Category: Big Thoughts
Friday, May 13, 2016 | Art, Big Thoughts, Holidays, Kids, Mothering, Work, Writing |
Last Sunday, I posted this photo along with the following caption on Facebook: I have been given these two notes and told to wait in my bedroom while the gifts are being hidden. Meanwhile in the bedroom across the hall, the eldest child is still asleep; and down the highway, the second eldest child is playing a soccer game in Oshawa. I’ve already walked the dogs, fed a neighbour’s cat and planned today’s soccer practice, and I’m wearing running gear in hopes that it will inspire me to go for a slog/run in the sunshine later this morning. What are you doing for mother’s day?
Here’s what happened next:
Daughter opens bedroom door, hands me a note, which instructs me to look for a remote control toy car in the bedroom she shares with her brother (oh yeah, we mixed up the bedroom configuration again: the two eldest get their own rooms, and the two youngest are sharing; I agreed because they came to the solution together and everyone agreed).
Anyway… I walk to bedroom, find remote control car, which has note affixed to it: Follow me!
Son proudly but silently picks up remote control car and heads to the front stairs.
Daughter: (admonishing tone) Those are the wrong stairs!
Son looks confused, drops remote control car, car tumbles as if in slow motions down to the bottom of the wrong stairs, breaking into pieces as it goes. Moment of shocked silence.
Me: It’s going to be okay.
Daughter: (to her brother) You’ve ruined everything!
Me: We can fix the car!
Daughter and son: searching for lost batteries, can’t find last one.
Me: Can I help you look?
Daughter, downstairs, closes door to area that may contain secret surprise. I find missing battery, put into car. Car doesn’t work.
Daughter: This was his idea!
Son: (silently trying to get remote control car to work)
Daughter: We should go with Plan B! That’s my plan! Not his plan!
Me: (tapping car, shaking car) I think the car is working now. (car moves several inches, stops dead)
Daughter: (retreats to nearby room where the secret surprise is waiting) It doesn’t matter anymore. Everything’s ruined.
Me: (quietly to son) What was Plan B?
Son: (whispers) I don’t know, but I think we were going to use string.
Me: (louder to daughter) Should we come down the other stairs instead?
Daughter: It doesn’t matter!
Me: (smacking car a few more times) It’s working again, let’s just keep going.
Son: (silently maneuvers car through doorway, I follow, into room containing secret surprise)
On the table is a jar of freshly picked tiny spring wildflowers from our backyard, and a paper bag with a gift that son has carefully carried home from school on Friday. It is a clay bowl, the fourth one I’ve now received for Mother’s Day. Apparently there is a kiln at school, in the basement, it is reported to me. The clay bowl is full of notes detailing all the things I can now get for free: 1 free help clearing the table, 1 free walk the dogs, etc.
Me: But this is lovely! (sits down)
Daughter: (bursts into tears) I don’t even have a gift for you! Because I wasn’t in school on Friday! [she was sick] And then he had to do his plan.
Me: But you picked these flowers! And these notes are from you, aren’t they? Or is your brother supposed to give me all this free stuff by himself? (joking tone)
Daughter: (wiping tears) No, they’re from me too.
Me: All I really want for Mother’s Day is to see you having fun together, and it sounded like you had so much fun planning this….
Son: (a bit miffed) You already have four of those clay pots?
Me: (shouldn’t have mentioned it) Now I have four. I only had three before. (pause) I guess this will be my last clay pot.
END SCENE
So … the construction of the above scene may give you a hint as to what I’m working on now, perhaps foolishly, definitely without provocation. I just want to do it! I’m writing a play. It is not a play about Mother’s Day, it is not autobiographical, and I have no idea what will happen when I’m done writing it (assuming it’s any good), because a play is meant to be seen and performed, not read like a book. And what do I know about that?
In unrelated news that my brain wants to make related, the Canada Council has just announced a juicy one-time grant in celebration of Canada turning 150 next year. The grant is called the New Chapter. I would love to figure out how to participate by pitching a project that would “encourage public engagement in the arts” and “promote outreach locally, nationally, and internationally.” (Not sure I entirely get what that second clause means in practical terms.) I want to be a visionary, but my strength is doing stuff, not making stuff happen, not pulling together a bunch of disparate pieces and spinning them into something like the amazing Terres des Paroles arts festival I participated in while in France (which would be an example, to my mind, of what a New Chapter grant could and should be used for here in Canada) … where X artist from discipline A works with Y artist from discipline B: i.e. writers and actors collaborate to create performance pieces in small Canadian museums; or actors perform readings from books; and it all happens in small towns.
Is anyone out there applying for this grant? I’m curious to know whether artists even know about it. It sounds like an opportunity for collaboration. And just thinking about it makes me feel a little bit lonely and disconnected, in all honesty. I can’t seem to imagine who, what, where, when, and most of all how …
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, May 3, 2016 | Big Thoughts, Kids, Mothering, Peace, Soccer, Spirit, Writing |
It was the moment when I was on my hands and knees trying to vacuum up every last tiny fragment of broken glass off the kitchen tiles—a science experiment gone awry at 9:38PM—and I was still dressed in my coaching gear after our exciting exhibition game, and I could hear the younger kids upstairs calling for me to come kiss them goodnight, and I saw Carrie-in-France like a ghost haunting the scene, like an ephemeral substance dissolving before me in a puff of breath. I could not be here and be Carrie-in-France. What did it mean, to be Carrie-in-France? It meant being so unencumbered by responsibility that my mind could empty out and be still and I could think clearly, think with a relaxation and peacefulness that allowed for fantastically ambitious plots and schemes and plans. Not just to dream of them but to see how they might be realized.
And here, with the tiny sparkles of broken glass everywhere, glass covered in corn syrup, which was drawing an army of ants—ants! we have ants!!—it was all I could do to keep my shit together, if you know what I mean. I was congratulating myself on only yelling the tiniest bit, on staying relatively calm, and not freaking out completely, on merely with a sense of exhaustion and inevitability getting to the task of making our kitchen floor safe for bare feet while the boy doing the science experiment stood by sheepishly, another glass jar in his hands.
Here is also what I thought: it’s okay. It’s okay because I brought back those ideas from France. I carried them home (and not in glass jars) and I’m working on them now. But when those ideas shrivel up, when their energy dissipates, I need to remember to head out again on a retreat, I need to remember that it’s not a waste of time, it’s a necessity, it’s the path to clarity. I can’t replicate what happened in France here at home. Here at home fills me with a different kind of energy, a different kind of drive—the chaos, the whirling schedule, the stolen moments of peace and stillness (like right now); I don’t begrudge here at home.
I just need the other too. Now I know.
xo, Carrie
Monday, Apr 25, 2016 | Big Thoughts, Dream, Feminism, Friends, Work |
Today is a good day.
Every day is a good day.
That is not true, but every day could be a good day. Since I returned from France, I have endeavoured to hang onto the laid-back vibe that surfaced, slowly, and prevailed while I was there. It was so easy to be laid-back when my mind was emptied of its many duties and responsibilities, and I had only to focus on what mattered to me, and what I decided would matter to me.
Of course, that mind has once again been cluttered with necessities, but I am trying, trying, trying to maintain a focus on what matters. Does it matter that we will be a few minutes late because a child is disorganized (or because I am)? No. It does not matter. In France, I was amused to realize that it was no advantage to be early or even to be precisely on time, because no one was ever early or even precisely on time. Better to arrive a few minutes late without breaking a sweat. Now, that doesn’t quite work here in Canada, but at the same time, it isn’t a bad policy to follow: to not break a sweat. I don’t know if I can keep that laid-back feeling of … hey, this isn’t a real problem, this is a problem of vanishing effervescence which serves me not to trouble over. So many of the day-to-day problems are like this. If only I could let them go.
But how to let go the child yelling “hey, Mom!” from the other room as I clutch my train of thought while trying to respond politely, laidbackly.
Certain things seem easier, it is true. I’ve been reading and researching even if it looks (and even feels) like leisure. Just because I’m enjoying it doesn’t mean it’s not productive. Also, I’ve been much better at ignoring emails until a designated time, when I churn through the whole lot; or designating a particular half hour to a particular subject, like soccer messages (aargh!), or tax prep (double argh!). But you know. It all needs to get done.
I returned from France feeling content with my life. In France, I decided not to complain anymore about the things I’m asked to do, but to do these things with excitement and a sense of adventure. I decided to not worry so much about whether I did an awesome job, and simply content myself with doing my best and showing up. I get asked to do a lot of different things, some of which I’m not, frankly, all that good at, and probably never will be. So all I can do is try.
What I remembered, in France, is that a person is rewarded for her curiosity, her interest, her excitement, her willingness to leap in whole-heartedly. Really, those are simple ingredients. They require no talent. They require no skill. They require only a willingness to learn, to listen, to observe, to engage, to dig in, to do. I have those things! Sometimes I almost annoyingly have those things. I know that the light is going out of me when I lose those things. It takes so little to spark them again. I lose them when I’m exhausted, run down, distracted, overwhelmed.
You know, this can happen, in this life.
I wish the busyness of my every day life was renewing, but sometimes its effect is draining. Okay, so be it. I decided to have four kids, and I enjoy all of the richness and interest that come with raising them; of course there is a downside. There is always a downside. So how to make space within the chaos, how to prioritize, how to make space for my mind to wander, as it needs to, and to dream, and to come untethered from the schedule and the organizing and the mass of must-does.
I must go pick up children for violin lessons right about now.
Dare to dream, remember to dream, wander. Let the mind wander. Feed it on clean air, on walks outside, on friendship, and on work. Good work. Work that feels good to do.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Apr 12, 2016 | Adventure, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Exercise, Peace, Spirit, Word of the Year |
If I were to write a blog post today, I would reflect on the past five days of utter solitude, days during which I rarely spoke out loud; there were several days when I spoke to no one in English. I read, I noodled, I listened to podcasts and surfed the news, emailed Kevin, ate pretty good food, kept to a reasonably regular routine, wrote and edited the museum piece, and went for several runs and many more walks.
I was not bored.
I was not even particularly lonely, except for the morning when I woke up with a raging bladder infection. Good thing I carry antibiotics with me in case of such an occurrence. Yes, that morning I was lonely and in pain and felt far from home and prone to worst-case-scenario thinking, but even that morning, I understood that I was self-sufficient and knowledgeable enough to cope with the unexpected crisis.
During these five days of solitude, I haven’t been lonely, I haven’t been bored, and I haven’t been restless either, not restless of mind or body. The body has taken care of itself. I’ve gone for long walks, and finally on Sunday felt a twinge of anxiety that whispered — you need to sweat! So I went for a run, and ran and ran and ran on the beautiful trail, discovering only afterward that I’d gone nearly 9 km, the longest and least painful run in many many months. Today, I ran again, pushing even further as I could feel my body beginning to trust that it would be okay: nearly 11 km. How joyous it is to run without pain; I’ve been injured for so long that I’d forgotten the joy of pushing against the ordinary discomforts and limitations of a body being asked to run — breath, heart, muscles, endurance. Running with a chronic injury you feel all these limitations, but you feel also a terrible dread that springs from pain from a different source, pain that whispers, Are you doing yourself damage?
For the month of March, my theme was health. This month, it would seem natural to name my theme: travel. But strangely, I think instead it’s: paying attention. The theme has arisen because I am travelling, and also because I am alone. What I’ve been paying attention to are my own interests, whims, rhythms, appetites, and desires. How often in a person’s daily life does an opportunity like this present itself? I’ve fantasized over the years about going on writing retreats in the middle of nowhere, and someone told me about a retreat where you do yoga and ride horses (not at the same time) that sounded fabulous, and a couple of years ago my mom did a silent retreat that intrigued me. But the risks seemed too great (the risk of it being a waste troubled me), especially given the heavy load of responsibility I’d be leaving on Kevin’s shoulders while away. So I never pursued these ideas.
I didn’t pursue this trip, either. It just landed in my lap, and because it was work-related, I said yes.
I thought I was saying yes, in part, to a writing retreat. I was excited to see what I would make with all this free time. (And I’ve made something interesting and specific related to the Museum’s exhibit, but it belongs here, and will stay here.) Why am I not writing my new novel? I thought, as the week went on. I tried, but the words felt dead. Yet the words, here, in my daily meditations and on my blog, these words felt alive. They interested me. And so I’ve been writing after all, just not the material I’d pencilled into the schedule.
Something else happened as the week went on. I stopped panicking about what I was not doing. I stopped worrying about what I should be doing. I started paying attention to what I wanted to do.
I wanted to read. So I’ve been reading: a David Sedaris essay collection (which has a story set in Normandy, as it happens); Ali Smith’s brilliant novel How to be both that somehow merges the world of a 15th century painter with a British teenager from the now, and weirdly also happens to be a book about sitting and looking at paintings, which I did not know when I chose it for this trip; Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, on black bodies in Amercian history and the present, which challenged me, moved me to tears, and has inspired me to think differently about Dreamers and Dreams (and he’s going to be in Rouen THIS SATURDAY at the same bookstore where I had an event on Thursday, and I must figure out how to go, because, honestly, how is that even possible?); and now I’m trucking through Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert.
I wanted to write. So I’ve been writing. Mostly things like this. Scraps. Ephemera.
I wanted to rest. So I’ve been resting.
Most of all, it seems, I’ve been resting my mind.
It’s taken exactly 13 days of rest to recognize that I may already be writing what I’m supposed to be writing. I am writing what has come to me, which is all we can ever do, when we’re trying to make something out of what we love and believe.
Maybe, just maybe, I’ve been anxiously searching for purpose down dead ends, without seeing what is open before me. Wide open, like that field at the end of our street when I was a child in Managua, with its dusty path and matted grass and garbage and crumbling concrete walls — the place my mind travelled to when I wrote the phrase: open before me.
I will probably never be content, exactly, with what I’ve made. But maybe, just maybe, I can be content with what I’m doing.
xo, Carrie
P.S. Just thought of my word of the year: PEACE. Yes.
Sunday, Apr 10, 2016 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Running, Spirit, Travel, Work |
There should be art for all occasions. Sometimes we want to laugh, sometimes we want to be entertained, sometimes we want to cry, sometimes we need to be challenged.
What I’ve enjoyed about this experience in France is being given something to do, an assignment, a commission. It gives me purpose and direction. In my usual writing life, I am the sole source of my purpose and direction. I have to propel myself toward something no one else can see and when the work is done I have to convince people to care. It takes a lot energy. The pleasure of this commission is that I’ve been asked to do something, and I’m doing it, to the best of my abilities. It’s up to the Festival to convince people to care about what I’m making, just as they invented the goal. It takes so much weight off.
My sense, as I’ve worked, is of being at play, in a playful and free state of mind, digging in, like a child with a wad of modelling clay having just been told: go ahead and get messy!
::
When I am busy and rushing around, I imagine that what I want is to be still, to do nothing. But here I am, today, with nothing pressing to do, well-rested, in a state of quiet and relaxation, and it is almost as if I’ve come to a stop and can’t begin again. The idea that we will get to do whatever we want in our state of needing-to-do-nothing ignores that it is a state that requires some force to exit. I think I sense this in my every day life, that it is easier to keep going than to stop and recalibrate. Now is my chance to recalibrate, now that I am at a stop, and it’s up to me to decide what that means.
Today, I went for a run on the trail by the river where I’ve been walking almost every day. What a good choice it was to run, as I knew it would be. The air was sweet, the wind was cool, it was sunny, I got a good sweat going, I made myself work on some stretches and let myself go easier on others. I heard songbirds, and saw the green popping out faintly on the trees, and my thoughts came calmly and clearly.
I thought about doing rather than thinking. How important it is to do. To do is to be. I’m proudest of myself and most satisfied with my life when I am active, involved, taking risks, in the public space, using my body, along with my mind. My idlest and least productive times have been when I’ve had “all the time in the world,” or “nothing but time.” During those seasons (winter, age 19; fall, age 23), I tried to write and produced nothing; more nothing than at any other time in my life. For example, as soon as I got a job, age 24, I started to write again. Another example: I started to write Hair Hat as soon as I’d given birth to my eldest, but not during the months of relative idleness before. That says to me something quite profound: that my being a writer is not dependent on having grand expanses of free time. It may even be dependent on the opposite, on being squeezed for time because life is so interesting and full, and I’m doing so much, and then in reverence and thanks can I come to a quiet space and write, in a way that feels crucial, important, necessary. If I could go around the planet working on commissions like this, I would; but this is unique, this is grace.
Something came to me while I was running — running past a ramshackle farmhouse with a red attic door and orange brick outbuildings, running past a field of bright yellow blooms, running under a row of fat-trunked trees with bird-shit splattered on the pavement below them — I thought, in order to write I must have something to say, and I’ll only have something to say if I have something to do.
I need to do.
If I want to be the writer that I want to be, I need to do more … but what? … than write.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Apr 5, 2016 | Adventure, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Travel, Work, Writing |
I tell you, spend a little time on your own and you start to develop a picture of yourself that is not that flattering. Do you know what I’ve done for the last hour? I’ve eaten a chocolate croissant, watched a bunch of HIGH-larious and/or weep-inducing videos on FB, and drunk a small glass of white wine (Reisling, from the Alsace region, purchased for less than $6 at a nearby supermarket). To tell the truth, I’m feeling pretty happy. I’m wearing my new sweater, which I purchased earlier this evening in a small boutique up the street, because I didn’t bring sweaters and it turns out that spring in France is chilly, like spring everywhere, really, except back home in Canada where apparently spring is winter, and there’s literally a foot of snow on the ground.
If I were to live alone …
Well, first of all, I would start talking to myself. Out loud. Loudly. Everywhere. With dramatic emphasis and an occasionally nagging tone, and a lot of swearing. In the second person. As in “you.” That sweater is totally you, I mean, it’s practical and it’s warm and it’s a nice colour, plus you got it for a deal. Nicely done, Carrie!
Oh, and the conversation would be banal. Even the swearing would be banal, as it would refer to the tiny irritations that come from doing every day tasks alone, like opening bottles of wine with cheap corkscrews. I worked my way in, but by God, it was touch and go for a few minutes.
Have I mentioned I’m in a new town, where I’m staying in a small flat? Louviers is about an hour and a half south of Dieppe. I arrived here on Sunday. I’ll be here for most of the next two weeks. I assumed I would want to write all the time. But I spent this morning writing at the museum and was completely spent by lunchtime—emptied out, emptied of words, emptied of the desire to process ideas. So this afternoon, I went for a long walk. There is a beautiful walking path beside the river, paved, and it goes for miles and miles between all the little towns in this region. I thought I would use the walk to think about things, but instead I just walked, as one does, and watched the families on bicycles and roller blades and scooters, and saw some swans and ducks, and a lot of dog turds. You really have to watch out for dog turds (I told myself, as I walked along).
The other thing I’ve taken to doing is hanging around outside the tourist office, which is fortuitously nearby. The wifi in my flat can’t be coaxed into working with my phone, so if I want to text or upload photos, I simply stand outside the tourist office and borrow their free wifi. I do feel like a bit of deviant or thief as I nonchalantly lean on the bricks between the windows, hunched over the screen of my phone, but I’m like a junkie for the wifi; I can’t get enough. I guess I could go inside, but there really isn’t anywhere to sit: it’s just a woman behind a desk with a shelf of brochures, and I’ve already taken several maps. I think the woman behind the desk is beginning to wonder about me. Tonight, after purchasing the sweater and the chocolate croissant, I stood outside the tourist office and texted Kevin while watching three young men fish in the river, a few metres away. I stayed for awhile, missing home, enjoying the happily timed back and forth conversation with my husband.
I wonde
r what this town will look like to me when I’ve been here for two weeks. Already its winding narrow streets are beginning to map themselves in my mind.
There is a hookah bar directly across the street from my flat. Also a Turkish kebab shop—two, in fact—a pizzeria, and a “Flanders-style” bar. When it starts to get dark, I close the shutters. Closing the shutters involves opening the windows, which look like huge doors and are level with the street. When they’re open, I could high-five strangers walking by on the sidewalk, not that I’ve tried. Then I unfold the shutters, pull them in, and close the latch, and shut the windows, and sit in my suddenly dark flat and see myself for who I really am.
xo, Carrie
