photo:  Morgane Azevedo

Meme

She was fiesty.  She was hard-nosed.  Meme was everything I thought she would be.  And more.

It seemed like a magic moment in time.  Privilidged.  The stories poured out of her.  War memories of women's shaved heads.  The one's who had slept with Germans during the occupation. 

Her lovers.  Her husband.  The time they met.  He in a knitted sweater on the beach in Nice, her in a bathing suit propped amongst her friends.  She thought he looked like an idiot in a sweater on the beach in the summer.  But he was gorgeous. "Who is this fool?" She thought to herself.  But the fool was rich, and confident and he looked at the group of bathing beauties and he saw her.  Only her.

I wonder.  When we are old, do we balance out our lives, mini gods reconings, hopeful that the final equation equals = I was right!   Meme talked of deep deception.  Of a disapointment in life that only her strong spirit and will to take care of herself seemed to override.

"Soit tu le trompe, soit tu le tue"

She was so forthright.  Such a whiplash smack from a different time, a different culture.  Where women had to be so unique and tough and at one with their goals to get to any place at all in their lives. 

--------

This summer was full of contact with older couples, the ageing, people set in their ways, almost ancient modes of communication between lovers and husbands and wives.  Such contention all around.  I vowed (well, that's a bit out of tune with my own reality, isn't it?) ... but I did make a sort of promise to myself never to let myself go to the point of living a lie with my lover.  Conversations were had:  would WE get to that stage?  A stage of hostility.  Constant discontent and disharmony?  How could a mind become so entrenched?  Morgan allowed as how maybe those who must open their minds to new ideas for a living might be the ones who manage to keep a positive and fresh outlook on life. They might be the ones who manage to keep looking at their lovers and see, really SEE who they are looking at.

I think he might be right.  Maybe the mind is a muscle and we must exercise it regularly.  Maybe love is a pump and it must be kept primed.

__________

This summer my father said my lover would leave me for a younger woman.  He said it matter of factly.  "Oh that one will leave you as soon as his career takes off"  Like it was something I should know about in advance.  The idea that he and I could have a relationship that was based on something other than the firmity of my flesh escaping him. The image of the 'player' with blinding quantities of money pimpin up and living large causing the macho in my father to quiver and moan.  His old school masculine need responding to something in the picture I couldn't begin to explain to him.

Love is a pump.  Old or new.  It functions the same way.  The mind is a muscle.  Old or new it needs a workout.  And we are who we are. 

When I am Meme's age.   What glorious sentences will I have to share with the children?

'Le soliel sur le sexe, ca fait grandir!"

That one is my personal favorite.  I think I will adopt all that I feel it really stands for.  The essesnce of it.

'Le soliel sur le sexe, ca fait...  "

Well, at least it is positive.  If we climb up the ladder of life to read the small print (as did John Lennon when investigating Yoko Ono's work) let it at least say:

YES

photo: Wes Hardison

When do you know?

I have started a new relationship.  And i am asking myself:  so when do you know it IS a relationship?

I had stopped blogging recently. The number of hits I have been getting on this site freaked me out.  I mean, yes, I am writing to be read, but at the same time I had this false sense of privacy.  And of course there is the ‘my mother reads my blog’ issue (hi mom).

I am fairly sure the person I am involved with will not be reading this.  And as for my mother,  I don’t dig that she reads this per se but hopefully she will be more discreet about her comments than she has been before.  (like, don't) Maybe she will take this simply as an opportunity to hear my thoughts directly from my head.  After all, a blog is not a dialogue.  In any case, surely  the person that has looked into your body cavities without flinching  deserves a peek into your mind.  A mind reveals itself slowly, changing and evolving as you go.  The heart stays the same.   And the soul,  well, I think I left mine around here somewhere.  I am sure I will come across it eventually.  I’m in no rush for that.  But the mind...

So when do you know it is a ‘real’ relationship.  Is it when you say things like:  "my girlfriend", "my boyfriend"…. Is that when?  Last year I briefly dated a much younger man.  After the first weekend of being together he soberly pulled me aside and asked me ‘what are we doing?’.  The moment was so formal.  Charming.  I enjoyed it and it made me feel good to be taken seriously.  But I knew it was not a ‘real’ relationship.

........

He takes me to the airport to see me off, gently.  Securely.  Just like he received me when i arrived.   He is mercurial in movement.  A light aura, but the face is dark. Contrasting.  Like the cultures he carries with him.  It is so late and the cavernous hall, void of people, does not swollow us.  It is like a cloak that hides our kissing, reaching for each other.  The lone guard hardly glances at my papers- is he embarrassed by the show of physical affection from a minute ago?  As i walk the long long long open corridor to the flights I think about the man i just left behind- is he thinking about me?  Is he watching me?  God, I am so immature, so ridiculous!  ... i clear my head.  At the end I can't help turn back for a second.  A few hundred meters away he is still there, waving now when he sees me turn as my head disappears down the escalator

This is a moment.  Like when he asks about a past boyfriend and then quickly adds that he doesn't really want to know;  '... no, don't tell me...'  Or it is just the weight of his hand between my shoulder blades..... 

Am i misreading signs?  Or are these moments?

Maybe it is the lift of his shoulder when he is playing pool.  An impromptu game.  I am so bad at it, but he is not.  I like the way his shoulder pulls up when he walks around the table, looking for a shot.  He begins to dream, losing concentration.  Missing balls.  But he lets it go.  Until the end when he gets himself together slowly, waking up.  "I better concentrate" he mumbles to himself.  And he sinks every ball.  If he had caught my eye watching him now, this may have been a moment for him.

It is the magic of a new relationship (as ben says).  It does feel magic.  And last or not last, these moments wont lose their power.

It is all in the details.  All of it.

Photo by Wes Hardison

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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?

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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

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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?

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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

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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?