Camp Dead Whale

Their eyes roll back into deep crevasses, white marbles float behind fluttering lashes and fluttering sound within the lobby at the Institute. Their necks stretch for recognition, for guidance and instructions, as they dance their heads for reassurances of control. They sit in chairs or stand against walls, white canes appended alongside these children who have been inflicted with disease or abnormalities at birth, are waiting in muted choir.

They are going on a trip and will take ferry across the inlet to an Island paradise, to mulct nature and consequences, to pilfer things meant only for the sighted and, until then, reserved only by divinity and for not one less perfect. Sabrina waits amongst them and her daddy smears away the wetness that has uncontrollably escaped his throat and providence. He wants to leave immediately and tell them there's been a big mistake, but Sabrina has already found a chair to sit in, a familiar comfort has chastened her within fluttering lashes and fluttering sounds within the lobby at the Institute for the Blind, a deviation assented by no one.

Some arrest in complete darkness, while Sabrina nervously shudders her head, monitoring her surroundings and the other teens registered for camp. She is wondering which girl will be her roomate, since the rooms are maintained for two guests each. Her daddy wonders, too, and if Sabrina will need to chaperone a white caned kid with white marbled eyes. He wants to flee and desperately questions Sabrina, "are you sure you want to go?" But she is too excited to take trip to the lodge, where she will dwell by the water and float and kayate down streams that snake into the salty taste of the ocean. She is so bloody brave his heart aches.

This damned conflict restrains him from utter sorrow, yet he knows deep down inside his fear this is where she belongs. He lets go and waves one last wave, as the bus pulls out into the busy streets of Vancouver, winding down romantic traffic toward the ferry docks, until Sabrina can no longer see him. She could never see him.

She telephones us the instant they land on the beach and are escorted to their quarters. Our cell phone we gave her is fully charged and we anticipate it's ring, but not as quickly as this, to the exact minute of the itinerary of events. She already sounds different. She sounds older, like confidence. Sabrina says she is safe and that we are not to worry about her, it's a beautiful place and she has friends just like her, "eyes just like me, mom", and there's a hot tub and my friends are Kayla and Duck Boy.

In the background I hear faint sounds "quack, quack" and am convinced she is amongst retards. Blind retards. I whisper one last time, "do you want to come home?" Nod once for yes, two for no. God damned no good for nothing telephones. I accept her silence as an embarrassing conversation she must let go, and "mom, don't be afraid".

Wake up call is 7:00am, to ready the day for adventure and new beginnings. They blast the stereo system into each room, boom-boom-boom, announcers with military overtones, and military threats. Or so she thinks. She doesn't want to wake this early, but reluctantly drags herself out of bed towards the smell of breakfast and toast and jam. It's almost like blind kids can smell the skin of bacon a mile away, even under the cover of wild flowers and drift wood and dead whales.

Sabrina will stuff her belly with enough sustenance to last the entire day, enduring ocean cold waters, and computer-aid labs, and roomate switches and glitches, until she is ready to telephone her parents good-night. Today was a good day and she is tired. Her eyes are tired.

The next phone call is more frantic, as she annoyingly reports that someone has stolen her pyjama bottoms. She's almost blaming me, angered about this turn of event and what should I do now and make things right and it's all my fault. I'm beginning to feel pissed off. She says the girl who switched rooms could have taken them, the girl who is completely blind. I'm calming Sabrina down by telling her it's possible the girl didn't know, after all, she's deaf. Sabrina is momentarily silenced, formulating my comment and how harebrained that seems, eventually concluding how foolish she is being. She is searching her room while we speak, while the new roommate listens in on our conversation, and I immediately understand the Freudian aspect of this phone call.

The fact Sabrina can call her parents, furthermore, the action of searching, is far more revealing and enviable driven to someone who cannot seek out a garment at all, notwithstanding dial a tiny cell phone. Sabrina is spreading her wings, demonstrating how much of a peacock she really is, and finally reports , "Oh, there they are". The fact that she's a slob didn't even figure into the equation, but I had my suspicions.

I'm feeling a bit sorry for the girl who moved out, since Sabrina ransacked through her luggage, shovelling out her belongings in search of pyjama bottoms. I now envision some teenaged girl tapping her cane along corridors, wearing missmatched apparelle, items previously neatly packed to aid in her daily wardrobe selection. But Sabrina is not familiar with these sort of protocols, having some sight has excluded her from a level of correctness only the visually impaired can dispute or repute. Sabrina has never considered herself visually impaired, she has never learned the ordinance of the blind.

She is almost thirteen years old and her lodge-mates are sixteen, seventeen, older and wiser. But Sabrina has better vision than most, better advantage than most. Not everything is brailled and she knows it, now. She has never been amongst her fellowship, has always been lesser than the sighted kids at her school, being teased having to use special soccer balls, or basketballs adapted with bells within them, to rely on other sensory perceptions to play the game, to enable her to be in the game at all. She realizes now she has many bells in her eyes which have, hands down, appointed her a leader, a luminary despite her youth and immaturity, Sabrina is someone to be reckoned with.

And she will use this time well because the week will soon be over and she will eventually return to the life she truly resides, the life of preconceptions. This week she will savour in all her taste and smells and touch, she will soak in every moment of being what it is like to be the sighted one, the bully, the moderator, the wounded, the weak. She will become Sabrina at twelve years old.

In the morning the staff will bang pots and pans and yell for the teens to awaken, the dawn of a new day is approaching, and in the confronting likeliness of her mommy, Sabrina yells from within the warmth of her blankets, "We're blind, not deaf!". I know she will be well in any circumstance, any situation, any darkness.

This kid is my kid and I'm not afraid anymore.

Once Upon a Panic

Once upon a panic I worked in a one girl office, caged up like a lion at a second rate zoo, melancholy wearied by breathing time away and answering telephones for copier machines and calculator orders, equally as tiresome. The view outside my window was the parking lot and I formed phrases and words from acronyms on license plates; DHE 691 became "dirty, horny, easy, 69 once", amusing myself to drain the hours away in niggardly wages and unsolicited boredom.

I'm in my early twenties have decided to become an actress, or a screenplay writer, or a director, anything that will keep me from playing scrabble in my head, and I've signed up for an acting class from a man claiming to have directed many episodes of Danger Bay, or some other dull Canadian show produced with government tax credits for the National Film Board of Canada.

He conducts his class in his high rise apartment situated on the north shore of Vancouver, close to the ski hills and the constellations, and he plays up his connection to Hollywood so that we're all feeling tingly inside, anxious to become the next it factor. Vancouver has become a boomtown in the film industry, with many Hollywood productions coming north for the range of scenery, doubling as many U.S. cities or international landscapes, all in the comforts of a cheap Canadian dollar and flavourful beer.

Our acting teacher informs us of a production currently in need of extras and how this would be an ideal experience to witness a big movie production first hand. I attend the casting call and wait in the long lineup to meet with the casting agents, and soon learn the movie headlines Daryl Hannah, who is well known in the industry by now, especially after her role in "Splash" with Tom Hanks.

The movie is "Clan of The Cave Bear", a story of a young cro-magnon woman raised by neanderthals, and it's adapted from Jean M. Auel's novel, which I would read many years later on the sky train to work. Daryl plays the tall, blonde, blue-eyed Ayla, who is adopted by a bunch of dark, pudgy, short homo sapiens, and I fit the clan perfectly, except for my eyes which are eerily blue against the painted body tan I receive each morning before film rolls.

I am allocated to the Desert Clan, amongst many clans who gather at a ritual meeting, where others will meet the character, Ayla, who herself meets the only other person with blue eyes. It's not me, of course, as I am sent to the backdrop by the director himself, a notoriety I proudly pomp having been told, "you, get out of my shot", and I saunter off to stand with the likes of Creb, Broud, Droug and Zoug.

I wanted to stand up close to Daryl Hannah, James Remar and Thomas Waites, having grown up with celebrity fascination and adoration, to watch them perform, to watch them be real. I am familiar with James Remar and Thomas Waites, both were in one of my favorite movies, "The Warriors". James had a leading role, Thomas' appearance was momentary and unaccredited, but he previously starred with one of my favorite actors, Al Pacino, in "And Justice for All", little tidbits of information that somehow managed to trickle down to the peons.

Of course, I really couldn't recognize them at first because we're all dressed up like cavemen, but in time we'd ascertain the ones wearing the really nice fur skins were the big movies stars, and the ones wearing the thin cow leather, weren't. We film for three days on Bowen Island, a forested retreat just 20 minutes away by ferry from Horseshoe Bay, which is a perfect secluded location, without the bloopers of modern man mistakenly showing up on reel by poor editing.

It's cold when we film, we stand around most of the time waiting for the camera 'B" yell, and eat marvelous meals dispensed by the caterers on site, steak and baked potatoes, fruit salad, anything we wanted appearing out of the blue from the puny confines of a metallic trailer, like Houdini from a chained up trunk.

On one of the breaks I become aware I am standing near Thomas Waites and strike up conversation, asking him what it was like to meet Al Pacino. He is with a couple of other actors, and I will never understand why he did this, as he drops his hand down to grope at his crouch from beneath his fur skin and asks me "how would I like to meet this?"

There's a time and place for vulgarity and I'm not expecting it in the remake of the caveman epoch, nor am I expecting it from a movie star, as I glare at him disdainly. I believe he felt awful the second he blurted his words out at me, pausing in disbelief, wishing he could take the words back and chat up a storm about Al Pacino tomfoolery instead. But it's too late, I'm disenchanted by him and I've already turned away, blaming the cold for my gritting teeth. I have found a fire to stand by, to allow the rising smoke to flog me and cleanse the dirtiness off.

The next days would be the same, repetition of scenes and direction, watching all the little people scurry here and there, production staff rushing with purpose, then the bear comes out and we watch the trainer make him stand up and act grizzly. Upon the third day I am feeling weak and tired, having to wake up at five in the morning, racing to catch a ferry, having hair and makeup applied, only to wait around for hours skimpily dressed, soaked in morning dew.

I immediately recognize it, the hesitation of breathing, the heaviness in my chest as I gasp for air, untutored breath. I am having a panic attack and I'm feeling paranoid, trapped on a tiny Island without a doctor, without a hospital or a defibrillator nearby, which worsens my panic. People beside me have brought my predicament to notice and I am quickly escorted off to a dressing area, which is a large tent hoarding the street clothes of all the extras. I have decided to leave, now, because panic creates an urgency, no matter how mentally absurd it is, I am dying.

I have reached my car and have laid myself on it's hood, just to stop for a minute, to arrest my heart from imploding, when I am unexpectedly approached by a man wearing a huge fur coat, a coat of bear skin. I hold my head up and he cups my face, checking me over for injury, and agrees it has been a long day. It's James Remar and I will never forget his kindness, the embarrassment and awkwardness of myself, not knowing which pair of eyes to look into, his or the ones on the bear hood crowned on his head.

Today, when I see him in a television show, I am reminded of Bowen Island, the grunting dialogue, the hands rendering words and gestures, and how "Ajax" restored my adoration to actors and the movie productions.

I stand by the ferry dock, watching for it in the distant waters, a solitary figment swelling into a hull and superstructure as it sails closer, then the main deck encased in storm rails become visible, and finally the crew who will take me home, safe.

I stand on the banks of Bowen Island for one last time, and she comes to shake my hand and conveys it was nice working with me, though we never met on set. It may have been in my eyes, the fear, the isolation, the regret, the happy ending, as the panic disolves away into the horizon.

Daryl Hannah is going home, too. She walks away, so tall, so skinny and beautiful, like a Mermaid.