Diva XII

The couch in her dressing room was cramped but served the purpose. Ellie lay entangled with her leading man and waited for the inevitable. The awkwardness, the elusive gaze, the mumbled apologies. She tried not to think of her rumpled Chanel suit or what Edith would say when she had to launder it. She tried not to imagine the faces of her colleagues, of Hamilton’s studious ignorance, of Swain’s wry smirk or the narrowed eyes on Margie Hunter. She glanced at the telephone on the vanity, half-expecting it to ring with a frantic Vera on the end of the line.

Everybody knew. Somebody would talk. It would be in all the rags by morning.

What had she done?

Dane’s weight shifted. The cue for remorse. Ellie gave him a shove and set about straightening her skirt. His unkempt costume didn’t look much different. His character’s hair wasn’t as tidy as his eight-by-ten’s either; it just figured that her appearance had suffered more from their tawdry tussle. Her hair was mussed, her jacket torn open—and an earring was missing.

Shit shit shit.

She sat up to feel for it between the cushions. His back was to her while he rearranged his clothes. Ellie kept her face averted, unsure which of them was the more embarrassed.

“Milady?”

While her head was down, Dane had knelt in front of her. One of her black patent pumps was in his hand; she’d heard it hit the floor just as her back had hit the couch. Bewildered by his courtly tone, she frowned at him. He brandished the shoe with a naughty twinkle in his eye.

“If this slipper fits, you’re the girl I’m looking for.”

Ellie’s laugh emerged as an unladylike snort. Clearly, she was the more embarrassed. It was an unusual reversal of roles. Overcompensating made her sound belligerent. “Are you always this gallant after sex?”

“Only if I want a repeat performance,” he answered, frankly. He caught and cradled her stocking foot in his free hand, reclaiming his chivalrous demeanour. “May I?”

She couldn’t keep the colour from flooding her face. “If you insist.”

Her foot slid into the shoe as easily as he had slid into her. She felt something come loose deep inside and she swayed on the point of a mortifying swoon. Dane smiled as if he had half-expected the shoe not to fit, then bent his head and kissed her ankle. Ellie forced herself to speak, to keep the rising tide at bay while she unscrambled her wits.

“They’ll talk about us, you know.”

“Let them talk.”

“You don’t know what they’ll say.”

“Maybe I don’t care.”

“You should,” Ellie said, sadly.

Dane raised his head. “Why?”

His face was open and earnest. His hair tumbled, unruly with spent passion, over his forehead, and in that moment Ellie understood why she was so attracted to him.

Dear God, I could fall in love with this man.

She put a hand to his cheek, ran her fingertips over the angled bone and down to caress his lips. Her touch lingered there, her thoughts teetering against the urge to push him away before either of them got hurt. Dane studied her with his soft grey eyes, and when she finally slid off the sofa, he gathered her into his arms.

Teacher, Teacher

My fear of missing the bus can be traced back to an episode in first grade. The class was to copy a page of text from our reader before school got out, and my Virgo perfection complex had me taking my time to get it right.

My sibs and I were bussed from home in those days, to the English speaking school across the Richelieu River and, at six years old, I assumed if I missed the bus home, I’d have to stay at the school overnight and it wasn’t even in the same town. Scary stuff, right? But when the bell rang and I wasn’t finished the assignment, the teacher made me stay behind until it was done.

The bus was waiting and if I wasn’t on it ... all sorts of nightmarish possibilities scampered across my mind, horribly distracting as I struggled to meet my deadline while in a burgeoning panic.

So I hurried. I did the best I could under duress, but it wasn’t good enough because the old bat looked at my work, picked up her red pen, and crossed out the whole page of my exercise book.

I made the bus home, which was my priority objective, but I fought tears the whole time. I think, but don’t recall, that I ripped out the page so my parents wouldn’t see the humiliation—I was hugely upset because I’d done my best in a race against the clock and the teacher had totally negated my effort. Whether or not it was, and forty-nine years later I’m still undecided, it felt unfair.

That particular teacher had a bit of a reputation among the student body (my older sister once did a hilarious impression of her yelling at kids on the playground), but she certainly left an impression on me.

Fast forward to seventh grade, my final year in elementary school after we’d relocated to Victoria. I had gone down the corridor where grades one, two and three were taught, probably to deliver something to one of the teachers. It wasn’t to the old dragon I encountered; that much I remember. I also remember her stopping me in the hall and demanding to know why I wasn’t in my own class. Mostly, I remember wondering why they assigned the most frightening old biddies to the first grade kids!

I seriously doubt this is the case now. From the antics of my co-workers who have school age children, I’m more sorry for the teachers than I ever was for my classmates because I’m pretty sure the sabre-toothed modern day mother would have had her fangs drawn by my first grade teacher.

Don’t Look Back

Last week, I watched Bill Maher and his four guests—two Democrats and two Republicans—argue back and forth about their upcoming election and what’s wrong with both candidates. The US is in a sticky pickle because, as I see it, the voting public is caught between a Trump and a hard place. When faced with two evils, folks generally choose the lesser one ... but in this race, how can you tell which is which?

No matter. I’m Canadian. My problem comes after the US election, when everyone else in the world has to deal with the outcome of their decision.

It was interesting, however, to hear people on both sides trying to outshout each other about “taking America back”, “getting America back”, and “reclaiming America”. One of them referred to regaining the country originally intended by the founding fathers.

Are you kidding me??? The country was founded over two hundred years ago, by privileged white European males who drew up a Constitution that would serve their interests and no one else’s. Think about it. When the country was formed, the only Africans in America were slaves, women were chattel, and the native Americans had been driven off their land by the guests they had welcomed but who refused to leave. The paperwork wasn’t written for anyone within those three groups. The right to bear arms meant that colonists on the frontier could defend themselves instead of waiting for the cavalry to ride over the hill. And they were pretty much defending themselves from the indigenous residents, so I’m of two minds on the fairness of the policy in the first place.

If I have learned anything in the past couple of years, it’s that nothing is ever going to be the same again. You cannot get back to the way it was because the way it is has changed so radically that previous rules can no longer apply. Society can’t rely on a document that was written in the dark ages because that document was written for the dark ages. Respect its purpose, sure, but then improve upon it, for crying out sideways!

We are not here to stay the same. We are not here to live in the past. We are here to move forward, to embrace each other and create something better than what we had yesterday (and I don’t mean building a better iPhone). Cleaving to an outdated document is not the way to fix today’s problems. One might even suggest that cleaving to that document is what created today’s problems. The world in 2016 is not remotely similar to the world in 1776 or whenever. Can we please leave that old world behind and work with each other to make something wondrous of the one we have?

Because it is wondrous. People are amazingly diverse, but our diversity is not what makes us magnificent. Our shared divinity is what make us magical. We are each capable of love, of compassion, of respect and gratitude and kindness. Our culture does not make us any of those things. Neither does our history. We should be using those things as starting points from which to grow and change ... but even as I write this, I realize that I might be missing my own point.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are born divine. Many of us lose sight of it along the way. If time truly is cyclical and we are moving in circles, then perhaps we do want to go back to somewhere in the past. Let’s go further back than two measly centuries. Let’s go back to where we truly started, when we were born pure and untainted, radiant with love and no conditions, when we knew in our souls that all we needed to make a success of this life was to exercise our divinity and treat each other ...

... with love.

Cursed Cursive

The local newscast recently put up a viewers’ poll, asking the question, “Should chilren continue to be taught cursive writing in BC schools?” I didn’t see it, but Ter did, and her first thought was, if it has anything to do with spelling, you guys have failed!

Spelling should definitely stay in the curriculum, as should the mechanics of handwriting—both printing and cursive. While we’re at it, let’s insist on pushing the kids to do basic arithmetic in their heads instead of with a calculator, to colour with crayons instead of a mouse, and depend less on technology than on their own manual abilities. You might think that cursive writing is expendable, and maybe it is—or would be, if the aforementioned technology was more reliable, but one sizeable electro-magnetic pulse and we’ll be back in the Stone Age. The handwritten word will resume its status near the top of the communications food chain and how will the millennials survive if they can’t communicate without their devices?

The viewers’ poll resulted heavily in favour of keeping cursive in schools (evidence, perhaps, of the median age in their audience demographic), and it also reminded me—because I need more reminding as I get older—of my pledge to draft blog posts by hand.

One of my delaying tactics is my reluctance to boot and park in front of the computer. It’s a pretty weak excuse when I can curl up on the couch with a notebook on my knee (the original laptop) and scribble in ink until my hand cramps. Transcribing to screen is easier than drafting onscreen anyway.

My handwriting is harder to read, though.

Food Porn X

“Comfort Food”

It’s a crappy rainy day. I have a cold. It’s not at the “I want my mum” stage, but it’s enough to warrant postponing a sister lunch that will likely not happen now until mid-October.

When the majority of us are still working (but not bitter), it can take that long for a lunch date to travel from inception to implementation.

Anyway, this morning Ter suggested mince and tatties for dinner tonight. “Comfort food,” she said, though I needed no convincing. Mince and tatties is my childhood favourite of all time, especially when paired with ...

“Rhubarb crumble for dessert!” I croaked.

“I can get you a can of custard at the shops,” Ter added.

I threw back my head. “Oh, God, yes!”

It so happens that I made a strawberry-rhubarb crumble yesterday, but was too sick to eat any of it. A fortuitous circumstance, if you ask me. Pour a little Ambrosia brand cukkie over warm crumble and be transported to a bliss unlike any other in existence.

Once I came down from my foodie orgasm, I said, “Check the guide! Is there a hockey game on?” Because mince and tatties are our traditional “hockey night dinner” and food is almost always associated with some emotional gratification. Plus, the World Hockey Championship starts this weekend and we’re in hockey withdrawal. Ter grabbed the remote and yep, Canada faces off against the Czech Republic at 5:00 p.m. We are set!

What is it about gloomy weather that inspires a desire for, let’s face it, stodgy food? We call it “comfort food”, but it’s really all about the stodge. Hot soup, beef stew, meat-pie-and-potatoes—okay, anything with potatoes—followed by sweet creamy puddings are probably the worst combo for our compostable containers, yet a grilled salmon Caesar salad just won’t cut it when I feel like s***. On a rainy day, I am compelled to bake, to scent the house with the perfume of burnt sugar and chocolate, toasted pecans and cinnamon, warm fall fruits and ginger. Ter, having less of a sweet tooth, craves the aromas of roasting meat, bubbling gooey cheese, and hearty herby broth. Tonight’s menu won’t do anything to help my congestion, but do I care?

I probably should, but I don’t.

*cough cough*

To Be in Paris

I’ve heard it said that when you ask yourself a question, your heart will answer immediately and honestly. One morning I picked up John Taylor’s autobiography to look for a particular reference, and got lost with him in the mid-80s when he was buying property all over the world. Eventually, he said, he gave up on the “perfume bottle real estate thing” he had going— John Taylor of London, Paris & New York—and finally settled in Los Angeles.

A step down, if you ask me.

The question I asked myself, just for fun, was of the three big cities, in which one would I choose to live? The answer came in the next beat:

Paris.

???

Quelle surprise? I think not. Considering how my new favourite tea is Murchie’s “Paris Afternoon” (thanks, Ter!), I listen most often to the Paris Café channel at jazzradio.com, and I have a thing for Musketeers, it’s hardly a surprise at all. Must be the romantic in my soul—or perhaps a memory from another life, where I am almost certain I got into trouble with a gang of dissolute artists, musicians and poets.

Ironically, I am not a fashion plate. I do not wear French perfume. I would never drive a Citroen, and when I think of red-white-and-blue, the Union Jack pops to mind. I do, however, adore champagne, baroque architecture, and sidewalk cafés.

While in my early twenties, I spent a few days in Paris. My companion was a native so language was no barrier, but I was too young to appreciate where I was for what it was. I visited the Louvre, was unimpressed by the Mona Lisa, took the train to Versailles and blew a whole roll of film on the statue of Neptune Rising from the Sea, ate street food because the restaurants were too expensive, and discovered the joy of Perrier Citron (mineral water with a shot of lemon cordial), though the café waiter was rude and I later found out why: tips were automatically added to the bill, so there goes the incentive to be well-mannered with the tourists.

Mind you, the Parisians are kind of notorious for dishing ʼtude at foreigners. They’ll warm up if you try to speak French—the worst thing you can ask off the bat is “Parlez-vous Anglaise?”—and the whole world has been advised of how immigrants are perceived by the nation as a whole, but still, it’s an elegant, magical, beautiful, romantic, noisy, bustling city of light, art and culture and I would definitely do it differently if I had it to do again.

Or maybe I’ll just live there again in my next life.

Time on Your Side

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” - Lao Tzu

Where did we go wrong?

It’s not where you might think.

Okay, maybe it is. I agree that the speed of life has hit warp ten, and in the immortal words of Montgomery Scott, “we’re going nowhere mighty fast.”

Why is that? Why do we continually lament a loss of time in which to get things done? There is so much on everyone’s plate you’d think we’d accomplish something, but we end up spinning in circles, abusing regulated substances and each other, and getting no further ahead than our next paycheque.

So much for the pursuit of happiness.

Maybe we’re trying to do too much in too little time.

Or maybe it’s how we look at time itself. We view it as a limited commodity when we probably shouldn’t view at it as anything. We certainly shouldn’t regard it as linear. It’s not linear. It’s cyclical. Ask anyone with an inbox: you can’t empty the darned thing before it’s refilled as if by (black) magic. Time is the same. You can’t run out of it; it’s always there.

Better still, it’s there for you. In abundance. Honest. But if you believe you don’t have enough of it, or that you’ll run out of it, guess what? You don’t and you will.

I know, I know. How does this explain the difference between a dragging workday and a Mach speed weekend? Believe it or not, the same number of hours exists in a Tuesday as in a Saturday. I’m beginning to suspect that managing time effectively has more to do with how aware I am in the present moment. Not an hour or a day or a week from now, but right now.

Tuesday drags because I’m thinking about the weekend past or the weekend future rather than about what I’m doing at the moment. Once I focus on a project, time resumes its normal course. Not only does the day end sooner, I finish a task I initially feared wouldn’t get done due to—duh—lack of time!

By the same token, Saturday seems a lot shorter when I spend it thinking about work on Monday. I’m amazed at what I can accomplish on a weekend when I focus on the weekend itself rather than the dwindling time within it.

So the next time you’re worried about the time you don’t have, flip it to your advantage. Pay attention to the moment and repeat after me:

“I have all the time I need.”

And you will!

With love,

Return to Castasia

“Enjoy your book,” Ter says, leaving the room to let me read a bit before I go to sleep.

What’s so strange about this, you ask?

I am reading my own book.

Re-reading, actually. I was inspired to revisit The Healing after a work colleague asked if I would take a look at the first few chapters of a fantasy novel she’s writing. I have great respect for this person, not only because she rocks at her finance desk job, but because she has published a bunch of books through real contracts with established publishers. She already identifies me as a capable employee. To have her recognize me as a fellow wordsmith—or at least someone who knows something about writing—was pretty darned cool.

You don’t entrust your fledgling child to just anyone.

After I sent her my review, she dropped by my office for our first real writer-to-writer conversation. We’ve scratched the subject on occasion, but because I respect her practice of keeping her writer’s life separate from her work life, we had never gotten into the meat of it. My effort with her manuscript proved more than she had hoped for—not knowing what I was doing, I did a complete line edit rather than a general overview—and our relationship seems to have shifted in a more comfortable direction as a result.

At the same time, I decided to take another look at The Healing, if for nothing else but to remind myself of how my own fantasy story started. Of course I’d write it differently now … but not by much. My style has evolved in the decade-plus since I finished the first draft. The story itself is good. The characters are complex and colourful. The magic is present but not overpowering—I recall GRRM saying that magic is like anchovies on a pizza: too much and the whole pie is ruined. Best of all, elements are present in The Healing that remained consistent and actually propelled the series forward in subsequent novels. I should be proud of that sucker; it’s a pretty good read, if not a little fatty in places. It’s actually fun to see that I could have cut a line or a paragraph, or even a scene, to make the flow move faster—then again, I always write what I want to read. In 2003, it seems I wanted to read something thick and sticky with detail. Nowadays, not so much.

And that’s okay. Like Treason before it, The Healing deserves better than two of five, so I’ll give it …

Fabulous 55

It’s my birthday!!!!!!!

I confess, I get a little wired on September 2 because Ter has been madly shopping and wrapping and planning for the occasion. No one is more grateful for me than she is, and while it feels weird to be celebrated just for existing, I appreciate her effort almost as much as I appreciate her just for existing.

It works two ways.

So, here I am at the almost-middle-age mark. No regrets, lots of memories, a happy Now, and excited about future episodes of “Two Girls and a Tiguan”. Life is, has been, and continues to be good to me. I am so very fortunate.

I have a great friend and soul sistah in my beloved Ter. Without her, I’d probably still be living in my parents’ basement instead of embracing a universe of potential and possibility.

I chose a kick-butt birth family spearheaded by wonderful parents who planned for me and gave me sibs whom I am always delighted to see whether days, months, or years have passed between sightings.

My friends are few and extremely precious. Writers, healers, humourists, and relatives (yes, sisters can be friends) all contribute to my creativity in ways they can’t imagine.

My colleagues are gold, to the point where my executive director worked to get me a salary increase rather than let me go when I was so unhappy last year. Though money was not a condition for me staying with the division, I’m grateful for the abundance nonetheless. There are still days when I don’t get paid enough, but in a world where a living wage is beyond many people’s reach, I recognize how spectacularly lucky I am.

My pit crew will get my compostable container to my intended 115^th birthday; by then I think I’ll be done.

I have a new writing rig that happened when the old one spontaneously combusted. It’s taken a couple of days, but I think the new computer has renewed my passion for writing—proof of the wisdom not to get too attached to things.

Wherever I am, I have a comfortable home where I feel safe and loved at all times.

In short, I’m in better shape now than I was a year ago. Who says things only get worse? In my universe, they only get better!

With love and gratitude,

Buzzkill

Well, thank you, Debbie Downer, for yesterday’s post. Sheesh. The last thing one needs on the threshold of her fifty-fifth birthday is a reminder, even a semi-positive one, of tragedy and mourning. While the subject is true enough, and the post was, I guess, as uplifting as one can make it, it was also evidence of the panic my mind went into on discovering that a) I am on vacation and b) all is well.

Honestly, I was amazed at the abnormally dark and dangerous thoughts that taunted me throughout much of Tuesday. At first, I was actually immobilized by them. Everything from locking the basement door between laundry loads, which I never do, to picturing Ter being T-boned at a left turn, which I never do, came to mind in such a short space of time that it was soon obvious something was afoot.

Someone was trying too hard to scare me out of my happy.

Turned out to be myself.

Not myself in the divine sense, of course. Myself in the intellectual/egotistic sense. Yup, my compostable white knight, the disk operating system assigned to keep my physical self safe and alive, didn’t have a lot to do on Tuesday, and facing a fortnight of days off with not a darned thing to worry about, she freaked out in a big way.

Once I figured out what was happening, I was able to stop it. I just said, “Stop!” And it worked. I could almost hear the whimpering as my mind shrank into a corner to suck her thumb. She poked her head out a few times during the day, but now that I was on to her, she didn’t get very far before I sent her scooting back to her corner.

As for why, all I can conjure is the suspicion that I usually run on so much adrenaline, always thinking ahead because Ru time is defined by my work schedule, that when I take my foot off the gas, my mind views it as a threat and sets out to convince me that the world is scarier on vacation than it is in everyday life!

Nice try, girlfriend.

The conscious mind is uncomfortable with silence. It’s awkward with contentment, and if the present moment is tranquil, it won’t last “so you’d better buckle up for what’s coming because if you’re not braced and breathing fast, you’ll be horribly maimed for not having listened to me!”

Relax, Compostable Ru. You’re fine. All is well; you’re safe, Ter is safe, and no one is imperilled just because I’m taking a few days off. This moment is most precious for being one of a kind, so I intend on enjoying it—and if you calm down and breathe, you’re welcome to enjoy it with me.

There. Doesn’t that feel better?

You bet it does.

With love,