February 1, 2023
Gleanings
- For me, the puzzle represents an acceptance of the messiness of life. Sometimes a piece is missing. Sometimes you just have to give up. Sometimes the demon wins.
- Women hate in each other what we fear in ourselves. Perhaps men do, too, but for women — our hatred of each other keeps men safe. Because it keeps women quiet. Who’s gonna hate you if you keep your mouth shut, your legs closed, your ambition to yourself.…
- There are times when it is impossible to separate the disease from the person it is happening to, and we were in the thick of one of those times. The guilt that surrounds that feeling, the one of wanting to get away from the person you were so terrified of losing only weeks before, is confusing and consuming.
- Heck, the title of this blog is Living Plan B. I know planning is somewhat of a myth, and at this point, I’m fairly adept at the large pivots. Even still, in 2023, at the age of 66, I continue to be sorely disappointed when my plans fall through.
- I finished my 1000th book on Saturday. The Sleep of Apples by Ami Sands Brodoff. I enjoyed the book, a collections of linked stories, but I also got that frisson when I finished it of knowing I had hit 1000. Three diaries, almost 17 years, and 1000 books. I judge myself so harshly for this but also–just so excited for 1001. What is this impulse?
- If photography is fiction, then composition is the initial dishonesty. The lie begins to take shape the moment the photographer aims the camera, imposing his or her arbitrary, exclusionary, restrictive and preferential choices on anyone who later views the image. Vantage point, punctum**, exposure, and focal length (zoom), all combine to determine what is or is not in the shot.
- As most creative people know, when you’re just playing around, goofing about, that’s often when neat stuff happens. You’re open to it, it’s open to you. Who knows. In the next two frames, a couple of birds began to play. You could tell they were riffing off of each other, taking turns perching on the horse. Delightful, yes?
- And I wonder what if … what might become possible, if we see, if we allow those borders between us and within us, not to be impassable walls and boundaries, but simply flowing rivers permeable and unpredictable, constantly changing … sacred waters, inviting us to step in, to cross the threshold and unite what separates you from me, and me from me.
- I wish he had resisted the temptation to republish A Writer’s Diary as a conventional book. He could instead have accepted the ephemerality that is a blog’s most defining quality, letting the posts scroll away as they first appeared, one day at a time.
- I haven’t been feeling like doing very much at all over the past month. I can’t seem to get myself all zizzed up about a new writing project or a visual arts project. I don’t know what this means. Is it simply okay to float aimlessly for a while and produce nothing? It doesn’t feel okay to to me to just be. It’s not in my nature to not be making something or working towards some sort of goal or outcome.
- The train was LONG. Three locomotives to pull it. The conductor sometimes let us get off at stops or when we had to wait for freight trains to pass. There were also lots of stops for the smokers. I jumped around a bit, stretched my back and legs.
January 24, 2023
Gleanings
- I think I’m drawn, in most of the art I love, to the kind of ordinary darkness that everyone experiences: that every one of us, no matter what we might aspire to, is capable of failing to do what’s right, and that failure, no matter how we might explain it to ourselves, no matter how sorry we might be, could have catastrophic consequences anyway. This to me feels like the tragedy of the human condition, and it also feels like the source of some of the most beautiful, terrifying stories people have made.
- I’m going to be completely honest: If your girlfriend wrote into this column with this story, I would tell her she should break up with you. Not because you were “honest about your feelings,” but because gaining and losing weight, over and over and over, is part of nearly everyone’s life. It is so inconsequential in the vast tapestry of existence, and if getting fatter over the course of nine short months throws you into this kind of tailspin where you find yourself not only unattracted to her, but you feel honor-bound to tell her so, how are you going to handle it when the really hard stuff happens?
- What activities and actions and experiences and routines help me feel good, whole, content? What leaves me feeling empty, anxious, drained? As I explore what I FEEL (last year’s word), I gain clues to what I NEED.
- I would move into this book immediately if I could, or at least visit for a while. But of course, I already lived there once. Of course, this reading is wildly coloured by my life experience, as is anyone. Perhaps there will be a future school of criticism about the death of the reader, but I don’t know how that would be possible and also it would be too sad.
- It’s not a colour I like to wear because finding the right shade of orange in clothes is nearly impossible – but it’s everywhere in nature. Persimmons, apricots, clementines, strands of saffron in water. When I see it I swear I can feel my heart expand.
- Walking is not a form of exercise. It’s an act of contemplation, a ritual of communing with nature and self.
- “Equanimity,” says Salzburg, “can be described as the voice of wisdom, being open to everything, able to hold everything. Its essence is complete presence.”
- How, just how, in a world of 8 billion people floating amidst the vast cosmos, with layers and layers of histories and everyday moments and decisions, did the group of us from all over this world end up together in this very moment, in this very place … continues to mystify me with awe and wonder and gratitude.
- It’s not how many books or works you read (in whatever form) that counts. It’s that you read that counts – and it counts so very much.
- So I didn’t buy it and we went off to La Paz for five days. I thought I might see another bracelet I liked. I didn’t. But I saw that blue everywhere.
- Honesty is scary, and surprisingly freeing. It helps to try it out on people whom you trust, who’ve been honest with you, too. One honest conversations begets another. And so begins a chain reaction to something so liberating you wonder why it took you so long to blossom.
January 12, 2023
Gleanings
- Fiction is a remarkable way to conjure up a world you didn’t know. There’s a comfort in facing those questions; in imagining those answers. Simply going there put to rest so much unrest in me. I really do feel like something very deep in my psyche has been solved.
- Foreign interventions in Haiti have failed because the bases for these interventions have had little to do with supporting Haiti’s sovereignty, the rights of its people, or alleviating its financial burdens.
- There are a whole bunch of skills that we teach our kids about how to be good humans in the physical world. We teach them what it looks like to be kind, to be safe, to help others, and to learn new things. But if we never explicitly show them what those skills look like in a digital space, transferring those skills online can be very hard.
- If I have any resolution this year, it’s to try to roll with what the world offers me, rather than to wrestle life into my control.
- It hasn’t made logical sense, not from a financial perspective, nor from an artistic perspective either, really; which is why I’m curious to know: will I still be able to make a beautiful book, with alive characters, built on an elaborate structure I see in my head, if I’m not obsessed, or in pain, or seeking to soothe deep anxiety? I’m hopeful. I am.
- And then, channeling some of the greatest philosophers of our time, I started singing, “All You Need Is Love.” By the third round of the chorus, I was almost skipping, singing, “All you need is love!”
- Enough people were on twitter denouncing folks’ end-of-year summaries as “bragging” if they were too positive that I was reminded that it might not be so terrible if that site just immolates.
- Leonard wasn’t my first up-close experience with a mascot. When I was twelve, a mascot had punched me in the face.
- There is power in numbers, but united, in community, their strength lies in their common values and purpose.
- Endings. Beginnings. All pieces of the mosaic of our lives, some pieces that we can fit effortlessly into our life story, others more difficult, that require us to adjust and accept.
- Basically my mood for the next year is to hang onto what I call my Rome vibe at all costs. Because life really isn’t meant to be like that, the profound unhappiness I was dipping into on the regular.
- I woke up this morning, and like most mornings, had to re-orient myself to where I am. The rock-hard mattresses (a truly adequate description, as the girls look under the sheets to see if the bed is in fact, made of concrete) reminds me quickly that I am not at home.
- This has been an unusual year for Novel Readings, one in which my reading life was overtaken by my real life—or, since I firmly believe that “the world of books is still the world,” a better way to put it would be that my reading life changed because so did the rest of my life.
- There is shame, there is guilt, there are more than a few regrets. You are writing down the words, hoping they will make sense.
- Every year at year-end, I set goals for the upcoming year. It sounds kind of hardcore, but really it’s more of a reflection on things like, where do I want to be? what do I want to learn? what projects do I want to start and finish? how do I want my relationships to be? where do I want to travel?
- I feel the white sheet of the bed around me and think of Aida in prison. How different two friends’ lives turned out to be.
- There are no rules for good writing. There are only guidelines which will serve you 75-95% of the time.
- Let’s read more books, sing and dance more, take more walks, print photos of family moments, make some art, write some letters, play more, go barefoot, and sit with silence from time to time. Surprise yourself.
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December 21, 2022
Gleanings
- Have you ever been to the theatre to watch a dance company perform a classical story ballet? If so, was your first, The Nutcracker? Mine was, at age three. My memory of that performance is understandably sketchy but I clearly remember being wowed. It was my first of many magical and fantastical ballet moments.
- *This post took me all day to write and I will never write in a coffee shop again**
- It felt like an adventure. It still does, here in the warmth of the fire, snow falling, remembering (and yes, wishing, wishing) the winter afternoon when friends knocked on the door, in snow, and came in bearing gifts.
- As the lyrics to this song go on to implore, “Pray for peace, people everywhere” and perhaps instead of waiting for ‘the Child’ to bring us “goodness and light” we could do what we can to bring goodness and light this year.
- Epiphany is actually an invitation for us to leave routine intentionally, because when we leave that structure that we are so comfortable in, we learn things about ourselves and about the world around us.
- My observation is, gone are the days of the shushing Librarian who lay in wait to collect a late fee. Contemporary libraries serve communities with programs to expand curiosity, kindness, and sharing.
- For hikers, there is a code to leave no trace behind. How does that translate to our everyday lives?
- I try and remind myself that social media has always been about the people we connect with there, but maybe it’s time to migrate our connections to better spaces yes?
- I am sure that if Davis were alive today he would be fighting alongside Ontarians against the current government’s anti-environment Bill 23 and Greenbelt land grab.
- Aries is a fire sign and to boot, I’m a double Aries, though I don’t know enough about astrology to explain what that means, but I do think it means I’m doubly fiery, which is both good and bad. Regardless, it requires some taming and being by a body of water does that for me.
- The truth is, I don’t know why I bother to write, but I listen and notice lately that I am writing myself somewhere unknown. And maybe it is there … there behind the intellect and the masks, the emotions and the knowledge, the will and the ego, comparisons or cares of what others think, past the external motivations and desires or bigger projects and clear pathways… maybe it is there, as I unclench my jaw, relax my belly, undo the button and let it hang loose, empty … I might find or hear … or glimpse…or write or dance my way towards something … somewhere … nearer to soul.
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.
December 14, 2022
Gleanings
- I don’t want a neat ending. I don’t even really care about plot. What matters most to me is latching onto a voice that fascinates and challenges me. I’m still unraveling how this works and finding a way to describe it when I see it.
- Yes, I’ve felt unsettled. No amount of advance preparation or knowledge or planning could shift what came at me, poured through me, but as the year progressed, I got more comfortable with that. Comfortable with being unsettled. Or, perhaps more accurately, comfortable exploring the sensation.
- When will I ever learn to relax and leave it to the wind shifts and Angels?
- The other day I put on a coat I hadn’t worn in several months, put my hand in the pocket, and pulled out a scrunched up poop bag.
- Every year we are very warmly invited, indeed encouraged, to spend Christmas Day with friends. ‘Though generous and sweet, and ‘though we are very grateful for the offer and to have such thoughtful friends, we find it is not a day we want to spend in the midst of another family, much preferring our own wee celebration. And so it is.
- For a while, all of that worked, until it stopped working. When I took a year off writing novels, I took a year off from all of that as well. And that’s when things started moving forward, with barely any effort from me.
- And once we arrive at ‘the truth of life’, after decade upon decade of life events that bruise us and elevate us, crush us and uplift us, scar us and teach us, what do we do? We hide our glory. We conceal who we have become and what we’ve gained along the way. Because flaunting is for the young. Because who will want to know? Who will be interested in our stories? Who will say, “I am listening”?
- What is it I want? I want everything. I want to know the long line of my family going back centuries, I want to know their houses, their gardens, their sorrows, their hopes, the names of each and every one of them. I want to know about the feuds and the weddings.
- I think Bewilderment is, in part, about the limits of explanations, which are not, after all, instructions. What lies beyond them, as deep and vast and mysterious as space, is love.
November 29, 2022
Gleanings
- A living tree died, its length bucked into logs, each one so beautiful I want them to stay in this gallery of open air, green salal, perfumed by the resin.
- How well Woolf understood: I see myself in Jacob’s bereft mother, baffled, as I have so often been baffled, by the puzzle that completely ordinary things like shoes and clothes remain, even though the person who gave them meaning is gone.
- That is to say, all the small moments, the flickers, the ordinary, the mundane, the sacred, the profane, much which goes unnoticed, none of which will ever be written down anywhere, well, except here. For years and years I’ve been searching, seeking, and all along it seems it was right in front of me … wonder. Life, all of it, you, me, them, the cat that refuses to use the litter box … miraculous. And so it is.
- But I’d been writing novels every weekday morning since 2006! What was I supposed to do with myself?Just try other creative stuff, is what I was thinking. Here’s what I did instead.
- After a while, I realized, turning down a summer’s worth of work wasn’t just about resting. Recovering from burn-out, or what have you. This was about getting back in touch with who I truly am, and never fucking letting her go again. Learning how to separate THE VOICE THAT IS YELLING WHAT I SHOULD DO, from the voice that is whispering what I love to do.
- “An attitude of gratitude was embedded in older people’s recollections of the past,” said Kavedija, “but also allowed them to think about the present in a hopeful way. A world in which one has received much goodwill from others is a different place from one in which one has experienced loss, even if the facts of life are the same.”
November 22, 2022
Gleanings
- Today, I see ambivalence to difficult situations as a gift because it means that I’m allowing myself a fuller human experience.
- The sweetest plums of publication vary by writer, but for those of us for whom the call is coming from inside the house, as it were, I think one has got to be the copyeditor’s style sheet.
- I mean, summers are always good for swimming, but this summer, I decided to pack three summers into one and jumped into any and every body of water I could.
- Given the sheer number of possible interactions one might have in a lifetime, I often wonder, how we don’t marvel more at the amazing miracle it is when two paths cross, the fact that somehow, someway, the two of us, both fighting the odds, even to be here in this moment, are now together, if even for this moment.
- Sometimes writing is like swimming in deep and unknown water. How deep is it? What else is there? What about the currents? A strong swimmer knows she has the ability to stay afloat, buoyant in the turbulence, if it arrives. I’m not a good swimmer but I am strong and at this point in the writing, I am ready for the deep.
- And so I made an updated version, which uses ribbon instead of machine embroidery and has a hood! I don’t think I’ve ever cried looking at a finished garment before. It’s just…so many feelings, and so warm…I wore it ALL WEEKEND LONG on our trip to Montreal for our daughter’s “champagne birthday,” including as a cozy blanket on the plane, and while watching films with friends. I
- Thank heavens for pops of pink! Thank heavens for the last remaining autumnal leaves, tiny crimson catchalls for the snow. All signs that it is indeed mid-November. A month to expect the unexpected. Like wierd weather and time travel. Or is that just life?
- As I stood there holding my little shopping bag of cosmetics, not wanting to leave, I knew I must talk to her more. Get to know her better. We had more to learn about each other’s lives. I asked if I could take her to lunch and she excitedly agreed.
- How do the places where we grow up shape who we become? What do we take with us when we immigrate to a new home and what do we leave behind?
November 15, 2022
Gleanings
- Every morning I ask — how do I find acceptance, let alone joy in the midst of it all?
- This is my advice to ten-year-old me: Sing it, little sister! You keep doing what you’re doing even when other people think it’s weird.
- It was always on my mind to do it. I had to gather the skills as a cartoonist and storyteller to do it well, and the distance to look at it with new eyes in a way — but not be so far removed from events that I couldn’t remember things anymore. So when it was time to make the book, it was now or never.
- When was the last time you were truly amazed? Astonished? Thunderstruck?
- Washi tape is pretty, am I right? And colourful. But in the quest to believe in your own ideas — those ideas that want to come into the world through you – washi tape is SO MUCH MORE!
- Back to the woman in my group who is reluctant to admit to reading (or writing) memoir. Let’s call her A. Unsurprisingly, A’s view on memoir as ‘cringe worthy’ was formed by remarks made by a man….
- The glory of a cottage bookshelf! Decades of mass-market paperbacks with their cracked spines and dog-eared pages. Put me in a cabin and the first place I’ll head is for the books.
- I feel as if I keep picking the wrong books, as if my reading radar is malfunctioning.
- It feels downright unfair that I figured out how to make the best molasses cookie — thick, tender, but also one-bowl, no hand-mixer required, the kind that makes your whole home smell like the holidays — and you’re only finding out about it today.
- becoming… more resilient by the day. It’s been such a turbulent few years for my family but each day I surprise myself and find ways to endure the rough days.
- It all got managed. Work, warmth, kids, food, laundry, creative thinking, all of it. Like a frosting swirl that is just the perfect amount and not too sweet. Perfect.
- And at last, I see how, through the years, I have been not just making my novel different—I’ve been making it better. The process has been circuitous, and I’ve learned a lot.
- I am not alone in my tears. Every Iranian-Canadian/America/European you know is crying. We are filled with hope, fear, despair, anger, and love for the people, the very young people, who are being killed every day. We are not doing well and we are also doing great. I have never experienced such unity in the collective pain of the Iranian diaspora community, such determination to help, and a sense of closeness with one another.
- I stop today to consider the word family and what it really means. The way life circumstances can turn a family upside down and then add people to it and put it back together anew
- There is a certain tree-falls-in-a-forest-quality of being an only parent. In having these moments of reconciliation with time. I often wonder if what I’m feeling is something other than what it is.
- Writer is a capacious carry-all for my spirit.
November 2, 2022
Gleanings
- Things fall apart, but the purpose of life becomes clearer in the debris: be where you are right now. Do what makes you feel good. Find ways to do good and serve others while feeding yourself. Look for beauty. It’s everywhere.
- On days like these, my curiosity feels infinite which would seem to imply it will remain forever unquenched; each curve in the path prompting another question, another thought and, with a bit of luck, a bit more insight. As the rain gently fell and the breeze teased my hair, I finished my trail with glee and dashed back to the car to dry both me and my gear.
- October is a beautiful month. It’s also the gateway to the dark months and I know there are those who miss and crave and yearn for the light and the warmth of summer and I get it! I do love a good summer backyard BBQ with friends and family, but my absolute favourite shared meals are inside.
- One doesn’t get older without knowing that what truly makes us unique is on the inside, but sometimes that bears
- And so what follows are just some things that have helped me. I’ve written about most of them in previous posts. But I thought it would be helpful and useful for me to have them all in one spot for when one of THOSE DAYS shows up, and maybe it will also be useful for you. Some days some of these “helpful” things will hit wrong, some days, they’ll hit right. Take what works, ignore what doesn’t. The usual.
- Years pass, paths diverge, and yet the sheer mystery and miracle that they ever crossed at all… a gift. Life is a rare commodity.
- I stayed until the end but I won’t be back. I will leave some nice, constructive feedback on the failings of the class, once I have simmered down a bit. I know it is stupid but I was a little teary when I got home after class, because I tried this thing SPECIFICALLY FOR KNOW-NOTHINGS but it turns out I was supposed to know something, and let’s just add it to the FAILURE column, yet more evidence that I am not good at anything but blog posts and blowjobs.
- The image I keep returning to lately is that it’s like I’m crossing a suspension bridge. It’s a bit unsteady underfoot, but as long as I look straight ahead it’s not too bad moving forward, just doing the next thing that’s in front of me, and the next, and the next. It’s when I look down and realize all over again what’s below it, or it’s shaken by a gust of wind (a memory, a place, a picture, or just a feeling) that the vertiginous sensations return — “O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall / Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed” — and I am overcome, unbalanced, beside myself, in spite of myself.
- A window so fleeting, so challenging, so beautifully and wonderfully intense that my memory could only hold on to so much. A t-shirt. And the girl who wore it.
- And I’m sitting in my house, getting the dinner ready and waiting for the kids to get back and the light is that perfect october light here, the leaves are on fire and your eyes hurt from the beauty everywhere. Its fucking heartbreaking. It really is. Its so beautiful, I am stunned into melancholy.
October 26, 2022
Gleanings
- “Humility is about being the right size in a given situation.”
- Friends!! Here it is – the Nanaimo Bar Cake.
- My agent just compared the emotional aftermath of publishing a book to the postpartum experience, and the accuracy blew my mind.
- My friends all believe that I have an irresistible urge, bordering on an obsession, to renovate each of the houses we’ve owned. ‘Though I’d vigorously deny that accusation, there may be a grain of truth to it.
- and I felt so wildly happy running across the grass to get some water for the flowers, thinking of the miserable muddy February of his funeral and how far we’ve come. When I got back, I announced to the stone monument, “J is getting married today,” because I knew he would have been happy to hear it, and then promptly felt the sting of tears. How strange it is to be so old, and not live in that town anymore, and not to have my father alive. I don’t think I will ever stop being surprised.
- One of the best feelings in the world is that moment when you open a new book to the first page and begin reading. It’s exhilarating—like setting out on a new adventure.
- What folds? Time does. It wrinkles, it turns on itself, it collapses, it takes us forward and back in the same moment.
