January 11, 2022
Gleanings
- For a while, grief is the only thing—but then the noise of life begins again. Now, as we pick up some of the pieces of what was once just routine, we all find ourselves confused by sudden vertiginous shifts between familiarity and estrangement.
- Though snow swirled yesterday and the roads were icy, though ravens have begun their courtship over our woods, acrobats of love, though the house is quiet and the cat is sleeping, I am happy to have reached my 67th birthday as the days grow a little longer and the sun dreams of summer.
- What secrets might be inside? Who could resist opening that little door? Definitely not me. Inside I found a small purple book which encouraged those who discovered it to share their dreams.
- Books did a lot of heavy lifting in getting me through this past year, I’ll tell you what.
- But I’m also very aware, increasingly so, that there’s more years behind me than ahead of me. And that these days, months, years are not to be frittered away being busy or seeking merely to be entertained or, god forbid, working on ‘self-improvement’.
- “It’ll be a mess,” one reporter said, “and in 24 hours it’ll be over“, and of course he was right.
- As for me, I do want to make of my life art. I want to be a witness to splendour. I want to get as much down as possible, whether by the light of photography or by the light of my weird noticing.
And one more (extra special) post! Kathy, whose excellent blog is Little Yellow Bungalow, wrote a really kind and generous post about her experience as part of Blog School’s MAKE THE LEAP course in September. My next course starts on the first of February, in just under a month. Sign up today to join us!
January 4, 2022
Gleanings: Happy New Year!
- But COVID predictions, like election predictions, are often mostly about escaping from the feeling of unease and unreality and uncertainty that dominates the current moment.
- Was I really grieving the marriage all that time? All those jokes, that mistake of identifying myself as cold, or hard-hearted? Grief? Really? It makes me weep for the woman I have been.
- I am hesitantly stepping into 2022, much like stepping onto a frozen pond, not sure if the ice is solid enough to hold me.
- In 2021 I read 49 books, and I loved them all.
- …and our hearts each beat probably around 100, 000 times and the light of the day got the teeniest of a fraction longer, because this earth we all live on is orbiting a sun out in a galaxy and universe beyond that which we can even fathom.
- But as we all know, being top of the class means very little later in life, with how you might actually live your life.
- That’s a gift of living in pandemic times, for those of us who’d imagined we had more control over things — we get to see and feel and know how precarious our plans were all along.
- In any case, I don’t think any book I’ve written has ended up being what I thought I was going to write.
- It’s possible that R will never get the cookie he wants since he’s fixated on a memory of a variation that cannot be repeated. I should also add that the challenge is entirely in my own head. It doesn’t matter to him whether I make the cookies or not. But if I make them, he will offer an opinion. That is our dynamic.
- What makes a house, a home? For starters, I would hope we can all agree it doesn’t have to be a house.
- I think, in some alternate universe, if the coat had been fine and never wrecked by moths, I wouldn’t want to wear it.
- Resolutions tend to be removing things from our life or ‘improving’ ourselves or how we do things. Bunk to that. Instead I want to focus on what I can add to my life to make it better, happier, more fulfilling. I want to focus on what I can do to bring more carefree joy to my life.
- This makes me question my own life’s ambition to write a biographical novel of Harriet Vane. But maybe that’s different because she is already a fictional character? I will have to ponder this…
- Today I whittled my inbox down to the essentials. I chased payments and worried over invoices. I put on a pot of beans. I tried to move gracefully from working in a quiet apartment with a scrappy mouse for company to navigating the converging energies of five whole humans at the end of their long days.
- I’ve found that these types of reading “goals”—the resolution to read books that challenge my expectations and complacency, that provide unexpected pleasures, that a small business believes in—have enriched my life in a way that “read all the XX nominees” or “read all the bestsellers” or “read XXX number of books” doesn’t.
- If I were to pick a word for the upcoming year, it would probably have to be contingency.
And one more (extra special) post! Kathy, whose excellent blog is Little Yellow Bungalow, wrote a really kind and generous post about her experience as part of Blog School’s MAKE THE LEAP course in September. My next course starts on the first of February, in just under a month. Sign up today to join us!
December 8, 2021
Gleanings
- Art is such low stakes. Nothing depends on me getting a painting just right, not even my happiness! No one’s life depends on what I make. Nothing bad is going to happen if I don’t make art. And yet…
- For a writer, what’s important aren’t the tools but the words–except that I’m also a human animal who likes her creature comforts.
- In fact, it looks to me like there’s a resurgence of blogging as people seek out alternatives to being at the mercy of the social media bully boys. And why wouldn’t they? Social media is super convenient and lots of fun, but it’s also governed by a gang of democracy-crushing, money-hoarding, self-obsessed narcissists. It makes sense to seek out an alternative.
- I will miss you, little brother– maker of the best wooden toys, travel companion, shoulder to cry on, world’s best uncle, teaser extraordinaire, reasonable sounding board, and last of the male Pinniger line.
- They talk about traditions as being anchors, when we’re feeling unmoored, providing a place for us to hang our hats and connect the dots to our real here and now life … traditions as ways to mark us as who we are and attempt to draw us back to the places where we feel like we belong and come from.
- …sharing the food that I love to make, that I drool over and lick my lips in anticipation of, feels like an act of joy, pleasure and love towards the beautiful fat body that is my home.
- Meander too is Greek in origin, though now located in Turkey, near the ancient Greek city of Miletus, a river that gave its name to a concept.
- You still have to have a feeling of people here,” Cayley recalls Wells saying. “Not just your zombies and your billionaires and your underground bunker. That will not carry you.”
- So really, it’s thanks to sandwiches that I’m feeling more myself.
- Struggle is pivotal to books and movies, drawing us in, keeping us reading or watching. And yet, when struggle or conflict happens in real life, we want it gone.
- The town of Frank is the home of the famous Frank Slide where, in 1903, an entire side of Turtle mountain came tumbling down in an avalanche of rocks, some the size of crates others the size of boxcars.
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November 30, 2021
Gleanings
- Change is literally baked into plot, just like change is baked into each of our lives.
- If you stop and take a moment to let them in, you’ll see that joys abound.
- Friendship has been on my mind a lot lately. We tend to overlook its importance in our lives. But when you’re single and live alone, contact with friends is important, especially in a pandemic world.
- And how does one move and live and experience joy and laugh and dance amidst all of it?
- There is more delight than I could have foreseen in these teenaged years. Sometimes its just the tiniest moment between the tumults, but man, they are an entire world of glow. a secret look into the snowglobe of the world.
- I wish Jo Baker had not written Longbourn: if I hadn’t assumed that she was just one more unimaginative barnacle on the unstoppable ship Austen Always Sells, I might have read her other books sooner.
- And maybe swimming is just that too: swimming. But it feels like such a potent time, a meditation that isn’t always peaceful (those waves), pushing my body forward and back in the water, eyes open but not seeing anything outer.
- Most days, I am happy to drift aimlessly on a gentle breeze. Increasingly, I welcome the wind swirling around me, giving me that extra push needed as I set my course.
- She told me she’d be with me always, I know she is and maybe it’s in these sparrows on my deck, at my feeders full of spicy seeds.
- Just as each day is different, so too each walk is different. Each walk is like a story with different scenes, characters, and storylines.
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.
November 24, 2021
Gleanings
- Right now, we’re making do. Sitting on it. Doing nothing.
- In the years since, I’ve put characters in a novel on that road, just so I could travel it again over and over, as I wrote…
- This week I am numb. I think our brains can only take in so much suffering and heartache and I am maxed out.
- I’ve been looking forward to this novel by the very funny and sharp Saskatchewan writer, Dawn Dumont. I read it as soon as it was released, and loved it.
- It’s never the same, some days I walk alone, some days with others, some days with awe, some days it’s a head down get it done kind of walk.
- I think we all need a little more cake these days.
- Do we need to know our forefathers? And by knowing the details of their lives (but not their personalities, their struggles, their stories) – will it change who we are today?
- What I recognized through this work was that my inner light has the capacity to shine brightly in many situations; but there is payment afterward (or before) when that energy burns.
- Three books that are really hitting the spot for me of late…
- For decades, we have been telling ourselves that we need to be perfect if we want to satisfy our audiences. But AUDIENCES DON’T WANT PERFECTION. They want to see themselves reflected on stage. They want humanity.
- Writing essays is easier for me and often more fun, but writing novels feels like what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. I may be wrong about this. I often wonder why I don’t just stick with the thing that’s fun.
- “Whenever someone writes a memoir about death and dying or grief, it’s always like this: ‘My house burned down, I lost my husband in a car accident, and now I’m CEO of this company,’ ” Hitchins says. “You have that story, or the self-help version, which is, ‘Ten years later, here’s my post-traumatic wisdom.’ What is it like when your only achievement is you started showering again?”
November 17, 2021
Gleanings
- Thank you for tolerating white board markers that never have enough ink, hours that never have enough minutes, and parents that never have enough empathy for what you deal with in a given day.
- This is NOT what I thought I was signing up for that summer when I decided I wanted to do this for a living.
- And tweeting small observations about the world around me, as well as lifting up others’ voices, is enough to keep me checking in.
- Can I hope we will meet in person someday, coffee cake or no coffee cake, to continue the conversation? GAH. Sometimes I miss people. In person. A lot. And I’m an introvert who loves being at home in her comfy pants!
- Women are like that, putty in their stylist’s hands. Hoping the blonde will darken in a few months, I will return to him, because I still believe in his skills. And yes, I want to look good, even while going grey.
- It’s as if that one remark moved us into something different, from strangers to fellow travellers, from small talk, into conversation.
- Our walks were how we connected with a city in lockdown and how we stayed close to nature, to ourselves and to each other.
- Why don’t you try something you haven’t done and why don’t you see where it takes you? Why don’t you.
- It’s funny how you can set your life up to be the way you want it to be, and then forget to appreciate it.
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.
November 10, 2021
Gleanings
- Baked in a disposable foil cake pan for easy door dropping and classic Deep n’ Delicious aesthetic, with frosting piped on with a star tip to complete the effect, I’ve baked this several times and it has been devoured each time – it’s wonderful, vegan or not.
- And then it gets weird. The Hong Kong avian flu introduced H5N1 to the world, a new and dangerous virus, transmitted from birds to people, causing fears of a worldwide influenza pandemic. The European Union experienced major floods, while a massive tornado stormed through Texas killing 27 people. Meanwhile, world leaders from 150 countries met in Kyoto to sign an agreement to address climate change.
- I am about halfway through You Look Good for Your Age: An Anthology, edited by Rona Altrows, and so the theme of aging—body and mind and soul—is clearly on my mind.
- A deliberate act of stopping, noticing, looking up, breathing deep, all in stillness – a necessity I am becoming more comfortable with, in this hunt for awe, whose closest companion, may just be gratefulness.
- I’ve got a lot of houseplants, dude. Each time a mood strikes me, I find myself holding a potted plant.
- Books have been a comfort to me since early childhood as I learned to navigate life in a world that expected much more from me socially than I would ever be able to give.
- I’ve had less flattering juxtapositions of “Taylor Swift” against other aspects of my identity, most noticeably in university when a Black friend pondered why a Black man would be listening to a “basic white woman”. The false description aside, my reason is simple: her themes embody the kind of writing I seek to create—emotive and universal, yet highly specific.
- I suppose what gets to me is this belief that we need to take classes to learn, to become perfect at something. What happened to just plain practicing? Why not sing, dance, paint, or write for the pure joy of it, rather than feeling like we need to be experts?
- It feels like the epitome of late fall to me, the kind of thing I can never resist on a lunch menu because isn’t it wonderful when someone else has already gone through the trouble of roasting squash?
- The power went out at 5:30 this morning, the small lights we are accustomed to at night–the shell nightlight in the bathroom, the glow of the modem in John’s study beyond our bedroom– extinguished
- What is a character without place? Even if it’s a place as small as a room or a country where the character does not feel she belongs.
- I’m miserable when I’m not writing in some form — so if I don’t write for too long, something starts to feel deeply off and so I keep coming back to this complex relationship.
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.
November 3, 2021
Gleanings
- Unvaccinated people didn’t just arrive in Toronto from Mars. They are products of a culture that over the last few generations has become increasingly individualistic, distrusting and focused on personal welfare over the larger community.
- It’s a very bizarre thing to find yourself squeeing in the middle of a gut-wrenching and upsettingly graphic story about the bubonic plague. And yet. Here we are.
- Last week we held a celebration of life for my mother and yesterday we hosted a baby shower for my oldest daughter.
- But somehow the days accumulated until yet another summer had passed, and I didn’t swim to the island.
- But why the maniacal drive for completeness? And what is completeness, anyway?
- So yes, I was today years old when I realised I was happy – definitely the best birthday present I could ask for.
- No bluegrass song has ever been written about freaking THROAT COAT TEA
- I think Beautiful World also offers a more affirmative response, though: that there is value in both love and art, that they are what can make the world beautiful, that they are worth believing in and standing up for, and that the novel (including this novel) is one way of doing that.
- (for the life of me i will never ever be able to keep a secret about myself. for others? til death. but myself? never ever. Is this a flaw? a strength? a quirk? idgaf. yes, that.)
- I think part of me thought it was too typical that a woman would write about food, and that I wanted to make my voice known on other topics. But somehow, I’m still hungry.
- But the history of kitchen cabinets and the appliances tucked in snugly between them is not pretty or seamless. It’s brimming with attempted liberation, deliberate oppression, Cold War marketing and feminist utopias founded on white supremacy. And it’s still stewing.
- Afterwards, when the street was quiet and the night was black, we blew out the candles in the pumpkin and brought him inside. I thought about how some things that we avoid actually turn out to be good.
- In his book, Williams uses the word whiplash to describe the sensation of going about one’s daily life until, without warning, one is confronted by a reminder of race and its implications
- So yes, I do aspire to be kinder, more generous. I aspire to give you what you want before you ever ask. But most deeply I aspire to be eccentric
- The coconut word triggered a few memories of instances when I felt misjudged or slightly vulnerable because of my skin colour.
- Asked what her first principle for detecting a good story was, Schoemperlen speaks in terms that echo Kennedy, albeit with fewer lethal connotations. “The stories to which I felt an immediate connection were the ones that just made me say, ‘Wow!’”
October 26, 2021
Gleanings
- But you know, the beautiful thing about a blog is that I’m not forcing anybody to read these posts, should I choose to write every day- and every so often, something I write that makes me feel good might just make someone else feel good.
- I believe that, to truly experience the world, you need to be out in it.
- Was there a Wanda? Maybe. Doesn’t matter. This is fiction. In fiction everything and nothing is possible and everything and nothing is real.
- The next day the trees had disappeared. Were they stolen in the night? Had the city reconsidered planting trees? Did whoever delivered the trees put them on the wrong street? In Montreal there are always many possibilities. The workings of the city and its employees are not transparent.
- I’m so grateful for friends like this, the shared meals, the stories, the laughter, the complete letting down of hair and being ourselves.
- But in the room yesterday, surrounded by photographs of Barbara, hearing from friends and family who knew her as a girl, then a young bride, a young mother, I thought that our lives are somehow liminal. Between.
- It’s here that I am full of hope and possibility. The kiln hasn’t had its wicked way yet. No cracking, blistering or warping. I can see the finished piece exactly as I want it to look. I
- What fascinates me most is family narratives and the intergenerational impact on women. Are we more resilient when we know our stories? Do we learn to break the cycle of generational patterns? Do our generational stories create bridges or chasms? Those are only some of the questions I want to explore.
- Oh, didn’t that quotation find me at just the perfect moment? I responded on Twitter that the “distanced intimacy” of reading takes many forms.
- After all, Amelia Earhart, with whom Grace becomes obsessed, is not a straightforward symbol of escape or liberation: sure, she broke barriers and flew away, but eventually she also, tragically and mysteriously, never came back.
- Together we were living out the narrative of this time together as it unfolded, it just too bad there weren’t any guitars or fiddles.
- It may not be quite the same as sitting at a table on a sidewalk in Europe, but a little bit of butter, a little flaky morsel, goes a long way.
- We need to make a point to fill ourselves up. I need to, as JGO says below, let the bitterness sink to the bottom of my life. Allow myself to take the joy to go. And this is found, often, in the company of good people, good friends, and yes, often in the company of women.
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.
October 19, 2021
Gleanings
- My family journey is an affirmation of the beauty and worthiness in life and relationships which are salvaged and repurposed.
- When I pointed out that a recipe book on her kitchen counter was mine, she said, Oh, we’re having sex, I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t mind about the sex. I did mind about my recipe books and cake tins.
- We can all connect to scenes of swimming in the local pool, waiting for the bus or sharing a meal with friends. No doubt, Monet, Morisot et. al. would be fans.
- Does an axis wish for a particular season?
- I’ve been thinking a lot about the words we use to describe ourselves as I step into retirement and cope with the death of my mother.
- I became very adept and meeting people and communicating online, and now this has become the primary way I engage the world.
- So it’s a good time of year to be looking in puddles–what’s real, what’s reflection, where’s your focus?
- I Will Follow Claire-Louise Bennett Anywhere
- Horror means something to me. It gets me through shit. Horror movies have literally saved my life. Maybe not life, exactly, but more like, just … saved me.
- I’m caught up in the details of organizing this ritual. Somehow, I have to free my thoughts of the minutia and write a eulogy. Sometimes there is a tendency to focus only on glorious achievements, while ignoring more down-to-earth, even negative aspects. I want to write about all of it, but from a place of love and understanding.
- My eight year old is obsessed. Can’t stop trying to spend her money on little bits of plastic that squish, or pop or spin. It is making me nuts, causing my inner panic buttons to be pressed about waste and the future and poverty and sea turtles.
- Our long walks up the mountain aren’t quite what they were. Rough ground presents difficulties so we try to find places to walk where the terrain is even. But I have to say that otherwise, things go on as they always did.
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.
