June 30, 2008
Additional Dimensions
This photograph is notable for three reasons, not least of which is that I captured a spectre partway up the staircase. Second, to brag that we have finally painted our hall, and how yellow changes everything. (Goodbye eggplant brown!) But also to talk about the very fact of stairs, how they expand one’s residential experience, the access they allow to additional dimensions. People who’ve grown up in bungalows no doubt feel quite different, but real homes, to me, have always required two stories. And that I have two floors in my own home now has been an arrival of sorts. We’re still a ways away from homeownership, but stairs in the meantime are more than consolation. And not just because we’ve joined the league of multi-story apartment dwellers such as Diff’rent Strokes.
June 27, 2008
Hunger eats civilization
“[It’s] the same around the world. What look like ethnic problems are really economic issues. If you look closely at these conflicts around the world, they come down to poverty and economics and resources. The more poverty, the worse the war. Hunger eats civilization. The West is not hungry; that’s why they can say they’re so civilized. Civilization is the biggest bluff!” –Marjane Satrapi, The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers
June 26, 2008
Poem in the Post
Kawaii. Today in the post was a “Hello Kitty Everywhere! Haiku Postcard” from my sister. Haiku as follows:
Peeking through the soil,
The flowers shyly emerge.
I am their first friend.
June 26, 2008
Worthwhile
You’ll have to buy the magazine, but do check out Guy Gavriel Kay’s “Summertime When the Visigoths Go Pillaging” in the July/August issue of The Walrus. I’d quote the whole thing, it’s that lovely, but I’ll settle for, “…I suspect we all have inward links between some books and where we were when we escaped into them. Everyone knows the memory links to scents or the pop songs of teenage summers, but I suspect if we reach back and in, we’ll find many of the books of our lives to be vividly time and place specific too.” Indeed.
My friend Lauren Kirshner has started blogging, and her posts demonstrate her immense talents. (She’s got a book Where We Have to Go being published by McClelland and Stewart in the spring). Kate Sutherland’s post post on Anne of Green Gables at 100 (to the day) is fabulous, quoting from Montgomery’s journal entry the day her book came: “There in my hand lay the material realization of all the dreams and hopes and ambitions and struggles of my whole conscious existence—my first book!” Fine Lines (my favourite diversion) is going to become a book! And a profile of Jhumpa Lahiri.
I also went to the ROM this weekend. Their exhibit “Out from Under: Disability, History, and Things to Remember” is extraordinary (and on until July 13).
June 26, 2008
A Perfect Match
We don’t talk fashion much, here at Pickle Me This, except when its bookish. But then how bookish is this, to find myself today wearing a dress that was perfectly coordinated with my reading material? I don’t think even cool people have started doing this yet. Or perhaps that they haven’t is the fact that makes them cool…
June 24, 2008
Bookish Happenings
I visited This Ain’t the Rosedale Public Library this weekend at their new location in Kensington Market. Which was my first time at This Ain’t… altogether, actually, so I’ve nothing to compare it to, but I was impressed. A great selection of journals and magazines, and shelves and shelves of bookish spines. I bought Girls Fall Down by Maggie Hellwig, because all the reviews I’ve read have intrigued me, and because I love the quality of Coach House books.
In other bookish news, I am beyond excited to discover that my favourite poet has a new book forthcoming: Jennica Harper’s What It Feels Like For a Girl is out in September by Anvil Press.
June 24, 2008
Found
Found today in a box by the side of the road: A Recipe for Bees by Gail Anderson-Dargatz and The Tiger in the Tiger Pit by Janette Turner Hospital.
Claimed.
June 24, 2008
Club Hand
I’ve been over-indulging in all my favourite pleasures of late (i.e. train travel, strawberries and sugar), but then I’ve got a birthday upcoming. So it was for this reason then that Stuart and I partook in Afternoon Tea at the Four Seasons this Sunday– which is my absolute favourite thing in the entire world. Accompanied by Bronwyn and her husband Alex, and it was perfect from start to finish, the weather complementing the sun-dresses we’d planned to wear all along. The tiny sandwiches delicious, tiny cakes delectable, the scones brilliantly fresh and sided with copious jam and cream, and yeah, the tea was good too. Overwhelming always to be in the midst of my favourite thing in the world, but I survived. It was absolutely wonderful.
Disturbing, however, was the revelation that my pinkie finger doesn’t work. As I don’t do most things properly (even those I love best), I’d never made a point of holding my teacup like the Queen does (or her friends), but I was devastated to realize that I physically can’t. My pinkie doesn’t go that way, and it doesn’t even when I’m not holding my cup, and then everybody started calling me “Club Hand”. They said I had fingers that were toes. Which is better than some people I know who’ve got toes that are actually fingers, but I’m not naming names…
June 24, 2008
The world is more wonderful
“The world is more wonderful than any of us have dared to guess, as all great poets have been telling us since the invention of poetry. To discover these truths, we don’t need to scale Mount Everest or white-water raft the Colorado or take up skydiving. We need only to go for walks.” –Sharon Butala, The Perfection of the Morning
June 24, 2008
Fun with Ichigo
For the second year in a row I’ve found my bookish pursuits in line with the season. It was almost a year ago that I first read Animal Vegetable Miracle, and I’m now reading The Perfection of the Morning, having finished the mesmerizing Prodigal Summer just before it. Both books inspiring a yearning to get closer to the earth, and so I did when any earth loving city dweller does for such a connection in the month of June–I ventured out past the suburbs.
Around our house June is one of the best times, full to bursting with fun and fetes, the sunshine and the solstice, and then the strawberries. I don’t have faith in a lot of things, but the very fact that delight manages to grow itself on trees (or at least bushes) suggests to me the world’s inherent goodness. The amazing abundance of summer time and sweet things, and all of this is well celebrated with a trip to the strawberry patch.
I went on Saturday with our friends Carolyn and Steve, and proceed to pick far too much out of fear of not enough. It was a gorgeous afternoon, well-spent toiling in the fields in suburban fashion. Ten litres I picked, an entire bucket and more, and I also acquired some new freckles and aches in my old lady knees.
Afterwards we came back to my house and the toiling continued (for a woman’s work is never done, moan moan, but of course, as usual, I did my suffering in silence). Carolyn and I made batches and batches of jam (albeit freezer jam, as our preserving ambitions still have some way to go). We used an obscene amount of sugar, and then ran out of sugar and had to go buy some more.
Soon the fridge was full of jammy delights the kitchen resembling a strawberry explosion. 
Dripping down the cupboard doors, staining counter tops, a couple of grubby finger prints up and down the telephone. Piles and piles of dirty dishes and utensils, and then, for fear of not having dirtied absolutely everything (and because it is one of my favourite things to do), I baked two strawberry pies. One for eating that evening (and it was delicious), the other put away in the freezer for a while. I intend to do as much with every fresh fruit appearing all summer long, and then come winter have a defrostable treasure trove of summer fruit goodness.
