A bit of a blowout this Tuesday, sad to say for I am not being as productive as I should be, couldn’t sleep last night. Again. Wish I could get a prescription for a sleeping aid but that doesn’t get to the core of the problem. I start hyperventilating, feel absolutely certain that I am dying and the more I worry about not sleeping, the more panic mounts in my body. I went to the emergency room once, sure that I was about to die of cardiac arrest. My mother had heart disease, so I worry. Christ, she had depression and diabetes too, drank herself to death really, a slow suicide. I start to feel like I can’t breathe and replete with chest pains Josef took me to the hospital. After a long wait they wired me up for an EKG and promptly pronounced me normal, fine. Now I’m able to recognize the signs of an anxiety attack but find little comfort in that knowledge. In fact, I am intimate with anxiety, nostalgic for the days when it was a foreign concept.

I just posted photos of our night of performance with Victoria Stanton last week. I was glad to finally meet her in person. We’ve been corresponding for years, ever since we screened one of her videos at the Vancouver Videopoem Festival. Funny how you form preconceived notions about people by seeing two-dimensional images. I was surprised when I went into the cafe to collect her and found a gamine sipping tea, dwarfed by the bulky suitcase next to her. I suppose I thought she would be physically as formidable as her work.

Poor Victoria! I had lost my cell phone and of course that was the number I gave her. So here she was trying to reach me in vain, to let me know which ferry she was on, and getting my voice mail. She looked me up in the book and everything turned out all right but I felt bad. Christ, traveling is stressful enough. We had some of my fragrant Malaysian stew of chicken and sweet potatoes, with coconut milk, garnished with cilantro. I was relieved she wasn’t’ a vegetarian and over dinner we made plans for the evening’s performance. She ironed a white sheet to use for a screen and Josef helped her set up the PA and video projector. I put out snacks and chairs, lit candles and once again transformed our home into a cozy, inviting venue. A couple of people arrived early. Gawd, I hate that. The only thing worse than people arriving late is people arriving early. I let Josef entertain them while I finished dressing though sometimes it doesn’t occur to him to offer guests a drink or something to eat, he can be a real nerd. The other arrivals were staggered over the next hour and I knew Victoria was anxious but I wanted to include as many people as possible. We had a good turnout for a Monday night, the weather cooperating in that it wasn’t pouring rain. Russel brought about five people, bless his heart. I am always so happy to see him. He makes me laugh and flatters me shamelessly the entire time he’s here. At last I was able to introduce Victoria. The crowd delighted in the Bank of Victoria cards she handed out, with Point de Rassemblement printed on them and the sentiment echoed in her spoken word performance that, “When I go away I need to find the anchor points, the gathering places, the connections that resonate within my body.” We watched her onscreen, running down a country road, video she had shot on Gabriola Island where she had been the day before to appear at Hilary Peach’s annual Poetry Gabriola festival. The piece certainly resonated with me; I was very moved. Later Victoria thanked me and said she loved the audience and performing here which was gratifying to hear. I want to be able to do this, invite people whose work I admire and provide them with a gratifying experience. It’s also a good way for me to share with my community, on my terms and to provide them with opportunities to see some remarkable artists. We were all happy I think, with how the evening went, in fact; it’s safe to say that it was enchanting. I stood on the deck after everyone was gone in awe of the stars so brilliant here on the island. Enchanted.

The next day Victoria and I visited Opa, Bowen’s towering, thousand year old tree, walked a stone labyrinth and hiked around Killarney Lake. I am busy today preparing for my writing retreat next week as I need to make sure I get as much out of it as possible. With no domestic duties or distractions, I can achieve so much writing, despite my fretting. It usually takes me a day to settle in and adjust. I walk around feeling like I’ve lost a limb, completely discombobulated. I need to be very clear on what I need to accomplish. I am going to work on the tree book Tina Schliessler and I are collaborating on and I want to re-write entirely my novel, The Town Slut’s Daughter, ready at last to cut great swaths out of it. I have been trying to tell two stories, not one, so I am going to cut it down, or out, and tell the coming-of-age story that it truly is, not worry about focusing on the mother-daughter dynamic and Fiona’s loss of her Quebecois heritage. That quest is the other book and one I can work on now that I am traveling to Quebec more often. Once I get this novel in shape, I am going to publish it on Lulu.com, if necessary, which several authors have told me is the best online publishing outfit. It’s the wave of the future, cultivating one’s audience via the Internet, the gatekeepers slowly being eliminated. It’s about time, glad to see it in my lifetime.

Still mourning Peter every day as my relationship to his family is rebuilt. I am also forging friendships with numerous “creative co-conspirators” as his sister Gretl refers to them and it’s a satisfying feeling, and helpful, to be able to explore our grieving together. No one here knew him. Byron and I have reconciled through this process and I am grateful for that. My friends are becoming more and more vital to me as I get older. Byron and I chatted on the phone last night and our banter is much the same it was oh, so long ago. So long ago, I’m avoiding calculating the number of years. Staggering, the number of years. I feel like I’ve lived two or three lives, at least. Sometimes I resent the grief, fear it’s taking over my life of late but like many things, the only way out is through. I love that saying, should find out who said it.

Monday

Spent the day in my office mostly, on the phone and on the computer, catching up on email correspondence, working on the AURAL Heather Valentines Tour as I’ve been calling it. We’re scheduled to perform at Montreal’s Festival Voix d’Amériques, Sunday, Feb. 8 and are slated to play the Exposure Festival at Queens University in Kingston, Feb. 11 or 12. I am really hoping we can arrange to stop off in Ottawa on the way down and play a show there, then head to Toronto after Kingston and the date would be right around Valentine’s Day, Friday, the 13th or Saturday, the 14th. Need to get it done so I can apply for a travel grant and will have to figure out how to finance it whether I succeed in getting one or not. Long way to go to freeze our butts off but I’ve been wanting to do FVA for years though, am very excited to be invited.

Junior has a cold, dammit. I’m not surprised, having spent most of Friday at his school, helping out—we parents do that at this alternative school, though it’s not officially called an alternative school that’s what it is in essence—and more than one kid had a stuffy head and was coughing throughout lunch. I knew Junior was going to get sick. He’s only there part-time as it is. Oh well, we’ll do the work here, at home, being home schoolers. One thing I’ve learned is that we all find our own processes, methodologies for learning and teaching together, just like in the real world.

I just had someone I know ask me to relay a message to a friend of his on Facebook because he “won’t/can’t sign up,” because he’s a paranoid nut bar who believes the CIA is monitoring everyone when the greatest danger is wasting time.

Friday:

So I woke up this morning cranky as ever wondering where I was and then had to jump up and dash around like a barmaid in order to get Lucas and me to the Learning Centre and my parent duty day on time. No time for oatmeal and blueberries, just Earl Grey in a red commuter mug. People at school expressed shock that it was I and not the other parent, stepfather Josef. I know its’ been a while but its not as if I’ve never done it before. So I sharpened pencils, framed the kids’ artwork, made photocopies, swept floors, washed dishes and vacuumed. Al said they were trying to think of a new name for the Learning Centre and asked me think of some but when I sent along the suggestions to the Planning Council later, they were largely ignored, me thinks.

I sure didn’t feel like going out, to the last Rocksalt Anthology launch in North Vancouver, debated whether it was worth all the effort, not to mention expense of getting my butt over there. I wasn’t able to come back until the water taxi at 12:30 am and felt tired before I started getting dressed. I’m glad I went. There were a lot of people, I was happy to visit with Kate (Braid) and Russell (Thornton) whom I haven’t seen in a coon’s age and I met some of the other poets from the anthology, like Trevor Carolan, Joanne Arnott, Tim Lander, Maxine Gadd, Daniela Elza, Rob Tyler, Peter Trower and Zach Wells. Because of the ferry timing, I arrived early, had to go kill some time at a lounge, in The Edge, a restaurant because there were no pubs or bars around. I guess it was continental cuisine, or maybe Spanish because there were flamenco players setting up but they let me sit at the bar and order a glass of wine. There was with a big, buff tatted guy next to me and an equally large and awkward silence until he said something to break the ice because he was not shy. He was a friend of the young bartender’s, a blonde boy with a lisp, studying business and about to graduate. They laughed when I told them I was solo because I was in the neighborhood to do a reading at the bookstore up the street. The big guy, John, asked the maitre d, “Hey Bob, did you know there was a book store around here?” “Well of course he does silly,” I said, “they’re fellow businessmen, probably members of the chamber of commerce,” and he smiled and nodded yes. John and the bartender didn’t believe I was a poet until I showed them my book and cd. They might actually have been impressed but did their best to hide it. The new Bond film, Quantom of Solace, came up and John complained that the action went by too fast. I agreed that the editing made it hard to follow at times and teased them both by saying that Daniel Craig was the best Bond ever. They phshawed the notion and then John brought up my age, saying he guessed I was 45 because I said Daniel Craig was nearly as hot as Steve McQueen. “So sue me.” Then he toasted me, saying I was one hot, sexy redhead. I didn’t tell him I’m 53, we were all too busy flirting. The bartender said John was a hired assassin and I laughed as they tried to infer that it was true. I didn’t really care if it was because I was not about to go smoke a joint or do anything else with him. They begged me to stay when it was time to pay the bill. I invited them to the poetry reading, they recoiled naturally and I said, “You don’t have the guts.” Which is true. They dared me to read a poem in the restaurant and I said, “Sure, pay me,” then promptly left, relieved to run out into the rain and into the bookstore filled with poets and poetry aficionados. Three of us read poems inspired by Vancouver’s missing women. I have a feeling those poems resonated with editor Mona Fertig and Whore In The Eddy must be striking a chord. I found out recently that it’s been selected for another anthology, Vancouver poet laureate George McWhirter’s Verse Map Of Vancouver coming out in the fall of 09.

Rob and Peter and Zach and I went out for drinks after and the only place they seemed to be able to find open was a Red Robin on Marine Drive. I suggested that there must be something resembling nightlife on Lonsdale but Rob said he had friends there waiting for him. Pretty trippy, four poets in our element despite the rooster motif and location. We talked about what we call ourselves, poets or writers. I said I liked to watch people squirm when I tell them I’m a poet. You might as well say you are a professional throat slasher. People are usually, ironically, at a loss for words. So perhaps that was the lure, the reason I went out despite my fatigue, the opportunity to be with people who get it. Love it. We also discussed ways of utilizing various media to advance our work and Peter offered to help me get my manuscript to some publishers. He has heaps of books, works with musicians too so we have that in common. Rob is an intriguing, handsome young man, a savvy poet who notices grey diamond wallpaper and whispering women. I wanted to encourage him for he is a rare avis, a man in love with poetry.

I noticed another young man on the water taxi home, with angled cheekbones and curly hair that reminded me of Peter. It was hard not to stare wistfully.