moss in graveyards | 12:45 PM >

It's been a while. I've been keeping busy, mostly with the Blizzard Art Competition. I think my entry came out pretty well. Still waiting to hear back on the winners.

Last week was a wash. I was in a funk and I couldn't crawl out long enough to get anything of import done. However, the week itself was quite nice. Sunday, Phoebe and I went to this huge publishers' event downtown where all the publishers brought books and set up tables. (I forget the name, but apparently it happens every year.) I got one book from Insomniac Press for two dollars, and Phoebe came back with an armload. Afterwards there was a dinner party with Phoebe-made Thai curry. There were also theatre sports. And there is incriminating photo evidence of the entire event. Strangely you'll actually see me in a lot of the shots, because the Freaks passed around my camera.

("Freaks" is used here as a term of endearment; our groups is "The Freaks" by choice.)

This week was much better. I have a new project to work on (more later if it pans out) and on the whole I was just feeling more up. I figure, as I always have, that downswings are natural and there's nothing to be done about them except to accept that they come and not hold onto them when they leave.

There was this poetry recital thing that Phoebe headlined, which was really cool. I took a notebook and wrote down a lot of stuff... It's funny how being around a bunch of people focused on creativity, even when they're not creating, can turn that section of one's brain on. I came away with a tonne of great ideas and a book by one of the lady poets. There was this poem inside about Fire Scrying; I'd thought I misheard her at first, so I checked afterwards. I'd heard of all kinds of scrying before that, but never scrying in fire. Then again, I suppose some native american traditions had practices akin to it. Maybe it's just the words. "to scrye" is such an interesting verb. It sounds like it's action: full of mystery, with a touch of the exotic.

I kept looking at the different performers and my mind did that Ally thing where my imagination started painting the scene with odd and erratic brush strokes. I had this sense of those kinds of performances going back a long way in time. Certainly now it's teachers and poets (read: people who make a living on poetry) and retirees in coffee shops and pubs, but listening to the words and the music, I couldn't help but think that he same scene could have been played in the 60's in a beatnik parlor. Take away the poster advertising the website, change the hair styles and shoes, and forty years ago is today. It got me to thinking about whether this is due to certain kinds of people always pooling, or people not being able to let go of old ideas. Maybe it's neither -- maybe this is indicative of a world in which certain ideas themselves don't die, and thus there will always be those poets to express them.

I don't know. They were random thoughts, followed by a comparison of each poet to an archetype from Arthurian times. Then I thought about firing microphones like arrows from castle wall slits. I wouldn't put any stock in them.