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Monday, December 31, 2018

2018 - Retrospective

2018 - Retrospective

This is what I posted on Facebook:
This has been a strange year. It's been a year of a lot of professional growth, but also a year filled with a lot of creative struggles. It has been a year of returning to a lot of struggles with managing my energy and endeavors, and questioning how I support and am supported by others.

It's been a year filled with re-learning how to communicate, and then having been hit with setbacks and trials. It's been a few months of staring in a mirror and trying to figure out what's staring back at me.

It's a year of, for once being healthy enough to feel like I'm back to where I was before I got sick.

This has also been a year of finding better ways to exercise my voice, on both my behalf and those less privileged than me, in various capacities.

I don't know what my next year looks like, but I don't know that I've ever known, going into New Year's Eve. For over a decade, life continues to be a wild adventure, I don't know what's around the bend and I accept that my role is to be prepared for it.

Let's go adventuring. 2019, you're on.

The rest of this post is about what I'm writing here. And only here.


Poetry - Wish - Neil Gaimen

Poetry - Wish - Neil Gaimen

A little poem and a little art for 2019, from Neil Gaimen.

Saturday, December 8, 2018

Quotes - Martha Graham

Quotes - Martha Graham

“No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
― Martha Graham

Saturday, December 1, 2018

West Marches - Beneath the Surface, Quiz's Counterpoint

West Marches - Beneath the Surface, Quiz's Counterpoint

There was no indication of time in the Estate House of Moray, but somehow, the Dwarves all seemed to have some internal clock to their rhythms. Celebratory drinking and song eventually gave way to sombre storytelling and the dull clink of passing coin and card. Over time, the dwarves came to a drunken state of rest, emaciated from their predicament as they were, their constitutions yielded to strong drink. Around him, Sedriks idly plucked at the Viola like a guitar, watching and nodding as handfuls of small brass and silver coins were deposited on the table before him.

Friday, November 23, 2018

West Marches - Friends on The Dock

West Marches - Friends On The Dock

Azais and Sedriks are wandering the vast docks in Soulbrook, watching ships unload various sized crates and cages. The sun is uncomfortably hot for Azais' liking, thankfully the salty breeze helped take the edge off.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

West Marches - Morning at the Manor

West Marches - Morning at the Manor

The day dawned bright with a clear blue sky indicative of the water the Whiskey Riders were so near. Silea eyed the piece of bacon she had plucked from her breakfast plate. Perhaps it was not big enough, she thought, though the time to rectify such a potential social error was decidedly past. Shaking her head Silea went over the possible options for the beginning of dialogue before, mindful of how soft her steps could potentially be, she proceeded through the front door of Gilham Manor. Sedricks was lounging on the main steps of the Manor, viola on his shoulder as he plucked idly; jotting notes down in a ragged book of tangled vellum. Silea’s eyes darted to the area nearby to find Lute: artfully stalking a butterfly.

Silea approached cautiously, holding out the bacon and taking care not to be too quiet or accidentally startle either man or kitten.

"Are you writing a song?"

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

West Marches - Gilham Magic

West Marches - Gilham Magic

There is a sub-basement room in Gilham Manor, the Whiskey Riders' new outpost in Sou'Brook, that most of the Riders don't know about yet. When they were clearing out the years of junk and making it livable, Quiz found the servants door to the underground cellar and decided to not mention it to the group.

Quiz now stands in the room, manipulating a ball of glowing light in his tiny hands. It fills the space with orange-red shadows and beams. He tosses the ball to the figure near him. "Catch it."

Sedriks' reflexes are instant and fingers snap upwards, but the ball shifts harmlessly through, ghostlike and insubstantial.

Azais playfully laughs from the stairwell. Quiz shakes his head, snaps his fingers, and the ball of light flies back to his palm. "It's not so much grabbing it as it is... you need to grab the space around it."

Sedriks focuses, thinking and hooking his thumbs into his armor, steadying his breathing.
"Hold it without holding it," Quiz continues. "Your hand isn't carrying weight; it's carrying a map for the light." He throws the ball again.

Monday, November 5, 2018

Life - Shatter

Life - Shatter

Shatter silver threadbare raiments
Like dust fallen silent we ply this
strangeness.

Drift ethereal and cold
I am left alone.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

West Marches - Winter and Wood

West Marches - Winter and Wood

Azais sits on a slightly damp fallen tree just outside the camp, close enough to see the hut but far enough away for privacy. Focusing on nothing in particular, she continues to play with a small collection of continuously crystallising and melting snow flakes in a spot on the ground between her Ashwire boots. Ha…her boots, "What an annoying predicament these beauties have gotten me into hey grandma…"she laughs to herself. The thought was merely fleeting though, as she continues to make the ice and snow dance, for the majority of her attention was still upon the small wooden shard in her left hand. It slightly tingles her fingertips as she passes it back and forth between them. Perhaps it's because she is more attune to the sensation than last night, or perhaps it's because she is closer to tree line…she quickly glances up as she though she saw something move - just a rat in the roots of a far off tree... but the feeling is much stronger than last night

Azais:  "There is more to this shard than an ordinary tree…" she thinks to herself "…nothing in the Fellwoods is as innocent as it seems."

As she raises her head the ring of crudely etched runes to her left from the LeShock ritual catches her eye. "Ah yes, another venture to solve, but not until I am somewhere with books and the learned." She casts the task aside for a later time when she can seek answers to these seemingly endless string of questions and troubles.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

West Marches - The Lodge Calls

West Marches - The Lodge Calls

It isn’t the same path you took before. The sheer number of deer trails and rough-hewn pathways through the Fellwoods may be uncountable… but to you, the way is clear in your mind. The site of the cabin you pulled Ioleth out of is now no more than a rubble strewn clearing, abandoned for decades if not more.

But there’s always another path.

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

West Marches - Whiskey and Plots

West Marches - Whiskey and Plots

Sedriks walks up, a young boar slung over his shoulders still twitching. Azais is sitting on a cleared stump, the wood part of the palisade somewhere already.

"Hey, if ye kill this, will yer dagger work?" Azais is still silent, staring at the sooty embers dusting the fresh grass. He sits down opposite and flicks shards of glass out of her hair. “That were a right good explosion.”

Finally she finds her voice. “It was certainly a shock...”

“Where’d Quiz make his way off ta?”

Thursday, August 30, 2018

West Marches - Azais' Song

West Marches - Azais' Song

The night before our shiocro showdown we are all in the tavern cloaked in thick silence with the impending battle approaching. Sedricks begins to strum his lute in an attempt to ease the tension. As you’re listening you begin to hear ever so faintly what sounds like humming coming from somewhere in the tavern. As Sedricks continues to play the sound gets louder and you realise it’s someone singing, a female, but in a language you don’t all quite recognize.

As the music continues the singing becomes increasingly louder and simultaneously more determined, invoking a strange but welcome feeling of calm and confidence within all who hear it. As people become more entranced in the song they forget to search for its  origin. Minutes pass, like time is slowed, and eventually the lute and singing come to a fading end.

As people are too absorbed in the calm yet hopeful sensation the melody left them feeling for tomorrow’s battle, no one noticed it was a silver haired, purple eyed elf facing the fire who had been singing. It was an ancient elf battle song and Azais had just sung, casting her guild with a ritual for luck in battle.

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Definition - Depaysement

Definition - Depaysement


People do some out-of-character things in foreign countries. They strike up conversations with strangers in bars, even if they would never do the same back home. They wear unflattering hats. There’s something about being a stranger in a strange land that’s equal parts exhilarating and disorienting, and this messy mix of feelings is what the French word depaysement — literally, decountrification, or being without a country — means to capture. It’s “the feeling of being an outsider,” and though getting lost because you can’t quite read the street signs as well as you maybe thought you could can be unsettling, the feeling of being somewhere else just as often “swirls us up into a kind of giddiness, only ever felt when far away from home.”

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Indigenous - What do you see?

Indigenous - What Do You See?

"A white man and an elderly Native man became pretty good friends, so the white guy decided to ask him: “What do you think about Indian mascots?” The Native elder responded, “Here’s what you’ve got to understand. When you look at black people, you see ghosts of all the slavery and the rapes and the hangings and the chains.

When you look at Jews, you see ghosts of all those bodies piled up in death camps. And those ghosts keep you trying to do the right thing. “But when you look at us you don’t see the ghosts of the little babies with their heads smashed in by rifle butts at the Big Hole, or the old folks dying by the side of the trail on the way to Oklahoma while their families cried and tried to make them comfortable, or the dead mothers at Wounded Knee or the little kids at Sand Creek who were shot for target practice. You don’t see any ghosts at all.

“Instead you see casinos and drunks and junk cars and shacks. “Well, we see those ghosts. And they make our hearts sad and they hurt our little children. And when we try to say something, you tell us, ‘Get over it. This is America. Look at the American dream.’ But as long as you’re calling us Redskins and doing tomahawk chops, we can’t look at the American dream, because those things remind us that we are not real human beings to you. And when people aren’t humans, you can turn them into slaves or kill six million of them or shoot them down with Hotchkiss guns and throw them into mass graves at Wounded Knee. “No, we’re not looking at the American dream. And why should we? We still haven’t woken up from the American nightmare." -Chief Guanikeyu. Jatibonicu Taino

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Quotes - Arthur Ashe

Quotes - Arthur Ashe

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." Arthur Ashe

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Open Letter - Kevin Loring to Ex Machina

Open Letter - Kevin Loring to Ex Machina

Attn: Artistic Leadership of Ex Machina and Theatre Du Soleil,

I am speaking to you as an Indigenous Theatre Artist in Canada.

It is with great concern and disappointment that I am writing you to address the issues arising from your production of Kanata that will run in New York and Paris in the coming months. Billed as “the history of Canada through the prism of relations between Whites and Natives,” it appears that the truth of this production is that it is in fact an analog for the relationship between “Whites” and the Indigenous Peoples of this land. Having read about the process that lead up this production in Le Devoir and hearing accounts from Indigenous artists and leaders who took part in the consultation process I can only conclude that this process was deeply flawed.

Nothing about us without us

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Politics - Civil Discourse

Politics - Civil Discourse

First he came for Mexicans,
Then he came for Muslims,
Then he came for Women,
THen he came for a Disabled Reporter,
Then he came for Gold Star Families,
Then he came for Trans Troops,
Then he came for NFL Players,
Then he came for Africa,
Then he came for the Chinese Economy,
Then he came for Canadian Neighbours,

Then he put children in internment camps.
Then he put children. In Internment Camps.
Then he put MORE children in Internment Camps.
Then they drugged children in Internment Camps.
Then they sexually abused children in internment camps.
Then they lost children from internment camps.

Now he says we have lost the art of 'civil discourse'.

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Writing - On Politics: Yesterday Today

Writing - On Politics: Yesterday Today

Image may contain: 1 person, sitting and suit

I listened as they called my President a Muslim.
I listened as they called him and his family a pack of monkeys.
I listened as they said he wasn't born here.
I watched as they blocked every single path to progress that they could.
I saw the pictures of him as Hitler.
I watched them shut down the government and hurt the entire nation twice.
I watched them turn their backs on every opportunity to open worthwhile dialog.
I watched them say that they would not even listen to any choice for Supreme Court no matter who the nominee was.
I listened as they openly said that they will oppose him at every turn.
I watched as they did just that.
I listened.
I watched.
I paid attention.

Now, I'm being called on to be tolerant.
To move forward.
To denounce protesters.
To "Get over it."
To accept this...

I will not.

Friday, June 8, 2018

Tragedy - Anthony Bourdain

Tragedy - Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain.

I watched a lot of his shows, and I thought that one of the best things about him was how he talked honestly, and passionately about elevating the idea of experiencing culture and other humans. He talked about travel, about living, and about listening.

I really can't overstate just how incredibly 'honest' Bourdain was on his traveling shows. He chose to explore and engage, and fearlessly try things without portraying himself as having 'discovered' customs. He went off the beaten path. It wasn't about 'tourism', it wasn't about self-gratification of himself as a tourist.

It was about meeting people, hugging people, smoking with people. It was about talking and going over things he himself loved and hated, what things offended him, and why that might've been legitimate or awful. How he responded to things that were frightening or strange, and why more often than not they actually weren't.

It's a tragedy, and a reminder that you can 'have it all' but the insidious nature of depression, mental illness, and suicide means little in the face of that. We need to find more ways to engage, encourage, and uplift one another. We need to find better ways to protect the people that need protecting.

Rest in Peace Bourdain.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Tragedy - Gaza, May 14, 2018

Tragedy - Gaza, May 14, 2018

Bilal Badeer Hussein Al-Ashram, 18 years old
Nasser Ahmed Mahmoud Ghrab, 51 years old
Omar Jomaa Abu Ful, 30 years old
Talal Adel Ibrahim Mattar, 16 years old
Mohamed Samir Duwedar, 27 years old
Abdelsalam Yousef Abdelwahab, 39 years old
Ali Mohamed Ahmed Khafajah, 21 years old
Mahmoud Saber Hamad Abu Taeemah, 23 years old
Kamil Jihad Kamil Mihna, 19 years old

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Childish Gambino - This Is America (Official Video)





This is on repeat, not because I love the song, although I have tremendous respect for it, but because the video has me riveted and I cannot look away. I can't NOT bear witness.


Friday, March 30, 2018

Quotes - Kimchi and Cool

Quotes - Kimchi and Cool

“I see a lot of white guys making Korean food, and I’ll be honest, it pisses the shit out of me, because it’s everywhere now: kimchi this, kimchi that. I’m like, ‘You weren’t ostracized in elementary school because everyone thought, when they visited your house, it smelled like garbage.’ They didn’t have to endure emotional hardship, and now it’s cool.” — Chang, Ugly Delicious "Fried Chicken"

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Theatre - World Theatre Day 2018

Theatre - World Theatre Day 2018

World Theatre Day Message 2018 – The Americas

Sabina Berman, Mexico

Writer, playwright, journalist

We can imagine.

The tribe launches small stones to bring down birds from the air, when a gigantic mammoth
bursts in on the scene and ROARS –and at the same time, a tiny human ROARS like the
mammoth. Then, everyone runs away...

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

West Marches - Pens and Poets to Paper

West Marches - Pens and Poets to Paper

The work as they determined near enough, was informed as “strictly voluntary”. But any able man o’er woman who declined the voluntary work w’re added to a rolls the guards kept on their person for the rest o’ the week. Those persons if were determined to have caused breaks in the peace or disturbing those most restful would have been subject of the magistrate’s harshest penalty.

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Nightmares - Daughter

Nightmares - Daughter

I had a dream. A nightmare, a dream, of a nightmare, a moment, a stillness, a life, a question.

No answers.

No. Answers. No. Answers. No.


Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Politics - Student's March

Politics - Student's March

Explain to me what is today, because this is the only thing I can see:

Thousands, thousands and thousands of students who rose up in protest.

Maybe a million. Maybe millions.

Students, teenagers, CHILDREN. Protesting their right to live. To draw attention to the fact that adults have failed them. Adults have failed them again, and again, for 19 years. Since a fateful day in April, 1999, when 13 people died and Americans did nothing.

The pattern repeats itself. Over and over, until Sandy Hook. 20 children are shot and die. Their ages are between 6 and 7.

America does nothing.

Stoneman Douglas literally one month ago. Another 17 students are shot dead, another 17 wounded. In the face of despair, and the agony of what they shared, those same teenagers now are demanding MORE. They are rising up, they are angry and RIGHTLY so.

They have been failed, and they recognize it. You have a country where a dude tried to blow up his shoes and now we all check our shoes before we go on an airplane. But the response to a gun in a school was to arm every teacher.

No one believes it. The NRA has become an organization lobby for the profit of itself and to maintain its stranglehold grip on power by any means necessary.

Including sacrificing children.

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Politics - Gun Control

Politics - Gun Control

The opposition I see all the time to the term 'gun control' is split into two categories. There is the irrational, which is not worth engaging in because it has no recourse based on reason. And there is the rationale that sits in a position whereby the imagination has not yet seen a path forward on gun control. Whether wilful, or ignorant, or both, is not what I am interested in expanding upon here.

Instead, here is a straightforward proposal about what reasonable gun control could look like, based on a handful of other examples in other nations.

Monday, February 19, 2018

Writing - A Tale of Two Bards - West Marches

Writing - A Tale of Two Bards - West Marches



“Oi! Bard!”

Sedriks looks up from a wooden bowl of eggs and pork cracklins to eye a longtable of farmhands, the lead of which, a grizzled greybeard has just addressed him.

“That twanger on your back, is it just for show or can you play a tune?”

Taking one last long pull of the mead, the bard in question responds, “Isss not for show, how dew ya do. I can play it right smartly if ye have the coin for me trouble.”

There is a slight rumble of chairs and scrapes, the farmers rustle through cotton pockets and into leather pouches to produce a fistfull of brass.

“Here then! If you are as good as they say from the night of the attack, a song. More where that came from if we likes what we hears!”

Sedriks unslings the Viola, with a nod of thanks to the waitress who deposits the coin on the table before him. The room falls to silence as a long ashwood bow is produced from within a sturdy carrying case. The first pull of the bow produces a clarion clear note, low and mournful, echoing through the rafters and out the half-cracked windows into the evening rain.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Politics - Stoneman Douglas - On Evil

Politics - Stoneman Douglas - On Evil

Consider this: Right now, someone is doing a calculation on how much money it costs for the lobbying and marketing campaign to ensure that yesterday’s tragedy happens again. It happens so often, they might already have a spreadsheet for it. They plug in what state, elementary, junior high, senior high, or post-sec, how many children died, how many teachers, was the shooter black, or muslim, or white? They put in the guns the shooter was carrying, the put in whether the shooter killed themselves at the end. The put in a bunch of variables from the long list of shooting history

That spreadsheet kicks them back a number in the millions. That's the dollar value they spend on ads about 2nd amendment rights, on 'protect yourself and your family', on botnets and forum posters that 'the Democrats are coming for your guns'. On lobbying politicians to push their agenda.

That's the kind of evil we're up against.

Friday, February 9, 2018

West Marches - Tale of Two Bards

West Marches - Tale of Two Bards

New West Marches

“Oi! Bard!”

Sedriks looks up from a wooden bowl of eggs and pork cracklins to eye a longtable of farmhands, the lead of which, a grizzled greybeard has just addressed him.

“That twanger on your back, is it just for show or can you play a tune?”