Forgot about this one

I had to update my CV recently. I added a reference to an essay published in Dr. Struthers’s essay collection titled Alice Munro Everlasting: Essays on her works. It’s published by Guernica Press and came out a few years ago. Dr. Struthers asked me to draft a response to Ms Munro’s story, “My Mother’s Dreams,” and I did not want to do it.

Here’s the first paragraph of my contribution.

I didn’t want to read this story, or write about it. Motherhood is fraught. Everybody knows that. We spend money talking to professionals about the damage our mothers caused, about the damage we cause as mothers, about the damage our daughters cause us. Wreckage all around. When I think of my mother, I wonder whether she had any dreams for herself. About these, I never got to find out. I know she was sent to work in a factory at age 12 with a robust grade six education. I know … she was married in the month of May in a silk satin gown with an empire waist and not a moment too soon… She bore five children, three of whom lived. I was last born and soonest orphaned. What are mothers’ dreams to me?

As I age, that question of dreams keeps cropping up. What are you dreaming of, you mothers? May you be swaddled in turtlenecks and cradling hot tea on this blustery October day.

October 2023

evening in northern Ontario on a quiet lake. We’ve got a million of these here, each one making magic. You can’t really see the smoke on the water, or the patient, fishing man on the dock, but both are there, untouched by the gold and fine with that.

Smoke on the water

Dog Days

I’ve been working my way through Louise Erdrich’s writing. The families, communities, characters, even the dogs have such dimension and there is a sweetness that just so firmly works despite the million provocations, the billion injustices, the hardships and sorrows. The writing takes your hand and draws you in and though it is not your world and though you are happy to be in the audience of such grace. I recommend The Nightwatchman or The Sentence to start.

If you’re wondering about what the Duomo in Orvieto looks like, here’s a pic. Take the funicolare and check it out.

Winter's end

We are on a warming trend and snow will be gone in tomorrow’s 16c weather. Snow and I had a good run. For today, the roofs outside my office are still white, still restful to see, still cool, but the fog is rolling in. The poor world shuffles on. In the thinking about letters and words and sentences there is some comfort. I keep a tight focus in my house and today it’s on making some good food and saying a grace of thanks for a small peace, barely earned, but attended to with care. The photo is old, of my dad and me and I love it. From the days when you stood still and uncertain in your own backyard. Crested blazer, plaid skirt, white socks. Always with the outfits.

Too little, not too late

I’m giving the manuscript an overhaul. I’m not fast about it. I’ll tell you, the last year has been a lesson in marketing and patience. Seinfeld says pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a gap and this, my friends, has been an educational year. Knowledge has been rushing in on all fronts and I am wrangling with the complicated present and the hopeful future. Aren’t you?

We see the light on at the end of the tunnel and we are sure it is not the train. But here, at least, where I am, we are still hanging out in the tunnel, in the semi-dark, dreaming of light, post-operative, post-production, post-vaccination light. All the dreams and all the feelings crowd the room I’m in. This room I keep curating, angling the desk, making the books flush with the edge of the shelf as though that will make the difference. I am hopeful, I say. I insist upon it.

Pasta, pizza, pie, cake, cookies, crumbles & some pushups and planks

What it means to stay home. You go for a walk. A longer walk. The longest walk. You pull up some dandelions from the yard (not me, but I see this being done locally and I applaud it). You attend meetings with cubes of faces more or less aware that they are live and in person. You breathe, you eat some things. Then you eat some more things. Then the things you have seem inferior so, look, you have flour and sugar and eggs and some other things that in combination do miracles for your mood and I recommend all of them. And what’s this? You also have strained tomatoes and basil, olive oil and maybe an onion and a carrot? Ok some butter too, why not? Then hot water and pasta and time? Jump in I say. Twirl that magic onto your fork and chew mindfully (!). Plus thinking is hard. Eating is easy. The elliptical does not exactly sound dulcet tones when your jeans are telling you to hop on and save yourself.

Covid so far.

Autumn

Everyone’s favourite. Not too cold, but the sweaters and boots - suede and 70s groovy jeans and crocheted accessories - come out. The tan fades from your hands and the laugh lines around your eyes are less defined, or at least, they seem that way. You start to close the windows, drink Scotch, the good, smoky stuff, by cautious fingerfuls. You start a new project while you wait for news. Your mind turns to comic possibilities after so much delving into the hard matter of life. As Linus says in response to the comment that we are all going to die some day, “yes, but most of the days we are aren’t” the new work is in that vein. Absurdity, vanity, desperate love, or, at least, infatuation, against a backdrop of social stricture and professional misconduct. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Also, pie. Definitely autumn when it’s pie.

Writing in July

In July, don’t you find that there is just too much going on? Everyone wants to visit. Meet for drinks, have a barbecue, go for a bike ride, find a nice patio, exchange photographs, host reunions to which you must bring antipasti. We are too much exposed in summer. Old friends you haven’t seen for five years call you and you get together and it’s wonderful and you lie down at night on cool white sheets and wonder how it’s possible that you have talked so much your throat hurts and listened so long, your eyes are burning, as though eyes had anything to do with listening. The fatigue presses like the heat and your ac-averse spouse sleeps, comfortable and sweet, while you wonder how much fragrance is possible for blossoming shrubbery to exude into the atmosphere before the whole world just sneezes. It smells too rich -- all earth and roses and skunks -- all the stimuli you want to reflect on in winter, staring at the white wall, in order to turn into fiction. So you have to go to sleep. The bright days have been good for writing. Summer is best for me when I imagine it.