September 15, 2005
A Personal Debt
In 1972, Margaret Drabble who I love wrote a book called “Virginia Woolf: A Personal Debt” which was limited to 110 copies. And tomorrow, I get to read copy 80 in the Woolf Collection at the EJ Pratt Library! No one can tell you that life isn’t exciting. And do the Guardian poetry workshop!
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!
September 11, 2005
Tomorrow
Really, say what you want about Russell Smith but I’ve enjoyed every one of his books that I’ve ever read. Currently in the final third of Muriella Pent and it’s wonderful. Otherwise, I made a fantastic spaghetti dinner Friday night and my future as a hostess is promising. And classes begin tomorrow.
September 7, 2005
Perks
Becky’s website is redesigned and you can see our Canadian wedding photos here! Today has been a marvelous day of schoolbook buying, as I managed to spend $50 of gift certificates I got as a wedding present, and get an out-of-print book used for $10. I also wrangled free cookies and juice, and Stuart and I had a little picnic at Hart House. To update the “Toronto is the best city to live in if you’re broke and looking for fun” file, we went to see the Fembots last night play a little free show at Soundscapes on College Street. They were ace, inevitable comparisons to the Jayhawks or Wilco but enough of their own. Their new CD is said to be excellent. A review of Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty”. She places her story in America, and I’m interested to see how she does that. I get a strong sense that (North) American writers really shouldn’t try to “write British”, and that the Brits themselves have more freedom to jump continents. My story takes place in England and I oft fear I don’t have the authority to carry it off altogether, though I did live there for nearly two years. There is a cultural gap however minute and it matters. Stuart keeps comparing everyone here to characters from an American Pie movie. Here, top ten books on Russia. Oh! Zadie is profiled, and discusses the novel as “an ethical enterprise”. I ran into a Professor today, and we talked about not only about the pain of so many books to be read, and the number that should be reread and how it’s never going to happen. Being a grad student has perks I never even imagined by the way.
September 6, 2005
Get back to where you once belonged
Nothing much changes on the UofT campus, and I have a part-time job at the library again. We had our “orientation” session this morning and classes start on Monday. The van finally did become available and we moved in Thursday night. Our apartment is absolutely gorgeous, and we really would be reluctant to leave it if the neighbourhood wasn’t so fantastic. All is really well.
August 31, 2005
A kind of holiday
We move tomorrow, and so who knows how long it will take before we have internet at home again. We are looking forward to going though, but there is plenty of organising to be done in the meantime. I am excited about opening boxes of stuff that’s been packed for over three years, and displaying things we have collected together over the last two years. Also excited about having closets and drawers, rare things when we lived in the Leo Palace. It’s going to be good.
Jonathan Freedman stretches things a bit with results worth reading. On the 8th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, he remembers the sweet dream of the 1990s, which, “viewed from today… look like a kind of holiday, a pause between two eras of anxiety and conflict. Just as Eric Hobsbawm defined the 19th century as stretching from 1789 to 1914, so we can take the same liberty: the 90s began with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and ended with the fall of the twin towers in 2001.”
August 29, 2005
The Wisdom of Jen Aniston
This is a blatant rip off of and not nearly as brilliant as “A Villanelle Composed Upon Jennifer Aniston’s Answers To Her May 2001 Vanity Fair Interview, With Catalina Island Glimmering In the Distance”, but something must be done about Aniston’s September 2005 Vanity Fair Interview. She has a tremendous ability to spew and suck drivel simultaneously, and she speaks like poems I wrote when I was twelve. So now, poetic excerpts of the 2005 interview for those of you who puked too soon and didn’t finish reading it. Believe me, it means nothing more in context.
****
i)
Seven very intense years together;
we taught each other a lot-
about healing, and about fun.
It was a beautiful, complicated relationship.
What we said was true-
as far as I knew.
We exited this relationship
as beautifully as we entered it.
ii)
The world was shocked
and I was shocked.
The sad thing, for me, is the way
it’s been reduced to a Hollywood cliche.
iii)
It was that thing about being a nurturer;
somewhere along the way
you sort of lose yourself.
You just don’t know when it happens.
It’s such an insidious thing,
you don’t really see where it started-
and where you ended.
There’s no one to blame
but yourself.
iv)
It’s sad
something coming to an end.
It cracks you open, in a way
it cracks you open to feeling.
When you try to avoid the pain
it creates greater pain.
I’m a human being
having a human experience.
I have to think there’s some reason
I have called this into my life.
I have to believe that-
otherwise it’s just cruel.
v)
I’m not a fortune teller;
I have no idea how it will play out. People say
“What are you going to do?”
I just don’t know.
I kind of love that
not knowing.
****
Read Lynn Crosbie’s take on the Interview, who believes Aniston “reveals what lies at the heart of women’s public demonstrations of personal grief. While public men tend to exhibit a panoply of vivid emotions when cuckolded, ranging from bleak despair to homicidal fury, with the exception of the prostrate Elizabeth Smart, women, hobbled by vanity and pride, are more given to follow the song-counsel of Melissa Manchester: “Don’t cry out loud/Just keep it inside, learn how to hide your feelings. . . .'”
August 28, 2005
Witness
I’ll admit to apprehension before my cousin’s wedding, due to some rather shameful wedding inadequacy issues. It’s not that my own wedding wasn’t brilliant in every way, and come on, I did have two. But it was no secret that their wedding would be far more elaborate and formal than ours had been, I knew how much work had been invested in it and I feared how my little homespun do would look in comparison. And wow, their wedding was incredible. They were married in a little white historic chapel in a conservation area near Jordan Ontario, in Niagara. Two enormous vases bursting with sunflowers stood at the alter, and the bride and groom were gorgeous as they walked down the aisle together to exchange their vows. The reception afterwards was held at the Inn on the Twenty, where we sipped (gulped) ice wine martinis and other fine beverages and feasted on delightful hors d’oeuvres. We entered the dining room for dinner, and were met with a view high atop the edge of a valley from windows which stretched along the entirety of one wall. Outside, black eyed susans grew into every shade of greenery, hills that rolled on and on and the vista was spread out before us like something absolutely magical. The meal was simply exquisite, and our table was marvelous company. After dinner and speeches, a band played fantastic music including an acoustic rendition of “You Shook Me All Night Long” and Stuart and I drank ourselves stupid and had to be driven home by my mother. We had a fabulous time with our cousins, and I was so pleased to be getting the best of family. There just aren’t enough happy occasions really. Not that there are so many sad ones, but there are too many ordinary days and I absolutely love weddings for bringing people together to celebrate nothing more than just love. And all stupid inadequacy was gone once I just started to enjoy myself, and appreciate how lucky I was to be there. Congratulations Alec and Jackie!
This summer I learned two things about being a wedding guest. First, what a great idea it is that everyone who attends a wedding does play a part in the ceremony, as a witness to the event, and therefore is obligated to support and nurture the couple’s relationship throughout their lives. I think a wedding is so much more meaningful when that is taken into account. Secondly, that as a guest your job throughout the wedding is to assure the bride that you and everyone you around is having enormous amounts of fun, because that’s probably all she really cares about.
