Schades of Gray

Today’s word of the day, I have decided is schadenfreude. I was surfing bloglinks of friends and came across the term again. Why is it so seductive? I know of people who don’t feel properly alive unless they have someone or something to bitch about. The quickest way to feel better about yourself is to put someone else down, or observe or talk about someone or something deprecatingly. It feels momentarily good but it’s wrong, and it’s bad for the soul, I believe. Slippery in its quick, dark seduction, delivered in the form of bad TV, tabloids and gossip, it’s a thing I personally try to indulge in as little as possible. Great word, though.

It’s a Walk-off

I’ve been noticing women, of late. Women walking, that is. Quite a few times I see a woman walking along the fair streets of Montreal in summer wearing a lovely summer dress and fetching footwear, and then I notice the walk. Too often it’s a waddle or a swagger or a lope or a shuffle or a trudge, which completely ruins the effect of all the other nice things about them. Beauty is in the gait. Did they not get the memo, I wonder? Is our current society even sending out these memos anymore?

A woman’s gait (and a man’s for that matter) is what carries off the rest of the personality; walk all sloppy and it won’t matter what you are wearing or who you think you are. Perhaps it’s easier for me to say this, being a dancer. I’m always walking as if I’m about to enter from stage-right, and propelled by delusions of grandeur I also walk about as if I own the joint and as if to say “I have arrived,” even somewhere as mundane as the grocery store. But it feels good to have a dignified and intent-filled gait, you feel like you own yourself and are at harmony with the environment around you. I think more attention should be paid to how we mindfully move through space, that’s what it is. So step up, peeps, step up.

Bathing, Nue

After an amazing fortnight of dance spent in Toronto, I headed straight for a spa I had heard about called Body Blitz. It is a women-only spa near Spadina and Adelaide where you can spend $38-$48 for a whole day just flitting between all the bathing pools and steam rooms for as long as you like. Treatments are extra, of course. They have a salt-water pool, a cold water pool, a pool of green tea, an infrared sauna, and a hammam. They serve you a variety of tea by the poolside and shots of healthy elixirs containing mixtures of ginseng, ginger, rosehip, wheatgrass, lavender and all manner of healthy concoctions. Needless to say, it did wonders for my well-exerted muscles and their aches.

The main thing I liked was that nudity was completely accepted and a bit encouraged. The main thing I found irksome, was that hardly anyone exercised their nudity right. What is it with women? I stuck to my guns and went fully nude, despite all the 20-something and 30-something girls who stayed in their bikinis the entire time. Only a couple of women past 40 were at the point where they didn’t care what the world thought, and happily went about nude. I was the only relatively young person in the nude in the entire spa that day. Did these young women not realize that you are more “judged” with clothing on than off? To my eyes, if a woman is in a bikini she is trying to hide faults and accentuate assets, whereas a woman wandering about nude is simply “in her skin” rather than “naked”, and therefore sexuality and the notion of body perfection fall to the side. There is nothing to hide, and suddenly one feels more relaxed.

It would be nice if our North American attitudes towards nudity were more realistic and less uptight. In Québec we’re thankfully a little more progressive in matters of the body than the rest of Canada, I’d say, but still, we could do with less nudity hangups.

(There is a very interesting entry written by The New Scrawl on when the photographer Spencer Tunick came to photograph nudes en masse in public venues that I can’t find yet).

What Up?

Well, I’ve been dancing. A lot. :) Read about the adventures here.

Zura on Stage

And now for some shameless self-promotion:

An Evil King. A Noble Youth. A Damsel in Distress. More Damsels of the ass-kicking Warrior-Goddess variety. Jaw-dropping Fights from one of Montreal’s best choreographers. Dance, Theatre, Kung Fu & Storytelling meld together to tell a timeless tale of War, Peace, Love and Death.

Come see Zura herself in a very unique play featured in this year’s Montreal Fringe Fest which is happening from June 11th-21st! There will be fighting, acting, dancing and general ass-kicking – not to be missed!!

The website.

The Facebook event.

I invite all that are able to come see the show. One of the pivotal characters (mine) is actually named Zura. :) You will of course notice that the flyer design is a take on a certain someone’s avatar.

If you enjoy Amazone (how could you not), you’ll also enjoy Vérité & Conséquences, a french one-man show with ninjas.

So I am currently on vacation, as I decided to take 3-4 weeks off of work just to be in and work on this play. My body hurts all over, and if possible I am busy working more intensely that I normally am at my regular IT job. I’ll definitely need a vacation after my vacation, or perhaps just an indulgent day spent at a spa. I am living as a working artist this month (who happens to have vacation pay at the same time), and as exhausting and volatile as it is, I am completely loving the creative process. Yay.

Vérité & Conséquences

Eloquence and gravitas

Here’s a terribly inspiring and eloquent interview with Indian actress Shabana Azmi by Charlie Rose. It’s well, well worth the whole watch.

The world is recognizing that all parameters cannot be set by the west by which the east will be judged. For the first time, there is a recognition… you need to understand different cultures in the paradigms they themselves have, rather than what you impose… That is a very happy situation to be in.

Busy Schedule

How the heck do I have time for everything? It’s a question I get asked a lot and that I am now asking myself more pointedly. Between a full-time, fast-paced, high-stress IT job, finishing my yoga teacher training certificate, teaching the odd dance workshops and yoga classes, blogging, working out, socializing, rehearsing for two plays at the Montreal Fringe Fest and coming up with movement choreography, freelancing with voice acting, getting back to people about designing their websites, cleaning the house, going through the pile of books I have decided I “need” to read, making time to practice piano and getting enough sleep… no kidding I’ve been stretched paper-thin, these days.

In passing

I found out today, that one of my favourite teachers from CEGEP, Dr. Punhani passed away not nine days ago. He taught physics and calculus with an unmatched and contagious passion. He had an unmistakable quality of voice, was always, *ALWAYS* covered in chalk, and would let out small excited cheers of  “yesss!” whenever he worked out a theory on the chalkboard for us to absorb. It’s been since the early nineties since I saw him last, but I miss him anew.

I’ll leave you with a great quote by him that I found on some random blog:

“Reaching infinity? Absurd! You can never reach infinity. It’s like walking on the street and meeting God.”

–Punhani, Marianopolis math and physics teacher

Horse & buggy

We may still have some winter to finish up, but today it felt fully like spring. The sun gleamed on my walk to work, the breeze warm, my jacket slightly open, and the garbagemen passing by bonjour-ing me enthusiastically.

I heard the clip-clop of a caleche behind me, which was quickly followed by “Hi there, would you like a lift?” Would I! And so the nice caleche driver and his horse called Knockout – once a very timorous beastie who had since mellowed once he realized he got food out of it – gave me a lift to work. We overtook the now-cheering garbagemen and the driver drove into Old Montreal dropping me off right where I like to pick up my coffee and croissant. What a great way to travel. Neato, that. :)

Nightwalker

What I love about this city… is its ease with itself, its ease with me, my ease with it. I have a habit of indulging in time spent alone with my city. Today, spring is teasing us, pretending to come early this weekend, but we all know there is at least one big snow storm to come and several days of -20 degree weather on their way. This evening, I decide to venture out to watch a movie. The rain drizzling overhead in a darkening sky, I move effortlessly through the crowds of Ste. Catherine street as people end their shopping.

The 5:15 show of Watchmen sells out while I stand in line for a ticket, so I buy one for the 6:30 show and head off to the bookstore to browse in the meantime and see what might catch my eye there. An interesting book has caught my eye, and I manage to find a quiet nook in which to read a few chapters of it. Half an hour later I am hooked and walk out of Indigo with a new purchase in hand.

Finding an empty seat in the sold-out theatre, I watch others as they settle into their seats. Couples with their concession stand fodder in hand walk up and down the aisles furtively looking for two seats together. The man next to me has a little too much cologne on.

Boots off, I snuggle further into my seat, and I watch the Watchmen. After the credits have rolled, the theatre has emptied out and I go up two flights to use what I hope is a less crowded washroom. It is that, but there are puddles of water and bits of toilet paper strewn all about the floor left by an earlier crowd, and I wonder how we as a people become so neglectful in our habits in public places.

Outside, a jazz musician on the corner of Stanley and Ste. Catherine plays “My Favourite Things” on trumpet, moving on to “Tenderly” which stays in my head as a soundtrack for the rest of my meander home as I walk westward, deftly sidestepping potholes, puddles and slow-walkers.

I stop to drool over shoes in a display window of a favourite shoe store. I continue to move silently about the city, my city, with ease, always with ease. We are old lovers, she and I, no longer having the need to speak anymore to be understood by the other. I feel like a secret superheroine, walking the dark dank streets of the city I secretly protect; this is my favourite fantasy in which I frequently indulge.

I stop to pick up fresh shrimp at PA Marché on du Fort for a quick Thai shrimp curry I will cook up for dinner later. There is a very talkative Indian man right by the fish section emoting something rather important to his friend in a flurry of Bengali. I understand most of what he is saying and try not to let my smile show as I walk past, a packet of jumbo shrimp in hand.

I make my way to the cash when I spot a man an aisle away whom I think is David Luviner, a guy I had an instant crush on on my first day back to school in second year cegep. On the verge of eighteen at the time, I had spotted him outside our chemistry class the very first day noting that the leaf green of his eyes perfectly matched the green in my floral sleeveless top. I had thanked the Fates profusely with all my loins as They had devised our last names to be so close in one letter that we were alphabetically chosen to be lab partners for the next three months. He had been a shining, gleaming, beautiful adonis, near-painful to look at for too long; I had never seen anything more breathtaking. The man that walks down the next aisle now with his girlfriend/wife/friend gleams very ordinarily now to my present-day eyes.

I leave PA, and walk southward, staying a moment to glance through the closed gates of the CCA (I love this building), then past an apartment facing it that I had almost lived in, once. I take the ridiculously over-lit St. Marc tunnel down, black and dirty snow greeting me at its entrance. Halfway through, I pass a swerving homeless guy and wonder if this is perhaps not my best-made decision of the day. I walk on more briskly, breathing a tiny sigh of relief once I am out and then on through the quiet parks of Little Burgundy.

The slush crunches underfoot, and the rain continues to drizzle making my hair soft and wavy in a way that I like but can never seem to duplicate on my own. I observe the night and I drink in the essence of the city. I see all of her flaws and mind none of them tonight.

Nearing home, I pass by a stationary black SUV with obnoxious headlights and tinted windows. The engine is left growling as the driver inside waits for what must only be a drug/crime date. I move along quickly, finally turn the key in the lock and I am home.

In my kitchen, now clad in yoga wear, I add extra ginger and turmeric into the curry I am cooking, to dissuade the cold that is currently threatening at my throat to take its leave of me. The jumbo shrimp in its red curry sauce beckons to me, and I sit in an easy silence, eating and enjoying a glass of wine as the night rain gently mists the windows of my kitchen.