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 she realizes “it’s just too late for some things.” (Not burlesque! I admire her for taking it up only last year, the joy it gives her, when not mourning her brother.) Yes, I said, that is one of the toughest things about getting older. We are hit with the brutal fact of life that life, our life, is finite and that we are not going to do all the things we may desire. It sucks. No way around it except to live, live as well as you can. Be in the moment and all that crap. Gretl said, “I will never be a redheaded poet” to which I replied, “And I will never be a bodacious raven-haired librarian.

So I guess I’m old and cranky. Today partly because I had to meet a hard deadline with no opportunity for regrouping. Brutal really, to sit through nearly 70 Visible Verse submissions, and a privilege. I’ve been battling insomnia, a virus and mein leiber got mad because I put away some tools he left out weeks ago. He expected me to remember, or to diligently report where I put his crap whenever he leaves it lying about. I suggested that perhaps if he put it away himself he would know where it is. Men! Reminds me of the Roseanne Barr joke, something to the effect of “my uterus is not a GPS.”

I did have a fabulous dream though! I was riding around with my friend Gloria, whom I got to see for the first time in over fifteen years during my recent South Cal sojourn. It was all very ominous. We were in the city at night in a scary neighbourhood in a car with a stick shift. It was a very hilly landscape and we were fleeing. We had previously been sitting in a restaurant in a Vancouver high rise when I looked out the window and saw three of the North Shore Mountains spewing forth fire and lava! I was freaked, wondering how the hell I would get over the Lions Gate Bridge and back to Junior and Josef. I was driving like a maniac, at one point nearly running into an intersection at a red light, having to back up to avoid being hit by oncoming traffic, on a steep grade. As soon as I accomplished that, the green light turned yellow and we had to wait again. We had an old-fashioned stereo or radio or something, kept dropping it, trying to manipulate it while driving but maybe it was the gearbox. Then I realized there were no erupting volcanoes, it was just a dream and we could resume our dinner plans. Don’t you love dream logic? Not much lucidity in this one! Lots of panic though.