Sunday Scribblings: Deepest, Darkest

This week's prompt, deepest, darkness, somehow brought out the poet in me. She doesn't come out very often, so be kind! I don't even know how to punctuate poetry.

The Grave

The grave I dug was deep and dark,
It bordered on the woods,
I tossed within bits of the past,
The evils and the goods;
Broken bits of shrubs untended,
Sweet herbs now gone to seed,
A diamond and some precious coins
To show I’d lost my greed.
I knew that there was room for more,
Something not yet revealed,
I searched the dark depths of my mind,
But it remained concealed.

The dew of dusk clung to the leaves,
The sun began to set,
I grabbed the spade to fill the grave
But the task was not done yet.
The wind picked up, the clouds went dark,
And soon I could not see,
The darkness spoke in a deep sure voice,
The forgotten thing was me.

For more deepest, darkest, check out Sunday Scribblings.

Permission to Take a Vacation Granted

I took yesterday's and today's photos a couple of years ago, in May, when I gave myself permission to take a vacation in Europe. The flowers were outside a Parisian florist, this magical place is the Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

A number of my fellow-MFAers have been experiencing burnout lately, and I sure know that feeling. I am feeling it now too. I'm unmotivated, feeling burdened and put upon. A friend has asked me if I want to get together for an hour (one little hour) this weekend and my knee-jerk reaction is that I can't afford the time off. I have work to do!

I remember when I first started working, I thought that I could not afford the time that a vacation would take. So I started to avoid vacations or always take work with me. About ten years ago, I realized that I had not gone anywhere without at least some work-related reading in more than a decade. And often the work that I took never got done, but cast a dark shadow over the whole vacation. I was plagued with the sense that I should be working. My conclusion: A vacation is time off work without any work to do. It occured to me that no one is going to give me permission to take that kind of vacation, but I am a grown-up. I can take one if I want. Yes, sometimes I need to scale the expectations back to fit with my finances, but there is always some destination that is within my reach. Sometimes, even staying in town and doing something I would not ordinarily do can be a vacation. I find that when I give myself permission, I feel better about my work and I can remember what I like about it, even convince or remind myself that I have chosen this work (for now). It does not rule me.

You know how they say that if you don't sleep, you go insane and then you die. Well, I think the same is true of not taking real vacations. It may take longer, but it will kill us, and along the way, it will suck the joy out of our lives and make us crazy.

So please, please, plan a vacation. The more you think that you have no time, the more you need one! Me: I'm going to Chicago in May, and before that I am taking some time off right here.

Tulips ... Soon

The garden is starting to offer some promise. Tulips are pushing their way up through the soil, and the hundred crocuses that I planted back in November are stretching their little green stems up to the sun. Nothing in this world compares to the hope that the slow steady rousing of spring life spurs.

Like the flowers in the garden, the new essay changes daily, almost imperceptibly. Measured development, but visible at the end of the week.

I Want Some New Yarn

I am just itching to buy some summer yarn (the picture on the left), but I have some stash from last summer that I haven't even touched, as well as an in-progress denim project (the Rowan jacket pictured on the right) that I need to pick up again soon. Birch is languishing in a state that has not moved beyond intial cast-on. The only project that I have spent any time at all on is a sweater, that might turn out to be really ugly, but it's easy enough to knit when I watch 24. It's the only thing I watch these days, and then only sometimes, and definitely only on DVD. I can't tune in regularly to anything, and in any case I'm well behind on seasons, currently in the early hours of Day Four (so far, not in the same league as Day Three, IMHO). The rule around here though is that you are not allowed to forge ahead alone with the episodes. Lest you think that I watch it uncritically, I do not. But I don't have the energy to get into it right now.

The bottom line is, there is no need to buy new yarn right now because there is no time to knit it. Not that the intention to knit is a prerequisite for a new yarn purchase, of course. There is sometimes just the luxury of a box of new yarn delivered to the house, and then the subsequent unconscious seeking that ensues as the right brain (or is it the left brain? I can never keep them straight) tries to find the perfect project for it. Truly, the process can take years.

Sunday Scribblings: In the Kitchen

I grew up in the kitchen, sitting at the table, drinking tea and watching my mother work her magic at the avocado green stove. As a feminist, I sometimes worry about the whole “woman in the kitchen” thing, but I realize that in many homes, certainly the one I grew up in, the kitchen was a real locus of power. It really was the heart of the home, the most regular gathering place, the warmest, most comforting place to be. You could take the pulse of the family in the kitchen. We ate all of our meals, many together, in the kitchen. We sat at the table and played cards in the kitchen. I learned how to do macramé at the kitchen table when I was a child in the seventies, turning brown twine into plant hangers (remember those), making my own beads and painting them—all in the kitchen. I baked my own horrible easy-bake oven cakes on the kitchen table while my mother made mouth-watering real ones at the counter. Or I stood on a chair beside her, full of admiration and longing to know the same secrets. In the late afternoons, you could hear the pressure cooker (which was to approached with the utmost caution, if at all) hissing away on the stovetop. And the aroma of sweet baking filled the house every Sunday afternoon. When I was a little older, I sat at that table in the kitchen, leafing through cookbooks, experimenting with recipes, absorbing my mother’s skills and making them my own.

When I was shopping for my first home, I surprised myself by realizing what a huge priority the kitchen was (right up there with closet space) and how definite my ideas about it were. I wanted a spacious kitchen that I could move in easily and with a vast counter that would allow me to say “yes” whenever guests asked if I needed any help in the kitchen. I wanted a dedicated bookcase for my own growing collection of cookbooks, none of which I can think of discarding. And a little desk. And most of all, I wanted a kitchen that was continuous with the rest of the house, not shut off from but open to the social space. And now I have it. No other room lives in a house the way a kitchen does.

See what's going on in other kitchens.

Note to Self: It's a Process

Bug was writing about beginning again today, and what she said really resonated with me. I had the luxury last month of working on revisions. This month, I am trying to start something new and it is in that shapeless, aimless early stage where the only thing that keep me moving forward is faith in the process. I have 10 pages and fear that they all need to scrapped. Nevertheless, I am going to keep moving forward with it, adding daily until I have 10 more pages. Then I'll go back to the beginning and start looking for its shape and its point.

I love Julia Cameron's suggestion to put this sign in my creative space: Great Creator, I will take care of the quantity; you take care of the quality. I know from past experience that I cannot sit down and plan to write something brilliant. I can only do my part by showing up and leave the rest to the process. If I am going to get to the other side of this transition as a writer, I need to accept that there will be many, many beginnings. I have given myself two touchstones this month. (1) Ralph Keyes' The Courage to Write sits on my desk. I don't even need to read it anymore; I just let it be there. (2) I am re-reading the freewriting after the "finding true north" meditations that we did in the very first MFA seminar. In January, it helped me get centred and find the vein of the essay I was writing. Perhaps it can work its magic again this month.

Sunday Scribblings #51 Inspiration

This week, as its first anniversary approaches, Sunday Scribblings has prompted us to write about inspiration.

One of my very first blog posts was on the topic of inspiration. As far as my writing life goes, not much has changed since then. I still cannot afford to wait for inspiration. But I have discovered something else: the more I write, the more the inspiration seems to come. Regular time with the page, a gift which I have been giving myself in generous doses over the past few months, trains my creative spirit to be awake even when I am not at the page. I'm not sure if I'd call it inspiration, but lately I've been overflowing with ideas to such an extent that I just have to get them down or I'm going to explode. And I think the main reason for this abundance is that I am prepared to sit down and write no matter what my mood. I don't look for the inspired moment anymore.

There is another kind of inspiration that the prompt called to mind for me, and that is the inspiration I get from the world around me. Energetic young feminists inspire me. My friends' achievements inspire me. Stories of writers who persisted, believed in themselves and finally broke into the market inspire me. Sunsets, rainstorms, lush forests of ferns, silent snowfalls, summer breezes, and the night sky inspire me. Yoga, meditation, and that sense that nothing needs to be different inspire me. I could go on. But you get the picture. Some days, I am in awe of the universe and everything in it.

Find more inspired writing here.

Radio Days

Radio documentaries are fun to make. Pitch, pitch, pitch until you get to do one. I'm having the best time right now putting together a draft of my story with the producer. I can't say it's not a lot of work and I can't say I'd have been able to do it without help, but I am learning a lot. The thing about doing this is that I'm not just learning about radio, I'm learning about story-telling. So a lot of what we're doing I can carry into my writing.

Yesterday, the main task was to sort through the tape that I flagged when I was organizing the rough draft of the structure, decide on the order of the various bits, and then cut, cut, cut until we ended up with about 20 minutes of tape (the final product will be 13). Watching it take shape through the day was so exciting, just like watching your story emerge when you're writing. Considering I started off last month with over 500 minutes of tape, and even in the initial narrowing down still had over 90 minutes, getting down to 20 streamlined the possibilities and nailed the one thread that the story will follow. I'm listening to it right now and, just as with a written story, I can see what is needed, what is working, and what needs to be edited down or edited out. You just have to love the creative process!

At the end of the day, I thought I had time to go yarn shopping before meeting a friend for dinner. But Romni Wools has such a terrible website that I got the times completely wrong and thought it was open until 8. As it turns out, it is only open until 8 on Thursdays. So arriving at 5:55, just as they were about to close up, was kind of disappointing but saved me a fair chunk of change since I could feel that adrenaline rush starting as I began to do that thing where you run the different strands of yarn between your fingers, squeeze the different balls, do the mental calculations of how much you need and how much it will cost...

I had a great dinner with a friend who is a professional writer, the first one who ever encouraged me to pursue writing as a career. Now this morning, since her husband works in the newsroom at the CBC, I'm getting a tour of the newsroom before I start work on the documentary.

The building on the corner with the red trim is the CBC, and the tower in the background is the CN Tower. I took that pic on my way to the yarn store yesterday. The weather was just stupendous. People were even sitting in outdoor cafes on Queen Street yesterday (it's kind of relative; in September or October it would have seemed way too cold for that, but in March, it's like wow, what a balmy day).

Sunday Scribblings #50 Dream Journey

My dream journey takes me through a magical door that catapults me straight out of my dayjob into the new life as a full-time writer who doesn't have to pretend not to be an artist anymore.

Now, please.

Travel here for more (and more inspired!) dream journeys.

Happy International Women's Day!

The International Women's Day website describes IWD as a "global day of celebration," and so it is! Any opportunity to think about women across world, about ways of continuing to improve the conditions of their lives, about strategies for developing an inclusive global feminist community is worth taking. Women are participating more fully in public life than ever before, and there are many more opportunities for them than there were. But pay equity, representation in politics and government and business, opportunities for education, the unrecognized value of their unpaid domestic labour, exploitation of women workers in the global economy, poverty and stigma facing single mothers, inequitable access to healthcare resources, and violence against women are still issues for women in developed and in developing nations.

There are IWD events going on all over the world today. Check for those in your area. Be a role model. Make a difference today.

The beautiful logo you see here is from the Status of Women of Canada website.

Close, So Close

How is everyone doing on the next submission? I'm in that period of the last minute where time suddenly opens up and feels more expansive than usual. I think it's because it forces a certain kind of focus. I still strive, one day, to find that focus more often without having it be pressure-induced. There is probably no spiritual tradition that does not encourage living in the moment, so why fight the time-honoured truth?

Anyway, the essay is coming together. I can see where it still needs work, but I have done a respectable enough revision, expansion, and restructuring that anything I do after tomorrow morning will be bonus. I'm behind on the reading for one of the annotations. I have never left the reading so to the last minute. It's not that I'm not enjoying it, but with this cold, reading makes my eyes close pretty quickly. I've probably read enough to write something, but I feel as if I'm cheating. Okay, maybe I'll be willing to lower my standards if the reading isn't done by tomorrow. I have some work-related reading that needs to take priority tomorrow. Boo.

An interesting thing happened with my new writing this month. I thought I was working on a new essay, and it turned out to be an extension of the previous one. So a little experiment in combining them paid off big time, and I am quite happy with what is in the making. At least I see its potential.

Tomorrow is International Women's Day so remember to take a moment to think about our sisters locally and globally.

Want to Come Ice Fishing?

This morning it was back to work. I was up at 5:30 working on my essay for the next submission (still aiming for Friday). It was a productive hour; I like how the piece is shaping up. I gave myself plenty of time for my meditation and my morning pages (no yoga today). I had a few things to do to get ready for my 9:30 commitment, and with just a 10 minute commute, leaving at 8:30 was just fine.

Except that the driveway looked kind of like this (well, it didn't look blue, but for some reason that's how it looks now):


Last week it was just a lake. Now, well, I'd have invited you over to go ice fishing, but I really did need to get to work. Then my wheels started spinning -- the Rabbit is cute but front wheel drive? Not so cute. I looked at my watch and tried again. Nothing. I went for help. The car did move some with the pushing (I did a lot of the pushing), but it kept ending up stuck in a worse position. As you can see, it went through the ice. Just when I was ready to give it up and accept defeat, a lovely neighbour came out to offer her help. Between the two of us pushing as hard as we could, R (yes, funny how he ended up in the driver's seat!) managed to control the vehicle as it catapulted free, onto higher and drier ground.

Here is the forecast for this evening. There are two warnings in effect: a snowsquall warning and a windchill warning. We're expecting about 5 cm (2.5 inches of snow), winds northwest (the real cold kind) 40 km per hour, gusting to 60 km per hour at times, temperature plummeting to minus 24 C, minus 32 with the windchill factor. Tomorrow morning is supposed to be sunny, but not when I walk to yoga at 6:30, in the dark, with the wind chill temperature of minus 36 degrees C. Then it's going to snow again. And then again on Wednesday.

Somehow it doesn't seem quite the right time of year for daylight savings time to be starting.

Ira Glass on Story-Telling

I don't usually crib so directly from other blogs, but a friend sent me this great page from "Your Daily Awesome" with four completely engaging and charming clips of Ira Glass talking about story-telling. They've been a great help as I try to put something together in rough for my radio documentary. Thanks for the tip, CA.

Four Hours!

I had a miraculously productive morning working on revisions. My packet finally arrived from my advisor yesterday. It took nearly two weeks for it to get here -- you'd think it was going halfway around the world. Thankfully, she had sent the letter by e-mail last week, which contained 8 generous pages of the most helpful comments. But getting the packet with the comments in the margins really helped. So I went at it this morning. I began a bit later than usual (I am sick with a cold, after all), about 8:30. And I'm not kidding, before I knew it it was 12:30! And I'd only checked e-mail about 3 times. I feel great about that. The writing is changing for the better, and though I am not going to have much to show in terms of the new work unless I get cracking on that tomorrow, the revision is likely to be substantial enough that I can get away with it as long as I promise new work for April.

The first annotation is done. Reading for the second one is on track, though the reverse schedule has been revised. I'm okay with shifting schedules.

I spent last night on the IS project. I have a Monday deadline for a rough structure for the radio documentary. And then on the 13th and 14th I am going to the CBC in Toronto for a couple of days to work on it. That will be thrilling. I signed and mailed the contract today. I still can't believe they're paying me. Of course, trying to come up with the narrative structure has brought out the usual, mean inner critic telling me my tape is all wrong, there is no story, I don't have enough scenes etc. I need to re-read FC's inspiring post from the other day.

R brought me a cup of tea this afternoon in response to my complaints about not being looked after the way someone with a cold should be.

I don't have time for this

I do not have time to nurse a cold right now, but really, when it hits, it hits hard. So I had to spend the morning, for which I had high hopes of making progress on my essay, sleeping. The drugs that I am taking to enable me to breath leave me a little foggy. And I'm in a grumpy mood. Why is it that when we women are sick, we end up having to take care of ourselves, but when the men in our lives (if there is one) are sick we love to take care of them. Why can they not reciprocate?

I have three plans for today other than sleeping: 1. Spend two hours (Bug, I can't do three. Just. Can. Not) on my essay and 2. Work on the structure for my radio documentary (my IS project) and 3. Read the book for my second annotation -- I am behind on the reverse calendar but that's okay.

Meanwhile, while I was gone it seems that FC and The Repeater have taken to blogging daily! I love it!