I’ll participate in a panel at Montreal’s Blue Metropolis Literary Festival called “Becoming a Writer,” in which I should talk about my experience with self-publishing and all the steps of the seemingly infinite ladder towards making one’s name emerge in a very crowded and noisy market. Of course, I’ll talk about having the book on lulu.com, more as something anyone should do if they’re not going through getting their work torn apart at an MFA program to shake them out of their bad habits. We always question that, we, the beginners. We don’t like to have our egos deflated as an exercise. Perhaps that distinguishes the hobbyists from the wannabe professionals. All the same, I feel that with the Internet and people’s changing habits, an Internet presence is necessary if you want to be an author and it doesn’t seem you’re in line any time soon for major recognition. Anyone can start a blog like this one on any free service currently available (if you don’t like google, try wordpress). The harder part is to …

OK, I’m probably not reporting anything new by telling you about newpages.com because if you just google “literary magazines” or “online literary magazines” it shows up at the top of the results. I may even have heard about newpages.com, and it may even be in my browser’s bookmarks for what I know. Except that today, faced with another rejection letter and faithful to my promise to just keep submitting the same story to other magazines, I felt overwhelmed by the number of literary magazines out there. It became even more overwhelming once I found the lists at newpages.com A few days ago, I thought: I’ll start my own! I know how to make websites, and since I even own the web site, litbazaar.com, I might as well use it. That will take a long time. And there are so many out there! How many writers can there be? Some of the most obscure (to me until now) online magazines already post “no more submissions for now, please,” and it feels like arriving in a town …

Wow, I keep forgetting that the rest of the U.S. out there is really strange. They keep thinking whoever isn’t like them, i.e. ignorant, is dangerous. It reminds me of what we learn about the Middle Ages, and frankly the U.S. has been plunging into something like its own version of the Middle Ages for a while now. It’s amazing that today, with technology that would allow anyone to get a proper education, we can hear them. There’s the case of Sally Kern, a State Rep from Oklahoma spreading her message of hate and bigotryhttp://www.victoryfund.org/files/listening.html And then, much more to worry about the loss of civil liberties that is now an institution, a University professor in Florida was arrested and jailed because he’s Palestinian, lost his job, has been in prison for no reason for five years… http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/21/al_arian_enters_19th_day_of This is so much bigger than it seems. We see the tip of the iceberg, and we do nothing because we think Obama or Hillary will fix it. But I’m pessimistic.

93106you know? That place the Associated Press calls “gitmo” so it sounds friendlier? While you’re at it, check out another place they need to close: http://www.soaw.org

Décembre. La nuit devenue froide et sombre T’invite à dormir. Des bougies et autres formes de feu Remplissent le vide laissé Par un soleil en vacances. Commence l’examen Du temps qui passe.

Ah, December… Suddenly the cooled and darkened night  Sweet-talks you  For more sleep. Candles and other forms of fire  Fill the void  Left by a sun on holiday. The scrutiny of a year past  Begins. 

note: I read this at an open mic and it started a controversy about the justification of the bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So I failed to raise our consciousness to the level of what it means to be human and at either end of weapons. My personal opinion is that all weapon manufacturing, small and large, should be stopped and made illegal by all countries. Take that for a controversy. I’m sure many men will scoff at the idea, as they usually do, since they’ve been brainwashed from birth that one should have more weapons than the neighbors in case they used theirs. What happened to talking about our differences? What happened to trying to understand events under a different light? Peace,Guy Thoughts on the Anniversary of Hiroshima On August 6, 1945, this child’s sixth birthdayNever happened, erased from all memoryRecords pulverized by a gigantic mushroomThe fungus on humanity’s footAs it continues trampling onPrinciples, teachings, evolutionAs it continues spreading the seedsOf hatred under engineered flowersSo pretty, so noble, so smart. Sixty years later it …

They say we replay forever in our mindsThe rules learned in the first six years of our livesThe mother of all mantras, like a broken recordImages of your first fearsSeen through your first tearsAdults standing byDeciding whether you will love or hateBe selfish or generousWithdrawn or outgoingA poet or a politicianObserving chaos or causing itAn innocent bystander or a perpetrator. Now we sit on the edge of chaosAnd the voices say, “do nothing, you cannot do anything about chaos, you don’t know how to deal with chaos.”Do we stand up, or submit? Crafty discourse rides on the mother of all mantras, expecting complacency and extinguishing all growth of conscience, as if we were six years old. This could be our collective ageA society unable to learnStuck in its fears and instinctsWhat will we do about it?