THE BUM BEAT

THE BUM BEAT

I wrote this piece a number of years ago - can't remember exactly when, but it had to be before 2001, maybe earlier, because that's when I submitted it to "Dropped Threads", the anthology that Marjorie Anderson and Carol Shields were putting together - stories by women about things that we hadn't been told.

I had the following response in December, 2001:

"Your proposed topic, "Silence Around Sex", caught our interest because of its unique angle and your writing style. We invite you to send us a full piece of about 2000 words on this topic."

I sent it, and received later, date unknown, this critique from Anderson and Shields:

"An energetic, candid account that has an appealing freshness and honesty to it."

I didn't make the final cut for publication, and somehow forgot about the invitation to have it posted on the website for reader perusal, so the work has simply languished in my files ever since. But now!! Here it is for the world to discover and enjoy, much like myself in discovering "the bum beat".

**************

My first orgasm arrived like a secret lover stealing into my bed in the night. Ten years old,

second daughter in a Catholic family of then six, later eight children, I lived in a naive and uncomplaining isolation. The business of life: ("Set the table; go outside to play; go to the store for me") formed the conversation in our home, not any personal small talk. Thoughts, wishes, dreams, ideas, fears, or even mundane recountings of the day's events were never communicated. There was no tendency to share, not even, it seemed, the memory of any interest. My private and closed world, my self and soul, were enclosed by regulations established in a pre-verbal order. I never questioned. I never rebelled. It goes without saying that sex was not discussed.

And so my sexual awakening was truly that. I awoke one morning with the sweet memory of a thitherto unknown sensation. And, in my unenlightened and inexperienced solitude, having no awareness of the existence of sexual organs, I reasoned that this enjoyable throbbing, which I found I could repeat endlessly by manipulating the general area of the toilet functions, must be connected with the bum. It's what I knew, in any case, so I called this satisfying pulse "the bum beat".

The bad thing about leaving children alone in their minds is that they grow up not knowing how to relate to others, living in subordination to ancient fears or flights of fancy, or to their own underdeveloped solutions to problems of survival which, out necessity, they created. The good thing is the autonomy which they then take for granted. Everything is organized according to this very comprehensive, albeit primitive perspective. No problems.

I set the bum beat to work like a new and delightful wind-up toy, keeping it to myself, as I had been taught to do with all feelings, but otherwise exploring, replaying anywhere, everywhere, and as often as I could. If left alone, I would prostrate myself if possible, but no matter what position my hands would fly to my crotch. In crowds I discovered that I could "do it" by simply crossing my legs and squeezing. I did this once on the sofa on a Sunday night when the whole family was lined up in a row on either side of me watching Ed Sullivan. Thanks, Ed. Or maybe thanks to whichever family supplied the sex genes. A Ward aunt, (my mother's maiden name) was seated immediately next to me, so perhaps it's true: 'The Ward lurks in strange ways', as they so often say.

I got in four good years of constructive sexual learning, or at least practice, before falling victim to the Catholic Church's inimitable brand of perversion - that unholy lie, created by self-hate, fear, repression, and clod-like depredation; to wit: the lie that sexual play is a sin. The specialized evil - misogyny - doesn't enter the scene here. Masturbation is a sin for males and females alike. This point was illustrated to me when, about eight or nine years after graduation, I ran into a (male) friend I'd known in university. Sitting in my kitchen, he atop a high stool, we had started reminiscing about our early Catholic backgrounds and the humiliation in general of the teen years. I have a perpetual vision of Tom, rocking himself and the stool, wiping tears from his eyes, choking and sputtering and teetering dangerously, as he tried to overcome his laughing hysteria and tell me the priests' approach to high school boys' confessions around the sin of "impure touching". I had recently been in Gestalt therapy sessions where entering into the "here and now" of the past was encouraged, nay, insisted on, to promote healing. Tom must have been healed, as he pitched on the perilous perch (which I like to think symbolized the pastoral patriarchy), giggling with shame and self-consciousness and holding himself in a straight-jacket embrace, until finally he regurgitated the confessor's one defining interrogation: "Was there flow?"

Flow indeed. Those many years later, in the 70's, "go with the flow" was the new religion. But back in high school I discovered, having overheard some older girls talking about it, and later looking up the word in the dictionary for teenagers which I found in the home where I occasionally babysat, that I was in fact masturbating. I read the definition and shook my head sadly. Mortal sin. End of fun. I went cold turkey for five years.

As it turned out, it was a most efficacious method for improving the frequency and intensity of my orgasms when I started to date a man in university. I didn't touch myself impurely, but if he kissed me for a while, you can imagine the release that five years of repression would generate. Technically, I was innocent; (Catholic dogma: no intent). Necking was probably putting myself "in the occasion of sin", but again, vagueness in communication ruled, and moreover, in university that level of sexual activity was the unspoken bottom line, so to speak, a minimum requirement, but besides, I wanted to. It didn't take long for me to orgasm, at which point I would demurely, and in my most Catholic voice say, "I better go in now". He, being Catholic too, would let me go. I always slept well.

It was many years later before I learned about the "double standard". Unwittingly, I had turned the tables and taken my pleasure first, quite selfishly and happily. I sleep even better now enjoying that. But at university in that first year of being back "on the beat', the April examinations came upon us and I went up north to study, at a house whose owner was away. This first separation from my partner, and the resulting sexual deprivation, combined with the tension of academic pressure, hit me head-on one night as I bathed in the old clawfoot tub. It was the first confrontation between sin and my will, and I was forced to realize my own consciousness and admit the conflict between being passive and getting some relief. So I decided, in the quiet Muskoka evening, that not only did I want sex more than the Church, but that I was probably in deep shit anyway, for all those good sleeps. After five long years of never having hand to hearth, I baptized myself in the waters of sin, with pleasure.

That summer, I split up with my guy and was having a flirtation with a co-worker. At some point, I decided I was going to have intercourse just to find out how to actually do it. As I had continued in my own world order and lack of information, I had no idea either that men sometimes "used" women; that there existed a kind of battleground in an area where I thought we should just have fun. I hadn't known of the silly rules that men make up nor that this competition for power resulted in a premium on women's virginity. When the summer guy asked me if I was a virgin, I didn't know why he asked, but I told him "yes" because I was. But after our tryst, he kept harping on it, confusing and irritating me. I didn't get it and didn't care, but even though I was annoyed, the confidence I had from my own sexual autonomy made his blather irrelevant, so I just didn't listen. it was only when I went back with the university guy and eventually slept with him that Christmas, that I discovered my virginity was still intact. Up until that very unmistakable moment of penetration (which occurred coincidentally with the cat's epileptic fit), my hymen had not been affected by my previous lover's smallish member. So my attempt to become a roué of sexual dalliance was for nought. I remained unsophisticated, and, for the male sensibility, pure. The virgin buster had had no reach.

My education continued and I graduated to the wealth of misinformation that men like to disseminate. The university guy informed me after were making love regularly, and my physical satisfaction was out in the open, as it were, that women didn't have orgasms. He'd read that. The book, of course, written by a man. This was the sixties, before the revolution, or public discussions, or sitcoms where everybody knows everything about everyone's sexual habits, but still. In the darkness of this earlier time I handled it by deferring to my only authority - my silent and private autonomy of old. I assured him that in fact, women do orgasm, because I did, and we left it at that.

There were other happy surprises which have confirmed the blessings inherent in just relaxing and letting yourself feel good (or making yourself feel good if nothing "comes" on its own - like my original secret lover did). I remember the shock when after some years of experience I pleasured myself on the floor and, sitting up, saw in a floor mirror that my genitals were actually dripping a profuse viscous liquid. I had always thought all that goo came from the guys. That's where the emphasis of sex information always was and nobody told me otherwise, so I had the additional pleasure and delight of discovering the physical proof of my own erotic productivity and role. 

Another time, I was just lying nude, my stomach to my man's (also nude) back, and just squirmed myself to orgasm: no plan, no expectation, no manipulation, no "spot", or method. This serendipity also occurred relatively late in my sexual career, after imagining that I'd done it all - proof to me not only that I hadn't, but that "being" does indeed conquer "doing" sometimes.

I always come back to the bum beat, like an old and dear friend. It has prevailed, rolling over men's ignorance and the other numerous trials of life that come my way. It has been the succour to hurts and frustrations, fatigue and the limitations that life encounters. Once when I worked in a government office, the environmental tension was so great it forced me into the washroom during my break, just so I could get myself back to normal. Now, so many years and lovers later, I find comfort, freedom, creativity, and, dare I say, spiritual connectedness in this expression of life's most constant and commanding force. The orgasm is the essence of our beings, the wave we rode in on; it was our first sense of ourselves, and we were alone. Personally, I like to return to that old self. I need my place in the cosmos, my isolation, to be my choice and I need it to feel good.

The bum beat, in its primal position, perseveres and is true, like the heartbeat, in dignity and confidence.

The bum beat rules.

(30)

WHERE TO NOW, JAMES?

Been out of hospital for about ten days now; dragging myself around the house with very low energy.  Oh yah, got cancer, then the drugs attacked my leg, eye, and heart muscles leading to myocarditis - heart inflammation.  So I am pretty useless these days. Music and exercises and slow re-learning how to walk in the park notwithstanding - and now that I think of it, very often it is not with standing, but with a wonky falling-over posture.
Please tell me it will get better...
In the meantime, I thought about the past, present, and future.  At least I hope for a future.

And I made a little video, but it's too big for the blog, so i've put it on youtube:
ZOE CHILCO  I wanna dance and bike Past Present Future June 2019

https://youtu.be/BbsKz0huNMY

MEANWHILE....I did do a little gig last week, exhausting myself, but loving singing once again.

MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE

all the womens for the finale

Cathy Salvatori, drums

Dawn Duvall, vocalist & flautist

Julian Yarrow, piano

Paul McKeracher, guitar

Rachel Melas, bass

Tabby Johnson, vocalist; with Zoe

Lucy Lehman, vocalist

Carolynn Coburn, MC

Cue Kirk, poet

Kim Doolittle, vocalist

Zoe, finale

John Sheard, piano

Monday, May 6, 2019
It's a little hard today to make that kind of joy; it's been raining all day today and yesterday, and is going to continue. I'm cold, since my house was empty and unheated last night while I stayed elsewhere to be closer to the hospital appointment at 9am the next day. I sat around in the hospital giving blood and waiting to see doctors, losing the whole morning, - a depressing way to spend even a good day, let alone one which already was high on the depression scale.

I find myself in a BAD MOOD.

Time for that delicious homemade soup that a friend brought over for me, along with her corn bread too. Such good and generous people in my life.

And I'm so lucky to have had in my life the wonderful experience of having an idea for a show, then working on it for over a year, then see it come to fruition last Sunday evening, May 5, with the most fantastic group of musicians, vocalists, and one entrancing poet - all performing songs and their messages that I have written over the years. They did it with great verve and personality and talent that made the whole place (a full house at Hugh's Room) go crazy with approval, love, and yes, joy.

The words of whatever quote I'm quoting from a new or old testament, or famous religious hymn - certainly came to life. The happiness was palpable, and I consider myself privileged to have worked with these artists. I got a very good group. And a very good result. And a very impressive amount of funds raised for the beneficiary of the concert: Sistering, a group that helps women in Toronto.

Altogether, a successful venture.

So much so that the next morning, when I was sitting in the very depressing blood clinic at Princess Margaret, with a crowd of shuffling and coughing, masked strangers, I was able to go back a few hours in my head, and recall the night before, so that I could blot out my surroundings, and smile gratefully at the memory of the night before.

Today, the hospital having drawn my blood once more, I too draw again, but on that night's memory.

Make a joyful noise, indeed. They all did, performers and audience, and my heart, which is still reeling from the experience, it's noisily joyful. As the song says: "They Can't Take That Away From Me". It will triumph over many a depressing scenario, just because it happened, and I was there. Another week later, it's still working its magic.

A RASH MOVE

I lie and wait, rain dripping from the window ledge of my seventeenth floor penthouse room, saline solution drip-dripping into my body. Overnight the clouds have set in; the shadows of the city's tall buildings soft in the grey vista surrounding the hospital this morning, the distant condos and office towers invisible in the mist.

I lie and wait; I ponder my fate; I'm late, I'm late.

I want to go home.

They are friendly, efficient, and very thorough here at Princess Margaret Hospital. They admitted me yesterday for the night; they grilled me about all my functions and reactions; they did another small biopsy; they had me pose for nude photos of my whole body, and then studied my rash endlessly to eliminate the one very evil and very dangerous type that could herald death.

Later that evening, my son came over to visit just before sunset, and we had a real photo-shoot in this, my private dorm in the sky, silhouetted against the city backdrop, and with specular highlights to boot. One shot of me, - hand on heart - praying perhaps, for a good outcome to this hurdle.

My rash is probably benign, - as much as an arrabbiata (anger is more forceful when it's Italian) and flaming mass of red spots can be benign - and I'm hoping, now that it's morning, and everyone has seen me and decided there's no imminent danger, that they will give me a cortisone cream and discharge me. Perhaps this erupting skin is a late reaction to the chemo, or just myself all awash in nerves, anticipating my upcoming show on Sunday.

Or it could be me dreading the next round of chemo, and subconsciously creating a delay: "We'll head 'em off at the pass, Red; you cover me while I get away." Didn't work, though. Chemical infusion Tuesday, as scheduled. No rash changes. It's enough to curl your hair, if I have any left in the next few weeks.

MY OWN EVENING NEWS

So you know how you turn on the six o'clock news once in a while, then turn it right off after 'headline' stories? - the latest murders, or idiot politicians, or world disasters? Personally, I'd rather focus elsewhere - walk, or sing, or read a good book.

But having been hit by my own evening news - i.e. cancer whacking, punching, and kicking me like a mean school bully - it's harder to turn off. Some mornings, the dread is there as soon as I awaken - a weight that sits on your head and heart, saying your life will never be the same again; in fact, may soon be over. I weep for the loss, and then move on.

It takes a very concerted 'focus elsewhere' to make my mind walk, sing or write a good book, and change the structure of my brain. Fortunately, I sing out loud in the real, outside world, which is a healing experience, but I also have had forty years of being a massage therapist, so on the mornings that the dread doesn't totally debilitate me, I know how to mentally massage myself; to go into that part of my brain and brain waves that are associated with healing, and to use that energy to focus on a specific body part.

I do this in the hope that I will shrink the wayward and out-of-control cells that somehow are currently active in me. Does it work? Don't know, but it makes me feel better, helps me to think that I still have some control, and just generally reminds me of what is important in the life: i.e. love, an intention to help, an openness to wisdom and knowledge that is available subconsciously, and an awareness that while I don't know a lot, I can be a conduit for good if I simply allow it.

So in this evening of my life (I'm not old enough for the late-night-before-the-final-big-sleep-bedtime news yet). I say, "Begone, cancer - get thee out of me!". And I've taken to my own personal "Go Shrink Me" campaign, which is to ask everyone I know not to waste energy feeling bad for me, but to spend a few seconds daily thinking of my bad baby belly and shrinking-to-elimination that demon child, which strangely, I might have foreseen in a poem, "Bad Babies" I wrote back in 1988:

BAD BABIES

So yesterday morning I woke up,

Curled on my side, as I often am,

And my eyes, when I opened them,

Beheld a strange sight.

There, between my thighs,

Was the beatific and sleeping face of a babe.

"My God!" I said, "I have given birth in the night".

I wondered if it was alright, with only its head out,

And quickly gathered it up.

I thought about the cord, and how you cut it -

I didn't really know, but I remembered all the

Natural births I'd wanted and thought: "Oh yes,

I'll just lay her on my chest. Everything is fine."

And it was.

Except for some things I noticed later,

When I held her in my arms:

She was sucking her own thumb, and continuing in her blissful sleep.

"What's wrong?" I wondered, "Doesn't she even know enough

To want her mother's breast?"

She looked a little too self-sufficient.

I worried that she was not normally needy.

And then, there were her legs: lumpy and toady -

Covered with spots and warts;

And the black hair, that was so black, and yet,

Red too.

Long and straight and fringing the underside of her chin.

A voice murmured: "A demon child."

"Oh really," I thought, "she's so cute."

And still, I had to admit, devil babies probably were cute -

They had to start somewhere.

What to do?

The others - (I'd had three other babies,

All normal, all born that night), -

Would be enough; I could toss this one -

Even the Christians would approve of that.

The problem was: I liked her.

She was cute, hair and warts notwithstanding.

And with the loving upbringing I intended,

Would prove the silly superstitions wrong.

She couldn't really be a demon, could she?

************************

When I looked up "Bad Babies" I found this, written twenty years later, in 2008, on the day my momma died;  Today is her birthday.   no title:

Huge white panther at my side

Like a baby; fearless hide

Belly-up, inviting strokes;

And a smile that invokes

All her regal, massive power -

Set aside while we have our

Intimacy - public now -

And our comfort, showing how

Her prodigious size and strength

Would keep me safe should she

Unleash it all.

                                      

************************************

Long story short: I may die sooner rather than later, but today - at least before more chemo comes, -

BESAME MUCHO

ME, AGE ONE

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN

I still say, like the song, "I'm gonna live 'til I die."

PEOPLE GET READY, THERE'S A TRAIN A-COMIN'

I wish.

One of the side-effects of chemotherapy is constipation. Not a pleasant topic, or situation.

Hey, that rhymes; I could write a song....

But no, I'll confine my creative output to this blog, and hope my body output gets moved to move too.

My sister from Calgary just phoned to check in and make sure the chemo didn't "knock the poop out of me", but I told her "Oh, would that it had!"

I will sit here in the bathroom, computer on my lap, phone by my side, foot roller running back and forth over those large intestine meridians, until I get some results.

And meanwhile, the photo below might amuse, or turn you off, but one must have a sense of humour, mustn't one?

A few years back, I was getting ready for a gig up in Minden, and I and my granddaughter, staying with me at the time, and put to work later on the door for the performance, were just goofin' around with fake poo fotos, which made us giggle a lot. Personally, I am easily amused.

Except right now, as the Queen says, we are not.

******************************************************

The chocolate choo-choo never came by, so after a valiant three hours, and a few phone calls and projects and books from the throne, I gave up. But they had put the fear of God into me at the Princess Margaret Hospital, saying that if nothing moves for two days, then the danger of a bowel obstruction looms.

Since that time had passed, I phoned the doctors there, and they told me I should go to Toronto General Emergency and make sure the obstruction was not happening.

Downtown hospital. Last day before a long weekend. A few loony guys and an endless parade of other people in varying stages of discomfort and pain, most of whom were seen ahead of me. Then  eight hours later, at 1AM, I am pronounced obstruction-free, just full of shit. Oh, and cancer.

Looks like a big jobbie for for SuperZoe.  I will be stepping up to be boss lady.

What a day this has been! What a rare mood I'm in! Why, it's almost like being in love.

The love goes to my son, who has been ferrying me around the city through these last few weeks, and now tonight into the wee hours. Thank you, figlio mio.

I JUST HAD TO SING

That's the title of one of the songs for my new, upcoming CD, and it's true. I just have to sing, every day, because that is what always frees me from the madding crowd, and it's what inspires me, and makes me feel good, better, and best.
So I will keep on singing....Here are the words to the song I referenced in my last post:

LIVING FREE

Standing in the front end of a fast boat;
Skimming waves atop the big blue sea;
All the things I see out on the shore line
They don't mean a single thing to me.

Speeding over miles in just a moment;
Only thing that's real to me is now;
Where I've been and all the years that I've spent
Blowing in the wind and past this bow.

This is how I live out on the ocean;
Where problems of the world just disappear.
Where slicing through the air is all that I know,
And I have left behind me every tear.

Standing proud and tall and looking forward;
Opening my arms to what will be;
No more chasing after what the world says;
Life is sun and wind and a blue sea.
I see it in my mind and I am free.

san pancho, 7 marzo, 2019

can't remember chords.

RIDDLE ME THIS

I've meant to write more here, but time is just not around my life any more. So many visits to the hospital and it's a lousy way to lose your life's little allotment. I started this maybe two weeks ago:

Nobody wore German health shoes back in the 60's, did they? Or ate whole wheat bread? Or rode their bike everywhere. But I did. And I still ride, still eat only good stuff, still refuse to destroy my feet or back with bad shoes. I also swim, walk, do yoga-type exercises, take time to smell the roses and appreciate life, have good friends, etc. etc. etc.

And yet, if the genes don't fit, or perhaps if they fit too well, then you are fucked. and if the shoes fit, well, you wear them.

Got the damn bad genes, I guess, and so now, here I am, riddled with cancer.

Quelle horreur. And it's not funny. However, I think about my favourite Monty Python skit and say:

"It's only a flesh wound!!!", and get into fighting stance.

**************************

Today's precis April 16, 2019 9:30AM :

I am Orange 22 - the chemo colour unit and chair number. I feel like Dead Woman Walking, on her way to the electric chair. I sit in 22 and listen to more of the endless blather. Oh, they are all professional, friendly, and very helpful, but this is a crap hand in a crap deal, and I find myself thinking "I hate you, God" - a blasphemy that could send me to my afterlife hell, but right now I don't care. I only hope that my higher, healing self, which always took over when I was doing massage therapy for the last forty years, and which let come to life a person and awareness very different from the self I had come to know in "normal" life. Just hope the higher me takes over this process while I go away and sulk.

It's so depressing. I want to cry, but that would only depress me more. I had planned many chores to get done during this brutally boring day, but now I just want to shut the door to everything. Bad attitude, I reckon, but "to thine own self be true".

I expected, - and still do expect, - more, and better, from life.

I was part of the entertainment at this hospital a few years ago - appeared here three or four times for patients and families condemned to this health sentence. I'm not singing now; this experience is the opposite of the life-affirming privilege I have enjoyed as a musician and performer. How quickly things can change.

KABOOM!

I did sing a bit this morning at home, when I found a tune I'd written about a month ago in Mexico - before the sounding of the death knell. It is called "Living Free", and when I think of it, I can return mentally to the beach where I was when I composed it, watching a boat skim over top the waves of the ocean, someone standing forward in the prow. I can feel the good air rushing past me when I become that boat person; I can see the shore line - even see myself standing there watching. I see the world, which the songwriter me says I'm happy to leave behind. Little did I know then that I just might have to do that. Ah, well, having a child was good; doing massage was good; my lovers - even the ones who couldn't really be there for me - they were good. And then the music. That was the night's "lovely tune". Beware, my foolish heart.

Maybe I'll listen to my own yet-to-be-released CD. I just have to wait for my sister to get here with my bag. If it's ready for manufacturing soon, I hope to celebrate its birth. If it's posthumous, then I hope everyone else celebrates it well.

Yesterday, after buying some drugs the hospital prescribed for me, I saw a Lucky Money envelope lying on the sidewalk. I know them from many years ago, when I was teaching and living in Kensington Market. They usually had a $2. bill in them for the Chinese New Year. Yesterday's envelope, when I picked it up, had a $20. in it. Lucky me, eh? Just full of luck - and now, poison drugs.

3:30PM Well, to be honest, and except for a period of time when I felt like one of the Parkdale rubbies - drunk and leaning over too much, and slurring everything I said (Wuuuuh th' heh's goin' on, ennyway, eh? Hey!! yur priddy cute, y'know? Oh oh, sorry, sorry, maaam. Don' min' mee, I'm juhsanoldrunk! Yaaaaaah. Hevva niyz day, eh?). Except for that interlude, I felt OK, - tired, but much better than I had thought would feel. It helped a lot to have sister Lucy for aid and for company, and the nurses were very helpful. I could almost say I didn't feel a damn thing. But I was pre-drugged. We'll see later, when they wear off, how I fare.

Showed a couple of the nurses the page for my benefit concert on May 5. Gotta keep on advertising...

The show must go on.   zoechilcoeveryvoice.blogspot.com   hughsroomlive.com (calendar May 5).

Got to my son's house where my daughter-in-law made a lovely soup and bread for dinner. Thank you, Morgan. Chris came home, and we had a little visit. 

And now to bed. It might be a long cold winter coming up.

The tired old lady with the bad bad baby belly, getting the poison drip

The tired old lady later that night

The relatively youngish girl last July speaking prematurely but accurately expressing the future events, and saying WTF?
but still wearing the t-shirt that says "Gracias a la vida", which means "Thanks to Life".

A BLESSED EVENT

Came home from Mexico Thursday evening, March 21, 2019. Friday morning called the doctor, made an appointment for 2:30pm. Doctor saw my condition, and made an appointment for an ultrasound at Women's College Hospital. By 3:30 I had it, and that test resulted in a recommendation for a CT scan, also done that day. I got home from my 2:30 appointment at about 8:30pm

The weekend meant waiting, plus an art show and good friend making me dinner, but Monday I had blood tests, which, when passed on, resulted in an appointment at the cancer hospital on Wednesday, where six years ago I sang a few times to entertain patients and family members. 

Little ironies of life.

There I learned all about the horror show that had so suddenly become my life, although in truth the strangeness in my belly, which I experienced as deadness, and disconnectedness, had been ongoing, when I figured it out, for a couple of years, It did not become so apparently wrong until the week before I returned to Toronto. At that point, i knew I had to consult the doctor.

My son accompanied me, thank God, and thank him, to the cancer centre. Everyone was very nice and very helpful and very efficient, but that night I couldn't sleep. I tried to make my head spin even faster, on purpose, to centrifuge my thoughts out of my brain, but it was pretty useless. My brain is, always has been, too fast for me, and one giant step ahead, usually with negativity.

I had gone through some old diaries, thinking to throw them out, and spare the world after my looming death. I don't know if it was their contents that had disturbed my peace of mind to the point of no sleep, but it was shocking and utterly distressing to read them, - and I read only a page here and there, out of a mountain of notebooks - to see the vile and all-consuming self-hate that I lived with for so many years. It was shocking and saddening. I lived and functioned, I guess, on a certain level, but inside, I was absolutely trapped and alone. I had no one with whom I could share my feelings - I never had, all the years I had been growing up; I never knew anything else but to suffer and keep it to myself. The pages are awful - bleak and black, and relentless in self-criticism, doubt, and guilt over everything I thought and did. I feel such sorrow for the person I was, and also such a loss for the wasted years.

Fortunately, my life did change at some point, although not in a real discernible way for a number of years. I mean, I didn't stop my endless diatribes and insane spirals for a long time, although outwardly, I did find people and activities that slowly reduced and finally eliminated my habits of being lost within my own head, with no one to talk to.

Therapy, once past the stupid and abusive therapist sleeping with me, then massage therapy, for and later, by me, then music. They made the difference. But friends gave me the most, once I learned to open up a bit, and they helped me to let myself out and let other parts of me live, besides the child trapped in the evil grasp of whatever demon I had absorbed. It's embarrassing now to see what I was.

Likewise humbling. I am not always happy now, no one is all the time, but I have had a lot of joy, and opportunities to express myself and to be creative. I sought out those things, I guess, in my blind way, screaming and repeating my misery over and over again; writing, scribbling thoughts and poems that had no hope or light, but which somehow helped me throw off, if only temporarily, the emotions that were destroying me. Recording all my dreams, looking for guidance.

  I don't know, now, how I survived, and I feel ashamed of my pathetic and desperate beginnings.

But I did survive, and feel like I must now express gratitude to all the people or chance encounters, or perhaps the changing times, maybe even some stupid sitcoms on TV, that somehow taught me. I especially am grateful for music. I was lifted out of the mire, mire maybe of my own confused making, but I had never been taught otherwise, and I don't care any more. I was lifted out, I survived, I did change somehow.

And now I'm pregnant with death, - sat, or laid down, on a conveyor belt of unknown destination. I probably have cancer; it's not been confirmed, but the fast-tracking of all my appointments has been ominous; preparatory for the worst.

The irony of it all: girl overcomes cancer of the spirit, and succumbs to the destiny of the failing body. Maybe that was the lesson of this life. Maybe it's precisely as ordained. Job done.

MOVIE TIME

This is a gig I did in Mexico last Friday, March 15, with Steve O'Connor, a wonderful guitarist.
Will attempt to upload a film...
Well, it won't upload the main one, so this is just one song.

YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE

My only sunshine. you make me happy  - when I can see you. I am in sunny Mexico where I can actually see the sun, feel the warmth, relax my shoulders from around my ears, and BREATHE!!! again. Where I can walk unimpeded by mountains of frozen slush and ice.
I'm lucky, I know, and very thankful for being here, listening once again to Mexican music played loudly, and the ever-present roosters and dogs.

There's also the ocean, pounding and roaring relentlessly, where I rejoice and stretch, and sing my song "The Rolling Ocean" (written on this beach in 2013, and on my soon-to-be-released CD). There's food and colour, and other people walking past you and saying "Hola" to everyone they meet. 
Just can't help feeling good....

So today, I remember watching the second hand on my watch go by, and counting every once in a while, 1-10. That was fun.
Or doing some little tightening exercises while sitting on the sand, or straightening my shoulders so they're not curved around me like the Toronto City Hall.
Or lying back, listening to birds, and reading Maya Angelou's book "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings". (and I know why the uncaged bird sings, when I hear the sweet real-tweet sounds). I read a line that makes me weep, quoting a woman in Angelou's story who tells the young Maya that "Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning." I weep because it's so good to hear someone else confirm, albeit after the fact, what I try to do with the lyrics of my songs. It's also what a poet is going to be doing when she recites two of my songs at the benefit I'm organizing for May 5, 2010. More about that later.

But here, in the sunshine, undoing is a more precise description of what I'm doing.

Last night I was at the beach at sunset where it was just like this video I took a few years back. Time doesn't exist, people don't change, in the everlasting glory of the ocean's playground, and in the light of my lovely friend, sunshine.

I FREEZE, THEREFORE I DANCE

Such a long, cold, icy winter, but today the sun is out.  I'm trying to post a little video of my personal antidote - dancing. This was a recording I made a while ago - my singing left off, but the great sax solo is by the illustrious JD