first collection by Conrad DiDiodato

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

"Bridget bird" is out!

"Bridget bird" held proudly by me

I am pleased to announce that my first book of poetry, titled Bridget bird, is out! If you would like to purchase a copy of my book (15$), please contact me for the mailing address at cdidiodato@gmail.com.

An appetizing excerpt from poem "Bridget bird" on page 8 :

A leaf pressed into the red thirsting beak

    of a bird!

The harder the catch, leaf, slug, the harder you spin

    like a Bridget bird!

You a hipster and the Sun commingle wherever

    bugs are, glossing

over fields and looking bird-deep into a fresh face of

    sunny sunny things

_____________

Details of the book launch will be posted in a week or so.

I'd like to thank you (in advance) for your kind support.

                            * * * * * * * * * * *

Congrats, Conrad!

                             * * * * * * * * * * 

 

Hi Conrad,
Cheque's in the mail - in fact, I just folded a $20 bill into a tacky greeting card (5 bucks for postage & hassle!).

Please be sure to sign your collection ...!!!

Yeah, I'm the same way re poetic inspiration. If your Muse hasn't called, at least 2 or 3 times!!!, well, the poem just isn't ready.

And of course, mainstream be damned. Peeple don't know shit (or shite!). We have to write for ourselves (& our Muses) and People's Poetry - or why fucking bother!

with anticipation,
peace & poetry power!
Chris ... and Chase ... wrfffffffff (you'd better read me some of Conrad's stuff or I'll bite your sorry butt!)

  
On 2012-03-14, at 8:28 PM, Conrad DiDiodato wrote:

Thanks, Chris!

I'm not too prolific...poems here cover about a 10 year period. I'm in no rush. The poem tells 'me' when it's ready: I never never force it. And I never never write to please mainstream tastes, a fact which I wear like a badge of honour.

Again, thank you!

Conrad

Send cheque to: C. DiDiodato
                            12 Darrow Drive
                             Stoney Creek, ON
                             L8E 4P5

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 8:16 PM, Chris Faiers <zenriver@sympatico.ca> wrote:
Congrats, Conrad!
Let me be one of the first in line to buy a copy! Long overdue I suspect. You have written some beautiful, powerful & evocative poetry - & that's just from the small sampling I've read in the past year on your blog (esp. the poem about the 3 murdered sisters and their aunt).

Please sign and mail to:

Chris Faiers
P.O. Box 69
Marmora, ON
K0K 2M0

let me know your mailing address & I'll send a cheque tonite ...

again, many congrats!!!  :  )

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hippie pub drug bust 1970: The Three Fishes

Following is a chapter from my 1990 haibun/memoir Eel Pie Dharma.
I'm anticipating its republication this year with Tai Grove's Hidden Brook Press.
 

Chapter 20 - The Three Fishes

Pub life in London reflected the British tendency to divide into classes and areas of interest.  There were upper class pubs, right wing pubs, Irish Republican pubs, working class pubs, and one unique pub where all the regulars were very short, young males who only listened to Eddie Cochran on the juke box.  There were skinhead pubs and of course hippie pubs.

The Three Fishes was a hippie pub, located on the corner next to the Kingston-Upon-Thames rail station.  The lights were dim, the music blaring rock'n'roll, and the clientele longhairs of both sexes.  At that time in Britain, kids as young as fifteen could get away with going into pubs, although the legal drinking age was eighteen, so there was the expected quota of schoolgirls and boys.

It was just the sort of atmosphere I loved after a hard day of digging graves.  On one of my first visits, a gorgeous young girl of about sixteen came and knelt before me, as if before a medieval knight.  She clasped her long hippie shawl about herself, and even I found I couldn't take advantage of her, and offer the expected walk home through the park:

Young girl     in an old shawl         kneeling

One summer evening I made the long ride into Kingston on my bike after work, and had a pint or two at the Three Fishes.  It stays light very late in Britain in summer, and so dusk was just turning to dark when I left after 9 p.m., and began undoing my bicycle lock.

In the half light I noticed something very strange.  There were several police vans parked outside, and more arriving every second.  In the dark I made out the shapes of several dozen policemen, and I realized that a raid was about to take place.

I wasn't drunk, only stupid, and some sense of hippie brotherhood won out over common sense.  I walked back into the Three Fishes and began yelling "It's a raid! - It's a raid!"

The office in charge followed me through the doors, and I was the first one grabbed.  "You're nicked," he snarled, and passed me to another bobby.  Bustled back out the door, I caught a glimpse of the pandemonium as drugs were dumped under most of the tables.  I was pushed onto a bus, much like a large tour bus, which the bobbies had requisitioned for the occasion, and soon I was joined by thirty or forty other longhairs.  Then the bus and several van loads of miscreants were taken down to Kingston police headquarters and booked.

I didn't get to sleep that night, as it took the police all night to process so many of us.  In the early morning light I found my way back to my locked bicycle, and slowly wound my way back towards Twickenham.

Our case didn't come up for a month, and the courtroom was a mob scene.  When my turn came, I pleaded "Guilty, Your Honour" to the charge of interfering with the raid by warning everyone, but I added, "I don't feel guilty, though."  The courtroom burst out laughing, both at the oddity of my charge, and at my unusual plea.  I was given a fine of thirty pounds, which was then my wages for about three weeks.

Hash aroma     and stale beer         under the table

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Eel Pie Dharma is protected by international copyright laws. Individuals may print off a copy of this work for personal use only to facilitate easier reading.

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Eel Pie Dharma - contents   |   previous chapter (19)   |   next chapter (21)

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old guys in shades ... (Faiers poem)

old guys in shades -
think Purdy on the A-frame lawn
Plantos  outdoors in Cabbagetown
Milt - cigar forward thrusting
I'm one now
Morley said I looked like Ray Charles
almost cool ...!
at the dam reading last summer

hair thinned & graying
and longhair not cool for decades anyway
youthful looks long gone
time to pose in dark sunglasses

on this springlike March 11th
Chase and I wandering farm roads
to avoid muddy snowmelt
on our usual bushland back trails

beer in my backpocket
swigged out of farmhouse sight
-
face in the sun - minutes pass
perpetual biscuit bribes to Chase
then I catch the pose -
old poet in shades
harsh face sunthrust -
wind sweeping gray hair
mind in the cosmos
crows in the fields
noble poetic posing

last swig of beer
transforms the loose-held Zywiec bottle
into a hoser Aeolian harp

a nimble mouse skips
free from roadside brush
tiny brown squirrel chitters
at licorice allsorts dog
and old guy in shades
poetic posings

Zywiec works its magic
and that kidney stone fragment ceases
its annoying journey to an outlet
all now perfect on these parallel ridgetops
miles north of Highay #7

this is Purdy Country
and I've caught myself mid-Purdy pose
much shorter and dumpier perhaps
but reminiscing - imagining - poeticizing
on this fragmented day
strange chest twinges
and stoney irritants forgotten
we pause too long on our sunny stroll

Chase and I continue ...
lovers on a 4-wheeler pass
between sugar shack rendezvous
we wave - and I lose my best pocketknife
stuffing the Zywiec bottle back pocket

this hike is a four-step
a boxed walk north of Deloro Road
we turn lake south and magic reveals
a damp glen of mystery - sexual

where teen boys - lured by tree nymphs
spurt virgin cum on mossy green mounds
nymphs will rub this spoil
ecstatically into woody hollows
to spawn fey ones humans only guess at

a statue to myself
like Milt thrusting Cuban cigars
skyward
like Al on the A-frame lawn
like Ted posing somewhere in Cabbagetown

old guys in shades
lucky to find solace
anywhere
harsh old faces sunthrust
dark shades protecting
minds in the cosmos
memories in the hollows
with wood nymphs and schoolboys


first draft March 11/2012
Marmora, ON

true secret story of Wilber Walnut, Milt Acorn, & Big Al Purdy

Hey Chris,

Re: Wilber Walnut’s relation to Milton Acorn – The ‘other’ house guest.

Now I am not sure if Wilber Walnut is actually related to Acorn in any way given that his parentage is questionable and anything he says about himself is at best dubious.  He does claim to have met Acorn and Purdy once, both at the same time during that winter Acorn and Purdy spent in the A-frame.  Wilber was their senior, god only knows how old Wilber actually is as there is no record of his birth given he was born way back in the bush a heck of along time ago, but if he was playing around in the woods with Grey Owl before the outbreak of the First World War he is well, well over 100 now; even if he doesn’t look a day over 92.    I think it was Acorn who invited Wilber up to the A-frame much to Purdy’s chagrined, Wilber was never well known as a poet but Acorn had heard of him in left-wing circles and wanted to meet him.

Now the “House Guest” story is that Acorn and Purdy were actually getting along just fine before Wilber showed up and started to drink all of the wild grape wine he could lay his hands on no matter where they tried to hide it.  And as far as I know, the fact is, Purdy and Acorn never, ever, spoke of Wilber’s visit during their A-frame time and this may be an indication of how things went.  Furthermore Wilber isn’t very forthcoming on the subject either.  The only hint I know of is Purdy’s last line from his poem “House Guest” which is “and I guess I was wrong about those eggs” and Wilber’s comment on Purdy that the man is a menace of mayhem in the kitchen and then begins to mumble random culinary terms such as “scrambled, poached, fried, over-easy, broken yoke, caudled, omeletified, smashed, souffléd, baked, soft boiled slashed in the center with a bleeding skewer of toast on a fork” while readjusting his eye patch and adding…. “Salvador Dali has nothing on Purdy when it comes to eggs.”    (As an aside, Wilber also claims to have met Salvador Dali and to have one night left a clock on the stove, proving Wilber is also a menace in the kitchen, and in my experience every other room of the house.)

“I am also a poet who isn’t a carpenter” is Wilber’s only comment on Acorn that he is willing to make at this time and I can’t get anymore out of him, he is on his way out of the cabin door just now… all of my beer is gone.

Jim

(You can post this on yr blog if you want but Wilber was mostly incoherent (drunk or senile how can you tell?) as I managed to glean his random thoughts and rants which I then tried to weave together into yet another fragmentary “true story” of Wilber Walnut.  Why do I bother?  Wilber will never manage to be immortal as long as he is still alive and continually refuses to die!)

                                                          .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


thanks for the further cornfusion, Jim  :  ) I wouldn't have posted this, but I AM drinking right now!
- Chris/cricket

hey, did I ever tell you about my great uncle DArcy MacMurray? Your description of "drunk or senile how can you tell" brought him to mind. He was in that same tradition of rebrobates as Wilber, Milt & Al  - I lived with him for a very brief time during CLM. We drove each other nuts. Went to visit him one time afterwards, & found him dead on a cement slab in the backyard, a pool of blood congealing under his head. Called emergency & the ambulance quickly came screaming up. Darcy was in his 90s then, & I thought 'not a bad way to go, hanging out in your idyllic suburban backyard near Glendon campus' - I led the ambulance attendants to the 'dead' Darcy, who lifted an eyelid and told them to fuck off (possibly saltier language than that!). The old fucker wasn't dead - just dead drunk. He refused to go with the ambulance guys, & I had to carry him back inside & throw him on his bed.  He finally died in his mid-90s on K Wing (veterans floor) at Sunnybrook Hospital. To the very end he was flirting with the nurses and cheating me at gin rummy.
 RIP Uncle Darcy ...

There were 7 crazed MacMurray brothers, and one beautiful, spoiled baby sister, Naomi (my grandmother).
Brother Dave (I think - finally starting to take an interest in my twisted family tree at age 63). Dave was an undertaker (& I'm sure another reprobate). A freighter sank in a great lakes storm, & Dave was standing on the end of the dock with a measuring tape when they started bringing in the bodies!
No wonder we're poets with ancestors like these  ;  )

Of course there's the earliest 'famous' MacMurray, my ancestor Archdeacon William MacMurray. He married a First Nations princess, and is buried in St. John's Anglican Cemetery in Ancaster, Ontario.
The rest of the MacMurray clan has spent over a century trying to outlive & rectify  our family name after this one oddball, venerable MacMurray clan member. Last year I did a posting on the Archdeacon
hisself - but it's taken a beer or two to finally acknowledge & reminisce about Darcy, Dave and even Naomi  :  )

- Chris/cricket

Wilber Walnut in THE MILTON ACORN ROADSHOW!????

(Larwill/Faiers emails preparing/fantasing about PurdyFest #6 - Acorn Fest)


Hi Jim,
What I'm envisioning re "Acorn Fest" is a performance featuring your incredible thespian talents. Anything featuring Wilber Walnut would be fine & appreciated, as Wilber is some sort of half brother to Milt (I believe, if I've got the story straight). I'm copying this to Simon de Abreu as well, as he did a great job directing you at PurdyFest 2 years ago.

Or maybe a piece from Milt's play, THE ROAD TO CHARLOTTETOWN, or a dramatic reading of Milt's poetry ("I Shout Love"?)

A Jim Larwill performance could serve as the centre piece for Acorn Fest. I remember Cedric Smith at the memorial for Milt in Charlottetown in 1987. Cedric does a great impersonation of Milt, he really hams it up ...  and everybody loves it! Maybe Cedric will come out of the woodwork, wherever he is, & show up to resurrect Milt's voice & mannerisms ...

The possible framework Terry & I have discussed is a repeat of last year's very successful tribute to Raymond Souster. There were only 13 or so present at the Marmora Library Symposium on Ray, but then we took this 'practice run' to Toronto - where 4 months later the event filled the Runnymede Library meeting room (60+ - standing room only).

We had some top names in CanLit (John Robert Colombo, Greg Gatenby, etc.), as well as Joe Fiorito, who both participated in the event and then wrote a nice column about it for the TO Star on Ray's birthday this year! Also Toronto Public Library videoed the evening for posterity.

So Terry and I envision an initial launch in TO on July 15th I believe, followed very closely 2 weeks later by the foofaraw of Acorn Fest. Then if we can successfully duplicate the pattern of last year's promo of Ray, we could return to TO after Acorn Fest with some sort of fall performance package to further promo IN A SPRINGTIME INSTANT - and I can see you being a major part of this "MILTON ACORN ROADSHOW". 

It would get you and your work some great exposure, promote Milt's new book & his legacy of People's Poetry, etc. .

Who knows who might attend? The old BOHEMIAN EMBASSY gang? - thinking esp. of George Miller and Don Cullen ...

Anyway, we're in the dreaming stages now, but like yourself, I forsee this summer being a special PurdyFest, thanks to Milt.

peace & poetry power!
Chris ... and Chase ... wrffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff!


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Hey there Chris,

Looks like PF 6 is coming together gang busters.  Good work!

In an earlier email you asked if I had an essay on Milt and I do have
one "Acorn vs Pound:  You Growing  vs  Francesca"  where I compare
Acorn's "You Growing" with Pound's "Francesca" which is the poem Acorn
based his "fight not plight" rewrite upon of the earlier poem by Pound.

"Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you."  Pound

"Out of a clamour of voices
Demanding faces and noises."  Acorn

The comparative perhaps sheds some light on the aesthetics of People's
Poetry verses Facist.  (Or in Shamanic terms Raven's are good mimics of
mockery.)

It is an old essay so if you did want a presentation of some kind I
would want to rework it, so let me know what you and Terry think.

Keep marching.

jim

The Wake - Gail Taylor

 

 

 

The Wake

By Gail Taylor





From the wake,

that turbulent flow

of errant emotions

riding the crests and

  troughs of my despair,

arose an inner thought…

wakened at first

as an ever-expanding

shock wave of despair,

moving methodically

through my memories

searching for a path,

a harbour…

a retreat from pain,

but now awakened

by the collapse

upon a distant shore,

of an undertow

which is returning

with its dredges,

 those sands of regrets,

whispering, whining

and wailing

that I stand alone

ever in the wake

of time

into the Mystic: Akashic Record (for Dummies)

book reviews/reflections


THE AKASHIC RECORD (the complete Idiot's Guide to)
Dr. Synthia Andrews, ND and Colin Andrews
2010, Alpha Books - Penguin Group
314 pages
isbn: 978-1-59257-996-9

For many years Terry Barker and I have discussed our mutual interest in spiritualities and philosophies considered Eastern. Several months ago Terry picked up the book Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West at a used book store. I bought a copy so we could find more common ground in our discussions - a shared vocabulary at least.

Re-enchantment turned out to be a chronology of mini-biographies of the people who have explored and introduced Tibetan Buddhism to the West for the past 150 years - interestingly, mostly Westerners - and the book does give a good introductory overview of this movement.

What surprised me in reading RE was the amount of cross-influences early Westerners have already exhibited on our understanding of Tibetan (and other) Buddhist practices.  

A month ago I picked up The Akashic Record to deepen my own Buddhist understanding, and to further Terry and my rambling discussions. I loved the first third of the book - and I kept praising it to friends. Then I felt the middle section of the book devolved into New Age mush, and I almost stopped reading. I diligently plodded through, shrugging off some of the stickier self-helpism, and then I did feel I was finding some major answers, or at least plausible explanations,  to cosmic issues in the final third.

So what is the Akashic Record? In one of Terry's many carefully typed letters he quotes Norman Blundson  in A POPULAR DICTIONARY OF SPIRITUALISM:

Akashic Records: an occult term said to be a cosmic picture gallery and record of every thought, feeling and action since the world began. Often advanced as an explanation of clairvoyant and psychometric perceptions. Somewhat akin to the idea of Cosmic Consciousness. Yogis believe that this record can be contacted when in certain psychic states of consciousness.


Synchronistically - and AK points out several times there are no accidents, and  as human consciousness evolves, we will all experience far more synchronicity in our lives - the first section of the book covers much of the same ground at RE. I had always considered Westerners, especially occultists like Madame Blavatsky, harmless spiritual goofballs.

But the combination of long chats with Terry, his well-thought-out letters, and now this New Agey Complete Idiot's Guide were giving me a new respect for and interest in these early Western spiritual pioneers.

                                                               . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

     (time out to walk Chase - more later - both books are a great read & highly recommended)


It's a dangerously windy early March day - I decided it was too risky to drive to any of our favourite trails, so Chase and I braved the 70 km winds and marched to the boat launch.


                                                           
                                                            blustery wind
                                                            blows the honk back
                                                            into the geese

                                                       
                                                            . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


an observation

I've been observing and participating in the merging of Eastern thought (consciousness) with my Western upbringing and lifestyle since I was 18 or 19. I believe yoga and meditation saved my life in the mid 1960s, when I was eligible for the Amerikan draft as a resident alien Canadian.  Through these practices I encountered a 'private Buddha', opposed the Vietnam War, and then left the U.S. forever in 1969.

For almost half a century it has both annoyed and amused me to observe the way we Westerners incorporate Eastern consciousness and practice. It seems we always incorporate Eastern ways at the lowest level possible.

First was our love affair with martial arts - judo and karate - rather than with yoga and meditation.

And as Westerners we always have to screw with methods long proven in the East. Yoga has slowly become mainstream, but first we had Pilates and Madonna  : ) And even now, there are probably as many wannabe yoga practitioners parading in "LuluLemon" yoga wear as people actually practicing yoga.

To me, yoga is just the form for practicing meditation. Sure, it's healthy, but so is taking a good windy walk. I believe the point of practicing yoga is to meditate, but we are taking our good time incorporating these powerful Eastern concepts, always first commercializing and bastardizing them.

Haiku: A case in point is haiku. I've been writing and publishing haiku - following the haiku path - since 1968, when Eric Amann kindly published my early efforts in his seminal magazine Haiku.
Yesterday I skimmed the intro to the latest Haiku Canada members' anthology (our 35th anniversary!)
The intro noted there were about 35 Canadians writing haiku (haijin) in the late 1970s when a handful of us formed Haiku Canada (initially the Haiku Society of Canada I believe), and now there are many hundreds, if not thousands, of Canuck haikuists.

I've also kept abreast of the international English-language haiku movement. Apparently haiku has become the latest fad in creative writing. There are milllions of sites on haiku/haibun on the web now! But how serious, how in tune with the spirit of Basho and the early haiku masters are most of these self-proclaimed haijin? Is this a bad thing? No, of course not. Just as anyone even attempting yoga has at least taken a first step on the path to meditation (and ultimately enlightenment), so anyone observing their life and recording it in haiku is on a genuine path, whether they realize it or not;  and of course it's irrelevant if they annoy the hell out of me with their arrogance and silliness ("sci-ku"??)  My problem, not theirs  : ) 

but ultimately, is the poet/haijin on the path to Buddhahood (bodhisattva) or just to ego aggrandizement?

                                                                . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


back to reflecting on the 2 books
(March 5/12)

I've had a couple of more days to reflect on these two books. I've come to the conclusion Re-enchantment was disappointing, in that it didn't tell much about Buddhism and its practices. Not surprisingly for a Western author and publisher, the book focuses on individuals rather than a movement, or what I believe is an ongoing and major shift in consciousness.

On the other hand, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Akashic Records may tell readers 'too much'. If New Age hippie/dippyness bothers you, this definitely isn't a book you'll enjoy. But if you have begun to experiment with yoga, meditation, Buddhism, or any of the other mystical practices such as I Ching, this book may answer some questions for you and provide guidance further along these paths.

Want to contact angels, or spiritual guides and ascended masters? AK's authors are only too willing to give you advice! Want to read your own life past & future (!) histories - read on.

Humans are at a planetary crossroads. Our little spinning ball  - our home itself - has become collateral damage to our recklessness. Physical science has brought us to this very edge of destruction (cue song The Eve of Destruction). In the West we have developed physical powers which are sadly beyond our own mindless ability to control.  In the East, and in many First Nations cultures around the globe, humans have found ways to live in harmony through a developed 'higher' spiritual awareness and consciousness. The time has come to merge these seemingly disparate and opposed cultures - the yin and the yang if you wish. The completed whole of human physicality incorporated with a higher awareness will lead us to a New Age almost beyond our current comprehension.

Reading these books makes me write silly things like this! ...

peace & poetry power!
- Chris/cricket