Category: Backyard
Tuesday, Jun 9, 2015 | Backyard, Blogging, Running, The Candy Conspiracy |
Today I went to my 9-year-old’s grade four class to read them The Candy Conspiracy and talk about writing. For the venture, I brought along a file folder of all the edits and original storyline ideas and drafts, and read to them from the very earliest draft. The funny thing was, it was really funny, perhaps rather more darkly funny than the version that made it to the published page. The original draft included mysterious characters called Grubbers (which vanished entirely by draft 3). The kids spontaneously imagined their own versions of the characters, with hands up afterward to describe what they thought the Grubbers looked like. Shrivelled up vegetables, elves, gremlins, little green blogs or specks, tiny green worms. Everyone had a different version in his or her imagination.
And that got us talking about the magic of the imagination. Don’t get me wrong. I love illustration, and illustration paired with text can make magic too. But the simplicity of words on the page, projected into our minds, is at once personal and collective. We all hear the same words, but what we see comes from our own personal landscape of experience, textured with individual differences.
I have left myself a mere eight minutes to write and publish this post before picking the kids up from school. There is much I could write about, perhaps too much, and here is a shortlist of topics I was thinking about covering.
Playing soccer in the back yard. (OMG so fun! Even I’m getting into it and testing out my mad dekes on … okay, on my 7-year-old, whose mad dekes are way madder than mine, but hey).
Being a depressed miserable writer. (Such a great topic, right up there with my collection of belly-button fluff. I’m sure you’re all sorry not to hear more about it.)
Our continuing efforts to try to train the dogs. (Having a dog is like having a toddler FOREVER.)
Coaching soccer. (Best game ever last night, as our Mighty Green Grapes, with only 5 players on the field for a 7 v 7 matchup, held their own mightily and with an intensity that could only be admired and cheered in the off-and-on rain. The coaches were verklempt by the end.)
The weekend. (That seems like a long time ago.)
Food I haven’t had a chance to cook or bake. (Just kidding.)
Laundry. (Sorry. I do like talking about laundry.)
Running without pain! (Hurray!!! In this beautiful spring weather! This is what I worked for all winter!)
Time. (And the way I’m forever running on the edge of behind, and yet not quite falling off, like a tiny figure on a giant treadmill, arms and legs whirling. Or like a metaphor with the wheels about to fall off.)
Happy Tuesday.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Apr 22, 2015 | Backyard, Big Thoughts, Girl Runner, Good News, Spring, Work, Writing |
First, to the news: I’m pleased to announce that Girl Runner is going to Greece! The book has been picked up for translation by Thines Editions. This brings the foreign sales of Girl Runner to eleven languages, plus the US and the UK & Australia. I know. Astonishing, huh.
Every once in awhile it comes to me: thousands of people have read Girl Runner. Thousands of people have taken into their minds this story shaped by my mind. That is a staggering thought, and comes close to fulfilling what I’d hoped to achieve, in thinking back on my early years of hoping to become a writer. It was to be read. Those people who’ve read Girl Runner aren’t thinking about me, Carrie Snyder, they’re thinking about her, Aganetha Smart.
I think that gives me a certain amount of flexibility too, in terms of the choices I intend to make in my career, the projects I intend to pursue, their variety. I see myself as someone who can shape-shift to some degree, with a malleable voice, rather than someone who has a very distinctive style and voice and subject. I can use that in positive ways rather than seeing it as a weakness, but it’s a talent more readily used by someone who doesn’t have a big personal public profile. These stories come from me, but they aren’t me. Or more precisely, I am not them. I am just the mediator, in a sense, or perhaps the medium, the interpreter between worlds.
Ultimately, I’d like to be read because I send out into the world interesting, creative, curious, insightful, moving, maybe even life-giving stories.
It’s a lot to ask. Because it means I want my writing to be excellent. It puts the weight on the writing, and is my writing good enough? Is my thinking deep enough? I don’t honestly know.
For the purposes of achieving this goal, I’m challenging myself to direct attention and energy onto the books that I write, and to otherwise be at peace with my authentic, ordinary self when asked to appear in public. It’s my problem, not anyone else’s, is what I’m getting around to—I’m the one who has been dissatisfied, in the past, with my public performance or persona, always thinking that I should be more charismatic, more out there, more … well, more not myself. Recently, I’ve been trying to let go. And I’ve found myself surprisingly content with being adequate, average, competent at the jobs that are not within my main area of expertise. I’m not splendid or charismatic on stage, but what I can do is make people feel comfortable in the slightly awkward formal environment. My sense is that that’s something I’m able to offer, and that’s good enough. Forget trying to shine or, much worse, to outshine. It’s not who I am. I’m more of a cozy fire in the fireplace, a friendly candle on the table, a light in the window to show you the way home, here to make you feel comfortable in your environment.
So. Let go. Let go of chasing fame in any way, shape, or form. And keep writing for the writing in any way, shape, or form.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Apr 14, 2015 | Backyard, Meditation, Readings, Running, Spring, Work |
My meditation guide invites me to enjoy sitting in silence for twenty minutes, taking these quiet moments for myself, to which I must reply: GAH! Yesterday, I meditated on the train home from a day-trip to Toronto, while just behind me a woman agreed compulsively with everything her friend said, even while her friend was in the midst of saying it: “yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes!” Today, I meditated in my office with the constant beep-beep and deep motorized rumble of trucks as Hydro employees work on the wires in front of our house, which has been a constant for at least a week. The dogs chimed in during the last five minutes of the meditation to howl at … well, whatever dogs howl at, and I think ours are particularly thick in their choices. Are you making good choices, dogs? Are you?
Am I making good choices?
Well, I keep meditating, despite the lack of silence, inner or outer. I think that’s a good choice. I’ve returned to a regular running schedule, despite some twinges in the hamstring. I think that could prove not to be a good choice, but I feel better about running than not running, and I’m making some gains in endurance and cardio again, so, hey, there’s probably a fifty-fifty chance that it’s not a bad choice.
Kevin chose to invest in some new soccer nets for our backyard. Really good choice. Fabulous choice! The kids have been outside non-stop, either on the trampoline or playing soccer in this happy spring weather we’ve been having. We may never be able to grow grass in that strip between nets, but I’m still thinking it’s a good choice.
I was also thinking, while looking out the train window yesterday, and watching the just-rained-upon farmland zoom past, that here in Canada we have such a low threshold for excitement about what constitutes spring. A bit of sun, a touch of warmth beneath a brisk breeze, and we’re all outside grinning and hi-fiving each other. Sure, the grass is brown, the ground is wet, the flowers have scarcely peeked through the mud, and all the trash left behind by melting snow banks is suddenly visible. Sure, it’s windy and rainy and when the sun goes behind a cloud it’s kind of chilly, in fact—but there’s light after supper, and the birds are noisy, and the kids are outside being noisy too, and we’re leaping and kicking our heels together for spring, spring, spring.
xo, Carrie
PS I successfully checked off from my list all of the work-related responsibilities for the past eight days. Book club; followed by ceremony for the winners of the KPL contest; followed by a reading in Ridgeway, Ontario (where the organizer, who also owns a lovely bookshop in Ridgeway, near Niagara Falls, let me come to her store after the reading to pick out books for each of my kids! isn’t that generous!?); followed by a meeting in Toronto yesterday; followed by an interview today. And now I’ve completed the public work for a little while and can dig back into the private, quiet, sitting-and-writing-all-day work. Oh, and the laundry. Light lifting. That’s the phrase that comes to mind. I don’t know why, but I’m glad. Maybe because it’s spring? All of this, despite the busyness and the effort, and the noise, has felt like light lifting. On we go.
Tuesday, Feb 17, 2015 | Backyard, Holidays, Meditation, Weekend, Winter |
picnic table sled run
Holiday yesterday in Ontario: Family Day. We celebrated by having a really fun weekend together, not doing anything much out of the ordinary. There were five soccer games, four of which were coached by us (Kevin, mainly). The truck stopped working in the extreme cold; thankfully, we belong to a carshare, and have friends whose cars still turned on, so we got around where we needed to go–and went nowhere else.
I was running this morning with a friend (yes, running! slowly, but without pain). She mentioned that in just six weeks or so we’d be leaving our state of hibernation. Can I admit something? I’ve really been enjoying the cold and the dark this winter. There’s a peacefulness to hibernating, to inhabiting the season. I can feel it settling all around me. Permission to sit in front of the fire and read.
Or to listen to podcasts. This holiday weekend, I spent a lot of time folding laundry, cooking, and washing dishes — far more than I needed to, but I need to do something other than snack while listening to podcasts. First, I tuned in to one recommended by a blog reader: On Being with Krista Tippett. I wanted to hear Mary Oliver’s voice. Listen, if you’ve got time. It’s totally worth it. And then, having discovered that it was possible to listen to podcasts whilst doing dull tasks around the house, I recklessly started listening to Serial, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages — just couldn’t figure out where “listening to podcasts” might fit into my schedule. I’m probably the last person on the planet to discover this show, but I can’t stop listening. Can’t stop! I need to bake some bread or something today …
Other hibernation-season activities ongoing …
daily meditation; writing; story-reading; playing ukulele while the 9-year-old practices her violin (at her request, I must add); reading with six-year-old and listening to his philosophical observations about life (especially while reading Calvin and Hobbes together); watching old episodes of Friends while doing physio exercises; spontaneously making plans with friends–yes, socializing!; and cross-country skiing, which I was lucky enough to do with a friend in the cold and the dark one evening last week while a kid was at soccer practice, an hour of genuine bliss
This sounds like a Grade One writing topic, but hey, I want to know: what are your favourite things to do in the winter? Do you like hibernating? Or are you longing for light and mud and spring?
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Sep 25, 2014 | Backyard, Dogs, Teaching, Writing |
Insects buzz. Insects with a vibrating hum and insects chirping at regular quick intervals, like a racing pulse. Cars pass. Engines roar, mildly, louder when accelerating, heavily whirring before changing gears, puttering, brakes squeaking, a rushing sound like wind that is not wind, that is mechanical, a hush of white noise.
Shadows on yellow brick, moving as the wind moves the trees, patterned, like lace.
The dogs begin to bark. What have they seen or heard? The first to begin is DJ, loudest, the leader of this pack of two. Suzi joins, confused, eager, uncertain. DJ stops, stiffens behind the raspberry patch, behind the cluster of dead flowers, and sniffs the air. Whatever she has seen is gone. The yard is safe, again.
On the clothesline a few items hang, shirts upside-down, athletic gear airing in the breeze and sunshine. The leaves are turning colour. The sky is steady opaque blue, not quite dark, not quite light, clear behind the flame orange leaves, like an artificial backdrop for a photograph I took last year, and the year before, but not yet this year.
photo of the changing leaves, last year
I have not taken any photos of changing leaves this year. This is not because the leaves have not changed. I don’t know why I haven’t brought my camera outside to catch the season on its cusp of coming.
I am sitting in a green plastic fake Adirondack chair, bought uptown at the hardware store for cheap. The floorboards beneath my feet are painted a rich blue, the paint also bought uptown at the same hardware store.
I turn to examine the pile of sandals by the open back door, and see instead a large spider, suspended in its web, very near me. It hangs upside down. It is alive, its legs twitch, each leg thin and ringed with a pattern of pale tan, dark brown, and a shade in between the two colours that looks mottled. Its body is fat, and also patterned in shades of brown. I would fear it, but it has lived on our porch for much of the summer, moving its web higher or lower when disturbed by one of us. I have watched it through the kitchen window suck clean the body of a large fly, a bee, draining each to a dried husk of its former self.
I am writing this because I’ve given the students in my creative writing class the same exercise. I want to feel what they feel while forced to sit and focus for 15 consecutive minutes, uninterrupted except by what they observe, their objective to seek out the details, no matter how small, and place them on the page, without judgement, without critique, simply observing and noting and describing.
It is an exercise I’ve given myself at times throughout this past year. It asks not: is this interesting; but rather: what is here to be found?
The timer rings. I don’t want to finish yet. The dogs have gone inside, and are working themselves into a sudden frenzy of emotion, howling and yipping at something they’ve seen through a window. Gradually, the noise diminishes, then stops abruptly. Here is Suzi, come to find me, her little body quivering.
Here am I, glad for the excuse to sit still and think of nothing but what is, right now.
xo, Carrie
Monday, Jul 14, 2014 | Backyard, Blogging, Fun, Kids, Play, Summer, Swimming, Work |
Top ten travel locations so far this summer
1. the point at Seeley’s Bay, Ontario 
2. soccer field(s), Fooey’s team 
3. soccer field(s), Albus’s team
4. soccer field(s), AppleApple’s team 
5. Silver Lake camp 
6. Kingston, for tournament, with siblings, cousins, aunt and Grandma 
7. Swimplex, Nepean, with cousins, aunt and Grandma 
8. Ottawa 
9. en route, from somewhere to somewhere 
10. our house; swim lessons; friends’ houses; backyard 
Top five reasons I’m blogging less this summer.
1. I’m out and about with the kids all the time. And I’m swimming at lunchtime.
2. I’m prioritizing writing work in those spare moments not populated by children and their summer activities (and mine).
3. Blog-time is going largely toward building a new web site to house this slightly long-in-the-tooth blog.
4. Summer. Have I mentioned summer?
5. See above. And below.
last day of school, June 26, 2014