April 16, 2006
Clockal Embellishments
Pleasant things I saw tonight as I bicycled to the library: the children next door having an Easter Egg hunt, two little girls in dresses wearing rabbit ears, daffodils, and a couple on a tandem bike. Oh, and the sunshine.
Muriel Spark has died. Like Maud Newton, I’ve only read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Finishing School, but will be taking up The Comforters upon recommendation.
Now reading An Audience of Chairs by Joan Clark. It’s pretty wonderful. And my 51st book of the year.
April 14, 2006
I get a visit from a midge
Zoe Williams quite rightly on misogynistic slang. Although she admits that “It is incredibly unfashionable to object to language and ideas that denigrate women. I’m almost embarrassed; I feel like I’ve left the house wearing something fluorescent.” The marketability of anti-feminism is really quite phenomenal. Incredibly, the Environment Minister censors an Environment Canada scientist from talking about his novel on climate change- though perhaps the problem was his attempt to use his official position to market a work of fiction, but it’s disturbing all the same.
And I must get back to my essay, but first a story. I love it when school floods over into real life. Last night I was writing my paragraph about Annie Dillard’s affinity with insects, and the various way she connects them to writers in The Writing Life. And then suddenly, a tiny insect landed on my book. Something midge-like, as if it had just materialized from Tinker Creek. This is odd, as I really haven’t seen an insect anywhere for about six months. I greeted it familiarly, and watched it flap its wings for a while. There was no “Yeah, flap flap, isn’t it?” but still, for an instant, there was indeed “a glimmer of companionship”. And then it flew away. And perhaps the point of this after all is that we need new window screens, but I am glad it happened all the same.
Now for Easter Weekend. For a secular fundamentalist such as myself, Easter Weekend involves chocolate (but not chocolate bunnies if I can help it, because of Miffy) and visits with family. And we’ve got plenty of family coming round in the next few days- in-laws and… outlaws (?)
And please, run, don’t walk, down to your local book dispenser and pick up Mean Boy by Lynn Coady. If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class, you will especially find particularly hilarious. It’s hilarious and a bit heartwrenching. And who doesn’t like having their heart wrenched?
And now back to the feral nature of the written word.
April 12, 2006
News
On a new book by the “morally flexible” Bonnie Fuller (who I sort of feel like I grew up with, even though she’s 49).On politicians who write. The youngest Pointer Sister has died, which is sad, but I’m not sure why it’s front page news. Sock Monkey arrives in China. Poetry in motion. And bizarrely, movies that smell.
April 12, 2006
On Grace Paley
I want to write a bit about Grace Paley. I first learned of her through this post at Maud Newton. She came into my life next at the beginning of March when I was shelving her Collected Stories at the library. I took the book home with me that night (what a wonderful job it is to be handed books all day, I must say) and absolutely fell in love with her work, and, through it, with the short story itself. And now I’ve finished her collected non-fiction book Just As I Thought, which has left me awfully enamoured of the woman herself. After fifty years as a anti-war, pacifist, anti-nuke, feminist activist, I think Grace Paley would be quite right to look back on it all and say, “I was right all along.” Though what she was right about, I don’t imagine would bring her great joy.
In Just As I Thought, Paley recounts her years in the peace movement, the women’s movement, and also as a writer. “The Illegal Days” is an excellent piece on abortion. But my favourite piece in the book was “Imagining the Present”, in which she writes about imagination in the same way that so many writers look upon the novel as a means to empathy. Paley sees imagination as a tremendously potent force. She writes:
First of all, we need our imaginations to understand what is happening to other people around us, to try to understand the lives of others. I know there’s a certain political view that you mustn’t write about anyone except yourself, your own exact people. Of course it’s very hard for anyone to know who their exact people are, anyway. But that’s limiting. The idea of writing from the head or from the view or the experience of other people, of another life, or even of just the people across the street or next door, is probably one of the most important acts of the imagination that you can try and that can be useful to the world.
I am so glad I read this book.
April 12, 2006
Yea!
Pickle Me This has finally become gainfully employed for the summer, at neither call centre nor kiosk, though it’s not yet confirmed whether the walls will touch the ceiling. After sleeping poorly for two months worrying about this, the news comes as a great relief. In other good news, Essay 1 of 2 is three and a half pages underway, and I completed a short story last night. There is a mug of lemon tea on my desk. And therefore, today has already been a very good day- and it’s not even noon yet.
April 11, 2006
Creepy Japanese Kewpie Doll Spaghetti Ad
The internet is marvelous. I was trying to find the website for The Walrus magazine, and found this instead. I’ve not looked at any content beyond the main page here. But I couldn’t believe what I found! When we used to do our grocery shopping at MaxValu in Japan, this would constantly play on a loop in a display for spaghetti. It is the scariest pasta commericial I have ever seen, and to this day can’t make any sense of it. Take a look, and discover for yourself that Japan is truly the strangest place in the world.
April 10, 2006
More for your pleasure…
Hear Beverly Cleary on NPR! (I was referred by Maud Newton.) I am also obsessed with the website for The Tea Guild in the UK. Today I pulled rank and got my mitts on “Mean Boy” by Lynn Coady before it even got on the shelf. Of course it now joins by ToBeRead pile. Watch this space. Intriguing question of the day: has Bloomsbury misjudged Gary Barlow’s currency? In fun trivia news, courtesy of “Six Words…” by Katherine Barber, the origin of the world “rhubarb”- something like “rhu” was an old name for the Volga, and “barb” as in “barbarian”, for this fine fruit (it is a fruit?) began in the land where dragons be!
April 9, 2006
Spending April 8th
Nearing the end of a fun weekend, which include dinner party hilarity at the most craftastic Ms. Smith’s, and Sunday brunch with Carolyn and her man Steve. In between, I spent April 8th. April 8th is my favourite day of the year, mainly because I like the “eh” sound repeated in the date, and I like the idea of a favourite day for no apparent reason. I spent it reading, appropriately. I finished The Selfish Gene, which was interesting and I am glad I read it, though one doesn’t read The Selfish Gene for the reasons I most love to read, so the task was arduous at times. I also read Margaret Atwood’s The Tent, which I loved. And began Just As I Thought, a book of non-fiction by Grace Paley which has superglue on its cover. We played a marvelous game of Scrabble last night, and features included “vulva” and “fetid”. It was tremendously fun, and now I must devote my time to essay writing. Which, clearly, I am not doing.
The Streets (who I love) have helped British pop reclaim its accent, according to this piece at CBC.ca.
April 9, 2006
Hanami Time
Though this might not be news to anyone else, April 9 2005 was a year ago. 
Our ability to move so brazenly through space and time is extraordinary.
