August 10, 2006

Every thought is a possibility

In April I was walking down Harbord Street listening to the Indigo Girls sing “Mystery”, and it was a gorgeous sunny day and I heard the lyric “and summer’s beginning to give up her fight” and I laughed, thinking that summer was going to have to go on for a long time before that started to happen. Silly girl I am, not quite ever convinced that time won’t stand still because I want it to. I really am not sure that it will now, because now it’s August, which means summer’s fight is going to have to end sometime. I have noticed the tendency for this to happen. I don’t plan to ever despair getting old, but the end of summer will always break my heart a bit. And so we will savour what is left, and hope it comes around again. It is a gift every single time.

But then the next line of the song is “and every thought’s a possibility”. New seasons do that, just like New Years. Time to take stock, and see what has been accomplished and what still has to be done. Every thought is a possibility, and there are exciting projects on all sides. My Now Doing website has not been updated in ages, because what I’ve been doing lately isn’t very photographic. I am proud of what I have accomplished this summer; I’ve written six short stories that are strong, and my goal to have a first very very sketchy first draft of my thesis project is not an impossible dream. The year ahead will be spent filling out the gaps, and rounding the corners, and I am up to the challenge. In my working life, I have been part of a project that has broadened my horizons and been so very worthwhile, and has an enormous impact upon society, which is as much as one can hope for, even if it has rendered me rather sleepy of late. Stuart and I are at work on our second publication, “I Wish My Enemies Were Russians”, a collection of my poetry which should be available by the end of the month. I am also quite excited to be working on Echolocation this year as prose editor, and I am confident we are going to make something really excellent. And so these are the buzzing thoughts that keep me awake at night. All apologies for being somewhat wanky in this particularly entry, but on some mid-to-late summer nights, this should be tolerated.