Rain. Then a bit of sun, and everything looking like it just stepped out of the bath.

More rain, “belts of rain,” the weatherman says, followed by no rain, no sun, only grey scale, which, along with green and blue, are said to best describe our region. The Vancouver Olympic Committee chose purple over grey (to go with green and blue) when representing our city, purple standing in for what we have made of it, I guess.

Sun! Everything’s up again – the quince, the rhododendron, the lawn! I pull on my clothes, all set for a walk, but as I’m buttoning my shirt the hallway darkens, then a rumble in the sky. Too late to take off my clothes, I go to the window and wait.

(Which is impossible, waiting; there is always something else to do.)

On my mind, the latest in the ongoing conversation that is book publishing. I’m glad people are talking about it. I only wish they spoke of books with the same urgency they speak of the industries that acquire, distribute and sell them.

Or maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. I’ve always believed that the writing, editing, printing, selling and reading of books is not five stages but five-fifths. What if we looked at publishers as books, read them as books; the books they publish as characters, their authors of the same blood type as the editors they work with? What if we looked at publishers that way, and thought sideways from there, not unlike the content of Nikki Reimer’s March 29 Lemon Hound post? It’s a start, yet another way of looking at…

Sun!