Birthing the Dream

Sunset from the Tigeen

If you're a regular reader you'll remember this recent post.

And when you do a start-up, you never know, do you? Well I was beside myself today when I got my first booking for the Tigeen: An American writer-in-residence who wants to spend 2 days in my wee cabin and tour the Avalon before heading off to her summer position about 400K from here.

I am so chuffed at how my friends have gathered around with suggestions, promotions and downright support and accolades about the Tigeen to anyone who will listen to them. For instance, tonight the author sister of a good friend is promoting it in a broadcast to her connections.

Now, I'm holding my horses, this may be the only booking. But hell, isn't it so very lovely when this dream, after such a long incubation, has become so very much ALIVE?

The View from Here

View of the packed theatre from the 'gods' on Saturday night.

Wow.

I feel that my life, being quite surreal at the moment, needs a few days for it to drag my arse back down to earth and into normalcy, or whatever passes for that.

Talk of wildest dreams, dreams that I carried with me from about seven or eight years of age, being realized sixty years later!

So the play has now been performed in the city. Twice. To sold out audiences and standing ovations. Media coverage was amazing. Print, radio and television. I would have told you I was not good at speaking spontaneously. I proved myself wrong. I think this goes to the place where passion sits. Once we are passionate about something we can talk of it without preparedness or scripting.

The cast and crew were amazing, it is wonderful to see the characters birthed originally in one's spirit come to life in a professional, beautifully lit and 'sounded' environment where the acoustics are perfect. What a theatre!

A precious friend flew in from Toronto to offer her support and attended both performances. Daughter insisted on arriving a few days before to provide whatever I needed to keep the nerves and stress at bay. At such a time, I realized one really senses who one's dearest are. And words are completely inadequate to express how I feel about them. I could never have done it alone as the enormity was too great to comprehend and I needed their soothing presence, reality checks and outrageous humour. And we all realized that this was One Big Moment, never to be repeated in such a way again.

I'm still absorbing it all, still pinching myself, thinking there is be a play inside me, all ready to be written about the making of this play.

And Out The Other Side

Amazing possibilities are out the other side when I suit up and show up.

We have this amazing theatre troupe I've written about and a pretty damn good play. So everyone says. For how can I speak of it, all the characters are dear to me and spring from my fertile imagination. I get to love my characters, they are my babies. And the brilliant cast makes them even more real. And people ask me about them.

"So what happened to Phelim," they ask. And I am flattered. He has become real to them too.

And for years, many times, I drive by this place, a very old church, oblong. Tall and sleek-ed. Lovely old windows. White and blue. And another dream takes hold. And I think, ridiculous. No. This could never be.

And a friend has the dream too. Independently. And we find out the building is for sale. For a song and some TLC. And we go there today. And say to each other as we look around this gorgeous place, key trembling in our hands.

"This is where the box office is. This is where the washroom will go. This is where the dressing rooms can be built on."

And maybe, just maybe, our theatre, our very own theatre will be birthed. Yes, overlooking the ocean. You are all invited to the premier performance. We counted. It will seat 90. Comfortably. How perfect a dream is this?

Crystal Clear

Picture taken today from my deck, moments before a speedboat broke the sound barrier.

And these things I swear to be true:
We have to be open.
We have to be available.
We have to put it out there.
We have to suit up and show up.
We do not have 200 years to live.
We must make every moment count (see above).

I've talked about my dream book, here and here for those interested.

Well, another dream began today. At noon.

I am writing, directing and producing a play which will open in the spring and tour for the summer, with rehearsals all winter.

I will hold auditions over the next weeks and start rehearsals November 1.

Excited?

Beyond.

Very Local Highlights

I always have a few days of uncertainty when I get back here to Newfoundland, straddling momentarily the metropolitan world I've left behind, with its dear friends, its culture, its diversity with the tiny outport world I also love.

And then little things start to take over. We've dug 4 beds in the meadow this year, one for turnips, one for (of course) potatoes, one for carrots, one for cabbages and another small one for golden onions.

I've been sizing up 2 gorgeous apple trees at $39.99 each. Apple trees need partners so I have to have 2. I haven't bought them yet. These are in blossom and about 5' high and the smell, my dear - I keep thinking after reading a post at Irene's yesterday, about the blossoms' scent wafting on to the sheets on the clothesline, much like the blooming hawthorn hedge around my grandmother's drying sheets pervaded hers.

And then a few authors in the village consulted me about this guy who wanted to conduct a writing workshop, a big city fellah, they tell me, and why should they give the business to him when I was right there and I could facilitate one and it would be far better, said they, as I'd already advised some of them privately on some of their writing and had shared and read mine with them. So what better person? Ahem, said I, of course, but I'd need payment and a space. Oh that's alright love, said Joe, who's the self-appointed leader, it's all arranged, a nice big payment for you and a lovely space out on the next bay for the taking and the rent's covered. When do you want to get started and do you want to do the announcement? And, he adds, I think there'll be more interested than we have space for so you may need to run a series.

OMG, thought I, OMG!!!!!! Is this the manifestation of a dream or what??? OMG!!!!

I didn't share these thoughts with Joe. I nodded seriously like the adult I sometimes pretend to be and said I valued their trust and confidence and I would not let them down.

I am beyond excited about this. Beyond. I start when I get back from Europe. 8 is the magic number in my experience. So I said 8
would be the maximum class size. And it would be held once a week over two hours for 8 weeks with 8 participants and lots of work. Everyone is enthused. I said maybe we could have a performance at the end of the 8 weeks. A stage show. Lovely background music played by the locals and some readings of the fine-tuned works. Massive enthusiasm by all.

I think we're on to something here. I can hardly wait to get back from Paris. I never thought I'd say that.

Can you believe it?

Hunger

I started blogging when I first moved nearly full time to Newfoundland. Without much thought, really, or reflection. I only get a sense of my own motivations long after their initialization. At the time, I tend to "just do it" without too much navel-gazing or careful evaluation. My best ideas seem to take place that way. They drift in, often disguised in the form of something else. Only afterwards will I think, hey, that was something I put in my "Dream Book" a long time ago and now it's happened. Wow, would you look at that.

I am one of those people who is open to new experiences, new people, new locales. I am a shy person by nature until I get to know someone. I'm not one to toot my own horn on first acquaintance, I prefer to get to know the other person, sound them out, listen to their life journeys, their narratives. Others have always fascinated me. Particularly as to what brought them to a certain place, a certain time, even into a certain relationship. If they're willing to share, great, if not, that's fine too.

Most people in a social setting come in two kinds, those who are voluntarily there because they love going out or those who are dragged there by a partner or friend. I can easily sort out who is who.

Arriving as a stranger here I have forced myself to go out and about and meet new people. Otherwise I would be that weird hermit in the old D--- place, keeps herself to herself and talks to her dog a lot. Not that there would be anything wrong with that. I sometimes am that weird old hermit, particularly when Scriobhnarin, (pronounced for those who care - Screevnareen) my own personal writing muse, descends. I spend a lot of time alone and am happy with my own company.

You may wonder, if you're still with me this far, what the hell is this all about, I've titled the thing 'hunger' after all and rabbitted on a bit about blogging, social scenes and niceties, etc.

The thing is I hunger for good conversation, for an exchange of dialogue, for spouting of new ideas, for throwing down the gauntlet of the fire of creativity. I started this blog because of the dearth of this. I had left many friends behind in Toronto, dear people I would engage with on a regular basis and we would toss stuff around like multi-coloured balloons against the blank canvas of the sky.

This blog and reading other blogs has satisfied so much of that hunger. And I find in the past year here particularly I am finally meeting with like-minded souls. I had such an afternoon today. Lunch in a new friend's house, followed by a great hike overlooking an incredible bay with the fall colours dancing all around us and the blue of the sky so piercing it hurt the very soul.

And I left my new friend's house hours and hours later, loaded down with DVDs, books, CDs, muffins, crab-apples and rhubarb jam. And a head full of ideas for the next time. And a list as long as my arm of more people for me to meet.

How truly blessed I am. My hunger is sated.

My Rules of Life---Part Eight

The Dream Book

I thought to wind the series up with this post. I could add a lot more of my ‘rules' but won’t for the sake of brevity.

Interestingly enough, I’ve been receiving a few private emails on this series and I’m only too happy to offer a compassionate ear and a sharing of my own life story. I never deem to give advice as everyone’s journey is so different and it’s always a question of finding one’s own way through life with the answers rolling in of their own accord.

At least that’s how it was for me.

I call them the 2 X 4’s of life – and I’ve been thwacked over the head by them on more than one occasion. There’s nothing like pain to grab my attention and force me to change – my outlook, attitude and circumstances.

I started to write an observation book one time on this whole concept of clinging – whether it is to a person, a place, or stuff. Or pre-conceived ideas. I’ve seen the clinger cling so tight to the ‘clingee’ that it either literally or metaphorically explodes. I’ve seen people stay in unhappy partnerships and heard both sides of the reasons. Which don’t amount to a hill of beans really but involve keeping him or her ‘happy’ or ‘secure’ while the other partner says the same thing. And there you have it – two desperately unhappy people clinging for dear life to the false concept of each other’s happiness until the whole thing implodes, as it inevitably does.

I had a dear friend clinging to her house as it represented the only security she had. She couldn’t afford to take a holiday or go to the theatre as any spare change went to paying down the mortgage. Then her house caught fire with the insurance company paying for the fortune in repairs less the deductible. This was followed within a year by the house being flooded. All the new ceramic tiles peeled off the walls and the floors like yesterday’s newspaper.

At this point she said f*** it. I’m just going to have a good time. And she did. And she’s never been happier.

In my time I clung to dreadful jobs and desperate relationships, friends who betrayed me and poor real estate choices. I would take care of you long before I would take care of me. I slowly learned that life was not about clinging to stuff but about realizing dreams. And the amazing thing was that the dreams didn't have to cost much materially and most were actually free.

About fifteen years ago I heard of the concept of The Dream Book. One buys a large blank journal and proceeds to go through it all page by page, each page headed with a dream. No matter how silly, infantile or hopeless seeming.

I felt a little foolish, taking all those pages and listing a dream on each one, some were childish, some were what I thought impossible.

Part of the process is on the first day of each month I go through each and every single dream and if there has been an effort to achieve even a minuscule part of that dream I write it down. It reinforces my belief that anything, literally anything can happen to make these private ephemeral thoughts come closer to a reality.

For instance, one of my pages said “Write”. I hadn’t written anything apart from my journal since high school.

I followed this with what I had written, where I had submitted it and then my first publication about ten years ago as a columnist in an Irish magazine.

Then my short story collection was picked up by a publisher, my cards were ready for sale, I had a win in a recent Irish poetry competition and a recent request from a new paper here to do a column for them. I write all these things down on the page to reinforce the power of the dream once it gets focussed on every month and then making room for it to move into my life.

Another page said “Open Up Kitchen”. I’d always had these tiny hemmed in kitchens and I love to cook. So I saved my money and a couple of years before I sold the Toronto house I had a wall taken down to open up the kitchen. And one of the first jobs I had done in this old house was to, yes: you guessed it, take down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. It’s symptomatic of opening up my life.

You get the idea. I’ve a hundred dreams (for now) in all stages of development and on a bad day I can look inside the book and realize, hey, there is some magic after all, I did run that marathon in my fifties!