Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 144

brava Bonnie Raitt

Sunday morning in paradise - my green garden. The roses and gardenia are overloaded with buds about to burst, and the tender lettuce leaves are begging to be picked and dressed. It's so quiet here on the weekends because, I guess, the neighbours are at the cottage. My idea of heaven is not having to get in a car, ever.

Bonnie Raitt - what an inspiration. She's a few months older than I am, with a career spanning more than 4 decades, fabulous to look at in her skinny black jeans, and listen to, with her powerful guitar and her clarion voice as strong if not stronger than ever. I read on-line that she went clean and sober in the mid-eighties, right afterwards had her first mega-hit and has been sober ever since. She was gracious to her longtime band, constantly pointing out their solos and talent, and they to her. The music ranged from real old-timey blues to raunchy rock to achingly beautiful ballads. How can she still wring so much from "Angel to Montgomery"? "How the hell can a person/go to work in the morning/and come home in the evening/and have nothing to say?" She made me cry at least twice, and I was not alone. Magnificent.

This is what she said recently about getting older:
"My end of the music business doesn't rely so much on looks. It allows you to age more gracefully than the mainstream pop stars that are total babes. People are snarkier about them getting older. It's just terrible. So I'm actually relieved that I'm in the character actress end of the world, where I can just get more seasoned and people go, 'Oh, well, look how mythical she's become!'"
Time to get out those old records and listen again. (And FYI, I rode my bike to see her at the Sony Centre.)

Yesterday, off to the documentary cinema to watch "Sacred" with Ken - a doc about religious practices around the world. We were going to see "Wonder Woman" but chose this instead, and I wonder, as a woman, if that was a mistake. It's a messy film, skipping about all over the planet, a bit of a Filipino crucifixion re-enactment here, a bizarre Buddhist practice here - monks walking ceaselessly around a mountain for 1000 days - an almost violent Christian service in Botswana, a terrifying view of zillions of worshipers at the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. All the way through, I the atheist kept thinking - bizarre, cruel, a waste of time. The fact that countless people worship with ferocious blindness is no surprise but scary nonetheless.

The only place where it seemed to me religion actually served a great purpose was in a Louisiana prison, populated almost entirely by men of colour, some of whom have found god. Faith gives them hope, kindness, something to live for, which is good because most of them are serving life sentences and will never emerge from that hellhole. But otherwise, even Ken, who's a practicing Catholic, was completely put off by what was shown. We'll have to try again for "Wonder Woman.

I realize - as I bop around, seeing musicians and films and plays and friends - how lucky I am, but also, how easily distracted. There's SO MUCH TO DO! And summer is just heating up in Toronto, the Luminato arts festival is just starting and all the other festivals non-stop around town. How to settle down to the work?

First world problems.

Tonight, the Tony Awards from NYC. I am rooting for the Canadian "Come From Away," but am torn - my ex was the original producer of "Dear Evan Hanson," another best musical nominee, as well as one of the nominated plays, and will be in the audience. So either one. Break a leg, Newfoundland. Break a leg, Ed.

a beautiful gift

Just had to post this and give it a separate page. Mary, a dear friend and on-going writing student in my home class, read my blog posts about my frustration with the rewrite of the memoir, the fact that right now I'm stuck and avoiding work. She just sent this generous, thoughtful, kind note, which filled my heart to bursting:

Here is my humble suggestion for you - try to stop looking at your struggle and start looking at your successes. Your writing is not the only measure of who you are (in my humble opinion). You have a gift for connecting with people - you empower and inspire, helping people to scour their souls and minds which in turn frees them of demons and angels who lie below the surface. It is so powerful.

Try to work back from your present, instead of forward from your past.
Start with today and then yesterday, last month and last year - then go back to how you got here. Here to self assured, highly engaged mentor, teacher, grandmother, mother and long time friend to so many. You are a traveler, an explorer who came from wandering without goals and purpose, self love or a sense of identity to a driven, self-assured woman who snatches every ounce of what she can in life, each day.

Start with today's gifts and work backward to the gifts and charms you acquired along the way. Where in your journey did you find the things that make up the Beth of today? Start with " I am..."

It may do nothing for you but I hope it helps to you to see that your writing flows from many pens beyond your own. You are witness and voice for many who would otherwise be silent. 

YOUR voice may be still for now or it  just may be quiet for the moment. Let it come peacefully; invite it in and listen quietly to its sound, as you do for so many others.

readings and CNF competition

It's summer! John came yesterday and we spent our usual hour standing on a chair and a ladder, putting on the pergola cover; it's infuriatingly difficult but once it's done, I have another room, an outside living room with retractable roof. My home class came yesterday evening and we sat outside in the new room. The lettuce in the deck containers is lush and the roses and gardenia about to burst. My own Garden of Eden, except that I hope not to be expelled by a vengeful god anytime soon.

Yesterday, Anna came with her boys on the way to a school board meeting; she's getting involved in local school politics, not a surprise as she's so articulate and engaged. Two little boys appear; my soul is flooded with love, they rip my house apart, and they leave. My very own little endorphin-producing beings. Oxytocin, the cuddle hormone—released through closeness with another person. It can also be triggered through social bonding, like eye contact and attentiveness. This helps strengthen existing bonds and relationships.

This morning, the termite hunters came with their equipment and their drills, seeking colonies and nests. Last month, as I wrote here, I was sitting in the kitchen when winged ants began to emerge from an old wooden column in the kitchen. Horror! I sprayed Raid madly in all directions, but Richard, aka Mr. Termites, came last week to confirm what the ants were. However, even after the two young guys this morning had done their worst - ripping up carpet, drilling holes, digging into walls - they found nothing, no colonies and no nests. I must have obliterated a small fledgling group, or else they're hiding somewhere. The guys injected their anti-termite poison anyway, since the holes were dug, and Richard comes back in 3 months to check. But for once - though I still have to pay the bill - good news.

And tonight's good news - I'm going to see Bonnie Raitt. I've been a fan, have had her albums since the Sixties, but have never seen her live.

Lots going on literature-wise: Ben McNally is producing an event with young female writers, and there's one of the best-known non-fiction prizes.
In Her Voice Festival
Next Week
(June 15-17)Just a reminder that next week we'll be hosting our big
In Her Voice Festival.
Tickets are still available, and we hope you all can make it out to hear about these interesting books, and the remarkable authors behind them.

The festival is being held at:
Crow's Nest Theatre 
345 Carlaw Ave (at Dundas)

Click the button below for more general information about the festival and to buy tickets. Crow's Nest Theatre
Dig Out Your Best Truths! $1,000 Goes to One Winner [image error] The Malahat's annual Creative Nonfiction Contest is now accepting submissions for the $1,000 grand prize!Writers from around the world are invited to submit. Send us personal essays or memoirs, narrative nonfiction or travel writing... if it's real and creative, we want to read it!Word count limit is 2,000 to 3,000 words. Entry fee varies by location, but comes with a nifty one-year subscription!This year's contest judge is Brian Brett.Submit your contest entry today.

If you're not in the obit, eat breakfast.

My friend Gretchen just sent this, a list of things you can do to deal with writer's block. Good ideas, though most of them dealing with fiction, the sense that writing is coming up with ideas, whereas memoir writing is coming up with memory, scenes from the past, and figuring out how and where they fit. And that's the block - I have hit a memory brick wall, for now.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/05/heres-how-you-can-deal-with-writers-block-from-the-expertsutm_content=bufferf226e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

But I'm re-energized, from a most unlikely place - watching a program last night with the marvellous title, "If you're not in the obit, eat breakfast." It's produced by Carl Reiner and features a bunch of his comedian friends and others, all in their nineties and some in their hundreds, who are still active, busy, working, and most of them, this being Carl Reiner, extremely funny - Mel Brooks, Betty White, Norman Lear, Dick Van Dyke. He shows the amazing black woman - I've seen her on FB - who started running at 67 and still runs races at the age of 100. Life is a gift, they all say, over and over. Don't waste it.

As I watched these marvellously calm, wise, humorous old people, I felt so young! I've been feeling old, as I complained yesterday - I'm not used to pain, but these days when I get out of bed, my back hurts, my knees hurt. That's something new and not fun. But that's not necessarily age, I think it's partly because I'm not moving enough. Dick Van Dyke says he was asked to write a book about aging well and replied, It would be a short book with one line: Keep moving. (He did in fact write the book and that's its title.) And he's right. KEEP MOVING.

I will move more and I will get my memoir mojo back. How, when there aren't enough hours in the day? Something has to go, and perhaps it's the time I spend falling down the rabbit hole of Facebook.

It must have rained hard in the night, because there are puddles on the deck and the air is heaven - green and fresh. It smells of spring. In my heart, too.

PS I shouldn't include this, it's vain and boastful, but what else are blogs for?! My old friend Terry sent me this, from someone who came with her to the last So True. Good to hear - golden! - on a day when I am already feeling rejuvenated:
Sorry I'm unable to accompany you to Beth's event at the Black Swan this time...  You'll have to tell me all about the readings. And when Beth holds the event again, please let me know in advance. Did I ever tell you I read her book, True To Life, which I bought last July when you and I attended? Her advice was very helpful, and the tone was pure kindness. But you'd know that. I've learned when out and about that Beth's reputation is golden in this city. But you'd know that too.

saved by "Sgt. Pepper"

Still avoiding work. I sit at the desk but am stuck. Stuck stuck stuck. Stuck. Did I mention that I am not making any progress? Everything in me is fighting going back to this material, opening it all up again.

Sigh. But it'll happen. This is sheer self-indulgence; I'm wasting so much time, it's sad. However. 

More nice things coming in about So True. Everyone, it seems, was very pleased, and if they weren't - well, who wouldn't be? 

Just had a phone call from Sam, whose life is never dull. Apparently, last night at his restaurant, a group of women he was serving asked if he was single. When he said he was, they asked if his mother was "a character". When he said she was, they asked if the two of us would like to appear on their TV show - in which, apparently, mothers choose dates for their sons who go out with the woman and then discuss afterwards. He’s coming tomorrow with a DVD of past shows so we can watch. As I said - never dull. 

And here's Anna's critical assessment of the new Wonder Woman movie. Also never dull.

!!!Wonder f***ing Woman!!!

So True - inspiration

Sometimes, in the course of preparing for another So True reading event, I wonder why I'm doing this. It's a lot of time and work - we've done it 11 times, and each time, it's at least 8 essays to find and edit, some extensively, 8 readers to coach and prepare, then the event itself, sitting there like mama bird nervously watching fledglings take flight - and then I have to stand on stage and do something myself, talk and read and wrap it all up. I feel it as a huge responsibility and weight.

But today - once again, for the 11th time, when I'm actually sitting in the audience watching one writer after another read fantastic, powerful, moving stories, and then standing there myself to speak directly to that long dark warm room - well, it's wonderful and I wouldn't stop doing it for anything. It's fabulous. One writer has already emailed, Thank you for this wonderful experience. It was a privilege to read in public with such wonderful story tellers. I learned so much and left inspired. I'm grateful. 

And so am I. This time, I told them with our world as dark as it is now, what we were doing there - telling the truth, bearing witness, and especially listening, listening hard to other people - matters more than ever. That I wished I could bottle the kindness, empathy, and honesty in that room and send it south to the giant orange blowhole. We just might save the world.

So yes, one proud mama tonight. Tired, though. And disappointed - lots of friends, though often invited, do not come. I guess they imagine it's a bunch of whining people feeling sorry for themselves, instead of a series of the most moving, funny, uplifting, human stories. Just received another email, from a woman whom I don't know: What an incredible afternoon ! I'm hooked and have November 5th in ink in my calendar. You and the other readers and writers have truly inspired me. 

Yay!

Yesterday, I spent much of the day riding my new bike, Marilyn, around town in the soft sun. I'm crazy about her - so comfortable, her handlebars so high, I feel like a little kid with his first BMX. Here she is at the Y today. Sea foam blue, Norco named her colour. Not sure I've ever seen sea foam that colour, but who cares?
Have you ever seen a bike so beautiful? I think not.

I confess that apart from my new bike, So True, and my classes, this was not a good week. I was confronted with the task of rewriting the first 50 pages of my memoir, and I failed miserably, doing everything possible to avoid the work, including, at one point, sitting at my desk with a tooth pick in my hand, cleaning gunk from the edges of my computer keys. That took a good 20 minutes. Now my keys are clean and the new pages are not there. I have the self-discipline of a toddler. However. It has to be done and I will do it. At some point. Soon.

As Eli might say, I DON WANNA.

But I will.

At some point.

Read an interesting book - "The Blue Touch Paper," a memoir by playwright David Hare. Lots of gossip in a restrained British way. But in the end, brilliant as he is, he had an affair and left his wife when she had five month old twins and an older child. Phooey, is what I say to that. Now reading Etgar Keret, "The Seven Good Years." Etgar's wife, according to his writing, has his number; he won't be going anywhere. He is a very funny writer.

Bravo to the So True team today. What a joy to hear you, such a diverse group in ages, ethnicities, backgrounds, approaches to the work. Spectacular. And now, Sunday night TV for me. Tomorrow morning, I will go to my desk once more and try to ignore the toothpick.

Sgt. Pepper and pot, the joys of 1967

Since this is Sgt. Pepper day, and no one wants my essay about the Summer of Love, I'm posting here a cut down excerpt about the album. Surely I enjoyed the ultimate 1967 experience - Pepper and pot simultaneously, both for the first time.
The first week of June, a seismic event - the Beatles released an album. My neighbour, Brent, asked if I wanted to come listen to his brand-new copy. Brent was 18. His parents were out. He showed me the album – a far-out cover and such a strange title, the Beatles as a “lonely hearts club band,” whatever that was. The Beatles were many things, but I was pretty sure lonely was not one of them. Brent got something out of a tin. “I have a treat for us,” he said, holding a scrawny cigarette. “It’s pot.”Brent put the record on the record player and lit the little cigarette. I’d never taken anything into my lungs except air. It made me cough to inhale the hot bitter smoke.      We heard incredible music, one song sort of linked to the next, a kind of circus show. My head grew light, my body fizzing, heart hammering. The last track on side two was like nothing I’d ever heard, a whole orchestra, it sounded like, every instrument gradually climbing up, up, straining ever higher. As I sat in Brent’s father’s La-Z-boy chair, eyes closed, caught in that soaring crescendo, I was a flower, bursting through the hard dark soil into the sun. At the end, a long quivering chord held forever, and I, hanging onto the arms of the chair to keep from flying away, my petals still glowing in the light.
As I floated home, I thought, well, pot’s fun, and that’s a really great record. But it’s the Beatles, that’s what they do. In six months, they’ll come out with something even better.
I really thought that. Just another brilliant album. Many more to come.

Sigh.

Here's a brilliant Simpson's episode for your viewing pleasure. Sometimes they can do no wrong. And after all these years, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo3fT0xPeHs

Watched a PBS documentary on aging. Though there's nothing you don't know, here as a reminder are some of the things they said help you age better, according to studies they've done on the island of Okinawa, for example, where people routinely live to be over a hundred healthy in mind and body:
Eat less meat - there are enzymes in meat that contribute to aging - and more colourful fruits and vegetables, especially purple ones.
Keep fit: dance and walk.
Socialize.
Learn something new.
Eat nuts. People who eat nuts have 50% less chance of a heart attack. Or something like that.

Okay. That's your wisdom for today.

Tonight's the rehearsal for So True. Today's thrill - my new bike. After much research, several trips to Canadian Tire and other shops, I bought a Norco at my local bike shop. Finally, I have a stepthrough- also called a girl's - bike with high handlebars. Thrilling. She is turquoise blue and I've called her Marilyn, because she's old-fashioned and big and show-offy and gorgeous.

I HAVE REGISTERED HER WITH THE POLICE and she has a big fat lock.  So if you're planning to come by and steal her, think again.

rejected

I have an essay ready to go, a refashioned excerpt from the new memoir about the Summer of Love - 1967, fifty years ago, when the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper and I went to Le Hibou coffee house to hear an unknown young folksinger called Joni Mitchell. That summer my family and I travelled to Expo 67, then on to western USA and Vancouver, where I was thrilled to meet my first actual hippies. And then I hitchhiked back across Canada to Toronto's Yorkville, where Canadian potheads congregated.

I am trying to find a place for this 1300-word essay. Sent it to a friend with connections at the Walrus, who was not encouraging. Wrote to a friend at the Star who also was not encouraging - it's too long. Sent it to the CBC; they already have a 1967 piece on the go. So in desperation - it's time sensitive - I sent a query to Hazlitt, an on-line magazine.
From: Beth K 
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2017 10:00 AM
To: Hazlitt Editors
Subject: the Summer of Love

Hello, Hazlitt editors:

Fifty years ago this June, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper. The evening I heard it for the first time, at the age of 16, was also the first time I smoked pot. And then the summer of 1967 unrolled - a trip with my family to Expo 67, to Aspen, Colorado where I met my first hippies, to San Francisco where I saw the burgeoning of hippy culture, to Vancouver, and then hitchhiking home via Yorkville in Toronto. The quintessential Summer of Love experience, except without the love, which would come.

I’ve written a humourous 1300 word essay about my journey through that summer and wonder if you would like to see it.

with best wishes,
Beth Kaplan

Hi Beth, 

Thanks for sending this our way but unfortunately it's not a good fit for us. 

Haley 

Haley doesn't even want to read it in order to reject it?! I confess, I do get discouraged sometimes. My style is not right for literary magazines, that's clear after a bunch of rejections. My friend and student Rita just gave me a valuable critique of the new memoir - she loved it except for the first 50 pages, which need a complete rewrite. And I know she's right, it's just that I don't even want to look at the thing right now.

Sometimes it's easy to say - what's the @#$# point?

However, I do know how to cheer myself up.

John Shields's death in the New York Times

A beautiful day here. Ran into my neighbour Jean-Marc, who had left a New York Times in my mailbox. "The Times is praising Canada again," he said. "They're regularly running articles about how we do things better. Today there's a big article on the front page."

I've just read the big article on the front page of the NYT - by Toronto's own Catherine Porter. It's not often a newspaper makes me cry, but this did - an amazingly long, detailed, very moving article about John Shields, a Victoria man with a terminal illness who decided, legally, to end his own life. The way to go.

Highly recommended. Brava, Catherine Porter, on a gorgeous piece of reporting and writing.

The Death and Life of John Shields - The New York Times
My oldest friend friend Ron came over last night for a visit. We are the same age, only a week or so apart. He's a gay man now single, with three young grandchildren whom he visits regularly in Calgary and a horse who is housed 3/4 of an hour away, whom he rides twice a week and adores. He bought himself a grand piano and is taking lessons from my piano teacher. But he's also still working, still making money. I teased him once that I'm good at people and he's good at money, and that is still true. But we are both, right now, healthy and fit, with healthy children and grandchildren and houses and occupations and hobbies - so much love.

If there is a greater blessing than this, I do not know what it is.

So True next Sunday

Come hear some wonderful stories. A good time guaranteed. Check our website if you're not sure.