ho

...ho ho

this sunday, toronto played host to the fat man's arrival and the official launch of the tackiest, shiniest, loveliest season of my year! i'm of course talking about the Santa Claus parade. before going further: yes, i know capitalists have done everything they can to co-opt the season. yes, i know i'm not christian. yes, i prefer to actually celebrate solstice than the 25th. yes, i could choose to grumble at every tinseled tree i see, and dismiss it all as a fascist ploy or gawd knows what.

or i can choose to embrace it. i can choose to savour the time friends and family dedicate to making merry with each other.

as a kid, the playing of Elvis' Christmas Album was always the official launching of this merry season. but since moving to toronto 3 years ago, the parade has become a delicious substitute. i LOVE parades. i love being huddled with my city's people, smiling at tired waving children, tapping my feet to marching band tunes, and feeling my heart swell at the familiar belting out of the ho ho hos. I. LOVE. IT.

and this year, i got to enjoy it with my fella, who had somehow never made it out to the parade, despite a lifetime of living in toronto... (ahh, what men will do for love, and god bless them for it!)

and let me tell you: it was a beautiful day. a beautiful mild day filled with beautiful smiles, candy apples and clowns. (although admittedly, some of the clowns looked a little too much like drag queens on new year's morning...) my favourite moment (other than seeing Santa, of course) was hearing the little girl beside us LOSE IT when she saw Clifford the Big Red Dog. too fucking precious.

i took a few pics with my handy dandy camera phone and just look at my face - how giddily happy am i?? it was a splendid day, topped off with a mountain of whipped cream atop a white hot chocolate and a peanut butter cookie. yum! (as a side note, isn't it strange how grammatically, it would make more sense to say "hot white chocolate", but how that somehow sounds dirty - like a porn star name or something? Keith was clever enough to point this out, to the counterperson's giggly delight. words are funny.)

all in all, a gorgeous day. yay!

SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i may be the only happy adult in toronto right now, because when i emerged to gather some lunch, i noticed it was snowing. oh, not much- just a few floating flakes, but it was snow and I LOVE IT!!!

i LOVE snow!

i love mittens and scarves and hot chocolate and tinsel and twinkling lights and snow angels and skates and eggnog and sleds and frost and pale moons and crisp skies and wool and fireplaces and mulled wine and and and... i love snow.

it's already stopped, but i don't care. even a few flakes can carry me through the next few days.. : )

i hope it snows for real in time for the santa parade this weekend. yes - the santa parade. i may like de phazz and mammalian diving reflex and peter chin and robert priest, but i also like the santa parade.

dammit.
(grin)

*mwah!*

Remembrance day

in canada, today is Remembrance day - a day when most of the country's 9-to-5ers get the day off to remember. (there are a few notable and disappointing exceptions to the observation of remembrance day. for some reason, new year's day merits a holiday, easter merits 2, but our nation's soldier's get barely a nod from 2 of the country's provinces - one of whom houses the nation's capital. it says something, doesn't it. but i digress.)

at 11 am, i dedicated a minute of my life to the memory of theirs. the classic rock station wrapped up its minute of silence with Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms. cbc 2 featured a very impressive organ and a very earnest choir. cbc 1: bagpipes. of course. (and why not; i love bagpipes.) i finally settled on the alt rock station's offering of the Pogues' Waltzing Matilda. and i stood there as i do every year, tears insistently silently streaming down my face as i contemplated the horrors humans relentlessly unleash on each other.

and as the planes flew over toronto, i remembered. or, well.. pondered memories. as best i know, nobody in either of my families has ever fought in a war. i have no grandfather stories, no sacrificed uncle after whom a brother was named. and yet, there are memories. maybe they are the memories of a universal consciousness, a glimpse at the blossom of our humanity. because my heart feels heavy with a hundred thousand memories. a hundred thousand tears. a hundred thousand souls lost in battle. and i mourn for each gasp, each drop of shed blood. and i mourn because we're still doing it.

and yet, world war 2... hitler... how to not fight such a war? are those deaths not well earned? unlike our new wars. when did wars go from being important and noble, to fucked up and begging for protest? did they change or did we? did the nature of the beast change, or did our perception of it evolve? devolve?

i don't know. i guess it's not supposed to be easy. i guess that's kinda the point.

top of the world!

i'm on top of the world! powerful! amazing! wonderful!

why? cuz i climbed the CN Tower, that's why! that's right - i managed to drag my wonderful ass up 1,776 stairs and raised what i think is a pretty amazing $360 for United Way - extraordinary, really, considering most of my friends are broke-ass artsy types just like me. so hooray! (as a side note, i'm the chair of our office's United Way campaign, and i'm thrilled to announce we had an amazingly stellar year, raising over 140% of our goal. yea!!!)

it's funny... i mean, the climb was challenging. definitely challenging. and yet, it was easier than i thought it would be...

i work on the 5th floor of a building, and tried to prepare myself for the climb by taking the stairs in the weeks leading up to the big day. well, i can tell you i was getting awfully worried when the day before the climb, i was still winded by the time i reached our floor. and a few times i climbed all the way up (12 floors) and it damn near killed me each time!! well, believe it or not, climbing up the CN tower was easier. seriously! i even took the work stairs after the climb, and still they kicked my ass! fellow climbers concurred.

there could be a few reasons for this, most notably the clever/not-too-steep/many landings design of the CN Tower stairs.

all i know is this: unless you have some serious physical ailment that absolutely prevents you from climbing stairs (and i don't mean "oh i don't think i can"), i *strongly* urge you to take on this challenge next year. i know it's silly compared to, like, winning the Pulitzer Prize, but holy man, the overwhelming sense of accomplishment that fills your every pore! for days and days, i'm sure i radiated pure joy every time i glimpsed the tower...

it's aliiiiiive!

yes: i'm still alive.
no: i have not forsaken you.
yes: i still love and adore every single one of you.

it's just been...
my plate's been...
i've been...

well, you know. the dog ate my homework and all that.

really though, i'm doing GREAT. after a gruelling few months of pathetic indecision (do i choose the funky soulmate, or the sexy kindred??) i finally decided: i choose ME! fuck this love business. every time i stumble into it, i obsess and i fuck up. so i've decided it's high time to chillax and spend a bit of that quality lovin on the one person i know i'm stuck with: moi. and so i'm back to writing, creating, doing...

in the next few days and weeks, i promise to regale you with my endless tales of wonder and deeply illuminating ponderings (ha!). for now, a bit of shameless self-promotion. and to show you how busy i am, i'm cutting and pasting the email i sent to the people i love best (or who happen to be on my mailing list) - so apologies if you were all excited to finally read something on my blog, only to discover you already got the email. heh heh.
___

stand back and gaze in wonder as ladykaen's theatrical career SPIRALS OFF INTO THE STAR-STUDDED WILDS OF OUTER SPACE!!!!! yea baby!!! or in other words, i got a coupla things coming up this week, should be fun, hope you can come...

wednesday nov 9: RED Festival
Lula Lounge, 8 pm
i'm doing a puppet show. (yes, you read that right.) as part of the fabulous RED Festival, I'll be joining a busload of other impromptu puppeteers and presenting a 3-minute glimpse of the extra-ordinary. i gotta tell ya, i'm pretty excited about my fabulous little puppets and deluxo little stage!

sunday nov 13: Lab Cab
Factory Studio Theatre, 8 pm
i'm presenting a 10-min excerpt from one of my plays (she spoke such words). i've had the great honour and pleasure of working with two incredible actors, Sheena Lessard and Elley Ray Hennessey, so i'm VERY excited about this. it has been too wonderful to watch these talented women help two ladies who've been living in my brain for the last year take their first breaths, stretch their limbs, and grip my heart with their tragic beauty. i really hope you can make it for this... details about the whole soirée are included below, for your reference.

and in case you don't know, i'm moving back to Vancouver in about a month, so this may be your last chance to sink your teeth into my art. ..until a tour brings me back this way, of course!