I’ve been meaning to post this for a few days now:
Tom Stoppard is adapting a script for Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass for New Line Cinema.
How cool is that?
(If you’re as cooled out by this as I was, and you’re wondering how on earth they’re going to pull it off, there’s a rather amusing ‘what-if’ scene about the pitch etc here. And the fan site Bridge To The Stars is pretty decent all around.)
Just remembered something nifty that tilted my world a bit this weekend.
NDG is currently the playground of a film crew shooting a movie called Wicker Park, as you well know if you’re an NDG resident and have been rerouted, or have been forced to find somewhere else to park because your street has been taken up by Star Suites and generators and eighteen-wheeler rigs stuffed full of equipment. On Friday around five PM, my husband drove me over to the Royal Bank on the corner of Sherbrooke and Hingston so I could cash a cheque and put gas in the car.
Except it wasn’t the corner of Sherbrooke and Hingston when we got there. It was the corner of two other streets. There was a US Postal box on the corner, and a City of Chicago trash bin, and a bunch of US newspaper boxes strewn about. That little triangular park had a new “Keep Chicago’s Parks Clean” sign up. And my bank wasn’t my bank. It had a huge green sign both out front and over the door, and it certainly didn’t say Royal Bank; it had a series of initials instead in gold lettering.
It certainly felt odd to walk up those steps and go inside. It was as if I had crossed some odd teleportation line, or passed through a twist in earth energy between my new apartment and the bank, and landed in Chicago. (Except Chicago is currently experiencing much nicer weather at nine degrees Celcius, as opposed to our minus ten. It’s March tenth; it’s more than time for spring. Damn groundhogs.) Anyways, it makes you wonder if there’s something odd about Sherbrooke Street – if you drive east along it from Cavendish to Hingston, you get Montreal; but if you drive west along it from Decarie at just the precise time on a Friday afternoon, you inexplicably end up in Chicago.
Fanciful, perhaps. Do remember that I worked in a F/SF bookstore for four years, though.
One of the things we have to get used to now in this new kitchen is the electric stove. After using gas for two years, it’s quite the adjustment. This is a brand-new stove, too, so it makes little pops and groans as we break it in, so to speak. It’s fiercely hot, although it takes a while to get there, unlike our previous gas stove, which was poof! hot as soon as you turned it on. Some day I will learn to only bake a single sheet of cookies when I’m trying out a new oven, so I don’t ruin two whole sheets of cookie dough.
The rest were just peachy, though. Mmm.
I’ve been reading up a storm this past week – it’s one way to escape the semi-chaos that still exists around here. (Mind you, ‘chaos’ to us means that we don’t have things up on the walls yet.) I’ve read Robin Hobb’s Golden Fool, which was even better than The Tawny Man; Jenna Starborn by Sharon Shinn, which is billed as a space opera and gothic romance retelling of Jane Eyre; Shatterglass, the final book in a YA fantasy tetrology by Tamora Pierce; and I’ve just reread Silver RavenWolf’s Beneath a Mountain Moon as well. None of them even made it to the “Currently Reading” table at the right. It might have had something to do with my reluctance to sit down at my computer, as overwhelmed as the desk was with piles of stuff as we sorted through boxes.
Speaking of which – all my books are now unpacked! Huzzah! I’ve had to double up all the bottom shelves, which means that a third of my books are hidden behind another row, but tha’s what you get for giving away a bookshelf just before the move. I’m fairly certain that I know where everything is now. (Fairly certain. Not positive, but fairly certain.)
The antibiotics proceed to drag me back from the brink of heart-rending, dramatic death. All hail Pfizer and their 7$-a-tablet pills!
On the work front, it looks like I might have a freelance editing contract for a privately published history, which will be nice; I have to sit down and think about how long it will take me to smooth out, copyedit and generally proofread a 100 page document in order to have a final figure to submit for the proposed budget. If there’s something I hate almost as much as deciding on how much my time is worth, it’s gauging how long it’s going to take me. At least after all that soul-searching a month or so ago, I had a ready answer when I was asked what my rates were.
We’re headed over to the South Shore tonight to my in-laws’ place for dinner, and then the Brier final on a glorious big screen TV. This is good, because the only channel we receive on our TV right now is CBC, and it’s really grainy. I’d rather not have to try to figure out who’s who during a bonspiel like this!
So, slowly but surely, things are getting back on track. I’m feeling more human than I have felt in quite some time now, which is a good thing, no?
One thing that insomnia and being so sick for the past week has given me is lots of time to read. I finally finished The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell; I also finally finished Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. Both are excellent books, they just took me a lot longer to read than I expected. Both were loans from other people, too, so I really felt bad. Both were really densely written, which contributed to the long read. Perdido Street Station was nasty and dark and so damn well written that I will willingly plunge into The Scar once winter is officially over and I no longer feel like brooding, moping, or otherwise indulging in winter-connected depression. (There should be a warning label on Mieville’s books that reads, ‘Caution – Do Not Read During SAD Season If You Are Prone To Moodiness’.) As for Cornwell, I really, really have to be in a particular mood to read his work: namely, in a mood to appreciate logic and war maneuvers while simultaneously being actively interested in Arthurian characters. That’s a rather rare mood for me.
I also read an advance copy of Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K Hamilton that’s been sitting on my shelf since, um, mid 2000 or something. Anyway, it’s highly ironic that it was an advance copy, because not only has the book itself been released in hardcover in the meantime, but also in paperback, and the sequel was released in hardcover with its paperback publication imminent, as well. (March 4, as a matter of fact, so if nothing in my collection appeals to me when I start hunting for something new to read, I know what I’ll be buying.)
I picked up Dianne Day’s Strange Files of Fremont Jones Wednesday night when I was wide awake, and it was good. So’s the sequel, Fire and Fog, which I finished today while taking a break from packing. Nice little historical crime books, with your standard independent female protagonist. I have a third in my possession, but like other crime series that my mother sends to me once she’s read them, it appears to be missing a few books in-between. Mum picks some up at the shop and reads others through the library, so when I get the series they often look a bit like Swiss cheese – you know, volume 1, 2, 4, 7 and 8. Insisting on reading books in sequence is one of those delightful character traits that make me so lovable, so I’ll be hunting through second-hand shops for these ones. (A day’s read contained within a light crime novel is not worth the $10 purchased new, in my not-so-humble opinion. And it’s my blog, after all, so my opinion doesn’t have to be concerned about humilty, now, does it.)
I have an entire box devoted to Books Which I Have Not Yet Read, so I don’t have to go hunting once we’re in the new apartment. So very clever of me. Probably pointless, though, since as I unpack I look through my books, and I will likely find dozens I suddenly must re-read immediately.
Apparently it’s gearing up to be a lovely day tomorrow, with a high of +2 degrees. That’s reassuring.
Antiques markets fascinate me.
There are several levels to this fascination. One has to do with the simple experience of walking through a collection of stuff, some of which is really nifty. It�s the other levels that interest me even more, though.
As I walk through an antiques shop I constantly wonder about who owned these items before they ended up here, on a shelf with a clutter of other (mostly) dissimilar objects. If it�s a piece of china or glass, obviously from a set, I wonder where the rest of the set might be � broken? Parcelled out among children, some of whom thrust their share to the back of a dark china cupboard and never think about them again; some of whom pass them lovingly down to grandchildren; some of whom die alone and friendless and whose possessions are sold via estate sale to a variety of dealers? The silent stories lying tucked in among the odd cups and saucers and gloves are legion.
Then there are the items that I recognise. We had a jug like that; isn�t that china pattern the same as so-and-so�s; who had flatware like this? Old tools; old cameras; strap-on ice skates.
And then, there are the people. They flow silently through the little dens created by shelves and walls, hands in pockets, or fingers flitting over bowls and umbrellas and memorabilia. They murmur to themselves, sigh almost soundlessly when they find something that arrests their attention, whisper to one another as they stalk sherry glasses. The face of an eleven-year-old as he rounds the corner and sees a well-kept Victrola with his own eyes for the very first time; the arch glance of the man who spies a butter mold and does not wish to betray his interest as he casually examines a wooden churn nearby; the woman who exclaims aloud with happiness at finding a piece of Depression glass that she had been searching for; all these are, to me, as interesting as the objects themselves. People hunch over collections of objects, shielding them from your eyes until they�ve had the opportunity to scan them ruthlessly first � you never know what might be there, after all, and if a bargain is to be found, they�re to be the ones to find it, by God. Unlike other shops, no one strikes up conversation with strangers; antiques hunting is a very defensive, solitary pursuit.
I saw a first edition of L.M.Montgomery�s Kilmeny of the Orchard priced at ninety-five dollars today. I saw a pewter inkwell desk set for one hundred and thirty five. I saw vintage wedding bands, slimmer than a penny�s width, their gold a warm coppery tone from age, incised with delicate elongated diamonds almost impossible to see. I saw cases of war medals, carefully labelled as to regiment, which saddened me; heirlooms like that should be preserved by family in pride, honour and love. Were they � and the full sets of silverware, and the vintage marquis emerald rings � sold by families reluctant to part with history, but bowing to the need for money and the knowledge that they will never in their lives use these things in a practical fashion?
It�s saddening. Yet, in amongst all the odd jars and empty milk bottles and brass mortars and pestles, does there wait the single cup to complete a tea set, a knife to complete a setting of flatware so that it can once again be used for a dinner party?
Antiques aren�t just to look at. They�re meant to be used, or at the least honoured and kept alive. History isn�t mean to be put on a shelf. It�s to be re-lived.
I am officially sick. Right on time, too; I have an audition in four days. Nasty headache, sore throat, coughs and sneezes, the whole cold package. I’ve been feeling increasingly off all weekend, last night I slept horribly, and I’m cranky. So I’m in bed with my laptop, and when I’m done here I’ll curl up with A.S. Byatt’s Possession, the rest of my pot of peppermint tea, and furry hot water bottles that purr.
Well, well, well – Chretien is going to take Kyoto to Parliament. About bloody time. HRH will be pleased – that was going to be his next rant. Along with building a big air-proof dome over the Kyoto-scorning US, he was saying something about short-term sacrifice on the part of companies to ensure a long-term benefit of saving the planet.
I printed out the sixty-five pages of the story that I’ve been working on, and I read it all at one go last night. It’s rather gratifying to see that things flow. I even found some lovely unintentional foreshadowing and dramatic irony that was unplanned but which works quite nicely. For things like that to happen I have to be in the right headspace, and evidently I’m occupying it on a regular basis. There are snags, and I need to smooth things out here and there, substitute other words, but all in all, I like it.
I mentioned that I’m reading Possession again. In only three chapters an innumerable amount of references to thesis-related concepts that I didn’t find while I was doing it have leapt out at me. I must have been so focused on the particular angle I was after that I filtered out these other ideas, which is good for what I was doing at the time, of course. Now, though, it makes me want to write another paper. Hmm. Maybe the use of research and the character of History in Byatt’s work. Angels & Insects would be perfect for that, both the title novella and its focus on natural history, and its sibling novella about mediums and reaching into the spirit world for news of past family and lovers. So would Virgin in the Garden, which is all about staging a Renaissance-related drama.
Uh-oh. Do I sense another project coming on?
I have been taken with the whim of attempting to publish something; perhaps I’ll focus on an academic periodical and see what happens.
Wandering through one of my favourite second-hand bookstores here in Oakville, I found a copy of Karen Kain’s Movement Never Lies: An Autobiography for only twenty dollars. Needless to say, although I walked away from it virtuously, I stopped by again later in the afternoon to take it home with me. Karen Kain was a goddess to me when I was a child. I’d borrowed this autobiography from a friend of my mother’s when it was released a few years ago, but when I saw it on the shelf, I knew I had to own my own copy.
I danced for seven years as a child. I wasn’t obsessed with the ballerina stereotype, the way some girls are; it might have had something to do with how much I disliked the colour pink. No, what I loved was the physical expression of dance. I could use my body, my awkward clay, my shy hands, to tell a story. I forgot that I was shy when I danced. I could be graceful, and un-self-conscious, and light.
It didn’t hurt that I was naturally very flexible. Exercises that others had to fight to achieve were second-nature for me. Music, too, was a part of me without effort; others had to struggle to internalise music in order to fuel the dancing, but music has always been a language I have been able to hear and understand without difficulty. I was not, as you might guess, a favourite of my dancemates, just as I wasn’t popular among children in regular classes – too quick, too smart, too easy.
My mother took me to see a ballet at Place Des Arts as often as she could, usually once a season. I have had the excellent fortune to have seen the Kirov ballet do Cinderella; I saw the National Ballet of Canada do their celebrated Giselle and Romeo and Juliet, among several other ballets. We saw a lot of theatre, too. My mother has always been very determined that I would be exposed to the same kinds of culture that she had been exposed to as a child. Her father would always take the children to see the new Rogers and Hammerstein musical as it came through town, and one of my mother�s fondest memories was going into the city to see Romeo and Juliet with her older sister. She passed that appreciation of art on to me, and I expanded into opera as well, which I adore.
I began dancing at six. After a year, the National Ballet School recruiters were coming through town, and my teacher requested that I be allowed to audition. At the time I didn’t understand what an acceptance into the National Ballet training program would entail. Yes, I would be able to train to be a dancer; no, I truly had no concept of the discipline, the homesickness, the pain, the chances of failure, the depression. My mother, knowing perfectly well the horrors that children go through at ballet school, refused to allow the audition. I was disappointed, of course, but at seven, these losses come and go, and are easily forgotten.
I danced until I was just about thirteen. At thirteen, we were considered old enough and formed to a level where we could begin pointe work. This is what every woman who has ever imagined herself in place of a ballet dancer moving gracefully across the stage dreams of: the elegant long line of leg and arm, the ethereal illusion of floating, of weightlessness created by balancing on her toes. A woman en pointe possesses an ultimate secret femininity. Part of me yearned for that; part of me yearned for the slow, controlled moves that pointe work requires. Another part of me eagerly anticipated harder work: exercises, developing a new centre of gravity, working different muscles. Going en pointe was a rite of passage from child to adult.
I would have kept on dancing but for the fact that my teacher sat me down and explained that although the next step was to move on to dancing en pointe, there would not be enough students to fill the class. I and my sole remaining classmate would have to be put back a year, repeat what we had just learned, and then go en pointe two years from now with a full group.
I was crushed, and affronted, and insulted. Repeat a year when I had been so successful? Be held back to dance with people a year younger? Did she not understand what going en pointe meant to me? Had I not paid my dues, put in seven years of work to reach this moment?
Being a few weeks shy of thirteen, however, and still shy, I felt my eyes sting with tears and said little. And I just didn’t go back in the fall.
I regret it immensely now, and I have for about a decade. At thirty-one, you can see that a year – a single year of evening classes once or twice a week – forty-odd hours of extra work is nothing. At thirteen, though, it’s a lifetime.
I tried to go back when I was twenty-three. I called a dance school and they invited me to an evening class to try it out before I registered. I was terrified, but I went. The teacher was wonderful, and had I tried a class early in the session I might have registered with them and still be dancing today. The class I audited, however, was near the end of the term, and the dozen women in the group all knew the sequences the teacher was calling out. I tripped; I stumbled. I couldn’t recognise what the teacher was calling for next. I got in people’s ways. At the end of the class I avoided the women as they cooled down, skulked into the changing room to pick up my bag, pulled my coat on over my dance clothes without changing, and slipped out, my eyes burning again with tears.
And again, I never went back.
So re-reading Movement Never Lies makes me think about a lot of things. I wonder what might have happened if that audition had gone through. I look at Karen Kain’s life and although at times it was glamorous, like any kind of theatre, the effortless and natural illusion presented to the audience covers a community clinging to sanity by the skin of its teeth, performing despite sprains, back spasms, bitter and violent fights with a co-star, touring conditions that would horrify rats, and the artificial society that never quite fits into the real world. I deeply admire any man or woman who has the physical strength and mental and emotional endurance to commit to a life of dance. Had I kept on dancing, my knee and back problems might never have existed � or I might have been crippled by them. The Might-Have-Been game shoes no horses (to mix metaphors); I do my best not to play it. Dance formed my body and my love of theatre, and for that, I’m thankful.
Seven years of dance when you’re in such a formative stage leaves its mark; it is a part of me now that I could not shed if I so desired. I am complimented on my movements, both on-stage and off. I am usually quite aware of my body and how it is reaching, stretching. It is now natural for me to stand just so, legs turned out, usually with one foot slightly in front, heel of one nestles into the arch of the other. Arm movements always lead with the hand, thumb underneath the palm. My pelvis is tucked underneath my torso � and if I catch myself not doing it, I correct myself without thinking. I rarely stand face on to anyone or anything; three-quarter front was drilled into me as being more aesthetically pleasing. If I’m sitting, I sit on an angle, or at the very least turn my head slightly. And when a man I dated for a time welcomed me into his circle of friends, the sign of acceptance was being given a mock Native American name.
He named me Walks With Grace.