WOWEEEE. It is like the Tao Te Ching but more colourful. I love that part about sitting by the campfire with Plato, melting the Forms into marshmallows. The playfulness of the book dabs from a palette of delight onto the grey matter of the adult mind. I love how you get really in between things, like a child fitting between a wall and the refrigerator. So original! So refreshing! I am also really impressed by how you create a mood and an aura with so few words. Quite masterful…

Thank you, Alex, for engaging with It. Your words too are poetic and refreshing. The child fitting between the wall and the refrigerator…love it.

It is always nice to hear back. Whether it is right away, or later when I stumble upon a write up. Immediate or not it is like a little echo coming back to you. Thanks Laurie Neale.

Arlene, that makes four, out of the seven poems we have written together, published. Three of which came out this year. I think we should raise a glass of something to mark the occasion. The rest are under consideration. We can raise a glass of something to them as well. In general when in doubt, raise a glass.

The entries for the challenge issue will be going up a couple at a time. So be sure to check back. Thanks Dorothee for the work on this issue. There is no shortage of challenges in the world today.

While on the topic of collaborations I will also be moderating a panel on collaborations at the Summer Dream Literary Arts Festival.
Saturday August 13th, 2011
Lumberman’s Arch, Stanley Park (11-8 pm)
The panel is from 5:05 – 5:30 pm at the Granville Stage. (Yes, still at Lumberman’s Arch). Stop by and join the conversation. Also check out the schedule for all that you would like to take in at the three stages of the festival.

Usually, my husband is the one that does the pumpkin carving with the kids and the trick or treating. He doesn’t mind. So I can avoid it mostly, and not worry too much about it. Other than when the time comes to get rid of the rotten pumpkins from my porch. Some of the people I know have also expressed their issues with it. Let’s say they tolerate it.

This year Dethe is travelling, so the quietly simmering crises for meaning (that I mostly keep subdued on the surface) boils over. I will confess, I did not buy pumpkins for carving. I just could not make myself. If lit carved pumpkins are what we need to remember the dead, isn’t it ironic when there are people dying of hunger in the world? Is it not an indulgence putting out a lot of waste?

What does Halloween do for you? I would love to know. What is it a metaphor for? I did not grow up with Hallowe’en. To buy into it I have to really be convinced of the non-commercial “value” of it. I am shopping around for a more sustainable ritual, a ritual that has a lot more spiritual benefit than the waste put out in its name. What happens to the way we grow pumpkins, when we know that most of them will be wasted? Are we growing nutritious pumpkins? Or are we just growing them for the size and the look, not for the taste?

My friend Robin had a photo published on qarrtsiluni titled The Names of the Dead are Floating to Heaven which offers another way of remembering the dead. It is that photo and memories of how my grandmother remembered by lighting a candle, that helped the simmering boil over. I am trying to make this joyful, honestly. But it seems being honest is more precious for me at this time.

Perhaps I am thinking too much. Perhaps I should get more into the spirit of things? Well, that is exactly what I was going for, more for the spirit of things. Perhaps we are living in a world where we probably should start thinking harder. And question what we do and what we know with more vigour. Who benefits the most from our Halloween extravaganza?

So this Halloween, I am not going with the flow, well not entirely. I will perhaps visit the cemetery. Take a flower to a grave. Anyone’s grave. Maybe I will write a poem. I have already made delicious pumpkin pie, from scratch. Including the crusts.

And of course will assist my kids with dress up. Whip up the whipping cream. And then I will have to figure out what to do with all the candy they bring home.

I have pretty much gotten over the fear of writing and publishing right away. Click— and it is out there in its immediacy and imperfections. Which has relaxed the editor in my head by now to the point where I can tell it to shut up, and Ha…it will. I do not know if one can entirely get rid of that ingrained voice, “what would people say?” (which is very much in the voice of my grandmother). I do want to know what people would say. Is that a good enough reason? I ask this little voice, and for a while it leaves me alone.

There are aspects of poetry that I keep thinking about, but may never end up writing about, if it were not for writing about them here. In other words, I do not do the writing I do here, anywhere else in my life. Only once was this blog useful in a writing class when we had to write every week, and I could do it here, and it counted. The rest of the time I do it out of the sheer excitement of putting thoughs and words down and giving shape to what is whirling, swirling in my head. And the fact that all this may be of no use, somehow makes it more interesting to me. What use is writing a poem? Or painting a picture?

And here is a question I thought I will put out there:
What has poetry taught you?
I wonder if by next year I will have an answer. For me this year is a manuscript year. I have to, have to, have to put a manu-script together. Ok, there, now that I have said it there is no going back.

Writing into the void of the internet has been good to me. For which I am grateful. And thank you all for your thoughts and support, which always gives face to this void. Here is to another blog year.

Hope you enjoy it. I surely did, writing it. Dethe and I are thinking of collaborating again. Just waiting for that spark, which I think we had the other day, and now I wished I had written it down. These things we do not remember must be the perfect memories, they remain in the moment, you are left with the taste, the feeling, but not the words, or the actual. . . .memory that warps and changes over time, with every remembering. There is scientific backing to these claims. Honest. And it is as real as. . . this memory I am trying to recall.

But since memory fails lets get back to the present moment: I think now I can say we are “officially” married in poetry as well, Dethe and I. With this first publication between the two of us. Our credits: two kids, and one poem.

And now for the quote of the day:
My friend Rob sent me this quote a while back. And I have not been able to get it out of my head. So I thought I would post it here.

“Metaphor is the mind’s opposable thumb” —Cynthia Ozick

I also had this urge for a few minutes to launch into a meditation on hair as metaphor, a perfect moment for this post, but but … my head has been wrapped around submissions, submissions, submissions. A good substitute for Spring cleaning. So that may have to wait.

By the way, he had this idea to make one of those hair commercials, where the hair drops, shakes, and he turns around to face the camera, beard and all. We, and he especially, have been so crazy busy with work and keeping up with the kids that we never quite got around to it.

Go check out his before photo, and, please if you can, support the cause. All the money go to Children’s Hospital to support children and families affected by cancer and blood disorders and the hair goes for making wigs for kids.

There is no talking him out of it. Coincidentally, on Saturday evening (when he will already be bald) we are going to the Chicken and Egg Dance in support of local farmers.

Come back on Monday to see his after photo. He has already raised $300 and his goal is a $1000. Thanks again for your support.

So December is the time of year when I can burst into some Christmas tune, unconsciously, while washing dishes. Or while chopping some innocent vegetable.s, or while not writing christmas cards. (I have to apologize for that, but this year that is how life was. Some years I have been known to send out 50 or more, which I hope makes up for the years that I do not have the luxury to write detailed accounts, on cards drawn by my children, and individually decorated, i.e.when I do not have this time as vacation).

Ok, back to the Christmas songs. After I have started singing, it takes me a bit to realize that this cheerful and care free outburst is in fact a Christmas tune, and one that you cannot get out of your head. One that has got you instead. If I do not realize that, my kids are surely quick to remind me.

And then the startle, and a kind of horror grips me. Who is in charge here? That I do not even have the freedom to unconsciously sing what I wish? This should give you an idea of what December feels like to me.

But then comes the Solstice, with its promise for light. This year we missed the Festival of Lights, where we walk with lanterns, and other light sources, along the water to a fire display that ends up with lighting a sun and hot chocolate etc. I swear, it almost feels lighter after that. We seriously undermine these moments. This year few were willing to trudge through the snow, and there was a lot of it.
A couple of days after, on the 23rd is our anniversary which always seems overshadowed by the actual Christmas (believe it this time, finally, for real). Then, it is Christmas day.

We were happy to have my husband’s aunt (Jane) visit us for about eight days. The last time we saw her my son was six months old. Now he is eight. She arrived with the big snowfall. She left her hometown where it was 77 degrees F. The snow fell and fell and fell. It surely, and most definitely, was a white Christmas here. A little more white than anyone could have thought or anticipated. The first three days of the white fluffy stuff was exciting. My kids spend three to four hours a day outside building, playing, sledding etc. Then everyone was ready for it to be gone. Especially when the snow houses would not hold, or would start to collapse even while building them. But it kept on snowing. We kept on shoveling. We kept on not driving. There was no last minute panic. Because there was no last minute. We were all mesmerized. Now the snowflakes are large, now they stopped, now are these snowflakes or rain, now you wake up in the middle of the night and see it falling against the lamp posts, and there is no trace of all the shoveling from the day before.

We played lots of board games (Settlers of Catan, Seafarers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Apples to Apples, Carcassonne, Mancala, Scabble etc.) and wii games, and watched movies, and had a blast. We went to the Winter Harp concert on the 20th at the St. Andrews Wesley church. As usual they put on a great concert. I did miss the guy who read with them before. And some of the old stories. The new guy is ok, but I felt at times he was trying a bit too hard and that was distracting from the words and bringing the attention to the reader.

Now Christmas is gone. And it is the last few days before the closing of 2008. So if December is my least favorite month of the year (or to say the least, an ambivalent one), these last few days after Christmas are the ones that redeem it. It is quiet. Everyone is full, and satiated with turkey or some equivalent. Expectations are low. Presents are still exciting, and played with, maybe a bit too much (the kids got Spore this year).

And as the snow outside is melting, there is a kind of peace descending like snow. Settling. A time to look back. And be thankful. A time to look forward and be hopeful. A time to ignore the to-do-list a bit, because everyone will understand. And a time when I do not hear any christmas songs. As I said a quiet, peaceful time.