This Thursday I’ll be participating in a Factory reading at Avant-Garde, Ottawa with Shery and Jamaal. Jen had to cancel. Details.

To think I once was once juggling a dozen blogs. And now? A post every quarter at one or two places… For the curious, or compulsive readers who must finish a paragraph, I once had this poetry blog, a cat-narrated blog, one for flash fiction, a vegan recipe blog, a daily life, and a poem-a-day, a daily selfie blog, a weekly portrait of B blog, one written by a sock monkey, a weekly in Spanish/French, a dream journal, a haiku one, all unhooked from each other because that much hyperglossia would look crazy, no? And I would often binge-write and then let it autopost in an orderly fashion to give the semblance of steadiness while I, behind the screen, crashed.

A difference is keeping things for myself these days. And rather than throw things indiscriminately, I share cautiously with those who have earned trust. Who actually are invested in me. Terribly at odds with being a poet, I know. 😉

The frantic train station of my head showing less traffic. Meds are good. Some high seasons are down. People have stopped dropping like flies so less concussive death. I’m processing more and doing more rather than reflecting. I previosuly used all my energy as an introvert on extraversion. People said I have so much energy but I had a boom-crash cycle where after an event I didn’t function or ran the red line of panic attacks and living inside headache constantly. I mean daily headaches from early 80s to 2015 or so.

I laughed more then but chuckled not at all. I was wrapped way tight, keeping myself hopped on excitement, hafta, hafta, gotta, and sugar to extend my comfort zone, keep the walls from crushing me, learning to talk. I was aways stacking triggers to prove myself I could do anything, then wondering why everything was hard.

It’s an interesting fast headspace and I could parse at speed but there’s the sensation of inspiration without..something. The sensation of being productive is not the same thing as useful. Or as being present.

Only by hyperfocus through text I could pull out one thread of purpose from the many tangled threads and find a piece of what felt like order.

Now order is slow and quiet. Of course there are structural changes to make that happen. Ghosting bad dynamics and being less passive, more intentionally choosing instead of drifting. Balking, refusing to play, giving up FOMO, letting go of more, givng myself space to see patterns, to act not only react.

Instead of having my hand in many pies, on committees and publishing, going to many events, trying to keep contact with many people, living in thin-walled places where neighbours scream at each other and traffic noise never stops, I read instead. Probably 3x as much as when I was peak “busy”.

At risk of going on too long for the medium’s attention span, now I make slow time face-to-face with people. I take less on as my responsibility. Indifference can be depressive trait, but it feels more centred than off-kilter. I am not constantly pushing myself to overstimulated for fear if I stop I will wither and atrophy and be forgotten. My place in the universe is less-ego driven than when I was trying to people-please.

I don’t want to lose days anymore to overdoing it. Maybe it is learning cause and effect, maybe it’s maturity, maybe it is a case of too old for that shed. I don’t have much energy and my body is liable to act up with nausea, vertigo and pain if it thinks I’m doing more than I should. It’s quite opinionated.

I’m more secure, and less self-defeating. My nature hasn’t changed but the balance has. And that’s, I think, something more sustainable.

Some writing experts with courses seem to harp on about linearness. You start something, you finish something. Process is negated without reaching for the brass ring of product. Big emphasis on closure. It makes sense. It’s an economic model of you pay for classes, you get your money back in sales therefore offset courses.

For some writing is all about organization, discipline, regularity of habit, mapping. Of course, that’s planner vs. panster in the novel-writing world. And I am both. I love both planning and improv. I am good with open-ended prompts, structured constraints and lack of either.

I start my brain in the morning with random articles from Wikipedia (the downloaded Kiwix) and was struck by Monet’s process for his haystacks.

“Certain effects of light only last for a few minutes, thus the canvases documenting such ephemera received attention for no more than a few minutes a day.”

“[H\is willing helper was quickly bringing as many canvases as her wheelbarrow could hold.^[17] Monet’s daily routine therefore came to involve carting paints, easels and many unfinished canvases back and forth, working on whichever canvas most closely resembled the scene of the moment as the conditions and light fluctuated. “

I am not Monet but I do live in changing atmosphere and light.

I typically am writing whatever I write, not to project. When I have a research-based project, I steer thataway but otherwise any manuscript is a cobbling together later-problem.

When I have a few comparable, I have a theory of cluster and can tag things to go to that pile as they appear but I’m generally got at least half a dozen to a dozen active manuscripts. And that which fits nothing. That makes sending to magazines hard because the new edge of not fitting is most exciting but magazines want a congruent set of compatible 3-5 poems.

Some do, but I won’t refuse to write/think/feel/try to parse because I didn’t anticipate that direction and don’t know “what use” it will be.

Perhaps that’s a father-legacy, though none he’d want as a mantle. His snort of dismissal or disgust that something or some subject is “useless”, “what good is it”. (That was, admittedly his depression speaking, his defeated moments rising, not his central self.) Still the internalized echo and my inner no then reminds me that the marginalia and the stuff that doesn’t fit is as much of value. As rob mclennan likes to say, “it all counts”.

There’s not a lot of pattern to what paintings or poetry I like. I tend not to like high emotive lyric or chaotic visual poetry but then, sometimes it resonates.

I’m comfortable with things not fitting patterns, with ideologies in conflict held in parallel.

I don’t have to apply a matrix of meaning, shove things into significance, binary or otherwise. If I were to have a guiding principle it would be the buddhist parable of the farmer who received the wild horse on his property. Neighbours telling him, What good luck! And him non-committal. Much is contest and context changes. All things are all things.

This “wishy-washy” attitude of mine annoyed all the right people growing up who accused me of being so open minded as to be mistaken for someone with no mind at all. (Oh, bully uncles, I saw you as such then too. So afraid of so much, they wanted to be categorically superior. Who ground them down so hard?)

I get higher energy not just have tolerance for chaos as basic reflection of universe. Even Lauren Harris sort of excluding all but the primitive shapes, overly constrained, sits comfortably. I’ve thought of inserting into my novels in progress someone high on butting in chronically with IDIB (infinite diversity, infinite beauty) to riff off Gene Roddenberry. Perhaps it will make the cut.

The process though at its core is being alert, figuring out, curiosity, not the finite dimensions of book, as perishable as a conversation. Staying in the game. With people who also want to play the game. Books are sweet discrete outcomes, sure. Being present for each moment is valuable. Says she, having forgotten to stand, or walk the dog. 🙂

Work in progress. Always.

Are there mistakes really? Or only critical mindset? Obviously grievous ones exist in war and acts of fear. But what comes after? 

Can you do an event planning wrong? Eventually there will be an event where my a combination of factors next to no one shows. But where two minds meet, what more can you want? Mobs of upward spiralling energy, but mostly that is rare. 

I have a buzz after the last Haiku Canada Conference with no energy crash. That’s odd. Grocery shopping can give me an energy crash and days of trough. I did things differently, blew off talks, the day starting and ending for me when I got there or left. Not a strain to absorb everything. Chatting with folks or not. Where is this lack of pressure coming from? Who knows. 

The core of life, of writing, of events, is about people, affections, connections, curiosity about people not “Networking” and “Learning”. Reflecting on the weekend there are all kinds of salient patterns, inner and outer. 

There are high or low planning conferences and events. I’ve done committee for TESL and haiku conferences and Tree Reading Series. And been far more often on the audience side. Pet peeve for feedback of any is people not praising programming but complaining about the coffee or snacks. That is also universal human nature. Until we start programming for cats we can disregard that data. 

There are two extremes of conference planning. High planning: 

• A theme tagline that guides all the programming 
• Corporate sponsors 
• Schedule announced months in advance 
• News releases to local papers or relevant journals 
• Logos everywhere: on the website; on signs with arrows to event location; on the paper agenda; on the welcome package of tourist info, notepad, maps of town, parking, free chapbooks, coupons for meals
• Corp of volunteers for set up, registration desk and greeters 
• Banner to announce event on site
• Theme-coordinated table cloths
• Early morning start and strict schedule 
• A moderator to cut people off to prevent running overtime. 
• Complimentary break time snacks & drinks
• Taking speakers out for a meal 
• Formal gathering social time
• Plenary address with prestige speaker(s)
• Panels on theme
• Music or theatre interludes built into events 
• Microphones
• Filming events and/or arranging for people to do photography and live-tweeting 
• Live broadcast and pre-registration 
• Chain of people introducing speakers 
• Hostess gifts and reader gifts
• Formal thank you bouquet for organizer 

Stripped down planning: A schedule released a couple weeks ahead, word of mouth for directions on the day, speakers adjusting for longer or shorter speakers, byob, organically spreading word and letting people photograph as they like, hearty thanks. 

Both are for the same audience with the same budget. Both are style. Not right or wrong. And audience adapts. 

And both work. The core thing is the people meeting and ideas exchanged. Everything else is bonus. Which is not to say chic is bad or good or that stripped down is good or bad. 

An event has a lot of moving parts. A lot of people to coordinate. Behind the scenes is busy in either case. 

You can get up in your head about perfect events, or perfect writing, considering every contingency, trying to accommodate every need. People are pretty good at meeting half or at walking away no matter how much you chase. 

You don’t have to grow or shrink yourself and your impulses, to what you think would reach the most people. You don’t have to mask to an imagined normal. You don’t need heroic measures. 

You can let your freak out & that works too. A narrow band of people feel less alone and most people are neutral. 

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

– Ernest Hemingway

People who started publishing after me have twice three times the number of book-books. People who friends praise… I don’t always get what the fuss is about. 

Resonance like humour is personal. I can give myself permission to not get it, to not try to be everyone’s perspective and focus on following my bliss. 

Part of me worries about siloing. Spinning off so far into arcane that I lose people but losing some people puts into position for finding other people. If people are contextual they will fall away no matter how you pursue. Keepers look after keeping themselves kept. 

It requires a certain trust and acceptance of paradox of being enough. Knock yourself out and you are enough. Barely calling it in and also you’re enough. It’s not that it is subjective. It’s that being enough is inescapable. 

Maybe it’s a paradox like universal basic income. Being provided for doesn’t make lazy people lazier and hard workers lazy. People who are driven are still driven but are cared for more. People who are under pressures internal and external that makes them in danger of going under are also taken care of. It’s a structural choice to accept a universe’s model of sufficiency instead of threat and scarcity.

It is easy for a pessimist like me to look at what is wrong, what isn’t working, what is broken, impending, excluding, disappearing. I have to train myself to see what is ample and welcoming. I get spoiled by like-minded people, shocked by something outside my usual. For example a Catholic magazine I came across that had a reasoned, articulate, compassionate, well-structured argument against anyone accessing abortion. A whole parallel isolated reality. 

It’s easy to forget that most people are not English speakers, even locally. Most are not readers, nor readers at my consumption rate, let alone not writers. Most of those don’t read or write poetry, let alone read haiku, let alone write non-syllabic haiku and are in the subset of that that tickles me. 

I’m more a line on a pie graph than a slice. But like a tree seed falling on a rock cut ledge, I only know what I immediately touch and that it’s good and enough to start.

There are people also on that narrow line. 

It doesn’t matter what I am not. What I am not is also infinite. I love the idea of being a generalist, a know it all, a curious renaissance man or polymath, drilling down immersively also appeals.  

I’ve kept one foot in familiar, compensated. I was the peacemaker, negotiator, translator, who was bridging worlds. I don’t need to be a runner, messenger on the bridge. I don’t need to shield people, make myself available as a piggy bank for other people’s secrets. I don’t need to use up my slack for people who are thrashing. I don’t need to affirm everyone and sooth and mute myself to not make waves. That may seem radical and selfish. That may seem to bear no relation to how I seem. I have spent a lot of time trying to justify my existence by helping and pleasing others, trying to be found acceptable by people who would use anyone convenient. 

I don’t have a lot of life left even in best case scenario. Maybe a third if I’m lucky. 

Being drawn by glimmers, by quiet yesses instead of being hampered and hammered by crowd of hectoring internalized voices condemning is a new idea. What if I could say, shush you, and be led by what lights me up.