It's been more than a week since that amazing Leonard Cohen concert at Holy Heart, and my feeling that it was a spiritual experience is borne out by the fact that I still can't get the show, those songs, or His incredible presence out of my head. I keep playing the CD in the background whenever I'm doing anything--it's the only music I find fit to listen to these days.

BUT, having said that, I was at the annual arts and letters gala Saturday night and saw another wicked show. As usual, the entertainment was fantastic, especially from the younger winners. It wasn't Cohen or Dylan, but I enjoyed every second of it. With all of the writing, music, and visual arts talent we have here, it's just a feast for the sense whenever you get that many artistic souls and their work together in one spot. I did pick up my third consecutive award for fiction, this time for my short story "Hold Out". Earlier in the week, I was lucky enough to receive a much-coveted arts grant for the writing of my short story collection called Moonlight Sketches--the title being a sort of backhanded homage to perhaps the most famous short story collection in Canadian history, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock. So I'm hard at work writing the remaining stories in that collection while I put my novel(s) on hold for a little while. There's a lot to get done over the summer, that's for sure. I wrote a new story today called "The Darkness and Darcy Knight," which is easily one of the darkest stories I've ever written. I think it's a keeper. Once that one was done, I immediately started work on another new story. My goal is to write at least three complete stories by the weekend--for me that's a lot. I've never written more than one in an entire month before, although when they come, they usually only take a day or two to put them together. I like to write fast when I'm channelling a short story. It's just the way my brain works. Poe said that the short story had to be able to be read in one sitting. Well, the best way to accomplish that as a writer is to compose the whole thing in one sitting, more or less.

Anyway, tomorrow's my birthday, about the same time as last year, in fact. I'll be taking some time off, though I'll probably be working a few hours. Not feeling older and not necessarily any wiser. If I was, maybe I wouldn't be working so much on my birthday.

Peace out.