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Unstoppable
Trim all you want,
I will not be held back.
Gird your domain,
I recognize no borders.
Offer me pain,
I respond with laughter.
You cannot limit me
If I will not allow it;
For I will grow,
Despite your best efforts,
To become more than
Either of us foresaw.
I am Life
And I will live.
Awaiting orders
With military precision
The condiments await
A culinary decision
From Table 28
Packing it in
Cardboard conundra;
A thousand puzzles
Demanding attention.
Sticky fingers clawing
Invisible seams;
Tortured screams
Muffle buried treasures.
Swaddled icons
Nestled strategically;
Memories layered
On things forgotten.
The paper-laden tomb
Of a modern day pharaoh;
Heiroglyphic notes
Of fumed pitch.
Life in a box
Awaiting release.
Unintended misogyny
According to the Cambridge Dictionaries Online: misogyny (n) Feelings of hating women or the belief that men are much better than women.
Let me state for the record that I do not hate women, but over the last decade or so, I have come to realize the insidious ways in which I felt (or made it appear that I felt) men to be superior to women.
As a male writer, I have historically written stories from the male perspective. My protagonists were male. My antagonists were male. My peripheral characters were predominantly male. And when I did include a female character, she tended to be rather two-dimensional (see also my blog post For my friend Emma).
Several years ago, I had the fortunate happenstance to take a sketch comedy writing class at Toronto’s Second City Training Centre under the guidance of actress and writer Aurora Browne, best known locally as one of the actors from the show Comedy Inc. and former mainstage performer at Second City. Perhaps not surprisingly, the class was mostly comprised of men. And to a man, we wrote sketches about guys.
After the first couple of classes, however, when we had each produced a few sketches, Aurora challenged the men in the room to either rewrite one of their existing sketches or write a completely new sketch with a woman (or several) in the lead.
It was at that moment that I realized my unintended misogyny.
Aurora was tired of trying to find material with strong and/or well-defined female characters. She was tired of simply playing the girlfriend, the ex-wife, the nurse, the teacher. Not that there was anything inherently wrong in playing any of these roles, but more that they were almost always written as two-dimensional…if they could even be said to aspire to a second dimension.
This was her opportunity to put her heels into the dirt in moulding the next generation of comedy writers.
From my perspective, the task was amazingly daunting and very surprising, as I found myself breaking down walls and obstructions I never realized I had put in place. I had to think how might a woman character function differently in this scene, without getting cliché, and how would that change the dynamics of the scene. Or even would it?
In the years since, no matter what I write—sketch, screenplay, teleplay, poem—I watch for places where I might fall into gender bias. The minute I decide on my main characters, I ask myself if the protagonist or antagonist could be a woman (sadly, I still typically default to males). If the answer is yes, then I take a second run at my idea to see which way would make for a better story.
As a result, I have both dramatically increased the repertoire of characters I can bring to life and greatly enriched my stories. In fact, the two most recent screenplays I am developing have female protagonists, as do a couple of my television pilot concepts—not out of a sense of political correctness or fairness, but because those choices made the most sense for the story.
So thanks, Aurora, for the creative kick upside the head.
(Illustration used without permission.)
Head banger
You seek, you tap, you listen,
Bobbing left and right.
Grasping a toehold,
Grasping at hope.
Brute force, divine strategy
Mingle into a dance
Both aerial and arborial.
Unceasing, unerring, uncaring
Of the lives you disrupt;
Your murderous needs
Foremost in your mind.
Survival of the fittest
In a war of millimetres.
Anger? Frustration? Agony?
Only ceaseless desire
For what you have not yet.
Dauphin Lake
Virginal tableau of ice and snow,
Cloudless sky of photonic bliss,
Serenity whispers in my ear
And the universe rests.
A thunderous snap
Violently tears the silence
Only to be swallowed
By the gentle murmur
Of a newborn breeze.
Almost imperceptibly,
The tableau is broken;
Minor movements barely felt,
Tinny cracks inaudibly sensed.
Newly formed leaves turn to watch
The millimeter march of white
As snow and ice shift to shore.
Pushing, crawling, clawing,
An unrelenting progress
Of unimaginable ruin.
Unslaked with its beachhead,
It forces onward and inland,
Carving glacial paths toward homes.
Bending trees, crushing fences,
Invading homes, uprooting lives,
Until the breeze subsides
And serenity returns to the lake
To contrast broken lives.
(Images used without permission; copyright ctvnews.ca)
Learn more about the destruction at Dauphin Lake and our ongoing under-appreciation of Nature’s ability to take back what is hers.
I sight
I cannot see you
As you might wish,
But only as my eye allows.
Retinal engrams
Of old beliefs—
Blind spots
Emotional and real—
Shade the greys,
Colour the colours,
Frame light with dark,
Dark with light,
Until all I see
Is what I choose
To acknowledge,
To believe,
To understand.
I cannot see you
As you might wish;
Be glad I see
Any of you at all.
A slug eyes me eyeing him as it crosses a shrub near Tofino, BC
Costume storage
Last week, I walked through my neighbourhood and passed a theatrical costume store called Malabar, a place through which I love to rummage for the sheer joy of the pageantry. And that brief moment would have been forgotten had not fellow blogger Madelin Adena Smith posted a hyper-caffeinated blog and vlog early this morning.
In it, she challenged her readers/listeners to consider the roles they play in their day-to-day lives and asked us to consider the real us that lay hidden beneath those performances, which made me think of my psychosocial closet and all of the costumes I have worn throughout my life.
(Before proceeding, this is not a complaint against family or friends. These costumes were of my own choosing and it is only now in later life that I am realizing what I did to myself.)
Here is the schoolboy outfit…god, I was so small back then…the dutiful student who wanted to explore storytelling, but knew that this was not the accepted route to success. Oh, I was supported in my storytelling, but only as a hobby. My real future lay in science and medicine.
And the eldest son/man-of-the-house costume…almost looks like a football uniform with its broad shoulders and firm back…heady responsibilities for a young boy growing up and not having a clue as to who he is supposed to be, let alone actually is.
The clown costume…my go-to in times of stress…a protective device against a world in which I didn’t feel I belonged or related. Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em laugh, make ‘em laugh. Then run away.
The Creative Director costume…the true song-and-dance man of my repertoire. This was perhaps my biggest role in life and is a costume I still wear on occasion, if only because it is expected by clients.
My psychosocial closet is filled with these things and all of them served to block my art because they stifled the real me.
You see the problem with the bars of a cage is that they work in two directions. Yes, they keep the world from getting at you, but at the same time, they keep you from reaching your true self and that is where your art lives.
During my eldest son phase, my art would express itself in the wee hours of the morning, long after everyone had gone to bed, until my mother would finally yell downstairs for me to cease the deafening machine-gun fire of my electronic typewriter.
The clown phase almost cost me the love of my life but when the silly girl challenged that I was simply a clown, my hackles rose and I gave her reams of painfully personal poetry I had written. Her preconceptions shattered, we were married within a year and were so for 13 years.
Interestingly, it was the new costumes we donned during our marriage that led to our separation last year. Luckily, in shedding those costumes, we remain very close friends and confidantes.
Ironically, even my Creative Director guise stifled my art. Sure, I was creative, but for others, not me. This is the main reason why I chose to quit my job last year and pursue my art as a career unto itself. I had to sacrifice something, and it was the job.
With rare exceptions, my psychosocial closet is now just a relic of my past; a yearbook at which I can reflect on lives lived and mistakes made. It is not, thank goodness, something into which I feel the need to dip.
The only real costume I wear now is my Randall C Willis (please, call me Randy); the only costume that was ever truly mine. The artist has no clothes, if you will.
And because I have finally divestmented myself, my art can flow freely and keeps me warm at nights.
I am, therefore I create. It’s a great feeling.
And in the meantime, I wonder if Goodwill accepts old costumes.
So, now that I stand here naked (don’t think about it), I feel free to ask: What costumes you have worn in your life or do so now that have blocked your art?
The only costume I am apt to wear these days is on my hand
Seven words
Seven words
The lifespan of a conversation never had
Pain unrecognized invalidated
Anger unexpressed unbearable
Disappointment ingrained unappeased
Sadness unutterable unrelenting
Despair intolerable unfathomable
Acceptance impossible unreachable
Hope unthinkable unrealistic
I am sorry that I hurt you
Seven words
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