Travelling

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!

Recording the poems

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.

The snow poems

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.

Back at last!

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.

Writing "Pivotal instant"

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.

Trouble in digital land

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.

Gulp

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.