March 30, 2008
Isn't twenty-first century marriage just grand
The very best thing I’ve read lately is Andrew O’Hagan’s “Iraq, 2 May 2005” in the LRB, and it seems to be available online. A stellar piece of journalism, standing as evidence but not of anything too obvious.
This week I was interested to hear Diane Francis on The Current talking about her new book Who Owns Canada Now, for these are the details my job concerns.
Margaret Atwood on Anne of Green Gables (which I’m looking forward to rereading this summer). Lizzie Skurnick on Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game (which is one of very few of my YA books that came with with me into adulthood, even surviving through the age in which I thought I was over all that.) Middlemarch celebrated. Justine Picardie guests at Dovegreyreader’s today.
Must get up now. My husband has just cleaned the whole of oven/stove and I’m still in bed (oh– but isn’t twenty-first century marriage just grand! He’s even brought me my tea. Can’t take this for granted though, or he’ll leave me for a cleaning lady).
March 25, 2008
Coming Home
I am now reading Salvage by Jane F. Kotapish, and I am totally hooked. Her language is mesmerizing, and the story is edge after edge.
And now living amongst gargantuan chaos, as perhaps two thirds of our apartment is packed up, and only a narrow path is cleared to walk from room to room. I keep thinking of new reasons to break into the boxes I sealed two weeks ago, and of new boxes to fill with things I’d forgotten we owned. I keep thinking of new things to own, and other things to shed. Of the light in my new kitchen, which I’ve only ever seen in February, and how they’ll get the sofa out the door.
I think about losing our big storage closet, and where will we store our baseball gloves now? The exposed brick and the fireplace, and the roof beams in our new bedroom. The ugly carpets, for which we’ve traded our hardwood, but then the Mexican tiles in the kitchen, the cupboards in the bathroom, the two decks, and the premise of laundry without coins or going out of doors. The “spare room” and “library” and that they’ll be one and the same doesn’t make me swoon about it any less.
And to be settled down again. This is how I function best, how I write best, and for the past month, we’ve been positively in-between. My brain moved out the day we gave notice, and I hope it’s packed somewhere too, in a box I’ve just forgotten to label. I’m looking forward to being home again, to the day the apartment stops smelling like someone else’s, to the familiar sound of rain on that roof, to the lazy easy light of Sunday morning. And not only to being home, but I’m looking forward to coming home, day after day. Counting the stairs, my key in the lock, somebody’s already put the kettle on to make a cup of tea.
March 11, 2008
It's not just me
My husband is now reading Nikolski, inspired by my exuberant praise for the novel last week. So of course I was a bit apprehensive: I had declared Nikolski “perfect”, what if it failed to measure up?
Last night when I came to bed, I tried to ease him into the story. Saying things like, “The beginning’s a bit strange, I know. It’s hard to tell what’s happening but it will make more sense soon, and you’ll get used to the writing style, and soon the prose will string itself right through your mind, and the fish!!” (For it happens that I am going through a period of being obsessed with fish).
And Stuart said, “I love it already. But be quiet, I’m trying to read now.”
It’s rarely such a pleasure to be shushed.
February 29, 2008
Home
The first house that was ours had been “mine” previously, and we shared it with a roommate. It was a two-up-two-down terrace house in the Midlands, with hideous wallpaper and a carpet that melted when you sat a cup of tea upon it. The door blew open with the wind. And the situation was only meant to be temporary, so we slept on an inflatable mattress, but then temporary turned into six months, the mattress exploded, we had to buy another, and that one had a hole so we were always on the floor by morning. We didn’t even own a kettle and we boiled water for tea in a pot.
Our next house was company accommodation in Japan, barely furnished, but big enough and beautiful. Our bedroom had tatami floors and sliding walls, and still there were no beds for us because we slept on futons. We had a gorgeous balcony with a cherry blossom view, and we could see the mountains and we lived on top of a sushi shop, but then we had to move because the rent was extortionate.
Our next house was a small box. A galley kitchen held a bar fridge and a hot plate, we had one cupboard and a washing machine in the corner. The bathroom had a sliding door and was about the size of a bathroom on an airplane. The main room was sunny, about seven feet wide and five feet long. We had a view of a pachinko parlour The ceiling was high, which was fortunate because we slept on a wood platform just below it. To reach our bed every night we had to climb up a ladder. We were lucky we could sit up on our futons and read without bumping our heads.
We’ve lived in our current apartment since we moved to Canada in 2005. We were attracted to its straight angles, neutral colours, to its gorgeous touches and its lack of quirks. I was coveting drawers and storage closets. It was clean, bright, beautiful, and we didn’t even have to look for it as I’d inherited it from my cousin. It was home, because we’d never really had a home before. We were able to unpack things that had been packed up for years. To live in a place with the intention of staying awhile, to live through multiple sets of seasons, to know our neighbours, grow food in the garden, to become best friends with the guy downstairs, to learn to cook, to write a novel, to have dinner parties and tea parties, watch the struggling tree outside the window hold onto itself for dear life.
But it’s time to go– we’ve known it for a while. The house seems to expand to accommodate each new piece of furniture we stuff inside, but we fear that it may reach capacity sometime soon. And so just a few days ago we set off on a hunt for a new home, which we spotted as soon as it was in sight. The only place we looked at, in truth, but then we also knew exactly what we wanted. We found it, and tonight we learned it’s to be ours come April 1st. A wonderful, weird and beautiful place, the top two floors of a house in the Annex, with two balconies, built in shelves, a second bedroom/office, gorgeous light, and in-house laundry– the latter I’ve not had the pleasure of since I lived with my mom and dad. The apartment has charm, beauty, and seems ready to hold us and our abundance of stuff. And I think we’ve been waiting for each other.
February 25, 2008
No no no
Highlights of this weekend included brunch with Erin and Ivor, diets managing not to start even tomorrow and not cleaning our house. This afternoon I played Scrabble in support of Frontier College with Stuart and Rebecca, and learned how much is too much sushi. Yes, two thirds of us are writers and though Rebecca did beat me, our game was won by the graphic designer with a Bachelor of Science, but ah well. The event put was put on by the Toronto JETAA (and my friend Natalie Bay) and it was tremendous fun. Fun continued into tonight, as we attended an Oscar Party at our friends’ Katie and Alan’s. It was a grand evening, although having seen only one film last year which was Alvin and the Chipmunks, I wasn’t so interested in the show, and really just hijacked the whole event to (rather inappropriately) fulfill my lifelong desire to dress up like Amy Winehouse. Which was perfect because then I won the prize for most creative costume which was the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But the very best part of this weekend was the sunshine, and the fact it felt like spring.
February 23, 2008
Wunderspace
It’s a time of excitement and nerve-wrackage, and of general up-in-the-airness here on the Pickle Me This homefront.
First, having finished my first novel and now beginning the process of finding it a road to publication, I’ve started work on my second book. It’s been buzzing about in my head for a long while now and it’s exciting to finally get writing. How brilliant then, to have the possibilities still be infinite.
Second, and most nerve-wracking: the homefront is being relocated! After two and a half years here, we’ve outgrown our gorgeous apartment and are ready for a change. And though we’ve been thinking about buying for a while now, we’re opting instead to find another rental, save for another few years, thus enabling us to continue eating expensive cheese and going on vacations. Also so that when things break we will continue not to have to fix them. I further like the idea of renting because it still leaves open the possibility of me taking up cafe-sitting full-time, which would just not be possible with a mortgage.
So we’re now on the hunt for a perfect two bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto, aboveground with a deck. And wherever this wunderspace happens to be, come April 1st we are going to live there.
January 14, 2008
Sadness and Guilt
My weekend contained best friends at brunches and lunches, perfect chocolate cake, delightful cousins, new shelving units, knitting, reading, jobs done and a bath-to-come. This weekend’s Globe and Mail was terrific. Stephanie Nolen’s “An Inuit Adventure in Timbuktu” is the most amazing piece of journalism I’ve (ever?) come across. (“I wasn’t really intending to read this,” my husband said to me, “but once I started I just couldn’t stop”.) Well-written, beautiful, fascinating, and will make you think of things you’ve never considered before.
And then the books section– G&M Books, what’s happened to you? For you’re becoming sort of wonderful, it’s true. More than an assemblage of watered-down reviews by friends of friends, and paragraph-length excerpts. The 50 Greatest Books Series is terrific, and not just because the first week’s choice is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Oh it’s been done before, I know, but don’t you find that great books can be discussed forever and ever?
And then the reviews themselves, epistolary goodness. Reviewing The Mitford Letters (which I loved), Graham Greene’s letters (which I’m reading), Eleanor Wachtel’s Carol Shields book (which is a treasure), Four Letter Word (which I can’t wait for). It was as though the Books Pages had tapped right into my heart.
I’ve also really enjoyed the latest Vanity Fair, whose lives of rich and famous feature such gems of phrase as, “Robin was an ongoing source of sadness and guilt to Lady Annabel after she allowed him to enter the tigress’s enclosure at Aspinall’s.” As they say, you really couldn’t make this up.
January 11, 2008
Wonderful Things
There is turmoil at our house, as a new computer arrived (not for me). Therefore boxes of boxes are everywhere, and no one’s washed up from dinner. Also the phone was just fixed after three days of deadness, so there was catching up to do. The wind outside is blowing, and I’m afraid the house might fall down. But still, there are links.
Some wonderful DGR posts of late: discovering Grace Paley, on the Reading Cure. At the Guardian Books Blog, on enjoying arcane how-to books (which reminded me that I still have to-be-read my copy of How To Run Your Home Without Help). Jeffrey Eugenides on his new book (the anthology of love stories My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, which I cannot wait to read). And please, Chelsea C. vs. D. Huckabee.
And today’s G&M Facts and Arguments essay was amazing: “Nearly Lost at Sea”. About a love letter, returned to sender. “Inside the envelope was a typewritten note from the Returned Letter Section: ‘It is regretted that the enclosed air letter has been damaged by water in transit.” Handwritten across the note in blue ink was the explanation: “Salvaged mail from Comet crash off Elba.’ The love letter John had written had sunk to the bottom of the sea.”
Speaking of love letters: how brilliant is this, Four Letter Word: Original Love Letters. And of course, I knew as soon I glimpsed it: designed by Kelly Hill.
January 6, 2008
Reasons to be happy
Reasons to be happy– even if one’s holiday is rapidly drawing to a close– include cotton tights, sleep-filled nights, baths with bubbles, legs sans stubbles, magazines, movie screens, new bedclothes, h-nut cheerios, to-do lists done, friends and fun, books in the post, and he whom I like the very most. Plus California in thirty-four days. And….
…having just partaken in that “hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea”, of which, under ALL circumstances, “there are few hours in life more agreeable than .”
December 31, 2007
2007 I liked you
And not just because you were the year in which we drove across a European country with the top down.
Happy New Year and all the best for 2008.
