As much as I love gardening, it does swallow a load of time. My garden's breaking out in sunflowers.
I'm feeling well, now that I've found a solution to my sleep disorder: who knew that changing one's house around -- so that the "bat cave" is now the study, the study is the bedroom, and the bedroom the guest room -- would make such a difference.
Busy though. I've written a new children's story which I'll send to a publisher soon.
I've been doing the fiction editing for the SWG literary journal spring.
I've received an invitation to read in Portland, Oregon, so I'm trying to figure out how I can swing that.
I've had reports to write, and mice to trap in the garage. There's been a tonne of tick-picking. A little hammock swinging, and a fair bit of reading.
I bought these incredibly sexy slippers at a yard sale in St. Benedict.
And there have been invitations to dinner and parties ... oh we do like that.
There's been company, including my dear friend and running partner Donna: And Logan and Taylor were out with their partners.
And after fishing, pellet gunning, a log finding mission, campfiring, and playing an acting game I made up called "Ring Ring," it was a new day. Not sunny. Not hot. Certainly not a good day for snakes, but away we went.
And 32 snakes ensued.
Another weekend, and this time I'm city bound. 'Tis a far cry from snakes and rubber boots and timber wolf scat but it might just be okay.
The kids are here with their partners, and all are down at the lake with their fishing rods in the spitting rain. I like the sensation of creating pockets of solitude with a weekend of company.
Last night Logan, Taylor and I went into the bush and dragged logs back to the house. (Tick count: one.) There was a campfire, and a phone left in the rain.
This morning Taylor's partner, Megan, cooked up a dynamite brunch. We listened to commercials the kids voiced when they were 4 and 6 years old, and I worked for CKOM and C95 Radio.
Pictures may be forthcoming. And hopefully, fish.
Ah, rain coming down harder now, and I haven't even taken them on the snake walk yet. Seven snakes yesterday. Six big ones.
Sleep. So elementary. So elemental. Yet I can't manage it.
I wake every hour through the night, often more than once. Just after 3, and it's already light.
I'm hot. I'm cold. I'm hot. I'm cold.
Is it the red wine at dinner? The morning's strong coffee? I'm positively jacked.
When the birds start up, again not long after 3, I close my window. Hot once more, there goes the afghan, the comforter, the blanket, the University of Saskatchewan Huskies sweatshirt, the pajama bottoms. Minutes letter I'm shivering, and the layering begins again.
At 4:31, it is as light as daytime.
I think about the mistakes I've made in my life.
I think about how much I hate sleeping alone.
There are books and literary journals beside the bed. Should I? I open the latest issue of Grain. It's the best issue of this particular journal I've read in years. The new fiction is so good it's intimidating. And I've never heard of these writers:
Avi Silberstein ("Strings"). He's "a librarian at the Greater Victoria Public Library."
Krista Foss ("The Longitude of Okay") ... from Hamilton, ON.
Kathy Friedman's "The Longest Night of the Year" -- how's this for an opening line:
"Teagan Lumley awoke early one morning to find that sometime during the night her older, more daring sister had spontaneously combusted."
Kyl Chhatwal (this is not a typo) has penned a dandy, titled "Angles in their flight." Who is Kyl Chhatwal? "A columnist with the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, and a sometimes actor." From Cabbagetown, Toronto.
Jim Johnstone (" ... holds a Masters of Science in Reproductive Physiology from the University of Toronto ...") has a poem called "Abbatoir Ghazals," which contains this gem of a line:
"Darling, the composer has stepped into fire. I can
hear the music in his hands, burning."
You see, writing that like that of the above gets me damn excited. I need to read in order to write. Sure, I'd prefer not to be reading at (I check) .... 5:12 a.m., but maybe that's the ticket. Maybe I should start writing in the wee hours. I've a Mexican writer friend, Andres Acosta, who does much of his work when he's in that semi-conscious dream state. And it's freaking awesome.
I've never been a good sleeper, but things are now completely out of hand. Is it age? I hear you don't need as much sleep as you get older. But I do need it, I know this. My skin's starting to buzz a little, the way skin can when one is super-tired, in an airport, say, or in a hospital waiting room where you've sat all night -- through the screaming and sirens, the bawling babies and overdosing teens -- waiting quietly, bees beneath your skin.
Once, a few years ago, I was involved in the CBC Poetry Face-off in Regina. Coincidentally (or not), my daughter (poet\artist Taylor Leedahl) was also one of the competitors. I didn't want to do it. I agreed because CBC producer Kelley Jo Burke has been so good to me over the years, and I didn't want to disappoint. I did it because Taylor wanted me to, and I wanted to be a good mother.
I wrote "The Insomniac Courts the Moon," and read it in a beat poetry style while -- damn, I'm sorry, dear, I forget your name (it's the sleeplessness) -- anyway, while an amazing guitarist from Regina played along.
The insomniac courts the moon
Let's say it's four a.m..
The stoplight blinks
its tawny eye, a drunk weaves
down Main on a banana bike.
Here’s to a good hotel
in a bad part of town, where salesmen
and mid-career poets are put up. No one else
on the sixth floor, the clearing
a mouth makes in window-frost.
Earlier, after your reading,
a former student
gave you her handmade chapbook
containing tall poems about trees.
(You felt like flossing
with the yellow waxed-thread.)
There were moments tonight
when they all got it,
even the three children,
the librarian unnerved
by your last-minute arrival
and wine stains.
Not a whole poem, of course, but lines
of it. A few words or syllables, that high-
wire of breath, held hostage.
Hallelujah: you're done.
Now moon time, and no one
courts her better. May’s storybook moon
in a marzipan sky; October’s bullet
of something like blood
or communion. And February: can’t find the moon
for snow, all this white on white
on sheets of no sleep again.
And what is sleep, but a black button
dangling from a thrift-store coat
in the midnight closet, glove on a hand
that needs touch? Or algebra,
code you can't crack, forever
the child in new wire glasses
hunched over the textbook problem:
If Joe’s driving to Estevan
at sixty miles per hour
and Susan leaves La Ronge at 8:15 a.m.
with a quarter tank of gas, when
will they meet?
Or where?
Not at the library. Behind the podium,
the mouth managed showtime
but the mind snagged on memory:
you were four fingers held up,
coaxing the stickman shapes
of letters from a thick red pencil
at the arborite table, your mother
in her picnic-gingham apron
and 1960s beehive, hips backed
against the counter, smoking
menthol cigarettes.
All the roads on your map
lead to the slow clock of her heart
stopped at a thundering:
As long as that wasn’t your father,
she said, but this was
the sound of your father, falling
off the roof through laddering sunlight,
then rising,
his back gold-starred with leaves.
In the ventriloquial country of no sleep,
tires crush what they can; addicts
rattle grocery carts
rich with empties, drop a few
for the percussion they make on cement,
and is this not urban poetry?
O, moon-emulating traffic light.
O, neon sign for discount furniture.
O, front row, candy-unwrapping woman
who shattered the exiguous spell.
We're all in this fraud together.
_____
That may not have been it exactly. I'm certain it's been revised since it was performed, lo those (checking cv) ... 3 years ago. (And the line and stanza breaks got completely buggered in the transfer). But you get the idea. Me and insomnia, we've been holding hands for decades.
Hey, here's something: minutes ago, when I got up to retrieve my laptop from the dining room (of late, I seem to have abandoned working at the desk in my study for the expanse of the dining room table) and bring it back to bed, I noticed that [the morning] smelled like winter. Winter!
Maybe I should stop drinking (anything) after a certain hour. I have one sip of water, and it's good for 5 noctural trips to the bathroom. What's up with that?
5:35 a.m. In three hours (count 'em, Shelley) I expect to be on a country road (the one I call Frank Winkel's road) running 10K. I love that I can run again (achilles tendon healed). Not bragging, just a fact: I get more exercise than anyone I know. Shouldn't that account for something? Shouldn't that just knock me out for a good 7-8 hours every night? (It should also make me skinny, and doesn't.)
And then, in this season, there's the added fun of ticks. In bed I feel them crawling up my neck, my legs, but each time I check: nothing. (Oh, but there will be ... my record last year was 9 in one day. Bet I can top that this year).
Well, guess I'd better give sleep one more valiant shot tonight (or this morning).
After the dry, hot, and blindingly monochromatic landscape of Malta, I was happy (and a little desperate) to get back into a country with trees, grass, colour and cooler temperatures. (Rain? Absolutely pounding, at times, but I drank it up.)
York is one of those mouth-watering, formerly walled cities, with two rivers (The Ouse and the Foss). For all you history buffs (if this bores you, please fastforward):
(from Wikipedia)
York (pronunciation (help·info)) is a former walled city, situated at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and it has been the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence.
At the end of Roman rule in AD 415 the Angles moved in. The city was renamed Eoforwic and it served as the capital of the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria.[6] When the Vikings captured the city in AD 866 they renamed it Jórvík and it became the capital of a wider kingdom of the same name covering much of Northern England. After the Norman Conquest, the name "York", which was first used in the 13th century, gradually evolved .[6]
I didn't have much time in the city (only two nights), but packed loads into it. We stayed with Sean's nephew, niece and family -- super people, who wined us, dined us, and took us out to their local (mere footsteps from their house, and holy "Coronation Street" ... great characters, including a woman named "Plum").
Sean's nephews played guitar and piano brilliantly, and Sarah and I agreed that kd Lang's best song is "Constant Craving."
Keith and Sarah's house in York.
We did the "On\Off" bus ... a double decker tourist thing offered in over 80 cities around the world, with either recorded or live commentary that's usually pretty heavy on history. It's a good way to orient oneself with a new city (I'd done this before in London, Edinburgh, Milan, etc.), then go back and spend time at what interests you.
We did the Castle Musuem. (Excellent curating ... made me want to be a curator in my next life).
We walked. And walked. On a part of the old city wall that's still standing. And through parks. And the site of the old Abbey. And through the famous area called "The Shambles." We popped into the Minster. Took a boat ride on the river Ouse.
Enjoyed the art gallery. (Here you see the rather conspicuous On\Off bus).
And I, the non-shopper, couldn't stop myself from going into the many wonderful second-hand clothing stores that raise money for Oxfam, etc. Got some great clothes for almost nothing.
Here are a few more shots of the city:
And the obligatory 'Shelley Before A Sign' shot. (Note: out of the shorts and skirts, and into a turtleneck).
On May 22 I flew from Leeds to Paris, stayed over in an airport hotel, then flew home. I never thought I'd say this about an intercontinental flight, but it was Terrific. Three seats to myself ... a 1.5 hour power nap ... and three movies, including "The Wrestler," which I quite liked. That last frame ... (Mickey Rourke ... the ugliest hot guy).
So Paris to Montreal, Montreal to Toronto, Toronto to Calgary, Calgary to Saskatoon. I rarely do anything the easy way.
Stone walls like this divide the farms on Malta. In my little writing room at St. Joseph's Home Hostel.
This is St. George's Beach, in St. Julian's, Malta. Hideous place.
A photograph taken while walking from Valletta to St. Julian's.
Walking from Valletta to the aforementioned hell-hole. About a 8-9 K walk. Great early evening light.
A photo taken as the ferry was departing for Gozo.
Flowers near Mtarfa.
This is the house Sean may have lived in as a baby. (Mtarfa)
Ha! This is the tourist information centre in St. Julian's\Sliema. What a joke.
And just try to find a working public phone in St. Julian's!
Another postcard for St. Julian's that attests to its "affluenza".
The buses on Malta and Gozo area very cool.
Today (May 15th?) we were in Rabat, the capital of Gozo. (Rabat is also known as Victoria.) It is halfway across the length of the island, and we walked. Traffic was quite ridiculous, and each community much resembled the one that came before. I sure miss trees.
I am in Ghajnsielem, a village near the ferry terminal in Mgarr on the small island of Gozo, Malta. (Or maybe I'm in Shambala.) Here, if you have coffee – not espresso, or café americano: our request for the latter was met with a 'Huh?' -- in Piazza Indipendenza at one of the plastic tables outside, you can view three different cathedrals. Gozo, like the rest of Malta, is very Catholic.
Arriving in Malta (on the main island) was bleak. There was no relief from the landscape of condominium-type, puce-coloured square buildings, no trees, scarcely any greenery at all … I felt it must be something like Egypt. Actually, it was hard on the eyes. Terribly hard on them. Our first destination was the sea-side town of St. Julian's. Well …
imagine a hot day, a beach loaded with people, and not one person in the water … imagine a landscape of strip clubs, bars, souvenir shops and boarded up businesses imagine broken glass like landmines on the limestone rocks along the water imagine a community that seemed to exist almost expressly for young Europeans looking to party
Sean and I have been playing this game where we each come up with 5 adjectives for locations we visit, then we share them.
St. Julian's (Sean): betrayed, sold-out (or souled-out), impermanent, generic, sad. St. Julian's (Shelley): lunar, plastic, detonated, spoiled, surgical.
Then we got to the apartment we'd booked on-line, in a dreadful residential area even the taxi driver had a hell of a time finding, and learned that we had to share it with the owner, two Italian women, and three Irish, one of whom was so exceedingly drunk and obnoxious she got the lot of them kicked out. Eight people, one bathroom: not a good scene.
It was too much for us. And the internet wasn't working well. Though we'd planned to stay for 3 nights in St. Julian's on Malta, we told the owner we were leaving the next day. We did, though we had to pay for one of the nights we wouldn't be there.
Travel lessons learned on this day: always pick up maps and other info at the airport … it may not be available elsewhere. (the tourism information booth was a demolition site)
:don't settle … if you're not happy at one place, find another
After we dropped our bags at the apartment (and before we decided to leave), we toured the old city, Valletta. It was charming, and saved our lives.
Valletta: (Sean): dove-throated, heavy-stoned, intimate, breathing, imperturbable. Valletta: (Shelley): spirited, breathing (we actually selected the same adjective!), valid, preserved, lyrical
The next day we spent travelling to Mtarfa, where Sean was born and hasn't returned since he was 18 months old. There's an entire essay involved in that day – everyone was very kind and helpful, but each had a different idea about where the hospital was, and the school his mother taught in, etc. We more or less left shaking our heads in disbelief and amusement. One lovely man took us into his palatial home (which Sean may have lived in as a baby) and showed us around, and I loved that.
Finally, the ferry to Gozo, a much smaller Maltese Island. (There are 3).
And here we are.
St. Joseph's Home Hostel is singularly the best hostel I've ever stayed in, and I've stayed in several. It beats the funky Valencia hostel, the Honolulu surfing hostel, the three very good San Francisco hostels I'm acquainted with, and Makuto Backpackers in Granada.
We wandered around the large place, with its caged birds, and lizard-like creatures that might be skinks scooting along the stone walls, the potted plants, and antiquarian items, the paintings, impressive coloured glass chandeliers and iron grates. There is a huge games room, with a pool table and a tennis table, fooz ball and pinball machines. A library, an internet station, an expansive rooftop terrace. Up the curving stair, a balustrade sets off the large U-shaped second floor. There is a loggia-like walk, and from it, not far away, we see the ocean break against the limestone shore. On the south side, the ruins of a fortress, and before this, fields slip down toward the water, and then, to the right, the lane that leads to the diving site where three ships have been sunk.
We are so close to the sea we're lulled to sleep by the night waves. As I write, I am looking through an ornate, screenless, metal-grated window. Sea air on my arms and face. The palm tree out my window is slightly swaying. I hear small birds, and the ocean. No traffic. No people. No industry.
And this is what I love about hostels: sometimes you meet great people, like John-Paulo, from Italy, who has been doing NGO work in Somalia, and Susan, a Scots woman of about 50 years. Her powerful legs attest to her love of walking, and indeed, she is walking all over the island to various beaches and villages. A French woman just checked in; I don't know her story yet, but I will, soon.
And imagine this … there are only two restaurants in town, and only one open last night. It is about 85 steps from our door, and within it I had the best meal I've had on this entire trip. Spaghetti. Yum.
And there have been invitations to dinner and parties ... oh we do like that.
And Logan and Taylor were out with their partners.
And after fishing, pellet gunning, a log finding mission, campfiring, and playing an acting game I made up called "Ring Ring," it was a new day. Not sunny. Not hot. Certainly not a good day for snakes, but away we went.
but it might just be okay. 
