epiphany

i hate the word epiphany. but that is not what this post is about. i'll save that for a day i feel a bit less empowered and a little more bitter. that is not today.

i've been staring at the computer far too much...working on my thesis for my diploma, in which I am developing a childbirth education series. the epiphany came during this proces... it had a similar feeling to one i had about 8 years ago. that one was while on a two week kayak trip on lake superior. one day while having a hard day paddling i was thinking about all of the diverse things I had done so far in my life and how they all came together. and then it all clicked. i knew what i wanted to do with my life....and what stood out was the common thread throughout my experiences that I had never noticed.

8 years later things have shifted. i am not in the outdoor education field which I had studied for years. i've been pretty hard on myself about that. after leaving tbay I didn't want to talk/hear/read about outdoor education again for a while. and then five years passed. in those years i've been constantly studying...everything metaphysical, herbalism, counselling and now the perinatal field at GBI.

oh...so yes, the epiphany. i realized today as i was preparing my childbirth education series that what I was doing was experiential education....and preparing a workshop brings me back even earlier to high school...when i co-led a number of workshops....its a returning to self. i had felt like that self that lived in tbay had disappeared from the community that is me. she was hiding out.

in the same vein of thought...this week i wrote a song about the first time i fell in love. i have not been able to write about that moment without the song ending with 'and then you broke my fucking heart and i'm still mad at you". but i've come to a place of forgiveness in the last year with that relationship...and then the song came out....just that moment in its perfection....

these are both returning to the girl from tbay. i've missed her.

on a completely different topic: my teenagecrush-like infatuation with mel watson of the band fruit has flared up again. can you blame me?

songs that get me all veclempt

its been happening frequently lately. i'll be walking to work or running around the track with my headphones on and my throat gets all tight and my eyes get to the verge of pourage...sometimes even flowing out some tear action...all because of the beauty of music. often it is the content, the way they sing it....so here are the beautiful culprits of my veclemptness...

you stay here - richard shindell
corner talk - pogirl
bomb the world (armagedon version) - Micheal Franti and Spearhead
soak- melisse lafrance
upon my altar- wyrd sisters
softly to the ground- sarah metzner
i saw a bird fly away- dar williams

this weekend has been so surprisingly enriching.
I approached it with caution as I had way overbooked myself with social events each night, while my gut was that I would just want to be alone each night, with a book and a bath. But as saturday and sunday night each approached I was aware that each of the events would be more nourishing than I would have with a quiet eve at home. Sometimes that is not the case, but this time my gut was clear on that.
There were many things I adored about this weekend, but one of the things that stands out the most was that we are grown ups now! At the sleep over night in the country at C & M's the party was a ruckus extrordonaire, but truth be told, the whole party crashed at midnight, and tonight was a lovely dinner party at A & E & A's i headed home at the reasonable hour of 9:30.... good lord we are bloody responsible! these both worked with my 7 a.m. rising schedule but still allowed for two fucking beautiful social evenings. Call me a grown up, but it seems we can party and sleep! What a concept!

its a miracle. i have nothing to do!

tomorrow i have nothing to do.
do you realize what a fucking miracle that is!
for months...everyday off i've had has been filled with essays or appointments or meetings.
the odd day off i'd get drunk the night before and mess up a day off with a hangover, but not this eve....i have mild plans which include listening to the cbc all morning (which is normal for me) but what is not an everyday occurance is my friend kristin is going to be on 'sounds like canada' between 10 and 11:45. pretty damn cool. also...i will be biking to some far off beach with a friend to lounge. i cannot explain to you how much i need one of these days...to slow down.
what happened to lazy days?
how come there are so few of them?
when can i go on vacation?
truth be told. i'm pretty damn excited by all the reasons my life is so busy. i am motivated about my life and all that i'm doing. its worth it.
but oh lordy i'm not going to miss the absense of the alarm clock tomorrow!

i have remembered
in the way you recall in each cell and the blockage that was there just burst open and your whole body is fluid....starting with the eyes. then it turns to air and leaves from your pores smelling of the past. i have remembered what i lost i don't know how long ago. i slowly became disempowered and i let it go. its true no one makes you feel inferior without your consent. and i consented.
i have remembered that i am precious. i have built up a thick skin and forgotten what needed to be protected.
and the way to this preciousness.
is music.
is laughter.
and those pathways to self are mine alone.

and so we take the stage...

SWAG Fundraiser
Saturday March 5, 2005
At the SUNSET LOUNGE
(on Herald St. by Store St....just behind Value Village.)
Show starts at 8
Cover is $4 and it's a kid-friendly event!
so, i messed up my computer and haven't been able to get it fixed yet, so i can't update my website...thus...i'll have to do my updates here....

this weekend i'm playing a show...its been a couple months since my last one, and i'm excited to get back at it. so here's the info for what is in store for you:

performers include:

jenny cupcake
sweet-vocal-improv-storytelling. ms cupcake radiates positive heart energy to everyone in her path. she'll take your breath away.

vivienne
i'll be accompanied this saturday by leif nordholm of brix n' lay. how to describe myself? well, you'll get some ode-to-the-goddess-action/comedic-tunes/unexpected vocals mixed in with the storytelling-leo i am!

glenna
the piano stylings, powerful vocals and raw poetics of glenna are something undescribable. described as "...raw, emotional and utterly captivating..." she sure is. her music is an experience unto itself and i promise you will be blown away.

kristin sweetland
we are blessed to have miss sweetland back on the island this winter before she takes off again in her magical van travelling this fine country. described as "a monster of a guitarist and a goldmine of a mind" she sure is something else. she is honestly the most brilliant guitar player i have ever seen of any gender, sings beautiful tales of heartbreak, mythology, mysticism....she's simply magnificent.

be well.
love V

i am ready

i am ready to heal. i am ready to stop self-sabatoging. i am ready to love again.
i am ready to sing fully. i am ready to be proud of my body. i am ready to tell you my truths.
i have been recouperating from my life for two years. resting in my loft bed in the fetal position, cats purring by my ear. focusing on opening my heart again and not shutting it down. it is late and i am tired. i have been crying, thinking about past love, past hurt and how i can heal it in the present. i am ready for that too.
i am ready to show up in my own life.

on being a femme

after a winter of hibernation....i am emerging.
this past week has been packed full of social sweets, making new friends, intimate house parties and purposeful gatherings. it is so lovely to be in the company of people i adore, people i totally want to spend more time with and people that are just radiant!

tonight i went with some of my lovelies to see one of my fav authors, Anna Camilleri
Anna was doing a performance piece called 'Sound Siren Red' which is based on her new book
'I am a Red Dress'. It was beautiful, jarring, chilling, magical and pure beauty and depth. it was a lovely evening altogether and I was in bliss looking around at the audience....strong strong femmes, dykes, students, professors, girls, boys, bois, butches and everything in between. Especially the femmes. Anna spoke something in the question period that I have resonated with for years but speak of rarely. Being a femme is identity separate from sexual orientation. I began to explore my femme identity years ago when I began to learn more about trans issues and began to look deeper into my own gender identity. Being a femme can be a highly visible yet totally invisible place to be. It doesn't clearly identify me with the queer community, but also, being a femme like me, doesn't clearly identify me in the straight world either. I like it there.

Being a femme like me means i can wear gingham shirts and rolled up pants, tutus and army boots, knee high shit kickers and carry a zebra print bag, it means i can wear no make up and many hats. it means nothing in terms of categories and means more than i can explain to you.

I was surrounded by so much loveliness tonight. I adore the people I have in my life and those that are emerging into it. In this uber socialness I have been finding myself replenished in these settings, something that is not particularly normal. I tend to replenish myself alone. It seems these days seek a bit of both. So tommorrow night I have a date. With the best feline-femme imaginable...the great ladybug and my tranny-kat extrordonaire elliot. We will be sitting in the orange chair, by the orange curtains, reading the new jeanette winterson, crooning to the new richard shindell and purring. Ah, the good life.

International Women's Day Show

yo.
sorry i haven't been updating my website. i think i deleted or screwed up my video card on my computer so all of the images i see are all pixels using about 16 colours as opposed to 265! oops. alas, i cannot update anything right now, until i get it fixed.
but i did want to tell you (in case you are in victoria)
of a show i'm playing at, which is a fundraiser for SWAG (Status of Women Action Group) for International Women's Day. The show is
March 5th
7p.m.
@the Sunset Lounge, which just off Store Street downtown
More details to follow.....
but go write it down in your daybook okay!

ten reasons why i love fernwood

#10- The belfry. Its purdy.
#9- The two dollar taco place...the best freakin tacos. the guy makes them up right there, they are fresh and spicy and he has this restaurant just for the love/fun of it.
#8- Its a good mix of hippies, yuppies, anarchists, cyclists!, fancy theatre goers, and bikers! We have community gardens galore and even a Compost Education Centre, believe it or not.
#7- Grafitti! Even when that jerky slumlord boarded up their building...whatta we do? paint/grafitti/create art!
#6-The Thin Edge of the Wedge....my americano haven and favourite local food spot. I also love watching the gathering on Biker Nights....and seeing all the beautyful harleys.
#5-As much as it can be sketchy....i feel safe here. At night I've gotta walk tough downtown sometimes, but once I get to fern'hood I sigh with relief.
#4-Logan's...the local pub. i was there tonight and it is always a fest of reconnecting with people i haven't seen in ages. plus they have strongbow on tap.
#3- The Hootenany...sunday afternoons, especially in the summer...a mix of old drunk musicians and a super diversity of us twenty something fiesty folk. Hosted by the ever entertaining Carolyn Mark
#2- Fernwood free boxes...people offering up the things they are letting go of. especially on moving day it can be quite the free thrift shopping experience
#1-Its home. My orange curtains and feline friends tried other parts of town but it just ain't the same.

the only person you can count on is yourself

i don't even know how to describe these present days
the veil of disillusionment has been lifted
i feel raw and grounded in reality
but it is bittersweet and has some sharp edges
my heart finds familiar memories in my days living in montreal....i didn't really know anyone there at that point, living at my folks and not being involved in any community there...just working. i had one hell of a time though, wandering montreal, eating at santropol, movies at cinema du parc, tam tams, st. dennis, st. laurent....sorbet on duluth...all on my own.
i'm stubbornly independant it seems...i wasn't gonna miss out on the beauty of montreal just cause i didn't know anyone there....and mind you it is perplexing...i can sit on a city bus anywhere else in canada and make friends at the drop of a hat, but not montreal. montreal is the land of solitude for me.

these days seem far different at first glance. i am surrounded by ever-growing beautiful social network, i have a good job, a spiritual community, a funky apartment.....so different from montreal. but this week has just been filled with that feeling of...no, not lonliness. i rarely feel that. am i heading into a period of solitude? perhaps.... it feels though more like i'm heading towards a period of intense self-care. finally putting myself first. i don't think i've done that since montreal now that i have this verbal rant.... yup. its time.

on one of the saddest days of my life, the day of the funeral of my sisters partner, about 10 years ago...she and i were driving to a gathering after the funeral. classic toronto black ice was pulling cars off of the highway one by one. we barely made it into a gas station....blown away at the surrealness of the day. i remember after she got the gas she told me...
viv...the only one you can count on in this lifetime is yourself...you need to always be your own best friends...and always have the skills to survive on your own.
cause you are the only thing you've really got.
i don't know if she remembers this. i thought i'd never forget it, but i think i did for a while. she didn't mean that one would always be let down by people, but moreso that you really don't know how life is going to manifest. creating community and love but without losing my relationship with myself. that day i knew that i would need to be able to always be my own best friend.
and i did.
and i will do.

my love/hate relationship with friendster

things i hate about friendster:

1. you only get two choices for gender identity....ummm...hello, have you looked at who likes friendster? i swear outta my 35547 3rd degree friends at least half o' them don't fit easily into two categories of gender.
2. people picking me up. does my profile say i wanna date? no, it says friends! the first time it was charming, but after the third person, its getting downright weird.
3. people make profiles for their cats. (i mean, i have time on my hands, but not that much time!) 4. people make profiles for their dogs. (no lady and elliot do not have profiles, and yes you can laugh at me when i get bored enough to do so)
5. its so fucking slow it doesn't let me update anything.
6. shameless self promotion.
7. the "popular searches in my network section"....like any of my friends(ters) are looking up
"hipster quiz" or "gothic hair styles" or "getting over a breakup"....like i'm gonna believe that any of my friends are gonna look to friendster to find out how to get over a breakup!
8. it creates a whole new type of "aquaintence"...the friendster....the not quite yet friend...maybe this is a good thing...helps us computer geeks get friends!
9. it makes me look like a hypocrite for bitching about computer addicts, when look at me! addicted to checking my 'friendster' everyday!


things i love about friendster:
1. i've tracked down so many long-lost people in my life.
2. a much purdy-er alternative to my junkmail over-run hotmail account.
3. people make profiles for their cats. (i've gotta admit the first time i saw that a cat had 227 friends, all of them being cats i laughed for 15 minutes straight until my jaw/belly/bladder hurt).
4. people make profiles for their dogs. (okay there are some ridiculously cute dogs and dogowners out there)
5. all the little emails have pics of my purdy friends faces beside them.
6. shameless self promotion!
7. i get to be a total geek after hanging out with my lovelies, i get to send them little testimonials with snippets of our nights....taking action on the sigh and grins after a good gathering.
8. testimonials. we need to attest to why we adore our friends more often.
9. its a mighty easy way to develop crushes on strangers.

the madwoman on the corner

i'm on a new kick...after hiding away on this here island, i'm interested in finding out where all the people who were in my formative years have gone to. i'm slowly uncovering ex's, old crushes, the boy who sat next to me in science class, the girl that i took the bus with every day but never knew. i'm not contacting everyone but am enjoying surprise spurts of info about who is who and what now.

i was procrastonating and looking up people from my hometown on my friendster thingy and came across a couple boys that i went to high school with. they were both a little bit awkward in high school, one was tall and lanky one was the chubby boy. and it just about made me jump outta my chair to see them happy, buff and GAY! oh lordy....somehow i feel relieved. feel a little sense that everything is gonna be okay....i barely remembered these guys names...its not that i'd been worrying about them all this time, but seeing their now confident faces has just made me so relieved. its not that they were buffed and gay per say (thought i must say they both looked studly nowdays) but that they were happy.

i live right near a highschool and every day i see the parade of kids heading to school as i drink my morning coffee. awkward boys with pants a bit too short cause they are growing too bloody fast, chubster girls, the trendy girls, nouveau gangster boys. i worry about them all. cause teenagehood is fucking hard.

i wanna yell out the window to them....please don't be so fucking cool, remain humble....don't worry about being awkward, you'll grow into yourself...someday you may be happy and gay.... i swear someday you'll love yourself....

i don't become the mad woman on the corner trying to save their souls, but when i walk by the school i just try to smile extra big at the one's that remind me of myself cause usually i can see that they see the reflection too.

i wanna track down more people. i don't much care to find the well off white boys and girls cheerleaders jocks and all the people that hung out at the trophy case. i wanna find the goths, the geeks, the queers, the musicians. not that i was really any of those things during high school, but i feel more and more humbled within my own life seeing how other people are thriving, creating, surviving, making their place in the world.

drunken emailer...

i have a problem.
whenever i have a few too many, i enjoy doing a little emailing before i retire for the evening. sounds harmless, yes, but its not. alcohol induces bad spelling, misjudgements, sentimental excess, bizarre subject matters and a lack of memory of writing such emails. i usually remember that i did so, but it takes all day for me to recall who i wrote to and what i said. recievers of such emails may not know that i was drunk...perhaps just that i am weird.
i would really like someone to invent a computer breathalizer for me....needing to have a certain level of soberness to be able to turn the 'puter on. i don't know if anyone else has this problem, so i don't think its a real money maker.
i guess drunken emailing is better than drunken phone-calling.
you don't have to hear people laughing in your ear.

transgendered warriors

i've been re-reading (for no joke..the tenth time!) the book stone butch blues, by leslie feinberg.
this is one of my most treasured, cover worn, coffee stained, corner folded books. i'm about 10 pages from the end, writing this to procrastonate from having to close it again till the words drift enough from my memory to pull it out again and dive in.

stone butch blues follows the character jess through discovering the pre-stonewall bars of buffalo, discovering the femme-butch dynamic and learning from mentors. not an easy life, it chokes the reader up when jess and friends regularly get beaten by the cops that are supposed to protect them. jess pulls our heartstrings through relationships and the decision to transition to living as a man. isolation and loss accompany that decision and we read and read hoping jess will make it through with some hope left till the final pages.

i was reminded today that saturday november 20th is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Many cities worldwide are having events to commemorate those who have been killed due to anti-transgendered hatred or prejudice.

All of the transgendered friends of mine are alive and most thriving in ways that would not have been possible or even imaginable during the era of 'stone butch blues'. Surgeries are covered by health coverage, communities are growing and diversifying. I'm not saying its at its peak though...i think there is lots of growth for the trans community to come. I'm grateful to be a part of this movement. There has been so much change even through the years since I began to learn about the trans community.

There is nothing planned in victoria, but i think i'm going to make an anscestral altar of remembrance. I'm going to remember the characters in sbb....Al, Ed, Grant, Frankie, Ruth because although they may be characters in a book, the experiences from which those characters came is real.

If anyone has not seen the movie 'Boys don't Cry', i highly recommend it. Its a hard movie to watch but it is the true story of the murder of Brandon Teena, a transgendered young man from small town nebraska.

I am grateful to be an ally of the trans community. It has changed me in ways I have yet to learn. Questioning our own gender identity is something everyone can to... we all have masculine and feminine aspects. Just like we have light and dark. I'm grateful to have watched my boys go through changes. The broadening of shoulders, the lowering of the voice. And as they changed I felt myself becoming more comfortable as a femme, returning to feeling empowered as a woman. Thats what it is about...feeling comfortable within your gender identity. whatever it may be.

are you gonna show up?

work?
this is work being human. taking breaks from deep healing work turns into numbness and then smack....
right back into the deep-earth-moist-rich-soil-dirty-knees-hands-full-of-so-much-life.
too much sometimes to know where to start. where to start catalouging organisms in the soil, temperature, consistency, finding what is buried beneath it, which roots connect to which ancient trees. today i don't want to catalouge, quantify, or name. i just want to curl up in the rich soil, be a mess in it, leave cleaning up for later.
get to know the smell-taste-touch of it. cause the rest of it is work. this messyness isn't work. its being alive.
big realizations today. as you can tell!
big realizations about when i feel alive and when i shut down, when i am open or numb, when i close off and when i flood, when i am honouring or disrespecting others, and most importantly when i am passive and when i decide to 'show up' in my own life. really be present, authentic.

i've been described as aloof, an enigma. i never really understood why until today. i've come to understand from eyes outside my own skin the ways i shut down...close off... out of protection sometimes, out of fear others. i want to be present as much as i can be. i want to show up, show who i am, be interconnected, not just solitary.
i wanna 'show up' in this live, not just live through it.
and at the same time to honour that it is okay to be protect ourselves, to keep things private, to be solitary.
it is all welcome...

samhain

happy samhain
happy hallowe'en
this is the time of the year when the thin veil between the worlds is lifted, when we can honour our beloveds who have passed on and honour those who have been born during this year.

every year i go to an event in vancouver put on by the reclaiming collective. each year it gets more inspiring and creative. i am not there tonight due to circumstance and miss my dear sweets who i usually spend this day with.
in thinking about this season i am recognizing that i have not experienced the death of a loved one this past year. it is a very important part of my mourning process to go to this ritual, where all 200 + people in the room have the sacred space to honour our beloved dead. grateful to not have lost this year.

i did celebrate samhain last night with a collective of folks. i was grateful to have the space to honour our beloved dead and chose to honour specifically my great grandmother elisa. i placed an amber bracelet of hers on the altar and when i held it in my hands i missed her so much. this woman....this woman i will tell you about one day. so grateful to have met her in this lifetime and blessed to have been her grandchild. grateful after all these years to still have the space to honour her and tell her i miss her.

in my neighbourhood there are firecrackers going of like haywire. there are the formal backyard firecrackers with familys gathered, clapping after each one goes off and there are the fernwood-hoolagans setting off firecrackers in the middle of the streets. some of them are far too close and i can hear far too much inside these thin walls...i wonder if falling asleep soon is a remote possiblity with all this activity.
oh, and after all this serious samhain talk...check this pic out

triggers.....

today one word was said that drew massive amounts of fluid up to my eyes and nose
ready to pour out in streams from both orfaces.
i held in in somewhat until i got home.
i'm not gonna tell the whole story because its not really the point. but it is good to recognize when we are being triggered. it allowed me to be present in the moment with my emotions but to also look at it in the big picture. it isn't really about that one word, the person who said it, or the context it was in. it is about why that comes up for me.
where does it fit in with the map of my life.
these are all concepts we are exploring in this lay-counsellor program i'm taking. but i got to experience the real thing today. real life emotion.
issues can lay dormant for years and then burst out in a second.
pretty overwhelming.
in my state of disarray i called a good friend. she helped me put it into great perspective. she brought up that a mere month ago i had spoken to her i didn't want to replay my trapped negative cycles anymore, like what came up today...issues of self-sabatoge in success, not letting myself reach my full potential.
i hadn't realized that i had actually asked for todays emotions. i asked for this change to occur in my life. i asked to establish new patterns. today my emotions were an alarm bell telling me that i was heading towards my old patterns. today was a challenge to see if i would listen or if i would hop right on into the cycle i've been in. thank the goddess for tears! thank the gods for friends who listen. and thank the universe for its ways of supporting and challenging at the same damn time!

bit o' heaven

i spent the other day in heaven....a small room overlooking a lake. inside this space was not only a grand piano and two upright basses but guitars, a banjo, drums, cases and cases of instruments that one just had to look in to see what else could possibly be in this room! i discovered within a dusty little case high up on a shelf...a clarinet... and fell in love with that sultry sound. i played clarinet in like grade 6.

during the day we had the sweetest jams and i don't usually jam on instruments, just vocals, cause there is usually a fancier guitar player around. lifechanging jams...so amazing to rediscover an instrument. i'm realizing how much i love and need to live music. i hope i have a room like that someday. i have a little (and i mean little) corner in my place where my instruments await attention. the guitar gets far more of that...but i think when i get my very own clarinet (i'm in love) there may be a bit o' competition.

so grateful for that day and that room. life lately has been consumed by work...homework...and trying to get a little rest in there somewhere so finding myself in such a beautiful room where you are asked to be creative...open a case, pick up an instrument and just play! heaven i tell you. heaven.

vivienne.ca

i just bought a domain name.
strange but true.
vivienne.ca
a logical choice it seems.........
i'd been eyeing it for a while, getting ready to get my ass in gear and get serious about my dreams and goals.....my intent in having a website is to promote myself as a perinatal assistant and doula, to promote my music, and to get my but in gear and make my herbal body products.
that is the plan.......................
now i have to learn how to make a webpage though.
oh lordisa.
html is already making me dizzy.