Category: Morning
Wednesday, Dec 21, 2022 | Death, Feminism, Fire, Friends, Fun, Holidays, Morning, Party, Peace, Spirit, Winter |
Winter solstice. Do you mark this day?
I shared the morning with women from the neighbourhood, many of whom I’ve known for nearly twenty years, a few even longer. (I don’t host this event — I just get to go! It was dreamed up eleven years ago by my friend Kasia, who deeply understands the power of ritual.) It’s been two years since we’ve been able to come together to share in this ritual of welcoming back the light, on the darkest day of the year. There was magic in the room.
I love how as we age, we are freer with our emotions, freer to express our whole selves. We knew each other when our children were babies; and now our children are teens and young adults, and our parents are growing older. Crises are familiar to us, during this stage of life. And so, I think, we’ve all learned through experience how to offer each other support and care. With laughter. With tears. Without judgement.
I would like to honour the women of my generation, who are edging up to fifty, or already there. I see in my friends such a wealth of wisdom, honouring care, love, and intention. We’re in a gritty time in our lives. Yet we are not depleted. I love what I’ve learned from my friends: how to care for myself, how to care for others without losing myself, how to be kind. When I think back on dark times, there’s a friend coming toward me, carrying the light, meeting me where I’m at. I can picture these exchanges inside my mind, a private photo album of kindnesses. Honestly, there’s so much kindness in this photo album, it’s bursting at the seams, and so many of the gestures are seemingly small — yet they live on inside me. Isn’t that a good to know? That your / my gestures of kindness don’t need to be extravagant. They don’t even need to totally make sense: spontaneous, simple, brief, non-intrusive (trust; the kindness I’ve learned from my friends doesn’t presume or assume or even claim to understand, it just shows up).
Light doesn’t need the right words. It comes from inside.
You / I / we all carry it. How powerful we are, how brave.
xo, Carrie
Friday, Sep 16, 2022 | Adventure, Art, Books, Confessions, Dogs, Dream, Exercise, Fall, Family, Francie's Got A Gun, Kevin, Kids, Morning, Publicity, Publishing, Readings, Running, Sleep, Spirit, Work |
What a beautiful day. What a beautiful week it’s been. Each day has a slightly different rhythm, but throughout there have been conversations with friends, bike rides, walks, and several runs in the park.
How has your morning routine changed, as the new season begins?
For me, it’s meant waking up earlier, though I’m still figuring out how to get to sleep earlier to compensate. I’m prioritizing daily morning yoga. We are also walking Rose more regularly. After a close encounter with a skunk last month, Rose now has a curfew: she’s not allowed out after dark on her own. Ergo, more dog walks. Kevin and I like to end our evening with a walk around the block with Rose. We often walk together in the morning too, just around the block.
The first two hours of every day are devoted to exercise, yoga, and, often, connecting with friends. The house empties out by 8AM.
As this new season begins, the house feels so much quieter. Our two eldest are at university, and do not live at home. Our two youngest are now both in high school, and growing ever-more independent. So …
What am I to do? I’ve spent 21 years of my life devoted to looking after my children. Their needs are changing rapidly. In the midst of all this quiet, I’ve begun look around and consider what comes next. There is writing, of course, and there always will be. But I’d like to find a job, now, that offers stability and routine, preferably not writing-related, preferably with people. I really love being with people; I love writing solo in my little home studio, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve loved doing that all these years with a bit of cacophony in the background, a swirl of impending chaos. Maybe the disruption and interruptions have been as important to my writing process as the ear plugs.
Your thoughts, suggestions, advice, leads, encouragement would be very welcome, as I begin opening to this new direction, with some nervousness and hope.
In the meantime, on the book front, I’m keeping occupied with some readings, book clubs, and workshops. Links posted below!
xo, Carrie
Friday, Sept. 16, 7PM (tonight!) Bestival Reads with Wild Writers Literary Festival, tickets include snacks and a drink, with Emily Urquhart, Kimia Eslah, and Tanis Macdonald
Saturday, Sept. 17, 2PM (tomorrow!) The Village Bookshop, 24 Main Street North, Bayfield ON, reading and book-signing
Tuesday, Sept. 20, 6:30-8:30 WPL Eastside branch, The X Page Storytelling Workshop, with me and Anandi Carroll-Woolery, a mini-version of the workshop, open to all! Free, but you need to register at this link.
Friday, Jun 18, 2021 | Current events, Family, Friends, Lists, Local Food, Manifest, Meditation, Morning, Source, The X Page, Word of the Year |
Do I have a simple Friday message? I do not.
On Monday, I went for a solo run in the park. On Monday mornings, early, no matter the weather, no matter my mood, for weeks, months, years (more than a decade, at least), I’ve run or walked with my friend Nina, who has been our neighbour for 18 years, and my friend since we lived across the hall from each other on campus, our first year of university. This past weekend, she and her family moved away.
I’m still working out how to approach this absence.
I started by hand-writing Nina a letter and sending it in the mail. It felt like it approximated the feeling of the kinds of conversations we’ve had, over the years; the letter wasn’t about anything special, just the particularities of the now, and unlike an email or text, I folded it up and stuck it into the envelope and no copy was kept to remind me of what I’d said, it was of its moment, she was the recipient, no one else, and like our walks, it came and it went.
An observation: when I sat to write the letter, on paper with pen, it felt like Nina was present with me; I don’t get the same sensation when composing an email. (side note: Why is email so awful? I have a few theories …)
On Tuesday, a fox trotted near where I was stretching in the front yard; I feel that we know each other, as we see each other often, early in the morning. She’s very beautiful, her orange fur mottled with greys and blacks. She crossed the road, then sat for a moment, and watched me watching her.
That afternoon, I biked to pick up our first CSA box from Fertile Ground farm: greens, greens, greens! On Saturday, I’ll walk to pick up our first CSA box from Little Fields Farm, because, yes, for the second summer running, I belong to two CSAs; I am a fan of women-who-farm.
Please send salad recipes!
On Wednesday, everyone was out of the house, active, with friends. I took my mom to get her second dose of vaccine. The workshop session was an easy one for me: I got to watch my friend Melissa in action, vocal coaching. Mark your calendars: the X Page Performance “Little Things” will be live on Zoom, July 7th, at 7PM. Tickets are free, registration opens here on June 23!
On Thursday morning, I met my son in the park for a run. My grown son, who now lives away from home. I ate healthy food all day (greens for lunch, more greens for supper), but my back ached and I didn’t feel fabulous. Napped on the couch, groggy, too late in the day. Walked over to visit neighbours, still groggy. Trying to remember how to be social again. (Trying to remember what exactly I’m doing with my life, that too.)
Today, it rains. I did a longer yoga session this morning (yoga last night, too, with my friend Kasia; look for more offerings from her this summer, some online, some in-person). Started my time in this studio reading and meditating.
After that, email. (Trying so hard not to start my days with email!)
Now this. Then lunch (more greens??). Laundry. Writing, revising. I want to cook lentils with spinach for supper, and braised bok choy on the side. But the kids will want to order in (our Friday ritual). Which of us will prevail?
I neglected to invite anyone over to our backyard this evening, a Friday ritual I’d intended to start again, and managed the past two Fridays in a row. But it’s raining, with a big thunderstorm forecast for this aft. Excuses, reasons: It’s raining. And inertia. And maybe social anxiety. Who knows? I’m trying to remember how to be in the world again, how to host, how to invite, how to converse, how to connect in real life, in ways that make sense and are sustainable. Y’know?
Go easy, my friends. Enjoy your weekend.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, May 13, 2021 | Adventure, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Current events, Fun, Lynda Barry, Manifest, Meditation, Morning, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, The X Page |
Today I went for a long bike ride on trails and paths around the city. I just kept going and going and going, seeing if I could find how the trails linked up, so I could go in a very big loop. The city is full of wildness, and birds.
I stopped to take photos, and I noticed that my mind and body and spirit were revelling in anything new. Turning down a path I’d never followed before. Discovering a street lined on both sides with flowering trees, in full bloom. Even a patch of construction gave me a sense of newness and discovery.
It’s what I crave, right now. How to exit from stasis, to experience my life in motion, as I know it to be, but do not often feel, right now. Time spins onward, but I’m like a stop-animation film performing a series of postures in my studio, my kitchen, my living-room, over and over and over. At night, the dreams have been difficult, sleep disturbed, as the day’s fears and anxieties try to untangle themselves.
Cruising slowly, gently on my bike today was pure bliss.
I think it helped to be part of the X Page workshop last night, too; to be in a space that is actively promoting the idea that the process is the experience, and the outcome or goal is a lovely result, but not the thing itself: the process is the thing. It is it. As we settled in to listen to each other’s stories, separated by our screens, by the occasional technological glitch, holding our elbows against a barrage of exceptionally sad, frightening, painful world news, the space became its own entity, and we were temporarily transported. What do I hear when I stop and listen, when I toodle along more slowly, when I take a new trail?
All day, I’m faced with choices. What if I kept turning again and again away from self-pity, away from anger, disappointment, away from the harsh self-talk that keeps me tangled in my own unhappiness. That voice will come, it will return, of course, but I have the choice to listen, notice, and say to myself, Is this what you want to do? Do you want to tell yourself you’re wasting your time, you’ve made the wrong call, you got it all wrong? Or do you want to say instead (or adjacent to, if instead is too challenging): Look what you’re making, be gentle, hold your heart dear.
In the words of Joy Harjo: “This is my heart. It is a good heart.”
Those are the opening lines of a poem / song, but I can’t find an accurate version of the text to share with you just now; below, a link to a YouTube video of Joy Harjo, the American poet laureate from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, playing saxophone and performing the text as a song.
This is my heart. It is a good heart. Something changes in my body when I hear those words.
xo, Carrie
Friday, Apr 8, 2016 | Morning, Travel, Work, Writing |
I haven’t taken many photos at the museum, where I’m spending my mornings. I mean to, and then get caught up in the work and forget everything else. I’ve been commissioned to write a completely open-ended piece that will be performed in the museum a week from Sunday (by an actress, not by me).
Here is my morning routine: I walk to the museum, enter at a back door that is unlocked and propped slightly open, climb a wonky circular staircase, which I swear is going to fall off the wall any minute, and ring the bell outside an industrial metal door on the second floor. Eventually someone comes to let me in, although I usually have to knock for awhile too, and one day had to wander around the grounds until the museum director happened by. Behind the door is a large room with big windows, big tables, shelves of books, filing cabinets, several desks, mysterious bubble-wrapped items, and a workspace where today a man was framing photographs: new prints made from old film (or would it be plates?), photographs originally taken in the late 1800s. These will be part of the exhibit too, which focuses on portraiture.
I follow the director down a hallway where he unlocks another door, this time to a small storeroom that has become very familiar. Here, I sit on a step-stool and write, while looking at paintings, photographs, etchings, sketches—whatever the director brings and props before me. His gentle delight when he offers me a new portrait has become familiar too. It is an astonishing and simple way to spend several hours. I sit, I study, I look, I think, I lean closer and examine, I wonder, I write. Out of this, I hope to make something new and original.
Adolphe Felix Cals, “Portrait de Leonie-Rose Davy,” 1874.
Today, I walked through several empty rooms in the museum below, where the director has taped paper print-outs of paintings on the white walls to indicate where the real paintings will be hung. The exhibit is due to open a week from Saturday. On one wall, I saw a print-out of the portrait, above. As we stood in the empty room, the director gestured toward the woman and said, “It is you!” I have not seen the painting in person, only in the catalogue. I have not studied her face up close, nor sat with her in the storeroom. I hope there will be time before the exhibit officially opens to stand in front of her and wonder about who she was.
After I left the museum, and walked to the boulangerie to buy half a baguette for lunch, and to the fromagerie to buy some very soft cheese to eat with the baguette, I came back to my apartment and looked up an old photo I remembered taking during my 365-project (when I took a self-portrait every day for a year): our expressions are so similar, it is uncanny. What do you think?
I surrender to the mystery.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Jan 7, 2015 | Blogging, Exercise, Family, Morning, Sleep, Swimming, Winter |
Sorry about yesterday’s long, rambling, complicated, sort-of-poem post. Note to self: don’t mistake a stream of consciousness “poem” for a blog post. I was trying to be efficient, kill two birds with one stone. I’ve got this project underway to write a poem a day, but you can see from yesterday’s example what these poems look like — journal entries, perhaps, or meditations, completely unedited and unmodified. Poured out, you might say. Which is swell for a private project, but less awesome for a public forum such as this.
Today I’m going to be efficient by telling you far less. Not sure I’ll have time to write the poem, but if I do, I won’t inflict it on you. In truth, a poem a day is aspirational at best.
I’ve got big aspirations. I love this time of year. I love the snow, the cold, the bright days. I love my new-year appetite and enthusiasm for big aspirations.
I love napping on the couch with the dogs.
The nap is my sweet reward for another aspiration: exercise five mornings a week. Early mornings. Five in a row. Not sure yet if I can hack it, but I’m going to try. Monday: spin/weights with group of friends. Tuesday: run/walk/yoga with long-time exercise friend. Wednesday: swim with daughter (!!). Thursday: run/walk with newer fast exercise friend. Friday: spin/boot camp with a couple of friends.
I’ve made it through Wednesday, peeps. (Why am I calling you peeps? Sleep deprivation, perhaps?) Swimming with my former swim-girl was pretty much bliss this morning. We swam for an hour. We shared a lane. She did her thing, I did mine. And Kevin made us a big pan of scrambled eggs when we got home.
Kids are practicing instruments. Meals are being made. Physio exercises in the living-room! Soccer skills in the basement! Reading in front of the fire!
And I’m being efficient because I’ve got writing to do. If you don’t hear from me as often here, assume the best: I’m writing something else! (And it’s probably not a poem…)
xo, Carrie
PS Physio exercises and laundry folding have been elevated to new heights by a) a subscription to Netflix, and therefore b) ten seasons of Friends available to watch on-demand. It’s the small pleasures, it really is.
