CCLT : Day 3

Today Shivon said that the act of singing creates oxytocin which is the "love and trust" hormone, and that's why the act of singing together makes people so happy.

Last night we attended the first Gettin' Higher Choir evening rehearsal. There were at least 100 folks there, three quarters women, half altos. People arrived smiling and expectant. Many have sung with the choir since it began 14 years ago. Denis began with a lovely grounding and warmups. Most songs were taught by ear, a few from the sheet music. Beginners stood with experienced singers and the sound was lovely. Denis and Shivon alternated leading, her dancing pixie energy an interesting contrast to Denis' grounded energy.

Tonight we will attend the 2nd of 3 evening practices, all of about 100 people, all with basically the same repertoire so people can attend any or all of the three.

Now to rest...

CCLT : Day One and Two

I am in beautiful Victoria, BC, awake at 4 am after an exciting first day of the Community Choir Leadersip Training with The Gettin' Higher Choir. The leaders, Denis Donnelly and Shivon Robinsong, made us welcome and packed a lot of learning and song even into the first afternoon. Then a delicious baked salmon dinner for about 30 people, including the 13 people enrolled in the course and their hosts. Many people flew from the States, one from Kuala Lampur, and they all have such interesting stories and diverse backgrounds. I'm staying with wonderful friends (there may be a lot of superlatives for awhile... bear with me) in a their gorgeous house. And of course, Victoria is "bloomin' lovely" as always.

Tomorrow, we'll be teaching each other songs and I volunteered to be one of the first... I'll teach the Pat Humphries song, Peace Sala'am, Shalom. No wonder I'm excited. I love the song, but must admit, I wanted to get past the nervousness so that I could fully enjoy the others!

I'm reading a Deepak Chopra book called The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire. It's a great reminder about the power of intention. "...intent comes from the universal soul, becomes localized in an individual soul, and is finally expressed through an individual, local mind." It's helping me to stay focussed on the real reasons that I'm doing this course. I started this process in 2003 while reading a book that helps you determine what you really want in life. It was clear that I wanted to sing. So I formed an intention and it's manifesting. Not quickly, not magically: I had to spend a winter in Vancouver getting a certificate in choral conducting and taking singing lessons with an opera singer to learn how exercise and develop my own voice so I'd know what to expect in a choir. And now this course... which will help me understand how to facilitate, and encourage people to sing with joy and gusto.

I keep wondering why singing makes us feel sooo good, and why creating harmony together is such a high. It's definitely about sharing and working together, and I also think it's about vibration, perhaps even breathing in concert. Let's face it we're originally pack animals, and howling together must have felt wonderful during our evolution into the polite, civilized creatures we've become. !

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Home again, jiggety jog.

Cinqueterre is only a beautiful memory!

The weather forecast for that last day in Italy was bleak, but I went anyway and I'm so glad I did. It was BEE-utiful!!! I took the train from Pisa and after an hour or so, the train burst through a tunnel and there was the wide, blue, glorious expanse of the sea! I realized how much I'd missed that lovely perspective that I was so accustomed to on Hornby, and I was in bliss as I walked along the Amore trail, perhaps 100 feet above sea level.

BUT Ontario in the snow is a beautiful NOW. Strangely, the address of the house I bought in Owen Sound ends with B E. I looked at the name on the street sign: 4th St. B E and thought, "Wow, BE HERE NOW!" Actually, all the streets in this city are classified by number and East or West, and A or B. So I'm on 4th St. B East. Which also looks like BEast. At least my number isn't 666. That would be scary.

My living room window gazes onto the Sydenham River and silhouettes of deciduous trees and a big willow tree. There are often a pair of swans lolling elegantly outside my window, usually surrounded by a court of ducks. I can walk downtown in 15 minutes, or reach Harrison Park and all its trails, in 10 minutes. I'm happy. And it's so nice to have a phone number and internet again!

I've been shop-shop-shopping. Flea markets, used furniture stores and, dare I say it, Walmart. Also, friends have contributed odds and ends so I have enough furniture and dishes to invite my newly married son and his wife and a few friends for a turkey feast before Christmas. I ordered a fresh turkey from a farmer at the market and bought a Norfolk Pine for a Christmas tree. I've shovelled snow 3 or 4 times already... well, it is Ontario!

Home again. A Merry Christmas to all!

Lovely Lucca

I arrived in Pisa yesterday afternoon after doing a last tour of Florence in the morning to say goodbye. Had my last Florentine gelato, said goodbye to San Marco del Fiore (most of the churches in Florence are pink, green and white because of the flower motif). I said hello to the leaning tower... it really does lean and I saw two unrelated people having their picture taken pretending to hold it up. Then found the hotel I'd booked. Another noisy one, another sleepless night which, once again, resulted in an incredibly good day. Why is that? A reward from the universe for taking it all in stride??? This morning I dragged my heavy suitcase back down the 6 half-flights of stairs (it's full of parmesan cheese and sundried tomatoes so it weighs a lot more than it did two days ago) and set out into the Sunday morning stillness of Pisa to find a quieter place to stay. And found... the Michele Guesthouse. Yes, I do recommend it. Kind people... made me a cappuccino while waiting for the room to be ready, assured me that the room would be too quiet for me, and gave me detailed instructions on what to see in Lucca and the best way to see Cinqueterra tomorrow, my last day in Italy.

I loved Lucca. I bought a glass bracelet at an antique market, and later, by following the noise of voices, discovered an indoor market and sampled polenta and olive oil, and fresh (somewhat undercooked) foccaccia, which I watched being made from a big circle of dough that a young woman was flinging in the air just like my Nonna used to do. I also lucked into hearing an Italian choir practising in an auditorium. Then walked about 3 km. around the city wall back to the Stazione.

Trouble is, I'm starting to limp. Every part of my body is begging for a day off walking. Michele (pronounced Mi kaylay) drew me a diagram showing me how to see Cinqueterre without a lot of walking, by skipping one of the 5 villages and taking a train between the 2nd and 4th. So of course I'll go. After 12 hours on my back. I can do it.

San Marco and the Wizard of Oz

The trouble with going so long between blogs is that there is too much tell.

I forgot to tell that I went to mass in Florence's grand cathedral... San Marco del Fiore (St.Mark of the flowers) last Sunday night with a girl I met from Chile. She was going to have an audience with the Pope in a few days, and I was thrilled to be able to go to mass with her, if only as a respectful observer. The structure is sooo huuuuge, that the sound of the voices and organ keeps circling for several seconds after the end of the intentional sound... resonates and resonates, producing a huge, eery sound. We were sitting about 1/5th of the way back, and it wasn't until the people in front of me left that I realized that the huge voice was coming from a little tiny man in a large gold hat...Honestly, he was the size of my little finger nail... and I thought, he's like the Wizard of Oz!!! Not to be disrepectful, but it reminded me of that scene in the movie, when Toto pulls the curtain back and reveals the man behind the voice.

Then went to the opera on Tuesday, and heard La Traviata, done by a fairly young company in an Anglican church. It was lovely.

What else...OH! San Gimignano!!! Breath taking views of the surrounding Tuscan countryside. Absolutely lovely, and worth the tedious, endless bus ride to get there and back to Florence... I met up with a lovely woman from Texas who was staying at the same hostel... we walked around the outer wall and were equally smitten by the beautiful views, then had lunch together at a little place in the Cathedral piazza... delicious crostini. The best thing about staying in hostels is that you do meet people to travel with, and share what you know.

I'll explore Pisa and Lucca for a couple days, then fly back to London for a few days of free galleries before flying back to Canada. Sicily will have to wait for the next trip... though I love Northern Italy so much, think I'll be coming back.

Palazza Pitti and Black Forest Cake

What do the Palazza Pitti and Black Forest Cake have in common?

Answer> if you try to take in too much of SUCH a rich thing, you'll explode. I could never have imagined such opulence before today. It was the Medici palace for 2 centuries after the downfall of the Pitti family... silk wallpaper, frescoed ceilings, stone inlaid tables, ebony and carved ivory, huge handmade carpets, walls covered with huge paintings by Rafael, Titian, Fra LippoLippi... Everywhere you look, there is wealth...

Going backwards a couple days...I must fill in the space after the last entry about my terrible, awful, no-good night at the hostel. It got worse, with loud arguments in the street and machines and people coming and going, and the girl who snored through it all of course woke up early... onandon...finally the whole mess turned into rain and just imagine a very deflated me sitting in the lobby of the hostel wondering where to start. I was just about to venture out into the Florentine wilderness when I heard a brisk Italian accent say, Now who is coming on this tour? The hostel offered a free walking tour of Florence. So off we all went under our umbrellas to see Santa Maria del Fiore, San Lorenzo etc. etc. The guide was very good and cheerful in spite of the rain. And I met 3 people ... Or from Israel, Macarena from Chile, and Alessandra from Brazil. We went to the Accademia together to see the real David... the REAL David!... and later had dinner together in the hostel where we were joined by Besan from Japan who played a mean classical guitar and could pick up most songs that Or threw at him... we sang for several hours and my heart was full.

I moved to a private room so have been sleeping... important on this kind of journey. Tomorrow I will take a bus to Siena and San Gimignano.

Highs and Lows

Along with the moments of bliss and real ecstasy are bound to be the other kind... yesterday the joy of being in my Nonna's birthplace, the day before the ecstasy of seeing Venice and eating TWO gelati. The day before the pleasure of exploring Ferrara with a friendly fellow traveller named Jim who retired from teaching 4 years ago and has been travelling ever since.

Today, a different kind of day. First, not one but two drunks accosted me in the train station in Bologna. The first called me a very rude name that starts with putt... when I refused him money, which actually led to a nice conversation with the Italian lady nearest me... and the second started yelling "pesante, pesante" at me and then followed me when I tried to get away... I hid behind a bunch of teenage girls who were being guarded by an older woman. We all moved away nervously. I haven't found out what pesante means yet.

I spent a few hours strolling down Bologna's main street, Via del Independenza, to the square. Missed the bus I was planning to take a tour on---yet another bus missed---so walked back to the station and enjoyed a slab of pizza standing in the street. Evidently this is an Italian tradition because the cost triples if you sit down to eat it. Then bought a ticket at the nifty machine and remembered to validate it, then, after escaping the pesante man, boarded the train to Florence where, once again, I went in the wrong direction and was helped by a friendly stranger.

Now, in a hostel... My experience in the hostel in Ferrara was so good I decided to try again. Not so lucky this time... young male party animals next door are stronger even than wax earplugs AND pillow wrapped around head. Might as well get up and write a blog. Wait... I think they've left to party elsewhere! Oh... Buona notte. Arrivederci!