April 28, 2020
Gleanings
- I have baked enough over the past 40 years to know that one can use less yeast if one is willing to wait
- Even as I keep teaching my students that stories need conflict, I’ve grown perplexed about the ethics of abusing characters to drive a narrative arc.
- I am interested in the value of a mistake. If the character knew how to pronounce that word from the beginning, there wouldn’t be a story.
- Our world is changing drastically, but we don’t know what it will look like, which means there is room for us all to imagine.
- It’s more a matter of learning to live with the debris and planting what is hearty instead of wishing for what we can’t have.
- We first met somewhere on Cape Breton, remember?
- I mean, shouldn’t you stock the stuff you need for what you’ll want to cook and not some arbitrary list from a lady who loves Triscuits?
- I’m always inspired by people who make something out of discards, remnants and broken pieces
- It’s a lot to process, as is said, and it really freaking is. But we can hold it. We can, we do.
- Mondays are for Melancholy
- From the famous first line: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” to the bittersweet ending, it’s a story told like the alighting of a butterfly on different consciousnesses as the narrator’s eye sweeps over London.
- every first draft is a success because by definition, its only job is to exist
- If Cineplex collapses, I honestly don’t know. But gawd, I need to go to a movie.
April 21, 2020
Gleanings
- My tiny problems are nothing compared to everything else right now. But they’re our stories. If we can be brave enough to listen, rewrite them (which we’re all going to have to do) and then share them—that’s hope!
- This will probably be the last time I read The Order of the Phoenix aloud.
- Hey, just realized my recipe for a writing day is kind of like my recipe for sourdough!
- Feel free to get completely carried away. Make a mess.
- I won’t wait 25 years to finish the candles. I can’t. The box is on the floor in the way.
- Finally, believing it must be true, what they say, about Fred and Ginger movies cheering people up in the Great Depression, because we saw them dancing “Cheek to Cheek” on TCM yesterday
- And now we’re at the point in April where, because we’re isolating and distancing, I’m more aware of ghosts.
- Lately I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the news headlines. Yet I definitely prefer the news headlines to the garbage being spread, fertilized, and growing on social media.
- I miss everyone so much and if I think about it for too long the sadness is overwhelming.
- “Open up. Keep trying.”
- Another life-saving thing has been to – quite late in life, I feel – begin to consciously and deliberately seek out fellow readers and connect with them.
- The novella seems such a perfect form to hold certain things I want to do with language and with the possibilities of story.’
- You might think it’s just sweet advice I’m handing out, but this goddamned practice is saving my life.
- The reason I re-read this book, is the same reason I re-read a lot of books on trees and nature generally… because of learning how to be on this planet.
- All I’m saying is that when Rosner talks about chicken, I find good reason to tune in.
April 14, 2020
Gleanings
- Not everything is a lesson. Not everything that happens is for you to analyze right as it’s happening.
- Though I was raised Catholic, my family actually worshipped at the Church of Frugality.
- I was grateful the book was there, even if I couldn’t give it the attention it deserved.
- Maybe I can write about what life is like when you feel like it is slowly ebbing away from you and some days you wonder why you are holding on so tightly.
- I wondered, myself, where is this surge of joyfulness coming from—not to be mistaken for the lack of concern for everyone that is and could be affected by COVID-19—and there is not one reason. I actually, counted 19.
- Love of reading in the time of corona
- Women Talking is itself a kind of manifesto, I suppose, though it does not read like a statement of intent so much as an inquiry, almost an autopsy.
- There’s never been a better time to enjoy the calm of green spaces. As the Chinese proverb goes, Life begins the day you start a garden.
- My fascination with loos began in early childhood, when a trip to the powder room felt like a flirtation with independence.
- So, I’m not. Nimble at catching my thoughts, that is. Quite the opposite. Mine are like dragonflies, abundant, right there in front of me but impossible to corral
- Yeast privilege is something that before the pandemic you may have thought you didn’t want to have because it sounds itchy.
- if there’s one thing we are good at here, it is staying the fuck home.
- As long as we can find (not just find but SEE and grab hold of) the tiny moments, the patches of light, the glimmers, then the days will continue to be ok.
- No, this is not what being retired is like
- The kind of book that feels like letters from a favourite aunt.
- Every picture a couple posts of a delicious meal they cooked together makes me wince with pain, as I eat sardines out of a can with my fingers.
- One thing, though which has really surprised me, is that I am much more of an introvert than I ever thought I was…
- It might be the least of our troubles, but curating the internet has never been trickier.
- But sometimes I’m kind of, I don’t know, done? I want to say, “Shhh.”
- I can solve nothing, I can save no one, but dammit, I can mail Patrick a copy of The Night Watchman.
- Two very different kinds of days and for me, two very different ways of reacting to each during these stressful, odd, pandemic days.
- You can’t be happy all the time, and you can’t be grateful for all moments, but all moments are opportunities for gratitude.
- It takes a true bibliophile to appreciate the desire not just to read books, but to surround oneself with them, to collect them, to pile them on shelves until the wood bows from the weight.
- I thought of how easily one adjusts to solitude. It doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely.
April 7, 2020
Gleanings
- how to make a log cabin while sheltering in place
- The exceptional does not faze us.
- “Gentle,” I told myself as I worked. As, I recognized, I have been telling myself for several weeks.
- the thing has to be read to be appreciated, otherwise I could as easily say frogs, bulrushes, English sparrow, landscape, polar ice, sunlight, rain, thunder, a gravel path, the egg cases of a praying mantis, the thin membrane of an onion, that sort of thing.
- I believe this is how we will all build the future of journalism: person by person, reporter by reporter, opportunity by opportunity, story by story.
- Is it possible to think of the time right now in some ways as holy or sacred? Where can we locate our “collective effervescence?”
- It would be easy to feel hopeless.
- Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
- Given the times, given that we are keeping our distance, given that more people than ever are strolling along my usual routes by the river and other green spots in the city, I’ve been tromping along backstreets, down alleys, through what others might call the uglier parts of town.
Cool New Blog School Offering Coming Soon:
LET’S GET TOGETHER in June 2020
March 31, 2020
Gleanings
I made a list of Books With Vision whose authors imagine a different, better kind of world. If you’re looking for a book that’s relevant to read right now, here would be a good place to start. Hope you are keeping well.
- And yes we are watching numbers when what we are looking at are people, bodies, lives no more, deaths. Yes we are baking upside down plum cakes and eating salt and vinegar chips and worrying about our children. Yes we are finding it hard to concentrate.
- But what we do know, is that we’ve all navigated challenges, and that we’ll navigate this one, too.
- Tragic times call for extraordinary qualities. We are made for heroic realities.
- Finding our purpose is not a direct flight. I think, maybe, our purpose is the journey itself.
- That there’s no one I’d rather be cooped up with than my husband
- …two months ago, a positively bizarre time in which we entered and left our homes with abandon, casually hugged friends we were happy to see, and if our nose became itchy, we’d scratch it and not stand paralyzed in panic afterward. What salad days!
- I choose to see the silver lining, to embrace what is good and right.
- Such contrasts make life more interesting.
- Clare Hunter’s Threads of Life is a marvelous, inspiring, touching, and extremely wide-ranging account of the myriad ways needle crafts of all kinds have mattered and made meaning throughout history.
- Can making stuff amidst the mayhem REALLY improve our mental health?
- I guess it’s not a big surprise to me that Virginia Woolf is what I need right now.
- Let’s be okay with ourselves at our laziest, at our saddest, at our most vulnerable.
- Possibly the best bit of our day is the afternoon walk to the woods, and right now they are looking stunning, though the next best bit is the fields on the way up.
- Believe me when I say I started out intending to read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, just that one book. I couldn’t stop.
- And some day, I’ll be ready to begin my own work again. Not yet–not today. But soon. And until then, I’ll visit with old friends.
- Five things I am grateful for
March 24, 2020
Gleanings
In good news, I have pulled myself off the floor after a week of abject panic. Before I share this week’s gleanings, I wanted to let you know that I wrote a piece for 49thShelf on the strangeness of being unable to read, and also that I created a mini-guide to blogging for kids if you know any who are looking for a creative outlet.
- A person’s tolerance for uncertainty is how well they handle being in a situation with an unclear outcome.
- What I’m trying to say is, if you’re feeling a lot of anxiety over the next few weeks, just turn off your phone and focus on those little details.
- Don’t try to be ‘happy’. Just aim for a steady baseline when you can. Being OK is a much better goal. Happy can be the cherry on the cake. Steady as she/he goes is just great. The odd dip is totally understandable too.
- If my online brand is cute things on the internet and openly available then I guess I will use this time of crisis to recommend resources to get us through.
- Count blessings. Practice gratitude. Do your part, however small it feels.
- Watch out for the bullshit, and whenever you come into contact with it, wash your hands.
- So much is beyond control or management, but clean bedding I can do.
- Who would be shadowing our days and even (it seems) our nights, ambling around outside while we sleep, helping himself to kale and a few succulent ants.
- And at the time, bedrest was all we could do to feel some semblance of control in a situation where we had none.
- I left my Heart in Paris and my Appendix in Berlin
- You don’t really notice how much you count on a guy like Tom Hanks.
- Not to be Outdone, I Rode a Wild Cow in a Rodeo
- Each time I open one up to write, the words don’t come.
- All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well and fingers crossed for the return of the swallows soon and owlets to come.
- When those reserves run low, one of the things we celebrated in the old world that can still replenish our spirits in this new world is a good, inspiring, comforting, diverting book.
- We shouldn’t shut joy out of literature even when – maybe, especially when – we are all too aware that the world is full of troubles. Sometimes it’s important to stand facing the sunshine.
- However does a woman teach herself to be an awesome photographer?
- Once upon a time a tree grew into the wires overhead.
- I’m shaken, as we all are, by how quickly our personal safety and our collective safety has been changed and compromised
- It seems unlikely my book club will be meeting any time soon, but if we were able to, I’m not sure this book would give us that much to talk about.
March 9, 2020
Gleanings
- How to be Sick and Single
- This was the era of travelling around Europe in a camper van and that’s what we were going to do.
- The ‘fetch’ from the bookshop in Plymouth was as exciting as collecting any book you’ve waited years for could be. I’d preordered and thus supposedly saved £7, except we drove an eighty mile round trip to get it, got stuck in a slow traffic jam for half and hour with the engine running, had to pay £2.80 to park the car, ended up needing sustenance in the M&S cafe and so I think came out of it in financial deficit. But at least I can say I was there on the dawning of the day.
- …what’s easy for us may be hard for other people. That talents and skills don’t always intersect.
- That time between eighteen and twenty-three was vulnerable and embarrassing and I’ve kept it private for no reason other than it was weird and messy and full of a soughing longing and despair, and because I hadn’t really lived in my own skin at that point, so that it hurts to look at it even now.
- It’s what both overwhelms and excites me about pottery, and life, how very much there is to learn.
- ALL THE THINGS that I spend my life trying to avoid in my own work. All the stuff I suggest authors don’t do. This book is STUFFED TO THE CEILING WITH ALL OF IT and it didn’t bother me once.
- That turtle toilet filled me with such irrational joy when it turned out so well! Who would ever think of such a thing? Who would ever make it?
- One of those mornings, the sky soft and promising after a few days of chilly rain and snow creeping down the mountain behind our house, one of those mornings when you turn to each other in bed, saying, Where did they go, the years?
- Quiet time is space our minds need to recharge also helping us to discover what matters most in our life.
- On #IWD2020 and every day from now on, be bodacious, be brave, be brilliant but please don’t tell me you’re not a feminist…
- Still life of ketchup, hot sauce, and empty champagne glasses.
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March 2, 2020
Gleanings
- I like to think of myself, in some ways, as an artist of the everyday.
- “Let it rest” can mean giving the piece an hour, if that’s the deadline. For an essay, a week or a month is better.
- Some moments call for flowers, or a lasagna.
- This is what blogging is about, that we can see each other even when we feel invisible, that through time and space and memory and algorithms, we see each other. We hear each other. That in the quiet, we are briefly together.
- First steps and leap years
- I’ve been keeping a “book” since 2011.
- A long time ago my husband built a hang glider.
- Due to the luck of the draw I was one of the last to be called, and the jury was selected before I was asked to return to court.
- So I’ve developed a kind of short hand for interpreting dating profiles to save me from spending a precious evening suffering through a bad date instead of chocolate-dipping a whole box of strawberries and eating them by myself.
- When people suggest feminism has somehow been a failure, I like to hark back to the world I was born into, the world that made my mother so full of suppressed fury…
Do you like reading good things online and want to make sure you don’t miss a “Gleanings” post? Then sign up to receive “Gleanings” delivered to your inbox each week(ish). And if you’ve read something excellent that you think we ought to check out, share the link in a comment below.
February 24, 2020
Gleanings
- I gave him the two pages in which the painting is mentioned in the novel and based on those two pages, he did the painting in three days. It’s not a portrait of a real person. I bought the painting from him. It’s hanging in our den. I never get tired of it.
- Can you even bear to think about putting a half-read chunkster back on the shelf and ‘resting’ it for a few weeks…
- But the other thing about Tyler’s novels is that while her characters may stray, they almost always come home again.
- Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d use a rolling pin as often as I do.
- What even is real life?
- Dialogue tips from The Port Authority
- …in the end, life is just an ephemeral garden of memories, a paradise we create with missteps, a paradise created as we bring together the broken pieces…
- The Buxton Chronicles is Curtis’s masterwork. It transforms the Elgin settlement into a version of Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain grew up: a setting of idyllic boyhoods, full of pranks and woodsy adventure, in which Curtis examines themes of slavery, race, and class from an unequivocally Black perspective.
- Why High-Achieving Women Pretend Their Lives Are in Shambles
- When I read that Marie Kondo now started an online store, I felt like I’d been had somehow and I haven’t done much de-cluttering since.
- It felt like one of those Escher paintings where you’re climbing stairs to nowhere that never end.
- And the level of homesickness Ginzburg was feeling for her large family comes through strongly as she evokes them all while maintaining a personal privacy.
- Just after we turned out our reading lamps, the coyotes started singing.
Do you like reading good things online and want to make sure you don’t miss a “Gleanings” post? Then sign up to receive “Gleanings” delivered to your inbox each week(ish). And if you’ve read something excellent that you think we ought to check out, share the link in a comment below.
February 18, 2020
Gleanings
- I’m not at all against social media. But one wishes for more poetic investigation, more hospitality being offered in a conversation. We want to talk things through, to get to another side, but acknowledge the mess of things, and to still find some kind of meaning, however impermanent, in flux it might be.
- Discovering that, if it’s the right one, a romance novel is the best bookish friend imaginable–always there when you need it and sure to cheer you up–is the happiest result of my now decade-long romance reading adventure.
- If this font was a person, it would be the sort of friend who fits in wherever they go and who you trust with your secrets and who will never fail to tell you if you’ve got something stuck in your teeth.
- What I wanted to say in this essay is that I laugh about death because death is a lens through which I’ve seen the world for the past year and this way I laugh every day.
- Where is my corner in the room? In the world? There are so many sharp corners, at every turn.
- Why is protesting such an uncomfortable enterprise? It may be because a protest is a perfect storm of social awkwardness: It’s where the tidal waves of conformity and nonconformism smash into each other.
- Loving my discussions this week with friends about Valentine memories from their own childhood…
- You can learn a lot from attempting to photograph a can of sardines.
- The healing superpowers of learning new things
- But even the sight of my neighbour’s sheets, socks and undies bellowing in a Toronto breeze warms my heart.
- Sewing the chapbooks in sunlight, and this evening we’ll read from the Odyssey, that great poem about craft, textiles, cunning. And love.
Do you like reading good things online and want to make sure you don’t miss a “Gleanings” post? Then sign up to receive “Gleanings” delivered to your inbox each week(ish). And if you’ve read something excellent that you think we ought to check out, share the link in a comment below.
