Reading Out Loud

Listen to an interview with Mary Ito on CBC Fresh Air on the morning of the performance http://www.cbc.ca/freshair/2010/11/saturday-nov-27.html

And look at these gorgeous photos taken by Wayne Eardley. This what it looks like to read the letters out loud as a call and response with Ravi and Ernie, and Besharah, as if one might be a whale, as if one believed in frozen music...

At the end of the evening,  Ravi's father quoted Einstein to me:

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. "

For those who have read the book, this would be the math solution I've been looking for.  Ravi's father is a math professor and knows of what he speaks.

It was an amazing night.

Getting Ready to Play with Ravi Again

THE CAMINO LETTERS in PERFORMANCE

Saturday, November 27^th, 2010, 7:30 p.m.

Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, Toronto, Ontario

I drove to Toronto in the rain this morning to drink cappucino with Ravi and finish planning for Saturday. And so the countdown has begun...  

Today was only the third or fourth time I've seen Ravi since I got back from Spain with my letters.  Before that I hadn't seen him since we were teenagers, but I was thinking of him because of a huge butterfly I wrote about in Chapter 2.  Ravi and I also used to float toothpicks down the melting rivers in the street in the spring.  I remember that, and I remember that sometimes we whispered about magic - though not very often.

I hope Ravi's mom and dad are able to come on Saturday because both of mine are gone. Ravi's mom remembers my great big butterfly right down to the last detail - I remember that it was black and white, she remembers that it also had yellow on the inner part of its wings.  It was as huge and wondrous as I remember from when I was six - I know that because she told me so. Ravi's mom believes in magic too, I think, and she was my mom's friend.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with Lizzie and her band Besharah.  Lizzie and I travel around in a grown-up version of connect the dots - that's what Lizzie and I do.   And so I met Brandon and Carey and Saskia for the first time and, driving home, I realized that I will never be the same after being in their company with the music that they are wrapping around my letters.  I think Saskia and I would agree that it's about the fugual nature of things, but that is another story that you will need to hear in music rather than words.

None of this is part of my plan for my life.  I've never stood on a stage anywhere.  I didn't do theatre when I was young.  I can't sing to save my life.  If you had told me a year ago that this - all of this - would be the life I was living I would have said:  Never.  Not ever.  Not me.

I stand and talk all the time as a lawyer. But I face in one direction and I say planned and scripted words, crafted for a specific purpose and offered to the judge sitting ahead and up high.  What I'm doing with Ravi on Saturday is not that.  That's for sure. 

I can't wait to see what magic Ravi and I are going to make this time, with new friends, floating along once again on our little toothpick boats.

Showing Up ...

When I was planning this little book tour, intending to hop and skip west from Saskatoon, there were some people who thought I was a bit silly to organize myself simply by convincing a few people in each city to invite me into their space (bookstores and churches mostly).  All I really planned to do was show up with my letters and read.  And guess what?  A whole pile of other people - sometimes the most surprising people - showed up too.

Resting in the Company of Older Women

I was reading today in Calgary, where I am staying with Marty's sister Anne and her husband Ken.

At dinner tonight with Anne and her dear friends, Pat and Maureen, I basked in the company of beautiful women, older and wiser than me.  I'm learning to rest in the company of older women, that is something that I am learning to do. 

Men too.  Ken didn't come to any of my readings, but he quietly and perfectly tied up my Calgary time in a small, simple, bow by reading to me from Ulysses in his kitchen: 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield....