Red Cedar

In a fit of not knowing what to do for xmas presents, I’ve ordered custom calendars with words and images from this blog and personal letters. A few of you close friends will be getting these as gifts – but for those of you who just wish you had a print or two of mine to hang on your wall – here’s your chance!

As described at Lulu.com, Lucipetal is a calendar of words from my blog and images from my travels over the last year. Personal and quirky – and a little bit wistful. You can see sample images here. To overview or order, go to this link.

I’m also thinking of doing some notecards and postcards at cafepress of my favourite two or three images. Just figured that if I was going to do them for my own uses I would put them up as print-on-demand products.

• This week has been a bit strange and it’s worn me out.
• If I want to stay mentally upright I need to get enough sleep.
• I should never skip packing the advil when traveling.
• Coca Cola is still the best hangover cure I know.
• Darren has been moved to FCI Marianna. Click here for his new address (inmate number stays the same. Please write him.)
• I’m speaking again in a couple of hours. There will be Ukranian food served to make the meeting more “social”. Perogies and politics. Borscht and bullshit.
• My life is really full right now. It’s good, but I’m frustrated often by the fact I can’t do everything all the time.
• I’m facilitating a meeting on Colombia at SFU this weekend, then hosting a Resist! meeting at my house.
• Some real writing is coming, soon. I promise.

I knew it was coming, but I’m still very sad. I just found out that Jeremy Paster passed away a couple of days ago. I’m glad he was released from his pain peacefully, and I’m glad I made the call to him before it happened. I suppose there isn’t much more you can ask from a death.

I saw Anna and the new baby Cai (a nephew of sorts to me) last week and got a few photos. No time to post words to go with these, but I wanted to get a couple up.

Oy. Spinning girl. Frightened because things seem pretty damned good – when am I going to be punished for this period of relative peace? (Oh yes, I am nothing if not predictable in my moments of self-sabotage).

But really, my life is very good right now. Work is busy, I’m getting lots of talk time for my union (and remember, for an attention whore, any audience is a good thing), I’ve had some great social interactions in the past few days, I’ve been playing music, Darren is feeling much better this week, and I’m dating someone who makes me feel both adored and adoring. Besides that, I cleared with the friend who was upset with me, saw a decent play on Friday night, am reading an excellent novel, and managed to get both laundry and groceries done on the weekend.

I know. It can’t last right?

But as Kyla said to me last week when I was visiting Victoria – do you reject one sweet because there are only 20 sweets in the bag and not 100? By which she meant – just because the sweets aren’t infinite in life, do you eschew the ones that are offered? Of course not. So I’m working on enjoying the sweets that are there without worrying too much about where the bag bottoms out. (Or course, too much of a good thing can make you sick, but that’s another analogy all together).

I’ve another busy week ahead of me, with one night away in Courtenay and the rest of my time spent here in Vancouver going place to place. It’s a manageable schedule culminating in a daytime date with Brian on Friday and a radical girls drinking session at the WISE Friday night. I suppose if I really need something to worry about I can just start thinking about how behind I am on making Solstice gifts.

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On an entirely different note – is it my imagination or can bill bissett do just about anything and call it poetry? It’s no wonder concrete poetry isn’t taken seriously by anyone other than literature scholars. Pshaw!