September 24, 2005
The limits of imagination
~The Western mind assumes that it can readily imagine anything. Its collective knowledge and experience have been fed by a millennium of exploration, global empires and scientific breakthroughs. Everything has been or can be reduced intellectually toa relative state. What is the North but a reflection of the South? A progress from hot to cold, from jungle to snow and ice, with, always, the West’s vision of itself at the centre~
~John Ralston Saul
September 24, 2005
Bookery dookery hick
Joan Didion, who is one of my favourite authors and my favourite writer of non-fiction full stop has an excerpt from her new book, The Year of Magical Thinking, about her response to her husband’s death. Her words are so powerful with minimal exertion, and this piece left me crying. A review of fabulous poet Alice Oswald’s new book. Fairy tales and AS Byatt here. Book news continues big. I am currently reading Women of the Raj by Margaret MacMillan, and we’re going to see her read at Hart House next week. And then of course, Word on the Street this Sunday! And Bronwyn, my best friend number thirteen, has been accepted to the University of London to study History of the Book.
The one-eared cat in the garden was anxious tonight.
September 23, 2005
Mrs. Brown
~One of these day Mrs. Brown will be caught. The capture of Mrs. Brown is the title of the next chapter in the history of literature; and let us prophesy again, that chapter will be one of the most important, the most illustrious, the most epoch-making of them all~
Virginia Woolf, 1923
In other news, the internet has returned home. Get ready for fun.
September 20, 2005
I refuse to jump out of airplanes
My spirit is alive with the joys of summer in mid-September. This week is better in every way than the last, and no animals have chased me lately in any of my dreams. Last night I was supposed to jump out of an airplane, but became obstinately principled about that- that I wouldn’t- and so my mother did instead, and really you can do with that what you will.
In my new class, there is a wonderful girl called Lindsay who owns Puddle Press and who seems to regard creativity as a lifestyle. She makes clothes into poems and I think would understand why I enjoy writing poetry about the Mitfords. Anyway, she is coordinating The Toronto Small Press Book Fair, and I am signing up Pickle Me This. It’s October 29th, and will be incentive to make the haiku book happen, and get the word out about the book of poems about knitting because I think there is (an albeit selective) group of people who would be really interested in that. Anyway, we’ve got our artistic visionary in search of a logo, and now the Japanese text is scanned and I have to do only a couple of more things with the lay-out. Now we get to start thinking about paper! (The things that thrill me are getting more and more dorky).
In other news, my story was workshopped yesterday. It was the first chapter of my novel and the feedback was really inspiring. I know there is something lacking there and it’s nice to be told (asked?) what to do with it. The dynamic yesterday was cool and I am entirely enamoured with school, as my Virginia Woolf class today was nothing short of sensational. With relief, I realise, I remember how to go to school! (In fact perhaps I do it better now).
(Yesterday Stuart worked at RMH. He left before me, and I wrote “I love you!” on our white board. Being apart is weird. Really, since we’ve met we’ve had more or less the same hours, and lived the same life and then this summer we were joined at the hip (blissfully) for over four months, and now days apart seem tragic. Anyway, I came home to an empty house, but he’d been in and written “I love you too” below, and it was incredibly touching. When you’re together all the time, there is less physical evidence of your relationship. It was really nice.)
OH GOD! Peggy Mitchell is back on Eastenders!! I hope my mother-in-law is recording this.
I now have a date with Souvankham Thammavongsa.
September 19, 2005
Kansas
I am quite intrigued. I am writing a story, part of which takes place in Kansas, which is dangerous as I’ve never been there, and know nothing about it. I imagined a town called Alden. I wasn’t sure and did an internet search and am a bit spooked to find there is one in Kansas. With a population under 200 of course.
September 19, 2005
Up the anti
25 years of Degrassi Street. Lionel Shriver has had it with being “the anti-mom”. So perhaps she could stop writing articles about it? I went to see Rebecca Godfrey give an excellent talk in the UofT bookstore reading series on Friday. Her book seems to combine literature with true crime, and I can definitely do that genre.
September 18, 2005
Autograph
“Virginia Woolf: A Personal Debt” was wonderful, and I read it quite happily and then, when I was finished, flipped over the final page and there, where I almost hadn’t even looked, was Margaret Drabble’s autograph, thirty-two years-old but there all the same.
Tonight we are having goulash.
September 18, 2005
For One Year
We hollowed out a home
in that tough and tiny core
one room and we fixed it
with a window a door
a ladder we climbed to our bed
and in the rafters there
we slept like bats alive
and hanging for one year.
After there were seven boxes
that we sent home by sea
a hoard that we acquired
almost accidentally
unnoticed stuff that lived with us
filling space we didn’t use
they slipped inside so quietly
with the dust upon our shoes.
That cosy world we curled within
we came to need no more
it felt unnecessary
to have more walls than four
elbow rooms and breathing rooms
overblown and obsolete
just that little room for me and you
to dine live love and sleep.
September 13, 2005
Remembering the Midlands
I deeply frightened of and disturbed about graduate school. Any finding my workshop course very difficult, trying to contort into positions I’m not accustomed to. It will be good for me eventually. And so in escape, Guardian Top Ten Books about my former home, The Midlands- though not exclusively the East Midlands (which everyone knows is the best bit). Now I want to read “The Road to Lichfield” as I fell in love with Penelope Lively this summer via Moontiger. I still love Gloria Steinem. I have to go as there are line-ups for the computer, and I have to find some OSAP.
September 12, 2005
Poems About Knitting
There is exciting news at Pickle Me This Press, as plans are underway for a book of poems about knitting. It will be our second project, and we will be calling for submissions shortly. The haiku book is also coming along well, and we hope to have 30 copies published by the end of October.
I had my first class this morning, and the workshop meets for the first time this afternoon. All is well, and I had my first shift at the library this morning, which felt like a step back in time (but not entirely for worse- it’s the nicest job I’ve ever had).
And I am going to see both Zadie Smith and Joan Didion at Harbourfront readings this autumn!
