Back to ________

Warm, winded, bluer--like leaves I could see out the south window, in other words--is how I felt yesterday morning during a meeting.  Sure, about to wither and fall, get walked on, finally swept up by a noisy machine.  (Duchesa, if you're listening, you can hear the same noise when the gardiner trims grass below your place.)

But I know I'm enjoying myself back at ______ because I lay awake last night.with teaching ideas   And just one chapter of Huck Finn fired me up.  How wise the kid is, how innocent, how much he sees in other people.  Knowing that most students won't have that text with them when my American Classics class opens next Wednesday night, I look forward to reading that first chapter, Huck already wobbling the nature/civilization line.  Laughter shows up more easily in night classes, I think I've learned.  Huck will make us laugh.

August 22

Took a look outside the other day.

Wondered what haze meant.

East on the former 25th. 

By now the smoke from Williams Lake had reached me.

Found the nearest house red,

old Broad street turning.

Further to Previous Post

After this brief note I'll insert a photo of a post.

It's about smaller steps now.
Less content, more jump.

Less research, less unit of street.

Might even take a glance, shiver to think of it, south to Whitmore Park or some area with no name at

all.

Gathering Room

Something about "new enhanced preview" on this blog machine.  That's what Sage Hill did for me--what Daphne Marlatt and the group did. 

I knew I hadn't arrived at the starting line, really, of my Hillsdale book until I'd finished the initial gathering of pieces (later this summer and fall, I'd hoped).  What I mean by starting line is that moment when I begin to zap individual pieces, make them live a little.  I knew, too, that like the folks on that cruiser the other day off Lumsden beach, I was having fun at the surface, not minding the depths.  It was getting sort of automatic. 

Daphne took one look at the 35 or so pages of sample pieces I'd sent her and pointed out, politely, that the language needs a good zapping--the tensions among pieces too--and that the deeper through-line, so to speak, is yet to show itself. 

I told her a little story about the early days of my first creative writing class, with Fred Wah at DTUC in 1981.  I'd handed in the 4th of a series of poems about a guy delivering ice in the Okanagan (my summer job in '81).  Fred said, politely, "Well, it looks as if you've found a lyric voice" which, for Fred, was the faintest of praises indeed.  That is, it was a useful enough achievement for a beginning writer, but he was looking for deeper explorations with language.  I feel the same response from you now! I said to Daphne at Sage Hill.

Of course, that is why I wanted to work with Daphne Marlatt.  Be a student again, tip myself and my work over, get new with my process, etc.

Gardiner Ave.

I've been wondering what to do with words

in relation to photographs

in relation to seeing.

I thought writing on location

would be WRITING on location, not

shooting the puddles, the effects

of overnight rain. I got the idea

from re-reading Gardiner

as rain dreg and going there

to collect what the dregs

might be.

Houses of Haultain 7

Houses of Haultain 7
Originally uploaded by TagHill

Not a great photo--crooked, the light too harsh and all, but I'm going with this blog entry directly from my Flickr site, home of 180 Hillsdale photos, including the seven Houses of Haultain.

What goes on in these houses includes:
Garbage day.
Woman walking by with one child strapped to her chest and at least one more in a stroller wide as the sidewalk.
The sidewalk itself split and lifted.
Just down from here a house for sale. L-shaped living room, a fireplace angled at the crotch of the L, kitchen on the other side of the walls, two bedrooms and a bathroom, basement steps leading down from the back door.
Rain earlier, bright clouds now.

So far I've chickened out, but sooner or later I'm going to use my little digital to compose a panorama, images linked, of this row of houses on Haultain.

But as I say, not when the light's so harsh.

Road Trip

In June I drove to Edmonton to see my friends off to Europe.

And catch my son's act at the Edmonton Improv Festival.

He and I walked by our old apartment (top left).

A few days later I slept by my sister's pool in Kelowna.

Under the solstice sky, which had all the answers.

My three sisters and I spent 48 hours down the lake.

I tipped my cap to the sky.

   

Then I drove home.