Community

Where have I found community (online or otherwise) in 2010? Where would I like to join, create or connect to more deeply in 2011?

On a side note, I'm enjoying Reverb10. Even if I feel rushed doing it.

I have noticed this year that I started with a feeling of community. Within and outside of the theatre. I had gigs, friends I was working with, confidence and joy. And then that went away and I felt a vacuum of community in my life that led me into depression, or at least damn close to it.

So I've felt a loss of community that was, in retrospect, kind of self inflicted.

I briefly felt a sense of community at a church I went to three times, before it began to push all sorts of buttons for me.

I've felt connected to my neighbours for the first time in two years. Not strongly, like I was used to in Rosebud, but still connected. It's something...but not a community.

I've felt connected to people S. worked with. A bit of community, like a family I was married into. The people I've worked with, in some cases more than others, like a little bit of that too. But not enough to sustain me. And that's not what work is for, after all. Not outside the financial, anyway.

So, to answer the question. I've found community in dribs and drabs, where I could, because I realized I desperately needed it. Mostly offline, much to my surprise now. Although I spent a lot of time on Facebook. Which I guess says something about social media vs. human connection.

I would like to be more connected to my 'old' friends in 2011. I would like to find community in a spiritual sense this coming year, whether in church or in an informal setting. I'd like to plug into the theatre community, in some way, and into the Arbonne one as well.

But mostly with my friends who've been there through thick and thin. And some new ones I'm making now. Relationships are important to me and I want to keep that a priority.

It's Nothing New

S. believes in me. The depth of his belief blows me away.

I wonder if I believe in myself as strongly. I don't know. If I did, wouldn't I have done something with the talent he sees in me by now?

The fact that he thinks I'm talented enough to make it provides more impetus than I expected.

He sometimes tries to spur action in me by nagging me. That doesn't work very well.

But the simple act of telling me he thinks I'm talented, that he believes in my gifts, makes me want to do something with those gifts. How strange.

S. loves me. The strength of his love takes my breath away.

It's nothing new, but it seems new to me every time I realize it.

I am one of the fortunate ones.

Bits and Pieces From My Mind

"Just give it to a thrift shop, they don't care if their water tastes like burnt."

I know he doesn't mean anything by it but my hackles rise a little anyway. But I don't know him that well so I say nothing.

I don't think he's ever had to face a reality of poverty. Where everything he owns comes from a thrift shop. A charity. Where if it wasn't for someone giving him something he'd have nothing.

If he has, he's sure as hell forgotten it already.

I can speak from experience - if I don't like the taste of burnt water, nobody else will either.

No matter how poor they are.

***

But we don't live by our emotions, do we?

This is still bothering me, weeks after reading it on an acquaintance's Facebook page. This acquaintance said she felt like her world was crashing down around her and she had nothing to hold onto. So what does one of her adult Christian friends - I'm assuming she's some kind of mentor - say to her? We don't live by our emotions. What you feel is invalid. Push it away, and hang onto God.

Why does this bother me?

I stop myself from commenting on this post over and over because I don't know what to say.

The assumption that we shouldn't take our emotions seriously - that we shouldn't listen to them - that we shouldn't live our lives by what we feel - it makes me feel uneasy.

Something I should ignore according to Christian Mentor there. Just stuff it away. God will take care of you. If you feel negatively, you just don't have enough faith. Trust God! God, God, God!

Look at all that projection. She didn't actively say any of that. Obviously I have some issues of my own to deal with.

But I would like to know why Christians think that emotions are so...so unnecessary. Why are we told that we shouldn't live by them? And what the fuck should we live by then? Our minds?

(Spoken as a true Blue.)

But I would like an answer. I don't think living solely by our minds is any better. I don't know about everyone else out there, but God doesn't usually use my brain to communicate with me, not right off the bat. First He grabs my attention by tweaking my heart in one way or another - through my emotions.

Because I listen to them.

Maybe it's just because I'm an actor and I have a bit more, oh I don't know what to call it. Emotional training? Positive experience with heightened emotional states? It's closer to training, how to open yourself up to that overwhelming experience, and then how to get yourself down without breaking or destroying yourself...maybe that, combined with my personality, makes emotions less scary for me than they are for the average person. Because emotions are scary, but that is a fear to be embraced. They serve a purpose. They are there to serve you as much as your brain is, your heart, your intelligence. It's all there because God put it there, and it pisses me off to see something so close to myself written off as an unnecessary appendix to life.

Because there needs to be a balance, and I think as Christians we all too often lose sight of that, and instead we push away the frightening aspect in favour of the one that makes more sense. The one that can't be manipulated by the Devil, after all, it's in the Bible. It's there in black and red.

As if knowledge is immune to the twisting of Darkness.

All of this just because I want to tell this acquaintance, this girl, that how she feels is okay. It's something to accept, to learn from, and to grow because of.

Ignoring emotions isn't going to build anything up except walls, and walls don't help any relationship. Not with people. Not with yourself. Not with God.

***

It just occurred to me that if I were to ask one of these two people what we were supposed to live by, they might say Faith.

Complete trust or confidence. Strong belief.

Those evoke emotional responses in me but maybe that's not how it is for everyone.

I don't really know what it means to live by faith. I have a bipolar faith - I either trust God completely or I don't trust Him at all.

I know when I'm struggling to trust when I get an anxious spring, a tightening in my chest that tells me everything is going to shit and no-one will be there to catch me.

I understand I should trust when I look back at the path behind me and see that I haven't been homeless or behind in any payments - even if I've been broke - and that I have been provided for. With friends, money, shelter, love...needs and desires.

And when I feel the trust there I am afraid of nothing. Perfect love casts out all fear.

***

It's telling to me that in Harry Potter, the Avada Kadavra spell, death by pure terror, isn't shattered by peace. It's broken by love.

It hits us on the most primitive level. Where everything is survival and instinct and reaction time. Love opposes fear, not hatred. Although I think a lot of hatred has fear at it's root.

I feel like a very fearful person sometimes, although I don't think I really am. I'm not afraid of bugs, or dead things or rodents; I have my fair share of rational fears but nothing that overwhelms me and keeps me from living a normal life. I'd hate to find an intruder in my home, for example, but the fear of it doesn't make me sneak around my home with a butcher knife.

My one irrational fear is a fear of the dark. It's something I've worked against since I was a kid. I learned quick that if you have a flashlight outside at night it just makes the darkness darker and inhibits your ability to see outside your little sphere, which I think makes you vulnerable to attack from all the crazies waiting in the shadows. I'd go out to check the animals at night and leave the light off until I needed to see details. Of course, when I slept I'd tuck the edges of the blankets underneath me so the dark creepy things couldn't sneak underneath the blankies with me. Even now I fight the impulse to jump from the light switch to the bed, so that I can prove to myself that nothing is lying in wait underneath my bed. And then I lay in bed and see shadows gathering in the corners and they appear to get thicker and darker and I tremble and shut my eyes and pray for the fear to be gone. Or I snuggle into S. because he's warm and alive and he'll protect me even when he's sleeping.

Love. It's pretty powerful.

I had a lot of dreams last night where I needed a flashlight to survive. Lots of battling the darkness with what little lights I had. It's probably just the combination of a few books I read - Brother Odd and Forever Odd by Dean Koontz - and the latest XBox game to grace our console, Alan Wake. Alan Wake has to fight Darkness personified with any light source he can get his hands on in order to save his wife. It's a pretty cool concept, actually. I haven't played it yet because just watching S. play makes me jump off the couch.

But these were just dreams, because I didn't wake up, skin crawling, sweaty, heart pounding with fear.

***

I finally figured out why two of my pots of sweet peas are dying. The cold at night is only bothering them, and it confused me no end until I realized they were the only two pots in front of the sliding patio door. The glass doesn't hold enough heat to keep them through the night. I moved them the day before yesterday, after they almost had it, and I think they're coming back already. Hurrah! Except now the middle of the balcony will be naked.

Rest In This, Daughter, And Know You Are Loved

This last week has been a time of thought and contemplation for me.

It seems like so many things are tying themselves together from past conversations into a present learning experience, which is both incredibly cool and extremely difficult to accept at the same time.

Months ago I had a conversation with one of my best girlfriends about the human relationship with God. She had just come back from a retreat where she was surrounded by artists who wanted to figure out how their faith fit into their art, and what she had to share with me blew my mind, to the point where I don't think it's really been able to absorb the heart-knowledge until now, and even now it's only just starting.

What she said was this: that we relate to God as either slaves or orphans, or on a good day, as sons (or daughters).

Slaves feel that they need to earn their keep, their love, their place in God's eyes. It's all about work. The work will save you. Orphans have no sense of what family is. They feel that God is transient and they need to steal their way into His heart. They need to please him in order to belong; and even then there is the constant fear that He will abandon them just as everyone else has.

On the other hand, Sons don't do anything. They can't. You cannot earn or steal the title of Son. You have that title before you are born, before you exist. It isn't something you earn, or accept, or steal. It's what you are. Nobody can give it to you and nobody can take it away.

All you can do, as a Son, is rest in your place.

That still makes me tear up.

It clicks, doesn't it.

So why is it so hard for me to accept?

I don't know.

I haven't had a steady, permanent job yet this year. Over and over I've felt, in my heart of hearts, that this is where I am supposed to be, that this time is gift meant for me to practice my craft of writing and auditioning. That this is my time to create and to rest.

I haven't accepted this. Instead I've fought it tooth and nail, looking frantically for work, feeling like I'm mooching off the system by being on EI. I've conveniently ignored the fact that I've paid into that system my entire working life and so it's not mooching. Even when that's been pointed out to me by my parents and by S, I've rejected it. I've ignored the creativity within me, pushing it aside to write my resume and pursue jobs that kill me just thinking about them.

Simply put, I've done everything but rest.

I have trust issues, have I mentioned that before? I'm very much like a toddler, believing that how things are now are how they will be forever. In my head, I will never find another job, so I'd better take the first thing that is offered to me no matter what it does to my soul. I struggle on a daily basis - no, hourly...rather, by the minute and the second - with believing that God will provide for me. I ignore all the evidence to the contrary - that I am clothed, fed and housed, that I am not yet broke - and take counsel with fear. I consider selling my soul, my actual eternal soul, to the powers of Darkness in exchange for financial security.

And then I wonder why my dreams are dark.

God is very patient. That's all I can say.

And I am very confused, most of the time.

I've been reading The Chronicles of Narnia and it amazes me how those stories also bring me to tears, over and over, by their power and simplicity. To see Aslan taking such joy in those He loves - it makes me cry to write that down - alongside His incredible patience and sorrow when they fail, or turn aside, or put pettiness above following the nobility within them. How He cries with Caspian dies, an old man...He really does share our sorrows with us, even when He knows better than anyone how short lived that sorrow will be, and that brings me to tears that He would care enough to partake in that with us, so that we won't be alone. And that He cares enough to share our most transient joys, even if it's nothing more than the pleasure of a romp in fresh air in the springtime.

For some reason it is easier for me to see clearly when I am in Narnia with Aslan, than it is when I am here and now, with God.

I think - I hope - He's okay with that. After all, as He says to Edmund and Lucy at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (coming to film sometime this year, hurrah!), "...There I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."

It's an uphill journey and I fear I am much more like Jill Pole than like Lucy Pevensie. But I try. And I put down my burdens, and I pick them back up, and I put them back down, and I start again.

For now, that will have to be enough. See? See how even then, I take the perspective of a slave, that my struggle is the work I must do to be fit for love? See how I turn to God as an orphan and cry out that I'm trying, please don't turn aside, I will be better, I will, I will.

I would never have thought that resting would be so much work - and I know it only is because I keep making it that way.

Goddamn this fight, this struggle to accept that I am loved, end of sentence.

I hope I'll get it eventually. I hope that someday I'll even just see His shadow as He leads me. That I'll feel His warm Lion's breath on my forehead and know, just know, that I am enough. Until then I am blind, with tears and with humanity, overwhelmed with sorrow at my own frailties, with the disbelief at the gift I am being given, day after day after day, offered to me every second as I doubt and fight and struggle with myself.

And for now, that will have to be enough.

Not for Him; for me.

Until I learn how to open my arms, my heart, and accept.

End of sentence.

Breathe

A week and a half later and I'm just breathing.

Man, what a rough weekend that was! On Friday I lost my temp job because they hired someone full time. It wasn't unexpected but I hate being unemployed. The days stretch on without an external force to govern them, no imposed schedule too often means no schedule at all for me.

But I had plans. I was going to focus all my time on the show. I was not only the playwright and an actor, but also Head of Marketing which was just about to kick into high gear.

And then it all got postponed indefinitely.

Now I have nothing to fill my days with. Nothing. NOTHING. Except to mull over and over what happened, what could I have done differently, what should I have said, what he said, what she did or didn't do...

Mulling can turn into brooding really easily.

Especially if you're a blue personality like I am.

I tried to shut it off, push it away and focus on other things, but every time I sat down to write that was all that came up. Anger. Frustration. Betrayal. Bitterness. Rage, and I was blocked, no words coming out except words of pain, my pain, not related to the work I was trying to do. I could journal until my fingers were numb but the second I turned to write something creative, whether it was something new or something I'd been working on for months and a giant rock settled itself in my brain and my soul and I was blocked entirely.

I'm working past it right now. Channeling all of my anger into angry stories. But it really felt like having one creative avenue shut down killed all of my desire to try again with something else.

Immature I know. But that's what it felt like.

So I put everything to the side, put my life on hold and ignored it all.

Until that didn't work anymore.

And then I began to sort, to think instead of brood, and I made myself sit my ass down in a chair and write even though I didn't feel like it. And what came out was angry, yes, but it was part of a story and I felt better afterwards. Like I had done something productive for the first time in days. Like I'd finally gotten out of bed and shown up for something instead of wallowing in self-pity and bitterness.

And I signed up for Script Frenzy, which may or may not have been an insane idea as I now have to write a 100 page script by April 30th but I suspect it'll force me to show up and move on every day, the external force I so desperately need right now.

We have an audition tomorrow. I hope it goes well - it could mean employment for the summer. Either way though, I will be imposing a schedule on myself. Waking up to an alarm. Going to bed on time. Eating when meals are supposed to happen and writing from this time to this time every day.

I think it's time I stopped drifting and made an island for myself instead of waiting to float into something. None of the things I've floated into this year have provided a lasting foundation.

It must be my job to create that for myself, with the help of God and the people in my life whom I trust to stick around and support me.

So here goes, and the whole while I'll just be here breathing.

We'll see what happens next.

Peace?

I had so many other things I was going to write about.

The return of bitch mom with her whiney little girl; the man who had a stroke who can write but can't speak clearly; the strange dynamic at work.

Instead.

I know that if God wasn't a part of my life I would have a hole in my heart.

I wouldn't say he's a huge part of my life...I don't do the external stuff like read the Bible or pray a lot or go to Church (so according to everything I learned in Sunday School I should be shrinking or something)...but now I know that if I cut him out of my life I'd have a hole.

A surprisingly large and painful hole.

Huh.

I'm not at peace. I wish I was. But instead of the active rage and dissatisfaction I now feel...silent surprise. That's not quite right. It isn't surprise so much as a discovery of something I didn't know was there, something I'm not sure I expected or wanted to find and now I have do something about what I've found.

Like apologize. Or repent. Or something equally unpleasant.

That's what I'm pondering on tonight. That and the unexpected well of pain and hurt and anger I have right next to that not-a-hole-today.

Love

we fight
we bicker and squabble and pull and twist
for control
of ourselves and each other

control

isn't what love is about
is it?

i can't let go
not without a fight

but i don't want control
i'm just afraid
afraid of what will happen when i let go
let go
no control
falling
headfirst
into

what?

it's all new.

we learn
we live

we let go

those moments sustain
keep me hoping
hopeful
knowing that the struggle for freedom
is worth it
in the end.

Reflections on Death and the Gossip Mill

I think I actually have some buttons from my Uncle John’s death. I had no idea that his death had affected me in any way. I feel that I didn’t really know him, that it was the death of a stranger to me that nevertheless ripped my father apart. Most of my pain from that death arose from the pain I saw my father, my grandmother, my cousins experiencing. But I have buttons, buttons about respecting the privacy of the family to mourn. Buttons about giving people space. Respecting the process, the death, the loss and the grief for even just one fucking day before that gossip mill starts up again, just one fucking day, people, that’s all I ask.

This revelation was triggered by the death of one of the people in Barkerville. One of the Chinatown shop keepers, who also worked in the Chinese restaurant, died in a car accident. Her entire family work in BVille. It’s a small town. Something like this, a death, especially a sudden and unexpected death, gets around fast. It’s how a small town works and I know that. But I didn’t expect the rampant gossip that accompanied it: they were on their way to pick up their son; he was in the car; he wasn’t in the car; the husband has minor injuries; the son must feel so much guilt; the driver must be beside himself; the father and son are in Vancouver; they’re coming in tonight to pick up some things from the shop.

And the insincere comments of grief. Okay, I know some people were upset, some were really upset; but funnily enough they weren’t stopping to talk to anyone who wanted to talk about what had happened. They stuck to themselves and stayed out of sight for most of the day. But the ones who were whispering on the street – “She was so nice. I’m going to really miss her. I didn’t even know they were married.” This, verbatim, from a lady who has been working here for years. Years. I’ve been here two months and I didn’t know the deceased. I’d met her twice. She served me in the restaurant once, and sold me a fan from the shop. Yet I knew who her husband was. I wanted to ask, “Just how much are you going to miss this woman whom you obviously never got to know, who you just saw when you ate at the Duck when she took your order with a happy smile and a polite greeting, how much can you miss her? You knew nothing about her life. You don’t care, you just want to gossip about her death and her family, you stupid bitch.” But I didn’t. I walked away instead and avoided all the gaggles on the street for the rest of the day.

Maybe I’m too cynical.

But when I overheard a shop keep telling the story (a gossip version, so full of inaccuracies no less) to tourists – plain ordinary tourists who don’t care, who don’t give a shit about the family or who died, they’re just callous voyeurs in someone else’s pain – I got infuriated. Again, I wanted to shake them and scream in their fat ugly face, “How dare you? How dare you say, ‘It’s a big family here in Barkerville, when someone dies we all feel the pain’ when you aren’t even doing the bare minimum to respect the family, the actual family who are in actual pain, you don’t even respect their right to grieve privately without a bunch of curious eyes on them, eyes from people they don’t even know?” Again I held my tongue and kept walking, walking away from the idiots who I think would change their tune if it was their mother/daughter/sister/wife who had died. But maybe not.

This isn’t Michael Jackson, who the world felt they had a right to (whether they did or not); this is an everyday woman who I would bet most of the people in town didn’t know anything about, didn’t spend a moment’s thought on when she wasn’t serving them in the restaurant or the shop.

They didn’t even wait for the corpse to cool. Gossip flies in this town, to the point where the lady who runs the Wells General Store came into Barkerville to share the latest news as soon as she got it. She couldn’t even wait for people to get off work and come into the store, in case they heard it somewhere else first; no, she had to come into our working place, interrupt our work day to tell us all the newest gossip. Not professional. Not polite. Not respectful, but it makes her feel important and she doesn’t care about the people at whose expense she feels big. She just knows something we don’t know, and can’t wait to share it with us. I walked away before she could talk to me. I have another two months here. I don’t want to say something I’ll regret.

I don’t know the woman or her family. I am not in pain or upset or grieving but out of respect for those who are I feel it’s wrong to comment on her death and guess at what happened. It’s just rude to speculate on the guilt those who were involved must feel. But all day that’s what I heard and it made me furious, absolutely furious, to the point where S. had to tell me to stop ranting and just accept that small towns are vicious with their gossip.

The thing is, I’ve lived in small towns before. I grew up in a small town community and spent the last four years of my life in Rosebud which is almost as small as they get. The gossip mill was (and is) alive and well in Rosebud too. But it felt different. I thought about it for a while and I think it’s because in Rosebud the people you are gossiping about are usually your classmates, roommates, cast mates or friends. Or all of the above. Rarely in Rosebud is there someone who is only involved in one of your spheres of existence. There’s a more personal connection to everyone you’re likely to hear gossip about. I won’t deny that I’ve heard some downright nasty and cruel rumours in Rosebud. No town is immune to that kind of thing, unfortunately. But to gossip about death? Not something the town would do with such rabid ferocity. It wouldn’t have been treated like a piece of entertainment, a piece of news to liven up the day. Not like here in Barkerville. I’d like to think that in Rosebud we would instead get together and comfort each other and the bereaved; pray; go on with our lives without telling the patrons of the theatre about the death in all it’s details instead of speculating on things until four different stories of the event were circulating throughout town.

I think the difference there though is that in Rosebud people have a vested interest in each other. There the lives of the people around you touch you in some way and when you actually know the person who is suffering, you are less likely to just stand around and whisper about their loss; their loss is in a way your loss too. You at the very least feel echoes of their pain. Here in Wells and Barkerville people don’t live together. They work together. Whatever the shop keeps might say, there is a difference. Working together doesn’t make you family. If I had any doubts, the rumour mongering this weekend proved it to me. Family doesn’t gossip about the death of one of it’s own. Family doesn’t spill the news to strangers just for the thrill, or to feel important. Family bands together and weathers the emotional storm. Family holds each other up instead of ripping each other down for every last nugget of information.

When my uncle died there was a bit of both, I guess. He died in unusual circumstances which meant that strangers thought they had a right to know what had happened – in reality they couldn’t control their curiosity and for some reason that was our problem to solve in the midst of grief. It didn’t help that some of those strangers were from the press. One reporter phoned every person with our last name in the phonebook, asking the same questions which (I believe) we all declined to answer. They didn’t give up but they ended up getting their information from some satellite ‘family’ member who didn’t know what was going on…and it got printed in the paper, gossip presented as journalism.

On the other side of the coin were the people coming in quietly with support, food, hands to hold and shoulders to cry into, stories to make us remember my uncle and stories to make us laugh. Those people were the true friends, the family, the ones who maybe didn’t claim to share our pain but who respected it and let us know they were there for us. All without agenda. They didn’t come grieve with us so they could feel important or whisper about the circumstances of our grief with their curious neighbours. They came because they actually gave a damn about us, about our loss and about my uncle.

When people feel the need to share intimate details of loss with voyeurs to make themselves look and feel important, they aren’t family and never have been. The sad thing is that some of them can’t see the wrong in what they’ve done. People like that get no respect from me but bigger than that I think they’ve lost sight of something precious, something compassionate that makes us humans noble.

This whole event has done nothing to make me less jaded about human nature, that’s for sure.

Right now I feel that even if the rest of this place…it’s remote natural beauty…the easy job…the general friendliness of the people…even if it all begged for me to come back this one incident is enough to make me turn my back on this town forever and never come here to work again.

That might change as time goes on. We’ll see. But right now I think I’ll leave and not be sad to go.

Life

My life is going pretty well. I'm enjoying myself and don't have anything to complain about.

The lives of some of the people who are important to me aren't as free from care.

It's confusing. I don't know what to think or feel. I'm trying to just feel what's there and not think about it too much right now.

Other than that I don't have much to say except that I'm really, really glad S. is there for me.

Northern Life So Far

The week we left for Barkerville my car died. I drove it to Rosebud so that it would be looked after, cared for, started once in a while – so that it would still run when I got back from BC – and on the way there the water pump decided it was no more for this world and the engine overheated and I perhaps cooked my engine. I still don’t know. I left it in the hands of a friend and we’ll see in five months whether I have a car or am in the market.

I do appreciate the bitter irony of the car situation.

The actual trip to BC was made without incident. We drove through the mountains with snow and rain and sun each taking their turn. We didn’t see any animals much to my disappointment. I did see birds – a Great Blue Heron, a few hawks and some ducks of various breeds – but no animals that run on all fours. Unless you count squirrels, in which case I saw one.

The hotel we stayed in was small and much, much dirtier than the images on their website led me to believe. I walked in and said, “I have a reservation.” The woman at the desk said, “You have a reservation? Here?” She sounded so surprised. I knew right then that things were going to be a bit squibby. When she looked down at her papers and called me by name, it clinched it. Obviously the place is not a well-used hotel, as the three vehicles in the parking lot implied. (One of them was ours.) We watched some television and went to bed.

The rest of the trip was also without incident. We ate breakfast in a place that had no fruit on the menu which normally I wouldn’t have noticed but I really wanted French toast with fruit that morning (damn); we commented on the remote farmhouses and ranches and wondered who in their right mind wanted to live out there all year round? Or at all? We kept a sharp eye out for the turn Google Maps had told us about – but when we got to Prince George we realized that the road didn’t exist. (I have since learned that Google Maps was directing us to a road built in the 1860’s which is no longer in use if it even still exists.) In Prince George the highway was being used as a parking lot and we had to drive carefully to avoid hitting mirrors. I have no idea what was going on but apparently it was a big deal, as everyone in town was there. With their dog and their dog’s car.

We explored Quesnel briefly and then went to Wells. The road was long and curvy but we made it there in one piece and found the house we are staying in – the yellow house next to the even yellower community centre. It was indeed easy to spot, as we had been told it would be. We met our roommate, Tim, who is a nice guy and reminded both S. and I of someone we know. It took us almost the entire evening to figure out who – the art teacher from our Certificate year! I don’t think he sleeps much, as we’re always in bed before him and he’s always up before us. When we wake up at night he’s either not home or he’s up eating or drinking coffee. I don’t understand it but that’s just because I like to sleep 10 hours or more a night.

The snow here. Wow. The snow! When we got here it was piled up against buildings, laying in thick white blankets on the baseball diamond – six to ten feet near the house and probably four out in the open. I wish I’d taken pictures as now, after a week or so of sun and (mostly) rain it has shrunk considerably. (Near some buildings it was piled up to the eaves!) It was cold our first few days of work.

We got costumes after a few days, which actually made it warmer. A corset holds in a considerable amount of heat and the dresses hide all the civvies I care to wear underneath them. On the coldest day I was wearing two pairs of socks, long johns, jeans, two shirts, a corset (as well as the necessary modern underwear), a heavy petticoat, my green dress, a scarf, gloves, a wig (to keep my ears warm), a hat, rubber boots and a thick woollen cape.

It was warmer today so I wore my blue dress. I like it quite a bit. It has a lace collar and cuffs and a lacy bustle as well. Those women in the 1870’s sure liked their bustles. Not to sound vain, but I look good in period costumes. A part of me wants to wear those kinds of clothes all the time, except for how sore my back and shoulders get. They’re heavy and really, I couldn’t wear a corset all the time. I like being able to tie my shoes and lean back on chairs and snuggle up on a sofa with a book, all rendered impossible with a properly fitted corset.

However, I was not the only person who thought I looked fine, much to my dismay. Today I collected a follower of the male persuasion, much to the amusement of all my co-workers. I can’t remember his name but apparently he latches on to a different pretty girl each summer and I’m the unhappy target this year. The fact that I have a boyfriend isn’t likely to deter him – one year his object of affection was clearly and obviously married. My boss has had to talk to him before about bothering actors who are working, so if I can’t shake him on my own at least someone will deal with him for me. Actually, my boss gave me and S. permission to kiss – full on French – in front of this guy; this while we are portraying an era where men and women didn’t even touch in public.

Hopefully I won’t need to resort to that.

I’ll try to keep this blog up to date through-out the summer. It’s a bit hard – I have to bring my laptop to the local general store to access the internet and after work it’s the last thing I feel like doing. However, like I said, I’ll do my best.

Company

I got this from my brother.

A married couple was in a car when the wife turned to her husband and asked, "Would you like to stop for a coffee?"

"No, thanks," he answered truthfully. So they didn't stop.

The wife, who had indeed wanted to stop, became annoyed because she felt her preference had not been considered. The husband, seeing his wife was angry, became frustrated. Why didn't she just say what she wanted?

Unfortunately, he failed to see that his wife was asking the question not to get an instant decision, but to begin a negotiation. And the wife didn't realize that when her husband said no, he was just expressing his preference, not making a ruling. When a man and woman interpret the same interchange in such conflicting ways, it's no wonder they can find themselves leveling angry charges of selfishness and obstinacy at each other.


When I read this, I laughed out loud because it was almost verbatim a conversation S. and I had about a year ago. We figured it out within the half-hour - but it's nice to know we aren't alone in our misunderstandings!

Advice on the Radio

I wake up in the morning to CBC Radio. A good way to get a clue about the outside world, a bad way to remember dreams - they fade in the blur of murders and the many varied tragedies that are deemed important for me to know about.

This morning, although I don't remember what happened on the news (except for a school shooting in Germany), I did lay in bed and listen to half an hour of Q. They were going to interview some Monty Python people but couldn't get ahold of them, so instead they aired an interview they had already done with David Sedaris.

Working in a book store (which I may not be for much longer but that's another story) I see books and authors all around me every day that I was previously unaware of. David Sedaris is one of those authors. He's in the humour section. Guys are the ones who pick up his books so I had relegated him to a pile in my mind labled, not interesting.

What a mistake that was. The interview was fascinating. He's a morbid guy. Morbid and funny and all he does is observe the world around him. And when he writes about his friends and family, which he does a lot, he always clears it by them first. Gets them to read it and tell him if there's anything they want him to change. Why? Because he values his relationships over his writing. What he's going to share with the world, he clears with the ones he loves first.

That level of respect impressed me greatly.

I don't think I've done a very good job of doing that. So now I'm going to start.

It doesn't cramp my creativity. I write what I want and no-one stops me. But if I'm going to share that writing with the world? There is a fall out from that, and it had better be one that I, and those who are important to me, can live with.

Thank you, David Sedaris. You will probably never read this (unless you have that Google thing that lets you know anytime someone writes your name online) but thank you anyway.

Unwanted Empathy

Today I understand, at least a little, what my mom must have felt all those years Dad was driving truck in the snow and sleet and icy cold.

At least I know my love is stranded in a hotel while the storm rages outside.

Even if he isn't in the city he was supposed to be in right now.

But I'll take stranded far from home over never coming home any day.

Moving On Into the New Year

I sit in my new apartment and look around. I live in Calgary now. It's a dramatic way to start the new year, moving from a town of less than 100 people to a big city but although I'm an actor that's not why I did it. It's surreal but I like it. The apartment, anyway. I haven't been here long enough to know if I like the city yet. The apartment is looking like home as we spread out our junk, finding hidey-holes for all of it somehow.

We. S. and I are living together now. It's something that four years ago I wouldn't have thought I'd do but I am really enjoying this now. I'm not sure what changed. Well, I did, I guess, but I'm not sure why. I just know I'm happy I made this decision and that is all I can go by.

It's going to be a vast learning experience though. I know that already. We are so different in some ways and too similar in others. I notice this keenly as we unpack. I am slow and relaxed, finding, in an almost zen fashion, where things want to live. He is all go-go-go, wanting to get it all unpacked before bedtime.
However, I am very particular with the kitchen and where things go - I've moved enough times to know the feng shui of kitchens and how dishes and food need to be oriented to the stove, fridge and sink - and so is he, but in a different way, and we have our first fight in our new place. It's short lived. We compromise. I put things that are important to him on lower shelves so he can reach them easily and the rest goes where I want it to.

My interlude is over and the unpacking must continue. I'm going to Banff tomorrow for the day so I'll get my rest and relaxation then - but now I'll go. Happy New Year, everyone!

A Little Freaked Out

Why?

Because I've been informed of 3 - count it, people, 3 - engagements in the last 10 days.

All among my peers.

I am joining the generation of people coupling up and settling down. I didn't think I was that old yet! I don't feel that old yet. Or mature. How - when - did this happen?

But it is spring, so I guess love is in the air. And with love, comes a lot of wedding bells.

Even if it does freak me out a little.

My Recent Thoughts

People confuse and intrigue me. They are mysterious and predictable. I sometimes think I should understand them better since I am a people too but I don’t.

One of my friends was getting close with her ex again, to the point where I wondered if they had secretly gotten back together. If they were, that sure ended fast. The girl who caused them the most trouble swooped back into the picture and now the ex is off with her, dropping my friend like so much hot dog shit. Why did this happen? I don’t know. I don’t see any love between the ‘home-wrecker’ and the ex. I know my friend loves him but I don’t think he loves her back. And I wonder at these people’s ability to love themselves.

It seems that people who can’t love themselves also can’t be alone, and that’s what this feels like to me. It’s horrible and painful and difficult to witness, and I wish I could be there for my friend – but she flew to Vancouver to get away from this. I hope that’s a good thing for her but it feels like she’s just running away from the pain instead of dealing with it.

It makes me so, so thankful that I let S. love me and that he lets me love him. I am so grateful that we share a love together.

****

I just had a good talk with my roommate J. We talked about people, relationships, pain and how people hurt each other over and over and over. How it’s so hard to witness people hurting each other but that that is all you can do most of the time.

As we talked, he mentioned that his brother-in-law is so awkward at their family events. We talked about how people sometimes assume that their future mates should just mesh into their families of origin. It happens for some people. My friend L. who just got married, they both fit into the other’s family like water into more water. But does that mean that if it doesn’t work out that way that the relationship is doomed or bad or with the wrong person?

I don’t think so.

I think the fear is that if the significant other doesn’t fit in, that the child will then choose the mate over the family and it will cause a schism. That happens, I’m sure. But if the mate doesn't fit, it doesn't mean there will be an unhealthy separation of the child from the family.

I feel like my parents are afraid because S. doesn’t fit into our family like he was born there. I wish they wouldn’t be. There isn’t anything to be afraid of. He knows my family is important to me. He just can’t handle any expectation that he’ll get all chummy with these people who created me. He doesn’t do well with expectation from anyone, even those he trusts, and he takes time to trust people.

I wish that didn’t scare my parents so.

****

I wish that people would learn, once and for all – you can’t steal something that you can’t own.

In other words, people.

Loves cannot be stolen. If A leaves B for C, it’s because A didn’t want to be with B, not because C stole A somehow.

There are a few people in this town that I would like to slap, to explain this to, but most of them are in the midst of believing that they’ve been stolen from so I doubt this would go over well.

Besides, another truth is that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. I can talk until I’m blue in the face but no-one has to listen or accept what I say as truth. They have to all figure it out for themselves, the hard way it looks like.

****

I wonder why people blame this place for their troubles and their pain. I have heard so many people say that they have to leave this town, to get away from it all.

There is pain here, crap here, politics – good lord, are there politics in this town – but it isn’t any different ‘out there’.

The only difference I can see is that out there you don’t usually live in the midst of the people you share intimacy with. When you don’t interact with people on the level we live on here, of course you don’t get hurt.

You don’t experience the love, support and blessings either though. Not on the same scale. Pain and love live at the same depth. When you are the most open to love, you are the most open to pain, and it seems to me to work the other way round too.

I don’t understand why people think they can run from their pain. Pain comes from inside you and that goes with you wherever you go.

I feel like I can’t live in Rosebud forever, but not because I’m being smothered here or damaged here. I have to leave to get another perspective of the world. I went from my parent’s house to this town of intimacy and I wonder what it is like to live in a ‘normal’ place. I feel a need to prove to myself that I can live and be okay 'out there', that I can make friends in a world where they aren’t made for you. I also need to live in my own house, without roommates (someday), and that won’t happen here simply because this is a town centered around a school – the houses are centered around dorms so there is nowhere to live unless I have roommates.

It isn’t that Rosebud is smothering me though. I love the people here, I love the people I live with. They are like people I have seen everywhere else...beautiful, damaged, blessed, open, closed. People are people wherever you go. Life is a blessed thing, wherever you are given the chance to live it out.

Magic Mother Eyes

My mother has been silent this holiday.

We haven’t talked much and I feel it as an uncomfortable weight on me.

I don’t know what she’s thinking. I don’t know if I want to know what she’s thinking. It’s driving me crazy not knowing what she’s thinking.

I don’t know if I want her to know what I’m thinking either.

When I was young I stole a box of Smarties from a guest who overstayed her welcome in our house. I stole them a few at a time until they were all gone. Mom confronted me and asked me if I had taken them. I lied to her face. She believed me and that was when I realized that the magic mother eyes were a lie.

It’s strange how if you’ve been told something enough times, even when it’s proven to be false you still believe it.

This Christmas I got busted for smoking pot with my brother. My mom was so shocked. I was shocked too. I thought she already knew. I don’t know why. It’s not like I told her. The myth of the magic mother eyes is strong.

There are a lot of things that I assume my mother knows and when it becomes apparent that she doesn’t it surprises me every time. She asserted her omniscience so often in my childhood that it is going to take a lot of repetition before that lie is broken in my mind for good.

One thing I know – it won’t be broken with silence.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

My mother is a writer.

All of my life she has called herself a writer. I must admit that during most of my growing up she only wrote in her journal. Before she began her blog I actually didn’t see much concrete evidence of her writer status. However, she has always been a writer and I never doubted that.

I didn’t have a title until I went to acting school. After a few years I felt comfortable calling myself an actor. Well, actress – I don’t like the whole politically correct thing of everyone being actors now. I had my own title, I had my own life, things were good.

Then about a year ago I took a playwriting class.

God forbid I ever call myself a writer. I have always written, but it was more of a hobby. An interest, nothing more. I kept a diary from the age of 6, on and off, wrote several skits with my brothers, wrote a children’s novel in my teens that I never did anything with and I have at least half a dozen unfinished stories in my head and in my filing cabinet, but I was not a writer. It was an interest, an acceptable interest for an actress. Supplemental income and all that rot. So I took the class.

Within two months I began to wrestle with my titles. My teacher was calling me a writer. My classmates were calling me a writer. The other instructors in the school were calling me a writer.

I refused to accept it. Even though I was writing and nothing had ever felt so perfectly natural to me, I rejected the title with all the strength and stubborn willpower in my body.

I struggled and procrastinated like I had never done before in my entire life. The things I would do instead of writing! I suddenly found a passion for my annotated bibliography, the most pointless course I take here; I don’t think my room has ever been so clean and orderly. I vacuumed. I hate vacuuming. I washed other people’s dishes. Anything so that I could avoid writing my play.

I put an astounding amount of energy into avoiding writing. My ideas would come, my spirit would whisper to my muse, and I would evade eye contact. “If I can’t see you, then you aren’t reeeallll,” right?

I can only live in denial for so long, but it took a lot of wrestling before I broke down and called myself a writer. It did break me, even though I was alone that first time.

I go for walks when my thoughts get too jumbled up to the cemetery up on the hill, an old cemetery full of old graves of long forgotten people. I walked around the dead, watching my feet swish through the grass, scaring the grasshoppers into their rain-pattering flight. I was railing against God. Against my play. My idea, the only one I’d been given, was too big. Too dangerous. Too painful. It wasn’t fair, and I told God so.

I crumpled to the ground and with tears falling down my face I looked up to the sky and said, “I’m a fucking writer. Okay? I’m a writer. And I hate it.”

I uttered the phrase with a mouth full of resentment and bitterness. It wasn’t fair, I was an actress, I was not my mother, I refused to become my mother, and I knew this was the first step down a long and impossible backslidden slope.

Months later I finally said the words to someone else. I think my passion for writing equals my passion to act. It was strange to hear those words coming out of my mouth. The strangest part was that my resentment had disappeared. It was suddenly okay for me to admit that I could, perhaps, be a writer.

I’ve spent way too much time trying to figure out why I had such a strong negative reaction to being called a writer. I’m no closer to an answer, and no closer to knowing why it became okay. But I can call myself a writer now.

It scares me, but there is a peace in the fear along with an excitement as I explore this newly forgiven aspect of myself. The world seems like an open book, my oyster chock-full of pearls just waiting for me to come along and pick them up.

Like mother. Like daughter.

I’m okay with that now.

One is the Lonliest Number...

...and I should know, since I have mono.

Which means '1' as S. so gleefully told me.

He wasn't so gleeful when he found out that I can't kiss him for two months.

Lonely indeed.

Can’t Buy This

The sun was shining, illuminating occasional puffy white clouds and a big, blue Prairie sky. One arm tingled, refreshed and chilled from the AC, while one leg of my jeans was almost too hot from the sun shining in the window of S.’s ‘cranberry-purple’ car. The grey asphalt curved away, disappearing into the ditch as we drove along on our way to go grocery shopping. It’s nothing earth shattering, but it makes me happy.

We’ve gone shopping together before – it makes sense to carpool when you live out of town on a limited budget and to be perfectly honest, I’ll go with S. when I don’t need anything just to spend time with him. I love sitting in the passenger seat without a care in the world, knowing that the man I love is sitting so close to me.

We are quite different shoppers. He’s a ‘get in and get what you need and get out as fast as you can’ kind of guy, and not only because he’s so efficient in his daily life. He hates shopping, even for groceries. I don’t mind shopping. I don’t like buying so much, but I like to take my time, meandering from aisle to aisle and perusing the merchandise laid out on the shelves. Even when I’m focused and in a hurry I only go at his most relaxed pace. So far we’ve laughed about it – even if it’s sometimes only to dispel tension – avoiding any real squabbles. He bugs me that I’m going to get hit by the cart as I gaze star-struck at the shelves around me, I tease him about his scurvy-inducing phobia of the produce section.

We are also quite different when it comes to how we deal with our groceries. We were sharing a cart and as I wandered along he came up and casually put his ground beef in the cart. On top of some grapes.

“You can’t do that!” I almost shrieked.

He picked up his meat very quickly, startled. “Why not?”

“The meat juices could leak out…that’s how you get E-Coli. You can die,” I said. It seems I’ve heard that somewhere although upon reflection I don’t know if it’s true.

“It won’t leak,” he said, scoffing. “It’s sealed.” But nevertheless he put his meat on the very bottom of the cart.

I leaned towards him, instantly embarrassed for freaking out. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” he said, returning my kiss.

When we got to the teller, he started handing me things to put on the check-out counter. “Could you hand me the heavier stuff first?” I asked.

At his quizzical expression I explained, “It makes it easier for the person bagging the groceries if they’re in order of weight.”

“You do realize that they don’t pack them in your special order,” he said.

“Yes, but it makes it less likely that the bread will end up under the cans,” I said. I thought everyone knew this, but apparently not.

As we drove out of the valley, he shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

“You are really particular when it comes to food,” he said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m irritating you by not following your system.”

I thought for a moment. “I just forget that there’s more than one way to do things,” I said. I still felt bad for freaking out about the meat. “It surprises me and sometimes that probably sounds like I’m irritated, but I’m not. I’m not irritated with you.” I looked out at the hazy blue horizon. “I’ll try to remember that there’s more than one way to do things.”

“It’s okay,” he said.

I looked over at him, the familiar lines of his face and his blue eyes revealing themselves to me as if I’d never seen him before. “I really appreciate how you just take me in stride,” I said.

He glanced at me with a little smile in his eyes before looking back at the road. “You have to take me in stride too,” he said.

“I guess.” I was silent as I thought. “You just accept my idiosyncrasies. I appreciate it.”

He shrugged. “Why not? They’re not going to change.”

And just like that I discovered another level of love to fall into.

He accepts me right now, how I am now, and doesn’t need me to change for him to love me.

It surprised me. It still does – I guess I didn’t think I’d find someone who would, or could, accept me like that.

I had that goofy Bridget Jones smile on my face the rest of the way home. When he asked me why I had no answer except “I’m happy”. I finally understood the magic of those words – “He loves me just the way I am”. There is no phrase as perfect in the English language.

Or as priceless.