Friends who are adaptable are wonderful to have.

Yesterday, a few of us had planned to catch Cobra: The Musical at the Fringe Festival. We met early for dinner, and by the time we got our food we were looking at our watches and calculating the time we had left to go get in line to secure tickets. It was do-able. “No problem,” I said, half-jokingly; “if we miss it we can always go see Fellowship of the Ring again.”

Oops.

Well, dinner meandered on, and when we’d done we looked at our watches again and hmmed and hawed, and waffled, and even though we probably could have caught the last few tickets for Cobra: The Musical, we ended up going to see LOTR:FOTR again, even though we’d missed the beginning by about fifteen minutes. We walked in just as Frodo and Sam were leaving. Everyone’s seen the film at least twice, so it’s not like anyone was left wondering what was happening. We watched it with pure glee. This was decadence. We went for the fight scenes, for the coolness waves, for Aragorn and Arwen and Boromir and Gandalf and Legolas, and yes, even the hobbits useless in a fight scene.

I noticed something this time around, too. The scene between Frodo and Boromir at the end goes wrong because Frodo is becoming paranoid, not because Boromir is losing it. Boromir is remarkably sympathetic and controlled right up to the point where Frodo turns his back, and Boromir realises that he’s trying to leave. That’s when he snaps, right there. From Boromir’s POV, it must look like Frodo’s just going to waltz right up to Mount Doom and hand over the ring to the bad guys. Now, Boromir’s pretty convinced this Fellowship thing isn’t going to succeed anyway, so he’s been thinking all along about the good guys using the Ring as best they can before the bad guys get their hands on it again, but abiding by the general consensus. It’s a rather logical POV, if you think about it. So he tries to grab it from Frodo before the hobbit takes off and walks right into a trap or something. The whole thing, though, revolves around Frodo’s paranoia, not Boromir’s obsession with the Ring. It’s a fine distinction, probably only made by acting, but it’s there. I was very impressed.

And then…the preview.

I have one word to say: EOWYN!

When Bill and Stephen and I did our LOTR guest spot on CBC Radio One last December, we were discussing the alarming possibility that the scriptwriters had combined Arwen and Eowyn into a single character. I was pleased last night to discover that our fears were put to rest.

Damn, it looks good.

“How long do we have to wait?” my husband groaned as the credits rolled by. “Six months,” I said, bouncing in my seat, “but we get the first DVD in August, then the Special Edition DVD in November, so there will be lots of LOTR to keep us happy until then.” After all, it’s been a whole six months since we first saw it, as unbelievable as that is. The next six will fly by.

So, you see, having friends who can be adaptable and flexible enough to toss one plan over the shoulder and readily agree on another is an asset. Thanks, all; we had a blast.

Timothy Findley is dead.

There’s no graceful way to say it. I was jolted awake this morning with the six o’clock news because my husband didn’t get out of bed fast enough to turn it off so I could sleep. I sat up and said, “What?” to the saddened woman reading the news. I think I startled him.

Seventy-one. Died in his sleep in the warm south of France, where he moved after selling his wonderful home Stone Orchard in Ontario. Canadian seasons were getting to be too much for him. He still did work in Stratford in the summer, though.

My first thought was a selfish one. Timothy Findley is dead. I will have no more new books.

My next thought was almost as selfish. Timothy Fndley is dead. I will never meet him.

One of my dearest possessions is a signed hardcover copy of Inside Memory: Pages From a Writer’s Notebook. Findley’s writing style is so wry, so personal, that his journal makes for a humorous read while instructing in the art of living. One of my most awe-full memories of encountering an author is the lecture/reading he gave at Concordia when his novella You Went Away came out. He was deathly ill with one of those Canadian colds – he spoke around a cough drop that he replenished at regular intervals through his reading, and you could tell he wasn’t up to his usual sparkling, mischeivous self. Yet he still made a connection with me, and likely most of the audience. I didn’t have the money to buy the book at the time (the lecture was free), but when it came out in paperback I brought it home and cherished the reading of it, hearing his voice.

He began as an actor, which also endeared him to me. You could hear when he spoke: extravagant words rolling off the tongue, the use of dynamics, the rich timbre of his voice. I think many authors are actors at heart (and if they aren’t perhaps that’s why they’re missing some sort of dimension that adds the spark of life to their work). He loved the theatre all his life, and worked closely with the Stratford Theatre in southern Ontario for decades, creating several original works for performance, and appearing in their author series frequently as well.

Like Robertson Davies, Timothy Findley represents everything that is bright and good about Canadian literature to me. He explored contemporary struggle in a uniquely Canadian way, while still appealing to international audiences. Findley and Davies always seemed to have an intellectual approach to their prose that appeals to my vaguely elitist taste for a national literature that is elegant and still touches my heart. “There’s always something very magical about print,” he said. “There’s also something magical about the act of writing.” He’s so right. There’s a magic to capturing a vision, a feeling, in symbols that lie inert on a page until someone opens the book and reconstructs your vision. Writing and reading is a constant act of creation and abandonment that fascinates me.

Timothy Findley was a gentleman. He was a graceful man, with a great love of life. He was courageous, and refused to hide his homosexuality behind closed doors. He never used it as a soapbox either, for which I admired him greatly. He simply chose to live his life, in his own fashion. He loved food, struggled with alcoholism (that day in the lecture-hall, he refused to take even cough syrup), luxuriated in comfort and aesthetic beauty. He was an inspiration to me as a writer, and I feel bereft.

Tiff: for all your work, your thoughts, and your mentorship to the people of Canada both in the arts and in other disciplines, I thank you. One of his favourite sayings was, “Against despair – be well.” Today, I will remember that saying often.

So I’m brushing my hair last night, and I looked in the mirror, and – hey, when did my hair get so long? It was only a month or so ago that I was moaning about how I wanted Pre-Raphaelite locks cascading down my back, and I was all mopy about how it would never happen. Looking over my shoulder into the mirror, I can see I’m mostly there all of a sudden.

My hair is acting in a peculiar fashion. I decided a while ago to put an end to the never-ending cycle of chromatic experiments that I’d been doing for the past couple of years, and to put a seal on it I resolved to henna my hair, which is the kiss of death if you ever want to use chemical colour again. Natural herbal colour and chemical colour don’t mix well at all. (Think of that scene in Anne of Green Gables where her hair turns green, and you’ve pretty much got it.) So I did my research, ordered some brown henna, and did the deed last weekend. Now my hair is more like I remember it: thicker, wavy, even. And, apparently, longer. I cringe when I think about the chemical damage I must have done. Henna is a natural conditioner that’s great for your hair and scalp, and heaven knows I needed help. Maybe my hair is rewarding me.

It’s a beautiful day today – more like what we expect from late June in Montreal. Sunny, a bit humid. I never cease to be amazed at how much of an effect the weather has on my mood.

I taught another class last night. At the end of a workshop I always ask if there was something the students would have liked to seen more of, less of, explained differently. Last night when I asked, all they did was thank me for being clear, concise, unbiased, and dynamic. I even got a round of applause. Not only that, they all decided to come back for my next workshop in two weeks as well. I think I must have hit on something, here. I’m always surprised when people enjoy my workshops – not because I think they’re bad (I work too hard on them for them to be anything but good!), but because I think those attending will be left rather neutral towards me and the material. All I’m doing is giving them information, after all, or guiding them though an exploration process where they discover their own answers. I keep forgetting that while I’ve known this material for a while, they’re all new to it, so it’s two solid hours of discovery and communion with others of like mind, where as individuals they often think they’re alone in their interests. The newness of it all, plus the bonus of meeting others, has to be exciting. I must be facilitating this excitement and discovery is some sort of constructive fashion. As much as I think I’m not a people person, a friend pointed out to me the other day that I care about others, which automatically makes me a people person whether I like it or not. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be as approachable. Which makes sense, in an irritating sort of way. The reason people like being with me and seek me out is because I’m a decent human being, even if I’d prefer to be alone a lot of the time. Seems contradictory, but it isn’t. Alas.

As if Vanilla Coke wasn’t enough of a discovery, now I’ve found a new chocolate bar too: the Hershey’s Sidekick. The wrapper says, “Milk Chocolate, Peanut Butter and Soft Nougats”. (Nougats? I though “nougat” was a collective term, like “chocolate”. But I digress.)

In reality, what they’ve done with this new chocolate bar is a simple case of cross-breeding a Mars Bar with a Wunderbar.

It is soft and yummy. It is evil.

Two Vanilla Cokes left.

Now it’s raining again.

I live in a city with a schizophrenic weather system.

Marika Bournaki is the name of the eleven-year-old pianist who knocked my slippers off with the Chopin. Here’s a full list of the performers and their pieces; you can click on each name for a full list of their accomplishments.

And what have I done with my life?

Just kidding. These kids have had opportunities that didn’t come my way, that’s all. I chose different paths. What a world lies ahead of them, though…

See? Now it’s sunning out.