BLANKETS AND BASKETS

a song for spring somewhere warm

 

So we’ll wait for the next day. for tomorrow let’s pretend

all will be better when my hands do not bleed, a bit of cheek

caught when my hands are flapping and I can’t keep control

of my own blood tied up in twine. I want to be naked

but my skin is itchy, and my urine, does it still drip

watch my watchfors snags trolling the deeps, meta

fucking fours my cat has my skin in its claws nothin

fancy about that, hey! I take it away as a take a way

who grooms you baby not right now maybe soon

Chrissie Hynde reaches to pat my cat I substitute my hat

you can touch my hat, but you can’t touch my cat.

There some pushing and shoving, we’re all good with that.

The camera capture our immediate image no-time flat.

Double nns keep moving, bread, blankets, picnic baskets.

 

Finished? April 29, Monday, a working day so I’m working

 

 

March 28, 2024

LUFTIGEN.

I didn’t expect the noise to come
with spring’s open windows.
Winter was such a quiet affair
going door to door. Tight
that was the word, air that enters
called a draft. Rugs and blankets
thrown around everywhere.

Now time to break our nails
we dare to remember windows
can loosen by layers until the screen
reveals itself. Huzzah let’s shout
The air is fresh yowls Gus our cat
let me out I swear there’s that
noisy squiggle sniffing the casement.

I breathe sufficiently fill my lungs
shout Gus be heard never mind
the rhyme or being seen, your purr
comes easy when I stroke your coat
over and over and over again  (to be certain)
there is no illness in your hair
there is no cancer in the air.

~

I am often more confused easily but enjoy getting stuff up on the my name website. Have been gone for a while because I have completed a manuscript; 170 pagers 0f a prose and poetry hybrid called Always Breathe  has some work from the manuscript

but often represented by artists that were commissioned to read some off my work and make an art work it inspired. Murray Toews is working on turning the physical gallery show to one that floats freely and virtually  in internet space.  However, our care giver of the day has left and we won’t see her again until next week.  This is one of her specialities. We intend to feature one of each off our carers in the new year. 

AYDEN RYGA’S SPANAKOPITA
Published: DECEMBER 17, 2023 | Edit
Michelle and me hire at least two students every year who work as a team with up to another 2 care aides. We are both full-time wheelchair users Michelle has MS and Diabetes and I have a lot of things, most create pain. I chose to have my left leg beneath the knee be amputated to eliminate a terrible Stage Four Flat Foot with an ankle fusion that went wrong. The surgeon’s third out of 300. Mercifully,
I am in the 30% of amputees that feel no or very little “phantom pain” after surgery. We are fortunate to have a well rounded support team that allows us to advertise and hire those we wish to do the work we can no longer do. One of our favourites, especially once it’s on the table, is making spanakopita. I will feature other specialities by our carers in 2024,

Jayden, working with my shabby memory and several cookbooks and a quick check in with Jo back in Winnipeg where this was also a Chalmers family favourite, and never used parsley for this! Dill only please which is delicious in this recipe. So Jayden (yes she is George Ryga’s grand-daughter) has accumulated a lot of sources to make it her way, the way we present it here,

Ingredients

375 grams Feta Cheese
1 bunch fresh dill
black pepper
1 large white onion
600 grams frozen spinach
200 grams fresh spinach
5 garlic cloves
250 grams ricotta cheese
3 eggs
olive oil
one pack Filo

 

What to do
→ Heat oil in pan, once hot, add chopped onion and garlic. Once onions have caramelized, add frozen Spinach.
→ Wait 5-10 minutes then add fresh spinach.
→While cooking spinach, mix eggs, feta, ricotta and chopped dill in a separate bowl. Mix together.
→ Begin layering filo in ~ 8×12 inch pan. Add 5-6 single sheets, brushing with olive oil between each layer.
→ Preheat the oven to 350°F.
→ Combine cheese and spinach mixture. Add this mixture to the filo-lined pan
→ Top this pan with 3-4 more sheets of filo. (brushing with olive oil)
→ Bake for 40-45 minutes or until golden brown

 

I have known Murray for more than a decade, starting when he was art director and illustrator for Rhubarb magazine until it’s last publication of anthologies in 2017. We had begun to work together on small projects, moving “INTO THE TIME ZONE” with Covid and videocasts from our respective bunkers.  Murray is the artist wrangler, the Victor has too many ideas wrangler, and key to opening the door on LOOK.

Murray Toews – Bio 2022

Murray Toews is a “Deluxe artist” whose work spans the disciplines and media of writing, drawing, print, film, audio-art, interactivity and digital / analog hand-drawn animation that make use of thematic process-driven animation techniques that rapidly create animated shorts. He received a BFA first class honours degree with a thesis in advanced drawing from the U of M in 1992.

In 2004, he curated “Animator/Re-Animator” featuring Prairie animation with screenings in Canada and Japan. In 2012, his animated short Thought Camera, Reel One: “Circus of Objects” was the official selection for the NSI Online Short Film Festival and the 2013 Gimli Film Festival Manitoba program.

In 2018 he premiered “10 Years Before Happiness”- a subjective and allegorical autobiography seen through the youthful lens of intense emotion and surreality as he explores a personal landscape of shifting memory.

In 2022, he continues to produce and collaborate with a small group of talented cinematographers, writers, and audio artists to create short, animated and live action films as an independent artist and as the owner of an indie-driven media business called URBANSTICKMAN Productions.

July 10, 2022

For most of my adult life, I have wanted to work in my art on topics of pain and disability. I feel the human body is resilient while simultaneously fragile. Participating in Lookshow is an opportunity to make artwork expressing sterile health care facilities. In the sculpture, fabric shashes resonate with hospital bed sheets, scrubs and gowns, while the handles reflect the relationship between patients and aides.  

 

I first got to know Victor through working at Artspace, in Winnipeg in the 20th century, and in several reincarnations and/or reinventions in the 21st. 

 

My work investigates visual mediums of drawing, sculpture, with performance, video, and installation. An artistic language featuring the body is the starting point, where I reflect on its relationship to materials to make new work. For this piece I will be working in a metal shop. The shop is called “north forge fabrication lab”  and it’s not a forge! I’ve wanted to work in there for a while,  and the piece I’m making for Lookshow is a perfect reason to try it. 
Nicole Shimonek 

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GRACE NICKEL

July 4, 2022

A wound gives off its own light
surgeons say.” Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband.

I met Grace Nickel behind my back. Five vessels, shorter vases perhaps,  under plexiglass to keep the gorgeous ceramics safely in view,  rested on the credenza in my Manitoba Arts Council office. I met many fine artists, high and low, gentle and harsh,  angry and charming,  during my years in Winnipeg. Grace’s work reminded me of a relaxation exercise I had been doing since the 1980s where the refrain “calm and serene” were heard softly. All I had to do in my MAC office was turn around and meditate

It was her sconces that next drew me to her work.  I am delighted that Grace has agreed to make two sconces, or sconce based sculptures, stand alone, and including light. She has started experimenting with clay thinking about bones and their fragility inside us. 

“A note to let you know that I’ve been reading the poetry you have sent and I have begun to create some sample “test tiles” for the light sconces. There will be bones (quite possibly some broken), and there will be an overall narrowness to the forms, just as our feet are slender, small bones combining to create the delicate base we stand up on. But something is still missing – cartilage perhaps? – a matrix-like substance or a webbed network that holds it (us) all together? The work will continue.”

Nickel’s biography here on our look show site demonstrates her achievements at home and abroad, far and near. This week she is at a rural Manitoba residency. You will see the work I have asked her for is a small part of a large and advanced ceramics practice. 

I SCARE MYSELF[1]

Even with M keeping me in bed it’s dark after ten even on Canada Day. Deefer Dog is shaking between us until he’s not and the bangs stop banging. I start my journey into the night my body and my mind insisting on separate rips. I wake as my arm sweeps the tall lotions off the night table on my first pass, and see my arm dislocated, barely attached to my shoulder and twice as long. Second pass I get the water and nearly everything else, struggling into consciousnes with a deep affirmatiion from M to put up my side bed rail to corral my chaos just enough to let her sleep and stop scaring the dog.

I scare myself when I scream ten out of ten and a pain generates upside my neck bending over to take off my fake leg. The aftershocks in pieces of my mind send me to the hospital emergency, but only when I throw in the cxrying towel a week later. Taken, and taken seriously for a brain CT scan and an appointment with a doctor at the TIA ( mini-stroke)clinic. The vascular neurologist shows me my brain, unremarkable except for as small mass on my third ventricle. My body memory choses the day my son had his mass in his fourtth ventricle removed in an eight hour brain surgery to press rewind replay remember I scare myself.

The neurologist does point out one of my arteries to the brain is narrowing. Meditarraen diet he says, eat more vegetables! I nod in pain. I breathe, again. Then he moves down to the scan of my cervical spine. “Oh, my,” he says as I want him to speak, “your neck is horrible, horrible!” Those words, the word horrible exact as much as anything in this world that scares me everyday I open  my eyes. My cervical spine curves the wrong way and the small tab-like disks have crumbled like feta. Still me, parts of my body scare me.

The pain I feel belongs to me, something I’ve held as my own since I was a child. Friends, relatives even doctors, exclaim, “no idea how you do what you do so much with all your injuries and ailments, you are absolutely fabulous! I wish I could have such an interesting life. Considering all your challenges you are  absolutely THRIVING.” THis is why I need a new psych, to build some prespective; reality checks sure, but ignoring the tempatation to fervently believe my achievements outweigh my pain.”

How hard it was and is, to explain to my families and friends that Icanbe in severe mental distress despite success dogging my steps. I am not worthy, I am unclean, I do not deserve to be let off the hook. So I dangle like a particple waiting for a psychistrist to take me down to listen when I scare myself.

[1] Borrowed from Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks

Grace Paley writes:

My father had decided to teach me how to grow old. I said O.K. My children didn’t think it was such a great idea. If I knew how, they thought, I might do so too easily. No, no, I said, it’s for later, years from now. And besides, if I get it right it might be helpful to you kids in time to come.

They said, Really?

My father wanted to begin as soon as possible.

[…]

Please sit down, he said. Be patient. The main thing is this — when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.

That’s a metaphor, right?

Metaphor? No, no, you can do this. In the morning, do a few little exercises for the joints, not too much. Then put your hands like a cup over and under the heart. Under the breast. He said tactfully. It’s probably easier for a man. Then talk softly, don’t yell. Under your ribs, push a little. When you wake up, you must do this massage. I mean pat, stroke a little, don’t be ashamed. Very likely no one will be watching. Then you must talk to your heart.

Talk? What?

Say anything, but be respectful. Say — maybe say, Heart, little heart, beat softly but never forget your job, the blood. You can whisper also, Remember, remember.

BUTTERFLIES IN MY HEART

June 22, 2022

 

I just saws a monarch butterfly, and it’s not the only one I am likely to see this week. I’ve gone whole summers without seeing a monarch butterfly. This sighting reminded me of a poem inspired by an old friend who has just retired, Grace Paley for a reason I have forgotten at the moment, Chrisse Hynde from  the Pretenders watching the clothes go around,  and Les and Jane who must be the kindest Laundromat owners in the East Interlake.  

 

MY SLIGHTLY DEFECTIVE HEART
for Peter Dueck, Grace Paley,
Les and Jane and Chrissie Hynde

My heart is irregular and incompetent, still it keeps beating
all the time. Arrhythmia is what it’s called, that flutter,
that irregularity. My friend said “just imagine,
you’re a lucky man, you have a butterfly heart.”

I’m sure his job doesn’t let him use enough metaphors,
and I enjoy the thought, lightening up. Oh
so much better to have a butterfly fluttering in my chest.
My heart’s incompetence is the incompetence of my aortic valve.

Listening, my general practitioner heard the sluice back
using his stethescope. Yes, sir, confirmed the ultrasound.
Cradling my heart in my hands I urge all this blood

to keep circulating, a deep breath, my life assured
Astride a chair at the East Interlake Klean-All Laundromat.
I swish, I swash, watchin the clothes go ’round,
beat that.

 

 

PAIN EATS MY BRAIN

June 18, 2022

I forget 

all the comfort
I brought to you last night
when your body turned
senseless

i forget the other night 
all the shudders  
blood rushing
to my fingers

~really? is all you need
to ask
this morning
overcast, pain

taking my hand, me
glad compassion
is my kind auto-pilot

when I cannot hold
onto my memory
even love escapes

pain
unfortunately
pours in.

BEAUTY

the extra 5 milligrams with my bread and butter 
Allow my eyes to see the beauty of the afternoon
Early in June, green leaves are all here latest
brightest summer breeze drop seeds from the trees

Photosynthesis will go on life will go on, but the extra 5 milligrams
Is not enough to take me outside into the near summer air
my shoulders my hands unwilling to turn my wheels, I can see
I can know there is beauty without moving or getting high.

Behind the double-glazed glass, I look at all that beauty;
Beauty beauty all around (and none I can transcend),
see, look out the window like I do, the world
clusterfucks the sun too bright for a photograph

now look down, in my lap I clip beauty in the image,
beauty releasing my pain, my fear, my rage.

Clip Dart 1

IMG_0468

 

April 20, 2022

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

– F.Scott Fitzgerald

I sat on my glasses for the last time yesterday. They broke. Glasses have been a part of my life since I was four years old. I have been to the optometrist and had my checkup and ordered new glasses which will take two weeks just like in the old days. My mother realized there was something wrong with my eyes when she couldn’t teach me how to read. Thankfully she didn’t waste too much time in having them checked and glasses ordered from James Shane in Winnipeg at the Bay, which was my family’s beachhead in Winnipeg. Reading became a snap and an important part of my life.

I’ve been closing my eyes a lot lately, without really knowing why. I’ve been looking for a psychiatrist in Kelowna, but I’ve had the good fortune to find a psychologist in the meantime and I had a session this morning. Towards the end of the session I talked about closing my eyes all the time. And trying to connect it to some thing.

Then I remembered these lines from a piece called OUTTA SIGHT!

” What I’m trying to say is I don’t want to be seen like this.  I know, anybody I know doesn’t really want to know how much it hurts on a scale of 1-2-10.  My pain is only original to me. So I take my pain alone like so many others not being a burden making do, getting by and closing my eyes because I don’t want to see me like this either.”

Part of this story relates to my son Theo who, when he was three, covered his eyes and said you can’t see me. He became invisible because he covered his eyes. So the whole business of seeing and looking into somebody by looking into their eyes is of interest to my thinking.

So on the one hand I’m self-conscious about my disability, particularly my weight, and during my ‘cognitive variances.”  I’d prefer people not see me when I’m not at my best. This has been happening more often since I’ve become physically disabled. Covid has come just at the right time where it looks like I’m just doing what everybody else is doing instead of withdrawing from the people-y world. I’ve been fortunate again in finding a partner who also has a disability and also rather  be at home than out and about, who commented on losing service 0f our body and mind at the same time, “When your mind and your body both give out at the same time – total quitsville!”

I’ve just got this big Canada Council for the Arts grant which is essentially an extravaganza of showing myself and asking people to look, or more formally, let’s say it’s about identity, self-portraiture through the lens of pain, suffering and disability.

These are the two opposing ideas that I’m starting off with. On the one hand I’m closing my eyes a lot. On the other hand I’m writing stories from my life and I’m asking 12 different artists to interpret aspects of my life from my writing including my body parts and pieces of my mind and the pieces it’s in. I am delighted that I have found artists that will work with me and my conceptions of myself; or as I sometimes think, my several different selves.

For me it’s important for other people to look and see and hear different narratives of the disabled experience. There are as many stories and variations of living as a disabled person as there are disabled people. “If you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person” is a common saying,  because for Christ sake we’re all different!  That should be a basic understanding but it means people have to tolerate difference. In fact tolerate isn’t even a good enough word we should be able to do better than that,  be kind is getting there, be fair. Better or worse!

But in this instance, my story told using theatre, films, music, writing, videos and sculptures all showcase different parts of my life and my living. I have a cartoon that Murray Toews drew for me. I had a dream in which the doctors were pointing to the base of my spine,  where I have spondylolisthesis and said “see that’s where the hubris is coming in.”

 I try to remind myself to be cautious about my expectations either of myself, the other artists that are working on the show, and the people that come and see the show. One thing I can say about this though, it won’t be boring. The conflict between not wanting to be seen, to hide deformity, disability, my different body that people really have trouble looking at, which I’ve been writing about since 1979 actually, “all the picture people look the other way” (Jimmy Bang) and my desire for people to accept my differences so I am not ashamed will be dramatic.

For me the energy comes from creation. One of my favourite sayings is simply that desire creates all. And wanting to do something,  making some thing is the forge that I need to get dressed in the morning.

Today is another day

March 17, 2022

I spoke this morning with my new urologist this morning. He would be a new urologist anywhere, I’ve not seen one before. Lab tests next week including PSA blood test, a camera up my urethra later in April. I have an unremarkable bladder, and a regular sized prostate so this is all out of an abundance of caution.

I wrote Patreon copy before lunch and hope my readers subscribe, renew, whatever it takes. The promo below points out it can be as cheap as $9 month or $67 annually for the whole kit and caboodle.

I meditated and medicated like I always do, and noon and woke with the realization my left shoulder was hurting, even after the hour’s rest rest on my back as always. Disappointing. The cortisone shot benefits were gone in two days. I would have settled for two months, the six was the optimal result.
I put my leg on, my big boy Dickie overalls and headed out to the near IGA on Highway 33 and Hollywood Avenue.

I placed my order online, and the helpful clerk packed them into the van, surprised there was room on the passenger side. The passenger side is designed to accommodate a powered chair and unless my wife has come with, there is room for groceries. I went to the Hollywood square of shops and bought a loaf of bread, some licorice and cold cuts at the butcher’s (we’re very well stocked with meat at the moment, but they carry Michelle’s favourite licorice from New Zealand I think), had a haircut at Lorenzo’s (Number 1, all over my head took less than 10 minutes including an eyebrow trim,  for $20 senior’s price), and finally some oranges and bananas that I had missed on the grocery order.

Home again home again  jiggedy jig,  meds and rest, more pain. And still have other chores. I’ll do the most fun first, outside having a lime cordial and soda. Write this blog and invite friends and foes alike to tune in to the premiere of F; and update my Patreon page. I’m back in  the subscriber business on Sunday, March 20, isn’t it? Now about that lime cordial …

MARCH 16, 2022

My website victorenns9.com is changing slightly overtime. I will promote a pay system using PayPal. The victorenns nein freeforall continues until Saturday when the letter F from the abject alphabet premieres as Episode 6 in the time zone.

Thanks to Murray Toews!

New subscription rates beginning Sunday, March 20, will apply for Lookbookshow ($3), ListenHere ($3) pain room ($3) and complete access to my massive archives ($3) , any two for 5.00, all four, only $9, yes nine dollars.

Annual rate $67 (my age, which no matter what happens to the clocks, will increase every year). All current subscribers will be grandfathered for one year.

All subscriptions include “About” “Abject Alphabet, A through F.” and “Blog.” I have assurances about the security of my site, and ask that all readers of my website subscribe. The first nifty fifty who have been with me pretty much from the beginning will roll on.

THANK YOU!

February 9, 2020

My desire drives me to work everyday, and it ain’t in no cadillac. I want to say something.  I want to write something. I want to read something. I want to make something. The Need for Wanting Always is the name Gertrude Story gave to a short story collection. Her desire was returned by the way of a muser who dictated the stories, well most of Gertrude’s stories. I can’t remember the dictator’s name

It’s not the wanting that’s so much the problem, I’ve heard.  It’s becoming attached so you can’t let go. Makes sense to me like this…I want…I write a poem…as good as I can…then I let it go.  Desire is not the same as attachment, said the man with three ex-wives.

I advised an artist to give up on despair and get back to riding desire right to creation. You are god, the creator, the maker, you’ll never find a better job. You make something using everything your desire gives you, to create. You put into the world something that didn’t exist before your wanting then thinking then making. Without desire your imagination withers. Argue if you like but I believe desire beats all.

Herbert Marcuse says somewhere in Eros and Civilzation, that making civilization is Eros sublimated, Thanatos thwarted. Otherwise like the Kills sing in Black Rooster “You just want to fuck and fight (down in the basement).” Argue if you like, but I think making is the ticket to civilization.

Without desire I will die, or want to die. I know while I am working, writing especially something new that didn’t exist just minutes before, I am most alive  in the sway of my free-ranging senses making, creating something new.

“If that last thing left you can do is to keep creating, creation will sustain you…. creation is life-sustaining.” I get this, put succinctly by Tom Allen on CBC speaking about Mahler at the end of his life. I hope my family and friends do too.

 

Misdirected thoughts listening to Schafer String Quartet 7

November 11, 2021

1. Thinking about the pharmacy I say I was thinking bout the pharmacy ring the bell please understand I don’t need
2. The Percocet now, but in two weeks. I am asking now
3. So will have the little I need in two weeks.
4. This now is Schafer string quartet 7. Lyrical in violin first theme and in cello with the second theme
5. Which brings the colour down a bit, but there is still light penetrating the smoke
6. The 10+ totally awful airqauality head ache headache so can I still dictate while I’m listening. Next paragraph seems so
7. . There’s a sermon sounding like a Thurman theremin there we are sure why not but it’s a soprano well of course it’s a soprano both Schafer’s wives were sopranos two wives one and two I had one through 4 none of them could sing like this but all of them knew a good line when they saw one
8. This is actually pretty splendid so there must be lyrics it’s more than just ooze and the letter O it rises it falls there is fear apparently apparently this soprano is backing off the stage so it sounds off in the distance now maybe she’s been outside maybe she’s running away because there’s fear or that’s what I hear will be great when I get my hearing aids back though won’t it
9. OK so here we have the Viola I have a cousin named Viola Viola Epp she never played the Viola also the cello and I think maybe even a violin she never played. let’s all get involved you know even this darkness is pretty gentle there are vaccinations to be had there are infections to be at I’m staying inside folding laundry and wondering where did I get this headache
10. not so much I am planning to make cottage pie for supper and we will have to sort this out because here comes the soprano insisting they really should have baked beans can’t really have cottage pie  without baked beans but I’ve never baked beans in a pie.  When the soprano’s hit those upper notes with a bit of volume behind them breathing from their pelvis R pudenda if you’re allowed to say that and really let it blossom I don’t know why he’s so infatuated with that sound
11. theremin, that’s the sound he’s mimicking why not just get a theremin of course then it wouldn’t be a quartet what a but how is it a quartet now if she’s singing I’m having coffee that’s going to help actually I’m perking right up ah saying she’s doing a lot of signing now sahagin sighing sighing and Yang Yang too why not an yen Yang and Fred Wah’s music at the heart of thinking I was something he thought of I’m so glad to be doing this again have I told you how glad I am to be working again Oh my God
12. and how I can make paragraphs with the return key that might help actually in dictating poetry I should try that do I dare have a second little cup of coffee I’ve loved my thermas this big metal thermas is humongous and that’s probably a good thing for the wedding I like stainless steel but this is not a stainless steel quartet no it feels a lot more organic i really should check on the song to it’s a long one movement piece it’s gonna have to find the lyrics in wiki I think which might screw things up I don’t know doesn’t matter if I understand it
13. here we are in the second page danger always with dictation long long long go long go long gong gong gong it was gone gone gone gone so long and she had a wonderful feeling yeah of course banger going of course she had one good for her next paragraph let’s go
14. Smith spring if you and I were lovers I’m hearing life would be so sweet I will just give you a swing a sweet a single shrug obio it’s just a very thin reedy violin but OK it’s over like oboe like I’m hearing tonsils now there’s never a cartoon of a singing soprano without her epiglottis is it or is it are you view love quivering quivering shaking in her mouth I wonder if they realized the cartoonist of course they did of course the cartoonists knew what they were doing with that does her clitoris work yeah well anyway where am I going with this i’m back but i need to know how how long this piece is and it’s 27 minutes and there’s 18 minutes left so we’re at the 19 minute mark and it sounds like a wood block but of course if it’s a quartet though Murray wouldn’t really be held in by the fact that a quartet is with four instruments it would be using a sound go like a woodblock or he was using a woodblock it sounded like a metronome it sounded like a metronome
15. here we are again so lyrical theme being passed from the violin to the Viola to the cello no my cello angry set up a bit peeping Tom peeping Tom peeping Tom parting the curtains Yikes they see each other in the mirror of the glass there’s the metronome there’s the metronome now we have a little dance in the violin dancy dancy
16. I’m a little on the dizzy side and I don’t know if it’s the coffee my leg or my pain and it’s not that late yet I took my meds near 12 so I can’t really take them again until noon I mean until 4 sort of drifting right but doctor John cabots in would say that’s alright just bring your mind back back to what you’re meditating on and I’m meditating on Schafer’s 7th quartet being played by
17. The .22 c a;ibre b ullet is the fismallest to kill you and me. At this point I might guess it’s too long but I’ll have to read the lyrics maybe if you heard them they would be more engaging and there would be a story to tell beyond me just talking about what’s happening on a very surface so like this would be a level so if I was going to write this as a quartet then I would write different parts I don’t know if I would I could start with the soprano I suppose and then right all the different parts in other words the violin is saying this the Viola is saying this the cello was saying this and the lyrics well never mind the lyrics they were saying something too they were saying something too I love to swing in my chair twirling in this spring Ling in the swings I’m thinking about riding in the land and the storm that happened that night and Theo holding up his arms and shouting I’ll save us as the tent was being threatened with wind so fierce that they could blow us away but couldn’t really they could lay a blow the tent down over us which is what happened but here I am not listening to the fat lady that singing again well I shouldn’t say fat lady that’s not right is it next paragraph I have no idea what she looks like I’m thinking actually pretty thin from the sound that I’m hearing
18. I’m going on to the next page so I don’t really need to but I think I should put a paragraph into the last one one of the things about this kind of composition is it doesn’t take into account how often you’re dealing with external things like chewing your sub nail and being irritated by the pain in your right knee here we have a bit of dashing about with syncopated 8th notes and then a bit of lyricism when they reach the top end of let their doing the pizzicato something I like only rarely this is going to be some mess I think this could be a cut actually now there’s an idea I wonder if I could set up a program that would just pick every third line or something and have it make the least amount of sense this shape her number 7 which of course was written to make a lot of sense but which I’m ignoring OK you will look up the lyrics of course you look up the lyrics you’re feeling really good right now boy you should drink coffee more often C and then you could pump a little water into it and you would have a small glass for both and do you want your cold water tasting a bit like coffee well maybe I do
19. I will need to concentrate harder and talk less only beginning to focus if I wouldn’t know better I’d hear I just heard two piano keys being played there’s always this sort of shouting singing this I’ve heard before it is in fact if it’s just like when you’re finishing the phrase and it’s on a rising tone usually yeah now we have some repetition that’s interesting it sounds like gallop she’s galloping though I don’t think she’s riding a horse the voice is galloping was no Monty Python coconuts here oh I’ve got to talk less oh I have to talk less oh I have to talk less maybe I should take every 7th line and see what happens OK but I still have to wait till it finishes we’ll do that will do this several ways from Sunday but it would be great to have another one of these done by the end of the month would not I wonder when I’ll hear about the CBC literary competition other writers aren’t supposed to want to win prizes we all do and we all know we’re not supposed to even enterprises especially since the classless money how vain we are oh wait a minute she’s faded out.

Published: October 21, 2021 | Edit

Listen Here is well underway. I am getting ready to listen to R.Murray Schafer’s 8th String Quartet as a prompt for free-fall writing leading to couplets, leading me to a new ghazal. I plan to write a ghazal for every quartet. .Extensive research continues, as does listening. The first seven ghazals in the collection are complete, and I’ve written an introduction for the book including the other sections in the manuscript called “Dispatches from the pain room” and “The Jimmy Bang Blues Project” to crystallize my thinking and outline my work for the next three months.

R. Murray Schafer died in August 2021. He was 88. Here he is pictured with Quatuor Molinari and his spouse Eleanor James.

August 14, 2021 

I am in an angry and sad place right now. I’m sad that R Murray Schafer has died. He was 88 and has done a lot of good work so it’s a tempered sadness as I work on gazhals prompted by his string quartets. I am sad that Dave Barber has died. He is my age and has done a lot of good work so I am sad on a personal scale for having lost him as a friend and colleague when at work for the Winnipeg Film Group, and for the loss of his programming expertise for Cinematheque.

Mostly I am angry and sad about what’s happening in Afghanistan. This could easily have been and probably was predicted by advisers to Dis United States administration. I agree with the general sentiment that it’s time that the USA stopped being the policeman of the world, or building empires. I am however sad that the United Nations has not come back into the country when Dis United States departed leaving the country to the Taliban.

The Taliban took Afghanistan so quickly it could only have been agreed to before hand with many of the local population tired of the corruption common in this so called attempt to bring democracy to Afghanistan. It’s a law and order government that’ll happen, it will subjugate women almost certainly.

At the moment there is a promise that women will be able to educate women just like midwives are women and are allowed to touch women in childbirth but male doctors are not which still means that there is more death in childbirth and high infant mortality rates higher then in many or most countries. Wait and see.

I know I know killing to support  human rights doesn’t make any logical sense. “But if I had a rocket launcher…” Or life is unfair and we should just accept it as such. I am a lucky man. This is where I run into my problem. Under the Taliban the rights of women to free speech, freedom of movement, freedom to be educated will be wiped out within months.

Yes I know I know that was already happening. I think the best suggestion I heard about this was to arm the women. And see what happens, it can’t be any worse. Teaching them to grow food has not stopped the collapse of human rights, which could never ever even be mentioned when I was there in 2008.

And that’s the essential conundrum in Afghanistan explained to me. It’s a choice between bad and worse. It’s not a choice between good and bad it’s a choice between bad and worse. At the time when I was in Afghanistan in 2008 that meant the occupation was bad, but the Taliban is worse. Yes that’s now present tense, but we’re told this is Taliban 2.0. speaking Urdu not Pashto. Educated, and from Pakistan who will be the new occupiers. Pakistan? Likely they’ve negotiated an end to drone strikes there as well.

So Prime Minister how will you bring 20,000 vulnerable Afghans to Canada now, in the middle of an election, a pandemic and wildfires? Triage.

I can’t watch; and start thinking how to raise money to help educate girls and women wherever in the world they are not treated as human equal to men. This means in our Canada too, where Indigenous girls and boys too often do not have equal opportunities for clean water, housing or an education.

Today I do not feel up to the challenge, happy the lives of my granddaughters will be better than my mother’s, and better than the girls’ in Afghanistan. I am sad and angry about racism in our Canada, about the need of clean water, housing and education for Indigenous peoples. In Canada I can see a bit of hope now and then, there has been some movement towards improvement, however slow. In Afghanistan life will fall back,  likely moored in teaching of the uncleanliness of women, and the superiority of men.

So we teach our Canadian children human rights and reading,  and support others risking their lives to teach girls and women around the world, teachers under threat of death and dismemberment. Triage.

My manual wheelchair disintegrated under  my butt, and our handicapped equipped van broke down likely for the last time. The left channel on my amplifier is gone and there are too many passwords keeping me from my work as a writer and as a consumer. My puny sorrows. I am a lucky man.

Covid-19 infections are way up in our valley as wildfires torch the surrounding forests. Hurrah for the front line workers, the firefighters, the paramedics!  Our house is safe and insured. Triage.

And then there are the ruins of capitalism observed in tin cocoons by billionaires circling the earth life is good they say life is good. Triage.

EXCERPT FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SUSANN ENNS

In spring preparations for Mennonite Collegiate Institute (MCI) Sängerfest and Graduation took place. I was given parts to perform in both. The big Sängerfest was held in a big tent rigged up and supported by poles. We had no sound system and had to learn how to project our voices.  Naturally a big thunderstorm blew up and gave us 60 students quite the competition. How I wished some of my family would come too. Graduation was held in a separate Sunday. I had to speak again. Of the Schulfest (Sängerfest) my memories seem to be of a Chemistry laboratory demonstration in German. One quotation I made which has stuck with me was: “Reden ist Silber, Schweigen ist Gold!”

My graduation day was a frustrating one. My Mom and sisters and brother Andy (as driver) preferred to go to a distant cousin’s wedding in Morden. I was to milk the four cows and do the chores before going to Grad for

7 p.m. The cows had to be driven home from the pasture a mile down the creek and since I had to start earlier than their usual time, they objected and did not want to go. At any rate, after all was done, I took the bike and headed for Gretna.

Mrs. Siemens was anxiously waiting for me. I had left my graduation dress, made by Sister Betty and Mom, here. So I quickly washed up and changed. (The dress was made of Voile- 25 cents a yard. Our sewing machine had decided to quit for making it and so it was done mostly by hand.) Mrs. Braun had my bouquet ready for me! At school, Mr. Peters was impatiently waiting. They had been waiting as long as possible to take pictures but it had been getting dark and so they took them without me.

At the banquet table in the school “Dorm,” the principal discovered that I was alone. He was rather taken aback and I can still hear him exclaim: “Oh, du armes Kind! Mutti nicht einmal hier!” He would not let me sit alone like an orphan, so he and Mrs. P{eters took me between them! This was a rather hard experience for me.  Everybody else’s parents  were there.

PASSIONFLOWER

September 22, 2012

Shelagh Carter’s feature Passionflower opened at Cinematheque last night.  A strong story about a child coping with her mother’s mental illness, good casting (all local actors, with Darcy Fehr turning in another stunning performance as the father), and superb art direction made for a memorable experience. 1962 Winnipeg was never so believable, well probably since the films of John Paizs who was one of the mentors on the project during the time that Carter was at the Canadian Film Centre.  The film though, is all Carter’s who wrote the script from personal experience and directed the film produced by Polly Washburn.  It’s screening tonight and tomorrow. Check http://www.winnipegfilmgroup.com/cinematheque/default.aspx forPASSIONFLOWER – blog screen times.

EXCERPT FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SUSANN ENNS

In spring preparations for Mennonite Collegiate Institute (MCI) Sängerfest and Graduation took place. I was given parts to perform in both. The big Sängerfest was held in a big tent rigged up and supported by poles. We had no sound system and had to learn how to project our voices.  Naturally a big thunderstorm blew up and gave us 60 students quite the competition. How I wished some of my family would come too. Graduation was held in a separate Sunday. I had to speak again. Of the Schulfest (Sängerfest) my memories seem to be of a Chemistry laboratory demonstration in German. One quotation I made which has stuck with me was: “Reden ist Silber, Schweigen ist Gold!”

My graduation day was a frustrating one. My Mom and sisters and brother Andy (as driver) preferred to go to a distant cousin’s wedding in Morden. I was to milk the four cows and do the chores before going to Grad for

7 p.m. The cows had to be driven home from the pasture a mile down the creek and since I had to start earlier than their usual time, they objected and did not want to go. At any rate, after all was done, I took the bike and headed for Gretna.

Mrs. Siemens was anxiously waiting for me. I had left my graduation dress, made by Sister Betty and Mom, here. So I quickly washed up and changed. (The dress was made of Voile- 25 cents a yard. Our sewing machine had decided to quit for making it and so it was done mostly by hand.) Mrs. Braun had my bouquet ready for me! At school, Mr. Peters was impatiently waiting. They had been waiting as long as possible to take pictures but it had been getting dark and so they took them without me.

At the banquet table in the school “Dorm,” the principal discovered that I was alone. He was rather taken aback and I can still hear him exclaim: “Oh, du armes Kind! Mutti nicht einmal hier!” He would not let me sit alone like an orphan, so he and Mrs. P{eters took me between them! This was a rather hard experience for me.  Everybody else’s parents  were there.

CHRISTMAS 2020

God writing the Bible
As told to Nebbish the first Phoenician

God was sure he had a book in him. He wanted advice, in moments of self doubt he felt like an imposter, and needed reassurance and some help with his selling um spelling  and grammar.  They were very new.

God:                    Hey Nebbish, come sit down awhile.

Nebbish:          Why call me nebbish, you hardly know me. I’ve disappointed you?

God:   Nah no idea even, where the name came from, to me you look like a nebbish, so I call you nebbish. I am the name caller and the decider. You worry too much.

Nebbish sighs, sits on a rock next to God.

God:          That’s it, take the weight of those those….feet, the feet.
Have you heard the one about when the feet smell and the nose runs you’ve got a problem?

God : (Jumps up and does the kids song about karma knees and Toews.)

Nebbish says, “Geez, you’ve got a name for everything. ”

God: Yeah,  I’m sure enough names for a book.
Nebbish: A list of names?
God: Well a list of begats you know like Nabokov.
Nebbish: Might be logical but boring, I would think. Nobody ever read Ada.
God: Oh there is another name. Ada and Eva. The First mothers! But really there have not been THAT many begats yet! And the names they could come with characters, to develop. And of course we’ll need some conflict a narrative arc a climax, a resolution, but not too much closure…always leave it open for a sequel!

God : So Nebbish you’ve been around a glyph or two. Can you take dictation? and l I may need  some help with the details.  I’m not much of a detail person, Ideas, big picture thinking more my thing.
Nebbish: Oh, so now you want illustrations too?
God ( who looks like everybody and is a shape-shifter, all races, all genders, all a\sexual orientation fluidities).) Not right away, but maybe when we could add a bit of colour in another millennium or two. Turns yellow, readjusts his invisibility cloak, brilliant flashes of lightning) ...
Nebbish: (Sheilding hizs eyes) Geez I wish you’d stop doing that.
(retrieves a chunk of tablet and a chisel. Or a scroll and a quill)

Nebbish: Ok, God shoot.
God: ….Once upon a time…
Nebbish: Godda ring to it, but what is time?
God: not sure, but I’m sure it ‘s slipping away as we sit around jawing…
Nebbish: so start againish:

God: Ok. ok. hm…. getting nothing here, I thought inspiration just came into your brain and then you wrote words down.
Nebbish: That’s what you asked me to do.
God: Right so what have we got so far?
Nebbish, Nothing, a void…..
God: so once upon a time is out? What  other way could I start.
Nebbish: ok … how about “”In the beginning?”
God: Sounds good, short and snappy, laughs …

Nebbish…what?
God: I can just imagine the scholars trying to figure that out!
Three words in and we got a puzzle without an answer.
Nebbish: how’s that?
God: Well what came before the beginning?
Nebbish: It’s turtles all the way down.
God: what’s that?
Nebbish: I heard it at a pow wow last weekend. Explanation good as any, we could use a little diversity.
God: We’re what, Three words in, and there’s no diversity! (Turns a shade of brown or black) How about this? (Genitalia changes under invisibility cloak change, thunder) There, now  what we got.Nebbish: So nix on the turtles.
God:  later ……later….not ready to name creatures yet anyway.
So…In the beginning….in the beginning…there was me! How about that?
Nebbish: Sounds a little narcissistic….how about….hm…pauses then
“In the beginning was the word, and the word was God!”
God: Triumphantly. Yeah yeah,  I like it. Glad I thought of that. You getting that down!
Nebbish begins to chisel on the tablet….
GOD: Thunderously. IN THE BEGINNING! THERE WAS THE WORD! AND THE WORD WAS GOD!!!!
God: Does a little skip, steps on his robe, wobbles. Steadies himself, looking around to see if Nebbish or anyone has seen. sotta voice: Gotta be careful, too many of those and I’ll be in a PCH before moonrise. Nobody knows how old I am. Happy enough for senior discounts but the end game is not so pleasant.
Nebbish: What? You’re mumbling. Are you not using your hearing aids?
God: Sighs. What I was saying, what YOU didn’t hear was : Well that’s a full days work.
hmmm yeah 11 words. Let’s say when I’m interviewed.

“Yes, Mr Gzsowki , 12 words a day without fail That’s what I did but only with help of Nebbish my scribe.
Gzowski: It’s a big book, must of taken a while.
God:Yeah first I had to create light. Then the alphabet. And the book, well we had to make it all up it all from nothing.
Gzowski : So it’s fiction?
God: Well I’d call it audience fiction. They live a good story!

…Nebbish (finishes could be a scroll) Well you will need to sell it,
God: The book?
Nebbish:Yeah, that too. But I see a placard waving…no…, sorry wrong millennium… you need, no to soon for billboards and banner ads….
Startled with a thought. Word of mouth!  How about  that, eh? In the beginning was the word! and we sell it by word of mouth!
God: Charlton Heston maybe? Spokesperson.
Nebbish: Maybe in the beginning,” …falls over laughing
in the beginning, get it! No. Not Heston he has a messianic complex and a fetish for guns..
Nebbish: How about disciples? You know you get 12 people, and  they get 12 people more.
God: No guns?
Nebbish: No guns. How about fishers…they could be fishers of men…
God: All right whatever. I’m all wrung out (sounds of rain)_
God is getting tired of this and gets up to leave.,
God: Well, I’m bagged. Same time tomorrow?

Nebbish. Ok. How long do you think this will take?
God:  Who knows? God knows! (laughing)Forever and ever, dancing away.
Nebbish: Yells….Watch out! You Have to be careful!
God: I know how it ends, I’ve seen the movie.
Nebbish, God you’re annoying when you’re manic! I’m meant careful, be careful!  you were about to dance off the turtle’s back!…………

  I wrote this last night, as a note so I wouldn’t forget the bit. This is still very drafty, off the top of my head, without checking my Concordance Bible for my references. There needs to be more character development, and getting the shape shifting more into the foreground. More jokes, always more jokes! I’ve put in another two hours and that’s all I got.

undated

A forgettable day, except for knocking my coffee flying. Now I can’t turn the below into normal type. Probably need to purge my cache. My kitchen smells like a kitchen bacx in the day; pork chops, potatoes, carrots.  A pear for desert, the exception. Listening to Holger Peterson Jazz show. The blues I write are too sad to sing. I have completed acceptable first two draft ghazals inspired by String Quartets 1 & 2 by R.Murray Schaffer, cognizant of what I’m learning from Ravishing DisuUities and Hungry Listening. I enjoy composing in modern ghazal forms, and have plenty to learn. The rhyme scheme is more comfortable with every outing, and the disunity between couplets is a strength in my work. The rhythm of line and couplet  is proving to be the hardest to learn. I took a week or two between ghazals to collect my uncollected poems  called Spontaneous Combustion, for now. My whereabouts for now, will be largely spawned by my imagination, but the physical me be staying right here, in Gimli, writing in place.

Thursday, Oct 22, 2020

I realize my website fantasy will only ever  border on reality at best. I realize I want to blog for every heading in my banner. So for now, I am double posting my blog, aka my daily flog or fog until I can be sure the “first” blog has settled in under B in the archives. That’s not all, I plan to blog for “Listen, Here,” for sure and then create content unsteady as he goes for MLIP (My Life In Pieces) which will largely be video and audio podcasts, “pain room,”attempting to become an outsider art show, and annotate The complete Jimmy Bang,which now has many more new and blues poems the original 32 punk poems. And what to do with the Mennonite Book of the Dead, aka Dead Mennonites, Boundary Creek, He was the kind of guy and What Men Do.