Almost lift off

It's two am ... I tried to sleep last night. Went to bed at about 10 pm dozing while watching a bit of the Olympics. Those ski jumpers are amazing. What a feeling it must be to hurdle down a hill and then be airborne for 100 feet (or is it metres?).

Rather nice to catch a glimpse of snow before I go. Last night here in Toronto it snowed too. Hard to believe that tonight I'll be in a climate that feels like summer.

I'm feeling surprisingly calm for someone who is going into uncharted territory. Fortunately, it's my own uncharted territory. Lots of people have charted it before me, and I am really grateful to be travelling with the good folks of World Accord - Terry, David and Nelson.

My itinerary:

- land in San Pedro Sula, Honduras about noon
- travel to a farming village about five hours away in northwest Honduras
- stay in Honduras about five days .. then down to Antigua, Guatemala for a day of r & r
- then go to Chimaltenango, not too far from Guatemala City
- Guatemala City on the 24th until March 3rd
- March 3 - go to San Salvador
- March 5 - back home to arrive in Toronto at the frosty hour of midnight ...

.. 2:17 already .. cab will be here in about 20 minutes .. good morning all, I'll update you when I'm at a computer again ... this time in the sunny south.

Time to start blogging again ..

Good morning, friends. The reason why I started this blog in the first place is so that my friends can keep track of me when I travel.

So far, this blog has covered India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Kenya. With stops at airports in between. Closer to home, I've been to Vancouver, Bear River Nova Scotia, Ottawa, South River Ontario, Windsor Ontario and places I've forgotten about.

And now I'm going to be adding Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. I leave next Sunday, the 14th .. Valentine's Day and my nephew Anthony's first birthday ..

I'm doing another installment of documentaries for The Green Planet Monitor, the podcast/radio series I have been working on with my buddy Dave Kattenburg for many years now.

Today, I'm summarizing my story list, trying to figure out where to stay in San Salvador, whether to stay longer in Guatemala City and take the TICA bus to San Salvador .. many questions.

And as is my usual state of mind before a big trip, I have the usual moments when I just sit immobilized in my comfy chair as I say to myself "I can't believe I'm doing this .."

More later .. much more later.

Happy New Ear!

and New Year too .. for my new year's resolution, thanks to Kathryn Borel Jr. (author of Corked! - a Memoir of Wine and Existential Dread" -- from today's National Post (why I subscribed to the NP is a story for another blog entry"

I would do a link to her book but I can't find one. If it's as good as this quote, I want to read it.

Says she:

"Don't trust all your feelings right away ..

I have a long and explosive history of experiencing a large scale feeling, trusting that it is correct and making twisted life decisions based on what turns out to be a mere impulse, as opposed to a real emotion. Like most significant things, big life truths or important feelings tend to take a bit of time to reveal themselves in full... I now generally squash the impulse to make public -- or private -- proclamations of big feelings. I mix the truth with a little time and light and measured discussion and see if it holds as steady as I thought it did in the first place. And then I act."

I think she's a bit further ahead of me when it comes to this particular skill .. I expect this will be hard work for me.

My new year's project

Dear Media Friends and Supporters:

Way back in the 1980’s, at the tender young age of 25, I discovered that my work in media didn’t have to be as an observer, “objectively” reporting on things that I saw around me in a dispassionate, detached way.

I’d learned in school and by doing classical journalism that this was the only role of the media maker. And then I arrived in Vancouver, 1982 ... a city in a polarized province reeling from the cutbacks of the Bill Bennett government. Cruise missile testing in Cold Lake Alberta was a catalyst for some of the largest peace marches in history. Ronald Reagan had just arrived in the White House. For seven years his ideological mistress, Margaret Thatcher, had been convincing us from 10 Downing Street that only the rich and powerful mattered. And here in Canada, too many people were starting to believe her.

It was in the midst of this climate that I discovered Vancouver Co-op Radio and its message that media makers didn’t have to stand by and merely watch. We could write, take photos, do documentaries, create video and audio art in a way that participates in society, not just reports it. We could be catalysts for change, not just hold up a mirror to reflect the status quo.

Ever since that time, I’ve looked at my work in a different way. I have done my share of “objective” journalism but no longer believe that this is the only role for people working in the media. In more recent years, my experience in community-based activist media has taken me in some interesting directions. Two years at Appalshop, a major American community media arts organization dedicated to social change in the heart of the impoverished, environmentally devastated Appalachian Mountains; working with teenagers in an American inner city living in poverty; working with immigrants and mental health survivors helping them use tools of the media to tell their own stories .. All of this and my continuing involvement in community radio and the internet magazine Rabble.ca have strengthened my belief that we have important work to do.

Comparatively speaking, media for social justice is less developed in Canada than it is in places such as the United States, Europe and the UK. For a few years now I’ve wanted to start a new organization to provide a focus for work of people who share my aesthetic and my perspective on life (and more practically, so we can get grants that are only available to organizations.) I know there are a lot of you out there .. because many of you are my friends.

I am writing to tell you I am now doing it. The main goal of the yet-unnamed organization – to produce new works about some of the burning issues of our time; to create festivals, exhibitions and other dissemination opportunities for artists working in social justice oriented media; to provide workshops for our fellow travellers. And most important – to build a community of artists who work in social change so that we can work collaboratively and support each other in our work.

This is just beginning, so I don’t have it all figure out yet. If you would like to join the community of artists who have already said “Count me in”, get in touch. We’ll figure it out together.

Because this is important work we’re all doing, especially now. In many ways, it feels like the work I did and the things I learned way back in the 1980’s was just the dress rehearsal for the conditions we find ourselves in now. Our voices are needed now more than ever.

In the words of an inspiring writer, Clarissa Pinkola Estes ..

“I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now. .. Ours is a time of almost daily jaw-dropping astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

… For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

.. Do Not Lose Heart. We Were Meant for These Times”

In Peace,
Victoria

Big Changes, Big Travel

It's a condition of our time .. too many blogs, too much Facebook, too much Twitter ..

Well no, I'm not going to say it's Too Much, because I just love this new internet environment. But it does mean it's hard to get everything done. And as usual, my businessy, arty blogs get more attention than this one, my personal reflections.

I originally set up this blog as a way for all my friends to stay connected when I'm on the road. Time for me to heat it up again, because I am once again GOING ON THE ROAD!

Not until the new year. I need some time to sort things and get rid of all the things I never should have packed up and kept in storage last time. And I need time to develop the plan. Which so far includes house-sitting in Toronto, a trip to Guatemala, a few months on either the west or the east coast doing my audio art camp again.

And I would dearly love to spend some time in Montreal studying with Montreal's famed electroacoustic composers. Especially Eldad Tsabary, who I had a brief and wonderful time with a couple of weeks ago studying Ear Training for the Electroacoustic Composer (including games like Name that Frequency. Is it 5000 khz, or 7,000?)

In the meantime, I am continuing to build business doing podcasts for clients. And building a new organization focussing on Media Arts and Social Engagement. Theoretically I'll be able to work anywhere there's a high speed internet connection.

It's all good .. I'm enjoying the present and really looking forward to the future.

Love
Victoria

Remembrance of Easters past

Happy Easter, everyone. Beautiful day today .. reminds me of Easters back on the farm at my grandparents' place. First tulips of the spring (we lived in extreme southern Ontario where flowers bloom three weeks earlier than down the road in Toronto. So while the daffodils are out down here, the tulips are likely coming out in Ruscom).

Childhood memories of Easter all revolve around being able to finally go outside without a coat on with my city cousins. In recent years, one of my strongest memory was Easter morning in the Appalachian mountains ... I decided to haul out the mattress and sleep under the stars so I could watch the sunrise. I awoke to the sound of birds .. one of the best choirs I've heard in my life.

So Happy Easter, Passover or whatever Rite of Spring you celebrate. The Light has returned after the long, dark winter.

The Nature of Progress

For the first time in my life, I decided that I was going to go to the gym on a regular basis.

That was last August. The first few months (until about December) were really, really painful. The minutes dragged by so slowly, my legs complained at me constantly. I ran out of breath. I could run for maybe a minute at a time at a speed of about three and a half miles an hour (which isn't even a fast walk) before I had to drop my speed back. My heart rate maxed out at 140 once I approached a 4 mph ... it was working hard.

Well, today I ran at four and a half miles an hour for five minutes without stopping (hey, I know it's not marathon standard but really good for me). I even got up to 2 minutes at 5 mph. I couldn't get my heartbeat to go over 140 even at that speed .. at 3.5, it barely went over 118 today.

And as I ran and walked I reflected on how much harder I have to work now to get the same result (actually I wasn't so much reflective as pissed off). Somehow it just didn't seem fair. Do I have to keep working so damn hard ALL the time?

But that's what happens. I do more and more, and expect more and more from myself. And how often do I stop and look at what I can do now that I couldn't do last summer, and compliment myself on how great I'm doing?

That's what I am realizing. I will always expect a lot of myself. When I achieve one milestone, I will constantly look ahead to the next one. And that's good .. as long as I remember to appreciate where I am at this moment and allow myself at least a little bit of contentment before taking another gulp of water, mopping the sweat off my forehead and challenge myself to Five and a half miles an hour.

Hello from Ottawa

It's four in the morning
The end of December
I'm writing you now
just to see if you're better ...

Whoops, that poem has already been written. Thanks Leonard.

Doesn't matter ... I just wrote my own. Do you ever have that happen to you .. you wake up at some early hour of the morning and a perfect poem or story is going through your head. And you want to just say go away, I want to sleep. Kind of like a lover who is trying to get your attention and you're in the middle of a good dream.

I got up and wrote it. I'm glad. Except now I can't get back to sleep. Oh well, doesn't matter. Lots of good poems going through my head.

Something about Ottawa does this to me ... for some reason I am at my poetic best when I am up here. I think it's because when I lived here I had lots of time that I could spend on things not directly related to making a living. It was nice not to have to be the primary income earner for a change ...

I'll let you know when the poem is ready for publication.

Living in Two Places

See! Said I would do another update!

For the past month, I have been living in two places. Half the week, from Sunday to Wednesday, I am at my friends Lil and Ronnie's. I'm housesitting for them for a couple more weeks.

Then, from Thursday to Sunday, I am back in my own place here in Hamilton.(The photo above is a winter scene from my balcony of my Hamilton home, looking over to Locke Street)

This kind of lifestyle has its challenges. But every time I do it, I am reminded that I am the kind of person who really likes this way of life. I've done it several times before .. first, when Barry was in Ottawa and I couldn't leave Hamilton yet. Then when he was in Appalachia and I didn't want to entirely leave Canada. Now I'm realizing I really like living like this.

Some of the challenges -- never knowing which place my favourite sweater is living this week. And groceries are a challenge -- inevitably, I end up packing the lettuce, tomatoes and zucchini that won't last until I come back to whatever house I am leaving. So my backpack tends to be heavy. And it always takes me a few hours to acclimatize to whichever place it is I'm at.

The advantages -- I see a lot more of my friends. It makes my Hamilton friends seem more special because I don't get to see them all the time (absence makes the hearts grow fonder). And I get to spend time with my Toronto friends, many of whom I haven't seen in a long, long time.

The change of scenery really shifts my perspective and gets me thinking about change .. too easy to get "settled" and dull in one place. At least it is for me.

I want to keep on living like this. I won't be able to afford to live in too many places. But I do want to have two homes .. one here in Southern Ontario and one in Bear River, Nova Scotia. And fill it in with invitations to housesit for friends in other parts of the country and even the world.

I am really glad that my business (Sound Out Media -- multimedia productions for the internet) can be done any place where there is high speed ..

I have not abandoned this blog ...

If you looked at this blog on a regular basis, you might come to the conclusion that Heading To Central Blissville is an orphan.

No, it's not ... it's just that I have been working on my OTHER blog, which is business-related (therefore money generating related). This particular blog is all about me .. the rest of my life that reflects the real, personal me.

Got to admit, I haven't been taking the time to reflect the personal side of me in recent months. Seems like I did lots and lots of that in the past four years so now time to focus on my more public side ...

If you want to see how the public side of me is evolving (and I know you do), my other blog is www.soundoutmedia.com

Check it out and check back here as I pay more attention to this blog and the other sides of my life!

Happy new year .. and congratulations all on the inauguration of Barack Obama .. I can feel the world turning in a better direction ...

Happy Snow Days!

I know, we haven't had any official snow days yet. But we're off to a good start. We haven't had an early start to the winter like this for at least a few years.

Early Happy Christmas .. now that work is winding down, I am going to be taking more times and write blogs for fun rather than just business ...been a while since I've been here!

Looking South

I'm watching the Democratic National Convention and listening to all the references to the election of 2000.

At that time, we were in the process of moving to the States. In retrospect, I didn't really want to go. Don't know whether it was because I felt comfortable where I was .. in Ottawa, content in my quiet little Canadian existence. Or whether I felt ill winds blowing .. I don't know.

We moved to the mountains of Kentucky right around the time of the election. Barry was already down there when the election happened .. I was still up in the north country packing up our stuff. He was coming back in a week to load up the truck, pack up me and the cats and then be out of here. We were on the phone with each other constantly ... talking about what our new life would look like.

I remember the night of the election .. watching what was happening and feeling more and more like I didn't want to go as the election returns rolled in. And then travelling south down I-81 a week later, thinking .. this place is going crazy. (On top of it all, our car broke down on the highway, leaving us stranded in a hamlet with a gas station, a Burger King and a Best Western for two days while we wondered if we were ever going to get down there. I think I just wanted to turn around and come home).

When we got down there, Barry's co-workers at the Media Arts Centre where he was working said "you sure picked a hell of a time to move down here". And we didn't know the half of it ... the next year, the planes hit the towers, the country prepared for war and I said time to get out of here ...

In some ways I am glad that I spent two years in the States. After all, can we really understand the world without understanding the US of A? No .. but then again, can we really understand the US with all its contradictions, its sense of itself which doesn't match people in other countries' sense of the US? A country that can throw around the word "liberty" and "freedom" yet its actions demonstrate either that they don't know what the words mean .. or that they do and just don't care?

It was time to come home ... I wonder if I'm any wiser from having wrestled with some of the questions about the contradictions I saw. Or whether I'm just confused by it all.

I like this picture

I just like this picture .. feeling a bit nostalgic this morning. These were taken at WMMT in Kentucky. Hi Barry .. thinking of you .. hope you're doing well.

Living Alone - Pros and Cons

This isn't my house ... it's a friend's in Appalachia


I've been living alone for the first time over the past year since I was 25. This morning as I got up and drank my coffee, I got thinking about what I like and also don't like about this. Here's my summary.

What I love:

*I can decorate however I want. I can use the colour pink. And lots of lace if I want.
* I can fling my stuff wherever it lands and tidy up whenever I want. Or not.
* I don't have to negotiate space for my stuff and his stuff.
* I can have quiet and not talk whenever I don't want to.
* being able to concentrate on work without interruption.

What I don't love:

* waking up by myself
* cooking for somebody else .. I love cooking but I need an appreciative audience
* not having somebody to share morning coffee with. I end up drinking the whole pot myself and then I'm on caffeine overdrive all day.
* having to hang pictures, move heavy furniture and do all the household stuff by myself
* those wonderful spontaneous conversations which break out at unexpected times.

I think conversation is what I miss most of all. And the hugs too. For now, I like living by myself but I don't think I want this forever. That's been a bit of a shift in the last couple of months ... it's a good space to be in .. content but looking ahead to the day when I might want a change.

Hi again, everybody ...

Been a while since I've posted .. just wanted to pop in and let you know this isn't an abandoned blog, despite the fact that I now have THREE MORE!

This online habit is taking a lot more to organize. It's fun though .. I wouldn't do this if I wasn't such a queen geek.

In case you're wondering what I'm up to .. mostly working this summer. If you look back on my previous summer blog entries, I've been hardly working instead of working hard. It was good and a welcome break.

But now I'm back at it, business is growing well .. social life is doing well .. I'm happy. No big changes contemplated .. maybe I'll move somewhere but not until next spring. Planning my Guatemala trip the end of October ..

Until then, I am here .. and liking where I am.

Rethinking Appalachia

There are many places I have yet to write about. One of those places is Appalachia, where me and my then-husband Barry lived, from 2000 until 2002.

I am about to go back to my dozens of sound files that I recorded when I was down there .. square dances, old time fiddle music, clear mountain springs high enough that the pollution couldn't get to it ... the distinctive accent, the coal trucks, the clicking and hissing of mountain bugs on sweaty hot summer nights.

If things go according to plan (that is, if my arts funding comes through), I will be starting to create a documentary poem with my good friend Angelyn deBord. Ange is a mountain woman, born in North Carolina, who has lived almost all of her adult life in a hundred year old house on a mountaintop. She's an accomplished writer, actor, painter, storyteller and she's now learning how to play the fiddle. It will be wonderful to go to Angie's mountain and work with her again.

It will also be a time to process my own thoughts and feelings about a time which was very beautiful, transformative, full of of good things. But also full of challenges. We happened to move down there two weeks before the first US stolen election, and we also lived there when the planes hit the towers. There was a kind of intensity that was hard to put into perspective .. and a very good opportunity for insight into what America really is as opposed to what it says it is. Revealing, but also disturbing on a number of levels ...

It was also the beginning of the end of my 23 year marriage. I wonder sometimes if we would have split up if we hadn't gone down there, and whether it really was a good idea.

But that's hindsight .. and now there are stories to write ... I almost feel ready ... almost ...

My new podcast and blog

A Gypsy in Kashmir .. heading 300 miles south to winter grazing grounds

I am very excited. I've been trying to find a way to combine travel, listening and tourism. Lots of people do photography but I haven't found anyone who takes sound pictures like I do.

So I have started a new blog and will be doing a new podcast ... I won't be announcing the name until I get the domain name registered (it's competitive out there). It will be a place where I can post my sound art from different places and also my journalistic pieces I've done. I've got enough pieces done to keep me going for at least a couple of months. Soundwalks in Nairobi, temple bells in Kathmandu, falcons on the tundra ... listening to my sounds brings me right back there.

The whole idea being that you don't just have to take your camera .. sound recording devices and editing program are inexpensive enough and easy enough that you can bring home your memories in sound. And add them in a slideshow presentation to your photos .. maybe even do some poetry around it ...

I'll let you know when I get some content up ... I'm so excited. Especially about getting enough traffic to my site to get free trips ...

Current blog count:
this one -- Heading to Central Blissville
Sound Out Media - my tips and tools blog
My non yet announced blog and travel and sound

Podcasts:
The House of Sound and Story - (which I really need to do more frequently)
The Green Planet Monitor (a project of Earth Chronicle Productions -- new series coming starting in September)

I know that sounds like an awful lot of podcasts and blogs .. but believe me, I know people who have 10!

My Next Mode of Transportation

I'm going to move somewhere next year at this time.

It will probably be a city. I really want to move to Nova Scotia but I don't want to buy a car. Partly because of the expense, mostly because I had one small accident, the first and only in my entire 25 years of driving. And the insurance companies want to charge me extortionate rates.

The damage to the car was around $8000. The book value of the car was only $6000. So they wrote it off. The person who hit me only got a scuff on her bumper. So this is justification to charge me $5000 a year in insurance?

I'll stop ranting now. I will rent cars. And live in cities. I will not own my own car as long as the insurance companies want $5000 a year from me.

If I did move to Nova Scotia, I think I would buy a horse. It would be less than an hour to ride to Digby to get groceries. Of course, Superstore doesn't have a hitching rail, so that's something I'd have to lobby for.

Overall, in rural areas, it makes a lot of sense. Still haven't ruled out the idea.
But I think I will continue to be a city dweller. Maybe Toronto. Maybe Ottawa. Leaning towards Ottawa ... where for sure there is no place to hitch your horse ..

Lessons in Patience

Trying to slow down for a good look around


The other day a friend of mine and I drove past a garden shop. They were advertising Impatiens for .69 cents. My friend said "you sure don't need any of those. You're already impatient enough".

I have never been known for my patience. I attribute it partially to my background working on current affairs shows. I could often get three stories chased down and written in the time it was taking others on the show to finish one. My secret ... know when it's not going to happen and move on to the next one.

It is very useful to know when to cut and run. But to live a truly balanced life, one must also have the capacity to sit and wait. And I'm not good at that. Especially right now. The last three years in my life have been one of those phases where growth took place slowly, (if at all, sometimes it seemed .. things moved so slowly for a while there that I think they were actually going backwards).

And now things are just bursting wide open. All kinds of exciting possibilities. Great things happening .. it's kind of like Christmas. So much to open, so much to be excited about. I want it all. NOW.

I am very consciously trying to slow myself down, telling myself that everything still takes time even when time is travelling at a dizzying pace. So much value in slowing things down a bit.

So I try to meditate (never have been very good at it), try to live in the moment, try to tell myself that some things are still going to take their sweet time. And not drinking as much coffee ... I am like a madwoman on four cups of coffee in the morning.

Ah yes, this quest for patience.

The biggest challenge is that I want more patience NOW.

The Richness of the Question

In my last post, I wrote a bunch of notable statements that I heard at the Deep Wireless Festival. One of them is staying with me.

It's from Chris Brookes presentation "Making it Rain". He told a story about a snake .. can't remember what the snake connection was, but this snake asked the question "Why would you destroy the richness of the question with the poverty of an answer?"

Maybe it's because I ask questions for a living. Or maybe I ask questions for a living because it's something I've always done. Journalists are the answer seekers. In my art, which is not always journalism, I am always an answer seeker.

In my personal life, I also ask a lot of questions. And I'm always looking for answers. Life is a mystery to be solved. Ambiguity is just something to be contended with, not something to be enjoyed like a foggy day.

The reason why I am drawn to Chris's (and the snake's) question is that maybe, finally, I am starting to enjoy the questions. For the first time in my life, I am starting to relax with the idea of mystery .. of not needing to know the answers to everything.

It's slow growth, though. I have to remind myself to be patient. I have to remind myself that not knowing what I'm going to be doing every minute of the day tomorrow is good. That there is a lot of life in the unpredictability, because then I am open to the possibilities I wouldn't see by requiring everything to conform to a predictable path.

Don't expect instant patience from me right away .. but I'm planning to be around this world for a lot longer ... so I do have some time to work on it. Another good thing that happens with patience is accepting that I am a work in progress.

I am the richness of the question. I am not the answer.