See you later, A-spoons&C-spoons

Find that not only am I getting SPAM comments on my blogspot space but I have lost the will to write in this particular sphere. Find me here from this point on: www.totheblankpage.wordpress.com Or you know, don't. But if interested, there I be.

Thanks, o ye' constant reader.
morganne.

"The mind can calculate but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows."

We make plans; big ones, lofty ones, your average daily ones. Sometimes they don't pan out the way we expect -- different like -- where we nod and say, "I can live with this," and sometimes they do not work at all.

Stephen King was just going to buy milk at the corner store, walking down a back road in the October woods of Maine when he got hit by a car. Threw him into the ditch and he was unable to walk for months. He just looked in the fridge that morning and realized he didn't have anything to put on his cereal.

I don't think God laughs at our plans or even smirks - I don't have a picture of a God who benignly smiles when we fall on our proverbial faces, even though we are yes, often ignorant and yes, often proud. We are small, with short-sightedness. I suppose he lets us go about the business of life and has an opinion every now and then. "Moves" things in some directions, and leaves others. It is an odd balance of involvement and observance -- another one of those paradoxes that comes along with the keeping of this faith. However the mystery of free will works, it can make for many disappointments when our ideas, hopes, desires veer left when we were expecting them to go right all along.

I imagined my Vancouver adventure to go one way and it went another. All my best laid plans went to some place called the Land of Best Laid Plans where tumble weeds whistle by and it is always dusk and there are never sunsets. Not a land of despair but of disappointment. The whole thing was sort of a paradox in and of itself; a lot of it was wonderful, I felt both a deep and complete happiness and a heavy melancholy, both fulfilled and somewhat at a loss. Rich in experience and poor in pocket. I met a lot of interesting people, in unexpected places. Jasper Morgan for example, at my coffee shop haunt downtown. He is one of these "self-employed" types that run rampant in creatively entrepreneurial hubs like Vancouver who said to me once as we were sitting at the bar by the window, "Coffee, smoking and crossword puzzles keep me alive. Unfortunately, it's difficult to do all three at once." Every day he would smoke a pack-a-day and run the seawall.

In the midst of these characters,
of biking to work in the dawn of the Mount Pleasant neighbourhoods
the 5.30 am bus up Main st -- it smelling like a dark cellar of spilled liquor and disappointed spirits from the night before
the ocean
the damp
the blooms
the skinny jeans & the plaid shirts
the dogs in vests
the espresso
the energy
the expensive music for dirt cheap
the overwhelming colour and taste of good food
the people watching
the pen moving
the shaking like a dog-out-of-river of my soul

I am still processing the last four months. But at the end of the day, at some point in May it was, I decided that the water I was treading didn't seem the right water, or the right tread, or .... the right time to be treading. And my short legs were numb from the movement. I couldn't really explain it to my closest of friends in V why I had to go. The heart knows what the heart knows. The one thing I could grasp onto as a tangible reason was that I had no money left. Economically, the city sure takes you down in the back alley at the knees, executes a swift kick to the ribs and goes through your clothes for loose change. And when I started to pull fuzz out of my pockets and shadow the bottle collectors, I knew it was time to change something. The whole experience left me feeling more bruised and confused and blinking rapidly than down right destroyed.

So I came home. There are a lot of definitions for home but I like this one: "a place where something flourishes, is most typically found, or from which it originates." Home should be a place to be at rest, to cry if you must, to be at ease, to be warm and comfortable. And in my case, where I don't have to pay rent and I don't have to pay to wash my clothes.

I feel sort of like Stephen King in the ditch on the side of the road right now -- wondering what all that was about and for and squinting through the dark for that elusive "point" we're all looking for. But out of his accident, he wrote a lot of great stories.

And I haven't forgotten the pacific.

Stories Walking By

He's a volunteer security officer. Black coffee and a decadent chocolate square ("why don't they just call it a brownie?"). Everything always gets complicated. No ring, a widower. Volunteers to fill the empty spaces. Coffee break is a quick and functional thing, just like in the army. He clunks in his black almost-cowboy boots past me to the bathroom, his keys jingle on his belt loop, he stoops a little, his eyes are blue and keen. He drives away in a green four door mustang. Belonged to this wife but he had to sell his caddy to keep the creditors away. I think he is lonely.

//

He works as a truck driver for the DAN-D-PAK. Spends his days stacking boxes on dollies, wheeling trollies, "Sign here please. That's your copy." He remembers his village in China, when his parents sent him to the city, his relatives -- so he could get an education. Saw an ad for Canada on the back of a magazine in Beijing on the train, it was lying forgotten on a bench. He decided to go there. He left the love of his life to find true happiness in the vastness of Canada. Now he drives a truck, wears a bluetooth in one ear and tries to smile through his eyes like his uncle, the farmer. His life is clipboards and single serving packets. He stacks them with care and precision. He is still looking for his dream and sometimes he panics. Is this all there is?

The Ink of the Pacific

I had an adventure. It involved public transportation across the Lion's Gate Bridge in after-dark torrential rain, squinting with map in hand for a venue I had never been to, attached to a non-descript high school in the high, green leafy hills of the north shore and come hell or high water (and there was a lot of it falling from the sky that night), I would get there.

The bus I needed, I missed -- and the one I got, was packed full of exhaling, wet and post-work damaged spirits. Due to many, many unfortunates and the realities of Adventure-taking, I was an hour late for Yann Martel. I slipped through the back door (which felt like bursting), soaked through amongst the well-read, well-bred, well-dressed of Vancouver. The room was not as full as it should have been in my opinion, and as far as I could tell, I was the only person in attendance under the age of 40. I will now lament the loss of the young fiction-reader. Lament.

As I tried to silence my breathing and ignore the frowning truth of water seeping into every fiber of skin and cloth, I tried to get my bearings around just what exactly I was an hour late for. Yann Martel (of Life of Pi, and of Spanish -- as in Spain -- descent), with Anosh Irani, an Indian playwright and novelist, were both discussing their new works (a novel for Yann and a play for Anosh) -- and I had just made it for the question and answer time. One of those "draw out of a hat" sort of things. I was too late to put a query in of my own but enjoyed hearing others speak without me having to participate (as usual). Two questions in particular stood out for me.

One was in regards to the great severity of opinion towards Yann's newest -- Beatrice & Virgil. Folks either hated it or loved it. The New York Times for example, trashed it. It was wondered how he reacted to the negative opinions, if it affected him or his confidence. I enjoyed Yann's tall and lanky presence -- soft-spoken and articulate and yet very confident in his way. His answer was this:

"I write what I write and when I feel it is complete as it can be, I give it up. I have no control over how it is received once it is out there; art is a gift and it is meant to be given away."

I liked that. I do not like that art is often seen as an interior thing; artists possess a higher gift that mere mortals can not fathom, so art is created out of hurt, pain, anguish and anger against the world, and out of my favourite: the raised banner of, "You Don't Understand Me" -- and kept for the artist and the artist alone to dwell in. An isolating thing indeed (though I will not disagree that isolation is needed for part of the process of creating -- I need much of it -- if the artist remains in said isolation, then their art is never shared and is grasped in a vice-grip of gollumesque-groping possession).

And the other question from the hat, asked how Yann's life had been changed after Life of Pi exploded into the world (with so much grace and beauty). He answered thus:

"I have a lot more money now. Doing taxes used to be a lot easier. But I was really happy when I was poor. I lived in Montreal and paid $250 for rent -- I had a bike and virtually no other expenses. I was like a monk living in Montreal, working on this novel."

After it was over, the two said they would be in the lobby signing books. I was thinking about how I was going to get home because buses from there barely ran at rush hour and it was edging towards 10 pm. I was walking down the sidewalk with the ceaseless rain coming down on my purple raincoat that makes me look like a giant crayola, considering these realities, when I stopped and thought, "I've come all this way and there's not that many people. I should at least try and meet the guy." So I trudged my way back in, Converse slapping in the puddles -- no point in avoiding them now -- and merged with the back of the line. Everyone was clutching a copy of Beatrice & Virgil in their hot little hands, but I, no, the price for a hardcover copy was more of a luxury than I was willing to consider.

I made it up to the table in a relatively short amount of time and said in a clear voice (I'm told I mutter) but no doubt in a rather rambling sort of way:

"I don't have a book for you to sign because I'm kind of like a monk living in Vancouver and I can't afford it right now but I wanted to shake your hand anyway and say thank you for sharing your art."

Yann: "Are you a writer?"

Me: (slightly abashed but still going strong): "Yes." (for I promised myself that if he asked me this question that I would respond with yes, simply because I need to get better at it).

Y: "What are you writing?"

Me: "Mostly short stories, blog posts, the odd music bio for friends. Attempted articles. The long term goal is fiction, real fiction. But I'm in school right now so I'm having a hard time being creative with my own stuff, even though I'm studying English literature and writing."

Y (a very good listener and not the least fussed that there was still quite the line up behind me): "You know... if you have stories, you just need to write them, no matter where you are. You don't have to go to school to be a writer."

I listened to what Yann had to say and boy did I listen hard. This guy completely baptized me with every image, with every colourful page he wrote. He wrote magic. He shared an incredible work of fiction with the world and he was talking to me about the craft, disregarding the page flippers waiting for him to sign their blank page. (And when I say craft, I do not mean some magical experience of Writing that is married to inspiration, hillsides in sunshine and hair flutterings -- as Stephen King says, "there is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers..." Writing is a day in and day out job that Yann simply did with Life of Pi because he had a story to tell).

And so before I left the table I said: "Will you sign my map? It's all I have on me, and I got lost -- really, really, lost -- trying to get here." I handed over my still damp 12 inch map book and opened it to the page with a section of north Vancouver pasted on it. He signed in the ocean:

"May the pacific be the ink of your pen."

The image of the boy and the Bengal tiger in the lifeboat on the great wide sea came to my heart when I read what he wrote.

I shook his hand and exited, just a little elated.

I suppose it was not so much the content of what he said -- I know that I don't have to go to school to write -- many people have told me this, some more smugly than others. It was more the timing of the matter and who it was coming from and how it was said. I will not bore you constant reader (as Stephen King would say), with the state of my heart and mind the night I swam in from the street to hear this author speak. I simply needed encouragement, the immersion into five minutes of conversation with someone who has Done it, and I had not realized it.

I am now living in Vancouver and writing and reading (for to write, one. must. read). Going to school I am not, writing what, I do not know -- to what end, I have no idea. But all that matters is that I am.

I celebrated this mental and emotional shift by drinking a beer, listening to Josh Ritter at full steam and by reading Life of Pi, this glorious tale of magic realism, once again.

"A shiver went through my body. Between the life jackets, partially, as if through some leaves, I had my first, unambiguous, clear-headed glimpse of Richard Parker. It was his haunches I could see, and part of his back. Tawny and striped and simply enormous. He was facing the stern, lying flat on his stomach. He was still except for the breathing motion of his sides. I blinked in disbelief at how close he was. He was right there, two feet beneath me. Stretching, I could have pinched his bottom. And between us there was nothing but a thin tarpaulin, easily got round.

'God preserve me!'

No supplication was ever more passionate yet more gently carried by the breath."

"In the absence of God, I worship music." David Gray

From his show I experienced at the Queen Elizabeth theatre on May 14th.

The Biltmore (Part 3) // Love like a see-through dress

This is the last installment of the Biltmore trio of posts, I apologize for the delay. I have in fact, been to this venue and as you will read in this last installment, I did observe this scene from the opposite side of the stage. They sort of percolated in my brain for awhile and I guess had to get them out somehow.

//

As they descend the steps and spill out onto the Biltmore floor, the two are submerged in a deep blue-gray world of opulence. Luxuries not of material wealth but a sort of richness of self-confidence; the Experience and Independent Thought of the Individual radiates off wall, cushioned chair and wooden dance floor. There is nothing right or wrong here, just one big mass of acceptance. And so in being okay with everyone and everything, no one really knows anything for Certain -- only that it is Friday night and there's music promised.

The room is full but not yet packed. Ear vibrating tecnho-ambient plays over the speakers. There are people standing around, drinking and talking before the Swedish musician takes the stage -- some are sitting on the high stools, leaning against walls, lounging on the low couches. Discussing anything but the work of the week, as the stress seeps out with every molecule of alcohol ingested.

He realizes before any decisions are going to be made about the where and when of their evening that he needs a drink. He sees her about to head off without him, no doubt seeing someone she knows so he puts his hand on her back, leans in and says,

"I'm headed to the bar, do you want something?"
"My usual please, darling," she says with a hand on his chest, "Come and find me."

He feels mildly irritated as she slips into the crowd, like liquid beauty moving effortlessly through less attractive barriers. He walks up to the bar, no need to wait in line; everyone there is nicely settled with their first beverage of the night and this seems to be the pause between the early-comers and the on-timers. He says loudly to the smooth-faced boy-man behind the bar,

"A negroni, easy ice with a lemon instead of orange and... whatever your lightest beer on tap is."

The bartender-god proceeds helpfully to list them but the snatches of names of half a dozen micro-brews he hears over the din mean nothing to him. He asks for something with a frog in the title and turns, leaning his elbows on the bar, surveying the room. It really is filling up now. He catches sight of Sara talking with a guy he does not know, and the heaviness in his stomach takes a hard left with a sickening lurch. It isn't because she's talking to another guy -- this happened with frequency when they went out and he was used to it. He felt about Sara's admirers the way he felt about the homeless people in his city. You go out and like the rainclouds that are always hiding in the corners of the sky, there is one on every street corner, asking for a little something from you. Annoying sure, but a part of his daily reality none the less. And both experiences were often accompanied by a small twinge of both guilt and satisfaction -- because he had something that They wanted. And in his life, that rarely occurred.

No, this feeling was something different -- a foreboding that clouded his vision and made the shirt stick to his back with a sudden sweat. And as he walked toward her clutching his beer, the lights went down, the sound system was silenced and the band began to play. The room, suddenly packed from all those on the peripherals, is one big mass of shuffling-closer-to-the-stage and he is suddenly going against the tide.

The Swedish woman steps into the narrow beam of light -- she is tall and languishy, she wears a dress made of black material that hangs on her bone-like frame. Her hair is long, ocean-horizon straight with a fringe, framing wide blue eyes that are highlighted in black ink. She sways, clutching the microphone and she seems like she is either stoned or on some bless'd other planet that earthling people can not connect to. Her voice is a blissed-out marriage of an ethereal Joni Mitchell and Mazzy Star but also distinctly... Icelandic.

He has somehow made it to the side line of the stage, and realizes that his proximity to the woman is almost too close for his comfort level -- much too intimate. And looking over he realizes his place falls next to Sara and this man she has somehow snared. He gives him a quick look-over; both his and Sara's faces are illuminated by the stage lights and more distinctly because of the blackness that curtains behind them. He is wearing a brown felt fedora, a red tie with a long sleeve white shirt and a pinstripe vest, tapered slacks and shiny brown shoes. And his face wears a completely at ease and confident expression, held together by his perfectly timed five-o'clock shadow. Fedora man is handsome and well thought out and put together in every sense -- he certainly would have the EP of this woman on stage, would probably even be able to track-name-drop and Sara was letting him touch her. Sara was so close to the stage that she was actually sitting gingerly on the edge of it and Fedora man stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders, skimming his fingers along her hairline.

Before he could fully put together what he was seeing, Sara had grabbed his hand too, smiling up at him, glad that he had made his way towards them. He understood with a clarity, that she now had both of her prizes. And he was of course, letting it happen in the face of his confusion. (Like he just "let" every thing happen to him). He zoned out, listening to the warbling and eerily hollow words and voice of the woman on stage, who was beautiful in a zombiesque, empty vessel sort of way... The room was hot and all he could focus on when he was not looking at the Swede is the three people directly across from them on the other side of the stage, also illuminated by the stage lights. They are an exceedingly tall man with a moustache, standing with a mysterious-looking dark-haired woman and a shorter blonde haired one. They are sharing a drink and taking in the music in their individual ways. As if they are there together and yet completely separate. By focusing on these three, he is able to keep a tight rein on his rage. And as he watched the blonde hand the drink to the dark-haired woman with a wink and a genuine smile, it is then he realizes a truth: the day he had seen in Sara's eyes something other-worldly and mean, it was not Mystery or Allure or something he would never understand, it was because she truly was a horrible person. (But what did that make him)?

Fedora man had sat down on the edge of the stage with has his arm around her waist and she had settled contentedly into his neck space. Her hand still remained in his own however, and she was applying pressure to it, hoping, he supposed, that he would sink down to her level as well.

And he felt himself falling again under her power and her infinite cruel beauty and the fact that he was indeed, a simpering fool. He kept his eyes on the three across from him for the rest of the night, thinking that they seemed, perhaps not happy -- who knows what happy is? -- but content and at ease. Somehow it was radiating from them, and he wished he were standing there too, sharing their one and only drink.

// You don't know if it's fear or desire
Danger the drug that takes you higher
Head in heaven, fingers in the mire
Her heart is racing, you can't keep up
The night is bleeding like a cut
Between the horses of love and lust
We are trampled underfoot
Oh...love...you say in love there are no rules
Oh...love...sweetheart...
You're so cruel //

U2

A Tragedy Undone

When I was a kid I remember not really liking the darkness of Good Friday and of hearing about Jesus being killed. To my young heart it just did not make sense why it had to happen that way and why everyone was so angry with such a good man (who for some reason, was always portrayed as a blonde, blue eyed, felt-board, all-American chap). I remember saying to my dad during Holy Week when I was about 8 or so: "Why can't we just celebrate Easter?" My dad turned his twinkly blues on me and said, "Because Mo, you can't have life without death." I'm not sure what I did with that response, except that such a theological statement to an 8 year old probably didn't lodge itself too far into my brain ("Hey look, a butterfly!") --

Now that I'm older, I remember my dad saying this on a regular basis and how I now know that life without death wouldn't seem like real life, that love without sacrifice is an easy job indeed -- that life without grieving, sorrow, want, ache, is one-dimensional and all of the hard stuff gives it grooves, corners and cracks and shapes us into people with such grooves and corners and cracks -- and makes us aware of a need for something or someone outside ourselves.

And if Jesus was just a good man, spoke of loving God and your neighbour, was crucified and stayed in the ground, then my faith means nothing. So that I believe Jesus climbed out from behind that stone alive again, then the story I was immersed in, the one I thought had ended with death, did not. It is one story that doesn't end, that is continual from 2000 years ago to today and onwards and upwards. That I and others have a faith based on life, love and hope -- the belief in a very simple story with a radical twist at the very moment when we believed that it would end as "just another tragedy after all" -- well, it changes everything. Everyday. As C.S. Lewis said, "Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."

But here we are on earth. And it is full of gravity indeed. Leaving you with something I wrote last year but seemed fitting for an Easter nod.

These dusty roads

The graveled places

Seems where no one has been before

And those who have walked them have gone away

Taking all joys, disappointments, triumphs and mis-adventures

For you were here

You walked and laughed, you sat and wept

You ate and drank, you slept and laid awake

You loved, you angered, you gladly, with depth did live

You told stories and asked for tales and you helped to write our narrative

Beside you these sun-washed few

These fishermen, these small town folk, these women of heart and duty and love

Walked along in the dusty tracks of the grooves of your holy calloused feet

As many, but known as each one by Him - the One who called them

Observing, recognizing, unbelieving, believing and faithful almost to the end

Oh to have seen

Oh to have eaten

Oh to have drank with hearty thanks

Oh to have touched

Oh to have laughed and sat and walked and smiled and peered in his eyes

And then down the road he went

The dust, it settled

The sun, it hid behind the darkness and the blood

The birds ceased to praise

The wind refused to breathe

It was lost

The light - all the light had gone from the world

The shadows grew bolder, the silence fell hard, the stars did not quiver

Forgone, forlorn for everything chaosed like the beginning of time

But the Spirit did not hover there

And we felt alone without companion

For you were there and then were not

You promised much and delivered what to us, was nothing

You walked our hills and valleys and water and breathed our air and felt our hearts

And allowed yourself to be cowered over and trodden

O sacred head now wounded

And then!

The bless’ed ones who came upon you!

Padding down a dirt road with dust on your feet and sun in your hair and light in your eyes

It is finished! You said with earthly glee and kingdom gravity

Death has died, Life has won, Christ has made Hope complete

We began to rejoice

We breathed sighs of relief for we no longer had to search

As the wine began to flow and the fish and bread began to feed us, and all was warm and right

Away you went, o so sudden

We don’t know where to look for you

Speaking in riddles and stories

Maybe if we’d listened with more than just ears

Alas we think we are here without

Though left with a gift that you promised

A gift of power that moves in ways mysterious

Ways that are not our ways

Moves, not our moves

For these roads are dusty

These paths, long and traveled well in ever the same direction

You never said they would not be

It is we who see you here

We who see you walking, laughing, sitting, weeping, eating with the least of these

And we who see you hurting, clothe-less, hungry, comfortless, without refuge

O let us see with eyes wide

For it is we who walk these dusty roads

We who set our feet in treads of holy calloused feet

Let us love without fear, let us see glory in all things daily, reverence in all things common

Let us walk these dusty roads

And to know with whom we walk