May 14, 2010

Rebecca Rosenblum's wonderful new website

My friend Rebecca Rosenblum has a wonderful new website, (which my husband made for her!). You should take a trip over and welcome Rebecca to her new home. Congratulations to Rebecca and Stuart!

May 13, 2010

C'mon Papa by Ryan Knighton

There is no better metaphor than blindness to describe new parenthood. Nobody knows what they’re getting into, nobody ever really sees the baby properly in the ultrasound, nobody expects what will happen when the baby arrives. Even those of us blessed with good vision have had trouble recognizing our newborns once they’re out in the world. And, um, even those of us with good vision have stuffed soothers into eye sockets and smashed fragile skulls into door frames. Parenthood is the kind of thing you have to pick up on the job, and there’s plenty of stumbling along the way.

All this is to underline the universality of Ryan Knighton’s experience as outlined in his memoir C’mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark. But of course to consider blindness as a metaphor is only part of the story. Knighton has been losing his vision since being diagnosed with a dengerative eye condition at 18, and he is now blind. What vision he has left has enabled him to see his daughter only in glimpses, as a blur. His story of fatherhood and blindness considers little details the rest of us take for granted– venturing out with the baby carrier when you can’t see where you’re going (though he should know that many of us have also walked around with our children facing out and covered in puke, and not realized it), how to find a silent toddler who has toddled away, how to change a diaper when you’re guided by touch, how to move around in the dark so the light doesn’t wake the baby (and it is perhaps here only that Knighton would have an advantage).

Knighton writes about life with a newborn better than any other parent-memoirist I’ve encountered. (The horror! The horror! Fear of colic! Fact of gas!) This might be because he’s the first father parent-memoirist I’ve ever encountered– I think most mothers get too lost in the murky swim of things to remember it all as pointedly as Knighton does, and even if they do, those memories fall victim to amnesia. What he gets really well, however, is how sound factors into early parenthood: the incessant newborn cries, the claustrophobia of being stuck in a car with a shrieking infant, that eerie silence once the baby is asleep and all ears are tuned listening to… nothing. Or was that a rustle? And oh shit, the baby’s up again. You go.

And did you know that baby monitors were invented out of the paranoia of the Lindbergh baby case? Um, and that if your baby woke up you’d probably hear it anyway, even without an electronic device?

Knighton’s book has a bit of the “There are the notes./ Now where is the money?” about it, which is refreshingly honest and illuminating. He describes the pressure to write, to produce, in order to support his family, which is probably common of most fathers and not something mothers would experience to the same extent. Because “Provider” is the one role that is defined for a father, the one job for which he’s not just a bystander. Knighton’s helplessness in supporting his wife in other tasks would not be limited just to a blind man– during pregnancy, labour and the newborn days, fathers are very much outside of the experience no matter how much they’re supportive, and Knighton does a fine job of describing what that helplessness feels like. So he does what he can do– he writes and writes.

Ryan Knighton belongs to that generation that believes it invented parenting (though it kind of did, grammatically speaking. was “parent” even a verb before that?) but as a father and as a blind man, he has a unique perspective to add to the mommy/daddy canon. His book is hilarious and beautiful, and a testament to love and to family.

May 12, 2010

So what is to be done with phone boxes

From “The Person in the Phone Booth” by David Trotter. London Review of Books 32.2:

“So what is to be done with phone boxes? Or, increasingly, without them? Some will no doubt survive, merged imperceptibly into the general fuzz of urban information. Others may enjoy an afterlife as tourist attraction, temporary internet office or excuse for performance art. The rest will vanish. But the question these cubicles have posed for more than a century is as pertinent now as it ever was. How are we to go on being private in public? The lesson to be learned from the history of the phone box is that the construction of privacy in public by physical rather than social and cultural means always tends to excess. The physical structure (box, booth or kiosk) brought about experiences which, although they did not concern telecommunication, became indelibly associated with it. The lesson to be learned from the representation of the phone box in folk memory, and in literature and film, is that we remember the piss and the phlegm, and the hauntedness. There is knowledge in that remembering, knowledge we wouldn’t otherwise have, of what ordinary coexistence in dense populations might actually amount to. We’ll miss out on a lot of inadvertency, both good and bad, if we give up constructing privacy in public by physical means. We may find ourselves in a world in which the boundary between public and private is either non-existent or policed by surveillance and legal constraint. That doesn’t sound to me like much of an improvement on those anxious, savoury minutes spent locked and lit up in the toxic aquarium.”

May 12, 2010

Books in Motion #5

Spotted westbound on the Bloor-Danforth line (as I was on my way to the first meeting of my brand new book club, The Vicious Circle [which is setting up to be the best book club ever]), a white male approximately forty years old. Hairline slightly receding, drinking a can of Pepsi, wearing a thick gold wedding band. His handsome-enough appearance juxtaposed with flood pants, black socks, bad running shoes and a windbreaker. He was reading Shakespeare’s The Tempest, on-loan from the Toronto Public Library.

May 10, 2010

Spam in the post!

Today was amazing because I received spam in the post! A letter from Patricia Besupa Zatal, manager of a South African prime bank. She wants me to handle some kind of complicated financial transaction and feels comfortable dealing with me having already gone through my impressive profile by my country’s Chamber of Commerce. So exciting. They’re even going to give me a cut. So basically, I’m thinking about retirement.

It’s all very 1992– has Patricia never heard of the internet? What they had to have spent on stamps boggles the mind, and I can’t help worrying they might not make it back. I will also keep the stamp– South African stamps mailed my con-artists don’t arrive every day. And I’ve hung the letter on the fridge. I’m very honoured to be a part of this project and excited to see what happens going forward.

May 9, 2010

Patient Frame by Steven Heighton and Joy is So Exhausting by Susan Holbrook

Amazing, I think, that the range of a single volume of poetry by Steven Heighton can put me in mind of a book like The Essential P.K. Page, which encompassed an entire career.  Patient Frame is quite different from other poetry collections I’ve been reading lately, lacking an essential narrative. And while I do find narrative-driven collections immensely appealing, the various nature of Heighton’s book is fascinating to consider, a poetic lumber room packed with corners to explore.

It’s a room that’s remarkably well-organized however, complete with a key as an appendix that places these poems within their wider contexts. Placing Officer Hugh Thompson, an American helicopter pilot whose heroic actions ended the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam; Roy Bryant, one of the men convicted for the murder of 14 year-old Emmet Till; Toussaint Laverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution. The poems reference music by Alison Krauss, the Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones, and other figures including poet Richard Outram, and Edith Swan-Neck, mistress of a Saxon king. (This poem is followed by another called “Reading  The Saxon Chronicles in a Field Hospital, Kandahar”.)

Some of the poems are personal, addresses to family and friends (most of these contained in the section Elegies & Other Love Songs). “Home Movies, 8mm” finishes with the wonderful line, “If I could start over, I would stare and stare”. Fourteen Approximations comprises Heighton’s translations, including “Fragments of a Voyage”, constructed of pieces from five sea-faring texts. This is a fitting collection by a man whose other works include novels, short stories and other poetry collections. His range seems unlimited– everything he touches turns to story.

***

Susan Holbrook’s collection Joy is So Exhausting is bursting, exuberant. Holbrook engages with the stuff of the world as Heighton does, but in a way that is more immediate, or perhaps just more akin to his translations. Because her work is very often also translation– her poem “Insert” takes directions for inserting a tampon, playing with the language to make clear the banal ridiculousness of the original source, and also to invest ordinary words with unexpected meaning– “Get into a comfortable Poseidon. Most wimples either sit on the Toyota/ with knick-knacks apart, squat slightly with knitting needles bent, or/ stand with one football on the town clerk seep.”

“Poetsmart” translates a pet training manual: “Using positive reinforcement methods, you’ll learn how to prevent/ unwanted behaviour and establish a bond with your poet.” A poem called “Constance Rooke, Author of The Clear Path: A Guide to Writing Essays, and Home-Inspection Consultant Brad Labute Converse, with Rude Interruptions by Walt Whitman” is exactly what it says on the tin. Holbrook has made sudoko with words. She writes a love letter to chocolate. “Textbook Case: Questions to Consider Regarding Our Last Phone Call” contains the line “11. Do you think that I will ever forgive you? Cite evidence from the conversation to support your answer.”

Holbrook’s poetry is bounding, raucous and fun(ny). Ending on an incredibly touching note with the twelve page poem “Nursery”, which traces a mother’s train of thought as she feeds from side to side. This epic poem is a microcosm (can an epic be a microcosm though? But Holbrook has made me think that anything is possible) of the entire book, bending words and perspectives, irreverent and wonderful.

“Left: Now that you’ve started solids, applesauce in your eyebrows, I’ve become a course. Right: Spider on the plastic space mobile, walking the perimeter of the yellow crescent moon. Left: Dollop. Right: Now it’s on Saturn’s rights; if it fell off, it would drop right into my mouth. Left: I take 2%, you take hindmilk. Right: Fingers shrimp their way through the afghan holes. Left: I have hindmilk.”

***

It is worth nothing that both these collections’ bottom right-hand corners have been well-chewed. Initially, this annoyed me, but I decided it shows that they’ve been lived in.

May 9, 2010

I'd rather lick a garbage truck

It was a year ago that we discovered just how immovable our child was, though I wouldn’t comprehend just how much until she was born. And now she’s eleven and a half months old, we’re planning her first birthday party. She sleeps all night almost every night, which makes me feel that wonder and amazement you’re supposed to feel when someone hands you your newborn for the first time. That this enormous blessing could be mine. (Other mothers say, “We’ll see how long it lasts” and then I want to hit them.)

I had a splendid Mother’s Day today, beginning with six and a half hours sleep (and it’s only that because I stay up far too late), then a lie-in, breakfast in bed (croissants! yoghurt! fresh fruit! tea!). Harriet was thoughtful enough to buy me Darwin’s Bastards (which I didn’t think I’d want to read when I first heard about it, but the more I read about it, the more I longed to). This afternoon, my own wonderful mom came into the city and accompanied us to afternoon tea at The Four Seasons. Scones were so fresh. Harriet was an angel, and the staff were so nice to us even though they had to vaccuum grapes and cheddar cheese off the floor after we had gone. (Interestingly, they remembered Harriet from our last tea in February. I am not sure whether that’s a good thing or not.)

Also, asparagus is in season, so all is well.

In really stange news, my maternity leave ended on Friday. In an alternate universe, I’d be going back to work on Monday, but as working full time and being a mother would cut into my tea breaks, we decided it would be best if I stayed home for a while. Also, my husband begins a new day job in two weeks, leaving his Bay Street office behind for work at a non-profit. I’m very proud of him, excited for him, and relieved that if I get to be home all day, at least he’ll be working somewhere that makes him happy.

And I do mean that, “get to be home all day”. Can I just say that staying home with a small baby sucks like nothing else in the world? I’d rather work in a glass chewing factory or lick a garbage truck. Staying home with a one-year-old, however, is pretty brilliant and gets better all the time. It’s also a great excuse to spend sunny afternoons outside in the park. Even though her naps are often fleeting, I get to curl up on the couch with a book and a cup of tea. When Harriet is awake, we hang out together. She is beginning to show her understanding of language in ways that fascinate me, we can share jokes, she is a pretty happy kid and very affectionate, and I really do like her company. So I feel lucky that we get to continue our days together, that spring is here and summer is coming, and I look forward to exercising feats of financial acrobatics so that our little family can get away with having our income cut in half. (There may have to be less afternoon tea. This is sad).

Anyway, all of this is to say that I am grateful for my good fortune (especially the asparagus) and that I’m very happy that I’m a mother today.

May 6, 2010

Which means I've turned into the dad from Finnie Walsh

I am now reading Bugs and the Victorians, which is non-fiction, which means that I’ve turned into the dad from Finnie Walsh when he compulsively read the entirety of National Geographic and ‘began to start all his sentences with, “Did you know…” Invariably the sentence would end with an obscure fact somewhere between very and not at all interesting… Whether or not you knew, and whether or not you even answered, his response was always the same: “How about that! Who would have guessed?”

Hopefully this won’t reach the same level as with my Guns, Germs and Steel reading from a few years back. I’ve never been more boring, but then, did you even know that zebras are incapable of domestication, and the impact of this upon African agriculture in contrast to places that had the horse?

May 6, 2010

Horizontal Parenting Vol. 2: Sleep Solutions

My self-published book (via Lulu.com) about my parenting method Horizontal Parenting (TM) was a huge success when it came out last Fall. Built around the tenets of The Five Ls, it showed parents how to care for their babies while exerting the bare mininum of energy (and fitting in a little yoga at the same time).

Well, now I’m pleased to be taking my Parenting expertise one step further with the latest volume in the Horizontal Parenting series, Sleep Solutions.

How to get your baby to sleep through the night? It’s simple, with these three easy steps. It’s called (somewhat confusingly) the TWO process.

1) T is for Take it easy and do whatever you can to remain horizontal at night. When your baby cries, bring her to bed and feed her. Sometimes she will eat all night. Don’t worry about this, even though books will tell you it’s causing tooth decay and that you will be feeding her this way well into her college years. If you happen to wake up again, stick her back in her crib. At some point, she will refuse to be put back in the crib. So just keep her in bed with you. Buy a bedrail so she doesn’t fall out. Don’t feel too bad about being a dairy bar. The alternative is being upright, which makes you want to kill yourself at three in the morning.

2) W is for Wait. This is the hard part. Dr. Sears (as we all know) had a child who did not sleep through the night until he was three. When your baby only sleeps for two hours at a time, the prospect of “through the night” is unfathomable, and you will think everybody whose baby does this is lying. People will propose “sleep training”, but you disagree with this on a philosophical level, because it is impossible to sleep train in a horizontal position. Cry It Out is reprehensible, because how could a mom expect to sleep through that racket? Sleep training requires will and discipline, and horizontal parents are lacking in both of these departments. So you wait. And it’s hard, and it sucks, and sleeping with the baby beside you has done something weird to the alignment of your shoulder. But at least you’re lying down. And then…

3) O is for One day it will happen. Baby will sleep through the night. WITHOUT YOU DOING ANYTHING TO PROMOTE IT (though it may have something to do with her learning to crawl and finally deciding to roll over onto her tummy to sleep). She won’t do it every night, but she’ll do it most nights, and she’ll also decide she doesn’t like sleeping in your bed because the cramped space prevents her from doing her 360 degree spin all night long. You will be reluctant to announce this too widely for fear of jinxing it, but now that it’s been a month, you think you really might be onto something. That your child wasn’t necessarily not sleeping properly because you’d failed to teach her good sleep habits, and maybe you don’t even control everything in the universe after all.

In all my sleep agony over the past eleven months, I wanted to read somewhere that the problem would fix itself without me bothering to do anything about it. Because, of course, I am a horizontal parent and therefore profoundly lazy (particularly come the middle of the night). But to all you other lie-abouts out there, let me send you a message of hope– Take it easy. Wait. One day.

Everything is going to be okay.

May 6, 2010

"Lousy Explorers" by Laisha Rosnau

Lousy Explorers

The river that once slid through this valley
was damned on its course to the sea, swollen
and put to work. Bloated wood– once banged
together to form a house– still floats up;
rusted nails hold nothing down. Trees shift.
shake their roots free, shoot to split the surface.
Imagine a dislodged pine taking the aim
at the underside of sky.

Most things on the ground have long been discovered.
The words pristine and ruin the doubled-sided blade
of a paddle that slices us forward, forward.
Rhetoric is slammed down with pints
in the lodge each night, loggers and biologists
both punch-drunk with it. Under water and in the sky
there are things unanswered– fathoms deep, dark matter.
People are working on it as we speak.

There are those of us who try to go to these places
in our minds. Lousy explorers, we make a mess
of things, strip and exploit, squint blindly at stars,
block what should flow. When feeling lucky or foolish,
we let our guns go off, howl at the echo on the lake,
then fancy our largesse, our heavy grace, and sink
deeper, dream pines loosened, quickly rising.