east of cambie

astride a wharf pile

cormorant feathering

her neck


pair of canada geese

head under wing

 in a row


pecking at wet barnacles

in cleft of log

a crow.

 (some photos to go with it ( : )

Barbara Hammer and eating popcorn

The day started out ordinarily enough. All I was trying to accomplish was to record my writing classes  from the yearly schedule in to my Georgia O'Keefe (1887-1986) paintings datebook. Which took several hours of meticulous careful work - interrupted  by many phone calls. The home care nurse to change their calls to monthly instead of weekly - given that I am nearly better I expect this is a good idea. The technician to tell me they don't have any extra-tall seat backs in stock right now for the electric chairiot ....hmmmm. To try to get a yearly bus pass for me and the chairiot instead of special transportation subsidy - it's too complicated to explain, call back in March. My GP to tell me she is on it with the bone density tests, but despite recent boney events, she is worried I don't qualify, there is not a box to tick for me - even if treatments leave me with the bones of a 60 year old. A different nurse to make a time for a monthly injection - the one that leaves me with the bones of a 60 year old. The new supervisor, of the home care workers came by in person to meet me. Now don't get me wrong I am mighty grateful for health care and whatever kind of assistance I receive, and the people who give it. I just never realized how complicated my life is in one day! 

barbara hammer with camera  as younger and older woman

Come evening time, things got way more fun! I went with  two friends (the same two as from the chairiot coast adventure) to the movies! We were going to see the Barbara Hammer (1939 - ) touring retrospective show Making movies out of sex and life. I saw some of her movies in the 1980's in Aotearoa. The fact she has been making experimental films - some 80 in 40 years is remarkable  reason enough to get dressed up on a winter night and head out in to the sleet. I had tried quite hard online the night before to find out how to buy tickets in advance with no success. All information said tickets at the door, doors open at 6pm. I wasn't taking any chances, we were there at 6pm on the dot. There were already 20 or so people waiting in the freezing cold of the ticket line up. The show was sold out in advance, the ticket booth was not open and would not be open until 6.45pm, no we could not go inside in the meantime. Things looked grim. It was starting to snow.

We did not have any of the mysteriously reserved tickets, nor the yellow arm bands of the many participating organizations. My charming companion miss brain face stuck close by one of the organizers of a group she has participated in, stuck like glue. Miraculously one arm band appeared   - we each insisted the other should go in, and then two spare yellow arm bands materialized, very very grateful! Alas no more could be found, our faithful companion was sick of standing around in the cold, and had been wanting to see the movie The King's Speech for some time, she would just make a 7pm screening at a nearby cinema. She graciously departed for it post haste.

barbara hammer smiling

 I schmoozed a little on my way in to the theatre, my companion, miss 80, thoughtfully found us seats at the back just in from the aisle. While I was off chatting with a friend, my companion discovered the black jacket on the seat next to us belonged to none other than the filmmaker herself, Mz Barbara Hammer. They chatted and became instant buddies. I was very excited to meet her, we talked some about filmmaking, our common history of cancer, the Guerrilla Grrls and having your career pick up when you are 80! (She is 71). She was so down to earth and approachable. How typical of a filmmaker to sit at the back -  you can observe unnoticed your audience's reaction to your work - which is always fascinating to see. 

After introductions, we watched Dyketactics (1974), No No Nooky TV (1981), SYNC TOUCH (1987), and A Horse is not a metaphor (2008), the latter about her journey with ovarion cancer.  There were times I wanted to take both her, and my companion's hands, knowing what each had been through as survivor, and witness, but I was too shy. At the end of the show before Mz Hammer was called down the front for an illuminating Q and A, she turned to us and said, 'I bequeath you my popcorn'. If I had been a different kind of person I would have kept it and sold it on e-bay. But I am not, and so I did as she had intended in giving it to us, and ate it!

Hammer! book cover

Barbara Hammer is a great public speaker, warm, almost theatrical. I was very interested in her decision on noticing her early work was picked up by lesbian audiences but not mainstream art houses, to make work not focused on lesbians and women in her mid career work - and it was then picked up by galleries. Her later work bringing it all back in to focus. She answered audience questions with honesty and gusto. Finished by reading from her recently published memoir Hammer! Making movies out of sex and life, a beautiful piece to her partner, in the lyrical repetitive style of Gertrude Stein. Alas all her books were sold out in the foyer, so words about that remain for another day.

of Desires book cover

Our faithful companion arrived to transport us home through the falling snow, having thoroughly enjoyed her movie The King's Speech, it made her weep and learn much. On the way home we picked up the mail, which included a debut book of poetry from my dear gay compatriot Billy Darlington. We were all a little giggly from the evenings wondrous events, so we ate pancakes and honey with lemon, when that was not enough we moved on to fruitcake with sherry and read aloud from Billy Darlington's book of Desires, appropriately enough starting with the erotic poem 0359.

Ellen Galford and The Fires of Bride

book cover with Celtic knotwork

For writing class we had to write about a work of a writer we like.  I  chose Ellen Galford’s The Fires of Bride for its no-nonsense style, which evokes both a down to earth pragmatism, and an as given magical realism, whether she is writing about kippers or ghosts. Galford (1947 - )writes with a sensory physicality in the present tense: to describe recent remote rural Scotland, an ancient nunnery, pagan or Viking times, with an immediacy that transports you there. Her approach is to use small practical details to create a sense of place, time, and character. She is very good at writing from a range of characters point of view in terms of their language and attitudes. Whether that be a stroppy sculptor Maria, playful blind weaver Isa, or a career driven archaeologist. Something I need to work at – getting inside different characters heads and voices. Ellen Galford's approach makes a range of cultures accessible, fun, and funny, so that you want to go there.

One of the characters Mhairi, is a nun in a scriptorium some centuries ago, learning the illustrated arts of writing as a pictorial calligrapher. To me it is a metaphor about writing generally. In part it says ‘there are 17 different shades of blue’ and then she goes on to describe some of them from calligrapher Mhairi’s point of view. This challenges me to think how I could describe each one, and how to create mood by precise creative distinctiveness, choosing each word carefully.

Galford’s narrative of Mhairi’s apprenticeship as a calligrapher under the tutelage of the stern Bloduedd who for a year only lets Mhairi trace letters others have formed, is a metaphor for me of writing as a hard task master. To begin with you may copy the forms of others, say in poetry using rhyming couplets and writing on topics dictated by teachers. As you gain confidence you may develop your own form, style, rhythm, and narrative. Writing, like all arts may require a period of apprenticeship, it continues to require discipline, dedication, creativity, patience.

In one section Mhairi collects flowers, berries and shells to make the colors for her illustrations, burns her hand on the acid of a red berry while preparing it, which leaves a scar. Hints at the power of writing to change you, not just mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, but also physically. It changes your muscles, how you hold your body, how you sit, how you read. 

As testament of the power of a book to change us, over twenty years ago the Scriptorium in which this scene is set became a kind of magical place referred to among other writers who had read the book. In honour of me going to writers school this year, a fellow writer from far away, had a sign made for my room and mailed it to me, it says: Scriptorium.

In the late 1980’s when we read Fires of Bride, a roommate made a beautiful painted coat based on one of the other main characters in the book – Catriona, a GP who paid her way through medical school by working as a fortune teller. Fires of Bride is full of such  wondrous contradictions which appeal to me. I still have this coat.

So intrigued was I by the remote Scottish Isles where this book was set, I once traveled there just to be amongst the standing stones, the people, the Gaelic, the heaving north sea, and the windswept landscape.  

I can aspire to writing words that could evoke: creative imaginative spaces; artwork; or journeys in others; and speak to the future. 

standing stone circle isle of lewis

   

Strong Medicine - West meets East meets North meets South

Medicine and spirit has been up a lot lately. I'm gonna go with that. During a film festival, I saw the films Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life, and The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island.

Buffy Sainte-Marie (1941- ) is an awe inspiring artist and activist who travels the world performing, and working on her Cradle Board Teaching Project which links indigenous teens across communities, provides School Curriculum on First Nations and much more. I really like her innovative  digital art work, 'painting with light'.  Her multiple streams of creativity, and standing up for what she believes in. Learning more about her long trail blazing career as a singer and songwriter since the 1960's was just wonderful. She has worked so hard for close to five decades, and endured her music being 'blacklisted' and suppressed due to her stand on First Nations rights and many other issues.

I was struck by many things in these two movies, but what stays with me is near the end Buffy Sainte-Marie says in the film something to the effect, 'if you carry the medicine, if you are a medicine carrier, but the illness is not epidemic yet, you have to carry the medicine for a really long time'. It made me reflect on the long history of many diverse communities for justice, healing, and wellness.

Buffy Sainte-Marie who was born in Saskatchewan, Canada of the Cree Nation, lives some of the year, when she is not traveling for work, in Hawaii. She talked about the need for a place of retreat, and quiet, in order to be able to do all she does as a performer and teacher. Similarly Hanne Sorensen (1960 - ) originally from Denmark who is one of 6 people featured in the film The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island, talks about needing to retreat after years working as a welder and technician aboard Greenpeace ships on environmental issues. The Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior - named after a Cree prophecy of the ecological disaster that would befall the human race if nature was not respected, was to lead a protest against underwater nuclear bomb tests at Mururoa, in 1985. For decades the peoples of the pacific have been made so sick by radiation poisoning, which still effects people today, including genetically. The Rainbow Warrior had just come from Rongelap, (Marshall Islands), where the indigenous people had asked for help to relocate to another island, their homeland had become so uninhabitable. The ship was bombed by members of the French military in a covert operation in Auckland harbour, it sank taking the life of Fernando Pereira. Many of the crew now live on nearby Waiheke Island. Aotearoa has been a nuclear-free zone by practice since 1984, and by law since 1987.

I understand that need to retreat, to reflect, to rejuvenate.  Both these places - Hawaii, and Waiheke Island, where these two women live, I have been to, and returned to for exactly these reasons - healing, review, renewal. Places which in and of themselves are healing, they have such powerful energy.

I watched a video of African-American writer Alice Walker (1944 - ) and Buddhist nun Pema Chodron (1936 - ) Pema Chodron and Alice Walker in Conversation (1999).

Alice Walker's third novel The Color Purple is one of my favourites. It talked about things I knew: violence; relationships with women; and things I had not been subjected to: racism. It meant so much to me, when the movie based on the book came out, a friend took the poster from the movie theatre and gave it to me, it hung on my wall for years. Alice Walker was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (the first African American woman writer to receive it) and the American Book Award for The Color Purple

Pema Chodron is a European-American Buddhist nun, director of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Pema Chodron and Alice Walker  talked amongst other things about making toxic things in to medicine - more like emotional, or mental or spiritual suffering. Not to seek suffering, or be martyrish about it, but to accept that there will be good times, and there will be hard times. To use the hard times, to make use of them, to learn about ourselves, and others, a way to understand this as a social activist -  our shared experiences of sufffering. To make the hard, the toxic be a teacher to us.


Or as the Dalai Lama puts it:  'Acceptance of suffering does not mean we should not do everything in our power to solve a problem whenever it can be solved. However, acceptance of the suffering that we are already undergoing helps us not to make it worse with the additional burden of mental and emotional suffering. For example, there is not much we can do about old age. Far better to accept our condition than to fret about it.'

A Two-Spirit friend who was participating as one of forty Aboriginal ceremonial spiritual elders and leaders in the third annual Downtown Eastside Smudge Ceremony invited me and a friend to come. Which was a humbling and amazing experience -  it is open to all, four hundred people came, many First Nations people traveling from near and far. It is held in a hard place, a dangerous place for women, especially Aboriginal women, where colonization meets the street. Where poverty, displacement, violence, addiction and prostitution live. A place where people live, and look out for one another. A place where Aboriginal villages once were. A place of hurt. The ceremony of healing from violence towards women,  was initiated by Darla Laughlin in 2007, after she had a vision in which she saw a huge abalone (paua) shell from which the smoke of sage was filling the street. Bringing together people of all races from the four sacred directions of the medicine wheel. Red races from the West, Black races from the South, Yellow races from the east, White races from the North. This year the smudge ceremony was on the 'Summer Solstice: Honouring Women as Sacred Life Giver. Prayers for Mother Earth and all Female Energy. Keeping our Seven Generations.'
 

Powerful medicine, after three hours one of the most painful places on earth felt as clear, neutral, energized, pure as a temple. I have recently been taught the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. Making your heart  a place of light, through which you breath in others suffering, breathing out joy, peace, happiness. I do not find it easy, I am still learning how not to take in, on that suffering, not to be overwhelmed by the suffering of all living beings.  Being a bit of an energy empath, I frequently shudder, on the bus, on the street, in traffic, when people and places of hurt, negative energy reaches and envelopes me as I pass by. I try to have compassion. To remember that sometimes, angry, aggressive, violent people, are just like barking dogs - scared. Yes I try to protect myself, with light. There are reasons I live in the mountains, and meditate on buses.  In the ceremonial space of so much concentrated energy, with so many people standing in spirit with their sacred medicine bundles, and constantly renewed by the smoke of the smudge, it was much more possible. The breathing in of suffering, transforming it, the breathing out of joy. It was a profound way to spend the summer solstice. 

After in the park, we ate wonderful vegetarian South-Asian Indian food. Amidst the First Nations drumming and dancing, I thought of friends in Aotearoa, in the winter, celebrating Matariki, the new year.


Later that week, an Aussie musician friend from down the line, I wished I could see more often, was in town and turned up unexpectedly next to me in my mediation class to surprise me! No not in a vision, like in reality! Let us sit together and envision a better world for all.

With gratitude Namaste.

a giraffe in your head

if the front
of your head
is your forehead
florid
florin
what is
a crown?
the back
of your head?
like a boat 
fore and aft
afthead?
daft in the head
draft in your head
a giraffe in your head?

BIOMYTHOGRAPHY - d'bi young anitafrika

Run, wheel, scoot, bus, drive or take handidart to see d'bi young anitafrika perform Blood Claat at the Firehall, last chance for the Vancouver run, Saturday April 17, 2pm and 8pm. Fan-freakin-tastic! She embodies all 12 characters so completely - young, old, female, male. Characters like a teenage girl, granny, auntie, uncle, bus conductor, boyfriend, priestess, warrior all reveal their different relationships to blood. Her sweat and tears are hard earned, it will touch you in a deep place, and make you think about, everything. She is an extraordinary storyteller, sit in the second row for the most fun and laughs! Support women in theatre! Talkback with d'bi after each performance, you'll be glad you stayed.

'Blood.claat, is a story told through multiple generations in which rituals travel in symbolic cycles of scorn and celebration exposing rites in which all metaphors unite in the fluid of life.'

I had the pleasure of being wowed by her entrancing dub poetry at the folk festival last year, once you have seen her perform, you won't want to miss her ever again! Check out the youtube clip where she talks about dub theatre.  Her website for her  performance centre in Toronto anitafrika dub theatre, or an interview with her talking about her work  here.  

She works in the genre of biomyth(ography) as presented by the wonderful writer Audre Lorde, (1934 - 1992) as do I. Hmm maybe I will dust of that three generational play and finish it sometime! Feeling inspired! It was Audre Lorde who wrote: "We must be the change we wish to see in the world." I found Audre Lordes work in the late 80's/early 90's, from memory 'Zami: a new spelling of my name', and 'The Cancer Journals.'

Blood Claat is the first part of a trilogy of works d'bi is currently touring: 

'blood.claat (the first play in d'bi.young's biomyth-monodrama trilogy entitled sankofa) was nominated for five dora mavor moore awards in 2006, and won in the categories of outstanding new play and outstanding female performance. it toured canada extensively and was published as a bilingual 1st edition (english/spanish) by playwrights canada press. d'bi.young is presently completing benu (part 2), originally commissioned by montreal's la chapelle theatre and supported by factory theatre and word! sound! powah! (part 3), originally commissioned by soulpepper theatre and supported by canstage theatre. young's first play, a two-hander co-written by naila belvett, entitled yagayah was published in testifyin': contemporary african canadian drama in 2003. her second two-hander androgyne was produced by buddies in bad times theatre in 2007. young is the 2009-2010 playwright-in-residence at canstage theatre and is a member of the tarragon playwrights unit 2010.' 

Para Graphia Mark III

It’s all about context eh? It was only today seeing Para written in a sentence with other Maori words, I remembered Para is also a Maori word, or often prefix. I know that it’s not only about context, it’s also about who is writing, or seeing, or speaking, or understanding a word. That Para, separated from Graphia, as in Paragraphia, is a word not only in English/Latin, but also Maori, and possibly other languages such as Spanish. I set out to find what Para could mean. Relying on the always reliable, extensive Ngata Dictionary, Maori to English, and English to Maori. (http://www.learningmedia.co.nz/ngata/)

Which revealed 260 results for Para. So out of respect for the fact letters, sounds syllables live within many languages; in this space devoted to words, meanings and writers, included below are some of the beautiful possibilities in Maori. Which resonate with this writing, and whose trail led me back to another language I had been thinking about after returning to spend time at the Out from Under exhibition, Braille:

For those who may not know, Aotearoa is officially a trilingual country. The official languages, are indigenous Maori (since 1987 - of which in reality there are many distinct languages and dialects), NZ Sign Language (since 2006). English which is a de facto Official Language by use since colonization in 1800’s, but not actually by law.  Unfortunately the reality of access to, use, and teaching in all three languages is a whole other struggle. English being far more favoured by officialdom, and both Maori and NZ Sign Language having been repressed historically. That is, in practice, and legislated against, and people punished for using them. I believe the only other country in which Sign Language is an official language so far is Uganda.

Hori Mahue Ngata (1919 – 1989) eldest grandson of Sir Apirana Ngata MP (1874 –1950), was a kaumatua of Ngati Porou, with tribal connections to Ngai Tamanuhiri, Rongomaiwahine, and Te Aitanga a Mahaki. Interpreter, University lecturer, scholar, he, and his whanau (family), friends, and colleagues spent decades creating the dictionary of over 14,500 entries. From the 1960’s on, until it’s publication in 1993, four years after his sudden death in 1989. Leaving us all with a great taonga (treasure) of which I am in awe. (My apologies I can’t work out how to put the macrons over the long vowels on this computer – but I am on the trail of finding and configuring software which will correct this).

"kopara: female bellbird (listen to her sing http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/small-forest-birds/4/1).

haparangi: to bellow; taipara(tia): bombard; parapara: bent. He mahi parapara te korero purakau ki a Witi Ihimaera. Witi Ihimaera has a natural bent for story-telling. (this is even more apt considering he is gay writer = bent!). para: body. He nui nga para kai roto i te wai. There are foreign bodies in the water.

ukupara - smudge; pake parapara: black cape. Ko nga muka harakeke i totohua ki ro paru mo nga ra torutoru, i whatua mo te pake parapara. Flax fibres steeped in mud for several days were used to weave the black cape.

parapara: acumen, faculty, ingenuity, instinct/ive, resource, remains. paraketu(tia): probe

para kore: pure. tio para: mud oyster.

parari: gully; parara: roar. Te parara a te hau i roto i te koaka. The roar of the wind in the ravine. paparahi: trail; para: spirit."

H.M. Ngata Dictionary 1993

Which brought me back to Mae Brown, first Deaf-Blind person to receive a degree, at Toronto University in Canada in 1972. Working away on her Braille typewriter, with her lectures spelt into the palm of her hand, as part of her work she created a Braille encyclopedia. She is featured in the Out from Under exhibit under ‘Trailblazing’. The text of the online Plain Language Audio Tour of this section concludes:  http://www.ofu.ryerson.ca/exhibits/trailblazing.html

“Long before she earned her university degree she wrote an article comparing her life to a deep dark canyon. She imagined that her only way out of the canyon was by making a difficult climb. She wanted to leave way marks behind her so that other people could find the path she had taken”

when I lie down
tired worn out
others will stand
young, fresh
on the stairs
which I have built
they will climb
and on the work
which I have done
they will mount
at my clumsy work
they will laugh
and when the stones roll
they will curse me
but they will climb
and on my stairs
and they will mount
and on my work”

Mae Brown (1935 – 1973)

I like to think of Mae Brown working at her studies in the late 1960’s; whilst on the other side of the world H.M. Ngata is beginning his dictionary, starting with the legal terms used in his level III Maori Language Class at Auckland University. Trail blazing, doing something worth doing which no one has done before.

The roar of the wind in the ravine
roar
gully
trail
spirit

Te parara a te hau i roto i te koaka
parara
parari
paparahi
para

Or, it wasn’t until I stood alone in the dark canyon of the wings about to go on a stage, with the book my friend had given me, in which I had pasted my stories. I noticed for the first time, some months before she had written ‘Shine on you crazy diamond’. (Yes Ups to Pink Floyd!) She had put those words there, perhaps knowing, I would later need them. I took courage from those words. Blaze on my friends, blaze on.

Revolving word cloud

Highlights of the week. I get to hang out with women as fabulous as this! The acerbic wit, insight, and mischievous eye twinkling smile of brilliant activist academic and Out from Under co-curator, Catherine Frazee. Along with her partner Pat, and fellow co-curators. I attended the exhibition opening on International Women's Day, and a small group of us went to eat together after, what a wonderful way to spend the day! A few days later I am stunned as always by the sheer power, and beauty of Afuwa Granger's paintings in the Heroes exhibition. The range of artistic mediums, the scope of subject matter, the ingenuity of form, the painful beauty of many pieces. On Friday I join with others in being made breathless by the mesmerizing, electrifying, non-stop mental gymnastics, laugh so hard you cry performance of Jan Derbyshire in Funny in the head!

Yesterday, a meeting, at which we all are at different times and combinations of, to muse on  the importance of art making people uncomfortable, racism in the disability and media communities, translating disability  issues within the disability communities to wider communities....

The image, I can not shake from the Out from Under exhibition, is the baby's bassinet in which there is a thick report of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the suspicious deaths  of 36 disabled  infants at the The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. As many as 43 died from lethal drug overdoses it was revealed in 1981. As always I am reminded that history (including to the present day)  seeks to exterminate, medicalize, pharmaceuticalize, neutralize, neuter, confine, conform, control women as gifted as these, who bodies and/or minds do not conform to 'the norm'. I am grateful. For their existence, for their resilience, for their brilliance. Their artistry, their analysis, and for the time we have together.

In honour of the ideas these women liberate daily into the atmosphere, which are circulating in my brains word cloud; and on my way to trying to find out how to embed articles; I discovered the wonderful revolving word cloud application. Which circulates Blog Post Labels like their very own evolving, revolving,  revolutionary planet. Enjoy! If you move the mouse over the words you can make them change direction, and speed. If you just must have it, you can get your very own here.  

No sugar-coating for disability exhibit www.vancouversun.com

For disability rights activist Catherine Frazee, the personal overlaps with the political even when she doesn't intend it........

Out from Under | Disability, History and Things to Remember ofu.ryerson.ca

This virtual museum of activist disability history pays tribute to a proud legacy of resistance and survival. Click on the images below to enter the exhibits, or browse the menu at left for a range of ...

One of Afuwa Granger's  3 luminous paintings in the

Heroes Exhibition
The text with the above image says: There is poetry hidden in my paintings/ ink and paint/ give form to marks/ carried by my ancestors/ they resist erasure/ Guyana petroglyphs/ enmesh personal/ physical history/ with/ visible present.

Jan Derbyshire gets a little funny in her head | Theatre

www.gayvancouver.net

Vancouver Lesbian Jan Derbyshire presents her one woman show Funny in the Head on March 12th as part of the Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture Festival.

WOMEN / MENTAL / HEALTH - Happy IWD, PWD's!

Photo Copyright FreeStockImages.org


HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY MARCH 8
- PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES!

MARCH 12
She Laughed, She Cried;
Fado with Sara Marreiros & Comedy with Jan Derbyshire
Friday, March 12, 2010. 8:00pm - 10:00pm
Location: Telus Studio Theatre - Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. UBC
Opening the performance stream of the Kickstart Festival 2010. Fado singer Sara Marreiros and her band bring music steeped in the passion of Portuguese saudade (yearning). Jan Derbyshire performs Funny in the Head, the rollicking story of a bipolar comedian’s fight to stay funny.
Tickets: $22 ($16 students, seniors & fixed income)
http://www.ticketmaster.ca/section 604.280.3311
Kickstart Festival 2010 presented in partnership with the Chan Centre
for the Performing Arts. http://www.kickstart-arts.ca/kickstartfestival.html

MARCH 13
Womyn and Mental Health. Saturday, March 13th 2010.
Facilitator: Erin Graham Location: Hastings Library
(2674 East Hastings Street). Time: 10 am – 2 pm.
This workshop will offer participants opportunities to talk about their understandings and experiences of psychiatry and mental health. We will discuss some of the ways in which women respond to the sexism and oppression we encounter, and examine how some of those responses are labeled "inappropriate" or as indicative of psychiatric illness. Participants can expect to have lots of time to engage with current ideas about women and mental health, and come away with some concrete strategies for how to get beside and assist women in distress, or who may be looking for resources about mental health. Come with questions, problems, ideas and an appetite for understanding.
Erin Graham is a long-time feminist activist, mental health Worker, storyteller and raconteur. She is presently in the process of getting a PhD from the department of Educational Studies at UBC.

MARCH 6
A Feminist Perspective of the Indian Act.
Saturday, March 6th 2010. Facilitator: Fay Blaney.
Location: Hastings Library (2674 East Hastings Street)
Time: 10Am – 2Pm
With International Women's Day fast approaching, this workshop will take a feminist exploration on the impact of the Indian Act on First Nations women. The feminist principle that “the personal is political” is an effective tool in bringing about greater understandings of gendered inequality. It underscores the relationship between the shaping of ideologies and beliefs through legal and institutional instruments, and its' impact on the lived experiences of First Nations women. The conviction that “Feminist until all women are free” must apply to this discussion!

Fay Blaney is a Xwemalhkwu woman of the Coast Salish First Nation. As a founding mother of the Aboriginal Women's Action Network, Fay lead two participatory action research projects on (i) Bill C-31 and (ii) violence against women as it pertains to alternative justice models. During her years as an instructor at Langara College and UBC, Fay taught Women's Studies, from an Aboriginal feminist perspective. She also played a significant role in the creation of the Aboriginal Studies Program at Langara College. Fay also taught a course on “Racism and Ethnic Relations in Canada”. In addition to several publications, Fay appears in the film, “Finding Dawn” and developed the Study Guide that accompanies this film.

Registration: Swathi Nirmal. Women's Centre Coordinator.
Vancouver Status of Women
Phone 604-255-6554 womencentre(at)vsw.ca. Bus tickets , Snacks and Childcare Provided. Please contact gorgeousmabel(at)hotmail.com in advance if you require childcare.

AVAILABLE NOW
Rain and Thunder Issue 45 (Winter 2009): Annual Activism Issue
Featured articles:
Activism as a Disabled Womon by Philippa Willitts
"Fierce Indigenous Love": Fighting for Her Sisters -- An Interview with Aboriginal Radical Feminist Laura Holland
Twin Oaks: Not the Revolution But You Can See it From Here by Valerie LivingWater
Lone Radical ...Feminist Actions by Diana Russell
Forty Years of Activism by Jean Taylor
The Other Side of Activism: Withdrawal as a Radical Act of Defiance by Kim Rivers

ART SUBMISSIONS APRIL
Words on the wall: Remembrance Of Patients Past
Psychiatric Survivors Archives of Toronto (PSAT) is giving out bricks for artists to create with, deadline for submission April 7th 2010. There will be a silent auction of bricks painted by local artists. Proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Psychiatric Survivors Archives of Toronto (PSAT) for the purpose of buying plaques to commemorate the labour of CAMH patients during the construction of a wall on the institution’s grounds.

Marc Glassman, Executive Director of This Is Not A Reading Series, will host the evening. Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen St West Wednesday April 21: 7:30pm. To celebrate the re-issue of his groundbreaking study, Remembrance Of Patients Past (University of Toronto Press), scholar and activist Geoffrey Reaume will conduct a walking tour of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) grounds. Reaume will then guide the group to the Gladstone Hotel, where he will have an on-stage conversation Ruth Ruth of Friendly Spike Theatre Band. http://www.tinars.ca/content/remembrance-patients-past.
For bricks contact: 416 661 9975; http://www.psychiatricsurvivorarchives.com/index.html

KICKSTART FESTIVAL 2010 MARCH ८ - २७ - disability arts and culture

Art Exhibitions, Theatre, Dance, Music, Workshops.

k.d. lang eh

Yes I watched the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games on TV. For the record I wish governments would spend as much money and energy on addressing First Nations sovereignty; homelessness, poverty, services to women, children, elders, disabled, refugees; the arts etc as they do on sports events like this.....k.d. lang singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah near the end kinda got to me. Wow, such power in her voice, she put her heart and soul in to that! (Even tho up until that moment I wasn't really a fan of this song, I mean the dude can write, but his songs can tend towards dirges and sometimes 1970's style misogyny). Okay I cried during the First Nations part, with so many dancers from so many nations gathered together in one place. Bagpipes make me cry sometimes too, and I tried not to cry, during a fantastic performance by Turanga Ararau and local First Nations last week, I went to on the eve of Waitangi Day, as I hummed quietly the familiar tunes. It's part spirit, part collective memory, part some grief of energy around previously oppressed cultures, part some personal history of my own. Like when people play 10 guitars. Theme song of 1970's parties, rural and urban.....I actually thought this was a local song up until quite recently, there were so many localized versions sung; me being oblivious to Engelbert Humperdink.

It made me think about the power of k.d. lang standing there in her white suit butchness for all the parts of the world which could watch knowing some part of who and what she is. This Metis, lesbian, butch woman, singing a song to another woman. It inspired me to carry on with my own tiny spoken word performance when the opportunity arises. There is a power in your own truth which others not only appreciate, but need.



Like a disabled artist I met out at a Uni talk about Cancer and being Queer. I was chatting with after, asked me 'was that you I went to see perform at such and such a venue'? Yep it probably was. We have no idea sometimes the positive effect of what we do has on others. We often don't find out until years later, if even at all. Being a big boned gal from southern alberta, apparently k.d. lang performed Turn me round at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics too. I did love that song, big boned gal from southern alberta that year, it made me feel like I fit in my body as I danced around the kitchen.

I did really love her Constant Craving song from her Ingenue album, and could play it over, and over and over again in the early 1990's! Although I always thought of it as being about chocolate! I'm joking! And I thought the line 'Maybe a great magnet/pulls all souls towards truth' was 'Maybe a great Minatour' huh? I always imagined some big Taniwha.



So as per Dame Edna's dubious advice below, I am embracing my inner Canadian, no not the Olympic pride kind. The be true to yourself, k.d. lang kind. I do love when she sings how she commits, to the song, to the note, to whatever she's wearing. That's it, just commit.





I saw the delightful k.d. lang in concert in Aotearoa a few years back for my birthday, fantastic! With a couple of my dear, apparently straight grrl workmates who were swooning in the aisles! There was leaning over the balcony, taking breathtaking photos, and breathless whispering! But y'know k.d. is awesome it's hard not to swoon! Ah good times good times ( : I often seem to see people perform outa their country, whichever one I'm not in. Like I saw The Topp Twins live in Canada in 1998, and Alix Dobkin, and Joan Baez in Aotearoa around 2000. Stumbled upon my all time favs Aussie grrl band FRUIT in Canada around 2006.



At the Turanga Ararau performance at We Yah Hani Nah Coastal First Nations Dance Festival we got seated near the front, on the side with the bear totem, which made me happy, the side, the place for twins. ( : Reminded me how ten days before I met Miss A, I dressed up in a bear costume I made out of my grandma's black coat and tried to win a free trip to visit Canada. The energy of that, of committing to that. Once when I was first in Canada, things were going real badly housing and relationships wise for a bit, and I knew no one, and I was staying in this place with no phone and no internet. I felt so lonesome, just before I fell asleep, I thought of a black bear, I'd met two by then already. I fell asleep with it's warm pungent fur and breath on my neck. The next day, a bear walked up the stairs past my door. It truly did, I called, and bear came and gave me strength to go on. I been wondering if twins will come to the next generation, and then a relative did talk to me about that this week, the possible genetic inheritance of that happening.

Hey and synchronistic I was walking through a mall thursday and I heard playing 'How Bizzare' Sistah Seena says 'funky'!!

Okay enough with the youtube mix tape session, I need to get Mixpod like the stylee Miss Brian। Nice music e hoa! Still craving some k.d? Miss Brian rightly points out in her comment below k.d. lang does indeed have a new compilation just out Recollection.

SUNDAY DRIVE

Don't ask me how, I got to thinking about the Sunday Drive, maybe coz it is Sunday, or maybe it's the crocuses poking through the dirt, or the pee-paw sound of a bird heralding spring, the overcast day. Although hitherto unto now I had completely forgotten about the existence or possibility of the Sunday Drive for a large number of years.

From memory a Sunday Drive require 6 things:
1. A Vehicle any kind will do, truck, car, motorbike.
2. A Driver.
3. Passengers.
4. A Road.
5. Money for gas; and maybe an ice cream.
६. An indeterminate amount of time.

I don't have all that fond memories of the family Sunday Drives, owing to the fact I was the youngest and the smallest, and my siblings were prone to poking me, as siblings are, which made me squeal, I still do can't help it! Which meant when we had the little domed car I had to sit in the front on a board wedged between the parents in their bucket seats, with my three siblings in the backseat. When we had the station wagon I sat in the boot/trunk part, not all that comfortable, nor allowed by law today, but at least no one poked me and could be quite sunny with windows on three sides ( : Either way the Sunday Drive involved staring dreamily out the window at all that passed by in the countryside. The Sunday Drive like theatre does require audience participation, in this case passengers, although the 'performance' itself is mainly the Driving.

Mostly there was no purpose to the Sunday Drive, that was the whole point, you didn't know where you were going. You meandered, the original the journey is the destination experience, route choices were made on impulse. Although secretly you all hoped the Sunday Drive would stop at your favourite ice cream store, and in reality the Driver often did have a plan in mind, they just didn't reveal it. That was part of the deal as they pulled up to the much often visited repast stop of old. You all exclaimed in mock surprise, and excitedly raced in to eyeball every single flavour of ice cream in the open cardboard boxes under the glass refrigerated cabinet, and had the same one you always had. Cherry chocolate, bubblegum or hokey pokey.

I think the Sunday Drive happened more in the winter and spring. In the winter as an antidote to cabin fever and distraction from the rain, which did make the windows kind of misty what with all those people breathing in there. You might stop at some remote part of the road and be let out like puppies to run around on the beach for a few minutes wildly you hair steaming in the wind until you face and fingers were freezing. In the spring you drove by lambs, new grass, daffodils, foals. In the summer if you were near one, you went straight to the nearest waterhole, or beach. Less of a Sunday Drive, and more of an Outing. The only meandering involved picking up more friends to cram in the car.

The Sunday Drive may have been be combined with contemporary hunting and gathering activities, such as going to a pick berries, wild blackberries, cultivated strawberries by the bucketful, more in your stomach than in the pot. That apple orchard by the black stump on the back way to such-and-such, where they sold apples by the wooden box load, in Miss A's childhood; or in plastic bags as tall as an 8 year old in my time. On the way home you might stop at the flower or tomato stand the one you had scoped out as the best on the way up. Take your produce, put the coins in the honesty box, to this day you can still do this in places like the Sunshine Coast.

My Nana took me on plenty of Sunday Drives of the hunting and gathering variety when she came to visit and we were living in the city by then. I returned the favour when I went back to visit her in her 80's. Driving the hour and a half down to see her, and believe me she was ready and waiting (a little too anxiously) at the gate of the old folks home in her finest peacock hued clothes to go out for the Sunday Drive. We went to the Brian Boru pub for fish'n'chips and pavlova, once operated by relatives of Miss A. We drove up the coast to a picnic bench by the ocean on a curve in the road. That may have been the last time I was a regular practitioner of the Sunday Drive, which does really require you to have a car. We did it a bit up the Coast, maybe drive past the house with the arched wall, see if the eagles are out on the rock, look at the colored lights on every ones house in the winter time....

Since my parents, and my grandparents indulged in the Sunday Drive, it's apparent they were well off enough have cars, and some free time. The Sunday Drive is most often done with people you live with, all inmates of a house pile in, including pets. But some one could call you up and say I'm going for a Drive, wanna come? You will say yes, although you have no idea where they plan to go, and maybe neither do they. Sunday driving as an adult with the family can be dangerous, members are prone to reminisce about stories which have become the stuff of family legend. Tales which you now realize have gaping holes in them you could drive a tractor through. Which, when you question the mythologer on, you discover truths you would really rather not know.

Perversely, when you are actually on your way somewhere, an Outing, or emergency, to say a Fair that closes in less than a hour, the hospital, a funeral, a sports meet, and you meet people crawling along the road on a Sunday Drive, you will be infuriated. You will honk your horn, and pound on the steering wheel, gesticulate wildly out the window, yell "come on!" at the top of your lungs until the 4 or more people in the car in front of you finally pull over to the side or you will foolishly gashilit and pass them in the no passing zone at top speed, yelling with some contempt out the window "Sunday Driver!" get off the road!

Fortunately our neighbor Miss D, 80-something, has just dropped by to say hi after I took over some vegetable soup yesterday, and to pass on a spare blood pressure reader for Miss A. Miss D, was able to fill me in on the custom on Sunday Driving on the prairies. Yes indeed, her dad, a farmer, was a proponent of the Sunday Drive, to see how the other farms, his neighbors crops were doing. The Sunday Drive may not have involved ice cream it was 14 miles to the nearest store. When she lived in Vancouver's Westend, she and her husband went on Sunday Drives, out to the forest at UBC, the farmland in Surrey etc.

She thinks the demise of the Sunday Drive, is Television, why she herself has just been watching the women's curling; and paradoxically there being too many cars on the road. I'm not sure where it went. Do people still do it?

I just asked Miss A where she would like to go for her imaginary Sunday Drive. She would like to go to Ponds store at the Mairangi Bay of her childhood, for an ice cream. I would like to go, up north to Trounson Kauri Park, where I heard and saw the beautiful grey/blue rare and endangered Kokako, whose intriguing voice you can hear here, maybe have a swim in the pool in the river there. More of an Outing I guess, but the road is pretty long and winding.

So we are looking for a Sunday Driver, the ideal candidate would be affable, but not verbose. But have you noticed most affable people can talk the leg of an iron pot? While taciturn people can tend to sullenness? Steady on the road, can get hold of a car, able to concentrate on the job at hand while remarking every 6 miles or so, "the lambs are a good weight this time of year"; or "I once saw a hawk on the road here". Fond of ice cream.

PARAGRAPHIA LAND

Things are going well in PARAGRAPHIA LAND ( :
As well as writin 'bout writin here in the blogoshere, I have actually been doing some writing; as well as currently wrangling ye old arts promotion day job.

In month one I have sent off writing submissions of:
- a spoken word piece to a festival
- creative writing and non-fiction on health issues to a women's studies journal
- poetry to a lesbian journal from the poetry collection I am working on

We'll see how all that goes. Next up an opinion piece to a newspaper; and some writing on the meandering route of the performance artist to a theatre newsletter.

I never did get that "what color is your parachute" concept of working out what you are good at, and therefor what kind of work you should do. I always thought wouldn't your parachute be multicolored? How else do we explain musicians who are also lawyers?

This aint poetry, but it may sum up the gist of the poetry book I am working on, it's prosetry from a few years back; it's multicolored:

swan song
I will always love you. Because, when I discovered on the world wide web at 3 a.m that a short story I had written had been published in an international book of women writers 3 years ago, I burst into your room at 4 a.m where you were soundly sleeping and told you the good news, announcing I felt like dancing. You said with some good-natured amusement - go on then! Later under the covers in the dark when I had calmed down somewhat, you asked me what color I could see. You saw violet I think, and I said I saw silver, and turquoise and aquamarine, and green, and yellow and blue and orange and so on. You said that was not possible. I leapt out of bed and bounced back in with what I considered intractable evidence. Two Fortune cookie sayings tacked to my desk from a recent meal - one of the first in this home we share. One said "your mind is creative, original and alert", and the other "sometimes the best choice is to choose all options". You agreed I may have a point. Later that day, by 5pm you had not arrived home as planned, for me to go to a meeting in the car. I had no idea where you were, was frantically calling the cell phone, when a paramedic finally answered, my heart was in my mouth when I urged him to tell me, everything. It was with much relief I heard you in the background, of what I now knew was an ambulance, bossing him around. I was so happy to hear your conscious, lucid, living voice, post car crash.

FEELING NOSTALGIC

Brian's an unusual name for a girl, doesn't like the weather lately, which as it pounds on the roof made me think of the late poet Hone Tuwhare and Rain.

Reading the NZ Herald online, R.I.P. Pacific Island music pioneer Pauly Fuemana, innovator behind that classic debut single How Bizarre. Which lead me to think of the late Maori/Jewish/Celtic music pioneer, and later Like Minds Like Mine mental health educator; Mahinaarangi Tocker, whose music formed the soundtrack of the 1980's for me. Which lead me to this soulful version of Po Karekare Ana by Deborah Wai Kapohe who I just discovered right now. She seems to be furthering the honourable tradition of wonderful women musicians who also happen to be lawyers, along with Moana Maniapoto Jackson, Judy Small, and Anne Feeney.

Like I said, feeling all nostalgic for them Black Sand Shores.......

JANE RULE – bi-national identity

Jane Rule eh, (1931-2007) US born, transplanted to Canada in 1956 with her partner Helen Sonthoff (1916-2000)- teacher and scholar of Canadian literature. I read Jane Rule's posthumously published essay collection Loving the Difficult (2008) over the holidays. Columns and articles previously published in a variety of forums from 1990 - 2006. She had published 7 novels, 4 short story collections, and a commissioned literary review, Lesbian Images.

I was especially intrigued by her essay Labels (2005) about how she negotiated her bi-national identity, whether her work was considered American or Canadian, by whom in what circumstances and how much that depended on where the book was set. In Canadian Customs (undated) she explores not only censorship of her work, and seizure by Canada Customs at the border of her novels once published in Canada and given Canadian literary awards, but now only available from the US or UK; but also about how her work has been treated in different countries, as a female, and lesbian writer. She writes:

'Though mainstream publishers have since become more accustomed to handling both feminist and gay subjects. Their marketing skills for such books are limited since they depend on reviews and quick sales. Feminist and gay presses are willing to keep their books in print long enough to sell by word of mouth, as they must because books from such presses are rarely reviewed. Only in Canada do I still publish with a mainstream press. In the States I publish with Naiad, a lesbian press. In England, Pandora has reissued all my novels. In both countries there is critical silence about my work, and I am reviewed only in the gay and feminist media.

Canada is not as homophobic as either England or the States. My books are generally reviewed here, and I am invited to participate in the literary life of this country, which includes serving on juries for the Canada Council, our arts granting organization, and being sent abroad to represent Canada.'

Jane Rule's groundbreaking lesbian relationship themed novel Desert of the Heart which she published in 1964, after 22 rejections from publishers, was made into the film Deserts Hearts (1985). The ONLY lesbian movie we had when I came out in small town New Zealand, we watched it just about every weekend at different community members houses.

Theme for Diverse Instruments (1975) eventually found it's way downunder, and I was entranced by it's series of stories with the twins (was it Ariadne and her twin brother ?)the realism of their close yet competitive relationship. She wrote so convincingly of the twin siblings I assumed she was one herself. It was only when I read Loving the Difficult, I discovered she wasn't, having an older bother who barely tolerated her, and a boy cousin she shared a twin-like existence with. Apparently her father was a twin and there were both fraternal and identical twins in her extended family. By 1993 Memory Board (1987) was one of my favourite books, as at the time like the characters in the book, I was estranged from my fundamentalist twin brother as an adult; we're all good now. I could not have forseen how in other memory board ways this novel would come to reflect my life in the future.

It has taken me these past 10 years to understand the nuances of New Zealand and Canadian English, humour, accents, slang, spelling. When I came to Canada fantastical worlds opened up to me in digital media. Writing and performing was harder to mediate. People were confounded by the way I used words, my accent, poetry readings were a nightmare, people were always 3 lines behind trying to decipher what I said, by the time they got the point, the joke, I was 5 lines ahead talking about something else.

In my country of origin my delivery was all about the speed, the onomatopoeia, the hard sounds at the beginning and ends of words bouncing off each other. In my adopted home country my delivery had to be about savouring the fat succulent juiciness of words, the nuanced pauses. I am probably fluent enough now to write exclusively in either New Ziln, or Canagen English, instead of this strange hybrid I favour. I am ready to write. A sojourn to work back in the country of origin, and a return, to perform in Canada, has taught me how to negotiate the universality of story, and the nuance of location.

When I first came here, the Canadians I met spoke English so slowly it seemed to me, that I was always accidently interrupting them, by mistaking the pauses between words for being them finished what they had to say. When I went on TV they asked if I would be offended if they gave me subtitles. I replied: 'I w-i-l-l s-p-e-a-k s-l-o-w-l-y f-o-r t-h-e C-a-n-a-d-i-a-n-s. Still people comprehended about 1/3 of what I said. My much longer transplanted compatriot tried to teach me how to speak in sentences, rather than my usual paragraphs. A self-conscious silence came over me. Day to day people teased, mocked, parroted my accent, every time I opened my mouth. I started to sift out incomprehensible sayings, 'better than a slap in the face with a wet fish', I tried never to speak in public for a whole year. (I know, I know, quit whining for crying out loud, I have the luxury of passing if I keep my mouth shut).

Ironically I came from a nation of teasers, where wry sarcasm, and exaggerated over-statements of the obvious are a sign of affection, where making yourself the butt of the joke is an art form. If Canadians are self-effacing, New Zealanders are self-deprecating, I spent so much time making out how stupid I was, people actually started to believe I was! I found myself hanging out with First Nations people, refugees, and folks from the prairies, or all of the above, we seemed to share a lexicon of humour. Thanx mates!