September 7, 2021
Gleanings
- When I set out on my walk, I hadn’t expected to find Bertrand Russell and Judith Krantz curled up together.
- In a way I think of frogs as my familiars. I don’t mean this in a New Age way, or maybe I do.
- I debated googling “how to swim in waves”, but strapped on my orange tow float, and went straight into the water, remembering how much easier it is to let the waves carry you, instead of standing and having them crash into you.
- But there is something I’m beginning to crawl towards, a small crack embracing and flowing with the beauty of the imperfect chaos of life, a reminder of life’s cyclical patterns, an inner orientation of being with what is, versus controlling or perfecting it … noticing and marveling at the wonder of life, and that there is never an arrival, that all things, especially cleaned counters, are impermanent and fleeting.
- And I am and it is, but why the need to explain away a pretty serious injury? Why minimize the trauma just because, well shit it could have been worse?
- Thirteen years ago today, I bought the convertible VW bug an early 50th birthday present to myself. I fell in love with this car the moment I saw it. A mid-life crisis? Maybe. But my motivation was driven more by the fact that I no longer needed to ferry my girls to softball games and I now had the time and the means to head off on road trips.
- There it is again, the idea to start small. All you need is a little inkling, a little idea.
- I’ve been trying out new things. This past year and a half, this pandemic year, staying home has stretched me further. Take my painting endeavours – Please! (Sorry, bad joke).
- Every day the light is different. It illuminates this then that.
- in my head i’m calling people cocksuckers a lot. i’ve also had the kids today for ten days straight with no break and so i think i need a literal quiet moment and also a much larger reorganization of my entire life.
- It made me realise the horrible cycle an exhausted mind and body will find themselves in and struggle to get out of. It made me re-think reaching out to the therapist a friend recommended the other day. I was interested because honestly, who couldn’t use therapy after the last 18 months, but turned away because I figured I was fine. I think my body has been trying to tell me otherwise.
- So, yes, I’m taking them as sign and symbol, my perfectly wonderful twenty-four jars, of the fabulous years we’ve had and the many good things to come.
- They had come by once, they might come back again.
- Regardless of the outcome of Election 2021, on Tuesday morning, 21st September, the politicians will all disappear — some home to pack for their Ottawa residencies, others to resume their former lives. The rest of us will still be here in the trenches, slogging through the same mire, trying to find solutions to impossible problems, trying to get the necessary assistance for our vulnerable.
- But The Mimifesto has become one way I measure—and capture—time. Here are a few others.
- Keeping in line with my inadvertent summer theme of fantasy novels, I recently turned the last page on A Deadly Education, the first book in Naomi Novik’s projected Scholomance trilogy.
- But what if we all just started planting a LOT of flowers, metaphorically speaking? What if we filled up our metaphorical walls with ART?
- That night, in the middle of the night, the refrigerator began working again, but for how long?
- Sounds of summer have already begun to transition into those of autumn.
- It will get dirty and it will fade and I don’t have a perfect plan for keeping it clean except, perhaps, to take it down from its hooks should I have the need to deep fry a batch of beignets. Good thing the objective here isn’t perfection and there’s a donut shop down the street.
- Her Name Was Margaret is a compelling, unputdownable and strangely optimistic book for many reasons, not the least being that Davy shows us there IS a way out, a way both humane and economically viable. For that reason alone it’s must reading.
- One of the things I love about travelling is coming home.
- It’s the time of year, I guess, or the time of my life, or maybe my eyesight is fading. Or maybe this is how I will see the world for the next few years as I write this novel. This novel? I’m going to leave the question mark there for now.
- Because for all the talk these days about blogging being over, it remains, for me, the best form the internet has come up with for the kinds of things that I value about the internet.
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