April 6, 2008
Have a seat
Welcome to our new living room. I apologize for not offering the sofa, but I had to sit on it to take this picture, as I wanted a shot of the fireplace, and our huge windows (there are three, which have blinds now! How exciting). We are officially unpacked, and have been entertaining friends all weekend– friends who’ve dropped by with flowers, baked goods, cupcakes, a strawberry slicer, and cheese. Clearly we are very lucky people. Real life has also returned, which is splendid. As has spring– unbelievable. People in this city don’t miss a beat with that spring thing– today people were out riding bikes, drinking on patios, smiling, walking, looking startled and pleased by their good fortune. We did our part tonight by having the first barbeque of the season, christening our new deck and paving the way for a marvelous summer ahead.
March 28, 2008
Things
My grad-school classmate Lindsay is published today in the The Globe‘s Lives Lived. And listen to Dr. Seuss on The Current.
March 26, 2008
Just in
I’m just in from the Exile launch, which I left all too soon as I have 600 impossible things to accomplish before bedtime. Had the great pleasure of hearing Rebecca Rosenblum read though, and I picked up the new issue of the Quarterly— it’s beautiful.
In others, I am thrilled that writer Justine Picardie has started blogging. I fell in love with her writing when I lived in England, particularly her memoir If the Spirit Moves You and I look forward to reading her new novel Daphne. Maud Newton on Laura Lippman (whose What the Dead Know made for a perfect cottage read last summer). The Great Gatsby celebrated in The Globe & Mail. And Steven W. Beattie reads Nikolski.
March 21, 2008
Remembering Days
The book I’m reading at the moment, which I’m absolutely in love with, contains that quotation, “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” Which I don’t buy actually, and I never have, because like Albert from Behind the Scenes at the Museum, I “collect good days the way other people collected coins or sets of postcards.” I can remember so many glorious ones, right down to very details, and though today wasn’t exactly glorious, it was definitely very fine.
The finest thing about today being happiness arriving in the post the very week I decide to stop looking for it there. And isn’t there something about a surprise package when you’re expecting nothing? The surprise turned out to be from Sayaka (who has a blog, by the way). She’s our friend from Japan, she stayed with us for a few marvelous days last summer, and now she’s seen fit to surprise me with a gift that blends two of my favourite things: tea and Miffy. Indeed, I do miss living in a land where Miffy kitchenware was so easy to to come by, but it’s nice of Sayaka to ease my yearning. How positively splendid.
In other fortune, another friend gave us our wedding present a few weeks ago, nearly three years late but perfectly on time actually, as it was an HBC giftcard, and I have to buy wares for our new apartment. So I spent the early part of this evening buying new towels and bathroom accessories, and it was fun to spend spend spend (though not so fun to carry the bags home). And then I spent two hours with Rebecca, which is some of the best company I know.
The list goes on: that work has been good of late, but that today I left early, we move in a week and a half and a farmer’s market is starting up in our new neighbourhood, our Easter treats from our English Mum and Dad, going home for the weekend to the Canadian ones, that tomorrow we’re doing nothing at all, the stack of good books to be read, the one that I’m reading, that March sunshine, and that all I want at the moment is a cheese sandwich, and in a matter of moments I will have one.
March 5, 2008
Collecting Pieces
The three of us kept these scrapbooks back in high school, called “Nothing Books” or “Anything Books”— an indication of their contents’ specificity. I was partial to transcribing copy from sportswear ads into mine, penning bubble letters in rainbow hues: “Seek the Goal” or “Run Fast in the Direction of Your Dream” which I thought was inspirational and I wasn’t even athletic.
Pop lyrics were prized like they were poetry— excerpts from “You Gotta Be” by Des’ree (“Listen as your day unfolds/ Challenge what the future holds”), the entirety of “Forever Young” by Alphaville. We preferred our illuminations encapsulated, entirely divorced from their contexts: lines from novels we’d not yet read by Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde. We had a thing for speeches by Kennedys, and Martin Luther King Jr. I had a quote by Sappho on the side of one page, and a lyric by Bob Geldof on the other.
And amongst all these wise words were pasted photographs of ourselves, and pictures cut from magazines of the dreams we hoped to one day embody, the kind of people we hoped we’d become. Also, ticket stubs from movies, plays and concerts. Shiny labels peeled off juice bottles. We’d make lists with such headings as “Things I Like” and “Future Children’s Names”.
We were partial to a premature nostalgia, this furious attempt to contain the present exactly as it was. Entirely self-absorbed, perhaps, but I would argue our scrapbooks were more about the world around us. Assembled more in homage to the future than to the present or the past.
Because in high school, although the world was just beginning to show its face, it certainly didn’t belong to us yet. There we were, as grown as we’d ever be (or so we figured), both capable of and yearning for real life, but with most of it still out of reach.
So in lieu of our lives and in lieu of the world, we turned to collecting the pieces instead. Life’s rule was chaos, as we were beginning to understand, but if we could write down its maxims, perhaps we might tame it. Imagine various butterflies, pinned by their wings, encased under glass, and such were our pieces of the world, these scraps and clippings— our desperate need to contain in order for understanding. But imagine scotch tape instead of the pins.
The truth was that apart from these sloppy collections of stuff, the three of us had nothing. Oh, of course there were the usual teenage trappings; we’d been born lucky, each of us blessed with bicycles and bedrooms. But so little of it was actually our own, things we’d chosen ourselves as reflections of our tastes. Usual trappings were all well and good, but we were after something more essential.
For we didn’t even have our selves yet, and perhaps we knew that. That in so many ways we were still in utero, and how terrifying it must have been to be alive and unsure of who we’d ever grow to be. Exciting too, but it made for constant insecurity, this explaining such lists as “Things I Like”. We had spent our whole lives ever-changing; our very souls only ephemeral, fluid, impossible. So it was no wonder that we self-defined in bits and pieces, down on paper in point form. When you’re sixteen years-old in the world, you see, you take what you can get.
Though of course over time we would get much more. Teenagedness was an affliction to be cured of, finally, as life started offering us three-dimensions. Bringing with it actual things, experiences, and none of it cut from magazines. So we could be living the life un-tape-downable, learning new lessons that couldn’t be contained on a page.
And though we are still not so old now, these days we’re old enough that it’s remarkable we’ve been friends for half our lives. Remarkable too, for it seems that between the three of us, somehow, we’ve acquired the trappings of adulthood. We have husbands and fiancés, a beautiful house, two cars, a dog, a couple of successful careers, six degrees and we’ve traveled to 20 countries. We’ve made a wealth of new friends, good memories, smart decisions, proud mistakes with lessons learned and stupider ones with stories.
Though none of this is entirely essential either; of course we know that. All these things we hold now— whether literal or figurative in their three dimensions— they might one day appear as insubstantial as our scrapbooks. We know that we’re probably still assembling our pieces.
But this makes them no less a creation, these lives of ours. Like the treasures our books were— how we’d marvel that we’d made them. Like the treasures the books still are, and how far they show we’ve come. So we can keep marveling at the world’s knack of making wholes out of pieces, and at friendship as the very foundation.
March 3, 2008
This weekend I read
This weekend I read Descant 139, and loved in particular “In the Time of the Girls” by Anne Germanacos, the “Synchronicities” section, and poems by Changming Yuan– “delicately hung is this earth/ a bluish cage in the universe.” I also read the February 7 issue of London Review of Books, and “Derek, please, not so fast”— a review of As I Was Going to St. Ives, a biography of Derek Jackson (to whom Pamela Mitford was but a footnote! I had no idea: “To call his carry-on goat-like would be grossly unfair to goats, who seem celibate, faithful, and even tempered by comparison”). The William Faulkner interview in The Paris Review Interviews II was stunningly awful, brilliant and profound. I will soon be starting to read Nikolski, and after that I’ll get to Brighton Rock.
I also began culling my library in preparation for our move. A shedload will be donated to the Victoria College Library Booksale on Thursday, but anyone who wants to can drop by before then is welcome to sort through the stacks. Assuming you know where I live, in which case you’re probably my friend, and I’d be happy to see you anyway.
February 28, 2008
Reading without gravity
I was fascinated to read Astronaut Steve MacLean’s blog post on reading in space (from Canada Reads). The wonderfully inspiring Rebecca Rosenblum has written a wonderfully inspiring post on being short-shortlisted for The Journey Prize. I am excited to now start reading Belong To Me, particularly after Deanna’s endorsement. (And not because the cover is of Wellington Boots, which are a few of my favourite things.) A wonderful post at The Pop Triad about the music we find in films.
February 25, 2008
No no no
Highlights of this weekend included brunch with Erin and Ivor, diets managing not to start even tomorrow and not cleaning our house. This afternoon I played Scrabble in support of Frontier College with Stuart and Rebecca, and learned how much is too much sushi. Yes, two thirds of us are writers and though Rebecca did beat me, our game was won by the graphic designer with a Bachelor of Science, but ah well. The event put was put on by the Toronto JETAA (and my friend Natalie Bay) and it was tremendous fun. Fun continued into tonight, as we attended an Oscar Party at our friends’ Katie and Alan’s. It was a grand evening, although having seen only one film last year which was Alvin and the Chipmunks, I wasn’t so interested in the show, and really just hijacked the whole event to (rather inappropriately) fulfill my lifelong desire to dress up like Amy Winehouse. Which was perfect because then I won the prize for most creative costume which was the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But the very best part of this weekend was the sunshine, and the fact it felt like spring.
February 17, 2008
Lucky
We really didn’t want to leave. Yesterday we were right at our gate, crossing fingers that our flight was overbooked and we might stay another day. And we almost did get to stay, for somehow we missed our boarding call. The final call, and then they had to call us by name over the whole airport, all the while there we were right in front of them, oblivious to the whole cruel world and conniving to stay in San Francisco forever. With no such luck.
We had the most glorious week. The weather was gorgeous, the blossoms came out to bloom, we walked that whole city and we got to know it well. My theory is that you’ve never actually been any place unless you’ve been to it twice, and so we left our Friday free to go back for what we’d liked best. Which was the Mission, and Delores Park, and corner cafes, Valencia Street, streets called Lucky and Balmy, and that sunshine. For lunch we had burritos. It was perfect.
The whole week was perfect, so much of this to do with friends. In 2004, when we lived in Japan, Stuart and I were part of a Habitat for Humanity Global Village trip to Thailand. In our group of about 30, all were American save for Stuart, me, and our now-friend Carolyn, who lives in Toronto. And those who were American were the very best of America. No coincidence, I think, that most were San Franciscans. The end result of all this being that a) we came to love Americans and b) we’ll always have a place to stay in SF. We stayed the week with our friend Lynda and her adorable son Henry, and they were so impossibly good to us, perhaps the best part of our week. Further, on Friday we were treated to a Habitat Reunion at our group leaders’ amazing house, high up on a hill (naturally). It was such a delight to see everyone again, to know they’d come out because we were coming, to get their updates– because they’re all such fabulously interesting people. It was a lovely evening, filled with wine, good food and laughter, and we both felt so lucky.
Which was sort of the story of our entire week.
February 6, 2008
Spiced Up
It was almost as exciting as when Backstreet was back, except it was the Spice Girls, who we used to go to high school parties dressed as in 1997, refusing to break from our Spice personas. There is also a lingering memory of dancing on cafeteria tables, but we turn away from that. I was Ginger, and last night Baby and I attended the Spice Girls’ second sold out show in Toronto. Scary would have come, but she thought she’d be on a business trip to the Cayman Islands, but it turned out she was only home with a throat plague. We missed her, and we also missed Posh (who I haven’t actually seen for ten years) and Sporty (who is currently working at the South Pole).
And it was fun– we were on our feet dancing and singing for the show’s entirety, I’m hoarse today. “Wannabe” was the encore, and that one would have to get with our friends in order to be our lovers is as true as it ever was– just ask our lovers. Arms waving at “Viva Forever” and “Goodbye”– “look for the rainbow in every storm.” “Mama” brought tears to my eyes– how much additional meaning the years have brought it. The Spice Girls in real life, and they can really sing. Interestingly, though, they are about as good as I am at dancing. All a wee bit perfunctory, but what did one expect?
The downside was the absence of our Spice comrades (friendship never ending, and all), and that everybody there was fifteen. Then I got upset because all the fifteen year olds were way prettier than me, and had perfectly straight hair, and Baby and I were both cranky, and tired after all day at the office, and I was wearing winter boots, and we had headaches, and kept yawning, and even though she holds the group together, why doesn’t Mel C. get the credit she deserves? I also couldn’t stop thinking about Eddie Murphy, and that I am way too lame to go out on weeknights.
