Lake Louise, Alberta - Mountains

This is the scene from the Deer Lodge at Lake Louise in Banff National Park. You couldn't ask for a better back drop to getting married could you? Yep this was what I would have seen had I been looking at anything besides the man that I was about to marry. What a remarkable picture! I'm so fortunate to be close to the majestic Canadian Rockies!

Lake Louise, Alberta - Mountains
Originally uploaded by szejns

The majesty of the Canadian Rockies!
This is another spectacular view. The mountains in Banff National Park are unlike anywhere else in the world. How could there be anything but romance in the air. This was the final glimpse of the panorama before coming in for the reception and our first night as a newly married couple!

Hands...

So I've been on my own for the weekend... My partner/husband was called out to a business meeting in Toronto on Thursday and isn't back until tomorrow afternoon. Each time he's gone I imagine with great delight the many magical tasks that I am going to accomplish in his absense. I falsely believe that with more time to myself and less time devoted a relationship that I'll be able to put my hands together and accomplish great things if not miracles... Each time he's gone I think I'm going to start that book I've been talking about for oh... 7 years or maybe I'll sketch for the whole weekend and come up with some brilliant idea for my next painting. I've even considered pulling out my flute or some old sheet music and getting back into things. Hell... I've even considered cleaning the house.

When it comes right down to it... I get very little if any thing accomplished and then I wallow in my misery and self-pity about how much of life I am wasting and how I'm always complaining about how busy we are in this world with all of our toys and blackberry's and stuff that are supposed to "free us up" and what it all boils down to is that I hunger for the chance, the time, the freedom to do nothing at all.

I acknowledge and respect and even yearn to be like those who manage to go river rafting on the weekends or dragon boat racing... I've got tremendously talented friends who take road trips and incredible photographs... I've got other friends who go out regularly and one that travels to a different city almost weekly. Other poeple I know have learned a language in what seems like days, or made roman shades from toothfloss and garage sale finds... People find the time and energy to re-arrange their homes, volunteer at the animal shelter, get dressed up and get stupid at pub while watching some stupid show called Big Brother 8... and I seem to accomplish almost nothing when left to my own devices.

I used to be involved in everything. I needed a personal secretary and 2 day times (pre blackberry days) and a driver just to manage. I had so much energy and felt so alive and involved in things... somewhere along the way it all started to slow down and change. I think it may have been my junior or senior year of university - which co-incidentally was when I started to take naps... I'd lay down in the library or Fine Arts faculty building and sleep for hours.

So I thought about my hands today and what they could have accomplished in the last 3 or 4 days and what they really did... I could say that the drawing here is something that I did this weekend... but that would be a lie... it's a sketch of hands probably done when I was thinking about this exact thing some two years ago... Hmmm... at least I can find the time and gumption to type... Later!

My new ink

Well I said I was going to do it and I've done it. While in Vancouver celebrating the love of an old roomate and his wonderful partner and the occasion of their marriage I got my long planned for, thought about, sketched and re-sketched, pondered and dreamed about tattoo. It took about an hour and a half and despite being on my skinny back and right on the spin wasn't too bad at all. I got it done at Lotus Land in Kitsilano, Vancouver, BC.

I had a few other artists sketch things out for me but their visions never really matched the ones that I had sort of sketched out myself. I put a few of my rough sketches in an early entry here but when I got to Vancouver and talked to the artist and he brought the sketch back to me to take a look at it was finally right. What I wanted for myself, with a bit of flare from a good tattoo artist.

I think the colours are alive... it kind of feels like a window to my soul. The tree and the roots connected to a heart and all things sacred and loved. The delicate lotus flower that despite everything is remarkably strong. I love how the lotus on the bottom holds the earth. The fire and water up the side with the clouds and air at the top bring together the four elements. The bird seems happy... just does to me. The fence and the grain are awesome... bringing together two important aspects and people in my life.

I got it done last week and its healed up nicely... just in time... today is the 24th anniversary of my Mum's death. Where have all the years gone. Sometimes I still feel like the lost little boy who lost his Mother at 9 years of age. Now I have her on my back along with all the people and things that have helped to shape who and what I am.

My new ink

Gay Vancouver

Vancouver is a city well known for its beauty and lush green spaces, gorgeous and cosmopolitan sky line as well as culture. It is quickly becoming known, especially to gay Americans, as ˆtheˆdestination to get married. Coming from a country where gay and lesbian people are in the spot light on broadway, in the fashion run ways and on tv shows at dinner but denied the basic right to get married and have a celebration, more and more gay and lesbian Americans are flocking to Canada and especially Vancouver, BC to tie the knot.

Having lived in the US for many years and studied in the US at private American schools I feel somewhat like an honourary American - even if I still spell honour with an "OUR". US customs and immigration doesn't feel that way. They took my tuition money, handed me my degree and kicked my what is obviously "communist ass" out and back to Canada. No hard feelings. How could I have hard feelings when so many US citizens come to Canada to get married, avoid the war, run from the draft and racial intolerance... My brothers and sisters - you're all welcome here!

I think the thing that surprised me most was that I had forgotten or become complacent with how stinking polite Canadians generally are. The group of friends and famiy that cam up for an old roomates wedding in Stanley Park kept commenting on how friendly everyone was and I guess there is some truth to that. As I sat on the bus one day I noticed that all the passengers but one who got off before I did said a kind "thank you" to the driver from the back of the bus before disembarking. Even restaurant staff were polite. I had to giggle when the Americans seated around the dinner table at "Earls" commented that you knew you were in a good restaurant when other staff came to help when they didn't have tables. You have to realize that "Earls" is much like TGI Fridays to us.

After eating like kings and queens at Stanley Park and wandering about Davies street and taking in all of Kitsilano and Granville Island and acquabus through the harbour and saying good-bye to my American guests I realized just how fortunate I am to be a Canadian. I guess I am a lucky little shit after all.

Getting married in Vancouver

My partner and I got married in February 2006. It was a snow laiden day, crisp and cool and wonderful. The Family Day long weekend in Alberta ironically enough. We escaped to a little chateau at Lake Louise in Banff National Park with six good friends, a Unitarian Minister a photographer and did the deed. We were legally married in the province of Alberta, in the great land of Canada.

After having been separated by many miles and a lot of time from my old roomates and friends in the United States I managed to get in touch with one. He informed me that he had been with his partner for a few years and that they too were coming to Canada to get married since the right to marry the person they loved was denied to them in the United States. So come this Thursday, my husband and I will be flying to Vancouver to celebrate the gay wedding of my dear friend and his partner.

It strikes me as so odd that there is so much violence and hate in this world and so many people kill each other over religion, money, nationality, soccer and all other manner of nonsense that there are still people who fight the rights of gay and lesbian people to get married and celebrate their love for one another. What could be better than two people committing themselves in a loving, devoted and symbolic way. Maybe its the fact that gay people can and do actually LOVE the flies in the face of those who fight the equal rights movement of the GLBT community. It's sad though that so many get so angry and hateful defending their right to love and their denail of that same right to others.

Vancouver... here we come!

End of Life ~ What do you do?

The Stampede is coming to a close. The stampede parties only have today and tomorrow to round up the remainder of the drunks, the whores and the try-hards... The party that happens daily across the street from my office will soon come to an end aswell. Unfortunately it was the party was also the end for a 22 year man, the son of my partners co-worker. His cell phone rang and as he walked away to answer it, the mechanical bull started its gyrating for the drunk and obnoxious crowd one more time... this time the bull hit the young man in the head - throwing him to the ground and leaving him brain dead. I understand that the family has made the unbelieveably difficult choice of taking him off of Life Support. What would you do? When would you do it? How would you know that you made the right choice? Would you wait for that miracle? Do you believe in miracles as much as bad luck?

I'm not certain what I would do. I know that there are flukes of luck - good and bad... it just seems horribly tragic that so many are so careless and so unconcerned for others and all in the name of a good time. Why wasn't the area roped off so that people weren't struck? Why does a "fun" game need to have such force that it could strike a grown man and throw him with such force as to kill him? Why does shit like this happen every year at the stampede? Last year I seem to recall two others that broke their necks on the mechanical bull ride... a lives in wheelchairs for a 2 min joy ride in front of a bunch of drunk strangers...

Hmmm... puts things in perspective sometimes doesn't it?

Calgary Stampede - Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth

The world famous "Calgary Stampede" is happening this week. 10 days of drunken debauchery and steer wrestling. Calgary is extremely proud of its western heritage and there is infact much to be proud of. Today however, the stampede consists of a midway park with rides and foods pumped full of transfats that cost as much as a pair of Gucci sunglasses. Concerts happen each night, although this year Jon Bon Jovi is one of the headliners - I don't quite see the connection... There is a rodeo with the required Bull Riding, Saddle Bronc, Calf Roping, Barrel Racing and the Chuchwagon races... Millions of people come from all over the world just to see real cowfolk.

Ironically Calgarians either embrace or shun the stampede. Those who embrace it get dressed up in all manner of western gear. Some outfits look legit, others look like poorly designed and rather dated Halloween costumes made for adults. Judging by the fact that I call them "outfits" you can safely bet that I don't a pair of Wranglers, roppers, a white stetson or a bejewelled rodeo shirt. All the big Oil and Gas entities have elaborate parties, the small businesses and community groups have smaller ones... starting at 6 or 7 am, literally hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people will line up - rather like cattle - to have a free sausage, a pancake and some tang (aka OJ) with a bunch of strangers in the spirit of the west. I guess its all good if it makes people happy.

I'm amazed in a city of over a million people that you'll find thousands of people absolutely pissed out of their trees "square dancing" in the streets by noon and that dozens of roads around the city are blocked off by bales of hay to indicate that stampede parties and pancake breakfasts are occuring. People apparently "network" and "do business" at these events. I've never been so much as able to find a place to sit let alone come to a deal with someone.

The stampede party beside the office building where I work has daily parties that start at 9 am and go until 4 am. This year in a new and classy move, those who are married can check their wedding rings at the door and have a spray tan cover the white ring mark left by the wedding band upon entry. That's right. One of Calgary's biggest and most well promoted parties also advertizes this fact... come, spend a couple hundred dollars on booze and tackarama and hopefully get laid by a complete stranger amongst a crowd of several thousand... all the while, across the street there are hundreds of underpaid and over worked people working for the homeless, the elderly, the United Way sponsored programs, those with mental health struggles, disabilities...

I attended a "party" last year as a "Charity of Choice" had a table set up to let people know that they could make donations to the charity and that all donations raised at the event would benefit the group. The party cost almost $300,000 and had over 2,500 of Calgary's most prominent lawyers, judges, movers and shakers and after 8 hours of "working" the crowd - the charity got a cheque for not quite $2,500. Yep - about a dollar a person.

There's something wrong when millions of people come to see the best that Calgary and Western Canada has to offer and you check your wedding ring at the door, spend hundreds of dollars on booze and candy apples, wear ridiculous and ill fitted clothes, leave a city blocked and covered in horse crap and through it all in the face of those who have not, who struggle and battle daily to meet their most essential and basic needs.

Maybe tomorrow I'll be in a better mood and "catch the true spirit of the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth"

Hmmm...

Marks of destinction?

Some people wear jewellry and others wear a certain style of clothes and still others dye and colour their hair to set themselves apart from the rest. For a period of time it really bothered me that so many people felt this need to be different... like they needed to prove something. Then as I aged and got a place of my own I realized that I really wanted a place of my own, not a row house or some standard square pad in a large grey cement building and the hunger for individualism emerged. I realize now that I've always been somewhat unique, probably as a result of my pot smoking, hippy, happy Mum who was as free a spirit as ever existed... I just need to get comfortable with it.

As a child I was in a horrible car accident. I shouldn't have lived. Infact those who responded to the accident scene took the two other passengers to hospital and were treating them when I was discovered in the ditch sometime later by the crew that were clearing the road and remants of the crash. Rushed to hospital and all mangled up, doctors didn't think I'd live. Then they thought that I wouldn't have any brain function... later it was just my physical abilities such as managed movement, sight and the abilty to hear or speak that would be lost. A young mother's insistance made the doctors operate, perform skin grafts and plastic surgery and here I am today... one hell of a shit. I come by my tenacity with legitimacy.

I've worn my scars on my face since I was two years old. It's funny that a lot of kids get picked on... the chubby ones, the skinny ones, the tall girls, the short boys, the kids with accents, the ones who no money and velcro shoes... I'm quite amazed that in all my years (33 and counting) that I've only been called "scarface" once. I've only been called a "fag" once in a parking lot... I've never been challenged or beaten up... never been harrassed, never been so much as laughed at... Why is that? I should have been - after all I was the short, skinny kid, had an accent, was orphaned, poor, scared and not good at school. I couldn't play sports to save my life, couldn't even swim... yet I survived and got through it far better than dozens of kids that I watched and pitied.

Today I wear all those marks of destinction. I wear them in my skin... they're in my pours and breath and so much a part of who I am that I feel as confident as ever. I'm hungry now for a more visible mark of destinction... I guess I'm at that time in my life. While a student at a religious sanctioned university in the USA, I got both a small tattoo on my hip and a piercing in my belly button - I was SOOOO rebellious. A few years later while in Montreal QC for the Festival International du Jazz a Montreal with my partner, I got my ear pierced... I'm ready for something else now.

In preparation, I've spent many hours thinking about things the represent me, where I've been, the people in my life, the things that have shaped my character and ultimately my choices. I've designed a new tattoo that I plan to get in the next few weeks and I'd like to share it with you. The tattoo has the following elements and meanings:

A strong central tree with deep roots = C'est Moi. I've always just identified with trees, they are come in all shapes, sizes and colours. They provide shade from the sun, break the wind, give shelter to both humans and the beasts, they bear fruit and nectar... Magic to me. The roots represent my hunger to have roots, to feel secure and steady in my life.

At the base of the tree is golden rods of wheat. The wheat represents my Grandmother who raised me. She's always feed me and sustained me and been connected to the earth. I can't think of anything more perfect and simple than the image of wheat for her.

There is also a red ribbon at the base of the tree. Ribbons have become known to represent breast cancer, diabetes, supporting our troups, HIV/AIDS and other diseases. The ribbon for me represents all those who fight their battles and the courage that it takes as individuals and families and societies to overcome obsticles and the turmoils of health.

A fence off to the side of the tree is taken from the headstone of my Mum. When I was nine years old I lost her and was forced to pick a stone for her grave. I found one that had an old broken fence, it had flowers growing up the side and butterflies around it. She loved being outdoors, in the sun and working on her far. It was a perfect image and marks her death and that tiem in my life.

Above the fence is a little bird in flight. Mum was a little robyn bird to me... Now she flies about in the heavens and sings to me. She's free and though not with me... she's always there with me.

The sky has a bright burning sun on one side of the tree and the moon and stars on the other. Having always been religious and believing in the heavens, the spirit of life, God, the Godess and Eternal energy... I feel that the sun, the moon and the stars best represent my connection to my past and present religious self.

Scattered near the robyn bird and in the branches of the tree and music notes, eigth notes and sixteenth notes. Music is for me the great escape, the great coming home and the great and quiet place that I can find myself and loose myself and discover myself. My greatest experiences in life, my most sacred times, the most wild and zany times have alwasy been connected to music so it's important to have music there with me as well.

Encircling all of this a sort of rock mandala with four key stones on the top, bottom, left and right. In each of these keystones is one of the elements - earth, air, fire and water... the things from which we all come and will return to. There is soemthing special to me about the four directions, the four elements... some things overpowering. The symbols of the clouds for the air, the waves for the water, fire for... well fire and the earth for um... the earth also have greater meaning to me. The world represents for example, all the places I've lived and people I've met and things I've learned and experienced from Canada to the USA to England, France, Mexico, Japan and Italy... God I love Italy... sigh!

Twisted around the stone mandala is a gorgeous vine with deep green leaves and lovely flowers. The flowers represent my lover, my friend, my partner and husband Colin Emilio. He is the brightest thing in my life. He makes me happy, brightens each day, makes me smile and brings peace to me. Flowers are what reprent his happy, colourful self. He actually thinks of himself as a roma tomatoe but that's just too far a stretch for any artist to encorporate.

Above it all and resting to the top keystone - the piece that keeps it all together is the sign of infinity. I don't believe in a beginning or an end. I believe that all things are connected, inter-related and blend from one to another. The sign of infinity also represents the dualism of male and female and I think that those traits should be cultivated in each of us.

So here are my two home made designs... I hope to get something like this placed on my back between my shoulder blades... that way I've got these things on me, backing me up and "watching" my back. Once I get the tattoo this summer, I'll post a pic and let you all tell me what you think... It's sure to be magic to me.

Awkward first blog

Like the awkwardness of a first kiss, I entered into the mysterious and still bewildering world of the INTERNET in 1997. Only my first kiss came far more naturally! After a brief two year stint in Italy, I moved to the United States of America to complete my bachelors degree in Vocal Performance & Pedagogy. At the end of my first music history class, the dapper Prof in the bow-tie at the front of the room anounced that all papers were to be submitted "On-Line" with proper footnotes of all "INTERNET" references. Was I the only person in the lecture hall who didn't understand these words... uttered like a foreign language?

A sly but still rather foolish conversation with some other music students soon made me realize just how LOST I really was. I had just moved to America and had never heard of the Internet, Email or the World Wide Web... so like my first awkward kiss... I had to just go for it. The days of the shoe box full of poorly written stsudent papers was over and I was lost.

I quickly ran out and bought a "Word Processor" mistakenly thinking that it was a computer with Email and the Internet program stuff... only to quickly realize that I was a fool and the processor couldn't help me. The first semester was more than a little rough, but I am proud to say that after 10 years, I have graduated, have an email account and have been lured into the mystical and magical world of surfing, emailing, instant messaging and am now ready to blog!

A dear friend from my college years in the United States has a blog and has shown me hers. It's amazing and I love that it keeps me connected to her. I marvel at her pictures and her words and the ability she has to share those thoughts, those moments, feelings, experiences with the world. Having always been an advid journaler who loved the smell of paper and the feel of a weighted pen on fine paper... the transitiion to the world of the computer age has been both rewarding and somewhat disheartening however and so as I gradually transition into the world of blog... hmmm... I'm tentative.

so like that first kiss there's really nothing to do but to launch myself in with all the mistakes and long distance phone calls to the US for help that come with it. I'll save my paper journal for myself and my unmentionable journeys and endeavor to share with the world a little of myself as I search and seek out the others, like me, who feel a need to communicate and experience. Be patient with me and I'll try to keep things interesting along the way and learn a few tricks of the trade as I go.

Szejn