Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

thank you for your wisdom, Dr. Wayne

It’s the last day of August and change is a-comin’. We’ll soon have new neighbours downstairs. My resumé is in the shop, being revamped in support of my intention to seek another job. Ter’s office has been moved into a new ministry. I’ll be 54 in a couple of days. And though not everyone knows it, the world lost a great light yesterday when Dr. Wayne Dyer passed on in his sleep (but that’s another post).

Gratitude for the return of my voodoo medicine man continues. His work on my bum ankle is bearing fruit, though it’s taking time and conscious effort on my part—not to mention a sharp reminder of just how much fun acupuncture can be when the points are activated. You know the jarring metallic ache of tin foil on a filling? Amplify it a thousand times and you have the latest response to an ankle point that I had no idea existed until recently. Aaaaaeeeeeiiii, did it HURT! After I regained consciousness, Dr. Voodoo jested about wearing a cup next time … only I didn’t laugh.

He also told me—because we chat between threats during a treatment—that the Chinese annual cycle actually has five seasons (no, hockey is not the fifth no matter what the Scotiabank commercials say): true fall, true winter, true spring, true summer, and late summer/early fall. He’s an October baby, so we share a mutual love of the segue from summer into autumn. I’ve always viewed this time of year as a time of renewal and new beginnings. Given all that’s happened during the past few months, I’m especially grateful for the morning mist and evening chill that bracket the welcome warmth of a lingering summer sun.

In celebration of this shift between the seasons, Ter and I are taking off to Saltspring Island tomorrow. It’s more of a retreat than we imagined it would be when we booked the accommodation, again because of all that’s occurred of late. Home construction, work headaches, wonky ankles, noise noise noise … yes, we’re looking forward to a few days of solitude and utter silence.

In my absence, however, the Rebellion continues, courtesy of a few brave souls who accepted my invitation to be guest bloggers. Ms. Nicole D. Myers, my personal Poetry Bean, takes the wheel on September 1, followed by my precious (and pre-scheduled) Ter on “the day”—September 2—and finished up with an offering from my immortal beloved, Julian Scott-Tyler, on September 3. I am truly blessed to have Nic and Ter in my life, to have their love and respect and admiration. Everything they give me is reflected back a hundredfold. Despite being a writer, I cannot express in words how deeply grateful I am for their friendship. Julian is a different animal entirely, but he is also the only character I know who comes without hesitation when I call. That speaks to an affection he hasn’t professed aloud, but which I certainly feel when I’m working with him.

And so, with change in the wind, to Saltspring I go.

With love,

“The Green Fairy Speaks”

Already the light is changing. It seems darker when I wake and begins to fade before I want to sleep. François is now perennially haloed, though it may only be his hair. He is the picture of tow-headed, my boy who is more a man than any of the men I have known, Georges and Henri and that ridiculous Jean-Claude. They are the boys, more passionate in their notion of fame than their pursuit of it. They spoke of art, of holding a salon to rival the Impressionists, yet produced not a single work between them.

I see that now. I see so much in the changing light, sitting at the window with a café au lait to warm my hands.

Mme. Bernier scolds that I should not take coffee when I cannot take her soup. François says that no one can take the old dear’s soup, and continues to bring me his magical potion despite her protestations.

She teaches me to knit while François is at work. I am making him a scarf in secret, of red wool to brighten his winter coat. He quit waiting tables to take an apprenticeship at the boulangerie when I fell ill. The baker’s daughter is in love with him, but he does not see it. She begged her father to procure the steamer François uses to make my coffee. I do not believe that she begrudges me.

She can afford to wait.

From my window, I can hear the music of the Moulin. François took me there one Sunday afternoon and taught me the steps to the waltz. He was amazed that, after a year in Paris, I did not know them. I knew how to kick and cavort and flip my skirts above my knees, but not how to waltz.

I learned quickly, I loved it so, and he is a patient teacher. Something happens to him when he takes me in his arms. He becomes more than my boy, more than my angel.

He becomes my lover.

The other day he arrived home with a priest and a pawnshop wedding ring. I tried to dissuade him, but he insisted and now I am his wife. It feels no different than it did.

Perhaps it is un peu plus triste.

He loves me, I know, though I don’t know why. He has promised to take me home. After we said our marriage vows, I suggested that my father cannot refuse me now. François said quietly that he will not dare, not when I am returned to him honourably wed with a grieving husband.

The light keeps changing, dimming sooner and sluggish to ignite, but it burns brighter than the dawn around my François.

I will dance with him one last time, here in his tiny apartment while the music drifts toward us on the breeze. I will take his hand and he will put his arm about my waist, and we will spin and whirl in a blur across the floor. When I stumble, he will catch me. He will sweep me up into his arms and continue the dance, waltzing me closer and closer to the ever changing light.

It is not so dark now.

“The Green Fairy Speaks” (Preface)

A few years ago, I heard a song called “Dark Waltz” sung by Jackie Evancho on PBS. It was eerie as heck, hearing this very grown up lament sung by an eleven-year-old girl who sounded like a thirty-year-old woman. I tried to find her version of it on Youtube, but found this one instead. The video is glorious, the song perfect, and while not sung in the same mezzo soprano as the kid’s, Viktoria Tocca’s rendition does justice enough to the sentiment.

Who knows why something doesn’t ignite right away? I loved the song on first hearing, but wasn’t inspired to write from it until a few weeks ago. While one might automatically think “vampire”, the lyrics actually struck me as something that might be applied to someone on the precipice between this life and the next. It’s sad, it’s haunting, it’s romantic… as my Nicole would say, le sigh.

Imagine my surprise when a character I hardly know stepped up to finish a story begun more than a year ago, where a Parisian waiter named François rescued a girl named Odette from the clutches of her artist admirers. I wrote a fairly lengthy sequel to the original piece, but less has turned out to be more. It goes up tomorrow.

And so their story ends.

Enjoy.

Bibliography VIII

“Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore” – Robin Sloan

It’s not often that I laugh out loud while reading a book. Humour is brutally hard to write, yet the narrator in this whimsical offering is naturally funny. And endearing. And determined. Clay Jannon is an unemployed twentysomething geek who, out of sheer desperation, takes a job as the night clerk at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. With hours to kill and only a few regular customers, he notices something a little odd about the set up and sets out to solve the puzzle. His curiosity takes him and his friends on a quest to discover the secret of immortality.

But is it a mystery? A comedy? A fairy tale? An adventure story?

My impression is that it’s all of the above, with maybe a couple of other items thrown in to make it … well, it can’t get much more interesting. While it’s not exactly an edge-of-your-seat suspense novel, it’s most certainly an engaging read. Clay is a wonderful character, and his world is a beautifully rendered blend of modern day technology and the old-fashioned (dare I say) values of friendship, loyalty and generosity. His narrative is smooth and easy to read, his humour is genuinely amusing, and his friends, just like everybody else, are products of their age. The girl of his dreams works at Google. His roommate is a model builder at Industrial Light and Magic. His best friend from childhood started a computer digital imaging company out of college and has already made his first million.

And then there’s Penumbra, the elderly keeper of the bookstore and member of an ancient fellowship called the Unbroken Spine. This group has spent years searching for the secret of immortality that is supposedly buried in the 15^th century memoir of their founder, but until Clay comes to work for Mr. Penumbra, they’ve been doing it the hard way:

Without technology.

Clay and his buddies get on the trail and stick with it until they reach the logical end … and while the trip itself is a veritable hoot, the treasure that waits at the logical end is purely magical.

It’s a statement of the author’s talent that I haven’t even mentioned his name or given him credit for spinning this sparkling story. Congrats to Robin Sloan for creating such vivid characters and letting them loose in this truly absorbing story. For all the reasons stated above, I absolutely loved his book and will keep it around for a second run at some point in the future. It’s a real gem that’s worth more than one round.

Vacation Update

look closely - I think that's an otter

My bum ankle has made me reluctant to work it for any length of time, so my walking has been severely reduced of late. One of the things I want to do on vacation is return to the daily flânerie—that idle stroll with no particular destination in mind (though I inevitably wind up at Starbucks), sometimes with the camera and sometimes not, but always with the intention of enjoying the world around me.

Thank you, everyone who loves to garden. Some of the yards around here, drought conditions notwithstanding, are explosions of shape and colour and glorious scent.

I’ve also missed the beach. Granted, rising with the sun is easier at spring and fall equinox, so I haven’t seen a sunrise since March and likely won’t for another few weeks, but this morning, I went for my first “beach flânerie” since I can’t remember when.

Want to test a wonky ankle? Walk along a pebbly beach. Good thing I was wearing my Nikes; at least I gave the foot some stability, and it held up really well. I sat for a while with my eyes closed and listened to the tide come in. Surf striking shore sounds like the roar of a crowd and surf receding over pebbles sounds like applause. Just thought I’d mention it.

I walked all along the beach at Ross Bay, crossed the road and hiked back through the cemetery. Up ahead, I saw what looked like a big tawny dog and immediately scoped for its owner. What I saw was another critter, equally big, equally brown, soon joined by a third. I slowed right down, trying to look innocent and not smell like I wanted to be chased.

They turned out to be deer. Three young bucks, to be exact, and only one of them gave me the time of day as I passed among them. He looked me right in the eye, shrugged, and went back to grazing. His buddies didn’t even blink.

So now I’m home for the rest of the day. Ter is out on a foodie adventure and I have a date with Bill Maher for elevenses. This afternoon? More writing, maybe. I have a few blog posts in mind and all the time I need to get ’em done.

It’s nice to be back in the real world.

Start to Finish

It occurs to me on Day Two of my vacation that now is my chance to finish something. I have a trove of beginnings and no ends in sight. I also have a fortnight of loosely scheduled outings around which I have ample time to write. Momentum is more easily maintained without a day job to jam a stick in my spokes.

I recently had a good, albeit brief, talk with a co-worker who is also a writer. We had a lull while awaiting another’s arrival to a meeting, and I asked her how she was doing in her real life. She has three projects on the go, and a set of creative challenges as unique to her as mine are to me. For instance, it takes her roughly five chapters to get momentum and start enjoying the process. “I hate beginnings,” she sighed.

By contrast, I am the opposite. I love beginnings and tend to lose momentum at five chapters—assuming I make it that far in the first place. These days, I’m lucky to write five pages before a project stalls. Hence my collection of half-finished stories, each begun with great enthusiasm and inevitably abandoned when I reach the early-midway point. If I persevere, the end will reveal itself and I emerge triumphant. Perseverance, however, is harder to employ now that my job has more responsibility and takes more of my mental energy than it once did.

But, hey, I’m on vacation! Instead of starting something new, I have decided to finish something already started. I’ve picked the piece, reviewed what already exists, and am now wondering where it will take me before I reach the end—but reach the end I will. I am resolved.

Actually, one might say the same thing about life in general.

Smell the Roses

It’s the first day of vacation and I can’t slow down. My mind chatters like a runaway train: what to do first? Dust? Bake? Walk? I can almost hear it panting in my ear, a juiced-up puppy eager to bust loose.

Why is it that I feel pressed to do everything—even play—all at once? Granted, a jet moving at speed on an extended flight needs time to slow down once its wheels touch the tarmac. A sudden stop would flip it end over end, and I’d rather avoid a face-plant on my first day off.

Breathe, Ru.

PBS began a rerun of Wolf Hall, last week. Two episodes, back to back. I read the book by Hilary Mantel and wanted to see what Masterpiece made of it.

For most of the first episode, I was dying, the pace was so ponderous. It helped that I know the characters—told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, it’s the oft-told tale of his rise in the court of Henry VIII at the time of the King’s Great Matter. A darned good story worth retelling, else I may have packed it in at thirty minutes. I’m glad that I stayed with it, though, because after thirty-five minutes, it got interesting. By the end of the second episode, Ter and I were sold and looking forward to the next installment.

She guessed why: we had to slow down, ourselves. Once we did that, we could pay proper attention and the story came alive.

A friend once told us that he could teach anyone to juggle. “All you need is to stick with it for more than three minutes,” he said. Three minutes being the critical period required to catch and keep someone’s attention.

Are you kidding me? Three minutes? That’s all?

Apparently, it is. I am guilty of impatience if F***book takes too long to load, if more than two people are ahead of me in the checkout line, if I land at an intersection as the light turns red and I have to wait through the whole sequence.

I have two weeks to live life at my own speed. Right now, I’m on “world speed”. If I take three minutes to be still and silent, it’s almost guaranteed that my natural rhythm will kick in and suddenly I’ll believe what is true:

I have all the time I need.

I must use some of it to stop and smell the roses.

Fallen Angel

The demise of my childbearing potential has come with some inconvenient side effects. During the office renos this month, I happened on a conversation between two colleagues about plugging a computer directly into a wall socket. “Is that allowed?” one was asking, “or do we have to use a power bar for surge protection?”

“You can plug it in directly,” the other replied, “but I’m all about surge protection.”

I almost chipped in with a fervent, “So am I!” because the oscillating fan in my office has four settings and I could really use one that has a fifth.

The other hormonal hiccup is dry skin all over and itchy skin in patches. A particularly persistent spot has developed on the inner edge of my left shoulder blade. The other day I was pretzel-twisting to reach it and thought, “Why is it so itchy here?”

The answer immediately followed:

“It’s where your wings used to be.”

You Scream for Extreme

Then there is slacklining—the latest death defying “sport” to make the list of “Ways to Prove Darwin Right”. It’s walking a tightrope with some give in the tension … at an altitude of twenty metres … without a net.

I caught a clip on the news the other night: a beautiful young girl from California who’s come to compete with her peers in BC this weekend. She talked about how the practice is about finding your calm centre, overcoming fear and controlling the adrenaline “because too much adrenaline makes you shaky.”

Gee, you think???

Adrenaline is a natural response to potentially mortal peril; I’d say that tiptoeing along a clothesline strung across a chasm would justify a tremor or twelve, but not necessarily the cost of a body recovery.

I’ll seek my calm centre with green tea and yoga, thank you.

I Scream

So now we have “extreme” scratch ʼnʼ win lottery tickets. Bigger prizes in greater number, and it’s no longer enough to use a butter knife to reveal that “you’re not a winner”. Now you use a shark’s tooth—from a live shark.

Geez. Almost everything has been jacked to the max. Action movies. Contact sports. Rock concerts. Potato chip flavours. Even Mother Nature is getting in on the act with extreme weather. No wonder we’re prone to road rage and anxiety attacks. Man cannot live on adrenaline alone—but he’s making it nearly impossible not to.

Even online customer surveys are pushing it. Last summer (motivated, I admit, by the chance to win a $500 shopping spree), I filled one out after a visit to Pier 1 Imports. It was the most hyper-anxious set of questions I have ever encountered. “Good” was not an option. Neither was “satisfied”, or the fact that Pier 1 is third on my list of home décor retailers. My shopping experience had to be orgasmic or they weren’t doing their job.

How can we make Pier 1 your first choice for home shopping?

You can’t, I replied. I come here to buy candles.

It’s taken me a year to bother with a second of their surveys, and they’ll like my responses even less this time. The seasonal scented tealights I bought in June came in a pack of thirty for ten dollars. The seasonal scented tealights available for the fall come in a pack of twelve for eleven dollars—less than half the product for ten percent more money! An extreme ripoff if you ask me—and I am mightily vexed about it.


One might even say vexed “to the extreme”.

The King of Pop

Watching This Is It inspires me to renewed awe for the late Michael Jackson’s genius.

He was a Virgo, you know. *beams*

But seriously, folks, when he died, a halogen spotlight died with him. He had such ferocious talent and relentless instinct for music and movement—watching him rehearse for the tour that never happened is a mesmerizing glimpse at the inner working of a savant.

The tragedy: knowing it was filmed during the final weeks of his life.

The miracle: that he had decades of material from which to choose. 1987’s Bad is my favourite album except on days when the posthumous CD Xscape surpasses it, and even then, naming my top five favourite MJ tracks is like picking my top five Beatles songs. It absolutely depends on the day.

In all honesty, Ter made his work a fixture in my life; she was the greater fan. She mapped out the moves to Thriller when choreographing her own performance in her dancing days (we still laugh about the stick figures bent this way and that across the foolscap). His death immobilized her; she couldn’t listen to any of his albums until well after his funeral.

Six years later, he remains a vibrant presence in our music library. Prompted to revisit This Is It the other night, I became acutely aware of his effect on the world and on me. Whenever I need reminding of creativity’s power in action, I look to his legacy.

I suppose there are people who will always mourn the music he never made. I am more inclined to gratitude for the music he left behind.

Artificial Intelligence

For most of my life, I have been irrationally (really?) freaked out about robots. I can’t say when or how it started, but I am so anti-droid that:

I refuse to entertain the notion of investing in a robotic vacuum cleaner to make my former house elf’s life easier.

On meeting the new photocopier, I was immediately reminded of Star Trek’s M5 and vehemently warned our office’s tech advisor against unplugging it at source because “it’ll fry you where you stand!”

My favourite Alan Parsons Project album, I, Robot, tells the sorry tale of machines becoming our masters and, gee, who saw that coming?

Any Hollywood attempt to make androids our friends is less believable than any Hollywood attempt to make androids our enemies.

I don’t understand our obsession with making machines smarter than we are, with giving them personalities, or with trusting them to remember their place and to stay in it.

Ironically, a robot may have changed my mind about the inherent evil code-named “artificial intelligence”.

Type “Hitchbot” into any search engine and a plethora of pictures pops up, each of a funky little compilation of parts parked roadside in any number of locations. Developed in Canada and set loose to test the nature of humans when interacting with machines, Hitch travelled across the country, spent time in Europe, and started a journey across the USA which, sadly, ended last week in Philadelphia. In a thicker twist of irony, the amiable little droid was vandalized beyond hope of repair in the city of brotherly love.

Robophobia notwithstanding, I have problems with vandalism against any inanimate object—without the psychoanalysis, it’s a show of disrespect and does nothing to further the argument that humans are a superior species. Programmed though its personality was, Hitchbot was also harmless. Beating it to death was a show of bullying cowardice as much as it was an act of vandalism. Unfortunately, a violent end has—for the moment, at least—eclipsed all those good folks who drove it from town to town, pausing for photo ops with their kids in front of national landmarks. It’s kinda sad that I only learned about the ʼbot’s adventure when it was over, and sadder still that it was only news because it ended with an act of mindless savagery.

Intelligence? I’m pretty sure we’re the ones who are faking it.

Painting and Revolution

Ter and I recently watched a 4-part documentary about the Impressionist movement of the late 19^th century. The presenter—a quirky character with a droll sense of humour—did more than discourse about the painters themselves. He expanded the subject to include the changing times that inspired their work. It was awesome!

I love Paris and I love Impressionist art—the light and colour and motion are dazzling and, as is the case with most artistic endeavours, they reflect the world in which the artists lived. Sometimes the painter’s inner world is revealed—Goya, Van Gogh and early Degas come to mind—but it’s the external world that lends life and colour to our history. Without the painters, poets and playwrights, we’d only have the media spin on what went before. In the days of kings and cardinals, artists were funded by the powers that be, hence the abundant regal and religious works … and you can’t tell me that Holbein and Van Dyck weren’t the masters of Photoshop in their time. When royalty is your bread and butter, you’d better make those recessive traits look good.

Patronage aside, art is critical in capturing the essence of a time and place. Artists are both historians and scientists, experimenting with light and colour in ways that “real” science might ignore. Even now, in the 21^st century, our society is revealed through its art , and not to its best advantage when one considers that terrorists and serial killers are the heroes on TV and the world can only be saved in the movies by people with superpowers.

Isn’t that why arts programs are the first to suffer funding cuts in times of fiscal restraint? Creativity is considered a luxury by those who fear it. To everyone else, it’s a link to something greater than ourselves, and a perspective on life that reveals too much for intellectual comfort.

I digress.

Like the Dutch masters before them, the Impressionists were free to paint what they saw: ordinary people living everyday life. Better yet, they spawned a revolution in tools as well as technique. The invention of tubed pigments and portable easels made painting outdoors as convenient as working in one’s studio. And, man, did they have a myriad of subjects from which to choose. I have yet to see myself in any of the café tableaux, but I’m sure I was there in a past life; I’m too in love with music and the lifestyle, naughty girl that I must have been.

The documentary also prompted me to revisit the story of François and Odette, not to amend it in any way, but to look at them a few months after he rescued her from the life of a disenchanted muse. As with any revolution, some will benefit, some will suffer, and the artist will record it for posterity.

Serenity Now

Yesterday was the Leppard King’s birthday. Ter and I set out to celebrate accordingly, but despite our good intentions, everything seemed to go against the grain. By 8 p.m., we were forced to admit, “Well, that was a bust.” We then spent a half-hour listening to The Lost Fingers online—a gypsy jazz band out of Quebec; their version of Sunglasses at Night has made me a fan—after which Ter suggested we go ahead with our plan and finish up the day with a few Leppard videos.

Perhaps, appropriately, that turned out to be the best part of the day.

I woke this morning wondering what had gone wrong. We had looked forward to a pub lunch in His Royal Leppardness’ honour, followed by a stroll through Oak Bay village, shopping and maybe stopping for sorbetto, then preparing a carnivorous dinner at home. We went through the motions, yet nothing worked.

I think it’s because we’re exhausted.

I know I am.

You can attribute some energy malfunctions to a full moon—I’ve lived and worked among people long enough to defy the naysayers who pooh-pooh scheduled lunacy as New Age nonsense—but there are times when the spirit simply cannot overcome the flesh. Nor should it. Sometimes rest is the best medicine, and my compostable container is going through the mill with intense treatments on its bum ankle. Mental rest is as important, given the continuous strain of functioning as an introvert in an extroverted world. Ter and I are both fried at the end of a workweek; the last thing we needed yesterday was a trip through Tourism Central during a heat wave, even on the august occasion of Joe Elliott’s birthday. Consequently, our energy was misaligned and things did not work out until the day was practically done. Only when we were sequestered in our lovely peaceful home, curled in place before the Leps’ greatest hits, did we actually relax.

Today, we have retired to our respective happy places. I’m in my room and Ter is puttering in the kitchen. It’s a long weekend, for which I am immensely grateful. It’s also a mere three weeks from our summer vacation, for which I am deliriously grateful. I work from January to September with one measly week off in between, then I wonder why I’m knackered by mid-summer. I’m not saying that yesterday bombed with spectacular gusto. It just didn’t run as smoothly as it might have had we taken time to recover from the previous week. On the other hand, had we stayed home, we would have missed a photo op that suited the occasion to a tee:

Happy birthday, Joe.