Joining
Tamar and
Jean: this was fun!
1)
Who is the last person you high-fived?My dog; she shakes my paw whenever I ask and she’s good about high-fives too.
2)
If you were drafted into a war, would you survive?I’d never allow myself to be drafted into a war. If I joined the medical corps, I'd suffer hugely from PTSD, but that's the only area I'd go if absolutely forced. I don't think I'd do jail.
3)
Do you sleep with the TV on?I’ve never had a TV in my room. I need quietness and darkness to sleep, use earplugs actually.
4)
Have you ever drunk milk straight out of the carton?I may have once tried from a small carton; the milk on the edge of the waxed cardboard wasn’t very appetizing.
5)
Have you ever won a spelling bee?Never been in one; I’m not a great speller.
6)
Have you ever been stung by a bee?No.
7)
How fast can you type?Probably around 60 wpm – not fast (self-taught typist, lots of mistakes).
8)
Are you afraid of the dark?Never been afraid of the dark, that I can recall. I love being wrapped in darkness.
9)
What colour are your eyes?Blue. With brown flecks around the pupils, I'm told.
10)
Have you ever made out at a drive-in?I’m sure I have. But we're going back a ways...
11)
When is the last time you chose a bath over a shower?A few nights ago – bubble bath, tealight candles all around the edges of the bathtub, beautiful.
12)
Do you knock on wood?Yes. Wood feels so good under the knuckles, grounding, earthy, wise.
13)
Do you floss daily?Every single day. But then I have to.
14)
Can you hula hoop?Yes, and it’s still fun. When I was seven I was the Hula Hoop Champion of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia.
15)
Are you good at keeping secrets?Yes. I completely forget what someone’s told me in confidence until I’m talking to them again.
16)
What do you want for Christmas?That’s a long way away.
17)
Do you know the Muffin Man?No. I'm not much of a Muffin Woman either.
18)
Do you talk in your sleep?I think I utter obscure phrases now and then.
19)
Who wrote the book of love?Rumi, oh, but there is no other poet who comes close to Rumi’s vision of love.
20)
Have you ever flown a kite?When I was a kid and lived in England for a bit we’d go to parks and fly kites. Not in Canada though.
21)
Do you wish on your fallen lashes?That’s a new one.
22)
Do you consider yourself successful?Yes and no. On personal terms, yes, hugely; in societal terms, no. So I try not to think in those terms...
23)
How many people are on your contact list of your mobile?Before I let the battery completely and utterly die? Perhaps six dozen; don’t know. Now? A handful.
24)
Have you ever asked for a pony?Never.
25)
Plans for tomorrow?Busy with writing.
26)
Can you juggle?I’ve tried, can do 2 things at a time for short snatches.
27)
Are you missing someone now?Yes. My son, who turns 19 this weekend. He's living at his Dad's in another city.
28)
When was the last time you told someone I Love You?Today. This morning.
29)
And truly meant it?Wholly.
30)
How often do you drink?Not often enough. I used to go through one box of red wine a month, a quarter of a glass every night, oh how teeny and fairy-like, my thimbles of wine. But they don't sell wine that way in Ontario (unlike BC with its mountains and camping) and it takes me too long to finish a bottle -:)
31)
How are you feeling today?Pressured. Artistically pressured. To create anything, a poem, a photopoem, a drawing, a dance, anything... to write that paper I have to write... to submit some abstracts for an upcoming conference (oh, deadline's today)-
32)
What do you say too much?Really…
33)
Have you ever been suspended or expelled from school?Sigh, no. I haven't lived enough have I?
34)
What are you looking forward to?I’m not sure if there’s anything in particular. More unfolding.
35)
Have you ever crawled through a window?Yes, last Summer when I was locked out of the house. I used the ladder from next door, climbed onto the roof over the kitchen and in through a bedroom window. It was a hot, humid, melting day, but I got in. My dog barked frenetically throughout.
36)
Have you ever eaten dog food?Yes – a few crumbs once of home-baked gourmet peanut butter dog treats. The Ikea recipe (whole wheat flour, wheat germ). It tasted like biscuit without the sugar.
37)
Can you handle the truth?Yes, far more than I can handle dubious fabrications.
38)
Do you like green eggs and ham?Still haven’t figured out what this is!
39)
Do you have any cool scars?A smile-shaped scar on my right shin from running into a corner of corrugated metal roofing in Kafue National Game Park in Zambia at age four. We lived 200 hundred miles from the nearest town. So I didn’t get any stitches.
With Photoshop, I can play with an image, adjusting the colour, lighting, adding and taking out bits, layering, and doing and undoing sequences at an alarming rate until I get something I can live with. The route is impossible to reproduce because it is full of possiblilites and wrong turns, undone histories, duplicated and deleted layers, filters pushed to 100% opacity or retracted to 25% transparency, and there's no master memory of the process. A single photopoem takes an average of 4-5 hours to produce, once the rough draft for the writing is composed. Those hours are spent trying this, and trying that, just to see. It's all exploration, there isn't a 'effect' I'm after; preferring, instead, to trust my aesthetic intuition. Sometimes I make notes of where I ended up in case I want to change something (as in the one on the left for A Dozen Cherry Trees), but that's rare.
