Merry Winter Solstice! Here Comes the Sun…

Don’t wait for Sunday; today/tomorrow is the day to celebrate!

While strip malls are swarming with stressed shoppers scrambling to get to the bottom of their lists in time for the big gift switch, the truly monumental moment is happening tonight (or tomorrow, depending where you are). It’s winter solstice – go hug an evergreen!

Sun Tree Winter Green

This midwinter festival goes back way more than 2012 years. It goes back into the cold dark pagan past. It goes back to the beginning of human consciousness, when the first naked apes looked up at the winter night sky waiting for a speedier return of the increasingly overdue sun.

With days getting colder and nights getting longer, these people – with no Weather Network, no electricity, no streetlamps (nor streets) – huddled together under precious animal skins and waited for the return of light and warmth.

Must have been a hell of a thing.

But they weren’t stupid; they’d lasted long enough to figure out that things would turn around, that snows would melt and new buds would blossom.

In time, ancient peoples such as Druids and Mayans constructed stone temples that took precise celestial measurements by which they pinpointed the date on which the longest night of the year past. And you know what they did then? They celebrated!

Merry Solstice to all of you, far and near, famous or forgotten, preachy or pagan, squished together or totally solitary – Merry Solstice to every one of you!

And for those of you in the southern hemisphere, enjoy your harvest. And don’t worry, your days won’t get shorter forever.

Fringe Festival 2012 and the Mayan Calendar

Next year is the last year …of life so far.

This past year, 2011 (in case you need clarification), is the year I leapt from having a dream of writing to having a life of writing. Next year, just as the world is ending (2012, don’t ya know), I will upgrade to having my dream life of writing.

Choosing, after 25 years of dreaming about it, to begin living as a writer, meant I had to adjust from living just below the poverty line to living well below the poverty line. In converting my writing life into my dream life, I aim to earn enough from writing that I can claw my way back up to the poverty line.

Focus and believing – that’s the combination that got me where I am today. And compromise. Writing pseudo journalism, for next to nothing or less, is not what this erstwhile playwright had in mind at the outset, but that’s what has been paying (a third of) my rent.

Back when writing was just a dream, it was about writing plays. And these days the dream is coming back to life. In recent weeks, just as I was planning out which script idea to revive first, my brother the actor came to me with a comprehensive concept for a play – and he had applied for the Toronto Fringe Festival 2012, for which there are so many applicants that acceptance is based on a lottery system. My brother was with me at the lottery several years ago when my application didn’t get drawn. I was with him last night when his application got drawn.

That’s right, we’re in! Preparedness, allow me to introduce Opportunity.

Being in the Toronto Fringe Festival means that, whatever we do, at least some people will see it (more than saw my plays when they were performed in New Brunswick in the 90s). What makes this good news better is that it has come just in time – before the end of the world. What is even better than that, the Mayan calendar – which predates, outperforms and otherwise bamboozles all other calendars (and, being made of chocolate, it even tastes better) – does not “predict the end of the world”. It simply indicates that we are reaching the end of one “Great Cycle” (many thousands of years long*) and beginning another.

The end is nigh – here comes the beginning!

(*Mind you, that is in Mayan years, which are shorter and spicier than the conventional year.)

Occupy the 99%: How to Shop on Buy Nothing Day

Buy Nothing Day? That’s not 99% commitment. Buy nothing wrong, 99% of the time. Buy ethical, buy fair trade, buy free-run, buy green, buy local, buy sustainable or buy nothing. If, only 1% of the time, you cave and buy into the 1%, the 1% won’t have the numbers they need and they won’t last.

Don’t like banks? Inconvenience them! Put 99% of your money in a credit union, and keep a no-fee account at a bank to pester them with transactions that cost you nothing and earn them nothing (like exchanging pennies for bills).

I thought local politics was a waste of time until Rob Ford made a mockery of democracy. My vote didn’t stop him, but next time I’m taking 99 voters with me to the poles. My vote didn’t stop Harper, but next time I’m taking 99 voters with me. Rant and vote and rant and vote.

Ninety-nine percent commitment doesn’t mean occupying a tent in the park. All that achieved is to get us talking. Now we’re talking! We’re talking 99% commitment. So occupy yourself.

Occupy your power.

Occupy your autonomy.

Occupy your focus.

Occupy your priorities.

Occupy your influence.

Occupy your vote.

Occupy where your dollar goes.

Occupy the change you want to see in the world.

Woody Allen Fired Me and my Day Begins

When Woody Allen fires you, it’s time to wake up and start writing.

Woody Allen at work

The room was full of people and a bunch of us hired to write for Woody (yeah, ’cause that’s how that works) were sitting down for our first meeting with him. Woody came close to me, looked at me much like he’s doing in this press photo from the set of his latest film “Midnight in Paris“, and gently explained that I hadn’t been pulling my weight and he couldn’t afford to keep me on staff. “You haven’t given me anything to work with here. You’re the only one who hasn’t been giving me funny lines.” “But,” I feebly protested, “you haven’t told us about the characters or the plot or anything. We haven’t started yet.”

“That hasn’t stopped the others.” Then he took out a handkerchief full of change, shook 11 loonies and some pennies and dimes into my hand and told me I could drop by the production office next week to pick up the rest of the 40 bucks he owed me. I co-operatively shuffled out through the crowded room of happy people who were about to begin their career-making work with Woody Allen, and I woke up.

Woody Allen told me I wasn’t producing any material and everyone else was coming up with great stuff. Never had the meaning 0f a dream been so clear to me. It was a great wake-up call. I woke up and started writing.

Here Comes My Big Brother: Robert J. Sawyer’s Wonder

Robert J Sawyer‘s 20th novel Wonder is being launched in Toronto tomorrow and will be in book stores on April 5th.

ROBERT J. SAWYER Photo Credit: Christina Molendyk

Since 2008, I have been attending talks by Sawyer in Moncton, Montreal and Toronto, on a range of topics covering writing, publishing, science and philosophy.

I recently interviewed him for the second time. The first time was at the beginning of his WWW trilogy about the World Wide Web spontaneously becoming self-aware; this time his trilogy is concluded. Please read my article Here Comes My Big Brother: Robert J. Sawyer’s Wonder posted at AE The Canadian Science Fiction Review

or for a very abbreviated version of the interview please read http://www.postcity.com/Eat-Shop-Do/Do/March-2011/Wonder-lust-Robert-J-Sawyer-launches-his-latest-novel/ at www.PostCity.com (where you may encounter more of my writings).

Wake

Watch

Wonder

Yes, Shatner is Canadian!

You might know who “Beverley” Leslie Jordan is, even if you don’t know you know him. The 55-year-old comedic actor steals scenes on stage, film, and television (best known as “Beverley Leslie”, nemesis of Karen Walker on Will & Grace). He flies into Toronto tomorrow for one night to perform a one-man show tailored to the audience, a fundraiser for the CLGA. In honour of Jordan’s Boston Legal co-star William Shatner and last night’s “Genies“, here is part of the interview:

You’ve worked with William Shatner. Can you name the awards show he’s hosting?
No!

The Genies.
What is it?

Like the Canadian version of the Oscars.
Wow! Is William Shatner Canadian? I enjoyed working with him. I like him. He’s funny.

Would you ever want to host the Oscars, or would it be easier just to win one?
Oh Gosh! I don’t want to host one, I don’t want to win one, I don’t want to be nominated for one. I went to the Emmys once. It was the most nerve wracking thing. It was torture. I mean, you’re not going to get any sympathy: “I had to go to the Emmys and I won. Poor me!” But I’m telling you, at one point I thought I was having a heart attack.

Will there come a time when being gay is as widely accepted as being left-handed, and what would it take to get there?
I can’t believe you just said that! I’ve always said that I would love for a parent to say, “I think my child is going to turn out gay” the way you say, “I think my child is going to be left-handed.” Not so much with pride or shame, just that it is.

Read the rest at Post City online http://www.postcity.com/
http://www.postcity.com/Eat-Shop-Do/Do/March-2011/Loud-and-proud-Leslie-Jordan-at-Hart-House/

New Moon Resolutions

Here we are, 2nd day into the 2nd week into the 2nd month into the year. How’s that New Year’s Resolution working out for you?

Mine was to start and maintain a blog. How am I doing so far? I’ve made other resolutions this year, and I’m sticking to them too.

New Year’s Resolutions are too few and too far between. It doesn’t take a year to make a resolution stick, and it doesn’t take a month to let it slip.

Try this. A New Moon Resolution. Make a new one every month. A habit can be formed or broken within less time than that. Some may say it takes three weeks, but cut yourself some slack and give it a month.

Within that amount of time, you can establish an exercise routine, or improve your diet, or change your sleeping pattern, or learn the basics of a language, or straighten up your home or your finances or almost anything! OK, maybe you can’t do it all within a month, but you can firmly establish a habit of taking care of whatever item of business you choose as your focus for the month.

Want to loose 100 kg? You won’t do that in a month (without cutting something off), but you could start walking. Set a reasonable goal (e.g. walk 15 minutes 3 times a week). If you can keep that up for three weeks you can keep it up forever. And if you can stick to that routine, maybe you can do more the next month.

“I can’t” is usually a lie. If you can walk, you can walk three times a week. If you can do it for a week, you can do it for three.

“But” is not a lie, but it’s cheating yourself. “But I sprained my ankle.” Then save the walking for another month and make a different resolution in the meantime. Make the goal something you can do now, and do it now.

You will probably get off track, probably more than once. Now what? Get back on track. Stick with it until you can do what you promised yourself you would do for three weeks. If you can’t go three weeks without slipping up, then renew the resolution for the next month. If the first goal was too hard, make it easier — more realistic.

If it works, and you find you continue the new habit effortlessly into the next month and the month after that, then it’s time for a new New Moon Resolution!