Mansfield Road Tour – with Stuart Ross editor, Sarah Dearing, Jason Heroux and Jim Smith

Something’s different after the tour. Am I in love? Am I in love with being on tour? With the feeling of reading to and the sumptuous quiet of being listened to? Not that the personal moments around the reading were as fabulous as I was hoping for. I felt abandoned after reading in Kingston. Waiting for audience members to approach me.  And so I did. I waited. In Ottawa there were more takers, I felt less exposed. 

Last month, at the Toronto launch, Lynn said my reading was endearing. I was surprised by that. Endearing? 

On the road I noticed so many people gathering around and talking to Jason. Jim too arrived like an illustrious gunslinger with an audience of renowned poets ready to take him in. And Sarah, with this her third novel, her voice, how Sarah’s voice pushes through clear and fierce when she reads, and then how whatever that clarity is, attracts audience members towards it and her like a magnet. 

Something happened along the way making me stop feeling jealous against their success. In the car on the road a lot of talk, perhaps even gossip. Who better at gossip then writers? Me, my part of the conversation, sharp clever digs, like how I am, like how I write, and the others, they generous sharers of themselves and their perspectives, how they sometimes didn’t quite know how to take me, my unevenness needing an editorial hand, how to read me. 

Which made me feel weak. Lesser than. Made me wonder about the stuff my writing is made of. And even if my being this way made me think that they, Stuart, Jim, Sarah and Jason must be judging me, somehow it didn’t matter, because all of it, the driving up to reading venues, the being dropped off at billets or hotels, the going out for Chinese or bar food after, even including the not being approached by as many people as I would have liked; what these moments added up to was that it was all only the sidelines, the glad shuffling around the edges of, it - the worlds of our creations, the ones we write in, read from, where we live.

Voicey - blogged Sep 12 12

I’m struggling to blog about my novel Flip Turn because I can’t figure out the right voice to do it in. I feel like I want to talk in its voice. I also feel like I want to talk in this more, what I would call – social – voice. The social voice would be one of those voices that knows a lot to do with critical thinking, that knows how to connect to others in a mature, relating way. Further, I suppose could write my blog in a more personal voice, like the one in Flip Turn, but one that is more mature. Like me. Now. I’m not a young girl anymore. But then I like saying shocking, direct things, more suitable to a young woman, actually, would be a better description of the voice in Flip Turn. Although, come to think of it, the voice in Flip Turn, is hard to pinpoint age-wise. It’s both young girl and young woman.

Another pull to my voice is the audience. I do like to talk to my audience.

 I have been reading a book of poetry written by a friend recently. Which for me can really help sometimes, feeling a personal connection to the writing, but I just could not hear her voice. It was really hard for me to read her work, even despite the fact I know her.

I was thinking she probably just isn’t a very voicey writer. I was thinking maybe she writes more from the word level. I thought maybe the reason it’s hard for me to read her is that I think words are dangerous. I don’t trust them. But then I thought, no, that’s not it. Quite. I think the distrust is more about the person, the being pulled into their grammar, their world view, I don’t trust. (can you believe I just admitted to that?)

Which makes me think, while my writing voice may be maturing, my ability to read is still pretty immature.

Or to let myself off the hook some, maybe I just prefer to read voicey writers. Which similarly I am.

 As far as voice goes, I also talk to my cats a lot in a sort of voicey way too. In the talking-to-pets voice. My son has had a lizard for year now and for a while I really didn’t know how to be with him. (the lizard) But now I talk to him in that voice too. I put him on my knee and put blueberries on my other knee. I coo to him and once all the tension with the cats trying to figure out how to catch and eat him wanes, he thrusts his pretty pink tongue out, capturing a blueberry at a time with it and gobbles them down.

39 days til we move

Jacob is at the Buzadi's. With Henry. It turned cold. They are in Etobicoke. A drive away I am about to make. Larry was mad because I always act superior he said about how he is attached to things and I am not. And people, he said, unfairly. Which I pointed out. But we didn't talk about.

I was lying down in bed. My heart was hurting from the argument we had, which the second round was no yelling but he described how I was talking to him like a litany. Only he didn't use that word.

It's hard to write about the heart usually. Usually it comes out all cliche. But it was hurting because I was thinking, this is the person I love? And I was thinking I wish he would come to get me. That's the best sign, when the person you loves comes to get you. And I heard him approaching but it was just him on the way to the bathroom.

But then he did. And he said that. About me always acting superior and hating it. And left. But I said to come back. And he came back. And I said thank you for telling me how you feel.

There was going to be a good ending with an insight about the heart but now Larry is cooking something and keeping talking to me and also I have to go get Jacob in a minute. And I can't remember what it was.

Long time no blog

Larry had a job interview. It went well. Getting ready he pulled down some jeans from the closet he didn’t wear in ages he forgot about that look really nice on him he wore to it. Larry is magic. We were at the Pinery last week and he was making these beautiful ornate funny drawings of nature parts. Bugs, flora, creatures. Larry is listening and hearing the call, his call.

Sometimes I feel like a grabby, clingy bedridden old man. Kids are grabby too. I think I remember remembering not to be that way. To take something given with grace. Feeling the transferring from their hand to mine.

At work Tina’s hands are red. Her husband is a cook and she always has a good lunch. It’s some kind of psoriasis on them. I am thinking I wonder if it’s something Tina is eating causing it, looking at her every day her husband making them for her seeming so nice lunches. Amy said, “Oh you’re not wearing your new ring,” to Tina. Tina said she took it off because she’s always putting cream on her hands pausing, alluding to the problem of her hands. The way Amy said it like it was so nice I got the impression the ring was expensive and had diamonds in it. Maybe because Amy wears jewellery like that.

Larry said the reason they’re not accepting your work at the literary magazines is because it’s different. They’re not used to work like that. I said I didn’t think of it that way, but thank you. Listening.

x-rated

Poor Iggy has sex on the brain. Lilu doesn't get it; his constant sniffing at her nether regions; the distracted, nostril-flared dazed look on his face; the neck pinning and pelvic thrusts.

She visits me, I think for assurances, more often than she did.

I don't know if Iggy gets what's going on either.

Some months ago, we set Iggy's appointment with the vet for the snipping, except it's not snipping anymore - its laser surgery, for the last weekend of May.

I don't know if we're going to make it.

Love

Sigh.

Love, love, love. Love, love, love.

Isn’t that how that Beatles song goes?

Jacob was having one of his nightmare things last night, a light one. From out of sleep he joined us in the living room Larry surfing playoff hockey, basketball and watching some Blue Jays too.

To distract him from his brow scrunching bad visions Larry told him the Blue Jays were winning 4-2 in the 8th. In response Jacob switched his bad dream vocalizations to numbers. Six-six, four-two, he mumbled with more anxious trepidation, the numbers taking on the same bad meanings.

Our strategy to help him out was talking to him in normal voices he wasn’t hearing very well because of the dominating bad dream interference going on his head. I said, leave the door open, as he left the living room to return to bed. But he was closing it so I repeated it until he heard.

If there’s anything you need just call, I said. Then fast he said, love. I need love.

If only my blog entries were more socially relevant

We went out for an art walk yesterday. The funnest stop was at Paul Petro. Andrew Harwood had a show in the upstairs gallery called Psychic Friends. He was dressed in character as a drag queen Madam Zsa Zsa. The lighting was blue. He had his face covered in a veil. There was a swirling disco ball globe in front of him for his crystal ball.

What I liked about him was his intimacy. I was very comfortable with it. It made me realize I am like that too.

Since I know astrology well, I could feel Cancer energy about him. Cancer energy can be the most intimate. It’s water and it’s mother energy. I asked him his birth data and I was right. His Moon is in Cancer as is his Jupiter.

He needed you to get physically close to him to do his “readings.”

He was treating them like they weren’t serious and a joke but also like they were serious. He would say the colour he saw in relation to the question you were asking him. Having a methodology, seeing colours, means seriousness.

Since I am an Aquarius and my masculine side dominates my feminine in an (in my case) unhealthy way, I’m often in my cool aloof Aquarian side. But being with him, like I said, made me realize part of my strength is in my moony Cancer side. Except I’m always hiding and diminishing it.

When I went back on the street in the sunshine outside of the blue light I realized it’s my fear of men often knocking me out of that intimate side. All the scary men and my fear that I can’t be myself around them , that I have to succumb to their perspectives and needs, is how I get knocked out of that intimate side of myself and into my distant Aquarian head.

Also I am reading some literary blogs and feeling very stupid. People organize their thoughts in ways that don’t have the same kind of scope my astrological perspective does.

I’m scared it means they’re better and I don’t belong.