The inspiration for "open chakras"

In the picture you see Eero with his mother and maternal great-grandmother, attending the Robbie Burns Night in Picton, Prince Edward County, Ontario. The event is run at the Picton Legion by the Picton Legion Pipe band, of which my son Peter, Eero's father, is Pipe Major (leader of the band, for those who don't know what a Pipe major is.)

The morning after, in the Picton Harbour Restaurant, where we all met for breakfast, Eero, who is two, noticed the ceiling fan running above us, its light globe jiggling slightly, and said "flying light". I was so struck by the imagination there, and this fresh way of observing something we all take for granted that I wrote "open chakras", as today's poem.

wintering

I was at it again yesterday: shoveling four inches of snow out of my too-big driveway, path, front steps. The only advantages I can see to frequent renewal of snow depth are that the exercise is good for me, and the fresh snow covers all the gray road crap. Of course, this means that come the next thaw, we'll have an eyesore, but that's the nature of snow.

We have terrible cards at duplicate, Tuesday: I think I bid something like four times all afternoon. Most of what I could do was just furnish cards: no weird distributions, no high cards in particular. The only interesting factor was that all the other East-West pairs were just as frustrated as we were.

I am trying to take an adequate photo of Katisha (our Abyssinian kitten) to put up here. She is huge, fast, graceful (of course).

What happened to the snow

The first two shots show the city's loaders clearing snow from the boulevard in front of our house around midnight a few days ago.


These next shots show the state of the yard and street in front of our house after the warm spell of the last few days, when the temperature was warmer (15 degrees celsius) than it was in the first few days of July last summer (8 degrees celsius).

the basis of recent snow poems

Here are some pictures from the day after we received 50 cm of snow, with winds that left it a lot deeper than that where it drifted. On a clear day like the one shown, even the shadows in the snow are blue!

The poems in wordcurrents I wrote about the snow in latish December are based on this event.

"See Pap"

The title of this post for December 15 is a play on CPAP, the acronym for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. This is a device to overcome a condition called sleep apnea, in which the airway to the lungs is cut off during sleep. The device reminds me of Jonathan Swift's take on science: complicated silly invasive procedures applied to human problems.

Don't get me wrong: sleep apnea is a serious problem. But the apparatus you have to wear to solve it is silly-looking. Fortunately, it is worn in the privacy of your bedroom, and privacy should preserve one's dignity if one's spouse is not laughing too loud. I think comedians are missing a great sight gag here. Picture a huge clear plastic nose that you strap onto your face with a giant set of velcro-adjustable straps that hold it onto your head. Attached to that is a long corrugated plastic hose looking for all the world as if you are wearing a vacuum cleaner to bed.

Anyway, if this article does not convince you that I am serious, "See Pap" should.

Hmmm. Maybe I should write a poem about a guy who goes to bed with a vacuum cleaner on his face . . . .

podcast

Once again, I have posted a reading of one of my poems. This reading of "elephant waltz" is about two minutes long, in MP3 format. The file size is a tad larger than 2Mb. The poem is part of an experiment in rhythm. The rhythmic poems in this series are tagged under "rhythm" in the tag cloud at the bottom of the left column in wordcurrents. (Clicking on "rhythm" in the cloud, brings up excerpts from and links to all the poems with that tag.)

Here is a direct link to the reading: elephant waltz podcast

wordcurrents is fixed

It turns out the problem was not a hacker, but some internal security software that accidentally identified me as a malicious fiend intent on destroying the blog and world peace or something. A great many conscientious bloggers who use this software were locked out of their own blogs. Here is a link to a discussion of the problem: Bad Behaviour

Yesterday's poem, which, because of the screw up, I was not able to post until today, is "garrison there", which deals with the issue of barricading ourselves against enemies who may be out there. I have included this poem in the Lotus Eaters series. That series continues later today (December 6) with "garrison here".