a strange new compulsion

Behold, the Nipple Hat!

The Glee Cozy Project has cultivated a strange new desire in me. I find myself donning all sorts of things not intended for headware. This time, I looked at my half-finished crochet project (a hot water bottle cover) and thought, "okay now, THIS will look funny..." What do you think? Happy Solstice to you all.

It's not serious. Seriously.

My third eye tells me everything I need to know.

Bill Pollett described my screenplay as "a satirical Cronenbergian fable set in an eco-friendly dystopia that has much to say about both sexual taboos and political intolerance."

Here are some of the projects that are feeding my imagination as the story plays out on the movie screen of my mind.

Biosphere Home Farming
www.design.philips.com/probes and click on FOOD for more info.

www.ekokook.com

Toronto-based source of velomobiles. More at www.bluevelo.com

a kind of jester

Courtesy Last Temptation Thrift.

Writer warps words in her Wernicke's area. Her hat-bobs bobble between banter and bathos. She dances, dodges, dips and doodles down dangerous drive-thrus of astounding antonyms and stunning synecdoches.  Even her extraordinarily effervescent eyes exclaim "excellent". The bells of Onomatopoeia jingle. Are you not entertained?

Cozy from the past

Mom is keeping my head cozy, even though she's been gone for more than half my lifetime.

My mom knitted me this hat when I was about twelve. It's a scarf with a hat built into one end of it. I remember wearing it on my walk to ballet class. The snow drifts were high, the wind was pushing against me. I felt like a Russian ballerina on her way to the studio.

Revision is the process of ruining a piece of writing in order to make it better. The toughest, most anxious stage for me is when the piece is ruined but not yet better. I'm there now with my screenplay. Only one thing for it: keep going until it is better, or at least better enough.

Hair is cozy enough

Sometimes my hair can be a Glee Cozy all on its own.

No hat arrived from my supporters on time for this week's post. So, here I am. My bare-headed, bed-headed self. Often, writers need to funk it up on their own.

turned on its head

Queen of Glee or margarine commercial? You decide.

When a Fibre Goddess from Nelson felted this Creamsiclesque handbag, she had no idea it would be warped into a Glee Cozy. It seems like the right thing to wear during my first screenplay critique.

pandas don't hibernate

shape-shifter? or just shifty?

This week's Glee Cozy is giving me warm fuzzies while I finish the first draft of my short film. Donated by a Hip-Hop Dance Goddess, it made its way all the way from Calgary into my mountain studio! I resonate with bears in general, so this hat is giving me a real boost. I need that boost right now.

weird enough to work

lurking in the penumbra, a strange creature was sighted....

Donated by Banff's Fine Art Maven and twisted by yours truly, this week's Glee Cozy makes me feel like a mutant mouse/Martian hybrid. Will it produce interesting writing results? It may be just weird enough to work! This week I wrote my first pages of film script. Finally hearing how my characters talk and interact. My anxiety is lessening and my enjoyment growing. If this trend continues, I could be having too much fun by December.

things you can have a thing for

Upon seeing a fake-fur sasquatch costume in a shop today, I said to the clerk without so much as a how-do-you-do, "Did you know there are folks with a fetish for people dressed in fursuits?"

"No, I didn't," says he.

"Yup. And some folks have a fetish for plush toys, too. It's called plushophilia. It may even be listed in the DSM-IV. How much are these tube socks?"

"Ten dollars."

"Okay, thanks. People in the furry fandom community refer to such a fetish as 'yiff'. Have a good one."

Let this be a cautionary tale for other writers out there. Not everyone is walking around thinking about human-kind's range of sexual fetishes. Just because the main character in your screenplay needs you to be obsessed with such matters, the local store clerk doesn't. He'll just spend the rest of his day texting his friends: "OMG, u'll nevR guess what this weird customer said 2 me 2day."

Spanky Poodle sat right down

a-writing on a story

put a feather in her cap

and called it allegory!

This week's glee cozy was handcrafted from our local newspaper by a Culinary Goddess(pictured Right) but it has never contained fish or chips. 

 

This week's Glee Cozy

 

warming my brain this week...

As I mentioned, I'm writing my first film script. I'm researching paper alternatives and fetish psychology. If anyone has suggestions of books or links on these topics, send 'em my way! Also, I don't have a Glee Cozy for next week yet, so send those my way, too!

Glee Cozy of the Week

"Over any extended period of time, being an artist requires enthusiasm more than discipline. Enthusiasm is not an emotional state. It is a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process, a loving recognition of all the creativity around us." ~ Julia Cameron, in The Artist's Way

Me, I've been functioning on discipline for too long. In the spirit of the above quote, I've invented the Glee Cozy. It's a zany hat that I wear while I'm writing.

If you have a crazy hat (or come across one) that qualifies as a Glee Cozy, donate it to me! I'll post a pic of me wearing it while I write. In this small way, you can support a creative mind. Think of it as being a kind of old-school Patron. This is cheaper. And more fun!

Here's what's warming my brain while I write this week.

I'm learning how to write screenplays! Just finished creating my first pitch for a short film. It's getting workshopped today. Oinkers aweigh!

who, exactly?

First Wild-Flour morning to be unwritten by visits. 1, 2, 3 amazing women & an incredible conversation each. All those times I've written uninterrupted. Why is today the day I can't get past my first stanza? Between "a woman like me needs/a mantra" and "a woman like me needs/ a rosary made of bubbles not beads/ and prayers to pop every one", I was offered guided Kundalini meditation and maybe found an actor to stage my nascent script. All witnessed by local art - this time, Lynne Huras' http://www.sillygoatstudio.ca/

bloody business

Thinking of the platelets bundling along in my arms makes me lonely. Writing's a bloody business.

emotional present

i guess i am actually living in the emotional present. it's just that my present now includes my past.

Spanish-Guitar-Love

Local guitarist John Goulart played at the Banff Library's 60th Anniversary celebration. I requested Asturias and he obliged. What makes me love that piece so much? Auditory embroidery. Restraint followed by momentary release. Invisible additional fingers coaxing resonance from strings - plucking, stroking, striking vibration into polished wood. Asturias transforms me into a plush creature, limp and alert, eyes closed and pores open. My skin drinks the sound. Thanks, João! www.johngoulart.com

listening

To get to my Wild café, I cross the frozen Bow. Mukluks bark against snow. The TransCanada calls out with its rolling rubber voice, and Banff Avenue answers in a rush of grinding gears and tight brakes. North-bank raven croaks to south-bank chickadee, comparing notes. At the vertex of this verge-of-the-wild X, a piece of watercolour-washed sky has fallen.

the morning of no poem

Too tired to introduce myself.
Too sleepy to say "soy".
Too bruised to heave meaning from words.
Yet the register chunks open,
the tea flows,
the Burleys chug up,
the noise grows, and still,
caffeine clunks the sludge from everyone's heart
but my own.

still recovering, Catholic

Black box atop the split log bench beside the Old Crag Cabin. Like a radio from an old car pulled from the dash and turned on its end. A sticker on the underside exposes a matrix of red dots, forms the curve of a wavelength, a single rise and fall. What was it? I never looked. Another dog. This one tied to a Burley, rigged for running.

lick or stick?

My stickers are unstuck. Sticky stuck a stick of unstuck stickers. Stuck? Stick or get sick. Suck or get unstuck. Sticker stickiness. Where to stick? Stick me. Peel and lick. Ick. Just stick.

last temptation of the recovering Catholic

Writing about guilt. How quickly the old Catholic credos return! Not since 16 have I attended mass, yet the words came easily: "I confess to Almighty God/and to you my brothers and sisters/that I have sinned through my own fault" et cetera. Poem began with "I should be wearing a wimple/instead of this velvet hat./No time for hairstyles/on my rush to the altar/of writing." Then visited The Last Temptation. Found a westsuit, a shower curtain, and a silk brocade handbag. Sweet absolution! http://www.banffthrift.com/

parked filmmaker

Same day -- I ran into Karen McDiarmid at Wild Flour. She's one of the extraordinary women of Banff and, among other things, a filmmaker. She's part of the Tara Café Project http://www.taracafeproject.ca/shiningspirit.htm. They created Shining Spirit, a film about a Tibetan family reunited to make music. Jamyang Yeshi, one of the Tibetan musicians was with her. I had been listening to their CD for years without knowing it had been conceived and produced locally.

A café with great Karma

Next day--where the dog had been, now lay a formerly-red wool blanket. The faded pink fibres draped from the top step to the next step down. A rectangle of old cardboard duct-taped to the railing read, "Feel free to allow your dog to sit on the blanket to keep it's (sic) bum and paws warm. *The Wild Flour" It's that kind of place.

the parked dog

I watched a cross-breed dog parked behind the Old Crag Cabin on the wooden steps above the cold flagstones. His German Shepherd hips sat on the top step, his front paws one step down. He never took his dark eyes off the café line-up beyond the picture windows. Regularly, his black nose twitched: could he smell Chai through the glass? He lifted one front paw, then the other, waiting. I was fascinated by the long wisps of fur that extended out from within his triangular ears. I thought of lynx, and my dear friend whose eyelashes spring from her tear ducts.

Back at 'er

Writing alone at home, the only feeling I can hurt is the kettle's, when I splash water into its empty eye. But writing in public has its demands and today I didn't meet them: I was grouchy to one of the café staff. Sorry. I was anxious and sleepy.
After a month's break, Mom and I are still eating raw meat, it seems. Started a new poem, too, about her expression for "get to the point". Gazed out the window at a parked dog, and at the trees on the walls (in acrylic by Véronique Gay-Fraret Bottaro). Left to buy dental floss

wild rice in the porridge!

And Gabby smiled into my London Fog. Writing about my-mom-and-mandarins widened another of my heart-cracks. I used the re-used the recycled brown napkin to dry my eyes.

P.S. Charles Noble launching Sally O: in the Betsy Sense of the Word tonight http://charlessnoble.com/books.htm.

dutch licorice rooibos: the sequel

Sat near the window in my long-johns. Was wearing pants over them, of course. Lovely, lovely staff replaced my drink even though t'was I who'd forgotten to say "soy". Fear commandeered my pen. Sometimes the creative journey is like that. Will remember ahimsa and try again tomorrow.

Day What?

Missing many free beverages due to illness. Felt like I should call Wild Flour to justify my absence. Lungs still gurgling as a I juggle words in my head.

Day 3: Dutch Licorice Rooibos

B's beautiful blonde hair was down. Someone was sitting in my spot but not for long. Fat snowflakes melted on the flagstones while I wrote about eating raw meat with my mother.

Day Two: Decaf Americano

Manager B tempted me with maple-syrup-spiked espresso. Eschewed caffeine in favour of a decaf Americano + more cream and organic raw sugar than would strictly be approved by Health Canada. Thought I was exhausted but managed to douse another love poem before going to Banff Tea Co. to work on a new tea blend I'm creating.

Day One: Bow River Hot Cereal+Rooibos La-tea

Bow River Hot Cereal is a gluten-free, hot cereal with stewed fruit. The La-tea is steamed soy milk with loose-leaf rooibos tea from Banff Tea Co. steeping in it. Did you know that Italy has the highest number of Celiacs in the world? The manager of my chosen café, Wild Flour, told me that. I wrote the first draft of a love poem. A great antidote to the bitter-love-destroyed poem I wrote pre-registration