Motorcycle Maintenance

I have been very much enjoying the thrilling experience of riding on a BMW motorcycle. I had no idea that I could be so afraid and so joyous simultaneously (is this love?)! My father, who was never one to enforce rules on me as a young girl, had one rule when dating boys: never get on the back of a motorcycle.

Yet here I am, riding with Joe as often as I can. He's even got me addicted to The Long Way Around. I'm watching Ewan and Charlie fight the difficulties of traveling through Mongolia and Siberia on motorcycle, and I can't help but wonder: some people are just born ridiculously beautiful, even six weeks into a wild camping adventure - Ewan McGregor is one of them. But then, so is Charlie.

(I know. It's an old show that was produced in 2004... but this is the brilliance of today's TV -- watch what you want when you want. Rent the series on DVD, find it on Surf the Channel or stream on the show's site...)

I love the grounded personalities of these men. Funny how I find them "grounded" when they are traveling around the world on motorcycle leaving their wives and children behind. What does that say about me? Their ups and downs, their desire at times to quit (and that producer David who I wrote off at the beginning as a wank, actually reigned Ewan back in - he's much more of a mother figure than I ever would have imagined), their delight at seeing a black bear for the first time (wait til they get to Alaska!) Oh, it's great fun for me. More than I can even admit to Joe and my father though they will likely read this...

My father, when he met Joe, pulled out his motorcycle for him. And get this! When Joe sat on it, my father took photographs of him! Then he wordlessly allowed me to get on the back of his steed and allowed this new man in his daughter's life to take her off to the wineries of Prince Edward County.

What does that say about my father? About Joe? About all of us? How I will like to know what my father thinks of this TV series.

One more thing: unbelievable how MUCH Siberia looks like British Columbia and how much the truck drivers look like BC loggers. Even Ewan and Charlie become Mountain Men.

I marvel at how small this world can feel sometimes. And at the same time so infinite.

garb-you-radar

Noun: garb-you-radar (pronounced garburator)

Usage: Cdn

1. A method for determining the presence and location of an object of apparel by measuring the time for the echo of a style wave to return from it and the direction from which it returns.

2. A means or sense of awareness or perception: shoppers working under the style radar.

3. An approach used by style-, socially- and ecoligically-minded individuals to clothing.

I've been told that I have a particular style that is born out of a sixth sense. This is of course my wording - my friends have been far more flattering in ways that I cannot adequately accept with grace.

ANYWAYS>>>> some of you have asked me over the years to shop with you - take you to my favourite haunts, help you pick out the diamond in the rough at the local second-hand-shop.
I've finally decided to take your direction and start a little Self-Style 101 course of sorts.
I see it as a Sunday afternoon in Kensington Market doing the rounds.

The goals are:
- Finding your own style (and then owning it)
- ECO-nomic (a second-hand dress costs $30; and second-hand cowboy boots $40)
- ECO-logical (keeps small children out of the sweatshops; re-uses what's already out there)
- Funness! (I'll make you try things on you'd never have picked out for yourself; we'll stop for tea mid-way through and show each other our outfits over cocktails at the end of the afternoon)
- a whole outfit (from boots/shoes/purse to dress/top to scarft/bracelets)

This idea is obviously in its infancy. I would like you to help me develop it by participating in any way - come with me this Sunday or send me your feedback. I'm going to Kensington on Saturday to map out the route and meet the store-owners.

Eventually I want to charge a fee for this service, but this Sunday will be free.

EAST VILLAGE, NYC

The theme this Sunday is to find the perfect EAST VILLAGE outfit for you! (and me!)
I just returned from NYC (where I now share a basement apartment with my boyfriend Joe) and I did a LOT of studying of fashion while I was there. Believe me, I have totally figured out the East Village look - not only is it sexy and hip, it's also super comfortable.

Let me GARB-YOU! And eventually you'll have your own RADAR for pulling together your own unique street style.

Sunday June 8th, 2pm-4pm (I'm keeping this first foray SHORT and SWEET)

Praise Where Praise is Due

If you scroll down the comments for this Bright Eyes video you'll see that I became miffed when viewers started disparaging Conor Oberst for being TALENTED! Such a shame...

Relationship Advice From Cary Tennis

WOW! Is it Spring or is it that myself and my peers are thinking seriously about finding our right mates... Feels like relationships is the number one topic of our conversations these days.

It's all a process of self-discovery and communication isn't it? And then it's so painful and disappointing when the rocky moments hit. Love can be both heart-rending and heart-mending. It's give and take while being true to ourselves. Sometimes we grow together, other times we grow apart. What to do then? I've known for years now that standing in the fire is so very painful and difficult but the only way to truth.

Cary Tennis agrees. Here's some up front good advice for anyone going through painful moments in relationships:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2008/04/30/husband_wants_divorce/index.html
For those of us who embrace the artists' approach to life, this advice will be particulary keen.

If you're thinking of doing some writing for personal exploration (according to Cary, all writing is personal exploration) http://www.carytennis.com/workshops.html

Reading Cary's column, which sometimes I LOVE and sometimes hits me the wrong way, has been a great boon in my personal growth over the past year. Through my own meditation, writing and reading his column, I came up with my mantras that I have shared with you already:

CONFIDENCE
INTEGRITY
LOVE IN YOUR HEART
FAITH

SEPARATE THE EGO FROM THE PRACTICE

And with my mantras in mind and heart, I thank you for taking the time to read this.

An Exciting Speech

Obama sent shivers up my spine with this speech. It's long, but it's really worth listening to all thr way through.

The speech is called "A More Perfect Union" in case this link dissolves:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords/

peace

Path of the Monarch

To me, a monarch butterfly is pure inspiration. It is as delicate as an onion skin, yet as strong and determined as an orca whale. I see them tumble and waver through the sky at the edge of my parents' beach on Lake Ontario at the tail end of summer before they take a last deep breath to cross south.

Their migration spans the three great nations of North America. They know no boundaries set by humans. They don't recognize our systems and ways, yet we are making it increasingly difficult for them to survive.

"...researchers are greatly concerned that the entire monarch butterfly migration and overwintering phenomenon in eastern North America may collapse in the near future if the Mexican government does not fully enforce the logging ban."

I read about clear-cutting in Mexico in The New York Times today. The article led me to this NASA website that contains disheartening photographs:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17943

In November 2000 the Mexican president declared this "core zone" for southern overwintering a protected space. Unfortunately the illegal logging persists. And get this: the loggers sometimes go in armed! I can just see them aiming at the fluttering orange targets. Silly men with guns. Don't they know how hard it is to shoot a butterfly?

Notes on the Fire on Queen Street

(pics courtesy of torontoist.com)

Notes from the Fire on Queen Street

MORNING
Chopper chopping the news
Copter hovering above like
A dragonfly suspended

Bulked up firemen; an older one is
Smoking a classic wooden pipe
“My feet are cold” he says
They climb into the idling
Red truck

At least a dozen trucks at
Intersection. These firefighters
Have been here for hours.
The younger ones are the
Grunts lifting canisters of
Oxygen

A slope of kindling across the
Sidewalk; the remains of what was
Once – and before that –
Behind it a steady
Fall of water – five hoses aimed
At the base, one from a tower

Pedestrians on cell phones
Some had heard the news
& came prepared with cameras
We’re all stepping over the
Police tape

The water from the crane
Hose is a solid tube of
Froth a good foot in
Diameter

It’s frigid. My hands are
Cracking from the cold

A beautiful sunny day

The mood is quiet &
Pensive

Axe chopping ice at the sewer drain

Thick boa constrictors of
Fire hoses on the pavement
Lying, some empty, like
Discarded skins & others
Full of water rats
In the middle
Of the city’s busiest intersection
Now transformed

Smoke fallout traveling
East. It will be a stinky walk
To work today

Five more trucks on Richmond
A man knocks at homes
To evacuate?

There will be homeless

EVENING
Two crane ladders

Still pumping streams

Street now lit up like
The film set of a
Horror pic
Haunted Fun House gone
Wrong

Facades iced in cake
Trees and wires hung heavy
With gaudy icicles

Crowds of people
With cell phones &
Cameras
Some smiling; excited
Others grim-faced

Bits of ash floating down
Or is it snow?

Rocky Mountain Wisdom

Two days of snowboarding with this view - my body aches and I feel as though the mountains worked me good.

I thought that by going out West and being in different scenery - namely the grand Rocky Mountains - I could open up my heart and mind and let the cool, clear wind pass through and blow away any detritus. I expected that once cleared, the mountains could provide me with the answers I would use to fill them up again. What does my past mean? And what does my future hold?

I said once I got to the peak: I'm an empty vessel, Mountains. I am ready for the wisdom that you can impart.

I waited.

Alas, all I heard and felt was the cool wind.

Driving back through the Rockies towards Calgary, sitting beside Heidi during long silent passages of time save for her iPod on shuffle, I got an answer I didn't expect. I realized that I should and could be present wherever I am.

Heidi and I have not spent this much time together in years. Yet we could be silent and contemplative together. We could also sing horribly together! But what fun.

I have recently made a move to live alone again and I have to re-learn to be silent (or sing horribly!) and contemplative in my own company and at any given moment be truly present. A process that I already know is vastly rewarding.

My Rocky Mountain experiences serve to anchor me. Serve to remind me that I am but a speck on this planet. But that I have work to do to pull my own weight.

I have a strong vision and purpose.

I am excited about my own future.

I am happy.

May you also feel the joy of being present in your self.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for

and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...

I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened by life’s betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade itor fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself.

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty

even when it is not prettyevery day.

And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be doneto feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the centre of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom

you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself

and if you truly like the company you keep

in the empty moments.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Until One is Committed

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

Goethe

Culture Shock Replacement

I've been thinking non-stop about a suitable replacement for culture-shock which my friend Hilary finds is an unfriendly and repressive term. She asked me yesterday, “can we come up with, right now, a replacement for that term?” But she was in transit and we didn’t have more than ten seconds to ponder a replacement.

Hilary’s on her way to the Middle East for the first time and everyone seems to be warning her that being thrown into a new culture and feeling disoriented is a “bad” thing. Can it not be a “good” thing?

I've come up with so far:

culture-stir

culture-birth

culture-awakening

I like the idea of birthing, of awakening when we are thrown into new surroundings. I also like Hilary’s summation: the opportunity of being in new surroundings is a time for standing back, taking in, for observing and respecting and remaining quiet.

And then when ready, I think, ask questions.

Here is the Oxford Dictionary definition of awakening:

A rising from sleep, or (in modern use, more commonly) from sloth, inaction, or indifference.

I love the notion of rousing or quickening to a new culture, and new sights, new sounds. Truly you are asleep to the whats, wheres and whoms you don’t know. This process of being born into a new life, essentially, is disorienting, and scary for sure. But it also affords us, in time, recognition of a community once unknown to us. And that can only better our understanding of our common human experience.

Traveling, truly traveling and leaving the prescribed routes, is a shock, certainly. But those of us who are fortunate enough to have traveled to cultures previously unknown to us respect the fear caused by disorientation. We celebrate our newly gained knowledge. The enlightenment that we achieve is what we are able to share with others and vitalizes the whats, wheres and whoms of our collective consciousness.

A Red Jello Placenta

Pitted and cratered like the moon.
Blood-red and wet-glistening.
Slick it slides out of the bowl with a
Suction-released shuck
Into the trashcan
Cherry topping on waste
It jiggles briefly, then is still
Now wasted.
An exercise gone wrong:
Impatience had made me stick the
steaming liquid into the freezer
so eager for the carnal Quick Fix
of processed sugar.
The Morning After
Charred flesh
Grizzled by frost
And defrosting it
Doesn’t undo
The Mistake

Union Station

Union station as it was being built

Train station in Buenos Aires
Gare du Nord - where I arrived when I visited Paris
I love this classic picture of Grand Central in NYC
Bikes outside of Station Centraal in Amsterdam
Passengers waiting in Mumbai

I read yesterday that the city is going to invest $176 million over the next 20 years to keep Toronto's station in a state of good repair. It does look pretty shabby these days. It needs loving. I felt like taking a look at other train stations around the world (I love the internet! That's correct - I do not own these pictures.)

There's something about the light in train stations that really gets to me.

The song that picks me up

If you feel like singing a song
And you want other people to sing along
Just sing what you feel
Don’t let anyone say it’s wrong

And if you’re trying to paint a picture
But you’re not sure which colors belong
Just paint what you see
Don’t let anyone say it’s wrong

And if you’re strung out like a kite
Or stung awake in the night
It’s alright to be frightened

When there’s a light (what light)
There’s a light (one light)
There’s a light (white light)
Inside of you

If you think you might need somebody
To pick you up when you drag
Don’t loose sight of yourself
Don’t let anyone change your bag

And if the whole world’s singing your songs
And all of your paintings have been hung
Just remember what was yours is everyone’s from now on

And that’s not wrong or right
But you can struggle with it all you like
You'll only get uptight

-Wilco

Save Canadian Television

Please, if you support Canadian programming, the most effective way is the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) despite what the cable companies tell you.

Visit this link and click the NO box: https://secure.shaw.ca/apps/Secure/CRTCForms/CTF.aspx

This is what I sent to the Minister of Heritage min_verner@pch.gc.ca:

As an employee of CBC Television, and a proud Canadian television viewer, I take serious issue with Shaw Communications' current campaign in nationwide advertisements to discredit and distort the essential contribution of the Canadian Television Fund to the production of Canadian television programming.

I sincerely hope that the Minister of Heritage and the CRTC will give swift action to resolve this dispute, and furthermore believe that it is irresponsible for a company like Shaw Communications---in possession of a public trust in the form of a telecommunications license---to willfully undermine an agency that has tirelessly and effectively promoted creative Canadian programming.

Save the CTF. Save our jobs. Save Canadian culture on our screens.

A Shout Out

Leslie Davidson and her sweet baby Veda

My sister Sonya and her children Charlotte, Petronella and Willem

Bhajan Cooke, my friend since we were 16
David Lochhead and Christina Stobert - irreplaceable
Precious Heidi Neill
Amazing Hilary Black
Stronger than a jewel, Julie Cote


Talented in so many ways, Bethan Nodwell

It's sometimes difficult to pinpoint those precious people who have influenced and shaped your life in such a way that you are changed forever. Here are a few of my most solid and ever-giving friends that naturally rise to meet that definition. They are constantly inspiring me and encouraging me to embrace my self. Pure love.

Naivete of War

I read this in The New York Times today:

U.S. and Israel Sign Arms Deal
Israel and the United States signed a deal to give Isreal $30 billion in military aid over the next decade in what officials called a long-term investment in peace.

Reads like a joke, but it's not. Not that I'm a peace-nik out there protesting. I can understand humanity's tendency towards violence... this just seems so ridiculously imbalanced.

Am I naive?

Prince Willem

I've been waiting since late last week for Sonya to go into labour. She finally did and Willem was born shortly after 5am on Saturday, which just happens to be my father's birthday. I was gratefully present for this calm and amazing home birth that went as smoothly as you could wish. The only difficulty was that Will was facing the "wrong" way and turned during the birth which caused my brave, drug-free sister some additional discomfort. But it was over quickly and the amazing midwives made us all (myself, Sonya, Keven and Willem) feel at peace. Sonya was up and about later that morning, and my parents and I spent most of the day babysitting the girls who are thrilled to have a little brother they are calling Prince Willem. Now I'm back at my desk. How boring!

Blast Furnace

Michael, my super new boss, likened Toronto to a blast furnace yesterday. I was overhearing a telephone conversation between him and an independent producer - the language can get rather descriptive at times.

Since yesterday, I've been thinking of the term non-stop. I include a picture of a blast furnace here to help guide your imagination if you are lucky enough to live amongst cool, clean breezes.

Carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, waster gases and air blasts.

Imagine cycling to work through it. Or even walking down a sidewalk.

And yet, I love Toronto. I have never felt more at home anywhere. In Toronto, I have grown into my calm, centered, happy self. The air is shit. Especially on a hot day. But I think of the millions of people around the earth who are sharing the same experience with me today in Guatemala City, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Bangalore and Rome. Hello my fellow city-dwellers! It isn't easy living here today, but it's dynamic and this city holds my attention and forces me to grown and learn - and for someone that bores easily, that's important.

But oh am I ever looking forward to some peace and stars when I visit my parents house on their stretch of open lakefront.

I will navigate the milky way with my father's binoculars and sail over choppy waters and in between I will pull in deep breaths of fresh air.

Crippled

It seems to me that Jesse Imeson was fleeing in a violent panic from his own sexuality.

WATER: drinking, rising, owning

There is a water shortage globally. We don’t like to talk about it ‘round the cooler in the office, but very soon it will become a major issue of our time. And that water cooler may very well become a relic of history.

With 1 billion people already lacking adequate access to clean drinking water this number is projected to rise to 7 billion by 2050 if our current practices remain unchecked.

Wealthy nations use up the water of poorer nations via food production and the manufacturing of goods for export.

The first real crisis of water shortage in the wealthy world is being experienced by Australia. Some regions are in their 5th year of drought. The situation has forced that country’s citizens to learn to ration and collect in several jurisdictions. Crop failures abound. Yet in Sydney there was recently a flash rainfall which elated its inhabitants. Unfortunately the liquid life-force was let to soak through the parks and drain down the sewers.

If governments don’t begin to appreciate this shortage of water the situation will affect global security.

“The primary cause of the water crisis of the twenty-first century is not a shortage of water, but of political commitment and good water management.” – Willem Alexander, Prince of Orange

As a result of our warming climate, the cryosphere is melting. Along with this, our mountain’s glaciers are retreating fast. This water is being added to seas that are already thermally expanding. Should Greenland’s ice-mass succumb we could see millions of “climate exiles” from low-level coastal areas such as India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The Dutch have already accepted that several polders they worked so hard to reclaim from the sea will have to be given back.

Canadians will have to reconcile their hold on water for the greater good of humanity. Blessed as we may be with massive caches of fresh water, we will have to bend our protective attitudes for the thirsty south of the border.

Currently water is not a “good” outlined in the North American Free Trade Agreement. There is a general anxiety that if we start to sell it, it will become a “good” and in essence no longer in our control.

“There are increasing number of conflicts about how much water a person should have and what it should be used for. Which is a better way to handle those: through market or through authority?” – Jim Mattison, B.C.’s comptroller of water rights

This documentary seeks to bring three broad water concerns to the forefront of our imaginations.

RISING

The affects that a warming climate has and will have on the world’s seas will force cities such as New Orleans and London to seriously consider storm surges. Countries in south-east Asia must plan to relocate thousands of people annually. The Netherlands has already become adept at building home on the sea. Storms will become wetter. Rivers that are prone to flooding and mountainsides that are subject to slides will have to be dammed and diverted. Protecting cities, villages and homes will involve inordinate amounts of politicking, planning and engineering.


DRINKING

Despite the world’s amount of sea water, desalination is an extremely expensive and environmentally destructive procedure. We await a more efficient solution to this dilemma. In the meantime, we must make drinkable the water at hand in order to prevent the spread of more water-borne disease. Various scientific methods are currently being developed to address this issue. For instance, the journal Science recently reported a nanotechnology technique for removing arsenic using electromagnets. To develop these types of methods will cost money. To bring them to those who need it most, and teach them how to utilize them, will cost even more.


OWNING

Even more valuable than gold to humans is water. We need to drink it, we need it to make food and we need it to manufacture all of our creature comforts. Already the world has seen the commodification of water. The World Bank saw water privatization as the most practical way to purify water for poor countries. But in 2006 Suez (one of the world’s largest water companies) pulled out of Latin America. One of its chief executives lamented: “Private funding runs into ideological problems. We need to be more humble. We have to adapt to local realities.”



“We need to do for water what we did for climate change. How do we recharge aquifers? There’s no policy anywhere in place at the moment.” - Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the UN’s Millennium Project

An Open Letter to Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer, what I want to tell you is so vast.
It expands years of my life. It connects the different “parts” of me. The “chapters” if you will, of my life.
I am going to write here, free-form as Sarah instructed us to do without editing, without re-writing, I am trying to write here without editing myself, but it is difficult as I have just smoked half a cigarette and I am buzzed and the physical limitations it places on me means many typographical errors – I can barely type coherently.
But the thought that I encountered while I was thinking of how to start this letter to you was that I understand, to a limited extent mind you, the enormity of challenging Nature.
My life and my relationship with Nature, with my brief and ever-so-narrow experience with Mountaineering and that part of my life, intertwined with my life as a Writer and my life as a Journalist and as a Filmmaker are all intertwined and somehow echo deeply with the kind of writing that you have produced.
I have known the harrowing experience of challenging Nature. While I taking the time to reflect briefly, to delve into my memories if ever so tentatively, I came across the memory of Jason. How he had come to climbing X mountain and told me that he almost froze to death along with another climber there on the side of that face, him trying to sleep in the bivvy bag that I had sewn him while young, while inexperienced, while idealistic about the sport, the challenge, the life.
Yet by the time he tried it, I myself had given up. Had walked away from the challenge. Had decided not to take it on as my own. It was a big part of why he and I are no longer together. Yet I feel it. I feel a kinship towards it. This desire to feel the ache of our Planet, to feel humbled by the sheer force and magnitude of the power of Nature.
I love to feel humbled.
Hence, I suppose, my inhibition to write to you.
Ok, it’s not easy to write to someone you admire greatly. I mean, who am I? Yet we are all Human, we all share in the awe of being alive.
For nine years I lived in British Columbia and forsook my parents, my sister and friends in order to maintain a fierce relationship with the Land. The mountains, the trees, the earth and sky and oxygen it fed me. The Earth never gave up on me. It always gave me more: more nutrients, more challenges, more questions to be answered.
Yet here I am today in my country’s largest city and I feel at home. I feel as though in those nine years I explored as much as I needed. I became aware of and could accept my limitations. Others could not. Others pressed on to the point of expiration. I admire that, yet I disdain it simultaneously.
Your writing was at first a quenching to a thirst. To understand more fully the quest to “bag a peak,” to understand the feeling of being pushed to ultimate physical limits. Lately, after reading “Under the Banner” my respect for you grew. I have to be honest though, when I first started the book I was annoyed and disappointed that perhaps it was a little sensationalist. The feature magazine writer in you pushed me away. Especially after “Into the Wild” captured me so fully because of its intimacy. But as I read further, I realized that you had spent a great deal of time, a great deal of energy – you had invested so much into this story that was at once a part of you also became a part of you. And as I read it, so did it become a part of me.
Religion proposes endless questions.
I have been working in television for the past – oh, almost ten years now. Sheesh, the greatest part of my adult life. I have often wondered why I am involved in television at all since it feels like it is too much too often the pap of the people. But it is, actually, a place where human stories are told. I am trying, right now, to piece my first film together. It is personal. It involves friends who have started to make maple syrup from the trees that grow on their land. It is also the story of a birthday party, an event that is consciously made to occur simultaneously with the spring maple rush. It is a lovely story of the excitement that we as humans have for the life-force of Nature.
I don’t know if it will turn out to mean anything more than a fond memory to myself and the friends who attended this weekend of maple sugaring in the bush – but at the same time there is a deeper reckoning. For myself at the very least.
Somehow I have ended up working for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in the Documentary Programming unit. I am the executive assistant to the Executive Director of Documentary Programming for CBC Television. There are too many times I have typed the word executive here and I am annoyed. The fact that I am an assistant is also annoying – but then, this is the story I have written for myself. Sometimes I think of the job as a corner instead of an opportunity which is maybe limiting myself.
All my life I have fancied myself a writer. I have fancied this of myself, yet I have also known it to be true on a much deeper, fundamental level. When I read your books, I feel a sense of relief. A sense of “ah, someone is answering my unwritten, unspoken, indescribable need.” You connect the disparate “chunks” (for lack of a better word at the moment) of my life.
The writer in me. The explorer in me. The philosopher in me. The journalist in me. I have never been published, yet does this detract from me? I used to think it did. I accept (happily) now that I am who I am.
My newfound friend (I am being forward in calling her a friend) my writing teacher and peer, Sarah, suggested that I write you a note to thank you for having an impact on my life. Isn’t that a lovely idea? She said that too often writers work in solitude.
I thank you, Jon. I thank you for questioning. I thank you for questing. I admire you greatly for your desire to feel connected with the unknown, the previously un-explained. You dare to attempt to explain the facets of life that are sacred, that many feel are not possible to put into words. You dare to try. And you do so with grace, with the utmost respect and with, I feel, a desire to understand more fully the nature of us, us strange, weird, egotistical, magical, creative wondrous creatures, us humans. And with your writing, you bring us together in a way that has never been done before.
It’s 1:49 am now and the day has taken its toll on this 33 year-old child who is unaccustomed to staying up this late on a “school night” and subsequently attempting to write. I appreciate your patience in reading through this bit of a slog. I wanted to reach out to you, more than any other author, because I believe in you, Jon. I believe your convictions to be true, and I am inspired by your desire to quest.
Thank you for the words and experiences you have shared with myself and your other readers. I am grateful for the efforts you have made and the thought and care you have infused in everything that you do and write.
All my best,
Your daughter, your sister, your friend and your colleague,
Ilka