Well, it’s 29 days until the launch date of “This is All a Lie.” Publication is a letting go and it is always with melancholy and excitement and anxiousness. There are some wonderful blurbs from Rona Altrows, author of A Run on Hose, Anne Fleming, author of Pool-Hopping and Other Stories, and the delightful Laurie Greenwood, Independent bookstore owner for over 30 years, book columnist for Global TV and CBC Radio (retired). You can read them here. These blurbs are such a lovely sending off. Sometimes novelists need others to tell them about their book. They need the book to be “read” and readers will say what the book is. Two of the blurbers have mentioned the humour. I thought it was a very dark little book and they found the lightness I’d hoped was there. I am grateful for this. So grateful.
It’s just after 8 p.m. and I am listening to The Road Home on CKUA. This two hours of music and spoken word is a antidote to a mad man (the mad, egotistical king who makes everything about himself) at the helm of the USA and the threat of Serious Fucking War. It’s a balm. An enclave of sanity. Bob let me know he read one of my poems into the show…For this, I am grateful too. This one:
The sea
“Roar, lion of the heart,
and tear me open!”
–Rumi
Perhaps you have forgotten that this
is part of being together. The explosion
of pleasure given without expectation –
and pleasures accepted without expectation.
Rumi says lovers run like lightning and wind,
and the fearful ascetic runs on foot, along the surface.
Be lightning and wind with me. Be the random, ferocious
gust. This is not about duty, or obligation. It is
the messy shock of loving – and wanting
to be breathless, and holy, and lost. It is about being
human, and humane, and delightful, and disgusting. This
is about desire. Desire is what moves us forward. Have you
forgotten this? Hold fast to desire. Choose it over the
horrors of aging. Bathe in it. Surrender. It’s always
different – for each person it is different, and this is why
it is so damned fascinating. Wake up! You are alive and
vibrating in the flow of this wide river. This water may
move slower but it will always yearn for the sea.
Maybe this post should be called “On gratefulness…” Because I am grateful for other people — Gail and Geoff and Django for hosting us in Powell River, for sharing their ocean paradise. And for friends who offer up support around the new book…
September is my favourite month. The cooler nights…the skeins of geese, the wool sweaters, and a trip up to Miette Hot Springs in my beloved Rocky Mountains, with good friends.
