liscious’s posterous

   

Click here to download:

enough_why_is_it_never_enough.zip (409 KB)

And it isn't, ever.... why?

Been doing so much lately.  Been on top of things.  Finished the second draft of the feature script .  Got a few creative pick up jobs (some camera work, some dance work, some modeling) did a cool shoot with Gareth Brown (photo shown), got to wear a full on traditional Japanese Kimono (someone somewhere is rolling in a grave... i had no right...)

But there I am, doing it.  And i just want more.  Just keep wanting more and more. 

Script ideas are coming quickly now.  The urge to get on stage is so strong.... there are the band rehearsals.  (yes, a real live band, I am screaching like Janis... it's fun.. we are good, we hit the stage in December)

But why can't i just do one thing?  Why is it never ever enough?

And then there is the sticky subject of money.  So i lucked out AGAIN.  I got a 'real' job.  Something that pulls in monthly cash. 

My little Nana said: you don't SEEM happy about it Mama. 

And i am not.

Why?

I just want to have the space and time to create.  You know, Virginia Woolf and 'A Room of One's Own' and all.  That still resonates.  LIke a holy grail.  And i want to have loved ones around at the same time.  Why the hell not?  Why can't i have a lover, my kids, my work... my CREATIVE work...

all

at

the

same

time

It is almost as if I am being tantalised by little tastes of each world.  Lovely intense tastes of each.  But never all at once.  Never quite making it.  It never quite happens.

Why?

     

Click here to download:

low_tide_high_tide.zip (2569 KB)

Me thinks those around me doth protest too much.

Finished the first draft of 'The Death Loop' and where it is a 'good' script it really needs to be an 'amazing' script.

I wasn't sure at first if i could 'go there' but after the feedback i now know i was 'on the right page' and will now 'turn that shit out'.

It is funny, when you are writing, you get into this little world that is all your own and sometimes it is impossible to tell if others reading what you have written are with you - in that same world you are in.  But i think i have found a way to remedy that.  It is about that sweet spot when i can feel it working:  i act and react as though i am the characters.  Then i am speaking from a place of truth.  And that always works.  Like I would try to do as an actor... but with the written word.

B said that as he read the first draft, he felt the world around him (i'm paraphrasing, okay?) and that at the end he felt his emotions rise.  But i want more.  And so I am taking the characters- taking some of them i didn't bring on the full ride, taking some of them hostage, and i am going to break them open and reaveal them to themselves.

I hope

Hemingway said:  The First Draft of anything is shit.

Woody Allen said:  If you are not failing sometimes it is a sign you are not doing anything innovative

I say:  get my butt off the internet, and get back to my own little world- the head movies that make my eyes rain (if you get that reference , you are truly okay in my book

PS:  some pics of a few choice days of late:  one from corporate Hong Kong with love, the other with my dawg

         

Click here to download:

Untitled.zip (3160 KB)

Family?  Yeah, family.

So, we are born into these units called families.  Some people think we choose which families we come to.  But if we are going to be scientific, and I am in a scientific mood, then there is no evidence and most likely it is all chance and we, by chance, end up in this unit, this entity called a family.  We maybe don’t gel with this unit, maybe we are at odds with it, or rebel against it, or join it or collude with it.  But no matter what we do, it is in response to it.
I’m at my father’s bedside in the hospital.  Watching him fight and succumb by turns.  Each episode leaves him with a balance in the negative or positive.  These days the negative taking the upper hand, and always the possibility of tomorrow, with a little more of his fighting, ‘control freak’ spirit engaged, the possibility that he will change the tide of his ailing health.  The health that he has lived in denial about for years.  His smoking, his bad eating, his lack of exercise…

Does the unit change its general nature when the relation of its members to each other changes?  I think not.  My father has just winced, his face contracting like a baby’s, as the nurse once again puts the needle in his arm.  He is exhausted, I can see it.  They have just bathed him, each roll over making him cry out, panting with pain. 

What can I do?  Nothing but just sit here and tell him I am here.  Sometimes reaching shyly for his hand, sometimes talking to him like he is a child, sometimes being told- patronizingly- that I’m not helping at all.  Amazingly he has tried to get me to join forces with him against the nursing staff.  It is just like that film “All That Jazz”.  You know, when Roy Scheider gets open heart surgery but in the recovery room sneaks in liquor and cigarettes, throws parties and harasses the nurses?
Well, it was almost like that the day before yesterday.  But now reality has set in and he is just exhausted, delirious, and cantankerous.  
But it is family.  And this is where I have to be-glad to be actually.
Family.  Yeah.  Family

Well, I am off to ingest one of the four food groups the good people of Nova Scotia use to feed themselves regularly: 

Salt, Sugar, Fat and Alcohol. 

And they say good air is tiring?

         

Click here to download:

Fly_Fly_Away.zip (3561 KB)

The plane takes off and banks.  In the assent open a million worlds while my tired mind searches for meaning.  I’ve just left the kids, clutching and irritated with the early wake up and constant schedules of cleaning and cooking and managing their time.  Travel is always the moment where I take the opportunity to think deeply.  I guess I can’t move my body or get distracted so I’m a prisoner to my thoughts and I love these moments.  
On the tarmac I sift through emptiness and a blank feeling I don’t like to have.  What exactly am I doing?  With myself?  With my life?  Isn’t it time to get a ‘real’ job?  Then arrogance seeps in.  Aren’t there some exceptional people in the world that should be ‘kept’ by the rest of the world.  Watered and fed.  Walked and groomed.  If this is true then I must be in the exceptional category.   Can’t I just get paid to be who I am? 
But life just isn’t like that. 
Recently a friend had blogged about the solar eclipse.   His words make sense to me now as then.  Something about how insignificant our problems seem when put next to the mightiness of the universe that surrounds us.  This is how I feel as we prepare to take off.  First the rain peeling off the wing lays a pattern on the asphalt.  Like an echo.  I don’t know why it moves me.  As we shift forward in our line up, preparing to heave this mass of metal into the air, the rain curtain wobbles and moves, disappearing sublimely as we lift.  Then, the play of the different mists and bursts of moisture from the clouds are like a dance.  As we gain altitude and bank, the ocean opens below us moving and breaking into an infinite pattern.  There must be answers in the patterns.  They are too powerful.  And like a master musician, something plays the melody of the clouds – different shapes and consistencies at different intervals- against the base of the earth- mountains, sea… a river seen from above spills into the water below mixing and churning.  The cut of the wing through the heavy air makes me breathe out loud.  Everything looks special, meaningful.  And I can’t write it.  I have to show it somehow. 

But I’m blocked.  Frozen.  Showing what I see to others ultimately means making a film.  And I am very close.  Why am I hesitating?  L said recently that it was fear of failure.  I am sure that is in it.  But there is also the fear of so many other things.  Like showing who I really am.  Then I would have to face that wouldn’t i? The darkness of this piece I’m writing.  The smear of it.  Doesn’t it prove my x, and other’s too who criticize me and the way I conduct my life, the way I behave, the way I dress… doesn’t this piece prove them right?   It is such a tightrope walk between expressing myself and conforming, between being free and making others happy.  I was overwhelmed once with this and I did something very stupid that time.  This time I wont.  For sure.  But I think about the options if I can’t keep balancing.
I want to scream, to complain at the very least- I have no partner, no money, no helper and kids to manage with no family and no friends for them as they have their daily life elsewhere.  But how can I complain?  I chose this.  Who can I complain to?  So what do I do?  I hang on to the idea that maybe I am talented after all and that someone will appreciate what I can give.  Pathetically self-involved really.

Meanwhile I’m flying to see my father who is sick.  Giving time and energy and money where I have none to be with him.  The same man who two years ago told me there was nothing I had ever done that had ever made him proud.  His words.  I’ll never forget them.  So maybe, just maybe the reason for keeping on being who I am and doing what I do should be because I just can’t do anything else.  Not to impress or prove.  But simply because that is the way it is.  Most people, even those that are close to you, don’t really care what you do in the end, they make their decisions about you based on their own separate parameters.  Most people don’t pay attention to the lives of their friends, their lovers, their family. 

Most people pay attention to films though, 
especially a film that touches them in some way. 
I’m closing my eyes…

And jumping

         

Click here to download:

I_wore_my_Stetson_to_the_Vatic.zip (9640 KB)

Stetson not pictured....  

I am going to give 'back-blogging' a stab.  I had jotted down a few things here and there for the rest of my trip and i'll stick it up her eand there (you all seem genuinely interested!)  Hell, even my mom has found this blog.  I will TRY not to let it change the way i write, but i am only human.  I may not say 'shit' all that much anymore or talk about substance abuse quite so much.

But then again, substance abuse has fallen sharply off since Italy, Slovinia and Scotland.

Rome was, well, Rome was not a happy place for me.  It maked a change in the trip.  Suddenly, Robert was gone and daily needs and work struggles raised their ugly heads.  'Doesn't reality suck' quoted a friend.  But, it doesn't suck.  It is just very very different and i think the sudden shifts need a necessary period of adjustment.

One morning i headed out to the British Airways offices out in butt f&%$ nowhere.  Actually it was quite an adventure.  I had to change my ticket and that was supposed to be the only place in Rome, other than the airport, where i could make the payment.

It poured rain, i mean, poured.  I had rolled up my pants to above my knees, had successfully navigated to a landscape that looked more like Antonioni than Fellini, and was completely and utterly lost.  The rain assured that no one was around to harass for directions.  But that is a boring story filled with mundane details about spending more money than i really could and all the little stuff that qualifies as 'reality sucks-ness'.

That night, my last in Rome, i went for a long walk from my hotel by the train station over to the Vatican.  As i arrived, in the dark, at where i thought would be the holy city, i found myself faced with a wall that was never never ending.  I decided to circumnavigate.  "There MUST be a way in somewhere around here" I told myself.

As long minutes past i realised ... man... this place isn't just a city... it's, like, a COUNTRY. 

Yes, one can call me a lapsed catholic.

I began to muse:  could it be that there is such a thing as a holy presence and is it angry at me for all my sins?  Is IT not letting me IN?

That is when i found the main gate.  Whew... pardoned.  That was easy!

But holy presence i didn't feel, and the vast empty space lined with plastic chairs here and there and the odd worshiper filled me with nothing.  Certainly not the feeling of power and awe that i felt at, say, the wailing wall or the shewedagon pagoda.

Maybe it was the hat?

I don’t know what I have done to deserve Robert but this friend of only a few years has become a traveling companion extraordinaire.  Faithful and devoted and fun I get the sense that Robert and I will always find the time to take a trip together for the rest of our lives.  It’s like that.  ‘My gay husband’ I call him.  He has described us as an old married couple who don’t have sex but still enjoy each other’s company.  I would add that we have men in common.  In his fifties, imposingly stylish, he gets as much ‘play’ as I do on the flirting front.  Yesterday in the ‘campo’ in front of our flat in Venice a gorgeous guy walked past Robert as he took his café correcto (coffee and strong alcohol) at the local bar.  The man stopped and quite openly looked at Robert, then continued to walk and stopped again to turn and look at Robert, then at the top of the bridge in front of the Arsenale the man turned once again and this time removed his sunglasses and nodded approvingly.  Robert just smiled.  “Don’t you want to call him over?”  I ask.  “It is not that kind of vacation honey.”  He says.
God love Robert.
It has taken a few days to get into the swing of just doing nothing but being here.  And this is Venice.  There is nothing more on the face of the earth that you want to do but just be here.  This is the most beautiful city I have ever been to.  Bar none. 

I take a special pride in being able to orient myself anytime anywhere.  A special gift that all these years of traveling has given me.  Robert will say many times that I will have a wonderful sense of direction- especially for a woman- he says!  (even the open minded have their little ticks.. )  This city however will take my directional self-confidence and grind it into a pulp.  I got lost, every single time, even with a map, even asking directions.

The little canals and bridges that link together the various sizes of squares (campos) and walkways/streets (calle) form an intricate and almost impenetrable maze.  Charming view after charming view after charming view on parade and you think – I must come back to this square… certainly I can find it again – and you just don’t.  Well, not at first.  Venice unravels itself slowly, carefully, to those who take the time to find it.  I can imagine this as the birthplace of some kind of naughtiness.  Some indefinable new trick the Europeans spoke about only in hushed tones in proper society but then scurried back to their castles to try out with their mistresses.

Today I joined Robert on the square at the café.  He is always up very early.  His finished double espresso and shot glass of something or other and the crumbs of the sugary and doughy chocolate croissant are all that is left of his breakfast.  We have spent day after day eating and drinking.  Four squares a day.  Wine with lunch and dinner and alcohol between those…. He glances up from his reading glasses- gorgeous hand made Italian numbers he splurged on the day before-  “morning honey… chocolate croissant for breakfast?”.  “oh nooooo….  “ I frown and rub my belly.  “… too heavy….”  I stretch and get up to go inside and order what I want.  I come back out and sit and when the waiter comes to serve me a café latte and a big ham sandwich Robert almost falls off his chair laughing.

My father once said that one of the reasons he married my mother is because she knew how to eat.  I think Robert likes this about me too.


The lull that this portion of the trip has gotten me into is even more spectacular given the stress that came before it and will undoubtedly follow.  I realize only now how much I do, all the time, every day.  And as much as I am vowing now to take time to live more simply and at a slower rhythm I know that once I get back to things I wont.  The occasional quick check back into the internet and quick glances at emails – ( HOW many???!!!) demonstrate that nicely.  I come back from a fifteen minute pop into the city’s only internet point (it takes about forty five minutes to find the damn place and it is hotter than hell in there).  The few emails I managed to address have me so uptight that Robert has forbidden any more of that nonsense while I am on vacation with him.

This is a time for reflection.  Surely.  That must be what is happening to me.  I go between long listless thoughts that sift past me to deluges of ideas I barely have the time to jot down.  Where I came from, where I am going, how to get there… 
There are a few choice ideas about what to do with FOF.  Real gems.  And there is the feature script.  This sifting through process is so important; it is so rare to get distance like this.  I savor it.  Ben sends me ideas… I read them, I let them sit.  Like I am doing at the museums.  Just let it be, let it happen.  And I have clarity- I think- I see the  “but why?” ….  I see the focal point without squinting.  And like that amazing painting of the house in the dark by Magritte in the Betty Guggenheim museum in Venice- I have a strong, very visceral and indefinable reaction to it all.  Definitions are for those who need to get un-lost.  I don’t need to.  Not yet.  Not yet…

I know what I want for xmas this year. I want a Slovinian liver. They must be indestructible. I can’t imagine a better-made filter for any blood engine. From what I observed, these people are the hard-core partying models of human beings. And I am proud to say I held my own and never once got sloppy. (spoken in a thick almost-russian-with-a-hint-of-italian accent) “wow, you heave nice budy… schmal but tough you…” I was much admired!

Let me give you a few details! It is worth it. It starts here…

Basically, Robert has taken me to meet his oldest friend who’s family is from Slovinia. A town called Gorizia is the closest, just across the border from northern Italy in former Yugoslavia. There is a big wedding taking place. They have taken over a small medieval town in the nearby hills. The father of the bride is a national Slovinian treasure- his art work is in the homes of head’s of state world wide (someone named Oskar Kogej). They are gearing up for a full weekend of eating and drinking and dancing. The groom family’s business is food distribution. There is a specialty of prochiutto, ham and wine. They are well off and in fact the surrounding cities towns and countryside impress me with their affluence. I was expecting that American stereotypically drab eastern block state feel, but everywhere I look is smart, clean, classy and historic.

It has taken 12 hours of travel and four trains when Robert and I arrive at the station in Gorizia. It is late. No one is around. Just a sleepy little town... Across from the train station surrounded by trees is a small war memorial. We wait for Robert’s friends to pick us up. I get the feeling that this bend in the road will be relaxing. A light night breeze, quiet… I am looking forward to all the nothing to do ahead of me. The car pulls up. Out spills Urush and Gary- Robert’s friend of thirty years. Urush is Matejash’s brother- it is Matejash’s wedding.

Just saying these people’s names gets me in the mood!

Urush: stocky, stoic and boisterous at the same time… he is going to take us for a beer before dropping us off at the hotel they have booked for us. I imagine a small dusty bar with old men smoking gitanes. What we GET is more Lan Kwai Fung than anything I have seen in Europe yet! The streets are absolutely full of young people sitting in front of bars and clubs. Dj’s on the street spinning music… people sitting under shaded seats, eating, smoking, laughing, flirting. A scene! Who knew! So much for a quiet sleepy town!

The next day we are expected to be ready for the wedding at 10 am. We will be brought to the house and the eating and drinking will start. When we arrive we surprise the mother of the bride sprinting up the stairs in a loosely wrapped bath towel. She is still quite beautiful. Her squeals and the family’s laughing set the mood for the rest of the day.

This classy family has pulled out all the stops and being at the wedding as an outsider not speaking the language makes it possible to sit back and watch. It is a feast for the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, stomach, pancreas… The wedding breakfast turns into the wedding snacks, which turns into the wedding itself which is broken up with more food and drink which becomes the wedding tea which becomes, finally, the cortege to the restaurant. At this point we have been drinking and eating for a full eight hours. I am ready to drop. The cars pull out behind the bride and groom in a 12 cylinder Mercedes. A car behind them has a full set up of gas-powered horns on the car roof. It sounds like a cross between a church organ and a full cruiser ship. It’s pretty crazy I can tell you. As we drive, slowly, through the surrounding towns all the people come out to yell and clap and if they are in cars, to beep in solidarity.

Suddenly the bride’s car pulls into a gas station up ahead. I can’t believe that they have forgotten to gas up the car! The bride gets out to gas up…. Huh?!?...

We shift about, unsure of what to do, the cortege begins to pull over, finding places to wait… we are too many, we block the gas station… the bride begins to dance to the music they have turned from loud to deafening and the best man returns from the station store not with cigarettes as I have thought he might, but with a five liter bottle of grappa and a pile of plastic cups.

And the party begins.

We stay at the gas station, drinking shots of grappa and dancing on the cars for a full half hour. Arms are raised over heads, backs are slapped, full evening gowns are held up by the thighs as the women are lifted to wiggle and laugh. The grappa, white man’s firewater basically, burns on the way down but it hits with a high that is euphoric. What a party. It is seven pm.

At the restaurant we are served course after course. The theme of the evening we decide is ham and asparagus. Everything seems to come with one or the other or both. Who cares… it is sumptuous food. The wine is brilliant. All from a local maker. The wine bottles are designed by the bride’s father. We get to the sixth course and stop counting. I beg Robert: don’t make me eat for the rest of the trip… He will laugh at me for the next few days because just after I say this a course arrives with amazingly tender veal steak with a light drizzle of porto reduction and grilled fennel. I will finish it and lick the plate clean,

Everyone under 60 is stepping out to partake of the special stuff and so will we. Crazy crazy crazy. At around one am the groom will go by our table and point at me gruffly. I point to my own chest and mouth “me?”. He jerks his head to follow him and Robert and one other friend to the bar. (that accent again) “…now, you come…now: we party!” What he could possibly have in mind I just don’t know but, well, I am up for it! He slams down huge shot glasses of more engine starter and challenges. I don’t know why I can feel I won’t be drunk or hung over (and Robert will witness for me that I will not be either!) but I can feel I will make it. I take the glass, look him in the eye, and kick it back. And the next one too. A big slovic belly laugh and he grabs me for a spin on the dance floor. The groom spins me in the air, body bumps me, rides me on his thigh, swings me out and pulls me back all the time laughing into my eyes. “… uh…wont the bride mind?...” I am thinking… Mind?!? Another second and she is dancing with us, and then her mother too and his mother, and that crazy uncle with the false leg who keeps insisting on dancing with me…. As the crowd grows they grab hands. And we are all dancing in a silly circle. Robert appears beside me : “it’s like a Slovinian hora!” he yells

When we try to leave at three am we are dragged back onto the dance floor and plied with drink. ‘Stay! There are rooms upstairs..!” We have to get on our knees to beg and are only allowed disgruntled departure permission when we claim we have jetlag. We will make our way home with perhaps the only sober person left who is ferrying the grandmothers home. From what we understand, the wedding will go on until six am

What can I say folks. Get thee to Slovinia.