This is an in between season. Something not quite autumn, with sun and crunchy leaves, and not quite winter, with snow and merrymaking. It is the blue season. A cavernous time of darkening and oppression. Cold rain comes down fast and hard. So hard that as drops hit anything they explode and become mist which then travels back up and makes having an umbrella a cruel joke. Storefront windows are fogged, people leave their hats on indoors. Suicides increase.
"Why don't you cheer the fuck up, anyway?" Barry's feet are on the coffee table and his sport socks, clearly worn for days on end, sag around the toes, giving him the look of a limp elf. He has your manuscript in his hands. He is reading it. Fucking douche. Didn’t you tell him not to touch anything?
“I’ll cheer the fuck up when you get a job and get out of my apartment, Barry. That’s when I’ll cheer the fuck up.” You feel good about that one, just a little pressure valve release, to keep you from killing him. From strangling your own brother. Sometimes imagining him slowly turning blue and his lifeless body dangling in your hands, sometimes this is the only thing that can put you to sleep at night. This has become worrisome.
“I never used to want to kill you, Barry.” Barry laughs, but his laugh ends in a little cough when you coolly take the manuscript from him and place one hand on his throat, squeezing gently. Holding on just long enough to make him uncomfortable. Barry’s face changes.
“Hey, cut that out. Fuck, Dale, that shit’s not funny.”
“Get out of the apartment, Barry. Go away for a while. Go to the park, or a movie, or go get drunk. Just leave me in peace.” Barry looks like he might respond, his mouth opens, then closes, like a fish. Barry’s stupid, fishy face stares at you.
“Can I have twenty dollars?” He is sheepish and arrogant at the same time. It equals out to pathetic, but you find twenty dollars and shove it at him. He mutters thank you, and goes. You think maybe you see him crying a little on his way out. It almost softens you, but not quite. You need the breathing room. Time alone. Close your heart, you think to yourself, it’s better for both of you. You hear the door close and Barry’s fading, thudding footsteps.
It is quiet. You realize you are gripping the manuscript so tightly that you have crumpled it. After staring at it for a moment, you frown, then scream, then throw the manuscript at nothing in particular. The pages mock you, drifting in all directions, spreading across the sofa and coffee table, fluttering peacefully to the floor. You hate it when Barry’s right.
5.31.2009
Hey, listen to this!
I'm pretty funny, actually, when Guy MacPherson interviews me for a second time on his radio show, "What's So Funny?". I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying listening to it right now!
http://www.comedycouch.com/podcasts/Whats_So_Funny_RHahn2.mp3
Cut n' paste, or go over to the sidebar and click the link.
xo RH
http://www.comedycouch.com/podcasts/Whats_So_Funny_RHahn2.mp3
Cut n' paste, or go over to the sidebar and click the link.
xo RH
5.14.2009
This is a short story I wrote tonight.
It is a hot night on the subway. I am sticking to the seat. On my way to Brooklyn. The train does not stop at my stop this late at night. I have to walk several blocks, near the park and in a city unfamiliar to me. I am staying with a friend. She will be asleep, wrapped in the arms of her girlfriend, who is beautiful and fun but will later turn out to be a liar. My friend has had bad luck with women. I love staying with my friend. She is easy to be with and easygoing. She does not ask much of me or my time and happily intersects with me when we are both able.
New York city has the most jello available in restaurants of any city I’ve been to. At home in Vancouver there is only one restaurant I can think of where you can order jello, and it always comes in a tiny cup, with whipped topping, and always has a skin on it that tells you it is stale. And they never have red. It is usually yellow or orange, like those flavours are cheaper, always on sale. In New York the jello is fresh and comes in a glass dish as big as my left breast. Which is a D cup, so that’s a lot of jello. And it’s usually red, and they cut it up in squares. It’s cold and refreshing.
When I was a little girl and would visit my father in Montreal we would ride our bikes to his mother’s apartment on Wilderton Avenue. His mother, my Bubbeh. I wouldn’t realize until much, much later that her name was Tillie, I only knew her as Bubbeh. Her apartment was exotic to me. So many stories high, I thought only rich people must live there. You had to push a buzzer, one of seemingly hundreds of white buttons, and she would talk through a speaker and let you magically into her building. No one else I knew ever lived in an apartment. Houses of varying states and ages, cabins, schoolbuses, tents, shacks, domes, wagons, townhouses, co-ops…but no apartment buildings. We would ride our bikes up long hills along the side of Mount Royal and spend the evenings with Bubbeh. She would measure me against her blue chair to see how tall I had grown. She would make fried chicken and kougal, salad with iceberg lettuce and chicken soup. Always for dessert she would make me jello. It would be in this rectangular glass dish with a lid, always the same one. I would try to guess the flavour before we arrived. I hoped for red. Me and my father would sit on the balcony and watch the planes land in the distance against the sunset, eating the jello. I let the jello linger in my mouth, turning it back into liquid, sloshing it around, savouring every bite before swallowing. I tried to make the jello last forever.
I am sticking to the seat so bad in the hot subway, on my way home to my friend’s house, where she will be sleeping in the arms of her girlfriend. I can not believe it is so hot down here underground. A strange man stares at me, he looks like he wants to talk. An old woman fans herself slowly with a magazine. We are the only three on the car. I imagine the cool jello I will eat tomorrow, remember how it refreshes and comforts.
New York city has the most jello available in restaurants of any city I’ve been to. At home in Vancouver there is only one restaurant I can think of where you can order jello, and it always comes in a tiny cup, with whipped topping, and always has a skin on it that tells you it is stale. And they never have red. It is usually yellow or orange, like those flavours are cheaper, always on sale. In New York the jello is fresh and comes in a glass dish as big as my left breast. Which is a D cup, so that’s a lot of jello. And it’s usually red, and they cut it up in squares. It’s cold and refreshing.
When I was a little girl and would visit my father in Montreal we would ride our bikes to his mother’s apartment on Wilderton Avenue. His mother, my Bubbeh. I wouldn’t realize until much, much later that her name was Tillie, I only knew her as Bubbeh. Her apartment was exotic to me. So many stories high, I thought only rich people must live there. You had to push a buzzer, one of seemingly hundreds of white buttons, and she would talk through a speaker and let you magically into her building. No one else I knew ever lived in an apartment. Houses of varying states and ages, cabins, schoolbuses, tents, shacks, domes, wagons, townhouses, co-ops…but no apartment buildings. We would ride our bikes up long hills along the side of Mount Royal and spend the evenings with Bubbeh. She would measure me against her blue chair to see how tall I had grown. She would make fried chicken and kougal, salad with iceberg lettuce and chicken soup. Always for dessert she would make me jello. It would be in this rectangular glass dish with a lid, always the same one. I would try to guess the flavour before we arrived. I hoped for red. Me and my father would sit on the balcony and watch the planes land in the distance against the sunset, eating the jello. I let the jello linger in my mouth, turning it back into liquid, sloshing it around, savouring every bite before swallowing. I tried to make the jello last forever.
I am sticking to the seat so bad in the hot subway, on my way home to my friend’s house, where she will be sleeping in the arms of her girlfriend. I can not believe it is so hot down here underground. A strange man stares at me, he looks like he wants to talk. An old woman fans herself slowly with a magazine. We are the only three on the car. I imagine the cool jello I will eat tomorrow, remember how it refreshes and comforts.
5.07.2009
Pet Peeve
When people use the word "trolling" when really they mean "trawling". I am a on a mission.
Proverbs
Dear Anonymous: You and your wolves. Yeah, I get it about feeding them, but, you know, sometimes a starving wolf howls really, really fucking loudly. You can keep all the red meat you want in your pockets and just give it to the nice wolves, the happy, peaceful wolves, but sometimes the fucking howling, I swear, from the other wolves, the rabid morbid long dark night of the soul wolves just gives you a headache. Put in the earplugs and they start circling. And then you've got all these fat, sleek, happy peaceful wolves laying around, being fat and sleek and no help whatsoever, too fat to move from all the food you've been giving them, and the rabid morbid long dark night of the soul wolves just eat the happy peaceful wolves and then you didn't even feed them but somehow they've been fed and now here you are. And you gotta kick them out and start starving them all over again.
4.29.2009
Choppy Seas
I don't know what to tell you, guys. People lately have been mentioning that they follow this blog. Then I feel like writing in it more. Then I sit down to write in it and start it over and over.
I am curled inside myself today, feeling like every moment brings a new heartbreak. Or the visceral memory of an old heartbreak, made fresh again by my vulnerable state. Yesterday was not like this. Possibly tomorrow won't be, either. Today was hard right from waking. Had an appointment to touch base with my GP today, since I have been in an anxious place lately. I have a lovely therapist but she is out of town for two weeks. I thought it wouldn't be a problem, two weeks without talking to someone, but I am pretty shaky. Really vibratey and charged. I waited for my doctor for an hour. Sitting in the waiting room with strangers, holding back tears and crawling out of my skin. This sent me to a place of feeling so frustrated and disrespected, I had another appointment at noon. I decided to leave my doctor a note to update her, but while I was writing I dissolved into full sobs. She came out and I just couldn't sit around any more. Her solution to these things is to constantly ask me, "Are you sure you don't want to go on drugs?" I am sure. I am so sure. I know in my heart I deserve the chance to work my internal demons out with a good therapist, and that I can get through it without the awful numbing and loss of who I am that drugs have brought me in the past. I don't like days like today, I really don't. I am lonely lonely lonely and the thoughts are dark and violent. But I know it won't always be this unpredictable, and I abhor the thought of pulling out of myself again. The Celexa made me fat and slow and foggy brained, unable to wrench out of the torpor. The prozac made my energy unfocused and ramped up the anxiety to levels where the only thing I could do was spin. Medical solution? Sleeping pills to counteract the effects of the Prozac. Solution when left to my own devices? Smoke more weed, drink more booze, fall into a drug induced sleep. None of this strikes me as having been useful. So. Now I am sober. And it has been since March 28th no booze, and April 8th no weed. No wonder I am feeling all unbalanced, I know, and I am so so so so sure that it will all ease with time and tender therapeutic ministrations. Lord, if the mornings and nights were easier.
I feel so trapped today. And I am, I suppose, as we all are. Since I know that no matter how far I run, literally or figuratively, the trap is still around me, in the form of my own skin, my own brain. The loneliness really is new for me. Or, letting it be there is. The temptation to smoke or drink it away is huge, but I'm not into starting that cycle again. I recognize that it starts with smaller things, and that I am now in the thick of those very things. My house is a shambles, I have eaten too many things which are not good for me, I haven't taken my vitamins in days. I wish someone was paying such close attention that they would show up at my door with a plan to help me just finish these few tasks I seem to be skirting. Dishes. Pile of stuff I no longer want to be removed from living room. Furniture to be got rid of. Divesting and letting in air. I have gotten to a place of feeling unable to deal with it my own self. And yet, unlikely to ask for help. I don't even know what the help is I want to ask for. Mostly, I want to ask for a friend to come and sleep here. Get in bed with me and quietly cradle me. This, actually, is the hardest thing to ask for. I miss feeling loved and safe. Nothing feels very safe to me.
The flip side of all of this is that my work is amazing. My creative life has tremendous momentum and I can only see further opportunities and growth as an artist. Magic. And I am doing my very best to orchestrate my work so that I do not disappoint myself or my colleagues. Which means not getting involved in things which cause me anxiety, like stand up shows. I will sing and tell funny stories in a performance setting, but I can't call it stand up, and I can't go to many stand up shows. I am loving the improv, the music, the theatre. And any second now one of these auditions is going to pay off. It feels close. Writing still undisciplined, but the inspiration is there, and as my brain comes back to me in it's full glory, I am nearly unable to keep up with all the ideas.
Piano lessons, singing lessons, therapy...all to the greater good.
This particular portion of my journey is incredibly complex and magical and difficult and some moments I am wide eyed with wonder at the connectivity and serendipity I am cultivating, nurturing and even letting sneak up on me and surprise me. I know I am sometimes cryptic, sometimes overly poetic, but it is coming from me in cathartic bursts and I know the regulatory systems will even out and I am looking forward to deriving so much pleasure from the work.
I don't know if any of this makes any sense to you, but it's coming out of me in waves, and I'm just letting it.
Today seems like the wrong day to try to figure out iDVD and iMOVIE, but, sadly, I have a postmarking deadline tomorrow that requires I learn how to make this quicktime of me burn to a dvd. Sounds easier than it is. I will NOT throw my brand new beautiful computer off the balcony. But I might throw a dish. I feel like throwing dishes. I can really see clearly a lifetime of behaviours behind me driven by exactly what I'm feeling today. It is revelatory, and a bit frightening. Breathing. Always breathing.
With lofty ambitions and limited patience,
xo
RH
I am curled inside myself today, feeling like every moment brings a new heartbreak. Or the visceral memory of an old heartbreak, made fresh again by my vulnerable state. Yesterday was not like this. Possibly tomorrow won't be, either. Today was hard right from waking. Had an appointment to touch base with my GP today, since I have been in an anxious place lately. I have a lovely therapist but she is out of town for two weeks. I thought it wouldn't be a problem, two weeks without talking to someone, but I am pretty shaky. Really vibratey and charged. I waited for my doctor for an hour. Sitting in the waiting room with strangers, holding back tears and crawling out of my skin. This sent me to a place of feeling so frustrated and disrespected, I had another appointment at noon. I decided to leave my doctor a note to update her, but while I was writing I dissolved into full sobs. She came out and I just couldn't sit around any more. Her solution to these things is to constantly ask me, "Are you sure you don't want to go on drugs?" I am sure. I am so sure. I know in my heart I deserve the chance to work my internal demons out with a good therapist, and that I can get through it without the awful numbing and loss of who I am that drugs have brought me in the past. I don't like days like today, I really don't. I am lonely lonely lonely and the thoughts are dark and violent. But I know it won't always be this unpredictable, and I abhor the thought of pulling out of myself again. The Celexa made me fat and slow and foggy brained, unable to wrench out of the torpor. The prozac made my energy unfocused and ramped up the anxiety to levels where the only thing I could do was spin. Medical solution? Sleeping pills to counteract the effects of the Prozac. Solution when left to my own devices? Smoke more weed, drink more booze, fall into a drug induced sleep. None of this strikes me as having been useful. So. Now I am sober. And it has been since March 28th no booze, and April 8th no weed. No wonder I am feeling all unbalanced, I know, and I am so so so so sure that it will all ease with time and tender therapeutic ministrations. Lord, if the mornings and nights were easier.
I feel so trapped today. And I am, I suppose, as we all are. Since I know that no matter how far I run, literally or figuratively, the trap is still around me, in the form of my own skin, my own brain. The loneliness really is new for me. Or, letting it be there is. The temptation to smoke or drink it away is huge, but I'm not into starting that cycle again. I recognize that it starts with smaller things, and that I am now in the thick of those very things. My house is a shambles, I have eaten too many things which are not good for me, I haven't taken my vitamins in days. I wish someone was paying such close attention that they would show up at my door with a plan to help me just finish these few tasks I seem to be skirting. Dishes. Pile of stuff I no longer want to be removed from living room. Furniture to be got rid of. Divesting and letting in air. I have gotten to a place of feeling unable to deal with it my own self. And yet, unlikely to ask for help. I don't even know what the help is I want to ask for. Mostly, I want to ask for a friend to come and sleep here. Get in bed with me and quietly cradle me. This, actually, is the hardest thing to ask for. I miss feeling loved and safe. Nothing feels very safe to me.
The flip side of all of this is that my work is amazing. My creative life has tremendous momentum and I can only see further opportunities and growth as an artist. Magic. And I am doing my very best to orchestrate my work so that I do not disappoint myself or my colleagues. Which means not getting involved in things which cause me anxiety, like stand up shows. I will sing and tell funny stories in a performance setting, but I can't call it stand up, and I can't go to many stand up shows. I am loving the improv, the music, the theatre. And any second now one of these auditions is going to pay off. It feels close. Writing still undisciplined, but the inspiration is there, and as my brain comes back to me in it's full glory, I am nearly unable to keep up with all the ideas.
Piano lessons, singing lessons, therapy...all to the greater good.
This particular portion of my journey is incredibly complex and magical and difficult and some moments I am wide eyed with wonder at the connectivity and serendipity I am cultivating, nurturing and even letting sneak up on me and surprise me. I know I am sometimes cryptic, sometimes overly poetic, but it is coming from me in cathartic bursts and I know the regulatory systems will even out and I am looking forward to deriving so much pleasure from the work.
I don't know if any of this makes any sense to you, but it's coming out of me in waves, and I'm just letting it.
Today seems like the wrong day to try to figure out iDVD and iMOVIE, but, sadly, I have a postmarking deadline tomorrow that requires I learn how to make this quicktime of me burn to a dvd. Sounds easier than it is. I will NOT throw my brand new beautiful computer off the balcony. But I might throw a dish. I feel like throwing dishes. I can really see clearly a lifetime of behaviours behind me driven by exactly what I'm feeling today. It is revelatory, and a bit frightening. Breathing. Always breathing.
With lofty ambitions and limited patience,
xo
RH
3.19.2009
2.05.2009
Where and When I am.
Hello!
Upcoming Shows -
MON FEB 9th - Chivana - 8pm - 2340 West 4th Ave. - Urban Improv unveils Nerdprov, I sing, Canadian Content does their award winning improv. Special night, free admission!
TUES FEB 10th - Kino Cafe - 9:30pm - Cambie between 18th and 19th.
THURS FEB 12th - Kingston Tap House - 9pm - 755 Richards, downstairs.
TUES FEB 17th - Darby's - 9pm - 4th @ MacDonald
FRI FEB 20th - Cameo - 9pm - 295 W. 2nd Ave
SUN FEB 22nd - Corduroy's Cafe - 8:30pm - 1943 Cornwall Ave in Kits.
TUES FEB 24th - Yuk Yuk's competition - 8:30pm, $5, Burrard at Comox at the Century Plaza Hotel.
FRI FEB 27th - FUSE at the Vancouver Art Gallery - 6pm til midnight - $17.50
SUNDAY FEB 15th - I will be a guest on What's So Funny, Guy MacPherson's radio show. Co-op Radio, 102.7, 11pm.
Things to see and hear:
This aired on CBC TV's Living Vancouver -
Bikini Waxing
You can listen to my songs here:
The Riel Revolution
You can listen to Guy MacPherson interview me here:
What's So Funny
You can listen to me guesting on the Justice Pals Podcast here:
Eric and Shaun!
Ta,
RH
Upcoming Shows -
MON FEB 9th - Chivana - 8pm - 2340 West 4th Ave. - Urban Improv unveils Nerdprov, I sing, Canadian Content does their award winning improv. Special night, free admission!
TUES FEB 10th - Kino Cafe - 9:30pm - Cambie between 18th and 19th.
THURS FEB 12th - Kingston Tap House - 9pm - 755 Richards, downstairs.
TUES FEB 17th - Darby's - 9pm - 4th @ MacDonald
FRI FEB 20th - Cameo - 9pm - 295 W. 2nd Ave
SUN FEB 22nd - Corduroy's Cafe - 8:30pm - 1943 Cornwall Ave in Kits.
TUES FEB 24th - Yuk Yuk's competition - 8:30pm, $5, Burrard at Comox at the Century Plaza Hotel.
FRI FEB 27th - FUSE at the Vancouver Art Gallery - 6pm til midnight - $17.50
SUNDAY FEB 15th - I will be a guest on What's So Funny, Guy MacPherson's radio show. Co-op Radio, 102.7, 11pm.
Things to see and hear:
This aired on CBC TV's Living Vancouver -
Bikini Waxing
You can listen to my songs here:
The Riel Revolution
You can listen to Guy MacPherson interview me here:
What's So Funny
You can listen to me guesting on the Justice Pals Podcast here:
Eric and Shaun!
Ta,
RH
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
