June 25, 2025
Gleanings
- One of my photography passions is wildflowers; they fascinate and charm me. All of them — even the simplest, most humble dandelions. Especially the dandelions.
- There are less and less … both dances, and people of that time. I look around the room, and can’t help but think it is inevitable, before this too, is gone. The man now alone with his guitar and laptop was once a part of a band, widows dancing with widows, some barely shuffling their feet and yet, here we are, the young so delighted by the old, the old enlivened by the young.
- And honestly, that’s my favourite thing about travel: the way that even the most foreign of experiences can remind you of something familiar.
- Writers, thinkers, listeners, see-ers, who insert themselves into the subject at hand. For me that brings an immediacy, an authenticity.
- I trust my imaginative plane as much as some people trust their god, or their tarot, or their psychic. I do. So, as I float about… what does it mean that i can’t stay still, that my foundation is afloat? Is it bad? Is it the world? Has the utter crazy of the global and national scene just knocked my roots from under me? The hope that is a usual tether has been snipped and I’m off.
- It turns out that being a real friend means doing something incredibly hard and, in a way, unkind: confronting Nicola with the truth. “Wake up,” Helen finally says; “You’ve got to get ready.”
- When Judith’s peonies, poppies and Irises are all in full bloom (and her red door is flung wide open to let the breeze in on her jewel of a home) it is a sight to drop-your-Metro-bags and behold. I learn so much about gardening –– about human nature –– by observing people in their gardens.
- We need beauty to help us weather out the storm.
- ‘Welp, I read the internet,’ he’d sometimes tell me around 10 am. “Got anything else for me?”
- But watching the bear, who was no doubt the offspring of one of the original bears — a child, a grandchild? — I realized that the orchard is remembered, in the way the beautiful old crabapple tree is remembered by successive generations of those same bears. It’s not what I expected but it’s something sweet.
- Baiting with Tolkien, luring Whippets named Rapunzel, and other ways to make friends.
- It occurs to me that we writers should emulate lighthouses and shine our lights without prejudice or favour, just keep putting our beams out there. If it guides some away from the treacherous shoals of life, all the better. If it helps other readers keep their own boats on course, comforted to know another kindred spirit is out there, has been through these same storms and survived, that’s all good too.
- It felt like life was curating the perfect evening.
- I have a terminal case of wanderlust. But even as the scrolling and research heightens my anticipation, once I arrive, alone, in a foreign city, I’m often struck by the question: Why? Why did I haul myself in a cramped seat across the ocean and plunk myself down, alone, in a strange place. What am I doing here?
- I also think it’s essential for an editor to be connected to the world at large, because the publishing industry is a mirror for society.
- The funny thing about bookshops is that their most regular patrons are the ones who aren’t short of things to read at all!The double-stackers, the hoarders, the ambitious lunatics, I love them dearly.
