Blowing, wet blustery day, autumn here big time weather wise, as I drag my butt around, feeling tired, achy and sore from the tetanus shot but starting to be able to use my foot again so that is good. Someone said, “Well the nail in the foot was the third bad thing that has happened” so I am hoping she is right and I have earned a reprieve somehow and things will level out soon. To reiterate, #1 was my sister’s death, # 2 was Peter’s murder. Guess I needed some physical pain to match the emotional pain of loss and grief and do things really happen in threes or is that a lot of hooey?

When it rains it pours and it’s pouring in my life but it’s my own fault as I keep on taking on more. So many projects but I know I have to work in more than one media because if I didn’t as I said at the Word On The Street festival during my reading, I would go nuts. If I was relying only on print, which moves at a glacial pace, I would be so frustrated! I am working with video and music and at least I have some control over those kinds of projects. Still, that means I have a lot of irons in the fire as they say, in addition to raising my son with special needs. On that front though, I am feeling encouraged because I think we may have finally found a service provider, an RDI (Relationship Development Intervention) specialist that we can work with to help Junior. We had attended the RDI symposium with Steve Gutstein last year but there were no practitioners available in the Lower Mainland. I hope it works out. I have learned through trial and error that a lot of this stuff winds up being pretty ineffectual, that many of the experts are talking through their asses when it comes to the child, your child, with his or her unique, individual profile and needs. It’s hard not to be bitter about the fact too that he was misdiagnosed as having a “moderate to severe language disorder” when in fact he was Aspergers all along. That diagnose did not come until he was ten. I knew something was not quite right with his development from the age of two but I am no expert.

Peter still enters my thoughts often as I take care of business, cronies of ours emerging to ask if I’ve heard the news. Yes, and where have you been? Up until this point most seemed determined to remain in the past but I suppose their curiosity is getting the best of them and now they want to know what I know which isn’t much. I do know that the investigation will remain closed, whether the police or the DA’s office believes Bruce’s story or not. Still, it is not over and I am interested in seeing what develops in the near future.

Swamped lately for in addition to aforementioned projects, I am embroiled in my curating work for Pacific Cinémathèque and SEE THE VOICE: Visible Verse, the annual screening event of poetry video and film that I host each year, culling 27 works from 65 submissions from around the world Continue reading →