March 14, 2006

Interesting things

Interesting things are that yesterday I told Stuart about an idea I had for a story, and he informed me that I had just described the plot to “Phenomenon” starring John Travolta. And that on a radio show about insomnia, the host described Canada as “a nation of tossers.”

March 11, 2006

Voices

Heather Mallick in good form on South Dakota’s step back into the dark ages. Lionel Shriver weighs in with “The abortion row in the US is not about babies. It’s about power-mad grown-ups who despise each other”.

We are going to a 905 party but we don’t have any 905-wear.

Update It was a very 519 party actually and we had so much fun!

March 10, 2006

Early Afternoon March

Late Morning March

The air through the open window is the same
as when you breathed for what you don’t believe in now
and such anachronistic miracles are dizzying
separating you from local time.

I remember every spring that came before this
linked in the smells the city makes.
The armature of scattered selves
fastening you to year-to-year.

I wrote that poem in 2001, and it’s perhaps the only thing I wrote then that remains true to this day. We’re crawling out from under cover. Today I caught a whiff of rotting garbage, which was music to my nose because rotting garbage is unfrozen garbage. And now I am sitting in front of an open window, accompanied by shining sun and a cool wind. I had forgotten how wonderful March in Canada is. (Wind is a bit torrential. Must close window.) Britain is springtime all the time, and I loved that- green in January. Spring in Japan, as we know, came suddenly and April there is meteorological perfection. But spring in Canada- can’t be counted on, more a promise than an actual delivery. But oh what a promise. It’s almost worth it.

Today has been a bit brilliant, based upon the meeting I had this morning with Camilla Gibb. She’s the Writer in Residence at Massey College and on top of having written one of the best books I’ve read in ages, she was lovely and I got a lot out of our conversation.

What else? I really enjoyed The International Women’s Day In Pictures in The Globe. Fun Milestones in Pop Feminism. And introducing The Blooker Prize, which I am doing a seminar on next week how exciting. A golden age of British women’s writing indeed. Ali Smith’s The Accidental was extraordinarily unlike anything I’ve read before. Amazing. I’m reading The Collected Stories of Grace Paley, and Voices from Iran which is interesting but terribly written. And rereading The Elements of Style.

To lunch.

March 7, 2006

Feminism just won't die

Leah McLaren ought to take a card from Margaret Wente if she really wants to start provoking debate. Today, Wente’s article How the feminists betrayed feminism appears, and though it’s bound to please those who hate women and Muslims, and to annoy the likes of me, I think it’s a very important piece. She writes that Western women have it better than they ever have, and they are avoiding speaking out for women who truly need liberation- those oppressed by “head scarves, face veils, the chador, arranged marriages, polygamy, forced pregnancies, or female genital mutilation”. In a sense, she is absolutely right. Inevitably though, however…

First, look at the news- the latest woman murdered by her estranged husband or the abortion ban in South Dakota. All is not terribly well at home, so let’s not hang up our guns just yet.

Second, she is wrong to say that no one is watching out for women oppressed internationally. What about (off the top of my head) Sally Armstrong or Mavis Leno, both of whom have been speaking out about Afghan women since 1997- when the rest of the world was saying nothing about the brutal Taliban regime? Wente writes “Western values and institutions aren’t the problem. They’re the answer. We should be doing our best to spread them. Capitalism and globalization have done more to empower oppressed women of the world than all the NGOs on Earth. ” She is right, but it’s really easy to put these words in a column. Putting them into action is a different story. The US adventure is Iraq has proven that people don’t take too well to having values and institutions foisted upon them. Women don’t like being told that they are stupid, that their culture, rituals and traditions are archaic. Since reading Wente’s article, I’ve been thinking about “Snow” by Orhan Pamuk, “Sweetness in the Belly” by Camilla Gibb and “Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi. I think problems in this world would be more easily solved if people read more fiction. Fiction teaches empathy, understanding, context. From these books, I’ve learned that nothing is simple. Shock and awe doesn’t work. Bringing about positive change takes a long time, it’s about small steps. It comes through education. Though it’s hardly immediately satisfying, this the only route that really yields results. And it’s going on all the time.

March 7, 2006

Good China: One Day I'll make art from our pieces

I broke a plate on Friday night- the first such casualty of our marriage. It wasn’t a dinner plate or a bowl. I’d define it by what it was, but I don’t know the name for larger-than-sideplates plates. I didn’t throw it- it just sort of tumbled onto our ceramic tiles and then splintered into pieces that flew into the living room, down the stairs, and even inside the bedroom door. It was indeed a mighty crash. And I saved the pieces. One day when I am old and we have a wall, I’m going to make a mosaic out of everything we ever broke.

Now reading “The Accidental” by Ali Smith, which is written in a startlingly convincing precocious twelve year-old voice. This character likes to say “typical and ironically” and “substandard” but most of all she says “i.e”. As in, “I was going to the fridge i.e. I was hungry” or “He thinks he is so now i.e. he is completely embarrassing”. I thought it was an interesting figure of speech but then I told Stuart about it, and demonstrated it and now typically and ironically I can’t stop i.e. I am annoying. Mostly due to my substandard personality.

March 5, 2006

Weekend

Our weekend was fun, in that we spent Friday in the wonderful company of Natalie Bay (whose URL I entered incorrectly before), and then Saturday night with the Lui/Doerings and we got to see Walk The Line at the Varsity! It was wonderful, and I’ve spent the hours since lusting after Reese Witherspoon’s hair (not to mention Joaquin).

On cyberlibel. I find it odd how threatened people are by these “unsophisticated publishers”. A more sophisticated publisher urges us to boycott Google. He uses the old, “It’s the authors who will suffer most” line. Ha ha ha. An interview with Leah McLaren in The Star. She says that “she TRIES to provoke debate” which is “her job at a columnist. I fear she is confusing “debate” with “venomous wrath”. This article makes a case for literary imitation. On being a writer in Zimbabwe.

I am still absolutely adoring “Reading Lolita in Tehran” and plan to finish it in a hot bath this evening. I also baked an absolutely perfect lemon almond cake yesterday afternoon. From a different cookbook of course.

March 3, 2006

Oh.

I am far more disappointed than the preceding post would suggest. It is strange to so consciously do something wrong, and be surprised when it turns out badly.

March 3, 2006

The story of a batch of brownies

(or how to go terribly terribly wrong…)

It is always hard to tell where I go wrong when I am cooking or baking, mostly because there are so many opportunities for disaster to step in. First, I buy a UK edition of a cookbook because it’s the cheapest available online. I don’t think about what that means about measurements and temperatures. I don’t let that dissuade me from my project either. And then, on top of having to convert all my ingredients based on a probably very wrong estimation that 100 grams equals half a cup, I decide to break the recipe in half because a) it makes 48 brownies and b) my only cake tin is nowhere close to the size and proportions the recipe suggests. Another problem I just noticed is that I seem to think recipes “suggest” things rather than “demand” them. Anyway, after all the numbers madness, I decided to use the kind of sugar I have rather than caster sugar, to use chocolate chips rather than chocolate squares because they’re cheaper and poured in a tablespoon of salt rather than a teaspoon and had to scoop it out again. And picked up my flour cannister by its top and it nearly fell off, pouring flour behind my fridge. But I didn’t. And none of this is my attempt to become the Anti-Nigella, this crazed Bridget Jonesian wacky housewife (who is far too obsessed with archetypes from British popular culture). I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I just wanted to be a domestic goddess. Anyway, the brownies are in the oven. This should be interesting. Anyone want to do my washing up?

March 3, 2006

Night Falls

It’s strange that the sun goes down behind Ossington Avenue now. When we lived in Northwest England, it used to fall in the sea.

March 2, 2006

All aboard for Utrecht!

Today is exciting, because my new PenPal project begins. Inspired by the new book Between Friends: A Year in Letters, my fabulous friend Bronwyn Enright are going to start exchanging letters regularly. Each letter must be answered within ten days, and contain a print-based treat of some sort. I will write the first one tonight, and mail it tomorrow.

In further excitement, why not let’s go to Utrecht? The Guardian is all Miffy manic of late- naturally. There is a new Dick Bruna museum in Utrecht, and the second tallest building in the city has a seven foot pair of her ears attached to it. And today is something called World Book Day, which means that the Guardian Books section is all abuzzing. And I have received a book in the post today, and yesterday, and tomorrow will be sad when it proves to be bookless. Unless somebody has sent me a present?

I am now reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, and so far it’s wonderful. It’s strange to be learning about two very disconnected ideas (literature and Iranian history) at the same time. And still on Woolf in Ceylon, which is such a weird book. I am enjoying it, as I have been really interested in colonial history lately, but Woolf was Ondaatje’s excuse to write a travelogue. There are so many gaps in Woolf’s interest that Ondaatje tries to contextualise, and this reads awkwardly. As in, “I don’t know why Woolf was so uninterested in the flora and fauna of this particular town, which I will elaborate upon for the remainder of this chapter”. Or some such thing. I am also reading the poetry of PK Page, who is coming to our class on Monday. And further, Camilla Gibb is reading at Massey College next Wednesday. And I only have to wait until October for Margaret Drabble’s new novel!