Writing – Page 11 – Rant and Roll

These women. These women.

A very happy International Women’s Day to everyone!

This year’s UN Theme is: Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity: Picture it!

I encourage all of you – everyone reading at home, as well as those on transit (or in-transit!); everyone hunkered down, or waking up; everyone navigating this amazingly complicated conundrum of a world we call home – to picture all of the brilliant, powerful, and brave women in your lives.

How have they impacted the world? How have they changed your life?

How do they impact? What do they change?

What makes them extraordinary?

And how do you picture an empowered humanity? What can we all do to ensure that these visions are no longer just visions, but reality?

Here are some of the brilliant, beautiful, and brave women in my life.

My amazing mum Donna, who, as an arbitrator for the federal government, wrote and oversaw many ground breaking decisions in the early 1990s on pay equity and discriminatory labour practices across Canada.

My sisters: Jessi – newly minted red seal chef, business owner, and new mum-extraordinaire; Kate Woznow – dedicated activist, non-profit director, and triathlete.

My sister in-law Mel, who is so very incredibly strong (both on the inside and outside) and who is unflinching in her belief that we can all make impacting strides to better our world.

Her mother, Valerie, valiant and fearless feminist whose work continues to support and inspire academics the world over.

My formidable mother in-law Cheryl, who in light of the discrimination she faced as a teenager after her family immigrated to Vancouver from India in the 1960’s is now one of the greatest champions of multiculturalism I have ever met, and who in 1973 co-founded the The Door Is Open – a drop in centre on the Downtown Eastside, that is still open today at its present location at 255 Dunlevy Avenue, in the heart of East Vancouver.

I would be remiss not to touch on my great aunt in-law, Flo Curle, who was the first of my husband’s family to immigrate from India in the early sixties. A single woman, she moved to Vancouver and sponsored every single member of her family’s residency to Canada.

My sisters in-law Veronica and Vanessa: two women passionately dedicated to our environment and education, as well as the high-seas (Veronica) and circus silks (Vanessa).

My step-mother Susan, who as a conscientious and exasperated American does what she can to move her birth county in positive direction.

To my amazing colleagues at Big Sisters, who fight tooth and nail every day to ensure that young women all across the Lower Mainland have the opportunity to be matched with a life-changing friend and mentor.

My own Little Sister Melissa, with whom I have been matched for almost seven years. This young women has grown into a confident, excited, hard-working young women, who takes the world by storm each and every day.

To my outstanding, heart-bursting friends who transform and deconstruct; who build, breathe, and believe in a better today and even better tomorrow.

And finally, to all of you reading. To every woman who wakes up every day and makes change, kicks butt, loves herself, loves others, smiles brightly, laughs loudly, dances madly, cries freely, jumps blindly, catches discretely – for all who are unapologetically her, and her, and her.

This is for you.

Pretty good footing

Running Part 1.

I have runner’s feet.

And I am okay with this.

(Most of the time.)

I am fine with my blisters and callouses, my rough skin and my high arches. My second toe on both feet remind me a bit of aliens, which is funny to myself and a source of hilarity to Marc.

I really like painting my nails during the summer months, because I think (but really mostly hope) that the colours take the focus away from all of the above.

Because as much as I’d love to think that everyone is as okay with my feet as I am – I cannot begin to imagine that this is the truth.

Last night I was at a dinner party and wasn’t wearing any socks. Incredibly aware of the now long-suffering (and completely innocuous) blood-blister on my left right toe, I felt as though I needed to head the message off at the pass, and immediately told my hosts:

“THAT’S NOT A WART IT’S A BLOOD BLOSTER FROM RUNNING,” while pointing at my foot.

They were suitably caught off guard, and told me that hadn’t even noticed it.

Which made me feel weird having called attention to it in the first place, and then I spent a large portion of the night simultaneously trying to hide my toe, and wondering if they were now, in fact, checking out the blister.

I also have a ridge of callouses that begins on my right big toe, and then migrates down the length of my in-step. I like to call it the Queensborough Ridge, as I think it sounds both regale and fun, and because I regularly run over the Queensborough Bridge on my very long runs.

(I can be such a silly girl.)

Feet truly are such incredible things.

Mine have taken me to some of the most beautiful places in the world. They fit into ridiculous heels, and float about in my favourite pair of men’s oxfords. They are the reason that I can run like the wind and dance like a mad woman, and they are the reason that my husband screams in agony when I put them up against his back in the middle of the night (because they are freezing and he is warm.)

They are awesome.

And I love them.

Running Part 2.

So I think I may have just watched eight episodes of House of Cards?

I can no longer keep count.

I’m really not into the show, I’ve just invested too much time that I need to find out what happens.

Otherwise, URGH.

The one thing I’ll give Clair Underwood is that she has some absolutely badass running outfits. But other than that, she and Frank are just the worst.

And the writing is absolute bollocks.

Double URGH.

When it comes to shows about US political shows, I’ll take Veep over anything else.

But I do want her running outfits.

Running Part 3.

The other morning I was out running before work and a man who was out walking his dog shouted at me, “GIRL YOU’RE MAKING MY DAY!”

Normally I get a little shirty when random men shout things in my direction, but this actually made my little heart smile.

Which is pretty great.

(But good thing he never saw my feet.)

A late night’s pictures and dreams

Some things of note (if you will) –

I. The funniest Kids in the Hall sketch:

II. If you read John Cleese’s book “So, Anyway…”, and are even a modest fan of the man and his works, you’ll have the pleasant bonus of finding yourself reading the entire thing in his voice. It’s like having Basil Fawlty as your personal narrator (although to be fair, I am more of an Archie Leech woman, myself.) I finished reading this book approximately twenty minutes ago and found it incredibly enjoyable. I laughed out loud on many, many occasions, and found myself giggling so hard on public transit that a women standing just off to my right turned to me, tapped my shoulder, and told me that I was an “absolute delight”, before confiding that she couldn’t wait to dive into her copy the minute she returned home.

I told her to piss off and mind her own business.

KIDDING.

I blushed like a mad thing and told her that I was just excited for her as she.

III. My masked self:

IV. Disclaimer: This next point will resonate solely with individuals who either live in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, or have spent enough time in Vancouver and its surrounding environs to know of which I write.

Chiefly, the utter madness that is Kingsway, and how lucky I feel whenever I manage to navigate this utterly insane stretch of road and emerge (relatively) unscathed – neither crumpled up inside my severely mangled automobile, nor having run over a rogue, clueless pedestrian (nay, pedestrians), nor having witnessed any sort of monumental crash-cum-pile-up due to another driver’s last minute decision to make a left turn on a red light an run ramrod straight into on-coming traffic.

That road is a bloody death trap.

And five hours later, my nerves are still shot.

V. Fashionable pantaloons:

I recently bought these sweet running pants from Mountain Equipment Co-op. I love them because they make me feel as though I am wearing a patchwork of old movie stills, even though the pattern is actually beautiful abstract black and white shapes.

For the uninitiated, MEC is the outdoor gear MECca (har har) of every pseudo-mountain person (and to be fair, every hardcore survivor man/woman) this town has to offer.

The place is basically Whole Foods for purveyors of hatchets, kayaks, and tents. Everything is fair trade and organic (including your rage when you realize that you could have purchased the exact same sleeping bag for thirty percent cheaper at one of the other stores just down the road had you exercised one iota of free will and not succumbed to the tractor beam pull of this ridiculous outdoor monolith. But I digress.)

The reason that I was able to purchase these amazing pants in the first place was because my sister and brother in-law bought me another sweet pair at Christmas that were very unfortunately too big and needed to be exchanged. With the store credit I was able to procure these cool duds and now I feel like a right superstar every time I put them on.

(A real 1930’s dynamo, as you please.)

VI. Sun cat:

FIN.

Mouth those words like you mean it

There are times in my life where I think to myself, “holy hell I was one weird kid.”

This happened a couple of days ago, as I sat in my office regaling one of my co-workers about the time in grade six when I wrote an award-winning speech on the life of Evita Peron. At the time I was unabashedly obsessed with the movie musical starring Madonna and Antonio Bandaras, and my presentation was written from the perspective of one of Evita’s childhood friends (played by me). In my zeal to create a compelling narrative, I fictionalized a series of letters that (I liked to imagine) the two women had sent back and forth between the time she moved to Buenos Aires in 1934 before her death in 1952. I even cried at the end, reminiscing about our lost childhood innocence.

It was pretty nuts.

(The reason that I was telling this tale in the first place was because I felt my work aesthetic that day to be very “Evita-esque” and had asked the same co-worker how she thought the two below photos compared):

“Hair needs less bangs, and more height,” she rightfully critiqued.

Then we laughed like drains.

After we regained our composure, I told her about my speech, and my ever-enduring love for the Evita musical.

She again started laughing, before shaking her head and asking the oft-repeated question: “how did you end up being this way?”

To which I answered, as always, “I have no friggin clue.”

I was just a weird kid who was into weird things.

But not only that – I really, really liked the things that I liked, and even though I desperately wanted to fit in, I could never truly let my desire for social approval and acceptance outweigh my desire to be strange as hell.

Case in point: every year my elementary school held a day totally dedicated to airbands (or lip synchs if you will.)

It was a huge thing. Kids had to audition in front of their class and the king of teachers himself – the formidable Mr. Bell – in order to get on the program.

The best outcome one could hope for was to be cast in the both the morning and afternoon shows, which meant you were out of classes for the entire day and were able to showcase your routine for multiple audiences on different shows.

It was the best.

In grade five I was a new student to the school and, despite loving to be on stage and wanting desperately to perform, I was too nervous to put anything together for the auditions.

I remember very clearly the only acts that tried out from our class were two groups of boys who literally performed “air bads” – with guitars, basses and drum sets – to “Lump” by the Presidents of the United States of America and “Basket Case” by Green Day.

I had never seen boys hop around on stage, pretending to play instruments before. It was totally bizarre.

(I had also never heard the latter song and quickly became obsessed. I would sit by my radio with my blank cassette at the ready, poised for the exact moment it would begin to play.)

The next year however, I was primed and ready. I had a solid group of friends – some of whom who had even agreed to act with me!

Together we put on “Hakuna Matata” and “RESPECT.”

Imagine, if you will, the tallest, skinniest, whitest twelve year-old, harnessing everything her bad-ass, budding feminist self has to offer, so that for approximately four minutes, she WAS Aretha Franklin.

It just may have been the finest performance of my life.

I distinctly remember all the teachers absolutely losing their minds.

Hakuna Matata too was a pretty good show. We had an absolute blast, dressed head to toe in tie-dye, pretending to be the animals, and really getting into the spoken word sections.

Nothing like a farting warthog to get us going!

However, because I wasn’t one to ever leave anything well enough alone, I decided that I wanted to do one last airband to round out that year’s revue.

At that time of my life I was also pretty obsessed with the Forrest Gump Soundtrack (being as it was that I was Benjamin Buttons, and reverse aging like a fiend, from eighty to eleven) and I especially like the song “I Don’t Know Why I Love You, But I Do” by Clarence “Frogman” Henry.

(Holy shit.)

I mean, to its credit, it’s a solid, nice song.

But what I could have possible been thinking when I chose THIS tune as my third airband is an enigma wrapped in a mystery folded inside of an ARE YOU EVEN KIDDING ME?

The one thing that sold the entire act was that I committed like crazy. I dressed up in a suit, wore a tie and bowler hat, and carried a cane. The whole thing was so earnest I was basically Charlie Chaplin in an after-school special.

Evidently Mr. Bell really dug the performance, because he cast me in the morning and afternoon shows.

I never for a moment even stopped to think that what I was doing was brave, or nerdy, or subversive, or strange.

I just liked the song and thought people might identify with the lyrics!

The reaction I received left me absolutely stupefied. People were impressed! And not necessarily by my performance, but by my bravery for going through with the performance in the first place.

I’ll never forget Carrie Knoll coming up to me after the morning’s show and just blurting out “That was one of the coolest, cutest things ever. I cannot believe you had the guts to do it.”

I thanked her profusely. Being one of the coolest girls in our grade, her words were more than just a compliment – they were an act of legitimization, of the acceptance that I really truly did crave.

I was just flabbergasted that they were born from (what was perceived to be) such an extremely nerdy public endeavor.

Which just goes to show, you totally can kill two birds with one song.

Especially if it’s from a soundtrack you love.

Oh, my heart. My heart.

I like knowing where others have been.

A woman’s perfume that lingers. The faint trace of a cigar, long-extinguished.

It makes me think about all of the lives I may never know.

All of the hearts I may never touch.

This morning I woke to a stretching sun. A ball of bleached blues and sherbet hues, melting its way across the frozen skyscape.

Before the herald of the first alarm, I silently stole from my scattered dreamspace, and crept into the cool dark of the house.

Nymeria yawned and quietly mewled from her corner of the chesterfield, her eyes squinting in discomfort as I turned on one of the small side lamps.

The soft light illuminated the many discarded tea mugs and half-finished books populating the table space of the room.

(Hallmarks of a busy workweek and my inability to ever finish a drink.)

I drank a demi-cup of sugary, dark coffee, and read from one of the books, marvelling all the while at the stark beauty, ablaze, across the New Westminster waterfront.

I then slipped into my beautiful new running pants, laced up my runners, and set forth to immerse myself in the golden glow of a world, seemingly reborn.

There are times in my life, where I am unable to stop myself from crying. Tears stream easily, unencumbered from the corners of my eyes. They are fat pearls of emotion – of happiness beyond equation.

Beyond compare.

And this morning I cried.

Racing time.

Racing an untameable sun.

I felt as though I could keep moving forever. That I might blend my body to my path, eternal.

Returning home, I caught a fragrance of a women. And for that moment, I breathed a life; a mind, body and soul – now vanished, or perhaps vanquished – within the thrum and hum of a waking day.

And I was hit with a sense of nostalgia so strong, I quaked.

I was five and cuddled up next to my mother as she read aloud to me on my bed; I was ten and exploring my grandparent’s basement bookshelves, as the dust swirls sparkled in the amber light; I was nineteen and working late closing shifts, experimenting with eye contact and fake names; twenty-four and riding my bike down Hagley Road under the muggy, Brummy sun; twenty-nine and dancing my heart out, my hair stuck to my back, and my calves like two hot rocks; thirty-five and forty-four, and sixty-seven; I was past, present, and yet-to-be present.

Who are we all?

Why are we here?

From where are we going?

Infinitesimal sums of beauty and strength, of wonder and light, of magic and marvel, of love, of love, of love.

So just keep breathing.

And let in the light.