I’ve been too busy to blog but I managed to write the first poem for the new book project with Tina Schliessler.

BARE

Pushing bare

singing be

scars rest

pelt loosens.

Wobbles

define apart.

Hourly swells

rustle spores.

Light

bathed columns

stand

prop

bear heat

spasms

pangs

stings

ruptures

to make sounds

bring form

to mounds,

limbs

pears

leaves

the girl

growing chaste

giddy

alone.

We are hosting six adolescent boys and celebrating Junior’s birthday today. I’m looking forward to the cake. The local chocolatier, Cocoa West, makes this incredible flourless chocolate cake that is fudge-like in texture, very rich, decadent. Josef is going to make pizza and we’re giving each kid a pumpkin to carve and take home. I found some electric carving knives, like mini chain saws that I know they will enjoy, being teenaged boys. I can’t believe he’s fourteen! I took him shopping the other day, as he has grown out of most of his clothes. He needs Xtra Large in shirts and jackets, is a 34-32 in pants and wears a size 11 shoe. No more Boys Department and he delights in calling me “Shorty.” This means we need to arrange an excursion to Stanley Park to take his picture next to Lumberman’s Arch. My photographer friend Lincoln suggested we do what he did, photograph his child at the same spot on each birthday. Junior has to whine about it every year but I know some day he will appreciate this lovely chronicle of his growth and development. We should have gone today, the sun is shining.

I don’t think I will get much else done between wrangling kids and dogs but I’m going to try to Continue Reading »

This place is a zoo! I swear, finally I am rewarded a few hours of solitude, had just settled onto my daybed, fired up Word, opened a new document to start writing when I hear tires on the gravel and the dogs going nuts. Fortunately, the visitor came and went pretty quickly but it happened again a few hours later. I always call first, why can’t other people do the same? I was reassured though to write a new poem today, it’s been so long, I wondered if I still had it in me.

Why are there two elections happening? I think it’s a plot by Steve Harper, a sleight of hand of sorts. The spectacle that is the U.S. election will keep our eyes off his shenanigans, as he merrily cuts arts funding and ignores environmental concerns, making us look bad to the rest of the world in the process. “Ordinary people don’t care about the arts.” What a dolt. A cynic. “A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. “Gawd, I hope he doesn’t get re-elected.

Life is sweet and bizarre all at the same time. WTF? is going on? Markets melting, loved ones dying, wars proliferating. Am I lucky, smart or ruthless to be in the position Continue Reading »

We’re blessed with beautiful weather the last few days, the clouds on the horizon so fantastic I had to take some photographs, to add to my large collection, From My Window.

Man, got to get on the good foot, as well as the bad, and start organizing the Princess Nut CD party we’re hosting Nov. 1. Figured I would have a Day of the Dead theme and sadly it’s not ironic. I am going to erect an altar honouring my sister, Peter and Merilene. There is talk of going to the Baja between Christmas and New Year’s and then I am possibly attending the San Miguel Poetry Week Jan 4-10. I’d like to stop off in LA on the way back to see Peter’s sister and my goddaughter Ava Rose. It would be nice to visit and not have to attend another funeral, however I haven’t made any travel arrangements, things are so crazy with renovating/converting the garage to an office for Josef, and AURAL Heather business. We found out the deadline for the Violet Femmes compilation album is Oct. 15! So we spent yesterday recording though I felt like crap and it was the last thing I wanted to do. “We are Ninja” as Roderick says and certainly we got the job done. We had considered doing the work at a local studio, I made inquiries but by the time they got back to us Roderick had started recording us amidst the mess that is the living room these days. He was able to isolate the vocal and guitar tracks and left with them this morning. The song is called Sun Hee, a Latin and jazzed tinged tune about unrequited love. Never fall for a banker’s wife. He had his trusty MacBook and new Telecaster in tow. Josef and I bought it for his upcoming birthday. Seems fitting somehow that Roderick was born on Halloween. I’m not big on astrology but I seem to attract Scorpios. One of my best friends, Candye is a quintessential Scorpio along with my son and his father. Anyway, it’s astounding that a guitarist of his caliber doesn’t own a good guitar. You deserve it I told him and I am happy he now has one of the most fundamental tools.

The Peter saga continues. He had told me he was sending along a copy Continue Reading »

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 »