me and the lovely Sandy Lam 

We just got notification from the Canada Council today. So Roy Miki, Fred Wah, Marilyn Dumont, Wayde Compton, Hiromi Goto, Ashok Mathur, Glen Lowry and yours truly are on our way to a big CanLit blowout in Taiwan. A few of us will go on to Japan afterwards.

Going to Asia feels like going to the future. All the architecture and technology is sleeker, faster, better-designed. It’ll be interesting to bring Canadian critical thinking/politics there, and our open-ended ways writing/performing. The last time I went to Taiwan, I had a chance to talk to people about some pretty interesting stuff– what it’s like to be the citizen of a small country lying in the shadow of a major world power, the effects successive waves of colonization on language and culture, what it’s like to live intimately with new technologies. Yes, I’m wired, but in Taiwan people are really jacked in. Especially young people. I had a long conversation with a young woman there about how she met her boyfriend. The whole conversation revolved around cel phones– the etiquette, the nuances, what kinds of connections they do and don’t make possible, and also the object-ness of the thing. Style, line, size, all that. Hers was pink and sleek, and a third the size of the smallest phone I’ve seen in North America.

It’s not a nightmare, Loch. The Boogerman is real.  

late september blue. i work on my grant. i read a good chunk of ruth ozecki’s All Over Creation and envy yummy fuller’s nerve. i plot the future– next month’s travels to france, spain, taiwan and japan. i’m excited, but also tired and overwhelmed. when the road comes for me i do embrace it.

carmen’s brother’s band Light City Fiction is awesome. i go to barfly after supper to hear them. singapore sam’s for spring rolls and a plate of noodles afterwards. our gifts are many, our curses are many. the balance teeters cheerfully up and down.

Applying for grants pushes at least eleven of my twenty-nine buttons. Getting rear-ended by some ditzy guy on my way to yoga did not help. Fortunately the damage was minor– just a couple of scratches. But I’m cranky about it. My new car! (Motor vehicles = massive guilty pleasure.)I did my sun salutes. I breathed. It helped. I am almost human. Then I went to the pink house to drop off a sacro wedgy for Aruna. (Ask me if you’re interested. These things are amazing.) Thought I’d feed the dog and cat, since it was supper time. Animals happily munching away. I went to the community notepad to document the feedings only to find Sharron with 2 rrrrs’ had been there before me. Oops. Oh well, the fat cat will get fatter. The skinny dog– well, it can’t hurt her can it? Speaking of ditzy…. Uh. Hi!
I drink wine. I nibble salami and tuscany ham, walnuts and raisins while I cook. It’s going to be a good supper I think– a stew of buffalo sausage, lentils, squash, carrots, green and yellow beans, a bit of tomato, garlic, thyme from my porch, some bay leaves, lovely salt from my real true visit to Guerande, and the secret ingredient– a pinch or two of Madras curry. My dear South Asian friends: look away. I know Madras curry is a cheat. I know you’re not supposed to put it in stew. Especially meat-eating Western hippie type stew. But it perks things up so nicely. My hybridities are getting away on me. Mea culpa, mea culpa. The brown rice is nearly done. See you tomorrow!

There is something East Coast about dinner at the Derkson/Gamble house. Champagne on the deck, then inside to candles, bread, cheese, summer sausage, pumpkin soup, roast pork, potatoes. Cozy catchup, my hairless godson stares wide wide wide-eyed. When the world is new, everything is delightful, so laugh little boy, laugh. The pupils of his eyes look like the eyes of my dancing Toronto friends on E.

We plot to disturb Alberta. We gossip and puzzle, external internal, who does what and why. Why we choose what we choose, and where it lands us. Our own guilts, culpabilities, desires and foibles. This is a transitional time of life, and a transitional time of year.

In this house I am all full tummy and warm lights. We drink, we laugh. I fall asleep on the couch. Jay covers me with many blankets. But afterwards, when the tired family has gone to bed, my contacts get dry. I slip out the back door into the quiet city. The witches are asleep, and the business men haven’t yet got out of bed. The road is mine, the moon is mine. The city is dark and empty. I accept the cool quiet. It isn’t the gift I wanted, in spite of its perfect beauty. I get home. I crawl into my own bed and sleep.

always the representation, never the thing. never the thing, always the desire. never the desire, always the gap. never the gap, always the motion. you can’t hold the motion, you can’t stop the water. the river doesn’t progress, it descends. what doesn’t move doesn’t live. what doesn’t fear doesn’t feel. what doesn’t feel doesn’t risk. what doesn’t risk doesn’t know. what doesn’t know cannot move. we plunge into tomorrow without armour. it could be soft, it could be sharp, it could be cold. it could drown us. the cliff’s edge beckons, this way this way. we could sprout wings. we could turn to stone. the sun warms our backs. we love the heat but cannot stay.

the same river twice 

snow moss water 

Ribbon Falls