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.

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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