In my head all day today:

Flawed logic

Pad crepuscular rays.

Gloaming.

The dimming reason. Fade in stray.

Patiently flaying. Seasons of discular moan.

The mournful mizzen.

The follicle scrim.

Open fire. Fall clearing. Mollifying dusk rim

opt. A civil trim. Assimilator.

Opulentor.

Home fizzing.

Load baring. Laymen foible

strop. Fob gobbling.

Homunculus. Opal.

Bundle.

Stow.

How can we take pleasure in a reported pleasure (boredom of all narratives of dreams, of parties)? How can we read criticism? Only one way: since I am here a second-degree reader, I must shift my position: instead of agreeing to be the confidant of this critical pleasure -- a sure way to miss it -- I can make myself its voyeur: I observe clandestinely the pleasure of others, I enter perversion; the commentary then becomes in my eyes a text, a fiction, a fissured envelope. The writer's perversity (his pleasure in writing is without function), the doubled, the trebled, the infinite perversity of the critic and of his reader.

- Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

A Plan for Preserving Birdsong

Is it true that tiny lawyers
.....Hatch in puddles in the spring?
I plan to capture orioles,
.....And teach them how to sing.

But if they can't, the lawyers,
.....Dressed in cunning feathered suits,
Will congregate in sheltered spots
.....And toot on tiny flutes.

- Dennis Lee, The Bard of the Universe

What blossoms did I know? Stinkweed and maybe the shooting star. Buffalo beans in the springtime. Wolf willow. Pin cherry. Foxtail. Does quack grass blossom? Does pigweed bloom?

- Robert Kroetsch, The Words of my Roaring

Feeling Overwhelmed, Stuck, or Burned Out? Personal Life &Work Life out of Balance? Having Trouble Saying No?

This is a workshop for lawyers that want to learn to:

· Work more effectively, yet also have more fun in their lives!

· Create healthy personal boundaries.

· Enhance all their relationships!

· Make life affirming decisions about balance!

· Make changes or complete ongoing changes.

· Maintain excellent mental health and manage stress!

I feel stressed! from all the exclamation marks! !

One of the most pleasing things is stamping DRAFT in big, red letters on legal documents. Stamping COPY comes a close second, but stamping DRAFT is more satisfying somehow.

Currently reading:

• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard (on the bus on the way to work, because it fits in my purse);
• The Words of My Roaring by Robert Kroetsch (too quickly, because Kroetsch books are basically recreational drugs);
• Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals by Frans de Waal (partly for the pictures of apes and monkeys, partly because de Waal rocks);
• Dies: A Sentence by Vanessa Place (haltingly, because I'm too distracted to give it the attention it deserves);
• Chicago Review 53:4 & 54:1/2 (intermittently);
• Implexures by Karen Mac Cormack (barely, because I just started, but expectantly); and
• A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright (again, because I need to refresh my memory).

OK, I google my own book too damn much, but look! you can buy it at Target! I would love to see my book in a bargain bin at Walmart or Costco or something, marked down to a super-low price, like 50 cents. That would be one definition of success.

And here's Audiatur, a neat site my book has popped up on (thanks to derek beaulieu). Not sure of its purpose, or its language, but it has a lot of poetry.

Do I (does my writing) have a wilting gaze? Really?

In case you haven't read it already, here's Rachel Zolf's very cool acceptance speech for the Trillium prize, recently awarded for her book Human Resources.

Slowly turning into a lawyer: yesterday I added a "furthermore" of my own volition to a court order I was drafting, for no reason other than to make it seem more "legal". But the furthermore looked incredibly strange and I had to google it to make sure it was really a word. And later I took a "therein" and a "thereon" out of a contract I was editing. So all is not lost, yet.

WTF? Of course it's worth $112.82, but who's buying?

Aww yeah, T. Rex and Marks & Sparks. Sigh. I remember Marks & Sparks.

Poetry! Social conscience! Tiny books! So cool.

Ridiculous but persistent fear #783: mistaking the Lysol bottle for the Listerine bottle, as they're both under the bathroom sink, and I keep forgetting which brand name belongs to which product.

Re-reading more of the books that I rescued from storage, including in immediate succession two of my favorite novels: Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley, and Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. Both offer a satirical picture of mid-to-upper class English society uncomfortably adapting to modernity, Crome Yellow right after the First World War and Lucky Jim a few years after the Second World War. Each has a young man as its protaganist, in Crome Yellow a pathetic, ineffectual poet, and in Lucky Jim a frustrated, reluctant academic. I've read each of them several times, once every few years. I'm not sure why they have such a hold on me.
Lucky Jim is laugh-out-loud funny, with that British kind of humour that's witty, absurd and ridiculous, like Monty Python or Will Self. On this reading, however, I noticed the pathos more than the humour. Most of the comedy comes from characters who are stuck, either in their careers or in their neuroses.
Crome Yellow has its funny moments too, but it's much more subtle. It seems quite rooted in the era it portrays, and I get the sense that I'm missing some of the satire, because I don't really know what Huxley is referencing. Some of it hits home, though, like this:

Mary looked at the picture for some time without saying anything. Indeed, she didn't know what to say; she was taken aback, she was at a loss. She had expected a cubist masterpiece, and here was a picture of a man and a horse, not only recognizable as such, but even aggressively in drawing. Trompe-l'oeil -- there was no other word to describe the delineation of that foreshortened figure under the trampling feet of the horse. What was she to think, what was she to say? Her orientations were gone. One could admire representationalism in the Old Masters. Obviously. But in a modern...? At eighteen she might have done so. But now, after five years of schooling among the best judges, her instinctive reaction to a contemporary piece of representation was contempt -- an outburst of laughing disparagement. What could Gombauld be up to? She had felt so safe in admiring his work before. But now -- she didn't know what to think. It was difficult, very difficult.

Melancholy, adj.:

Re-reading ribsauce, an anthology of women's writing published in 2001. When it came out I wrote a positive review for filling Station, but I couldn't remember any specifics. All the work has definitely stood the test of time (not that 2001 was very long ago...). It's particularly interesting to read works-in-progress from writers who've since published some awesome books, i.e. Heather O'Neill, Emily Schultz, Emily Pohl-Weary, Larissa Lai, Rita Wong...

found non sequiturs:

Non-profits spark an interest.

... showing what's owing...

Buy Yourself a Bacheelor,

Thanks for served you!

Very happy to be the featured poet for June on the excellent ditch, the poetry that matters.