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.
October 18, 2022
Gleanings
- Who are we when we set out to challenge ourselves and what happens when we don’t understand or respect the land we’re on? What is the outcome worth, if it comes at a cost to others?
- That me taking care of and asking for, and going after what I need, is in turn, a gift that is given to you … and vice versa. Even, especially, if that need is time … space … for doing nothing.
- Old buildings attract me. Old doors and latches enchant me. Looking in and looking through unmasked windows satisfy my curiosity.
- What’s beautiful about this slither of Autumn is that the no matter how many leaves land on your doorstep, there are still just as many on the trees.
- He reminds me a lot of my dad. And my dad’s death. And my dad dying was part of why i knew i’d need to change my marriage, or leave it, and try and look for more than what I had. The sadnesses of this season are many. And I am getting better each year, and have been getting better for many years.
- I seem to revise a lot, which is fine — it’s one of the most useful, beautiful, and unpracticed parts of writing, in my opinion.
- Next weekend will be Thanksgiving, and three weeks from today the third anniversary of Doug’s first day in Long Term Care. In my dissertation I argued that “care homes for the elderly are transitional areas, home yet not home, often a last place to live before death.” The transitory, liminal nature of a care home. For the “elderly.” Ha. What did I know? (Yes, Ms Munro, who did I think I was, indeed?!)
- Unsurprisingly I quoted then the line that means a lot to me now. (It’s almost like we need to keep learning the same thing over and over 🙂 ). She says, “Wholeheartedness is a precious gift, but no one can actually give it to you. You have to find the path that has heart and then walk it impeccably.”
- As I shared each test result, treatment, and surgery–including my physical and emotional response–it’s like I felt obligated to add humor and lightness. I wonder a little about that. Was that for me or for my readers?
- What happened to the blog is that I got really into posting on Facebook during the pandemic.
- Sometimes, experiencing something familiar through fresh eyes is every bit as intriguing as a brand new experience. That was my goal for this walk through our splendid Carolinian Forest. Me? I’m usually looking down for wildflowers or up for birds. On all my forest hikes I’ve spent precious little time actually looking at the trees. But not this time.
October 4, 2022
Gleanings
- We stopped at Pakan Church, beautiful in the grey light, and then continued back to Smoky Lake where our family was arriving to eat pierogies, visit the museum, watch a crane drop a giant pumpkin onto an old car, followed by a scrabble for seeds for next year’s garden.
- When it all is confusing and uncertain. When it’s murky and unclear. When the once clear why of every little thing becomes a challenge to see a why in anything. What does it look like to paddle to deeper darker depths instead of exhaustedly attempt to tread water towards the light?
- I really want to find my sense of humour again. It’s probably among my top three goals at the moment.
- When I began writing this blog post, I thought I would write about the attributes common to women with whom I feel a connection. I found that difficult to pin down. I reflected on Kasl’s words that we can only connect with people when we see them as distinct from us. I realized we share as many differences as we do similarities. You are not me, and I am not you.
- One thing that is very apparent is that there is a band wagon out there that a whole lot of people are jumping or climbing onto and it’s called ‘the ordinary.’ I’m pleased so many are also discovering the beauty and serenity in the ordinary.
- Stories are what is getting me through these unwell days. Disappearing into other times and places, especially when they are fairly gentle is just the tonic for me.
- This week, I find myself thinking about mothers and the stuff they leave behind. And how we decide what to save or toss. Like my mother before me, I’m not a big saver of things, but this silver and china and linens . . . I can’t let it go. But what will I do with it when it’s time for me to downsize?
- There is nothing quite so nice as a drive through the countryside. With my sunroof and windows open, the sights, sounds and smells aroused deep gratitude for this pretty fall day, and the beauty of the Essex paysage where there truly is good in everything.
- I could not help wanting more and more…of the experience, the food, the joie de vivre (okay that’s French).
September 27, 2022
Gleanings
- On a hot August morning in 2008, I titled the blog on a whim, and began sending out posts to the universe.
- An optimist at heart, I loathe to be maudlin, but realistically, even if I live to be 102 years-old like my Grandma Princess, I am well over half way there.
- Instead, and for many happy years now, I’ve been striving to enjoy every moment exactly as it is: The chores—cooking, cleaning, laundry and gardening. And the activities—watching the Jays, hiking, paddling, swimming, cycling, and, of course, photography. Living each moment as it arises, unadorned or improved, has given me a much fuller feeling of contentment.
- It’s also a bit like this blog post: I’m just trying to make the excellent link between still life and poetry. But I think it’s there without me nattering on about it. Or maybe it’s something I need to write more about, longer, elsewhere. And probably will.
- Fast forward several years, and I have still never hosted a holiday dinner. The china only gets used twice a year, on my daughter’s birthdays, when I serve boxed macaroni and hot dog coins off of it. Instead, it is the place we eat super together every night, often shoving aside an avalanche of paper or Lego to make room for our plates.
- A commitment to be with the sunset every day of this, my 37th year.
- In that intoxicating conversational flow from book to book, from book experience to book experience, from insight to insight, here are some of the flashes that glinted off the waves.
- Bring in the sheets, soft yellow (your favourites), bring in the towels, fold them, the scent of sunlight and early fall air (on the mountain trail the other day, you both noticed the change), bring in your bathing suit for this afternoon’s swim, pack it damp for a road trip tomorrow, when you will drive up Highway 5A, stopping at Nicola Lake to enter its cold familiar waters, stopping by the pine as you return to your towel, crushing its familiar needles in your hand.
- I’m experiencing a lot of thrill lately, and I just wanted you to know. There is a beautifully flowering tropical tree INSIDE MY HOUSE.
- Once, maybe as recently as pre-Covid, I would have referred to those as “simple joys.” This summer they were everything.
- It seems many of us recognize autumn as our favourite season, and the reason is partly attributed to nostalgia. Nostalgia is typically derived from positive past experiences, and at 64, I have a lifetime of memories – no wonder I feel nostalgic!
September 20, 2022
Gleanings
- And here’s the sticking point, at least for me: While I did hold the late Queen in high regard, and felt sincere affection for her as an individual, I also have profound ethical misgivings about the system of government she represented, namely an inherited constitutional monarchy that is rooted in a legacy of profoundly corrosive inequity. Many of its conventions are, to my mind, risible and frankly indefensible.
- Due to a lack of “going out,” we haven’t cleared out and reorganized the front coat closet in a few years. This is going to require music. And wine, maybe.
- Nope. I’ve had enough. It’s partly a me thing – the amount and intensity of therapy I’ve had over the last few years has helped me accept and understand things about myself and the end result is…I’m too awesome to deal with your bullshit.
- Oh Adi, how I wish I could just give you the danged blue horse. Somehow make it all okay. But the truth is that it wouldn’t help. Wouldn’t teach. Wouldn’t prepare you for all the inescapable blue horses to come.
- For them (and for us all) each fresh start offers new lessons, new discoveries and new experiences. Children have an unfettered joy in the new and unfamiliar and can quickly make a game out of anything thrown at them. They love to explore and are constantly and easily amazed at their findings. That’s the spirit I’m trying to foster within myself and for myself.
- What I’ve found uplifting is that libraries persist.
- Blogging can be a vulnerable thing (as is any form of writing and expressing yourself), in that you allow others a glimpse into your interior life. And that interior may be messy and chaotic, sometimes unpredictable, sometimes rich and meandering. You are allowing others to form opinions and judgements on that interior life. Writing is a solitary pursuit. But once you launch your words into the yonder, not knowing where they may land, you expose yourself. You throw out thoughts and words, reach out a hand, inviting people to simply read, or read and engage, not knowing what may return to you.
- I don’t know how to write poetry, but I do know how to stop and notice all of the ordinary moments in a day. And this in itself has become my poetry. For I no longer wish or live for what’s next, but find myself fully grounded in the now, and this too, I pause to notice.
- In terms of books that made a mark, The Westing Game is one of the most perfect novels I know.
- I am trying—to read, to write, to be—but it’s hard and uncomfortable and often I would rather not. Turning away is easier.
- I’ve been swimming daily since the middle of May and I don’t want to let the lake go, my relationship to it, with it. The way it’s held me buoyant for months, even when I didn’t feel particularly light.
- Maybe the greatest lesson of all is that I have no control, and any illusion that I do is what lands me in the hole to begin with.
- I know it’s hyperbole but when Cardi B. says “I gotta stay outta Gucci/I’m going to run outta hangers” I always think well you can BUY MORE HANGERS.
September 1, 2022
Gleanings
- What if we knew and trusted and embodied a felt feeling and awareness of even mere moments of being satisfied, content — of having and doing and being … enough. What might become possible?
- Don’t make the mistake of thinking that contemporary fiction is all there is. Older books need not be the traditional classics that you read at school, if those aren’t your thing. Seeking out books published in earlier decades can provide you with a plethora of new favourites…
- What happened to the Retro Frosted Cake Brownie, y’all? Is it out of fashion? This is criminal!
- While I swam, the last of the swallows were dipping over the surface of the water, two of them swooping right over my arms, windmilling me backwards from one grove of cedars to the other, my sentinels.
- It has been much more than a week of lasts — indeed many happened much earlier, without out us being cognisant or marking those occasions.
- First come the peonies, then the Dahlias –– and then come the sunflowers, summer’s last laugh.
- in the face of countless calls to health insurance companies, car troubles, worries about money, automation, depersonalization, there are roses, there are flower petals dropping to the ground while no one watches. the fans oscillate. the artwork falls cockeyed in the frame. there is a chill to the air today, reminding me that i’ve survived another summer. jazz plays while i am on hold and i enjoy it. lots of horn.
- Is the world, ever so slowly, righting itself again? Stabilizing? So, so slowly? And if not — or if this sense of balance, possibility, and normalcy is also only temporary — can I enjoy it for this moment? There’s the bigger question.
- When asked about books that have stayed with me forever, what comes to mind immediately is a childhood collection of stories…
- When I sit to do my daily meditation, I try not to look at my meditation streak.
- I still can’t give a particularly good reason for getting the very large tattoo, or even for the chosen image (an owl made of woven ribbons), other than I like it.
- So, my advice would be to celebrate every success like it was the end goal. Finished an entire draft? That’s a huge accomplishment! Stop and revel in that. Revel in every moment. By all means, keep climbing, but don’t forget to take in the view on your way up.
August 9, 2022
Gleanings
- Instinctively, I started referring to the city of my birth by its Ukrainian name, Kharkiv, rather than Kharkov. The vowel change might seem insignificant, but it marked a shift in my thinking. I could no longer bring myself to say “Kharkov” aloud without confronting the stench of imperialism, violence, destruction and forced occupation. I have stopped telling people I am from Russia, because not only is it disingenuous, but it embraces an oversimplified understanding of history.
- As I orient myself, today, I hope to find new and continuing ways to conjure and appreciate experiences, both ordinary and extraordinary, that make possible profound connection with others. I want to be open, always, to that swirl and whirl of delight in what is, that grounds us in what’s happening with joy, trust, light, and lightness.
- How often life can feel this way, like there’s so much to do, could do, should do, could have, should have, could experience, should experience … that has us grasping at scarcity and urgency and fear and the elusive satisfaction that will be found somewhere out there.
- Last year we were away for two months traveling and I longed for this place of blue sky, and mountains, and wide open spaces. I dreamed about this place when we were gone.
- As I have learned more about grief and what helps people move through it, I have realized that the compulsion I felt starting very soon after Owen’s death to write about it was probably an intuitive reaching towards what in therapeutic jargon is sometimes called “meaning making.”
- It’s a reminder isn’t it? A reminder to find some balance between the sludge and the sparkle. A reminder to peek out of the (often unavoidably) muddy bits when and if you can. A reminder that there are beautiful bits tucked all around us, just waiting to be welcomed into each day, if we only take the time to notice them.
- A million years ago when I first left home and moved to Toronto I met a woman, a potter. She had her own studio. I wasn’t yet twenty and she might have been twenty-four, twenty-six, something ancient…. I remember she was ancient.
- books don’t go stale. Books can wait for you to (re)discover them, in your own right time.
- But my favorite kind of souvenir, no surprise, is the one that doesn’t get put on a shelf or forgotten about immediately upon its homecoming. The best souvenirs settle themselves right into the way of things—souvenir objects that transition themselves into everyday objects.
- A heat wave book if I ever read one. You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi is a book that colourfully conjures sun, sweat, and that shimmer in the air on a hot, hot day. Oh, yes, and a little splash of blood, too.
July 19, 2022
Gleanings
- What does your weird little heart call you to do that makes you happy?
- Storms are welcome—alas, what else would carry the seeds far and wide? My plant, it turns out, is the sunflower—always looking only where the good can be found.
- If you want Summer to kiss you and make your heart beat faster, you have to slow down and enjoy each moment.
- The pools brought back a way of being in Toronto that hadn’t been available to me since the pandemic started.
- So, my prayer to the Universe is this: may I wake up each morning, remembering to do something fun.
- the FLAP friendship is hardy, healthy, has survived 40+ years and continues to blossom.
- Have you looked at flowers ever? I mean, if all things are logic, biology and scientific advantage, and survival, then what the hell is a snapdragon? Chamomile? Daisy? Hydrangea?
- How should the thought finish? As I walk through the valley of the shadow of Owen’s death, I have no sure path or comfort. All I know, or hope I know, is that at some point, in some way, I will emerge from it and he will not.
- We all end up using the same language over and over and the effect is just deadening. You just think, I’ve heard that, I know that already, and the brain gets over it. There’s nothing interesting there anymore because we’ve all said it.
- As Little As Nothing was a lovely read on a warm summer day, and it was also a reminder that women have been fighting for decades and will continue to fight, for agency and the right to make decisions about our bodies.
- Over lunch with my writing group the other day, there was much animated conversation over ‘Summer Reading’ and what did that mean exactly?
- What even is the soul? “Soul is not a thing, but a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart, and personal substance.”
- But while discussing the implications of your linguistic choices may be a good feminist practice (one that’s helped me clarify my thoughts on many occasions, and has sometimes changed my views more radically), ultimately I don’t think any feminist can claim the authority to tell other feminists what they’re ‘not allowed to say’.
- Fixing toasters alone won’t halt climate change, but there’s no doubt that changing our relationship to stuff is a part of the puzzle.
- Every morning I think as I swim. I think about the sky, its huge arc above me, the moon still wide awake some days. I watch the scribble of a jet trail appear and disappear.
- And so I return to this dance between me and thou.
June 30, 2022
Gleanings
- Keep singing and dancing, drawing and planting gardens. This is no insignificant thing in the face of a movement that wants to make everything plain and ugly, cruel and sour. There is radicalism in refusing to judge. There is radicalism in listening. There is radicalism in saying, gently, ‘That’s not how I see it.’
- This doesn’t happen often. I am not a violent person. But right now, with broken families, broken hearts, beautiful cities torn apart by war, the consistent and constant gaslighting by politicians who could take measures but won’t, no authentic dialog, muddled truth, no compromise toward solutions, all leading to a sense of helplessness. it’s just time to break something. And cry.
- How on earth do we grow compassion, understanding, tolerance and acceptance on such stony ground? By welcoming one and all to the table.
- I remember rotary dial phones as a kid, which morphed into touchtones, then to call-display and the magic of voicemail. I remember when everything went through receptionists. If the person you wanted to speak with on the phone wasn’t there, the receptionist would write the message down on a special message paper, roll it up and pop it into a pigeon hole in a box that sat at the front of her desk (I say her, because back then they were never he).
- I think I want to write more about my life when I feel less sure about it. When things are a little dim or grimy or blurry and I turn to a Google Doc like it’s a magnifying glass or a flashlight.
- Minus our group’s cumulative, ongoing commentary and the special alchemy of our interactions and earned trust of each other’s opinions, adding words of criticism or praise here have no fair context. Does that make sense? And doesn’t that confirm that the secret sauce here is the book lists and information coupled with the chemistry of our fellow readers?
- For one, I’ve been highly reactive with the kids lately. My reaction time to kid-squabble-teen-bitchery is unbeatable. There is nothing faster, literally. My mouth and mother-hat are tilting wildly at windmills. At speed, mind you, which does not mesh well with health and wellness.
- I want to be open to the unexpected. Sometimes, opportunities fall into my lap; sometimes I pursue projects that don’t pan out but I’m glad I tried because why not.
- I want to stop worrying about ‘not enough’. My shaking doesn’t make me ‘disabled’ enough for instance, and there’s so many other things like that I feel. I’m fucking 46 years old and I’ve been though a lot. I think I need to stop being quiet and know we’re all enough, more than that. We just are. I might start going deeper, or at least trying to, and that’s kind of exciting.
- If I’m going to survive, I must make warm drinks. I must boil the water, select the mug, and also the tea – the latter two must align with the season and match the moon and whether I wish to feel free or safe.
- Recently a lovely internet friend and photographer wrote something on her blog that I one hundred percent relate to because what she said parallels how I use this space as well. Donna wrote, “This isn’t a portfolio of perfect images or a gallery of my best work. Instead, it is a record of my experiments and efforts.” When I read that, I couldn’t help but exclaim out loud, “Yes, that’s me too!”
- To follow my spirit, to say NO to societal pressures, is to go against the herd. It is to say once again, after fighting so hard my whole life to escape the pain of it—I am all alone.
- I’m more in love with trees every day now that I live with a forest. Am learning how they’re a community and speak to one another and how sometimes what we might call ‘crowding’ they call protection and comfort. Left to its own devices a forest pretty much knows how to be.
- Some days I think, Why bother? Why bother with writing books that get lost in the ebb and flow of the literary conversation, their voices a little quiet and timorous for these times? Or quilts, because honestly does anyone need another one in a world filled with stuff? But my hands need the work, my mind needs what happens when my hands find their way to loop and tie and dip and stitch. The way I find myself weeping when I see the cloth hanging on the clothesline, the books arriving in a courier’s van. See, you did this. It’s not quite what you meant to do (is it ever?) but you did this. On the cover of handiwork, a whole little flock of painted birds, ready to fly.
