We have pink spirreas which will not be out for some time. These are out now, and really make a show. If the sun comes out before the rain bashes them down, I'll take some more sunny photos of them. All this, and lilacs, too!
Blogger is based on web 2.0 (interactive online) software, and so is my main blog, wordcurrents. Both seriously let me down today, causing me to lose hours of work, and making me rethink the way I blog.
Let me explain: yesterday, I saw Copper Thunderbird, in the English Theatre at the NAC in Ottawa. I rose this morning at 5 am to start writing my review in wordcurrents, which is based on WordPress, which has an automatic backup feature, which backs up your work each time you stop typing. An hour and a half later, I discovered a typo, backspaced to correct it, and inadvertently deleted everything. When I stopped to back up my browser to reclaim the work, it had already backed up the deletion over my work. Everything was gone.
I took some time off to stop screaming (or whatever I was doing that passed for a reaction), then came back to platinum river, here, to complain under the title above. At one point, I thought it would be neat to post a photo of my irate face with the article. I opened my photo editor to find such a shot, the editor froze, requiring me to reboot, and I came back to Blogger discover that the only part of the article that still existed was the title, which you see above.
Moral: from now on, write articles in WordPerfect, which has appropriate backup routines, then post. (Now, repeat, one thousand times . . . .)
[I accidentally posted this as a blank post with just a title; I'm going to become gun-shy of posting at all.]
I am really caught on the horns of a dilemma about posting a new poem every day in wordcurrents. On the one horn, the discipline of having to meet that daily deadline is really good for my writing bones; on the other, I am flooded with early drafts (consecutive daily poem 482 today).
Last night, after the movie (I saw Lucky You, with Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana — enjoyed it.) I realized I had not yet written the day's poem. I sat down at the computer, wrote the poem "parking lot", in about three minutes, posted it, and started wondering once again if I should keep doing it. But now that I am writing this piece, I think I see the benefit my craft receives from the exercise. I have come to be able to write "on command" ("By your command", as the Cylons used to say, in the earlier Battlefield Galactica, is fairly appropriate; it feels kind of robotic: I just decide on a topic or image or experience, how I feel about it, and start.) Last night, on the way home, we stopped in the Tim Horton parking lot so that Gilles' brother, Denis, could get a takeout coffee. While we were there, and as Gilles and I spoke idly about the experience of sitting there, I formed the image of desolation that it was, and started processing the experience that later became the poem.
When I sat down to write, I had no idea what the poem would be, but I did not have much time, so I just started writing without thinking about it. The poem is simple, not very ambitious, but adequate.
So I guess I will keep doing it for the time being. This blog, being a diary, reminds me a what diary researcher said: the one thing all diaries have in common is that everybody dies, and they (the diaries) all come to an end. I wonder where this will end?
I was sitting the other evening in our GP's waiting room. I had some prescriptions to renew, and this is the drill: I call his office; the receptionist gives me an appointment; they call a few days later to change the appointment; I arrive a few minutes early, ask if there is a long wait, am told there is not; an hour and change later I am still waiting, but I have accomplished something: I brought my pen and notepad and have written sketches of "lotus eaters 7" as well as 8, 9, and 10, and notes for several other poems.
I don't know what it is about doctors' offices. I can write volumes of stuff there. Maybe it is the slim chance of being interrupted that propels me. Anyway, "lotus eaters 8" came out of hearing the receptionist and somebody else speaking just below the range of my comprehension while an office radio tuned to the local schlock station was grinding out commercial-laden radio, also, just below the level of comprehension, if there is anything to be comprehended there. We usually have CBC One playing at our house, well out of the range of my office. The only sound I have here is the ventilation fan and the occasional rumble of traffic on the street, which is on the main downtown thoroughfare in the heart of this "big city" of forty-five thousand.
Back to the poems. They seem to be turning to subtleties -- that may render them less attractive; however, they are just sketches preliminary to a larger work that may be one poem; hence the sometimes obscure nature of these pieces.
