Mrs. Everett Goes To Tasmania

Dearest readers you probably forgot about me by now. I nearly did. That writing self, the one who makes it a practice to blog every week, where did she go? Mired in ordinary work I’m afraid. I’ve come to realize writing for someone else all day really takes the wind out of my creative sails by the weekend. I did carve out some precious time for my own work, however, and in a flurry of words, I managed to crank out the longest segment of my Mrs. Everett story since it began. It’s her voyage to Australia and Tasmania and it’s really about four chapters but given it is a transmedia story, I’ll just give you a little section of prose intro here. You’ll find the rest of it unfolding on my biz site at http://www.whatisyourstory.ca soon. Notice I don’t commit to a date.

To catch you up, Mrs. Everett has been in Italy on the Amalfi coast having a romance with a gentleman named Lodano. Of course it didn’t work out and she felt for the first time in two decades, a bit of a broken heart. Not a real broken heart (because we know those can be fatal), just a little hairline fracture but nonetheless it hurts her deeply and in this chapter we are joining her as she sets off for the wide-open spaces of Australia to heal her heart. At the end of this chapter we’ll see Mrs. Everett reuniting with Mr. Everett’s younger sister, Mara, which doesn’t go so well at first. But that’s a whole other story to unfold down the road.

****

She let out a sigh of relief as the plane door was finally shut with a deliberate clunk of the metal latch. It was the most comforting sound she could imagine hearing at that moment and she happily leafed through a safety pamphlet in Italian, feeling her shoulders ease and drop. She hoped the seat beside her stayed empty. She wasn’t in the mood to make anyone else cheerful. God knew she wasn’t.

How foolish she’d been! She stuffed the pamphlet roughly into the seat back ahead of her and stared out the window. They had begun to roll down the runway and the plane heaved and creaked as she leaned forward, hoping she could somehow help speed it up and get as far away from Italy as possible.

Lodano.

His name rolled around in her mind like dice in an endless game. It made her think of ice cubes and she looked up for a stewardess. A red seat belt sign frowned down at her. No drink to ease her nerves yet.

Lodano.

How she loved to say his name, hesitantly, joyously, sensuously, whispery. She felt ashamed at how much she’d said it. Like an addict, she had binged on his attention, watching his eyes watching her lips as she’d cooed to him, a long-lost femininity fluttering up into her face, her eyes, along her skin, and flooding her mind.

Until she woke up in their hotel room early one morning and looked out the window to find  him exploring the back of a sundress on a young, curvy Italian woman.

She’d believed her days of being cuckolded were over. Still, there was a certain sense of whimsy to it all that she’d not felt since she’d been in high school. She knew Edward would say she was an easy target, a cliché, but she’d really been deeply infatuated with Lodano. Or was it Italy? No matter,  she was on her way to Australia and she was determined to have an adventure. She was circling around the idea of visiting Mara, Edward’s sister, but first she needed to hole up and knit back the hole she’d torn in her newly acquired confidence.

***

It unsettled her. This feeling of apathy. What was wrong with her? She’d loved every Four Seasons she’d ever stayed in. But she realized Italy had changed her forever and no amount of amenity or luxurious food, bedding or service would be enough to shift the weight, to unburden her from the sense that the time had come for her to really and truly let what she’d set in motion happen, unfold and become.

The front desk was agitated. There was a lineup and luxury hotels don’t like lineups. They moved in precision with clipped, hushed tones as she leaned on one leg then another, watching for a every inch she could move forward. She was normally an acquiescent tourist but now she was a traveler and she wanted out of Sydney.

“Yes, that’s correct, today. I realize it’s several days short of when I’d reserved for but something has come up.” She had nothing else to add. She stared flatly at the woman who paused, with a brief nod that conveyed her slight annoyance and offered a polite  ‘certainly, ma’am, by all means we are pleased you enjoyed your stay with us’. Well, she hadn’t enjoyed her stay but it wasn’t the hotel’s fault.

At the lounge the night before she’d met a BMW instrument mechanic who had purposefully spent most of his life on the road so he could avoid his marriage. He was matter-of-fact about it and they had an immediate commonality of travelers with no true ‘home’. They’d shared a dinner of appetizers in the bar and he’d described his travels in Tasmania in such tangible, colourful stories she knew that she would have to go there next. It sounded like a place where she could escape everything. It sounded like a place where she might also find what she’d been looking for since she’d started her journey.

***

On the ferry to Tasmania there was a rack of cards advertising places to stay. She couldn’t understand what they were. They were pictures of homes with people’s faces on the front of the brochures holding dogs and proffering baskets of food seemingly on their own front porch. Did they rent their living rooms? She turned one over after another. They were B & B’s. Bed and breakfast. Breakfast in bed? In someone’s actual bed? Not a hotel bed. It was an odd idea.

She wandered to the deck and considered how she might sleep in someone’s basement. The prices did not seem a lot lower than some of the hotels she’d stayed at so what was the selling point? She imagined soem kindly husband supporting his wife’s small business, walking by in his boxers int he middle of the night, giving her a small wave and she brushed her teeth.

No, she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

Stop it. You came here to do try new things. To remember how you used to live in the world. How your body felt without props, artifice or Edward. Why travel to the ends of the earth if not to end something? If not to find what you have lost?

She looked out over the cheerful expanse of blue ocean meeting blue sky and for the first time since she’d been a teenager realized she was truly free.

***

She stood at the edge of the property and looked up towards the house. She had the urge to call the taxi back. She felt like she was trespassing. There didn’t seem to be anyone home anyway. She turned to call the car back when a burst of energy piled out of the front door including two dogs, a man and a short, wiry woman with an unruly mop of silver curls that bounced as she bounded past her husband and met her with a hug. Prue broke into surprised laughter as her upright stance was  caught off guard and she stumbled in the woman’s embrace. The woman introduced herself as Ann and the man behind her as her husband, Ellis. He offered his hand and it was warm though roughly calloused.  Ann expertly guided her towards the shade of the deck.

“Are you parched? It’s hotter than usual out here the past few weeks and if you’re not used to it, can affect the noggin’, right?” The woman spoke quickly, sharp and precise like her movements as she scooped Prue’s bag from her shoulder and crossed the porch into the house, opening the door wide open for Prue.

“No, I’ve learned since traveling so much this year to always have a bottle of water by my side, thanks ever so much.”

Prue suddenly felt too formal and self-conscious, like she’d just barged into a family of perfect strangers (which she had) but her hosts instantly sensed it and offered her a tour of the house. It had large wood beams on the ceiling and artwork on every inch of the walls, with colourful  stained glass hanging in the windows that flooded the room with beautiful light. It felt like a home. She’d forgotten what that felt like and she her eyes blurred with the sudden prick of tears. Ann took no notice and kept up a steady stream of monologue as she led Prue to her guest room which was a kind of semi-detached space off the back of the house with its own small deck that looked out over a yard brimming with Ann’s artwork in all shapes and sizes of sculpture, paint, glass work, and pottery. The room was utterly silent save the soft chirping of birds she’d never heard nor seen before, some with flashes of green feathers as they moved between branches at the edge of the garden. The small bed butted up against a half-wall made of white slatted wood and huge windows surrounding it. Small wooden shelves lined one side filled with books and brightly painted pottery. An old-fashioned coverlet with bright embroidered flowers covered the bed. Prue instantly wanted to lie in it and listen to the birds.

“Allight then, you have a lie down and we’ll set about fixing a lovely dinner for you when you are good and ready for company. If you want to that is! We’re not fussy here and don’t want anyone telling us when and where we need to be–ever!” Ann said this with a kind of fervor that made Prue smile. She liked the rules of the house already.

“Thank you Ann, I think I will lie down for a bit,” Prue said, a yawn escaping before she could cover her mouth.

Ann made a noise of approval and whisked off, her salt-and-pepper curls dancing after her as she leapt up the two stairs to the door the separated them from the main house. The smell of the ocean drifted through the screens on the window and she was glad she’d chosen Coles Bay to begin her Tasmania adventure. It was remote, beautiful, and unpretentious. And so far, very poor cell reception which suited her just fine.

Prue had not felt so sleepy since London when she’d visited the hammam. As she closed her eyes she made a mental note to herself that this was the best check-in of her life.

***

© Margaret Doyle 2014

Photo credit Laurine Croasdale

Mrs. Everett Goes to Paris

This is the next draft excerpt from the chapter on France from the Mrs. Everett story. To read the full story, keep an eye on the main story page, I should have it done by the weekend! Just too busy with ‘real-life’ these days, sorry for the delay in my Mrs. Everett saga for those of you following along on her travel odyssey.  But you can follow her on Twitter or be her friend on Facebook  between chapters if you want to see what she is up to! She’s at the Hotel Eza right now, absolutely stunning!

Her taxi turned right on Rue de Verneuil and lurched half a block and stopped abruptly. Since her luggage had been lost, she simply paid the driver, and stepped out onto her first Parisian street in over 16 years. An unnatural feeling of joy filled her feet, then her chest and she had the urge to jump or skip or clap, perhaps even all at once. This was her third country since November yet it was Paris that made her feel her liberty as a solo traveler. The last time she’d been here she’d been a wife concerned only with the feelings and happiness of her then husband Edward. Or rather unhappiness as it had been then.

“Bonjour Mademoiselle Everett!” the concierge warmly greeted her, stepping out from behind a petite but elegant desk to attend to her non-existent luggage. She explained that the airlines were going to send her luggage along once it was found but that for now she was just going to bed. His eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“A little wine to take with you?”

“Oh, I think…” She let her voice trail off as she watched him open a small glass cupboard and take out a demure half bottle of white wine. She wanted to say no but then remembered Edward wasn’t upstairs. There was no one to frown dourly at her from across the room.

“Oh, well, perhaps, a wee glass would help after traveling” she cheerily offered him as  she accepted the bottle and started towards the tiny elevator. It seemed everything was made for a small person including the tiny handles but then the hotel was 300 years old. Maybe they weren’t as tall as her back then.

She noticed the man had pressed the button for her and he explained they were renovating but had put her in the top floor with a lovely view.

“Merci!” she called behind her as she slid into the miniature elevator and pulled the door shut. The walls of the elevator had a kind of carpet or upholstery on them and there was barely room to turn around. Edward would hate this place. She already loved it.

It was 4 am Paris time. She opened her fabulously tall window and looked down the street. As far as her eyes could see, Haussmann style roofs, fairytale grays and blues and flourishes of architectural details from an era where a woman like her would have been out on the street and not in a beautiful suite in one of the nicest areas of the Paris.

She kicked off her shoes, shrugged out of her dress and slowly  crawled from the bottom of the bed to the top. She hugged the downy pillow and giggled into it. After a harrowing start to the new year, she was at long last with one of her greatest loves.

*****

Prue Gets Visual

I had a great talk with Lance Weiler at the beginning of January and one of the things he told me to do is to use my digital assets of my Transmedia story, Mrs. Everett, and start to make video stories from them. So, I’ve started to do a series of her poems, or really I like to think of them as tiny audio plays, but nevertheless, they will tell another layer of her journey. I started at the beginning for my first one, which is when she is making a reservation for herself and her husband for their 20th wedding anniversary. She knows in her heart the marriage is dead but she feels compelled to try. She is ghost-walking through it and in this video you can kind of hear (I hope!) her sadness and the beginning of her realization that her marriage isn’t giving her what she needs as in, at all. I’m going to to be posting these videos to Prue Everett’s Pinterest page. Some will be on her secret board for her Pen Pals only! You can sign up to be her Pen Pal on my business website. You can interact with the story and help her decide where to go, what to pack, things to see and once in a while she even sends her fans souvenirs from her trips! She also has a Facebook page and she’d love to be friends with you there. You can vicariously live through her as she travels the world; I know I do.

The Next Big Thing

The title of this blog award has big shoes to fill so I’m kind of awed that my friend Tess Wixted nominated me for it. But happy and also grateful to be thought of by her (thank you Tess!).

Here are my responses to the questions that come with accepting this award.

What is the working title of your next book?

Mrs. Everett

1. Where did the idea come from for the book?

It started percolating when I saw a picture from the 60’s of this chic woman sitting in first class in an old Boeing 747 looking out the window about 3 years ago. It just hit me, the whole storyworld of Mrs. Everett. And I became obsessed with telling her story. The story often wakes me up to be told in the middle of the night. I’ve never had a story so insistent on being expressed. So, mostly I just try to make time to listen to it.

1. What genre does your book fall under?

It will be a Transmedia experience which means there will be a main ‘spine’ of prose as a stand-alone book with co-existing narratives in various forms including text (as in iPhone text messages), audio (as in a phonographic story), poetry (an entire poetry book written ‘floor by floor’ for every room Mrs. Everett stays in over the course of a year), Twitter (as in, a year of tweets), Facebook, same, and Pinterest with a board for every ‘Escape’ (ie destination) that Mrs. Everett visits. The idea is to make it more and more collaborative with hosts in cities/destinations creating content and adding continually to the breadth and depth of the story. As more people sign up for Postcards from Prue (her letters to her pen pals), I think a better online community can grow around the story. So, please sign up.:)

1. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Well, since Prue Everett loves Grace Kelly that would be my first choice. My second would be Marion Cotillard. For Mr. Everett I would choose Ewan McGregor without question because I think he can play a complex man very well. For the role of Violet, I would choose Scarlett Johansson. For the driver, Ted, I would choose Willem Dafoe.  For her estranged younger cousin Mary, I would choose Zooey Deschanel. There will be other characters but I can’t talk about them yet without compromising the story.

1. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

That is a challenging question. Okay here goes:

Mrs. Everett is the story of a woman who escapes the seemingly prison-like confines of her privileged life with her husband and goes on the lam by traveling around the world and in the process of discovering destinations comes to see herself and the world in an entirely radical new way.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

If there were a publisher with the cojones to publish this I’d be pretty impressed but at this point, I’m pretty sure I’ll be putting together an e-book that will include all of the digital media forms in one intensely amazing experience.

1. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I’m writing it right now and it will be completed December 2013. If I were honest, I could be writing this all day every day but have to try to carve time to pay some bills so I jam it in and around ‘regular’ life. Transmedia is not for the faint of heart, it’s a mind-bending amount of work to run multiple-narratives over time. A regular novel will feel like a cake-walk after this.

1. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 

There are none. Which is why I’m writing it. I have been in the Transmedia space for some time and a much of what I was seeing I couldn’t really relate to. I was seeing a lot of cyborgs and aliens and games where people are killed and pirates and mystical places and  space tales and large ‘Hollywood’ style productions with budgets of millions of dollars.  I respect it all, I know how hard they’ve worked on these projects and I feel a part of that tribe but I wanted to find my own voice in Transmedia and create a story that didn’t rely on special effects, a big budget, or non-human species. Also, I love (and work in) tourism and hotels and travel and I wanted to show how destinations could look at Transmedia and see how it might work for them. To me, it’s a no-brainer to use a Transmedia approach to any and all destination development and marketing but I realized I had to do a proper case study to show my clients to win them over. Also, I wanted to explore a single narrative Transmedia story. A more intimate, one-to-one experience versus the typical Transmedia production which shoots for mass consumption as the ultimate benchmark of its success. I want to encourage people to get involved in the story, and change where Mrs.Everett goes and be a part of the narrative with me. I want the readers to be collaborators. I want it to be participatory and immersive. It’s way more fun that way.

1. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

A few things. That initial picture I talked about earlier and the idea I wanted to tell a different kind of Transmedia story. But if I can be candid, characters appear quite fully-formed for me and Mrs. Everett (Prue) did just that.Magically showed up on my doorstep. I then usually have to fumble around in the fog chasing my characters to where they pull me along to. I try my best to serve the characters and relate their storyworld to those behind me reading. It’s hard, I feel I never provide the true experience of their story but I’m trying, I’m trying! Some of the plot and other characters have been inspired by the relationships and past experiences over the last two years of my life and the travel part is fueled by my many years in the tourism and hospitality industry. I am blessed to have a lot of contacts around the world to help me with the story. Another inspiration was the Orient Express company, who still value old-world traditions and a style of travel long-forgotten by many. I like their idea of a travel world, where the unforgettable experience is the ultimate goal and money is no object. That is how Prue travels. At the beginning.:)

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Beyond the interesting fact the book is told across multiple platforms and has a living, breathing social media experience, there is the core narrative of a woman who discovers the life that she has been leading for 20 years is an illusion. As she peels back the layers of the illusion, she comes to find the horrors of the reality she has been numb to for decades and in her discovery, she has to face her own demons and her own complicity in it. It is an exploration of the lies we tell in our relationships, the pain we inflict on the ones we love, the often savage degrees we will go to to protect these illusions, and yes, the dirty little secrets of what appears to be a ‘perfect’ marriage. Blackmail, death, wealth, corruption, power, intrigue, luxury travel, glamour, spirituality, awakening, self-love. It will all be in there. I hope you’ll be friends with Prue along the way. She needs your support!

Like Tess Wixted, who nominated me, I want to support just one writer by nominating them. He doesn’t have a website yet (we’re working on it) and I did interview him but we’ve decided to do it over as we didn’t like the results. First time podcasters so we’re going to get that interview up and posted this week so please circle back here to find out about Zero Lee, an extraordinary writer who is working on a book that we will be talking about and sharing some insights on in our chat. He is also my writing partner for a Transmedia play we are working on that will be completed this spring and go into production in Vancouver next fall. Stay tuned for that, it’s going to be killer.

Insanity of writing, memory of marriage, and the elixir of story

What I’m about to say could possibly seem odd to you if you aren’t a writer. If you are a writer, you’ll nod and smile. Writer’s who write for money and writers who must write are two different things I’ve come to realize over the years. If you are able to stop writing, that is, if you won a lottery, and didn’t have to write for your job, and you wouldn’t miss it so much, then you belong in the first camp. If you are deprived of being able to write and find yourself going slightly mad, then it is quite likely you are in the second camp. As a metaphor–after all, we’re talking about writing–the second camp of writers will feel, after a short time without their writing, as someone who is forcibly kept underwater and not allowed to surface for oxygen. Panic begins to take hold and the urge is so intense that you feel you may die without that air in your lungs. You will go to extreme lengths to take air. You will swim to the surface, no matter what is stopping you, in order to survive.

I am most definitely in the second camp. When I spend too much time being non-creative, thinking in a linear, functional fashion, I get that edgy, unsettled feeling that begins in the bottom of my lungs and builds and builds and builds until I am that swimmer desperate for air and wildly swimming up to it as though her life depended on it.

Because it does. My mental well-being at any rate.

I sometimes wish I didn’t have this problem. Because then I would not have to ever take any time off from being a productive machine and even more likely, would be far wealthier as a result I am sure.

But I have to breathe. You might find me staring out a window quietly thinking for instance. I’m actually writing. The act of pen to paper is only one part of writing. So often I have often been criticized for just staring out a window during my life, with people violently waving their hands in my face saying, ‘hello??? anyone home???‘ Well, yes I’m bloody well home you idiot is what I wish to say when that happens but don’t because well, I’m Canadian and polite. But seeing fictional characters, feeling them, getting the details of their history, imagining their voices–all these float towards you as in a dream but you have to be quiet and still and listening for them to appear. You don’t want anyone around. You don’t want to be interrupted–dear god don’t get in the way of a writer in the midst of this process for heaven’s sake–so you  can fall and keep falling into your storyworld that was calling and calling for you all this time. It is heaven to finally get to suck in all that lovely creative air, gulping and gulping it in, finally, finally satiated.

The other day I was talking about Mrs. Everett–a story I am writing using various forms including text, audio, photographs, and video–and my son said, you talk about her as if she were real. I said to him, if she isn’t real to me, she’ll most certainly not be real for anyone else. Well, he’s a visual artist so looks at me like I’m nuts of course but a writer completely and utterly understands how these other people take up residence within us demanding their story be told.

So, after working very hard since last February in the linear real world, I am going to be holed up in December in the storyworld of Mrs. Everett and letting her finally get a chance to emerge as she wishes. I am clap-happy about these plans I can assure you as I surface for days on end to drink in the elixir of story.

Part of the storyworld of Mrs. Everett includes her poetry musings, often written in the middle of the night, usually about Mr. Everett her husband whom she has recently left. Here is a sound recording of her second poem in the project 2012-11-20 2_57_30 PM.

The first poem (Room 107) is only available to subscribers to Prue’s Postcards which you can find on my business site. In this poem/scene, Mrs. Everett (Prue) is staying on Catalina Island in California and is escaping to a posh hotel but can’t sleep as she thinks about her life and what may lie ahead for her and what she has also left behind (her marriage). I imagine she is also thinking of their early days together when they were once so in love. She remembers back when they watched Un Homme et une Femme, with Edward translating for her and saying the subtitles were all completely wrong. So, it’s a painful time of looking back for Prue (Mrs. Everett) and also with hope for what lies ahead. Here’s a still from the movie that will place you exactly in the memory she has of their heady days first in love as a young couple:

Anouk Aimée & Jean-Louis Trintignant in Un homme et une femme (1966, Claude Lelouch)

Now, because this story is written employing Transmedia techniques, I have to give Mrs. Everett a voice and image and so am standing in for her. What she actually looks like and sounds like isn’t me, so please suspend your disbelief if you think, hey that is Margaret speaking. I am, but on behalf of Mrs. Everett. Clearly you can see why my son thinks I am insane. La de da I say, and don’t give a whit if you agree with him either. For those that love a good story, this one is going to be a doozie I can tell you. So I do hope you’ll join me as I develop it. You can read the first part of the story on my business webpage at http://www.whatisyourstory.ca. The next installation is on its way soon!

Sun, dreams, and freaks: LA and the carnival of story

When I was in my mid-20’s I lived in California and of the many things I loved about it, waking up in the morning and looking out at the sun streaming through palm trees was at the top of my list. So, when I woke up at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel a few days ago and looked out, I was reminded of my younger self all those years ago, a young theatre artist, looking out at the sky and dreaming of the stage.

I love the artifice of Hollywood Boulevard, the ‘how I made it’ stories of success, the neon, the hustle, but also the sadness there as well, evident in the desperation and longing you see in the faces as they step towards you, selling a tour, pimping a plastic Oscar statue, posing as a star, hustling you into Madame Tussaud’s. But for me, as a storyteller, Hollywood will never lose its golden hue, even if it is painted on by a hackneyed old actor trying to make a buck.

I don’t see myself as any different than they are really; I grew up with the same starry-eyed dreams, watching movies, obsessed with putting on shows, lost in the dream of what could be, worshipping at the feet of the almighty Oscars, getting lost in storyworld’s and feeling separate from my reality in a way I could see other children did not. For that, I remained somewhat of an outsider, a loner, and had the similar experience of being both a performer and an introvert, unsure of my belonging, but driven to make-believe.

Ironically, I felt more akin to the characters along this short, but famous strip, then I did with many of those who marketed themselves as storytellers at Storyworld (the conference I attended in LA). As so often happens with big conferences over time, Storyworld this year seemed to pander to mega business entities, 100 million dollar franchises, and a hierarchy of transmedia talent that let you know if weren’t near the top you were most definitely at the bottom. Not dissimilar to elementary school when you couldn’t get in with the cool group and knew you were relegated to the outsiders and weirdos. Luckily, there were a few folks like Lance Weiler and Brian Clark of GMD Studios who seemed to have found a way to be at the top of the transmedia food chain and still keep pretension to a minimum and art front and centre on their agenda. Both are doing great work.

As a writer, I know that I will always have to stay on the outside to create good work and I’m perfectly fine with it. I know where my tribe is, however flawed or desperate,  marginalized or freakish they may be, and I am glad to be one of them.

Story Mania

I write stories. I speak stories. I capture stories. I dream of stories. I wake up and search for stories online. I go to bed reading stories about people’s dinners, their hotel stays, their annoying pets on Instagram; I discover and ‘like’ pictures of photos by young artists around the world on Pinterest, comment on Facebook stories by clients, write manuals on how to tell stories,  track client stories on social media, upload pictures to Tumblr, link stories to ScoopIt, bookmark stories for telling.  I print off storyboards, do photo shoots of characters, work on  Transmedia drama, text stories from a character’s head, discuss on Skype with my web designer exactly how we are going to accommodate ridiculous Transmedia story forms?, and somewhere in between all of that I’m telling and living my own story.

My life is total story mania right now.

On Wednesday, I fly down to attend Storyworld. I’m staying at one of the most famous hotels in California and I cannot WAIT to take my character, Mrs. Everett, there as a virtual guest. Indeed, I have forgotten entirely what it is to live just as me in real-life anymore. Who cares? This is way more fun.

So, maybe this is my way of saying I’m sorry to be late in posting to my personal blog of which you are a lovely reader and I am deeply grateful for your patience as I run around with other people. You and I both know we have a special, exclusive, blog only relationship together that I’ll never leave so we’re good right? Right?

I’ll have some wicked stories to tell soon from Hollywood. Who knows what Mrs. Everett will get up to. Stay tuned for more…stories.

Introducing Mrs. Everett

This is a scene from one part of a small Transmedia story I’m creating to launch on my biz website soon. It’s about a character by the name of Mrs. Everett who is trapped in a stale and cold marriage to a wealthy businessman who cares more about his stocks than her. Inside Prue, her real self, lies another woman waiting to bloom, discover, and be discovered. In this scene, she is to meet her husband for an anniversary weekend at a swanky hotel. Instead, she finds out in a short text he can’t make it and is staying on in Shanghai. The story will also be told in photographs, poetry, audio, and a video diary. Stay tuned for more Mrs. Everett story unfolding!

She crossed her legs and uncrossed them. The light turned green. She heard the sound of an ambulance coming from behind them. She felt the lined leather seats below her. She thrummed her fingers anxiously on her knee. It was rush hour and they were trapped. A mirrored building beside her shone brightly and refracted urban light into her eyes.

She looked down at the text and wondered where to go now?

She called up to her driver.

“I don’t want to go to the hotel Mr. Everett booked. “

A long pause hung between them.

“Yes Mrs. Everett” answered Ted, her driver and only real confidante.

She knew she wanted to go somewhere; she could see it like a mirage shimmering, hovering fluidly on the horizon, watery and unformed,  a kind of liquid apparition she’d known was there all along but refused to believe in because no one else saw it.

“Ted?”

“Yes Mrs. Everett?”

“Let’s go to that hotel I was telling you about, remember the one I went to as a little girl? The one with proper light switches and service?” She pulled off her gloves and placed them one on top of another at cross angles on her lap. She smoothed her already ironed skirt and crossed her ankles.

“Yes, absolutely ma’am, we’ll be there in just under 30 minutes I suspect.”

“Alright, thank you Ted.”

She had the sudden urge to toss her gloves out the window, with their perfect snaps and buttery soft leather and silky monogrammed lining; she resented everything about them.

Suddenly, she wanted her hands free.

Suddenly, she realized, she could be free.

Rockstar Nanny

For those of you who are regular readers, you’ll know I grew up in a family of 13. Second generation breeding eventually happened and there was born lashings of limbs and faces and screaming babies; it seemed that children were endlessly thrown onto your hip mid-hallway or some sweaty hot little body was crawling into your bed or asking you to play at some ungodly hour and since I was now an Aunt I had to act like one whatever that meant.

No one really ‘watched’ after children in our house. You were sort of shunned if you were high maintenance. In fact, as the smallest, and a girl, I always felt lucky to have survived the day. It often felt like a race and I loved the manic pace of it with all the near misses of botched explosions, bikes tearing off of jumps, torturous tickling, pranks, thievery, flailing fists, falling out of trees, and so much more on any given day that the phrase ‘rough and tumble’ simply sounded like laundry softener in comparison to our activities.

My mother alone had a pretty strict schedule, an army-like precision that formed itself around laundry and cooking while our days were spent out of doors, wild and free and game for whatever came our way. I was always determined to follow the group despite my small stature and heard many a time from the front of the pack ahead of me “if you die, we’re not stopping” but I was not dissuaded. I just peddled harder and faster.

So when I was 15 and my friend asked if I wanted to babysit for this fancy pants music agency kingpin guy (that’s how he was described to me) I thought, babysit? My god, who wants to babysit? No one was ever ‘babysat’ in our family. You were left in the care of the mob. Besides, the idea of a clammy screaming baby in the middle of summer was not my idea of fun. It was all I could do to find a moment’s peace and quiet in my own house, why would I want to hold some other family’s baby?

Do me a favour? begged my brother’s friend, David Gray. I argued that it was beneath me to babysit; I was in theatre. At the time, I was volunteering for a Pirates of Penzance musical as an assistant stage manager so felt haughty and  theatrically superior; I likely resembled a strange stage version of Norma Desmond to the people in my life. But David was working as a clerk in an upper crust men’s clothing store in Kerrisdale and this was one of his important clients so I relented.

That is how I ended up becoming a nanny. This family also lived near Point Grey where I was raised but they were very different from my family. Not only were they a small family, they were not Catholic. As in, they were Jewish. I’d never met a Jewish family before then. But I didn’t know they were Jewish for many months and the first Christmas I knew them I brought over a Christmas cactus that was in full bloom. I knocked on the door and the mother said, oh, that’s lovely but we’re Jewish. I felt like a total fool but their wizened old grandma said that the Irish were a lost Jewish race anyway and so I was forgiven all my gentile shortcomings and taken into their fold.

I also learned how to negotiate from the first night I babysat.  The dad (the mogul) made me defend why I should be paid. I got a little ticked, I mean, wasn’t he just supposed to pay me an hourly wage? Nope. He didn’t believe in that. What did I do that I should be paid for? Exactly? So I had to negotiate, every time I babysat. For six years. One time I refused to look after the children as I needed a day off and was at my friend’s hiding out poolside when I heard the crunch of tires outside the fence on the gravel drive. The dad popped his head over the fence. I barked from the hot diving board where I was tanning  I’m not babysitting for love or money. I’m not. I won’t. 

He negotiated me into a babysitting but it cost him large. At 16 I was making 60 bucks an hour. Not bad for an afternoon’s nap time with babies.

I became a staple in their house. I loved being there because not only was there always great food (my first time seeing Häagen-Dazs in real life), deeply soft carpets, couches you never wanted to stand up from, Much Music blasting out of widescreen TV’s, but the dad was always-always-making deals on the phone. His business was pretty glamorous because it was the music industry and it wasn’t uncommon for me to chat on the phone with some well-known names. One musician in particular was invaluable to me when I couldn’t figure out the various clickers for the large screen TV’s. I would play on the floor quietly with the toddler and cock my ear to the pitching going on in the corner. I would smile as I could hear the familiar twists and turns of his sales technique and I learned an MBA’s worth of business intelligence from listening to him. I never tired of hearing him regale me with his stories. He’d crawled his way to the top, having never even graduated high school. He’d not been born rich but he’d make it to the big league. I admired him for his tenacity, humour and ability to see right through people in a moment’s exchange. He missed nothing.

There were always lot of galas and parties and I’d love sitting at the bottom of the stairs and look up at them in their tux and gown and watch as they stepped into the waiting limo. At the end of the night, maybe 2 am or so, I’d get to be driven home by the driver. Richard was one I remember well. One night I said, hey I don’t want to be driven home, can you take me to Club Soda? (the dad owned the nightclub so I knew I’d get in). I was 17 by this time but the rest of my friends had all turned 19 and I was forever lying about my age and trying to catch up. Nothing really new for me as the youngest.

Richard the driver lowered the window and said, are you sure? I said, oh yeah, just meeting up with my brother, no big deal. There was a long pause as he drove through the quiet streets then he turned right, towards the Granville St. bridge and I was screaming for joy on the inside. For years no one had ever seen me quietly being dropped off by stretch limos but for once I would be. I took my heels out of my backpack, tucked my sensible nanny shoes back in it and prepared to strike a pose.

It was a great moment to come up to that block long lineup that night, with Richard camping up the driver routine and opening the door as I stepped onto the sidewalk. The bouncer unclipped the rope and I  walked right in. Heady stuff for an underaged girl but for that brief moment I felt pretty rock star-ish.

I was a nanny for the first little girl from the time she was a small infant and held the second daughter the day she was born but as life would have it, I decided to pursue a Directing degree after my first year of college (which my nanny job paid for thank you very much). I had to say goodbye to my surrogate family. I loved the older daughter like my own having essentially been a third parent for her first 5 years and her wails and tears and my wails and tears on my last day holding her in my arms nearly kept me from leaving.

I learned so much with those children and that family. While watching the movie The Help the other day with my son he said, “Wow, I can’t believe people treated their help that way back then.” I said, “it’s not that far off the way some of the nannies were treated when I was in that world.”

It was true. Sometimes, as I’d be sitting in some mansion or other with a group of nannies, most of whom were Filipino, and the mothers would talk about us like we weren’t there. It shocked me but rolled off the backs of those young nannies, most of whom were thankful for the work. I felt a little sick they just took it like it was an ordinary part of their day.

One day we were in Shaughnessy at a birthday party and someone motioned to me and said, ‘where you’d get her?’ to the mother I worked for. She stood back and said, “I didn’t ‘get‘ her anywhere. Margaret is our friend and a part of our family.” And with that we left the party. A brave thing for her to do and I admired her for it.

For a job I never wanted, I gained a lifetime of lessons and memories. I’ve never regretted saying yes to holding that sweaty little baby and looking after her all those years. She was a handful but I loved her spirit and hope in some small way I made an impression on her life She certainly did on mine.

Hot Dogs, Heroines, and When to Have Your Last Meal

Nora and Woody likely having a very funny conversation.

I am still thinking about Nora Ephron dying. Charlie Rose did a nice montage of clips of her interviews, including her commencement speech at Wellesley, and I thought she seemed so alive, so young of mind, it came as a shock that she was gone seemingly so quick. At the end of that Wellesley speech, she says to the recent graduates: Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women. 

Like Nora, I was raised in a world of ladies, where white gloves were still worn to special occasions and men could only improve your life tremendously. Things are different now, and like Nora, I am thrilled at the choices young women have before them. Nora urged us to be the heroines of our own lives and while married (4 times), she always seemed to me like she spoke to the single girl inside us, urging us to pursue our own interests and passions and not fall back on dated models of what others wanted for our lives, but rather, encouraged us take the plunge into our own soupy mix of insecurity and angst and fumble through our necessary attempts at carving out our own passionate success (and failures).

I grew up with two female role models: One, my mother, a stay-at-home worker bee with 11 children, and two, my mother’s best friend, Margaret, a single working woman her entire life. I adored my mother but knew, as we shopped in Woodward’s together, she hunting for shoe bargains for my many siblings, and me, draping myself in boas in the lingerie department, that I likely would not be the daughter she dreamt of knitting her blankets for her as she got old. But to my mother’s credit, she supported my unconventional choice to do a theatre degree and didn’t blink an eye when I would put her to work on shows I was directing or designing for, sometimes racing up from the Arts Club with a ripped pair of pants screaming for her sewing skills which she obligingly, calmly, put to use during intermission.

I think we both knew I wasn’t going to wear white gloves and go to Church.

Yet, as you age, you suddenly start seeing your mother in the mirror more and more which is a little startling to say the least. She is long gone but I can easily see in my own face the beginnings of decline that I remember seeing in hers.  The droop of one eyelid a little, the deepening lines on my neck, sore hips after a long drive or flight, the faintest of spots on the back of my hands; had I no mercy on my future self? Why did I have to fall asleep in Greece like that for hours on end with no sunscreen for god’s sake?

I don’t discuss any of this with anyone, but rather, head straight to the internet and look up where I want to travel to next, jot down an outline of a story, write a poem, do something, anything, to wrest the day from its merciless ticking clock and make it produce something of grace and creativity, with more inky permanence then the scrawling lines of wrinkles waiting to say hello to the next hapless stranger.

I know now I’m getting too old to hang on to certain things, like relationships that don’t suit me. I can give myself permission now to say, you know, I actually don’t like camping or sleeping on your couch. The fact is, I am a neurotic sleeper and I need a box spring and mattress with a closed door, my own bathroom and strong coffee in the morning. I can say things like, you know, your snoring, it’s gotta go. I can take a trip or not, work when I want and so on. I can firmly be myself without apologizing and tidying up the bits that might make someone uncomfortable. Like a well-built house, I stand behind my own architecture now. Don’t like my choice of art? Oh well, there’s the door. No feelings hurt. I’m not for everyone but quite content to be in my own company.

For years I let others be the hero or heroines in my story. I was an excellent second fiddle or thought I was. I wasn’t really. Because I’m not built for that. I now accept I like being the heroine of my own story and writing my own adventures and developing my own plot lines, however ill-advised they be. I like the life I have and will have (knock on wood).

In one of her appearances on Charlie Rose, Nora talked about what her last meal would be. I think maybe she knew of her illness, hard to say, but in her inimitable style her meal consisted of a simple hot dog from Beverley Hills Nate ‘n Al deli. She cautioned us to have our last meal before it was our last meal because  “When you are actually going to have your last meal, you’ll either be too sick to have it or you aren’t gonna know it’s your last meal and you could squander it on something like a tuna melt and that would be ironic. So it’s important … I feel it’s important to have that last meal today, tomorrow, soon.”

I would add:

Don’t wait for the table to be set in a certain way, or that special someone to be with you for your last meal. Who knows, they might have run off on you or had an affair, or it’s raining, or you don’t have much money or your family can’t be bothered to show up, or you don’t have the right outfit. Don’t wait for the exact right time for your last meal. As Nora says, have it today, right now, just for you. Hers was a hot dog, held in her hand, with a joyous smile on her face.

Life is just too wonderful to waste on the future. Star in your own production right away, there’s really no time to lose. If we’re lucky, we’ll live long enough to have dozens and dozens of last meals alone or together, in good health, with joyous smiles and happy palates.  Bon appetit mon ami, bon appetit!