My Human Identity I am a social construct. Word upon word like blood. Image upon image like flesh. A technicolour film Of places and stories I have lived through. I am walking, breathing memory. Frame by frame repository Of history’s collective thoughts In my seemingly separate cranium. I walk this Earth for a slice of
The year is 1977. That’s when I recall a certain WIT (writers-in-transition) meeting at one of our members’ homes. As we settled comfortably into our host’s living room waiting for the ‘official’ start to our evening of reading, Norma — a usually calm voice in the midst of writers’ babble — held up her arm
I first met Norma West Linder at Lambton College in Sarnia when I attended her evening Creative Writing class. I had never taken a writing class—I hadn’t even told anyone I wanted to be a writer. Just the thought of meeting someone who was a writer made me nervous. I had written a long poem
Norma and my late Mom, Peggy Fletcher, were best friends. I can remember many writers meetings hearing their voices carefully dissecting and critiquing with wisdom and grace. Their adventures, first starting in the seventies with her first partner, John Henry, were epic. From her kitchen wall, painted with a personalized Peanuts cartoon to the photos
I shut my eyes to brush through my memories for warmth and sunny beaches as a pair of red, shiny slippers shelters my feet. As the slippers clack, clack, clack, I wishfully whisper: “there’s no place like home; there’s no place like home; there’s no place like home.” But that won’t get me all the
In A Mist it is the day after and I phone wanting to say a new song has nudged into place though my children play off-key tunes in the other half of my house I phone with all my senses jazzed by the gift of touch that foggy cornet a symphony by Bix Beiderbecke your