Author: carin

watching where i step

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

 

Dog like an angry fox at the bottom of a driveway. Possessive of its tarmac.
As I pass it watches me, positions itself as something much larger… I buy the ruse, walk faster.

But it’s not the only scary thing at this intersection of seasons.DSC02211Ice too.

And then another dog. Black and small and growly, companion to a small woman in black. She does not say hello, speaks only to the dog. Perhaps winter has been long and hard for her…

A teenaged lad approaches, staring at his hand. I veer out of his way.

And then a puddle in the shape of a hawk in flight.

And this.DSC02214Always this.DSC02216

Smell of cigarette smoke on the other side of a cedar hedge.

Third dog—a very young puppy, gambolling through the snow, followed by two gamboling young girls.

Things are getting better.

Signs of spring.DSC02215DSC02217

Also, the sun. Still high at 6:30 p.m.

Another puppy, a sand coloured one, unremarkable and content it seems.DSC02218
And then, because there haven’t been enough dogs, a beautiful but seemingly unfriendly Lassie, walked by a chap in designated walking apparel and with his perky young daughter outfitted in pinks and purples.  He reluctantly returns my hello  with a lemon sucking face. (No disrespect to lemons.)

As I turn toward home, a dove. Creaky garden gate sound of its wings as it flies from tree to overhead wire, sits, watches in that non-judgmental dove-like way… and I wonder what the view is like from there.

♦

 

wordless wednesday

Image ~ ~ carin ~ 22 Comments

IMG_5602 - Copy - CopyAm breaking from my usual silence to say that I chose this shot with the hope of inspiring some chatter, or at least an expression of preferences. I’m guessing there are at least two camps at this *almost spring*  time of year—those who can’t stand it one more minute and and are fleeing the last of the snowdrops (or in the case of eastern provinces, snowdumps)… and those who are all a-twitter waiting for them to bloom.

So, at the end of winter, are you a flee or a-twitter??
__

Other Wordless Friends—

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

♦

this is not a review: ‘and the birds rained down’, by jocelyne saucier

~ carin ~ 11 Comments

 

I haven’t the foggiest as to why fat books are so popular. Is it because there’s more to wade around in, that the reading will last longer? A double cheeseburger vs a cup of soup?

Yes, but,  I say.

Skinny books, being pared down to their sweet essence, have a tendency to stay with you long after the yummy saga of a fat book has slid into the oblivion of a happy gamorph. (After which you’re hit with the craving for another fat book.) A skinny book, on the other hand, often begs to be read again. And the re-reading gets sweeter (and more nourishing) every time.

And the Birds Rained Down is a skinny book of the most delicious kind, one of five Canada Reads selections, for which I am truly grateful.andthebirdsraineddown-220

I’ll be honest though. It took me few beats to relax into it and I wondered why this was… because I liked the story. Then it occurred to me: I was reading at the wrong speed; I was looking for something rather than letting the something contained within the pages find  me.

Also, the ‘something contained’ wasn’t what I thought. So I’d never have found it by looking.

For instance, what it’s NOT about is a few feisty and elderly men who have chosen to live in the woods where they rely on their wits and each other and occasional supplies from town courtesy of a couple of pot growers. Neither is it about the two women who arrive, one a photographer, working on a project about survivors of an infamous fire; the other, a former inmate of a lunatic asylum.

Neither is it about a small Northern Ontario community that was devastated by fire, or the way the fire’s effect has touched various unconnected people in the decades since.

It’s not about dogs named Drink and Chummey, or a cat named Monseigneur.

And it’s certainly not about the worry of death, though it’s mentioned a lot and figures prominently. And, well, there is  strychnine.

It is… however, about dignity. How we see people, how we expect or allow them to live. How we can choose to help or hinder or judge. It’s about the kind of communities we want and the kind we build. (A roadside hotel—a rather old and often overlooked shell of a place with an interesting past that still serves a real purpose to those with an appreciation for authenticity—offers a powerful metaphor for aging.)

“I like places that have given up any pretence of stylishness, any affectation, and that cling to an idea waiting for time to prove them right: prosperity, the railroad, old friends… I’m not sure what they’re waiting for. The region has a number of these sorts of places that stand the test of time as they revel in their own dilapidated solitude.”

It’s about respect for generations that have lived lives we can’t possibly understand; it’s about breaking down age barriers.

“The eyes are what are most important in old people. The flesh is hanging, sagging, gathered in wrinkled knots around the mouth, eyes, nose and ears. The face is ravaged, illegible. You can’t know anything about an old person unless you look into their eyes—their eyes tell the story of their lives.”

It’s about friendship and the surprising places it’s found. In one case, in an asylum where one inmate (who had her own baby taken from her) helped another mourn the loss of her child.

“I rocked her baby. That’s how we became friends. I asked if I could rock her baby. She passed him to me very carefully and I took him just as carefully, and I rocked the baby too, for a long time, singing songs to him. And that’s how, taking turns rocking a baby that didn’t exist, we figured out how not to be where we were.”

It is about love and sex in old age and the latter not working quite as it used to. Never mind. There are other ways. Saucier doesn’t shy away from this subject but treats it with exactly the right amount of ‘natural’. We might ask ourselves why this isn’t talked about more… is it just so terribly shocking to know that the elderly feel passion?

It’s about creativity.

The way these men have built their lives, and an unknown stash of paintings in which more is revealed about the artist than ever could be shared in friendship.

And, yes, it’s about death. Not in any maudlin or sentimental way but in the way it’s connected to both life and independence and the choices we make. Not only how we live, but how we die…

“Too many deaths,… Too many bodies, too much black coiled at the bottom of his paintings, never any light, or, if there is any, it’s to illuminate blacked bodies, cries of horror, hands out stretched where death surprised them. No one can live with that deep within. Ted tried to free himself from it, to hurl all of that horror onto the canvas. Maybe he succeeded in a sense. His final painting, the one on his easel, had light—very little a faint glimmer, but enough to created a space from which he could slip away gently. That’s what I hope for him, it’s what I hope for all of us. To slip away gently.”

It’s a book that celebrates the realities of life in its not always perfect perfection. And it does so quite perfectly.

All that in 155 pages.

♦

And the Birds Rained Down, available online at Blue Heron Books.

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stealing this one because it’s so good

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

 

I believe the correct term is ‘re-blogging’.

I’ve never done it before so I feel the need to make it very clear  that

                  —the following words are not mine!

They belong to the clever minds over at Telling the Flesh and rockstar dinosaur pirate princess but they are so very wonderful and so perfectly address the issue of ‘consent’, which for some reason seems to baffle certain folk to the point of collapsing empires…

And worse.

Anyway, they deserve to be shared.

______________

From Telling the Flesh—

The news is full of stories about sexual assault, rape, and rape culture. Jian Ghomeshi. Steubenville. Rehtaeh Parsons. Dalhousie Dental School. Etc. Every day, almost, there’s another story. Rape culture is now on the agenda, people say. And sure, it’s great that people are talking. It’s great that the idea of rape culture is actually showing up in the mainstream media.

But it’s clear that a.) this conversation shouldn’t have had to happen on the backs of those who have suffered – in some cases, died; and b.) the whole notion of consent still seems to be a particular sticking point for many.

I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why people have such a hard time with consent. To me, it’s simple. It’s straightforward. But for others it isn’t. And that’s where a handy analogy developed by rockstar dinosaur pirate princess comes in.

RDPP (for short) compares sex to tea, with brilliant results. Here’s just a sampling:

You say “hey, would you like a cup of tea?” and they go “omg fuck yes, I would fucking LOVE a cup of tea! Thank you!*” then you know they want a cup of tea.

If you say “hey, would you like a cup of tea?” and they um and ahh and say, “I’m not really sure…” then you can make them a cup of tea or not, but be aware that they might not drink it, and if they don’t drink it then – this is the important bit –  don’t make them drink it. You can’t blame them for you going to the effort of making the tea on the off-chance they wanted it; you just have to deal with them not drinking it. Just because you made it doesn’t mean you are entitled to watch them drink it.

If they say “No thank you” then don’t make them tea. At all. Don’t make them tea, don’t make them drink tea, don’t get annoyed at them for not wanting tea. They just don’t want tea, ok?

They might say “Yes please, that’s kind of you” and then when the tea arrives they actually don’t want the tea at all. Sure, that’s kind of annoying as you’ve gone to the effort of making the tea, but they remain under no obligation to drink the tea. They did want tea, now they don’t. Sometimes people change their mind in the time it takes to boil that kettle, brew the tea and add the milk. And it’s ok for people to change their mind, and you are still not entitled to watch them drink it even though you went to the trouble of making it.

If they are unconscious, don’t make them tea. Unconscious people don’t want tea and can’t answer the question “do you want tea” because they are unconscious.

Now, go read the rest, which you can find here.

___________

The above, with thanks, to Sonja Boon.

 

utopia

~ carin ~ 5 Comments

 

A strange conversation, recently overheard…

In a book store yet.

DSC02069

One woman to the other: I get fidgety if I sit too long.

The other agrees, says, yes, that she has friends who can read for hours;
she has no idea how they do it.

Exactly!  says the first. l mean, I Iike to read… but not for  hours.DSC02070

Another exchange, in the same shop, one that made more sense—

I ask the owner how many books he guesses he has in here. DSC02072

His answer: not enough.

Every day, he says, someone comes in and asks for something he doesn’t have.

DSC02075

We get that, right?

♦

“Literature is my Utopia.” ~ Helen Keller

the art of nothing

~ carin ~ 23 Comments

 

I was googling the title to see if there were already a hundred things called this and it seems there are not. In the process I found a short film made by an actor posing as one Hans Freeberling, an artist installing a show about nothing. The gallery is empty. People come. They think it’s real, that the artist is real, and so they try not to scratch their wee wannabecultured noggins until, eventually, they make up Their Own Point for the point of the nothingness. Because there must be one, right??

As a satire, it’s gorgeous. Says so much about us. Most of which is questionable, but there’s this too: that faced with a blank canvas, real or metaphoric, we can choose to impose our own thoughts. This is a kind of art form in itself. Getting People To Think From Ground Zero, we might call it.

The lack of ‘something’ might also be compared to a one word poem. Or a single toilet cemented to a wall. I mean, we can have real discussions about these things. (I recently had a strangely satisfying time discussing the ‘poem’ balloon. One word. Discussion went along the lines of who says it has to have only two L’s and where’s the law about the emphasis remaining on the second syllable… and so on.)

There’s always the chance these chats will lead to… oh, something interesting or important even. Possibilities are always endless where conversation is concerned and, really, anything at all can be a prompt.

But because something serves as a prompt, or because it causes us to think in possibly new ways… is it art? And who gets to say?

And what isn’t  art?

And who gets to say?

I’m not looking for a definition. Or even an answer. Is there even an answer? Tons of opinions. And all manner of conversation and argument and (most sadly of all) very little light-heartedness about things, including toilets, so I’ve decided to stop asking. In fact this whole ramble is a digression.

**

What I meant to write about is nothing, the art of it.

Which leads me directly to my dad, a chap who would not have called himself an artist though he played with paint, on both canvas and walls. He built our first house then spent decades renovating the second. The garden too. Rockeries and rose beds. Our hedge was almost a topiary. If he wanted a fence, he’d go down to the beach, find some driftwood and make one. Then he’d make a driftwood coffee table, an end table, a floor lamp. He made bookshelves. A fireplace, a BBQ and a bird bath out of stone and in the rec room he painted a wall to wall, floor to ceiling mural of a favourite spot under a tree on a beach in Barbados. He included my mother’s striped beach bag hanging from a branch. (The people who bought the house after my parents died, said the mural was a selling point.) He built two patios and a car port, refashioned our front door, and the back one too, to look more Spanish, a style he liked. And then he began making the inside look more Spanish too. To his mind anyway.

He did all this after his day job, and on weekends. Mostly in Hawaiian shirts, paint splattered pants and shoes with no laces.

This was his thing, this making.

I used to wonder how he thought up all this stuff. How could a wall that looked perfectly fine to me in its bareness or with a few holiday pennants hammered on, to him scream: paint a beach scene!!! don’t forget the bag.

He did a lot of sitting in-between the making. This was all before busy-ness was invented, when people really were   busy, doing real things without an abundance of appliances and before nannies and dog-walkers. These ancient busy people, it seems, made time to sit, have a coffee, light a pipe, and if you were to join them, say, at the picnic table on the handmade patio, they wouldn’t talk about being busy, they would say something about squirrels or sedimentary rocks or have you noticed how many buds are on the apricot tree this year? You might be wearing pedal pushers and drinking Koolaid when you ask if there’s such as thing as UFOs and they might draw a few times on their pipe, think for a minute, let the smoke out nice and slow as they say could be, who the hell knows…

My dad would be surprised to learn that the most important thing he taught me was not to make sure the vice on my workbench was closed at night or how properly to wash a car, but how to love what you do, to do it as well as you can and, most importantly, to take time for the nothing. In fact, he’d be surprised to know he even did it.

Some of my favourite moments, those nothing ones. Still are. I realize in my own nothings that that’s where we re-fuel, where we find our next mural.

A whole different kind of art.

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