the art of familiar letter writing

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

 
Was recently in a lovely hotel. One I’ve been in before, lucky me. On that previous occasion there was a folder that contained stationery, i.e. a few sheets of hotel letterhead, a couple of envelopes, a comment card, a pen, a Things to Do in the Area brochure. I like that welcomey sort of touch. Immediately after unpacking I like nothing better than plonking myself down in an armchair, feet on the coffee table and reading a letter from hotel management that says things along the lines of we’re so glad you’re here, and give us a dingle if you need anything, anything at all and please take your feet off the coffee table.

Makes me feel at home.

Plus, I love free pens.

And I adore hotel stationery.

I have a small collection of pages that goes back years and years, a decade or more some of it. Every now and then I’ll send a letter to someone on one of those precious sheets, sometimes recalling a moment from way back then, or making no reference at all to the place but merely using it as my personal stationery.

I think it’s damn funky.

However, it seems, at this hotel anyway, stationery has been done away with for reasons of “everyone uses email now”. And the ‘welcome’ letter is now a video, because no one watches enough TV already or is in any way tired of looking at screens. That is, after all, why we go on holiday, is it not? To look at different screens or, at the very least, our own screens in a different light, against mountain backdrops, to text in sultry salted air…

Well then, I thought, what to do in that hour before dinner, about three days into the holiday, when the sun is just thinking of lowering itself behind the lake and the patio is still all warm with it and I have a glass of cool sauvignon blanc and a bag of chips in front of me… Seems like the perfect time to write a letter and comment on morning rambles collecting walnuts and stones and finding an owl with its leg stuck in the net of a volleyball court and contacting the local and very wonderful SPCA who contacted one of their staff in the area who was at home and who was only too happy to trade slippers for shoes and come right over to help said owl.

Stationery would have been nice, but we’ve gone over that. Instead, I tore pages from a notebook and that worked well enough, even better because of the lines—saves the recipient having to turn the paper at an angle to read. And when I asked the front desk for an envelope, they had one, a hotel one even. The young woman apologized for the logo and I said, no, that was great, that was perfect! I don’t think she quite understood my euphoria given how she was not yet born when the art of familiar letter writing was in its heyday. It occurred to me only much later that they probably also had sheets of paper with the hotel logo, although not offered because no one knew what they were for.

Sigh.

So I’m writing this lovely hotel, where I spent a lovely few days. I’m writing them on my own stationery. With a pen. A stamp will be involved. Feet will take me to a nearby mailbox. I will breathe en route. I will ask if they foresee a time when the art of letter writing, if only from hotel stationery, might be revived. I will mention a very exquisite spot in Newfoundland where I had the privilege of staying a few years ago and where I was mightily impressed with many things, not the least of which was a postcard (or two), pre-stamped and featuring a nice shot of the inn and environs. Smart marketing, that. And they’ll mail it for you too.

I’ll update this post with said hotel’s response. Which, with a bit of luck, will come on hotel stationery.

◊

More handwritten thoughts:

—the postman brought all that

—pocalogging to my own tune

—dear mr. postman

—the reason i like mail

savoury sentences from several sources — part 1

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

 

“A single moment, a day, can shift into something profound by the reading of a single perfect sentence at the perfect time.” ~ Matilda Magtree, aka me

♦

“The boy was said to be a cousin of Kathleen Burnham and was up from New Hampshire, working at the sawmill, though he was no bigger and looked no older than an adolescent sugar maple.” ~ from Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout (Random House. 2008)

“Physical pain, like a poultice, has a way of drawing out what is hidden in the heart.” ~ from the essay ‘A Container of Light’, by Lisa Martin-Demoor, TNQ, Fall 2011

“What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one’s heroic ancestors.” ~ from Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James W. Loewen (The New Press, 1995)

“She sits at the edge of the narrow cot, neatly made and covered tautly with a white embroidered blanket, the kind that, if you run your hand over it with your eyes closed, feels like a skin disease, tiny white embroidered circles that pop up like pimples.” ~ from ‘A Well-Imagined Life’, in the collection Can You Wave Bye Bye, Baby?, by Elyse Gasco (McClelland & Stewart, 2001)

“It was the kind of party where no one ate the chicken skin.” ~ from The Forgotten Waltz, by Anne Enright (McClelland & Stewart, 2011)

“Because she is ten years old under an open blue sky, because there is not reason ever to arrive anywhere, because she has never felt exactly this way before—this loose in the world, this capable of escape.” ~ from The Juliet Stories, by Carrie Snyder (House of Anansi, 2012)

“Jake and I grew up without a mother, which wasn’t that bad, although we ate a lot of boiled peas.” ~ from the story ‘After Summer’, by Alice Peterson (The Journey Prize Stories,  2007)

“It was no more than a peep, the sound you might make if a butterfly lands on your hand.” ~ from the story ‘A Bolt of White Cloth’, by Leon Rooke

“There’s aggression even in the way they kiss each other so flagrantly, like they’re trying to suck the other’s gums out, like an old horse chasing a lost scrap of ginger nut biscuit down the palm of your hand and up your sleeve.” ~ from Malarky, by Anakana Schofield, (Biblioasis, 2012)

♦

 

savoury sentences, part 2

seen heard and noted on a late september ramble

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

A woman dashing, that is, walking swiftly and with purpose, from front door to car, but not without glancing up at a strolling passerby. That would be me. And then glancing away without so much a s Hale Fellow Well Met!  I’m all set to say good morning but it’s clear she has no time for such nonsense.

A chap, in his thirties, looking smart in a purple tie, approaches his smart silver car, starts the engine then returns to his house, leaving the car in idle, spewing unpleasantness into his smart neighbourhood while he’s back inside his smart house possibly positioning his tie so as not to get anything on it as he slurps the dregs of his coffee, very possibly made with the very smartest of coffee makers.
I consider how early the poor soul will have to rise in order to warm his vehicular interior once the morning temperatures fall below 15 celsius.

Something about the pillows on the porch chairs, the shade of green, the fact that bird silhouettes are stenciled on them in a sort of pale burlap colour, the way they look recently leaned against, makes me warm to the strangers living inside this house.

The very day after someone asks: why is it you never see two people walking a dog?—and at the exact moment I’m pondering this almost-koan—I see coming toward me two people walking a lovely rust-coloured pooch of indeterminate breeding.

I notice a bottle of Listerine in a neighbour’s blue box. This feels an oddly personal thing to know about them.

A bottle and can man in a red and black lumberjacket pulls a trolley along the street. I know it’s bottles and cans, it’s recycling day and I can hear them clatter. I respect this form of earning a few bob. In fact, I’d like to see those plastic bottle return depots they have in Calgary. Keeps the streets cleaner, folk make a little dough and there’s less for the landfill. What don’t I know about this seemingly good idea? Why aren’t they in every city and town?

I’m pleased and proud to see Giant Tiger yard waste bags, also President’s Choice, Canadian Tire and ‘Life’ brand in my neighbourhood. I think maybe we’re actually, collectively, getting how every tiny choice matters, support local! choose wisely where you spend your dollars or you will soon be surrounded by big box stores!  Maybe the 100 monkey thing is kicking in at last. Hooray! Then I turn a corner and just like that it’s all Costco and Home Depot, Loews. A different crowd entirely, and it occurs to me that you can probably judge someone’s politics by their yard waste bag as easily as a sign on the lawn.

Yet another man in red and black lumberjacket, this time a bathrobe. He sneezes as he walks to his garbage bag already on the street, opens it, adds something, then catches my eye as he turns and we say good morning, good morning. He looks like Peter Gzowski.

this is not a review: swimming studies, by leanne shapton

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

 
Leanne Shapton knows how to make a book.

In fact, designing books is what she does.

So it’s no surprise that, like Important Artifacts and Personal Property… her latest, Swimming Studies, is a composite of lovely things. Only this one includes essays—mostly memories from her days as a competitive swimmer—complemented by photos and personal art. The essays, however, are almost incidental.shapton-swimming-studies

Almost.

But not really. The words are certainly important, essential even, but this is what I mean about how she makes a book: it’s not in any way entirely about the words. In fact, I’d say her best writing is inspired by the visual, also by the remembered: smells, sounds, textures, shapes. And much of this she represents in one visual form or another.

Swimming Studies [the cover is cleverly, beautifully done, textbook style] is divided into sections, short pages of text followed by… something. Always something new, unexpected. Very Shapton, this, I’m beginning to realize. ‘Size’, for example, is a series of black and white photos, swimsuits she’s owned with notes on where she purchased them, wore them, who she was with, some small memory: “…My first technical suit. I do a test run in my backyard pool before using at a swim meet in Wilton, Connecticut. It makes me feel more buoyant, but also as if I’ve been swallowed by a boa constrictor.”

In ‘Fourteen Odors’ she offers a series of numbered watercolour sploshes, each number corresponding to the memory of a scent; the wet brick of a parking lot, a teammate’s hair, chlorine mixed with BBQ chips on her finger. Of an exercise partner she notes: “…Tide, milk, terrier, and grape Hubba Bubba.” Of her own wrist, beneath a watch strap: “…Vaseline Intensive Care, iodine and banana.”

This is Shapton at her best—translating the mundane into something that resonates on a large scale, relatable because it’s so real anyone else might overlook it. In no way does she strike me as someone who lives in imaginary places.

If the book has a weakness, it’s a tendency to lean toward the sophomoric in a few essays where a stroll down memory lane feels more self-indulgent than relevant or revelatory. I’d like to say this might just be a taste thing, or an age thing, but I’m not so sure. There’s a difference between presenting your life ‘as is’ because you believe it’s fascinating in itself… or really thinking about what it all means and then presenting that in equally simple ways.

For instance, in the section ‘Other Swimmers’, a series of portraits with notes, she writers under one: “I am not crazy about Stacy since noticing that she copied onto her own shoes the piano keys I drew on the inside of my sneakers.” It’s not that I don’t get it. She’s bringing us into the minutiae of this world, I get it. I just don’t care. Because it’s the same minutiae of any teenaged world. It lacks that je ne sais what—that deeper point that makes the incident special.

It doesn’t help that the entire thing is written in present tense, which gives everything equal intensity and creates pacing that isn’t sustainable. It’s an odd decision, this, and doesn’t suit the subject; not everything about one’s swimming history, however interesting, is that urgent.

Having said that, there is much to adore here. Tiny perfect observations, the reverence for her subject, the movement of bodies, the dedication to sport, the lingering effects, the habit of it all. Essays such as the opening ‘Water’, seven lines that sum up a lifelong passion or, ‘Laundry’, where a recent cold water swim in a London pool triggers a variety of memories from being billeted in an Edmonton basement to the smell of a on-line purchase: “…A detergent-fragrant scarf bought on eBay arrives in the mail and I debate whether to write the seller and ask what brand she washed it in.”

Overall, not a lot to complain about. Throw in a couple of essays written in past tense, a dash of reflection rather than action, and you’d have the necessary balance missing in this otherwise delicious morsel of a read.

a few things

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

Allyson Latta was right when she suggested I might love what Rebecca Rosenblum is doing over at Rose Coloured (where anyone can join in)—i.e. making a list of Things We Like—because, it just so happens, one of the things I like most of all is making lists.

So here’s mine:

Things I Like—

—  making lists (and repeating myself)

—  ginger snaps with blackberry tea on the patio at the end of the day

—  BBQ’d shrimp and chilled sauvignon blanc on the patio at the end of the day

—  the family in my neighbourhood that are always making dinner together when I stroll past their house

—  seeing into people’s windows, especially in winter with all that coziness inside, especially at dinner time

—  seedless watermelon

—  shadows

—  the letter zed

—  my almond cherry torte recipe that I live in fear of losing so have made several copies but still worry constantly that I’ll lose them

—  Lake Ontario in the dark when the waves are crazy

—  Lake Ontario in the day… any day

—  the summer and winter solstice

—  driving long distances over empty roads, thinking out loud

—  swimming (first choice: lakes; second choice: pool with VERY little chlorine; third choice: oceans without jellyfish or sharks)

—  making soup or spaghetti sauce or anything that requires chopping, stirring, simmering

—  cooking smells in a house

—  sheets and towels and tee shirts from the line

—  a cat snuggled up beside me like a teddy bear

—  sandals

—  the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

—  the [operatic] song from Big Night, first heard while having lunch al fresco at Quail’s Gate Winery

—  the sound of cutlery against plates in that final scene in Big Night

—  goat cheese omelettes with purslane

—  Cat’s Eye, the book

—  Drinking the Rain, by Alix Kates Shulman, which I read almost every year

—  the way insects and animals and birds and trees know exactly what to do

—  choosing well from a menu

—  painting with bold colours

—  discovering a new place in my own ‘hood

—  the word ‘hood

—  beeswax candles

—  walking, hiking, climbing, none of it too strenuously

—  the sight of the Andes from a small plane

—  the colour green, indoors and out

—  people who get excited about possibilities, art and words

—  the smell of dirt in Spring

—  the smell of snow and the way it looks in the sunshine

—  sharpened pencils and fast writing pens

when a tree falls…

~ carin ~ 8 Comments

There are no pictures.

Well, yes, there are, actually, pictures. The morning before we cut down the ancient juniper, I took a few. They’re not great—not meant to be great—and say far less than the expected thousand words. They certainly don’t say that the tree and I spent the better part of twenty years together.

It was already here when we moved in. Already quite mature with a slight tilt, which, a few years later, turned into a near fatal lean that required the installation of a serious rope and pulley system to keep it from keeling right over. The system worked well, but as the tree grew it continued to totter ever more precariously. Eventually branches began to sag and turn brown and the whole thing just seemed to be struggling.

It might even have been considered an eyesore.

Though not by us.

Its only real flaw in our view was the increasing potential for toppling over on the dearest and newest addition to the neighbourhood, a furry Mr. Reilly, who likes to play with chew toys on his lawn in almost the exact spot the behemoth juniper would land if the rope ever gave way.

It was time to think about taking it down.

The truth is it should have come down years ago.

But what year should that have been?

Not the year the cardinals had a nest there. And not the one when the blue jays did. And not in winter when robins [who for some reason no longer fly south] swarm the tree for its berries, which is interesting because there’s no other time I can recall seeing robins do anything en masse. The serviceberries are devoured by one bird at a time. Worms too… one, maybe two robins at the most, wait while I dig over the vegetable bed. But with winter juniper berries, swarms. Maybe because there’s less food to choose from in winter? or maybe because the berries, when fermented in their bellies make a fine schnapps… whatever the reason, they arrive at the juniper tree by the dozens. Thirty, forty birds, easily, at times.

I’ve never managed to capture it on film. You’ll have to trust me.

So now this source of winter food is gone. I didn’t watch the sawing. I said goodbye and thank you and hey, remember all those crazy robins… good times, eh?  And then I went inside and pickled some peppers and made zucchini soup.

I’m glad they left the stump. There was some talk of renting a stump grinder. I counted the rings. Thirty five. Google tells me this is admirable for a tree of its kind.

In a different world, a wilder one, for instance, in a house surrounded by woods or fields instead of sweet furry neighbours, I would have left this tree to die a natural death, to continue keeping the robins drunk and happy all winter, to be the ancestral home to many more feathery generations, to keel over whenever it pleased.

As it is, I miss the view of its gnarly branches from my window. We’ve planted new junipers in its place, smaller ones, young and cute and strong and straight, but as yet, without character. The birds fly right past. I wouldn’t blame them if they stopped and lodged a complaint… but they’re already adapting to the new landscape. And so, I guess, will I.