Author: carin

cool(ing) thoughts

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

Every year I cut a basketful of hydrangea for the neighbour lady who dries them to use on her xmas tree. And every year I think: what a lovely idea, and then don’t do it myself… being stuck as I am on the ancient Elmo and Fozzie Bear I gave single Peter a hundred years ago and which he still loves, and the battered white dove that used to be the top of my own tiny singlehood tree—and how could we not hang the hideous Starship Enterprise that no one knows where it came from but if encouraged will tell you to live long and prosper. Ugliest thing you’ve ever seen but it is a nice message.

You should be warned there’s no point to this post except to say the heat wave’s getting to me and thinking about winter has a pleasing effect. Frankly, I’m about one step away from doing a whole pointless wintery riff that could easily morph from tree decor to ice-fishing to memories of snow forts and pretending icicles are freezies and having my face washed on the way to school while wearing big brown rubber boots with buckles, boots so big you put your whole big shoe inside them, and homemade mittens and a scratchy wool hat with pompoms—and didn’t there used to be more snow when we were little? and wasn’t everything uphill? and five miles away?—and how our parents let us go toboganning on our own, at dusk, on Suicide Hill (which, if you didn’t hit a tree, landed you in a parking lot, screaming and laughing hysterically as you swerved past cars)… anything to forget for a single minute that it’s 248 humid degrees out there…

Alas, it’s too late. My fingers are already sliding off the keys and my brain is a fried plantain chip. (in which case may I simply say this: let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! if only for five minutes…)

this is not a review: practical jean by trevor cole

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

Among the definitions of insanity are…
i) doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, ii) deviating from social norms or iii) becoming a danger to one’s self and others (although it’s generally agreed that being a deviant or a danger does not always stem from being insane).

It may also be agreed that Jean Vale Horemarsh, the protagonist in Trevor Cole’s Practical Jean—given her quest to kill her four closest friends—falls bang into the second category.

Please don’t misunderstand; she’s doing it out of love. She’s doing it because she doesn’t want them to suffer old age and disease the way her mother did; she wants them to go out in a moment of bliss. Which brings us to the second part of her quest: determining what would constitute a unique moment of bliss for each of the women, then making that moment happen. Then knocking them off.

I love what this book makes you think about: what is friendship? what is kindness? what is nuts? (I also love the cover.)

Trevor Cole has done two remarkable things: he’s written from the perspective of a woman in a way that if you didn’t know, you would insist a woman had written the book. Inner monologues, dialogue, neuroses, petty grievances, vanity—sounds bad, I know, but it’s satire and satire is best done from a negative place—all gorgeously identifiable from a feminine point of view—albeit, admittedly, a little ‘trop’ in the name of art…

Or maybe not.

Which brings me to an interesting, possibly worthwhile, point of digression: can men ‘write women’ effectively, and vice versa? I think: yes, they can. Not all, but those who do it well (Richard B. Wright’s Clara Callan comes to mind), can be enlightening if only for the insight ‘the other’ receives in the reading. In fact, if handled with a deft and sensitive hand, the result is a little like looking into a mirror, being slightly startled and immediately wanting to blame the lighting, but then realizing that, yes, that is indeed us, with our dark circles and bad haircut.

One of my favourite scenes is Jean’s recollection of sitting on the porch eating Peek Freans Digestives (“…even though they were cookies it seemed like they were almost good for you…”) with her friend Cheryl. They’re both teenagers, newly aware of sex but in agreement about wanting nothing to do with it. Life is still wonderfully simple (as Cole illustrates with a lovely example of the ‘facetious’ he does so well) but there’s an ominous sense of adulthood creeping round the corner…

“…Cheryl was acting as if she wasn’t hungry… [she] was just fiddling with the cookie on her plate and crumbling little bits off the edge, and Jean had to ask:
Cheryl, is something wrong?
She said nothing, didn’t even look up, so Jean knew something was wrong and thought maybe Cheryl was mad at her. For what she couldn’t imagine, unless it was forgetting to say something nice about the turquoise barrette in Cheryl’s hair. That seemed like such a petty thing to be mad about, but Jean thought that was probably it. Cheryl could be a little sensitive sometimes; it was one of the few things about Cheryl that wasn’t so great.
I forgot to say, began Jean, that’s a really nice—
Before she could finish Cheryl covered her face with her hands and started sobbing. Sitting across from her Jean was thinking Oh, for Heaven’s sake. It’s just a barrette! But she leaned over and put her hand on her friend’s shoulder and said, Cheryl, I’m really sorry. It’s such a pretty—
Cheryl lifted her glistening face from her hands and bawled out, I’m pregnant!
Jean yanked her hand away as if it had been bitten. Even as she did it she wasn’t proud of herself…”

This simple moment carries a lot of weight, not only as a turning point in their lives, but as a through line in the book. Jean immediately drops Cheryl as a friend; soon after, Cheryl and her family disappear. Decades later, Jean’s guilt resurfaces and she’s desperate to find Cheryl, to atone for her lack of compassion.

By killing her of course.

The other remarkable thing in this book so focused on death is that Cole manages, without cliché, to maintain a very high, very subtle, level of humour via spot-on takes of various relationships, letting us in on the power of memories, the dynamics created by conflicting emotions, things said and unsaid—all of the sad mad truth of everyday lives. And all of it perfectly placed against an insane backdrop of benevolent murder.

Somehow the suspension of disbelief is complete.

Dark, delicious and very discussable; best read with a few good (but not too good) friends and a little good (very good) dark chocolate.

—

This post first appeared in July, 2011.

if you’re looking for love…

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

…there is no better place than your local Humane Society.

Stopped by mine the other day to deliver a duvet cover for the duvet I dropped off last week. (After it suddenly occurred to me that a duvet minus a cover plus claws equals feathers everywhere.)  Fortunately we had an old one that would do nicely.

A few years ago the original shelter burned down, there were many casualties, horrific it was. After that they found temporary housing in a shoe box; I hear it was beyond awful. No real facilities, no space, no air-conditioning. At least one of those summers, as I recall, was deadly hot and humid. I have no doubt they did their best but it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Thank god a new place has finally been built. And it’s a dream. After just a couple of visits I’m as enchanted as it’s possible to be by it and by the good work these people do. And stunned at how they accomplish it with zero funding. ZERO.

Despite an average annual vet bill of $250,000, plus a long list of other expenses, they manage solely through donations, fund-raising, sponsors and a dedicated volunteer base who do everything from feeding to brushing to walking to cleaning litter boxes to scrubbing out carriers—
—and laundry. At the moment they get by with a small washing machine and dryer, which isn’t nearly enough for the amount they go through. Three laundry lines are set up out back to help out. They live in hope of one day having two industrial size machines.
And, it seems, they do it cheerfully. Very happy vibes inside these walls and that includes from the animals—as happy, anyway, as homeless waifs can be.

I’d like to think this is how all shelters will be built in future: cages only for the anti-social or newcomers or segregation for health reasons, otherwise the population lives and plays in large communal areas and, best of all, have free access to the great outdoors.
Despite the lovely vibes, leaving this place without a fluff-filled carrier or something on a leash is as hard as leaving any shelter, but here at least you can take some small consolation in knowing these beautiful faces are, for the most part, really and truly at the very best place possible, next to a loving home. 

That said, and no matter how you look at it… they’re still looking back…

steal away…

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

“Just one word more—please steal time every day, if you cannot find it any other way, to lie on the grass, or in a hammock, under a huge tree this lovely month… and relax. What a tonic this is for the soul. What a rest for weary nerves! Our husbands, children, friends—yes, and the nation—will profit by our relaxation. The greatest need today is for calmer homes, and no fireside can be calm unless its guardian is at peace with the world.” ~Nell B. Nichols, columnist for Woman’s Home Companion, summer 1924

overheard

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

On my way to the store a pony-tailed woman approaches, power-walking with two others in her wake; she’s speaking loudly and I prepare to nod, say good morning, but the ponytail doesn’t make eye contact, too busy rattling on…

“I said to him, I asked him, I said do you like my hair better up or down and he said, I don’t know, hair is hair and I said yeah, I know, but do you think I look prettier with it up or…”

In the moment we pass each other, I notice her walk-mates catch my eye—no words, just a please, please can you help us?? kind of look that makes me smile, glad to be stepping out alone.

∏

A girl, maybe five years old, sits on a big comfy chair at the library, skinny bare legs stick straight out on the seat, pink sneakered feet barely reach the edge. She holds up a picture book the way a teacher would, turns the pages clumsily but with concentration, tongue between teeth; she talks out loud as if reading the story to a class but no one is there except an older woman flipping through a magazine in the chair opposite. The girl closes one book, picks up another from the small stack on her lap, holds it open beside her cheek, peeks around at the pictures while doing her teacher talk, then suddenly turns to the woman: 

“What do you think Michael is making us for lunch?” she says.

The woman barely raises her head, mumbles… “I don’t know, we’ll have to wait and see.”

“Okay,” says the girl. And holds up the next book.

∏

Two elderly people in a waiting room, the woman says to the man: “Of course we had the house built, chose the lot and everything—on the first of September it’ll be 53 years since we moved in.”

“When you moving out?” says the man.

“First of September.”

lunch time read: georgian bay gourmet summer entertaining

~ carin ~ 8 Comments

I love old cookbooks. Oldish. My favourites being from the 40’s through the 80’s. Depression era ones are also good, but there’s something irresistible about all that apres war poncing about with the discovery of avocados and kebabs and mandarin oranges in syrup; the way corn flakes and potato chips are used as crust, maraschino cherries and olives are tossed onto everything and platters of undercooked hams, shellacked and skewered with slices of tinned pineapple and unripe honeydew melon. Oh the things you can do with tuna! Or, when in doubt, throw some cream or sugar or liquor into whatever you’re making, and while you’re at it have a swig yourself!

A deliciously hideous pseudo-culinary flamboyance that continued for decades, seeming to peter out only with the arrival of celebrity Chefs and food channels and all-of-a-sudden real food from places beyond the British Isles.

There’s something comforting in all that kitsch, all those olives. Takes me back.

Happily, my most recent acquisition, Georgian Bay Gourmet Summer Entertaining, contains all of the above-mentioned in one form or another, plus people are smoking in the accompanying pictures. It not only took me back to an era, its cheerful everyone-must-have-fun bonfires and boating banter delivered me vicariously to some oddly frenetic cottage where placemats and napkins match and an aproned woman in pumps is all Martha in the kitchen morning til night while three year olds play with lawn darts and a guy in a safari jacket swills rum-laced pineapple juice and burns enormous olive-studded hamburgers. The book was published in 1983 when, evidently, no one was eating local or seasonal as any kind of rule. Lots of jellied salads, tinned fruit and things with marshmallows where marshmallows should never be—but as well, many gems, like a tomato and basil soup with gin, frozen watermelon daiquiris, and bits of trivia such as Georgian Bay has 30,000 islands and is the world’s largest fresh water inland bay. And pears—who knew they ripened from the inside out?

One of my favourite items is something called a Disaster, made by putting popsicles and ice cream into a blender til smooth then “pouring into glasses”. Admittedly, I was hot and thirsty while reading the book, which gave Disaster some added appeal. I haven’t tried it yet. Thinking about it now I see how it might be brilliant or… it could live up to its name.

Ah well, if it’s no good I’ll float some marshmallows, add a maraschino cherry or a splash or three of cognac.

Will report once the experiment has been conducted. :)

Happy weekend!