Well, I’m listening to a Brazilian girl singer on Soma FM, it’s going on to 1 AM and I’m starting to wake up, actually feel better than I have all day. I’m so nocturnal, which wouldn’t be an issue if I wasn’t a mother and have to operate on a schedule with the rest of *normal* society. No one said parenting was convenient however.

Snow. Ugh. Socked in today, sufferering from cabin fever and itchy feet, wish I could fly to Mexico. Now Senor Coconut is singing Show Room Dummies. Pretty funny. Like an episode of Twilight Zone. I love this station.

Lots to do! Aural Heather rehearsals start next week. Logistics are rather daunting of course, so Roderick will come over and spend Saturday nights here so we can work both days each weekend until the launch. That’s the plan anyway. The tour is starting to come together. Have some Ontario gigs, now have to work on Montreal.

Headache is returning. My neck is screwed up again. Will have to try again tomorrow.

Roderick plays a relentlessly raw and raucous guitar on this, frappy then thumping bass, his brother Malcom equally pressing with bullet snare playing and a steady onslaught of cymbal crashes. Wicked!
Appleton

Hooka squats on carpet, Buddha-
esque. Undulating spirals of sapphire
smoke hula up her nose. That buzz.
That buzz that slows

your blood, calls you back
to bed like a lover. Soothes your inner
asshole. B.C. bud. Best bud
in the world. Worth risking jail for.

High-resolution satellite images.
Narcs’ warrant executed Tuesday.
Grow-op raided Wednesday.
Dozens of firearms. Five thousand plants.

Big bust for a small town, says Constable Cook.
For export, for sure. Cultivation facilities dismantled.
Straight people relieved. Green party over,
but Zoe cried. It was the best job ever.

Dope dealers pay well. Her boyfriend
sold product at school. Their responsibilities
included digging a tunnel under the border,
blaming black fingernails and muddy jeans
on dirt biking at the gravel pit.

Parents were shocked. We thought she was on
MSN, chatting. We thought he was on
the Internet, with her, boy’s father chiding,
it’s APPLEton, son, not Marijuanaton.

Launch tentatively set for April 19th at the Firehall Theatre. Roderick wrote music for this inspired by Nina Simone’s version of “House of the Rising Sun” which, like “Hound Dog” is actually written from a woman’s point of view. You can hear it on my home page if you like.

Whore In The Eddy

Gazes up at ballooning clouds as if imagining
frogs. Giraffes. Corvettes and barns,
as if Neptune’s head has heard
her pleas. Sent me. She looks like a mannequin.
As if by law of nature, a stripped woman’s body
looks like a mannequin after it floats
to the surface in a rainforest denuded
by steam donkeys and timber sales. All matter
from the depths is netted by log jams.

She stares at me. Cannot see
the pebbles embedded in my knees.
Or my face, not so sweet.
No bubbles, just the stillness
of standing water. No trace DNA.
No hard earned cash. Only cool airstreams
of aspen leaves. My grasping hand
takes hers, skin gliding onto my fingers
like a glove. A device. We share features
any porno masticating, regular working stiff
joe wants in his garage
between the red pickup and the Crestliner.

We watch the rim of night. A spiral
arm of stars, their slow light two million
years too late. Naked eyes decipher
Orion the hunter. Cassiopeia. Bright knots
of the Double Cluster. Mars appears.
I look the other way, to the North Star.

I don’t perform out of some pathetic need for approval anymore. I’m performing for the art of it. I am honouring the art of it, trying to let free my ego. It’s a relief, to put myself in relief against the material rather than going at it unaware. I’m so hard on myself! I have had no formal training, have learned everything through trial and error.

I suspect people underestimate me sometimes. I am not unattractive and probably appear younger than my years. Often I encounter peers, give or take ten years, who assume I’m much younger and therefore not their equal. I have to admit I take some pleasure in blowing apart their biases. Case in point; I attended a writing workshop recently and most of the attendees were peers, in the sense that the oldest was probably not much more than 10 years my senior. They wear dowager shawls, bulky sweaters and sport hair-dos from the 70s. They must assume I’m a Gen-Xer, that I am not a contemporary. They read their passages, which are earnest, heartfelt and evocative. I go last, appropriately, since I am the *youngest.* When I finish they let out a collective gasp and one of them blurts, “Now, that’s a story!”

This workshop though, is a wondrous thing, as is Continue Reading »

I know. This is bad. No entries for weeks! My only excuse and the bane of my existence this time of year, is Christmas. Ugh. It takes over my life every holiday season no matter how hard I try to avoid its demands on my time and psyche. I know I’m not alone in dreading the annual holiday tide. Christ, it’s long. I swear it begins earlier every year. Retailers start in with the Christmas music right after Halloween. People start shopping and talking about Christmas in November, by early December they’re having their obligatory office parties and by Christmas eve I’m so sick of the whole thing, I just want to fly away like a red-nosed reindeer. This quote pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter. “If I had been the Virgin Mary, I would have said No.”–Stevie Smith. Or, “Happy Fucking Holidays” and I think a lot of people must say that. By the way, don’t virgins always say “No?”

We were all quite ambivalent this year. It was *magical* for me as a child but that is tempered by memories of drunken uncles fighting or falling on the tree and my parents being more broke than usual for months afterward. So the three of us debated but couldn’t agree on whether to have a tree or not. Finally Josef decided he did–Oh Tannenbaum–and so went out and procured one. A lot of work to put up but I have to admit, it looks and smells divine and we can let it rot on our woodpile in the back acre. I think next year we should buy a live one and plant it post-Christmas. At any rate, we just moved in August and this was to be our first Christmas in the new house. We had been planning a bohemian-themed gathering, with absinthe and exquisite corpses and finally had the opportunity to host it around the weekend of the winter solstice. Think we had this party and focused on it as a way to bypass some of the holiday madness but it caught up with us a few days later as we scrambled to get gifts for the children in our lives at the very least, and then wrapping, cooking, and on and on. We did have the pleasure of celebrating New Year’s eve in Whislter with my best friend Cathy at her fantastic new house that took nearly four years to build.

Busy week of meetings. Drove to Continue Reading »