March 6, 2024
Gleanings
- We don’t want to do only the smallest things, but we shouldn’t write them off either. They are not enough, but they are not unworthy. We know that every fraction of a degree, every healthier ecosystem matters. And with a runaway crisis that is so massive and sprawling, feeling like you can contribute, even in the smallest way, is a kind of clean-burning fuel.
- Joy and wonder. That’s the part that feels unchanged, or when lost, can be recovered. It’s the entering the kingdom like a child. Being four or maybe five or six, the wonder of hearing exquisite music come out of a huge tape player above my head on the table. The wonder of fields and hills we played in, the wonder of “swimming” in a foot of creek water, the wonder of those letters on a page that make up words and can be read, the wonder of God is love.
- “Just be yourself” isn’t advice you can market, and it won’t make much profit. But the truth is, that’s all there is. All we have is our own imperfect selves standing in front of our own imperfect children and admitting that we don’t have a fucking clue, either, but promising them that we’ll figure it out together.
- There are so many alongsides when you are in your mid-40s. It’s special to peel back all the layers for a couple of days and lay down alone in a bed and marvel at it all, admitting that it’s more than you ever could have imagined and sometimes too much and also, always, filthy rich with meaning.
- I’ve been adding blogs to my browser bookmarks, seeking out people who are still using old school WordPress and the like to document their days. Lots of people are still doing it in a no-frills and gentle journal-y way and I love them for it. Most of them are new to me and they’re really inspiring me to just write about the everyday here and stop overthinking the whole blog thing. Like we used to. Who cares if blogging is not really what most people do anymore? I still love it.
- The heart must feel reprieve from time to time, otherwise it might just explode.
- Yes, grocery store tomatoes: If you, like me, buy cherry or grape tomatoes far more often than you use them up, this soup is for you
- And in almost every other case? no, not really, I don’t trust myself. I’m certain about almost nothing. And I wonder if there is a root that I can follow down into this one somewhere. Do other people have this problem?
- Blogging, when it happens, fits into the in-between times. Like this post, written almost entirely on a Friday afternoon, sitting overlooking an indoor soccer field, feet up, travel mug of tea nearby, and my laptop open; but finished the following afternoon, because the previous sentence is where my writing stopped, when I turned to chat with a parent—a dad who was open to talking soccer with a woman, which is not, I must tell you, always the case. So I relished the opening, and went with it.
- It began, as many of my habits did, in East Wawanosh, where I was the only kid on the 10th concession whose TV-less status meant I couldn’t watch Saturday morning cartoons or Sesame Street. Instead, I had opinions about CBC Radio’s annoying “Fresh Air” hosts and I could hum the theme to Peter Gzowski’s “This Country in the Morning,” the program that held the coveted weekday morning spot where we now hear Q with Tom Power.
- Today we’re going by train to a village south of Porto, on the sea, to eat fish for lunch, watch birds in the palms. I finished reading Tom Lake earlier, with my coffee, and am filled with the sense that stories never end.
- I think putting painful memories away in a drawer we never open again does not deal with them. I think that poetry often involves a search for meaning. Perhaps it is the teacher in me that wants to keep learning from all my life experiences—bad and good.
