February 25, 2022

Signs of Hope

I am devastated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, by the toppling of our world order, and while my mental health is reeling, I am buoyed by how people all over the world, leaders and ordinary citizens, particularly within Russia itself, are standing in defiance of violence and tyranny, standing FOR democracy and freedom (which in this case actually means something, for once). We are all we have, and it’s so very precious, and it’s everything. Desperate for signs of hope tonight, I found this one newly installed on Brunswick south of Bloor, and it meant a lot to me. Sending love to wherever you are. And let’s abolish nuclear weapons so nobody else ever has to be this afraid again.

More:

• On Saturday February 26, I’m walking 5km to raise funds for my neighbours at the Fort York Food Bank as part of the Coldest Night of the Year fundraiser—it’s not too late to contribute if you’re able. You can donate here, and thank you!
• Did you know that I’m one of the jurors for the 2022 Kobzar Book Awards, which celebrates excellent books with a tangible connection to Ukrainian-Canadian culture? Learn more about the shortlist. The award will be presented on March 24.

February 25, 2022

The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich

“Even one person of a certain magnetism in this time can seize the energy and cause a maelstrom to form around each sentence they utter. One person can create a giant hurricane of unreality that feels like reality.

‘That’s what’s happening,’ she said. ‘Just look around.’

I didn’t have to. I felt like I could see everything—hatred valor, cruelty, mercy. It was all over the news and in the hospitals and all over me. Watching and waiting…had turned me inside out.”

I loved this extraordinary novel so completely, The Sentence a fiction made up of all kinds of pieces from the world, its characters including its author, Louise Erdrich herself, who flits in and out of the text, and with Birchbark Books, the independent bookshop Erdrich owns in Minneapolis, the backdrop for much of the story.

Set between November 2019 and November 2020, the novel’s protagonist is Tookie, an Indigenous woman struggling with returning to ordinary life after an incarceration, and who, on one of her shifts at Birchbark Books, is one of the first staff members to discern that the store is haunted by one very specific ghost, namely that of their most charmingly annoying customer, a white woman called Flora who had been an enthusiast for all things Indigenous.

As the trouble with Flora’s ghost escalates—she keeps knocking books onto the floor—much else is going on, of course—it’s 2020 after all. Tookie’s husband’s daughter—with whom Tookie has always had a fractious relationship—turns up with a newborn baby son. And then Louise takes off on a new book tour in mid-February, as news of a novel coronarvirus is becoming ever closer and closer to home, and I had such a visceral reaction to this part of the novel, back when everyone was wiping down surfaces and proceeding “out of an excess of caution.” Erdrich captures it so well, the looming dread, the incredible unknown, and the unfathomable way that time kept passing.

The bookshop closes to customers and Tookie and her colleagues find their work deemed “essential”, and so they spend their days socially distanced and packing up online orders, which arrive in surprising numbers. (Another visceral reaction for me was recalling that sad forever spring, and how wonderful and uplifting it was to have an order of books from local indies landing on our doorstep…) And Flora, or her ghost, at least, is still there, her presence becoming more urgent, beginning to seem dangerous.

But danger is everywhere after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis that May, killed by police at the store where Tookie’s husband goes sometimes. The city erupts in rage and violence (the chapter is called “Minneapolis Goddamn”), explosive and uncontainable, and Tookie fears for her loved ones and for the future, her own impressions and experiences of police violence kept close to her chest, but here and there they burble to the surface and recall her own sentence in prison, and are complicated by the fact that her husband is a former officer. But still she feels with all those grieving Black mothers, and she knows the names of the men who’ve gone before, and she knows too that Indigenous people are just as likely to be murdered by the police, but you’re probably not going to hear about it, these crimes happening in more remote places where people aren’t happening by with cellphone cameras.

This book is everything. Comedy, tragedy, current events, recommended reading list (it’s so gloriously bookish!), ghost story, love story, a story of community, and also a harrowing tale of individual survival and resilience, and I just loved it so much, and it found it to be a comfort in the light of our own tumultuous moment, reminding me of all the things that really matter and the spectacular possibilities of books.

February 23, 2022

Thinking More About Freedom

Today I went back and updated a list I’d put up at 49thShelf.com a few years ago, a list of challenged or banned Canadian books on the occasion of Freedom to Read Week. And I realized that my thoughts about censorship had been complicated in the years since I’d last checked out the list, when the idea of banning a book for its gratuitous sex or LGBTQ content seemed patently absurd and I was wholly onside with every person’s right to read Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners, never mind all the fucking (which was, not coincidentally, all the pages in my copy at which the spine had been broken). Freedom to read had once seemed easy to believe in.

But reading through the annotated list of challenged books, I was reminded that these things are complicated. Should the library in Victoria, BC, have gotten rid of their copy of Mog and the Granny, by Judith Kerr, because of its outdated terminology and stereotyped images of Indigenous people? Maybe yes? And is there a reason to retain the Dr. Seuss book with ethnic stereotyping? Maybe possibly? And how is this example different? (Spoiler: all kinds of ways!)

It occurs to me that this is why we have librarians, that libraries and all book collections require curating and culling, and that this is kind of thing is complicated, yet another issue for which asking questions is perhaps more important than having answers.

Something I’ve found curious in public discourse over the past few years is the forefronting of free speech as a fundamental tenet of our society. Not because free speech is not important, but why is it more important than, say, income equality, or physical safety, or access to education, or environmental protections? This question is complicated by the fact that the free speech question has been hitched to the wagons of all kinds of bad actors, that it’s possible to build a powerful platform on the basis of “cancel culture” backlash, and that far too often these conversations are ideologically driven and thoroughly devoid of intellectual curiosity. Sunlight is turning out not to be the best disinfectant, but instead an amplifier of hate and misinformation, and there are plenty of forces who are counting on that.

Voltaire never said it either, but there are more than a few people to whom I’d never utter the phrase, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” I continue to think that these are the abstract principles that sound perfectly reasonable when you assume that all things are equal, except they’re really not, and there are all kinds of factors in play, including race and gender, that only seem irrelevant if they’ve never factored in your experience. There’s a lot of hyperbole around harm, this is true (see Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse), but there’s a lot of “free speech” out there that’s pretty dangerous, disingenuous, and can hurt other people in demonstrable ways—vaccine disinformation, for example.

It felt weird to consider Freedom to Read Week in the context of 2022, after five years of living in an era in which free speech has been weaponized by some of the most awful people for personal/financial gain. I still very much believe in the principles of free speech and anti-censorship, but I no longer think that these things are uncomplicated or straightforward. The whole thing making me quite uncomfortable…but maybe that’s the point, that it’s supposed to.

And with all that in mind, this afternoon I listened to Brene Brown’s conversation with Ben Wizner of the ACLU, “Free Speech, Misinformation, and the Case for Nuance,” which was fascinating. I learned so much, had ideas clarified, and even changed my mind, which is a true sign that one is really thinking after all. The greatest takeaway was that it’s not big tech’s content moderation we should be blaming for undermining and eroding democracy, but instead their monopolies and their hoarding of resources which are working to hollow out the middle class in America and elsewhere, which perhaps might be the biggest thread to democracy of all.

February 22, 2022

Gleanings

• But I was there and I can tell you this: People at the convoy don’t want democracy. They want no rules. And that’s definitely not the same thing. 
• Censorship is on the march once again in North America.
• It was 43 years ago today that a friend called and asked if I’d like to join him and another poet for dinner before a reading that evening at Open Space down on Fort Street.
• How Cookbooks And James Barber Helped Me Find Fat Joy
• To be able to feel our feelings, to be with the whole spectrum of them, without added stories or narratives, but to turn towards and be with the sensations in our bodies, to let them “ferment and season” us can be so hard, so uncomfortable to do …
• The world is opening up and life is about to get enjoyable and exciting complicated.  What happens when all the divided parties meet again over the dinner table? How can we choose what our own personal normal looks like?
• So much of what my friends give me is intangible: the hope, the reassurance, the emphatic listening, a weekly dinner routine, a push to go for a walk, or snowshoe, or ski. It’s lovely to have these reminders surrounding me too. I am not alone. All will be well. 
• God, it is hard to grieve. So damn hard. How to incorporate these prickles of loss, joy, -with appreciation, love, self-reflections on our own mortality, a life reflected upon, memories of earliest life, and latest, all the temperatures mix and all at one single minute and then you are left on a ravaged beach after a tsunami. not even ready to look at the remains.
• The two things I’ve heard or read most often about grief are “it takes time” and “wait until you’re ready.” These are helpful comments, as far as anything is helpful; they lessen my anxiety and confusion by reminding me that there is no timeline, there are no rules, there are no ‘oughts’ that follow from this shocking and disruptive ‘is.’
• In a way this a biography. We certainly learn a lot about Orwell’s life. But more importantly we learn about the interconnections of a life with the the currents of history and movements. That an individual can apprehend the horrors of political systems, the damage done to humans, but can also find room for hope and optimism.
• I feel an affinity for my bathroom spider. I wonder if Charlotte has anything to do with that?
• It happens quite often, that I am drawn to a piece of art, one that I want to share here, but that I don’t because the artist’s statement gets in the way.

February 21, 2022

Bowling

One of the smartest and most affecting books I’ve read this year is Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks, which I’ve been thinking about all the time in the weeks since I’ve read it, how we think of time, and how we use it, and how we even imagine that time is something to be used. It’s a book that’s come around for me in a quieter season, when I’ve been stepping back from the hustle and taking time to recover after a rough couple of months. When I’ve been trying to come to terms with my own relationship to production and productivity, which is not quite the same as the cliched Instagram memes about the importance of rest and self-care, but is worth interrogating all the same.

Yesterday I went bowling. It’s the Family Day long weekend here in Ontario, and we went to visit my parents yesterday, going on a snowy winter walk with my dad in the early afternoon. Later on, we met my mom at the bowling alley, which is just the best place ever with its retro vibes and how instead of a refurbishment, they just decided to install black lights.

None of us knows how how to bowl, really, and even if we did, it’s five pin bowling, which I don’t think actually counts. My mom had asked for our lane not to have bumpers, but for some reason we ended up with them anyway, which was possibly for the best and meant the children had more fun…and not just the children. I hadn’t a clue how scoring works, and can’t believe that once upon a time you had to figure it out yourself on a scorecard with the air of a tiny pencil, but thankfully none of us were tasked with such a thing, because these days a computer does all the work, the numbers it was generating seeming altogether random. But no matter, because we were there to have fun, not for competition, which brings me back to our original point: none us actually knows how to bowl.

So there we were, hurling a small ball down the aisle, illuminated by black light while loud music played and the only thing you could hear over it were the cheers of the bowlers whenever anybody knocked down a pin, or got a strike, or (in the case of our group) when we failed to do either.

I actually managed to get a strike a few times, but bowling arm becoming more confident and effective as the time went by, and I was a little impressed with myself, but not entirely.

Instead, what I was thinking, was what a joy it was to while my time like this, playing a game with people I loved whose rules were seemingly arbitrary, bumpers making failing altogether impossible, the inconsequentiality of all of it so essential to the experience. As close as you can get to doing nothing while doing something. There was not a single stake except togetherness, and having fun, and it was so easy to be present, and then eventually, after an hour or so, we’d all had enough, so we took off our rental shoes and went home.

February 18, 2022

The Blame Game

Every time I hear somebody exclaim at how our governments have failed us regarding Covid, I cringe. First, because it’s dawning on me that such ideas and others are playing right into dangerous alt-right tropes that are working away to undermine public trust in government and democracy, that so many passionate well-meaning people are being manipulated by forces they aren’t even aware of, and not just those poor people’s moms who’ve lost their minds to Fox News. But I also cringe because there’s not a single government the world over who has managed to get Covid just right. For a while, Jacinda Ardern was the exception to that rule, but even her small island nation managed to eventually be out-thwarted by the virus, out-thwarting being precisely what a virus is for.

Across Canada, we’ve seen public health officials celebrated and then denigrated for their handling of one wave or another, and provinces whose governments are spread across the political spectrum all have to eventually resort to drastic measures to contain Covid spread. It’s true that provinces with conservative governments have tended to do more poorly, though that could also be because there’s a lot of those at the moment. I wonder if anything would have been different at all if Covid had come around a few years ago during that brief period where half of Canada’s provincial leaders were women. (Not unrelated: I am looking forward to reading Kate Graham’s new book No Second Chances: Women and Political Power in Canada.)

The only people who are sure they have the answers right now are the people outside of power, because it’s easy to dictate choices when you don’t have to accept any responsibility for their consequences. Governing, on the other hand, is hard, especially when there really are no right or easy answers, when every decision brings wins and losses. The political spectrum is so reductive, every single ideology inadequate on its own to address the reality of our society’s challenges, and that’s never been more clear than when it come to Covid, where every government in the world has gotten it wrong and gotten it right some of the time (seriously, even Florida was right at least once, though I don’t think that Brazil ever was, the exception that proves the pudding), no matter their ideas about policy and what government should be.

It’s such an interesting moment, as I’ve written before, when nothing is certain—which is the very opposite of saying that things are hopeless.

Instead what I’m saying is that we need hope—along with creativity, and knowledge, and wisdom, and expertise, and understanding, and kindness, and patience, and so many more essential things—more than ever.

We need to stop blaming each other, and our leaders, even if (and maybe sometimes especially if) they’re not our faves—particularly since our rage appears to be being harvested for profit at the moment. There’s honestly never been a better time to be a person who has no real responsibility for anything, even if powerlessness isn’t fun. Because these days, power isn’t much fun either.

February 15, 2022

Gleanings

• “Awe challenges us to look beyond ourselves, but, in return, it offers new insights and a wiser perspective—one filled with a deeper sense of connection, meaning, and purpose.”
• She described “an atmosphere of complete and utter acceptance in his classroom. Students knew that they had a teacher who cared about them and would do everything he could to ensure their success.”
• I was lucky to travel to Ukraine in my 60s, lucky to meet far cousins, and to be greeted with bread and salt, with tiny glasses of moonshine flavoured with mountain herbs, and I am reading backwards to remember it all.
• As a potter, I can tell you that function gets in the way of my fun. The minute I start measuring asparagus stalks, I lose my groove.
• Every so often, I try to do responsible things like Plan Ahead to reap the rewards that should come with it like A Calm and Unfrazzled Week and I fail almost 100% of the time in the service of Something More Fun I Just Thought Of.
• Who knew in grade one that the alphabet we were learning would be everything?
• An occupation carries with it the feelings of the oppressed or those who view themselves as the oppressed. Is there a difference between the two? I wonder sometimes.
• The vast majority of my work happens slowly, with a brush-in-hand and a butt-in-chair that’s at odds with the algorithm’s thirst for drama.
• Now our tale is done, said E. to the small brown owl, and he closed the book.
• All I know in my many years of working at the library is that interactions are so much more likely to go well if I’m able to literally feel an open heart when I begin.
• In friendship, there’s so much room for exchange. Generous exchange. Friendship is a practice in curiosity, attention, lightness, vulnerability, caring, holding and letting go.
• I don’t know, nor is it my business to know, if they knew each other, or if they will ever see each other again, but I do know I got to be witness to a moment where they met each other eye to eye, face to face, knee to knee, human to human … spirit to spirit.
• And it’s weird to think of us maneuvering into this next stage of life, too because wasn’t it just last year we were partnering up and having babies and finishing degrees and making bad choices and recovering from too-late nights at the bar with too many tequila shots? Spoiler: it turns out it was much longer ago than that.
• May I now present to you my first book! Not a book I had envisioned or expected at all, and definitely not my original idea when I put the dream out there, but a book nonetheless and one that I made myself.

February 14, 2022

Free Love, by Tessa Hadley

Free Love was in the air—I’d heard about the book’s release in the UK, and anticipated a delay before it becoming available in Canada, but there it was, on sale February 1, and so I ordered it. Before the book arrived, another friend was already posting about it on Instagram with a rave review, and then the day I finally started reading, another friend sent along an email telling me that it was one of the best books they’d read lately and that I really must pick it up, and I do so love being told what to do when I’m doing it already.

Tessa Hadley is newish to me. I’ve read her novels The Past and Late in the Day in the last few years, and really enjoyed them, and have been looking for other copies of her books in bookshops ever since, but they’re not widely available here in Canada. It’s also true that while I enjoyed both books, they didn’t leave overwhelming impressions on me and I can’t remember much about either one except that they had atmosphere. And I think that’s actually the point.

Because Free Love too is an atmospheric novel, a book full of tension and interiority instead of wildly swinging plot. And even when the plot does swing with housewife Phyllis abandoning her suburban life to pursue a relationship with the bohemian son of a family friend, or even before that when fate conspires to bring this unlikely couple together in the first place, kissing beside a garden pond on the hunt for an errant sandal, the earth barely shakes and life continues on, seasons changing, floors requiring sweeping, dinners making. Everything is changed, but also nothing at all—but then about two thirds of the way through there comes a revelation that blows everything apart, and has me texting the friend who’s read it already “OMG I JUST GOT TO THE PLOT TWIST!”

But it’s not in fact the plot twist that matters at all really, instead the rhythms and patterns of daily life, both before and after, that Hadley manages to capture so beautifully, the way that life goes on, and on—if you’re lucky—no matter your choices. Every moment itself is a narrative leap.

February 10, 2022

Making Magic Real

Shawna Lemay wrote a post once about doing secret good deeds, and I think about this often, trying to commit my own fair share. These secret deeds which give the world its substance, magic and possibility.

One night I crept into my children’s room to be the tooth fairy. In the morning, the amount of money the fairy had left was DOUBLED… because the little sister on the bottom bunk had been sneakily awake and discovered the truth of being grown up, which is that magic is where we make it…

And it was two years ago now, when the pandemic was still a baby and everything was AWFUL that magic arrived on our doorstep with a chocolate delivery from The Easter Bunny.

Like, the ACTUAL Easter Bunny, or something, because I certainly knew nothing about it, and was so bowled over that somebody had taken the time to make magic happen for our family. What a world we live in where such a thing can happen.

But then last year the Easter Bunny came again. Still a mystery.

And today, Bunny shows up for Valentine’s because Easter comes late this year and it’s just too long to wait…and we still have NO IDEA where this goodness is coming from, though we have our suspicions, but everyone we’ve ever asked claims they know nothing about it.

Keep doing secret good deeds, my friends. Go out there and make magic happen. You can be the reason that someone out there believes in miracles. You have more power than you think.

February 9, 2022

Blog School: BOOST

I’ve been teaching Blog School Courses online for more than two years now, and never knew exactly how to respond when people who’d completed my courses expressed interest in a “Part Two” version of my FIND YOUR BLOGGING SPARK course (which I also teach in a guided version called MAKE THE LEAP). Because my most fundamental tenant of blogging is that the writer has to make her own way, be bold and dare to blaze a path instead of trailing in somebody else’s footsteps.

But sometimes every blogger can benefit from a good creative boost, which is why I’m putting BOOST together, a “Part Two” kind of, as in we’ll get to work together again, but really this time you’ll be making your own way and I’ll be on the sidelines cheering you on.

Cost will be $400.

What you get:

• A one hour one-on-one call with me where we talk about your blogging goals and develop strategies to meet them.
• Written feedback from me on one post per week running for five weeks (Feb 28-April 1)
• A group of supportive and inspiring writers to learn from and respond to via a Google Group Forum
• Optional spotlight on the Blog School Blog and my social media to introduce your work to a wider audience