One gay day in July (2011)

Walter Quan's delightful rainbow sushi candles! divine!

Sometimes it’s nice not to be a cancer patient. Some days it’s great not to be on chemo. To have some energy, to go out! To do just what I want, just what I like. Go where I want, eat what I want, see who I like. My motto these days, go late, come home early.

The day started a little oddly with me making a hole in the wall during a sharp turn of my chairiot in the hallway. Then my prayer beads bracelet broke as I was trying to get off the bus on Commercial. The bus driver and passengers helped me pick them up and I stowed them safely away in my bag. Uncharacteristically for me I refused to consider either of these misfortunes as omens of anything. The sun was finally shining and I was determined to have a good day.

Soon I was licking a pina colada popsicle at the Dyke March Concert. I saw, U, and V. C and J, L, B, C. I had a great time catching up with everyone in the sun amongst the rainbow festivities. Enjoying the music and the inimitable Morgan Brayton as the ever present effervescent MC. Eating a Sweet Cherubim’s tofu rice samosa I wended my way past blooming flower gardens back to Commercial drive. Where I bumped into M and N. I called out to Y from my poetry class and we walked down Commercial drive and took the bus in to town, chatting animatedly about writing all the way.

I got off at Oppenheimer Park and went to the centre of all things Japanese, the Powell St Festival craft market where hundreds of people were enjoying the day. Browsing amongst the tents, I was taken by the variety and quality of the wares. I wanted to buy everything! Settling for a range of beautiful cards, layers of fabric, paper, pressed flowers, burgundy and pink. One with the word ‘laugh’ written in gold in the centre of a ring of tiny blossoms. A blue and gold fridge magnet with the symbol for ‘dream’ on it. Some copies of Ricepaper literary journal, always a good read. A small green pottery bowl for A, and the best from W from BC Arts Council who has managed to combine 3 of my favourite things, sushi, art and rainbow pride. In the exquisitely subversive gay pride colored centres rolled beeswax candle sushi. Divine! He was cheerfully crocheting a purple eggplant at the time I dropped by! So fun!

After another short bus ride, I rolled up Seymour St to where my friends G and D, are staying while their flooded apartment is repaired. Bearing a gift of a blue and gold fridge magnet with the symbol for ‘friend’. D and I had a refreshing swim in the outdoor seawater pool with a vista of the city skylines, me mostly just floating, relaxing. D gives me a lemon meringue from today’s farmers market, to take home and share with A, so sweet and thoughtful. She’s off at a gathering dancing the light fantastic with Lucie Blue Tremblay.

To my final festival of the day on my way home at Canada Place, next to the seabus, with a view of the breathtaking blue on the horizon Northshore Mountains across the inlet. The Public Dreams Society Illuminaires lantern festival. Cute to see the children in their fairy costumes carrying homemade lanterns. Alas my camera ran out of batteries at the pool so no more photos of things and people seen and heard. ( But here is some one else's photos ( : ) Like the giant heron lantern to be carried by several people. Meandering amongst the crowds munching a Sweet Cherubim’s aptly named chocolate bliss ball. Saw J from A’s choir running past, late, with green glitter lipstick and a drum, and D and D stopped to chat. Grooving with the festive mood I had my photo taken at a booth with dressup clothes, in an decorated ‘alladins’ type hat. Time to head home. All on accessible public transit. Grateful ( ;

Perhaps today reminded me of a summer’s day in early February in NZ. When we would go me, and A, and J and J, to The Big Gay Out, in Point Chevalier park, and bump into people we knew. Later we would pile into a car with my manual collapsible wheelchair and J’s walker and go to the Chinese New Year Lantern Festival that always seemed to be on the same day. J’s daughter, J, would be so good about pushing my wheelchair, and we would find good food to eat, and wander in wonder amongst the lanterns hanging in the trees. The young, the old, and the crip, the queer, like the strange little family that we are, and have the best day ever.

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.

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.

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.' 

Pink Shirt Day - Proudly Canadian

Did you wear pink April 14 to show your support for stopping bullying? At school, at work, at home, in public. I did! 

Makes ya proud to be a Canadian! 

Here's how the CBC called it September 2007: 

'Two Nova Scotia students are being praised across North America for the way they turned the tide against the bullies who picked on a fellow student for wearing pink.

The victim — a Grade 9 boy at Central Kings Rural High School in the small community of Cambridge — wore a pink polo shirt on his first day of school.

Bullies harassed the boy, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up, students said.

Two Grade 12 students — David Shepherd and Travis Price — heard the news and decided to take action.

"I just figured enough was enough," said Shepherd.

They went to a nearby discount store and bought 50 pink shirts, including tank tops, to wear to school the next day.

.....And there's been nary a peep from the bullies since, which Shepherd says just goes to show what a little activism will do.'

I was wondering why I felt a bit sad, immobilized, withdrawn yesterday. Something deep, painful I couldn't seem to find words for. Then I started thinking about, Bullies, I have known.  Bullying begins at home, bullies, they live somewhere. There was of course the highly abusive father, I'll return to that later. There was an older brother who enlisted my siblings in excluding me from, well, everything, until he left home when I was 14. They complied, even though he broke their bones anyway. He later joined law enforcement, draw your own conclusions. When I was 12, I said something a girl in my class didn't like, she was known for jumping to conclusions and taking things the wrong way. She said she was going to get her boyfriend, a notorious bully, small but mean, to beat me up. At that point my after school playmates were 3 neighborhood boys, so I wasn't as that phased as I might have been. I decided I would rather face up to it, than be ambushed, so I met N, at the set time and place after school by the bike sheds. He explained to me a little whakama (shamed) that if he beat one more person up he was going to be permanently expelled from school. So that was the end of the matter.

There was the sexual harassment my classmates and I endured from some of the few male teachers at an all girls public school. There was mr F who taught French, in a berating manner, and was known for leaning his 6 foot frame over our desks from behind and looking down our uniforms at our breasts. The was the art teacher mr C who was known for taking 'crotch shots' of athletes, allegedly for the school magazine. When you take photos of adolescent girls  in sports attire you need to be very careful how you frame them. At 16 we made up a rhyming song about the students and teachers, while on a school trip. The line about him - which I believe was supplied by a young student teacher - went 'mr C is a dirty old man, you watch out for his wandering hand'. We sang the song at an end of year public event. I was the one who had written the words down, and called out the lines. The Principal  told me we could sing the song if  we took out those lines, resentfully, we did.  But that was not the end of the matter, by 17 I was in his art history class, he frequently made inappropriate sexual comments about nude artworks we were studying. After talking amongst ourselves about it, I spoke to the Dean of our year. She said the school was aware of the problem and there was nothing they could do about it. (This was the 1980's). So we students agreed we would write down what he said. C, who sat at the back agreed to do it, mr C saw her notes and bullied her from the class, I failed art history.

There were other staff who were lovely. Like mr B our beloved science teacher, one day when I was 13 some of my classmates decided to tease me about how I talked, several of them imitated me, I just couldn't take it that day, I thought I was amongst friends. I hid my head, in my folded arms on my desk, and started to cry, I couldn't stop. At the end of class mr B had all the other students leave and then he tried to talk to me. He asked all the right questions, was I sick, was it a relationship, was there trouble at home, was I having difficulty in school. I couldn't speak, or even raise my head. Eventually he let me go and I went to the bathroom to get myself together.

When I was 20, and had extracted myself, or so I hoped from the reach of the abusive father, in a different city. I heard from my professors that he was at the University looking for me. I went, in my bare feet to see the stern Registrar who had a reputation for being a stickler for protocol, to explain my predicament. This was in the days before an awareness or policy about privacy, and the University was in the habit of giving out student's phone numbers and addresses to friends and relatives who asked for them. The Registrar looked at me for only a moment, and then swiftly erased my address and phone number  from the computer database. The relief, and gratitude was immense.

Bullies are not only male, female, too. But women can be less overt sometimes, harder to identity. Like the relative who tells you constantly how useless you are; or the sister who when you are a child pretends to people you are a boy, so you will be excluded from playing with other girls. Or the boss who takes your work and ideas, puts her name on it, giving you no credit.

I've been bullied in my own community, by a friend of a friend who spread outrageous false rumours about me. I called her on it, I asked to meet, with a qualified third party if she wanted, she could choose. She refused. It so angered and hurt my friend, she stopped participating in that community. As fate would have it, years later ms Rumour was in a class I taught, I was teaching people how to - listen. Sometimes I think the universe has  a sense of humour!

I'm a fairly assertive person, but still not immune to bullying. In the past 10 years, bullying bosses - 3 out of 6. Thankfully not currently! It's hard for me to even accept the last time I was bullied at work was only 2 years ago. The first time, he apologized on his own. The second time I called him on it. The third time I had to speak to some one higher up. He had been formally censured at least twice already for bullying other staff members.

Bullying is a behavior - like the in-law I met by chance on a transit platform, who shouted at me for twenty minutes while bemused passengers looked on with shock on their faces, wondering what to do. Nobody did anything. It doesn't have to be a lifestyle. We are all capable of it, it can happen to any of us, we can all be complicit. DON'T. I try to remember, see the good in all people. Mostly I can, it is much harder to imagine in people who terrorized you for years. Do something. I have driven strangers home who were running for their lives, stood up for colleagues at work. Told a young lesbian she does not deserve to be beaten by her parent, stood between abusive young men and their girlfriends to halt an attack. Recently I gave a knee tap with my walking stick to a man who was body slamming his girlfriend on the bus. Quite often this results in the bully, and sometimes the victim turning this in to a homophobic attack on me, but it won't stop me.

In its third official year (fourth counting the original action)  PINK SHIRT DAY is now observed Internationally.

In 2011 PINK SHIRT DAY will return to its usual last Wednesday in February, and be observed February 23 2011. Mark you calendars now! You can keep up to date with plans and events for PINK SHIRT DAY on Facebook.

Instrucciones para recortar el cabello en casa – how to cut an androgynous persons hair

Lets talk about Spanish, and hair cutting, and androgyny. It was a couple weeks before I would be attending a number of arts events and I needed a half decent haircut. Okay I hadn’t had my hair cut all winter since a traumatic incident last time.

It’s not easy getting your hair cut if you are androgynous. Although you would think the invention of the unisex hair salon and unisex haircut in the 1980’s would have solved all that. But no, no matter what I say, ‘flat top’, ‘buzz cut’ - thinking singer Grace Jones, they say ‘like a man’ and I sigh and give up and say ‘yes’. It still gets cut short in some head-hugging hair facing forward definitely feminine with little curls by your ear and a wispy fringe like model ‘Twiggy’ kind of way. Sigh. Instead of some clean cut, partly sticking up on top, stylish kind of way. The thing is I don’t want my hair cut in a particularly masculine or feminine way, I want it cut like me, what I look like. But there are not words for that, the androgynous haircut.

 The best haircuts I ever had were at a Men's Hairdressers on Lambton Quay, Wellington; in 3 Lamps Plaza, Ponsonby Auckland; Kaua’I, Hawaii, and up the Sunshine Coast. Haircutting is a service industry, where immigrants, refugees and visible minorities  are over-  represented. It’s partly about what kind of work is (and isn’t) made available, or starting your own business I think. Or perhaps cultural rituals around hair, or maybe coz no one else knows how to cut their hair either? Some hairdressers say they like being around people, well you know like for 20 minutes at a time. At a Men’s Hairdresser at 3 Lamps Plaza, Ponsonby the woman and younger man were from Iraq, and they knew their local clientele (him perhaps personally), how to cut gay peoples hair, men and women. In the beauty shop which also did enamel fingernails, in a tiny strip mall next to an industrial part of the highway in Kaua’i, the woman hairdresser was Asian Hawaiian. I gradually told her bit by bit, you know trying it out, to see what her reaction was, that when I got back I was going to be best man at a wedding and would be wearing a suit. She gave me the best haircut ever!  Up the Sunshine Coast, a neighbor cut hair, she was originally from Greece and liked to talk about her trips back there. She had such a lovely way about her. Maybe coz she was such a good conversationalist you hardly even noticed her cutting your hair, all you could see was the azure seas of Greece, and then voila it was time to shake out the plastic cape. At a Men's Hairdresser on Lambton Quay, the woman was originally from England I think, or her family were, it was a government town, she asked you how your work was going, told you about her sons sports events. Her salon was right handy to me, I got my hair cut often,  and was happy. Oh yeah and there was that cute wee pixie of a lesbian who was raised by dykes and worked at some swanky downtown gay frufru hairdressers in the ‘couv, who could make you look and feel fabulous! But that was many years ago, and then she moved salons, and we lost track of her, and we couldn’t afford it anyway. Before that I'd come from getting my hair cut for $5- $10 at the Peoples Centre. Where the cuts were okay, more perfunctory, completed with good natured humour by an irrepressible sleep deprived young Russian woman, who was in night school studying physics.


My friend T had such a traumatic haircutting experience she didn’t get her hair cut for 2 years, which is saying something for a butch who looks good with a buzz cut! I don’t know exactly what happened, I think the hairdresser saw the lesbian symbol tattooed on the back of neck, and things went downhill from there. She arrived at my place with hair down to her shoulders, asking for an intervention! She was real sick of her cult-like government workplace too – if you called in sick, then didn’t answer your phone later, managers came to your house! So I typed her arts based resume while I was at it, as part of my comprehensive complimentary make over service! Took her in to the lovely woman at the Men's Hairdressers, who I had already primed with the story my friend was recovering from a bad hair cutting experience. The Hairdresser chatted away to us about how my friends holiday was going, she looked at my friend’s girlfriends short haircut a few times, and modeled it partly on that. Turned out just fine!

I am ashamed to confess I privately thought my friend was being a bit of a baby about the whole haircutting incident, until, I had my own bad experience recently. I’ve been to this place a few times, Iranian women work there, I have had some good hair cuts there, but lately I keep getting this woman who says ‘oh I remember you’, points to a picture of a man with a curly flat top haircut, I say ‘yes’ and away she goes. It would be fine if she would just stop cutting half way through, it looks good. But for some reason no matter what I say she keeps going and it gets shorter and shorter. Until she might as was well have taken the clippers and run them over my head with a number 3 blade until I look like the fuzzy egg I do, at the end anyway! Don't get me wrong I have spent many a year with just such a haircut, and I did it myself, but theres good #3's and theres bad #3's! Maybe that's the difference between a haircut and a  hairstyle, I was here for the latter. For goodness sake it’s the middle of winter! I go home, cry, put on a hat, won’t come out of my room for a day and leave the hat on when in public for 2 weeks! Until it grows a little. I’m not all that fond of having anyone touch my head anyway. Often after the creative concept negotiations, and they get going I shut my eyes and go off in to a meditative trance just to cope. Kind of like being at the dentist. Hairdressing is a act and conversation  across culture, language, gender and sexuality, some things get lost in translation. I suspect though for me the concept that androgyny is something to be accentuated, (if you've got it flaunt it!) desired, desirable, may be biggest loss in translation.

No more! So I decided to return to my late teens early 20’s practice and cut my own hair! I have some clippers, so I got them out, plugged them in, oiled them, and away I went. Well not quite, this time I proceeded with caution, I was laughing picturing some of the less than great youthful haircuts I gave myself! So for the first time I got out the instructions. It said ‘Instrucciones para recortar el cabello en casa’ you know which got Para Graphia’s attention what with the word PARA being in there!

On the English version of the instructions it said: ‘Home Hair trimming instructions’. There were pictures too, with hair trimming tips, what process to follow, the order, and how to do a crew cut, puurrffect! I followed the instructions, I remembered how to cut hair. I laughed some more remembering the good and bad haircuts I gave some of my male fellow students at Uni who asked me to cut their hair and paid me in chocolate. I know how to cut MY hair, I’m real good at cutting straight up to the ears with the scissors, I used the clippers on the sides and the back, but not cutting too high up, and not too close, the largest blade, number 7. Which was good, its too hard to cut the back of your hair using scissors, directions become very confusing in the mirror. I cut the top with scissors, using the trim along your index finger method paying special attention to that tricky crown area. Otherwise one week after my haircut I start to look like a parrot! I really like my haircut! It still sticks up, there’s a bit if a wave to it.

So about those Spanish instructions: ‘Instrucciones para recortar el cabello en casa’, according to Bablefish online translation http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt it means ‘Instructions to trim the hair in house’ which if you re-translate back to Spanish is ‘Instrucciones de ajustar el pelo en casa’ again to English ‘Instructions to fit the hair in house’ back again to Spanish ‘Instrucciones de caber el pelo en casa’. That’s about where it ends.

Unless you think it wise to rely on free online translations such as Babelfish – and I personally don’t - as opposed to say online Dictionaries which seem much more reliable in their translation, of words, if not always sentences. Part of the fun of Babelfish is translating and retranslating a phrase between languages as it gets further and further away from the original sentence to something ludicrous, fantastical or nonsensical which may make you howl with laughter. But it’s only really funny for about a day and then you get bored. Unlike human translators, computers do not cope well with idioms, colloquialisms and contractions. Which is how the drift away from the original occurs, and because languages may construct sentences so differently, while computers translate literally. No not literary! But that might be useful……

According to this online dictionary http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/para

para [pah’-rah] is a preposition
Which can mean alternately: For, to, in order to (finalidad), toward, wherefore, to the end that.

It’s also where I discovered the fixings for this little bilingual lost in translation found poem on the nourishment of words:

es para ti                                         it's for you
¿Para qué                                      why
Leer para sí                                    to read to oneself
Para siempre                                 for ever
comida para llevar                        food to go
Hay que comer para vivir             It's necessary to eat in order live
   
I realize now that the people who might know how to cut my hair - the boyish looking girl, may be women who work in men’s hairdressers. Las mujeres que trabajan en peluquerías de hombresso! If you know any let me know? Otherwise too much seems to be lost in translation.

  According to Babelfish ‘Home hair trimming instructions’ in Spanish is ‘Instrucciones caseras del ajuste del pelo’ which I can not comment on the accuracy of, but perhaps some one will? I say we need instructions:  Cómo cortar un pelo andrógino de las personas - how to cut an androgynous persons hair. Or like painter Frida Khalo, I will have to resort to cutting my own hair.

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.

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.

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!

RENEE – you can’t really explain humour

You can't really explain humour. It is different in different locations, even if you are all (allegedly) speaking the same language. I have just finished re-reading Renee's (1929- ) book of comic writing Yin and Tonic (1998). Makes me laugh so hard! She has urban and small town NZ down to a T. Whether it be her frustration and successes in having some female garden gnomes made because previously all garden gnomes were male which she found ridiculous! Her priceless satirical gardening, cooking, ironing or pet care tips; taking the piss out of the media, dealing to heterosexism, ageism and sexism; or reminiscing about the good old days of political protest, womens groups, and writers parties. She has it going on!

I think my favourite story is: New Zealand's greatest pastime

'No it's not rugby, racing or beer. It's not sex, going out to restaurants, or reading books. It's not going to the theatre, opera, or ballet, It's not even bowls.
This pastime is indulged in by people of either sex, with people of their own or the other sex,and takes place both in the privacy of their own home and/or on the streets. It is enjoyed by people of any age. It is not a special feature of any culture, a plank of any political party or religious group. It is not confined to a certain class or income bracket, or whether you have or have not had children, a mammogram or cervical smear, or been tested for AIDS.It doesn't matter if you do it in the latest Porsche or in a rusty old Ford Falcon stationwagon. Policemen do it, drug dealers do it. Politicians do it, so do poets. Women do it, men do it, kids do it. Even animals have been known to do it. Hands up anyone who has moved house in the last five years.'

I believe I worked out once I have moved 60 times in my 4 decades and then some!

Or maybe it's her hilarious take on the invisibility of women over sixty in: To tell or not to tell, that is the answer

'You are party, from the next booth, to the discussion between two cheerful-looking men. One of them becomes aware that you would possibly overhear. You smile as though you have recently been discharged in to the community.'The old girl okay' the friend asks? 'Can you count to 100 backwards?' asks the first one. You nod and let a dribble of flat white run down your chin. They shrug and go back to discussing whether it should be a car accident or a drive by. You wait until they've gone, and then you attempt to solve the moral dilemma: should you tell someone? And if so what will you say?'

But then again theres What to do when I tell you I have breast cancer...

'Do not tell me about your auntie who died recently of breast cancer. Or I might tell of the sudden death by strangulation of someone who told someone who had a breast cancer that their auntie had recently died of a breast cancer.
Remember a lump is a lump is a lump, so do not ask me how big the lump is.'

Or the classic Touring:

'Then they turn to you and say, 'How would you like to be introduced?'
As the ghost of Marilyn Monroe, Queen Salote. Winner of Dominatrix of the Year Award. How about something about the books and plays I've written? Ugh, Ugh.
For some reason they expect you to be a good sport. Haven't they heard, that writers are never good sports? If they were good sports they wouldn't be writers, they'd be flight attendants.
And you'll eat all the asparagus rolls, won't you, because asparagus rolls give the writer indigestion.
Book signings. If you're very lucky one person might turn up for the book signing, and if you talk in a lively animated fashion they might stay round for two hours so it doesn't look as if no one loves you. Or maybe they'll just think you've gone off your medication, and run like hell.'

Part of her bio from the NZ Book Council/Te Kaunihera Pukapuka o Aotearoa reads: 'Renée, feminist dramatist and fiction writer, was born in Napier, of Ngati Kahungunu and Irish-English-Scots ancestry.She left school and started work at the age of 12; has worked in woollen mills, a printing factory, a grocery-dairy, and as a feature writer and reviewer; and completed a BA at the University of Auckland in 1979.

Renée has described herself as a ‘lesbian feminist with socialist working-class ideals’ and most of her writing is a direct expression of that conviction. She has been involved with community theatre, the Broadsheet Collective, PEN, radio shows, programme organisation for the Globe Theatre in Dunedin, and with script writing for TV. She started writing for the stage at the age of 50.'

See it's never too late to write! Renee has written 14 plays, 8 novels, short stories and poetry; a textbook Lets Write Plays (1998) and taught creative writing. For sure I saw her drama performed at the Dunedin Women's Festival (1989?) at Otago University. I think probably it was Born to Clean, and also maybe Secrets, and/or Setting the table. It was unforgettable, I can still picture the character in her floral pinny franticly cleaning, setting the table, and washing her hands over and over again. It was about sexual abuse, real, and unnerving, I felt quite sick after, yep it was that good! I am pretty sure I saw her perform with the legendary Hens Teeth womens theatre/comedy troupe in Wellington in the 1980's sometime, and man were they funny! Mostly I have been aware of her wry and status quo busting novels like Willy Nilly (1990), Daisy and Lilly (1993), and Does This Make Sense to You? (1995). Her work was some of the first local writing published by a lesbian with lesbian characters, along with Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Tahuri : Short Stories. (1989)