March 22, 2022

Gleanings

• If anything, ballet is forcing me to rethink my relationship with my middle-aged body and instead of noticing only the beginnings of older age descending upon me, I now marvel at what my body is capable of and the incremental changes I’ve seen as I’ve learned to stand with more confidence and courage. And as for the imperfections? They’re part of being alive. 
• …still one of the finest books of short fiction to appear so far in the 21st century.
• The key for me is that I keep writing, even if what I have to say is as frothy as a cappuccino. Because when the urge does come for me to express something weightier, I’m more likely to have the words.
• I missed the practice of framing the world through my viewfinder. I began wondering what I would find if I photographed my city as I would photograph Rome? If I looked at Edmonton, so often described in terms of ugliness, with love-coloured glasses?
• “In terms of the scope of the war, it’s the Russians who have done badly,” he says. “The ground campaign has been pathetic. And the whole world is watching.”
• The thing about having a practice, is to remember that it’s just that, a practice. It’s not something ever present, but something to continue to work toward. Sometimes there’s joy, sometimes not.
• The greatest gift I can imagine is if you give yourself the gift of a book.
• The rest of the intentions were along the lines of:  “Make more time for myself”; “Learn to accept myself more”; “Learn to say no more often.”  I wanted to feel empathetic towards the women, but all I could think was: blah…blah…blah…Self-improvement 101 stuff. (Perhaps I needed the retreat more than I thought I did?)
• Recently, I shared a photo of myself on an island beach trail. I looked at the photo and thought this is who I am.
• Somehow, that is, the end of Owen’s life has to become part of the story of my own life: rather than considering it a break, a catastrophic rupture, in that story (the way it feels to me now), I need to learn to see it as belonging to a new, different continuity. (Mrs. Ramsay, though dead, is still very present in “The Lighthouse.”)
• So I decided to keep writing, to let the plot unfold like the textiles in the small museum run by the cousin in Lviv, a city as haunted as any, and even if I can’t return, my character can go for the first time. She can hear an opera, drink coffee on Serbska Street, look at old books at the market by the Fedorov monument, and sit with her cousin, drawing the tree that gathers them both into its root system, families on each spreading branch.
• I began writing poetry and doing contemporary dance around the same time in high school, and they’re definitely connected for me—they’re both non-linear, non-narrative, and imagistic
• How we think we are one independent organism, living, breathing, acting on our own, and how I have so often felt so assured that I could, or even should do it on my own… and yet, there’s no possible way that we can’t not be interdependent. We need and are dependent on one another, and each provide gifts, seen and unseen, spoken and unspoken for the other, and receive what we need and more from others in return.

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March 16, 2022

Gleanings

• I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ways in which social media and the theoretical shrinking and speeding up of the world impacts our ability to be nuanced thinkers and ethical actors, not to mention emotionally stable.
• “Zero risk is, I don’t need to wonder anymore,” he says. “Wondering is exhausting.”
• I’m not running away or hiding from news of the world. But I do recognize it’s not healthy to focus on it to the point of inducing anxiety over that which I cannot control.
• I kept to the classic script and every single person in my family, including the two who don’t like bananas at all, couldn’t get enough of it. I get it now, I really do. It’s far more complex than it seems, and abundantly cozy.
• I just bought five bunches of Hyacinths from my local corner shop that within minutes of entering the house muffled the smell of gym socks and meatloaf with their ethereal scent.
• Until the light returns/ The trees promise to remember how it felt to/ Be wrapped up in cool, endless shade.
• Time. Time is what I most long for. Time denied the Ukrainian mother-to-be and her child who were killed in the bombing of their maternity hospital. Time is also what I most celebrate. Individual moments of clarity are all the more precious when they emerge from a fog. 
• It’s been nearly a hundred and fifty years since this chair was shiny, and new, and arguably, plagiarized. As always, to me, those years are a comfort
• Poetry is a place, still, to work things out, work things through. I
• I realized I knew little about poetry. By little, I mean nothing. But I want to learn to appreciate poetry, the beauty of the rhythm and cadence of the words, the meanings within. 
• At times, I can disregard the boring days, the days that stretch on and need to be filled, the days of ordinary-ness, the days we’d long for if we no longer had them, the days, so many are wishing for in this moment, the days that make a life.
• Its the spring, things and thinks burst out from seemingly nothing. All this time, they’ve just been waiting. It can be its own overwhelm, but I am hungry for it. And overwhelmed by it. the irony, the ache. the swell, the burst. all of it.

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March 8, 2022

Gleanings

• Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of the day when Faye’s kindergarten teacher sent around a parent sign-up sheet for volunteers to help with in-classroom hand washing. Just a few more days from now will mark the two-year anniversary of the day New York City schools closed and the rest of the city followed suit.
• My voice may be a little muffled by the mask, but this is me speaking. My skin is winter-dry, but this is my hand holding yours. Right now, this is everything. And more than enough. 
• Women empowering women: The importance of mentors
• In caring for a little piece of earth, one rejects the idea that scale is all that matters, or that all worthwhile labor is paid labor. One creates unruly beauty for its own sake.
• We had hoped for children, biological or adopted, but the universe had other plans. I suspect, truly, Piper chose us and let us pretend we were choosing her. I am not for a second suggesting that a cat replaces a child, but she came into our lives when we most needed her, and we have loved her ever since. 
• And yet stories of the war years have made up parts of who I am today and I can also say with certainty that although my mind doesn’t remember, my body certainly does! And it manifests the trauma and the impact of the war in variety of ways.
• Castle Breakfast isn’t as much a recipe as it’s a philosophy. It’s about making days off feel special, about feeling as calm and doted on at home as you would in a fancy tearoom. It’s about feeling a tiny bit royalty, regardless of budget. I hope it feels good.
• Does our watching the news and scrolling twitter change anything? Does reading poems change anything? Does witnessing in this way change anything? How is it possible that we can have one line of poetry about the massacre of innocents and the next about flowers? But of course we can.
• ask me what I was wearing, and if I could wear it again afterwards
• But it’s the charm against evil I’m most interested in right now.
• It is terrible, the damage grief does to one’s own generosity. I don’t like it, though for now I can’t seem to help it.
• How are we still doing this, going to war, in 2022? Have we learned nothing? How does a species who can travel into space and look at planet Earth from above, still have it in their hearts and minds to destroy each other, communities, cities, with weapons?
• I had no idea what I was in for when I signed up for this class. But it has been an eye-opening blessing and I would encourage anyone to do the same.
• She had hoped to leave her children and grandchildren something of value. She could not grasp that the family treasures we longed for were those that held sentimental value.
• There is so much I can’t do right now. But remembering the miracle of a perfect clump of crocuses, actually blooming underground, in cold soil, far from sunlight, reminds me to continue to try to find hope.
• If you know who Amanda Marshall is, that tells me so much about you.

March 2, 2022

Gleanings

• It has long been said that good fences make good neighbours and, sitting in the middle of this pandemic, I am convinced that a nice solid wall might make me a better person, or at least one who loses her temper with her children less often.
• In caring for a little piece of earth, one rejects the idea that scale is all that matters, or that all worthwhile labor is paid labor. One creates unruly beauty for its own sake.
• These individual stars expand into greater constellations, and it is up to the reader to do their part in piecing them together, recognizing the links and the shapes — in a sense, building the community.
• Here’s the thing about numbers: they measure some things really well. Money coming in and going out, for example. The number of words written, the number of pitches/pieces/novels/poems/whatever you wrote. But they don’t measure everything. 
• It’s hard to settle in. (Understatement). Maybe we’re not supposed to settle in. I’m flitting from book to book, from Twitter to Instagram, from post to post, poem to poem. I don’t have answers; I’m looking for hope. I’m looking for wisdom. I don’t wish for consolation even, but evidence of deep thinking. Evidence of the human and the humane.
• If it was possible to control through monitoring and scrolling and aquiring information, hell, I would have had most of the world’s problems cased.
• “Each piece of paper I cut is a prayer.”
• I woke just before 2 a.m., wondering about Ukraine. Wondering. Rather than going downstairs in the dark to sit in front of this screen, doom-scrolling, I listened.

February 22, 2022

Gleanings

• But I was there and I can tell you this: People at the convoy don’t want democracy. They want no rules. And that’s definitely not the same thing. 
• Censorship is on the march once again in North America.
• It was 43 years ago today that a friend called and asked if I’d like to join him and another poet for dinner before a reading that evening at Open Space down on Fort Street.
• How Cookbooks And James Barber Helped Me Find Fat Joy
• To be able to feel our feelings, to be with the whole spectrum of them, without added stories or narratives, but to turn towards and be with the sensations in our bodies, to let them “ferment and season” us can be so hard, so uncomfortable to do …
• The world is opening up and life is about to get enjoyable and exciting complicated.  What happens when all the divided parties meet again over the dinner table? How can we choose what our own personal normal looks like?
• So much of what my friends give me is intangible: the hope, the reassurance, the emphatic listening, a weekly dinner routine, a push to go for a walk, or snowshoe, or ski. It’s lovely to have these reminders surrounding me too. I am not alone. All will be well. 
• God, it is hard to grieve. So damn hard. How to incorporate these prickles of loss, joy, -with appreciation, love, self-reflections on our own mortality, a life reflected upon, memories of earliest life, and latest, all the temperatures mix and all at one single minute and then you are left on a ravaged beach after a tsunami. not even ready to look at the remains.
• The two things I’ve heard or read most often about grief are “it takes time” and “wait until you’re ready.” These are helpful comments, as far as anything is helpful; they lessen my anxiety and confusion by reminding me that there is no timeline, there are no rules, there are no ‘oughts’ that follow from this shocking and disruptive ‘is.’
• In a way this a biography. We certainly learn a lot about Orwell’s life. But more importantly we learn about the interconnections of a life with the the currents of history and movements. That an individual can apprehend the horrors of political systems, the damage done to humans, but can also find room for hope and optimism.
• I feel an affinity for my bathroom spider. I wonder if Charlotte has anything to do with that?
• It happens quite often, that I am drawn to a piece of art, one that I want to share here, but that I don’t because the artist’s statement gets in the way.

February 15, 2022

Gleanings

• “Awe challenges us to look beyond ourselves, but, in return, it offers new insights and a wiser perspective—one filled with a deeper sense of connection, meaning, and purpose.”
• She described “an atmosphere of complete and utter acceptance in his classroom. Students knew that they had a teacher who cared about them and would do everything he could to ensure their success.”
• I was lucky to travel to Ukraine in my 60s, lucky to meet far cousins, and to be greeted with bread and salt, with tiny glasses of moonshine flavoured with mountain herbs, and I am reading backwards to remember it all.
• As a potter, I can tell you that function gets in the way of my fun. The minute I start measuring asparagus stalks, I lose my groove.
• Every so often, I try to do responsible things like Plan Ahead to reap the rewards that should come with it like A Calm and Unfrazzled Week and I fail almost 100% of the time in the service of Something More Fun I Just Thought Of.
• Who knew in grade one that the alphabet we were learning would be everything?
• An occupation carries with it the feelings of the oppressed or those who view themselves as the oppressed. Is there a difference between the two? I wonder sometimes.
• The vast majority of my work happens slowly, with a brush-in-hand and a butt-in-chair that’s at odds with the algorithm’s thirst for drama.
• Now our tale is done, said E. to the small brown owl, and he closed the book.
• All I know in my many years of working at the library is that interactions are so much more likely to go well if I’m able to literally feel an open heart when I begin.
• In friendship, there’s so much room for exchange. Generous exchange. Friendship is a practice in curiosity, attention, lightness, vulnerability, caring, holding and letting go.
• I don’t know, nor is it my business to know, if they knew each other, or if they will ever see each other again, but I do know I got to be witness to a moment where they met each other eye to eye, face to face, knee to knee, human to human … spirit to spirit.
• And it’s weird to think of us maneuvering into this next stage of life, too because wasn’t it just last year we were partnering up and having babies and finishing degrees and making bad choices and recovering from too-late nights at the bar with too many tequila shots? Spoiler: it turns out it was much longer ago than that.
• May I now present to you my first book! Not a book I had envisioned or expected at all, and definitely not my original idea when I put the dream out there, but a book nonetheless and one that I made myself.

February 8, 2022

Gleanings

• The trauma plot, Sehgal writes, “presents us with locks and keys.” But humans are not doors to be unlocked with full understanding waiting just beyond the threshold.
• My fear with the Bernina is less setting the machine on fire (though it has crossed my mind!) and more general “breakage” paranoia. Still, I do like the idea of taking care of this new family member.
• The top came out lumpy, so I poured over a citrus-scented glaze and sprinkled on rose petals and lemon zest and decided it looks delicious enough. This is what actually happened and it’s also a metaphor for my winter survival tactics.
• If you’ve felt that inner impulse inspiring you to pick up a pen and write, then I believe you have a vocation, or a calling, if you will, to write.
• *Funny that every time I typed surfing in this post I would type surfacing instead. That works too.
• And after at least a year of feeling like my art wasn’t moving in a direction that made me happy, I decided to shush those voices that told me to ignore the whispers of enchantment.
• Some are a wake-up call, some are thought-provoking, some are humorous, some are poignant, and most are bold truths.
• I love Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s books Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life and Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal. If you’ve read them, you undoubtedly love them, too. And if you haven’t I don’t want to spoil them for you because they are under the category “books that delight and uplift.”
• In friendship, we walk the questions together. We feel less alone.
• Rightsizing doesn’t mean downsizing your living space or your closets or even your body. It means making choices that align with your needs, values and vision for yourself, rather than chasing after the elusive ‘more’ or ‘when I have …[enough free time], [more money], [more space], [a better job]’…fill in the blanks, you get the idea.
• Despite all of this chaos in the human world, nature simply goes about its business creating, growing, making new leaves, making new plants out of nothing and just generally being miraculous.
• I want to be stronger, yes, but just as soft.

February 1, 2022

Gleanings

• Making meaning of this pandemic is a very human response, but maybe it can also become a bit of an addiction, another way to control, and build an identity around how you’re doing it right while so many are doing it wrong.
• Reading does it again, gets me through, keeps me going, makes everything so very good, especially when I get to share it with someone amazing.
• We reach out, we spend time with each other, we ask questions, we lift each other up; and THEN we create. And the sharing of this creation empowers others to create. We give so we can give, so we can give.
• They shouldn’t let just anyone drive on our street.
• Maybe what I’m really trying to get at with this post is that we still need the tactile, the movement of pen or pencil over paper, we need the brush daubing and sliding through that paint, we need to get our hands a bit dirty or spill a bit of ink.
• Then I dug out this old picture of myself with a group of friends taken 40+ years ago, I don’t know the exact year. Did we know how beautiful we were then? And what if we knew then what we know now? Would we have made different choices? Would we have appreciated ourselves more, compared ourselves to others less?
• A bedcover, yes, but also a record of how I felt about the floods, the rivers, the state I find myself in as an aging woman, attentive to my own heart-beat.
• Isn’t it amazing to consider all of the millions of moments, decisions and details of not only our lives, but of previous generations, that have led us to sitting together, sipping tea and sharing stories on this very day?
• “What exactly is the cloud and how does it work?” I asked. And he admitted that he wasn’t quite certain himself.
• Tookie’s journey would have been enough for a story, but add in the bookstore haunting, her intriguing fellow employees and their stories, the vital role of books, and of course the appearance of the Pandemic and months of panic and isolation, as well as the explosive political moment of Black Lives Matter, and this book is bursting with deep ideas to explore.
• She’s right that grief is lonely, and that in the face of it, our words often fail us. She’s also right that “no matter how anarchic and wretched the grief may be, a poet will have gotten there first.”
• How do we know when it’s too late? I guess that’s what I’m wondering. I’m wondering what I can do right now, and how, and with whom.
• She could have skipped the event, but no one would have known why. She could have stood on a podium and ranted, but I expect she would have been largely ignored. Instead, she threw the prime minister a powerful glare that sent a clear message.
• Between one thing and another, I never made it to the cinema in the Fall, and now that they’re shut again, it’s all I want to do.

January 25, 2022

Gleanings

• And so I play to play. I ski to ski. It’s joy. I feel good doing it.
• Doing nothing, I have come to appreciate, is a pastime. And a worthy one, at that.
• At such times, she knew, you must just put on spiritual dungarees and remain in them until things are running smoothly again. 
• I am reading the last of Willis’ Time Travelling Historians series and it’s perfection and maybe while reading To Say Nothing of the Dog is when I got my idea….
• The Sargasso Sea is, unusually, bordered by four ocean currents and has no shores.
• Still, during a January that feels interminable, I decided to toy with adding a bit of color into our lives (and to finally fix a hinge that’s been broken for the past year and a half).
• What’s it like to live in long-term care during a Covid outbreak?
• the impossible, unreasonable, but inescapable feeling that I should have been able to comfort him, to hold him, to save him.
• After ignoring my body for so many years, I am not cued into the messages it sends me. I can feel aches, sore muscles, and even butterflies in my stomach, and yet remain clueless as to their origin.
• I’m delighted that more and more people are back blogging or have resumed ones they had abandoned.
• But I guess some of my river systems (the way I’m thinking of the quilting) have meandered and idled and I’ve finished my spools.
• Today I set my intention for 2022 – to be good enough.
• Does anyone else wonder whether the universe orchestrated this eclectic mix of departures?
• Look at it! It’s so intriguing. Published by a wartime reprint house, it’s small enough to tuck into a pocket, and warns that titles in this series may soon be out of print due to paper shortages – talk about stimulating demand. 
• But what might become possible if I choose a different story of needing others, of there being nothing to prove, of re-framing and reconsidering the narrative that has been created around the word “dependence” and “dependent.”
• Bones are big how exactly? And compared to what? Compared to the societal ideal that women should take up as little space as possible?
• Maybe it sounds morbid, but you know Fanny Howe was correct. I won’t be able to tell you what I love when I’m gone
• It can be moving without being perfect.
• We preferred if people called us intelligent or interesting. Or even cranky or cantankerous or grouchy. But never ‘nice’. 

January 18, 2022

Gleanings

• Compare these two sentences: “My feelings are hurt.” versus “You hurt my feelings.”
• I stretch, starfished across the bed. What shall I do with this day, I wonder?
• We can’t turn off our fear of these unknowns. But here’s what I do know: It’s time to untangle morality from health. For our kids and for ourselves. 
• Why do I hate asking for help, SO MUCH?? And here’s where things get ugly. Because I think I know the answer, and I don’t like it.
• In my experience, the most dramatic of the mama bears are those with the least realistic threats—the White, privileged moms, like me, who are used to getting things our way.
• For years, she was a jumble sale of smocked Liberty dresses, stripy leggings, glittery shoes and some ridiculously large flower on her noggin.
• So I’m having my bubblebath, this little self-care ritual that is really just a drop in the bucket of self-care that we all need, but at least it’s something, and I’d been wondering about how one even goes about collectively or as a group thinking-things-through these day when we’re all so separate.
• Yes, people wax on about how rewarding parenting is, and it is, but sometimes you can’t see that until later. Sometimes you’re so much into the just doing and coping and wondering and worrying above all else if you’re getting it right.
• The amount of this time stretch right now is practically imperceptible—only about a minute or so on either side—but it’s enough.
• And so I leapt … And found myself right back where I was … here, with the full-bellied yes to write random blog posts for no apparent reason other than joy and desire, rather than academic papers with long bibliographies and MLA-style references, that will be evaluated and praised.
• I sew my irregular stitches, never improving, while the world is on fire, dark with war, shadowy figures conspiring to violence, rafts sinking, and my only effort this morning is to stack logs by the woodstove and hope for the best.