We’re not done yet. We are still breathing; it is still our time. Those of us whose hearts are still beating after all the recent onslaughts, we are living our lives second by second. There is only now.
And yet. A writer writes things down, and by necessity, these events take place on the page, and the act of writing puts them in the past.
Word on the Lake Writer’s Festival in Salmon Arm. I had been invited to give the Keynote. Twenty years ago, I had been invited as a playwright to the first festival here. Gord and I, we weren’t time-traveling, it was really twenty years later and we had to get in the car and see the swollen, white- capped Fraser River, sit dwarfed by the steep mountains, smell the smoke in the air from Alberta. Drive under the avalanche bridge, read the “Chain Up” signs, the “High Mountain Road: Expect major weather changes”. Notice the multitude of construction crews alongside the highway, see the huge pipeline, orange cones, enormous cranes and earth diggers: the manifestation of tax dollars and political willpower.
I know I’m committing the sin of writers: I’m Telling here: the drive was stunning.
I met so many people.
First, there was host Paula (pickleball player) at the magnificent High Hopes B & B in Hope, our first stop. And Eva, a guest at the B & B, whose daughter is an avid reader.
Down the hill, Hope’s librarian Claire MacDonald had made some room in her schedule to invite me to do a reading.
I met a man who was inspired by Gord’s book covers to resolve a deep issue about his own origins in a goose-bumps way.
You never know when your art works.
A woman who attended at the library (next to the rec centre), laughed at the all the right places and then wrestled with the computer to type in the necessary information to request both titles, A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE and KENNEDY GIRL in the Fraser Valley library system. Here is her kind face! By the drop box outside at Hope Library.
Then, hours later, the hotel in the bird sanctuary, the excitement of ‘about to begin’. A few people managed to buy my books in advance of the activities. I was skedded to do a 5 minute read alongside the other writers featured at the conference for the evening’s LIT CAFE. In such good company! Andrew Buckley, Jacqueline Guest, Chris Humphreys, Brian Thomas Isaac, M.D. Jackson, Deanna Barnhardt Kawatski, Theresa Kishkan and Howard White from the Sunshine Coast, Miranda Krogstad and Valdy.
Of our Gracesprings Collective: Deanna Kawatski, her daughter Natalie Kawatski, Shirley De Kelver, Craig Bruhanski, Kay McCracken. Mike Jackson, who helped create the website for Gracesprings.
Kay Johnson and Gloria, Debra Turner, and others. Wendy Robinson Weeson, a virtual friend and fan since 2015. A poet.
I had been looking forward to meeting Valdy.
Years ago, a woman named Melanie Carpenter was in the news because she had gone missing and I wrote a piece that was broadcast on CBC radio, called A WOMAN’S BODY. Valdy had written me a note, telling me through the CBC how much he appreciated the essay. I brought a copy of it with me, in case he remembered. That night, he regaled us with his onstage energy, his red shoes and his new songs. I read BRIDES OF CHRIST from A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE and the audience laughed in all the right places.
