20th century women, and the end of the impasse

Another dear old friend visiting - Lani saw me in my first Vancouver show in early 1975 and immediately hired me for her company; we all wrote a revue to tour through the Kootenays. And so I befriended a most interesting, quirky woman, as we sat on camp chairs beneath those glorious mountains, drinking martinis she'd made for us while the men in the company argued about where to park the bus. We went on to have many adventures together, both personal and professional, including mutual boyfriends and many more shows - she tiny and fierce, I tall and genial, apparently a hilarious team, especially our Helena (tall) and Hermia (short) in their fight scene from Midsummer Night's Dream.

She has lived for years in Stratford, recently moved with her husband Maurice to Ingersoll, and has come to the big city for a few days. Today we went to see 20th century women. What a fine film - as original as Lan. It's autobiographical, the story of director and writer Mike Mills and his unconventional, empathetic mother in Santa Barbara in 1979. Since I'm writing about that very year, I had my notebook ready to jot down insights about that time.

But what hit me most about this lovely film, the coming of age story of a boy surrounded by women trying to help him grow to be a good man, was how hard it is to be the single mother of a male of the species. My God, I identified with that, as Annette Bening's character struggles to cope with the mysterious creature she has brought into the world, and the boy tries to understand the various fascinating women in his life, at a time in the world when feminism had taken hold and the clitoris and menstruation were dinner table topics. I loved the scenes where his mother tries to tolerate the violent punk music her son likes, as I reacted with incomprehension when Sam started to listen to rap and hiphop, "motherfucker music," as I called it, since that seemed to be the only word the musicians knew.

The film is thoughtful, a bit slow, a bit too careful, politically correct and sentimental, perhaps, but special - human beings in all their complex, marvellous glory. All the actors are wonderful, but Greta Gerwig is spectacular.

As important to me is the fact that - drum roll! - I've moved past the logjam with the book. Suddenly, after weeks of me diddling about with no idea how to fix a central problem, a solution broke open. The opening scene started to come together, and it all started to flow. Yes, flow. I read some of the new material to Lani, and at two points she had tears in her eyes, so I take that as a good sign. I have renewed purpose and energy and will soon enter the obsessive phase, I fear, when all that matters is the book.

In the meantime - sometimes it seems criminal to have a life, to care about anything else when the world is disintegrating and a lunatic is running the most powerful country on earth into the ground. How is it possible to have someone so wrong about every single thing right there, in our faces, and not go mad?