visiting fam-damily

I am pleased to announce the fun times I had while on vacation I had with my beautiful and wonderful family. This shot was taken by my brother andrew of me and my niece arriane. we were enjoying the last of a summer's day at the Just For Laughs Festival.

Docs I want to see

End of the Century: The Story of Ramones



In 1974, the New York City music scene was shocked
into consciousness by the violently new and raw sound
of a band of misfits from Queens called the Ramones.
Playing in a seedy Bowery bar to a small group of
fellow struggling musicians, the band struck a chord
of disharmony that rocked the foundation of the
mid-seventies music scene. This quartet of unlikely
rock stars traveled across the country and around the
world connecting with the disenfranchised everywhere,
while sparking a movement that would resonate with two
generations of outcasts across the globe.

Although the band never reached the top of the
Billboard charts, they managed to endure in face of
fleeting success and crushing interpersonal conflicts
by maintaining a rigorous touring schedule for
twenty-two years.

Tracing the history of the band, from its unlikely
origins, through its star-crossed career, bitter
demise and the sad fates of Joey and Dee Dee, End of
the Century is a vibrant, candid document of one of
the most influential groups in the history of rock.


Trembling Before G-d



An unprecedented feature documentary that shatters
assumptions about faith, sexuality, and religious
fundamentalism. Built around intimately-told personal
stories of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who are gay or
lesbian, the film portrays a group of people who face
a profound dilemma - how to reconcile their passionate
love of Judaism and the Divine with the drastic
Biblical prohibitions that forbid homosexuality. As
the film unfolds, we meet a range of complex
individuals - some hidden, some out - from the world's
first openly gay Orthodox rabbi to closeted, married
Hasidic gays and lesbians to those abandoned by
religious families to Orthodox lesbian high-school
sweethearts.

Winner of the GLAAD Media Award and the Golden Plaque
at the Chicago International Film Festival.


Investigation into the Invisible World



While scouting locations in Iceland, filmmaker Jean
Michel Roux discovered that many Icelanders truly
believe in the existence of pixies and elves.
Enchanted by the beautiful Icelandic landscapes and
intrigued by the sincerity of the people he
interviewed, Roux pursued his investigation. The
result is Investigation Into The Invisible World, a
feature-length documentary about the relationship
between humans and invisible beings such as elves,
ghosts, angels, water-monsters and extra-terrestrials.



How To Draw A Bunny



How to Draw a Bunny explores the fascinating, often
hilarious, and always enigmatic world of artist and
underground icon Ray Johnson.

A "Pop Art mystery movie", the film is framed by
Johnson's mysterious suicide on Friday, January 13th,
1995, the puzzling circumstances of which left both
his intimate admirers and the general public wondering
if this was a final "performance".
Little has been written about him, yet the man who
many have dubbed "the most famous unknown artist" was
considered a genius whose career spanned nearly fifty
years and whose collages have been exhibited in major
museums around the world.

Latin America Is Not Cute: How Globalization Overtook Magical Realism in South America

By Ignacio Bazon

A conspiracy against magical realism came to fruition in 1996 at a McDonald’s restaurant in Santiago, Chile. The occasion was the launch of McOndo, a new anthology of Latin American short stories. The title is tongue-in-cheek, combining Macondo, the name of the town in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realist classic, with condos, McDonald’s and Macintosh computers-—hallmarks of globalization in a rampantly urbanized South America.

“Latin America is quite literary, yes, almost a work of fiction, but it’s not a folk tale,” says Alberto Fuguet, co-editor of the anthology. “It is a volatile place where the nineteenth century mingles with the twenty-first. More than magical, this place is weird. Magical realism reduces a much too complex situation and just makes it cute. Latin America is not cute.”

Fuguet’s opinion stands in stark contrast to that espoused the world over since One Hundred Years of Solitude was published in 1967, kicking off the Latin American literary boom. First in Europe and then in North America, readers and critics alike began to pay attention to a fresh new literary world, in which poisonous snakes became friendly, dictators turned charming and flowers poured from the sky. Garcia Marquez was anointed the leader of this whimsical literary force: his work was seen as the perfect combination of lowbrow and highbrow culture, where the supernatural meets the concrete. Other Latin American writers, jotting down his recipe for success, began writing like him almost unconsciously. And while Isabel Allende succeeded in providing the genre with a feminist voice, most authors failed to splash magical realism with their own new colours. Garcia Marquez’s influence was so overwhelming that he eclipsed almost every Latin American who picked up a pen.

It has taken over twenty years for writers to move beyond his shadow. More than just a clever anthology title, the term “McOndo” has become shorthand for the movement that finally rebelled against the Latin American literary establishment. It represents a generation of authors who were raised in large cities during the 1960s and ’70s—writers like Rodrigo Fresen and Martin Rejtman of Argentina, Santiago Gamboa of Colombia, Jaime Bayly of Peru, Edmundo Paz Soldun of Bolivia and Gustavo Escanlar of Uruguay, among others. These authors, all under thirty-five when the anthology was published, had seen their home turf get inundated by American and European culture. As fast food restaurants, movie complexes, MTV and Rolling Stone became part of the landscape, they simply stopped relating to novels like One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Consequently, the works of McOndian writers—despite vast differences in style and theme—are strongly united by anti-magical realism (no more honey-hazed jungle towns) and by a gritty aesthetic of sex, drugs and urban alienation.

A case in point is Bad Vibes, Alberto Fuguet’s controversial and highly successful debut novel, which tells the story of an upper-class adolescent searching for his identity in the midst of Pinochet’s chaotic constitutional referendum of 1980. If 1996’s McOndo was the first manifestation of the conspiracy against magical realism, then 1991’s Bad Vibes was the inspiration. The excessive colloquialism of Fuguet’s language was nothing short of an obscene declaration of independence. While critics were equally astounded and disgusted, few could claim indifference to the novel’s moment of redemption, when the main character finds deliverance while snorting coke in a dank brothel with his father and two hookers.

Born in Santiago, but raised in Encino, California, Fuguet is the embodiment of globalization. Like Garcia Marquez twenty-five years before, Fuguet brought international attention to a generation of writers and became its most recognizable face—only this time, the artistic movement was not limited to writers. “McOndo,” he says, “is a global, mixed, diverse, urban, twenty-first-century Latin America bursting on TV and apparent in music, art, fashion, film and journalism—hectic and unmanageable.”

Brutish and global are traits that seem to work both for McOndian writers and for Hispanic artists in general. Latin American music today mixes traditional tango and electronic music (Bajofondo Tango Club and the Argentine members of Gotan Project), as well as rock, jazz and local folk (most notably Chile’s Los Tres and Mexico’s Cafe Tacuba). In cinema, the success of films like Amores Perros and Y Tu Mama Tambien shows that raw realism leaves a far stronger impression on international audiences than the magical realist overtones of, say, Frida (the Hollywood-financed brainchild of Mexican actress Salma Hayek).

Fuguet’s latest novel, The Movies of My Life, with its insistent grafting together of disparate genres, cultures and eras, gives some insight into the McOndo message. Waiting in an LA hotel room for a plane to Tokyo, a Chilean named Beltran Soler scribbles down the fifty movies that marked the course of his childhood. This list gives the novel its structure, each entry unfolding the tale of a child’s rootless existence in California and Santiago. His taste in cinema born out of his culturally anonymous state, Soler looks to Dumbo and Oliver! to replace the family he never had.
Like the McOndo movement itself, The Movies of My Life asserts that people’s tastes are not mere accidents, but in fact account for their present, explain their past and provide opportunities for reckoning. And when tastes shift rapidly and radically throughout an entire continent, that reckoning—beautiful, violent and loud—can change the course of literature.

Spanish Lesson: The Ball is Sacred

When refering to an abstract concept, an idea, a previous statement, or situation-none of which have gender--or to an unknown object, the neuter forms--esto, eso, and aquello--are used.

99 999-Noventa y nueve mil novecientos noventa y nueve.

I just learned that feeling like a baby jesus (como un nino jesus) means feeling like one of those little plastic jesuses that mexicans put in the cake at christmas. the unfortunate recipients of a nino jesus has to buy food (tostadas??) at easter for everyone in the spring.

feeling like a nino jesus means feeling comfortable, surrounded by warm fresh cake, the people you love, feeling comfortable, warm, fed, and happy.



it is also interesting to note that guetemala went to war with (nicaragua??) or some other latin american country over a bad call by a ref at a soccer match. the mayhem that is going to be upon montreal for the world cup. futbol is a religion in these countries, with the world cup being described to me as "an orgasm you wait 4 years to have."

the last world cup was completely insane in my portuguese neighbourhood, when brazil won. for a week, people were singing, yelling, screaming and dancing in the streets, wearing brazilian and portuguese flags, with the cars honking non-stop, not to mention rendering any sort of traffic flow completely hopeless.

i think canada doesn't even have a qualifying team this year, and the last world cup we were in was in the eighties. i think our only goal was to score against a country, but i'm not sure we even did that.

A banished chick gives the quote of the week

Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks recalls the harrowing details of "the incident"--the night at a concert in england where she said onstage, "just so you know, we are ashamed that the US president is from Texas."

Digested in 2003 on the eve of the US lead invasion of Iraq, Maine's comment fell onto the angry American mob, and they were merciless.

At the time, the Chicks had shelves full of awards and walls lined with platinum and gold records. The new single, Travelin' Soldier, had been at number 1 on the country charts. In one week, the song went down to No. 31, and it continued south from there. There were CD bonfires and boycotts, such as the "chicken toss" even in Kansas City, MO, where copies of the hit album Home were heaved into trash bins.

All three women remain opposed to the war in Iraq and believe that the Bush administration has repeatedly hoodwinked the American public. In an interview with Geoff Boucer of the LA times, Maines turns very serious when asked what she had lost in the wake of the Incident.

"I lost my optimism and my hope for humanity, " she said. "I'm not being funny. I try to find it. I hate it. It wasn't all gone after what happened to us, but then after the last election...it was gone."

"We've always kind of joked hta we didn't write great songs because we didn't have any baggage in our lives, we were too normal and fine," Maines said. And how is that's going? All three Dixie Chicks exchange looks and laugh.

Do it for YOU

Do it for you. You're not trying to impress anybody. And you have nothing to prove. You know who you are and you're comfortable in your own skin. In fact, you don't mind having a few lines that express the character and vitality in your face. Other lines, however, like the vertical frown lines between your brows, can make you look angrier and more stressed than you are. Or perpetually tired, even when you are well rested...

(from a pamphlet i found about Botox, in my gym I think.)

Maybe we should just lock ourselves into dungeons the moment we turn 45.

i massage people who have plastic surgery sometimes. it's a freakish thing for me, reflecting values i don't adhere to. the women are more likely to be bitchy and demanding. i think when you can't be happy with yourself, it's harder to be happy or easy going about anything.

exister en été

saludos roiboos, thankyou for showing up in my life!! here's a song for you by Charles Dubé.

Un Ciel pour le soliel

Violà je suis un peu perdu un peu surpris
Du soleil dans ma vie D'un ciel qui se veut
Je crois pour moi tout bleu
Mais parfois ma vie deveint folle et sans répit
Me laissant croire qu'il fait noir
Pour mon coeur et mes pensées Et pour mon humanité

J'aime le soleil dans tes cheveux J'aime ta bouche et tes yeux
J'entends ton rire dans mes oreilles T'es le ciel pour le soleil

Meme si je veux Tout l'amour
qu'on puisse avoir a deux Peur encore de rever
Comment faire pour t'aimer.
sans me perdre sans me briser C'est sur que j' veux
Me sentir libre d'exister

Comme un jour qui s'éveille Comme un arbre au soleil
Vivre, exister en été

J'aime le soleil dans tes cheveux J'aime ta bouche et tes yeux
J'entends ton rire dans mes oreilles

T'es le ciel pour le soleil T'as la douceur d'un matin du printemps
qui s'éveille sur la ville
Prendre un café avec toi, n'importe quoi tant tu sois
Mon éternité a moi

J'aime le soleil dans tes cheveux J'aime ta bouche et tes yeux
J'entends ton rire dans mes oreilles
T'es le ciel pour le soleil

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Banned from Vancouver's Human Rights Fest!!

Amnesty Forced to Withdraw Chavez Documentary from
Canadian Screening amid Threats of Violence.

Last year two Irish filmmakers were eye witnesses to
one of the most extraordinary events in recent Central
American history. Donnacha O’Brin and Kim Bartley had
travelled to Venezuela to film an intimate portrait of
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. They found
themselves in the middle of a coup staged by elements
in the military, powerful forces in the privately
owned oil companies and the privately owned media.

Venezuela is the US’s fourth largest supplier of oil,
and the largest outside the Middle East, but despite
this is an impoverished nation, with a massive gulf
between rich and poor. Chavez, a former military
officer, is a populist President and was elected with
a mandate to nationalize Venezuela’s oil. This has
enraged the US government and the large conglomerates
who own both the oil and the entirety of the private
media in Venezuela.

Donnacha and Kim were inside the presidential palace as
the coup unfolded in April 2002, and they captured
extraordinary scenes during and after the coup. They
witnessed how the private TV stations actively aided
and supported this military coup, and the way in which
events were manipulated and twisted on air. Most
importantly the two filmmakers captured the scenes as
millions of ordinary citizens in Caracas rose up
within days and restored the elected president, Hugo
Chavez, to power. It was a really incredible point
in the film when the
audience sees 3 million people surround the
palace, demanding the release of Chavez, as
well as the leftist, chavez-supporting
palace guards who were instrumental in
re-establishing the Chavez government. I didn't
quite understand what happened to him during the coup, but
the film makers portray that Chavez had been flown to
a remote island under custody.

If anyone gets a chance to see this film, I completely
recommend it. Some really unbelievable footage and
top-notch film-making.

“The Revolution will not be televised” has been shown around the world on
television and at festivals. It has won numerous
awards http://www.chavezthefilm.com/html/film/awards.htm

including the prestigious, Banff and Greisens awards.

However the documentary has been subjected to fierce
criticism. Wolfgang Chalk, A Venezuelan TV Producer
and Engineer, has spearhead a campaign backed by
Venezuelan private television producers, Generals and
the Caracas Chief of Police. They’ve campaigned on the
internet with a petition calling for the film to be
banned. They have harrassed film festivals and TV
stations who have planned on showing the film, calling
on them to withdraw the film. Judges from one
important documentary award have told of receiving
phone calls demanding they don’t choose this film in
the days before votes were cast.

This group seized on a decision by Amnesty
International in Vancouver to withdraw the film from
it’s forthcoming Human Rights Festival. Schalk’s,
curiously well organised pressure group took this as
“proof” of their claims that the documentary was
“lying” and began another round of calls to festivals
and TV stations on the strength of the withdrawal.


However Amnesty’s reasons for the withdrawal have
nothing to do with Schalk’s harassment and in their
own statement they say: “In the final two weeks of
October, we received from individuals and groups calls
for the cancellation of the screening of the film.
During this time we were also contacted by the chair
and director of the Venezuelan section who requested
us not to show the film. AI Venezuela believed the
screening of the film created the perception of an
association between Amnesty International and the
views portrayed in the film. At the time of the
showing, in the highly polarized climate in Venezuela,
the perception of association created a security risk
for AI Venezuela staff and members, described by the
Director as “a real threat against our security and
safety.”

Amnesty’s reasons for withdrawal of the documentary
had nothing to do with the content of the film but
rather to do with the very real threat of violence
against members of Amnesty International Venezuela, if
they went ahead with the screening. Their reasons for
removal are being misrepresented by a group of people
who wish to suppress “The Revolution Will Not Be
Televised”.

The film is currently on a limited US cinema release,
with distributors under pressure from powerful lobby
groups demanding it’s withdrawal.

Donnacha and Kim are angry about this stating: “It
would seem that whoever is behind the campaign was
determined at all costs to get AI to act in this way,
and then to “spin” the story to suit their own
purposes.” These two filmmakers dedicated their prize
at the recent Irish ESB media awards to “media
activists everywhere and the Indymedia Ireland
Collective”.

Read the statement from the filmmakers and the full
text of the Amnesty
statement here:

http://www.chavezthefilm.com/html/film/amnesty.htm

Love is No Big Truth

Another 2 weeks in my crazy life that moves around from place to place.

I decided to ditch the intensive university course that involved studying pavlov and skinner--I really hate that stuff. The prof had emailed us to say that he expected us to "eat, sleep, and breathe" the course, which, despite being an intensive, I thought was an unrealistic expectation. I will NEVER eat, sleep, and breathe university. I do realize that I am fortunate to be a Quebec student, and view my studies to be an amazing gift, yada yada. Now I am doing spanish 201, and trying to translate le petit prince into english, as well as some Jean Leloup as my french tutoring.


I had decided to take a lift to Toronto with Clive, one of my clients at the scandinave. he's been sort of flirting with me, but I don't mind really. he just broke up with his wife, works in an office, and is 45, and probably just needs a bit of excitement. We had some interesting conversation about depression, and the possible "cures". i feel like i have a lot to write about depression and will do an entire post just on that subject. Everything was cruising along, on a beautiful spring day, with Clive and I djing (he would play 2 songs and I would play 2 songs). My favorite part of the drive is just past Kingston, in the Gananoque area.

Around Oshawa, I began to feel really nervous about coming all that way to hang out with Roiboos. Although not an action out of character, it struck me as very crazy that i had travelled to Toronto to stay with someone i hardly knew. Why, I asked myself, was I not putting my energy into more valuable, tangable things, like a creative project, a puppet show perhaps, or a few of the book ideas i have, etc?

I got out of Clive's ride with my body over-loaded with stuff: books, a guitar, volleyball, fire toys, and squished-up left overs from the patio lunch with Clive. It was around 11 pm, and I called my friend Line from a payphone, a chineese woman i went to massage school with. She asked the typical question, "where ARE you, girl? (laughs)." She told me it was normal for people to look for love in their lives, and she reminded me that i haven't stayed in Montreal for an entire week since who knows when. It's true, i am often on the road, due to work mostly, but also because that is what i like to do.

I reluctantly went to eglington station to meet up with roiboos like we did the last time. I sat in an exhasted heap at the top of the station, and waited. I saw his black mass of curly hair and sort of hunched over posture skipping down stairs to find me, but I just continued to sit there. he came back up the stairs like a mexican peter pan. I still didn't move. finally i found the energy to go and find him, and after a few minutes of being around him, my anxiety thankfully melted away.

It was a fun, funny, throughly enjoyable time. Being a musician, whenever and wherever it was playing, i was transported into the beating heart of each song, and we were constantly discussing more techincal aspects of the music, and which parts of the song we liked best. Or we would just laugh at it. i can't really profess to have any talent musically, but it is something that lives inside me, and needs to be fed and watered like a room full of plants. I like it that i can suck and i don't feel like i have anything to prove to Roiboos.

We walked around Chinatown a lot, and took pictures of the pigs that hung in the windows, their heads gruesomely shriveled up, covered in a glossy sauce. There were all kinds of freakish fruits and displays. For example, the cabinet full of black tongues and dried-out turtles. it was strange for me to be feeling so well and happy in the world, in the same moment as witnessing these things that normally really disturb me--being reminded of humankind's cruel heart, our rampant over-consumption, and pollution.

Roiboos and I don't really see eye to eye politically, at least on some points. He's more conservative than me, I am gathering--and as a joke I accused him of being a republican, after he dissed the Venezuelan president, Chavez. i think he might know more than me about the zapatista crisis in chiapas, but being a lefty, i would naturally support any attempt of an indigenous minority to take a stand and defend what they consider to be an important way of life, and or piece of land. i think he argues that the indian zapatistas, led by a mexican spaniard, could have done better by working within the system, rather than trying to stage a rebel movement. From what i understood, he considered the entire affair was a bit of a t-shirt peddling joke.

We walked around queen west, and listened to records, and looked at all sorts of oddities. everything around me slowed down to a amicable hum, like a cat who is purring in a warm lap. i felt really safe and comfortable around roiboos.

One of my favorite moments of the two days we had together was when he wore a plastic bag on his head in the rain--i liked it that he didn't worry too much about looking ridiculous.

Love is no big truth (Kings Of Convience)

All I do is sleep all day, and think of you. A memory of the cushioned life I'm clinging to. The image of a mutual one-our haven. The sombre chords of our song-the fading. Love is no big truth, driven by our genes we are simple selfish beings. A symphony that's you, joyously awaking the ignorant and sleeping. Passion and its brother hate, they come and go. Could easily be made to stay for longer though. Many people play this game, so willingly-do I have to be like them, or be lonely? Love is no big truth, driven by our genes we are simple selfish beings.

We talked about travelling together in the south of mexico. his infusion of happiness has inspired many projects to completion, and i am feeling respected and supported.

I left toronto at 12 30 pm, and the line was curving around the block. when it was my turn to get onto the bus, and there were only isle seats left. In this precarious situation, you have to move up and down the isle, and tolerate the wrath of some un-lucky person who will be invaded by you. Invaded for the entire night ride to montreal.

i chose a skinny geeky chineese guy with braces. he didn't seem too happy, but what do you expect, i guess. I had just left Roiboos seconds earlier and was feeling this blank space beside my body. i was reluctant to come down from my high, and reluctant to go back to Montreal.

A few minutes later a black man came onto the bus holding a sleeping child, with the mother behind him, i presumed. They discussed what they were going to do. I piped up and said, "you should ask someone to give up their seat for you." Then, I turned around and began asking if there was someone who would give up their seat for this Mother and child. I really couldn't believe how selfish and ugly and mean everyone was being. The guy beside me wouldn't budge, and 2 women who had an entire seat to themselves shot me seething looks, and refused. Finally someone moved, a fatter black woman who had to squish herself beside someone else, and we shared the aisle together all the night. When nerdboy beside me tried to defend himself, i just ignored him. I hated feeling like some kind of maitre of manners, but people can just be so impossibly difficult sometimes.

That morning, the bus driver up Parc avenue was also an uberbitch, and i guess it's up to me to not let these people ruin my good times.

That weekend at work, I had a run-in with a horribly ugly, mean, obnoxious american client at the scandinave. it was just too much to think about being alone in a room with this human being for an hour, let alone being expected to touch his disgusting skin. GROSS. i refused to do the massage, and he responded a bit explosively. i imagine him to be the sort of person to punch and terrorize his girlfriend, or go and see prostitutes. Anyway, i am feeling really happy that i was strong enough to say no, and that it's my choice in the end who I give a massage to. the next day i massaged an african woman with dark and rich choclate skin, and maybe it's a bit of reverse racism, but it is always my honour to massage women of colour. an annoying weekend overall, but content to be finished for the week. i will have to work hard for May 24 (la fete de la reigne) and try and make 700 bucks or so.

Merci Roiboos pour un bon visit. Saludos.

Lords of the Rings

Freetown, Sierra Leone. Diamonds provoked and then fueled a civil war in which torture, mutilation and child slavery were used to terrorize civilians. They abandoned their homes and farms to survive, and many starved in the process.

I had originally heard about this story from Genevieve, who travelled to the diamond- war territory in Africa, with other gruesome accounts.

Irony plunges the hot iron even deeper into our sides, if we consider that diamonds actually represent a commitment of perfect love in the west!! I wonder what my brother would say about NGO's like world vision trying to educate people to stay away from buying diamonds.

There was another poster on the wall of the place where i bought this postcard. The picture was of a man who's hands had been cut off. Like diamonds, mutilation is forever. Had it been a white woman with her hands cut off, rather than a poor black man, would I have been more shocked and dismayed?

Forgive me for diving even further into this disturbing topic, but in that moment of seeing his two stubs where hands used to be, I was reminded of the mountain gorrillas who are poached, and the leathery black hands sold as fancy ash trays. I imagined a row of white woman's hands cut off just below the dainty wrists, their diamonds sparking on their fingers. Needless to say, if any potential suitor were to offer me a diamond as a proposal to spend the rest of my life with him, I am sure i would regard the loathed thing with horror, and the answer would be a NO.

Although, Louis just told me that diamonds are becoming a huge industry in the northern communities of Canada...perhaps there is a way to buy guilt-free diamonds, or corruption-free diamonds. i wonder what that logo would look like. Two brides shaking hands beside an inuit child perhaps, or the healthy smile of an african father in the setting sun.

The coolest travelers

Good day to all readers.
back on the road again, with some known and some
unknown territory. I started the journey at 6 a.m.
on
Friday.

Wanting to commit to my new conscience around global
warming, air travel, and other green house gas
emitting forms of transport, I decided to take the
train as my launching point, to Ottawa. I do really like the train. So smooth, so
much space, and better, less crowded stations. I

I have been following Via's depressing financial situation,
and reading all of Via's issued publications, "Destinations", with equal distaste. Too bad we can't get train travel more on track in Canada.

I live on St. Urbain, so it's convenient to just
step outside my window and find the next cab flying off the plateau. I always enjoy the cruise when I have the opportunity to speak French with a Haitian immigrant, and ask him questions like, "aime tu Montreal?" and try and get the conversation to take more political turns.

Friday Morning was sunny and pleasant, with no problems
or lost items to report. Just exhaustion after
staying up all night writing and enjoying the last
moments in my room before my trip to Ottawa and
beyond.

Everyone in the Ottawa commuter line was rude. I
showed up during rush hour and no one wanted me and
all of my luggage in their way. I did eventually
limp to the correct connections (a badly swollen toe injury) and find my way to the nice little apartment of dear friends, Julia and Genevieve.

We all were delightfully reeling in the freedom of a
day off. All day we rolled around in the sun
lethargically like cats, and laughed at each other's
jokes, and discussed, talking circle style, how we
would spend the weekend, which had tentatively been
planned as a trip to a "wilderness women's network"
weekend at a camp near Peterborough.

"I just don't get it," said Genevieve, of the women's
only space we are about to participate in. Genevieve
likes boys, and is slurping at the thought of finding
a spring fling. With no chances in sight this
weekend, motivation is low.

I was indifferent. The workshops in nature with other
femmes seemed neat. It has been years since I
have been in a women's only space. I always find that
I end up doing things and finding strengths that I
never knew I had when in an extended time frame of
women's only space. An un natural experiment that
gives perspective. There is a certain safety you can find, ironically, in women's only space. Usually you think in your mind, "well, there's this guy here, and he can help protect me from whatever ills and dangers there are."

but seriously, one of the things that we worry about the most as women and as mothers, is the whole strangers thing. The bad men who might take us--and worse.

but that weekend of moms and kids, there was a certain chilled out, "let them roam free" ethic circulating.

we decide that before the weekend, we would have a
celebration of men party, and invite every cool guy we
know in Ottawa to attend. It ended up being a fun
evening, full of gender-loaded jokes, sometimes moving
towards the raunchy side. Some interesting
conversation about being horny in the spring, and
stories from our lives about the disastrous or
beautiful experiences with coupling up, or flinging,
etc.

the wilderness women's weekend was low-key. Tons of
babies, and moms who slung them in these cool cloth
things, and breast-fed. I went to a workshop with
Laurie Gough, a Guelphite who wrote a book about
traveling that I read in Hong Kong. She just wrote
another book called "kiss the sunset pig", recently
published by penguin, mostly about driving to
California in search of the perfect place, in a not so
perfect car. I have a lot of funny and treacherous
stories about cars also, so I am interested to read
her account.

my main critique of her first book, although it's been
a long time since I read it, was the annoying smug,
cooler than thou attitude you find often in travellers
and travel writing. ie, the more places you've been,
and the longer you've been traveling, the cooler you
become. Why is it that you don't find Peruvian goat
herders backpacking around the world? Why don't poor
African farmers consider it a priority to soul search
and find "experiences" in far-off destinations? Duh.

I do love traveling and I could make fun of myself
in the same way, but I don't celebrate travel and
romanticize it in the same ways anymore. I guess once
I had a few serious problems while on the road, or got
a heavy case of the "wandering blues", or I realized
that this or that triumphant "traveling experience"
was merely a product that I had the money to buy as a
result of the strong Canadian dollar, my priviledges
as a white person, and the various sad and sick
facets of international disparity. In my opinion, travelers
and tourists don't have many differences. And being
a traveler or being a tourist definitely does not
instantly qualify the individual as interesting.

In Laurie's case, they are really interesting stories,
so I would recommend her first book overall...if I could
just remember what it is called. There are beautifully painted Fijian women on the cover, and the main story told was of her time in Fiji.

I was supposed to go to the high ropes course at the same time as Laurie's workshop, and just couldn't find the motivation in the rain, and didn't have a harness. Just turning into an old wuss I guess. I am going to order a new harness this week and try and get back into climbing.

in the first exercise of the writing workshop, we did the artist's way classic
stream of consciousness writing, which I am not
particularly a fan of. She asked us imagine ourselves in the forest, but since I associate that with working at the Scandinave, I chose to imagine myself in my room in Montreal. I wrote, on tiny pieces of scrap paper with my favorite black pen:

"My room is clean--the laundry is done, and there's nothing to do and nothing is lost. It is dark outside my windows--8 frames inside of 4 larger ones, facing St. Urbain on Montreal's plateau.

Soon Blake will email me back, and we will resume our dialogue that never really runs out.

The thing I have gotten out of this workshop so far, is the feeling that I could really be a writer, and maybe I will be a "real writer" someday. I don't like being attached to that dream though-I sort of don't care anymore. Somewhere in the not caring, the real writing comes out. Blogging is quickly becoming my new medium-I like the feeling that people may be reading it. I guess you can find material in it, but I prefer writing with a bit of purpose, right off the start. Hence blogging."

in the next exercise, Laurie asked that we team up and write a mini biography of another woman in the group. She was really interested in me, so we interviewed each other. I told her about how I was raised in a born again context, spent my last year of high school studying maps and travel plans, and then left to travel to Haida Gwaii, with embellishments and details.

this is the biography that I wrote about her:

"Laurie reminds me of Guelph. Her red hair sticks to her face, and a white hand reaches to push it away while she leans over the sink. Hand-made glass trinkets catch the light in the window frame above, treasures bought during the rush-hour at the community farmer's market on some fall Saturday morning.

A stack of books, and the buzz, noticed slightly, from a computer left on in the office. In recent times, a child has come into the picture- turning everything upside down, including the texture of love shared with a partner whom she'd met at the Albion bar while engaged to someone else.

In this southwestern Ontario town full of single women, she managed to throw down her Scottish charms enough to captivate. "No, no, no--" she would scream during the day, of the then-current fiancé. A new face, a new love, and a new beginning for Laurie.

Travel stories and travel plans remain as a suspended homogeneous mixture inside her that sometimes settles into distinct layers, into the form of published works. Or, they are saved, for the days when the little boy is grown enough to carry along like a precious piece of luggage, or can float along like Huck Finn on a raft."

I read it out to the group, being the first workshopee to share.

Afterwards, I felt a sort of awkward silence. Laurie turned to me and said, "You're gifted. You're a gifted writer." It does feel good to hear praise, especially from someone you esteem, but I usually shrug at both criticism and praise. All I can do is what I can do, and that's it.

It set a weird precedent, since after that we were all trying to be polite towards each other's greatness, with a lot of "oh, it's so good," after everyone read
each other's writing.

I suddenly longed to be alone, in front of the
impersonal screen, writing to a face less audience. I
did end up spending more time in that classroom,
rolling around and stretching on the floor. my wish was granted in the end.

Later that evening, I had the oppourtunity to be key grip for the open stage performances. i liked that. and i invited my friends to come for a sleep over in the class room where i did the writing workshop. It was much warmer than the unheated cabin we were assigned.

On Sunday, I found a lift to guelph, with suprise suprise, a mom
and a babe. I slept the whole way in the back of a
dolphin camper van, freezing, covered with a thin
fleece blanket, during the cold rainy drive.

she dropped me off at on an affectionately considered corner of guelph. more babies have been born there recently, from a mom that i used to babysit. That mom and that new baby live beside one of my best friends, andre, and his girlfriend, amelie. they both have businesses and
struggle to make ends meet. on their bookshelf there
are titles like "water", "david suzuki: earth time",
"green architecture", "fatal harvest", "forests", and
"fueling the future." the office smells wonderfully
of homemade soap products, and there are quilts and
plants and drawings of people skating, and photographs
of things that grow and are alive. Music: african
groove, an instrumental album by bruce coburn, and
Nick Drake.

I love it here; inside this house and on this little
patch beside GCVI, it is everything I want in guelph and holds
every good memory.

the wonderful woman erin, who i used to babysit, sometimes fills me with some sort of
jealous longing, but I guess we all have our lives to
live, and i have no idea how i would just snap my
fingers and find that sort of settled life, or where
it would be, or with whom.

best to just let life unfold with no expectations. i
am coming to accept that i may live like some sort of
transient forever, and that will be okay. certainly
there will be no loss for interesting stories.

I had a wonderful time planting witch hazel with andré, on a bit of land north of guelph that he rents. there was blue skies, cool air, deer shit that was black and shiny and wild, and a pond, and trees. we made jokes and had a picnic of paradise.

I also remember goofing around with andrew and julie, having a fabulous dinner with blake at einsteins....(the restaurant I worked at, as a depressed 18 year old, just after my dad died, for a pychotic alcoholic). new owners, new colours, and a new life I have.

on thursday, on the corner of oxford, near the library, in guelph, I was lost and couldn't decide on wether to go and visit andré's parent's one last time, in their cozy house. it was a perfect temperature and beautiful, and i didn't want to "waste" the hour.

I would be missing my bus to toronto at 4 30. however, there was a certain amigo from mexico that i wanted to visit....

I had just come from writing in Henry's backyard. It was a long walk through subburan lawns and ugly houses, but well worth it. The front of Henry's house is covered with bicycle corpses, relics, posters, and strange colours. Things interesting. The backyard is a small patch of forest, where I saw 4 different kinds of wild birds (a gorgeous bluejay, robins, sparrows, and a shiny black species I don't recognize), a fitting st.francis of assisi statue, and other bits of bric brac.

it's interesting to me how humanity focuses mainly on ourselves; having children, studying human health, transport, politics, etc. In this world it is really refreshing to step outside of the human sphere, and consider the life of a bird or tree as precious and valuable, in and of itself, rather than thinking about what it could provide for our lives, or what space getting rid of these things would create for myself. i guess i am nothing if not a tree hugging dirt worshipper. (ha ha) it seems like collectively, we are striving for a sterile world.

a friend had suggested that we do a puppet show in henry's yard. i imagined that it would be about a sailor lost in the world, trying to find his way back to the ocean.
we could put boats in the pond.

for those of you who don't know, henry passed away this christmas. he is happily re-joined with the earth, the agony of cancerous sickness has passed to peace, with a legacy of plants and knowledge left behind him.

it is amazing for me to think about how many of my closest friends have dealt with cancer and or depression.

standing on that oxford corner in guelph, i decided to hit the road for toronto. I hoped that my sister in law was back with her car, so i could lug my gear with 4 wheels instead of 2 legs. no luck. my brother offered some of his arms and legs to help me tho. we got to the bus station just in time to say "I love you", and that was it for my guelph trip. i had so much fun and feel grounded and relaxed.

the ontario fields rolled out like a familiar quilt, until there was nothing but lanes and lanes of highways, and industrial buildings, and advertising boards, mega style. the water on lake ontario shimmered and people walked and ran along the edge of it. people were standing on the balconies of their condos and taking in sun.

I got into the station and listened to a fire alarm, and then fire trucks, and then watched the slow anticlimatic stroll of firemen, who came to turn off the alarm, the sound of which was creating as much panic as any fire would have. those alarms really don't help crisis situations. i called my dear friend in the cozy house that i decided not to visit one last time. the message I left created some free space inside me to feel excited about my toronto adventure.

I called Roy. Roy is the mexican boy i met on a bus 2 weeks ago, who is studying english in toronto, who is an architect, who is fun, cute, and has some kind of youthful un-jadded ness that makes me feel less jadded too. he likes hanging around me, since i know canada more than him, and have helped to facilitate his 2 best days in our native land, strong and free. or so he tells me.

I don't like his name. I don't think it suits him. I think his parents named him that so he could have more of an edge, or oppourtunities, with an english name. ug, so un-true to his background, and so un-telling of his person. I would like to either call him José, after one of my favorite cafés in Montreal, Chez José, or call him roiboos, after that yummy tea.

we met up at englinton station, and there was no nervousness or awkwardness, despite a significant language barrier. neither of us knew where to go or what to do. i suggested the st.lawerence market. We found someone who knew where to point us, and we we went to king st. station, and started wandering around corktown. we discovered the market was closed, but opens at 5 am, so i guess it's a morning activity. oh well, the journey is more important that the destination, as they say.

after admiring the old row houses, parks, red brick, cafés and theatres, we found ourselves in a pub, drinking, and talking about roiboos's crazy little brother pretending to be a dinosaur during a soccer match, and the origins of nachos. We ate some nachos, and drew each other. i liked his drawing of me more than the one that i did of him. he pulled out pictures of his paintings, and a postcard with one of his photographs. roiboos believes that canadians are more open than americans, and i feel proud to be part of a mulitcultural society here. there still are lots of morons that live here, and i think sometimes the international community gives us more credit than we deserve, especially if you look at canada's horrendous track record.

the attraction was becoming undeniable, and there was nothing in between us. there were no "issues", pressing time constraints, or partners from the past glaring over our shoulder. in we fell like 2 kids tumbling over the side of a boat. the water was warm and posed no danger.

we decided to go and try and find somewhere to dance. back onto a streetcar. i was enjoying toronto--the endless shiny streetcar tracks so full of possibilities and dreams. we got off when we saw a backpacker's--surely they would offer some sound advice. the checker girl suggested gypsy coop on queen west--perfect, my favorite part of toronto. the shops--costumes, art supplies, punk rock venues, designer "indie" style clothes, traveller cafes, dinner clubs--provided smaller bits of conversation and amusement. although it was chilly, at least it wasn't humid and smoggy. after crashing a vernisage and looking at wacky art with all of toronto's hipsters packed loudly into a tiny gallery, eventually we did find our destination.

karaoke. the chefs were singing along to cher and mainstream hip hop sets, and Roy and I took a couch corner. now that i think of it, I should have looked up "the only living boy in New york" by simon and garfunkel, and tried to sing it. my steam was running out at that point, i think. more drinks and some funny salsa, and break dancing.

so that's it--hopefully I will be seeing more of roiboos.

computer bummers

what a beautiful day I had!!

it was a perfect sky, not too hot, and blue, and sunny. in Montreal we have to revel in the nice weather while we still can, since i can feel a potentially serious heatwave season approaching. what will become of us? I am reading a book called a guide to the end of the world-- everything you'd rather not know. it's depressing, obviously. i guess david suzuki was being criticized for being too doom and gloom--and then he wrote a book called "finding hope" or something much catchier than that I think, but with the same premise. maybe i should read that one next!!

I also picked up a book called Finding Lily which is the travel log of a bereaved husband after his wife jumps off a balcony. While flying around the world, he makes a series of drawings that he would routinely mail back to himself in Canada, and those are published too. i like it, although I found it a bit flat or dry sometimes, and in my imagination the story is much more tactile, with some way of printing and obtaining the true essence of the original postcards.
or, other bits of travel, like ticket stubs or photographs, that you might expect in a travel journal. I first heard the man speaking on CBC, with that wonderful "book" journalist, with the voice like liquid chocolate (whom I unfortunately do not know the name of, despite combing through the website.)

i sat and read some books at Concordia today also. one was a huge study on silicon valley, in California. it is truly astounding how much toxic waste is needed and produced while manufacturing computers. i didn't know how waste intensive it is. the industry also has another dark side--pun intended--of the exploitation of workers in factories that are often illegal, or trapped in over-seas cheap labour contracting. so what does that mean us? what does that mean for me, after purchasing a laptop, which i am loving, and while I watch myself becoming further dependent on the lifestyle and privileges afforded to a westerner like me? i need to do further research to find out how someone like me could actually make more conscious choices in terms of computer use--if anyone has any ideas, write back!

I think it's easy to become complacent in these matters--it's hard to see how my choices effect anything. i could be oblivious, and just consider that I purchased something, and made a salesperson happy, and that's it.

Computers, and the increased use of these technologies often become a wedge that drives the world's poor further away from any chance of affluence. considering that the keyboard represents for the most part, an english alphabet, or at least people with a language that also has this alphabet, would have a much easier time using a computer. it also requires electricity, and creates a lot toxic waste when you throw out a computer...


timewarp...now I am sitting on my brother's couch in his apartment in guelph. we somehow accidentally did not call our Mother, and now I feel bad. Oh well, it's hard to fit in everything on a trip of this nature. I do love her, and it would have been fun to see her. it's another blue-skies day and i am happy to pack up my stuff and hit the road again.

This trip has been fun, and i will write the full account next time.


things i need to blog:

camphill communities

that annoying magazine, destinations put out by via rail...the "men"issue.

sarah harmer

my business trip with uncle paul

welcome to the first ever post of MissE's blog.

i got into this haphazzardly. I was sleeping on Louis's couch; messy, dark, caked with cat hair. I had a dream, not a good dream. A dream that left me feeling out of sorts. When I woke up, Mama Mia (black, nice, fluffy... she's the Mom of a feline foster family that louis doesn't have the heart to send back to the SPCA) was sitting right beside my head, with a wise expression, and purring. She never does that. it was almost as if she knew the nature of my dream, and wanted to curl her soft body around me in comfort.

I dreamt that a character from my Guelph days, Blake Kennedy, with a furrowed brow and a booming voice, was discussing with one of my professors, Robert Hopp, all of the reasons why i shouldn't be a student at university. In real time, this dream followed being harshly rejected from a local massage studio (i am a massage therapist) after a long anticipated second interview. that's probably the reason why i had some doubts floating in the under-layers. Right away I thought, "Blake Kennedy? what the hell? what was he doing in my dream?" and i googled him in Louis's office. To my delight and suprise, Blake has become a new regular penpal, and has provided support in real life much the opposite of my dream-time encounter; lavishing me with compliments like "you are the personification of cool" and giving me some sort of perspective on how far I have come since co-habitating a sugarbush subburb with Blake, over 10 years ago. he has a blog on blogger too, so there you go, MissE's blog is born.

Back to describing Louis's apartment. this is a den with messier territory than any words could describe. fascinating tho. every time i am in louis's house, i am amazed and fascinated by at least one previously undiscovered bit of local culture; a new record, a strange little book, etc. He owns at least 3 businesses with names like archive montreal, and distroboto (a distribution project whereby local artists put their work in converted cirgarette machines). He has over 30 000 records, and pretty much every corner of a ground floor 7.5 is crammed with stuff, and a refuge for at least 4 cats at any one time. Louis, eccentric, writer, overly cerebral nerdy person (with old, falling apart glasses that too large for his face) in his mid 30's, is one of my best friends in Montreal.

This morning I am listening to folk roots on CKUT, the McGill radio station, and am enjoying both the sun and the cool breeze that I welcome into my gorgeous room, facing one of the main arteries of the ciy, St. Urbain. There is another Mélissa whom I co-habitate with. She's on her way to Peru and presently calming her travelling companion, a quebecois girl whom she has known from childhood. Mélissa (her) and Mélissa (me) regularly find themselves having impromtu dance sessions in the kitchen, to traditional quebecois music, or latin music, mostly. She goes swing dancing and thinks she is fat. Too bad, I thought and hoped that those insecurities in women were passé, like some kind of monster that was in a previous dream.

I had another bad dream last night. I dreamt that my brother had died, and i didn't take the time I hadbeen offered to spend with him. It's amazing so much sadness can exist inside of one person. It was such a relief to find some respite upon waking up. My brother is the one of nicest and most wonderful guys I have ever met, and i feel really lucky that he's one of my family, and also that he hasn't died yet. Andrew is a photographer, doing weddings mostly at the moment, and wants to go back to do more work for WorldVision Canada.

Recently I wrote a letter to the editor of "ZiMagazine", this canadian publication supposedly for"the young sophisticate". among other glossy photos, there is a white, pretty girl holding a cell phone to the camera, like she had just opened it up at her birthday party. The website also cites that Zimagazine is for people in my age range, for individuals "not just smart, but truly intelligent, technologically savy, and fashion conscious." I think the entire idea is self-defeating. Maybe Zimagazine wants all of these "cool" young people to identify to Zi, but why would intelligent young people choose to read Zi?

all of these incredibly sophisticated members of the editing team obviously haven't learned anything from highschool, or the years hence: Not wanting to be cool is cool, or not worrying about being cool is cool. being inclusive to all members of society is also more cool than trying to be truly intelligent, or fashion conscious. My mockery of these perfect people is given further opportunity after seeing their pathetically simple website, with half of links down, and no interesting graphics or flash animation to exemplify why"technology savvy" hipsters would be impressed by the display.

www.zimagazine.com

i don't know, maybe i am just being snobby. do elle and fashion montreal have any right to be young and sophisticated? if they don't call themselves such, is it any better? how are these idiot magazines contributing to women's body images and general well being? Zi magaZine seems to think that men will also be interested, but I kind of think that most of these glossy magazines are suited to a female or male readership; not both. who knows. i'm more into the indie, community-focused, counter-culture type publications anyway, if that isn't apparent already.

the editor of Zi is an immigrant from africa, and using the magazine as a "mentor in print" for folks getting out of the gutter, and it is admirable to read her editorial. so maybe i am just being mean?? but still, i would have more respect for the woman if she was investing her energy into some other kind of project, one that didn't have a young white woman on the front of the website, with an exclusive invition for the young sophisticate.


so that's it...taking a trip to toronto to visit a young cute architect from mexico, have coffee in the beaches, and visit my very alive brother.

later M> >