First order of the day was the bug museum. Got halfway down to Victoria, called Linda to meet up at the Bug museum. Met up there and WOW. turns out that my youngest is scared of nothing. I stared in awe and she has more creepy crawly things crawling all over her than you can shake a stick at. The older, a little more cautious and preferring to watch from the other side of glass. Great fun and we loved the gift shop with all the salt and vinegar grasshoppers.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Bugs, Boys & Boobs
First order of the day was the bug museum. Got halfway down to Victoria, called Linda to meet up at the Bug museum. Met up there and WOW. turns out that my youngest is scared of nothing. I stared in awe and she has more creepy crawly things crawling all over her than you can shake a stick at. The older, a little more cautious and preferring to watch from the other side of glass. Great fun and we loved the gift shop with all the salt and vinegar grasshoppers.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Carefull what you wish for
We start talking, she talks of a couple of fringe-style shows she's done. Cool, we say, then what else were you doing. Then she very casually mentions that she has been an art director/choreographer for Cirque du Soliel for ten years. so suddenly I am all over the idea of getting her in to work with the students. Taking her through the theatre and talking to her about some possible shows and staging, she is immediately looking up at rigging points and throwing ideas out about nets, ropes, silks, trapeze, clown, etc. All the while I am showing an exceptional amount of restraint, and desperately keeping myself from leaping up and down in the air and scaring her off.
Now, that all said, I have been extremely fortunate in the world of training and had opportunities galore which I am very thankfull for. There is however, one area that I feel I need to explore further, and that is in clown work. (not 'creepy guy blowing up balloon' clown, but real clown work, the kind whose tradition dates back almost 2,000 years, through roman mime, Del 'Arte, and Europe) With this lady working with Cirque (whose clowns have reached a legendary status), I ask if she knows anyone she would recommend to do some training with. she says of course and we exchange emails and now I am bouncing off the walls (almost literally) and exploding with possibilities for the students, for myself and for all kinds of show possibilities.
Damn I love this stuff.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Days I Love my job
Teaching an intro to acting class to a group of people, most of whom had never done anything like this before, was a little scary. I usually find that I am more comfortable around those with a cursory knowledge. Today however, people who were terrified of even standing in front of other people, wrote their own monologues, rehearsed them, learned them and performed them onstage. It was beautiful. It may not have been brilliant, but it was the world to them to see them recognize what they had accomplished.
Then giving them just a little bit of direction and watching the words they wrote and the characters they created come to life was an amazing feeling. They go on with their day and their lives don't change drastically, but perhaps there is a sense of ... ability, that wasn't there before.
I love moments like that.
Friday, June 1, 2007
Human luggage
Segue: the government has now deemed it unsafe for two people to travel down a waterslide at the same time. This means that parents taking their kids down are no longer allowed. the local aquatic centre has lept over this hurdle by taking away any age restrictions to the waterslides. Now instead of dangerously holding on to your child as you ride down an inescapable tube of rushing water, you get to send them down on their own so they learn the values of fending for themselves against an uncontrollable onslaught of water carrying them head first/feet first/head first/feet first down a bright red plastic enclosure into a riptide waiting for them at the bottom.
Back to the luggage analogy. Now picture a bunch of parents bustling at the bottom of a group of waterslides as their little ones are scrambling for who goes next at the top. Cries of "There's mine!" has a definite ring of relief as parents see their kids being spit out of the mouth of the waterslide like a particularly foul tasting morsel.
I started laughing as it struck me that we were waiting with bated breath for our human luggage.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
How to render your dad speechless
Scene - Int - Dusk
Sounds of bathroom splashing, general family household noises in the background. Jordan a slightly precocious 4 yr old girl is having a bath and talking to her dad, who is a little tired from a warm day, but generally the mood is pleasant.
Can you condition my hair tonight?
A mildly sinister and foreboding note would happen at this point. Daddy is brushing her hair and finishing up her hair. Jordan reaches up and feels her hair and lays down in the tub.
Someone help me when this one turns into a teenager. She is fabulous and wonderful as they both (my girls) are. But the anticipation of this one between the years 2016 - 2023 is enough to scare the bejeebers out of me.
On the upside, I also love it when she comes up with things that make me laugh as much as they did tonight.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
The day I was waiting for
There is a list. It seems small and unassuming at first. "that won't take too long" you think as you peruse the little things on this list. It is the list of things that need doing on the house. Then, as you start to complete the jobs on the list, it grows like the hallway in Poltergeist, where the light at the end of the tunnel is a train moving quickly away from you as you scramble to catch up.
Then, every now and then, you have the opportunity to not look at the list. Not work on the house. These days are usually when one of the bigger jobs are finished. Then, if the gods are truly happy with and wish to reward you for being such a good boy, they let the sun shine while you kick back and have a beer on the new deck that you have been working on. Long story short. it is done, finished and HUGE. Already I am watching as the benches are being used as tanning tables, kids are running around the place and Shell and I are having a quiet game of crib in the sunshine. There are few perfect moments, but this is definitely one of them.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Very often people will spend lifetimes working on finding the rhythm that best suits and connects them. At the end of our lives, I don't feel that our spirit as a whole reincarnates into another body, but rather that when we die we shed the excess elements that have thrown us out of sync, and the stronger rhythm that embodies us will move into another as their heart and body develops.