Author: Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

Inaugural Trotsky Tuesday

I used to think that I wanted to make a baseball card art collection of anarchists and revolutionaries, but I’ll do this instead. Each week I’ll present an agitator new to me — or an old friend. I don’t know if I would have liked Emma Goldman in real life… she’d have a lot to say about how lazy I am, although I’m working on it.

Emma Goldman on Wikipedia.

A review of her autobiography on C4SS

She lived in Toronto for a while. Every time I walked or took transit past Dundas and Spadina, I would think of her. I wrote a story about her and Kropotkin when I was living in Montréal; if I find it I’ll append it although I will probably need to retype the damned thing if I do find it.

recording sesh

Recorded ten songs – archival quality, if I was doing it nicey nice it would be 4 – with Anthony at 12th St Sound this morning. I’ve preposted some already.

Had a fantastic time, will definitely go back.

Katie’s going great guns on getting the rental into shape. She’s a force of nature, that woman.

560 new words today on UPSUN

Honestly I feel really happy right now.

Inaugural Maudlin Monday

Well hello folks! To be maudlin, that is, tearfully sentimental, is not at all hard for me. I cry readily, although with irritation because if go longer than 30 seconds or start sobbing, it messes with my head and makes my eyes feel scoured.

Today I want to be maudlin about me auld mither. She is loved and respected and honoured because she’s lovable and respectable and honourable. She’s a fan of science so she does change her mind from time to time about quite important things. This makes her unusual.  Her kindness, quick thinking and competence are a wonder to experience.

 

Continue reading Inaugural Maudlin Monday

Song of the Day – Bruise

There’s a bruise on my heart where the words went through
Green and purple and black and blue
and it doesn’t really matter if they were true
Green and purple and black and blue
The world will turn, my heart still yearn
and fire burn — I’ll never learn
just what it was this love was for
I don’t think that I’ll need it any more

Just a primate sittin’ in the rain
Not imagining that I’m still sane
Hunting for a hit of novocaine
but there’s no monopoly on pain

Buddies tell me keep your chin up, dear
Tears keep swan-diving into my beer
opportunists whisper in my ear
thanks, I’m drunk enough, I’m outta here

I’d invent a thousand words just to see your face
sit at your feet again and share your space
it was all a golden coin time cannot debase
though it SINKS IN THE WELL OF LIFE WITHOUT A TRACE

There’s a bruise on my heart where the words went through
Green and purple and black and blue
and it doesn’t really matter if they were true
Green and purple and black and blue

AKA THE REJECTION SENSITIVITY DYSPHORIA song

What’s the best advice you ever got

In this inaugural Sunday Survey…

What’s the best advice you ever received? If that’s too big, how about

for your health?

for your relationships?

for your career?

regarding your creativity?

re your pets?

re your schooling?

re money?

re gift ideas?

from a dream?

from a book?

Now think about the person who gave you that advice, and think about how it was given, and if that had anything to do with why you wanted to take it.

Send a brief thanks out into the world in that person’s honour, and resolve to be that kind of person.

Song of the Day – Crazymaking Boy

So this is for Paul, and Mike, and Tom, and Katie’s singing in the background, and it’s off my album Mama’s Got Skills (Katie named it), engineered by Gord Breckenridge. I think that’s possibly the drummer from Fleetwood Mac on the prerecorded drumtrack.

This song comes very close to being commercial. Most of my songs do not even skirt around being commercial, being out in that big ol’ left field.

You are the one I’m plotting crime with
The one I’m spending time with
The one my senses rhyme with
my crazymaking boy

You are my hero from a fable
My supper on the table
My ready willing able

my crazymaking boy

Everything you do just comes out fine
I don’t know how you do it
I’m just glad I’m living through it
Everything you say just comes out fine
I’m in some new dimension
I guess I’d better pay attention

You are the pin that burst my bubble
My vision going double
Another word for Trouble
My crazymaking boy

You are the one who brought me fire
The one who pulled the wire
Personified desire
My crazymaking boy

Crazymaking boy…. X 8

 

wonderful outing, terrible weather

The weather is heinous, unconscionable, loathsome and ghastly, but it is Vancouver in January, so….

Finished the biscotti around 11:30, borrowed the car just before noon, and delivered biscotti to Cindy (also returned her Christmas themed cookie tin, you always hope they come back but they don’t necessarily) and then drove to Tom and Peggy’s- their car was gone so I left it with the Globe and Mail on their front porch – then went to Planet Bachelor and gave the biscotti to Paul and met Katie on her way out the door (no Alex, he’s at his pop’s) to clean the new place on 15th which will need a new sobriquet, I’m thinking Generations. It is big. I mean this is a big, big four bedroom apartment. Open plan, perfect for a family. I joined her and cleaned two things and loaded toilet paper into all the johns and toured the joint and tried not to make work for Katie.

Then Mike showed up (the one she’s sweet on, not the one I hang out with and who gave us an Oculus for Christmas) and you’re not supposed to jump up and down and howl like a mofo when people lose weight so I said what I always say when people lose a lot of weight I pretend I’m sad and say, “But there’s so much less of you to love,” and his eyes kinda bugged out for a second and he said is it that noticeable and I said, “Oh yeah.”

So there’s me being dashed far from appropriate, and then the next thing outta my mouth is the classic, “You’re timing’s perfect, I just put biffy paper in all the johns,” BECAUSE THERE ARE THREE FUCKING JOHNS four if you count the one next to the laundry room downstairs but that one’s shared – and I guess I realized it was time to go. Did I mention the Jacuzzi? The square dance hall sized covered rear deck? the CHANDE FUCKING LIER? I’m leaving shit out, mOm, so I can ambush you with it later.

He went to her place – Katie cracked up as she thought of him scaring the shit out of the boys using her key. But he was going to help her move some stuff into the house, so that’s the kind of lad he is, immediately helpful and undemanding. And I thought I do not want to be here when he gets back.  I thought I’d pick up sushi but I just didn’t want to, so I went to buy stamps and went to choices and got salad and chocklit and chicken on skewers and made a late lunch and we watched the Saxon Hoard special on Time Team.

Now I’m thinking I’m going to nap and be happy in my sleep for a while, because I can’t tell you how happy I am for being wide awake at the moment. If I can sleep at all for the noise the wind is making, it’s quite unreal. Aw damn, I have to put the food away first….

Reasonably productive day

Shopping; didn’t get to Al P.’s New Years Walk in Trout Lake, le sigh, made pizza, wrote and mailed a letter to my mOm, made biscotti dough, three loads of laundry washed and dried and sort of staged for being put away, recorded Bob Dylan’s New Years Day.

This morning I shall bake biscotti and then deliver it to the deserving and the undeserving alike. Then I’ll probably make another batch because otherwise it’s too much room in the fridge as it chills.

Continue reading Reasonably productive day

Sorry Isaac, I had a stray thought and now you must pay

HOW doth the little anarchist
Improve each shining hour,
And gather intel all the day
With all her might and power.

How skilfully she builds her cell; 5
How neat she pubs her works,
And labours hard to feed it well
and shelter it from jerks.

In works of labour or of skill,
I would be busy too; 10
For fascists find some mischief still
For idle hands to do.

In books, or work, or armed revolt,
Let my first years be passed;
That I may give for every day 15
Some good account at last.

So, you may ask, where in the entire body of Christ did this come from, and my abashed answer is that I was writing a hymn, which just came to me sudden-like.

Shall I improve
this shining hour
with some new good
oh my lord
I will take shelter
in your song
Though days be hard
and nights be long

And then of course I stopped, because I knew that ‘improve the shining hour’ was a quote, and apart from being certain it wasn’t shakespear I was kinda stuck.

So I looked it up, and it was Isaac Watts, “How doth the little busy bee” and I immediately took in the poem and decided within about five seconds to rewrite it as an anarchist children’s poem. So here it is. I leapt from one song to another in the space of a heartbeat, and that really does sum me up don’t it.

2020 Accomplishments

2020

Went to not one but two parties on New Year’s Day

Had really nice restaurant meal at Hart House

Found out the name of a good mechanic in WA state on the highway towards Seattle

Wrote “Snow Poem” Jan 16

Called Stefan Molyneux an unregenerate Nazi sockwad

Wrote “how to write down music when you don’t know how to read it.”

Failed entertainingly as the Toasted Master of Conflikt XIII at the end of January.

In February, saw Hannah Gadsby, performing “Douglas” with my cousin Alexis.

Started making whole wheat flower rolls, pizza and cinnamon sticks as part of my diet issues.

Got myself diagnosed for ADD in October.

Wrote the song “I’m going to have to ask the smart people to leave”

Wrote the poem ‘membrane’

Found out about Stella the Talking Dog and my life got way better. Started thinking, in consequence, about training Buster….

Wrote a doggerel song called The Driving Instructor

Got a song on ‘filkcast’

Attended a simply fantastic Dunnett Spit at Sandbar in February.

Wrote “Thorfinn’s Song (The Standard of the Crow)

9 posted destiel fics totalling eighty thousand words

Wrote another six more but they aren’t completely edited and clean.

Wrote song “This is just a test”

Posted the overview of a script – Earthquake Tourists

As far as I can tell, caught and survived the first iteration of 2019 COVID between 17th and 23rd of March

Wrote the squib “I was born with Uranus in retrograde”

Wrote my obituary in doggerel – right before I caught the rona

Posted Sue Gillespie’s Impossible Pie recipe

Wrote poem ‘stop and start’

Wrote poem ‘phone call’

Wrote haiku ‘ratings system’

Wrote poem ‘ the open tap’

Wrote poem “Plea bargain”

Sometime in the spring began to train Buster

Wrote ‘Brief Poem”

Wrote poem “Ageless”

First kidney stone

Figured out that I also have Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

Figured out I should wear orthotics every moment I’m conscious

Although I don’t

started watching Time Team

Wrote the poem ‘winners’

Got new orthotics

Wrote short fic ‘the old woman’

Did a complete ranting takedown on an Open Letter in Harpers Mag

Met new people in a trek to Bowen Island

Wrote ‘the anticolonial song’

Put Mexican Gothic on hold in August, read it in December, loved it

READ ALL THE MURDERBOT STUFF I COULD LAY MY HANDS ON

Started to play hammered guitar and also dulcimer

Wrote ‘the staple gun song’ squib

Posted my vegan lentil soup recipe

Safely removed a bird Buster brought alive into the house

Participated in a social distanced housefilk

Survived the terrible air quality during the California fires

Sewed myself a bolster for my back so I’m more comfy in my bunk bed

Finally gave Paul his seventieth birthday card on his 71st birthday

Got a flu shot

Performed a complete review of my personal habits and committed to meaningful self-improvement, and it worked.

Started work on the MOLOCH poem

Commenced writing letters to loved ones and family members to stay connected during the pandemic.

Lost my phone and cancelled my cell phone service.

Applied for a pension.

Practiced singing and instruments almost every day for a year.