Oceanic

I have lived near the ocean for most of my life. It’s a bit like living in Paris: drive past the Eiffel Tower every day and, eventually, you just don’t see it anymore. I’m no sun worshipper, either. I have rarely spent more than a couple of hours at a time on the beach, and even then my beach time was accumulated in Europe a gazillion years ago. (The tan lines on my back took two years to fade.) It’s been enough for me to know it’s there when I want it—hop in the car and twenty minutes in any direction brings you to a patch of the coast, be it sandy, rocky, sheltered or open horizon.

On a trip to Edmonton in 1992, Ter and I visited the museum. The big draw at the time was a cetacean exhibit featuring whales and other “everyday” west coast critters—otters, herons, indigenous fish, etc. A horde of curious prairie dwellers had gathered, rightfully ooh-ing and ah-ing, around the life-sized model of an orca that, quite frankly, I barely noticed. I think I glanced at it, thought, oh, yeah—orca, then said to Ter, “Where are the dinosaurs?”

That was my first hint of how blessed I am to live beside wild water.

Only lately have I realized how therapeutic the ocean has been in my life. Almost inherently, I am drawn to it when distressed or frazzled. When my bones were new and thrice-weekly physiotherapy sessions were located in the Cook Street village, my mother often drove the long way home, cruising along Dallas Road in the big blue Mercury so I could look out at the water. My favourite ocean was deep blue with scattered whitecaps. I was so fixed on watching the waves that I forgot, for a moment, how much my joints hurt.

Over the years, my colour preference has shifted like the ocean itself, from deep blue with whitecaps to grey-green with whitecaps, but these days it varies. The one constant is whitecaps. Better yet, give me surf. Now that I live across the street from the very stretch of Dallas that Mum drove in the old days, I can lie in bed at night and hear the ocean boom as it hits the shore. I get up early on weekends and visit the beach, watching the birds and the waves and losing track of time. On work days, I deliberately choose a walking route from the limo stop that takes me home along the cliffs, just because I can. And the other night, after a particularly weird-energy day, Ter and I wandered across the street to “the finger” and watched the tide crash against the beach. Unsettled and weepy when we started, a half-hour later, I was cracking up as she danced along the breakwater. No drugs, no booze. Just wind and playful water, and we were healed.

Never underestimate the power of the ocean. Sure, it can take out entire villages in a tempest, but in a gentler mood, it can lull a babe to sleep and ease the edgiest adult. When I spend time beside it, be it on a workday evening or a Sunday morning, I always come away recalibrated.

The Importance of Tea X

“Spiritualitea”

It’s more than just a cup of tea. It’s an experience.

I have a standing date with my work pal, Julie. On Wednesday, we go for tea. Our favourite haunt is “The Red Couch”, otherwise known as the Teavana shop on Fort Street, where we have become somewhat infamous with the staff behind the counter. I hope we are favourites rather than dreaded nutbars, but they are trained to be welcoming so I may never know.

They also allow us to pay on our way out, which is where this story starts.

Unless one is a tea snob, one cannot comprehend the willingness to spend five dollars on a cup of tea. The price is based on how rare or exotic the tea is, white being the priciest, pure green being next, followed in descending order by flavoured green, black and herbal. So when Julie lost her mind over the cost of the white she had just downed, the ensuing discussion resulted in me losing mine. “You enjoyed that tea,” I scolded. “I watched you.”

“I’d have enjoyed it more if it was $3.99 instead of $5!” she retorted.

The twist here is that the staff were on her side. One admitted that their prices are hefty, but the better deal is to buy it loose and brew it at home, where even the costliest pearls work out to a dollar per cup. Her partner behind the bench mused that the in-house brew should be two bucks across the board. I listened to this for a awhile, then broke in.

“You guys are missing the point,” I said. “This is more than a cup of tea. This is an experience. Your tea is brewed for you—thank you, ladies—while we hang out on the comfy couch in this tranquil shop and get a much-needed respite from the office. It’s not just the tea. It’s the whole package. See?”

I’m unsure that my point was received on all fronts, but I think the staff felt marginally better. Julie is a riot—I love her dearly—who begrudges nothing to no one and will learn from her five dollar error in judgment rather than be bitter about a perceived rip-off. When we next hit the Couch, she’ll opt for the three dollar brew and enjoy the same experience. ’Cause that’s what tea all about, Charlie Brown. The experience.

SCOBY-Doo

I may not be mother to mortal children, but I seem to have a knack for breeding SCOBYs.

How hard can it be to breed spludges of yeast and bacteria, you ask? Not very, I admit. And the more batches of kombucha I brew, the easier it gets. I’m presently fermenting my nth batch (truly, I’ve lost count), and the mass I received from my older sister at Christmas never dreamed he’d have to work so hard.

I was a nervous novice and emailed my sister in a mild panic after three days: He’s just lying at the bottom of the jar. Is he okay??? She wrote back, They do that sometimes. I’m sure he’s fine. And on the fifth day, he rose. I checked the jar in the morning and he had floated onto one side, almost as if trying to himself over and getting stuck halfway. Okay, at least he’s alive. And when I peeled back the cheesecloth to test the brew on day seven, the mouth of the jar was sealed by a white film disconcertingly reminiscent of the white of an eye. Doo was floating just beneath it. In fact, he was tethered to it like the mothership spooling line to a satellite. Yuk.

It’s not unusual, apparently, for baby SCOBYs to develop in the same jar.

Batch number two proceeded the same way. This time I was hoping for a baby, because my tea buddy Treena wanted to try brewing her own kombucha, but if there was a baby, it was glommed to the original when bottling time arrived and I wound up (okay, Ter wound up) carving off a chunk of the whole thing. That batch was made with black tea, so the SCOBY looked like he’d been to a tanning salon. Double yuk.

A few brews later, another buddy expressed an interest in obtaining a baby. I had a batch planned for the weekend and promised her any offspring. From the get-go, SCOBY-Doo stayed near the top of the jar, but in the end proved as fertile as ever, producing a sturdy white sclera. To ensure that it was up to the task, I gave Doo a rest and plunked the babe into a fresh batch of sugared green tea.

It sank to the bottom of the jar and stayed there for twelve full days.

Peeling back the cheesecloth on day fourteen, I was puzzled by the papery thin film that greeted me. “Wasn’t it thicker than this?” I asked Ter, who has SCOBY-handling duty and is responsible for bathing and trimming the Doo between batches.

“I think it’s actually at the bottom,” she replied.

“You mean it never moved?” I peered through the glass at the fog I had perceived as just that: the milky fog that sometimes sinks like sediment on the floor of the jar. Remaining unconvinced, I strained the tea and Ter was proven right: baby-Doo had never left the floor!

The next day I told my friend the story and added, “Your SCOBY is a lazy bum.”

She was ecstatic. “You mean he made a baby to do the work? That’s my kind of SCOBY!”

For the record, she has a child.

All My Children

Adults don’t count. Vampires are certainly excluded. Even the children in my stories must be considered characters rather than offspring, being born to the aforementioned fictitious adults. But I guess, in a funny way, every one I write is my child.

On second thought, maybe not. I did not birth Lucius or Julian or Black or Cassie or any of the other grown ups—mortal or otherwise—who populate my work. They came to me as individuals with stories to be told. I happen to be the scribe. The biographer. Some authors roll their eyes at others like me, who insist that their protagonists appear like ghosts, fully-formed and possessed of a unique personality, looking for a mouthpiece to speak for them. What, do those authors build their heroes from spare parts and assign traits from a personalities app?

Zzzzzzzz.

I have never constructed a character. Perhaps it’s a matter of deconstructing, of working backward from the final result to learn how he/she became who he/she was when I met him/her. Take Lucius, for example. When I met him, he was a battle-scarred warrior of legendary reputation. His “bad dude” potential was right up front and I know some folks who were either scared of him, disliked him, or both. Now, a dozen years and six volumes later, I understand how he became the scary bad hero of Treason. I’ve worked with him for long enough to have learned what makes him tick, and not because he’s confessed to any of it. I’ve learned about him through the eyes of those who knew him as a child, then as a boy, then as a young man. Did I invent those people, each with a story to complement his? I suppose, on some level, it’s possible.

But it’s much more fun to imagine that I simply make myself available and the voice finds me.

Kid Me Not

Do I regret not having children?

Nope.

Lately, however, I’ve discovered that other people’s children—namely newborns—possess a perilous charm all their own. Cuddling my  five-week-old great-niece caused a brief pang of something close to remorse that probably coincided with another ovum popping out of contention. Same thing with the downstairs neighbours’ newbie back in February; she was two weeks old and out like a light when I cradled her, and what a sweet warm weight she was, too.

She has since grown into a wriggler. I happened on her last week and was invited to get reacquainted while her mum and I chatted. She’s three months old and able to sit in the crook of my arm, but man, she was a pedaling fury the whole time. Still sweet and warm, but … back to Mum you go, kiddo!

Would I have been a good mother?

Dunno. I like to think so, but only an adult child can say whether their mother was a good one, and it’s a credit to mine that all five of her kids adore her. Since I have no children, adult or otherwise, I can’t answer that question.

Am I a good aunt?

I love my nieces and nephews, but that’s about it. I’m not a hands-on auntie, and in truth, I relate better to the next generation now that they’re having kids of their own.

I don’t relate well to children.

Which doesn’t explain why I write about them so much. one of my favourite characters is twelve years old—and a real handful, to boot. Her best friend is one of a litter, and they run riot across the pages of whatever Fixed Fire story is in progress. And more are coming, as heroes and heroines fall in love. It seems that a babe is always pending, so what gives?

Novel Gazing

Progress on the rewrite is moving along nicely. It’s slowed a little, given my post-vacation status, but it was bound to get stickier anyway. The first eight chapters were pretty well fine as written; they only required minor tweaking and a couple of new scenes to help re-establish the focus. Now that I’ve crossed the line into where I went astray, it’s taking more time and even more thought and still even more “effort to resist what’s already been written”.

What was written before was all good material. I had simply lost my direction. Many of the scenes will feature in the rewrite, but I’ve encountered an unforeseen curiosity: I view those scenes as written in stone. My mind is trying to place them “as is” in a new location, and gets frustrated when the pieces don’t click into their imagined place.

Two scenes are about to become one. I’ve laid the mental groundwork, envisioning the setting and committing the dialogue to memory so I can blast it out when I’m done with this post. I was still struggling yesterday morning, labouring under the misconception that they had to appear in the same chapter yet remain independent of each other because, let’s face it, each one is effing brilliant, when a little voice quietly suggested, “Why not merge them?”

Uh … DUH!

From that one small instance, I realized that my logic processor is trying to control my creative process. It wants me to believe that what’s written cannot be altered to accommodate a new format, a better format, may I add, which further supports my argument that the ego, the mind, the intellect, is so freaked out over losing control that it will sabotage its own success.

Well, get thee behind me, micro-manager, I’m onto your neurotic game. As soon as I realized that two good scenes could become one better scene, you could almost hear the whoosh! as my imagination took flight. Suddenly, I saw how one location could support a longer conversation and add a new element at the same time. That element will lead into yet another (new) scene to keep the plot on course and voila! Another chapter finis!

Full Flight

The sport of kings may cost a royal ransom to play, but the plebs can watch it for free. Or, rather, the price of admission. Or the cost of cable. Nitpicking aside, I watched the Kentucky Derby for the first time in years this year. I didn’t pick a horse. Well, I kind of did, just because I wanted an upset, and I think my choice came in fourth—I don’t even remember now. It doesn’t matter, either, because I don’t bet on horse races.

Ter used to visit the track with her dad when she was a kid. He’d give her a couple of bucks and off she’d go to the wicket, but her clearest memory is of collecting the multi-coloured ticket stubs discarded by the losers. I think she was there for the love of horses, too.

My speed-freakishness probably started in another life, maybe when I was Charlie’s girl and he took me to Newmarket for the races in 16-whenever. The origin of my love for horses, however, remains a mystery. And since I’m currently on a bender about the beauty in nature, I have lately been reminded of the saying—though I don’t recall who said it—that the most beautiful sight in creation is that of a horse running at a full gallop.

Personally, I think that a horse grazing beneath an apple tree is just as beautiful, but for sheer robbery of breath, never mind a thundering herd. A single horse in full flight is one of the most beautiful things I can imagine. The sun on a burnished coat, the light in a dark eye, the flowing mane and rippling muscle, yikes, the dream interpreters claim that horses represent sexual power, but really? Can’t they just be beautiful for beauty’s sake?

I will admit that watching the Derby can get my pulse racing, but the best race I ever saw was the Belmont Stakes in 1973, when Secretariat put twenty-five, no, thirty-one record-setting lengths between himself and the second place finisher. That was a race won by a lone horse in full flight.

And it was beautiful.