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.

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

Ich.

Seriously.

I wrote all this garbage and then erased it.

Do you ever have moments where you think that nothing you say is really worth the oxygen?

For someone who likes silence so much I sure manage to fill up my life with noise.

I wish I understood things better.

RH

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

Downtown and Me

Hey, guys.

I haven't written. I know. You've forgotten. But here I am.

The reason I am writing tonight, after so so so many events in my life, personally and professionally, and so many events in my community, my country, my world....after so many events have occurred and I have not written about them here...the reason I am writing tonight is thus:

I was driving a friend home tonight, taking the downtown route from Kitsilano to Gastown, and we took Powell street to get there. Downtown Vancouver on a weekend night is a shitshow, I realize. I never, ever venture downtown on weekends unless absolutely necessary, specifically to avoid the possibility of gratuitous confrontation.

So, we are driving down Powell street and somewhere between Abbott and Columbia this thing happens. The street is packed with traffic. Lots of taxis, lots of people. I am in the left hand lane, Powell is a one way street. These two normal looking people, a man and a woman, are waiting on the street side of the parked cars to dash across the road to the nightclub across from them. We all do that, right? Wait to jaywalk by the parked cars. No problem. So I'm watching them, because I am totally not into hitting a pedestrian, seeing as how I am one most of the time. The woman starts to step out in front of my car, sort of hesitantly, so I honk, so she knows not to do it, because it will end disastrously for both of us. I honk. Not aggressively, just a short one, so she sees me. The boyfriend kicks or punches the car and starts yelling obscenities.

Okay. I have this thing, when situations heat up I like to diffuse them. It may be misguided, but I don't want that guy all keyed up and getting even more drunk and kicking the shit out of his girlfriend later, or yelling obscenities at the wrong person and getting himself knifed or shot. So, the traffic is sort of crawling and stopped at a red light anyway, so I decide to say something to the guy. I am calm and my tone is low and light. Which does, I'll admit, occasionally inflame the already irrationally incensed type of person. However, the friend I'm with, who's a bit of a loose cannon herself, starts yelling back at the guy. So then he comes back to the car and she's leaning out the window, yelling, swearing, and he's yelling and swearing back, and I just want him to know that I honked so I wouldn't kill his girlfriend, but he and now a new guy across the street are screaming, calling us fucking ugly cunts, telling us to get fucked....I was sort of lost for a minute, or my hand would have clamped down over my friend's mouth before she got word one out, but as it was it took me a minute to do so and the confrontation escalated to where I was scared of these guys.

It hits me sometimes, what an idealist I am. I like to think I can talk to anyone. And you know what? I usually can. After I told my friend she could never, ever yell at anyone like that out of my car window again, I dropped her off. I went back around and drove past the club again, vibrating with anger and fear and adrenaline and such severe sadness for what has happened to humanity. I don't know why I went back, I wanted to talk to the people, to the girl, and just calm everyone down. But I drove by, and the sidewalk was lined with people puking and yelling and jostling in line, so I kept going and came home, restless and sad.

I suppose it took me so off guard because I have encased myself in this little Obama bubble for the last few days. I have been so hopeful and excited and surprised and deeply moved by his election, and I guess I knew that to bask in the glow I would have to stay home. There is no going out in the world and noticing anything different.

I am so frustrated with people here not caring. No manners, no compassion, no thought for anything beyond getting drunk, getting high, getting even, getting fucked, getting fucked up. Cocaine and booze fueled thrills and damn the torpedoes. This insane sense of entitlement and anger about....God knows what the anger is about. PMS. Poor Me Syndrome.

Anyway, I am listening to the Talking Heads and Elvis Costello and trying to calm down. All this opening up to the world and being truthful and sensitive and having values and ideals....it just leads to heartache. But, you know what? I like it this way. I can not stand around and let my neighbours and countrymen fall irretrievably into apathy and spitefulness. There must be a way to inject compassion and kindness, mindfulness and engagement into the people. There just has to be.

Mostly I just feel so sad. There is all this potential in people, and they can't see it in themselves. How do I help them see it?

I had a tiny revenge fantasy that one of the guys, I remember their faces well, would show up in the audience at one of my shows and I would get to tell the whole audience that he was the guy who called me a fucking cunt and told me to get fucked. Sigh.

That's what happened tonight. I'm going to go write a song about it. I can't calm down. Maybe I'll watch "The Pianist" or "Dancer in the Dark" or "Big Fish". None of which I've seen and all of which will apparently make me cry. Or maybe I'll go for a run. It's been a long time, but I could see that calming me down. Now....where did I put my iPod?

That's me.

With love,

RH