the (anti) shopping list

December 18, 2015December 19, 2015 ~ carin ~ 20 Comments

Here is my not-quite-but-almost annual list for them wot don’t especially like ‘stuff’… Also, coincidentally, it’s a list of my favourite things to both give and receive… (note for those intent on giving: the asterisked books? got ’em.
But I’m wide open for all the food items… leave baskets on the porch).

1. Food. Any form. You can’t go wrong with cheese. If you live in the vicinity of Country Cheese… fill my stocking with the goat brie (coated in ash). It’s absolutely heaven sent, this stuff. Appropriate for the time of year, no?

2. A book about food. I’m mad for anything Laurie Colwin, also *The CanLit Foodbook and most recently, *a Taste of Haida Gwaii, by Susan Musgrave. And… Euell Gibbons’ Stalking the Wild Asparagus. I can’t believe I don’t own this.

3. Music by Laura Smith.

4. Gift certificate to a garden centre. My choice would be Richter’s Herbs for the following reasons: the staff know things and are pleasant (this is no longer the case at all garden centres). The selection is amazing and mostly edible. They play classical music to the seedlings. (Also, and not insignificant, the route home goes right by my favourite place for pizza.)

5. Gift certificate to my favourite place for pizza. (This is an excellent gift and comes with a good chance of being invited to share a slice.)

6. If you have made anything pickled, I would welcome a jar. (FYI, I’m not much for jam.)

7. Honey. Unpasteurized of course. Local please. Or a kombucha mother. And who would say no to a bag of Atlantic dulse???

8. And because we can’t ever have enough… books, books and more books from across this literary land. One from each province/territory — mostly published this year:

YUKON — Ivan Coyote’s *Gender Failure (Arsenal Pulp Press) actually came out in 2014. So sue me.

NWT — Ramshackle: a Yellowknife Story, by Alison McCreesh (Conundrum Press) (this review by John Mutford sold me)

NUNAVUT — Made in Nunavut, by Jack Hicks and Graham White (UBCPress) Because we could stand to know more about this part of the country.

BC — Please don’t think Amber Dawn’s *Where the Words End and My Body Begins (Arsenal Pulp Press) is only for those in love with poetry. It’s for anyone who loves words. Trust me.

ALBERTA — Rumi and the Red Handbag (Palimset Press), by Shawna Lemay.

SASKATCHEWAN — *The Education of Augie Merasty (University of Regina Press), by Augie Merasty and David Carpenter.

MANITOBA — A writer new to me, Katherena Vermette. I want very much to read her North End Love Songs. Also the more recent The Seven Teachings (Portage & Main Press, 2014/15).

ONTARIO — A Rewording Life, a fabulous project by Sheryl Gordon to raise funds for the Alzheimers Society of Canada. 1,000 writers from across the country were each given a ‘word’, which they then returned in a sentence. Essentially, it’s an anthology of a thousand sentences. I’m proud to have been invited to join the fun. My word was ‘nettles’.

QUEBEC — Okay. This came out in 2013, not 2105, but I haven’t read it and have always meant to and now it’s long listed for Canada Reads. So it’s time. Bread and Bone (House of Anansi), by Saleema Nawaz.

NEW BRUNSWICK — *Beatitudes (Goose Lane Editions), by Hermenegilde Chiasson. This was published years ago (2007) but I include it because it’s truly one of my favourite books ever and I don’t get to talk about it enough.

NOVA SCOTIA — *These Good Hands (Cormorant), by Carol Bruneau.

PEI — *Our Lady of Steerage (Nimbus Publishing), by Steven Mayoff.

NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR — Ditto the Canada Reads argument for Michael Crummey’s 2014 *Sweetland from Doubleday.

9. Donations to any number of good causes. And a few more ideas (some repetition, but also not). And this, recently discovered: The Native Women’s Association of Canada.

10. The gift of art.

11. The gift of lunch, or a walk, a phone call, an hour to really listen to someone who needs to be heard. A visit to a nursing home. A poem tucked into a card. An invitation, a freshly baked pie for the neighbour who could do with some cheering. The gift of letting someone give to us too. Margaret Visser wrote a wonderful book on that… The Gift of Thanks.

12. The gift of a promise kept.

13. And never to be overlooked or forgotten: the gift of massage.

You’re welcome.

And thank you.

visitors

December 5, 2015December 6, 2015 ~ carin ~ 12 Comments

When people come to visit, I never know where to take them.

Inevitably, we find ourselves at this diner or that café or the restaurant that does the excellent veggie naan even though the server is a pill.

Almost always we walk. Through the ravine, downtown, around the ‘hood, the beach. I point out the tree with windfall apples I use to make a crumble each October. And the place where once the kids and I ate pistachios and played Daniel Boone eating pistachios. It’s not a high end tour but there are almost always stories that spring from it… mine, the visiting people’s.

We’ll go to the galleries of course. There are a lovely abundance of them here. The market. The bookstore. The emu farm.

A concert maybe. A slice of local theatre.

There’s a junk store I might think of taking them, depending on mood and whim and inclination, where you can barely move for the amount of crap and treasure and the owner’s hoarding instinct, which prevents him from ever wanting to sell anything. The only store where when you ask how much this is, you’re told it’s not for sale. You don’t go there to buy, you go there to do anthropological studies.

If it’s summer we’ll paddle a rented kayak and have fries from the best chip truck in these parts or sit on a patio in a trailer park luncheonette and drink iced tea with some not too bad grilled cheese sarnies.

If it’s winter we might stay home and light a fire. I might make a feasty meal or maybe just keep it simple, make an omelette… I’ll mention that final scene in the movie Big Night and I’ll put on the CD and we’ll talk about first times… first omelettes, whatever…

We might drive. To see the xmas lights or the country lights.

This is what I do… and sometimes I wonder: is it enough, these emus and sunsets? And then I wonder why I feel that way because when I visit someone this is exactly what I want. NOT the Eiffel Tower, not a string of organized entertainments, but the experience of actually living in a place… the small slices of everydayness.

(Although I will not decline a quick dash into the Louvre.)

So tell me… when visiting, what is it we want?

And by we I mean you.

simon says

November 23, 2015February 11, 2019 ~ carin ~ 6 Comments

A boy in his driveway the other day shouts hello as I pass. He says his name is Simon, what’s mine? I say Carin and he tells me he has a Batman tee shirt. He opens his coat. I say that’s some great tee shirt and he says yeah, then tells me he’s seven. Not that I asked. He continues talking, about being seven maybe, or the tee shirt, just chattering away… all of this in only seconds; I’ve barely slowed my stride. His mum is raking leaves, smiling. And in all the chattering somewhere the boy asks… in a way he might ask a chum at school, or anyone… “How old are you?” His mother’s smile immediately turns into a nervous laugh, she puts down her rake, edges Simon toward the house and tells him that isn’t the sort of question he’s supposed to ask. Meanwhile I’ve answered by saying “Well, I’m not seven!”, as I continue on my way. Also laughing nervously.

And for the rest of my walk all I can think about is why.

Why is that not the sort of question Simon should ask? And is it only not the sort of question Simon should not ask people of certain ages? And how should Simon know which ages those are? And who decides that anyway? And doesn’t the whole way his mother reacted give off a vibe that suggests to Simon, if only subliminally, that there’s something *wrong* about certain ages and THAT’S why we don’t ask.

And if there’s something wrong with certain ages… what, exactly is that wrongness? I mean if Simon were to ask his mother Why can’t I ask? what would she say? Something about politeness probably. But why is it polite NOT to ask someone their age when you are seven and you ask everyone ? (And everyone asks you.)

Of course I was taught the same lesson as a kid. (But we’re back to the why… Is it to spare people the embarrassment of admitting they aren’t seven, or twenty-seven or thirty-seven or whatever decade + seven it suddenly becomes an embarrassment to *be*?)

North America’s twisted version of age aside, what really bothered me was my own response, that weird bit of laughter I threw out in order to make Simon’s mother feel okay about the whole thing. By laughing it off, by saying “Well, I’m not seven,” I condoned her discomfort and was party to the stupid lesson Simon was being taught.

Why didn’t I just answer the question?

Conditioning, that’s why. (And, mostly, conditioning almost always sucks.)

The thing is I happen to be a non-ageist kind of person. Even as a kid (just like Simon) I barely noticed someone’s vintage. I still can’t see how it matters. It’s their energy that registers with me. One of my favourite people to hang out with lived to be 101 and it never struck me as an unusual match.

I also have friendships where *I’m* the 101 year old.

And a few in between.

The thing is this: dullness and negativity, ego and bullshit appear at every mile marker. So do joie de vivre, curiosity, kindness, engagement with life, humour, a creative spark and the balls to be yourself. A tedious schmuck at sixty was probably a tedious schmuck at thirty.

Only with better abs.

My walk takes me on a loop and eventually I’m heading back toward Simon’s house. I resolve to tell him my age as I pass. I’ll throw it out, casually, maybe mention that I have a fondness for the colours green and orange and yellow and that I do not know how to tap dance. Not that anyone asked.

But the leaves in front of Simon’s house are raked and no one’s there.

Too bad. Because I think Simon would have found that particular line of chat quite normal. And that would have been so much better a lesson than the last.

winding up the week

November 6, 2015November 6, 2015 ~ carin ~ 4 Comments

Wind today.

So I go to the lake.

Cloud then sun, then cloud again.

This is good.

This is balance—the reason I like rain and snow, sunshine, warmth and sleet.

And the reason I could never live in Los Angeles.

tiny parcels of pleasantness

October 24, 2015October 26, 2015 ~ carin ~ 4 Comments

Walking through the neighbourhood I pass a house where a young child runs out the front door and, as if thrilled by the sight of me, points to her mouth and says “I’ve got a loose tooth!” I tell her that’s exciting news. And that, apparently, is about the size of it. We’re done. She waves and goes back inside. A sort of unusual town crier.

Around a corner, a voice. I think it says hello. I’m not sure who it is or to whom it’s speaking. I feel a little like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, like when she’s walking through the forest, or passing the scarecrow or the tin man or one of those things that isn’t supposed to talk… but it does. I look around at parked cars, there’s no one. Then to my left I notice a boy, maybe nine, ten years old, half way up a tree. I laugh, tell him that he surprised me. I don’t think he meant to, he’s a lovely, earnest little boy. There’s a large wasp’s nest very close to where he’s standing and I ask him if he knows it’s there. He does. “I’m going to knock it down,” he says. He doesn’t think there’s any wasps in it. I say to be careful anyway and I continue on my way. He says he’ll be careful. “Thank you,” he says. “Goodbye.”

Arborial Ambassador?

And then a wee tot on the other side of the street, not yet two years old, still a bit wobbly on her legs and holding on to her mum’s hand. She’s dressed in mint green and as I pass I turn my head, catch her eye and in that moment, just a second really, I see her bright face, mouth, eyes, cheeks, all of it so wide open and smiling as if to say isn’t this just such a wonderful thing to be not yet two and dressed in mint green and walking with your mum in the sunshine… I mean isn’t it just???

A pastel shot of B12, a tonic, that lingers.

every party needs a pooper, that’s why you invited me…

October 16, 2015October 17, 2015 ~ carin ~ 8 Comments

Here’s the thing.

The Blue Jays.

Winning.

How great. I mean, it’s really great. I get that. Even though, in the spirit of full disclosure, I don’t give much of a rat’s back-end about sports.

I do, however, like happy people, I like the excitement, the joie de vivre all over the place (on game days), the way revellers make room for traffic. I love us. We deserve this, the winning, the mad happiness. Who wouldn’t love it?

They say this kind of thing brings people together. On game days. And the economy gets a boost. Liquor and beer stores, junk food purveyors. Hotels, TV networks, airlines. You know, the people who need a boost.

Oh, and Rogers Communications. Owners of the Blue Jays dynasty. Apparently their shares have gone up rather noticeably during this period of frenzied winning/not winning/winning. The TSX, on the other hand, went down during the same period. But let us not concern ourselves with negatives.

The Jays are winning!

And we are being brought together as a community.

On game days.

However, in between and especially after the game days are over … it is, sadly, business as usual. That’s to say the homeless (‘boosted’ too by all the Blue Jay excitement) will still be homeless. Children will go to school hungry. If they go at all. Women will be beaten by spouses, some of them sports *stars* high-on-winning adrenaline, some just assholes, others on welfare, most somewhere in the middle. Old people will still die alone and prisons will continue to fill and the rest of us will still hate and judge and hate some more. No matter how big, how grand or how much money is thrown at sporting events, no matter how exciting or how often we are told these things bring people together… there are no games that have brought the world, or even a city, or even a community, together in a way that sticks beyond the game days. As far as I know, no Olympics or World Series has erased persecution, corruption or any manner of ‘isms’. After the winning, a handful of men will wander off into the horizon with truckloads of gold while the rest of us are scraping cold pizza off our couches. Nothing will be any different. Aboriginal communities will still have undrinkable water and mould on their paper thin walls and the oceans will still be clogged with the debris of our need to turn away, to be distracted by something more pleasant than reality, like the easy god of sports and winning. (Remind me…winning for the sake of what again?)

Oh yeah. Because winning is fun.

Right.

I get that. I do.

It just seems so trivial. The players and owners, I understand why they want to win. (And it’s not for the joie de vivre.) But what do we get?

(I know that certain players and individuals contribute privately to various organizations with their time and money… it’s not about individuals. This really is about the owners, the corporate aspect of sports.)

So I was thinking, what if we got something too… what if the corporate aspect, the people that make the ten trillion dollars from our love of the game celebrated each win by donating some of their gold to the community. To feed those kids or build some housing or offer opportunities to people who’d otherwise have none. There are agencies in every city that would gratefully accept a few thousand bucks. A few hundred thousand, for every game won during playoffs… well, that could change a city.

Now that would be worth cheering for, winning for, no?

“Big Sports” (and it’s always ‘male sporting events’) are a powerful vehicle. By adding this element we lose none of the fun. All we do is add ‘goodness’. It stuns me that we don’t demand it.

Just an idea.

From your neighbourhood party pooper.

(p.s. go jays.)

great full

October 9, 2015October 8, 2015 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

This couch, these cats, this morning, my handwriting, breath, this page, that light, the sun waiting to rise, the way my mind wanders to pumpkin soup vs puree the moment I congratulate myself on achieving something close to a state of meditation, the backyard, the large hostas that need dividing, a bushel of garlic, fresh string beans, tomatoes in a silver bowl, friends for lunch, the wine last night, the olives and raw milk cheese and crumbs of baguette, the new tradition of running away at xmas (already exciting), the poem about Edmonton, the pillow of peace and a shoelace with feathers tied to either end, the Benjamina and the fern, the ferns outside, the way something smells both sweet and spicy under the honeysuckle arch but I can’t work out what—catmint?, the beautiful green success of the kale and spinach and chicory, the nasturtium leaves (in October!), the way the red dress hangs in the park and the boy who said to his mother after they stopped to read the sign on it: what if we get to 30,000? , that painting of oranges and a vase of yellow flowers, a laundry line, the homemade chairs on our porch, always enough toothpaste, these feet and these hands and the way Laura Smith sings about joy, that open window, these books, this tea, breath—I said breath already, right?

a post about nothing at all

August 14, 2015August 17, 2015 ~ carin ~ 12 Comments

I meet a friend mid-way between her town and mine in a town the size of a walnut that neither of us know.

The kind of place where you can buy a summer dress, ice cream and a box of worms in the same store. Time-saving ingenuity, this, and sadly lacking in larger urban centres.

My friend brings her dog, a border collie named Becky, whose goal, given the amount of attention she gives the trees and hydrants, is to pretty much own the town.

We wander through the cemetery (where it always feels too weird to take pictures) and talk about people who come to tend their loved one’s graves and those who don’t and how it’s impossible to judge these things.

A reminder about judgment generally.

I tell her about a certain Olive and Burt, who now reside in the ground side by side but for years it was just Olive that was buried and her plot was never without the most beautiful arrangements, Bird of Paradise, that kind of thing. I’d notice them when I went to visit my sister there. Then one day the flowers stopped. Soon after Burt’s name was added to the headstone.

Here people leave more ‘things’ than flowers and I wonder why that is. Stuffed animals, a yellow toy truck, one of those windmilly doodads you hold up as you run and it flutters… I wonder at the stories behind them all. My favourite is the solar powered dog light. No story required.

We walk down side streets where the houses are made for jewellery’d windows…

…and the porches for sitting a while.

And if you’re wondering where all the flamingos went, they’re here in this walnut-sized town.

We walk across Becky’s newly christened bridge…

… past places no one has the heart to tear down but which I would love to see used and maintained before they fall down.

There’s a gas station, a grocery store, a place to sit outside and eat fish and chips, a shady corner to park the cars…

…and a bakery that opens at 5 a.m. to feed farmers and town workers and people driving into the city, and people who come in later too, people who’ve known each other close to forty years and still don’t run out of things to say, who come to do nothing at all except wander in this nut-sized town and eat freshly baked cheese bread with a few deli slices on the side…

roadside attractions (aka: perspective)

July 27, 2015July 27, 2015 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

“There are always flowers for those that want to see them.”

—Henri Matisse.

“Some people see the glass half full, some see it half empty; I see a glass twice as big as it needs to be.”

—George Carlin “While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.”

–Dorothea Lange

“Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time…”

— Georgia O’Keeffe

“Reality simply consists of different points of view.”

—Margaret Atwood “There is a kind of beauty in imperfection.”

—Conrad Hall “What we do see depends mainly on what we look for… In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, hunters the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.”

–John Lubbock

“If you look the right way you will see that the world is a garden.”

—Frances Hodgson Burnett

“Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

—Groucho Marx

it was never home and it always will be

April 20, 2015April 21, 2015 ~ carin ~ Leave a comment

(Schmaltz warning)

Toronto.

Seems like I’ve been coming or going, to and from it, forever.

First time was as a kid visiting family friends who lived on Admiral Road in the Annex. This was before it was The Annex.

And then I moved there myself.

And lived in at least a thousand apartments and houses.

Then I moved away.

And back.

And away again.

And back.

Away.

Back.

Away.

I live away now.

But when I visit, and despite all the changes and the traffic and the lack of space and the changes… so many changes… I still remember the places that used to be and how the Annex was just a place we drove to on a Sunday for lunch and the kid we visited had one of the those table hockey games with flippers and levers and we played with it on the third floor and then after lunch walked around Bloor and Avenue Road… a perfume shop and a delicatessen come to mind…

And I remember so much of what came after that.

Changes, yeah.

But this place that was never home, that’s got this reputation for being cold, where when I first moved at eighteen my (envious I wonder now) friends back home said how could I stand the way nobody spoke to each other, nobody looked at each other…

well, every time I come back, this supposedly aloof and unsociable town in flux says… even after all these years… hey, good to see you; how you been?