the beast awakens

hello hello and sorry sorry sorry. i know i've been painfully negligent, and it's not through lack of caring. really, you know i simply adore each and every one of you.

but i'm here now, stronger and smiley-er than ever!

or... i would be. if canadians weren't so fucking stupid.

i hang my head in shame over yesterday's election results. after shaking my head at our hapless neighbours to the south, i am shocked and awed that we have elected our very own monster. so much for being unique, canadian, socialist, open-minded and wonderful. so much for health care, pro choice and supremely sophisticated human rights. we now have our own dubya. this is what my fellow country people have said they want.

...or do they want it?

i was ABSOLUTELY HORROR-STRUCK last night when Rex (on CBC) read an email from some fucking moron. the person said they'd "voted Conservative to punish the Liberals". um... hey dumbass, you're not punishing the Liberals, you're punishing yourself. are people really this moutarded?? and if you wanted to punish your party, why hand the "reward" over to the very scary enemy? what about the NDP????

well you know what, i'm not gonna slit my wrists just yet. it's a minority government, with more than enough Liberal and NDP seats to ward off, i hope, any fascism. i guess we'll just have to wait and see what the Bloc do. wow, an alliance between Quebec and Alberta - who'd've ever thunk it?? craziness...

and you know, i am actually pretty thrilled with the leap the NDP has made, and am particularly tickled that my vote contributed to one of the NDP seats in the house. (and a big cheer to the Parkdale/High Park riding for not only voting in Peggy Nash of the NDP, but for showing up in such amazing numbers! over 70%!! yea!!!)

so hang in there kids. it'll pass. let's just hope mr. scary-evil-man doesn't get to do too much damage before the morons either stop "punishing" the Liberals, or realize there's another, better choice...

neptunian now

i've always loved the ocean.

when i was little little girl, perhaps 3 or 4 years old, my family took a trip to the maritimes. i can't remember much (hell, i can barely remember last week!) but i do remember one thing. or.. do i remember, or is it lodged in my memories from having been told again and again around the holiday table?

either way, it's there, in my brain, in my soul:
a young wild precocious girl emerges from hours in the back of a hot, smoky, gas guzzling "pontitac" (as i cutely called it). she emerges from her travelling cage and is confronted with the ocean. and the young girl doesn't run amok or giggle or do any of the silly wild things you can so often see her doing. the young girl, instead, stands transfixed, mesmerized by the vast beautiful ocean.

now, not so young but certainly as wild, this girl (sometimes woman) has fallen in love with a man from the ocean, of the ocean, with eyes like the ocean. and i muse over my oceanic love for him. deep, mysterious, stormy and beautiful...

i met him 3 months ago
and i ran
and ran
and ran.
away
and back
away
and back
a fickle ocean
of tidal disquiet
until finally
waves tossed
whales beached
storms passed
finally
i collapsed in the
gentle
lulling
sigh of his love.

and so here we are
and i am hungry for it all:
the hurricanes
the swells
the depth
the mystery
the titanic
oceanic
thrust of us -
our now
our tomorrow
our yes.

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!

flashback!

damn, time flies. where did the last week (since my last post) go!? and for that matter, where did the last 14 years go? well no, they haven't raced by, they've been full and lived completely - that's for sure. but it's been fun to reflect on them...

see last week, i was found by an ancient ex. and ah, the memories heretofore well and solidly dammed up have flooded my mind - frankly, i'm amazed by how much i remember.

if you've been paying attention (or if you're reading my words like you care, ahem...), you may remember that in my many exciting! amazing! death-defying! world travels, i've also lived in thunder bay. don't worry if you didn't remember: i try to never talk about it. (a note for non-canadian readers: thunder bay is by all legal definitions a "city" located somewhere in the woody cesspool of northwestern ontario.)

at the ripe and tender age of 16, i was transplanted from Montreal (french girls, dépanneurs, modern dance, poutine and Super Sex) to Thunder Bay (lager, loggers, legions and Bambi Bambenek). although this may bespeak a maniacal cruelty on my parents' part, there were reasons other than my torture. and anyway, as a colourfully-clad, bottom-feeding, artsy urban grrrl, i can clearly see the big shiny bullet i dodged. (shortly before the move i'd acquired an agent (modeling) - who told my 5'7" 115-lb anorexic ass to lose weight. i was also lambada-ing up a storm at the yuppie joints de choix. really: what might i have become?? shudder at the thought.)

but i digress.

so at 16 i suddenly found myself in a school that had a football team instead of an improv troupe, cheerleaders instead of a world-travelling jazz band and pep rallies instead of dance class. whoa. it was like i'd suddenly found myself trapped in an ABC After-School Special. this shit existed in Canada??? damned "distinct society" robbing me of dog squads and class-free, pepped-up wednesday afternoons...

my first few weeks were particularly scintillating. when i wasn't outside polluting my lungs with my cousin and her friends, you could generally find me sitting alone eating baloney sandwiches in the back corridor by shop class. despite this, and perhaps because i wore perfume, make-up, styly black clothes and spoke with a slight indescernible accent, i had earned myself a reputation!! that first week, the hushed voices spoke of "Parisian model". dayem, that's fun! i giggled and kinda liked this whole "gossip" business - something that somehow didn't really exist in my Montreal high schools... well the thrill ended when somehow, still sitting in the back corridor like a loser, i had become THE WHORE.

er... hm??

well what the hell eh. i was 16, alone, confused, and insecure as all hell and i now officially had nothing to lose. so i went on a bit of a rampage. say something witty (or, well... amusing anyway), be cute (or well... not uncute anyway) and buy me booze, and you had yourself a cute "foreign" girlfriend for the night or week.

until i saw him.
...met him? sadly the details are lost. but i do remember some things. like smoking in that far-back walkway as we started our solemn trek home (had to make sure he knew i was cool). i remember snow bros. at the 7-11. i remember the slow, lingering flirty walks home as we tried to ignore our raging loins (he had a girlfriend). and i remember that night... we were walking home from a friend's party, engaged in the ultimate act of adolescent foreplay: laughter-and-scream-laced wrestling. we manoeuvred ourselves into the perfect position: he sat straddling me as i lay looking up at his beautiful face framed by a naked sapling and a cool, crisp moon. and i remember my brain screaming out "kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me". i can't remember how it happened - did he lean in? did i have to lure him? did i reach up? i don't know. but i do know we kissed and he became my first full-on, really real thunder bay boyfriend. i'm talking months of devotion (which hey, for a 16 year-old is something) and 18 ct gold bracelets. oh yea, this was teenaged love at its best.

and now, 14 years later, he's stumbled on me at classmates.com. yes: someone actually gave the bastards some cash and got to actually contact me! i gotta say, it's sorta fun. haven't thought of Hammarskjold High in a helluva long time...

hunh

daydreamin

i'm indoors all day, but my soul doesn't have to be! she's off adventuring...

it's a beautiful day. although there is a flavour of fall whispered on the wind, the day is sunny and sporting a misty smog that speaks more of summer than autumn. it's noon and she has emerged from the recycled air to savour her hour of freedom. she has decided to cycle to a farmer's market to get something fresh for lunch while supporting the hippies and environmentalists she wishes she were...

she is elated to discover that this is no outdoor mall, but a small community. the people are smiling, the prices are negotiable, and there are musicians. the musicians are all cool and carefree, oozing a casual sexuality - but it is the drummer who catches her eye. a feast of thick hair coyly brushes past eyes raging with intensity, sparkling with mischief. he seems transported, carried to mystical realms by his masterful rhythms. she is instantly mesmerized.

she watches his eyes. she watches when they are closed, and he looks almost reverential. she watches when they are turned to a sky filled with invisible but potent gods. and she blushingly stops watching when their focus shifts to her. although she has averted her gaze too quickly to see the salacious smile, she can feel the sudden charge in his playing. it seems now laced with a lascivious drive that pulses right into the yes of her.

eyes downturned, she tries not to think of his eyes. tries not to imagine them inspecting the contours of her dress. tries not to imagine them drinking in her details. tries not to imagine them piercing her thoughts and exposing her soul.

smiling softly, she tries not to think of his mouth. tries not to imagine it smiling wantonly just for her. tries not to imagine it whispering into her hair. tries not to imagine how sweet and soft it must taste.

fidgeting timidly, she tries not to think of his fingers. tries not to imagine them easing her clothes off. tries not to imagine them pulling her hair, exposing her neck to his fierce hunger. tries not to imagine them gently but insistently unfurling her like a rose.

but his dancing fingers and charging pulse lull her into the decadent daydream and she is powerless to his rhythmic seduction. and so she dreams on...