Here’s another one minute ‘movie’ feature, this time at Geist. Really more like sixty seconds captured on film. I like the idea of stitching together a glimpse of the country this way—a kind of cinematic quilt. My favourite, without having looked at them all, is Albion, B.C., with the sound of the train passing by the ‘station’—all that split second excitement and possibility, yet leaving everything just as it was—leaving us to wonder: is that good or bad?
~
Maybe it’s summer, the heat, the mosquito bites. Maybe it’s where I am in the novel—ie. nearing the end [of the latest draft]. Or maybe I’m just not in the mood to read fiction and maybe I shouldn’t keep forcing myself to try.
The truth is I’m presently in love with memoir. Also personal essays, letters, biographies, diaries. It’s not a sudden thing. When I think about it I’ve been heading in this direction for months and months. There have been signs. I don’t know why I pretend to be so gobsmacked.
Still, the question needs to be asked: how did this happen?
Nothing would be easier than to say, oh yes, I know exactly when and where it began—it was with this book, or that book, that’s what led me down the memoir/diary/bio path. But who am I kidding? I can’t pin this whole mood thing on a single book—after all, I was attracted to the book, right? There must have been a reason for that. I was in the mood for what it had to offer.
That’s how these things work. It’s not like you’re so happy with fiction then you trip over a diary and out of the blue go crazy for the genre. You have to have been open for that genre to come into your life in the first place—otherwise you wouldn’t even notice it. And it’s the being open to it that comes as a surprise. Not even knowing what it is you need until it’s right there in front of you.
Anyway. No more guilt. No more pretending or ‘trying’. I’m off fiction temporarily. Period. I’m reading memoir. My stack includes Viola Whitney Pratt, Pablo Neruda, Pat Lowther, I Nuligak: The Autobiography of a Canadian Eskimo, Marina Nemat’s Prisoner of Tehran, Margaret Laurence’s Dance on the Earth, something called The Woman Who Walked to Russia, which I bought on a whim—no idea who or what this is about; The Letters of Alice B. Toklas, a biography of Dorothy L. Sayers, Confessions of an Advertsing Man by David Ogilvy, Wayson Choy’s Not Yet, and two old favourites: Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea (in progress), and Alix Kates Shulman, Drinking the Rain.
Sigh.
I swear I feel better already.
“Menus, recipes, small scandals, small journeys; exchange of neighbourly
courtesies and little kindnesses, little tasks; an earache, an inoculation; the text of a sermon, a ‘scene’ of some kind in church; sixpence won at cards, or a maidservant’s dismissal; a snowstorm, a ripening of cucumbers, a rumour from the wars in France; the garden, the weather, the walk before dinner—always these three—the garden, the weather…”
(from: English Diaries and Journals, by Kate O’Brien; Collins, London, 1943)
ratio of brown vs green leaves = ready for harvest
only half the crop ready (about 50 cloves)
fennel seeds planted in its place; cat [allegedly] heard to say: aahhh, that’s better…
~
“How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity. An early wallflower panic still clings to the word… we seem so frightened today of being alone that we never let it happen… if family, friends, and movies should fail, there is still the
radio or television to fill up the void.
“…Even day-dreaming was more creative than this; it demanded something of oneself and it fed the inner life. Now, instead of planting our solitude with our own dream blossoms, we choke the space with continuous music, chatter, and companionship to which we do not even listen. It is simply there to fill the vacuum. When the noise stops there is no inner music to take its place We must re-learn to be alone.
“…how inexplicable [the need for solitude] seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement, or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice.”
(from: Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh)
Here’s an interesting market for super short (like one minute) screenplays. Winning entries receive a staged reading, with the overall winner going on to have the project filmed.
The current winner happens to be someone I’m proud to know—with a subject matter near and dear to my heart. Not to mention my stomach.
~
A few northern blogs to help get into the spirit—
The House and Other Arctic Musings
Where badly behaved buses spend the summer.
Single file please, ladies and gentlemen—
~
Funny the domino effect of things.
Or whatever it is.
Yesterday I read Rona Maynard’s musings and reflections on ice cream. Today the stuff is everywhere I go. On CBC this morning with Matt Galloway. On the side of the semi that pulls out in front of me and makes me say bad words as enormous tubs of vanilla, cherry, chocolate, pecan-swirl momentarily tower over me—I can’t remember the brand.
And, oh look, there it is again on a sign
that I’ve probably passed ten or twenty thousand times on my way to the place where I buy happy meat and eggs and the best butter tarts I’ve ever tasted—but I’ve never noticed the great honking strawberry cone before.
Most bizarrely of all, it’s in my mum’s fridge.
Three individual servings of vanilla and butterscotch, untouched and melting. So instead of making the usual oatmeal or toast for her breakfast, which has been getting little or no reaction recently, I pour the ice cream into her coffee, then pour some more over canned peaches.
She laps it up, asks for seconds.
She’s almost ninety. What can it hurt?
A recent stroke has left her unable to do much for herself and this gets her down—everyone ‘doing’ for her, helping her dress and wash, preparing meals. She recently stopped enjoying food entirely, so when I see her licking her fingers, everything makes sense, the semi, Matt Galloway, Rona Maynard—it occurs to me there’s a message in all these ice cream sightings—ie. life is too bleeping short for oatmeal every morning—at least give the poor woman a dollop of coffee toffee mocha crunch with it…
And of course it makes complete and perfect sense.
Funny indeed how these things work.
~
Coming along, thanks.
However—
—am hoping it doesn’t have this effect on everyone…
~
Matilda Magtree 
