cheerio morning

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

And I don’t mean cheerio as in ‘goodbye’, but as in cereal… of course.

There used to be an ad when I was about eight or nine where this little kid would wake up before anyone else in his house and pour himself a bowl of Cheerios  then set off on his bike into the wild blue yonder. Everything looked so appealing. The way he poured the perfect amount of Cheerios and milk into a perfect bowl in a perfect kitchen, his bike waiting for him right outside the back door, like the perfect friend. How he didn’t have to bother telling anyone where he was going, and the way the sun was just starting to light the sky and the day was all his—anything was possible and all of it was good.

After that I asked my mum to stop buying Cap’n Crunch, Fruit Loops and Honeycomb. They had nothing to offer; there was only one cereal that suited the adventurous outdoorsy freewheelin’ kinda lifestyle I wanted.

All that summer I ate a bowl of Cheerios every morning and then headed out on my gigantic rusted green bike that was an ancient hand-me-down from my very much older sister, and which was too big for me to sit on the seat and pedal at the same time—and I’d cycle to the other side of the canal to hunt for tadpoles and steal peaches from the orchards whenever I got hot and thirsty enough. (This was before the invention of water bottles.)

All of this comes home to me on certain summer mornings when the smell or feel or something about the air—some indefinable combination of summer warmth and early morning crisp—or maybe it’s the light or just a quality of the earliest hours of the day at exactly the right moment—that catches me by surprise (because it’s always a surprise)—and reminds me that our days, regardless of age or circumstance, quality of bike or choice of breakfast food—are filled to the brim with, if not tadpoles, then certainly the potential for their equivalent…

cheating on my affair with memoir

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

Though the affair continues quite happily, being my fickle self I’ve occasionally dipped a toe into the fiction well. (How exactly does one dip a toe into a well? Wouldn’t that require a tragically long leg?)

Never mind.

Most recently, the well, or whatever, included short stories from the Summer Reading issue of The Walrus —for which Lisa Moore, Rawi Hage, Micahael Winter, Heather O’Neill, et al, were asked to write the “most Canadian story they could think of…” (inspiration for the challenge allegedly taken from someone’s memory of a man who got away with robbing a bank by threatening to harm a Canada goose). I just love us. 

One of my favourite pieces is Zsuzsi Gartner’s ‘Say the Names’—written as a letter (to “American woman, swamp angel, friend of my youth”) using only titles of Canadian songs, movies, books, and signed: “Baby, so long, Marianne.” 

Also some poetry by David McGimpsey, such as this—

My Life as a Canadian Writer

My first short story, ‘The Provincial Fair’,
was rejected twenty-five times before
it found its home in The Muskoka Review.
From then on it’s all been pretty easy.

I learned the beauty of socialism
from writers so passionate they’d cry
when they didn’t get a grant. We’d go north
and laugh at the thought of Alden Nowlan.

Yes, I have been on the radio!
If you heard that segment of Canada Reads
where a guy recommends the novel version
of Tom Cruise’s Top Gun, that was me.

Now I live and work in Montreal.
All we do is sit in cafes and talk through
the one remaining question of literature:
is it available for free on the Internet? 

~

Lovely bite-sized stuff and perfect for the toe-dipping, cheating kind of  reading that for some reason is always better in summer…

 

vive l’ete indeed

~ carin ~ 3 Comments

Before the whole summer gets away from me and people start talking about how it’s over the minute the #&@*ing CNE opens, I am printing this and taping it above my desk where its job will be to inspire me often to stand up, find a bucket and spade, head outside in any direction and—for much longer than I think reasonable—let my toes and mind wander where they may.

Thanks for the reminder, Carol…

red earth reptile, brackley beach

happy booker news

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

So pleased to see February on The List!

My introduction to Lisa Moore was only recent, after our book club won the House of Anansi’s ‘Art of Book Club Maintenance’ contest—the prize of  which was a visit from one of the ‘Anansi Girls’—ours was Ms. Moore (though, due to circumstances at my end, I had to miss out on that especially nice part of things…).

Still, it brought me to February which I loved immediately. One of those books where you get to the last page, close it for a second, take a breath then start right over without even a glance at your very nearly toppling over TBR pile. Loved it even more the second time. On the brink of a third go-through, it occurred to me I might consider reading her other books… which I oh-so-happily did. Until the next is written I console myself with bits as I find them…

My big, wide congratulations to Lisa Moore, and to the wonderful clever House of Anansi!

~

i know the face…

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

Pretty sure this is neither trout nor toad lily—lovely, innocuous thing, tucked away behind the clematis, not demanding attention, just there. For some reason, each year I’m surprised to see it… it’s like I keep expecting it to give up in a huff one of these days, offended that I’ve forgotten its name.

Mystery Plant

UPDATE:

Thanks to Cheryl Andrews and Associates (never under-estimate the power of associates!) it might be that we’ve put a name to the face. Looks pretty much the same beast to me, no? The difference in tonal quality being more of a lighting thing.

Blackberry Lily

Thank you, Ms. A!

~

leave the jiggery-pokery at the door

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

“In 1927 Dorothy joined the Society of Authors and brought many grievances to their notice. She complained bitterly about James Agate’s ‘unfairness’—a mild word in the circumstances—to members of the Detection Club. If the great man did not happen to like the book he had under review he gave away the plots, and as he disliked anything and everything about women (always excepting Sarah Bernhardt) he gave away their plots on principle. Dorothy had written to Agate, and to the literary editors of his papers, but had only received “rude replies”. There was another blight in this field, “a frightful female on The Spectator who slaughtered mysteries wholesale, but she was driven out by a subscriber of my acquaintance, who knew the editor” . Dorothy was a leading figure in the Detection Club, which operated from 31 Gerrard Street. Its members were at pains to point out that they had no connections whatever with the Crime Club, but the perverse public continued, and still do, to see no difference between books about crime, and those about detection. Dorothy enlivened things considerably by introducing all sorts of nonsense with candles and skulls into the enrolling ceremony, and composed an oath for the initiates to swear:

President: Do you promise that your Detectives shall well and truly detect the Crimes presented to them using those Wits which it shall please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance upon, nor making use of, Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or the Act of God?

Candidate: I do.”

~

(from: Such a Strange Lady, a Biography of Dorothy L. Sayers, by Janet Hitchman)

a series of lovely events (with a point)

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

—leaving my mother’s building I overhear an elderly woman looking for dental floss; I might I have some in my purse, I say, and she wonders if it’s new or used and I don’t ask what she means; I say I think new; my dentist gives them to me, I tell her, and sure enough I find a tiny blue container, the white seal unopened and firmly in place. She only wants a piece, she says, but I tell her she can have the whole thing, keep it forever. She smiles like it’s her birthday and floss is the perfect gift.

—from there I drive downtown to visit the library where a book I expect to have seventeen holds is actually on the shelves (and, even better, is now on my kitchen table).

—after that I walk over to a beautiful, recently burned out church to take some pictures and while doing so a man in a burgundy van stops and because I must look very keen on religious buildings he asks if I know where is St. John’s Anglican. I normally don’t know where things are when people ask and if I do my directions can be a little complicated. In any case, churches are not my specialty but, to my amazement, I’m able to direct him perfectly. He leaves with a “well, I sure as hell asked the right person” kind of look on his face.

—En route to the farmers’ market around the corner, I stop at a shop to check their small selection of second hand books, buy a copy of Tillie Olsen’s Tell Me a Riddle, published in 1956—I have a thing about that era, the 40’s and 50’s. Also pick up some postcards (also have a thing about postcards), which the shopowner says I can have for nothing because I look ‘honest’. Not quite sure of the math involved in his reasoning, but it’s sweet nonetheless.

—At the market I’m delighted to discover a new vendor, a local organic farm who not only offer fresh produce but also raise pastured cattle and poultry and are members of Community Supported Agriculture (a program where you can sign up to get a week’s supply of straight-from-the-field veggies, washed and packed). Not only all that, but they are tremendously friendly and charming and when I buy a pint of green beans, they throw in an extra handful.

—Then, as if all these lovely events aren’t enough to prove I’m in the right place at the right time, as I’m walking back to my car, which is a moderate hike, it starts to rain—but only the vaguely spitting kind of rain, a warning. I have time to get to get to my car, time even to stop and take this picture (because I love the style of this house and may use it in a story).

It’s not until I’m sitting behind the wheel and the ignition is turned on that the skies open like they’ve been unzipped, and within milliseconds this is what I see—

And that’s not all. It rains like crazy until I get home—BUT by the time I park and walk to the house, the sun is back.

Moral and/or point of the story—this stuff doesn’t happen all the time but when it does you’ve got to admit it’s like dental floss: one big fat gorgeous gift.

~

reading canada

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

I like what the LRC has done in the July/August issue, ie. offering up a list of thirteen books that epitomize each province and territory—as chosen by writers from said locale.

Not saying I’m going to read every one of them (and why exactly not? I ask myself…) but I’ll keep the list handy. I am, however, very intrigued with two of the titles. Joan Thomas’ choice: The Two-Headed Calf, by Sandra Birdsell, representing Manitoba, which interests me because—ever since, a couple of years ago, I was hugely and pleasantly surprised by what Winnipeg has to offer (extraordinary art gallery, especially its collection of Inuit carvings; smoked fish, best eaten with thinly sliced red onions, rye bread, and washed down with ice cold vodka; great restaurants in very funky neighbourhoods; Fringe Festival; fabulous kids’ theatre arts program; annual lit festival: Thin Air; the North End; the downtown library; the freaky and beautiful Masonic architecture of the Legislative Building; the Forks, especially Tall Grass Prairie Bread Co. & Deli)—I’ve been very into that province generally.

Also want to read my friend Steven Mayoff’s PEI choice—My Broken Hero and Other Stories, by Michael Hennessey, about which he says, in part:  

“Hennessey’s prose adopts an easy, anecdotal tone…There are also dark streaks of violence… complex undercurrents thrumming beneath what is widely known as the ‘Gentle Island'”.

Hmm.

And because I also love B.C.—and occasionally spend part of my year there nestled in a small trailer in the woods—I may also have to read Lee Henderson’s choice: The Invention of the World, by Jack Hodgins.

Because how can I resist this—

“…about B.C., but also about the bigger ideas of heaven and earth, earning a living, human nature and the supernatural. It is a portrait of the B.C. way of being and one awesome read.”

Then there’s Denise Chong’s pick: Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, which I’m embarrassed to say I have never read. Madeleine Thien’s choice for Quebec is also intriguing. And I know nothing about New Brunswick and Saskatchewan and I want to know more about Newfoundland (Lisa Moore suggests Michael Winter’s The Architects are Here) and the Yukon and NWT and Nunavut. And how could I not want to read the definitive book of Nova Scotia? I love NS.

And let’s not forget Alberta, a province I lived in for three years and know practically zippity doo dah about except it’s a 40 minute flight from Edmonton to Calgary.

So, yeah, I’ll keep the list handy.

But I’m not saying I’ll read every book.

I’m really not saying that.

I think.

~