Category Archives: Journal

Fantastic fungi, mortality, dream logic

Journal

I came across some fantastic fungi in the forest while walking the dogs. They resemble chocolate leather buttons! I know they’re not psilocybin, doubt they’re edible and since they’re not in my field guide, on the ground they shall remain.

I found a toad residing in the hot tub cover and two yolks in one egg this morning. We get our cackle berries from the local butcher, Alderwood Farms just down the road and they are always so lovely and nearly as fresh as having your own chicken coop. SamIAm just caught and devoured a dragonfly! He’s faster than he looks.

I’ve been in a real funk since returning from Los Angeles, feel like jumping out a window or going to live in the woods. I’ve said it before, I am always so happy to see everyone down there but it makes me nostalgic, melancholy even, haunting my old stomping grounds. You are forced to face your mortality when a friend dies. I was discussing it with Gretl, Peter’s sister. At 40, she said Continue reading →

Post-Peter memorial, discombobulated, sad

Journal,

Is it any wonder? I can’t focus, keep playing around with FB and email, skirting around the huge job I need to get done, curating the Visible Verse 09 screening.

I’m drained, keep listening to songs Peter and I wrote and sang together, going over it in my mind, all the things we *could* have done, the great potential we had, the promise, how we threw it all away. Well, I am apparently still trying to come to terms with it, never had to face it until losing him, our shared past. And I just plain old miss him! Hate the void…

Wednesday, Sept. 30

Lunch before I leave for the airport, Reuben sandwich in Beechwood Canyon with Teresa, right under the Hollywood sign. Odd how the fabled Hollywood came to be such a significant part of my life, moving here so young, playing in bands, hanging out with Hollywood punks. Like most of the rest of my life, I didn’t plan it. I’m no movie-eyed starlet. Certainly I arrived with ambitions but it just sort of happened, found myself in a band with Brad Kent who had played in San Francisco’s Avengers and had connections in LA, namely our drummer Karla Mad Dog of the Controllers.

Robyn Westcott, Byron and Maritza came by the hotel last night and we had a lovely visit. Robyn and I commiserated over those who were instrumental in Peter’s murder, those whose names make me Continue reading →

Hanging with my Cali girls, the Ex-Girlfriends Club, gecko in the bathroom

Journal,

Been battling insomnia, a vicious circle. The more I worry that I won’t sleep, the harder it is to drop off. I’m up and down for hours, anxiously peeing, assuaging the turmoil in my gut in vain. I retired early, right after dinner at Yamashiro with some of Gretl’s friends, too tired to party hearty. I shouldn’t eat so late either but the two computer programmers got lost in Hollywood. Geeks said Gretl-so I’m kind of surprised they didn’t have a GPS. Josef helped develop the technology and he only recently conceded to buying one. What’s that about?

Preparing today for my performance in Pasadena, wondering if anyone will show up. Even a poet’s friends don’t want to attend a poetry reading! I extend an invitation and they get a panicked look on their faces, revealing they’d rather be anywhere else. After we are to drive back to the hotel and cab it over to Boardner’s for Peter’s memorial and it will be interesting to see who shows up there.

Liza, one of Peter’s ex-girlfriends came over with her sister yesterday. A lovely young redhead from South Carolina, replete with endearing accent. Interesting to hear of their life together, that period. Things felt a little awkward but I believe we all tried to Continue reading →

Still missing Peter, one year later

Journal,

Peter’s birthday. He would have turned 54 if he hadn’t been taken out by a trigger happy *friend.* I’m preparing to go to LA to attend a memorial, meeting up with his sister Gretl. I am going be performing poems from my new book, Three Blocks West Of Wonderland, dedicated to his memory.

Sucks. Still sucks after a year. Still can’t believe he’s gone, haven’t entirely assimilated it or been able to write about it. It took many years before I could write about my mother after she died in 1992.

Dreamed I was ambling down the road on a hose! Like riding a snake. If I yarded the thing just right, it stayed up high, rigid enough to keep me aloft. Surely it was due to riding the horse the other day, learning to use the reigns. Lovely and bizarre dream, like the best of them. I don’t remember my dreams much anymore, am happy when I do.

Trying to tie up what seems like a million loose ends before I leave. Junior is digitizing some old cassettes, recordings of the band Peter and I had with Jon Huck and John MacAdams a long time ago. Josef transferred the footage we shot but the editing software keeps crashing. Need to get it rendered and to Roderick so he can start working on it. I have to view it though before I leave in case there is anything that needs to be re-shot, though at this rate, I am running out of time.

My first time! (On a horse) AURAL Heather video shoot

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I did it! I rode a horse! A stallion no less! A black stallion! For the first time in my life. I think. I told Josef that I vaguely remember trying to get on a horse once, long ago, when I was a girl and maybe I got scared or the horse spooked or something. It’s strange. I’m obsessed with the creatures. I told Laura Doyle, consummate horse woman and fellow artist, who gave me my first riding lesson today, that I dream about them, write about them, am always completely in awe of their grace, power and beauty.

I’m so lucky to have met her. Laura made the experience so wonderful, said I did well. I even got up to a trot! So naturally I’m inspired, want to learn to ride, want my own horse! Hers, a handsome black Friesen, named Orion. The Friesen is a “uniquely kind breed with loads of willingness, stunning to watch as they show their beauty in movement.” *sigh* I think I’m in love. I was nervous, but not scared. I have been around horses most of my life. I went to school in Cloverdale, many of my girlfriends equestrians and I even had a job watering and feeding a small herd of Palominos.

Orion was great, likes to be scratched at the base of his neck. Very affectionate, mellow. I am good with animals, dogs especially, tried to pretend, or approach him like a big dog. 1000-pound dog! I looked over at one point to see one of the mares on her back, rolling around in the dirt, just like Sam loves to do.

Great day! It even stopped raining and we shot out in the pasture and willows. It couldn’t have turned out better. A great day despite starting off in a quandary about what to wear. I wanted to spoof Lady Godiva and had the costume all worked out—made a hair piece, bought a body stocking— but Continue reading →

AURAL Heather video, Three Blocks West Of Wonderland previews

Journal

Boldly prevailing. Yeah, like that, what fellow poet Allan Briesmaster said  about my work, see below.

Deep in the throes of video production now, pre-production, a critical phase. It must have seemed to others as though nothing was happening but I’ve spent months working on the shot list then storyboard (despite losing my ability to draw) finding my costume (could find no one on the island to sew a Daisy Buchanan inspired dress so gave up on the idea of a period costume and ordered a dress online from the fabulous Peach Berserk in Toronto), a horse (islanders seemed afraid of liability, fortunately I found one along with an equestrian the lovely and talented singer-songwriter Laura Doyle through Tina’s friend David), crew (despite advertising locally for an assistant so have hired my niece Sanjezz to help out but George Zawadzki of Bowen TV has volunteered as cameraman), lighting which I managed to get donated thanks to my good friend film producer Fitch Cady. Locations are our back yard and Laura’s place in Pitt Meadows. Lots of pulling together disparate elements but it’s all finally coming together. Still a million things to do before first day of shooting Continue reading →

Life with & without *Slam*, AURAL Heather @ the &Now Conference in New York, Ferry Godmother

Journal,

Finally coming up for air and an opportunity to write! Some home improvement is on the agenda this weekend, a little fun as well. We plan to cavort a bit down at Bowfest this evening. I wonder if the beer tent sells wine. I can’t drink beer anymore; not sure why and there are only a few wines I enjoy. The weather is cooperating, no rain on the parade this morning.

Injured my knee thanks to our brute of a pup, SamIAm. Some kid and his mutt came by the house with a flyer and Sam went ballistic. Junior pays no attention to what the hounds are up to so I had to Continue reading →

Love life

Journal

Thoroughly foul mood though I may be basking a little in a rare spot of solitude. Josef took Junior to Whistler for golfing at one of his favourite courses, Nicklaus North. I could celebrate the end of the heat wave but still I stew, grapple with recent horrifying news of the murder of friends’ 17-year old daughter. I’m reeling, had to have a drink, call a girlfriend. Why! The story has become politicized. A recently paroled drug addict tried to rob her as she was running an errand for her mother. He became enraged when she couldn’t get money out of the bank machine with her credit card and beat her death. They found her body in her car the next morning. I won’t name names, as I haven’t been able to speak with her poor parents. Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to compose a message. I have no idea what to say, or how to say it. Certainly, an email is not going to cut it. I will have to find a way to send a letter and I don’t have their snail mail address.

Her father, my friend G, very kindly got in touch with me after hearing about Peter last year, came to the hotel on my last LA sojourn. It was lovely to see him and we had a good time reminiscing about the days when we all worked together. I don’t think there is an answer to why, at least not one that offers any comfort. The cruelty of fate. In the wrong place at the wrong time. I find I am feeling as much anger as sorrow. Why does this shit have to happen at all? Why can’t we figure this stuff out? All our godammned so called social problems. Prohibition didn’t work, why do we think criminalizing drug addiction will? These desperate motherfuckers go around wreaking mayhem in order to get their next fix. Why not just give it to them? Not necessarily out of pity—though a little compassion goes a long way—but practicality? All we do is create a black market, and crime. Heaps of heartbreaking, destructive crime. Man, there has to be a better way. Why do the godammn bible thumpers rule the world? Has organized religion solved any problems? It’s certainly created enough conflict. It’s their Puritanism and powerful lobby that prohibits a rational approach, a sensible solution.

What can I possibly do? I can’t even think of a way to help or imagine how anyone can live through this.

Love life. Before it’s too late, like it got to be for that wretch in Pennsylvania that took out a room full of women because he couldn’t figure out how to have one, or a love life.

Love your loved ones. Life. All precious.

Play It LOUD-“Caniculares dies” 09

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Ugh. Caniculares dies. Dog days of summer! Staying cool isn’t easy today. I am relatively used to it, having lived in southern California for so long but still, these low 30 temperatures are brutal. One of the worst aspects, besides the fire hazard, is the perspiration. I’m just sitting here and sweating as if I were hiking up a hill. I wash my hands all day, still feel grimy. Think I’ll do my workout after the sun goes down. Fortunately, things usually cool down around here at night. It’s much worse back east, heat and humidity relentless.

I can’t seem to get the video shoot off the ground, feeling vexed that certain aspects are not coming together. I need a costume sewn, was given references to two people on the island but they aren’t getting back to me. So screw the Great Gatsby spoof, I won’t bother with the period piece clothing, will just dress Continue reading →

Gobsmacked

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Well, the LA Weekly article Paul Cullum wrote about Peter’s slaying was finally published and I guess you could say I am gobsmacked, the fallout coming down heavily now, a week later, scab of grief picked open, bleeding all over the place. It’s also a relief in a way, after having discussed the story for the past year.

The editors cut it nearly in half and called it Beautiful Loser-Tortured Killer which offended Peter’s mother. Anything to sell the paper. Many people have asked, “What did you think?” I think Continue reading →