Phenomenal!

This just blows my mind out of the water.

This director is simply the most visually stimulating creative visionary I have seen in decades.

I am awestruck, and you should be as well...

when it rains, the sky opens up and pours battery acid from the heavens...

WTF?




Along with all the crap today (5 apartments, either beautiful and out of reach price wise or affordable but bona-fide shit holes), i got an email from a dear friend. One of her parents has a brain tumor.

With age, they had become not well, and many had feared the worst from their other ailments compounded, but not this.

And i feel helpless as she is on the other side of the ocean.
If I only had even two pennies to rub together, i would be there in a split second.

Time to glue on some fake feathers and make some wings.

Life is getting overwhelming no matter where we are...

home, not so sweet home...

Nothing can shake anybody more to the core than losing a home. A place to live, sleep, find comfort, feel safe. Without all those things, every day living seems a little less bearable.

This past Tuesday, E and I found out that we are basically being kicked out of our apartment. The landlords have decided to re-appropriate our apartment and make it their own. They own just under half a dozen properties/apartment blocks. That's more than a dozen units. Why they singled us out is, upon speculation and processes of elimination of various facts/factors is that we have been at our place for the past 10 years. Our rent is cheaper compared to the other units. They "move in" for a few months, make some half assed repairs and then re-rent it for almost double what we are paying for it.

We were served the papers by a bailiff on Monday night. A day after my huge meltdown chez mom. Fatigue, chronic pain, the inability to live a normal life due to this pain, and the onset of winter (the horrible in between stages of grey/lifeless landscapes and pretty snow covered wonderland) all began to erode away my spirit. This was the straw that broke my back.

I almost went into shock.
Why?
Why now?

We had been battling noisy downstairs neighbors for some time. Four teenagers from France - pompous, arrogant, and selfish, they run around the place at all hours of the night. Basically treating the apartment like a dormitory. We had to call the cops twice. Parties almost every night. They have quieted down, but just enough so we can't call the cops because four teenagers sitting around a kitchen table laughing their asses off at 3am doesn't warrant police intervention.

E is miserable. His company have come to a screeching halt and he worries about the future of his position. I do too. And it shows. We both look beaten down and weary. The love is there, but with weary hearts and minds, our patience is almost nil. We are supposed to be on the same page, but the tension is tearing our souls down. Exhaustion is an understatement

We are going to fight this eviction. The grounds for them giving us the boot is "well, you're place was the cheapest and we need a place to live". Bastards. Just last week, they gave us the pablum of song and dances, telling us they were going to break the lease of the kids below us because we weren't the only ones who complained about the noise and that they were to be served papers on Monday. But joke was on us. We were the ones who got the papers.

Stupid fucken bastards.
Be careful whom you trust from France. 
Of the dozen or so people I have met from that country, only one was sincere and nice, and not the backstabbing, arrogant, snide, and sneaky frenchmen I knew. And this man was the exception to the rule for the only reason I believe to be was that he was a Buddhist.

And so the task begins, picking up, looking for a new home. After 10 years, a forced move from a place we called "home sweet home" will not be our home anymore.

Sad strange days indeed...

art with purpose

We all feel the need to find purpose in our lives.
I have been struggling with this for many decades.
Thought i found meaning, but it was fleeting.
Am still searching but it seems more and more elusive as time goes by.

I wish I were able to create art that impacted the world like this brilliant man.

Jason DeCaries Taylor, underwater magician

car pool tunnel syndrome...

I had to laugh - the last episode of Modern Family, Gloria misunderstands American Phrases, like - "it scared the bejesus out of me" as "it scared the baby Jesus out of me", and "carpal tunnel syndrome" as you guess it, "car pool tunnel syndrome". So in typing this, i am aggravating my carpool tunnel syndrome as my fancy pancy blue velcro wrist immobilizer is currently in the wash (gawd. I have shweaty wrists...)

Last update - Action Theater Acting Improv class.

The practice of Action Theater incorporates the disciplined exploration of embodied exercises that lead to increased skills of strong, clear, spontaneous, and artful communication. 

Action Theater addresses and expands the vocabularies of expression including: movement, vocalization, and speech. Action Theater is a tool to examines one's perceptive and responsive process, bringing awareness to and thereby disempowering distracting thoughts of self obsessions, fears, judgments and analysis. 

My Lord, that was a gift from the heavens.

Four hours of mostly physical improv a day, for a week. I swear - four pounds must have been screamed/danced/twirled/laughed/shimmied off in those five days.

incredible experience.

I never realized how difficult improv could be, but having done it myself for the first time many years ago when I was literally, thrown into a movie role (because the director didn't have the foresight to cast an extra character, so in between my loading up film stock into the movie cameras, my part was born!  I won't tell you what part I played but you can see it for yourself - Draghoula - check it out..), one of the main actresses, right off the plane from L.A was floored to hear that it was my first gig. "You're a goddam natural!"

And so it began...

but this improv class was nothing like I had ever experienced.

Ruth Zaporah is a world renowned artist and her "action theater" has pioneered the teaching of Improvisational performance. She gives only a few workshops a year, and this one happened to be in Canada.  I was on a gallery/dance studio's mailing list and one day, the message floated into my inbox.

To tell you the truth, I have no clue how this gallery/dance studio got my email address. Perhaps it was just one of those divine intervention/synchronous/it was meant to be moments. Whatever it was, I am so very thankful for because this class literally changed my life...


I'm quite pooped  - spent the evening with mom in the hospital keeping her company in the emergency, and am still reeling from the toxic curry meltdown I had from the incredible food poisoning from Saturday night's meal @ an Indian restaurant, but will have to revisit this "acting theater workshop" experience in greater detail while it's fresh in my head and in my body.

Odd thing to say, but it really was a whole body transformational experience; it made me realize how deeply connected we are to these bones and casing of flesh - and that how by being aware of this connection, being able to stay present in the moment and allow the body to speak and not let the mind edit/hinder/manipulate while watching helplessly as it moves into the driver's seat, beautiful things can happen.

Check it out 
It's been a week and I'm going through improv withdrawal.
I'm going to miss acting out what it means to be a rock and a pile of mud...

back soon with more details/insights.