Yesterday Gill's world changed which means my world changed. She received her acceptance to Ryerson University's journalism program. This acceptance was not only based on her marks but on several articles she wrote for the Admitting Committee. She is ecstatic.

I asked if she was living my dream. (I worry about what I am unwittingly passing on to her - not the love but the negative things.) She said "no, this is my dream."

And so she will return from France before Rob and me, at the end of August, and move to Toronto. I feel a loss. I would have liked to go with her and help her find a place to settle.

I can't believe this tall slim beauty is leaving home and somehow the ache is more pronounced than the one I felt when she received her acceptance to University of Victoria.

Rob and I met at Ryerson in the Radio and Television Arts faculty. I left after a year when York University opened their theatre and dance program. I just calculated that we were there thirty-five years ago. I was one of two women in a class of 34. I do have some sweet memories and most aren't academic. I wonder how Gill will fare in "Toronto the Good." I am glad that she will have several of my sisters, my brother, and my parents close at hand if she should need help.

Funny how I felt so mature when I left home and although I know Gill is more sophisticated than I was, still she is my baby. (Oh cut out the maudlin stuff, Yvonne.)

This morning I had a plum meeting. Shirley is still in England becoming more worldly, so only three of us read and wrote, while listening to some young fellow, with a toque, play the piano and somehow music became entwined with the writing - predominantly in one of Wenda's pieces. We know we are fortunate to have each other to admire our work - even the truly shitty stuff (I'm talking of mine, naturally) - and to catch the mistakes in p.o.v. or time sequence or such - all the things that one misses when one has edited a story ten million times.

After the meeting, I had an hour with our accountant. Grrr... The government want still more money. Why can't we be taxed like the people of Hong Kong where whoever you are and no matter what you make, you pay 15% of your income - no play of favouritism. I think all the talk of dollars and sense left me uninspired. I'll close here.

Okay, gotta blog. It's way overdue but what can I say? I've been busy doing important stuff like having my hair cut and streaked - doesn't look that different - a little shorter and more natural. That's what I like or that's what I'm like - short and natural. Oh, who cares? My conservative parsimonious side says ouch. "How many days did you work for this non-transformation? You're never going to turn heads, honey." (I say this with my cow-woman voice.) My sensible (yes I do have that side) says "You're not trying to turn heads. How ridiculous a thought at your age?"

Rob gave me a compliment the other night. Or is that "complement" Shirley? (I hope you're enjoying your time in good old England.) I'm not goin' tell what he said 'cause it would embarrass me but he's a good fellow, that man of mine - although don't think I'm getting presumptuous, calling him mine. He's his own person. There's no question of that in my mind.

Have I lost my mind? Maybe. Am I avoiding (I was goin' say voiding but that sounds rude) telling what I've really been up to? Yup. There's too little privacy in this world. I have my secrets but doesn't everyone?

I have been thinking a lot of water and fish symbols. I did a little research on the internet. Okay, everyone knows that Christ is often represented by a fish. But how many know that the fish symbol represented the pagan Great Mother Goddess. "It is the outline of her vulva." (Yes, I found this information online.) In China, Great Mother Kwan-yin is represented by a fish. In India, the Goddess Kali was called "fish-eyed one." In Egypt, Isis was called "The Great Fish of the Abyss." The fish symbol was so honoured in the Roman Empire that the Christians stole it and denied any reference to female genitalia.

I think of water as fluid, life-sustaining, liberating, and sensuous. I need to swim naked but our public pool doesn't allow it. Oh to be rich and have a private pool. I have little respect for money but if I were suddenly rich - a lottery win would do it - I would have a pool with water the temperature of bath water and I would swim in the morning and evening. How delicious a pipe-dream is that?

When I woke this morning, thinking of water, I remembered Antonio Machado's poem "Last Night, As I Was Sleeping" and the first stanza is about water! (Oh I know writers shouldn't use exclamation marks but I want to!)

"Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt--marvellous error!-- [I can't believe it!]
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?"

I worked last night from 7 to 11. This morning I found out that the French workshop, both sessions, are a go. I'm excited.

Amid all my secret activities, I've been reading Singer's "Boundaries of the Soul". She writes of life being divided into two halves. The first part "is directed toward emergence as an individual, earning a living, rearing a family, establishing a home" and the second part is "directed toward achieving harmony with the totality of being."

One passage that really resonates for me at the moment reads:

"[T]he ancient Hebrews were told to rejoice when death comes to a friend, and to mourn at a birth - for it is a fearsome thing to send a ship forth on a voyage to an unknown destination, but a glad welcome is due when the ship returns at last to its home port."

My mother once told me, with a straight face, that life is not supposed to be fun. I think it is supposed to be fun. I will tell my daughter and sons that life is not supposed to be easy but, now that I think of it, I think they all know this already.

Oh dear, it's scary outside. The rain is pounding on my roof and it's starting to thunder. I'm afraid of thunder and lightening.

Time to go inside to the big house.

Yesterday was lovely. A radiant sunny day.

I wrote like crazy early morning down by the water. So many thoughts roaming my brain but I don't have time to write at length now. Clare arrives in half an hour and we need to talk. She leaves for France on Thursday.

I had a massage after my writing binge and then Gill and I meandered through the streets of West Van until we reached Park Royal where I bought underwear. Red.


But what I really want to tell is that I just heard from my sister Gael. They removed all the cancer in the orange. It has not spread to the lymph nodes. I am so relieved that tears are running down my face.

For reasons I will explain in a minute, I had to find my copy of "Leaving My Father's House" by Marion Woodman. I must have lent it. I went to the library and the one copy was in. I quote from Woodman's conclusion:

"Mothers and grandmothers for generations have despised their female bodies, their sexuality, "the curse" of menstruation. They were born in a female body; nothing can change that. No matter how hard they try, they feel they have failed from the start. Their contempt for their own matter is in their cells and that contempt is in the cells of their daughters. "I don't deserve to live" is blurted out as the bottom line of self-rejection."

Several paragraphs later:

"They [women] feel so betrayed by their body that they try to take up residence in their mind.... Numbness makes life bearable. To obliterate matter, however, is also to obliterate soul.... Life cannot be fully lived without embodiment, nor can death be faced creatively. No wonder death is denied in a culture that rejects the beauty of its own humanity.
As the psyche individuates so does the body, and the physical illnesses we encounter in the process make quite clear that our body cells do have their own wisdom, which they want to transform into light (consciousness)."

Strange how some writer's ideas stay with me. Stranger still that when I want the words I know almost the exact page of the book where I read them.

I realized a few years ago that the women in my family - specifically my mother and sisters including myself are masters of self-rejection and most likely come from a long line of females who do not value themselves. My father proudly says that his mother would rather have starved herself than see her children go out in public poorly dressed. This poor woman, twenty-five years younger than her husband, died of colon cancer in her fifties. One of her daughters died of the same disease.

I never knew either of them. Cancer, I thought, is passed maternally.

I found out last night that my sister Gael had a lump the size of an orange removed from one breast last week. The doctors think it may have moved into her lymph nodes. She will know in a few days.

I telephoned Gael this morning. Until the call, I felt bad for her but since the call I feel this ache - it's hard to describe - a hopelessness. She said that she didn't tell anyone because she didn't want them to worry and then, she paused. "The real reason is I thought no one would care and then make light of it - especially mum and dad.

She was surprised that they cried. This is so sad, beyond sad. She said she does too much, carries too much tension, too much angst. (She is a politician and is always running somewhere, helping someone.) She believes she brought the cancer on herself.

Leslie thought the same thing.

The trouble is that I know how horrible this disease is. I drove Les to numerous chemo and radiation treatments. I sat through doctors and specialists' appointments with her. I saw her hair fall out by the handful. But the worst times were when she could say nothing, when she would rock back and forth in pain.

Isn't it sad that the least painful part - losing one's hair - is the most difficult to bear?

Gael is scared. She has already had her hair cut short.

She is my parents' fourth daughter, the "pretty one", and the one who felt she had to prove she has a brain in her head. She worked as a correctional officer in prisons before becoming a municipal councillor. She has been more successful than any of her sisters in earning her own living. She has two daughters in their twenties. She paid for their university educations.

She hasn't been able to work this past week. She says there is no excuse. She feels fine. Instead, she keeps cleaning her house.

People from work keep calling, asking why she isn't at this or that committee meeting. So she told them why. She says that over 500 people know what she is going through. (For this reason, I feel I can write about her dis-ease.) She is surprised by all the telephone calls she is receiving, expressing concern.

She didn't know that so many cared. This breaks my heart.

We five Wetherall sisters are all so different and yet so similar. Rob's sister once said that it is difficult to be in a room with us when we are together. We are so powerful. Strange. I don't think any of us feel powerful.

But perhaps we are in ways I am just beginning to see.

We do not want to be victims. Should I say "I do not want to be a victim? No. I doubt anyone wants to be a victim. Alden Nowlan's poem comes to mind:

It's want we all want, in the end,
to be held, merely to be held,
to be kissed (not necessarily with the lips,
for every touching is a kind of kiss).

Yes, it's what we all want, in the end,
not to be worshipped, not to be admired,
not to be famous, not to be feared,
not even to be loved, but simply to be held.

Another passage in "Leaving My Father's House" resonated with me: "Crucial to the breaking of incestuous bonds to the parents is the recognition that we do not belong to them and they do not belong to us. Individuation begins with the painful recognition that we are all orphans. And the liberating recognition that the whole of the world is our orphanage."

Brendan asked me about my blog last night, said that I had left me depressed in the last one. Guilt sweet guilt. Sometimes I have the energy to expose myself in all my unsavouriness and at other times, I don't.

Why am I writing this public journal anyway? Am I writing to one particular person? No. But from time to time, I am thinking of an individual, telling what I can not to that person because he or she is not near.

A good example is Rob. We see each other for around five minutes a day during the week and the past weekend days and nights, I have been out at work or meetings. Besides it's impossible to catch up after so much time apart. Rob called me a day after my last entry and said that I sounded down. (An understatement.) I was surprised and pleased that he called and I admit a little ticked that he wouldn't have seen that I was low and not myself - or maybe I was myself - even though I knew this thought was unfair. He's working too long hours and hardly catches enough sleep.

Usually I don't dare contemplate my readers or I would edit myself. I believe myself, in person, to be miserly. I give whole-heartedly to those who are open and forthright with me but not to others who keep to themselves. This journal allows me to be forthright with everyone who cares to know how I am and doesn't hope for a "fine, thankyou" - the acceptable response of my childhood.

At times last week I felt like a confused, bereaved child. There was too much pain to bare and bear. Firstly, the death of a beautiful young man and the grief of his mother, father, and friends. And then the world news - so horrendous, I couldn't think about the heinous mutilation and other inhuman acts. How can such things happen in the so-called civilized world? Someone said that they have always gone on. Is it any wonder that one falls into inconsolable grief with all the monsters from within and without?

And then I hear from one or more people via email or in person and I am overwhelmed by their generosity of spirit and kindness. I become lighter.

Yesterday morning, I received an email from Vaughan. One of her poems has been accepted by "A Room of Her Own" - a particularly fine literary magazine. I know she's an amazing writer, even tell her so, but it's wonderful when someone in the publishing world recognizes her talent.

In the afternoon, Gill called me at work to tell me that she's been accepted at University of Victoria and better still, she can start in January. Now she can weave her plans to go to Europe, live in Paris for some months, and then return to find an apartment in Victoria and go to university. She's excited. So am I.

After a festive nicoise salad that Gill prepared for dinner to celebrate, I went outside to continue trimming the ivy that runs the length of the fence outside our front door, at the request of our neighbour. It was blocking her light. I had just started clipping when Bren came out and took over. I was surprised at the help and pleased. Where did this tall, thoughtful young man come from? I feel as if he's a gift, returning home at exactly the right time.

Later, he drove me over to Helen's to celebrate Double Dave's 41st birthday. This big booming sweetheart of a man is content with his life, his cottage, that is owned and cared for by the nursery next door. The back garden is enchanted with its huge magnolia tree and many varieties of flowering bushes and plants. Dave wants to have a party in June for all his friends and their friends.

Before beginning this blog, I read a chapter in "Looking for Gold: A Year in Jungian Analysis." The author, Susan Tiberghien is a writer and begins each chapter with a dream. The one I've just finished is about a cat who walks in the door - this happens in the dream and a few days later, in reality. I'm learning that there are universal symbols. "the cat refers to the close relationship between - the anima and man's capacity to create art and to enter into the world of imagination." Tiberghien comes to the conclusion that she can not force her creativity. She "can only let it open the door on its own, like the cat... " She also mentions Brenda Ueland, who I quoted lately and even uses the same quote: "imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering."

I think I'm being hit over the head with a baseball bat.

I am miserable beyond reason today and so I decided that I would not write my blog. And then I began reading Susan Tiberghein's "Looking for Gold" and I read the following passage: "Is this peculiar to the woman writer? How many of us conceal, consciously or unconsciously, our pain, our suffering, our despair?"

The idea that I have not a reason in the world to be unhappy, that I am so privileged, makes me despair more. I've been writing on and off in my journal all day. I began this morning with "I am so forlorn. I can't think or feel. I want to cry but can't. I feel so small, so self-centred (and even though I remembered Marlene's words - something to the effect that where else can we be centred but in ourselves, I wasn't consoled.)"

I continued: "I am a stupid writer. Oh I'm a writer that's what I do with myself most of the time but I'm selfish and I'm small and I don't know what to do with all these damn words."

I keep thinking of betrayal in writing and it's wearing me down. What if by not betraying another, one betrays oneself?

Betrayal is a writer's nightmare. What if she or he describes an intimate moment with another because it may help someone else not feel so alone or for some such reason (if the writer is arrogant enough to allow her or him self such a grandiose thought) and in so doing, hurts another? Should she or he keep her/his big mouth shut? Or should one pretend the intimate moment is fiction, that it was created by a vivid imagination, or an idea grasped from the collective unconscious and not personal experience? I so admire Nancy Mairs and her family who give her permission to describe such intimate moments and publish them as non-fiction.

Early this morning, I threw on a dress and trousers and then an old sweater - looked like a bag lady - and went down to the water and sat with a coffee. I wrote: "I am so damn lonely. I sit down at the beach because I need the sound of the water to calm me. I have so much to say that I'm afraid to share. And the image of a young man, dead in a car crash, keeps invading my thoughts. I didn't know the young man. I have only heard of him through the concerned words of his mother. I am so distressed. It hits close to home. I keep thinking of the night my car crashed. What if my son and I hadn't been able to walk away? What if he had been hurt worse? I can't bear the thought. How does one heal such a wound?

I read Shirley's and Kate's live journals to catch up on their lives and Kate mentioned my "good energy." I nearly cried.

When I am negative about myself, some of my friends think I am asking for bolstering. This is not the case. I simply want to describe my life.

I still can't figure how why I feel so forlorn. Can someone hit me on the head with a baseball bat?

My quiet neighbourhood is noisy today. Two huge monster houses are being constructed across the street. (Rob says good. It can only raise the price of ours.) And a couple of doors down, a huge tree is being removed. I think of Vaughan and the loss of trees near her home.

I returned last night from my writing retreat at Whistler. Alas, Shirley didn't make it. Her cold lingered but she will next time. Wenda, Vaughan, and I settled Sunday evening into my sister's luxurious duplex and wrote morning and night - alone and together - and ate. Oh mon dieu, how we ate - quiche, cheese scones, salad, chicken in wine sauce, brown rice, asparagus, strawberries, yogurt - oops, cheese and crackers, popcorn, bananas, apples - I feel as if I never stopped. Such abundance. At times like this I feel so privileged.

The drive home was not only glorious - sky bright, sun hot - but fun. We stopped at Britannia Beach for lattes and spoke once again about betrayal in writing. It is impossible not to add fact to fiction when writing (including those we love in our stories) or there would be little depth so we had a hilarious time dreaming up pseudonyms and then decided to take Gill's lead and shop at Value Village for a wardrobe to match our undercover names.

Home sweet home. But when I checked my emails, I found one from Maureen, a cheery bubbly generous soul who attended the workshop in France. Her son was killed in an auto crash last week. I can't begin to imagine her pain. It also reminded me how lucky Mike and I were to walk away when my car was totaled at the end of January.

Today is too busy - store meeting, doctor and dentist appointments are only the beginning but there will be a half hour here and there to write. My life would be so lonely without a pen and paper.

It's Mother's Day and all my children (Mike for the night) are back at home, sleeping soundly. and will take me out for breakfast. Brendan and Mike presented me with a glorious bouquet of tulips last night - mostly white with a splattering of orange flame.

I tried, by phone, to reach my mother this morning. Strange when Vaughan called me a "mom" yesterday, I noted that my mother always signs herself "mum", the Northern Irish way, and my writer's brain thought "mummies". The women in my mother's family have always been mum. I looked up the definition on my online dictionary:
Entry: dumb
Function: adjective
Definition: voiceless
Synonym: impaired, inarticulate, incoherent, mousy, mum, mute, quiet, silent, soundless, speechless, tongue-tied, uncommunicative, wordless

I see that, through my writing, I have broken the chain.

After breakfast, I will work and then leave for Whistler early evening for a writing retreat. My Plum group will join me although Shirley is sniffling and may not be able to come. Damn it. We don't often have the luxury of time to write and read so I'm hoping for a miracle recovery.

Yesterday, I left the house early - before 7:30 a.m. - to meet my friend, Lynn for coffee and then to work until four when Marlene picked me up at the store with Ursula who has just arrived for a quick visit from Toronto. She will assist Marlene with the movement part of the body/soul writing in France this summer. She is lovely. I liked her immediately. We drove down to Horseshoe Bay, met Bett, and had dinner at Trolls and discussed France. The only problem is that UBC mailed the flyers late and we still don't know if there will be sufficient registration to run both sessions. It's difficult to book air travel, let alone arrange housing for the participants until we have an exact number.

I just realized that in approximately two months, Rob, Gill, and I will be flying to France. Time escapes me. I have to start planning.

As I will be away for a few days, without internet connection, I will return to this blog Tuesday night or Wednesday.

I'm down at the water after a rich day.

This morning I spoke to Kate in Germany who recently had her first ever cover story printed - see Kate's story on seal hunting. She's living in a foreign country, speaking a new language, teaching school, writing fast and furious, raising a toddler, living with a Bulgarian; and thinks she isn't doing enough. She is beautiful, sexy, compassionate, more than generous with friends and family and I know, without doubt, that she will be famous some day. Perhaps, she'd prefer rich. (Kate, if you read this, see yourself through another's eyes.)

After speaking with Kate, I received a phone call from Helene in France - another amazing woman - who assured me that she can accommodate several writers during the workshop this summer.

After this call, I drove to Coquitlam for an easy lunch at a small cafe with Clare who has just recovered from breast cancer. After lunch, we drove to Lake Como and read our latest work to each other. Clare is a fine poet who doesn't know her worth. She has written me into a poem as "a friend who dances on tables." Why does this please me?

Now I sit scribbling down by the water thinking of last night and the last Jungian meeting of the session at Marlene's - yet another amazing woman. (Sometimes, when I allow myself, I think that I must be doing something right to have such friends.)

We listened to Marion Woodman's raspy voice for half an hour and then Marlene lead us through the last chapter of "Addiction to Perfection". Woodman has called this chapter "The Ravished Bride" and Marlene explained, in reponse to a question, that when a woman is in touch with her sexuality, her animal body, the whole world is erotic. I love eroticism - even worked my way through Georges Bataille's treatise on the subject.

I adore Woodman but she isn't easy to digest. Now I don't worry about understanding every word and passage, and following her thread: I simply read and then underline what resonates for me. For instance?

"Science attempts to understand nature but too often its methods are rape and exploitation. The feminine way is very different. Through the opening of the feminine, love can enter, thereby bringing with it awareness of what von Franz calls "the star" - the uniqueness of the individual in eternity. Only through the feminine can creation complete itself in consciousness."

"The addiction to perfection is an addiction to unreality which leaves little room for the feminine."

And I loved this passage: "If the woman waits, stops trying, and in response to the masculine allows the feminine energy to come in, then the mystery happens to her. Then having experienced masculinity, she redirects that into action. Sexual intercourse is like conversation. [yes] The feminine listens and responds; the masculine translates what is heard. The process requires the full recognition of one by the other."

And as one woman said, the whole book can be summed up by one sentence in this chapter: "To strive for perfection is to kill love because perfection does not recognize humanity."

During the writing session, I responded to the question "What is the treasure that I want to bring back after the reading of this book?"

I want to remember, in my simple words, that "imperfection is the richest state, the most human - facing the negative mother in myself, the stern Irish matriarch, and saying 'yup, you're right. I don't make your grade. It doesn't matter any more.'"

I have been madly cleaning up paper clutter since 5 a.m. because yesterday I couldn't find the receipts I need for ICBC. I still haven't found them but I have yet to attack office and I'm feeling more organized in my writing house. And the kitchen is literally clear of paper.

My meeting with the corporation's adjustor yesterday went well. Although I did become emotional at times, I was able to ask sensible questions and received, what I believe, were honest answers. I told her at the beginning of the meeting that I wanted a few days to digest what was said. She said she pushed as hard as she could for a 25/75 liability decision in my favour - even presented similar case studies - but she couldn't do it. The thing is that I should have waited until the light turned red to start my turn unless there was a sign from the other driver that he was going to stop. They know he was speeding from the condition of the vehicles. They know the light was amber as there was a witness but this witness said that he was surprised that I made the turn given the speed of the other vehicle. I am surprised that he said this as I believe myself to be an over cautious driver. I have never caused an accident and have never received a speeding ticket in my over thirty years of driving so what happened that night? An amber light lasts 3.5 seconds, according to the adjustor.

What the fifty/fifty split means is that I lose completely my safe driving category and this accident will cost me $2500 over the next three years. Because I was injured and had numerous doctor's appointments after the accident, ICBC will give me $2500 (which is half of what I would receive if I was not at fault.)

The young man, who I insist, caused the accident is contesting the 50/50 split. He says that the light was green. He could not have been watching the light nor could he have been watching my jetta start to turn.

So what do I do? I'm going to talk this through with a lawyer friend and then decide.

I woke up fragmented after sleeping nine hours, remembering bits and pieces of a bizarre dream with flying carpets and a huge fish bowl, full of tropical fish.

Today I go to view some sweaters with Sherry for the store and then to meet my ICBC adjustor. I still can't decide whether to fight their decision or not. I know that I am not responsible for the accident but I don't know if I can prove it and, more to the point, whether I want to spend my psyche energy on the battle. I intend to try and keep my calm, ask questions - sensible ones - that will help me decide.

Last night we received notice of the graduation ceremony and banquet. The "girls and boys" are told what to wear. "Jeans are not acceptable under gowns."
At the banquet dinner, priced at $85 a head for a buffet, there will be a "mocktail hour" where one can drink soft drinks and chatter and photograph the children. At the door to the banquet, there will be a security check and once inside one cannot leave and return. Grad families are not allowed to rent a room in the hotel. No wine will be served with the meal.

I'm ticked off, not because of the security and lack of a civilized glass of wine at dinner but because I should have joined the grad committee and protested such hypocrisies and restraints. This rite of passage event was celebrated in the same way when our sons graduated. The highlight of both evenings was watching the young men and women arrive in their limos looking gloriously grown up and beautiful and having the first dance with Brendan in his black tuxedo and with Mike in his gold-sequined one. This year Rob will dance with Gill, in her sweeping black ballgown. I almost get weepy thinking about it.

I must shower and start my day. Wish me courage. Situations where I must stand up for myself and fight are more than difficult.

Oh dear, I've been procrastinating about writing this blog. My days have been spent with thoughts not ready for public consumption. I've also been fixated on a story that refuses every ending I give it.

Damn it all. I hate fighting myself - reminds me of some lines by Rainer Maria Rilke (for some time I thought him a woman).

"What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great...
When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us."

I'm frustrated also by ICBC. I had a call Friday from my adjuster. The final decision is that I am fifty percent responsible for the car accident. The gist of their argument is that even though the young man was doing 9 km over the speed limit (as much as they can be certain), and ran an amber light, I should have waited - even though he was breaking the law that states one must stop for an amber light unless it is unsafe to do so - because most people break this law.

The question I ask myself is it worth my time and energy to fight the decision and, more to the point, do I have a chance of winning when it's taken them three months to come to this decision?

I will sleep on it.

I've had a lazy day, trying to work Psyche into a story that might not want her. What fool would want to write while the dust and laundry pile up around her? What fool would pour her heart and soul into a story and then, after weeks, months maybe, not know what to do with her manuscript? Make that plural.

This morning, Gill told me that she was proud of herself. She made a teacher angry because she questioned her mark on an English test. She interpreted the mood of a poem differently than the teacher and Gill told her that she would like another teacher's opinion. The second teacher agreed with the first (could it be that she had little choice? - and Gill wasn't asked by either teacher why she felt so strongly) but still she is proud that she had the courage to stand up to an authority figure. I wouldn't have had the nerve in high school. Although I love poetry, I hated the way we had to dissect poems. And I feel, like Gill, that there is more than one way to read a poem.

I have no idea where the day has disappeared. I was still in my night gown well after noon and finally threw on some clothes to mail tax forms. But my story wouldn't leave me alone and I took myself down to the water and wrote some more.

This evening I'm going out with my sisters and Gill to see "Maggie's Getting Married" at Presentation House. Should be fun as my sister Donna/Maggie is getting married. I'm wondering what message, if any, the play will have.

Home again and out in my little house. How I miss it when I'm away. This is the one place that I know I can be alone and think and write. It was impossible when away to do any creative writing as I was in a room with Gill and Helen but no matter; I love these two women and there was always chatter and laughter. Felt like being in a women's dorm.

The first day of market Gill went with Walter and Helen and I and became our model. It's really difficult to buy without seeing a garment on a body. The only problem was that everything looked good on Gill. The second and third day, Gill remained at the hotel and shopped when the stores were open for her grad dress. She bought two. One short little floral number and one long elegant black Audrey Hepburn-like gown. When she tried the latter on for Helen and I, and then left to change after receiving our approval, Helen cried. I mean she literally cried. Tears were running down her cheeks. "She looks so beautiful." She did with her long lithe body. Where did this elegant young woman come from? I tried on a dress too but looked so old and dowdy, I didn't leave the change room. I read once, when I was doing my research on mothers and daughters, that mothers are often envious of their daughters. I'm not. I love my daughter's beauty but what makes me sad is that I didn't recognize my own when I was Gill's age. I was always so critical. And now, as I age and see the lines and lumps of time, I am still critical. This makes me angry because I know at a gut level that loveliness is a state of mind. I need to find my way to that state.

Although there were a few disappointments at the show - lines that we depend upon that didn't measure up - there was enough, I hope, to fill the store with colour and style. Now I have to settle down and sort through all that we thought would work and place the orders. This is the hardest part. I'm given a budget for each department (tops, bottoms, dresses, coats, accessories) for each month and must make sure that I spend what must be spent to guarantee projected sales and that all will work together and is coming in at a good time. This is scary business because I don't know if it will be a warm or cool fall and what people will want or need.

On the ride home, I read my latest story to Helen and Walter to see if they could help me find a way to close it. They didn't but it did help to read it aloud. I'm hoping that some creative genie inside me will offer up a more conclusive conclusion.

When we arrived home, Brendan was there. He has moved back for a few months to give himself time to find a new apartment. I'm happy that he's there. Already, he has cleared one room and is painting it. Although I consider myself a minimalist, Bren is even more so. He needs simplicity and order and I'm hoping he'll inspire Rob, Gill, and I to clear up the clutter. (When he and Gill took off for a walk after dinner, Rob said "He's a man now." Oh I know it is obvious but it's hard for parents to see their children as adults.)

Interestingly, I attended a seminar at 7:45 in the morning on the last day of market. One of our reps was giving a talk on Feng Shui. The emphasis was on removing clutter from one's business but I could see its ramfications at home, in my writing house, and even in my writing. The Oxford dictionary defines "clutter" as " a crowded and untidy collection of things." Melanie described it as "stuck energy." And she noted that saving something because you might need it some day keeps you in a place of lack. "Instead, affirm that you will have the resources to create what it is you need as you need it" by clearing and clarifying. Good advice.

Must shower and go to store and start clearing and clarifying orders.

I've been having crazy days and nights and I don't have time to explain as in 20 minutes, I'm on my way to Seattle for a buying trip with Gill (for the first time) and Helen and Walter. The females share a room. Walter gets a closet. Oh we shall have fun.
And we will work hard.

All day, as I've been running I've been thinking about the demon lover (the topic for discussion at the Jungian meeting last night.) When I think of demon, I think of devil; and when I think of demon lover, I think of the devil in the film, Rosemary's Baby. This is not quite what Marion Woodman had in mind but I found my mind last night too dense to decipher her meaning. This chapter was - agreed by most present - the most difficult one so far. I have some ideas about how to approach Woodman's material - always rich and dense and disturbing - and hopefully someone of them will find their way into my journal and I'll be able to discuss this subject more lucidly when I return late Sunday or Monday.

I'm taking five books with me, fool that I am. I always do this and Rob always laughs at me because I hardly ever get beyond one. But how am I to know what I will feel like reading?

Hope the sun keeps shining. Write my writing friends. Good luck with your move Bren.

yy

Last night I went out with Marlene and Bett to celebrate my birthday. It's three weeks past but this is the first time we've been able to come together. I like these birthdays that go on and on.

I caught a bus across town - something I haven't done in a long time, I realized, as I didn't know how to insert the transfer ticket. I don't mind bus travel but half way through the journey, a blind woman climbed on board with her dog, sat beside me, pulled out her cell phone, called several friends, and told them loudly how tired she was, how she had worked since eleven, how she didn't want to go out in the evening. Usually I hate cell phones and I wasn't especially keen on hers but I was happy to see and hear that she was able, without the use of her eyes, to get around, work, and play. What surprised me was her rudeness. Without apology, she pushed her way past several people, demanded a particular seat and, after her phone calls, yelled at the driver to tell her where she was and to notify her when he reached a particular stop. I keep thinking about her, wondering if her gruff manner, is a way to avoid sympathy from strangers.

Every writer should take a bus now and again.

I met those two wild women friends at a new bright Greek restaurant on 4th near Alma. We shared a Greek platter and a chocolate "eruption" dessert, and although I wanted to discuss Euripides and Pisidia (in view of the Greek kouros with blue eyes waiting on us - yes, he was nude), they preferred to speak of dark-skinned men in the southern States. I simply had to come down to their level.

The evening was lovely and we did speak a little of the French Workshop where the three of us will be room-mates. I'm getting excited - over the workshop that is.

Bett returned home with me to spend the night. I waved her off this morning, and have been working in my house ever since. Oh dear, I just noticed the time. I have to be at the store in ten minutes.

Must run.

Sunday morning and I've been out in my little house since before five. Gill is in the big house preparing for the Sun Run - 10K around the city of Vancouver.

This week has been too crazy but I did resolve several issues at the store. On Thursday night I met Lisa there who arrived with a bottle of wine - "for inspiration." We worked steadily for over two hours and transformed the place. I acted as her assistant. She's fast and good. Now I can hand over this part of my job to her. On Friday, I worked the entire day and taught Carol how to price merchandise. Although it'll take a few more lessons, I'm well on my way to more freedom. I will simply do the buying. This will give me enough hours - especially during market times - enough satisfaction (I'm seeing that I have an eye for style and colour) - and leave me more time for writing.

On Friday night, I went to a lecture by Christine Mulvey, a Jungian analyst from County Wicklow, Ireland. She was lovely, with a lilting voice and soft smile. Her intent was to take "a gentle look at childhood and how it can shape and influence our adult lives." Before becoming a Jungian analyst, she worked as a psychologist with abused children. She said she wasn't ignorant of the perils of childhood but wanted to balance the scale and tell of the good side, noting that even the most abused child has some source of light. She accompanied her talk with pictures of children and written quotes by Jung.

"To remain a child too long is childish, but it is just as childish to move away and then assume that childhood no longer exists because we do not see it. But if we return to the "children's land" we succumb to the fear of becoming childish, because we do not understand that everything of psychic origin has a double face. One face looks forward, the other back. It is ambivalent and therefore symbolic, like all living reality."

Mulvey did not succumb to the fear of being childish (not that she was childish but childlike in her simple, straightforward manner.) She said she was nervous, smiled, played part of her CD - a piece of traditional Irish music, followed by a male voice reading one of her poems - showed a photo of her niece playing with a stuffed animal, and asked the crowd, "Do you remember a time when you felt this must joy?"

She spoke of Jungian analysis and said that when a new analysand arrived, she often wondered what he or she was like as a child.

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with objects it loves."

The play theme appears to want recognition in my psyche. It is coming at me from many directions in many forms. Earlier, I was playing on the internet and found this quote by Brenda Ueland: "[I]magination needs moodling - long, efficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering."

The plums yesterday, amongst other things, workshopped a story I'm working on. Vaughan apologized but said that it wasn't complete. I had to somehow bring it back to the opening. So while Rob watched the hockey game, I went out to my writing house (with a glass of wine, I admit - "for inspiration") and through dawdling and daydreaming, puttering too, it's almost finished.

I am pleased. Now if I could only remember my dreams. I'm making a concentrated effort to write them down, notebook and pen beside the bed, but they're damn and determined that I will not have my way. I'm going to have to become devious.

"You come to love not by finding the perfect person,
but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly." (Sam Keen)

Sweet Gill just brought a breakfast sandwich to me.

I've been reading about love, heart, and soul this morning.

I listen to my heart. It is racing.

Last night Marlene read a passage from Paula Reeves' book "Heart Sense: Discovering the Intelligence and Memories Stored in Your Heart." The heart holds the life and knowledge of its owner in its tight little fist. I only listen to mine when it makes its presence known - like now. What is its quickened pace trying to tell me? I wrote about this last night. It wants me "To slow down, to stop performing."

This is not my imagination. My blood pressure has been high for several years. After the accident, it rose more. I'm still waiting for a report from my doctor after wearing that cumbersome monitor for twenty-four hours.

I appear to be running, always running. Out to my house in the garden to write. Into the big house to grab a bite. Out to write in my journal. On to work. Back to house in the garden to write again, answer correspondence, read, write, and then back to store to work, work. And so I live my life.

I'm not liking this life at the moment. Heart racing. Shoulders aching. I'm carrying too much of a load. I have to stop being Leslie. She's dead. I want a few more years. I have a lot to sort out but I know, in my heart of hearts, that I have to extricate from the store or, at the very least, relinguish many of my responsibilities. Surprisingly, I requested that a good display person meet me at the store this evening to rearrange all. I think she's good. If she can do this, I will hand the job over to her.

And I must leave soon to take my mother to airport. I thought about telling her to take a cab. Simple solution. A few hours more for me. But she would feel lonely and I think, how many more years, will I be able to extend myself for her? So I will put all else aside and drive her.

Another day and I'm delighted as I woke at 3:30 a.m. Since I went to bed at 7:30, I feel refreshed and have managed to accomplish a lot of writing and soul work. I even caught a dream.

In the early hours, I called Susan and Bedding in France. Sue Standing, the poet, is visiting Castelnau at the moment. I am envious but not too much so as I have much too much to do here.

I have two stories to send out. More really. So I began researching places to send them. This drives me crazy. So time consuming and I feel defeated. There are two many good writers in the world. But come to think of it, I don't think this feeling defeated is especially negative. It allows me to fling out my stories without feeling hopeful or disappointed. I tell myself I'm collecting rejection notices.

Meanwhile I continue to write "shitty" concentrating on the motto "quantity not quality". I actually feel that I'm making some progress.

My reading is also informing my writing. Vaughan recommended "The Deep" by Mary Swan and I finished it this weekend. It tells the story of twin sisters who move to France during World War 11 to help in the war zone. The author is parsimonious in the telling. Short chapters from a number of points of view. What excites me about this novella is, not only the tale itself - the story of twins who act like one, their dysfunctional family, and the inhumanity of war, but its unconventional format.

It reminds me that a writer can break all the rules in constructing a book, that I specifically can allow my material to take its own shape. In a sense, it gives me permission to play - a theme I've been hearing from a number of directions lately.

I often say that I play the fool. Talking to Susan this morning must have reminded me of a note she sent me over a dozen years ago and that I read from time to time.

"I wish I had the courage to be a fool. At least you have taught me with all this clamour to see clearly that is what I want. It's also what I respect in other people, really respect. Being happy and having the courage to be fools is very much the same thing. Let's be happy."

It's a beautiful Easter Sunday. The turkey in the oven, there since 9:30 this morning, has the whole house smelling delicious. Last year at this time, Gill and I were wandering around Dublin and she remembered Easter and gave me a chocolate egg. This year she has given me two Godiva chocolates.

Easter used to be a grand affair in this house with an elaborate egg hunt and a feast for the entire family and friends. This year it is quiet.

Mike, who has to work all weekend, save today, is not coming for dinner. He wants some quiet time. Bren is content reading and may also decide not to make the trek across town.

My children are teaching me that all doesn't have to be traditional.

I am content. Last night, Rob and I went to visit a woman who I worked with in Toronto many years ago and her spouse. When the guys were upstairs enjoying the view of Vancouver, that was truly magnificent - a sweeping vista of the city, North Shore, water, and mountains - Patsy and I talked in the kitchen. She said that she has never heard a man speak of his wife with such pride as Rob did, when they last met. I felt so good.

"You have to be careful telling things.
Some ears are tunnels.
Your words will go in and get lost in the dark.
Some ears are flat pans like the miners used
looking for gold.
What you say will be washed out with the stones.

You look a long time till you find the right ears.
Till then, there are birds and lamps to be spoken to,
a patient cloth rubbing shine in circles,
and the slow, gradually growing possibility
that when you find such ears,
they already know."
(Naomi Shihab Nye)