May 22, 2024
Gleanings
- It’s the constant thread that’s run through my musical taste since I was a kid. Sure there are exceptions to the rule, but the broad strokes of my music collection are generally in the guitar and feelings vein. The folk music I grew up with and still love? Guitar and feelings. The indie bands and Canadian rock I loved in high school? Guitar and feelings.
- But beyond that, even in the context of safe and trusting relationships, we’re simply not in the habit of asking about emotions, listening to the answer, and responding accordingly.
- A lady comes into order a book “Chemistry…” (me, uh oh we won’t have this) “… Lessons, by Bonnie Garmus.” Of course we have that. Customer is surprised and delighted, makes her purchase and then has a small coughing fit. She says “I’m not ill!” from the doorway and I reply, “it’s fine” and then I wonder what on earth I mean – it’s fine if you are ill? it’s fine if you’re not. I’m sorry I said “it’s fine” when what I meant was “do you need a glass of water?”.
- Yesterday was the best day ever. Perfect in fact and, whilst out, I knew that my next blog post would be joyful. It is amazing how much of nature’s peace we absorb if we only give it the chance to work its magic. Whatever happens in the next few weeks and months we’ll face together, but it is not now, nor then, going to occupy so much of my thought process.
- For the first time in weeks, it felt like an opening. Fresh sky, cleansed from last night’s rain, birdsong. Do you want me to set up a target, he asked, and I thought, yes, that’s exactly what I want: my feet in the moss, the bow in my hands, string pulled to my cheek, the arrows alive in the air.
- It was not the noise of the door that woke him; it was my absence. He does not sleep well when I am not beside him. Whenever I get up in the middle of the night and take too long, he comes looking for me.
- Nothing is ideal. I love that too, the reassurance of it. I mutter this phrase to myself a lot — “This is not ideal!” —- and not negatively, but encouragingly. I mean it as a form of freedom. Nothing about this is ideal. (And it does not need to be.)
- On a day when thoughts go to maternal places I remember how my mother liked bluebirds and flowers on her cards, the more saccharine the better and preferably store-bought. Nothing made at school with macaroni thankyouverymuch. So I grew up with a certain amount of seasonal card anxiety and my teeth still ache at cardboard bluebirds but what’s more interesting is how this stuff finds its way into our work.
- I nipped to the shops mid-afternoon to get some chemist-y stuff and a few little treats (a packet of Smarties, a packet of Tina wafers). While I was there, a mother with a baby in a pram and a preschooler beside her stood at the register ahead of me. The preschooler said to the shop lady “look what i can do!” and then she trilled her tongue quite loudly and very proudly. The shop lady was obviously amazed.
- Munro writes about ordinary women with extraordinary complexity. In one interview, Alice Munro said she didn’t think anyone was, in fact, ordinary.
