Category: Current events
Monday, Jan 19, 2026 | Art, Confessions, Current events, Family, Meditation, Morning, Source, Spirit, Word of the Year |
Day 19 prompt – listening to what the body has to say
Hello Body, I am listening.
Carrie, I need you to know exactly how tired I am — no, not exactly, that is a term you would to measure something that wafts and flows and defies the work of measurement. I am tired. I keep drifting, sliding sideways into sleep but you don’t seem to notice or read this as a warning. You think — oh, body just needs more stimulation. My God, I am so stimulated that I only relax when — no, I do not relax, I fall, I slip, I slide. And furthermore, I am not “I” the way you see seem to think of it, or us. I am we, multiple, flowing, shifting, changing.
So yes, hard to read.
But we send out signals, like falling asleep sitting upright as soon as the mind eases its grip on us. We do what we can to support you (you?), we will hone our muscles and suffer and quake and we can endure a great deal of pain in support of your causes and whims —no, that’s too harsh.
We are doing our best to please you (you?), to relieve you (you?). Can you relieve us? Feed us. You seek to control us, deny us, mete out pleasure in tiny doses lest we become overwhelmed and greedy, and sink into — what? Bliss? A morass of nothingness?
Let’s be friends. We like to breathe and sweat. We like ever so much to stretch and breathe too. But we are tired, tired, tired. Give us leave to change. Will you let us age and spread? Will you let us fail you and not call it failure? Can we be kind across all spectrums of experience and sensation?
Things change, no matter how hard you push to hold on.
I can give you (you?) pleasure and rest. Trust what’s rising. The body knows how little time it has, how precious and advancing the hours. But also how much time too — the body is not begging for accomplishment. The body will luxuriate in sensation, give us leave to show you how beautiful you are in this world of beauty and loss.
Body, I am, Body, we belong to, we know, we are made of beautiful loss.
xo, Carrie
PS I’m in the middle of a 30-day series of journaling prompts from Suleika Jaouad. This was today’s outpouring. I’m also using my reorganized studio space for a daily drawing ritual, which includes a very quick sketch capturing one moment and one phrase from the day; a word for the day (usually taken from my daily journaling); and a sketch using a photo from today’s newspaper, in pen and coloured with water colour markers. It’s been a tough start to the new year on many levels and from many angles, and this studio, completely reorganized during the final days of 2025, has been my bliss, renewal, and recovery.
Sunday, Jun 15, 2025 | Adventure, Art, Books, Confessions, Current events, Dream, Family, Friends, Fun, Good News, Job, Library, Lynda Barry, Peace, Play, Publishing, Reading, Sleep, Source, Space, Spirit, Summer, The X Page, Word of the Year, Writing |
When and how to begin with BEGIN?
BEGIN is the title of my next novel. I can’t even write that sentence without attempting to delete or amend it. BEGIN is the title of the novel I’m writing. But even that sentence requires amendment. It is the title of the novel I was writing (last touched in March), and will be writing again—though I haven’t dared open the manuscript for months. I can’t let myself visit the pleasure of it in the tiny jags of time available, just right now.
I will begin writing BEGIN again this summer. Soon.
My library job ends in two weeks.
As does my time-limited stint as “producer” (hapless producer, one feels at times) of the X Page Storytelling Workshop, season 6. Season 6???! Tickets for the performance are available here—it’s called “The truth is …” and it’s playing one night only at the Registry theatre in downtown Kitchener, Wed, June 25th, 7PM. Please come for stories, for the stories are life-giving.
Look for me when school’s out in two weeks. I’ll be running out the doors with the kids, slipping off my sandals, standing in the grass, and maybe then, maybe then, my writing of BEGIN will begin again.
How will I parcel out my time? What do I need to write this book?
I have a publisher—Simon & Schuster Canada. (Yes, it’s official.)
More importantly, I have an editor—the brilliant poet and novelist, Katherena Vermette.
I have a pub date—fall 2027 (though those are always tentative).
I need a few intangibles, if I’m honest.
Health, sleep, sweat, rest. Dedicated time. Ear plugs?
Relaxation, intensity, hunger, delight.
Belief. Trust. Confidence—that too, especially that. You know this, don’t you, fellow writing friends? Maybe to that, I need, too, companionship that’s quiet and reassuring, and that would like to join in collective writing and drawing exercises after breakfast, before the work of the day begins …
I imagine for myself a near-hermit’s devotion to the hours, immersion in the subject, the playful giddiness that takes over when I’m making something that feels new or powerful or unexpected, that surprises me with some unearthed truth.
I can’t wait to begin.
Because I hope, I hope to finish what I’ve started. I hope to make good on what I find in the digging.
xo, Carrie
PS If you know of places to rent/borrow/sneak into that would make for good writing intensive spaces, please let me know!
PPS The image at the top was spotted in Chicago, which I visited a few weeks ago with one of my kids, who was presenting at their first academic conference.
Saturday, May 3, 2025 | Art, Confessions, Current events, School, Sleep, Spirit, Word of the Year, Work, Writing |
“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river. It is a tiger that destroys me, but I am the tiger.” – Jorge Luis Borges
If time is the substance I am made of, I am depleted and drained and running on empty. If I am a river of time, I am cutting through unknown lands. There is little enough time in one life to defeat the tiger that pursues me, my own personal tiger being ambition and ego, and perhaps, too, the choices I’ve made or not made. I feel much like a stranger to myself, or a distant acquaintance. Is it too late? Too late for what exactly? I am the middle of a sandwich, pressed on either side by demands and responsibilities. Am I strong and calm and solid and grounded—a steady and steadying presence for those around me? Or am I squashed flat and distracted and grandstanding and weary and humourless?
Maybe it’s just a lot all at once, and I need to stand up for myself and turn down opportunities and be wise, for heavens sake, count my blessings, prioritize, ask for help before it’s too late.
Or is my timing off, is that all that’s happening, that youth has run on ahead of me, and I’m holding onto mores and values that strike a clashing tone?
Is it me? Why don’t I recognize myself anymore? Once upon a time, books were a medium that entertained and diverted and enlightened. It takes time to settle into a story, time to deepen understanding. Time to reflect. Who has the time? It’s not that I’m not reading, or you’re not reading; we’re all reading, constantly, we’re all absorbing narrative: texts and posts and blurbs and headlines and opinions and hot takes. Our brains are pinging with the reward of the new(s); our brains are bored silly, restless, over- and under- stimulated at once, chasing a sugary scroll on multiple screens that never fills us up. More, more, more.
I say that what I want is stillness, reflection, ease, breath.
But my choices make a liar of me. At night before bed, I compulsively scroll news headlines till exhaustion drags me under. There are several novels waiting on my nightstand, half-read, and every night I promise myself I’ll pick those up instead.
What brings me back to myself — the self that I long for and occasionally glimpse?
Physical activity, motion, putting things in order. I go to the gym to feel more like myself. I shelf-read at school. I hardly ever stop doing, except to collapse.
The hardness of time, its relentless turning. Gravity pulling me down. I need to be strong, I’d like to wise, but what if, what if, I’m not?
xo, Carrie
Saturday, Dec 7, 2024 | Adventure, Art, Current events, Drawing, School, Spirit, Success, Work |
Day 7 Prompt
Draw & describe yourself through someone else’s eyes.
Notes: Rushed and messy, just like today. Amazed I even got it done, just like today. Grateful for the small acts of kindness I saw reflected and refracting back through this brief but powerful exercise, just like today. Materials: crayons and black pen. Songs: “Delicate Transitions” by Gavin Luke and “World Without Tears” by Lucinda Williams.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Sep 5, 2024 | Art, Big Thoughts, Current events, Death, Family, Library, Play, Source, Space, Spirit, Summer, Work, Writing |
There is so little to say, and so much.
I want to express the ways in which I’m changing, the shifts occurring in my mind, and in my outlook—but it’s not entirely clear … I’m floating along a deep wide river. The way I understand my own identity is changing, changing, changing. For most of my life, I was focused on being a writer. And it became my defended self, a self that required defending because I had no sustained confidence in its heft or even its existence—prove yourself, said the voice in my head, over and over.
That voice has grown so gentle.
Now that voice in my head says, there’s more and more and more—more life, more love, more space, more time than you’d ever imagined. Soak it in. Float. Spread out of your arms. Watch the sky, the leaves and branches moving on the trees, listen to the wealth of stories pouring in. This generous world.
And how I wish and hope to be a generous being while I’m here.
Spaciousness.
I feel it within me, surrounding me, available at all times. So much spaciousness. A lack of pressure (not a lack of challenge).
How can I explain what is impossible to describe? It is not that I have more time, but that time itself expands to accommodate so many threads and layers and textures of experiences. When I am restless with my environment, the voice in my head says, be where you are right now.
And I breathe differently.
It is not always easy to be where you are right now. It might involve challenges like boredom or pain or discomfort. Yes. And when I am here right now those challenges shift and become otherwise—boredom may be a conduit to concentrated observation; pain may invite breath; discomfort illuminates emotion; love and patience and depth of understanding weave into the experience of being.
I have been learning this my whole life, with my whole body, which offers its sensations and movements and feelings to the interpretation of my mind, and which acts as a container for my spirit, that droplet of essence that connects me to all beings.
I arrived here on earth to learn, to soak in beauty in its rawest forms—taste, smell, touch, light and shadow, sound, rhythm, anchors to my place of being. I arrived with the desire to push my body to its limits (not always in healthy ways, but that’s part of learning). I wanted to feel everything. I wanted to experience everything.
The impulse to make things, to respond to and to express all of this wonder at the beauty of it all—that has also been in me since the beginning. I arrived here on earth with the desire to make things (and make things up). I learned to nurture that part of myself—I practiced observation, through writing, playing with language and grammar and imagery. And I learned that to record requires of me a bifurcated attention, attention that must split itself between observing and recording (and interpreting). And I continue to learn that sometimes, sometimes, yes, I do not want to record or interpret what is happening, I want simply to be in the happening. I want to be in it and learn from being in it.
This summer has been a summer of being, not so much doing, and very little recording or interpreting of the doing and being. Hence, very little blog writing. But not never. Why lean on never, ever? There is time, there is time.
I arrived here on earth to learn.
When I notice all the spaciousness around me, through which I move and breathe and live, I learn in ways that resist expression. I settle myself in deeper. Everything shimmers. Time expands. I am, you are, we are. Learning together.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Jul 16, 2024 | Confessions, Current events, Interviews, Peace, Play, Source, Space, Spirit, Summer, Writing |
Who were you, just over four years? Who were you, before the pandemic (those blank months/years of stasis we none of wish to recall and scarcely can)? This morning, I found some writing and drawing published on my blog from March 2020, immediately after we were sent home to wait out the pandemic. Immediately after everything stopped.
I had been running so hard, working so hard, treading water but barely. Coping, but worn thin.
And suddenly all of my responsibilities, save for the ones contained and held inside my house, were suspended. I was no longer a soccer coach. I was not leading a storytelling workshop. I wasn’t driving children to lessons and practices, nor was I going to the gym in the early morning to work out.
I was home with my family, cooking, baking, cleaning and disinfecting, mainlining the news, but also—I remember this—writing. Writing was my solace and comfort, my escape.
And reading over these reflections now, in my post-pandemic, post-artist life, I find a welcome rebuttal to my current strain of cynicism and doubt regarding the usefulness of writing. Personal passion project, I wrote of my devotion to fictional characters in my previous post here (just yesterday), as if in scorn. Without irony, this morning, I chose to pick up a pen and draw and write, in the lined pages of my notebook: “Now, I enter my listening era. I seem to have the lost the desire to watch fireflies in the back yard and make meaning of them—or to describe their pop of light, brief luminescence, in other terms. I watch them. My heart slows.”
In other words, I wrote about those fireflies.
Maybe I don’t always need writing (watching the fireflies last night, I didn’t think that I did), or maybe I won’t need it in every era of my life, but by God, writing has been a balm. Let me pledge to honour my impulse to write, when it arrives, which it will, which is does.
Here are some beautiful words I found in that post from March 21, 2020.
“The sound of my pen scratching—too fast, sloppily—across the page. I’ve only just noticed that I grip it as near to the tip, the nib, as is possible. I only just see it—my pen—as an instrument that I am playing, an extension of my body encircled by five tips of fingers and thumb, each with a half-moon circle of curved, opaque nail. There are no straight lines on my hand. The pen is straight and hard and useful to me, it is made for this task and nothing more; but I am made for bending, praying, curling, holding, I am made for giving way. I am made for praise. For contorting myself anew.
I am made for change and ever-change, evermore, now, as before.”
I am made for praise.
I am made for contorting myself anew.
I am not the same person that I was four years ago: I’d just won a major grant in support of writing Francie’s Got a Gun; I had confidence in my writing that seems to have diminished; I can recognize this change, but not fully explain it. I suspect that without the pandemic to interrupt my whirlwind of activities, I would have rolled onward. It would not have occurred to me to get a job in an elementary school.
I don’t want to lose touch with that self who wrote those words: I am made for praise.
Because we all are, aren’t we? And there are many ways to offer praise. Sitting in the near-dark watching the fireflies, just watching, sometimes that’s fully enough. And sometimes it’s not—and that’s when the impulse to write, to record, to transform, to imbue, to capture, to contort, to burnish, to imagine pushes its way to the surface and I pick up a pen, this instrument, and let my hand play music that seems to come directly from the universe; a universal impulse to make and re-make anew.
xo, Carrie
PS My career—such as it is!—is featured in a post today on Conrad Grebel University College’s website (where I lived during my first year as undergrad), one of 60 alumni featured in honour of Grebel’s 60th anniversary.
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