Author: carin

the text(ure) of words

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

I’ve been thinking more than usual about words recently, about their placement, the choices we make in which of them we read, what and how we write. And why. How they tumble from between our lips or hands in conversation, how we listen to them, or don’t. And how, in this increasingly Twitterish, texty, Like-says-it-all world, in which (for the record and for the most part) I happily participate—I’m feeling a little nostalgic for a slower way of communicating.

Then, amazingly—in the middle of all this mulling—the universe does what it does so well, accommodates me, by placing in my path a book that not only slows me down but stops me momentarily with its beauty and simplicity and utter confounding complexity. 

The Black Book of Colors (a children’s picture book, which is—as the best of that genre are—so much more than a kid’s book) is written in both braille and visual text on black paper with raised black line drawings, also on black pages. The book, in fact, is entirely black so that on opening its black covers I find myself challenged to see colours not as a sighted person, but as a blind one. 

Colours, I am told, have sounds, taste, textures, smells. 

Well I sort of knew that already, but then it’s easy to attach a smell to a colour you’ve seen, but how do you do that when you’ve never seen red? What, then, does it sound/taste/smell/feel like? (according to the book’s narrator, it feels like a scraped knee)

I’m left in awe of the difficulty braille must pose to someone newly blind, how sensitive their fingertips would have to become, and how calloused and thick and impatient mine are. How one would have to slow down, and of all the benefits that come with taking ones time. I think of what I’m missing as I’m bombarded with a barrage of text every day—ads, billboards, signs, litter-ature everywhere and unavoidable. Subliminal. All that energy I, we, use in automatically translating those trillion words into what they mostly are: rubbish.

There’s something to be said for experiencing words without distraction, allowing them time to sink in rather than bounce off us or inspire an instant reaction of the oh-so-(yawn)-glib kind, to let ourselves ‘feel’ them instead, one word at a time. Not to impress, not to throw back out there, but to mull. To savour. Maybe even allow the things to rattle around our brains long enough to change us in ways we don’t even know…  

“But black is the king of all the colors. It is as soft as silk when his mother hugs him and her hair falls in his face.”  —The Book of Colors, by Menena Cottin, Groundwood Books, 2008

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feeling with the eyes

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

“When I first knew Gertrude Stein in Paris I was surprised never to see a French book on her table, although there were always plenty of English ones, there were even no French newspapers. But do you never read French, I as well as many other people asked her. No, she replied, you see I feel with my eyes and it does not make any difference to me what language I hear, I don’t hear a language, I hear tones of voice and rhythms, but with my eyes I see words and sentences and there is for me only one language and that is English. One of the things that I have liked all these years is to be surrounded by people who know no English. It has left me more intensely alone with my eyes and my English. I do not know if it would have been possible to have English be so all in all to me otherwise. And they none of them could read a word I wrote, most of them did not even know that I did write. No, I like living with so very many people and being all alone with English and myself.”

—from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein (pub: Harcourt, Brace—1933)

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delinquent paths

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

So I have a labyrinth in the backyard this year…. Doesn’t everyone? Really just a series of paths I’ve paced out in the snow, all connected, most of which follow the regular paths underneath, but some—and I love these best—run like delinquents straight through the middle of perennial beds, through the tall grasses, behind the spruce, across the veggie garden. Places I normally don’t walk. (There’s something very freeing about traipsing cavalierly over ice-encrusted earth where in just a few short months tender asparagus will present itself for my dinner.)

Cheap thrills, I know.

It wasn’t planned; I made this accidental circuit one night when I didn’t feel like going out for my usual walk through the neighbourhood. I wasn’t in the mood for cars and street lights so I walked in the yard instead under Orion’s Belt, up to my shins in virgin snow.

Only afterwards did it occur to me that I suddenly had my own personal head-clearing, right-outside-the-back-door well trodden walking ‘circuit’. I’ve come to love how I don’t have to plan A Walk, that I can just throw a jacket on over my bathrobe, stick my feet into boots and do a quick ten minutes before breakfast.

At first, of course, I felt like an idiot walking in my backyard. I think that’s what gave it the labyrinth vibe—the way it reminded me of years ago at Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto, how I’d been a minute into the labyrinth there, wondering when the magical life-transforming meditative qualities I’d read about would kick in, when a group of teenage boys showed up. As I tried to focus on my steps, they got comfortable, leaned against a wall, laughing and pointing. Apparently I was a scream.

I so desperately wanted not to care, to be already transformed, above such piffle. Instead I found myself concocting a plan where I’d make a quick and dignified exit, muttering just loud enough… something about that damned earring—where could it have gone??

But I’m not a very good actor, so I kept walking. One foot in front of the other. And then the other. Again and again and so on. Finally, finally, finally, as I made the last turn to come out, I realized I wasn’t thinking about the boys anymore, in fact I couldn’t remember when I’d stopped thinking about them—I hadn’t even noticed they’d gone, that the place was quiet. For how long, I had no idea. 

It was the first time I’d tuned out. In a good way.

A testament, I guess, to the power of the labyrinth, essentially the absence of destination that lets the mind relax. Also a repetitive quality helps, a constant looping back and forth. 

Qualities my own faux labyrinth has in spades.

True, it takes time to get past thinking the neighbours might peek through the hedge and call someone, but I love how eventually I forget about them, and most other things, and just walk—just following my own circuitous, well-trodden paths between Echinacea stalks, behind the blackberries, down this way, then that, turning right, left, along the cedar fence, criss-crossing the patio, past the bird feeder, the serviceberry—knowing it’s there but seeing none of it—and back again.

At least until the snow melts. After which, it’ll all disappear into a distraction of well-behaved stone paths that beg to be followed, perennial beds too crowded to walk through, things to cut and trim and pull and plant. Not to mention the big invisible sign over the asparagus that reads: Trespassers Will Go Hungry.

Until then, consider me occasionally and happily tuned out.

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things i saw

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

A girl, maybe four years old in a pink snowsuit, lets go of her mum’s hand and lies down next to the sidewalk where the snow is thin and crusty and streaked with black from cars. She flaps arms and legs in a vain attempt to make an angel. Her mum doesn’t stop her, doesn’t fuss about black snow; just stands and watches and laughs. Lucky girl.

I see two crows shouting the odds outside my window, and bird breath—little puffs of steam with every caw-caw. 

An employee at the Salvation Army store goes through books on the shelves, now and then tossing one into a cardboard box… I watch as Nora Roberts’ Summer Pleasures is pitched. Thwunk. She sees me looking and says some stories are not compatible with Salvation Army principles.
Sex? I venture. Or just bad writing? 
Sex, she says, her face screwed up in disgust.
How can you tell which ones have it?
She reads the back, she says, sometimes she has to read more, she just gets a feeling, god directs her to the steamy ones.
She seems to enjoy her work.
 

Note: do not look for this potboiler at your local Sally Ann.

east friesan black goes with brownies

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

In honour of my friend Chead’s birthday, I’m sharing what might be the world’s best brownie recipe. (Drink with east friesan black tea for happiest results. Add maple sugar crystals to tea for bliss.)

Katharine Hepburn’s Brownies

1. Melt together 1 stick butter and 2 squares unsweetened chocolate and take the saucepan off the heat.

2. Stir in 1 cup sugar, add 2 eggs and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and beat the mixture well.

3. Stir in 1/4 cup all-purpose flour and 1/2 teaspoon salt. (In the original recipe, 1 cup chopped walnuts is added here as well.)

4. Bake the brownies in a buttered and floured 8-inch-square pan at 325 F. for about 40 minutes.

—courtesy of Laurie Colwin’s More Home Cooking

Notes:

—I bake for exactly 40 minutes in a pre-heated oven. The second the timer goes off, I take them out and let them cool (thoroughly) in the pan before cutting.

—Some people prefer pecans to walnuts. You know who you are.
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happy ‘new’ year, happy new old plaza

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

There’s a little plaza on my way to the dentist. I’ve driven past it three or four times a year for the past two decades. Used to be a pretty ordinary place, easy to miss—generic grocery, dry cleaner, bank, doughnut shop, LCBO (this was when outlets didn’t actually display booze; instead, they had pens chained to the counters and you had to order your Blue Nun by scribbling a code onto a slip of paper which you’d then hand to a dusty grey gentleman who would shuffle into the back room disapprovingly to fetch it for you). 

Eventually it  was all replaced with an Asian grocery and various shops—I didn’t know what kind of shops because I never went there again.

Not until yesterday.

I was half an hour early for a dental appointment. Normally early means reading time. I drove past the plaza as usual. A block later I turned around, drove back, pulled in under a sign that said Chinese Halal Restaurant.

I’ve been reading Kathleen Winter’s blog, where she’s doing a new thing every day—might be she’s wearing red tights in public, or buying orange lipstick, or leaving the room to crotchet a necklace when company gets dull—and I’m loving this stuff. Makes me want to do my own new daily thing but I realize it’s a commitment. Got to be in the right head space. And I’m not. My thing this year is not focussing on the new but getting rid of the old. 

Thing is, newness is creeping into my life nonetheless. Partly, no doubt, because of the not so subliminal messages of my daily Cachaca and Green Cheroot fix, and partly because with every bit of  ‘old’ I toss, I’m actually making room for something new. It’s like I’m working on a different end of the same stick.

Old new. Ying yang.

The plaza, as it turned out, was like any plaza except the signs were in Chinese and the cantaloupe was dragon fruit. A Chinatown vibe but less frenetic. Compact. Easier to park.

And it was new. Which equalled fun.

I bought okra chips and New Year’s clementines with the stems and leaves still on—the regulars were pulling them off because they’re sold by the pound, but too pretty for this tourist to remove. I also got birthday cards in Chinese characters and one mystery card. The woman at the store couldn’t tell me what it said… Not birthday, not new year, not thank you, not party… Anniversary?… Not anniversary, not sadness…Wedding?… Not wedding… And little red paper money bags to tuck inside. I loved how, at the checkout the cashier chatted merrily in (Cantonese?) with every customer then when I got there she rang in my stuff and said You want a bag? (I love how, unlike travelling in, say, Europe, where you might be taken for a local, I’m relaxed in Asian cultures, knowing I won’t have to figure out how to explain that I don’t speak the language, that being a tall white blue-eyed Caucasion is enough of a clue.) I watched some old guys happily arguing at a table in front of a tea shop and just as I was leaving I caught the eye of a woman pacing outside the BBQ pork place that didn’t open til 11 a.m. Her expression such hungry anticipation I’ve already made a mental note to go back—after 11—sometime soon.

Very soon.