Oh. My. God. So you're (nearing) 40. Let me hand you a tissue...

The year I turned 5 in May, I started Kindergarten that September. Because I could read and write and do math and all sorts of crazy skills which, at the time, were inconceivable for a 5 year old to be able to do before entering school. In October, they started my progress to skip me. I did the mornings in Grade 1 and the afternoons in Kindergarten. By January, I was out of Kindergarten entirely.

And as such, I was always the youngest kid in my grade.

So for most of my life, my friends have been older than me. Maybe it’s only been a year or two, but when you’re in elementary school, a year might as well be a decade.

Then, when I was at university, I was hanging with people my own age who were in the year behind me. That was strange. It was almost as if I was hanging with a completely different generation for the first while. Because they had changed the Ontario school curriculum for children born after 1970. And since I had been lumped in with those kids born in 1969, I was literally from the old school curriculum. I was the last of the real Grade 13s and the first of the OACs. Which I don’t even think exist anymore, but that’s for another rant.

In May 2015, I will be 45 years old.

I’ve made a lot of friends along the way over the past 40 years. And now I look at the smattering of them across my social media networks. Friends who run the gamut from ages 15 – 65. A year or two make no differences anymore. Heck, sometimes the kids who are 17 are more mature than the 50 year olds.

But why I’m ranting today is that, recently, there has been a lot popping up on my timelines about “what it means to be 40” these days. As if there were some age crossing barrier, like the ones they have at railway tracks, saying “Now that you’re 40, you are like X instead of Y. You know the truth. You’re smarter than everyone else.” And all the other bullshit that the same articles told us when we were 30 and will tell us again when we’re 50.

Why do we need these fucking reassurances? So that we can feel better than other people? Feel superior to those not in our age group? Hang on to youth? Forget that we are halfway to shuffling off this mortal coil?

All of these “feel good because you’re 40” articles are pissing me off. I felt good before you told me to feel good, and now your article is making me feel bad. “There are no soul mates.” “There is no God.” “You do know better than your peers.”

You wanna know what the big deal is about turning 40? It’s the same big deal as turning 10, 20, 30, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, or 100. There’s a zero at the end of your age. So everyone can now calculate the exact year when you were born without too much thinking. Like the metric system. You’re a metric age because you’re a multiple of 10. Woo hoo. Go have a Litre of something to drink and 500 grams of cake.

Do you know better than other people? Well, isn’t it nice to feel superior? If you do know better than other people, then you don’t need to rub it in their faces. You don’t need to be patronizing. If you know better, you let people learn their own lessons, including your children. Once kids pass the age where they realize if they touch the hot stove, they will burn their fingers, you get to stand back and let them learn on their own.

But really, you don’t know better than anyone else except your younger self. And if you have to tell yourself you do, you’re as much of an asshole as those people you call assholes for putting you in your place, myself included.

Do you have a soul mate? Do you have 50 soul mates? Well good for you. Do you know what it means to have a soul mate? Because soul mate, like BFF, and to an extent, friend, is a term that’s become superficial and sorority-ized. It means nothing. 

If you have a soul mate, or a best friend, or you love someone, you don’t have to fucking declare it or anything like it on your social media timelines or anywhere else. If you are in a successful relationship, you don’t need to tell people about it. You and your partner and your families know. Your friends already know. People who have to continually brag about what they have are usually trying to avoid seeing the cracks in the foundation, or are hiding the underlying problems that will tear them apart shortly.  

If you’re over 40, you know who your friends are. You know what love is. And you’ve probably been devastated by one or both of those things. If you haven’t, well, good for you. Maybe you should try to live a little more deeply. And if you have been devastated, hopefully you’re not sitting around wallowing in your pain. Because that’s just as bad as surrounding yourself with non-friends. You know, those people who, at the first sign of trouble, will send you an OMG HUGZ text and then not bother to follow up with you to see if you’re actually okay.

You know what? Shit happens. You get hurt. Let yourself get hurt again. And again. And again. Because why? Because it means that you’re alive. Dead people feel no pain. And to feel no pain means you can’t feel joy. What the fuck makes you so fucking great that you refuse to feel joy and happiness? That’s what happens when you say “I don’t want to be hurt anymore.” That means you don’t want to be happy, either. And if you don’t want to be happy, that’s your business, but don’t make my life miserable by bitching about how it’s awful being single and alone. Your life is as awful or as wonderful as you make it for yourself, not by how much shit you make other people carry for you. If you need to be in a coven of complainers to make your life wonderful, please stay the fuck away from everyone I know. Complaining about the same thing over and over again is a waste of fucking energy. Just like those fucking empowerment articles.

About that there is no God thing. Of course there’s a God. Now, in the sense of big dude sitting on a cloud in the sky looking down casting fire and damnation and granting favours to those who worship him only…no. You're mistaking God with bank executives. 

You know that expression “The Lord helps those who help themselves?” Well, look agnostics and atheists, that’s basically confirming what you believe. You have a positive outlook on life, you try your best, you try to summon some good energy from the universe in a Tesla-like manner to gather good karma and positive energy for those you care about - never just take the energy for yourself, you selfish bastard. “Do unto others as you shall have them do unto you,” or, as we taught our non-religious child, “Treat people the way you want to be treated.” So if you want good energy, and good stuff to happen to you, then make sure you send out good energy to others. When you pray for someone to get better, you are sending that person good energy, and since we are all interconnected, they get that energy, and you will get a metric fuck ton of it back. That energy is God. If you need to visualize some blonde or black or purple or yellow or red dude who looks like a hipster or a prince or a chubby laughing bald dude to focus your good energy to, you do what you have to do. There is no correct or incorrect way to believe in the goodness of the planet and send good energy to others.

Don’t believe me? Look at kids playing. Just look at them. When they’re young. Before the video games and their parents and their grandparents and the world tells them that they can’t play with that kid because he’s wearing a turban or that kid because she’s got a wheelchair or that kid because he smells…look at kids. Kids love everyone and everything and have no fucking fear or negative energy whatsoever.

“Children are God. Listen to them.”

Why in the fuck do we grow up?

Wanna know what I learned from being over 40? That I know absolutely fucking NOTHING. That everything I needed to know about life, I knew before I was 5, and that stupid school got a hold of me. Before my parents messed me up by telling me that good grades would make me a good person. Before boys messed me up by telling me if I put out they’d love me forever. Before fucking social media came along and gave everyone a false sense of entitlement and empowerment.

Do I have a soul mate? Do I have 100 soul mates? Do I need a soul mate? Well, look, I’m not going to lie. It would be the best thing in the world to have a companion who would be willing to go through this crazy mess that I call my life with me. Someone who understands that they will never be the most important person in my universe, because that is my son, who already has two parents. Someone who values their space as much as I do. Someone who is ranty like me, and who understands that an argument is just an argument. It’s not about hate, or being superior to another’s intellect. No two people are the same, not even identical twins. Someone who would respect my uniqueness, my need to squirrel myself away at times, who would be as pleased to go see La Boheme as they would to see Ministry or Jackie Greene or James Rhodes, and who could understand why there are times when I just want to hear nothing. Someone who can show me all of the things that I might miss, and why those things might just be the most beautiful things on earth.  And someone who can match my libido and then some, in every way possible, who knows it’s not about size or acrobatics or apparatuses. It’s about all the things that can go wrong and do go wrong and making sure there are at least 3 hurricane mops on standby.

Can I find all those complementary things in one person? Other than myself? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I know people like this already. Maybe I don’t. But I won’t shut out the possibility that this person, yes, just one, is out there.

I have wonderful friends, and I hope that they know how much they mean to me. I try to tell and show them as often as I can. Sometimes I know I’m not as good as I would like to be, but I keep sending the good energy out to them. Faith is what keeps us alive, keeps our spirits moving, keeps us doing what we do. But each of my friends has a soul mate. Whether or not they’re partnered up.  

After this big long rant, the point is this…

If you’re near 40 or just crossed the barrier, and you need to post this reassuring bullshit to make yourself feel better, fine. But don’t lump me into your group of “Oh yes, that’s what being 40 is about.” When I was 5 I didn’t fit into the Kindergarten ideal, and I’m sure as fuck not going to start now.

Besides, you know nothing. Wait til you’re 45. You’ll see what I mean. 

Burn Baby Burn Baby – The Int-review

 

Last week, Kevin Craig’s brilliant novel, Burn Baby Burn Baby was released to rave reviews, including my recommendation here. I cannot stress how wonderful this book is, especially for anyone who has ever been on the rough side of life, especially during their formative years.  Here’s a brief synopsis of the story:

Seventeen-year-old Francis Fripp’s confidence is practically non-existent since his abusive father drenched him in accelerant and threw a match at him eight years ago. Now badly scarred, Francis relies on his best friend Trig to protect him from the constant bullying doled out at the hands of his nemesis, Brandon Hayley—the unrelenting boy who gave him the dreaded nickname of Burn Baby.

The new girl at school, Rachel Higgins, is the first to see past Francis’s pariah-inducing scars. If Brandon’s bullying doesn’t destroy him, Francis might experience life as a normal teenager for the first time in his life. He just has to avoid Brandon and convince himself he’s worthy of Rachel’s attentions. Sounds easy enough, but Francis himself has a hard time seeing past his scars. And Brandon is getting violently frustrated, as his attempts to bully Francis are constantly thwarted. Francis is in turmoil as he simultaneously rushes toward his first kiss and a possible violent end.

Without going too much into the book and telling you everything that happens, I will say this – you will be taken on an emotional and physical journey with Francis through what really adds up to a very short but intense time period in his life. Don’t let that frighten you – the novel is an easy yet intellectual read, giving readers insights into their own personal journeys while they follow Francis along his. For that is what Kevin Craig excels at – giving us stories about people which make us directly look at our own lives, and what we could do to make our own worlds better for ourselves and the people around us.

I was lucky enough to catch Kevin for an interview, where I asked him about Burn Baby Burn Baby, about his writing in general, and, most importantly, about the place that provides him with his writer’s ambrosia, Starbucks.

1. What does your favourite latte say about you as a writer?
Haha! Interesting lead question. You're just trying to source the best latte. I can see right through you. I'm not sure what it says about me, other than I'm a unique special flower. I have my own drink at Starbucks. It's kind of my trademark...my signature drink, if you will. When I go to Starbucks, I order a grande Raspberry Vanilla Latte. 2 and 2 pumps. With an extra shot. It's delicious. And the foam has a pink swirl in it. Because I'm a unique special flower. Nah. Not really. What it probably says about me as a writer is that I'm spending too much time at the counter making up pretentious drink concoctions in order to avoid the inevitable bum-in-chair time needed to hone my craft.

2. You wrote your first draft of Burn Baby Burn Baby at the Muskoka Novel Marathon 2012, and gave a detailed encounter on your blog about the mindframe you returned to in order to immerse yourself to be able to write your character. You yourself have been through some personal struggles and conquests since your first draft. Did any of your own recent experiences of triumph and liberation add to the emotions you put through in your subsequent drafts, in particular, to emphasize Francis’s feelings when he allows himself to be loved by Rachel along with his other victories in the story?
My first draft is almost the same as my final draft. All the time. I fiddle with words here and there, but when I write a novel it's the novel I want to appear on the bookshelf. The first draft of Burn Baby looked almost identical to the draft found inside that beautiful cover.

3. Recent stories in the media have brought domestic abuse, and abuse in general, back into the spotlight in Canada in particular. Personally, I feel stories like yours are necessary, especially for young people who may find themselves in this situation, as you note in your dedication. Once again, you discussed on your blog that you were  a survivor of abuse and bullying.   If someone who read your novel is in a situation where they are being bullied and/or abused and they reached out to you for help, what kind of advice would you give to them?
I'm not a professional. I'm not qualified to give such people any advice. I would plead for them to seek help through the proper channels. I would stress IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT. I would tell them they are not alone. I would tell them to SPEAK. Speaking our truth takes the power from those who would hurt us. Speaking is taking steps away from the abuse and/or bullying. Speaking is power.

4. You led us in a writing exercise recently where you had us put our characters from our recent pieces into situations that were not in our story so that we could think of them and their reactions from outside of the confines of the story we put them in. So I'm going to ask - what do you think would happen to Francis if he and Rachel broke up? Do you think he would be able to find a new love because he was able to find his first love?
That's a beautiful question and I think you broke my heart just a little bit just now. I will reluctantly answer your question. Francis was always a strong character who didn't know his own inner strength. Rachel entering his life allowed him to shine a light into his heart. Relationships are a beautiful thing in the way they allow us to reflect our own light back onto ourselves. Loving and being loved by Rachel gave Francis a little freedom from the dungeon of his own thoughts of unworthiness and self-doubt. Love allowed him to see that he was worthy of love. It's a simple equation, really. Love equals love. If he leaves that relationship, he will know in his heart that it could and would happen again. He would make it. And he would find love again.

5. You are a writing machine - you have another new novel coming out in about a month, Half Dead & Fully Broken, which is the story of a brother managing after the death of his twin brother. In Burn Baby Burn Baby, Francis has twin half-brothers. In Sebastian's Poet, we find out that the Poet himself is a twin. So why all the twins?
WOW! I had no idea. You just totally freaked me out. How did I miss that?! I guess, in all honesty, I've always been fascinated by the twin thing. But I didn't realize it had penetrated my writing so deeply. There's a crazy amount of twins in my family. My grandmother had twins. One of those twins had two sets of twins. On the other side I have two sets of identical twin cousins. They're everywhere!

6. Finally - what does your favourite Starbucks cookie choice say about you as an author?
I get to talk about my Mecca twice in the same interview! This is awesome. MY Starbucks cookie is the Ginger Molasses Cookie. Molasses is my comfort food. It kind of IS my spirit animal. Molasses takes me back to New Brunswick, where my grandparents were, where my uncles and aunts and cousins are. Molasses cookies, molasses bread, molasses cake, molasses and old cheddar sandwiches! Those sandwiches were the best. I didn't realize they were weird until I started mentioning them around non-New Brunswickers. When I bite into a Starbucks ginger molasses cookie, for just a split second I'm back in my Nana's kitchen. She's standing over by the old woodstove frying up potatoes and onions in her big cast iron frying pan, and Olivia Newton-John's Let Me Be There is playing on the turntable. And we're both singing along. And laughing.
What my Starbucks cookie says about me is that I'm a nostalgian. If that wasn't a word before today, it is now. Forgive my presumptuousness. But I'm a writer. I work with words. When I can't find the one I'm looking for to encompass what I'm trying to say...well, I'm allowed to make one up. My Starbucks cookie says that I'm a sap, I love nostalgia, I love giving my readers little nuggets that might toss them back into their own memories. I'm all about poignant moments. And the ginger molasses cookie clearly represents these things.

 

Burn Baby Burn Baby is available now in ebook and book book form at your favourite ebookstore: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

Follow Kevin’s adventures at Starbucks and other places that don’t serve coffee on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and his blog.

Half Dead & Fully Broken - THE COVER REVEAL

Hot on the heels of his new YA novel, Burn Baby Burn Baby, released this week, the incredibly talented insomniac author Kevin T. Craig is getting ready to release the first in the Carter Colby series of novels, Half Dead & Fully Broken, on January 19, 2015.

Half Dead & Fully Broken is the story of Carter Colby, the most unpopular teen at Jefferson High. This would be easier to deal with if his identical twin brother, Marcus, weren't the hottest, most popular boy in school.

When Marcus is killed in a motorcycle accident, Carter discovers the one thing more painful than trying to compete with Mr. Wonderful: wearing his dead brother's face.

He felt invisible before the accident, but with Marcus dead everybody turns away from him in mourning. How can he blame them? He can't bear to look in the mirror.

When Carter begins to see Marcus's ghost, Mr. Wonderful's quest to save the world and spread happiness may not be over after all, even in death. Marcus knows that Justin Dewar, the boy who drove the truck that crashed into his motorbike, is struggling with the guilt of taking a life. Melanie, Marcus's mourning girlfriend, was also hard hit by the tragedy. Marcus wants to make things right before it's too late.

With Marcus's help, Carter experiences love and friendship for the first time in his life. But is Mr. Wonderful's helping hand enough for Carter, Melanie, and Justin - three kids fully broken by the tragedy - to save one another?

Here’s your first look at the cover for HD&FB:

 

Things They Don't tell You in Parenting School #3765

When you choose to bring a child into this world, your first duty is to ensure the health and well-being of that new little person. Physically, of course, but more important, mentally.

Physical care is so easy – make sure they’re clean, fed, and watered.

Mental care is the most difficult duty you sign up for on this planet. Emphasis on the word “care”.

Because if you are a crappy parent who doesn’t care for your kid, then everyone in the world knows where your kid will end up, and you will just say it’s their fault or the school’s fault or TV’s fault, or anyone else’s fault but your own.

But when you do care, you try so very hard to make sure your child is as close to happy as he or she can be. You guide them through their big feelings – sadness, anger, confusion. You remember the mistakes your parents made with you and you try your damndest to make sure you don’t do the same with your kids. It’s not something you have to think about – it’s just natural.

So when our kids are old enough to understand words, and concepts, and what is real and what is pretend, we start to let the tether loose a little. You know they’re going to hear words that are unpleasant. You hope to God they never say them. But you can’t shelter them from words. All you can really do is tell them the reality of those words – many people say them, many more people don’t like them. So be careful what you say around people. Even if the grownups around you aren’t so careful to watch their mouths around you.

Today when I went to pick up my son from daycare, his daycare leader took us both aside and said, 

“He said a really bad word today.”

This is not so unusual for my son. When he gets upset the first thing he does is call everyone and everything a fucking asshole. He isn’t really aware he’s doing it. He is ASD, and it just comes out.

“What did you say, buddy?” I said, trying to be casual about it.

His daycare coordinator said, “Now, I don’t know where he heard this, or from who, or if he even knows what it means…”

“What did he say?”

Then the daycare coordinator told me and I nearly died. I asked if my son had been angry when he said it. The coordinator said no. That he had laughed about it. That almost made it worse.

We packed up, we headed out.  He knew he had done something wrong but he didn’t know what it was.

I asked him where he heard the word. He wouldn’t tell me. So I let his dad handle this one.

In case you didn’t know, our blended family is a little more blended than your average blend. My son’s father is a tall, big, white, strapping Irish-German Acadian dude. My son’s sister is half-Afro-Canadian. And me? Well if you didn’t know, my parents came to Canada from Trinidad. I’m a blend of Chinese, African, Spanish, Portuguese, Pakistani, Saudi Arabian, and Arawak. That I know of.

My son is the biological blend of his father and his mother. My son’s father would probably knock the lights out of anyone who used a racial epithet towards either of his kids. That is if I didn’t get to the fucker first.

When I came back into the room, my son’s dad  had tears in his eyes. We went to another room out of child’s earshot, to talk.

“This is my doing,” he said.

I was shocked. I tried to run through my head what it could have been. Song on Soundcloud/YouTube/car radio where the word of choice is often included with an “a” on the end instead of the much more maligning “-er”? That was the only thing I could think of. Because he would never in a million years even think of using that word at all.

Then he explained that his father had used it and that’s where the child heard it.

When my son’s dad and I were still together, his father came to live with us for a few months while he got some things in order, that never got into order. He was a pleasant enough man when other people were around, but when he was in a mood, as he often was, vitriol doesn’t even begin to describe what came out of his mouth.

My son’s dad told me a long time ago about the real reason why his dad had moved out early. He had called our son a retard. I’m glad he told me after the man had left because I would have probably cut off his shriveled up and dying ballsack. But it was enough to have his own son give him an ultimatum.

Apparently that wasn’t the only word he used towards our son.

You know, we try to look after our children, and now, we are supposed to and are obligated to look after our parents when they need help. When we tried to help my son's dad's father, in return, all he did was irreparably damage our child. I hope that old man's soul is tormented on the earth until long after the planet gets sucked into a black hole. I know my son’s dad wanted to reassemble his cremated ashes and knock the shit out of his dead father.

But we can’t. We were stuck holding the bag, wondering where to go next

The good news in a way is that our son didn’t realise he was being called something horrible and just thought it was a word. The bad news is that we had to now explain to him why his grandfather was a horrible person and why that word is forbidden from the vocabulary of our family, whether ending in the “-a” or the “-er”.

It was the talk you never want to have with your kids, but you know you have to, especially when your kid is multiethnic. I had hoped it would be from some stupid rap song, some kid calling to another kid across the school yard, even (what I had thought would be the worst scenario) some kid coming up to him and calling him that. But in a million years neither I nor his father ever expected to be completely devastated when we found out what had happened. 

These are the things they don’t tell you about in parenting class. These are the things we work so hard to protect our children from.  

And once we explained to our son why this word is never uttered, he understood. He understood it all. That was the worst part. And I hope by airing it out, that we can put it all behind us, and when he does hear that word again, he will be the first to step up and let whoever says it know that words do hurt and make them stop, too.

                                                                                                                              

Stop Whatever You're Doing and Read This Book Now!!

I don't do book reviews.

As a writer, I don't feel qualified to do book reviews. One wordsmith's brilliance is another wordsmith's bane. It's up to you, the reader, to let us know if you like our stories.

But if I might make a small recommendation...

READ THIS BOOK NOW!!

I'm scheduled to do an interview with Kevin T. Craig, the author, to be posted as part of the Blog Tour next week.

So my teaser for the interview next week is just this: Burn Baby Burn Baby is NOW AVAILABLE on Amazon and other e-book stores. Go and buy it. Read it. You will thank yourself.

Until next week's interview...

BURN BABY BURN BABY - Blog tour

I am pleased to announce that I will be taking part in the Blog Tour for Kevin Craig's latest novel masterpiece, BURN BABY BURN BABY.

 I have the pleasure of interviewing Kevin shortly and will be posting the interview on December 16, 2014 right here on this very page!

Kevin Craig is the author of three previous novels; Summer on Fire, Sebastian’s Poet, and The Reasons. He is a 4-time winner of the Muskoka Novel Marathon’s Best Novel Award. Kevin is also a playwright and has had eight 10-minute plays produced. His poetry, short stories, memoir and articles have been published internationally. Kevin was a founding member of the Ontario Writers’ Conference and a long-time member of the Writers’ Community of Durham Region (WCDR). He is represented by literary agent Stacey Donaghy of Donaghy Literary Group.

Find Kevin Craig Online:

Website: http://kevintcraig.wordpress.com/
Facebook: Kevin T Craig, Author, Playwright
Twitter: @KevinTCraig
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/785432.Kevin_Craig

Kevin is also one of the finest YA writers out there at the moment, so I am beyond excited to read his novel and interview him. I'll be leaving snippets for you daily until the big day.

Stay tuned.

It's Absolutely True....

Do you remember the first time you fell in love?

I don’t mean the first time you heard a song and loved it. I don’t mean the first pop star crush you had, which yes, yes, I know was true love and you still hope to marry them one day in the future because they wrote the best song ever when you were 12.

I mean the first time that someone made your heart go pitter patter. The first time you had those funny feelings just below the pit of your stomach. Maybe this person even made you feel like you were about to throw up.

But the coolest part about being in love for the first time was that someone else liked you for who you were. And then you and they fell in love because you just really liked hanging out together. Just hanging out with someone who really thought you were cool just made you the happiest person on the planet, and your heart would sing to the heavens.

That first time you fell in love.

Maybe some of you haven’t experienced this yet. Don’t worry. You will. It will fill you with joys unbounding and unending. You never forget that feeling when you first experience it. It will be different every time after that, but that first time stays with you forever.

I remember the first time I fell in love. The grand affair lasted for all of two weeks. But those two weeks were special. My heart was over the moon. I liked someone who was a cool guy, and he liked me. And he could kiss like nobody’s business.

We only went on one big date. We went to see a film that I had been dying to see. The only reason I was dying to see it was because the soundtrack was by David Bowie and it was directed by Julien Temple.

Today I bought the Bowie retrospective Nothing Has Changed. Sure, if you want to call it a Greatest Hits package, you can. But it’s just as much a retrospective as the David Bowie Is… exhibit that toured the world in 2013 – 2014. Except it’s a retrospective that comes to you once you download the mp3s or buy the CDs. The track order is in reverse of normal retrospective convention: he starts with the most recent tunes and they work backwards until we get to Liza Jane, which was his first single ever.

While I was listening to this retrospective, I realized that, even though I know that David Bowie is God (and don’t argue this with me, just accept this as a tautology and move along), the reason why his later music still resonates with me are the feelings that are put into the songs, and the emotions that are evoked in me. I know every lyric to every song on this collection because of the depths they reach inside me. That’s funny given Bowie’s method of writing lyrics by playing Yahtzee with a bunch of words.

So there I am, in the car, listening along, when the title track to Absolute Beginners was called up.

And I remembered what it was like to fall in love for the first time, since I fell in love with that person for the first time while that song played overhead through the theatre’s speakers. It’s such a simple song, a very 80s song with a 50s vibe, yet it is a love song with profound feelings for its simple message.

And really, isn’t that what falling in love, whether it’s for the first or the 31^st time, is like – profound feelings in a simple message.

EDIT: I just watched Absolute Beginners again for the first time in at least twenty years. It’s so flash, so styling and slick, just like a Julien Temple video. I think what drew my date to me was my fangirl giddiness over David Bowie.  Even though our two-week romance has been done for over 28 years, my fangirl profound love for David Bowie hasn’t changed one bit.

December 6, 1989

Twenty-five years ago I was a second-year student at Glendon College, the bilingual campus of York University. Located at Bayview and Lawrence, we were an island unto ourselves, with our own culture, our own mannerisms, and our own quirks, in two languages, in comparison to the grey, industrial wasteland that York University was at that time.

December is always a busy time at university. People are full of anxiety. It’s exam and essay time along with being Xmas Party time and getting ready to go home for the holidays time. It’s nerve-wracking for a young twentysomething. You just try to make it through every day until you’re finally done and can go down to the bus/train station to take the journey home.

December 6, 1989 started off for us as another one of those days. Getting stuff done, stumbling to exams loaded on caffeine and whatnot, looking like zombies, the omnipresent colds from living in residence causing our noses to drip. There was a lot of snow that year for Toronto as well. It was overcast, I remember that.

Back in those days, we had no social media. We just had media – newspapers, radio, television – and word of mouth.

I don’t remember exactly how I heard about Montreal. It was one of those times where the news came at me from about 15 different people.  Maybe I first heard about it in the Pub where I could almost always be found. Maybe it was walking back to my room in residence (dorms for you non-Canadian readers). When I walked in back home on my floor in residence, the Francophone girls from Quebec were shaking, bawling. Our Don (our floor leader) was one of them. The TV was on. Somewhere in between all of this I learned about everything that had happened in Montreal earlier that day.

The news was unbelievable. To this day, I can hardly believe that this atrocity happened in Montreal, in Canada. A lone gunman walks into a university campus, targeting dozens of women, eventually killing 14 of them. Girls like us. Just going to school. Trying to get through exam time and essay time to go home for the holidays.

Maybe the media weren’t reporting this as a crime against women on that very date, but all the girls on my residence floor, and all the girls on campus I would say, knew. We knew. We were targeted. We were the victims on that day as much as the 14 girls were. We knew Marc Lapine wanted women gone, just because we wanted to educate ourselves, be equal, be able to take care of our future selves. And we were angry, sick, saddened, and in some cases, frightened.

Word spread fast (remember in 1989 there were no cell phones, no internet, no social media) that there would be a “gathering” for women only in the Quad between both residences. We grabbed our candles and went outside.

It was very dark out – I think it may have even been 7pm. There was a group of about 40 – 50 of us who felt the need to be there. We stood in a circle, holding our flickering candles, the hot wax dripping on our cold skin.  Our boots started to sink a little in the snow, which I remember being a bit crunchy, and very white against the outside walkway lights. It was cool but not bitterly cold. A good winter evening for being outside. As if the weather knew.

An Afro-Fracophone young woman from Montreal named Karine led the vigil. The floor was opened to anyone who wanted to say something, anything, about what had happened earlier that day. Some women just cried and yelled about how disgusted, frightened, and angry they were, in both English and French. Some women sang. Others led us in prayer. Some women read verses. But we all needed to be there. We needed to be with each other. It wasn’t that we were excluding men from our vigil. They just knew to stay away on that night.

We hugged. We cried. It was as though the whole thing had taken place at our campus. And it did. It happened at our university campus and every university campus across Canada where women studied to make themselves, their lives, and their future, better.

When the vigil was over, I remember feeling dead inside. Helpless. Angry. Still in shock. I am still in shock while I write this.

Twenty-five years is a long time to try to remember something. I remember the important details, the way I felt that day, the way we all felt. It’s hard to convey in this day and age.

I made breakfast for my son this morning. It’s overcast today. No snow on the ground. A pleasant day to be outside. I gave him a big hug when he came downstairs.

“What’s that for?” he said with a giggle.

“It’s because I love you. I’m hugging you because I can, and for all of those who can’t.”

I could have posted and retweeted links, but not this time. This was personal when it happened. We knew we would be lucky to graduate. We could continue our careers, our lives. We would open our mouths. We were not going to let this happen in our city, our province, our country, ever again.

RIP les femmes. Nous nous souvenons toujours. 

One Last Time

November was a busy month for me. I completed a NaNoWriMo novel (yay), got up the Christmas Tree, had a night cough from hell, visited my author friends at Bookapalooza, completed a 2-day St. John’s Ambulance First Aid Course among all the usual stuff that moms who celebrate Christmas in December get up to in November. Never mind that there was an event that was supposed to happen on November 17^th that whenever I thought about it made me tingle starting at my tiptoes and going to the top of my head.

When we were approaching the end of the month, my friend Erin sent me a message which put me into a state of panic: “Cineplex fucked it up – tickets are on sale RIGHT NOW!!”

I have been trying to recall exactly when I met Erin. I know it was at a Lord of the Rings thing, because, well, that’s how we met. But whether it was at the Two Towers exhibit in June 2002 in Toronto or the Two Towers Oscar Party in Los Angeles in March 2003 or The Gathering of the Fellowship in December 2003, I know it was definitely before the final Return of the King Oscar Party in March 2004.  

It doesn’t matter exactly what day it was; what matters is the circumstances. We both grew up loving these books, we are both huge fans of film. Even though we live in the same city, there was probably no way we would have really met each other had it not been for the power of the Online Community.

I’m writing today because an online friend of mine whom I met through a music fandom community, the ubiquitous Dexter, wanted to know why I tweeted the following when Erin and I purchased our tickets for The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies:

I don't know if I will ever be ready for this day. #OneLastTime #elation #despair http://t.co/lAJlYRklag
— Naomi Mesbur (@woobiesmum) November 26, 2014

She couldn’t understand why I would be upset. After all, movies never die. Books never die. I would still have those and the friends I met. So why is this so devastating to me?

I’m sure my fellow LOTR people understand, but for each of us, it is also a personal journey, along with it being the journey of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.

My journey with the fandom began when I was 7 and first read the Hobbit. When I was 10 I read Lord of the Rings. Books I would and have continued to re-read over my whole life.

But the journey of online fandom for me began in 1999. I was newly married, and I had just taken a job at a company where they had actual internet. Not just a one-workstation dial-up job. And some dude named Peter Jackson was directing a film, no, three films, of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And he would post pictures from set of the set, of set drawings, of staging…I had newly moved over to the film production industry from music publishing, and so it was doubly fascinating to me to see what someone in New Zealand of all places was doing to my favourite books of all time.

I watched that set being built. I had no idea there were other people talking about this on a message board. I just knew that other people were seeing what I saw and that made it cool.

Before the film opened in December 2001, there was an exhibit of costumes, stills, props, and such that were used in the Fellowship of the Ring held at Casa Loma in Toronto. At the time, I lived around the corner from Casa Loma. I think I may have even walked there. And all the things I had seen on the internet were there in person. I could almost touch them. I could see them, smell them. On the walls of Casa Loma hung head shots of the actors in full costume.

I remember being utterly disappointed in the head shot for Aragorn. He looked nothing like how I had imagined Aragorn to be. And who was this dude who had taken over from Stuart Townshend?

I still went to see it opening day, and was completely blown away. The set stills had nothing on the finished rendering. We were IN Hobbiton! We were IN the Mines of Moria! And Viggo Mortensen was the perfect Aragorn. What the hell was I thinking?

Thus the film, like the Ring, possessed my life.  

In March 2002, a lady I had only talked to via the newly-crafted message boards at theonering.net who lived in Brampton said she wanted to go to Canton, New York, to get tickets for a Viggo Mortensen exhibit and asked if anyone would like to go with her. Without hesitation, I said yes.

And I met Jana for the first time when she was pulling up outside of my house.

You have to remember – we didn’t do these kinds of things back then. Meet up with someone you just met on a message board, not even live chat, to drive 5 hours before the break of dawn to get tickets and come back the same afternoon? AND cross the border? After 9/11? That’s just crazy.

But between December 2001 – September 2005, I went on journeys across North America for events related to this film, and Viggo Mortensen.

This is a picture of just a smattering of souvenirs from my travels, including two major events in Toronto, and wo fan Oscar Parties in Los Angeles. The man himself, Peter Jackson, stopped off at theonering.net's Oscar Party for Return of the King first, on his way to the New Line Party, to thank the fans first and foremost. That was in March 2004.

A year later, I was widowed.

Some of the kindest, strongest support I received during that time was from my Lord of the Rings family of friends. People whom I barely met at a convention. People who I had never met in person because they lived in Europe and couldn’t attend events here just like I had been unable to attend events there.

One of the first major events that I went to after the death of my husband was a performance of the Lord of the Rings symphony piece by the Kitchener Waterloo orchestra.

Even after the film, I went to the musical (don’t ask).

But the best part was the family of friends. When I did finally join Facebook, it was because I was home on maternity leave and I had heard about this thing where you could keep in touch with people a lot easier than via email.

When I got to Facebook, I found that most of my LOTR family of friends were there waiting for me. It made the whole experience less intimidating. Same with Twitter.

But we were united because of the films, and we knew that something was in the works. We all got super excited when we heard the Hobbit was being made into one or two films, and then Peter Jackson took over because his director, Guillermo del Toro, had too many commitments. And that old feeling came back again with the release of An Unexpected Journey.

So why do I feel the way I do about the Battle of Five Armies? Wouldn’t it be the same as Return of the King?

It’s not.

When ROTK was released, I was still married, I was looking forward to moving on to lots of positive things with extra love and support from the wonderful people I had met through these films and its community.

Since then, I’ve lost my husband. I had a child with a new guy, and that relationship has ended. I have my wonderful family of friends, all of us ten years older, wiser, greyer, a little more Radagastly. 

But there won’t be a third set of films to bring us back together again. And even on the off off chance that Peter Jackson does get the rights to the Silmarillion, it will be another decade before we see it, and by then, many of us will have already left for the Grey Havens.

This last installment is closing a chapter on my life. Yes I will still have my incredible and loyal friends from all of this, and I am blessed and grateful for their friendships every day.

But it’s all over. No more tingly toes. No more screaming at the computer to get its shit together when you try to buy AVX tickets, or even regular tickets at the box office while being on Facebook/Twitter/Text/IM with your fellow LOTR fans trying to make sure everyone got in.

We all just want to individually hug Peter Jackson for what he brought to our lives, to our community. It is incredible when a director is honest enough to remember to thank the fans before anyone else. He was like our big brother who got to achieve his dream and brought us all with him.

Namárië

Remembrance Day - but what if you have no need to remember?

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada. It’s Remembrance Day in the UK. These are completely different than Veteran’s Day in the US. We all know this, don’t we?

I had to think about this, moreso than anything, because of a tweet I got from a friend who lives in Sweden. It was almost as if she sent me a random writing prompt that said: 

Write a letter to describe Remembrance Day to someone who lives in a first world country which has never been touched by modern warfare.

We were taught that a World War meant the world was involved. The world being the UK and the British Commonwealth, the countries now known as the European Union, and eventually, the United States. 

So, how you would tell someone who has never been touched by war about Remembrance Day and why we celebrate it? How would you talk about the erection of cenotaphs, the celebration of the glorious dead, and why all those poppies?

There’s the dry, historical and factual method of explaining names, events and dates to distinguish WWI from WWII and the other wars – Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan – and distinguishing Canada’s role in all of these conflicts.

There’s the emotional, heartfelt method where mothers lose their sons, wives lose their husbands, and the return home for the soldiers after seeing atrocities that no person should ever have to witness. Those things that every time we think they’ve disappeared, they come back with a vengeance.

There’s the journalist method, which simply talks about what happened across the country and around the world today, and how this day brings together all Canadians across the country and around the world with the purchase of one small plastic red flower, and that little fake poppy brings together nations to remember our glorious dead (and explain the irony of that statement) and our hope that it never happens again.

But although we are joined hand-in-hand with several countries around the world who are remembering their veterans, alive or otherwise, the added step for me was explaining why Canada’s Remembrance Day celebrations differ from those of other countries. Sure, I could go into the usual national pride: a Canadian doctor wrote In Flanders Fields, the poem used around the world on this day to remember those who fell in combat. I could talk about how Canada helped in the battle of Vimy Ridge, and our unique roles in WWII, as a peacekeeping force around the world, our role in Afghanistan…

But I think this says it best this year:

We have this giant memorial in the middle of Ottawa near the Parliament buildings. It is called the National War Memorial, and it is dedicated to the memory of all of the soldiers whom we lost in all of the conflicts that Canada was involved in. Next to it lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, who represents the thousands of soldiers who died in conflicts whose bodies remain unidentified. As part of specialized sentry duty, certain soldiers in each division of our armed forces are specially selected to stand guard at our National War Memorial, as a symbol and in tribute to all of the Canadian soldiers we lost. This has been the way of the monument since it was erected, and it continues to this day. Every year, they have the Canadian National Remembrance Day ceremony at this memorial, the largest ceremony in the country.

Three weeks ago, one of the sentries, doing his duty, holding a symbolic rifle, with no artillery out of respect for the monument , was gunned down in cold blood by someone believed to be affiliated with a radicalized group. Everything that the Memorial stood for was shattered in one split second.

But instead of descending into madness and panic, Canada came together as a nation. We had to show the world who we are – today's ceremonies, not only at the National War Memorial, but at other cenotaphs and memorials around the nation, were up to twice the size they usually are.  Because that is our memorial. 

Remembrance Day is a celebration of gratitude – not a glorification of war or pomp and ceremony. Regardless of how you feel about the conflicts, the soldiers who died, were maimed or otherwise hurt, physically and emotionally, willingly put their lives to stand in front of the attacks for the sake of Canada and all Canadians. Doesn’t matter if you think war and its politics are right or wrong. Someone was your human shield whether you wanted it or not.

That is why we remember.

Bonnie's Last Cheesecake

 It’s strange cooking for someone who used to eat your food.

It’s not that I haven’t been through death before. I have. Several times. I think I’ve even gone to a funeral for someone who’s eaten something I brought in for a pot luck. I know that my late husband ate my cooking. I’ve been cooking for a while. But I don’t think of myself of having come into my own as far as cooking, baking, and/or preserving goes until after he passed away, and even moreso after the birth of my son, the one who gave me a valid reason to learn to do these things.

This time it's different. My BFF lost her stepmother, Bonnie, this week. Bonnie was a great lady. She was full of life. I know Bonnie used to like cheesecake, and she’s had several of my desserts. So that’s what makes this weird.

The first thing we do as a world culture is make sure the family of the deceased eats. In certain cultures, you don’t even let the grieving family go near the kitchen – you bring food, you send food, you order catering – but they are the survivors, and they have to survive. We need food and water and oxygen to survive.

There’s been a lot of grieving this week in my life, but in the life of my country as well. It’s been hard being a Canadian this week. And when I say that I don’t mean being Canadian – it’s been easier to be Canadian this week than it was during the Winter Olympics earlier this year. It’s just been hard here. We as a collective have been through the gamut. We had our collective hearts broken and torn out by senseless acts of violence. We’ve had our hope restored through people whom we had come to regard as figureheads. And we have come together as a nation – for the most part – to help each other survive this mess and keep going forward.

And in the middle of all of this, before it even began, my BFF lost someone she loved and cared for. In the middle of her family’s private grief, there was this very public loss and grief.

And that’s the day she reached out to ask for help.

So I decided to make something I haven’t made in a while. A cheesecake. I’m not sure why that’s the first thing I thought of, since I have apples and it’s pie season. It’s a helluvalot easier to bake a pie than to make a cheesecake. But I think it was because I hadn’t made one for a while. And it just seemed like the right time to make one.

So Rest In Peace, Bonnie Smith. Thank you for being you, and for being kind to me at a time when I felt like a stranger in my own land. I really wish you were here to have a piece of this apple cinnamon cheesecake I’m making for you. You take care, and rest well until we meet again. Hopefully you will be there to guide me through another place where I’m going to feel like a stranger in a strange land.

NaNoWriMo 2014 - waiting with antici...

So NaNoWriMo is next month. In fact, it starts 2 weeks today.

I have this really cool idea for it. But I feel like I’m not allowed to write about it. This seems ludicrous because, well, last year I finished a manuscript I had set aside. But this year I feel like I would be cheating if I started 14 days out.

So I don’t know what to do. I should just go ahead and start and then continue the project over the course of the 30 days.

But then again, I kinda like the anticipation of waiting to write something special. I like the feeling of anticipation overall. I just worry that once the starting pistol goes off I won’t be able to write a word. Or a coherent sentence.

And even though I’ve been writing every day, by hand, in a book, because I haven’t sat down at a computer, I feel like I haven’t written in ages. It was an effort to type this blog, and it’s going to be very short. I just wanted to hear the sound of the clacking keys again. It comforts me. Makes me feel like I might even know what I’m doing.

But I am still stuck with my idea. I have never plotted a story before. I’ve thought about where I want things to go and I’ve gone to sleep dreaming of ideas and where I want my stories to end up. But I’ve never not written it down before on purpose. I’ve procrastinated with ideas because I like to see where the dreams of the stories end up. But as for not sitting down to start because of a deadline? This would be the first time this has happened.

In NaNoWriMo 2012, I had an idea that I had been thinking about for weeks and had tried to imagine in my mind for weeks before I started. That novel is still sitting on my hard drive and I wasn’t happy with it.

I don’t want to be disappointed with this idea. But I’m not spending weeks dwelling this time. Just three weeks.

I might love anticipation but I really don’t have the patience for it.

Broken Hearts and Bravery

My heart broke today. 

Or, it might be more apt to say I allowed my heart to break today.

By definition, heartbreak is when something you care for, love, and treasure ends up disappointing you. Is a façade. An untruth. Even if it’s one you created in your mind – people have their hearts broken on a weekly basis playing the lottery.

Heartbreak happens when something you try to control is beyond your control yet you still try to drive the destiny vehicle. Even if you try to try to avoid it (think of trying not to tell your kids that there is no Santa), circumstances that are fated to occur will happen. When you hold onto these things tightly, or you’re not ready for them to happen, the heart breaks. Shatters. Like an iPhone dropped on concrete.

Once you start to discuss your broken heart, people try to console you, relate to you with platitudes, empty words, niceties. “It’s going to be okay.” “You’ll find someone else.” “Be strong.” “Be Brave.”

Bravery. There’s an interesting concept. Many things that people believe take courage are the same things that lead us to heartbreak. Circumstances beyond our control.

I went away last weekend to New York City on my own. People continually said to me both before and after my trip, “Oh my, that was brave.”

Why?

“I couldn’t do that on my own.”

Why not?

“Oh, big city, crime, need people…”

Living life requires no courage. It requires oxygen, water, sustenance. We do what we have to do to survive. That isn’t courageous. That’s what we have been doing since we took our first breath outside of the womb.

Helping others so that they can continue to exist – that’s courageous. Whether you’re a first-line EMS responder, a soldier sent to battle to protect the innocent, someone who runs into a burning house to rescue a pet, or someone who consoles a crying child who is lost, those are courageous acts. Putting your needs before the needs of others. Taking the fork in your predestined route because you want to help a fellow human being requires a certain type of bravery that not everyone possesses.

Doing things for yourself is far from courageous. It’s just necessary. It’s not always easy. Sometimes it breaks your heart when you have to do something for yourself at the expense of others, like go on vacation to New York City alone because the thought of being around people you know makes you want to jump out of your skin and leave it in a pile at the bottom of the stairs for others to find. But you know if you don’t do it, your ability to be courageous and put the needs of others before those of your own becomes compromised.

And sometimes your heart breaks when you have to be courageous. Like giving someone the right to their happiness at the expense of yours, instead of holding onto something that is no longer there that could or will end up destroying the both of you. I don’t just mean romantic relationships. Any relationship  – friendships, parent/child, familial – can become destructive to the people involved if they try to control the wills of others. Your child will leave you, even if it’s only metaphorically. Your friends will grow apart and find new friends, even if they still talk to you every day. Romantic partners will have their heads turned by others they may find attractive. But it’s not up to you to make any of those people return or stay with you. The decision lies with them and them only. These things do not require your courage to survive nor need your heart to break over their occurrences. They will simply happen. You just need to let them.

We do what we have to do to live. But before you call people who contemplate and/or commit suicide cowards, think about this. Sometimes people don’t call for help because they believe they’re doing what’s best to save their loved ones from going through their suffering. When you are ill, sometimes you have the strength to fight the illness. Sometimes, you have fought long enough for others that you have left no strength for yourself. Sometimes people just need the courage of others for the strength to be brave.

My cousin who is queen of the calligraphic inspirational sayings on her Facebook page posted something today that I would have normally ignored, but my fingers were bleeding from the shards of my heart I’d spent all day picking up off the floor.

“Love is always right. Love is always meant. We are here to Love. So the more we Love, the more we remember our reason for being.”

It takes courage to give your love to someone, because it’s something that can help them to live, whether or not that love is returned. (If you are a parent of teenagers or you have a celebrity boyfriend/girlfriend, you know exactly what I mean.) If we simply live, we can avoid heartbreak through wisdom and understanding, while retaining our courage for love.