Here we are: Muenster, Sk.

Brenda and Annette above standing on the road in town and Brenda is riding the train. The drive was fine, not too windy, or snowy and all is fine in the world of St. Pete’s.

Well, the time has come, it’s February which means it’s winter colony time. I am heading out to St. Pete’s, which is just outside of Muenster, to spend 2 idyllic weeks cavorting (I love that word) with many other writers in our own mini-idealistic community. I hope to finish some edits, start a novel, write a book of short stories, finish a couple of non-fiction pieces, complete 3 essays, and maybe just for good measure, a poem or 2. Or not. It’s an idealistic world isn’t it?

I thought I would leave you with something until I’m able to figure out how to download (or even if I’m able to download from a remote computer) some pictures. Here is a wonderful picture from a few years ago of 2 of my favourite colonists doing the ferret dance. The story is– there is no story. We dance, we sing, we play, we think, we write, we ferret, we build, we decontruct the build, we contemplate the build, we celebrate the build. Utopia!

Artist Honor Kever and writer Brenda Schmidt

…always says: “What goes around comes around.” Tonight I watched The Battle of Algiers. I think this review states best how “a film-maker can illuminate history and tell us how we repeat the same mistakes”.
Mom is right.

…is what I’m hoping this post won’t do. It seems Blogger took my words far too seriously about not posting much and helped me out by messing with my blog for awhile. I hope its got its little quirks worked out this time. I was wondering if I wasn’t next on the list, but this morning I noticed I’m still here–well, physically–and the blog has returned, even though the posts haven’t; I guess it’ll have to do.

I’m getting ready this week to leave for St Pete’s to do a couple of weeks of solid writing. I’ll take my camera so hopefully, if I have time, I will be able to post some pictures. As I was backing up all my files this week and copying them to cd, I thought how easy it was these days to take all my files, my laptop, my discs (even my printer is smaller) with me when I go away writing. Then I thought, maybe in some ways, it was simpler when all you had to do was carry your handy typewriter and 10 pounds of paper with you. No threats from viruses that are ready to wipe out years of work in 5 minutes, no computers willing to stop, drop and roll, and no internet glitches in communication that are beyond your control. But then again, (I learned to type on a machine much like the one pictured here (which was a birthday present this year)), I’m certainly happy I don’t have to pack this thing, nor type on it, and even though I wasn’t able to communicate for some days, I’m able to type this up in less than 5 minutes and have it out on the www in no time at all. More complicated, yes, but somehow more suitable.

I was reminded of Get Smart by the film prof before the scintillating showing of the Bond movie. “Would you believe…?”

I probably won’t be blogging much for the next month or so, I’m moving in and out of the real world, partially for writing, partially because I can. (I’m not 86ing the blog—once a social writer, always a social writer—“That’s the second biggest line I’ve ever seen.”) Static places eventually make me talk into my shoe.

(This message will self-destruct in 5 minutes—oops, that’s a different show).

…was the movie of choice in film class last night. Themes, such as tradition, culture, and dystopia were what we were supposed to study and know. Bond, in Sean Connery fashion was quite the dapper guy, dribbling all over Honey (Ursula Andress–who’s voice was dubbed with someone else). The funniest scene of the whole movie for me was Bond emerging from his hiding place on Dr. No’s island to drool over bikini clad Honey, who has made it to the island all by herself in search of conch shells to sell (she’s enterprising anyway). Bond, on the other hand, had to rely on the CIA and a local to get him to the island. Honey, of course, tells him to leave her alone, she’ll be fine. So, as Bond movies often go, he doesn’t and they get hunted down and shot at a few times. Bond, of course, decides after all the shooting to save the girl, but the shots have left her boat full of holes. Bond then turns to the other guy and yells frantically: “What do we do with her now?” Smarmy.

…I’m tired from driving 6 hours uphill in the midst of raging snowstorm flung from the treaded blackness of some mesmirizing semi in front of me, even though twice I had to stop and let the deer cross, because that’s what the sign says: deer crossing, and I had to stop every 2 kilometers after the sign, and even though my neck was sore from the extra load of guild meeting material weighing as heavy as a moose on my brain, (sorry, no pictures to prove anything, even though I might’ve been able to, but with the coffee cup in one hand and the cd case in the other, there were no hands left for the camera) and even though this weight is still heavy now, although now it only feels as heavy as a small grey car (mine, because I know how heavy it is), I was fascinated with how many times the tale of James Frey steered in my direction. I began to wonder on the ride home if the single-minded focus on the one path in the middle of the snow was our perception of the truth/reality and whether the snow layered and blowing around the sides and in-between each car/truck was everything else. Does there need to be boundaries set for non-fiction? Do we need to have factual truth? What is factual truth? Do we need to create a genre in-between fact and fiction? Hmm, here’s a hmm moment: tonight my newly created genre is called blogging. It’s full of the in-between.

…the best thing about staying home alone is reading a good book. Or reading a good book on the internet. There’s something slightly surreal and yet subtly soothing about turning the pages of a notebook written by Da Vinci, or by Jane Austen, or seeing the original Alice, or simply flipping through the pages of the oldest printed book, a scroll called Diamond Sutra (although I had some trouble with this one). I hope they continue to do this and eventually fill their site with amazing works.

I was a bit under the weather, popped 2 ibuprofen before I went to bed and proceeded to dream strange dreams all night. The one I remember the best was the dream of blogger comments. It went on for miles, well, not really miles, but a long flowing waterway of comments. A river of people. I don’t remember why there were so many, I only remembered scrolling down, reading comment after comment, down, and down. Mostly I think this was a dream of people, the connections we make in life, the way we come together or come apart.

The same extraordinary connection of people sometimes meanders like a small stream into real life. Today I had the chance meeting with someone new, and in the midst of conversation, he turned out to be the younger brother of a good friend from another town. We both dropped our jaws at the way the amazing world is really so very small. (This reminds me of line from a movie (Casablanca) “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, [he] walks into mine.”) Why and how is it we feel the need to connect again and again?

…will be spent reading Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000- 1887. Tomorrow night the rockstar and I are going to the late showing of Three…Extremes at the RPL–or that’s the plan so far. We are to do a review of a movie for Contemporary Film and this one looks like a movie(s) I might not otherwise see. At least it doesn’t look boring. I’m also doing a small review of “Cockaigne“, the satirical poem about the land of excess, and for good measure, trying to start some papers that are due in Feburary. I’m trying to get as much accomplished as possible before I exit this confined urban state, abandon–at least for 2 weeks– the ivory tower, the excess of city-built sky and replace it with snow cones and a prairie-colony sky that stretches with the whim’s eye, horizontal blinking captured in each rise and fall of my pen.