My son took an overdose of Tylenol while drunk on Sunday night. I wasn't aware of it. I didn't get him to the hospital until late Monday afternoon. I spent the night in a chair beside him at Emergency. He was still lively and talkative, though nauseous and couldn't keep even water down. They gave him the antitode, liquids, gravol.

He was admitted to hospital that night.

His condition today is much, much worse. He tells me he's drifting in and out of reality and is having trouble differentiating a dream-like state from where he is. He is barely audible on the phone.

I'll be going to the hospital after his Dad leaves this afternoon (I'm not allowed to be there, the father's girlfriend's rules), and don't plan on leaving unless he starts to improve. I'm taking a camping mat and sleeping bag and will stay beside him, hospital rules be damned.

He's 21 years old. He's a beautiful young man. Oh, my son..........

Sorry.

my son is still in hospital, his condition worsening, but perhaps today will be the day of peak and reversal and of healing back to health

Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 in E major

Listening to Bruckner's 7th, which I haven't heard in over a dozen years, not since my ex left and took Bruckner with him. It's the Jochum recording with the Dresden orchestra. Magnifique!

While I once heard Bruckner on huge speakers with booming bass, I now listen on a Tivoli hi-fi, with its inbuilt sub-woofer, and seriously, the sound is decent.

Bruckner to me is spiritual strength. We boldly reach for what we desire, and we dance with it. No light New Age-y airy stuff here. Dense, an impenetrable storm of instruments at times, like an orchestra of mountain ranges with dangerous sloping rock and deep bottomless crevices that plunge into the depths of the earth, beyond human range. And towering storms that move in a musical mass over the peaks. And the clear endless sky that opens out to the universe. At the centre, the heart that sings, with such passion!

Bruckner doesn't uplift me so much as buttress me against the oncoming tides of difficulties in their manifest forms. I find Bruckner in my bones.

Tarkovsky, in Sokurov's 'Moscow Elegy,' which I watched last night, says, of film, but it could be any art, that it is "a serious, difficult art, with great sacrifices."

Tarkovsky says, "It's you who must belong to the art, not vice versa."

Bruckner reminds me that we belong to life.

In the Dark of the Night

I

After a shower in the evening, I look for the hairdryer. A wind chill warning in effect, I don't want to walk the dog with wet hair even under a hat.

My hair is long and takes a long time to dry. I'll blow dry it a little and wait. We have time.

As I stand in the bathroom at the mirror, I disappear. The apartment is torn from the world.

I move like a blind woman through the rooms, searching for candles. At the window I do not see any lights, except distant cars. I phone my son at work. The grocery store where he works part-time has its own back-up generator.

Darkness retreats from the candle flame, leaving small globes of golden light.

II

Our apartment is heated electrically. Base board heaters line every room, and every room has its own thermostat.

My daughter keeps her room at 10C; I like mine about 22C. We keep the apartment at 17C. Tonight we plunge into frigidity together.

III

As the temperature drops, holding a candle, I look for my soft-fabric snowpants made by the Sundown lady who lived on Toronto Island and ran a cottage industry making warm bright down coats for babies, children and adults. She knew how to make coats for Canadian Winters. The snowpants are as warm and supple as they were 20 years ago when I bought them at her little store in a house on Richmond Street.

Or perhaps I am already wearing them when the lights go out, I don't remember.

IV

The first night is slightly exciting. Bravo and onward. My son insists his room in the basement is warm, and I go to sleep on my bed fully dressed, with wool socks and the snowpants, two down covers and a huge faux-fur coat from the late 1990s.

I talk to my brother who works nights for a couple of hours, till perhaps 2am.

The air is cool and yet faintly damp, like there is a cold fog.

Do I sleep? I don't remember.

V

My daughter is out of town, and I'm glad. In the morning I discover we have hot water and make a drink out of chickory and barley and a drop of table cream, something akin to coffee.

When I go downstairs to wake my son for his classes, I am overwhelmed by the smell of gas. He's alright. Upstairs my old Northern Telecom phone that's plugged into the jack works fine. I call the landlord and am on hold for 5 minutes before I hang up, find the Consumer Gas number and call and report the smell of gas. Men are here within the half hour, and they are downstairs about that long before I am asked to sign a form saying that they discovered one of the water heaters was leaking gas and so they turned off the gas and capped it.

This team only responds to emergencies; they don't do repairs. That's another appointment and another team.

Is it my hot water tank? Mine is the only new one of the four in the basement, having leaked last Summer and been replaced.

It's too dark to tell.

I don't know.

VI

The power failure and the leaking gas are two unrelated events. It is a bad day.

VII

At some point I sleep in my nest of a bed with its layers of covers. I don't know when, but wake groggily.

By then, my son is home, having missed his first class due to the bus service taking the place of the subway that isn't running due to the power failure which occurred because a major transformer station was flooded.

Flooding and heat.

Like my heart.

VIII

I buy a coffee at a Second Cup that has just had power restored. It's patchy, who has power and who hasn't.

My superintendent lives a few blocks away and though his house is in the blackout grid, he had nonstop power. He's sympathetic. He's glad I called the gas company. Because each of us rent hot water tanks for our units and pay our own heating bills, he says he can't put in an order for Consumer's Gas to come and fix the tank that was leaking, the tenant has to. We don't know who the tenant is.

In the roulette, it could be me.

IX

Fully weather-proof, I have only to put on mitts, hat and jacket to walk the dog. The neighbourhood is empty, save for a few other women walking their dogs.

It's unnatural.

X

I send updating tweets out over Twitter that go to my blog and to Facebook and friends there leave comments that come back through my email.

Obsessively, despite my cell phone being nearly dead. I siphon battery power from my netbook to feed the cell phone which gives me internet connection.

I feel dislocated from the world. Yet without lights, computers, TV, radio, the hum of electically-powered living, I am located in the world that is the world.

XI

Evening, and the inner temperature drops. The apartment is getting colder. I am wearing my full-length faux-fur coat with the hood on all the time now. I am shivering.

I call my other brother, who isn't home, and my mother, who forgets what I'm calling about and talks about the bank books she has for all of her grandchildren.

I phone a "warm house" and am told they can send a car round to pick up my dog and I right away. Thank you, but I'll wait and see later in the night. Okay, you have our number.

My son's friend phones to offer us warm refuge at her parents' place. She is very sweet. He and I are more comfortable with family, though. We'll wait for my brother, his uncle, who will surely rescue us.

He doesn't.

XII

Severe weather bulletin. A wind chill warning in effect. Temperatures are between -20C and -30C. Only 25% of homes originally affected by the power outage are still without power. That's us.

Warmth! Heat! Wherefore art thou?

Inside is like outside without the wind.

It's like winter camping, without the tent heater or the fire. Late one Christmas about 30 years ago I was in a bachelor apartment in a rooming house that had lights but no heat. The landlord and his partner had gone away and hydro cut the heat. I remember this particular type of coldness, its fog-breath. The ceiling cracked and paint fell all over the apartment that night and I broke my lease and moved within weeks. I put some of that broken ceiling paint in the journal I wrote, didn't I.

I sit on my bed wrapped in layers of clothes and the large coat under two down sleeping bags, my dog in a fleece coat beside me. I'd be gone if it wasn't for the dog, to a friend's or family or even a coffee shop. My breath is foggy.

My son will not leave. I am determined to stay, too. I buy a thermos-carafe of coffee while he picks up pizza. We eat by candlelight. He says he's tired and makes his way downstairs. I don't want him down there and to his protestations insist I will check on him later.

XIII

I only know this. I struggled and then lapsed into meditation, deeper and deeper, intoning a mantra, finding layers of calm beneath the water flooding the transformer station, finding what I'd forgotten, when, flash, the lights blinked on as if they'd never been off. The world began. Again.

___
When a Hydro crew arrived at the Dufferin transformer station, a relay station that turns high voltage electricity into usable energy in our offices and homes, they discovered dangerous flooding. The station was filled with water up to knee level and rising. They immediately cut power to 100,000 homes in Toronto. Power was restored gradually over the next day or so as they pumped the station and dried the electrical components. The blackout began around 10pm on Thursday, January 15th, and power was fully restored around 9:30pm on Friday, January 16, 2009. In the last area to be restored, we were without power for nearly 24 hours, a severe wind chill warning in effect for our region throughout.

Beginings of a Treatise on Performance Poetry

What I wish to do is develop techniques for videotaping and presenting performance pieces.

The writer, poet, artist, composer usually works alone. It is the solitary nature of creativity. While there is a great dissemination of work on the Internet, poetry is not mainstream. A century ago people memorized poetry, recited poetry in their sitting rooms, poets, like Byron, or Tennyson, were best sellers.

With the advent of media, poetry has disappeared into obscure journals, or Internet sites of individuals and groups dedicated to poetry but who really only read each other. The culture-at-large has all but forgotten poetry.

Poetry is beautiful, where language is most astounding. Most songs don't achieve the simplicity, richness or depth of a finely written poem. Poetry is honed language reflecting and shaping the concerns of the milieu in which it comes to be.

Yet poets are not singers, if they were they'd be out there like Leonard Cohen, or Joni Mitchell. Nor should it be necessary for a poet to add to their years of study of literature by having to also study film-making. There is no reason why a film of a poem has to be illustrated by images and carried with music, though, of course, these filmic components can add to the piece. My point is that the poetry itself should be enough, as were Dylan Thomas' lyrical readings on stages across America in his time.

Not just the words of a poem, but the reading of it can be magic. Poets can recite their work. There are poetry readings all over the world. Poets can perform their own poems.

What I would like to develop are film and editing techniques whereby the solitary poet, writer, artist, composer may capture their work in a solitary fashion on film and present it in video format to a multi-media world. I don't want to turn the poet or composer into a director at the centre of the collaborative venture a film is because this runs contrary to the solitary and introspective nature of most poets or artists.

By nature, the creative process is solitary. Poets are not collaborative. They read; they write. Alone. Surely a camera can be set up and a film created in the solitary world that the creative spirit works in for sharing with others. I am, therefore, exploring how the single camera on a tripod capturing a single performance can be edited to create a charismatic film of poetry that may be appealing to wider audiences and thus bring poetry back into the mainstream.

In this way poetry may become available to the masses who may find many poets, writers, composers superlative and celebrate and support them in the ways that they should be doing and would be if their work was presented in a format that the culture favours.

The Waxworks by Ai!R

Today I found this on Jamendo (a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses), 'Waxworks,' by Ai!R, a Russian band. This music touches me in deep places. Perhaps I may find I am able to put some prosepoetry and movement to music like this (the license looks okay, a first hurdle, and of course I'd ask for permission from the musicians and credit them):

twittergadget emoticon tweet

The ♫ was ♨, you know, ♀♂, even the ☃ melted & the ☆ came out in the ☼.

(TwitterGadget emoticon tweet.) ✉❤

(the music was hot, you know, man + woman, even the snow melted and the stars came out in the daylight)

Sold All My Classical Music in a Fit of Poverty

Once upon a time I sold all my classical music in a fit of poverty. Downloading all Bruckner's symphonies, 31y261d! Will I be alive still?!

Today on Jamendo (a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses), I discovered this artist, Grace Valhalla, French, unique:

And then downloaded other techno, like a few albums of Project Mahlen Goscht, to paint by...

My kids were: Why are you listening to techno? And then I began dancing the dance of the pneumatic drill, the hammer, the screwdriver...

(they laughed as they shook their heads, crazy-mummy)

Yeah, I'm falling in love: with Jamendo. The entry of the Russians rocks my soul.

Slideshow

Find more photos like this on Creative Crossing

A slideshow that I posted to a site that a friend, Klara Elek, invited me to join. Not to replace my art website, but sometimes one should contribute to a site.

Looking at these pieces, I realize I haven't yet begun to paint. There was a very long hiatus of perhaps 20 years, and then a slow reunion to painting. These pieces are 'to regain my hand.'

The only one that's closer to 'painting,' for me, is the Landscape Figure. I painted this in November 2006, and shortly after began a series of contract positions in reception at the executive offices of a bank, and, while I'd hoped to follow the energy in this piece and produce a series of larger size, between my relationship at the time, my daughter, who went into crisis, full-time work and desperately searching for a larger place for us to live, I neglected to push myself to produce, always thinking, 'later, when time opens out.' But the emotional energy had dissipated when perhaps there was finally and again time.

Message: when 'it' happens, go with it, push your life aside, follow your art. They'll all understand, they always do.

Rubies in Crystal blog banner

I've put up a new banner and changed the colours in the blog.

I took the photograph, a self-portrait, last Fall, after reading Peter Handke's, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams.

(Click on photo to see it at full size, which looks better to my eye. I had to shrink the image for the blog header.)

Or this, which I... don't know what to say about.



The original photo, and don't ask how I did all the colour and whatnot, I did so many things in Photoshop Elements I can't remember!

Yesterday, our doctor thoroughly checked my daughter's foot and decided that she didn't need an x-ray. This was good news. It is most fortunate for the 'other' family that her foot wasn't broken because they did not make sure she received medical care after the ex's girlfriend drove over her foot. They left the "medical care" up to me, days after the accident happened, though 'the Commandant,' or what I call the ex's girlfriend, had enough wherewithal to drive her to Toronto rather than making her take a Greyhound bus home.

the ice-pellet night

20:58 ...avoiding walking the dog in the cold, dark, snow mixed with ice-pellets Winter's night...

20:59 ...putting on snowpants, snowboots, muffs, fleece, wool socks & hat, faux-fur coat, earphones & iPod, and walking the dog... brrrr, bravo!

22:39 ...snow like little pins on the eyes was all that was exposed and got accustomed to Sirenia on low volume & thought of Milton's Satan

22:44 ...& of Wagner's Siegfried & Brunnhilde who wakes from a magic sleep

The ex's girlfriend needs a 'name.' I'll call her the Commandant. It suits her. And which she is, most certainly. One of my strongest images of her is her standing with her arms crossed, twaddling one finger on an elbow, in an Authoritarian pose, a la Milgram. Though she is a very buxom Barbie bleach-blonde who isn't skinny by any means and is quite tall and wears short mini skirts even though she's about 50 or something.

Anyway, "the Commandant" told my daughter to call her Dad for cab fare to and from the doctor.

Meaning=1) the Commandant knows exactly my financial situation and the detrimental effect getting my ex to cut child support will have on my family (she appeals to his cruelty, she knows him well). She thinks leaving 3 people without enough to pay rent, bills or eat is a fun thing to do, as any authoritarian personality would. She knows that I have a legally binding Separation Agreement where it is clear the ex must continue paying child support for my son and she knows I can't afford a lawyer who would stand up for me. She's laughing all the way to the bank.

And 2), to suggest that my daughter call her Dad for cab fare before she even dropped her off today tells me loud and clear that she knows exactly what she did to my daughter's foot when she drove over it and that she truly is behind manipulating my daughter into deciding 'not to' wait at a clinic or emerg for medical care (then the Commandant's 'traffic accident' would have to be reported and then her insurance premiums might go up, but let's care more about money than people) and how bad it really is since she knows my daughter cannot walk even the 2 blocks to the doctor (a 10 min walk at most under normal circumstances).

Could she have driven my daughter to her own doctor in the city where her Dad lives this morning? The one she took the poor girl to to get a load of anti-depressants that I assume she wanted to make the poor girl more docile and manipulable. Of course not. That would be to admit she ran over her foot and did not report the accident to the police as she should have, who would then report it to her car insurance company.

A highly manipulative woman who is extremely vindictive, oh it would make your hair stand on end to tell of some of the 'punishments' this woman has meted out to our family over the years!

You know, I wonder if the sense of ethic, compassion and fairness is a genetic trait that some people have, and others, like the Commandant, and the ex, don't have. While they treat my daughter as a weak little neurotic failure of a child, my daughter is in fact stronger than anyone in that house. My daughter has a strong sense of ethic, and for that she is amazing.

The Commandant's son, who was a heroin addict, on methadone now for 4 or 5 years, de-flowered my daughter mere weeks into her 16th year when he couldn't be charged with statuatory rape, and my daughter fell in love with him and was taken down the garden path of drugs by him and we nearly lost her, and my son, both in that house of doom, the Commandant's house, and yet her son's recovery only came about due to my daughter's strength and insistence on a drug-free relationship. I couldn't imagine living under the Commandant's rules and regulations and infinities of punishments, of which she mets out tons from what I hear, and I can well understand why no-one can live there without becoming dependent on drugs, street drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs, they all have, just to survive, as I understand it, because the core is bad, without moral understanding, without an ethic of care. I accused them of being terrible parents and so she had my ex cut child support to 'punish' me.

This is the commandant, her methods. How she 'controls' people. She particularly hates me because I refuse to be 'controlled' by her. She has never been able to manipulate me. She has hurt me and my children in innumerable ways to 'punish' me when I speak the truth about what goes on in her house but she has not been able to bully me into submission. For a decade she's been trying to take over the reigns of running my life through my children. I refuse to talk to her; I will only talk to my children's father when there is anything to be discussed regarding the children. It incites her to fury, I'm sure, that despite everything she's done, I remain a free woman raising two children alone, and I'm doing a damn good job considering what I have to deal with.

They are terrible parents and my daughter's foot is yet another example of how dangerous the situation is in that house.

I write too much. The story is so shocking.

The situation has worsened. My daughter's foot was run over on public property, outside a "Sport's World." I can only assume medical treatment was not sought because if the accident was reported it might affect the ex's girlfriend's car insurance. It is my belief my daughter was manipulated into deciding not to receive medical care due to 'the time it would take.' The girlfriend would know that if she could convince the girl that she did not want to go through the hassle of waiting for 5 hours at a clinic, or longer at a hospital, at 18 years of age, and therefore capable of making a legal decision on her own medical care, there is nothing I could do legally about the fact that she didn't receive care. I did have quite a long conversation with a police officer located in their city last night and I decided not to put my daughter through the stress of having the police go to her father's house to see if she was alright because, like everyone else, I fear what the girlfriend would put my daughter through.

While it sounds like a normal sort of thing to say about ex's girlfriends, in my experience, this one is a highly manipulative and extremely vindictive woman. I have what I feel is a horror story of examples of what she's done to me over the years he's been with her. She will strike, and she has in this case. He hasn't paid child support this month. This would not be the sort of thing he would normally do given what has happened, but at her direction, or perhaps threat, he would. That child support covers half the rent on a 2-bedroom apartment. Without it, the rent is 85% of my income, leaving scant money for only a portion of the bills and no money for food.

With this loss of income (taxable in my hands, he surely is luckier than most ex's in that regard), I can only cover a third of January's rent now because of the bills and cannot pay the remainder until later in the month, and the City, for that is who I rent from, at market rates, there are no subsidies given to me, will begin eviction proceedings within 3 weeks of any unpaid portion of rent that was due on the 1st of that month. They don't wait, and they give you no reprieve.

My daughter's foot is somewhat swollen but she is able to walk on it and claims it's not painful; it is quite bruised on the upper arch. She came home and after a conflagration between us over her either working or going to school, went to bed. I decided to let her sleep and made a doctor's appointment for tomorrow. The rub is that I actually cannot afford cab fare to the doctor's for her, for this is one of the dire consequences of her father suddenly and radically cutting child support, surely at the bidding of his girlfriend since this is her sort of thing to do when anyone crosses her.

When the girlfriend (they've been together about a decade and live together but she claims him on her taxes as "a boarder" thus avoiding the legal implications of the actual "common law" relationship they have and thus I call her "the ex's girlfriend") comes across these blog posts, I expect her to mount an armoured tank against me. But what can she do? I persist in telling truth; I do not manipulate; I do the best I can to take care of my children against what often seems unbeatable odds with what goes on in the other household.

Over my years of blogging I have endeavoured to keep the 'messiness of reality' out of my posts, preferring to focus on my art. I am not sure why I am now breaching my code, but it seems unstoppable. And if I must break the silence and speak, then speak I must.

At least I have this blog. Blogger keeps legal records of whatever's posted when.

I am too scared to call the police because I am worried about the emotional and psychological ramifications for my poor daughter at her Dad's house. She already carries such a burden, I wouldn't want to make it worse for her. I care for her and love her very much.

I cannot do what is right because I am afraid of what they will do to her if I do.

There have been other injuries where medical attention was not sought for my daughter and I have been concerned about her safety for this reason at her father's for some time.

A 2000 lb or 3000 lb car runs over a foot, your child's foot, and you don't take her to the hospital and make sure nothing's broken or strained, that she doesn't need a cast or crutches or even bandages? Surely it's not just me who finds this reprehensible?

Yet I can do nothing for fear of what they will do to her if I do.

Catch 22. Kafka's reality. It sucks, let me tell you.

If I call the police and request that they visit the ex's house to make sure my daughter's foot is okay, at least it'll generate a police report on an unreported accident. Then if there are any broken bones or other serious consequences to not receiving any medical care when the accident occurred there'll be a police report, a validation that nothing was reported or done for the girl who was injured.

I'm inclining towards asking for help from the police but fear what the ex and his girlfriend will do to my daughter psychologically if I seek the help that I believe she needs.

It should not come as a surprise to the readers of this blog that I left my ex in 1997 due to domestic violence, not towards me at that point, at least not physically any more, but towards my children.

It seems a continuation of that story, how her Dad's girlfriend ran over her foot with her car and her not being taken to the hospital - they apparently 'drove' by a clinic and decided it was 'too crowded' - it would obviously have taken up too much of their Saturday to make sure no bones in her foot were broken or that she didn't need crutches.

If the woman had run over a stranger's foot and had not reported it to the police and had not sought medical care for the person she hit she would be charged.

How is what has happened any different?

Because my daughter is 18 and thus legally capable of making her own medical decisions, there's nothing I can do about the fact that they did not seek medical help when the girlfriend ran over her foot with her car. But it was a traffic accident and not reported. I can get the regional police in the city in which they live to go over tonight and check on my daughter's foot and make sure she is alright.

Thankfully the ex and his girlfriend are not making her take the bus home by herself tomorrow, but are driving her to Toronto, where they have told her to get me to take her to a doctor.

What are my legal options if any bones are broken? Or if there are serious consequences to not receiving medical care when the accident happened? An accident that was not reported, as the law requires.

And if I get dispatch to visit their house tonight because I am worried sick how will the the ex and the girlfriend take it out on her? And on me (he still hasn't paid the child support I am legally entitled to this month)? Will they make it difficult for her there if I get the police to go to the house, and make it difficult for her to tell me of further infractions against her well-being and safety in their house?

I am a mother whose child has been hurt and for whom no medical care was sought I am more than worried. As you can imagine.

My ex's girlfriend ran over my daughter's foot with her car on Saturday, supposedly an 'accident,' though the ex's girlfriend apparently wasn't being very careful at the time, and they did not take her to the hospital, did not get it x-rayed, and, while they iced it, at least that, my daughter phoned and said they wanted me to take her to a doctor when she returns on Monday. I am, as you can imagine, beside myself...

Three Photos

Three photos, taken with my simple cell phone, then photoshopped to change the colour. I'm not sure what to do with them yet. They remind me of different things. I like the first two, yet can't abandon the third.

New Year's Resolutions, or rather Prophecies...

What are your resolutions for this year?

Or, rather, what do you foresee?

When I look into my crystal ball I see...


That birds will roost in the clouds and oceans will sweep over mountains;

That life will endure and we will continue our exploration of it all; we, embodied mind, conscious body;

That we will become fascinated with a model of a rebounding universe that blossoms like an opening flower and shrivels to a seed and blossoms again;

That love is, always was and always will be. That we will laugh and cry and be born and die.

On the blue-green pearl that orbits.

This year will see a crop of superb leaders emerge, but there won't be any major revolutions;

There may be food riots, many more homeless people, it won't be easy;

Continued economic upheaval for the Industrialized nations, that we are in the midst of a massive redistribution of wealth due to outsourcing, which is restructuring the wealth of the world;

Continued warfare between the Palestinians and the Israelis, peace won't be successfully negotiated this year;

That our connections to each other through the Internet will continue to develop at incredible rates with information flying globally even as leisure and fitness while still centred largely in the gym will also involve the quiet arts of meditation, yoga, flow workouts, walking and hiking, easefulness.

That progress in understanding and halting Alzheimer's will make old age a more appealing process;

And so on, and so forth, it's a very busy crystal ball...


(Impressionist photographer, Gertrude Kasebier, posted by Lotusgreen at Japonisme.)

Ruminating on 2008...

While I wait to go to Toronto Tam Tam, my favoured New Year event, and after having done many dishes left by my children, laundry, walked the dog in the frigid winter air, I find myself ruminating on the year that's just passing.

It was a year of shocking revelations for me. Yes, that characterizes 2008.

And a huge amount of work healing what those revelations revealed. It's been a tumultuous year in many respects. I feel as if I've spied the interior of Vesuvius. I hope I rose to the various crises with valour, goodness, respect and help, and things have certainly begun to even out now, but it's been rough going for sure. In that respect, the shock, and yes, denial, revulsion, horror, pain, grieving, all those negative responses, oh they are hard to express, but I am emotional, are not aspects of life I'd like to experience again, at least not to the extent that I have this past year.

I began the year in a contract job at a bank head office with people I loved, and was laid off, the recession already making itself evident as the US sub-prime began its collapse. Then I had another contract position at another bank answering technical emails all day, which was a little bit intelligent, and which I enjoyed, and again, working with wonderful people. Since that ended I haven't worked, which is hard, and takes its toll on the spirit, mind and body.

In November I wrote a novella of something like 57,000 words. I did a few paintings this year. And I began a venture into something I've wanted to explore for half a dozen years - videopoems. While I haven't yet produced anything I'm happy with, I am at least doing something I've wanted to do for a long time. I'll be taking a course on Digital Video Editing in January, and so this exploration will continue.

I haven't been involved with anyone this year since I've been reeling from what happened with the last one, a situation definitely among the "revelations." A couple of men have passed my way and expressed interest but I have to say nothing I would consider - all being married, and that doesn't interest me at all.

And in 2008 I crossed the threshold of menopause, and so am into my third great phase of life: that of the crone. I'm not yet sure about how I feel about it since there are many changes in my body that surprise me and which I wasn't aware would happen, but I accept it as readily as I did menses when that occured at the age of 13.

Both of my children are living with me, my daughter, who's 18, and my son, who's 21. We're very close, the three of us, in good and supportive ways. I am very glad I am able to be here for them because they've really needed that.

I'm sure there's more to this past year, but those were the highlights.

I joined Twitter, and Facebook. Both of which I enjoy. I saw way more movies this year, which was nice. I still have all of my old friends, am blessed in that way, plus some new ones.

It was a year of sweeping up the pieces, and sweeping them up, as calmly as possible, a year when I had to remain grounded and loving above all else, a year when I learnt not to reject what is difficult or painful, another year of living and loving.

In its own tumultuous way, 2008 was beautiful.

Wishing you the best for the year ahead...

Wishing you sparkle tonight, however you spend your New Year's, and a wish-granting great year ahead of success, inner joy and deep satisfaction.

Ice Flowers

"These are the most fragile and the most magical responses to moisture and cold I have ever seen. When the planets align, humidity and temperature are just right; moisture leaves the plant and freezes, creating these intricate crystals. These formed on some Aster left in the meadow."

Photograph and quote by Brian Parsons, used with permission.

(Brian Parsons has been employed by The Holden Arboretum, which he describes as a great organization, for the past 31 years. He also lives on the grounds of an old estate that has a wide variety of gardens so has a tremendous diversity of life around him to photograph. [paraphrased from his website at flickr])


Ice Flowers

asters, flowers of enchantment
whose burning leaves scatter serpents,
talisman of love, and of patience,* blackened
by frost, yet the ice clings to you all night,
your crumpled flowers like clumped hearts in the frozen fields,
making halos, or wedding veils, or intricately carved
pages of divine letters on angels' wings

your flowers become butterflies of light
who've escaped their cocoons

this winter day

__
*in folklore

fog rises through the blue evening, and everywhere pools of water, and the sounds of water, trickling, splashing, like a Tarkovsky movie

to the outside world it may look like nothing's happening, a woman resting, but I've melted into love

Frost of Dancing Birds

This photo of the frost on a window reminds me of dancing birds.

And dancing birds remind me of the return of the light in the darkness, Solstice, the festival of the trees, birth of the divine child, of the sun-god, rebirth of the spirit.

Sharing with you the image of the frost etched on the window that is dancing birds
celebrating the rebirth of the light...

Happiness, joy, good cheer, generosity, warmth, and laughter...

hugs, love Brenda
Toronto, Christmas Day, 2008

Magnolia Stellata, a videopoem

brendaclews has shared a video with you on YouTube:

Magnolia Stellata, from the Botticelli Venus Suite of Poems by Brenda Clews

From my Botticelli Venus Suite of Poems, 'Magnolia Stellata' is the first poem. I am learning how to make videopoems and while this is a complete version of the poem there is a talk to accompany it that I haven't yet recorded but I share anyhow. I taped this on Solstice 2008. Hope you enjoy this rendition.

It was videotaped with an iMac 10.5.5 and edited in Final Cut Express 4.0.1.

This was filmed on, and for, Winter Solstice, though there seemed a glitch and I couldn't upload it to You Tube for a few days.

A little late, but ah well.

My daughter saw it and while she would prefer I cut the hair shaking at the end, she thinks it's my best videopoem to date.

That's praise!

Pre-amble to Magnolia Stellata - another attempt

No, this is not "a video." This is yet another attempt. I videotaped for nearly an hour today and will throw it all out. Posting a tiny clip just because.

I'm working at it; I'm not getting very far. There's another unsuccessful attempt that's better than this one that I may upload tomorrow, don't know yet.

I am learning that creating 'videopoems' is very hard to do!

I'd like to run the text as a line in the top third and have spent a good half hour looking to see how to do that without success!

Learn by doing - that's what this is!

Please forgive. (And the song, too. I'm not sure how to remove it, or if I can. It's from "Yumeji's Theme" on My Blueberry Nights.)

Snow Squall

When I arose this morning, it was dark. As I drew open the bedroom curtains, the world outside was still.

Not one flake swirling, perhaps it passed us by.

In the tiny kitchen, I put on the kettle, and while that came to a boil, measured freshly ground coffee into the Bodum, and put away dishes that were dry in the rack.

Then I went into the livingroom and opened the curtains of five windows.

Between opening the curtains on the one side of the apartment and the other, not five minutes apart, the kettle still coming to a boil, the sky was swirling with blinding snow.

The storm moves with a sharp line across the horizon.


Walking my dog, snow pants, coat collar covering cheeks, only my eyes exposed, the lashing snow stings my eyelids.

In the park, the dog and I chasing each other, there is a lone man in a large navy blue parka and khaki pants.

His arms swirl slowly, one after the other, like warm Pacific ocean waves rolling. His body sways.

In the squalling storm he is gently performing tai chi.

When I pass and smile and say he looks beautiful, those oceanic movements, he says, "A storm is a great time to practice. In Halifax, a whole group of us did tai chi during snow storms."



The store where I bought that nylon coat is gone and it's extremely hard to find 4-paw, underbelly-covered coats for mid- to large-sized dogs and so this one is patched with copious amounts of duct tape inside which holds it together! If she doesn't wear it when there's packing snow hundreds of little balls of snow stick to her fur and cause her to shiver and then I have to bath her carefully at home to melt them off.


Keesha looks a bit like a red rocket chewing on a stick, but you can see the tai chi gentleman in the distance.

Pedro Páramo

Certain books change your life. While I can't say I fully understand the novel, Pedro Páramo, by the Mexican author, Juan Rulfo, having now finished it, yes, I am different. Literature has possibilities I didn't know of before reading this book. Published in 1955, it began a tradition of writing. Rulfo is called the father of the literature of magic realism in South America. In the novel, those who are living and those who have died interweave in haunting ways. Time moves backwards or forwards, you can hardly tell. Characters appear and disappear like wind; memories are everywhere in the air. Everyone's death is foretold again, and again. Put it on your list. A must read.