October 2020 Recap

Over the month my TOpoet.ca following blog grew to! The October WP map show my hits have come from 37 countries around the world. That India falls to 2nd place with the USA taking first. Hello Luxembourg! Hola Mexico! I even received some donations via paypal 🙂 My Tumblr is at 300, Twitter at 240 followers.

Plugging away at Picture Picture & am into the 2nd nano year of the original drafts. I made an abrupt jump from where I left off in year one. That first year I got really caught up in my hero’s back story – which was threatening to take over the book at the time – so started year 2 with the reality show investigation of those missing children. Picture Perfect so far: 42 sections, about 65,000 words posted with approx 122,000 left to be edited.

October hasn’t see any drastic domestic changes except for the spike in covid. Restrictions around that have little impact on my daily life. Not giving out candy on Halloween is a bit of a relief – though I did buy a face mask to wear for the occasion. No candy sales in the hotspots though. I have been enjoying neighbourhood dedication to spooky decorating – Halloween is the one holiday that hasn’t been co-opted by any religion.

Wrapped up the annotated Distant Music, I had planned to just do it for the summer but couldn’t stop in the middle of the book. Went back to the inputs of my 1970 novel Allen Time. POV slips around in a fun way. There is almost no action! Allen thinks a lot though. Considering what to do next with this piece of juvenilia.

Expanded my zoom life by adding another recovery meeting to the two I already log into. Checked out several before picking the one to add. With zoom one can find a meeting to fit nearly any time of the day, though for some you have to figure out time zones, for others figuring out the format is the challenge. I rarely turn on my camera though. Too many moving figures is distracting. I’m really not interesting in watching 30+ fidgeting people at one time & don’t want to add to that number. I end up minimizing the screen anyway to sound only – uses less bandwidth.

TV remains our prime source of entertainment. Besides documentaries on Ancient Egypt, the science of the brain I’ve been watching an adaptation of ‘War Of The Worlds.’ Some serious eye-candy has kept watching as the plot is over-wrought emotional confrontations between the people under attack. The robot dog/spiders are excellent. Finished season one of Broadchurch – intense but stretched out. We’ll start season two once we finish Brave New World: another adaptation but it stick a bit closer to the characters & general plot of the novel. It even had real laughs.

Also watched some excellent, if a bit difficult movies. Beau Travail dr Claire Denis – (loosely based on Billy Budd – set in Djbouti; Sleepwalking Land dr. Teresa Prata; Mozambique; Mouchette dr. Robert Bresson: rural France. All visually stunning, brilliantly performed – all addressing the nature of masculinity & growing up. Each with a narrative logic that at times makes you question who is telling the story & all leaving some of the story up to the viewer to tell. Rewarding & worth seeing.

November brings back pieces prompted by the 227 Rules for Monks on Wednesday. Music works fine on Thursdays, the Sunday photo blog has proved to popular enough for me to keep it going. Monday remains free-for-all, but also where I’ll chatter on about objects in my house & of course my covid19 musings. Picture Perfect will continue on Tuesdays.