This evening I listened to a CBC Radio program on dogs, the nature of their independent pursuits, dog life, and how to communicate effectively with dogs. One of the speakers commented that what is interesting to her is not how to make dogs obey humans, but rather their willingness to do what we want. She observed that dogs just adore humans.
This simple and somewhat obvious comment really struck me. We have two dogs and two cats. They do adore us, all four of them. They adore me. Every morning when I get up and open the bedroom door, I see all of the pets waiting for me. Oliver (cat) is patiently positioned on the carpet right outside the door. Sophie and Kate (dogs) race up the stairs to greet me, and Chaucer (cat) stands at the bottom of the stairs looking up and meowing. I greet each one by name and give each one a little pet. If I take the time to notice, they demonstrate in this sort of way all day long how happy they are to be with me/us. (And no, it's not just all about the food!)
Sometimes I get too caught up in language and general busyness to be observant of the clear evidence of caring that surrounds me. I race around in a huge rush, my eyes focused inwardly on the complex of troubles and tasks filling my mind and my time. At the end of a week in which I didn't manage to check off all the tasks on my list, or when some objective was thwarted, I might feel glum and dissatisfied. I finally lift my head looking for pleasurable distraction and entertainment, and if it doesn't materialize at the speed of a click of a button, I am quick to complain. I might feel unloved and unworthy of love.
But it is because I have turned my eyes and mind away from noticing the loving pets and the loving humans that surround me.
A few minutes ago, I opened a kitchen drawer looking for a tea egg. As I groped through the drawer, my hand found a wooden cone-shaped implement with a round handle. There is a story that goes with this object.
For some years, I had been looking for a specialized sort of sieve for making apple butter. The one my mother has is an antique -- a sturdy metal cone-shaped sieve on a stand, with a matching cone-shaped pestle for pushing the cooked apple pulp through the holes, while separating out the seeds and skins. Way in the back of a local specialty store, I finally found such a sieve and purchased it, but it came without the pestle implement. Last summer, visiting my mother who lives in another town, I told her about this. A week or two later she discovered a wooden pestle in a kitchen store and mailed it to me at an exorbitant cost as a "pre" birthday present. (This was the object in my tea egg drawer.)
Meanwhile, my dear partner Rob had decided find his own solution to the lack of a pestle. He went out to his workshop and made not one, but three different sized wooden implements for me to try out with the sieve. Each was beautifully sanded and finished. So I now own four pestles for making apple butter. What a surfeit of love! How very lucky I am! I just have to open my eyes to the love all around me.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Rolling Balls of Mercury
Have you ever broken a thermometer and seen the mercury form little silver balls that roll away across the floor?
I have. I was in grade seven and had taken to carrying a thermometer with me everywhere. I was doing a science project which involved measuring my own temperature at different times of the day and before and after various activities, like running a mile or taking a bath, to see how much it fluctuated and what might cause it to rise and fall.
I was reminded of that mercury yesterday evening. I was standing in my kitchen staring blankly at the empty metal sink; I had just heard some bad news. A single drop fell from the tap, and as the water hit the metal surface, the water balled up like mercury and rolled outwards in a star-burst pattern. I tried to cause another drip to fall so that I could see those little silvery balls again, but I was unable to recreate the event.
Later, out for a walk in the rain with the dogs, I thought about "Rosa," an elderly neighbour in my hometown, a close friend of my mother's. Rosa has just received a diagnosis of multiple cancers; it is likely that there is nothing anyone can do. Rosa is the kind of person who is the heart and soul of the community. At eighty-four, she runs the community soup kitchen, drives shut-ins to their doctor's appointments, and helps her neighbours complete their income tax forms. Seven years ago, during the last two days of my father's life, Rosa showed up to sit by his deathbed, spelling family members off for meal and nap breaks.
On my way home, after a grand loop of the neighbourhood and park, I found myself standing under a street lamp, staring up. There they were again, silver droplets, almost solid. Raindrops arrayed around the light, falling hard, hard. Perhaps it was sleet? I inspected the gravel road, the fur of the black dog, and my sleeve for white scurf, a melting crystalline structure. Just rain. Rain plummeting down.
I followed the dogs to the next street lamp, and stared up once again. The silver bullets turned white before my eyes, and wavered in their fall. On my sleeve a tiny tangled substance, like the skeleton of a sea crustacean, before it melted. I was present for the moment of transformation. Rain to snow, silver to white, bones to oblivion.
This is, after all, the way it goes.
I have. I was in grade seven and had taken to carrying a thermometer with me everywhere. I was doing a science project which involved measuring my own temperature at different times of the day and before and after various activities, like running a mile or taking a bath, to see how much it fluctuated and what might cause it to rise and fall.
I was reminded of that mercury yesterday evening. I was standing in my kitchen staring blankly at the empty metal sink; I had just heard some bad news. A single drop fell from the tap, and as the water hit the metal surface, the water balled up like mercury and rolled outwards in a star-burst pattern. I tried to cause another drip to fall so that I could see those little silvery balls again, but I was unable to recreate the event.
Later, out for a walk in the rain with the dogs, I thought about "Rosa," an elderly neighbour in my hometown, a close friend of my mother's. Rosa has just received a diagnosis of multiple cancers; it is likely that there is nothing anyone can do. Rosa is the kind of person who is the heart and soul of the community. At eighty-four, she runs the community soup kitchen, drives shut-ins to their doctor's appointments, and helps her neighbours complete their income tax forms. Seven years ago, during the last two days of my father's life, Rosa showed up to sit by his deathbed, spelling family members off for meal and nap breaks.
On my way home, after a grand loop of the neighbourhood and park, I found myself standing under a street lamp, staring up. There they were again, silver droplets, almost solid. Raindrops arrayed around the light, falling hard, hard. Perhaps it was sleet? I inspected the gravel road, the fur of the black dog, and my sleeve for white scurf, a melting crystalline structure. Just rain. Rain plummeting down.
I followed the dogs to the next street lamp, and stared up once again. The silver bullets turned white before my eyes, and wavered in their fall. On my sleeve a tiny tangled substance, like the skeleton of a sea crustacean, before it melted. I was present for the moment of transformation. Rain to snow, silver to white, bones to oblivion.
This is, after all, the way it goes.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
The End of Youth
Getting old -- I never thought it would happen to me.
I used to subscribe to a women's magazine that has a section called "firsts after forty." In it, they present profiles of women in their midlife who have taken up some new sport or endeavor, such as snowboarding, ballet dancing, or playing the violin. I find the idea inspiring. I love the challenge of taking up something new. The world is so rich and full of possibilities that I don't know how I can fit in everything that I would like to do in the time left to me on this earth. In the last five years, some of my new avocations have included playing the guitar, fly fishing, back country skiing, wilderness canoeing, greenhouse gardening, mountain biking, and telemark skiing.
Of course, as I am now in the latter half of middle age, I do not have the fitness and stamina to perform these activities at the level of a twenty-something. I don't mountain bike down the technical trails but rather up and down logging roads. The area where I like to back country ski is jokingly referred to by the back country crowd as "the geriatric run." When I garden, for every half hour of heavy digging, I spend another half hour sitting on my bench looking at the garden and daydreaming about it.
Then there are the little aches and pains that become more insistent and limiting over time. The achy back. The sore, stiff knees. When I was twenty, I didn't think that I had had a good day of skiing unless I had taken twenty runs or more. In the last few years, I have aimed for eight or ten runs. I mostly stick to the groomers and only include one or two or three mogul runs or deep powder runs per ski day. I have become used to feeling stiff and sore all the time. Ibuprofen is now my friend.
But I am not ready to give it all up.
I can live with the idea of only skiing half days, and staying off the black diamond runs most of the time. I can even (reluctantly) accept the idea of quitting soccer, as I can see have reached the stage of being a liability to my team in a league of mostly twenty-year-old ex-high-school soccer stars. But I am a skier. I have skied since I was three years old. Being a skier is part of my core identity. A skier is who I am.
This week, the medical specialist whom I saw about my failing knees told me that skiing is over for me. No more skiing. No more soccer. No high impact sports at all. If I stop now, I can delay the inevitable need for a knee replacement.
It feels like a death sentence.
I used to subscribe to a women's magazine that has a section called "firsts after forty." In it, they present profiles of women in their midlife who have taken up some new sport or endeavor, such as snowboarding, ballet dancing, or playing the violin. I find the idea inspiring. I love the challenge of taking up something new. The world is so rich and full of possibilities that I don't know how I can fit in everything that I would like to do in the time left to me on this earth. In the last five years, some of my new avocations have included playing the guitar, fly fishing, back country skiing, wilderness canoeing, greenhouse gardening, mountain biking, and telemark skiing.
Of course, as I am now in the latter half of middle age, I do not have the fitness and stamina to perform these activities at the level of a twenty-something. I don't mountain bike down the technical trails but rather up and down logging roads. The area where I like to back country ski is jokingly referred to by the back country crowd as "the geriatric run." When I garden, for every half hour of heavy digging, I spend another half hour sitting on my bench looking at the garden and daydreaming about it.
Then there are the little aches and pains that become more insistent and limiting over time. The achy back. The sore, stiff knees. When I was twenty, I didn't think that I had had a good day of skiing unless I had taken twenty runs or more. In the last few years, I have aimed for eight or ten runs. I mostly stick to the groomers and only include one or two or three mogul runs or deep powder runs per ski day. I have become used to feeling stiff and sore all the time. Ibuprofen is now my friend.
But I am not ready to give it all up.
I can live with the idea of only skiing half days, and staying off the black diamond runs most of the time. I can even (reluctantly) accept the idea of quitting soccer, as I can see have reached the stage of being a liability to my team in a league of mostly twenty-year-old ex-high-school soccer stars. But I am a skier. I have skied since I was three years old. Being a skier is part of my core identity. A skier is who I am.
This week, the medical specialist whom I saw about my failing knees told me that skiing is over for me. No more skiing. No more soccer. No high impact sports at all. If I stop now, I can delay the inevitable need for a knee replacement.
It feels like a death sentence.
Friday, February 4, 2011
On the Mountain
When I am not in front of my computer doing things with words, this mountain is one of the places that I like to be.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Revision: Beyond Procrastination
Revision, dreaded revision.
Writing the first draft of my novel was fun. I cannot say that it was hard to write it at all. That is not to say that the story just flowed onto the screen. I struggled over sections and got stuck in plot dead-ends. Certain parts didn't work quite right; I wasn't happy with them and not sure how to fix them. But I was happy to sit down to the story and write. Finding enough time to commit to writing was the only hard part (busy life, blah, blah, blah).
But for a year now, I have been in limbo, avoiding getting started on revising. (Moreover, I haven't let myself start writing something else either, knowing that is one of the tricky strategies my procrastinator self uses to get out of things -- like REVISING.)
In November, I began to recognize that some aspects of the manuscript needed work, thanks to a brief but helpful critique from Robert Ray. Although I have read many inspirational books on writing in the past, I began to seek out nuts-and-bolts writing books and websites. I have been reading about plot, subplots, character arcs, back story, building suspense, and so on. And I am finally getting down to working on the revisions.
Here is the good news.
But at least now I have a better grasp of the task that I face, my revision objectives, and some tools to work with.
Ah, revision. It actually feels better to have finally started revising (even though there are way more troubles than I initially thought, which is as depressing as hell) than it felt to be: a) fooling myself that hardly any revisions were needed (blush); b) realizing that some revisions were needed but avoiding getting started on them; c) in despair that the entire manuscript was unsalvageable; and then d) wanting to revise but having no idea what to do and how.
Writing the first draft of my novel was fun. I cannot say that it was hard to write it at all. That is not to say that the story just flowed onto the screen. I struggled over sections and got stuck in plot dead-ends. Certain parts didn't work quite right; I wasn't happy with them and not sure how to fix them. But I was happy to sit down to the story and write. Finding enough time to commit to writing was the only hard part (busy life, blah, blah, blah).
But for a year now, I have been in limbo, avoiding getting started on revising. (Moreover, I haven't let myself start writing something else either, knowing that is one of the tricky strategies my procrastinator self uses to get out of things -- like REVISING.)
In November, I began to recognize that some aspects of the manuscript needed work, thanks to a brief but helpful critique from Robert Ray. Although I have read many inspirational books on writing in the past, I began to seek out nuts-and-bolts writing books and websites. I have been reading about plot, subplots, character arcs, back story, building suspense, and so on. And I am finally getting down to working on the revisions.
Here is the good news.
- I have a complex, layered story.
- I have a good character arc for my protagonist that starts on page one and runs through to the last sentence.
- My main antagonist is well-rounded with a good character arc (although his exit still needs a bit of work).
- I have tension-building secrets and multiple subplots.
- I have a three act structure (with a twist).
- I have made good use of different character POVs and differentiated the characters' voices.
- Much of the first half of Act 1 takes place inside the main protagonist's head.
- By having my protagonist recount, remember, and think about things, I am telling rather than showing, and it is sloooowwww.
- I need action, dialogue, and conflict (not just angst)
- In many sections (e.g., the opening), the ms. lacks vivid word pictures to place the characters in the setting and show what they look like and what they are doing.
- My protagonist's core motivation is not clear.
- I have far too many flashbacks and have fallen prey to the dreaded info-dump
But at least now I have a better grasp of the task that I face, my revision objectives, and some tools to work with.
Ah, revision. It actually feels better to have finally started revising (even though there are way more troubles than I initially thought, which is as depressing as hell) than it felt to be: a) fooling myself that hardly any revisions were needed (blush); b) realizing that some revisions were needed but avoiding getting started on them; c) in despair that the entire manuscript was unsalvageable; and then d) wanting to revise but having no idea what to do and how.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Gust of Wind
This oil painting by Melanie Rocan was published in Room Magazine, a wonderful literary and art magazine published by a women's publishing collective in Vancouver, British Columbia. Check out the artist and the journal.
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