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| A beach on Bowen - note: sunshine. |
Friday, April 26, 2013
More beautiful B.C.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Crystal Cove
I'm in a log cabin on the west coast of Vancouver Island, near Tofino, in front of a dwindling fire; I've just stepped out of the hot tub after a day of walking on the vast beaches of this island paradise. This is what I dreamed of at the start of this trip, and here it is. You know I'm a weeper, and today, I wept several times for gratitude and joy.
Bowen Island was wonderful - this unique community of islanders where Shari knows and is known by everyone, because she has been a fixture of the music community and a well-known singer and songwriter for decades. In her four story house overlooking the harbour and mountains, she has both an office and a studio, full of musical equipment and instruments, where she composes and records. She's now doing house concerts, which she loves, is leaving soon on a cross-country tour and I hope next year will do a concert chez moi. In the meantime, we talked and walked with her old dog Louie and ate vegetarian meals.
There was one heartbreak, when she took me on a walk on a glorious path along the shore, where all the land adjacent was being developed into 10-acre sea-view plots "for multi-millionaires from Hong Kong," she said. As we walked, we heard the noise of backhoes and builders, beginning their work along this once-pristine coast.
I sat my alarm for 5.55 a.m. the next morning - why? To go for a dawn walk in the woods? To sit writing my heart out in the sea air silence? No. Members of the website Paulmccartney.com, of whom I am one, can buy early tickets for his concerts, and when I found out he was doing a concert in Ottawa July 7, I knew I had to go. I can visit Auntie Do and Paul too. So I had to be ready to buy as soon as the box office opened at 9 a.m. Ontario time - 6 in B.C. And sure enough, at exactly 6, the site offered tickets. It took me about 20 minutes of clicking to buy a ticket for myself and 2 for my brother. And then, thrilled, to turn out the light and try to go back to sleep.
On Wednesday morning, Shari drove me to the ferry, where I walked on on Bowen Island and off at Horseshoe Bay and then got immediately on another ferry, this one heading to Nanaimo, where Patsy met me and we drove off, across the island, to the west coast. To finish my jaunt, I was longing for some ocean time, and invited Patsy to be my guest at a place she recommended, Crystal Cove Cottages. When we finally arrived, we opened the door to our ocean-front log cabin, #2 - heaven. But - right outside the door, on the beach, was a large group of teenagers, partying hearty - drinking, smoking, with loud music. And then from the cabin right next door came the even louder sounds of heavy metal music. I looked at Patsy in misery - would this ruin our longed-for time by the sea?
So I went to the office, and they offered us Cabin #12 for the same price as Cabin #2. It's on the edge of the property, fronts on a beautiful cove, is completely quiet - and, huge bonus, has a hot tub, for which you usually have to pay a large extra fee. So thanks to those vile teenagers, we got a free hot tub, a silent cabin, and our own crystal cove.
This part of the world is bliss. Utterly, unbelievably beautiful - the endless, empty beaches, the ancient rain forest trees and undergrowth, the First Nation villages Ucluelet and Tofino - oh, I have loved being here. Yesterday, after buying groceries in Tofino, we walked for ages on our own beach before cooking supper, drinking wine and floating in the hot tub. Today we walked first for two hours on Chesterman Beach, where I camped in the mid-seventies as a young hippy, with a couple of guys in a truck - who were they? I cannot remember. And then later, we walked all afternoon, down an incredible path through the forest, falling in love with huge ancient trees as we went, to Schooner Cove, part of Long Beach, which is even more vast and endless and beautiful. I'm sorry that beautiful and endless and vast are the only words that come. But then, I'm blissed out and ready to melt after the tub.
Best of all - for once, on this rainy coast in this rainy province, there has been no rain. The weather - after so much cold and wet on my trip - has been perfect. Shari said, after 2 days of sun on Bowen, "You're the luckiest person who's ever stayed here." And here on the Pacific Rim too - warm sun and a breeze, and a horizon of sand and ocean, air and trees - and in the distance, as always in this most stunning province, the implacable snow-capped mountains.
I wept for the beauty of the ocean and the beach, then of the trees, but at dinner, finally, at the beauty of my friend, who was wearing a cut velvet top of my mother's I'd sent her after Mum died. We cooked dinner, drank wine, sat in front of the fire and in the hot tub talking intensely, as we have been since we became roommates in the summer of 1970, in a house in another cove on another coast, outside of Halifax. What a great treasure is an old, old friend. In a hot tub. After a day of bliss.
Bowen Island was wonderful - this unique community of islanders where Shari knows and is known by everyone, because she has been a fixture of the music community and a well-known singer and songwriter for decades. In her four story house overlooking the harbour and mountains, she has both an office and a studio, full of musical equipment and instruments, where she composes and records. She's now doing house concerts, which she loves, is leaving soon on a cross-country tour and I hope next year will do a concert chez moi. In the meantime, we talked and walked with her old dog Louie and ate vegetarian meals.
There was one heartbreak, when she took me on a walk on a glorious path along the shore, where all the land adjacent was being developed into 10-acre sea-view plots "for multi-millionaires from Hong Kong," she said. As we walked, we heard the noise of backhoes and builders, beginning their work along this once-pristine coast.
I sat my alarm for 5.55 a.m. the next morning - why? To go for a dawn walk in the woods? To sit writing my heart out in the sea air silence? No. Members of the website Paulmccartney.com, of whom I am one, can buy early tickets for his concerts, and when I found out he was doing a concert in Ottawa July 7, I knew I had to go. I can visit Auntie Do and Paul too. So I had to be ready to buy as soon as the box office opened at 9 a.m. Ontario time - 6 in B.C. And sure enough, at exactly 6, the site offered tickets. It took me about 20 minutes of clicking to buy a ticket for myself and 2 for my brother. And then, thrilled, to turn out the light and try to go back to sleep.
On Wednesday morning, Shari drove me to the ferry, where I walked on on Bowen Island and off at Horseshoe Bay and then got immediately on another ferry, this one heading to Nanaimo, where Patsy met me and we drove off, across the island, to the west coast. To finish my jaunt, I was longing for some ocean time, and invited Patsy to be my guest at a place she recommended, Crystal Cove Cottages. When we finally arrived, we opened the door to our ocean-front log cabin, #2 - heaven. But - right outside the door, on the beach, was a large group of teenagers, partying hearty - drinking, smoking, with loud music. And then from the cabin right next door came the even louder sounds of heavy metal music. I looked at Patsy in misery - would this ruin our longed-for time by the sea?
So I went to the office, and they offered us Cabin #12 for the same price as Cabin #2. It's on the edge of the property, fronts on a beautiful cove, is completely quiet - and, huge bonus, has a hot tub, for which you usually have to pay a large extra fee. So thanks to those vile teenagers, we got a free hot tub, a silent cabin, and our own crystal cove.
This part of the world is bliss. Utterly, unbelievably beautiful - the endless, empty beaches, the ancient rain forest trees and undergrowth, the First Nation villages Ucluelet and Tofino - oh, I have loved being here. Yesterday, after buying groceries in Tofino, we walked for ages on our own beach before cooking supper, drinking wine and floating in the hot tub. Today we walked first for two hours on Chesterman Beach, where I camped in the mid-seventies as a young hippy, with a couple of guys in a truck - who were they? I cannot remember. And then later, we walked all afternoon, down an incredible path through the forest, falling in love with huge ancient trees as we went, to Schooner Cove, part of Long Beach, which is even more vast and endless and beautiful. I'm sorry that beautiful and endless and vast are the only words that come. But then, I'm blissed out and ready to melt after the tub.
Best of all - for once, on this rainy coast in this rainy province, there has been no rain. The weather - after so much cold and wet on my trip - has been perfect. Shari said, after 2 days of sun on Bowen, "You're the luckiest person who's ever stayed here." And here on the Pacific Rim too - warm sun and a breeze, and a horizon of sand and ocean, air and trees - and in the distance, as always in this most stunning province, the implacable snow-capped mountains.
I wept for the beauty of the ocean and the beach, then of the trees, but at dinner, finally, at the beauty of my friend, who was wearing a cut velvet top of my mother's I'd sent her after Mum died. We cooked dinner, drank wine, sat in front of the fire and in the hot tub talking intensely, as we have been since we became roommates in the summer of 1970, in a house in another cove on another coast, outside of Halifax. What a great treasure is an old, old friend. In a hot tub. After a day of bliss.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Beautiful B.C.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
useful creativity
This morning I was in a movement class where the teacher talked about useful versus useless creativity. Useless, she said, was re-creating a scenario that did not happen, or creating a possible future scenario that might never. Useful - making something interesting that wasn't there before.
And that is what my friend Chris Tyrell has done. He's a writer, arts administrator and storyteller whose core story is so interesting - of adoption, rejection, and finally finding his birth mother who helped him understand who he really is - that many of us had urged him to write it down. So he did, not as a memoir, but as a show, an autobiographical musical show that he produced as a fundraiser for the Performing Arts Lodge here, which houses artists who don't have much money in middle and old age.
That is, a 65-year old man who's HIV positive, who's had 2 heart attacks and has severe asthma and defines himself as shy and has never performed onstage, wrote the script and libretto for and produced and publicized a play starring himself and two singers, to tell the intimate story of his terrible childhood and the redemption that came later.
Lesson: just do it. His best friends Bruce and I are theatre professionals who have both been working on projects for years, have read many, many books on how to do it right. Chris didn't read a single book; he just did it. It was flawed. He had real trouble remembering his lines, he's not an actor, there were lumpy, awkward and slow bits. But it was extraordinary and moving, because he was telling us the truth, his story, a big story of growth, courage, genetics and heritage, and we heard it and got it, right in the gut.
I'd edited the script and knew the story backwards anyway, from my decades of friendship with this man. But it was thrilling to hear it all again opening night Thursday and at the closing this afternoon. He has always wanted to do this, and so he did.
This city is such an anomaly. The weather! So often glowering skies and rain. I curse the place as I splash through puddles trying to get somewhere - today, to the PAL theatre in a freezing downpour, wearing every layer I've brought and under Bruce's umbrella, telling myself I will NEVER COME BACK! And then suddenly the skies clear and it's the most beautiful place on earth. Right now, I'm in Bruce's chair looking out at English Bay under a blue sky, the mountains, the sailboats and tankers; below the trees are bursting into green, and best of all, the rhododendrons are exploding. Gorgeous. And then it will pour again and I will curse.
I've visited friend Tara who lives on the water, had coffee and drinks at the Art Gallery with Patsy and Cathy, had several meals with Chris, walked miles, explored Main Avenue, Commercial Drive and Gastown which is not the shoddy touristland it once was, and last night had a fireside evening and delicious dinner chez old friend Margaret and her husband Roy and spent the night there so I could go with Margaret this morning to a class at the Western Front with Jane Ellison, dancer and teacher. I've gone with Margaret before and am desperate to find something similar in Toronto. Jane leads her class through an intense 45 minutes of stretching and awakening to the body, then puts on 4 songs of fantastic music of all genres and everyone dances like crazy around the room, then there's a cool-down and stretch. She's wise and luminous and it's a great deal of fun.
Now I'm waiting for Chris to call when he gets back from the theatre where they're striking the set, and we'll have dinner and he'll begin to come down to earth. He is a man of superhuman energy, and so I'm sure will begin a new project, perhaps a new script, tomorrow. And tomorrow morning, I am getting the bus to Horseshoe Bay to get the ferry to Bowen Island, to stay for two days with an old friend, the singer Shari Ulrich. And then to Vancouver Island. All the while tucking thoughts and ideas into my back pocket.
Because I have learned my lesson: JUST @#$# DO IT.
PS. This visit is also a trip back in time for me. I walk to the PAL theatre along Cardero Street, and pass the apartment building where my ex and I, he 26 and I 29, moved in together in May 1980, the place to which we brought our baby girl back from the hospital in May 1981. I stand and look up at our third floor windows and wonder who that blissful young woman was - I hardly remember her.
At the theatre, I'm reconnecting with colleagues from my actress days in the Seventies. One of them said to me, today, "You look younger now than you did when you worked here 40 years ago." And though of course it's a lie, this grandmother with grey hair, I do feel younger. Because I've put all that useless creativity, to a great extent, away.
And that is what my friend Chris Tyrell has done. He's a writer, arts administrator and storyteller whose core story is so interesting - of adoption, rejection, and finally finding his birth mother who helped him understand who he really is - that many of us had urged him to write it down. So he did, not as a memoir, but as a show, an autobiographical musical show that he produced as a fundraiser for the Performing Arts Lodge here, which houses artists who don't have much money in middle and old age.
That is, a 65-year old man who's HIV positive, who's had 2 heart attacks and has severe asthma and defines himself as shy and has never performed onstage, wrote the script and libretto for and produced and publicized a play starring himself and two singers, to tell the intimate story of his terrible childhood and the redemption that came later.
Lesson: just do it. His best friends Bruce and I are theatre professionals who have both been working on projects for years, have read many, many books on how to do it right. Chris didn't read a single book; he just did it. It was flawed. He had real trouble remembering his lines, he's not an actor, there were lumpy, awkward and slow bits. But it was extraordinary and moving, because he was telling us the truth, his story, a big story of growth, courage, genetics and heritage, and we heard it and got it, right in the gut.
I'd edited the script and knew the story backwards anyway, from my decades of friendship with this man. But it was thrilling to hear it all again opening night Thursday and at the closing this afternoon. He has always wanted to do this, and so he did.
This city is such an anomaly. The weather! So often glowering skies and rain. I curse the place as I splash through puddles trying to get somewhere - today, to the PAL theatre in a freezing downpour, wearing every layer I've brought and under Bruce's umbrella, telling myself I will NEVER COME BACK! And then suddenly the skies clear and it's the most beautiful place on earth. Right now, I'm in Bruce's chair looking out at English Bay under a blue sky, the mountains, the sailboats and tankers; below the trees are bursting into green, and best of all, the rhododendrons are exploding. Gorgeous. And then it will pour again and I will curse.
I've visited friend Tara who lives on the water, had coffee and drinks at the Art Gallery with Patsy and Cathy, had several meals with Chris, walked miles, explored Main Avenue, Commercial Drive and Gastown which is not the shoddy touristland it once was, and last night had a fireside evening and delicious dinner chez old friend Margaret and her husband Roy and spent the night there so I could go with Margaret this morning to a class at the Western Front with Jane Ellison, dancer and teacher. I've gone with Margaret before and am desperate to find something similar in Toronto. Jane leads her class through an intense 45 minutes of stretching and awakening to the body, then puts on 4 songs of fantastic music of all genres and everyone dances like crazy around the room, then there's a cool-down and stretch. She's wise and luminous and it's a great deal of fun.
Now I'm waiting for Chris to call when he gets back from the theatre where they're striking the set, and we'll have dinner and he'll begin to come down to earth. He is a man of superhuman energy, and so I'm sure will begin a new project, perhaps a new script, tomorrow. And tomorrow morning, I am getting the bus to Horseshoe Bay to get the ferry to Bowen Island, to stay for two days with an old friend, the singer Shari Ulrich. And then to Vancouver Island. All the while tucking thoughts and ideas into my back pocket.
Because I have learned my lesson: JUST @#$# DO IT.
PS. This visit is also a trip back in time for me. I walk to the PAL theatre along Cardero Street, and pass the apartment building where my ex and I, he 26 and I 29, moved in together in May 1980, the place to which we brought our baby girl back from the hospital in May 1981. I stand and look up at our third floor windows and wonder who that blissful young woman was - I hardly remember her.
At the theatre, I'm reconnecting with colleagues from my actress days in the Seventies. One of them said to me, today, "You look younger now than you did when you worked here 40 years ago." And though of course it's a lie, this grandmother with grey hair, I do feel younger. Because I've put all that useless creativity, to a great extent, away.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
City of Angelinos
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