The finished product (see below for instructions)

Mom to Mime in Six Easy Steps

It took me about an hour and a quarter to transform myself from mompoet to Marcel Marceau for last week's Dead Poets' Slam. It took me about 10 days to get the pictures out of the camera, but thanks to mighty connector guy (aka my husband Andrew) we have all new high-speed USB connections so our gadgets will communicate more reliably with the mother ship of our computer.

Here goes...

0. I came home from work, had supper with the family, then got dressed. I had the costume all prepared: clothing mostly from Value Village with a bit of cutting and stitching to get it right; hat and wig from beloved Dressew; makeup from various sources. I asked Fi to take my photo for a baseline. Soleil got in the picture too, which is rare. She's afraid of cameras, and apparently also afraid of mimes. She disappeared pretty quickly.

1. After I loaded the dishwasher, I put on the clothing. Nice and stretchy. Like pajamas. mmmm

2. After that I ditched the glasses and squished the hair. I still have a couple of pairs of contact lenses in their sterilized jars. They came in handy this night. If you've never had a wig cap on before, you should try it. It really takes care of the hair (well, most of it).

3. Now the wig. I had to give it a haircut because is was even more shaggy than in the photo. There was fake black wig hair bits all over the place for a few days.

4. White face all over. Niiiiiice.

5. The lips, the eyes, the eyebrows. The white stuff I got was not nearly good enough to hide my bushy brown brows. Well, I could have shaved them off, but I decided not to.

6. The hat. Now I can't talk any more. zip.

snap crackle plop

I'm still a mess of stress. I thought I was over it but nope, not, still frazzing. A neutral-intentioned comment from a co-worker yesterday sent me in a tizzy of self-righteous "she done me wrong" that's all straightened out today but whooaaah. For the first time in ages I DID NOT SLEEP AT NIGHT. Me, the one famous for 3-2-1-unconscious whenever I want to. I listened to my husband breathing for a few hours and did the pillow/blanket/flip-flop/shuffle until sometime past 2 in the morning. Ug.

Today was another matter. Things smoothed down considerably. It was Take Our Kids to Work Day, so Fi and her friend Kira came to work with me. I had some pretty boring moments, and a private hour with my Artists' Way group, so they spent some time working with an awesome preschool instructor and toured the Burnaby Art Gallery without me at the lunch hour. They sat through a Ministry of Children and Family Development presentation on child abuse prevention in my afternoon staff meeting, which made me feel proud. Then we started up a soccer program before I had to drop Fi to her rehearsal and take Kira home. After that I thought I was home free, but I got called back in to work for a minor emergency that didn't last long and was nicely resolved. Still, I know I am teetering.

I don't like to feel like I am not on top of my work.
I don't like to feel like I am doing less than a great job.
I don't like to miss deadlines.
I don't like that impatient and bitchy feeling I get when I start resenting someone calling or just sticking their head in my office door. That's not why I signed up for this.

I remind myself that there will always be times when I will feel overwhelmed. The time will pass, the feeling will fade. I'll be back on top of the horse.

Meantime, self-care: cancel what I can, do things I like to do, eat/sleep/love healthy and strong, get some exercise, be with people who nourish my soul, pray daily and go to church on Sunday. There it is.

All will be right, but right now, don't tip me - I splash sad/mad/illogic-globs. Watch out.

question: do you ever feel like not your best self? What do you do to recover your centre?

mompoet - lopsided, definitely

Uncurling

Art, friends, family. They do it for me every time.

My uncurling from a state of tight-wound stress began on Friday at work. I went over to the office of a co-worker for a short check-in meeting over take-out lunch, and ended up staying for a couple of hours. We got a lot done, but I also remembered what I like about my job - the connections I have with such good people, and the supportive and encouraging environment that we have created. I had this huge pile of work on my desk back at my office, and an imaginary clock ticking with a bomb attached, but it didn't matter. I felt back in my groove. I knew everything would be okay.

Friday evening, after picking up Alex from Karate and driving Fiona to dance class, and sitting on the couch for a while with Andy to check in on plans for the birthday weekend, I went over to Cathy's house for a glass of wine with the ladies. Cathy's mom moved home to Prince Edward Island earlier this year. It was so good to see her and to reconnect with my mom-friends. September and October went by so fast we haven't spent much time together.

Saturday, Alex and I went to the fabric store to get the stuff for Fi's Wendy costume, then to Sylvia's for a haircut, then we picked up Mom and Dad and went for lunch. The Eritrean restaurant wasn't open by 12:30, so we had Pho instead a few door down. It was perfect for a cold, drizzly afternoon. Alex went home by skytrain, and Mom, Dad and I saw "The Wars" at the Playhouse. It was very, very good. The perfect thing at the perfect time. I liked the spare staging, clean and precise characterization and the overall tone and shape of the piece. The play was about a young Canadian soldier in the First World War. It portrayed his experiences and relationships with his family at home and the men with whom he went to war. It was strong on emotion without wallowing in sentimentality or horror. It just felt authentic and good. After the play, Mom and Dad dipped into Sikora's Classical Records while I made a quick trip down to post-Halloween Dressew. I found a few bits more for the Wendy costume.

Saturday night, Andy and I went out for supper to celebrate his birthday. We came home and watched "Blood Diamond" on DVD. Wow. By the time we finished and talked a bit about it, it was midnight. OH! It was only 11pm. I love "fall back."

This morning we are going slow. I skipped church to cuddle in and sleep late. The kids just went out in my car to buy Andy a birthday present. Andy and I will go out somewhere - maybe the Vancouver Flea Market as he has never been there and wants to see it. The phone has been ringing all morning with birthday wishes. Did I mention that he is 50 today? We won't have a big party (his request), but we will make a nice family supper and pick up a cheesecake (his favourite) and some candles.

Tomorrow I'll head back to work and I know everything will be okay. I have re-filled the well with the things that feed my spirit.

question: what feeds your spirit?

mompoet - blessed to be surrounded with that which smooths over and fills up

potatoes

Wuddaweeeek

That's Shane Koyczan, Mike McGee and Anis Mojgani - three of my all time favourite poets. Yes.
That's my poet hero The Svelte Ms Spelt dressed as Dead Hunter S Thompson, and me, dressed as Marcel Marceau.

I haven't posted since the beginning of the week, and here it is the end, so this post may ramble a bit, and it will contain:

A CONFESSION
SEVERAL LENGTHY DESCRIPTIONS
A RECIPE FOR BANANA LOAF
A LINK TO SOME RANDOM SOMETHING
AN ENDING

1. A Confession
I have set up a facebook account. Lots of my friends are on facebook, and I kept getting those chippy little email invitations, so I signed up. It is intriguing and fun and you can waste a lot of time on it. I am determined not to ignore my blog in favour of facebook, because they are two different things. At the same time, I don't want to increase my time at the computer, so I guess I'll just have to learn to type faster.

2. Several Lengthy Descriptions
This is quite possibly the most stressful and delightful week I have had since early summer. Some of it I just can't tell about, but much of it is just business as usual in this full-up life of mine, but just a little too full these days. My workload at the office has gone off the charts. I feel like I am not keeping up adequately with anything, especially my non-favourite detaily-bits. I got a friendly reminder that I have not reconciled my personal cell phone expenditures for 12 months (it's supposed to be done monthly). Well, I have been keeping my phone bills clamped together with an attractive bulldog clip, so I am aware of them, but now I am compelled to do something about them. It's a horrible, boring, icky-picky job that takes about 15 minutes if you do it monthly. Tomorrow I will have 12 X 15 minutes worth of it uk. I am loving the parts about working with my lovely co-workers and the staff that I supervise. I am especially grateful that my counterparts are feeling similarly overwhelmed and are willing to share that feeling (it's better than being the only one in the place who can't keep up) but Oh my, please slow down. Somebody please give me a big hammer to smash my phone and a giant vacuum cleaner to suck up the stuff on my desk and my floor and falling off the stack on top of my filing cabinet. I'd like to start over. I'm sure I can do a better job next time.

Around the edges of work-wak, I am having some absolutely tip-top experiences. Monday was the Dead Poets' Slam at the Van Slam. I have posted a couple of pictures here so you have an idea. Everyone dresses up as a dead poet and performs the work of that poet. We sold the show out for the first time in several years, and the costumes and performances were stellar. Such a good night. I showed up as Marcel Marceau, which is a poetry slam in-joke. Mimes are mockingly reviled by slam poets because "Poets are the lowest paid artistic profession in the world. Mimes get paid more than poets, and they have NOTHING TO SAY." So when Marcel Marceau died this year, I felt sad, but I knew it was my opportunity to be him at the Dead Poets' Slam. I wore the makeup and a peculiar costume, and I did not speak all night. I think it was that last part that rendered me pretty much unrecognizable. It was a weird experience just keeping 100% mum for 3 hours, and even weirder seeing people and knowing that some of them did not know it was me. I have a series of photos showing how I put the costume together, but they are stuck in the other camera that is not talking to the computer right now. Eventually they will befriend each other again, and I'll post the pics. It's pretty cool, changing from a mom to a mime. The transformation took about an hour and a quarter.

Then on Tuesday we had Solomon Sparrow's Electric Whale Revival. Poetry House hosted this show. Five of the best performance poets in the world came to our town and did two back to back shows. Mike McGee, Buddy Wakefield, Anis Mojgani, Dan Leaman and Derrick Brown put on a show that defies description. It was the end of their three-month cross-America tour, in a van. The venue was The Cottage Bistro, a warm little cafe on Main Street South. We had about 100 people in the house for the first show. The vibe was just good, with everyone so open to the men on the stage and what they had to say and show and sing. It felt sometimes like we were one big body, breathing together. I found myself crying several times, and laughing my face off when I wasn't crying. It was just that good. I cried in the car on the way home too. I think I just had so much stuff to let go, and the show opened me up beautifully. It felt good.

Wednesday was Halloween. I took off work a bit early to come home and get ready. Usually we are so prepared for Halloween, but this year it didn't happen that way. I got the decorations out of the attic just the day before. I borrowed a staple gun (ours being temporarily misplaced) dug out the ladder, laid out the lights and skulls and carved a couple of pumpkins quickity quick. All the while I was feeling bad because I wasn't organized to get dressed up again (I like to dress up to greet the trick-or-treaters) and I had not baked (don't laugh, but I always have some cookies and squares to offer the moms and dads along with cups of hot coffee). I did manage to set up coffee but no cakes, and I was feeling pretty glum. I thought "I hope nobody says "where's the cookies?" because I'll either burst into tears or attack them with this borrowed staple gun. Luckily nobody said anything. It's funny how we set up expectations for ourselves, and when we allow ourselves off the hook, the world keeps turning. So anyway, Andy got home in time to do a spectacular lighting and spook-ifying of the carport with the stuff I'd dug up, while I drove Fi and her friend Shan to a Halloween party. I got home in time to make some grill cheeses and set up in the carport. We got almost 200 trick-or-treaters, and we sat out for an hour or so because it's more fun than going to the door. Our neighbours Sol and Wendy were out there too, with their new fog machine, so the whole double carport looked swampy and eerie. The little (and bigger) kids in their costumes were very entertaining. My favourite: 2 eleven-year-old girls with capes, tights and underpants on their heads, dressed as "Super Miyoko" and "Super Kaitlyn." I just love that kind of thing.

Today I went into the office obscenely early to try to stay on top but I just toppled off the heap and headed in for a full day at a Labour Relations course I've been taking on Thursdays. It was very good. The excellent news today was that my name was drawn to get a couple of hockey tickets in our employee group ticket draw. So Andy and Alex will get to see Colorado play the Canucks next Friday. Alex is over the moon. It's hard to get hockey tickets.

I came home in time to make a nice supper, then do an hour of work from the office and I'm starting to feel better about it. It's just work after all, and this too shall pass. I think I was a very grumpy bunny for the first hour I was in the house, but everyone pretended I was just my usual self until I calmed down and stopped acting mean and bossy and crabby.

So I think that's the detailed description. I hope you are still reading.

3. (What was 3? I have to scroll up... to remember)

A RECIPE FOR BANANA LOAF
1. Put a gorilla in a bowl
2. Stir the gorilla 15 times with your left hand, 14 times with your right hand
3. If the gorilla is still in the bowl, it's probably past its "best before" date. Do not eat it.
4. Go to the store and buy and banana loaf.
5. If you do not feel like going to the store, get 2 graham crackers and put a piece of banana and a marshmallow in between them. This is called "fast banana loaf." It's not very good, but you could feed some of it to the gorilla who won't know the difference.
6. Turn your stereo on and dance with the gorilla until you can't remember why you wanted a banana loaf anyway.


4. A link to a random something.

5. The end

Sunday afternoon at the movie

Andy and I saw Control yesterday. It's the story of Ian Curtis, lead singer and writer for the band Joy Division (the English band that later became New Order). The movie was visually spectacular and emotionally compelling. Shot all in black and white with lots of tight close-ups and claustrophobic room and stage settings, it feels raw and immediate. I looked up director Anton Corbjin, and found out that he is a photographer and creator of rock videos. This is his first feature film. It makes sense that the movie looks almost like a series of portraits. In the audience I could just stare at the shapes and faces, and felt like I was right in the middle of the events of this short life story. Ian Curtis was a talented writer and singer who lived a short life. The movie tells the story of a man pulled in too many directions. We watch him lose control, and with it his belief in himself. He just can't be all of the things that people need him to be. The sound track matches songs to situations, mirroring the singer's growing feeling of desperation. It's grim and not always beautiful, but as the character says in one scene, "Not all songs are meant to be beautiful."

It's on at the Fifth Avenue Cinema in Vancouver.

question: seen any good movies lately?

mompoet - I love the movies

Tim Horton Haiku

I NEED A DONUT!
my car first! double-double!
ME FIRST (drive-thru rage)

Dorrie the Little Witch

These books by Patricia Coombs were my favourites when I was little. My Mom read them to me, then I read them to myself, then I read them to my kids. They are still in the library - usually in the "special" section for holiday books, with a jack-o-lantern on the spine, although they are very good year-round.

I love how Dorrie's aunts are oblivious to peril, and how Dorrie gets into trouble by being curious and independent, and how the big witches can't do anything about it, and Dorrie solves the problems in creative and dangerous ways. I also love Dorries' cat, Gink. One day I will have a cat named Gink.

question: have you read them?

mompoet - they are very good

Peter Pan

A new baby chapbook about to be born

The Shoreline Writers' Society Chapbook group met at Helmi's house last night. We talked about our next book, determined the order of the stories and poems inside, and celebrated yet another collaboration. Before Christmas we'll have our book in our hands.

This year's book is our 8th. It's hard to believe we have made so many. This one is titled "Under the Sink" after a poem by Jody Spink. We have 9 contributors this year, and what I think will be our best book ever.

While we drank wine and enjoyed a potluck meal we reflected on many things: past books, and group members not in on the project this year, the process of shared selection and editing, how we release our work into the world, mostly be gifting it to our friends and family, but also with a few sales and the obligatory copies sent to the national library. I have been missing a few meetings this summer and fall, so I felt glad to reconnect with the group. Though we do most of our editing by email exchange, time spent face-to-face is the best, and in a way the reward for all of our work.

We may or may not have a launch, depending on how we all feel. We will all be delighted to receive our copies, and to set our work free into the world. Before that there's work to be done (mostly by Helmi and Fred) to do the copy editing and actually put the book together. At this moment it feels like the 9th month of pregnancy. Soon another book will be born.

question: do you have a group project that you especially enjoy?

mompoet - enjoying this

it just can't be

I am sitting quietly in my kitchen. It's 6:40am. I'm the only one up. Outside my kitchen window is our parking spot and our neighbours Chris and Rhonda's parking spot. There is a scraping sound.

It is not someone scraping frost from a car window. It just can't be.

Puleeeeeeeze. It is only October. I love winter but I don't like scraping. I don't have time for scraping this morning. Please make it be a wolverine trying to remove the siding from my house. Make it an alien emerging from a pod that was buried in my garden by comrades from the mother ship 14 years ago. Make it be anything but frost on a car window.

It stopped. Must not be much frost, or a very small alien, or a non-persistent wolverine.

phew.

question: it's still October, isn't it?

mompoet - it's cold and scary out there

Update on the Cold Wet Weather Shelter Plan

Port Coquitlam City Council has approved it. Here in Port Moody, it's been referred to committee, which is standard operating procedure in our city, but means we won't be able to be the November site this year. Lots of time to be ready to do it next year though. Let's all pray for a warm dry November, in the meantime.

question: why would we not open our doors to welcome people in out of the cold?

mompoet - going now to write my letter to the City Councillors

two compliments

I am frazzled after a 10.5 hour workday starting at 7 this morning, then a too long wait at the blood donor clinic and ooops no supper but I didn't think I'd be there that long. Now I have some egg in the hole and a glass of milk in my tum and the world is turning right side up again. I can reflect with joy and gratitude on two compliments that I received today:

from Kathy: (who phoned me on my cell while I was waiting in the lineup to get plugged in at the clinic so I had to whisper "thanks") "I just want to tell you how proud I am of you for the way you are leading the Artist's Way group. You are a natural teacher."

from Fiona: (who was cooking 'kess-a-dillas" - rhymes with gorillas - like on Napoleon Dynamite while I cooked my eggies) "Mom, you're the expensive smelly cheese that holds this kess-a-dilla family together. Not that you stink or anything. You're just fancy, so you're smelly, but you hold us together."

Thank you very much, beloveds. That was just what I needed as I jambled pell-mell through a day without a moment for which-what-who.

question: did you ever have somebody say the right thing to you at just the right time?

mompoet - ahhhhh

3000 visitors?

I'm looking at that little counter in the corner and thinking, "that many people have been looking at my blog?" Daily "unique visits" have been pretty steadily 15-20 per day. Not enough to sell ad space but WOW! Thanks for visiting, Mom, Dad, Fiona, Uncle Tim, Cathy, Laurie, Irene, Daisy, Andrew, Carol, Imran, Shannon, Pearl, Kristene and the other 2 to 6 of you.

You make my day.

Without you, I would be garbling into the void.

question: who'da thunk it?

mompoet - garbling regardless

I always thought "blurts" were good

Low impulse control. Sometimes it's something of a problem, but I like it. I like it when I'm comfortable enough to just say something a millisecond before I even know I'm thinking it. Sometimes I regret my blurts but mostly they are funny, and because I have a good heart and generally good intentions, they are rarely hurtful. Blurts are often my source of creativity. Some preposterous idea will just burble up at a random moment and I will look at it and I will say "I LOVE YOU!" I embrace the blurt, live with it for a while. If I'm lucky it grows into something that's worth keeping and sharing. If not, it's another one of those private jokes that I have with myself, that cause me sometimes to walk around with a distracted grin and giggle to myself for no apparent reason.

In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron uses the term "blurt" to describe negative self-messages that pop out when we are trying to believe in ourselves as creative beings. My negative self messages say things like: "Everything you do is inexcusably derivative" and "You just say that because you think the other person wants you to say that." My blurts mostly centre on accusations that I am not authentically creative. They tell me that I am a bad photocopy, rather than an original when it comes to making art. I'm using some of the techniques in the book to work on those blurts, and help know what to do with them when the arrive uninvited.

In the meantime, I'm hanging on to the positive meaning of "blurt." I think the time for thinking is in the revising process. If I overthink and planfully plan my creative stuff before I let it out, I reject everything before it's born. I must fart first, embroider later.

I have decided there are two kinds of blurts:

blarts (the bad, nasty negative kind) and
blyruts (the juicy, embarassing, exciting, wild, consciousness revealing kind that I like)

So if you see me walking around with a lopsided smile and tears in my eyes, with loose glips and bliggles escaping. If I bump into a lamp post and don't even notice, you'll know I am focusing on the blyruts, and the blarts are two lengths behind me and won't catch up.

question: do you blurt? if so, what kind?

mompoet - was that too personal?

Breathtaking

Louise and I saw "Take a Breath" at the Roundhouse on Saturday. Our friend Valerie Methot facilitated a group of people in a community theatre project. Each participant was asked to explore "what is important to you" and present it in a one-minute spot, using movement, music or spoken word. The show was woven together with movement pieces and bits of dialogue that made evident the level of collaboration and loving support that must have been at the heart of the process. Some of the performers were experienced, others not. They ranged in age from teenagers to seniors. It was beautiful and revealing and encouraging.

question: what's important to you?

mompoet - fortunate to witness

The Big WWWWIIIIIINNNNNNNDDDDDD!!!!

This typhoon came across the Pacific from Japan. The weather reports warned us to be ready for the worst. In fact, not much happened beyond a bit of heavy rain. Down in Seattle, though, it was horrendously awful (in a mild sort of way).

Defective Yeti has a great link to KING 5 news where they were clearly grasping for a local lead story. Check it out (and be sure to view the "raw" footage and tell me if you see any horrible wreckage and dire destruction).

question: did people WANT there to be a disaster?

mompoet - flashlight at my bedside just in case, but I think I won't be needing it.

The Number 14

I finally caught the bus. After 15 years of this show touring, I finally went to see it. My friend Robin treated me to an early birthday gift, with a performance of The Number 14 at Shadbolt Centre in Burnaby. This is a show about people on a bus in Vancouver. There are 6 actors who sing, dance, mime, work with puppets and masks and perform broad physical comedy and acute social commentary. The program notes say:

"Our inspiration has been Commedia dell-arte, Monty Python, silent movies, Mr. Bean vaudeville and ritual."

Robin and I laughed our heads off for the whole 2 hours. It was wonderful. If you still haven't bought your bus pass, get one and see this show.

question: did you ever mean to do something for a long time, then finally do it, and wonder why you didn't do it sooner?

mompoet - lucky that there's usually more than one chance to do a good thing

permission to be creative

I have started an Artist's Way creative cluster at work. We met today at lunchtime to talk about it, and will meet for 3 more weeks as we begin the 12 week program. The Human Resources Department agreed to advertise it as a "lunch and learn" class. These are one-hour classes put on by employees who have a particular interest or expertise. They're free to attend, and usually fun and informative, and you get to know what your co-workers are interested in and good at.

Our HR department booked a room at the Arts Centre for us, provided cookies and lemon water (we bring our own bag lunches) and bought everyone who signed up a copy of the book.

I was careful when I set this up, not to represent myself as an "Artist's Way Facilitator." I just wanted to get a group of people together who would do the program at the same time, share insights, help each other with roadblocks and have some fun.

If you don't know the program, it's based on the work and writings of artist Julia Cameron, who developed it as a course of study and practice for people to free themselves up to live their lives with a greater creative connection to the universe and themselves. It's a lot about making creative living and thinking and doing a priority, and also shunning the internal censor that says "thinking of yourself as an artist is an egotistical conceit." I tried the program once before on my own and quit after 8 or9 weeks. I figure doing it in a group will be something like a running group. I'm more likely to go the distance if it's not solo.

So today I mapped out 50 minutes of talking and playing to get us started. Eight people showed up, and 2 more will be there next week. We played with plasticine clay, talked about our reflections on the introductory chapters of the book, thought about what might be difficult to do in the program (like daily morning pages, a weekly artist's date, maybe up to an hour a day to read and think and do creativity-releasing exercises). Everyone seemed upbeat and interested. We finished by each writing a letter of encouragement to ourselves. I have the letters and will mail them in a couple of days, so we can receive them just before our next meeting.

We'll do the program on our own each week, and meet to share. In between we can be in touch if we like. After 4 weeks we'll decide if we want to continue in any form (follow up meetings, group emails, maybe a blog) as we continue with the 12 week program. I am hoping that it will mostly be about sharing and giving each other courage. It's easier to tell someone else they deserve to let go and be expressive, curious, playful, connected to a spiritual creator, than it is to say that to yourself. So we can help each other this way.

I'm optimistic, and getting over the idea that it was a pretty vain and puffed-up idea to think I could pull this off. People came, they played, they left smiling. Now I have to let go of that aspect and get on with doing the program myself. Morning pages day 1 - tomorrow.

question: have you done the Artist's Way?

mompoet - liking adventures, especially with other people who prefer a life out of the ordinary