Today is my birthday. It's hard for me to celebrate my birthday, and it's something I have tried to do since my marriage ended, not altogether successfully. There's something raw about this day for me. My ex said I was just plain weird around my birthday. I think it's because I miss my father, and my birthday, with gifts, a gathering of family, dinner out, was the day he celebrated his daughter. I felt honoured in ways that he could never know growing up because other things were going on at home while he was on all those business trips. There have been many years when my mother didn't give me a present at all, but hey, I've done that back too. She didn't want a child, neither did he, their marriage in crisis and about to end, but then me. She wished me out of existence many, many times, he fell in love with his little daughter, and treated me like an exquisite human being, and always did, the whole time he was alive. My brothers and I have never really recovered from losing him.

Anyway, it's my birthday, I'm supposed to celebrate this day that I was born 54 years ago, and I find I think of the wonderful celebrations my Dad had for me on this day, and I feel blessed and sad. My brother and his beautiful children dropped by on the weekend. My mother sent an email from South Africa where she's wintering. I've received a couple of emails from friends. Tonight two dear friends who I know through yoga, one of whom I did teacher training with, the other who came to my class for years, both of whom I've chanted with, are taking me out for dinner. I haven't seen them in about 3 years, so that'll be wonderful. I don't know if my daughter wants to do anything, we'll see.

I wish I could just forget about my birthday, really. Grieving never ends, it's cyclical, and my birthday triggers memories of a time that's long past. My father died 22 years ago.

So, Dad, thanks for all those birthdays, for honouring me, my life, and I am trying hard to bring that within so that I can celebrate myself in all the ways you would have wished.



Photos: The top one was me at 3 months; the middle one is me at 20 in front of the maternity wing of the hospital where I was born in Sinoia, Zimbabwe; the last one is my Dad and I in 1980.

A piece published at qarrtsiluni.

Hills of ice outside the indoor rink. I climb them, looking for your photograph. In the barkskin patterns of ice, soiled layers of sand, the rock-frozen display, I place my felt-thick feet, heavy-booted. The light from the ice centre's lamps thows a tungsten glow on the frozen rivulets and packed densities.

My dog runs over the mounds, compacted ice crystals, our breath steaming. I dig my head deeper into my upturned collar, the wind sub-zero, seeing you on the underside of the dark sky.

I am wearing deerskin gloves and merino wool tights and snowpants and a tight jacket pulled up high. Two layers of fleece insulate me underneath.

The frigid air catches my nostrils as I walk, white plume of breath, my thoughts composing the rigid ice hills where your image lies, fragile, fractals of millions of snowflakes, in crystalline rock.

We find ourselves in alleys,
the underpasses of our lives,
the places we cross through.

Where the cities don't reach.
Where the highrises and cultural centres
and shopping concourses aren't.
The backsides of houses,
in the litter that collects in the tunnels.
Scraps of memories, fragments of thoughts.

I thought I found you on Cherry Beach
in sand like a dune twisted with flecks,
the edge of the water littered with overflow,
scraps, what's thrown overboard,
what washes up on the shore from
other shores winnowed by the waves.

Did I romanticize you?

I don't think so.
I saw your depths,
the broken double helixes,
the places where you re-thread
your thoughts again and again.

Where we replay
what was, what never was.
I want to blank out the obsessional
complusive areas of my brain. To be
free.

We are incomprehensible to ourselves.

Beneath the flow of this constructed city,
soil, silt, rock, caverns of water,
the earth turning on its axis of magma,
the flow of a volatile consciousness.

Beneath the clutter, the mélange
the edges of our lives,
tumbling,
beneath.

"What is sexual pleasure for?"
"To preserve the world's gloss."

When we make love, we "help
the world refresh its gloss."

But the "world is like the impression
left by the telling of a story."
...................Yogavasistha, 2.3.11

Perhaps it is a story of love.
.........Or war.
...............Or survival.
Or of us, who came into the world through
.........................its gloss.

___________
The first 4 lines found in Ka, pp.71-2.

Today, only this:

'To love.' The infinitive of an active transitive verb with an open-ended objet de l'amour...

I drag myself, weary and sun-deprived, towards Spring...

I wrote this at MB's site a moment ago, and wonder if it'll be one of those images that opens a whole cast of images; I miss the ease of writing prose poetry pieces, and am waiting for words that shape themselves to the metaphoric consciousness to return....

Those of you with feeds know that I'm an incessant editor; you shalln't then mind if I update this until a prose poetry piece has formed out of the initial image? (which is a bit melodramatic, I'll agree :)

My very good news is that my daughter made the honour role. It's official- the report card came. This may not seem a big deal, but it is. The last grade she actually completed was Grade 7. In Vancouver she dropped out of 3 schools, a traditional one, a tiny alternative school, and distance ed. It was a most difficult time, and I ended up homeschooling (I made her read books in my library and do internet research on them: we didn't get far, but she did start exploring the rise of the novel through women novelists, Shelley, Austen, Bronte, and read Sophie's World on the history of philosophy, and a fair bit of art history, etc.). Here in Toronto I managed to get her back into her grade level, Grade 10, and, while it was touch and go more than a few times, and I was very worried, her diligence with homework, completing all assignments and essays, and getting to school has paid off. Congratulations, honey! Now onto the 2nd semester...

I wrote: I must ask you to be more detailed about love, more specific. What is love? Exactly? Well, that's impossible, but the sense of love, feeling love has so many different forms and tones, I wonder if we can find metaphors to express what this quality of love is that we value so highly?

MB and Ken have begun to respond, though I hope to hear more!

As the day goes on, I will add more to this post. For now, I would say love is:

That sacred place of the heart where you care for another's happiness and well being with a sense of permanence. Love is the deep caring, no matter what the outcome, because there is a serious intent beneath the surfaces that is trustworthy, reliable, strong, withstanding. Love is letting someone love you. It is easy with our children, this deep committment to love through all the joys and all the trials. I would put the strength of the mother-child bond at the heart of what I understand about love, because it is resilient, never-ending, deep, caring, strong, rather than the model of romantic love; in other words, the deepest love for me is familial, and romantic love is most pure and strong when it approaches the lifelong trust and comfort of the familial.

12:03pm. Ah, now, no, that doesn't work either. See Adriana Bliss's post on the mother as couch.

Not to throw out lovemaking with the baby and the bathwater! Romantic love, with its roots in courtly love, the adoration of the beloved from afar, is based all too often on illusions. What I mean, I think, is if romantic love could have the depth and continuity of familial love then it would be invincible. When I see this with couples who are as in love with each other 20 or 30 years on, that's what I think the miracle is. There's no separation of the muse from your partner. Romantic and familial love converge and nourish each other in spectacular ways.

Where oh where has inspiration gone? Blogging was easy the first year, lately it's been like, umm, like not being able to find your pantyhose in the morning when you have to get to work in an office you've never been in before; realizing there isn't enough coffee cream for the 2 thermos mugs you need every morning, and milk is so weak; being driven crazy by the Wal-mart clock on the wall that ticks worse than Cap'n Hook's crook because time is passing and nothing is emerging; seeing all the bright diamond glistenings in the snow when you take your dog out for a romp and knowing it's all been blogged and so have whatever photos you can think of taking; a dull kind of February silence filling the well that's frozen...

What am I thinking about? Men, confusing beautiful creatures that they are, but that's a constant, so never mind.

I wonder about evolutionary theory and the development of ethics. This topic's come at me from 3 different sources in the past few days. Something about how do you explain the development of ethic in 'natural selection.' Probably it's similar to wondering how 'mind' emerges from 'brain,' though I don't know. It's fascinating and perhaps I'll be able to work it into a prose poetry piece soon.

I wonder about the ballyhoo at the Museum of New Painting with a face-off on Saturday between the curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario, a couple of well known professors, and international artists over the "new new art." Or what I imagine is a faceoff between new media artists and old media artists, but we'll see...

I wonder about my birthday next week and why I'm here and what life means and what the future will bring, you know the score.

But mostly I wonder where inspiration is.