dim sum diaries

Tough day today. I met with the director and composer to go over the final notes for The Forbidden Phoenix. Then my composer and I met to cycle through the lyrics and finalize the script. I have another day or so of work and then I'm done. The meetings were fine. What made today one of my low points was the walk home. I was getting a ride home with my composer. We were walking through the downtown core to get to his vehicle, and we ran into a homeless fellow asking for spare change. The guy was barely out of his twenties and as soon as I turned him down, he snarled a racist slur. I said you're welcome and kept walking.

He was so full of anger and self-loathing that I couldn't feel anything but sorry for his life. All screwed up and barely out of high school. It did remind me of the importance of education to combat such things as racism and to build a sense of our place in the multicultural world. Anyway, it was a very real reminder of why I wanted to write The Forbidden Phoenix in the first place... to expose the racism that existed in Canada... and I'm sad to say that racism still exists in today's society.

I mourn the death of tolerance and shudder at the rise of ignorance in this city.