Cat Skinner Club

My Tribe

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Everyone I know and love is having babies.

Ok, not EVERYONE, but close. While sharing in their joy and excitement, this also leaves me feeling a little bit like the last unicorn.

The last year and a half in Schnooville has been an incredible exercise in learning my independence, and really growing very happy standing on my own. I’m happy with the woman I am, and satisfied with my life, and I’ve decided that I never want to feel like I need someone else in order to have the kind of life that I want.

As a result, I began to think about how I might complete the rest of the puzzle without anyone else, if for no other reason to stop feeling like I’m waiting for someone to fall into my life. I stopped looking. I began imagining single-parent scenarios, and made a list of all the people I knew I could count on for support if I decided to go down that road.

Then something extraordinary happened.

Is there a “right” way to have a family? Is the conventional two-parent, heterosexual model the only one? In this day of two mommy and two daddy families, can we really believe that only a mommy and a daddy can create a positive, loving home in which to raise a family?

Not in Schnooville. Here, we’re looking beyond the traditional Western model. The vast and mysterious universe has served up an order I wouldn’t have even thought to place, and now I’m turning my world around and examining each corner and each line to see how everything I thought I knew about life and love can be renovated and remodeled for a bigger, better reality.

I hope to be able to share more of this wonderful story here, but first there are big decisions to make, and very important people to share these decisions with. There will be no immediate pitter patter either. A lot of love and groundwork must be laid down first. What I wish to impart is that life will give you wonderful things if you open up your heart and trust in powers that are greater than us all.

Possibility is one of the most exciting things I know. It invites imagination, dreaming, and hope in abundance. The way we embrace possibility tells us so much about the people we are, and the way we move through our lives.

This possibility is just too good to walk away from.

The Long, Hot Summer

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Yes of course if you live anywhere near Toronto that’s a ridiculous title for this post, but the alternative is “The Dripping Wet Summer”. You can tell me which is more appealing. I’ll take either, and both. One is steam rising from the pavements sensual, and the other is the freckle-faced glory I crave during our epic winters.

It’s been a few days since I’ve been here, and I can blame this on two things:

1.) I have a show that opens on Thursday. Please see the image above.

2.) I have fallen deep into the Rabbit Hole and Wonderland is more spectacular than anyone could describe.

And so, I return to Schnooville to tell you this:

When you start to listen to what the Universe is telling you, and when you trust your own heart, it is the most profound magic you will ever know. I’m exploring some of the deepest corners of who I am, and what I want my life to be. At the end of the day, when all of the outside influences fall away, the answers seem so simple and clear. I’m challenging everything I thought that I knew about myself.

Love is not about losing yourself in someone else. It’s about finding yourself reflected in them, and looking deeply into your own soul to understand that the beauty they see in you, the beauty they love in you, is yours and yours alone, and it is the greatest gift that you have. You alone must sustain and nurture your own light so you can reflect back the love you are fortunate enough to receive.

All of the healing, understanding, acceptance, courage, strength, power, wisdom, and joy you seek are sitting there, somewhere inside you, like boxes of memories from ancient ancestors. When you finally tackle the mess, you’ll be amazed at what you begin to unearth.

First Night, One Year Later

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The first of July is a big day for me. Leading up to this day, I always feel displaced, anxious, and melancholic, and I usually forget why. Then, at some point around noon, on Canada’s bithday, I remember.

On July 1st, Four years ago, I sat alone in the dark on the balcony of my penthouse apartment over-looking Lake Ontario in Burlington. There were fireworks all along the harbour, and my boxer-mastiff Dudley was snoring at my feet as I was sipping wine. My ex-husband was gone, and never coming back, and someone new had planted something deep and inevitable in my heart. My life had utterly changed, and I felt completely and totally lost. The only thing that kept me rooted in the world that night was the moon, full and beautiful, and constant.

One year ago today, alone again, I declared it “first night” in The Fortress, and against the backdrop of another fireworks display, on another penthouse patio I toasted my freedom, and gave the moon a rueful shake of my head.

Today, as the sun arcs across the sky, and the promise of the approaching night cools the late afternoon breeze, I am still alone. I am stronger now, my home is filled with all of my things, and has been graced by my dearest friends many times over. Arthur now snores at my feet, tired from a swim in the lake and travelling across the city on the streetcar. I am o.k. I’ve lived with myself for an entire year, finding myself to be a most well-suited companion. The ache for someone to love is waning, mostly. I’ve planted a container garden of colourful flowers on my little terrace, and tonight I look forward to sitting there quietly, alone, to toast the moon. I’ll raise a glass to my own courage, and my tenacity. To my capacity for love and forgiveness. To my fragile, yearning heart, my thirst for life, and my profound gratitude for all of the incredible beauty that surrounds me.

If the moon completes her cycle, and I find myself still alone next year, I really don’t think that will be so bad.

Hot Cross Buns

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At Easter, I don’t celebrate the Resurrection. I find it hard to buy into. Instead, I turn my thoughts to rebirth, rejuvenation; coming into the light again after a period of darkness. I suppose you could say that I postpone my Spring Equinox festivities to a later date when I can celebrate with family and friends, who I am sure are also not celebrating the Resurrection; at least not in a literal sense.

(I’m experimenting with semi-colon. Please let me know how I am doing.)

I ran some errands in Bloor West Village yesterday. I saw not one but two men wandering down the street dressed as the Easter bunny, with truly frightening giant plush heads. Why, oh why? I was terrorized by these “mascots” as a child. They never, ever fooled me either.

The Easter Bunny has nothing to do with Christ. Or Hallmark.

Did you know that the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe, and similarly, the “Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [was] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos.”

The roots of the people in the early days of Europe when the Christians first arrived shaped all these holidays that we celebrate today.

Our roots shape and inform the way we celebrate at present, and the way we tell our stories and celebrate our tradition moving through future generations. A finger is always dipped in the pie of the past.

I’ll bet it took a long, long time for the early Christians to convince the Pagan tribes to adopt their new mythology. I know they had to create some parallels, for sure. How else would these people ever relate to this strange new culture?

As I understand it, during that time, things could be relatively peaceful too. There are stories of peaceful Christian monks living alongside Druid Priests, sharing knowledge and ideas (and no doubt enjoying all the meade and bonfire-lit revelry.)

I bet things didn’t start to get violent until someone in Rome started to loose patience, and felt threatened by the idea that there was a whole pantheon of gods who were vibrant long before J.C. and his big daddy.

Then the people were forced to leave their tradition behind, in ways that shan’t be described here, on such a nice, sunny spring morning.

I am embracing my past. I am honoring the stories that have shaped me. I am closely examining the pain and the pleasure, the sorrow and the triumph so that I can move towards a place where I can incorporate the rituals and customs that brought me the most joy into celebrations that involve new mythology. Without my dark and sometimes chaotic Pagan Dieties, I will never be able to appreciate this new god of Light and Love. In a perfect world, all the archetypes of my lifes’ mythology will enjoy a meal together someday. With a pile of brightly coloured eggs in the centre of the table, just so we always remember what came before.

Saturday Poem:
(not mine.)

Bells For Her (Tori Amos)

And through the life force and there goes her friend
On her Nishiki it’s out of time
And through the portal they can make amends

Hey would you say whatever we’re blanket frinds
Can’t stop what’s coming
Can’t stop what is on its way

And through the walls they made their mudpies
I’ve got you mind I said she siad I’ve you voice
I said you don’t need my voice girl you have your own
But you never thought it was enough
So they went years and years
Like sisters, blanket girls
Always there through that and this
There’s nothing we cannot ever fix I said

Can’t stop what’s coming
Can’t stop what is on it’s way
Bells and footfalls and soliers and dolls
Brothers and lovers she and I were
Now she seems to be sand under his shoes
There’s nothing I can do
Can’t stop what’s coming
Can’t stop what is on it’s way

And now I speak to you, are you in there?
You have her face and her eyes
But you are not her
And we go at each other
Like blankets who can’t find
Their thread and they’re bare

Can’t stop loving
Can’t stop what is on its way
And I see it coming and It’s on its way