I am still The MoonQuest story, just as I was that March evening in Toronto 30 years ago…the story of a bard who follows his heart and lets the tales that move through him reveal the way forward as he journeys on a quest to return story, imagination and vision to the land.
Read moreA Different Kind of Independence Day
March 26, 1984: With my mother gone, all her hopes, fears and expectations for me were gone too. Suddenly, without being conscious of it or of what it meant, I was free.
Read moreAIDS Beyond Dec. 1
Although I am posting this memoir-excerpt-as-tribute on World AIDS Day, it's important to remember that AIDS/HIV is with us 365 days a year...and not only in the West and not only in the LGBTQ community .
Read moreHello, Yellow Brick Road! – Day 282 – 2023-09-21 – Afternoon
When at age twenty, a few months into my first job out of college, I announced that I was moving out, my mother announced that if I was going, my dog would have to go with me. Seven years of pee stains had been enough. She wanted her house back. (This story may appear to be unrelated to this Yellow Brick Road journey of mine. However, if you read through to the end, you'll see that it has everything to do with it!)
Read moreHello, Yellow Brick Road! – Day 263 – 2023-09-21 – Evening
It’s a scary, tightrope-walking way to write. It’s an ever scarier way to live. In both instances, however, at least in my experience to date, the results are always more wondrous, enriching and miraculous than any conscious mind could ever conjure up, because our conscious minds have access only to the visible portion of the iceberg.
Read moreBirth of a Book
A year later in rural Nova Scotia, on the anniversary of that Toronto class, I complete the first draft of my first book — a novel I never planned to write, a novel I knew nothing about except as I wrote it word-by-word: The MoonQuest.
Read moreGoodbye, Yellow Brick Road – Day 179 – 2023-07-26 / Morning
“Even as I’m back where I started 179 days ago, I don’t sense that I’m here to stay. At the same time, it feels as though there was a moment during these past nineteen Sedona days when I arrived at the end of this Yellow Brick Road. I’m not sure I can identify the moment, at least not yet. Perhaps it will be unmistakably clear in retrospect. Or perhaps there wasn’t a single moment. Maybe it has been more of a passageway than a portal…”
Read moreYellow Brick Road...Plus More – Day 174 – 2023-07-21 / Afternoon
“The bigger miracle, however, showed up a few days later: One of the people who listened to my DIY recording , someone I barely knew, offered me a generous seed money donation to get The MoonQuest audiobook project started at a local recording studios. My acting as though was making it so!”
Read moreHello, Yellow Brick Road! – Day 167 – 2023-07-14 / Evening
The problem with suspending public posts about my Yellow Brick Road journey, which I did back on June 21 (Day 144), is that it’s hard to know what to say to fill in the gap, other than that I’m still here and still traveling.
Read moreThe "Accidental Immigrant"
When a powerful intuitive impulse prompted me to turn left into the US instead of right toward the Transcanada Highway and Winnipeg, I couldn't know that not only would I not be returning to my native Canada anytime soon, but that 22½ years later I would be a US citizen; a dual Canadian/US citizen, to be precise.
Today, on the 24th anniversary of my "accidental immigration," I share the serendipitous story that got me to the US all those years ago, in the following excerpt from Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir.
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