On Hiatus

Perhaps after the residency I'll feel motivated to get back to the blog. Until then, here's something from the safari in December. I didn't realize that leopards spent so much time up in trees. They even take their kills up there to keep them away from other predators.

Happy Mother's Day

Adulthood has many perks, but none so precious as the great relationship I am now able to have with my mother. It's just something that you can't have when you're a kid, a teenager, or even in your twenties. But once you're beyond that, it get easier and easier. For me, ever since I let go of the idea of my mother as an authority figure and embraced the idea of her as someone to have in my life because she's an adventurer, a great cook, fun to shop with, easy to relax with, always good for a lengthy and meandering phone call, sure to make good book and film recommendations, easy going, humane, loves jazz, has a lot to teach me about gardening, and knows how to laugh, I've just come to appreciate her in new and different way. Just look at those happy, dancing feet in the socks that I knit for her seventieth birthday! And guess who taught me to knit?

In my twenties, I used to still kind of cringe when people said they could see my mother in me and me in my mother. How, I thought, could I possibly be so like someone that old for one thing, and that mean, for another? Now, I like it. Twenty years later, she is no longer old and I can't even remember her being especially mean. People say I do that same little thing with my eyes, and that just warms me through and through.

Among my mother's many admirable qualities is her great big, forgiving heart. She is so forgiving that I am sure she will accept my deepest apologies for (a) not sending an anniversary card last week and (b) not sending a mother's day card either.

I love you, Mum!

Withdrawal: It Isn't Pretty

I was just a basket case yesterday. Absolutely and positively out of my mind. By the end of the day, I figured it out. We were having our internet connection changed to a different company and a different kind of system (cable delivery instead of whatever it was before). All week I was worried that it wouldn't work properly and that we'd be stuck without a connection. Our house has "smart wiring" with a router, and the tech support people at the new company weren't sure it would work. And as the installation was under way, I was getting more and more agitated, as was my spouse. And the installer had to leave and it still wasn't working. We had a connection. It went right up to the router just as it was supposed to. But then it stopped. Oh no. We'd have to wait until our computer technician arrived (he was scheduled to come in the morning-is here as I write this). Meanwhile, I am always able to tap into several people's wireless connection from my laptop, but this is not an adequate longterm solution for a three computer household. I was offering my husband "fixes" as required. I had a menacing headache all day long that was not helping my mood. People were getting on my nerves. I missed an appointment. I cried during a panel discussion that I attended later that day.

By the end of the day I nailed the problem: My name is TI, and I am an internet/e-mail addict.

It's not how much I use, it's that I need to be able to connect. If I cannot connect, I feel agitated, I cannot think straight. I can sometimes go a few days without, for instance, when I am on vacation. But the craving sets in, viceral and fierce, as soon as I approach a computer with access.

Writing Personal Narrative

Vivian Gornick says that the writer of personal narrative needs to discover: "who is speaking, what is being said, and what is the relation between the two?" These questions, if asked persistently, will take you deeper into the work. I have been using this approach with the new essay for this submission, and it is helping me to focus. I am over the hump, that agonizing stage where I feel as if I am groping in the dark, going on faith in the process, struggling to discover what I am trying to say. And besides just logging the hours, which is really the only way to get anywhere, Gornick's questions have guided me. But they are scary questions, questions that demand self-disclosure.

As a writer of personal narrative, one of the things that I am fighting these days is the "who cares?" question. I mean, who cares about the experiences of my life? Why should I think that I have anything of significance to say? When I read some of the great essayists I've been reading lately--Loren Eiseley, C.S. Lewis, Patricia Hampl, James McConkey, Vivian Gornick, John Haines--I am in awe of the way that they manage to build a discussion with universal significance out of the details of their lives. Their lives weren't special, weren't significantly different from anyone else's (well, okay, Haines lived a homesteader's life in the Alaskan wilderness for 25 years, and not many people have done that). So how do they do it? How do they write something that people want to read? If Gornick is correct, it is by nailing the answers to those three questions. There is a clear narrative voice (a narrative persona, she calls it), the speaker has something unique to say, and this speaker is the only one who could have said it. I'm so used to impersonal, scholarly writing, where the main point is to present your work in a way that is as detached from the author as possible. Who I am, what I do, what life I have lived, where I stand in relation to the material...these are all considered to be irrelevant in the academic tradition. What I have been taught to consider irrelevant is suddenly the key to meaningful work.

Who am I? What do I have to say? And what is the relationship between who I am and what I have to say? These are my new questions.

LIke Clockwork

It's like clockwork -- the MFA brainfreeze. The deadline is upon me and that is the cue to come to a complete creative halt. The new writing is coming one slow and painful page at a time, and it feels completely flat and uninspired.

I am falling behind on the reading, not even done one of the books and without a single idea for the first annotation, let alone the second. And all the while, I have put everything else on hold because I feel as if every minute of every day should be spent writing. I know this to be a bad strategy. Tomorrow, I better factor in a few breaks. I'm putting the writing down for the evening and going to do a reading blast so that I can at least break free of one task -- an annotation.

There is something comforting in knowing that this is just the way it happens each month, and it is no indication of anything. It's just a little hump that I need to get over. So, so predictable. You could set your watch by it!

In the end, the reading gets done, the annotations get written, the new work gets completed, and usually I manage to knit a few rows in between. In a few days, I'll be ready to move on to the empathetic questioning to deepen the draft, and suddenly, ahhhhh!

One day I would love to edit a volume, filled with the work of all the writers I know, about why, oh why, we write.

Random Attack

I wasn't going to blog about this, but it has been eating away at me ever since it happened so I thought I'd unload it here. Recently, I was walking home through a busy area after a pleasant evening out, when I was attacked by a stranger. It wasn't a vicious attack, but it was definitely a violation. This enormous, drunk guy ran at me, grabbed me around the legs, and hauled me up in the air. His friends implored him to put me down, and kept telling me not to worry, he's just drunk. I, meanwhile, was pounding on his back, swearing, and demanding to be put down RIGHT NOW. I'm relieved to know that I have an angry and assertive reaction in these situations.

If that wasn't disturbing enough, the group of them (there were four) then staggered off, leaving me, in shock (but pretty much unhurt), standing on the street. On this busy street, not a single person came up to ask me if I was okay, if they could call someone for me, or if I needed anything. I myself completely forgot that I had a cell phone with me, and just walked the rest of the way home alone in a daze. By the time I got home, and even now, I could not remember exactly where on the block this had even happened.

Now, I'm fine. But it did make me aware of how randomly and suddenly a person who is minding her own business can be picked out of a crowd by a complete stranger. I am so fortunate that this guy had no knife, wasn't in the mood for a fight, and had friends who just wanted to get him out of there instead of joining in the "fun". Walking home alone at night has taken on a whole new frame for me, now that I have been the target of a random attack.

It has also made me want to take some kind of martial arts training.

Facebook

It was only a matter of time. Everyone at my university is doing the Facebook thing. You know, you think you're on top of technology with the blog, with e-mail, with the mp3... It began back in January when my students started talking about Facebook. It came up from time to time but I thought, well, that's what the kids are doing now (like text messaging and msn and all that stuff that I know I'll never make time for). But then we had a big "issue" on campus, and suddenly the Facebook groups were where the activism was happening (in large part). Anyway, I have set myself up on Facebook. But since my blog is private from my workplace, I can't post my Facebook information here.

Personally, I think that Facebook would be a fun thing for the MFA-ers to go to. We could even set up a group. You can write on people's wall (like blog commenting), send them gifts, and "poke" them (I haven't done this yet because I don't know what it is and I don't want to do anything rude by mistake). I have hesitated to send out an invitation to join because I know that we are all way too busy (myself included, but I appear to have discovered yet another trigger for me addictive personality). The reason I think it would be good is that it is even more oriented to community building than blogging.

If you think you might be interested, let me know and I'll send you an invitation to sign up and be my "friend". Or you can just go here: http://www.facebook.com/. If you're already registered, so much the better. Seek me out! I don't have very many friends at the moment. :(

First Flowers

The first flowers in the garden have started to bloom just this week. It's so amazing how they just sneak up on us. One day, it's miserable and cold and no end seems to be in sight. Then, suddenly, when you're not even watching, new shoots start to spurt and then...purple flowers.

Wouldn't it be great if writing were like that, where you could just leave it for a few days and then, when you came back to it, it would be fuller and more colourful and textured than it was when you last checked?

My fourth submission is challenging because it is not behaving as cooperatively as my untended garden. I have neglected it and now I want to start nurturing it again, early in the mornings, quietly, before the demands of the day try to divert me away from what really matters. A different kind of patience is required.

Stop!

My head was spinning a lot this week and one of the times that was happening was this afternoon, and in the midst of it I walked past a stop sign. And that took me back to an exercise that I was taught when I was learning how to quit smoking (a long, long time ago). What you do is, if your mind is going all squirrelly and you can't shut it off (back then it was the single-minded craving for a cigarette; today, it's much more diverse and far-reaching!), you picture a big red stop sign and you say "stop!".

So I was walking past this stop sign, and my mind was running hither and yon about this, that and the other, and I remembered that exercise, and I looked right at the sign and yelled "stop!" (okay, I kind of looked around a bit to see if anyone was watching, and I didn't yell it so much as say it very loudly in my mind, silently to myself). And the next thing I knew, everything but the stop sign was gone, and a kind of silence descended, and suddenly I noticed what a beautiful day it was, and I could smell spring, and the light was just perfect, and I realized that today had been quite a productive day in its own little way, and it was Friday, and I had plans to take the evening off, and, well, life can be pretty good when my head and my body are in the same place!

Light as a Feather

Ah, that feeling of clearing a major task off the desk! Add to that the sudden lightening of my workload at the day-job for the next few months, and well, I feel as if the lightness of my present being could just carry me away like a feather on a soft breeze.

I don't even know what to do. I feel as if nothing is a good choice right now, even though technically there is not nothing to do. I had some space open up for me this week in a wonderfully welcome way, so I am taking a little overnight trip to Toronto tomorrow just for fun. The documentary work, for which I had set aside Tuesday and Wednesday, got postponed. I almost cancelled the trip, almost starting filling in the days with other commitments, and then I said "STOP!" I changed my ticket so that I could make it to yoga at 6:30 tomorrow morning and have a nap afterwards if I should choose to do so. I am getting on the train with nothing but a book and my birch shawl (which is coming along quite nicely now that I understand the pattern; it is also light as a feather).

I need to give a special shout out to my sister MFA-ers, congratulations on mailing Sub. Three! Only one more to go this semester. I am so grateful to have you women to lean on.

If anyone knows how to carry this lightness into the daily grind, rather than have it reserved only for those fleeting moments immediately after meeting a deadline, please share your insights!

Maybe It's Something about the Second Semester

Is the second semester a time for a collective crash or something? Did anyone tell us that it is the hardest (God help us if the third is harder)? Or is it the full moon? Or the alignment of the planets? Or global warming?

Yes, I was running with an idea yesterday, yes, it has given me something to go on, yes, there is more there than there was yesterday or the day before. And yes, it is deepening, kind of. But it is also spread out all over the place, with little spikes of promise here and there. Can this really be what I think I want to do for a living?

I've had to make a decision. The decision is that I am willing to send whatever I have to my advisor, in the hopes that she can give me some direction. We're supposed to know that it all starts off badly (the whole shitty first draft idea). We're supposed to know that there is usually a kernel of something that can be nurtured into full bloom with some love and attention (remember all those drafts of Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art"?). We're supposed to know that fear, insecurity, self-doubt, loss of faith are as much a part of the process as that eureka feeling, moments of triumph, surges of confidence, times where we think "hey, I can do this," and the conviction that the Universe is good.

But on those days where I feel like I just want to crawl out of my skin and slither away from the keyboard, to do something practical or nothing at all, well, those are the days that it is hard to remember the rewards of sticking with it. Maybe one row of birch will get me back on track, knowing the promise that it holds.

Running with an Idea

Have you allowed yourself to run with an idea lately? I mean, truly run with it with no expectations or goals or anything attached to it? After a few days of hitting a wall, today I decided not to have any expectations at all, to allow myself to run with an idea. I picked up some little jots and notes from Saturday, when I did a bit of "empathetic questioning" following Carol Bly's technique in Beyond the Writer's Workshop. This morning I grabbed onto the core idea that came up while I was doing that and decided to run with it. La, la, la...it has born some fruit (not in abundance, but there is some new growth and it is worth chewing on).

The great thing about empathetic questioning is that its only objective is to get deeper into the heart of the piece. Carol Bly really makes me feel better because she says that a first draft inevitably feels flat (oh yes, how I know this to be true!). But that is not where it needs to stay. By asking yourself some questions about whether you are managing to say what you really want to say, trying to get to the "truth," you can push the piece deeper. Since right now I have a very shallow draft the various bits and pieces of which are connected together with a thread that is hardly visible even to myself and would certainly be invisible to anyone else, including my most attentive advisor, empathetic questioning and running with its findings was all that it took to break free from the disjointed surface of this story. It has allowed me to "look forward and plan ahead free-spiritedly." How liberating. Instead of feeling stuck, I feel released.

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).