On Meetings

Meetings. They can be bloody awful, or they can crack open that tough ostrich egg of new possibilities. Today was a good one. People were in a good mood. It sets the tone. There was a new person involved. New energy in the room. There was blue sky outside the window. We reconvened at the Vancouver Community College for a bang-up lunch. I had pork pot roast with an excellent dark gravy with mushrooms, pearl onions and bacon. I also had parsnip and carrot mash and brussel sprouts with pecans for just about seven bucks. It was such good value. And you can sit in a room with quite a good view of some of the DTES heritage buildings. I bought some chocolates and also a whole pumpkin pie, which was less that four dollars. Amazing. Good food and good ideas makes for a happy girl.

I seem to be reading a lot of Swedish mystery novels lately which lead my imagination into the land of deep snow and ice and brutal, gothic tragedy. Reminds me of Saskatchewan! The sense of humour seems as dark and familiar as the landscape. I wish you could get mystery novels delivered to your door like pizza. I'm craving another one right now--a novel, not a pizza. While we're on that topic, my friend Jen is narrating the Nature of Things this week and it's all about forensic science--check it out. You can watch it online right now.

Went to T and T and bought ginseng tea and bitter melon tea as well as soba noodles. We had a simple tofu and veg soba bowl meal tonight. That's one of my favorite meals and I always forget about it.

Meetings: It's all about the attitude. "I make a note," as Beckett would say.

Be Gentle: A Meditation

Be gentle with people, I remind myself. Do not be a lion. Leave that to them. Be a mensch. Be tender. Be patient. Even when the math is not adding up, even when the little goat does not want to be neutral, just get on with the work.

Today I saw a man with a car. The trunk was full of white and pink balloons. Close the lid carefully. I was curious. Wanted to get in the car and come along to the party. Walk away, walk away.

I have to be careful. One time I was in Glasgow and stopped a man to ask directions to a gallery in a part of town I didn't know. He had a box in his hands, like a cake box. I kept looking at it and for some reason I thought he was going to give it to me. He did not. He gave me directions and then he warned me not to talk to strangers. I think that in spite of his appearance he could have been quite dangerous. There but for the grace....

Last night there was a storm which stole my dreams. I had to wake up and go to sleep again so I could get them back. I dreamed I was moving from one house to another--always moving, a recurring theme. We had a house on the west side and the east side and I was relieved because I was so tired and needed a place to rest from all this traveling back and forth.

I love to go a wandering along the mountain trail and as I go I love to sing Valderee Valderah, but we are so tired, even in our dreams. Patience requires energy and strong, healthy neurons. I was on the bus, well fed and sunshined, feeling the bliss and a baby started to moan and fuss and I felt badly for the mother because I know how it can wear away, the sound of a tired and hungry infant who is on a bus on the way home and wants something you don't have to give at that moment. We all have that infant inside ourselves, moaning at inopportune times, screeching with unfulfilled desire.

We are all waiting for the bus to take us home. We dream about it. We demand a better transit system for our restlessness, for the being of in-between, when nothing could really satisfy. Or could it? Could we have a bit more Orient Express, a little less Greyhound of Doom? Could we be happier on the bus? Little Miss Sunshine.

What makes you happy, patient, buoyant? I like to be part observer and part participant, suspended perfectly in between the two. I want to go to the party but part of me just wants to watch. I'd like to be a pretty silvery pink moth perched on a swaying balloon, listening, observing and making a little bit of the magic.

What about those Golden Globes, eh? I didn't watch them, but looked up some of the gossip online. So many spoiled little butterflies. Breasts like balloons and dresses like jibs. I wasn't invited. Wasn't invited to that five ring circus either, even though we have to pay for all the foofaraw.

Have You Met Aleksandr Orlov?

Need a diversion? Have you seen the ads that created a craze for Aleksandr Orlov the Meerkat? Ules and I had fun checking them out last night. The "bloop" reels are my favorite. The trailer for his latest movie is fun too. Apparently this Christmas Harrod's sold a plush (talking) version of Orlov for about 20 pounds, but there was such a demand that Fayed ended up donating the lot to charity. The toy doesn't capture him at all anyway. The ads do tend to take over your brain--you have been warned.

Bloops are here:
http://www.comparethemeerkat.com/specials

Creativity Circle

I find it interesting that two of my favorite female friends decided to spend their birthday parties making art with other women. One party was a back yard sketching bee, and the other was a book-making party. Part of my work has been very social and the other part isolated and almost anti-social. I have a split personality that way. I love the team spirit of working with a company to put on a play or a community art event, but I also need time alone to feel grounded and to re-charge my social batteries. I am very lucky to have two very creative friends and neighbors who have generously agreed to share their creative dreams and deadlines with me. We will get together every three weeks to check in, chat, and do something fun.

This first time we met we discussion our New Year's Resolutions and some tactics for getting them done. We shared what we'd like to give to the group and what we'd like to receive. We brought some old magazines and made resolution collages with scissors and glue sticks. It's good to have something for your hands to do. It creates a rhythm in the conversation. Rip, snip, glue, chat. We drank rooibus chai and ate C's homemade cherry squares. We talked about clearing the clutter and getting healthier. J says she read about a technique for achieving your resolution: visualize an image of what the reward will bring you. I see myself singing and dancing in a sexy black dress with a fringed hem. How about you?

We set goals and deadlines and agreed to share soup recipes. I headed home with a feeling of hopeful responsibility. I'm lucky to have such great neighbors.

I celebrated Art's Birthday by cleaning the house. I vacuumed for hours and I was up and down the stairs several times doing about five loads of laundry. Moved furniture and vacuumed up acres of dead skin and mouse poop. I am visualizing a beautiful clean house that I can invite people to without feeling embarrassed. I love the smell and feel of fresh duvets and sheets. My wool duvet has a wonderful sheepy lanolin smell after it's been laundered. I am imagining the fresh smell of lavender and newly painted walls. Clean. Zen. Calm. Ohm. Happy Birthday to Art.

That Spring Fresh Scent

Yes, the hazelnut catkins are blooming and the witchhazel is blossoming. I've seen snow drops and I've smelled that delicate almost-but-not-quite hyacinth smell that always catches me off guard on a grey watery day and nearly knocks me on my ass. I can never remember what that plant is called, but I love the its potent sensual mystery. For the past month I have been pecking away at a grant for a school garden. Research plants: peck, peck, peck. Research prices: peck, peck, peck and blah di blah di blah and so on and so on. (I had a psych prof that used to talk like that.) I got my Richter's seed catalogue in the mail and I'm stoked to put in a nice big order if we get that grant. (Please, please, pretty please?) I've got the flower beds all color-coded in my mind and I'm really excited about the burgundy part of the garden--nice rich shades of amaranth and 'Purple Volcano' sage. I've also been in meetings to plan spring celebrations and that always cheers me up, especially when Mutha Nature puts up a big fat rainbow in the sky after the meeting--how great is that? Power point presentations be damned!

So my eyes are a bit crossed after all this writing and research, but I think by next week I'll be able to make some visual art to balance things out a bit. I've been working with ideas of moths and pixelated camo material, so I'm excited just to do some pure experimentation for a change. I had a dream where a little stooped man told me in a German accent that the energy in my left hand was blocked. So there you go, I need to work with the right brain a bit more, je pense.

I'm also very grateful to the team of people I've been working with to pull the grant together. I really hope we can invite you all to our new garden this summer. Fingers crossed.

Sanity in Mind and Body

The Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says that "the sanity of the body is the sanity of the mind." That would be a pretty good mantra. Today after we got back from school I told Ules I needed a nap. He gave me a hug and a kiss and rubbed my back between the shoulder blades just the way I had done for him when he had a nose bleed on Sunday. It was very sweet and tender and good for my sanity.

For those of us who had babies in 2000, the real turn of the decade for us will be on our child's tenth birthday. This will mark the halfway point to their adulthood. The last ten years have been marred by paranoia, fear-mongering and hatred on a grand scale, but when it comes to the home front we tried our best to foster affection, loyalty, patience, and passion in our personal and *familial relationships. Locavores of lurve. I think what has really marked the decade for me is a kind of weird nostalgia for off-battlefield WWII-- the old "mucking in and helping each other in the blitz" kind of spirit. Victory Gardens are all the rage, and a local shop here sells tea towels and aprons with WWII slogans: "MEND AND MAKE DO," and "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON." The growing awareness of global warming has made us think about thrift and courage at home as well as the preservation and mending of the fragile environment which shelters, clothes, and feeds us.

This was a decade I really became rooted in domesticity in spite of my wanderlust and foolish dreams. An artist who saw me at a party the other day sneered at me and said, "I thought you were still barefoot and pregnant."
"Uh, no. But at least I'm not a sorry prick like you," I thought. I have been typecast as a mommy, and I might as well enjoy the role and settle in for the long haul. So I am volunteering for my son's school any opportunity I can and that has lead me to develop relationships with some very cool people, including many artists and creative people who are mothers.

This was the decade I fully explored a passion in food and wine and have ended up sated, saftig, and back to eating very simple foods. Last night we had crab, rice, and salad. No sauce, just good ingredients, like the chefs say. Last week I went out for an eggs benny and was surprised to find fresh imported fruit on my plate in the middle of winter. It felt wrong and unappealing. Mushy melon and tasteless strawberries don't do it for me at all. I mean, if you are going to go to all the trouble to import fruit from somewhere, at least import native fruit that is in season from the country you imported it from!

This was the decade I fell in love with UBC Farm and discovered my passion for gardening and teaching. I am very grateful for that and for the dedicated group of people who meet weekly to keep the pressure on the university to save the farm. It is through my relationship to the farm that Vancouver is starting to feel like my home, even after more than a decade of living here. This decade has been marked by a taming of my restlessness, my fernweh. I would love to do more work as an artist, travel more as an artist, but I have commitments at home that I need to attend to. This year I am really going to delve deep into my psyche and ask myself what kind of artist I am developing into and why do I make art at all. What's the point, Alfie? Is it to keep myself from destroying myself or to actually contribute something to society? (I've always felt it was more the former than the latter.) Sometimes asking yourself the question is what makes you crazy. Anyway, I will just have to take that risk. See you at the funny farm.

*I saw a sign the other day that said "Forgive quickly and kiss slowly." I think that's a good one. Maybe we need to make a version of it to hang on our wall, especially since our family can be quite volatile at times. Ahem.