The American people have finally elected Barack Hussein Obama, a visionary black and white man with a Muslim name and a global pedigree, as the new President of the United States. I am thunderstruck and elated in the way that love floods the heart and spreads everywhere. So grateful, I want to share this moment with you.

Let the healing of oceanic inequality begin anew, and a wildly fertile re-seeding of our exhausted earth. Stop all war. Activate peace. Cultivate self-respect and respect for others. Eradicate poverty, prevent and heal disease. Let the Obama family, at whose helm is a partnership whose beating heart we can palpably feel, inspire us. Let us give them our inspiration, and help and love each other now.

Send me your comments for a new age, or any great links!  

DO GOOD: If you’re in Toronto on November 19/08, check out Romina Fontana’s third annual Get Lit event for a great cause. This year’s reader list is outstanding! Tickets are flying - so book yours now. To make a donation, please visit their website.

Don’t miss our friend and award-winning Iranian-Canadian photographer Babak Salari’s beautiful, haunting photos about Havana’s queer artistic community in his latest book ‘Faces, Bodies, Personas: Tracing Cuban Stories’. The International Diaspora Film Festival will present Salari’s book at Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Street on Nov 08 5-7PM.

ZANY AND UNPREDICTABLE: If you’re in Montreal between November 19-23/08, ask yourself this: what happens to a guy who was born with a metal fork for a hand when he begins to see himself for who he truly is? Enter the world of FORKMAN… a play filled with string marionettes, shadow puppets, video, and more, presented by my cosmic friends Lydia Lukidis and Chris Godziuk. Check here for details, and see you there!

Dulcinea Langfelder. If her name doesn’t get your blood rushing, her latest show surely will.

Born and bred in Brooklyn, New York, Dulcinea Langfelder is part Slovak Jew, and part Sicilian Catholic (which, she believes, might contain Muslim roots). She is a woman of the world for whom the party is on stage.

Langfelder’s last show was the outrageously great Victoria; a hilarious and uplifting ode to life, death and a woman popping wheelies in a chair. I fell hard for Victoria, and saw it half a dozen times without blinking. Dulcinea and her crack team of creative and technical collaborators have toured the world with it, much to the delight of throbbing hearts everywhere.

Langfelder’s latest is called Dulcinea’s Lament, and it’s about to have its North American premiere in Montreal, in both official languages. She’s got a lot to tell us and she wants our bums in her warm seats. Mashing theatre, dance, music, video and puppetry, she re-imagines Dulcinea del Toboso, Don Quixote’s made-up muse whose utter fabulousness she uses to comically explore the history of religion and her very own sex. Admittedly, I have only been tantalized by clips of it, but I have faith we are in for a sumptuous feast.

I’ll be there on Saturday, Nov. 15, if you’d like to join our party. Check here for time and place, spread good the word (!!), and let me know how it makes you feel.

Another Montreal artist who gets my vote: Theatre director (and luminous actor) Alison Darcy and her company Scapegoat Carnivale are receiving raves for the gorgeously titled ‘Life is a Dream’. I’ll be there with bells on this Thursday, October 30. Only five nights left, get your tickets fast!

Life is a Dream, by Pedro Calderon de la Barca, translated by Edwin Honig, presented by Scapegoat Carnivale at Centaur Theatre, 453 St. François Xavier St. in Old Montreal, at 7:30 p.m., Wed. to Sat., 1:30 p.m. Sunday, through Nov. 1. Tickets $10 (reduced) or $15. Call 514-288-3161 or visit www.scapegoatcarnivaletheatre.com.

I dropped in to see my friend Ahmed at his antique shop yesterday. Unlike Barak Obama, he is a Muslim, and sports the post-Ramadan weight loss to prove it. Ahmed is also a furniture lover and a totally gentle soul who unlike most of the downtown types I know, has an innate faith in people. He trusts that they will pay him when they can (they do), and practices love and acceptance for all. I find it hard to swallow that when he showed up in a downtown hospital emergency ward as a non-denominational kidney stone wracked his dark-skinned, Muslim body, the ER doctor told him to get the hell out of Canada.

I asked Ahmed if he filed a complaint, he shook his head and told me that everyone in the room heard the doctor, and no one said a word.

My chest is hurting as I type. Ahmed is unscathed but I want to hunt down this criminal physician with my white skin, female might, and Jewish psyche haunted by the history of persecution and fear. Desperate for the world to be a better place- for people to heal- I will strap the mad doctor into a hospital bed for a week (the time Ahmed spent in a corridor with a morphine drip), and pump love into his veins to dissolve his hate. 

(Restored by Ahmed, in the center of our loving home)

If you’re on the look-out for a treasure to grace your space, check out Brocante Baleze at 2116 Bleury (and Sherbrooke). Say hi to Ahmed.

Good News Flash: Mazel-tov to my hogtown bud and super scribe Andrew Kaufman (All My Friends are Superheroes) who just signed a two-book deal with uber-publisher Ann Collins at Random House. Write on, A!!

Good News Flash: My whip-smart producer pal and NYC indie gal Mridu Chandra is about to world-premiere her latest feature film POUNDCAKE at the prestigious AFI FEST in LA in early November. They are honored to be the only US film in competition. Catch it if you’re in LA, spread the word and join the premiere party!

Last night, my husband and I went out for Chinese with my parents. Old-school, they’re off to Miami for the winter, so before they go we’re trying to squeeze in as many good meals as we can. The place was packed (with Jews, natch), and as we salivated in line, my American Dad announced, “You know why Obama just went up in the Florida polls? (Cue: drum roll) I mailed in my ballot.”

To avoid the catastrophic turn-of-the century shaft of Al Gore in Florida, political strategist and esteemed social activist Sarah Silverman has hatched a winning plan with her cronies Mik Moore and Ari Wallach, at Jewsvote.org. ‘The Great Schlep’ invites Jewish Gen Xers to visit their Bubbies and Zaidyes in the sun-baked swing state, feed their hope with Barak Obama, and keep the pivotal Florida vote in favor of the Democrats. Hey, non-Jews can be schleppers, too- it’s all inclusive and non-denominational. All you have to do is ‘talk to your relatives!’ What are you waiting for??!

Catch The Great Schlep right here, spread the word, and pretty please with sugar on top: vote for change.

CANADIANS: NO MORE HARPER! There is a very good website to help you vote strategically in your riding. You just need to throw partisanship to the side and go with the candidate most likely to win. The site lets you know which candidate has the best shot. CLICK HERE. 

GOOD NEWS FLASH: My American cuzzin and sassy soul brother Josh Keesan and his sparkling thespian girlfriend Teresa Reilly (get thee to her blog pronto) made the great schlep to the City of Lost Angels in one piece. Mazel tov! It’s good to be alive.

Schlep: A tedious or difficult journey. 

I’m still reeling from the effects of an unforgettable party last Saturday night. A party spiked with the blazing heart and soul of fifty Iranian activists and ex-political prisoners, in exile world-wide. They came to Montreal for a conference about the 1980’s massacre of Iranian political prisoners: to re-connect, to strategize, to honor the dead, and celebrate life. After surviving years of utter brutality via the Islamic Revolution, they continue the fight for human rights and peace. Talk about a theme!

Aside from my wedding (and its renowned Arab/Jewish hora), I have never witnessed such an explosion of joy as I did that night. Shirin and Mehrdad (see: The Heart of a Revolution) opened their home to their 1980’s cell-mates, and let the party rip. A live-wire ran through their veins, which, amazingly, included mine. A musical of towering emotional intensity was improvised on the balcony, with outbursts of ecstatic dancing that vibrated the feet, gyrated the hips, and threw heads back, lashing hair in the moonlight. Through the tears, my friends, laughter! Music! Three women singing, then six, then two men, then one woman, then, all together. Aching songs of sadness and joy. Soft voices whispered in my ear, translating the Farsi of Iran. Images of its mountains, sunsets, and the spirit of its people. The woman who lost her husband to the firing squad, and then her baby as she was tortured in jail. Female voices chanting the chorus. I clapped my hands, raw, in time. When Shirin opened her golden throat, I felt her heart fill the night sky with indomitable love. 

In the living room, one woman pointed to another- held in a group hug on the couch. She said, we shared a cell for a few years. They beat her terribly every day. For the first time, tonight, I saw her dance. 

GOOD NEWS FLASH: As we share our stories and break down the walls that divide us, we speak out against tyranny with our humanity and love. There is hope! 

I am attracted to but also repelled by the irony I see everywhere (periodically- gulp, through my keyboard), that some of us like to think helps us deal with the traumas of our world. Mostly, I figure, it masks our anxiety and fear. But, as the German auteur filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder warned so flawlessly in his heart-throbbing film: Fear eats the soul. True, it may seep in when I’m not looking, but I’ll be damned if I let it eat mine.

Allow me to share the inspiration of a revolution:

While I was studying film and the art of the party in the 80’s, Shirin and Mehrdad were being tortured in an Iranian jail for their political beliefs. While my friends stayed up all night dancing in clubs, their friends stood in front of the firing squad, and died. Mehrdad was put before it two times, to make him to talk. Shirin was put in a wooden coffin for months at a time, to make her talk. Neither one did. After being arrested, Shirin, an extraordinary singer, did not sing for ten years.

I asked Mehrdad how he continues to be such a passionate activist, why his soul is so strong today, and this is what he said:

“The problem of death was solved for me. I’ve been through it, and accepted that I would die. I have to make the best out of my life, and for my friends who were executed. What couldn’t kill me made me more alive.”

Shirin will be singing and baring her soul as part of their three-day conference in Montreal to commemorate the 1980’s Massacre of Iranian Political Prisoners. She will also be a part of a panel discussion as one of the subjects of Masoud Raouf’s award-winning film ‘The Tree that Remembers’. She and Mehrdad have set up rows of beds in their home, to welcome ex-political prisoners from all over the world, and plan on getting little sleep. Art and Resistance. Breaking the walls of silence.  Speaking out against tyranny with our humanity and love.

Please join us. 

FYI (For Your Inspiration): Shirin and Mehrdad met as young students and political activists. After years apart in prison, passing messages (and a wedding ring) to each other through their families, they re-united, and married in Istanbul. A thriving architect today, Mehrdad is building Shirin and their two beautiful children a new home in Vancouver, full of windows overlooking the ocean. Shirin travels the globe, singing her universal message of tolerance and peace. Wherever they go, they are embraced by a world-wide community of family and friends.

GOOD NEWS FLASH: You can buy your own copy of Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf)  right here. See it, and let it rock your world.

Please check here for all events of the conference. Here are the two mentioned above:

A night to remember: Singing (Shirin and others), Dancing, Poetry, Video and Art: Friday, Sept. 18/08. Time: 7:30-11:00pm at UQAM, Marie-Gerin-Lajoie (JM 400), 405 St-Catherine East (corner Berri).

“Breaking the Wall of Silence”: A Documentary Screening of “The Tree that Remembers,” and Panel Discussion with its director Masoud Raouf, and the film’s subjects: Firouzeh, Shirin, Shokoufeh, Reza, and Ms. Dolatshahi. Moderated by Brenda Keesal. Saturday, Sept. 20/08. Time: 5:40pm at UQAM, Room AM 050, 400 St-Catherine East (corner Berri).

I’m hot. After the cold shower that was this August in Montreal, summer is back with a vengeance, and so am I; to create, to blog, to burn the fire. Sticky thighs have glued me to the rubber exercise ball that doubles as my desk chair, there is nothing to look at but a computer flat-screen, and nowhere to go but the circus of my mind. Anything goes. The greatest show on earth!

How do I get there?

I crawl inside. At first, it’s dark and dank like a backed-up drain. I inch my way through the brainy slime, holding my breath, careful not to engage with inadequate phrases, limp ideas, or any clever, wordy crap that might distract me from finding that beacon of light, that clanging bell; the nirvana of a writer’s inspiration. On my belly, I slink my way through the cemetery of lame thought, discarded words splatter my face and paper-cut the flesh of my now naked body, stripped of humility in the face of creative mediocrity. I will overcome. I am a warrior on the path, purely heaven-bent. I push through the bloody canal into the swirling, colored lights of the infinite sky, and throw myself in grateful ecstasy, at the foot of the dream.   

My mind blows bigger than the ball on which I sit. 

GOOD NEWS FLASH: Mazel tov to our friend Hanna Thompson for winning a Silver Medal at the Beijing Olympics with her U.S. foil fencing team of three. Check ‘em out on Oprah this Monday, Sept. 8/08.  

Just came in from the garden, our heavily mortgaged patch of paradise on earth. As an inbred city girl, I am increasingly fascinated by the mystery of life and death in our little backyard. Last month, I stumbled on a stiff mouse in the cut grass. Last week, I uncovered a bird under the ferns, spread-eagled on a feathery funeral pyre, and this morning I found a batch of trampled yellow flowers woven with matted tufts of fur. Mammal locks. I trailed the stuff with a stick only to discover more and more of it, snaking it’s way through the aching poetry of the flower beds. Black crows circled overhead, and it hit me: where the hell was it all coming from? A belch shot up my throat, and I swiftly recalled my resolve to look life (and death) squarely in the eye (see: If you can’t stand the heat), so like the late Diane Arbus at a freak show, I unflinchingly rooted through the garden for chunks of furry flesh, or crazed clouds of insects hovering ecstatically over glistening pounds of fresh, bloody kill. 

At lunch (grilled tofu and salad), my husband solves the mystery by telling me he heard a cat-fight in the back last night when I was out, a vicious battle for feline supremacy under the pear tree, that screeched like cats in heat; only much more violent and traumatic. In other words, like death. 

I’m strangely pissed to have missed it (where once I would have shielded my eyes), and realize with total serenity, that my bloodhound attraction makes me an animal, too.

(Final remains, under the ferns. R.I.P.)

GOOD NEWS FLASH: Check out Rabbi Michael Lerner’s (Network of Spiritual Progressives) passionate article ‘My Talk with the Saudis and What I Learned from Them’ about his fascinating, and dare I say- hopeful experience at the 2008 World Conference on Dialogue.

MOVIE PLUG: Fantastically community-minded filmmakers Kerry David (Agent Cody Banks, multi-award winning “My Date with Drew” and “Making Miles -The Miles Davis Story” for HBO) and bestselling author Michelle Cove invite you for a wild night on the town: a fundraiser for their documentary “Seeking Happily Ever After.” If you’re in LA on Thursday, August 14, please go, and give these enterprising gals your support. Also, check out IndieProducer; Kerry’s indie film site that seeks to bring us all together to make our dreams come true.

One hot summer night in ‘77, eight teens squeezed into my friend Murray’s souped-up yellow Duster, and barreled down the expressway, bouncing potholes at 160 km an hour. The muffler was roaring, the music was slamming, and Murray’s foot was lead on the gas. At the top of our lungs with sangria-stained tongues; we were terrorized, euphoric. Hair lashing my face, I closed my eyes, and felt an unfamiliar happiness. I could die in a split second, and was more alive than I had ever been. 

I conjure this experience to pinch myself awake. 

Jews (as if you didn’t already know), tend to survive the harsh realities of life with humor, so we can stop crying, and shed some light in dark places.

Last weekend, I saw my oldest and funniest friend for a few precious laughs (she lives far away in, gasp, Toronto). Glory (not her real name but it should be) and I stood on a busy street corner trying to say goodbye, but kept talking about her mother Esther, who, at this point in her life has fairly advanced Alzheimer’s. Drum roll.

As Glory tells it, just the day before, her mom’s best friend Aunty Rose came to visit the family home, and a raucous time was had by all. Rose (the loudness of her voice belies the softness of her name) gave Glory’s dad shit for not taking care of himself, yanked open the drapes in the tomb-like house, and took everyone out for chocolate. Bitter-sweet. I asked how Rose was dealing with the fact that Esther, her friend of too many years to count, was no longer the woman she knew. As Glory tells it, she ‘talks to her the same because you never know what’s going on inside her head.’ Apparently, Rose’s sister Rochel (who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease), was talked down-to by her gerontologist one day, and unable to speak- she spelled out the words: “Get off your high horse, doc, I may be atrophied, but I’m not brain-dead. I still do the New York Times crossword puzzle… in pen!”

At this point in the story, Glory and I made it to our parting embrace (we now had to run and pee) when the punch-line hit, and we burst out laughing. The more I laughed, the more she laughed. Our shuddering hug felt so damn good, neither one of us could let go. I was aware of the odd couple we made on that busy street, but there was no way we would stop. The vibrations of our laughter came together, and it was, well… orgasmic.

Here’s a tip: hug someone you love, and laugh. Life, after all, is a belly-full.

For your inspiration: my ol’ pal, the brilliant, comical heroine Dulcinea Langfelder in her internationally acclaimed, Alzheimer smash- “Victoria.” Demand that it play in your part of the world.

Today’s GOOD NEWS FLASH is not new or news, but I can’t resist sharing the words sung by Mary Poppins and her posse, taken from: I Love to Laugh by Robert and Richard Sherman (Jews, natch)  :

The more you laugh

The more you fill with glee

And the more the glee

The more we’re a merrier we!

Check out the original 1964 Disney video. Singalong!