“There’s a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They’ve already passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.”–Diane Arbus

I saw a documentary recently wherein young teenage girls in braces were asked about their hopes for the future and more than one said, “I hope nothing bad happens.” I’d been through so much crap by age 14 I was expecting relief not trauma, anticipating liberation, a time when I would reclaim my life from defective and abusive parental units.

2010. Wow. It’s turning out to be one volatile year, a brave new world in fact, this past weekend brutal, exhausting. Suffice to say, my personal life is going through much upheaval and I’m no slave to the status quo, not always, but ultimately shaking things up. I had to work through some big issues, got the dents to prove it, now waiting out the fallout and working hard not to push the Panic button. I need to emerge from my lair though. Life and its demands do not allow for wallowing despite reading a Plath bio. I knew she’d made several suicide attempts but was unaware of the one that involved hurling herself—a complete novice—down a ski hill. She broke her femur in two places. It’s onward and upward for me.

I met with John Dowler of Cosmic Idea yesterday to work on my website. I can update text using Adobe Contribute and use Word Press for blogging but when I get stuck he’s always there to help. We need to optimize keywords throughout the site and I’m starting with Visible Verse as I must to get the call for entries out as soon as possible. I need to embed “videopoem,” video poem,” videopoetry,” “video poetry” and put “festival” after each one as well. “Call for entries” and “Call for submissions” will need to go in there too. The site got spammed again! So, tightening security is on the list, a long list of tasks I won’t get to before tomorrow. Too many projects, events! Our salon with Penn Kemp and Catherine Owen is coming up Saturday and I need to focus on that. I spent yesterday postering the island and a buzz is building.

Spring, life, keeps coming at us. This morning I had to shoo the courting woodpeckers away. They make a racket when they go at it, as do robins and hummingbirds and eagles though one of the pair survived their mating dance fall. Check out this CBC story. Wild!