artistry, in being able to write like that, to paint so richly with language and yet not overwhelm the reader with pretentious stodge.

And the story itself? Where did she come up with this thing??? A challenge between magician instructors where their students are ignorant and the circus is the venue. Only one can win, but what happens when the opponents fall in love? And what happens to the circus when they do? So there’s a morality tale as well as magic and romance; mysteries abound until pretty well the last scene – a conversation between one of the challenge instructors and a boy who can read the past. They speak of magic in terms I completely understand, so … does it exist or doesn’t it?

If The Night Circus is any indication, it most certainly does.

New Year’s Day

It seems counter-intuitive to begin a new year with a hangover, but that’s inevitably what I do. And when I say “hangover”, I mean of the gluttonous variety. I’m a cheap drunk, so despite the seasonal increase in consumption, I limit myself to one boozy libation per day. Treats, however, know no bounds and can do as much mischief as alcohol once the line is crossed.

Thatʼs why I try to view January 1 as just another day; a day to recover from the holiday overload and regain some perspective. A hangover of any ilk will skew the latter, thus adding to the fervour of making those pesky New Yearʼs resolutions. Is that when the tradition started, I wonder? Folk feeling like crap and resolving to be better about feeling better? A man will agree to do anything if heʼs miserable enough and wants the misery to end.

I may be aware of the perils in NY resolutions, but I am not immune. I was reflecting in the bathroom mirror this morning on what I might resolve to do better in 2014. One thing came immediately to mind:

Write daily.

Just as promptly, the panicked mental chatter ensued.

What, write something every day for a whole year and beyond? I canʼt commit to that. I have a job, a social life. What if I fail (which I am likely to do, given the scope of the resolution)?

Inner sigh.

“Write dailyˮ means write today. It does not mean write tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

The same principle applies to anything and everything else. Do it TODAY. And if youʼre unsure you can uphold that resolve for a full 24 hours (as I am about rebuffing those treats), hold true to the moment.

Just for today. For New Yearʼs Day and Valentineʼs Day, for Tuesday, for your birthday, for Arbour Day and Nirvana Day and All Saintsʼ Day—what day doesnʼt matter as long as itʼs this one.

This day. This hour. This moment. Itʼs the one youʼve got. Make it count.