Steam

originally published in Vancouver Island Almost Free

Lisa had always thought it was cheesy, this clock, with its off-key hooting. Every summer it was surrounded by tourists who must, she had thought, merely be desperate for a point of interest. She used to imitate its odd sound for the amusement of her friends: Hoon hoon HOON hoon. Hoon hoon HOON hoon.
Now, twenty years later, in the middle of December, she almost apologized to the thing. She wanted to hear that hooting again, for old times’ sake. But it was getting colder, and Sylvie was getting heavy in her arms.

7:25. Would they hear the tune at the half hour? Or was it only on the hour? Lisa couldn’t remember. She looked at her daughter, at the solemn little face turned upward, watching the steam billow and vanish into the dark.
“Do you like it, honey?”

Sylvie nodded, her eyes on the steam.

“Are you cold?”

“No. Yes. No.”

“Do you have to pee?”

Sylvie shook her head.

Seven-thirty now. The clock wouldn’t sound until eight, then.

“Well, let’s walk back to the Skytrain, okay? We’ll take another ride.”

“I want it to go up, up, up high.” Sylvie illustrated with a swoosh of her arm.

“Okay, honey, well, this time when we go on it, it will go higher. You’ll be able to see a huge ball of lights called Science World. Then we’ll get off and take a bus up to Auntie G’s.”

“Are we staying over again? At Auntie G’s?”

“Yes.”

“Yaaaay!” A pause. “Mommy.”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“When are we going home?”

“I’m not sure, love. Hey, can you walk a bit now, sweetie? My back is a little sore.”

Sylvie slid down.

They walked back along Water Street toward the station. The merry hum and clink of restaurants. Everything bathed in the appealing light of Gastown.

They stopped in front of a rock and mineral shop. A TV stood in the window, showing a documentary about gem mining. A trick projection threw multicoloured gems of light onto the sidewalk. Lisa looked at Sylvie’s coat and smiled.

“Look, honey! They’re on you!”

Sylvie lifted one arm in its sleeve and squealed . Then she looked up at her mother’s face, searching.
“Ahh! They’re on you too, Mommy!”

“It’s neat, isn’t it, Sylvie? “

“Uh-huh.” Sylvie pumped her fingers, trying to imprison a red gem of light.

Suddenly a voice roared: “MERRRY CHRRRISTMAS!”
The sidewalk was suddenly filled with Santas. A river of them, spilling into the holiday traffic. All shapes and sizes. Sleek female Santas, rakish lad Santas. Woolly, spongey, tattered, and fluffy beards, dirty beards, sparkling beards. A swaggering Santa with a single glossy Christmas ball hooked into his tights at the groin. Lisa stifled a screech of laughter with her gloved hand.

Sylvie stood against the wall and pushed some hair back from her eyes. She watched the Santas with the air of an anthropologist. That hair, Lisa thought. I wish she’d let me put a barrette in it.
The Santas kept flowing. Some in conversation, some looking around. A kind young Santa noticed Sylvie and knelt down, fishing in a pouch at his side. “Merry Christmas.” He offered Sylvie a candy cane.
“Thank you! What do you say, honey?”

“Thank you.”

Lisa lifted the girl once again onto her hip. Sylvie clung to her expertly, minimally, as a young goat adheres to a cliffside.

A non-Santa face emerged from the crowd. Older. A fume of alcohol, but steady enough on his feet and no threat.

“WELL!” he puffed, addressing Lisa. “I guess THERE. GOES. SANTA! It’s like: ‘MOMMY! Why are there so many?'”

Lisa didn’t explain that it was no bubble burst; she and her husband — ex-husband – had never led the kids to believe in Santa – not really. But she played along with the joke. “Mommy, some of them are girls!”
Her companion guffawed.
Lisa lifted Sylvie higher on her hip and plunged into a gap in the Santas, moving upstream. The man fell into pace beside her. The Santas parted and flowed around them.
“I’m Lisa. This is Sylvie. We’re just headed to the Skytrain.”
“I’m Bill! Nice to meet you two!”

As they rounded the corner to the station, Lisa stopped. “What’s. . .that fire?”
“Oh, you haven’t seen that?” Bill chuckled. “Not been here for a while, eh? Yeah that’s a new restaurant or something. They have those torch things on the – whatsit. Patio.”
“I grew up in Vancouver. I’m on the Island now. We’re visiting. It’s hard to explain. . .” Lisa trailed off.
“No, I gotcha,” said Bill. Life, eh? It’s messy!”
“Yes,” Lisa murmured, looking at the fire, and the strange light it cast on the building’s façade. “When I lived here, there was none of that stuff in the station. Just a deli and a bookstore, I think it was. Not even Starbucks — just a one-off cafe.”
“Yeah! Gastown is totally different, eh? It was nothing in 1969. Just a bunch of whatever stores, right? But it had those bumpy things, though.” He searched Lisa’s face, stuck for the word. He pointed to the ground.

“Cobblestones?” Lisa suggested.

“Yeah, cobblestones! Yeah, I was around here back then. This was my patch, you know? I stole one hundred and twenty-six cars from this neighbourhood. Back in the day.” He grinned and straightened himself. Lisa noticed now that he had a swollen eye, dark purple and blue.

A pause. Then Lisa raised her eyebrows. “A hundred and twenty-six?”

“YEAH! Got my education in jail, eh. Got my high school and I did my trade too.”

“Oh? What’s your trade?”

“Heating and refrigeration. Got my ticket. On the inside! Haha! When I got out, I got sent on jobs, eh. I didn’t even have to do nothing. I just stood there and watched the other guys work, haha. I was the –the — ” He patted a breast pocket containing an imaginary document.

“Um, overseer? Supervisor?”

He grinned . “Yeah! I was the guy telling them it was all legal and good. Haha! Think of that!”

Lisa smiled. “That’s cool.”

The Santas kept streaming into Gastown.

The companions approached a statue in the dark. A winged woman bearing the body of a soldier to heaven.
“I love this, eh.” said Bill.
“Me too,” said Lisa. “I just learned that it’s a victory, not an angel. I always thought it was an angel when I was a kid.”
“That’s not an angel?”
“Apparently not. It’s a mythological figure — Roman. She symbolizes victory.”
Bill gazed up at it. “Some victory.”
Sylvie was now fast asleep, slumped in Lisa’s arms.
Lisa sighed. “Well, I better get her – back.”
“Yeah! Little cutie.”
“Are you coming inside?”
Bill opened the door for them.
“Uh, no! I’m – not allowed in. To Waterfront, eh. Long story.” He looked down.
“No, I gotcha,” said Lisa, quickly. “Life is messy.”
Bill looked up at her. He cleared his throat.
“Yeah.”
“Take care, Bill.”
“You too, Lisa. Take care of little cutie there.”
“I will.”
Lisa carried Sylvie inside.
She looked out of the station window for a moment, watching Bill. The Santas were all gone now.

With a solemn face Lisa watched as Bill looked left, then right. She watched as he turned and vanished into the dark.

Toilet Paper Wars

Imagine a planet where women ran nearly everything, and designed public facilities for everyone, including bathrooms for men.

In this world only men poop; the women don’t. But the women, recall, design and stock all the public spaces including the men’s rooms. Where they never go.

Now because men sometimes poop, they need toilet paper (the women don’t). The toilet paper is kept locked in machines on the common wall of the men’s bathroom. These machines are always broken, and when they’re not broken, they’re empty.

The men also need two quarters — exactly two quarters, to get the paper, if there is any. If they don’t have two quarters, well, just hold in your diarrhea and go find them somehow. It’s not that hard, is it?

Wait — why isn’t the paper just free and available to the men, since they obviously need it? Simple. Because, according to the women, the men would be greedy and take it all home — of course! The men’s insatiable lust for paper must be controlled.

The men could complain to the women — if they could figure out who is in charge (while holding in the diarrhea), but the women wouldn’t be interested. To them, the men’s poop is just gross and also pretty hilarious. And they get so EMOTIONAL about it! They make such a big DEAL! It’s so FUNNY! Or it would be if it wasn’t so disgusting. . .let’s not even talk about it. Ever.

Well, we do live in that world. I’m talking about everyday life for women and the disgraceful carelessness about the kind of paper WE need from time to time.

Specific is Beautiful

(originally published on my art blog, Bright Earth and Paper Moon at http://www.rabbitinthedirt.wordpress.com/ )

When you try to paint something that directly represents too large a concept — for example “love” or “the unity of all things” — it doesn’t work. This is why 99% of new age/ metaphysical/ energy art looks like crap. I’m not even going to qualify that with a “to me.” It just looks LIKE CRAP.

The reason is that truly touching, profound and universal concepts are like wild animals. You cannot rush straight at them and capture them. They will elude you every time.

However, if you paint something rather mundane — a cup, a building, a fruit — with great sensitivity, mindfulness and even adoration, these profound truths come flooding into your picture, almost whether you want them to or not.

Golden City Restaurant at Dusk, with Reflections
by Jenny Hainsworth
all rights reserved

Suddenly your cup is about contentment, your bowl of fruit is about plenty, your building is about family generations and the passing of time. This is why the philosophers say that only the very specific is truly universal. This is something which seasoned artists know instinctively, but it should be taught in art schools.

Ideally, a foundation art course would encompass some philosophy as a requirement. Every artistic choice is a philosophical statement in itself. Even your attitude toward addition, subtraction, correction, metamorphosis, etc in a painting is a matter of your philosophy.

For example, I have learned to reject the idea of removal or correction as somehow “backward” steps in the painting process. They are not backward, because apart from the whole realm of happy accidents that these mistakes sometimes lead to, there is the idea that ALL steps taking in painting are forward steps. If they are mistakes, they are mistakes you had to make — that were meant for you to make, in some sense. So make them, correct them, learn from them. All of these steps are positive, forward steps, And of course this applies to all of life.

Don Mee

A recent drawing, part of the collection of 50 works I am preparing for my upcoming solo show in Taipei, in February/ March 2015 🙂

Jenny Hainsworth Fine Art

by Jenny Hainsworth
pastel on paper
22 x 30
$800

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The Perfect Day

(originally published in Vancouver Island Almost Free)

Here is a little story about the time my brother and I went to the wrong town in Scotland, and what we found there. Go ahead! Clickity click! 🙂

The Perfect Day

My Sky Blue Trades (an Art School Story)

(Originally published in Vancouver Island Almost Free)

My art education began by accident. I had just been rejected by Studio 58 – a prestigious theatre program in Vancouver — and it had broken my spirit for performing. I was a washed up actor at the age of eighteen.
I had heard the rumour that the acting program directors used a Darwinian tactic – initially rejecting talented candidates to weed out the weaklings. The idea was that the tough ones who could take rejection would reapply and succeed. But how was I to know whether my adjudicator’s handwritten notes, containing the stinging phrase “flaccid transformations”, and sent by post, were real or bluffed? I was humiliated. I consigned my Chekhov to the shelf, and never auditioned for anything again.

A week later, I knocked on the door of the Langara Community College visual art department. My cardboard portfolio contained a few puny pieces from high school – they were all I had to show. One was a pencil sketch of a soldier embracing a woman in a goodbye kiss, his pistol pressed against her cheek. Why he was holding it in his hand at that moment, let alone pointing it at his girlfriend’s eyebrow, I could not tell you.
My judges informed me that my line was expressive. My tone needed work. But I was in. They instructed me to register for five studio courses – drawing, painting, design, ceramics and sculpture – and two academic courses; English and art history. It was a heavy course load, designed indeed for the energy of a teenager with nothing better to do in the world.

No one in my family had ever gone beyond high school, although both my parents were well-read, even cultured. Autodidacts, as many people are. But we had been poor. We used the food bank, although my mom hid the fact from us. I remember the day I figured it out. I was rooting through the cupboards in search of a snack, and came across some weird products. Cookies from Yugoslavia? A giant tin of Viennese wieners? Had my mother lost her mind? Then it dawned on me. She hadn’t paid for these items. She had been stuck with them, along with a few vaguely nutritious things – some wilted lettuce and rubbery apples. You had to take everything in the box.

With the shame of my background still so fresh, I made few friends in my new program. I was too shy. I admired Mariko, who sat across from me in design class. She produced compelling pieces, one after another. I admired her multicultural name, her quirky beauty, her easygoing nature and her signature motif – the spiral. Oh, those spirals! people would remark, in my imagination, gazing at some student works on the corridor walls. This is clearly the work of the innovative Mariko Ferguson!

I felt unworthy to be friends with Mariko, at least in design class. And in ceramics I was outstripped by pretty much everyone, because I just couldn’t do the work. None of it. Clay would flop wildly on my wheel. Air bubbles invaded everything I did. Wedging left me exhausted and weepy. The making of glazes was so technical I felt I was back in chemistry class – an incomprehensible nightmare. I was reduced to begging for others’ leftover glazes, daubing them on my vessels and hoping for the best. The kiln terrified me. I am sure that some people’s projects exploded on my watch, and that I have blocked out the memory.

In my drawing class there was mature student, Mr Zingeris. He was ancient, phenomenally short of stature, and never talked to anyone. It was murmured around campus that during the War he had fled the Holocaust in Lithuania on foot, sleeping in ditches and surviving on windfall fruit.

Mr Zingeris’ only relationship seemed to be with his own mind, and he was in a constant state of anger at it. Every class contained a heart-stopping moment – the moment when Mr Zingeris would explode in rage from behind his drawing board. You wouldn’t know exactly when it was coming, but the scritch scritch of our willow charcoal moving on our paper and lulling us into a state of peaceful meditation would be suddenly shattered by Mr Zingeris’ voice. “I MADE A MISTAKE! I MADE A MISTAKE!!” he would holler, to no one in particular. He would attack his paper with desperate erasing motions. We would jump two inches in the air and clutch at our chests. I was puzzled. Why was poor Mr Z – so fearless during the war — worried about mistakes in an art class? Were we not all here to learn, to make mistakes?

It was in painting class alone that I began to shine. No one in the program could touch my gift for colour and composition. I always just knew how to lay out the picture so that the viewer’s eye did not slide off the edge anywhere, but rather moved around inside the image. My fellow painting students, drifting around the studio during the coffee break to see what everyone was up to, would catch their breath when they rounded on my easel. They would stand still and quietly study what they saw, as if a delightful secret lay inside.
This is it, a tiny voice said in my head. This is what you are supposed to do. Don’t forget.

In October a lump sum of money came to me – my student loan. It was the most money I had ever had access to. With no healthy family money habits or life experience to inform me, I decided to take a trip to New York City. I went because I missed a fair-haired boy named Jeremy, who had moved there in the summer and broken my heart, and I went for the museums.

A year later, I did forget that tiny voice. I forgot it for a very long time, but that is another story. Are we all not here to learn, to make mistakes?

Roxana’s Beginning (A Miracle of Ballpoints)

(originally published in Vancouver Island Almost Free)

 

Gabriela Motet, a name so lyrical, you couldn’t make it up. The angel of Annunciation and a medieval song, in one slip of a girl. Atop the pillar of her neck, the face of an Eastern icon, but for one difference. She is flesh and blood, and her dark eyes have the slick of living wetness.

Where is she now? Still in Calgary with her baby son? Not a baby any more, of course. This story happened years ago, when our small church community was one: whole and perfect like a hard, smooth nut. As long as you didn’t know about the cracks beneath the skin, waiting to burst; as long as you overlooked the overlooking, indeed, of many important things.

Picture a sunny day, when Gabriela was still free, and light as a new leaf. Swinging down Pandora street, her skirt snapping in the wind. Full sun, but also evening, so it must be summer. Over the rooftops, the roar of a festival on the inner harbour. And wending toward home, it is Charlie! Gabriela calls a hello, a thin voice in the wind. Charlie grins back with a wave. Teeth missing, but his face is ageless; clear eyes like a child. The friends meet on the sidewalk.

“Gabriela! Gabriela. Oh, how are you? What are you doing?”

“Oh, just picking up a few things on Douglas. At the Shopper’s. Are you going to Liturgy tomorrow?”

“Maybe, maybe, Gabriela. I guess so! Hey, how are your mom and dad, Gabriela?

“Very well, Charlie, thank you.”

@@@

Across town, a cul-de-sac in Gordon Head. Gabriela’s mother, Roxana, is at home. Scrubbing, vacuuming. Father Nicu will come tomorrow afternoon to bless the house. A dear young man. Better make sure the prayer corner is tidy! Say evening prayers at the same time.

The evening sun slanting through the lace curtains, lighting up gilt details in the china cabinet. Vlad away on business; Gabriela out enjoying the good weather. It’s so quiet. Roxana makes the sign of the cross and begins the prayer: “Doamne, Iiususe Hristoase, Fiul lui Dumnezeu. . .”

But she can’t keep her mind in the words. A restless swell is rising in her soul. Elemental, inexorable, like a wave in the ocean, like the beginning of labour.

@@@

“Will you walk with me for a bit, Gabriela? Are you busy?”

“No, I’m not busy, Charlie. You live around here, don’t you?”

“Yes, Gabriela. Up in that building there. On North Park. It’s not much, but it’s home, Gabriela! Haha! — Oh!”

Charlie stops suddenly, struck by a new idea. “Gabriela! Can you come up for tea! Can you?”

Gabriela hesitates only a moment. “I’d love to, Charlie. Lead the way.”

@@@

Roxana can’t concentrate. “I’m sorry, Doamne, I will have to talk to you later.” The little flame in the red glass nods and flickers its understanding.

I must write about it. I must. It has been almost twenty years. I’m no longer a young woman. I wonder whether I could do it all again. One does what one must at any age, I suppose.

Roxana, middle-aged Victoria housewife and hero of Ceausescu’s downfall. Unsung, as so many were. Safer that way. Long ago, working to smuggle into Timisoara the television crew of a western journalist. Hosting secret meetings in the kitchen. Her famous husband, Vlad, singing risky songs with double meanings. Dangerous letters changing hands. Their little girls, born and raised in a cloud of anxiety.

So many heroes, indeed, scattered after that strange Christmas day. Some friends to Brussels, some to the UK. Vlad and Roxana, hearts aching, leaving Gabriela, three years old, and Marina, eight, with neighbours. We’ll send for them in good time, God willing. Stepping onto the plane, the pain in her heart so much she thought she might die. Colleagues, friends, killed in the confusion, before they could get out. Roxana’s brother Ioan, just a teenager. Shot in the eye and killed instantly. Her new life in Canada, a thousand new lives, could not quench his eternal memory, the bright flame in her soul.

I must write. Tonight. Now.

@@@

Charlie jabbed the elevator button nervously. He didn’t often have visitors. Never! Haha! Having promised tea, he hoped he actually had some, especially for such a dear guest as Gabriela. Shame he couldn’t offer her any food; there wouldn’t be anything in the cupboards until Wednesday.

“Come in! Come in! Gabriela! Welcome to my humble abode! Haha!” He cleared a space for her to sit down. “Let me get you, ah, that tea. I’ll go put on the kettle.” He disappeared around the corner.

Gabriela looked around. Piles of books, a sagging futon sofa with jackets for blankets. Clipped articles pinned to the walls. In the center, a luminous magazine photo of Emmylou Harris, her long hands folded against her face.

“Don’t go to any trouble, Charlie,” Gabriela called out. “I’m fine. It’s just nice to see you.”

Charlie came back with two mugs. One green with a broken handle, the other dark pink with a blue bird.

“You’re so nice! You’re so nice, Gabriela! Good news, though, I do have tea! Two kinds! Do you want, ah, vanilla? Or orange pekoe?”

Gabriela scrunched up her face, politely pretending to savor the rich options. “Hm! I think I’ll have orange pekoe this time, Charlie!”

“Okay! Okay! Orange Pekoe it is! Coming right up! Haha!” He disappeared again.

@@@

Roxana was looking for a pen. Nobody was home to start the computer and get her to that screen she needed for writing. Why hadn’t she learned to do it for herself? Fifty-three, and she still couldn’t do it; it was embarrassing. And at this moment, frustrating. She must write. She opened drawers, looked in closets. Nothing, not even a single pen. Ridiculous.

At last, she spotted something on the floor under the table. A red crayon, dropped by her granddaughter. It would have to do. She could at least start her memoirs tonight.

@@@

In his kitchenette, Charlie’s mind was racing. Orange pekoe wasn’t the problem, he had the bag in his hand. That part would be okay. But he had to give Gabriela something else, a gift. Something! Think!

He crossed over to her and lowered the teabag into the bird cup. Carefully poured the hot water over it.

“Thank you, Charlie.”

“I know!” he exclaimed. “Gabriela! I have all these — look! Please, please take them!”

He ran to a closet and wrestled something from a teetering stack of boxes. A bag of ballpoint pens. A very large bag.
“Please take these, Gabriela! It’s my gift to you! This is about two hundred pens!”

“Oh, Charlie! That’s. . .so great, thank you!”

“It’s my honour, Gabriela!”

She stood up. “I better go. . .”

“Of course! Good night, Gabriela! Thank you for visiting. Enjoy the pens! You will never need to buy pens again, that’s for sure!”

“True, Charlie! Good night – and” (she held up the bag, with some difficulty) “thanks again.” She turned to go. Friends were now waiting at Swans for her to have a drink with them.

Late that night, Gabriela slipped through the front door of her family home and closed it softly. She climbed the stairs. Why was her bag so heavy? Those pens! She smiled wearily and dropped Charlie’s gift onto her mother’s desk with a thud. Some papers there caught her eye for a moment. In Romanian. . . and in red crayon? Strange. . .

@@@

Her mother’s voice piercing the morning air. Gabriela became aware of the day and of her own hangover in the same moment.

“Gabriela! Gabriela, wake up! A miracle! GOD SENT ME SO MANY PENS!”

 

 

 

 

Jenny Hainsworth

all rights reserved 2014

 

 

 

 

 

New Short Story: A Miracle of Ballpoints

I’m writing a short story today whose characters are survivors of the December Revolution in Romania. It’s actually a light story, based on true events (I knew the family I’m writing about, but the names are changed, of course), but reading up about the revolution is not exactly light! I came across this quotation from Cristian Tudor Popescu, the editor of a Romanian newspaper called Adevarul, in an NY Times article, and thought I would share it here.

If Romania gained its dignity in the Revolution, “We also have to gain the truth, because living under a lie while free is even less dignified than being prisoners under a lie.”

My story, which is called A Miracle of Ballpoints, will be published in the next issue (June/ July) of Vancouver Island Almost Free. I will post a link here when it’s ready to read!

Spring on Fisgard Street

This is a little rant from my visual art blog about how tricky it is to draw and paint in public and yet not get arrested for assault.

Jenny Hainsworth Fine Art

I’ve been making the most of an amazingly long blossom season here in “Victoria” (Coast Salish territory) and drawing street scenes in my beloved Chinatown. A boon for me, all these beautiful flowering trees; not so much for my lovely man, who is allergic to pollen. Glarck.

I only draw from life (with rare exceptions) so if I want to do a street scene, that necessarily means drawing on the street. Well, I like to be comfortable, so I have been using Carlos’ car as my studio while he is at work. It’s great — moveable, comfy, I can have music, even a place for my coffee cup. Best of all, it only costs me parking change.

The day I did this picture, about a week ago, it was sunny and unseasonably hot for April. I didn’t want to sit in the car, so I sat on it. I attracted…

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The Look Festival! My butt is at it! This Friday!

If you’re in “Victoria” (Coast Salish territory) this Friday, May 9, I’ll be reading some of my writing at the Look Festival at 11 am!

The Look Festival  (taking place at Uptown in a biiiiiiiig room next to Forever 21) is hosted by the Community Arts Council of Victoria, an organization that promotes local arts and artists. I just became a member last week. I am involved in the festival with two hats on; as a writer and a visual artist. One of my pastel paintings, “The Chinese School in Blossom Time,” (pictured below) won an award! Darn, I wasn’t there to bask in the glow on Saturday when it was (apparently) announced, because I was off on more important business — chilling with my three awesome daughters.

While I’m not one for looking to awards for validation (seriously — I’m philosophically against that; it’s a long story but it’s all Stephen Pressfield’s fault), I would be a lying hound to say it doesn’t feel good to get a little official recognition for what is actually bloody hard work at the best of times.

Anyway, I hope to see you on Friday for what could be called “Jenny’s Slightly Warped Story Time.” If I have time, I will read two, maybe three short stories. If not, umm, well, then just one! I promise I will not be boring — my stories are pretty funny, if I do say so, and I may even bust out some of my acting skills, you never know. Voices and such. Alien voices even, maybe. Plus flailing!