steam devils, stubborn devils

February 13, 2016February 14, 2016 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

When temperatures drop suddenly, especially after being weirdly mild, this thing happens sometimes, over open water. I’ve only seen it once before, a couple years ago. I remember looking it up when I got home and learning that the term is steam devils.

So here I am on an empty beach crouched down on this minus thirty-something day, taking pictures of the steam rising off Lake Ontario…
And a guy with a dog comes by.

He yells: “Taking pictures of the clouds, eh?”
And I say, “Yeah, the steam…”

And I think that’s it, the extent of the conversation, because it’s too cold for chat and my head is wrapped in several layers of fleece and so is his and we’re at a distance from each other and the dog wants to move on.

So I turn back to my crouching and picture-taking.

Then he yells again: “It’s not steam, it’s clouds.” And I say, Oh? I thought it was steam from the warmer water meeting with the suddenly frigid air.

“No,” he yells. “Clouds!”

“Right!” I say, and turn back to my crouching.

And he and his dog move on.

I don’t for a minute believe he’s right about this being clouds, especially given that the ‘clouds’ are only over the lake, not the land. But there’s something in the way he shouts “Clouds!”, that tells me he’s not interested in my thoughts.

Evenso, his arrogance and lack of curiosity makes me more curious, makes me want to double-check my own certainty.

When I get home I google it… “mist over winter lake”.

And for the briefest moment, I wonder if he does the same.

wordless wednesday? hardly

December 23, 2015December 23, 2015 ~ carin ~ 13 Comments

It occurs to me that the best of my friends feel like family. And the best of my family feel like friends. That while some of my friendships are decades deep and that counts for so much, others exist between people who’ve never met, and yet… they, too, are an invaluable piece of the precious whole.

Well hell’s bells. Aren’t I lucky…

So it’s hardly enough, these few words on this wordless day, but it’s my own small tribute to each of you… and all of you.

To you who inspires me.

To you who reminds me to trust myself.

To you who feeds the birds in your nightgown.

To you whose favourite day of the week is garbage day.

To you who will discuss the blue painting in a way that opens up its possibilities (not everyone can do this) and not flinch when the ribs are cooked in saran wrap.

To you who has lost so much yet continues to give (please, please… receive also… this, at least).

To you who appears like a gift on my porch.

To you who never fails to make me laugh. Until I can barely breathe.

To you with whom I make pickled string beans.

To you with whom I have occasionally been pickled.

To you who I only see a few times a year but surely have known since before forever and with whom conversations never end but merely resume.

To you who was first to run away and who showed me how, and who never really left.

To you who is going through the worst of times and yet you smile that beautiful smile, all eyes and cheeks and teeth, so sincere, and as real as your tears.

To you who loves dogs.

To you who loves cats.

To you who makes places for the bees to land and drink water from tiny pebbles in a dish.

To you who likes happy endings.

To you who has no idea how much you’ve taught me by being vulnerable and open and a mess. Because you never were. Look at you. Heroic.

To you who makes art that hangs on my walls.

To you who makes art that lives on my bookshelves.

To you who finds such peace in your music.

To you who has nothing in your fridge because your world has turned upside down and because you have no appetite and when I come to sit and chat at your table over tea, which is already more than enough, you place a bowl of pickled onions and boiled eggs in front of me and say eat.

To you who lives with impossibly beautiful views.

To you who lives three feet from a brick wall.

To you who I drive three days to see and then don’t. Because because. But I so look forward to seeing you. Again.

To you who do the best you can.

To you who walk and dance and sing with me, for real or in my imagination matters not… because I know you would if I asked.

To you. Especially.

Ten thousand thanks.

♥

May the season be merry and bright… and bring you laughter

love

and light.

♦

Other wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

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.

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.

i’m nobody’s gardener

June 1, 2015June 8, 2015 ~ carin ~ 6 Comments

I don’t garden.I plant things and do what I can to keep the weeds at bay. But the weeds usually win.
I used to care. Used to fret about weeds winning. It used to be that I couldn’t sit on the patio after working for hours in the garden, fretting and fussing and weeding, couldn’t sit down at last and just say, “Well, that looks good.”
Because I’d notice something askew. Or how the tall blue things were in front of the short yellow things.I used to care that delphiniums fell over in the rain.Then one day I got rid of the delphiniums.And anything else that was a bit precious. Or incapable of weathering the weather.The yard became less garden and more Place Where Things Grow or Don’t Grow; It’s Up To Them.Oh, what a happy day when I stopped being a gardener and started being someone who could sit on the patio at the end of the day and say, well isn’t that a lovely sight.
Without fretting about colour combinations and bloom time and height and things keeling over untidily.Untidy is hardly noticeable in my ungardenly garden. So if things are lovely, it has nothing to do with me.
After I stopped being a gardener, I sat on the patio one night and said out loud, “Well, doesn’t everything look wonderful”, and a young girl who was on the patio with me said what a funny thing for an adult to say. “Usually adults complain about things,” she said.So true.

Because we think we’re in charge.

watching where i step

March 20, 2015March 20, 2015 ~ 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.Ice 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.Always this.

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.

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

Another puppy, a sand coloured one, unremarkable and content it seems.
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.

♦

lines and circles

February 16, 2015October 2, 2020 ~ carin ~ 11 Comments

I have a labyrinth.I made it out of snow.It runs past all the stuff I didn’t cut down because the birds like the Rudbeckia seeds… and I didn’t get around to the tall grasses or the hydrangea.A trained eye will see that it’s technically more “snowy paths in my yard”… but it works exactly the way a labyrinth does.That is, you walk and walk and walk in a more or less circular way, turning left or right without thinking because the goal is not to think — once you begin thinking you’re toast. At that point it becomes less meditative labyrinth walking and more I wonder if the neighbours are frightened yet walking.If you’re doing it right, you’re not thinking a single thing except maybe about the crunch, crunch, crunch of the snow under your steps. The zen of crunch.It’s occurred to me to wonder how many steps long the labyrinth is but I’ve never paced it out. There are angles to be considered and the whole process would require a certain amount of addition.

And who needs the math…

♦

On the subject of labyrinths…

and eric

January 12, 2015January 12, 2015 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

in this tiny space was everything

January 4, 2015January 5, 2015 ~ carin ~ 10 Comments

Years ago I lived in a tiny furnished apartment on the second floor of an old Toronto house — and in this tiny space was everything I needed.

A single closet the size of a phone booth in which I managed to hang all my clothes and all my coats, as well as store my shoes and winter boots.

A bathroom in the hall, shared with the woman in the apartment next door.
I heard her come and go but we never once, in all the time I lived there, met face to face.

At the end of the street, a fruit and veggie monger. In winter I would sometimes buy expensive tomatoes from some faraway place where tomatoes were grown to be luscious. I ate them with basil and listened to Joan Armatrading and Van Morrison and had a white cat and a bedroom made almost entirely of windows.

I once called a friend to come and eat tomatoes and basil with me and she came, expecting, I think, a whole lunch but it was just those perfect tomatoes.