courses and dancing

Okay, a decision has been made: I am offering a one day intensive "Writing in the Garden" workshop on Sunday, July 13th from 10 till 5.  We will do various writing exercises, discuss issues to do with writing, great inspirational books, I hope have a guest speaker, eat a delicious lunch catered by my estimable daughter, do more writing, and talk some more. Inspiration, contact with other writers, deadlines, good listening and feedback guaranteed. Laughter, tears and insight or your money back.  $125.  There are six registered already with room for eight or nine more, at most.  

So - pretty quick from waking dream to registered students!  Nothing has materialised on the Frank Mahovlich front, however.  And the racoon is still screaming.

I also hope, if there are enough students, to teach a course called "Narrative Non-Fiction" at U of T from July 7th to 11th, mostly in the mornings with some one on one sessions, readings and panel discussions in the afternoon.  So - work in July, hooray.  I'll be able to pay for sunblock and strawberries. 

Yesterday my kids and Sam's two best friends Matt and Matt came for supper.  Anna brought a favourite CD, a "Creedence Clearwater Tribute" band, and put on her favourite song "Cotton Fields."  She wasn't aware that it used to be my favourite song too.  I went into the basement and dug through my dusty records, which by some miracle survived the fire that destroyed everything around them a few years ago, until I found the Creedence album I've had since 1969.  

In February I became obsessed with getting a record player again; I bought an amp at a pawnshop and an old turntable, so that I could begin to dust off the old L.P.'s.  Maybe it was just so I could put on the real "Cotton Fields" last night, and dance with my daughter.  Probably the record hasn't been played in 35 years, and it's just as good as ever.  We even dragged the boys in to dance with us, briefly; they were dying to but were just too embarrassed to dance with familiar females in the living room.  As she jived and twisted, Anna said, "This is my exercise and therapy."

"None better," I said.  

And then she said, "Are you going to blog about this?  I sense a blog coming on." 

Oh dear - they know me much too well.   

the secret garden last summer

new idea for writing workshops - feedback requested

Funny how things come to you in the night.  I keep a pen and paper by the bed so I can jot down ideas or dreams, because they vanish so quickly.  Last night, believe it or not, I had a powerful dream about falling in love with a young hockey player called Frank Mahovilich.  Yes, it's true, and I don't even know what Frank looked like in his prime; it was Guy Lafleur I had a crush on. Frank asked me to marry him.  Aren't dreams amazing?  

But right afterwards, floating in and out of sleep, I had a grand notion.  As those of you following this blog know, I have a beautiful secret garden right in the heart of downtown Toronto. Suddenly I thought - I'd like to invite writers here.  I had an image of people sitting and writing throughout my garden.  

And I had the idea of setting up one day intensive writing workshops in the summer - a day of on-the-spot work to give writers a creativity boost, a charge of companionship, inspiration, comfort, feedback, direction.  Perhaps I'd run one on a Saturday in July and another on a Sunday in August - from 10 to 5.  I'd ask Wayson to come and speak, and I'd get my daughter the fabulous cook to cater a big healthy lunch.  It would be a chance not only to dig into your writing heart and exercise your skills, but to meet other writers and to discuss where you are now and where you'd like to go - and how to get there.

What do you think?  Would any of you out there be interested?  I'd need a certain number of people to make it worthwhile.  For people from out of town, I could suggest nearby inns or b and b's; you could combine the workshop with a Toronto weekend or go on to the Stratford or Shaw Festivals.  

Let me know what you think.  I'll work out specific details later, but I do think I'll go ahead with at least one.  Exciting!  If it rains, being inside the house will be fun too.  

And maybe, if we're lucky, Frank Mahovilich will come and say hello.   

The Mystery of the Screaming Raccoon

I played Nancy Drew, super sleuth, at 3 a.m. last night, after waking up to a raccoon screaming somewhere out there.  A shrill, high-pitched, warbling kind of shriek - definitely not a happy raccoon, though I did briefly try to dismiss the noise as love play.  But it went on and on and I finally had to get up and see what was happening.  

So there I am at 3 a.m., wandering around the courtyard of the chic condos next door in my dressing gown and slippers, to discover that some raccoon was screaming up in the ivy somewhere, invisible and unreachable.  Which was in some ways a relief, because what would I, Nancy Drew, have done if I'd discovered a wounded or enraged beast?  Ripped up my nightgown for a tourniquet or blindfold? I did whisper, "Shhh," but it paid no attention.   

Nothing to do but go back to bed and put in earplugs. I remembered that exactly the same thing happened last year; back then I thought it was a little one temporarily abandoned by its mother.  This year I guessed a female in needy heat.  This is a Freudian test - listen to the yelling raccoon. What do YOU think is happening?

I put this event down on a list I keep in my mind: -"Experiences that Europeans do not enjoy" -and spent some time explaining it all to my boarder, who'd never been outside of Beijing before coming to Canada six months ago.  I had to tell her not only about the entire family of raccoons living on the roof just outside her attic window, but also the cause of that very bad smell that sometimes wafts through the downtown air.  "And besides skunks, there've been deer close to here," I said, "and beavers swimming in the Don." No bears, though the suburbs not that far away have a serious problem with bears.  And, unfortunately, no moose. 

I saw an interview on Jon Stewart with a man who's written a book about what would happen to the planet if we humans were all wiped out.  Extraordinarily fast, he said, other species would take over.  The trouble is, when we're not here producing garbage, what will those agile, omnivorous, occasionally extremely noisy masked bandits do for entertainment and food? 

That's life.

Whining and self-pity over.  Get a grip, get a life, get over it, my friends have said.  As Penny pointed out, in every competition there is a winner and lots and lots of losers.  That's life.  As Bruce pointed out, artists often feel that any review less than a complete rave is a pan.  "It's a nice review if short, with a good graphic of Gordin and the title of your book at the top.  What's the problem?  I've seen reviews for brilliant scores by Cole Porter or Rodgers," he wrote, "which said, 'Pleasant but not up to his usual standards.' That's life." 

I'm grateful for their admonitions but today, to tell you the truth, I can hardly believe that I was actually smarting for awhile.  This morning the Don Valley Parkway was closed for the Ride for Heart, and so, for my own heart, I rode my bike along the Don Trail.  The silence, the cascades of birdsong right in downtown Toronto - what a blessing.  

And then brunch with Nicola Cavendish, who finished the run of her play Misery last night croaking with a terrible chest cold.  But no self-pity for her!  I remembered the time I was in a musical with no understudies when many of us got a crippling flu - no choice but to go onstage and sing and dance.  They put a mattress backstage so that we could flop down in heaps until it was time to go on and sing and dance some more.

Nicola and I brunched with another old acting friend, Nick Rice.  Nick and I used to warm up for a production of The Three Sisters by singing folk songs on stage at the top of our lungs. Stanislavski would not have approved.  While others in the cast were doing serious sense memory exercises and immersing themselves in olde Russia, Nick and I were bellowing a song he wrote that went, "Oh I really don't want to do this show tonight."  That was certainly a premonition.  Not long after that, I left the theatre for good. 

I never forget one of the great things about writing as opposed to acting: you can go to bed, rather than to work, when you have the flu.