Entries Tagged 'experiments' ↓

A few weeks ago Conan O’Brien did something Vancouverites won’t forget for a long time: he came here.

That’s how funny the guy is- he moves his eyebrows just so and we will love him forever.

And love him forever I do.

I’ve had a picture of Conan next to my bedside since i’ve been 19, that’s a long time. Actually anytime I get a photo frame as a gift, I put Conan in it. (I’ve only been gifted two photo frames so far in my life).

This year I got a special two-hearts-as-one-photo-frame that’s probably meant as an xmas tree ornament for you and  your significant other. So, Jordan put his main love in there too. Voila: Conan and King Diamond brightening up a light switch. More than electricity ever could.

So, to indulge my sadness that I was missing Team Coco, Andy Richter, Max Weinberg, and ‘the best crew in history of the medium’, I went for a lonely walk down to the ocean the morning before his second show.  I stood by my favourite ship that washed up on shore a week before during the windstorms. (I will really miss this when it goes, although I’m sure this is a nightmare for the owners to have it perched like this, it has been a delight to anyone strolling by and the dogs just love running around it).

I imagined seeing Conan come down to the beach; both of us standing in the sun watching my favourite ship slowly being taken back out to sea. Us pausing in the sunlight and in the infinite wisdom of the present moment and then after a long silence, easily trading jokes back and forth about pets and hair. About what it’s like to be so tall and so short. So pale and so pink.

He didn’t show up. Not that he didn’t feel any Vancouver love, anyone who I’ve heard from that went will have coco stars in their eyes for the rest of the life, they loved it so much.

And you know, even in my fantasies that guy can make me laugh so hard at so much, including myself.

Come back to Vancouver, soon, Conan and do three shows -and maybe one for free outta a 7-11 parking lot!

Grace is located at 2685 Maple Street in Vancouver. It’s become sort of my daily prayer in staying playful. A reminder: This is it! This is what we’ve got and ain’t it beautiful?

Owner and creator, Wendy Williams Watt is a force -full of fun, insight, and that elusive “it” quality. (What is “it”?! It’s definitely bright (as in light and smart) and something some of us wear on our sleeves and the rest of us rub up against).

(Wait a second, does that make us some of us cats?)

(And what’s up with all the parenthesis?)

Sigh. That’s the thing with trying to describe “it”, you get cheap and feline in the process.

So, onto the short video we shot as a part of a job application. Wendy Williams Watt let us step over the threshold into a place of magic, a place full of “it” with not a cat in sight.

Maybe kids nowadays are getting more from Canadian history than I did growing up: Europeans sure loved beaver hats and in the 20th century we sure loved the Queen. (Who still wears a lot of hats, none of which are made from beaver fur, I don’t think).

While I am trying to be funny, I am not trying to be snarky. I can’t remember learning about The Quebec Act of 1774 which laid down the track lights for Quebec being recognized as a distinct society today. I do not remember learning about Residential Schools or the fact that the last one was shut down in Saskatchewan in 1996! 1996! And while learning that the longest covered bridge in the world comes from my humble home province of New Brunswick is awesome, I had little knowledge of the existence of the Tar Ponds one province over that both of my grandfathers worked with the coke ovens that created it! I grew up thinking history was sort of quaint and finished and definitely boring. How many maple leafs can one kid badly draw? Turns out, many.

So, history didn’t go deeper than getting a passing grade or watching Mom make room for my drawing next to the furnace bill on the fridge.  I wasn’t a part of it. It was was something that was done and to be memorized, not explored. Even with bristle board and a captain’s hat, history was a presentation you repeated from your text book. Something to get through before gym.

But as any short person over the age of 20 knows- history is alive and complex and full of the same issues and ideas we keep trying to gavel-slap and resolve from decades before: land treaties, a national housing strategy, a national hockey league and just what was John Chretien saying when he signed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

And then I thought of something any first-year art college student thought of when they were six: why not draw John Chretien as a cartoon, er, cartoon history books!

There’s something about cartoons that takes the barriers of the page away. Cartoons open up the sheet of paper or computer screen in front of you like a swimming pool and invites you-tricks you-gets-you-to-jump-right-in. And the jumping right in, well, I believe that’s a key component to actively participating in civic life, flourescent pink water noodle or not.

Take Chester Brown’s Louis Riel: A comic-strip biography, for instance. I was playing Trivial Pursuit with Jordan the other day and the question was “When was Louis Riel hanged for treason?”  1885. I could see Chester Brown’s drawings. I don’t remember much of a footnote about Louis Riel growing up, and if there was one, it was more about him as a menace to the government than as a complex, compelling figure in Canadian history.

Cartoons capture that.

I’d love to read detailed cartoon accounts of Royal Commissions! How fantastically Canadian could you get? Unless your bookmark was Terry Fox’s sock, I think Royal Commission Report cartoon novels would take the ketchup chips. What would Julie Doucet’s take on The Royal Commission on the Status of Women look like? What would Chester Brown’s take on the 1996 Royal Commission report on Aborginal Peoples look like? In Canada, we royal commission the crap out of things and in spirit of democracy, this is very (slow) good. But how can we get the findings of the different commissions to reach beyond a handful of lawyers, judges and government personnel to the every day person biking to work and swearing they forgot not only their apple but their deordorant? What an incredible project Canadian Heritage could fund, cartoonists cartooning our history into our minds and hearts, the pages wide open, us readers waving a a pink water noodle around completely immersed in our country’s decisions and future. Cuz if there’s one thing I know about history, it’s not over and if there’s one thing I know about raising your fists to apathy, the first way to win the fight for both kids and adults alike: cartoons.

If you consult Canadian Living or Fishing or Art & Design you’ll find hobbies that interest all varieties of Canucks including gardening, ATV’ing, playing hockey, throwing a frisbee, walking the dog, shopping at flea markets and/or making fish cakes.

Jordan and I? Well aside from the fish cakes and getting our magazines mixed up, we don’t do any of those things. Our hobby?  Obsession.  Sometimes we find ourselves bonding over a mutual obsession and sometimes we find ourselves putting up with the other weirdo’s insistence on watching all of Dolly Parton’s interviews from 1982.

Over the years we’ve had a lot of obsessions, ahem, hobbies- throwing off our daily garb of t-shirts and jeans and sliding into our spideman suits in order to be on the hunt, prowl and look out for any little tidbit of information pertaining to our obsess- er- hobby at hand.  We’ve been trying to uncover the meaning of life through (seemingly) random internet clips, fragments of conversations, a ripped page out of a magazine and maybe an mp3 or book.  Sometimes road signs or failblog really throw us for a loop.  Anytime you’re invited over to our place it invariably ends with amazement at our findings on YouTube. I have an inkling this is why people seem to leave well before 10 p.m. Don’t they appreciate Superfriends?

“Wonder Twin powers: ACTIVATE!” We even have a handshake for this! (Not really, but we do emulate the holding-hand-high-five-freeze-frame at the end of that insufferable yet intriguing movie Tango & Cash).

Which brings me up to speed on our current hobby: The Kurt Russell Project.

I find Kurt Russell dependable; solid. Turns out Jordan does too. While I like his dancing blue eyes and unbreakable spirit,  Jordan favours his comic, everyday-man-take on the situations his characters find themselves in. Whether that’s dealing with a frozen alien or tricking a well-to-do socialite into doing his dishes and raising his kids. His bouncy dark locks and stubbly square jaw don’t hurt either.

The world is better with Kurt Russell movies in it. That is the hypothesis we’re working with anyway. His unwieldy characters are alive with quirky contradictions, fumbling humour  and take-a-stand dignity. He brings joy to the screen amidst all the violence.

So, I put forward our latest venture: The Kurt Russell Project. We’ll watch every single Kurt Russell movie ever made. This even includes the Disney ones, the horror ones and as mentioned earlier, even Tango and Cash.

Side note: I have a major allergy to horror movies, after seeing 10 seconds of one my eyes and ears turn into super-sensitive orifices that see and hear scary things everywhere especially in the middle of the night while trying to sleep.

Even when Kurt Russell is in them.

Then we rate the movies out of 10, rate his acting out of 10, wikipedia the crap out of it and discuss how it makes sense of some other thing going on in our lives at the moment or in the nation. For example, when Stephen Harper equated arts funding with expensive parties and galas it was like when Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China said, “Everybody relax, I’m here.” Watching the movie you know good ol’ Jack means well but doesn’t fully understand the gravity of the situation. So, there was no way we could relax cuz Stephen Harper was here -whether he was sitting on a piano bench or not- no way, he’d be just as inept at using the tapered bo staff as Jack Burton. And let’s face it, that’s too much of a gamble with arts funding on the line. (And “You know what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like this?”  Keep writing & calling your MLA’s!)

We figure our project is about 36% complete.  (He’s been in a lot of flicks!)

The beginnings of our rating system and notes on movies we've seen

If you notice under the column that says "Laurie" on the left, I may not rate the movies very high out of 10 but Kurt Russell consistently gets 10 out of 10 for his acting. Bravo!

So  far, our favourite is The Thing. Keeps you freaked out long after you have gone to work the next day and the hardest to watch was Tequila Sunrise. Two words: what happened?

We’ll post again a full updated list when The Kurt Russell Project is finished. In these pictures it’s hard to tell, but we’ve seen nine of his movies so far, (with a few we have started but not yet finished) and have consistently been delighted with his acting whether the movie has been a stinker or not.

Kurt Russell, we thank you and your art makes sense of our world.

Below is a quick synopsis of other hobbies we’ve picked up and loved or continue to love over the years.

PS:  if you want to come over on Friday night, we can’t wait to show you a Japanese exercise video and Chatroulette. What? You’ve got plans starting  at 10pm? Long sigh. Well, c’mon over before then. We’ve got cheesies.

Examples of other obsessions/hobbies: King Diamond (Jordan), Dolly Parton (Laurie), Dungeons & Dragon’s commercials for toy figures from the 80’s (Jordan), The Office (American; mutual) , David Bowie (mutual), Savage Sword of Conan (Laurie -kidding- Jordan, but wouldn’t it be really cool if that was mine?), A Taste of Thai hot sauce (mutual),  Marvel comic book postcards (Laurie then Jordan then mutual), Organizing every file on his desktop (Jordan  then Jordan hoping this will become mutual), Playing House of the Risin Sun on guitar (Laurie- Jordan wishes she’d learn another one no matter how many people have covered it), thrash metal drummers (Jordan), Shane Koyczan (Laurie), Horror movies – b movies, zombies (Jordan), Mary Lou Retton (Laurie), Cupcakes (Laurie- for some reason I felt like our Arthritis Society fundraisers would make more money with these personal little cakes, turns out, I was right, also turns out, eating 12 of them, even if only their delicious and stylish tops, will hurt you like a knife), The Malazan Books of the Fallen (Jordan), Otis Redding (mutual).

The best April’s Fools jokes played on me were by my dad. He woke me up at 6am once to let me know it was snowing so hard outside there was no way there’d be any school…and then about 10 minutes before I had to catch the bus, he said April Fool’s! I remember scrambling to get on jeans and a clean shirt as the feeling of disappointment invaded my thoughts of freedom. I hadn’t done my French homework and planned to do it before school but once Dad told me school was cancelled I assumed the ’snow-day-gods’ were smiling down on me and I turned off my alarm.

I also remember being tricked into believing we had won a contest (my mom a regular contest-enterer) and a lot of money, that bigfoot was spotted in our backyard, that we were going on a trip to Disneyworld, that we were getting a dishwasher, that we had a new car.

The moment of thrilling exaltation at the surprise of all of these things was worth the crashing disappointment. I don’t think I was ever angry at being had, although I’m sure I whined about it to mom. Here’s the thing, I was too delighted by the stark possibility that Dad’s shenanigans shot into our regular life of routines, ill humour and doing the dishes.

My dad’s April Fool’s jokes were better than watching cartoons.

They were imaginative and believable, perfectly crafted to draw me right in, rising crescendo-excitement then poof, gone, like the one snowflake that may have fallen on the day he convinced me school would definitely be cancelled. (Did I mention he worked in the school system?) haha.

I’m his age now as when he would have been spinning some of the best tales of trickery, of course only until noon, (as soon as 12:01pm hit, the regular routines and doldrums of life marched back in).  Fast forward to this past week. On April Fool’s Day I thought with juicy delight about tricking my better half, Jordan. He was asleep and unknowing. But I couldn’t think of a “dad tale”, one that at once lifts you right outta where you’re standing into a place you’ve always hoped to be. When jordan was in the washroom half consciously brushing his teeth, a slippery idea popped into my head and I had a devilish glee about me; I was going to tell him I was pregnant!

Never in my life have I ever had the urge or strange punitive, aggressive and manipulative desire to tell a man I was dating or any man at all -even my celebrity crushes such as Jake Gyllenhaal or Conan O’Brien- that I was pregnant. Nope, never one inkling of an urge. I thought of telling them  ”hello” and “I’m a big fan of yours”  but never that I was with child especially when I wasn’t. Sure, I had dreamed of being Reese Witherspoon or Andy Richter or dating that cute bespeckled drummer I’m now engaged to, but those dreams never contained a ‘crying ball of wrinkled flesh’ as my co-host in life, Sarah Hyde once said.

So by the time the taps were turned off and I could hear Jordan wiping his beard in our small hand towel, I had reconsidered my April’s Fool prank. I was sort of amazed at myself. Did this mean I wanted to be pregnant? Or did this mean I had a horrible sense of sexist humour, bringing women’s lib back about six generations?

I quickly let the thought go like a hot turnip and considered other, less serious pranks. Maybe I could tell him we had won money (but he had been following lottery stories too closely lately and muttering how much he wants to win money in his sleep so I knew this would only be mean to lift his hopes up that high and then let them fall the length of the CN tower). I thought about telling him there was a food poisoning taint on the food he almost ate last night, so that way he would feel lucky to be alive… but ultimately that would be weird and mean to people who spent hours barfing up the contents of tinned fish. Or I could spin a yarn about an urban raccoon that has learned to play the guitar for untainted food, they do have thumbs after all.

But when Jordan came out of the bathroom and into the kitchen area where I was diligently typing and trying to figure out a way to trick him, I froze.

I was still sorta amazed about the baby thing and in awe of my dad. A simple trick, turns out, can take a lot.

Vitamin D is making the rounds on the news reels. Even Oprah is talking about not getting enough of the stuff that helps bones and muscle tissue. And for some reason (obviously the fact that I’m living under a sock puppet or inside the heel part of it at least) I had no idea that Vitamin D was a big deal.

And I don’t eat dairy except for the occasional blob of cheese on a pizza at a buddy’s house or at my apartment when I have said buddies in.

And I largely work inside.

And heck, after work, I usually stay inside.

And all that inside “action” is in Canada. Which for some reason -Northerly climate?-counts.

So, these back “facts” lead me to tell you about The Almost Diagnosis.

Because I’m easy to scare and influence with even the mere suggestion of a horror movie having me fearing ghosts, vampires, zombies, small children and abandoned rural gas stations for weeks, I want to start this blog post off as reasonable, rational, equating my “Almost Diagnosis” to lacking Vitamin D, which is likely, but here’s the story:

I have a cousin who was diagnosed with cervical cancer very late and has gone through heck xs hell xs what’s worse than heck +hell? and back again. She’s pretty amazing and tougher than I could imagine myself being. She sent me a card, writing beseechingly, to go get a pap test. Now it goes without saying that these tests aren’t pleasant and although I’m more a rule follower than Dwight Shrute, I sometimes let 2 years slide between each test rather than one.  But on the day I read my cousin’s card, I picked up my cell phone- day time minutes be damned- and called for an appointment.

So, when I got a call just a few days ago to go over test results, I almost shat the bed. My cousin is only 29 and we’re in the same age box on most online surveys for which Twlight character you’d be. And it’s true, recently I have been feeling really tired. Just wiped from the smallest of tasks that a few months earlier would have been as easy as peeling the foil off a chocolate and popping it into my mouth. And my fingers really hurt, and one of my wrists and my knees are more stiff than a set of 20th century starched shirt collars. I hadn’t been paying much attention to these things though, chalking them up to typing too much, not enough sleep or a side effect of learning to run. But once I got the phone call to come in to go over some tests, these “facts/symptoms” started piling up and chanting “cancer, cancer” on a dark stage in my mind.  A whole chorus of “C” words.

I felt caught. Like a fish in a grate. Before the call I was swimming in a great big school of healthy free fish and then wait a second, I didn’t even know there was a grate, hey, why didn’t I see these bars before?  -pinch- uh-oh, I’m stuck. I started wondering about all the people on an unseeming Monday or Tuesday afternoon that find out they have cancer. Maybe their car just broke down or the bus has been overpacked and fare increases are being threatened. Maybe their boyfriend’s dumped them. Maybe they had the same short story turned away, again. It doesn’t matter to the disease the other stuff that may be crowding out the salad on your plate. It is just one of those things that is. And I really thought that about for longer than I usually think about it, which is probably about 5 minutes a year.

I thought about disease. And I started to really notice the magnolias blooming in my neighbourhood. And I thought, why haven’t I noticed those before?

I walked to the doctor’s office almost late, trying to keep denial wrapped around my shoulders and pretend I was running an errand I considered fun, like picking out Thank you cards and shampoo in the aisles of a Shopper’s Drug Mart. I didn’t look at the trees or flowers or at people’s faces when I passed them on the sidewalk. Upon entering the clinic a man who was homeless was begging for cash. He came in the door with me and stood in the foyer. I had no cash but a one-zone bus ticket. He said that was useless to him. I asked him to take it so I wouldn’t feel so bad. He sighed and took the ticket. I rolled my shoulders back, turned around and walked into my doctor’s office. See? Life wasn’t so bad, right? The waiting room was packed but two minutes after sitting down I got called in right away. I could feel the stares on my back from the people who had been reading the same magazine article for half hour plus. Then I thought, Oh, god, maybe I’m sick. And I wanted to trade places with them. I could read about Harper’s Government in Maclean’s and wait another hour, no problem.

My doctor  got to the point.

Turns out my pap test was absolutely 100% clear.  I felt like the grate I was stuck in went back to being invisible and I could swim free to the surface again, I inhaled deeply. But wait a second, I still feel pretty badly… and then the light glinting off the water’s surface goes momentarily under cloud cover…

‘There is something,’ my amazing doctor says. ‘Well, it could be something, it could be nothing.’

My vitamin D is low.

Well, alrightee, then, thank you very much, I’ll go get some supplements and lay naked in the sun, no biggie right? I started to gather my things. There was a time in my life when Iron and B12 were really low too, a few dietary changes and horsepill-er-multi-vitamins later and I was good to go.

‘But,’ she continued, ‘Rheumatoid Arthritis came back. It’s inconclusive.’

The aches in my fingers, wrists, hips, knees, the constant low level throb, the fatigue, feeling bad, can’t that just be vitamin D? A little soy milk with my rum, right?

Well, I’ll find out. We’ll test again in two months.

It’s pretty harrowing all the stats on arthritis. That’s why we’re fundraising for the Arthritis Society (hello, wouldn’t that be the biggest crappiest irony of 2010 that while fundraising on behalf of family members I get the damn thing myself, gone will be my You’re So Brave speeches and born will be my, Jesus Christ, get me a painkiller and someone change the next episode of the Office, Michael Scott is the only one who gets it. Remember the episode where he burns his foot on his George Foreman grill? Exactly).

But it’s not for certain. It could just be Vitamin D, I’m in a zone that wavers between having it and not having, a gray shade. I do ache but not all the time. And it’s not for certain. Not that anything is. Well one thing is for certain: those magnolias blooming on peoples’ front lawns sure are beautiful.

Something different happened too, yeah, I noticed magnolias but I also noticed how I hunch my shoulders forward when I walk as though that will increase my speed. I noticed that I spend so much of  my time walking around worrying about shit that doesn’t happen that when something real does come down the tube, I’m dumbstruck. At a loss to see how good I had it my entire life up to just moments before. But I don’t think that way on a daily basis as I’m swimming along with thousands of other fishes all grasping at finding something: happiness, money, a friend who finds the dismembered arm scene in Jurassic Park just as hilarious as I do.

I have 2 months to get my vitamin D back up and then we’ll test again for the arthritis. Maybe it’s “just” a vitamin D deficiency and a very generous warning to take better care of myself. Maybe it’s more.

2010’s International Women’s Day theme is equal rights, equal opportunities: and progress for all. That being said, I find it fitting that I stayed up way too late the night before International Women’s Day to finish a book I couldn’t put down: Marni Jackson’s The Mother Zone.

The thing is, I’m not a mother, not even close, but I’m starving to read about women’s real lived experiences.  (In this case, a middle class woman’s real lived experience). And Marni Jackson takes you there.  Her writing is so unflinchingly honest, concise and poetic I felt like she was a friend hanging out in my apartment being whimsical, funny and starkly realistic all while I brushed my teeth, threw on my pj’s and crawled into bed to read.

And like a friend, you can’t forget her voice. And sometimes you really really want to.

There is something that makes me want to cling to glossy ads and the ludicrous promises they offer, such as perfection and easy love.  There is something electric and shiny urging me to stay in my cult of individualization -or as the weird teacher on Glee once put it,  in my “cocoon of horror.”

That’s the luxury of being middle class: “the cocoon of horror.” You can choose to be isolated and hold onto the belief that self-alienation will somehow lead to peace. Rather than be forced to be isolated and understand all too well that we need people to survive. We need people period. You can’t raise a child in a vacuum so what makes us think we can raise ourselves that way?

Delusions abound in this middle world, which we’re uncovering steadily as the middle class disappears like bales of hay during harvest time. And those of us bottoming out? We’re the rats scurrying to stay hidden underneath.

Marni Jackson’s voice lifts the cover of hay faster than an industrial rake on speed. You see yourself for the scurrying rat that you are. Friendly, innovative and a kind rat, of course -but running around systems that don’t quite work and failing to change them at the same time; completely exhausted after a day of uncertainty and distracted worrying.

Following a linear, achievement-focused, middle way of seeing things is crazy.

And we need to treat rats better too.

The Mother Zone came out in 1992,  a year when The Blue Jays won the world series, the L.A. riots set ablaze our fears, calling attention to social injustice and the very white problem of racism, and Mary Fisher made us wake up with words so poignant our souls cried to hear them about the strict social silences surrounding AIDS.  The Mother Zone was reprinted again in 2002, a year that was painfully post 9-11,  Canada beat the USA to win the 2002 Olympic Men’s Hockey Gold in Salt Lake City , and Jam Master Jay of the trio known as Run-DMC was shot dead in a recording studio in Queens.  And guess what?  Nothing has changed within the pages of this book. Nothing. The “outside world” is still morphing and fumbling along while ‘the mother zone’ remains the bermuda triangle for women and men who decide/are forced to/find themselves staying at home. Every type-set word is as relevant today as it was nearly 20 years ago.

Not a single thing has changed.

Not even the hairdos.

Ok, well, maybe the hairdos.

But aside from the ubiquitous  short, spiky haircuts, there’s still no national daycare; in-the-womb wait lists for expensive private daycare; not great pay/recognition/benefits for day care/in-home workers; parents in the home are still working the majority of hidden hours, those parents are usually women, and while there is a growing number of stay at home dads (check out this column I love from a Salon writer), no matter who is in the home, the work just isn’t valued.

Why isn’t “the contents of the baby’s diapers or the adorable thing little Cullen did to the dog?” just as important as the GDP? Doesn’t ‘population growth’ directly affect the GDP? How does our government think population growth happens? Working elves and storks at the baby pole?

It’s interesting that I want to talk about mothering and caretaking as a part of a conversation about International Women’s Day (next up I’ll be talking about body issues, har har, long sigh) because there are some formidable strides women have been making in science, math, journalism, art, medicine,  environmentalism, and so on) but it concerns me, the lack of support or value for mothering specifically. (Full disclosure: my own mother was a homemaker who babysat other children in our home and I didn’t value it growing up, in fact I was embarrassed that she didn’t “work” like all the other moms on the street).

Yeah, I’m pretty embarrassed of that now.

Women still don’t get paid the same as men and according to statcan.gc.ca, in 2004, 550 000 families were being raised by single moms. 38% of which had incomes that didn’t make it past the poverty line.  It’s scary as a society that we don’t value something unless it has a price tag, that is very very scary. Enter commodification of water, trees, raising babies, life.

I remember changing my mind in my early 20’s, believing that women and men who stay at home and raise kids or look after aging parents should get a bi-weekly paycheque like everyone at the office.  Just to have that acknowledgment, that veneer of support, that nod, ‘yep, Mrs. Dawson, you, too, count in this world. Contrary to what the neighbours think, you play an important role.’

I don’t think anyone I know has worked harder than my mother. And after reading The Mother Zone, I have a feeling there’s a lot of people in Canada who could say the same thing about whichever parent was their primary caregiver or about both parents if they figured out how to share the work.

Marni’s struggle between writing and mothering is a universal struggle, against who were supposed to be/try to be/strive to be and who we find out we are. I want to hear all about Marni’s life experiences in this way, in a book she has written. How did she negotiate becoming a writer, moving out, having a life-long partner, traveling, dealing with ill parents, her own health, etc. Her voice is so honest and real and funny and wise, I was just drinking up the authenticity of it like water after a long run.

In the Mother Zone, Marni isn’t telling a story, she is telling it like it is, which just happens to be an incredible story.

I know I have paid too close attention to what “I’m supposed to be” doing/being/feeling/thinking/striving for that in a lot of ways I’ve lost the path our sisters and brothers started a hundred years ago with International Women’s Day and all the legal fights for recognition and equality that have followed.

Marni Jackson reminded me.

I seem to -mistakenly- think of history as a progression, that in 2010 we must be eons away in grace, -obvious humility- and social advancements from 1910, but on a lot of fronts that isn’t quite right. We got the vote. Union labourers died to get us more reasonable work weeks. But there remains an atrocious number of murdered and missing women across Canada, the feminization of poverty is real, racism continues to exist and other startling facts.

On a shallow note, I have also assumed that women in the past must have been more prude than me, but that also is not quite right. They may have worn higher collar on their shirts, but they’re mouths seemed to be more willing to tell the truth than I have so far.

Although, that’s changing, with this one little post at least.

I want to uproot the in-depth religion I have made out of advertising. Out of the way “things should be”. That would blow the roof off the whole facade of being an individual who needs to do things individually. I find the culture of individualism alienating and lonely on the bad days and on good days, it gives me some room to forget about everyone else and watch a movie. And it’s this silent/screaming line I have drawn somewhere inside myself that I must be measured upon. But time and life doesn’t work that way. One day I wake up and it’s 10 years later and some things have changed and others have resolutely (and thick headedly /stubbornly) stayed the same. I thought I was agnostic but really, I have believed in plastic.

I strive every day not for success or great hair or to avoid my third peanutbutter-oat cookie before 10am (which alright, I do strive for these things too) but what I strive for most is to be honest. If I can truly be honest then I find myself living less hunched over, less one foot out the door to the next thing, less distracted, less unwilling.  On International Women’s Day, I lit a candle for the women that have come before me, Nellie McClung, Bell Hooks, Dionne Brand, Alice Walker, Marni Jackson, even confusing strong women like Madonna or Oprah that are at once cultural saviours but at the same time embodying our culture in a way that can shackle us.  Here’s to the Marni Jackson’s that were/are willing to go against the constant stream of messages and say, nah, a woman’s truth especially around good ol’ “boring” motherhood is not like that. In fact, it’s worth a book and an audience and it’s own space and place. After all, it’s about finding our own voice, but even more than that, it’s about putting them together.

Remember that 2006 movie, Paris, je t’aime? All the short films about Paris? I sometimes wake up thinking about those films or wonder what their characters would be doing now. Recently I felt like I was actually in one of the movies- the last one on the tape called 14e arrondissement by Alexander Payne. It’s about a middle aged woman who goes and visits Paris by herself. She wears a hipsack, uses French, sightsees, and takes it all in. In the closing scene she sits on a park bench and at once is filled with great joy and great sadness.

Well, LiveCity Yaletown, je’taime. I didn’t have a hipsack but an oversized purse, rain jacket, a map of Olympic venues and the honest intent to really take in the hugeness of the Games, the crowds, the line-ups, pavilions, energy, excitement. Like how some people go to Paris to feel love, I went to LiveCity Yaletown to feel magic.

The thing with magic and love is you’ve got to feel connected to something and usually that something is a someone or a lot of someones.  And like the character in the film, I didn’t. Sure, I talked to a few strangers, shared some cheers, tried to get a few interviews at some pavilions (not allowed), smiled and bobbed from foot to foot in the chilly rain with some super friendly blue-jacket volunteers, but the experience was at once, sad and joyful.  Sad to  not find that “it” I was looking for, joyful to watch the Canadian Men’s Hockey Team come back from the US loss with such a vigour and confidence, such a focus and clarity and speed, it was like James Hetfield sang Ohhyeahh at every flick of a skate’s blade and the team could score on Russia as though their sticks had wings.

What an incredible game. I’m sure we were all there because we wanted that incredible game to be bigger than our little screens at home or just streaming it from our computers at work. We wanted to be a part of it. Why go stand in the pouring rain in the late afternoon, cold and wet, watching a self-conscious good-hearted band from Manitoba play until pre-game if you don’t want something more?

But you can’t make it happen. Woody Allen said 80% is showing up. Yup. But what’s that other 20%? That’s the magic, that’s the feeling of love, that’s transcending whatever your current reality is and watching it turn into something else. That’s the shift, that’s what has made Malcolm Gladwell rich and probably not at all insecure to hang out in any New York City restaurant he pleases.

I forgot myself and where I was everytime Canada scored. A huge cheer went up from the crowd and my hands hit the air like jay z told me to.

But something was missing. Right in the centre of me.

I wanted to go around hugging people, especially the ones with canadian flags as capes, but I didn’t. I walked home with a heavy/ light heart, woohoo’ing pockets of people shouting Go-Canada-Go; high-fiving strangers, taking pictures, cheering at honking cars but not really feeling a part of it. I had tried to get into LiveCity Yaletown a few times and didn’t make it in. So,  I think I stored up my waiting-for-the-Olympics-magic to hit me and unfold within those large blue gates. But instead I got some rain, some friendly nods, some not so friendly nods, some small talk, some smiles and the chance to watch an incredible hockey game on a screen so big I couldn’t fit it all in my camera.  What I got was a sense of life, with its mixed bag of goods and bads.

And I also got this: a sound appreciation for those kids who dressed up and danced.

Last spring I interned for a month in Whitehorse.

A shot of Whitehorse, the capital city of the Yukon, taken from the East bank of the Yukon River. Visible are the White Pass train station, Main Street, the Elijah Smith Building, and the clay cliffs. Copied from Commons.wikimedia.org

It was such an adventure for me, having never been up North. I got to visit Destruction Bay, Watson Lake, (and see someone kite-ski for the first time ever, and ohh boy, do I want to try that!), drive along the Alaska Highway and gape in wonder out of the windshield at Sheep Mountain.

Copied from Yukon News, an article about an expedition to Greenland.

Sheep Mountain in Kluane lake area; copied from an amazing adventure story of a "world wide wanderer" riding a bike from Florida to Alaska in 1997 on Flickr

Destruction Bay and Kluane lake, copied from www.alaskahighwayarchives.ca

Something that stood out to me right away in Whitehorse (besides the fact that it’s cool to bring your dog to the airport off-leash, if that isn’t a reason to move there…) is all of the arts. If the streets were sponges, they’d be sopping wet with paint, music, theatre, woodcarving, writing. performances, multi-media adventures and more. If you squeezed them a 1000 artists would fall out, no make that 10 000.

(The population of the city hovers somewhere around 22 000).

What a community!  And not to mention the explorers, weekend warriors and  environmentalists. Someone where I worked personally composted all of the office garbage on her own, bringing it home to mix with her own compost. Most people think it is disgusting to take a stranger’s apple core but imagine taking all the paper towel in the bathroom’s trash too. And then this person whom I look way way up to, found time to hike the aforementioned Sheep Mountain with her children on the weekend.

Who are these people who live in Whitehorse?

Incredible beings. (And don’t forget, the weather is let’s say, a tad more rugged than Vancouver).

So, with the love and stars twinkling in my eyes for the residents of Whitehorse, you’d think my most memorable moment would be meeting some of the people.  That was great, sure, really great; but riding a pony was even greater.

Thanks to writer Sarah Lindstein, and an award-winning horse rider as well, I got to ride a pony named Spirit.

Writer Sarah Lindstein at the Yukon Horse show

I’m usually afraid of everything so my fear was considerably palpable upon entering the ring at Bales of Fun at the Takhini Hotsprings. Sarah helps out at the stables and in return gets to feed her love of riding (and caring for) horses.

Writer Sarah Lindstein cleaning the horse Josie's hooves.

One afternoon she took me along to Bales of Fun (owned and operated by another incredible Whitehorse resident: Trish Pitzel). I brought a book with me and figured I would sit in the car or if it wasn’t too cold, on a picnic bench and read. I had no intention of going anywhere near a horse.

After being persuaded to walk alongside the horses to the ring, I stood off  by the fence and watched Trish teach a group of kids around the age of 10 how to handle their horses. I scanned the kids’ faces, all of them except one seemed overjoyed to be sitting atop these huge beautiful creatures, and the one girl who seemed nervous quickly became confident, holding her reins just so, making left hand turns like she was born to it.

So, after the lesson, the students were free to ride their horses around practicing what they learned. I was standing inside of the ring, pretending I was much cooler & calmer than I was, when Sarah rode up to me.

“Alright, Dawson, it’s your turn,” she said as she gracefully dismounted from her pony.

I figured I deserved a very fancy gold star for just being so close to all the animals. Getting on one, well…

“Oh, no, no, no, I am way too big, I will hurt the poor guy, I love just watching, how about we go now? I don’t know how, I, I,I,” and all other excuses you can imagine me making, I made. You gotta know I was arguing for my life here.

The pony looked at me sideways. He swatted his tail.

“You’ll be fine,” Sarah say, “Spirit here will take good care of you and I’ll lead you around.”

“You won’t let go?” I ask.

“You’ll be fine,” she says, “Spirit’s the nicest one here.”

And she was right.

To the pony, I was just an oversized kid squeezing my bum into the saddle and nervously holding the reins like two pieces of cooked spaghetti. Spirit had no idea I was the oldest person in the ring that day and if Spirit knew how deep my terror ran, the pony didn’t let on.  Sarah, too, kept my secret as she started leading me around the ring dodging kids on horses as gracefully as she rides. Which is incredibly graceful.

We walked around the ring a few times. Spirit didn’t falter or swing his head in defiance or do anything you’d expect a pony to do with a fat scared kid on his back who narrated the entire ride with “oh, good boy, wow, doing so good” under her breath. I was becoming smitten with Spirit. I had read somewhere that a horse/pony can feel everything you’re feeling. Man, Spirit showed a type of acceptance I wish I had. It didn’t fluster him that I trembled and made too many nervous jokes. He just walked on. And I felt indebted to Sarah. This was an experience I would have never been able to do on my own.

Turns out I wasn’t able to get out of the saddle on my own, either.

My butt was stuck.

Really stuck.

The saddle was meant for a kid and although I usually get mistaken for one, in this saddle I was definitely no kid.

Uh-oh.

Spirit took it like a champ as both Sarah and I tried to heave my corduroy’d bum off of his back.  Sarah was unflappable and calm.

“Try this,” she says, “swing this leg over here.”

I had awful visions of knocking this saint-pony down with my big bum while the beautiful horse-riding children watched on in horror. There were some long, dreadful moments there when I didn’t think I was going to be able to get myself off his back. I briefly thought about what life would be like for both Spirit and I if we had to live like this. How would we have breakfast together? How would we sleep?

Then it was my turn to look sideways at the pony. Spirit was as calm as anything, not betraying my craziness for a moment to the crowd in the ring that day, it was like Spirit was saying, “listen, I don’t care how long this takes” and “we’ve got this.”  The pony didn’t budge a millimetre for all of my leg swinging attempts, he stood solid, waiting.

“Ok, Spirit,” I said and tried swinging my leg higher than before.

“That’s it,” Sarah says.

And with Sarah’s help I swung my leg enough to get the momentum to jump off of his back.

I felt like a bleacher full of parents should of given me a standing O for that.

If we could all be so lucky to meet a little pony named Spirit.

*Writer Sarah Lindstein not only shares her love of horses but also her love of the arts, you can read her column at What’s Up Yukon.