Author: carin

three girls

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

So I walked to the library.

And inside, the first thing I see, a girl, maybe five or six, in a red dress with big black polka dots, skip, skip, skipping, towards the kiddie book section—arms overhead and long blonde pony tails bouncing and swinging from side to side, unbridled as her joy.

On the way home, a girl, maybe fifteen, in cutoff shorts and tiny tee-shirt. Long brown hair, tied back, exposing round, freckled face and big smile. An apple-cheeked, wholesome Daisy Duke. She delivers newspapers in a wooden wagon and as I walk past she says Hello! in this way that feels like she’s actually happy to see me. Some people can do that. Some people can be fifteen and beautiful and not know it, and make being a paper girl who hauls around an old wagon seem like a very enviable thing.

Around the corner, an old girl. Maybe eighty. Maybe more. Grey hair, wavy, cut in a bob, shoulders hunched forward like a parenthesis, as if it’s been a long time since her back was straight. Comes out of one of the swanky houses that abutt the ravine. She’s in smart trousers and a light khaki jacket with a Burberry collar, black patent leather flats. She walks toward the dead-end of the street; I assume she’s off to visit a neighbour for tea or a few hands of bridge. But no. She walks to the end, then pauses, turns back and walks home. All in perfectly polished patent leather pumps.

venus and mars (the rocket science version)

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

“She was an attractive French Canadian in her forties named Julie Payette, who had flown one shuttle mission and would fly another in July 2009. She was dressed in blue NASA coveralls, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail. On the screens above us, in the briefing center, the space shuttle Discovery crouched, steaming, as the countdown progressed. Payette was too kind to laugh in my face when I asked her bout the silence of space, but she looked as if she wanted to.

“There is always noise in space,” she said. “When you don’t hear noise, it’s a problem, especially in a space suit. It means the interior ventilators are not working, not circulating air; the carbon dioxide [that humans breathe out] has a different density in zero gravity, it makes pockets around us.” She had intense brown eyes and a mouth that tried hard not to twist upward at my cluelessness. In order to sleep weightless, she continued, she had to find corners to wedge herself in, but “it’s hard to find comfortable places.” Her favorite nook was in the space-suit bay, jammed between two parked suits. “The helmets purr, ” she said, then repeated it happily, in French: “ils ronronnent.”

~from Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence, by George Michelsen Foy (Simon & Schuster, 2010)

~

Here’s the thing: were the author speaking with Neil Armstrong, would he have noted Armstrong’s hair colour and how he wore it; would the intensity of his eyes, or lack thereof have warranted even one line of ink? (Not to mention the shape and/or tendencies of Armstrong’s mouth to turn up at the corners.)

Granted, he may have asked about sleeping arrangements on the shuttle, but I’m not convinced he’d have asked Neil to repeat anything in French…

Furthermore, I wonder: if a woman had interviewed Payette [or Armsrong for that matter] would attractiveness, hair, mouth and eyes have figured in a story about the quality of sound and silence in space?

first flutter-by of the season

~ carin ~ 10 Comments

Not sure I’ve seen one of these before. Certainly not in March. No idea what kind it is. Behavioural clues: tendency to flap about rather absent-mindedly, nearly crashing into my head before settling (indicates possible bad eyesight?)…narcissistic attention to improving tan…unable to find a comfortable resting pose; ADHD??
…Eventually fluttering right on by without so much as a nod to the other insects.

Note: In my effort to make an identification I googled “clumsy, vain, hyperactive, short-sighted, anti-social, black and yellow flutterby with blue dots” and got a seamstress in Winnipeg named Ted…

in the neighbourhood

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

A guy walking his dog doesn’t normally get my attention. I can’t say why this one does except that I’m pretty sure it’s the guy from around the corner who lives alone since his wife moved out, whose dog is always howling because it never gets walked, at least not on this street. And the way he’s walking. One foot in front of the other at a regular pace, sometimes looking up, sometimes not—all very ordinary. Yet. There’s something. It doesn’t feel like an ordinary walk, it feels like something has changed, or is is about to change, like he’s walking at this end of the street because he’s lived around the corner for ten years and is kind of sorry he’s never talked to anyone, or walked his poor howling dog more often. Like he wants to see what he’s been stupidly ignoring all this time. Maybe he’s decided to change his ways and this is the beginning of a new habit; maybe he’s looking for someone to say hello to.
But it doesn’t feel like a beginning.
It feels like a goodbye walk.
I forget about it for the rest of the day.
I go out.
And when I come home, as I turn the corner, I see a For Sale sign on his lawn.
Whatever the circumstance, whatever his deal, I can’t help feeling a little sorry I didn’t go out to say hello when he passed by…

*

Grandchildren visit next door and the grandma (a dear woman who feeds the neighbourhood stray and whose husband built it a beautiful shelter on their deck, complete with sheepskin blankets and insulation done to code) shouts her happiness across the front lawn. Later the youngest plays basketball on the driveway, bouncing the ball more than shooting, while a girl does cartwheels on the grass.

*

The lad across the road is all grown up now. Must be nearing thirty. He lives elsewhere but comes home often and today he and a few pals bring out the nets and sticks and play some ball hockey, just like they’ve been doing for the past twenty years. Just like no time at all has passed.

*

The new people next to the ball hockey crowd have kids so young they ride bikes with bright orange training wheels and in the morning the boy stands at the edge of his lawn, facing the street and chirps loudly like a blue-toqued, green-sneakered rare bird and I’m reminded again of the genius of kids. And wonder when we lose the impulse to greet the day with a song only the wildlife will understand.

the illusion of a forest…

~ carin ~ 5 Comments

“The natural disaster of a forest fire returns carbon to the soil, enriching it for the new forest to come. A clear-cut removes the trees that are the source of that carbon. To walk there is to see a landscape devastated as if by bombs. Reforestation? It seems that real care is taken only for the hills and mountains that border highways where tourists and people from the cities can see them. Those are the clear-cuts where the corporations put up signs to tell the passing cars when the forest was replanted and how well it is doing today.

“The corporations rarely harvest their trees right up to a highway. If you stop your car and walk 300 metres into a forest, you will often stumble across a clear-cut hidden from the cars that pass. The trees you see by the side of the road are the illusion of a forest left there to salve your conscience. Back out of sight, on the plateaus and hills and mountains, the forests are doing poorly. The variety of species is reduced to one of fir, pine, hemlock, spruce, tamarack, or whatever, depending on which of one or two species is likely to return the greatest profit.

“Diversity of species is anathema to the managers of the new forest. Monoculture is king. It is precisely what happened on the vast prairie, where rich and diverse grasslands were replaced with fields of grain. The landowner’s system of fallowing fields on alternate years allowed for massive evaporation from the bare earth. The moisture rising from the subsoils brought with it salts from the ancient seas that once covered the land, and when the moisture evaporated, it left the salt behind. Vast areas of the Great Plains are pocked with crystal deserts where nothing grows.”

~ excerpted from ‘The Forest’s Edge’, by Patrick Lane (The Walrus, May 2005)

here is a day

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

It begins with the light.

Different this morning, although not really anything you can single out. The sun comes up, shines; the sky is blue, the trees are naked.

The grass still shivers and the only blooms are the brave-hearted snowdrops. But something has changed.

It’s spring.

No matter what the calendar says, no matter if there’s a blizzard tomorrow—a corner has been turned. The squirrels know it and so do the doves, the neighbourhood stray and the fly that landed on my arm today as I sat reading on the patio. It’s like hair. One day it’s perfectly fine, like it’s been for weeks or months, and the next [and you will never know how this can happen] it’s changed and it needs a cut and it will not be fine again until you cut it.

Spring arrives like that. Overnight. And suddenly everything is different. Regardless of weather, it will not be winter again until the last month of the year.

So we go for a walk on this beautiful spring day, Peter and I.

We walk to the grocery store to buy some baby food for Jake The Cat who’s a bit plugged up with shedding-his-winter-coat hairballs; my cat book recommends a recipe involving a veggie/meat blend along with melted butter, psyllium husks and water.

It’s about twenty minutes, if that, through a ravine and a park where, amongst all that loveliness, somehow people decide to just drop things and carry on.

We carry bags to scoop up the debris.

Back home again, I bake what could be my favourite thing in the world— today I use (local, frozen from summer) cherries.

And while I do, the sun shines in on my beach glass [and sunshine on my beach glass makes me happy…]
I read outside.

And I read inside.

I vacuum downstairs, but not upstairs.

I write a little. Not a lot.
And too soon the sun is on the other side of the house and making those end of day shadows on the guy across the street’s garage door and the wall in the living room and I put chicken wings in the oven and shrimps on the barbie…

— and Peter pours glasses of wine and today’s light will soon be gone but it was here and it was spring light, and before it fades and turns suddenly too cold to sit outside comfortably…

…I sit comfortably.
Happy spring.

Note:  Jake The Cat ate his ‘recipe’ and, later, things cleared up nicely. [In case you were wondering.]

blame it on the cheese

~ carin ~ 10 Comments

Last night was a blast.

Went to the fabulous annual Trafalgar 24 event hosted by Driftwood Theatre Group. A night of plays. Six of them. Each no more than fifteen minutes long and each staged in a different part of a local castle [once a private home, now a private girls’ school]. The plays run concurrently and continuously as the audience [divided into six groups] makes its way from venue to venue [venues being the landing of a grand staircase, library, science lab, locker room, chapel, and auditorium].

Here’s the best part: the plays have all been written and rehearsed in the 24 hours preceding the event.

Each playwright [there are six] arrives at the castle the night before the show, where they’re given a venue, a theme and some actors, after which they spend the night locked in the castle, writing. In the morning they rewrite and rehearse until showtime at 7:30 p.m.

The whole thing sounds mad and, really, there should be chaos at every turn, anxiety in the corridors, voices, flushed faces, crossed eyes. But the reality is the exact opposite. The thing is brilliantly organized and every year comes off smooth as silk. In fact [and I don’t know how this is possible] everyone involved—from volunteers, organizers, actors, writers—appears to be in complete control, mellow even. Surely drugs are involved. Herbs, at least… [aromatherapy?]

There is also food. And drink. And a silent auction.

But it’s all about the plays and when all six audience groups have completed the circuit and seen all six plays, they’re asked to submit a vote for their favourite.

At the same time a jury is sequestered in a very comfy lounge on very comfy large sofas to discuss the whys and hows and wherefores of each play and to determine the overall winner [said winner receives a commission and subsequent workshop with director, actors and dramaturge, to develop their play].

Now then… the astute reader may, at this point, wonder how it is I know the sofas of the jury room are large and comfy…

To which I would reply: I bought myself a seat.

It’s true.

It cost a bit, but was worth it. There was a bidding war, you see.

It started the way these things do. I was just standing around eating cheese when the emcee announced that the highest bidder would get a seat on the jury along with D. Jeremey Smith, C. Derrick Chua, Toby Malone, Lynn Slotkin and Kathryn Westoll. He started at two million dollars.  Ha ha, I thought, What a card.  I continued nibbling my cheddar, sort of listening, sort of not. At some point he lowered the opening bid to a hundred. A few people bandied numbers back and forth. At something like two fifty it was about to end with a guy at the front trying to impress his date.

Coincidentally, it was at that moment I’d finished the last of my cheese. My hands were empty. One of them shot up.

Two hundred and eighty!  the emcee shouted. He appeared to be pointing at me.

It went on from there.

Long story short. I won.

So, later that night, after the plays were done, I sat with the five judges in a private room and listened with rapt attention to the chat about each performance, loving the passion that every single juror put forward. Remember, these were plays written and rehearsed in less than a day. Didn’t matter. They were treated with a respect for the form that almost made my eyes water. What I loved most was that I’m pretty sure the conversation would have had the same intensity had it been about plays staged at Stratford or Shaw—the focus was on the work not the marquee. It was an honour to be privy to this behind the scenes banter, to be in that room with these people who adore the art of theatre. Period.

Also a privilege to be able to donate dollars to something I believe in. A tiny drop in the bucket of hope that it will continue it’s good work. Which, if it does, ends up in a way being a gift to myself.

Congratulations to the playwrights, actors and directors. And to Driftwood for setting the stage so perfectly— Bravo! You do amazing things.

Trafalgar-Castle-SchoolClick for castle tour.