This was going to be a post about how we finally got snow today, and I have a picture to prove it:
However, there is another, more significant "at last": our daughter just gave birth (three weeks overdue) to her first child, a boy, 8 lb 2 oz. That was what we went out to Vancouver for, and missed. We are pleased that mother, son and father are all well. Here is a family photo:
There was a dreamlike quality to our stop in Jasper. We detrained for about an hour, then waited in the station for time to board. They served champagne in the dome car, as they did leaving Toronto and Winnipeg. Just after I put my camera in its bag, as we were picking up speed, it was announced that the engineer had spotted elks on the left. I scrambled to get my camera back out, but watched about a dozen elk slip by before my camera was ready to shoot.
To the right is the inside of the station in Jasper. This is a train station with character.
In the poem, I speak of drivers in the west: they are trained to stop for pedestrians; if you step off a curb, anywhere, they stop for you to cross. I can see westerners getting into trouble in the east: eastern drivers have difficulty in Cornwall stopping for official flashing amber crosswalks. It got so bad, they had to change a pedestrian crosswalk in the east end of town into a red-amber-green signalled stop.
I wrote this poem November 20, shortly before we left on our trip out west. That seems so long ago. I have revised it significantly form the original draft: the last line in particular has been a subject of some sport for me. The tree in question (see photo to the right) is the tallest in the centre of the city, some eighty feet, I estimate. It is much taller than it appears in the photo; I used auto stitch to join two photos of it that I took a few moments ago. note how the photo tapers at the top. The tree seemingly taller in the foreground to the right is actually considerable shorter, if you consder that I was shooting up at quite an angle for the top of this. In years that huge murders of crows flock to the centre of the city, they seem to focus over that tree, often filling its branches as prodigiously as the leaves. Local tree firms are hesitant to consider pruning it, so large and dangerously close to property is it. I wonder what the future holds?
Here is another image of northern Ontario, taken from the lounge car. I like the contrast between the frozen evergreens outside, and the colourful flower arrangement inside.
To the left is a town we passed late in the day. see the light at the horizon.
The link for the title of this piece takes you to the whole category of poems I posted in my blog (and will continue to post there) . Here is a photo of the staircase in the lounge car:
The cars (manufactured in 1950) used to belong to the Candian Pacific Railway (CPR), which ran a little to the south of the Canadian National Railway (CNR). They are stainless steel and very art deco. In the photo, you can see the dome, which gives a 360 degree view of everything.
Here is a unique view out the rear of the train, through the lounge window:
In future posts, I shall give you other views, some particularly inspirational with regard to particular poems.
We are back from a wonderful visit to Vancouver and Vancouver Island. The wierd weather there on the west coast co9ntinued with heavy winds and attendant trees down, high surfs, power outages supplied by the "Pineapple Clipper" (heavy winds from Hawaii.) They were reporting winds at sea in the realm of one hundred knots, and seas over forty feet.
I took a lot of pictures and some video on the train trip out, and will post a few here soon. Lots of potry drafts, some of which I have posted from my sister's on Vancouver Island, and my daughter's in Kitsilano (a Vancouver district).
More when we are settled again.
Flora and I are taking a cross-country trip by train, starting tomorrow, December 1. We leave Cornwall at 11 am, arrive at Guildwood in Toronto/Scarborough at about 4 pm, stay with Bassermanns overnight, catch the Blue and Silver to Vancouver at 9 am Saturday, arrive in Vancouver at about 8 am Tuesday. There is supposed to be Internet access on the train. We'll see.
I am going to write, play Gin Rummy with Flora, take photos, and see this vast country. Trip of a lifetime. I am going to try posting some poems during the trip. I hope to keep the blog going with preposts. We have arranged housesitters, car rental, flight back, places to stay. Kowabunga!
I have started on a project to record my poems. It is a pretty complex operation, as first I have to choose between video and purely audio recordings, then I have to consider background sounds. I am using a Logitck bluetooth microphone to allow me to get away from teh computer, which is pretty noisy. The bluetooth seems to let me get about fifteen feet away before sound quality deteriorates too significantly. I think I should look for a better venue. Poetry has enough against it to have to fight poor sound or video quality too. I spent some time yesterday looking for a video camera . . .
My first attempt is an audio only reading of Dawn's Still Light, recorded by Audacity software using the bluetooth headset. A whole new dimension of presentation.
I have started writing a series of twelve poems that I call The Snow Poems. They are based on a found poem that I discovered, listing the eleven Inuit words for snow. I have known about the list for some time, but when I saw the list, it struck me that it is a sort of poetry in its own right, hence the found poem. I have printed the list in the intro at the top of the page on wordcurrents.
I have found the writing of this series to be a trip down memory lane for me, because I grew up in the North, where there was really a lot more snow and cold than I experience in Southern Ontario; for example, I can recall walking a mile and change to school with my sister, who was in grade four at the time: the temperature was fifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit below zero. At that temperature, your breath freezes right out of your lips. Your tears freeze on your eyelashes. You have to keep a scarf or your hand in front of your mouth so the inside of your mouth does not freeze when you inhale. I delivered the mail one Christmas vacation in my hometown of Kirkland Lake while I was in University: the warmest the temperature got each day at noon was thirty four degrees below zero, Fahrenheit.
Ah, the good old days.
I have not been able to log into this blog since about November 10, even though I had many things worth saying (which I have since forgotten, of course.)
We completed our very successful Barbershop concert last night, to raves. I wrote a poem about the day leading up to the concert, which I read at the traditional After Glow, when all the acts get up and perform again, for their peers after the show. I was asked to post it on our barbershop forum, which I did, although it is not available to the genral public, but I did also post it in wordcurrents. It is called "Water works". I have posted today's entry for wordcurrents (my 300th new poem posted there! yippee!). It is about the show and the After Glow, and is called "Barbershop's big night in Cornwall".
Just in case you are interested, our C-Way Sound Barbershop Chorus website (which I run) is at cwaysound.ca/
By the way, one of my earlier poetry posts this past week in wordcurrents, "cast X upon the waters", is attracting some fans in Zeugma poetry forum. It is about women's vote. It comes out of some comments Flora made about how some women don't vote, and how this ignores what women went through to get a vote. It is worth reading.
Back to work.
This piece, "Pivotal instant" was inspired by a scene in Sin City. In the scene, Bruce Willis' character, Hartigan, is sitting on the couch with Nancy (Jessica Alba), alone in their motel room, having a long-awaited reunion. She wants to kiss him, but he — the noble ex-copper, who rescued her when she was seven years old, and went through hell to protect her — says "No". Then there is a hesitation all reticence fades, and they kiss. The poem is that moment between the "No" and the "Yes".
I have often considered that instant between reluctance and agreement, between neutrality and partisanship, between indifference and conviction, between separation and union. I am also interested in the dithering that happens before one of a pair makes a commitment to reveal a secret, a passion, a secret desire. There is that moment of fear when you are afraid you will ruin all possibility of getting closer to the person, but you take the leap anyway. Sometimes it fails, often it succeeds.
I find that intriguing. I am sure it will be a theme in my writing, as it has already been.
Last night, as I was cleaning up one of my hard drives, it started going kablooy — that is the technical term; for the lay persons in my readership, that means the directories started showing only one or two letters of the filenames.
I knew something was wrong: I called it a night, but first, I shut down my CPU and started Spinrite, (which I purchased legally from GRC), and went to bed. It ran for seven hours and told me there was nothing wrong with my main drive. Tonight, I shall have to run it on my secondary drive. What Spinrite does is diagnose the drive and if possible, fix what is wrong with it, one bit at a time.
There is always tension underlying our use of computers: we don't really understand what is going on; as a result, knowing it can all come crashing down makes papyrus storage at the great library in Alexandria seem very attractive.
I sent off my entry to the CBC Literary Awards before the deadline (today, November 1).
By the time one gets to the final umpteenth rewrite of something this long, it starts to nauseate. I have had that experience before: I get to the point where I start to dislike the piece intensely, wonder how anyone could like it, and start to debate whether it is worth paying twenty bucks to have someone read it. I wonder how any writer can go on a book tour, for instance, and wax lyrical about something that has become such a chore to approach. The awards are announced in February. Maybe by that time I will like it again.
I had a fruitful telephone conference with Linda and Stacy, the MCs for our barbershop show November 18, Daddy Sang Bass. They are going to be just what we want: fun! Now all I have to do is write the script; fortunately, we don't need a lot of material, just fast, funny, witty and brilliant. (sigh)
I am thinking of posting "Remembrance at the War Museum" in WritersBeat.com. I have already posted it in Zeugma, where it was well-received. With Remembrance Day coming up, maybe I should think of sending it to the local newspaper, although with their sloppy standards of typography and editing, you really take your chances submitting poetry.
"It never rains but it pours" is a suitable motto for my present situation: not only is it almost perpetually raining, but I seem to go from one review to the next these days. At least, we are attending plays every few days it seems, and of course, I am reviewing them. As I write this, I am just finishing my review of Vagabond Theatre's production of David Belke's comedy That darn plot, which, except for some directorial choices and technical issues, I liked. Within the past couple of weeks, I posted reviews on GCTC's The Oxford Roofclimber's Rebellion by Stephen Massicotte (two days ago), and NAC's The Dream Machine by Blake Brooker. In just two more weeks, I shall be up to NAC for another play.
Our Barbershop Chorus' show, Daddy Sang Bass, in which I sing baritone (not being Daddy, I guess) hits the boards at Aultsville Theatre on November 18 at 8 pm. We are working for a sellout.
The deadline for my poetry entry in the CBC Literary Awards is fast approaching (November 1). I am still revising it. Fortunately, I can submit it by email, so a last minute submission is okay. The word length is 1000 - 2000 words, and I am coming in at 1546 at present. This is the kind of poem I like best: long. I cannot write more about it here until the judging is over, as the entries have to be submitted anonymously.
I have a conference by phone later today with my dramaturg for a murder script I am writing, and a script phone conference Tuesday with the MCs for the Barbershop show, for which I am also doing layout for the printed program.
It just keeps on raining showbiz.
I was just speaking to my buddy, Bill Roddy, who is an accomplished actor, heavily involved in all aspects of theatre. Bill is currently a member of the cast of Vagabond Theatre's production of That Darned Plot by David Belke. He tells me that they have been playing to a handful of patrons each night.
In some ways this is a puzzling development; in other ways not. It is puzzling in that Vagabond Theatre has developed a loyal following over more than two decades. In a small city like Cornwall, that should count for something. It is not puzzling in that the venue for the play is much too large; any audience that does show up always comes away with a sense that the community is not really into this venture. Of course, there are two aspects to theatre production that affect theatre attendance, and they are almost totally unrelated: production quality and good old selling hustle. You can have all the quality in the world, but if you do not have the hustle, nobody will know you exist. I think that as far as Vagabond Theatre is concerned, they have not hustled. The same is true of many community ventures: you can't resent your audience for not showing up; you have to rethink the selling side of the venture and get some real hustlers out there pushing it.
It would be a shame to lose Vagabond Theatre, but, then, very few community theatre groups survive very long. We'll be there Saturday. I hope a lot of other people will, too.
First, since this is a blog about wordcurrents, I will mention my Sapphic stanzas poem, "Remembrance at the War Museum", in which I speak of the emotionally charged tour Flora and I took through there with good friends Jane and John Cornwall, who were visiting from Mississauga, and who had visited us with the idea of visiting the museum, along with the Petra exhibit at the Museum of Civilization, across the river in Gatineau (Hull) Quebec. Both museums are within a few blocks of each other, have indoor parking, and are administratively connected so that you can purchase combined tickets to exhibits at both, as the "Civilization" link above indicates.
We visited on a Monday, and there were hardly any people in the vast place. I would recommend Monday as a pretty good time to visit. Parking was not expensive, nor did we have very far to walk to the stairs/elevator. By the way, the web site lists dates and times and conditions in which admission is free, although I imagine the parking fee is still charged.
So much for admin details.
I learned quite a bit from the first exhibit we saw: Clash of Empires: The War That Made Canada 1754-1763 — I had no idea that war started in Pittsburgh, nor that Winston Churchill had called the Seven Years War "The first world war." There were many interesting touches, video and artifacts, displays and documents, that were very interesting, showing such details as Washington's early campaigns while he was still fighting for England. There were knowledgeable volunteer guides there and really in aboth museums, who were really helpful. This is not a permanent exhibit, so if you are interested, I suggest you get in there this fall.
I really will let "Remembrance at the War Museum" do most of my speaking for me, although I will say this: some striking aspects of the exhibit are Hitler's actual open-topped black Mercedes-Benz with bullet-spattered windshields and photos of him in it, a realistic view of Normandy beach from inside a landing craft, the stories of several wartime internees from that insanely black part of our history, and much more, including a wonderful encounter with two vet volunteers.
The Virtual museum site is also a rich source of material. Either way, especially at this time of year, these things are worth thinking about.
This trip inspired "Blue"; as you can see, there is a lot of blue in the photo.
This is a view downstream (towards the north-east) at the head of Lake St. Francis in the St.Lawrence Seaway. To starboard is one of the green winter stick-buoys marking the south (Quebec) side of the channel. What a beautiful day this was. All of the land masses visible in this shot are islands. Below is an enlargement of the horizon, showing the little floating islands that really seem to inhabit a never-land between earth and sky.
Here is the photo of one of the scenes that inspired "Wet snow", the little poem that I just published in wordcurrents. We were driving home from an afternoon with friends, playing bridge, when the rain turned to snow. Back home, I took this photo with flash off the deck in our back yard. You can see the snow on the horizontal leaves. There is a fragility to this delicate scene; you can see why trees with leaves have to be deciduous in our climate.
"Four percent" is a screed and a sort of a poem that I published yesterday in wordcurrents. As I was writing it, I was thinking of the Star Trek the Next Generation episode in which the Enterprise crew captures a warrior who has been genetically modified into the perfect fighting machine; and after he and his brethern have won the war for his civilization, they are exiled to a moon. They are only dangerous when threatened. Like so many SNG plots, this one is related to actual human archtypes, in this case, the psychopath, whom research has shown was necessary for human survival in more primitive times (and, I would argue, today and tomorrow), but is unacceptable in present "civilized" society. I suppose John Rambo is another example, or just about any lost veteran who can't fit in after the fighting is over.
I see "Four percent" as a template for some future poems that are more like poetry, because I think there is a lot of pathos and therefore poetic subject matter in such a subject. The psychopath has several characteristics of the tragic figure: alienation, isolation, a tragic flaw — all built in.
Another current literary example of the interesting psychopath is the main character in HBO's new series on the Movie Network: Dexter. This is CSI is Jack the Ripper is Sherlock Holmes *shudder*. Here is a serial killer who works to solve crimes by day and secretly hunts down and kills serial killers by night. The interesting twist on this is that Dexter himself is being stalked. It would be even more interesting if the stalker were his sister, an apparently not-so-smart police woman he helps progress through the ranks by giving her clues that make her appear smarter than she is.
I was just reading Alison Pick's winning entry for the most recent awards. If you click on the title above, or this link — CBC Literary Awards 2006 — you will open a window on the links to all the winners from last year. Pick's entry is pretty impressive.
When one enters one of these contests, it is useful to be able to read previous winners, just so you can allow yourself to fall into the morass of despond and not expect too much. * signs and pounds forehead *
The winners are published in Air Canada's En Route Magazine, which appends the following disclaimer:
"The views expressed by the writers do not represent the views of enRoute, Spafax or Air Canada. Certain readers may be offended by the contents."
Don't you love it? More of Big Brother looking out for those of us who may be offended. I think there are a lot of people in this world who should be offended more often. Just in our own country they should be offended by child poverty, homelessness, the hoarding of wealth — and the list goes on; don't get me started.
On that subject, I am offended by the huge number of times TV programs warn us after each commercial break that "the following program may contain scenes of nudity, violence and coarse language. Viewer descretion is advised" — and then after they've gotten my hopes up, the closest thing to nudity is an occasional unclad family pet, the closest thing to coarse language wouldn't be bleeped on The Actors Studio and the violence is all about the same as you see on the street at noon. I recall sending a letter home to parents in the seventies, when we decided to show Roman Polanski's MacBeth* to students in the school auditorium. I told them that the film was reputed to have a nude scene and considerable violence. The only reaction I got back from the parents was that they applauded our decision to show the kids saw something with some issues in it, keep up the good work. The film really impressed the kids, and the followup classroom discussions were very productive. About ten years later, I showed the same film, and found the kids giggling at the gory death scenes, then realized, during the followup discussions that they were seeing the gore through the filter of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which I think may have used the same costumes. How times change.
* Produced, dear readers, by Playboy Magazine
The CBC Literary Awards deadline is November 1. I have just realized, upon reading the rules, that I cannot submit any of the 260+ poems I have published so far this year in wordcurrrents, nor any of the other poems I have published in the three poetry forums I post in.
Interesting limitation; interesting complication. Fortunately, I still have time to work on my entry of 1,000 - 2,000 words of verse. But, in the meantime, I am trying to learn the music for our concert November 18, and work on the playscript. If I still had a job, I would probably have time to do this; but since I am retired, it is quite hopeless. Now we know what a job is for: to protect one from the demands on free time.
I had better get going on writing todays' poem for wordcurrents; I haven't even decided yet what it will be. I drove the boat down river to the marina for winter storage today. Beautiful bright calm day for a ten kilometre trek by boat. Maybe I'll write about that.
I just discovered the other day that I can set up registration in wordcurrents so that readers can subscribe to the blog and receive emails when I post something. The email list is set up by category, so that readers only receive posts related to categories they pick.
In my case, if they choose "theatre reviews" they will receive about two or three emails per month; but if they select "poetry", they will be bombarded every day at least once. I suppose that if I post, then edit the same posting two or three times, as I sometimes do, they will receive an email every time. Yikes!
I'm wondering what my friends will think if they visit the site and don't join? Will they be pissed off? Will I?
The advantage is that I can send a massive email to all my registered subscribers if I have something momentous to say.
I have been amazed at the geographical spread of readership: China, Australia, Morrocco, India, USA, Canada, Argentina, UK, Austria, UAE . . . the list goes on. Some readers stay a while, too. I have also been amazed by the erudition of the readers.
I think a reason I am glad to give readers the ability to register is that it gives me more of a sense of dialogue. Most readers seem very reluctant to comment. This may be a way of making them feel more like saying something. I sure hope so.
Since this is about wordcurrents, you have to be able to find it: wordcurrents
wordcurrents is an outlet for my poetry and theatre reviews.
As of today, October 15, I have posted 264 of my own new poems there, since February 14, 2006, more than one per day. I have taken part in three poetry forums as riverwriter, using the avatar below to the right, which I think is a pretty good likeness:
If you want to see more about me, you can visit my Zoints profile, which has a photo taken last year, which is nothing like my avatar, although some people think it actually has some resemblance to me; I can't see it, but that may be vanity.
If you don't want to visit Zoints, just know that I am a Canadian writer living in Ontario pretty close to the easternmost point at which the St. Lawrence River is the northern border of New york State, Whenre New york, Ontario, Quebec and Akwesasne meet. Akwesasne is the Rez where my summer cottage is, but more about that in future.
One of the things I'll be discussing here is gathering my poetry together into coherent collections. When you publish a new poem every day, obviously some of it is not worth collecting; but some of it is, and finding it in a blog of this size is not simple, hence the collections.
riverwriter
