Monday, September 7, 2009

I had an Epiphany

It was a perfect Sunday morning. I don't know why life tastes, smells, looks so sweet after a few days spent cloistered with work. (Through which the dark thoughts swarm, you know them well by now).

But on this perfect Sunday morning, deeply rested from a long night's sleep, the new day ahead looked exquisite.
I was explaining to my friend Jean why technology has never scared me. I have been willing to go through days/weeks/months of frustration and hoplessness just to achieve that moment when you wake the next day and its use has become second nature. That has always been my relationship with technology, ever since computers appeared to challenge us in the early 90's.

Unlike for example my relationship with Music. Months/years/decades spent learning the piano, the guitar, the recorder: nothing stuck. I am useless.

"That is because you realise technology is a means to an end."Jean said.

YES! I thought. And so is music, so is every other obstacle that presents itself!

"So what is the end" Jean said after we argued this back and forth.

The end is expression, and the relationship with an audience, the moment when one person gets it and says"Ah!"
Photo: Perfect Toronto morning, College St prepares for a late summer street festival; Toronto couple enjoying dogs and owners romping in Trinity Bellwoods Park.

PS: I write, I sew, I take pics, make flicks. I talk. I can even dance (true not recently tho). Look to see me start making music soon people
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Saturday, September 5, 2009

For the Victims


If I stay awake after midnight, roving guilt overwhelms me.

I agree Susan Atkins (Sharon Tate's killer) should die in jail, what right has she to expect compassion?

But if I apply this purist standard to myself (as I must), then I am guilty guilty guilty.

There's so much I've done in my long life that was just wrong. Crimes against Humanity. Where is the remorse?

Photo: My homemade shrine. For the victims.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Endings

Friends,

After a juicy fulfilling summer, I'm heading back to Barbados in 2 weeks.

Grateful for the opportunity, but already grieving Toronto, my garden, cats, and feel of HOME that only an owned home has.

(Photo: Sunbathing - taking in the last days of summer.)

Monday, March 2, 2009

Monkey Business

One of the most enjoyable encounters I've had here in Barbados was with some wild monkeys.

They live in the high trees around the Car Park at the new Center for Creative Imagination at Cave Hill University. That is where I am teaching 2 courses over the next few months - Screenwriting, and Introduction to Film.

This monkey seemed keen to connect but a bit shy. I inched closer to strike up a conversation, but seconds later he leapt into the brush, and disappeared with his whole family.

The weather here is kind - better for my health than the brutal cold. It's calm, beautiful and I am getting a lot of writing done! (a play we're doing in the summer, called "Lockdown").
Talk to you soon.
Love,
FA

Monday, February 2, 2009

Tan Tan

I got this from my sister-in-law. My niece calls me Tan Tan! When I was in Tobago at xmas I got her to eat by doing a victory dance zulu style whenever she swallowed a mouthful of food. She loved that!
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Subject: tan-tan

hi there f-a,

just to let you know that your neice is starting to chat away and every time we use your green bottle you gave her she says tan-tan and last night when danny was trying to get her to eat more dinner and gave her a little victory dance she immediately said 'tan-tan' !!!

i keep pointing you out in pics and talking about you so she'll be ready to lime when you get back .....

hope you are well and busy enjoying life....

lotsa love miche

Photo My niece Leah Skye, aged 18mths.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

The old washing machine

Since being ill, I have not felt comfortable about writing, my thoughts seem irredeemably black and without hope. Not that I feel hopeless generally - I don't. Just my thoughts, when I engage them - at night before sleep - which mercifully comes fast - or in the interstices of activity, are just dark.

Having survived menopause I know, these are just dark thoughts, they have no import or connection to reality, so I give them as little attention as I can. Sometimes the dark matter flares up engulfing everything. Two or three days go by of intense introspection that feels rough and harrowing like a washing machine. Then subsides.

Dominica, story no 3: my last washing machine experience:

My friend Y paid for my trip and the whole endeavor, which was somehow miraculous and disempowering all at once.

After 25 years, it was painful to me to notice how complete his life was, though I was also able to genuinely appreciate all the great parts of it. The way his life, well lived and nurtured has flowered into something wondrous and whole. And he seemed to have great connections with everyone - lovely smart wife, great family, kids, connections to community etc. But painful to me because it was so complete. There was no space or place in it for a me, except as occasional guest. This hurt, left a great big sore spot on my heart.

Perhaps it is dying, in that process you have to let go of everything, and often all I am aware of is the loss, a kind of resentment that I have lost love and it is gone forever. It seems I am surrounded by this. Loss of Love, loss of opportunity, the loss of childlessness, loss of youth (imminent). All of this preceding the final loss of life, when you let go and all is gone. Right now it's like I'm not accepting that, resenting it. So it is painful, like tearing. Or it may be the opposite: Now - post this illness, approaching fifty - I am trying to reconnect with friends that I had, connections past that I let fall away. And it is painful how time has moved on. Where there was love is now overgrown with a different life, experiences have changed my friends, I no longer recognize the past. I search for my connections and they are not there. The person I loved no longer exists, or has no space for me. Nor I for him, if it comes to that - my life when I notice is full and defined.

And so there is this big hole, an emptiness, that moreover I have known all my life. But by this stage you would have thought I would have filled it up, found ways to be more complete, more whole.

It occurs to me that this old pain defines me, is me, has made me what I am. In that flame my decisions were forged. So like the dark thoughts, like menopause and loss of love, I should try to own it.

There endeth the lesson.
Photo: Y's wife Nancy, in Portsmouth Dominica.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Toronto

I have feelings about being back in Toronto. I feel panicked and scared - my heart beats fast and hard, little panic attacks, and constant gnawing and breathlessness.

I dont know where money is coming from to keep my business going.

Being sick I am not sure that I have the energy or even will to keep up this hustle. It's really hard.

Plus there is a "global economic crisis". Imagine. I am trying not to take it personally...

What chances do you think I have of surviving something so vast? Like a tidal wave, indiscrimate in its reach.

Untypically, I don't have any ideas what to do about it.

There are still amazing/beautiful things in the world... like Barack Obama, cats, turtles, babies, and nature.

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