Crap O’Clock

I am slumped in my comfy chair, still in my jammies with a hot Magic Bag softening my stiff neck and shoulders. A bleary-eyed Ter is nursing the day’s first cup of tea from her corner of the loveseat. Neither of us has the energy for small talk. A mournful wail suddenly wafts up from the lawn beneath our window, wending its way into our living room—it’s the three-year-old downstairs, voicing his displeasure at being dressed and out the door to daycare before seven a.m. on a weekday.

“Suck it up, junior,” I say, bluntly. “Life is hard so you’d better get used to it.”

Cut me some slack, okay? This is the same kid who wakes me from a sound sleep at this same ungodly hour on a Sunday by galloping gaily up and down the hall beneath our suite. Instead of sympathizing, I take a perverse pleasure in him being hauled out the door against his will two days a week when I have to get up and go to work for five. He thinks he’s hard done by now? Wait until he starts school, heh heh.

Yup, it’s a hard life all right. I am not nor ever have been a morning person. I have learned to appreciate the beauty of a sunrise over the ocean or the tranquil solitude of a pre-breakfast flânerie, but overall, I’d rather stay up late than get up early. And I can sympathize with Junior Jinx (as Ter calls him) to some degree: I became “anti-morning” when I started school myself. It’s not that I disliked school (much). I’m generally quite happy when I get to the office, too. It’s the getting up at crap o’clock to go somewhere I’d rather not go that well and truly bites.

I don’t know how my mother did it. She was always the first one up, summer or winter, rain or shine, and breakfast was usually on the hob before she knocked on my door with a cheery, “Wakey, wakey!” or—after my bones kicked in—an even brighter, “Pill time!” Those were bleak mornings for sure. I can’t imagine she liked them any better than I did, but I never saw it.

During a recent work tea with Treena, she reminisced fondly about the idyllic days of childhood. “Do you remember waking up every day, full of excitement and eager to see what adventure awaited?” she asked, wistfully.

I just stared at her, wondering what that must have been like. It seems every morning of my life is met with the question of whether I can do it. Whether I can get up and get going. It was particularly grim when I was younger, but I’ve hated being woken up forever. Sure, I can wake up happy on a weekend, but who doesn’t? It’s a weekend, for Pete’s sake!

Which reminds me: I have to reset the alarm before I go to bed tonight.

Crap.

Traditions 2.0

Before Christmas, one of our local radio curmudgeons did a bit about the importance of tradition. During the holidays in particular, we treasure the rituals that make us feel safe and secure in a world getting nuttier with every headline. Many of our rituals come with us from childhood, and new ones develop as we establish our own homes and families. For me, it’s alcohol and TV shows. I don’t drink so much at any other time of year, and it’s not Christmas until we’ve watched Charlie Brown.

Even at the office, we have seasonal traditions. On the day the fireplace went up, one of my colleagues paused when she saw it, broke into a grin, and announced, “It’s official! Christmas is here!”

It seems Ter and I have ton of them. The house gets decorated first. I get the cards done and gone by mid-month. The big tree goes up on the first Saturday in December (or the last one in November). We watch Jim Carrey’s Grinch on that night, and every other holiday movie/TV show we have between then and the 23^rd, when A Christmas Story kicks of the holiday hat trick that includes Alistair Sim on the 24^th and Jimmy Stewart on the 25^th. We stock the kitchen with Imperial cheese and garlic sausage, mincemeat tarts and eggnog (and my annual bottle of Prosecco). We visit my folks, friends, and a sibling or two ahead of Christmas Day, not to mention getting presents bought and wrapped for distribution at those visits. Our holiday CDs go on heavy rotation in the house and in the car.

You get the picture.

Well, this year something happened. A bunch of things, actually, that interfered with our nicely organized, pre-scheduled, comfortably familiar holiday hoopla. Some switchups were deliberate, like Ter deciding to bake fruitcake for the first time in a few years, but others were, er, forced upon us. We were too bushed after wrestling with the tree to watch Jim Carrey, so the Grinch got put off for a week. My parents were unavailable when we hoped to visit them, and we were unavailable when my older sister invited us to tea. (Happily, those visits happened after the 25^th, though it felt weird having to reschedule them.) We got hung up on some other oddball things that escape me now, but despite some of our traditions being waylaid by circumstance, other things happened to make holiday magic.

It snowed on Christmas Eve. It started within seconds of my return from dropping Treena home after her ritual holiday visit, and it didn’t stop until the street was thick with frosting and our view of Oak Bay had disappeared. Ter put on the cheeseball Christmas tunes channel, and we sat in a candlelit Ocean Room with wine and popcorn, watching the snow and revelling in the unexpected hygge.

We spent the next morning in the same room, opening our presents in the glow of the penguin tree when our habit is to spend Christmas morning with the big tree. Neighbour noise caused that one, but it worked out in the end. In fact, all the adjustments worked. The OR is my favourite room in the house; why not open our presents there? Visiting parents and siblings after Christmas Day was more relaxed than if we’d crammed it in ahead of the 25th. I survived without my jar of clotted cream and discovered the joy of vanilla and cinnamon Bailey’s. Limited rotation of Christmas music didn’t kill us, though it’s too bad we missed running Blackadder’s Christmas Carol and Nation Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Maybe new traditions were born of the pre-empted old ones; I won’t know until next Christmas. I do know however, that despite the hiccups and with the gift of snow on Christmas Eve, ours in 2017 turned out to be quite festive. Traditions are important, indeed they are, but when conditions are right—though they may seem wrong at the time—traditions can also be improved!

Auto Biography XV

“A Fine Set of Wheels”

This photo is not the photo I would have used for this post; however, the shot I would have used was never taken. It’s forever etched in my mind, though. If a picture is worth a thousand words, put up your feet while I try to describe the scenario on the night before we traded Jules for a new Volkswagen.

Our dear friend Treena has a professional grade camera and offered to take some photos for posterity. We don’t have many pictures of our beloved Camaro. What we do have are “working” snaps, pictures taken on road trips or after weather events like the Blizzard of ’96. We never did do the photo op we talked about when he was brand new. That’s why, in the shots Treena took, there’s a dent in his right flank and the hood on the driver’s door mirror is still wearing its factory primer (we never got it painted after the lens went phht!—but that’s another story). All the same, we took immaculate care of his motor and safety features; he had over 160,000 kms on him when we let him go, but he still ran like a dream.

I digress.

On his last night with us, I drove Treena up to Craigdarroch Castle and watched her do her photographer thing. She circled the car, snapping this way and that, taking cool background shots, artsy angle shots, and whatever else shots she felt would do justice to her unwitting subject. Through it all, Jules stood quietly, not posing precisely, but behaving like a gentleman for the lady. I wish I’d thought to bring my own camera, not to try my hand at emulating Treena, but to catch the moment when Jules ceased to be an inanimate object and became, for a brief instant, a living, breathing creature.

I was standing behind and to the right of the car as she crouched to get this shot. Treena is a delicate little thing, a fairy child with hollow bones, who might be blown into the trees by an aggressive gust of wind. Jules was coiled like panther, muscles bunched and thrumming, as she hunkered by his nose and lifted her camera. In that moment, in the mystic evening light, he looked about to pounce ... but then he lowered his head and let her take his picture. Seeing the two of them in that frame created a delightful memory which, unfortunately, I can only share through these inadequate words, but which will stay with me for the rest of my days.

The Next Two Weeks

This is my life for the next two weeks. With breaks for the new Star Wars film and hosting a visit with my wee and boy sisters on New Year’s Eve, the bulk of my remaining fortnight’s vacation will be spent writing. Yup, a typewriter and a coffee cup (actually a computer and a tea tumbler) are my constant companions as I devote myself to reconnecting with the Muse.

My primary project is the story of Caius and Aurelia. I won’t get it finished—there’s too much to tell—but now that I feel more like myself again, I’m eager to resume the writing of it. While I was doing the dishes the other night, the opening lines of Aurelia’s POV drifted in on the winter wind, soon followed by a third character stepping up to tell his version of the tale. I was so excited I forgot about the dishes and stood with my hands in the hot water, watching the pictures in my mind’s eye. With that much meat on the bone, I’ll be feasting well into 2017!

Reconnecting means more than with the Muse, however. I lost some serious touch with my daily practice after accidentally igniting an auto-immune reaction to a homeopathic flu preparation in November. A natural alternative to an annual flu shot, which I have never had, I decided to get back with the program after some years of going without—and I wish I had gone without it this year, too. Within 48 hours of the first dose, joints were flaring all over the place; and while there is no definitive proof that the medicine was the culprit, the timing is too suspicious to discount it. Over the five week course, my arthritis progressively worsened, started to recover, then worsened again. Three health practitioners had three different theories. None of the treatments made it better. One or two made it worse. I decided to finish the flu program rather than quit halfway through—it may or may not have been a good idea, but four weeks after my final dose and my body appears to be recalibrating. Oh, my joints still hurt like tiny star flares, but the frequency, location and intensity are diminishing and, as I say, I am beginning to look outward with more interest in things than I was through the past couple of months.

During those interminable weeks, it was all I could do to get out of bed, get to work and hang on until fatigue sent me to a premature bedtime. Christmas only happened with the help of tea fairy Treena and my angels—thanks to them, I was able to pull off the coup of Christmas prezzies for my beloved Ter, who was my stalwart rock the whole time—but anything else requiring energy or focus fell by the wayside. Weekly yoga sessions, daily meditations, attention to detail at the office (I’m sure my mistakes will show up later in January), and writing anything other than my name were sacrificed in the name of survival.

Though I did finish my annual reading of The Night Circus. And the Christmas cards got done. Priorities, you know.

So, my fiendish plan for the rest of my vacation also includes reconnecting with Ru. Gradually, gently, I mean to reinstate my twice weekly yoga sessions and practice more frequent meditations. Ter has wryly warned against “over meditating”—she has as many gurus as I have doctors, and in helping to make her point with me, she realized that she has a similar proclivity to spiritual maintenance as I have to physical. And it’s true: too much of a good thing can be as harmful as too much of a bad one. The pendulum on maintenance (physical for me, spiritual for her) swung a bit too far and messed us up in 2016. Between us, we intend on simplifying our practices as we move into the new year, aiming for balance in all things.

With love,

Food Porn IX

“Whopper Wednesday”

Remember the Pepsi Challenge? Folks were asked to choose between two colas whose labels were hidden. Those who chose Pepsi got on TV and those who chose Coke were never heard from again.

An impromptu malt ball challenge was recently held at work. It came up as a result of the salt/sugar snackies I put out for my co-workers each day—there is always a bowl of chips, cheezies or pretzels, and a smaller bowl of fruit chews, chocolate or gummies. I try to accommodate preferences, but one day I put out my favourite Maltesers and caused a controversy.” These aren’t as good as Whoppers,” my ungrateful minion declared. “Whoppers are better.”

“You mean the cheapo crap malt balls from when we were kids?” I asked, duly offended.

“Yeah,” she replied. She made a face. “These are too oily and not malty enough.”

That’s stupid, I thought. According to my palate, Maltesers are light, crunchy, and plenty malty. “We should do a challenge,” my minion suggested.

Damn straight. Confident of a landslide Malteser victory, I set about preparing the test lab. Two identical bowls. An equal number of malt balls in each. Shiny, uniform Maltesers on the left, muddy cheapo Whoppers on the right. On appearance alone, the Maltesers would win. My minion and I invited three people in our division to take the challenge.

All three liked the muddy cheapo Whoppers better, but my malt ball motto is “never say die.”

Time to expand the target audience.

I knew for a fact that my tea fairy would side with me, so off we went to her corner of the floor. When she wasn’t at her desk, we pigeon-holed the co-op student and asked her to take the challenge instead.

She picked the Whopper.

My tea fairy Treena rounded the corner. “You missed the challenge!” my minion crowed.

Bewildered and despairing at a missed opportunity for treats, Treena looked at me. “What challenge?”

“Maltesers versus Whoppers,” I replied.

She scoffed. “That’s no challenge. Maltesers are better.”

Yes! High-five, Treena!

My minion folded her arms. “Sore loser.”

“Not really,” I replied. “Since everyone prefers the cheapo crappy malt balls, it won’t cost me so much to feed y’all.”

But sometimes the kids eat what Mum likes because Mum likes it and she doesn’t care about them. A few weeks later, I put out Maltesers. My minion popped one and rudely interrupted my conversation with the office manager. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “These are the losers!”

I arched a high brow. “You mean Maltesers? So they are.”

Her brows lowered. “Even though the majority of people prefer Whoppers?”

“And no one has ever gone broke underestimating the taste of the general public,” I retorted.

I may go broke trying to elevate the taste of my public, though. It’s a hard thing to admit defeat, so any malt balls I’ve put out lately have been Maltesers.

Feeding the Muse

A quote from form Lily Tomlin 

We have a staff library at work. People bring in books from home and leave them for others to borrow—that’s how I was able to nab a copy of Andy Weir’s “The Martian” after Ter and I saw the movie. I mentioned to Treena that I was looking for the book and she said, “There’s one in the break room.” Serendipity strikes! The film stayed pretty well true to the novel; anything that wasn’t used wasn’t missed as far as I could tell.

My next pick was … disappointing. A textbook murder mystery where the law falls for the prime suspect, who is innocent but confesses to protect a loved one. I had the loved one pegged from the third chapter, which hardly made for enthusiastic reading—it took me weeks to skim four hundred pages because I wasn’t hungry to see what happened next when I already knew what happened next. Except I didn’t. A weird twist in the final chapter deflected the spotlight from the loved one to a secondary character whose motivation didn’t, in my opinion, warrant the grisly murder suffered by the sleazeball victim. I wasn’t disappointed as much as bewildered. The twist felt like a deliberate attempt to derail the reader where it would have been, again in my opinion, more honest to let the story end as predicted. I whined to my boy sister, “This was written by a New York Times best selling author!” to which he replied, “Was this the book that made the list?”

Good point, BS. Whether or not the author could do or had done better, this book was mediocre at best.

A mediocre book does two things: it threatens to lower my standards for my own writing and, in direct opposition, urges me to revisit a known gem. Next up: a second run at Station Eleven, a story so gloriously enchanting that I’m delaying the moment simply to relish the anticipation of a truly nourishing read.

A fabulous book will encourage me to stretch my own muscle, and I would rather overextend my reach than settle for “good enough”.

DIY

“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile” – Albert Einstein

After twenty years in the same suite, our dear friend Treena has bought herself a condominium. Before she moves in, however, she’s renovating. And she’s doing it herself.

Ter and I were called to assist with collecting supplies last week—namely transporting a thousand pounds of laminate flooring and seven gallons of paint from the shop to the condo. Tiggy is a little Stormtrooper, but he also has a maximum load capacity of 1110 pounds so, after some frantic mental math during which our combined weight was added to the load, we estimated that the flooring alone would take three trips. Picture this: one Tiguan, two babes in their mid-fifties, and one waif hauling 34 boxes weighing approximately 20 lbs apiece from the curb to the second floor suite.

Bwahahahahahaha!

The first load was tricky since, having committed and therefore unable to reverse, we had no idea how we were going to accomplish this feat without killing ourselves. We bumbled through 5 return trips, during which I predicted we’d be professionals by the time we were finished.

Load #2—half the remaining flooring and 5 rolls of underlay were picked up at the shop and sat in the Tiguan while his girls took a union lunchbreak. Appropriately fuelled up, the “curb to condo” routine went somewhat more smoothly. (Curiously, Ter was energized by the carbs she’d consumed while Treena and I could have used a nap.)

Load #3—the last 160 lbs of floor plus seven cans of paint (3 eggshell, 2 semi-gloss, 1 primer and something else that I’ve forgotten); Tig was all but doing wheelies up the road with the weight over his rear axle. And when we arrive at the building … no parking save for the passenger zone with its 3 minute maximum.

Ter slammed the car into “park”, killed the motor and declared, “We’re doing it.” And from sheer terror of being busted (and potentially fined) by the strata council, we had everything out of the car, up the elevator and down the hall in twenty minutes flat.

As I’d predicted six hours earlier, professionals.

Treena comes from a family of do-it-yourselfers. Her aunt happens to be Ter’s best friend from high school, and there is nothing she can’t fix, improve, or invent on the fly. Ter is equally smart when it comes to improvising. My superpower is pointing out that “you’ve missed a spot”. Thinking about hard work exhausts me, but something magical happened on the chain gang that day:

I had a blast.

I was aching all over and two loads of laundry awaited when I got home, but I spent the day helping someone I love alongside someone I love and that made me happy. Treena, bless her, was ever so grateful for our help, and I suppose that contributed to the joy (gratitude tends to inspire a greater effort), but I am grateful to her in turn, for giving me the chance to experience the unexpected delight of offering my time and my heart in service to one of my kind.

Love and service. That’s what life is all about, Charlie Brown.

Bibliography XII

“James Bond Cars” – Frédéric Brun

And in the “Pretentious Coffee Table Book” department, a hardcover tome packed with photos, anecdotes and specifications associated with the vehicular co-stars in the 007 series from “Dr No” to “SPECTRE”, including the oddball entries like space buggies, tanks, and airplanes. Did I die and go to Heaven when I unwrapped this baby? Pretty much. Yeah, sure, there are photos of Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig sprinkled throughout, but … who cares?

Ter claims that I have an instinct for engineering and I have always had an eye for automobiles (I remember identifying a Dodge 500 by its rear lights when I was a little kid in Quebec), so my excitement here is far less surprising than the giver of the gift—my little tea fairy, Treena, who has no idea at all about cars beyond trying to avoid being hit by one in a crosswalk (so far, so good). Whenever I start rhapsodising about the Tesla in the parkade or the Maserati standing outside the coffee house, she glazes over. But, gods bless her, she thought of me when she saw this book and I will adore her forever because of it.

Page after page of glossy, glorious photos in black and white and in colour, of Aston Martins in various stages of assembly, blocks of text describing how the DB5 and beyond became part of the Bond mystique, stories from the drivers and technicians behind the stunts … and there, on page 81, is a full colour shot of the Mustang Mach 1 from “Diamonds Are Forever”. The car was a bit player in my favourite of the 007 films, but it stole the scene it was in by ripping it up during a chase in Las Vegas. Other Mustangs have appeared in Bond movies—Ford gave the producers a pre-production model for the scene in “Goldfinger” where gentleman spy is distracted by pretty girl in white convertible, and a million new cars were sold as a result.

I’ll expect nothing but pleasure when I pick up this book to kill the few minutes between dinner and dishes, but then again, who knows? Inspiration can hit when one isn’t looking, and a hot car often heralds the introduction of a new character with a story to tell …

Christmas Eve 2015

I drove a friend home after tea on Christmas Eve. It was just after five o’clock, fully dark and sprinkling a bit. Some, but not much traffic. One of the local radio stations had gone all-holiday hits for the week preceding Christmas, so Tig’s radio was set to that channel for the duration. The volume was low with company in the car, but after I dropped Treena at her place, I turned it up to catch a Christmas song on my drive home. It’s only ten minutes, through a winding, tree-lined neighbourhood removed from the main artery to/from downtown. Plenty long enough for one, maybe two tunes. Simon and Garfunkel’s “Silent Night” would be lovely in the burgeoning stillness.

I turn left at the four-way stop. The commercial set ends and lo, “Mele Kalikimaka” starts up. Sigh … but hey, it’s a Christmas song and it’s not as if I don’t know the words.

“Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say on a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day …”

I’m singing with der Bingle. Tig is cruising down the hill, wipers occasionally clearing Christmas-coloured raindrops from the windshield. Fairy lights glow in gardens and on gabled rooftops. I am warm and, for the first time in a few days, alone. I reach the one traffic light on my route. A single set of headlights beams at me from across the intersection. Red turns green, we each roll forward in opposite directions, then I have the street to myself. The song (mercifully) ends. With luck, I won’t be looping it for the rest of the evening, and there’s still time for another.

What I get is an update from NORAD. The base in North Bay is monitoring communications and confirms that Santa has left the North Pole. As soon as he reaches Canadian airspace, jets will be scrambled to provide a military escort … and for some oddball reason, a tingle of excitement runs up my spine. For a singular moment, I feel the magic of Christmas Eve in a way I haven’t felt since I was little. Santa is coming; he’s on his way …

I’m glad to be alone when it happens, even though it’s the first thing I blurt to Ter when I come through the door.

It was nice to discover that I’m not as immune, as grown up, as I believe I am.

The Importance of Tea XII

“Extremitea”

1000 grams!

My tea fairy, Treena, gave me a sample of Davidson’s Organic Spiced Peach for my birthday. It’s one of the best peachy teas ever, and I promptly wondered if we can get it online?

Fast forward a few weeks. Treena emails to advise that she’s aiming for free shipping on something and a pound of Spiced Peach will push her total past the eligible amount. Did I want to chip in for half?

Naturally, I agreed (it really is delicious).

David’s “Tea of the Month” is Ginger Beer – a herbal infusion that demanded I stock two hundred grams pronto, which of course I did. At the same time, I topped up my tin of Mumbai Chai from Blenz. All that remains is to purloin a package of Murchie’s seasonal Snowflake, and I’m all set for winter sipping.

Once the Spiced Peach arrived, I happily informed Treena that my cupboard is stuffed to the gunwales and no new tea purchases will be made for the rest of the calendar year. She gave me the knowing sidelong look and said something about, “Yeah, until the Christmas flavours come out.”

I remain steadfast in my resolve. Murchie’s Snowflake won’t be out for another few weeks, but once I’ve bought my stash of that, I mean it, I’m done. After all, I have half a pound of Spiced Peach to plough through; do I need more tea???

*sigh*

My other tea buddy, Julie, roped me into visiting David’s so she could try their Chai and Mighty. I was happy to tag along, with absolutely no intention of buying anything beyond a cup to go. I bypassed the Halloween display and went straight for the counter. Julie, however, paused to peruse the merchandise. I’m chatting with the counter staff when she cries, “Ruthie! Stormy Night is back!”

I pivot so fast that my ears buzz. “What?”

“Oh, yeah,” says the store manager, “it’s back for Halloween, but only in the tombstone packaging. What you see there is all we have.”

Stormy Night is one of my favourites; I pitched a fit when they discontinued it and proceeded now to rant a reminder of my displeasure before I snatched up a tombstone. “Now you have one less,” I declared. “Chocolate Macaroon, by the way, is a poor replacement.”

I can order fifty grams of Stormy Night from their website for $8.50. Fifty grams in a cardboard tombstone cost me twice that much in store. And I didn’t care. I bought it anyway.

Now that’s scary.

The Three-Ring Night Circus

Falling so in love with The Night Circus means that it deserves to be a hardcover addition to my library. I dropped the hint for my birthday in 2014 and no one picked it up. Then I forgot about it until Christmas, when I re-read the paperback. I dropped the hardcover hint again and, again, no one picked it up. I suspect this was because my presents had already been procured. I got some neat books in lieu and forgot once more about TNC in hardcover.

Earlier this year, I searched online and discovered that new hardcovers no longer exist. Used ones, however, are available from various sellers in various conditions for various prices. I didn’t order one because online options can be boggling and I still have my paperback. A hardcover is a nice to have, but certainly not mandatory.

My tea fairy, Treena, usually coordinates her birthday/Christmas prezzie shopping with Ter; they compare notes and such to ensure that no duplications occur. Only this year, they didn’t consult on my birthday until it was too late. Each of them had remembered my request, and each of them had gone ahead on the assumption that the other would never think of it. Once they consulted, they realized that, uh oh, a duplication was in progress. Ter’s had already arrived when Treena came by for tea—a celebration which included my acquiring season three of Orphan Black, thanks to Treena, who shares my hope that one day Ter will become equally addicted to the series and we can all be addicts together. Ter certainly knows the series’ premise, well enough to coin a clone joke when referring to the duplicate prezzie gaffe. She and Treena decided to give me both “clones” of the gift and let me choose which one to keep.

Meanwhile, bearing in mind that I had no idea what they were up to, I quietly decided to pursue my own hardcover edition of TNC. There’s a great used bookshop on SSI called Black Sheep Books, and if there was a hardcover edition to be had, surely it would be had there. Ter dropped me after lunch one day and I went over the store from floor to ceiling in search of my treasure.

No luck.

No luck at Salt Spring Books, either—though I did score a copy of Plague by CC Humphreys (murder and mayhem in Restoration England).

When we got home, Treena’s clone had arrived, so she and Ter contrived to present me with two wrapped packages on Sunday afternoon. I was a little concerned about them being wrapped. Since they were the same item, where was the element of surprise on the second package? Oh, the thing about clones, I was reminded, is that they aren’t exactly identical.

True enough. The book pictured on the right is the North American release, courtesy of Ter, and the book on the left is the UK release, by way of Treena. They’re each so beautiful that I’m keeping them both.

And I’m keeping the books, too.

Extraordinary Miracles III

“The Concert”

Gee, maybe I am a fan!

Ter and I missed my niece’s wedding reception because we had tickets with our good buddy Treena to see Sarah McLachlan the same night. I have never seen Sarah live, though I have every album except her greatest hits—which, if you want to be literal about it, means that I have her greatest hits, just not on a single disc. I didn’t even realize that I have all her discs. 

How can someone be a fan and not know it until the night before the show? Maybe because I had not been driven to see her live? Not until last spring, anyway, when Shine On was released and I got word of a tour starting in Victoria on October 18. The email notification came and I debated getting tickets. It’s no fun going alone, and Ter isn’t enough of a fan to make me make her go with me. Treena has some of her albums, though, so I thought I’d ask if she wanted to go. Then Ter said she’d come with us just for the joy in watching us see an icon perform live in our hometown. So I got the tickets and put them away until October.

In a day piled high with extraordinary miracles, the concert was the cherry on top. First, the seats turned out to be most excellent – the only three seats in the second row up in the bowl, just shy of right angles to the stage. The set was modeled after a living room, with cozy chairs, carpets, a couch, and hanging lamps reminiscent of Christmas ornaments. At 8:00, a woman who could have been my sister walked on stage and welcomed everyone to the show. She explained the format, the band came on behind her, and this normal, chatty individual instantly morphed into Sarah McLachlan performing Flesh and Blood off the new album. Even then, it didn’t really register that I was watching her play live until the second song, Buildinga Mystery, which is one of my favourite Sarah songs and numbers among her biggest hits. I think it won a Grammy; the album, Surfacing, certainly did. Her voice is so distinct, so unique, that it stands alone among the voices of her generation, but when she’s talking, she sounds like any other Canadian girl and you’d be hard-pressed to believe your eyes when they try to tell your brain that yep, she’s the real deal.

She doesn’t need a band. Her songs are poems set to music; she can sit at a piano and mesmerize you with a range of emotion that defies description. Treena put it best after the show: with almost every song, I thought, oh, my favourite! Until the next song started and I thought, No, this is my favourite! And so on, for almost two hours straight. She broke to invite a few fans on stage and answer questions submitted pre-show from the audience; I swear, it was like spending an evening with my sister. She was warm, funny, generous, honest, powerful and absolutely perfect.

Well, except that she sang one song in the wrong half of the show. She finished The Answer and launched straight into I  Will remember You, which confused her band though they let her go unsupported and joined when they were meant to. We only knew she’d goofed because she apologized to them.

Yep, every song was a gem. Every lyric a poem, every moment a precious reminder that this woman, this singer/songwriter with the angel’s voice, is actually more to me than a mere nice-to-have in my CD collection. She started to sing Fallen and I realized with a jolt that the Afterglow album was the soundtrack for Reijo’s failed first romance, one of the most powerfully painful stories I’ve ever written. The album Fumbling Toward Ecstasy fuelled the relationship between Lucius and his half-sister Fae, particularly the songs Possession, Fear, and the title track. And yes, she performed those songs on Saturday night. I couldn’t believe my luck. She cranked that voice up to an octave undocumented on Fear—the recording of it is unearthly and haunting beyond chills, yet live (and twenty years later), she nailed it. Effing nailed it! I wanted to scream with her, but burst into tears instead.

So embarrassing.

During the intermission, Treena and I decided we had to hit the swag table. This occasion could not pass without acquiring some memento to mark it. She was as blown away as I was and, in a day of mounting miracles, so was Ter. It’s relatively easy to satisfy a fan. To elevate your status in the eyes of a casual awareness takes some talent.

Will I see her again? Dunno. Am I playing her music as I write this? You bet. She is and always will be one of the strongest musical inspirations for my writing. If I had to see her live to realize this, then her work is done. I am a fan, but in this instance I’m a fan for different reasons. I listen to her for pleasure, but mostly, I listen to her music, her lyrics, and her voice, to write my tales of the human heart in all its conflict.

I am in awe. I am inspired. I am grateful.

Vanity, Thy Name is Vader

I’m a big fan of Star Wars. Okay, I’m more a Vader ho than a series fan, but hey, what can I say? I like tall men in boots, cloaks and black masks, and there’s a really hot and husky rhythm in his respirator. 

Admittedly, that may be too much information. My passion for the Dark Lord, however, is why I was particularly excited to see “Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” some years ago. Being third in the story sequence but sixth (and last) in the movie series, it promised to provide closure on the story of Anakin Skywalker’s betrayal of his Jedi training and descent into service of the evil Galactic Empire. This was the episode where we witnessed his transformation from star pilot hero to mechanized villain, or how a handsome and promising young warrior went so horribly, tragically wrong. 

Great garment-rending plot potential, yes? I thought so. But all six episodes are “leave your brain at the door” popcorn movies spinning the universal tale of good vs. evil, with the hero triumphant and the bad guy finding deathbed redemption. At its best, it’s a fun romp through space. At its worst, it’s a mindless monster that became an example of art imitating life by consuming its creator and spitting out the Emperor of Mass Marketing. No matter. I went in with my eyes wide open, caring solely for Anakin’s tipping point and Vader’s subsequent rise. 

Ter and I saw the movie before our dear friend Treena did. That we saw it first was a bit of a surprise, as Treena is a frequent cinema flyer averaging two or three movies per month. She’s also got fairly high standards when it comes to screenplays and dialogue. After I saw the film, she asked me how it was, I gushed, and she followed up with a question about the dialogue: Were there any memorable lines? 

“Treen,” I replied, exasperated, “this is Star Wars, not Shakespeare!” 

Some years later and I find this at the bookstore:

 

 

Oh, I am Fortune’s fool …