A Very Local Presence with Vancouver Opera's "The Magic Flute"

Last night, I attended a performance of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver. I say "Mozart's", but "The Magic Flute" of the Vancouver Opera has also been made post-colonial Vancouver's andFirst Nations' through a profound process of adaptation. Far from being an escape into the romance of 18th century Europe, the story of Tamino, Pamino, and Papageno brings the ideas of a search for love and a vision quest for a life's purpose together on soil that is both local and timeless. This highly adaptable opera has been set in many locations and time periods since it was first produced in 1791, in Vienna, but this may be the first time such a thorough collaboration with First peoples has been achieved. My favourite costume (pictured in the illustration) was the Lady of the Night's fantastic lunar moth. She was cloaked in a beauteous garb of wide protective wings about an insect's fascination of feathers and gear, almost to the definition of many legs on a thorax, implied by the style alone, the wonderful contrasts of the beautiful and the almost dreadful, that hint of weirdness that is the insects, that hint of dread and discomfort. ***image credit: Rory Kurtz

A Little Bit of Publishing

Louise is publishing two poems in September, one online and one in a print anthology. She is finally happy with a poem of hers that someone else approved of, which is rare! The poem she's happy with is called "Raven", and she will link it here when it comes out.

I Am Your Ocean...

I am your healer when
even your healers are poisoning me.
I relax you when you are nearly
too tired to reach me. You
don't have to work:
I take care of everything.

I balance your vision
for you can see far
across my vast expanses,
and fantastic creatures may
wash up on my shores.

Subtly, everything about me changes
every moment, every day, every year,
gently, without burnout.

I polish glass for your pleasure.
You don't have to do anything,
but pick it up.

Your muscles strengthen
by working with my sand
hard work, without punishment.

Spend time with me, and
I will give you perspective.

Yoga Practice and Depression

It is a surprise to me how little I breathe, normally. It's like I've forgotten to breathe or am adapted to a biorhythic habit of scarcely breathing. When I do a gentle home yoga practice, focussing on the breath for 40 minute, however, I feel positively giddy with happiness. Now, is this the profile of a depressed person, or is it just the profile of someone who has forgotten to breathe? Whatever the reasons for slowing down of vital breathing, it's clearly not a necessary part of me.

Related to depression, however, it certainly is, and the problem is that when in the depressive state, one forgets the happy state to the point that, without a taste of it, one has no appetite to direct one to the needful thing. Translation: when I feel depressive, I don't feel any desire for the practice that will make me happy because I have no feeling memory of it. I am fortunate to have found that for me, yoga absolutely heals my depression, but once back inside it the way out cannot be felt. Therefore, I recognized that it is vital to create a bridge from depression's somber tones, to yoga's happy ones. Anything that can tempt me is a cue: a dedicated space, clothes I like, music, lotion, aromatherapy, and today some Read My Lips black tea with pink peppercorns, chocolate, peppermint, and little candy lips. I promise myself this new delight in order to get myself feeling like being on the mat. I will not listen to my mind. I am too much of a rebel.

Action Step: Think about what kinds of cues you can provide for yourself to get yourself feeling like doing the thing you need to do.

Intuition is a Life Skill

What more poetic than running your life based on your intuition? The whole body is involved in intuition as it is in writing the metaphors that often comprise poetry. It is an applied poetics when you pause, get past your relationship to other people's opinions, and feel what is right for you to do with any opportunity. Long bewildered by a world where I could find no real comfort zones, I hope and expect that one choice at a time based on my intuitions will help me find more of the missing pieces of the right life for me.

Spring at the West Side Beaches

It's spring, and the ocean is glowing cold, as the now brighter, hotter rays of the sun beat down on it. Eagles are a common sight, and strange, alien looking cartilaginous skeletons occasionally wash up from some distant, deep sector of the sea. The herring gulls seem larger every year, and seals troll just beyond the end of fishermen's lines on the large pier for easy second hand catches!

Squirrel Problems...

The squirrels are coming; they're walking; they're running; the squirrels are pelting; they're swarming; they're funning; the squirrels are filling my room over night; the squirrels are here; o, my dear; what a sight.

They're filling it up from the bottom to top; they're making it smelly; they're making it quite: nasty, and itchy, and hairy, and brown; they'll get me evicted; I'll have to leave town...

Bad squirrels, bad squirrels! Who told you, "Come 'round"? You're reckless and wretched. You make too much sound, and if I'd been a farmer, you'd all have been drowned. Bad squirrels! Bad squirrels! You rodents, pipe down!!!.

The Strange Thing About Death...

The strange thing about death

is not the body,

but the mind.

The body wears

and is ready,

knows its seasons

accepts

is fine,

but the mind thinks worlds

of thinking texts,

schooled in language

beyond the grave,

the immortality of the word,

that sprang so intimately from a brain,

so close to life

but not alive,

so well impressed

by what has stopped;

this quest for immortality,

fools us

whose bodies are adept
at death.

My Dishcloth Needs a Funeral and Other Stories...

Antique Cloth 

My dishcloths need a funeral. After three and half years of steady service in my latest apartment, they are getting a little thin and have some tiny holes in them. That's incredible! It's about three thousand dish washings in very hot water. What kind of funeral do you give dishcloths?

Gorgeous New Cloths

Monkey Wallet and Second Breakfast

Right now I want, an eclair and a coffee. I already had  tea with double cream and a croissant with agave syrup for breakfast, but like the Hobbits, I'm ready for second-breakfast.. My question is: do I indulge my desire or not? Is it a masterpiece of hedonistic independence or a distraction and evasion of work, an embodiment of the monkey mind, or in this case--monkey appetite"?Anybody with a strong mind body connection may encounter this form of the monkey-mind, may even feel, as I so palpably have felt many times during a week, the physical desire to bound up the walls, hang, swinging from the upper, horizontal frame of a door, or, less alarmingly and more accessibly, just jump up an down on some strong, invisible spring, in place. The phenomenon may also take the form of the "monkey-wallet". I, obviously, can't wait for an answer from my readers and will proceed to the pastry department of my nearest IGA for half-priced eclairs.

For $2.10 I made Monkey Appetite happy and saved Monkey Wallet .

Ben and Jerry

The lawyers' names were Ben and Jerry, an unwittingly incestuous gay couple who had no idea they  were fraternal twins separated at birth because their adoption records had been eaten by a dog,

The house was a stunner, stylish enough for New York, with long hallways and bright views.

The incest, unknown as it was, also didn't really matter in the sense of ill-generation of offspring.

One day the lawyers, however, began to fight about the house. ONe of them wanted the house redecorated and the other wanted the house exactly the way it was. The men just didn't have the same vision for the house One was all New York and the other was French Provincial, which is not to say that you couldn't blend these two styles in a quite fascinating way, but the guys were lawyers, not decorators and it wasn't their training or aptitude at all, so they had zero clue about that. Jerry just flat out wanted some hot shot fabulous designer and her construction team to come in and gut the place and redo it all like a French farmhouse with a view of the north shore mountains. it would be fascinating enough all on its own, just live in chaos for two months and or even just one and pay the bill and voila! What's the point of working so hard if you can't have your dream come true at the end of the day? So, i have to say that the guys were a little discontented, one more than the other. Ben was starting to feel slightly insecure.

What about dividing the house in half? Hmmmm, well it looked very expensive in terms of kitchen renovation or installation. It also just looked like a show house of design options. Each man tended to immerse himself entirely in the decor. it would spoil the dream to divide it in half; they both agreed.So forget that option.

Ben and Jerry thought it might mean living in separate houses. they had another house in the seam area, only a block and a half away, in fact. The other house was only worth two million dollars, while this one was worth five million dollars, but the other house was empty now. They, for no reason they understood before, had really not wanted to tenant it after the previous occupants had moved out six months ago.  So,  it looked obvious that they were about to start living in two houses. It seemed practically illegal to use up so much space in such a congested city as Vancouver, two guys living singly in two luxury houses, but one had been handed down from the family of Ben, the larger one, and they were simply lucky in the appreciation of it. The other had been a wise investment of the two men's a decade and a half earlier as they'd started practicing

A new fence, new landscaping, new colours and woodwork,d echoer, furniture imported from France, linens etc would perfect the scene. The food would follow, the music, the paintings, the outdoor eating. The boys would be gin to live happily apart. Who knew where things would go from there? Perhaps it was the beginning of the end of their relationship, though their relationship wasn't miserable. it was in transition and this felt good to both of them. Their relationship, whatever it was becoming or if it was staying the same in essence, seemed to be alright with the changes whatever they ultimately signalled. 

they tried to continue their relationship but every time Jerry would walk, or start to walk over to Ben's house he would encounter a ghost that would engage him in distracting conversation and by the end he was flat.His heart misgave him somehow, like a battery that had nearly died, and he couldn't continue on his stroll to the larger house he had to return home again, feeling weaker but peaceful. the ghost was a white figure, a man, younger than he was, quite stocky. On the other hand, Ben didn't come to visit Jerry at all. He expected Jerry to come, but Jerry didn't come, and Ben slowly let go It was as if he actually didn't care enough to make the the trip. He was used to caring because Jerry cared, but not to putting out his own neck to see. Lazy? Stolid? Uninvested? Ben had plenty of reasons to be happy enough alone. He was so secure and his life was a round of expensive pleasures to be sure. What could he want?And if he go t it could he face that it was entirely free of his commercial power? the realm of love and spirit, a whole powerful realm in itself, potentially unimpressed by pecuniary advantages.  He had no language for that and no control, or navigation tools He was out of his depth, so he didn't make the hundred and twenty yard walk over to Jerry's house.The renovations were accomplished. 

 Splitting up the practice was not as easy, especially when the partners weren't quite sure what was going on. And they worked well together. Their practices merged and supported one another. They had to keep working together for a while anyway, Still, it had to end. the offices were divided and this time, Ben moved. Jerry renovated his heart in the whole process and life began to spring up in him like young shoots inApril. He drew up a contract for the transfer of title entirely to himself to the First Avenue house, now a Provencal dream home. Ben , of course, signed it. It was hard for him, but he didn't hesitate  So there they were: separated, anti all started with a divergence in taste, or rather in the fatigue of Jerry's capacity to accommodate Ben's preference and Ben's unwillingness to accommodate Jerry's. Jerry wouldn't let Ben give him half the house. He didn't want to be paid for his gift of accommodation. He wanted it returned.

Fall Leaves

A friend falls away 

like a wet leaf of paper maché, 

falls away the way leaves always fall away, 

every leaf, it seems, but the evergreens.

The sky has regained its stars

and snowflakes reflect their sparkle.

Teatime with Pompoms

Tulip

I have a string of flowers

They hang around my neck.

The other girls wear gold

and pearls, but I say

what the heck!

Depression as Response to Soul Loss

http://www.jungcircle.com/depression.html

Suspect Trying to Ingratiate Himself with Noise Police

Note the way the suspect touches the police officer's toes with his soft paws and closes his eyes as if too inwardly-oriented to perpetrate any outward offence.                                                          

Was it you doing that singing outside the front yard this morning?

more...

Artistic Economy in Vancouver

This topic is no joke in most places on the North American continent, but Vancouver is a tough city; it's an expensive city. As an artist, you're interested in feeding your soul as well as your body and your bank account. There has to be a way to do all three, and I'm trying to balance it out. I'm sure I can get there. Soul, body, money: why not have health in all areas?  I needed a chair for my apartment, but the artist in me was not going to settle for junk. The artist in me also didn't have any money to afford something high quality. I found this oak chair someone was giving away in a back alley nearby. It's missing a slat, but it's gorgeous; the seat is wonderfully comfortable, and the legs are stable. Sometime, I might actually figure out how to repair it, but in the meantime, perfection need not apply! ♥

Crows and Sparrows

A slight gas exhaust in 
the kitchen breezes,
crows and sparrows,
cool, gold-green jungle;
dishes pile up.
Young women whoop;
drying plastic bags shift
over the sink. Crows caw.
Blackberries fall off
vines, overripe.
Sparrows rub their
vocal cords together
to produce autumn
sounds. Green tea
at the kitchen table
for murmuring 
reflections.

Return of the Buffalo. Please Vote.

I don't see why the buffalo herds can't be regenerated. There's lots of grass. Just let loose a bunch of buffalo of both genders and presto, nine or ten years later, lots of buffalo!!

Surly, Velvety Octopuss

Invasion of the Luminous Blood-Filled Jellyfish

Summer, 2011 So Far...

This is no day to list among the number of our summer days,
this day that's trapped inside a static mote of sand dust.

Love

Love is real; love is true; love exists

right alongside the other spiritual forces

and despite a lot of them.

Love is.

It Is All Very Well...

It is all very well, to tell, to tell,
to see, to think, to live on the brink.
It is all very well, the same old story, hard and gory.
It is always the same old story. The days
grow more beautiful now. The days grow more beautiful.
Sometime, they may not be, maybe tomorrow,
or in a thousand years. For now they are lovely.
What loveliness! And I do wonder at those
who show no interest in these beauties.

Shared Solitude


Do you ever like to be alone

unplug the phone

make them think that you're not home

on your own

inside the zone?

The key point

is something you must steal 

from obligation

deeper than they dig

for the to-be-buried sleeper

with his moon-shaped face

directed at the sun

far deeper than the bulldozer

in its raking run.

Sometimes you do achieve it,

get to the darkest sand,

unearth a convoluted mollusc

or long-forgotten wedding band.

What makes it worth it then

is that excavated by a pen

you can give it back again.

And as the other poet said,

it's your best self

that's shared instead.

Poinsettia

A perfect poinsettia twig grows, 

three years old twig, and well;

a perfect poinsettia leaf holds well 

out its leaf like a sheaf 

of softly velvet cheek;

she stands aloft shivering with 

the vibrations of the keyboard's gyration.

An accident has happened to this tiny poinsettia that wants to live so badly, right after it was repotted into a lush and fertile new soil environment. You see where I have bound it up with green thread at the nearly-complete break? It does have lots of new shoots coming at the base, so it will live. Now, let's cheer on the original stem!

A few weeks later...

How to Turn Insomnia into a Personal Deliciousness

You can substitute your own meditative practice, whatever that means for you, but when I sometimes have bouts of middle-of-the-night insomnia, I light a candle and listen to Emily Dickinson or some other loved literature, and drink some herb tea. It's a gorgeous experience, and I think the fact that it necessarily happens in the middle of the night is part of what makes it so good. I've been sleeping well lately, but when I'm not, this ritual turns insomnia into something really special.

Coco and Olive, My Favourite Cafe

A writer should have a favourite cafe. Mine is a no-brainer. It's Coco and Olive at Broadway and Collingwood. 

I hear the mellow lyrical music, the voice of a young man, very much voice-dominant with the music in the background. The floor is stripped to reveal the wood underneath, and then painted white and distressed by traffic. The kitchen has been outfitted by the chefs who are the owners. Even though their business is  limited—and they limit it intentionally—their skill is considerable. Their ambitions are human sized, with vision and an intention not to let things get out of control. This means the customer too can relax and keep a happy pace in here. The servers and prep people seem to take a realistic amount of time to assemble the foods, and since there are always two for a fairly small restaurant, it really can't get to far out of hand. They charge a little bit more than usual, but not in all cases, only for tea, something people are apt to buy on its own and then occupy space drinking for a while. They have planted a fair number of flowers and plants on the boulevard outside their door, placed some pots, and there's even a tree. Today, though, it's hot in here. The table is a broken deck of wood rendered table height.

What I want to say about this cafe is to do with economy, a topic that has interested a lot of people in the past three years. One point is about not spending more energy than you have, or rather being sure always to spend less than you have. However, this becomes not a painful thing to do if you are doing what you love. You derive so much nurture and energy from doing what you love that it's really worth money in terms of your happiness. You can buy happiness, but you don't have to. You can, alternatively, whip it up yourself from scratch.

Yellow Birds, a Kingfisher, and Hummingbirds

It may be cool weather for the time of year, annoying would-be sunbathers, but it's ideal for plant and  animal life.

Early in the spring, an online friend and I particularly noticed a lot of yellow birds. My friend lives in Boulder, Colorado, while I live in Vancouver, BC. It seemed to me I had not seen these types of small yellow birds before.

Yesterday, I had another unusual birdwatching experience. I saw one of my favourite birds, the kingfisher, quite close up. Normally, I just watch, astonished as they hover and aim their large heads at prey fish in the water below, wings paddling the air so quickly. But this time, I was sitting on a park bench in one of the overlooks on the cliff top south of English Bay, and a kingfisher flew up and landed on the wire fence directly in front of me. It didn't stay long, but I had never seen one of them perched.  The feathers around its eyes look painted on with a wide brush, generously loaded with white paint. Naturally it fled on seeing me. 

Blackberry Bushes in Bloom Near English Bay

  Today, I went to another overlook at the cliff where there are many cement stairs down to a small beach. An extensive blackberry bush is growing beyond the wire fence at the top of the cliff and down its face beside the long, strong metal railing attached to the cement stairs. Pink, cup-shaped blossoms were out in full force. Bumble bees were humming, visiting each flower. As has sometimes happened, I saw what I took to be a larger insect buzzing about the flowers, but I didn't identify it. Moments later, I saw that it was a hummingbird drinking from flower after flower. I stayed because it's not often I get to see this one of my favourite birds  going about its business. Then, a second hummingbird, of the same type as the first, a Rufus, I think, came even closer to me--within two feet--drinking nectar and even reaching out with its tiny black feet to try out the flexible vine of a morning glory in bud. The feathers were muted, glistening rust and olive, their scalloped edges fringed with lines of finest gold. The dark wings cut the air in a half-visible arabesque. The bird did not seem to know I was there, though it may have been the notice of me--one movement of my arm--that the nearer one saw from the corner of its eye which resulted in their instant disappearance. The robins, sparrows, and thrushes looked huge after watching the hummingbirds!

Is bird and plant life thriving a bit better this year due to the longer-term cooler temperatures? I wouldn't want to try to prove it, in the case of birds, but to me, and perhaps, to my friend in the US, this seems to be the case.

On Waking at Night...

It's not a nightmare,
it's just night, in the milky way galaxy
turned away from the glare of the sun
with a back alley view on
innumerable stars.

Cowslips

Easter Cupcakes Including Yours Truly!

Sunday Morning

i.

Seed pipe cleaner strands of birch flower,
pipe cleaners hanging down
and the sweet, grape-bunch seed of flower on the maple.
How do the leaves bud red, salmon red, pale meat red,
with the green-yellow flower clusters?
It seems to me they must arise separately.
Then I see the red part is the burst calyx
like broken shrimp shell shedding roe, and
similar enough in texture, that great mass of
incipient pollen and seed shower.

ii.

Some curly-tailed, black dog trots
like a pet pig, across mid-ocean
intrepid in its locomotion.

The Cheese-Making Dragon in the Rocky Mountains

There is a dragon, mauve, gray and pink, that lives in a cavern in the Rocky Mountains. It sleeps there like a cat, but when it wakes up it wants cheese. To make cheese, it needs goats and sheep. Very well, it flies to Switzerland and collects goats and sheep and carries them back home where they proliferate.

The dragon has very large fingers and nails, and can't milk the goats and sheep, so in the night, when people dream, it gets industrial engineers and milking machine mechanics to design and install a gigantic facility with a generator it can peddle with one claw. The engineers and mechanics get tired from overwork at that time.

And so, the dragon is set. it can gather the milk, once lambing and kidding is successfully completed and can hang large bags of milk in another deep cavern in the mountainside, letting the whey drip away until it has cheese for its delectation. The whey it smartly collects and pours onto the foliage that the goats and sheep like to eat to keep it strong and the animals fed so they continue to produce fine milk.

How to Love Your Red-Fringed Dress (in Fifty-Seven Words or Less)

I don't know.
Do not ask.
I've never had a red-fringed dress,
wasn't allowed the fringe much less
the fabric, but still I'll have a try
if you will attend while I imagine
a shawl with wheat colored tassels
and overblown salmon roses,
printed sage rose leaves,
triangular, on some artificial silk
hanging on the crooks of my elbows, just so,
so I can be a lady.
Don't you know that's out of date?
We're all so tough these days,
but wait,
I already donned a bonnet
with more, real roses on it,
and if you don't stop me, by god,
I'm almost going to pen a sonnet.
I just don't know what we can do
without some fine, flat, rounded shoe
to take us lightly to our host,'
tripping gaily as a ghost,
and I can't wonder what is said
when at nine or ten o'clock,
I excuse myself and go to bed.

An Arrangement of Camellias

Gnome Flu II

The inhabitants--as on a ship
beat by a succession of wild waves,
between which wait quiet troughs--
dance to their enormous joy
on every worn part, every oar,
wrack day by day, interminably,
this rolling craft; it tries their skill,
but each of them, dauntless,
dances still, and the roiling maw
of the ocean's jaw, pitiless, friendless,
rage it will.

The Brainless and the Clever Dogs

There was a brainless dog and one day it went out without its helpers. A pack of clever and voracious dogs started chasing it down the sidewalk, with the intention of eating it. The brainless dog fell into a hole in the sidewalk, as it was running along, and disappeared. The clever dogs were way too clever to fall into a hole in the sidewalk, and they ran and ran and kept on running, right out of sight.

Puritan Girl

I am seared by the purity of winter's black midnight.

In February,
let's make a storm of white soap.
Let's make an antelope.

My Ghost, My Love: A War-Love-Ghost Story

There is a big house, maybe an inheritance to someone, a wealthy house. It's like an old movie with Gregory Peck, so a character with a huge amount of integrity. His probably evil girlfriend was killed in the second world war, but there are two paragraphs, and when hers comes down under his, her entry, well, a phone opportunity comes, but it's like he is talking to the dead and his voice, long and drawn out is broken and calling and, "H. e.l.l.o.o.o.o., a.n.d. h.e.l.l.o.o.o.a.a.a.h.h.h.," for a long time, a whole paragraph, and it's nerves and it sounds as a ghost should sound in a movie, haunted, but she doesn't speak a word. Who gave him the phone at all with the ghost supposedly on the line, like Catherine in Wuthering Heights?

Poetry Magazine Publishes, Enlightens, and Educates

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/index.html

Poetry Magazine publishes some of the most interesting, successful poetry around. Listen to their podcasts, and you will hear the editors brilliantly discussing poems on their site in detail. They are really engaging.

The Mythic Function: at all times we are addressing the mystery, in contact with daily life.

How You Feel

February 13. Yay. Great. All I feel like doing is lying around eating. I'm getting a belly. I quit worrying about my diet.

Went to church this A.M. because it's at least a spiritual outlet. Aside from some monotonous hymns...to be expected...I found First Baptist on Burrard to be renewed by cogent spiritual activism. They were great! Really!

They were helpful, but I still feel I have very little purpose. I don't feel called. There's no other activity that is easy for me to do, besides writing. Everything else takes me forever, and is really hard. It's like I don't know any other language of work beside the English language, and have as much aptitude for learning as those folks who take ten years to learn languages and are still largely incomprehensible cause it's not in their brain/nature/anything at all. But I forced myself, and so...I can teach to a certain extent.

Well, I like to drink tea. What to write? Lately I had nothing left to write. Must be the dark night of the writer's soul. Winter.

Late November

On a day like today, when the snow coils slowly down from the clouds, and the sky is light brown. The ocean has stopped, the city is mute, and nothing is bright but the whirling teeth of a circular saw at construction.
On a day like this, when the bed is heaped with coats and blankets, scarves and mittens, and I am thickly layered with fleece and wool and silk and the air is alive but still
the littlest birds coast on the least power wings can relinquish, headlong, arcing, everything but falling out of the air

We are all the color of sand and sawdust. Christmas shoppers don their identities, and chickadees fluff up like the ruffs on wool winter coats, and there is nothing like Starbucks for a little comfort, for well prepared housekeeping of the steaming cup, for what one could well do for oneself at home, but hasn't necessarily the private momentum for.

the bare curving limbs whizzened into lyric

The Thing the World Wants Is Wrong

Because this apartment, this blind, this bird-
box with mufti quilts at the windows
against the street light, this sturdy stand
against the nightwith mosqito netting and
the fan whirling atop the armoire, the darkness
behind the desk,on a street, in a city,
that doesn't feel like home, the August sun glaring
and the air too still, longing for a gentler life
than the one on which I reflect.
In an attractive space,
I can't seem to roll up like a snail like
I used to dofitting myself into my shell.
And the fact is snails belong in their shells.
It's not a slug.
Having acquainted myself with the world,
it has become harder to escape,
has invaded and set like concrete,
too bold, too plain, too solid, too simple;
bring me diaphanous, delicate, lavender, mauve
too strong after all;
the thing the world wants is wrong.

I Don't Get Fat

I don't get fat,
not a bit.
I look fit.
 I don't get fat. 
I don't get anything
that doesn't look good.
 Not at all,
and I'm ten feet tall.

Worm and Crow

Today, I am a section of a worm,
and a crow is croaking out
a little sandpaper scratch into
the fluid mist of my day,
a little fingernail attention
from a more alert dimension,
whatever it is she's trying to say...

I Am...

I am becoming convinced
that there is some other slice of reality
that would suit me entirely well,
and this
isn't
it.

Fair Trade Chocolate

The thieving poet and that sort of stuff. Man, what a lousy duck... And poetry and poets are about love, but money is tied in to us, money for a dose of chocolate or a shoe. Can we manage both? Us two? One piece of chocolate and one shoe? No that limitation will not do, but with some other arrangement, two for me and two for you...

Squizard Offered Me a Flower

From "Beatrice and Virgil" by Yann Martel

Virgil: An expression.

Beatrice: Again? You'll sprain your face.

Virgil: I mean a verbal expression.

The Sloth and the Moth

Now this was a blustering version of sloth that we've never seen, as she scares the moth off from beside and between,
a whirling and twirling tornado of slothdom that works like a dervish to get that moth off 'um.

Like a feather, I am weighed down by the weather.

The Saving Madness of Burton/Depp's "Alice in Wonderland"

Sometimes parts of you may not survive indefinitely, if they are not befriended. Well, they survive, but they go sadly dormant. You can miss them. I had this feeling for a while that things are too real, way too real, even the beauty of things round me wasn't what I wanted--though it's better than not having it, certainly--as I was walking back from the movie into my area, I felt that I have become completely responsible. There was no part of me that didn't feel responsible or that every last thing was real around me, in other words: no imagination.

I heard that Johnny Depp resonated with the character of the Mad Hatter. I know he had a tumultuous life until he met his wife, who finally was the person who understood him. I think I relate to Johnny Depp in some ways as an artist. He said this was his ideal role, and it's my ideal role as well in another way. When I saw the hatter's table, that crazy rabbit (love that rabbit so much) and all their irrational behavior, I started to cry. I could have missed half the scene. I miss that madness in myself. I used to go crazy,  and it was wonderful. Now there's not a bit of madness anywhere in sight. I think I was happier when I was living a little more in a dream world. That's nonsense, of course, but it was much more real to me, and very lovely, and reality is not wonderful without it.

My reality is in better shape than it used to be, but my dream life seems to have suffered in the bargain. Ironic, eh?

Anyway, the movie did provide me some renewal. I came out and the world looked different to me (partly because they've renewed Cambie area, which helped, but it wasn't just that).

The movie showed me that there are dreamers in the world exactly like me, that they are strong and valid and functional, and that there is a place in the sane mind and body for the dreaming madness.

Tea Cup Clouds

The clouds like plumes of cream in tea 

and we walking around on the bottom of the cup

waiting for some god

to drink us up.

Magnolia Magnaflora!

Can you fail to gape at the size of some of the magnolia blooms that crack their bud shells in Vancouver in springtime?

Poem: To Cherish January

Cherish January, white and quiet
in the seasons' pause and stillness.
Silently cheer the heart of January,
myriad stars in the chill night sky.
A thousand stars in the resting body
bestow its dreams on you and I.

That's because I'm a Morkus. MORKUS, spelled morkus; backwards: sukrom...you know...

Rant:Transformation

Transformation isn't an absolute good or an absolute anything. Being alive is a process of transformation we can't halt. One day I am a monkey gin, the next I'm a catastrophic nickety nack nack; one day or other I'm going to feel like June Cleaver, and that's going to be my worst nightmare though she had a pretty good face. What am I doing here? I don't know. It just happened. Diagnose me. I had a plan for my apartment, but I was a little vague on my life in a larger sense. Now I think I'm going to dance the elephant-leg dance all over the carpet, and I consider the lawn and the grass a carpet and that's a Worchestershire shimmery manse behind the stage there where I live up in a bird's nest, when I'm not dancing. Up in the nest I sing instead. You or me, either one of us would go out of our tree if we didn't do that. I'm snockered. It's January. That's meaningful. We're all running low on vitamin D. It matters. Vitamin D is spiritual. So, some of us are lucky enough to have safe, wonderful, warm places to curl up in our sleeping bags. We may have low expectations, but I'm glad I expected that, at least. It's a blessing, to be sure, and I love it, but where is the rest of my life?

There Is No Way of Posting About Anything but...

the stunning fact that I am teaching at UBC in less than two weeks. What more is there to work towards? I can hardly want anything else. I am finished, done! That's it! Motives have lost all their reasons. Normality has gone extinct. There is nothing left to work out, nothing left to say. The End. What was I thinking before? It's a new world. I want for nothing. I care nothing for progress or emotion, change, development, growth. I think I am living some sort of alternative life. What's the point of these accessories without dresses to wear them with. Yet, there's nowhere to go back to. What happened to the world of the imagination? Where does it connect to reality and others? For, as Einstein said, "Science does not know the debt it owes to imagination." I am not living in my own world, and I am finished, but what shall I say?

Home: Sewing in the Kitchen

Every area accommodates a different art. The light in the kitchen is phenomenally beautiful during the brighter days.

Home: Multi-tasking for your Small Vancouver Space

Keep it simple so you don't wind up with phlalocyanine green in your next sandwich!

Chakra Theory and Psyche: The Voyage into the Seventh Chakra and Staying Anchored to the Earth

Connecting with God, that's what the seventh chakra is about, and it may be the case, as with Darl Bundren of Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" that when one lacks connection to family (1st Chakra) on some level and to a great enough degree, one may seek connection with God instead. You can see the vertical movement entailed easily. The earth, nonetheless, is still the earth, and God is a bit of a mystery. What is the landscape of the mystic's experience? How to evaluate mystic experiences, relate to them, place and navigate them? Visions of great beauty are not as etherial once manifested into the earthly world. What is wrong with flying up, up, and away? Nothing, unless you want to come back sometimes. I venture to suggest that some of your basic non-organic psychoses spring from this phenomenon. The question I'm facing now that art is taking me higher is: who is going to hold the string? Because there isn't anybody to hold the string, I'm having to back off, come down. I return to yoga because it too is a spiritual path, but other people are involved and are holding the string, so to speak.

Visions: Woman in Magnificent Costume

She wore a dress of many ribbons that curved like feathers, with one lip pink stripe in the center of each curling one and pastel turquoise stripes on the sides. The bodice was fitted the sleeves were wide and on her head were more of the same feather ribbons curling like rollered hair, as she lay there.

Landscapes of Joy

Oprah talked once about "textures of joy". Living the life of a poet provides me interior and exterior landscapes of joy. As a matter of fact, what it does is take what I have in my life already and make it more joyful. It isn't a single feeling but an experience of the variety of the aspects of life but with joy. It's not all the time, but it's an infusion from the source that is poetry, outwards into other experiences, like dropping watercolor into the corner of a pan of water.

Prizes for Identifying Literary References :)

Who said there's no money (read: reward) in an Arts degree? Tonight, at the awesome Robson Reading Series, I won the children's book "Alphabad" by poet Shannon Stewart--by identifying a couple of literary references in her poems. It's really good (a delightfully articulated piece of literary mischief, it clacks along as satisfyingly as a handmade wooden toy car on the end of a satiny string) and that, of course, is just my level ;)

Relationship Chaos

I heard a good description of the condition of love relationships, or the basis on which people in general in the first world seek love relationships over the past forty years and more. As survival becomes less of an issue, people seek marriage or partnership for love. This forces them to explore what love means to them, who they are, and what their purpose in life is in a spiritual level. The change from the survival mode to the spiritual mode is one cause of relationship chaos, where many people simply do not know what to look for, how to act, or what to expect of themselves or others. I appreciated the phrase "relationship chaos" and the observation that people naturally seek to revert to the old way because there is no new way, but that by staying with the chaos, one gives a new form an opportunity to evolve and result. Robert Ohotto was the counselor on Hay House Radio.

I have a cold and my mental energy was sapped today.

So I worked on my window box instead :)

Rita Wong at Irving Barber

The igniting Rita Wong talked for an hour to an inexplicably drowsy looking audience at Irving K. Barber Learning Center on Thursday afternoon. She left this writer with food for several days' thought minimum, which I'm going to use as my flimsy excuse for not cooking much this week.

The vision I synthesized from her talk was of a society more advanced than ours, which used technology in consciousness of nature and fit its infrastructure around natural systems in a harmonious way. Entirely possible from a technological/scientific/creative point of view.

Purity is not a natural state,

but to accept, to enter the fray

is it a matter of how much degradation

one can take.

Who Cares Nothing for the Opinions of Others?

Stimulate, trigger action, trigger desire and the whole machine, the ferris wheel, the roller coaster, the mechanics of the great steam engine start up again, round and round, on the same cog, massive, heavy, and exhaustive. Trigger this engine into action. Finally, I have heard the engine's labor long enough. The great labor is not worth the result, and no one's opinion is of interest. Without worry over the opinion of others there is little that needs to be done, little to do. Except for love, or perhaps the great endeavor, the life's work is isolated into a matter of the mind, and at last the body is not required to perform the magnanimous task of expressing it.

Sometimes an upside down cake looks like an upside down cake!

Robson Reading Series: Poets Marguerite Pigeon and David Zieroth

A delighted, connected, blissful little audience tonight at the Robson Reading Series at UBC downtown. There was something special, and rare going on, and everybody seemed to be feeling it. When I walked into the room late, and ever so quietly, I instantly joined a unity of openly expressed, vibrant, but quiet feeling.

Life Forms That Possess an Extra Dose of Vitality

(In astrology, it's Jupiter that lends extra vitality to an organism.)

The dahlias are budding again, and again, and blooming. It is September 10th. The azaleas, too, are budding again, but not with enough vitality to open out into flowers. One azalea bud broke thick scarlet from its casing but atrophied there like a tiny, hopeless, crumpled fist and gathered dots of pollen-colored mold.

I had an ultra strong, red primula plant that flowered for nearly four months this year in my window box. In other years the primulas have been plants that lasted a week or two indoors, or spanned a couple of months, perhaps, in people's gardens, but this plant had the staying power of a lobster that, after it's claw is ripped away by accident or predation, goes ahead and grows a new one. After the plant finally disappeared into itself for two weeks without signs of life, it began to sprout several perky new leaves and seemed to be intending to start blooming all over again. Though it hasn't bloomed again, I've now planted it in the garden along with all its little seed bells. It's doing well down there. We'll see what comes up next spring!

Some women want to have babies when they are in their early forties. It's absolutely natural for some women to feel this impulse. Who knows that they do not posses an extra dose of vitality themselves, whether capable of entirely blooming or not, and in Vancouver, I've seen roses bloom until December, so who's to say what life will do, or be able to do. We can talk about it being right or wrong, but really, all we can do is watch and see what happens. Certainly I could stand around insulting my dahlias and depress them into not producing gorgeous blooms in September, but what for?

Thursday's Recipe Will Be Fancy Recession Carrot and Ginger Soup

This recipe is so good because of the relationship between the ingredients and the presence of some no fail staples. It certainly isn't because there are any expensive ingredients involved.

I was at first surprised to be using a quarter cup of ginger, and by how mild and pungently fragrant the curry powder was, its spices taking over where the organic California carrots left off. Though I think of carrots as belonging to the west, and curry powder certainly originates with the east, their common earthiness means they have a natural neighborhood, an easy, unforced relationship. The ginger unselfishly infuses life into the circle, itself mellowed by the company. The unsalted butter simply adds class and smoothness and seems to have the capacity to up the gourmet voltage of any recipe that asks for it just by being there. I left out the white wine. I think that merely took it down from a restaurant to a home studio's level of self containment.

I used a recipe for Carrot Ginger Soup from "The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook".

Kitchen Storage

To me, relaxed space means a balance of order and chaos.

Turning the Corner from Reduction to Redesign

As of a few weeks ago, I finally had given away, sold, or recycled anything I wasn't using so that there is not too much stuff for this space.