Sensitivity

I was an “overly sensitive” child according to almost all my elementary school teachers.

As a young adult, I read books and articles about sensitivity and learned little. I read a lot about what I already knew from my life, but not why I was sensitive. Most of what I read was not for sensitive people; instead, it was directed to people who had to co-exist with (highly) sensitive people.

In mid-life, I began to wonder if I was sensitive because of the unique circumstances of my life (see previous post). Or might my sensitivity be genetic?

My bosom-buddy, Dwight is sensitive and has a sensitive daughter who has been raised in a wonderful and loving home. I have concluded, therefore, that my sensitivity is not due to my upbringing. But to consider of genetic origin raises big questions.

If sensitivity is a trait valued to our species, if it is worth remembering to the human genome, what purpose does sensitivity serve humankind? Is sensitivity what fuels creativity? It’s a fair question—both Dwight and I are highly creative; I am compulsively so.

I took Dwight to lunch yesterday for his birthday. The above is what we talked about. Today, John is coming to pick me up to take Bunny and I for a long walk and lunch. My two bro’s on two consecutive days.

My sensitivity has me very aware that I am blessed to have these men in my life. As Dwight said at our lunch today: “We’re your family.”

What to do About Inappropriate Man #1

Inappropriate Man #1 was, as recounted in the previous post, was a horror on Tuesday night. How to move forward is a conundrum.

As friends know, my father was a bully. He directed his frustrations at his sister, growing up, and at me later in his life. Worse: My mother instigated some of his attacks.

I hated Dad but didn’t know what to feel about Mother. She had Dad beat me but she was the one who wanted me and chose me from the Catholic orphanage. Besides, I wanted a loving mother and she was nice when things weren’t bad.

In 1974/74, the Symbionese Liberation Army abducted the American heiress, Patty Hearst. And in Norrmalmstorg (Stockholm), the Kreditbanken (a bank) was robbed and hostages were taken. In both cases, the captors shocked the world by joining their captors and adopting their values. Psychologists termed said the captors had suffered from “capture-bonding.”

Capture bonding, I felt, explained my situation with my parents. So, at age 25 I went to see my mother’s doctor to try to understand \ what happened to her. I clearly remember the day.

Her doctor welcomed me warmly. He knew why I was there; I had explained my purpose to his secretary and he had my mother’s files at the ready. I didn’t tell him any of our family history; I just said I wanted to know “what happened to her.” I explained that my father had told me nothing of her medical history. 

His response was to ask this question: “Do you want to know about her corporeal illness or her mental illness?” That’s how I found out Mother had been mentally ill.

As it sunk in, I had to reassess my understanding of our history. I felt I had to excuse her behavior with my new understanding. She’d been sick. But I still have the emotional scars of our past.

This history affects me every day.

Inappropriate Man #1 stopped taking his medications for his mental illness last September—four months ago. My walk yesterday had an agenda. I had questions to consider: Is it right and fair to allow last Tuesday night’s horror to withdraw from him? Or should I be sympathetic and allow our “friendship” to continue?

I reached a decision. I am withdrawing from him but not because of his behavior or because of his illness, but because he stopped taking his medications. That seems fair.

Mon. Off / Tues. On

The slaw. Two kinds of cabbage, mango, papaya, mint,
coriander, hot pepper and one of Yotam Ottolenghi's
 incredible dressings. Healthy and unspeakably delicious.

Monday was an off day. It was grey and cold; there was ten minutes of snow in the morning. All I did was read, watch, nap and eat. It was a restful day. I made more of the slaw that I love from Plenty, and wrote more of my play.

However, my play isn't engaging my passion. I now prefer cooking, shopping for food, reading recipes and eating to writing. This medium and the graphic design I do keep me creatively satisfied on days when I am not cooking or baking or reading or watching things about cooking and baking.

One of my inappropriate men came by last night; he excelled at pissing me off. Every meeting starts with hope but it is only  question of time before it turns to antipathy—this time, perhaps, to last.

Tuesday was an active day. I walked the seawall and through the park. With the sun so low in the sky, it gives an eerie light to the day—one I am not used to because winter walking is relatively new to me.

My friend John took these photos on Tuesday on his walk in the park.

Caroline Lebar makes “couture tarts”

Beth sent me an email:

Reading a Paris Elle magazine brought back for me by Curtis. A story about Caroline Lebar who makes “couture tarts” - I mean, actual tarts. Her book is called Une Tarte Pour Dimanche, and there’s a picture of a tart that reminded me of yours.

I am thrilled to see similarities between her work and mine, and inspired to replicate some of what I see here:

How to Describe Leaves

My First Show

Yotam Ottolenghi's recipe for fried leeks is sensational. It's like eating candy.

He has you boil the leeks first then dip them, cooled and drained, into whipped egg before rolling them in panko breadcrumbs before very briefly frying them. Just like that, they are incredibly delicious. But he suggests you serve it with lemony creme fresh infused with crushed capers, sliced inions and lemon juice. That makes the candy taste even richer. It is to-die-for delicious.

You really don't need the sweet pickled red peppers. This is offered as an appetizer so pickling the peppers adds time to your cooking. Still, they too are delicious but they are mildly sweet. There is sugar in the recipe. I made a double batch and am glad I did. They are delicious alone.

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In 1981 a play that was supposed to come into my little public theatre cancelled their reservation and I had a whole in both my program and my revenue budget. Seeing a chance to live a dream, I took a HUGE risk and decided to produce my first professional play.

At the time, I was hosting a bi-weekly amateur TV show for Shaw Cable in North Vancouver. That is how I got the idea for the show I wanted to produce. I wanted Nicola Cavendish to be the star and I could only afford two actors of her calibre. I was integral to the show's shape, script and development; I  had to be. I had 7,000 1980 un-supported dollars in the show—a fortune at the time, especially with as small a house as I had (210 seats).

It was a monster hit but we lost money and I was later fired for it.  By chance, it got reviewed in Variety, the entertainment newspaper out of New York. The review is below. My name is not in it and that hurt. Still, you don't get reviews like this very often, especially on your first time out.

North Shore Live is a two-hander that deserves a long and prosperous life. Its target is a familiar one — commercial television — but the means of demolition are genuinely innovative and extremely funny. The show opened quietly in a suburban house on the north shore of Greater Vancouver and has become the sleeper of the season in a vigorously competitive theatre town.

North Shore Live is the brainchild of two accomplished Canadian performers. Tom Wood and Nicola Cavendish. Wood is a veteran of several seasons of classical theatre at the Stratford (Canada) Festival. Cavendish is a West Coast fixture with wide experience in both contemporary and classical theatre.

In North Shore Live they offer two evenings in the life of a shallow, tasteless local television show. Not only did they have principal responsibility in writing the script, they also are the only two performers — creating a myriad of roles as they delineate the type of personalities who tend to show up on bad evening shows on bad local stations.

The versatile Wood’s impersonations include a punk rock star whose limited brain-power has become even more limited through drug use, a simpering singing nun with aspirations of becoming a stand-up comic, and a cretinous children’s entertainer named Capt. Vic who does inept scenes with a talking octopus puppet names Ollie.

Cavendish, a remarkable comedienne, materializes variously as a hideous child star oozing early childhood sexuality, an instant expert on chickens and a crazed competitor in a game show knows as Passwind.

But the unifying characterizations are of the two television hosts. Wood is Vic Gamble, a preening egotist whose longtime domination of the program is shaken and then shattered by the appearance of a new co-host, Monica van Fleet, uproariously performed by Cavendish as an ingénue with a heart of flint.

The result is a play which not only has malicious fun with the power-plays and fighting which can occur within the television world even at the local level, but which also savages the appalling type of fare which so often surfaces on local video. Kid’s shows, talk shows, cooking demonstrations, game shows — they all get their lumps.

The script is exhaustingly relentlessly funny — acute in its observation and genuine in its wit. The direction by Bob Baker, who also assisted in the writing, is brisk. And the playing of Wood and Cavendish is stunning. The theatre is set up as a TV studio —complete with monitors showing commercials and purported film clips. Wood and Cavendish are on view in these videotaped segments as well — lampooning moronic foreign correspondents and avant guard actresses, even at one point wresting in a vat of Jello.

Specifically local allusions are few. The show has enough of a North American sensibility that it could touch nerve ends anywhere on the continent. It’s brisk, funny and continuously innovative.