A brief how do ya do.

No, I have not fallen off the edge of the earth though there was a point early yesterday morning when I would not have minded.

I topped off a fantastic trip to Sarnia, where I got to hang out with all my ridiculously talented artistic friends, with a train ride home that started off well enough but soon devolved into repeated trips to the washroom to purge anything I might have ingested over the past week (at least it felt like that). This continued through the night and into the next morning.

So now, it hurts when I laugh. . . Or breathe too deeply. . .

The show was great, fantastic and amazing and I will hopefully post more later.

Ever since I heard NQ Arbuckle's Part of a Poem by Alden Nowlan Called Ypres 1915 over on the Zombie's blog, I have wanted to read more of Nowland's poetry. As chance would have it, I found a copy of his selected poems - on sale no less - at Sarnia's The Book Keeper bookstore. It's great stuff. I may even contradict my vow never to read a poetry book cover to cover again and read this one for the Canuck book challenge.

Here is one reason why I love Alden Nowland:

A Poem About Miracles

Why don't records go blank
the instant the singer dies?
Oh, I know there are explanations,
but they don't convince me.
I'm still surprised
when I hear the dead singing.
As for orchestras,
I expect the instruments
to fall silent one by one
as the musicians succumb
to cancer and heart disease
so that toward the end
I turn on a disc
labelled Gotterdammerung
and all that comes out
is the sound of an sick old man
scraping a shaky bow
across an out-of-tune fiddle.

I know I have more to write and some blog reading to catch up on but I must be off as I have to work at 4am tomorrow morning.

Ugh. . .