A Good Day to Stay in and WRITE

So that is exactly what I am doing. We are really being crushed by a blast of arctic air here. There has been a windchill warning in effect for four days now, and it continues. Today it is -25 degrees C with the windchill factor. That's up from yesterday, when it was -29 degrees C. To tell you the truth, the four degrees don't seem to matter much when it plunges down below -20. Ye, this is Canada. But this is not a part of Canada that is prone to this kind of weather. I am Canadian, but this is too much, even for me, a woman who loves winter.

So here I sit, at my desk, in my office at home, with the fire place going (I have a wonderful office), a cup of hot tea (vanilla rooibos with soy milk) and all kinds of time. I was up at 5:30, went to my 6:30 yoga class, had a leisurely post-yoga breakfast, and settled in to write my second craft annotation, which I just completed. The first was on C. S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed," and today's was on Patricia Hampl's essay collection, I Could Tell You Stories, which is very good. I seized onto an idea that I have found very liberating. "Memoir," she says, "is the intersection of narration and reflection, of storytelling and essay. It can present its story and consider the meaning of the story. The first commandment of fiction--Show, Don't Tell--is not part of the memoirist's faith. Memoirists must show and tell." Well, hallaleujiah to that. Wht a relief. I feel so liberated by that idea. Hampl is just masterful at using personal narrative at a vehicle for reflecting on issues large and small. The key to being able to reflect within a narrative is, I think, not to allow the reflection to break down into impersonal, scholarly commentary (always a risk for a professional philosopher). Hampl does it and does it well. Once again, what seemed like it was going to be chore (writing an annotation when I'd rather be working on my essay) has opened my eyes to something I can actually try to practice in my own work, the work that I am doing today.