…is something I’ve been overthinking this past month. Why? Can’t really say; artists are no more or less elusive (allusive?) than any other inspiration, whether it be flowers, or seasons, or people, or poems about people smelling the flowers, or maybe poems about people painting pictures that look like flowers, or poems painted that look like people are what people need to write. Maybe we’re all simply “journey agents” as this reviewer says about Ashbery. I like to think it’s all relevant to the process of whatever it is we’re contemplating about life at that particular time. Or not.

While I was out taking these photos, the squirrel was at the very end of this first picture curiously checking me out, maybe to see if I had some peanuts, since I dug up his stash the other day.

…the City of Regina Writing Award was handed out in grand style tonight at the Hotel Saskatchewan. I was on hand to give congratulations to Ven Begamudré , this year’s winner. It was another fine evening of readings by Ven and by one of judges of the award, Rhea Tregebov. It was great to see Ven again, and to meet Rhea. They both gave wonderful readings of new work.

…of what holds together. Is it the same fibre that pulls apart? Or, more to the point, does what pulls alter the way things are held together?

I’ve been taking photos of all of the flowers in the yard as they open and face the spring, the day, the world, and sometimes each other, and I’m struck by how the knotted heads hold to each other, continually lean in to each other; the community of buds in the way they bend out from themselves.

My favourite flowers are those that blossom in the soft shade of sky on a crisp day, or the shade of morning sky’s light in an early summer heat so quick to begin the crawl out of the ground. Flax, on the other hand, seems to have it all together, moves through fields with fluidity and grace of water, reflects not only its own imaginative features, but the face of the sky.

…I would like to go here and then here. I kept thinking some of these places are really close to the river. What happens when the river overflows?

…and for my next trick, watch me pull a geranium out of my hat.

…or wealth? I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. A couple of days ago I was reading an article about happiness that asked if you had to choose, what would it be, happiness or wealth? At first I leaned to wealth, because, hey, I’ve been happy once or twice before, but I’ve never been wealthy, but then I used one of my favorite professor’s tricks: define happiness, and then, define wealth.

Does happiness include contentment? Or perhaps, satisfaction? What is contentment and satisfaction, is it more important than all of the material things we think we want? But what about the non-material things we want? Can they be bought? Are our desires twined with our discontent?

Does wealth include stability? Emotional health/wealth? Sure, money doesn’t buy happiness, and, as recent conversations have pointed out, lottery winners are no more emotionally content after winning the lottery than they were before, they just have more money, but, can money buy the time needed to understand our discontent? Or does money only buy more discontent?

Maybe this all falls under Aristotle’s notion of being and becoming. Does wealth infer a stasis? And, as such, does it then impede our reason for becoming; do we exist only by being? Some days, I’d like enough wealth to see for myself. Or not.

…of new links. Bernadette has entered the blogging business, so check her out, and the rockstar now has his own page, so you can check him out too.

…for trying to relieve writing fatigue: take a web-page in another language you’re trying to slog your way through with basic said-language instruction, and when you sigh with the weariness of trying to read your way through the article, use the computer to translate it . I did this one–(the original)–and it just doesn’t quite read like the original had been reading; funny though, in a tired sense of the word.

Some ground ivy (top)
and the lilac, opening

This is a flower from the tree pictured on the bottom. There are four crab-apple trees in my yard–two are tall and thin like this one, but multi-petalled, and two are wider trees, fewer petals, but equally stunning; I can’t get a good picture of all four at once.