what news

What will that Putin guy get up to next? Well, the news commentariat in English is trying to talk about Russian unlimbering nuclear weapons in its desire to secure security as if anything about it is normative or acceptable, and that by itself makes life awkward.

Another bad Air Quality day in the lower Mainland as the #Minnekhada park fire continues. No rain and summer conditions  so no help from the weather.

Apart from running a load of laundry and leaving the house with Paul yesterday was a day of doing nothing OH I FORGOT watched the first four episodes of Andor. Absolutely love the show.

Mall walk with Paul yesterday. Got some treats at Cobbs – four chocolate croissants and two blueberry custard danishes. Damn they were good. Also got some pita bread from the pita bread factory. Still thinking about Paul going to the pita bread factory at Eid and expecting to find one crumb of pita bread in the joint. Men are so cute sometimes.

It’s like all I care about these days is food. Everything else seems suspect.

 

 

lovely time

Peggy made us kale salad, peas, rice, naan and butter chicken and we got pumpkin pie and whipped cream for dessert.

MAN aLIVE i love that woman. She had a helluva week (in a word PLUMBING) but was in good spirits.

Paul was in good shape. The guitar didn’t come out of the case but he sang along and sang the Shanty Boys song. Like many of his songs from the Dawn of Time there’s nothing on the internet that comes anywhere close to matching the tune and the lyrics. At some point, because his variant is so interesting we should probably record it. Closest I could find. Makes sense a historical song from Michigan would turn up in London ON there was a lot of back and forthing.

Otherwise it was Cindy driving things. She sang and played Emerald Green, Vixy’s love song to Seattle (which makes me cry every time I hear it because I miss my people so bad it’s a stone in my shoe and we did an ‘all filkers assemble’ recording of it at Conflikt one time (and I’m crying again lol no). Also she played WWJD (What Would Jack Do) and it really is a fun tune even if I did write it. Also she played JoCo’s The Future Soon and the classic unfilked Mary Ellen Carter.

Then home. I bought beer the other day but I have to stop drinking any, it’s disturbing my sleep.

KEITH DROPPED BY while we were there and he and Jas (this happened the last time too I SMELL A TREND) got into a lively and emotional discussion about Keffals (a transgender Canadian streamer/twitcher treated very poorly) which I stayed the hell out of, mostly because I was entertained as hell (Jas IS extremely entertaining, especially when he starts remonstrating with his mother Cindy.) It is not in and of itself an entertaining subject but the discussion that followed on about ‘what content creators do and how they have to manage the entire internet about their content’ was FASCINATING. i am so freaking glad I’m self-published AND DO NOT HAVE TO MANAGE MY 30 FANS. It’s a miracle. I don’t have the energy to do anything but content create and tweak my twitters or whatever. And call my mOm once in a while. And I really owe Mary a letter.

We also talked about housing. I am so glad Cindy and her kids live in a rent controlled apartment and can’t get demovicted; me and Jeff on the other hand will have to scatter to the four winds if this place goes. We are quite literally paying half market rent here. Serious stuff.

No surprise to Jeff’s sneezles this morning, AQI is up around 70. The woodfire smell is continuous but not overwhelming. Very restless night of sleep for me, the AQI can’t have helped.

New Poem – the Terrible Game

I am angry at you, Waffle
I flense your mother
I plunge my hand into the chest of your father
I cause rocks to be dropped on your siblings by rocs
I dismember your shop tools as if they were your children and eat them
Well know that I am displeased, Waffle

For your dictionary is foul, and your sloth is benthic

How is it, Waffle? that your dictionary looks like this
Ordinary words
Little, ordinary words in English
Escape your notice
‘Yep’ is not allowed.
‘Zoot’, as in zoot suit, is not allowed
I can understand that words with ‘s’ and ‘er’ and ‘ed’
Might be passed by, but then YOU ARE NOT CONSISTENT
About how the rules are applied
And I hate you
With that festering hatred that consumes cognition like oxygen
With a scary pH
Like a tailing pond, and I boil you in my mind in that very pond.

 

I refer to this game.

This poem is dedicated to my Onty Mary.

Peggy’s today

We’ll be singing and playing, with all the ventilation going as usual. Very relieved to have my booster. I will take her some Yorkshire Gold tea in her own container.

Jeff got me a samwich last night, it was YUMMY. I allowed myself to get dehydrated yesterday and so when I went walking to get my meds I kept feeling like I was going to keel over, but that’s what happens when you don’t eat and drink. I guess my mind was pondering mightier things.

Putin’s annexed four provinces of Ukraine and saber rattled use of Nukes, but against whom is not stated.

On the basis of Lumosity this morning my cognition is back up to where it otta be. I definitely feel sharper. Homemade vegan pizza and coffee – breakfast of champeens.

Apparently a road rage incident started two blocks from mOm and pOp’s house on Wednesday. Sometimes the things we don’t know are just fine. Love how a knife and bearspray constitute weapons in Canada.  REMEMBER FOLKS the only open carry weapon legal in Canada is a cane. GET THE ICE CRUTCH TIP you can rilly mess a dude up with those four way slashers on the bottom of your cane.

What do I do today?

Same thing I do every National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Pinky, reread the report recommendations, give thanks for the Treaty 6 source of my family’s health and wealth, and financially support Indigenous heritage language learners.

I’m certainly not flying up into Indigenous people’s timelines and asking for cookies.

(‘same thing I do every night Pinky’ is a quote from Pinky and the Brain, a cartoon)

walk in the Park

Paul and I went to Fraser Foreshore yesterday, first time in ages. The park was practically deserted. Although I was quite tired, we went slow and did a full walk. After I brought Paul back here and fed him Mac and Cheese and constructed a salad for us. For dinner I fried pork chomps (very very slowly) and nuked taters and made another salad. It was really good.

Today I hope to drop off some Yorkshire Gold tea at Peggy’s place, pick up additional bp medication and meditate on Reconciliation Day. I also hope to finish Sam Cooper’s “Wilful Blindness” which is a simply terrifying and disgusting read about how Vancouver has been completely screwed up by the international (mostly Chinese) drug trade and the rapacity of the CCP, paired faithlessly by the fucking idiots running both Vancouver and Victoria, and the ludicrously incompetent RCMP.

I’m saddened by how I care more about what’s happening in Florida and the coast than I am by the poor folks in the aftermath of the floods in Pakistan (it’s going to take more than the rest of this year for the waters to recede.) So I went to the internet to see if there’s any good news from there and found some.

As of this morning, there are 1500 dead in Pakistan – at least – and 11 dead in the US from Hurricane Ian.

Coolio, the somewhat shameless misogynist who penned the hip hop classic “Gangster’s Paradise” is dead at 59 of a heart attack.

Lizzo, the equally shameless (but for other reasons) recording artist has played a 200 yo crystal flute while twerking, and on the internet, you would think she had injured white manhood to the core. IF YOU THAT FRAGILLY STAY HOME BUB

visitation dream

I dream but never remember, so waking up with a dream is a good thing.

Jeff and I were living in an old house full of beautiful panelling. A whole bunch of guys appeared IN OUR HOUSE as if they were having a meeting. They were all settled in with their papers on their knees and joshing with each other the way people do before they settle in to business, I said, “Well you’ve come to the wrong house, I’ve got COVID, you all have to leave.” Then I realized it was ALL guys from Beacon, and one of them was Tom. He gave me an amused but guilty look. There were a couple of other of Beacon’s dead there too, so I got a package deal. Hi Dennis, Hi Ralph. You were so loved.

So the visitation dream is me kicking Tom out from a church meeting because I’ve got COVID. We never spoke, but you don’t normally in visitation dreams. I find it really weird that I wrote that poem the Sad Enterprise and a day later, boom. We’re coming up on the anniversary of his death. The anniversary of his diagnosis has come and gone.

Did a load of laundry and ran the dishwasher, did a shop, worked on The Sword That Cries Ruin! Got the wordle in three tries today. I can sort of feel my brain under all the cottonwool.

Time to do some shopping

I’m in a decent mood, finally, after all the damned EMOTIONS I’ve been having had forced themselves into poetry. I’m not saying it makes the poem better, but I sure wept hard writing it. Absolutely tip top night of sleep though!

I think I asked Jeff if we could shop today and if that’s going to happen I need to get up, take my pills and get dressed, because we usually leave for that about now.

New Poem – The Sad Enterprise

Yes;
I was wanting to talk to you about the sad enterprise
of writing poetry.

How downcast one is, seeing all the parts for it
enlimpened by advertising
et all the new Malaprops. one toes English
hoping it staggers to its feet once more
as with the pugilists of old, one drunken wager from renown
one butterfly from glory
one stolen kiss in a library doorway closer
to a skald’s dearest wish

A bard gets tired, in a world eating new words
faster than it can understand the effects
of the old ones
neogollyism newspikke and an endless
scrolling déluge of porn, puppies and punditry
it only seems so bad because there’s so much of it
but indeed, it is bad, because there is so much of it

I do not need to search for topics. The particular
presents itself, most insistently sometimes
‘RESPECTFULLY, I AM BEAUTIFUL.”
disrespectfully, I have the attention span of a house fly
and a variable crock of enthusiasms and illnesses
I LOOKED AT YOU AND YOU WERE BEAUTIFUL
But I ain’t writin’ a poem about that.

I am scraping blueberry pie filling from the counter
and that’s quite enough
i do prefer love over sinks
and the enthralment of learning and insight and connection
over the technic that gets us all here
whoosh
in the company of our peers
being the being that watches our species crash into an asteroid

I am saying this way is an old way, and it works for me
those beings who relent and strike the rock that is my forehead
then hoot with laughter as i bleed and swear
they are old beings and they do not have names
they don’t care about pretty moments
sing for your people, they yell, they babble and yell
trying to make themselves heard above my tinnitus

another field of verse – this body will lose this form
i remember holding you and thinking that these bones
inside these bones will be gone some day
you didn’t feel like a skeleton
no poem could contain my situation
and I was forced by my own breath into song

Other pens hover over those long bouts
of helpless, isolated weeping. it’s grim
and effortful and being uncomforted
is the whole point of it

I write poems about death because my friend died
there’s nothing complicated about that
it would be uncanny if I didn’t
poems are not edifices
they are tattoos
I’ve left a space here (pats chest)
for you, for when the word comes back
No.

accomplishments

Totally Boned 5165 words

advised Jeff of the rent increase amount – goes up in January.

Watched Dart

restrung the busted d string on the resonator. I will leave it for a couple of days before I try to tune it. It has a split bridge, which made restringing it more challenging than usual.

Advised Suzanne by email about the camera equipment.

Collected a lot of reddit karma points by liking Oysterhead (a band, actually a supergroup which still tours even though they only really ever did one album)

tossed some M&M lasagne in the oven for supper – it’s so tiny the two of us ate it all, so I am bordering on leftoverless!!! this will nevah do. Feel like making a trip to M&M today though, we’re out of their prepped meals and we do like their chickety-pie.

Stayed alive, staved off yucky feelings, made tea.

Since I don’t think I’m going back to bed I’m going to make coffee…. it’s 2 in the morning here.

 

 

I said it on twitter

As my dear old Onty Mary says, “I’ll quit wearing a mask and self-isolating when they quit trying to kill me.” Closest I’ve been to her in three years was 3 m and we were both masked.

This in response to a friend IRL commenting on the events she is not participating in because of the cavalier attitude of the organizers towards masks.

Now I know Mary never said those exact words, but the sense is correct.

Eggs over easy on sourdough muffins for brekky. NOM