Got My Shirts

Monday Night Dinner with Nicola

I am dressed for dinner; Nicola is due to arrive shortly. She will be fabulously dressed.  She is the perfect date—always fabulously dressed, keen and utterly and perfectly compatible.

We have regular dates since we both are recent beneficiaries of wills. We’ve been to the city’s finest, Hawksworth, a few times, but tonight we are branching out and going to Chambar. Before all our dates, we meet at my place to drink champagne.

I am wearing a tie. I hardly ever do that. I am also wearing my glasses that I think are too garish for me but that everyone admires. I feel like an child in a costume, playing the part of an adult so dressed, but I absolutely love “playing dress up” with Nicola.

It’s partly the availability of the money, but it is also about how I feel inside. A few posts back I wrote about pride. It is new to me, feeling proud of myself. But that is how I feel now that technical writing is behind me and I ambush with creative writing.

It took a long time and a lot of living to learn to write for the stage and screen and to feel pride but boy, was it worth it: Champagne, Nicola and fine dining… what a way to celebrate. And regularly.

Yay! We have Vivicean.

Lois Anderson, as Kate, in the Bard
production of "Shrew"

I just found out that Lois Anderson has accepted to be in Trudeau. I am thrilled  by the choice.

Monday Walk

Monday is my favourite day to walk the wall because there is usually no one walking. And it was a stunning day so I walked the wall and then meandered through some parts of the park I like.

A riot of Clematis.

Gorgeous, no? 

Violets.

Stunning dark leaves.

Water droplets. 

Even lichen is pretty in the garden. 

Faeries live here.

March Miracles

A Terror Has Been Unleashed on the World

Needs and Desires

I am well known as a walker. “Walking” for me means about three hours of locomotion during which time, I think. I like to listen to music in my last hour, but for most of the time I like to think about my projects and the things I see. Yesterday I thought about why I do what I am doing—the costumes and so much writing.

One reason I am writing so much is that I have the time. The other thing is that I am finally writing in a form and style that gives me pride.

Pride drives me. I realize that is why I was teaching, now that I have quit. I was so, so incredibly proud to be a teacher at Emily Carr. But I did not like three-hour lectures and the marking. My course was so intense and had such a deep mandate, lecturing was the requirement for much of the three hours.

So I was glad to quit. And I was able to quit because I found a new source of pride—my writing and, particularly, my costumes. Writing is something I feel I have to do. It’s an odd thing to say, and unpleasant perhaps, but for me writing is like going to the bathroom. It has to be done.

But making costumes is an option. I don’t feel compelled to create in three dimensions, but it is far, far, far more fun that writing. If writing is, to me, like going to the bathroom, making paper costumes is like drinking champagne.