trying new things.

March 30th 2009,

Blogging is strange. I've avoided it for so long, actual blooging but now it seems like maybe it's a good way to keep me writing. But today is for trying new things.

Imagine what the world would've been like if Anne Frank had a blog instead of a diary, or just kept everyone updated on twitter? not quite the same, is it.

But when i was little i always secretly wished someone would read my diary, because it was always written for an audience...most of it was probably fiction after all.

As i write this, I'm cooking pea soup on the stove in my downtown Toronto apartment. It's one of my favourite comfort foods that until this afternoon, i had forgotten i knew how to make. My house smells of garlic and chicken stock and smokey sausages. My cat, Dora, seems to be a perplexed as there is rarely food smells coming from the kitchen these days, unless you count cereal or toast.

Living downtown is new for me. I've always lived in the suburbs or in quiet residential neighbourhoods full of babies in 4x4 strollers and moms in running shoes and yoga pants. Here, it's noisy and loud, full of cars, people yelling at odd hours and at odd people, dogs barking and taxis honking at each other. It's exciting every time a bus drives by and makes my windows shake because it means I am really here, really doing this.

I never thought I would live in Toronto. This far away from my family, my oldest friend, my home, my mountains, my ocean, my first kiss, my first school and the people who love me the best. But here I am. It feels good, but every few weeks, the ties that bind me there still tug at me and say "When are you coming home?". The ocean calls and says " I can sail you here on the high tide" and the Western Wind offers to give me a lift on it's warm currents of homesickness.

But I keep telling them I'm not ready yet. This concrete city made of steel and neon has something to teach me and a present hidden behind it's back. It won't let me see it yet, but I bet it's a good one. I have good feelings about it. Besides, coming here has given me new friends, my new cat (she's a true Ontarian having grown up on the tough streets of St. Mary's), people in the theatre seem to give me the time of day here and I've managed to get me a boyfriend, after having long given up on the idea of all that.

So all in all, it seems to be working out.

I can call myself a working actor here...not just a waitress who aspires to be an actor, even now that I'm between contracts I can say that I'm an out-of-work actor who aspires to be a waitress...I could use the money for sure since 8 weeks of serving pays more than last contract.

Other new things include a fitness class that I started taking today. I'm "working out". I can't seem to write it, even say it without the use of quotes or the dreaded finger variety thereof.
"Working Out". So lame. I'm in a class designed by a dancer named Eva who wears eyeliner at 10 am and chooses to "work out" for a living. My personal idea of hell. The class wasn't so bad, except for my inability to understand choreography, balance, coordination and form not to mention my red-faced, feeble attempts at doing push ups and my bandy legs going every which but the way they're supposed to go.

I capped off the first day of new weekly "work out" by getting a new haircut which makes me look like a Lesbian which wouldn't be so bad, but given the neighbourhood i live in, could prove problematic and then I promptly spent the rest of the day sitting on the couch feeling my insides seize up from usage and napping because I ran out of thoughts to think.

The nap was interesting as my neighbour, who we call Benny Bongos, was in the middle of his daily Bongo practice which usually goes from 5:30 to 6. He's not very good, but over the 4 months I've lived here i have marked a genuine improvement in his bongo styling. I still loathe the Bongos and think them to one of man's lamer inventions, but all in all, it could be worse, he could play the tiny saxophone like Kenny G or be an avid Karaoke devotee like my former Filipino landlords or the gays down the hall who like to rock out Whitney Houston on Thursday nights.

My soup is done and my home smells like I'm 6 and mom has taken us to the Polish deli at the mall. I get a small bowl, which to me is huge, of creamy green soup with bits of random, fat sausages off the ends of what they sold the day before. Leanne gets chicken noodle soup and Mom gets Borscht with a big dollop of sour cream that turns her soup pink. I spread the butter thick on my white crusty bun with the knot on top (I always eat the knot first) and I dip the rest into the soup. It tastes like a memory of an ethnic grandmother I never had cooking me traditions of a place I've never been connected to. But my waspiness doesn't contradict my hunger for good tastes from the Old Country...even if it's not my old country.

My concoction will not stand alone in my memories as a life altering moment in time but it will fill that void that I feel on nights like this. But with my abdominal muscles tightening by the second, the sound of my cat snoring, the waiting for my boyfriend to call and say goodnight and the sound of the traffic outside all combined with the soup bubbling on the stove remind me that I belong here for now. This is the path I'm on and it's going to take me somewhere new. And one day I'll look back on all this as the beginning of that next big thing.