“Diva X”

She expected the brooding intensity of the eight-by-ten she had seen in Bernie’s office, so when her leading man arrived at the table reading, Ellie didn’t recognize him.

Nobody dressed up for the table read, of course. Ellie herself was in a blouse and pedal pushers with her hair in a casual twist (this after a handful of costume changes with “unaffected” in mind) and hardly stood out as the secretive siren she had been hired to play. She hadn’t a clue that the cast was complete until the director called everyone to order and chairs around the folding table were gradually filled.

She took one beside Patrick Swain and leaned in to accept the light he offered on seeing the cigarette in her hand. “Dinner’s at my place,” he said.

“What?”

“Unless you’d rather cook for me at yours.”

Ellie deliberately blew smoke into his face. He fanned at the cloud and tipped her a grin that earned a smirk in return. An old acquaintance—they had worked together more than once—he was always flirting with her and couldn’t possibly have heard about her split from Tony the previous night.

“Okay, everyone, let’s get started.” The director stood to address the cast. “Most of you know me. For the few who don’t, I’m Ted Hamilton, the guy you’ll hate most in the world by the time we’re done shooting. Introduce yourselves, please, and include the part you’re playing in the film. Eleanor, you’re up.”

Ellie obliged, tapping ash into the nearest tray, her gaze fixed on the end of her cigarette rather than meeting the eyes of anyone else at the table. Pat went next, then Margie Hunter—another familiar face—and a couple of others who made no impression before she heard his name and realized the error in feigning nonchalance. She caught her lashes flicking upward, dipped them too quickly, and wondered what the hell she was doing, behaving like a schoolgirl with a secret crush. Seward was a Hollywood nobody. She was the star of the film, for God’s sake; hers shouldn’t have been the panicking heart.

She made herself wait through another name before she lifted her gaze, this time to touch politely on the actor directly across from Swain. Since Dane Seward sat next to him, it seemed completely natural for her gaze slip one over except that when she made her move, she found him staring straight at her and it was almost impossible to conceal her disappointment.

He wasn’t a smoking gun at all. The man in the chair next to whomever was younger than his publicity shot suggested, handsome in a monied Gold Coast manner, with a shock of light brown hair falling across his brow, and he wore a crew neck sweater that belonged on an Ivy League campus rather than a cavernous soundstage in Los Angeles. Not Ellie’s type in his wildest dreams, he looked frankly amazed at finding himself in a room with a goddess of the silver screen.

As the thought crossed her mind, Seward smiled at her. It was sweetly boyish and utterly charming. Vera would have lunged across the table. Ellie fought the giddy swoop of a heart catching itself before it hit bottom.

Bernie Goldblatt, I am going to kill you.

De Deuce, You Say!

Ahhhhh, the heavy, Dior-esque perfume of leaded gasoline. The rib-quaking rumble of a chrome-plated V-8. The leonine roar of that same engine. The affronted bellow of a lesser model, revving to crest the top of the slope as it awaits the traffic flag’s all-clear. People clapping, horns hooting. A pair of old guys parked on the tailgate of a vintage Dodge pickup, providing Muppet-like commentary as the parade flows past.

And the colours! Candy apple red, basic black, pearl white, sunshine yellow, Tang orange, deep purple, sky blue, mint green, burnished copper. The occasional two-tones: black and white, black and red, red and orange, orange and yellow, buff and wood-grain. The detailing: flickering flames, grinning skulls, swooshes and swirlies in complimentary shades of turquoise and magenta. BC plates and US plates on exotic roadsters and hulking sedans. White wall tires, sparkling spoke hubcaps, rag tops and hardtops, white-haired seniors and tattoed twenty-somethings behind steering wheels as big as manhole covers.

The deuce coupes come to town every couple of years. When they do, they bring out the automotive afficianados among the locals and jam up the neighbourhood for the better part of a Saturday morning. I was sitting in the Ocean Room last weekend, reading while the world passed by my window. Normally, I hear the nondescript drone of ordinary traffic punctuated by a diesel tour bus, but when I heard something with a carburetor, I looked up to see a fluorescent orange hotrod zipping along Dallas Road. It was followed in quick succession by a bright yellow deuce, a black gangster-mobile from the 1930s and a purple-and-azure 50’s Plymouth. The event is called for the deuce, but anyone with a classic car is welcome to the party—even if you’re driving Grandpa’s rusted Olds because you can’t afford anything newer. They converge on Clover Point after breakfast on Saturday and cruise from there along Dallas Road to wherever lunch is scheduled.

After twenty minutes of gumball colour streaming, I couldn’t stand it. “I’m going down to see the cars,” I called to Ter. “I’ll be back in a half-hour.”

Except I forgot to bring my phone to remind me of the time. I brought the Canon instead, managing to snap maybe twenty pictures before the batteries died (I haven’t used it much lately), then finding a spot simply from which to enjoy the show. I’d have stayed to the last of the estimated 1200 cars, but Ter had an appointment and I was going along for lunch afterward.

I love my 2010 Tiguan. I loved my 1996 Camaro, too, but Blue Thunder was my first and Blue Silver was my baby. I love cars in general, so much that I wish I’d thought to take auto shop in high school except that it wasn’t offered to girls and among the countless other clues I’d not had at the time was my ability to comprehend the workings of an engine. Learning how to tinker under the hood never occurred to me, though I think I would have enjoyed it. Nowadays, with vehicles run by computers, designed from the same template and only available in five shades of grey, it’s disheartening to think that the art of the car may be dying out … until the deuces come to town.

Long live the classics.

Against Our Nature

When did Man decide that he is separate from Nature? Was it when he ceased to exist as a hunter/gatherer and began to farm the land rather than accept what was offered? At some point, it obviously occurred to his burgeoning ego that if he could choose what to grow, then he must be in control of and thus separate from—perhaps even superior to—Nature.

He mistook the earth’s willingness to work with him as something less than cooperation and more like mindless servitude. He lost his respect for the natural world and began to exert his formidable will over it, flooding arable valleys and redirecting rivers, overplanting the soil, overfishing the oceans, and sucking out the oil buried beneath the planet’s skin. He perceived flaws in the fields and orchards and began to tinker in the name of perfection, and now we have genetically modified Frankenveggies designed to… what? Last longer on the supermarket shelves? It can’t be for our nutritional benefit, else fish genes would have been evident in prehistoric tomatoes.

And don’t get me started on the biological misconceptions; that because we can think analytically we must be smarter, thus better, than the other animals. Have you ever watched a crow crack into a discarded Starbucks cup? That takes some ingenuity.

You know what makes us different? Our ego. Our arrogance. Our intellect. In fact, the most unpleasant facets of humanity are pretty well responsible for the present discord between Man and Nature. Of course the planet exists to serve, but so do we, and in believing ourselves separate from it, we have failed to nurture the resources meant to nurture us.

Abuse can only be endured for so long before the tables turn on the abuser. A planet once eager to embrace us is now fighting to save itself, and if we’re caught in the upheaval … oh, well.

We are not separate from Nature. We never have been. We are born of the same stuff as the rocks and trees and birds and rain and stars. We are a vital part of a greater whole comprised of other vital parts, each subject to the same law as the others. We are all alive. Living, breathing, adapting, we are all beings responding to the energy of intention. To cut ourselves off from this wondrous collaboration of particles is truly the means to our end.

The tide is turning, slowly. More and more people—the unlucky inheritors of a world we’ll leave to them—are reawakening to the relationship we have with the rest of creation. Many of us are trying to mend the broken ties and reconnect to the wonders of the world around us. Nature may lack the intellect, but forgiveness and compassion are universal traits. It might be too late … but it’s never too late.

With love,

Friend or Foe?

I used to play a game with God. I’d try to make Him guess when I’d switch off my radio before I went to sleep. Would it be after this song, or the next, or would I wait until one came on that I didn’t care to hear? Figure that one out, Heavenly Father.

Trouble was, since God knew everything, He knew before I did when I’d hit the off switch. If I went “yes, no, yesnoyes—no!” He was already at “no!” while I was still toying.

I was actually playing the game with myself.

My concept of God has expanded significantly over the years. He is no longer a bearded father figure with a warm smile and forbidding frown, keeping track of my mistakes and saving any rewards for the outcome of my Judgment Day trial. It seems so narrow-minded now, but it was familiar to me then, and so I went with it. For the purpose of this post, the omniscient creator of all things is referred to as “God”.

Life can change your mind if you’re open to new ideas. I am much happier believing that God loves each of us equally and unconditionally, and what awaits at the end of the road is neither punishment nor condemnation, but a joyous welcome home. As I’ve said before, even the bad guys deserve praise for giving it their best shot. They make the good guys look even better, don’t they? Without the villains, the heroes have no cause to be heroic. Without cruelty, compassion is unnecessary. How can we experience the best in human nature without someone acting out the worst? Ironically, it takes a hero to be a villain.

I digress. Sort of.

Just like everyone else, I was born with a map in one hand and a copy of my agreement in the other. The agreement is a list of things I want to learn, to experience, and to share. I also have specific assignments that only I, with my unique blend of energy and talent, can perform. I have this much time and will be accompanied by these people, for the purpose of this outing in the guise of friends, family, co-workers, etc. God knows me well enough to trust that I will fulfill the bulk of my contractual obligations, and maybe even nail them all; but how I arrive at the end result is entirely up to me.

God’s part of the deal is to provide lane assist when I start to stray off course, to plant road markers that I may or may not recognize (again, that’s up to me), and to be there when I reach for Him. I’m pretty sure we agreed to some other things, but I lost both my map and my copy of the contract so I’m basically winging it on faith, trusting that someone somewhere has the originals.

Oh, and the bit about God knowing what we’ll do before we do it? He doesn’t worry about when the radio is shut off. He just loves the child playing the game.

Another Perspective

At Rockland, Ter and I would stay up to see the Canada Day fireworks from our living room window. Since we moved to sea level, we only get the acoustics. Pop pop, pa-poppopop, popopopopoBANG! And so forth. It’s scheduled, so there’s no surprise when the explosions start.

One random Saturday night, we heard the same thing: Pop pop, pa-poppopop, popopopopoBANG! We wondered aloud what the occasion might be, since we knew of no celebration associated with July 9, then shrugged and went about our nightly routine of getting the bears ready for bed.

They weren’t bothered, either. One of them reminded me, huffing a little with displeasure, that there had been fireworks before Canada Day as well, at the home opener for the local baseball team. And I seem to remember a similarly unexpected display last year, something to do with Oak Bay perhaps, that I dismissed as simply more fireworks.

How fortunate I am to live in a place where Pop pop, pa-poppopop, popopopopoBANG! heralds nothing more sinister than an unscheduled fireworks display. It’s not a sniper picking off police officers or a religious nutbar massacring innocent people at a nightclub. It’s not civil war. It’s not an insurrection. It’s just a light show against the night sky.

A similar thought occurred ahead of a Snowbirds performance a couple of years ago (and I might have mentioned it in a previous post). The rush I feel on hearing the fighter jets’ approach is nothing remotely like what another woman in a war-torn country must feel on hearing the same sound. I was at work one day when the roar of low-flying military planes rattled the building and a co-worker asked me what the heck was going on. “The Snowbirds are in town this weekend,” I replied. “They must be practicing for the show.”

“I thought we were being bombed by Lebanon!”

She was joking, of course, but the sentiment has stayed with me. I can’t stress it enough. I can’t be grateful enough to live in a place where the sounds associated with war and craziness are a signal not to duck and cover, but to take the kids outside and watch the show.

In the Name of Love

After the Orlando shooting, I felt compelled to attend a pride flag ceremony at City Hall. I took time off work and hiked down the street, joined the throng of other like-minded souls and listened as our mayor made a speech before asking us to participate in a moment of silence for the victims of this purely hate-driven crime. I stood with my head bowed and my hand on my heart, and when the moment was over, I heard someone say my name.

Looking up, I was pleasantly surprised to see a former workmate who had moved on to bigger and better things. His office was just down the street, he said, what was I doing here?

“I’m just so sorry that this happened,” I replied. “I can’t believe it.” And yet I could, given the pin-headed contrast in this enlightened age. We chatted for a minute, catching up, then he introduced me to his sister, who is in a lesbian relationship. If his compassion had not made sense to me before—which it had; he’s a truly lovely guy—it made complete sense to me then.

Whether you know it or not, at some point in your life, a friend, co-worker, neighbour, or family member has either been attracted to the same sex or wanted to be a member of the opposite. If you knew and you were okay with it, kudos to you. If you’re running through a list of everyone you’ve ever known and wondering, please stop wasting your time. It’s obvious that you wouldn’t have been okay.

In my opinion, as long as it’s consensual and the players are of legal age, there is no shame in loving where your heart leads you. The shame is in the shaming.

You can’t convince me that the percentage of gay, lesbian, bi- or trans-gender people in society has increased over the years. I’m pretty sure they have always lived among us; they just haven’t been free to express it the way they are fighting to express it in the twenty-first century.

Personally, I consider them among the bravest people in the world. Nor do I condemn the folks who hid their true natures from fear of persecution and/or prosecution in times not so long past. It must have been—and still must be—horrible to pretend to be someone you’re not because being yourself might cost your family/job/reputation/life.

Our so-cool-it’s-painful Prime Minister recently marched in Toronto’s pride parade. This guy is so together, so enlightened, so necessary for the future of our country and society as a whole. He’s a great example of what Canadians not only are, but what we can be if we choose love over hate and acceptance instead of fear. Gay men are not predators and lesbian women are not mutants. Trans-gender people (and I have known one myself) only seek to be happy in their own skin. It’s not about carnal relations—or it shouldn’t be. It’s about the freedom to love where our hearts, not our minds, take us.

And so, with love,

The Hint of a Smile

I’ve been practicing yoga since January. I follow a thirty minute program on DVD two or three times a week. Each session ends with a ten minute meditation guided by the instructor. In the beginning, it was easier for me to stretch my body and breathe. The meditation was harder because my mind jumps around like a hyper Jack Russell and seven months ago, I was still very much controlled by my thoughts.

For instance, at the end of the practice, the instructor invites us to bring our hands together at our heart centre, close our eyes, and breathe. “Feel the hint of a smile on your face,” she says—and when I first heard that, I nearly blew apart resisting the urge to laugh. Oh, puh-leese! “The hint of a smile?” Seriously? Come on!

But I did it because a) I was alone, and b) I was determined to adhere to the practice no matter what, and guess what? Something strange occurred.

I felt happier. Instantly. And not just because the brutal floor poses were over. What the …?

Over the next few months, I continued to persevere and gradually my cynical snotitude melted away like the tension in my neck during the ear-to-shoulder pose. Even now, today, after completing the practice and listening to the meditation, I summoned a smile to my face. And you know what? It never fails! Calling a smile equals instant happy!

I’m not talking goofy grin here; just a little curve to the lips in a peaceful moment. They say it takes fewer muscles to smile than it does to frown. If the path of least resistance is your preference (as it is mine), you might want to give it a try, just for fun. Just to see what happens.

I bet you’ll feel better for it.

With love,

King of Kings

It’s been years since I read a novel by Stephen King. His On Writing is a staple on my bookshelf, but despite his name perennially displayed in the New Releases section at the local bookstore, the last novel I read was Gerald’s Game in 1993, and even then, I did not finish it. Too scary.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I still believe The Stand is his best work. Cal Leandros even gives it an honourable mention in Roadkill!

The man doesn’t need a book release to get my attention, however. I have long admired him for his honesty and, in particular, his sense of humour. The guy’s a hoot.

Little did I know that he and George R.R. Martin have been friends for decades, since before GRRM struck gold with A Game of Thrones (the book, not the TV series). So imagine my delight on finding a video of the two old pals having an onstage conversation when Steve’s recent book tour brought him to New Mexico. The bulk of the talk was stuff I already knew, but I always appreciate hearing how the professionals operate. One of King’s genre policies is this: “Aim for terror. If you can’t reach terror, aim for horror. If horror eludes you, settle for the gross-out.”

The other thing he said that had me rolling on the floor was during an elaboration of a storyline. He mentioned a villain’s recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer as motivation for a diabolical act and the audience gasped as one. He looked at them and scolded, “It’s written on page nine, for Chrissakes! Spoilers? Spoilers? There’s no such thing as a spoiler. You can’t ‘spoil’ a book; people read books to have an experience, so who cares?”

Or words to that effect.

He’s right. If he was wrong, I’d only read a book once. How else can I explain my passion for revisiting The Night Circus or GRRM’s series, or Station Eleven or the Cal Leandros novels; or for multiple viewings of Orphan Black or The Newsroom, for that matter? Knowing what happens ahead of time is clearly no deterrent. It’s the joy of reconnecting with beloved characters that brings me back time and again.

I recognize that some folks prefer the slow reveal. I admit, I prefer it myself, but knowing before I saw The Empire Strikes Back that Luke Skywalker’s dad was Darth Vader did not prevent me from paying to see the movie. If you really care, you won’t care. Stephen King certainly doesn’t.

Long live the King.

“Warrior”

feathers in his hair

he stands proud in sunlight

dances in moonlight

drumbeat, heartbeat

he rides the wind

honours the rain

kneels before fire

the earth is his mother

heartbeat, drumbeat

the children laugh

the elders smile

peacekeeper, nightwalker

he is the wolf

ever watchful over them

as spirit guides watch over him

he fights not to be conquered

Outwitting Myself

I’ve discovered a trick to keep Diva from becoming a full-fledged writing project.

Okay, a couple of tricks. One, I write one scene over a series of twenty minute bursts, picking up where I left off and blasting things onto the screen as they occur to me so I end up with a longer-than-normal exercise that is, in fact, more than one exercise. It’s sorta kinda working in one instance, but I’m not completely happy with the method because I still hang up on detail. The longer a scene becomes, the harder it is to keep it raw and fluid—I’m working on a resolution, but that’s what happens at present.

Trick number two is to take twenty minutes and write a scene-within-a-scene. For instance, in Diva IX, where Dane and Ellie are building their relationship, I was sorely tempted to expand on the dialogue, which threatened (again) the spontaneous purpose of the exercise. So instead, I marked my e-copy with an asterisk so I know where more detail is required. I’ll transcribe the conversation or elaborate on the narrative in a different exercise and drop them into the applicable scene when I start organizing the parts into a greater whole. It’s like writing a patchwork quilt, I suppose, creating a bunch of little works that will eventually form a larger one.

So where I was almost stalled, I’ve found a way to keep this particular project—because who am I kidding? There’s a good story here—fun to write and the momentum flowing.

More to come!

Rocky Road

I took myself to the beach the other morning. As I sat by the water, being one with my rock, I caught a movement from the corner of my eye and turned my head to see a fat black spider crawling over the log a few feet away from me. Before my brain identified the type, the thing fell off the log and disappeared between the pebbles.

I had not seen a spider like that at the beach before. It looked exactly like the one Ter described discovering in her office: a fat, chunky body and short stubby legs. Weird, that a bug seen twenty kilometres away on one day would suddenly appear in the wild a few days later. It seemed a little improbable, despite my talent for imagining things into reality.

Then I spied it again, closer this time, creeping sideways over the pebbles. How it got so far from the log so fast—wait a minute. Sideways? Spiders don’t crawl sideways … good grief, it’s not a spider! It’s a tiny little crab! And it’s not alone!

The one I’d seen first was climbing back onto the log, so there were clearly more than one of the species; three, in fact, as yet another weeny little guy was crawling a little further up the beach, slipping and sliding over rocks as big as or bigger than it was, on its way to … where?

Once convinced that I wasn’t hallucinating and they weren’t converging on me (which took a little doing, by the way), I realized that they were heading toward the water. The tide was way out, far enough to reveal a fair stretch of sand, so the crabs’ collective destination was yards away, the crawling equivalent of miles over really rough terrain. I observed the three little critters struggling up, over, and around each pebble in their path, sometimes tumbling into a shadowed recess in between, sometimes pausing (for breath?) in a patch of sun, and I thought, All they want is to reach the water before a crow or a gull spots them. They’re trying to get home, but it’s a long and rocky road.

Then I realized we’re all trying to get back to where we came from. The path is long and bumpy, part in sun, part in shadow, some uphill climbs, some sudden drops, a mix of straight lines and meandering detours, all of us aiming in the same direction and most of us unaware of it. Many of us are more concerned about evading the crows or the gulls so we lose track of where we’re headed. We all lose our way once in a while, but we’ll get there eventually.

Us and the crabs.

Idle Thoughts

One week off is not enough.

Hands up, everyone who’s surprised.

I doubted this would be news.

Truly, I am grateful to have had the time to be Ru. Though I didn’t get everything done that I wanted, everything I did I wanted to do.

I went back to Castasia. I finished the story about Lucius’s twin sister—I started it months ago, so it was good to wrap it up at last—and began another one about his youth, this one from his foster father’s POV and why he (Lucius) went into exile. Geez, this character is a goldmine; I could write Lucius stories forever and never run out of episodes. His influence is so powerful that he even owns the ones that aren’t about him!

I also embarked on a refresh of Orphan Black so I’m primed for season four (expected for my birthday)—no time for a marathon, but I got in a few episodes of season three. I remain an ardent fan of the series. It gets better and better.

And I finally watched the documentary about the late Amy Winehouse that won an Oscar last spring. I could have been a fan if she had been allowed to follow her bliss rather than her path—I had not known she started as a jazz singer before her career went supernova and she went the tragic way of many a broken child whose solace became her undoing. Her story, unfortunately, was the same as too many others—Billie Holliday, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain to name a few—but in a way it was worse for her because of the relentless media exposure. She wasn’t free to conquer her demons in private. She was forced to do it publicly, because that’s what the public demanded though her battle was deeply personal. As in “none of our business”, yet it became big business for the media. And how quickly the applause turned to derision! Get famous enough in this world and you’re doomed no matter how talented you are.

Her version of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” is sublime.

Enjoy.

Toe Canada!

Here we are, celebrating another anniversary of “thank the gods my parents didn’t emigrate to the US”. Once more, I tilt my gaze skyward and express my fervent gratitude for landing in this marvelous town in a marvelous province in perhaps the most marvelous country in the world. Sure, we have our problems, but they’re mostly first world and anything less could be resolved with a little compassion and less corporate greed. Our dollar may not be equal to the mighty American buckaroo, but our coin makes a stronger stand than their paper if you stack them side by side. And who cares anyway, when Canada by global reputation is safer, friendlier and far more polite than our noisy neighbours?

Given the state of the world these days, it’s inevitable that we will be affected in a negative manner as we go, but I have faith in our national resolve to stand in support of people in trouble while maintaining our collective cool. We are reasonable, peaceful folk (except at hockey games); we abhor violence (except at hockey games) and recognize guns as the formidable killing machines they are, rather than the extension of an outdated “right” as written by a gang of eighteenth century politicians. We may be a tad alarmed at what seems an overwhelming influx of races and cultures joining our ranks, but we’ll adapt because that’s what we do. We welcome newcomers. We try to get along with everyone. We share our wealth (most of us) and try to learn from our mistakes. We’re good people in a good country and I am so glad to be here.

Happy Birthday, Canada.