A Day as Recorded by a Happenstance Traveler in Florence

Star Anise; Neapolitan Pastry & Lucia's Puppet Stage:

Today, like most days since my arrival in this wonderful country of Italy, has been a mixture of wonder, surprise, anticipation and the occasional smidgen of discomfort. I spent my day at the aptly-named “Mostra Internazionale dell'Artigianato. Simply put, it was a massive market; booths upon booths upon booths of artisan's wares, food, clothing, inventions, you name it and it was there. I managed to show restraint while passing by the tables of linens and tablecloths and wool scarves and summer cotton dresses and leather purses priced to sell. But when I found myself on the third floor where the food was, all my restraint evaporated in one quick pasty puff. The truth is, no human person alive could have resisted the smells and sights of cheeses, breads, chocolates, spices and cured meats. I wish I could have filled a steamer trunk and sent it home to all my friends and family. But alas, I had to settle for chocolates and star anise. Yes, I came across a spice and tea table that took my breath away. Even though I have a healthy supply of star anise at home (as I often add it to tea or to a pot of cooking rice), I ordered a small bag of it and slid it into my purse. The aroma coming from that little bag I purchased actually floated around me. My next stop was to a pasty table where I purchased 'strogliatella Neapolitan.” The pastry is made with many delicately thinned layers and filled with a sweet soft cheese and orange peel fillings. I normally shy away from eating anything made with wheat as wheat doesn't agree with me but when I saw that pastry, it was as if I fell into a trance. The trance also led me over to a cafe where I completed the perfection with a cup of cappuccino.

After all the excitement of the pastry, my energy was waning but I heard an announcement (in Italian) that caught my attention. It was something about a theatrical performance for children. Being that I write theatre for children, this was of interest to me but I couldn't understand the particulars. And the location of the event is so vast with so many buildings nearby, I knew I could easily miss it (whatever 'it' was). In my pathetic Italian, I approached a young woman and asked her what the announcement was saying. She abruptly answered in English “I don't know what you're saying. I can't help you.” I suddenly felt embarrassment,  not only for that moment but for all the other moments in my week where I clearly botched my attempts to communicate in Italian, confusing “indirizzo” (address) with “adesso” (now) and “insieme” (together) with “sempre” (always). Most Italians I've met have been so lovely and kind even though I'm probably making no sense to them at all, they smile and are ever so helpful.  After my sting of embarrassment, I thought “well, time to call it a day”. When I stepped outside and saw that it was raining, I changed my mind and sat under an awning to watch the rain.

And then “it” happened; the special thing in the day that cannot be planned; the happenstance moment. A woman about my age proceeded to adjust a wooden cart so that it would stay dry, near an entrance to the main building. Her wooden cart was a delightful combination of little doors and drawers and knobs as well as red velvet curtains. It was, in fact, a puppet theatre complete with an accordion and an old man puppet who sat on a miniature stool looking kindly out into the crowd. The performer/puppeteer was dressed in a black bowler hat, black baggy pants and a button up jacket with multi-coloured buttons down the front of it. The portable theatre hearkened back to hundreds of years ago when entertainers traveled from town to town. I was instantly charmed.

When the play ended, I offered my congratulations (again, in my broken Italian). She had a friend with her who translated and we chatted for a bit about life in the theatre. Before long, she was inviting me to a one-day theatre gathering/festival that I may want to take part in. 

And now, I am back at the apartment where I am staying, enjoying my cup of star anise tea and musing on the many gifts of the day.

Dreaming of Berries

Dreaming of Berries:

It's not Spring yet, at least not where I live.  Snow stubbornly hugs to the sides of fences and the back yards.  Soon though, I will be thinking about my garden.  This year, I would like a garden full of berries:  gooseberries, saskatoon berries, red currents, raspberries and strawberries. Never mind vegetables.  I'll pick up fresh veggies at the market.  It's berries I crave.  It's also how I manage to get through our long winters: jam and tea, tea and jam. This year I had the pleasure of tasting berry tea and berry jams from the Arctic and Labrador.  Cloud berry and crow berry are my two favourites.  Considering how these berry bushes manage to survive in such harsh conditions, perhaps this is what makes them all the sweeter.

I'm all out of jams; both my own jam and jams from far away.  In the meantime, I look at my bunch of dried berries hanging from my window and remind myself that it won't be long now before spring....

Last year, I wrote a story about my theatre friend Reneltta Arluk.  Her theatre company's name is Akpik Theatre, which translates into Cloudberry Theatre.  If you'd like to read the story I wrote about her, just click below and enjoy.  But make sure you make yourself a nice hot cup of tea first!

http://www.arcticjournal.ca/index.php/2012/09/a-season-of-cloudberries-with-reneltta-arluk/

Embroidery for a March Snow & an Unscheduled Life

Embroidery for a March Snow and an Unscheduled Life

The bliss of having a few unscheduled days; the calm that comes with a clock ticking away with no observance on my part; the switch from swarming in the hive along with my fellow drones to stepping back and tasting the honey. It's good for the artist soul. (And somewhere inside, I believe we all have an artist soul.)

I just spent spent three days in the big city where I visited friends and my daughter and coffee shops and a quaint bar on Dundas, with no preconceptions about how each day should unfold. One day I lost my precious (to me) necklace at a Starbuck's and didn't realize it until late that night.  I counted twelve places in total where the necklace might be, retracing my bohemian steps that day. It was coming on close to midnight so I climbed into bed with a sinking feeling that I might not see my necklace again.  The next morning, I made my calls and to my amazement, the server at the Starbucks had retrieved it and put it into a little envelope in the event that I returned looking for it.  There are indeed good people in the world! 

One day, my daughter and I opened up a book on embroidery stitches and on an scrap of red velvet, I began to embroider.  Throughout the remainder of the trip, I added a new stitch or embellishment onto the scrap of cloth. The cloth kept me company throughout the trip, wherever I went.

 

And on the way home on the plane, I sat beside a woman who had never flown before. She was quite anxious and we shared a few things about our lives, as strangers in passing.  After the initial chit-chat typical of strangers, we both sunk into our own quiet worlds.  I then pulled out my stitched cloth out from my purse to work on it. (I'm not entirely sure if needle work is acceptable on a plane but I assumed if it was an issue, the stewardess would have told me.) Once I began stitching, it just seemed to open up a door between myself and the woman beside me. She told me that she runs programming in beading and traditional Aboriginal crafts in her community and that she herself did needlework. From there, we shared stories about our children and our lives. She felt lonely and out of sorts as she had attended a conference and had been separated from her five children, including her two little ones. We went from two strangers having a polite conversation to two women who found common ground.  The shift towards the personal, undoubtedly, came from the embroidery floss and needle.    

Upon my return home from the trip, my northern city has been transformed into an enchanted winter wonderland. When I took a walk today in the snow, I "saw" French knots in the dried flowers, and chain stitches in the tall grasses and feather stitches in the landscape.  

Cold Winter Days and Nights

It's been a long, cold month.  At first, I was brave.  I bought a used fur coat from Salvation Army, turned it inside out so that the fur became the lining and the lining became the fur.  I layered with down vests and woollens under my slacks and a scarf under my coat and a scarf over my coat.  You get the idea.  I wanted to take on winter with a positive attitude; like a warrior with a purpose.  My purpose was to not let the cold stop me from living my life.  Week one, I did very well.  Week two, I began to weaken.  Week three, and I've given in.  What does this mean?  This means that I'm walking less and reading more; I'm going out to events less and baking cookies more.  And it's not so bad; this slowing down and moving inward.   It's perhaps winter's greatest gift.

Eek! Wake up to minus 30. Car won't start. The battery is dead...need a new one.  Phone rings... appointments cancelled because of the cold...Yes!...an unscheduled day.  I can do whatever I want, bake cookies, sew, write a book, research theatres, visit my Mom but first.... I'll relax for 5 minutes....z.z.z.zZZZZZZZ... 90 minutes later....

So glad it's too cold to do anything except reading.... making risotto.... walking around the block (brrrrrr) ...hand stitch a pillow....Che adventura!.... study Italian words...what a wonderful day off.

The Year Everything Broke But My Heart

The Year Everything Broke But My Heart:

Many things break our hearts in life and if we're wise, we'll heed Leonard Cohen's lyrics from his song Anthem, “There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.” So when things in my life started to break throughout the summer of 2012, I tried to appreciate that these were all just broken things. It began with the dishwasher. Well, no big deal, my husband and I said to each other, we'll just wash dishes by hand. Then the taps on the main floor began spouting water everywhere. They needed to be replaced. Then the taps on the tub. Same thing. When my husband cut the pipe and brought it into the plumbing shop, the guy said “I myself have never seen a pipe like this, but my boss has.” Apparently, the pipe was as old as the house, which is 105 years old, and it was no simple task to match it up. To make a long story short, we had to order in special parts and for two weeks, we weren't able to shower or bathe in our home. I found an old wash basin in the basement, hauled it upstairs and began sponge bathing.

When my kids called, I proudly bragged about the sponge-bathing and how we used to sponge bath when I grew up and how we were only allowed to take a bath once a week and even then, we were only allowed four inches of water in the tub. Oh yes, wasn't I proud of myself for adapting and simplifying and not complaining about the fact that we had to wait for the plumbing parts to arrive. However, on about day seven, I noticed that I was phoning the plumbing shop daily to see if the parts had arrived yet. By day ten, I was now visiting my mother's house on a regular basis in order to shower as I had come to despise sponge bathing. By day fourteen, the parts had arrived. Out came the blow torch, out came the tools and my husband went to work on that miserable job. Twelve hours later, we had a functioning bath and shower.

I thought my streak of breakage was winding down. I was sadly mistaken. Next went the vacuum cleaner. Then the car broke down.... to the tune of $750. When we brought the car in to be fixed, we left it overnight at the shop and during the night, it got “keyed”. Before this incident, I did not know what it meant to be “keyed”. Now I know. Someone takes a key and scratches a deep groove into the car, from front to back. The car repairman felt badly for us and spray painted the groove with a colour that sort of matches the car. Okay, so now surely we've reached our quota for broken things, I thought. There can't be more, can there?

The next thing to go was the oven. Now you have to know that I love my 20-inch wide gas stove. It's cooked thousands of meals since my firstborn child was a toddler. It's got us through good winters and bad. It's filled the house with the rich smells of rice puddings and baked chickens and roasted vegetables. I wasn't ready to give up on my stove, so we bought a small confection oven and I continued to use the top of the stove, which was still functioning. Then one day the stove began to leak gas. I called in the gasman and he broke it to me as gently as possible but the sad truth was he had to condemn the stove. Yes, it's true, stoves can be condemned, even stoves that have served their masters faithfully for close to thirty years without complaint.

But I'm still not through my list. One week, it rained and rained and rained. We have an old back porch and the wooden posts of that old back porch, we discovered, weren't driven deep into the ground. After all that rain, stepping out onto that back porch was a bit like land surfing. The porch had literally moved ten inches away from the back door. This is not exactly a safe thing when you have a 90-year-old aunt and an 88-year old uncle who both visit on a regular basis. So guess what? We needed to dismantle our porch and down went the clothesline along with the porch. Being that we don't have a dryer, this added another annoying inconvenience to our lives.

So how many broken things am I up to now? The dishwasher, the upstairs taps, the downstairs taps, the car, the stove, the vacuum cleaner, the back porch, the clothesline and did I mention the cassette player? (I know it's pathetic that we still play cassettes but all of our best music is on cassettes.) There were a few other things that may or may not quite classify as broken, such as the birds living in our attic, happily flying in and out from the holes in the old wooden boards under the eaves. That was lots of fun but I think I'll save that story for my next episode.

For months, I've wanted to write about these broken things as a kind of cathartic experience for myself, but I couldn't and guess why I couldn't.... because I had broken my wrist and couldn't write! But I'm proud to report that my cast is off and I'm cresting a new year. Let me complete my little story by saying that my mantra throughout all these annoyances has been, “Things may be breaking around me but I am grateful that it's not my heart that's broken.” Hence, the title of my little story!

Happy 2013. I wish for you all happy hearts with just enough cracking for the light to find its way in!  

It's a Wrap!

Just before our film shoot of 'Under the Pearl Moon' began, a friend of mine said, “Enjoy the shoot. There's nothing like it in the whole world”. And now, a week after the fact, I couldn't agree more. We lived in each others pockets, twelve to fourteen creative people all focused on one story; one goal; one imagining. Not to say there weren't stumbling blocks along the way: the power suddenly shutting down, a thunder storm that came upon us out of the blue; the injury on the last day and though it wasn't serious, our fearless Sonja still needed to be brought to emergency, just to be absolutely sure.

And now that things have returned to normal, I marvel at all the things that could have gone wrong, but didn't. Our two eleven-year-old children had amazing stamina. And though we were shooting in the bush of Northern Ontario for most of the week, not once did a bear appear (though there was a bear on the site, the week previous), the bugs were minimal and the weather was good to us. We worked from dawn to dusk and the generosity of the cast and crew was amazing. We were stuck in a rustic cabin with no running water and yet in the entire week, I don't think there was one complaint from any of us about the setting. It was all embraced with true northern spirit!

Here are some pictures to be enjoyed. These were taken by artist/set dresser Marianne Brown.  I also intend to add additional photos by photographer Paula Thiessen.... coming soon!

A Night of Sleep in a Sewing Room

I know I've mused on this theme before but allow me to visit it again; the theme of being swept into the idea that comfort (and all of the things associated with that word 'comfort'), somehow equals happiness.  Here's the thing; we all need comfort; both emotional and physical.  We need a warm home to shield us from our bitter cold winters and we need loving arms to embrace us each and every day.  But do we really and truly need pillows on our beds with three times the puffiness of when I grew up?  Or sheets with a minimum of 600 thread count (whatever that means)?  I remember once baking with my grandmother and I accidentally dropped an egg on the floor.  She calmly opened a cupboard where hundreds of 6-inch cotton squares were neatly piled. She had cut them up from threadbare cotton sheets.  I don't think paper towel ever darkened her door because she used and reused rags until they simply disintegrated into thin air. 

I would say that I am fortunate and that I have very little to complain about and yet still I get swept into wanting the finest tea or the softest cotton.  And then something comes along to throw me into a short stint of discomfort.  And suddenly I see the world differently. Not at first of course.  At first, I'm annoyed.  But once I relax, the gifts of the situation begin to unravel.

The other week, I was visiting my daughter and two of her friends arrived also on the same night.  She lives in a small apartment so I offered to find a hotel.  She suggested that instead, I sleep in her tiny sewing room (which is actually a sun porch). So we got it all set up with a camping roll-out mattress and a blanket and there I slept.  Initially when I curled up under the coveres, I had trouble sleeping. The floor underneath felt hard and because the room is full of windows, the sounds of traffic were heavy in my ears.  I turned on the light and read a chapter of Nicholas Nickelby and suddenly my thoughts shifted.  I began to look around the room and see all of my daughter's treasures and sewing projects.

It hearkened me back to when she was a little girl and she dressed herself in the most ecclectic and inspired ways. And then I began to think of my own mother and how she could let in or take out any pair of jeans; she could sew the neatest zipper I've ever seen; she once made all her own clothes (prior to the birth of her seven children) and to this day, I take my mending over to her.  As I muse on all of this, each item in the sewing room become like tiny treasures. 

And then, in the morning, I wake up feeling as if I had slept inside a huge, lusciously green tree. All this because I didn't take a hotel room.  All this because I had experienced an hour or two of discomfort, which quickly reverted to a delightful night in a sewing room.