Category: Play
Saturday, Jul 30, 2016 | Adventure, Art, Fun, Play, Summer, Work, Writing |
How to sum up an experience like Omega, you ask, sitting in your office, once again, with a dog curled alertly at your feet? A child has just rushed in to tell you that she has gotten to 7 juggles (of the soccer ball, with her feet) in the “summer juggling camp” organized by your husband, to keep your children active and entertained, while you were away.
You were way for six days, but it could have been months. It could have been that you fell down into a different world, unrelated to your own, as vivid, as real, but somehow without connection to your own. You crossed a drawbridge that let itself down, into a small, contained universe which you inhabited almost like you’d become a child again.
You drew pictures. You wrote by hand. You went to class. You ate meals provided for you, and you compliantly accepted the food that appeared, eating something called “chickpea scramble” for breakfast every morning, almost obediently. You napped on pillows under a table with your fellow classmates. In the evening before bed, you went to tuck shop and bought a snack. You swam in a swampy seaweed infested lake. You laughed till you cried with your friend. You had a camp name. You were, in fact, a child at camp, again.
There were marvellously awful moments, such as when you struggled in full-on sun, sweat pouring off you, to erect an enormous, ridiculous tent, while the campers nearby reminisced about recently hiking the Appalachian Trail, popping up their compact tents in mere minutes. You almost cried, running in the heat to seek out duct tape—for the love of God, duct tape!—to repair your ridiculous and broken tent. And then you slept in luxury on a queen-size mattress, inflated with a motorized roaring machine that irritated those hardier neighbours who had recently hiked the Appalachian Trail.
There was the morning you rose at 4AM to attend a two and a half hour kundalini yoga class, that consisted largely of sitting cross-legged whilst chanting under the instruction of a tone-deaf guru.
There was the heat, the thunder storm, and the morning you had to take the rain-soaked tent down and pack up in the mud, only to be confronted by a breakfast of turmeric-soaked lentils immediately afterward.
But this was bliss.
It was blissful to spend hours every day writing and drawing. You didn’t know you could draw. You didn’t know you had characters inside of you, their faces waiting to be seen, their hidden emotions so certain on the page, present in a few quick lines you’d sketched there. After class, you would find your way back to the classroom to work—writing and drawing, drawing and writing. Determined as a child. Delighted as a child. You would want to thank this genius teacher, whose genius is her delight in the process, and her generosity. There was no waste in Lynda Barry’s class. Time was honoured. It was honoured with work, and it was honoured with rest, and it was honoured with delight in what you were all making, individually and together.
You went on this adventure, and you came home again.
But you’re still there, you think. Half of you is still there, safe and bewildered and surprised and elated.
Thank you, Lynda Barry.
xo, Carrie
Saturday, Apr 16, 2016 | Adventure, Play, Readings, Travel, Work |
I suppose I should know better than to blog under the influence of extreme emotion or wine, or, much worse, both, but here goes.
I am “home” from a truly wonderful evening that completely focused on and celebrated Invisible sous the lumiere, as Girl Runner must be called while I am in France. It was a truly remarkable evening. I can’t believe it, actually. Nearly three hours, all focused on Girl Runner. The first performer (above) was actually a writer, not an actress, a young woman who has already published novels herself and who is also a runner: she memorized at least half an hour of text directly from the novel and performed it — embodying Aggie at different times in Aggie’s life. After her performance, which was very moving, the same woman did a short lecture on sports and literature, and the book. This was followed by a second performance, a reading from the book performed by a male actor, who showed us a whole different aspect of Aggie’s character — her humour. The audience was really laughing. I started to think that I’d written not a novel but a play! When his reading of the text was done, it was my turn on stage for an interview, with a warm reception from the audience.
After all of this, there was a dinner for the artists. During which I had some wine along with the meal. And I’m only “home” now, and it’s after midnight.
I feel like I’ve seen something that I won’t forget, and also that’s changed my view of what I can do and imagine. Being in France has shown me Aganetha as I never saw her before, but it has also shown me something about my own writing that I hadn’t appreciated, somehow. I don’t know how to describe it. All I can say is that it’s amazing to feel such energy and to be in such a different creative space. This trip has been a complete gift. Full stop.
Tomorrow is the performance of my museum piece. And on Monday I come home. But meanwhile, here I am, floating.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Mar 3, 2016 | Adventure, Family, Fun, Kevin, Kids, Parenting, Play, Readings, Travel |
Yesterday, we gave the kids a snow day. This was not my idea, but Kevin was very keen on it, so I agreed somewhat begrudgingly as it meant sacrificing a quiet day at home in my office, alone. Quite a lot of snow had fallen overnight, but it was crisp, clear, and beautiful, as you can see from the photo above. In the morning, Kevin took the kids sledding; some safety boundaries were pushed to great hilarity, apparently (good thing I hadn’t gone along!). In the afternoon, AppleApple and I went cross-country skiing. We still had all of our regular after-school activities: piano lessons, soccer practice, and a soccer game. It was awfully late when we gathered together again for supper. The boys had been home alone, playing dominoes, waiting to eat until we’d all arrived. Well after 7PM, we sat down to a very popular meal of soft tacos. I could sense the difference the unofficial snow day had made for everyone. We were so relaxed, and especially kind to each other. We sat for ages after we’d finished eating, talking and laughing; everyone.
It’s a luxury to take a holiday in the middle of the week. Kevin and I are both very fortunate to have jobs that allow us this level of flexibility, and yesterday was a reminder to take advantage of that freedom from time to time.
Today, my office is quiet. The dogs are sprawled out napping near my feet. I’ve set the timer for fifteen minutes.
I have some news. I’m going to France in April. (!!!) I’ll be away nearly three weeks, attending events at an arts festival in Normandy, and promoting the publication of the French translation of Girl Runner (or, Invisible Sous la Lumiere, as it is being called). I’ve been commissioned to write a short piece as part of the arts festival, and will be given an artist’s residency at a museum for about ten days. I’ve been dreaming of a writing retreat for a long time … just never imagined it would happen in France!
One sad thing about the trip is that I’ll be missing the performance of AppleApple’s adaptation of Macbeth. Of course, in 18 days, I’ll be missing much more than that. I think I’m missing everyone and everything in advance right now. Premature homesickness. Adventures are so much harder to throw yourself into when you’re leaving behind children.
Two readings coming up this weekend. I’ll be in Hamilton on Sunday evening at an event called Lit Live, and in Toronto on Monday evening at the Rowers Reading series. Check my upcoming events page for more info.
Ding-ding-ding! That’s my time. Tomorrow I’ll try to remember to tell you about turmeric tea, the laundromat, and swimming.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Jan 6, 2016 | Adventure, Exercise, Fun, Meditation, Play, Spirit, Writing |
Immersion is the word of the week. On Monday morning, our family switched off holiday-mode and jumped into the deep end. I feel like each day has doors that open into different rooms, sometimes into wildly different rooms, and I open a door, step over the threshold, and adapt to whatever role is required of me; and then it’s on to the next door.
The key is to keep the other doors closed while securely inside any given room. Every once in awhile everything will tumble out into the hallway, where it will need to be sorted, organized, and assigned back its proper place. Or, I find, it’s helpful to leave stuff in the hallway. Forget about it. Don’t sweat it. It will be waiting for me when I’m ready to sort it out, eventually. (The hallway represents email, I think, more than anything.)
On Monday morning, I opened the door to the swimming pool with my eldest daughter, and she taught me how to do a flip turn! What a fabulous and unexpected beginning to this new year. I’ve been terrified of learning, but she gently urged me to try, and try again, and by the end of the lesson, I was able to sprint to the wall, flip turn, and sprint back again — my mind lost in effort, my fears lost, too.
I neither believed I would be able learn this new skill, nor imagined I would ever try to learn. It was such a happy surprise to discover that this new skill was within reach; and I couldn’t have done it if someone else hadn’t believed that I could, even when I didn’t believe it. Is this a metaphor for an approach to the every day? To attempt new things, even slightly unwillingly, even if you can’t quite see the point? To allow yourself to be coached, nudged, gently? To take pride in the smallest of achievements — that too. Because, I thought, if I can learn this, imagine what else I can learn!
The writing adventure has filled quickly. As of this posting, there are two spots remaining, and a few drop-in days, so if you’re mulling but interested, get in touch. I’ve had several people wonder whether the adventure could be for them, as they are not writers, and the answer is, yes: think of this as a creativity workshop, with writing as the medium.
Time to open another door, now. It’s a lovely threshold to step over. All this week, I’ve been meditating and then diving directly into writing (fiction) for several hours, while turning off my phone and email notifications. It’s bliss, but it’s also highly productive.
Wishing you a day of immersion and focus whatever doors you may open.
xo, Carrie
Friday, Jan 1, 2016 | Adventure, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Fun, Meditation, Organizing, Play, Poetry, Spirit, Teaching, Writing |
Here we are, day one of a new year. I’ve walked the dogs through gently falling snow flakes. The children slept till 10AM. We have this one last day of our unusually relaxing holiday to do as we please, each of us, before the new year’s schedule clocks in tomorrow morning.
Of course I am thinking about what I’d like to do this year, in addition to what I’m already doing; what would I like to try, what experiment shall I undertake, what challenge, what adventure, what’s calling? And I have a small idea, a possibility I’ve been mulling for awhile that seemed affirmed yesterday by the conflating coincidences of driving across town on an unexpected errand while listening to an interview on the radio with Elizabeth Gilbert, who was talking about the creative impulse. The creative impulse is not benign, she said (and I paraphrase). If it isn’t put to use, if it isn’t acknowledged and fed, if it isn’t set free, it will find its own damaging purpose.
I began thinking about rage, just under the surface.
I was driving along a street I don’t very often take anymore, and it triggered a memory: that I’d stopped for gas, at a gas station that no longer exists, in fact, with two toddlers strapped into car seats in the back of our old red truck. I was enormously pregnant with my third child, and it was hot, a summer’s day, and we’d just gotten a load of groceries. I filled up the truck with gas, and as I was walking around the hood of the truck to climb back in to the driver’s seat, a man approached me. He looked, if not homeless, then close to homeless, and with a rough voice he asked if he could bum a cigarette.
My response shocked even me.
Rage. It was rage that poured out, with no warning, no pre-emptive interlude. “Do I look like I would have a cigarette?” I snapped at him, almost shaking with my fury, indicating my pregnant belly.
“No,” he replied sheepishly.
I got into the truck and slammed the driver’s side door, vibrating with rage.
I didn’t know what had come over me. I didn’t know why I was so very angry. I couldn’t think of a good reason to be feeling what I was feeling in that moment.
But now, I think maybe I understand. Like raging people all over this earth, my wider, deeper emotions were not accessible to me at that time in my life. I was repressing a great deal: disappointment about my career, the sense of boredom and aimlessness as I struggled to be a stay-at-home mom, exhaustion from the drudgery of the day-to-day. There were many things I was not telling myself, or allowing myself to feel, because I couldn’t have borne it. So when tapped or triggered, there was only one emotion on offer: rage. Rage is a defensive emotion. It lashes out so as to prevent us from feeling anything else.
I’ll never know exactly why the man’s question set me off, but I think I was afraid of him, and did not want him near me. I felt vulnerable. I also felt morally righteous. Whatever it was, I was feeling something for which rage was a cover. I was ambushed by my own inexplicable fury.
I think unless we allow ourselves to experience a full range of emotions, including those emotions that indict us for our own failings — jealousy, envy, disappointment, humiliation, fear, uncertainty, grief — we will be at the mercy of that one emotion that is always on tap, always available, a defence against what the world may think of us, and what we may think of ourselves deep inside. Rage rage against the dying of the light. Yes. But rage rage against the accusations that we know to be true, and the terror of being fragile, and the admission of loneliness and failure, and the misery of not knowing everything best.
Rage rage against being human and fallible.
Rage rage against culpability.
Rage rage against knowing thyself, because to know thyself truly is to know some awfully dark truths, is to acknowledge enormous imperfections, and ugly vanities, and moral failings.
Yet I maintain that it is better to know thyself than to remain lodged in clotted rage, railing against the world, and spewing harm and hurt. The hurt your rage will cause to your own self is far greater than any hurt you could bring upon yourself by knowing yourself truly. It is only when we see ourselves as vulnerable and weak and wrong (rather than wronged) that we can see others with compassion, and love too.
And the rage will diminish.
It really will. It will not shock you with its sudden emergence, or hurt those you love most dearly. You will feel its potential, yes, but you will know what it means, and hear what it’s saying: you will feel behind the rage to the emotion that rage is trying to protect you from feeling, and you will be able to name it, and to access it, and to experience it. It is only through experiencing the deeper emotion that you can understand yourself, and get through that emotion.
I am alert now to my own rage. I know it’s trying to tell me something more profound. Why am I so angry? Is this moment deserving of my anger? So rarely it is. Almost never, in truth. And pouring out my rage, pouring it onto to someone else, is unacceptable, always. I believe that. So if it happens, when it happens, I try to name that too. To apologize immediately. Never to let myself off the hook. To reflect. There is always more work to do. Because it is easy to mistake rage for purpose, for fuel. At least it’s better to feel something than nothing, maybe? But the opposite of rage is not emptiness, it’s not nothing, it’s not depression, it’s not powerlessness, it’s not silence. The opposite of rage is connection.
Here is my idea. This coming year, I would like to host writing adventures in my home. It will be an experiment, I confess. The point will be to use the physical act of writing — writing by hand onto the page — to bring us into a meditative state of focus, in which we can access memories, draw them forth. We’ll leap from the intensive imaginative images we’re experiencing in our minds into the adventure of fiction. The exercises will be guided, the space will be safe, and none of us will be able to guess in advance where we might travel to on any given evening. Being or becoming a writer is not the point. The process is the point. Play is the point. Adventure is the point. Discovering and mapping our own inner imaginative space is the point. Anyone can participate. Everyone has a creative impulse. This is just one of a myriad of ways to express it, but it’s the method I can offer, if you’re looking for an opening, if you’re looking for a way in. Or out. Or deep down.
Please send me a message if you’re interested and I’ll keep you in the loop as the idea becomes a plan.
Happy New Year!
xo, Carrie
PS The title of this post is the first line of a poem by Rumi called “The diver’s clothes lying empty.” Look it up if you don’t already know it. Read it out loud. It will tell you everything I’ve written here, and much more.
Tuesday, Dec 29, 2015 | Adventure, Big Thoughts, Birthdays, Coaching, Confessions, Exercise, Family, Friends, Fun, Holidays, Play, Spirit |
I love that my birthday falls so close to the end of the year; it’s the perfect time for reflection. Last night I wrote by hand in my journal, as I’ve done for many years now, on the night before my birthday. This is just one of a few simple rituals that make each birthday feel special, squeezed as it is between Christmas and New Year’s. For example, this morning started with a hot yoga class; something I’ve been doing on my birthday since 2009, when I first tried out a hot yoga class. That first yoga class was a treat and an adventure, to try something new, and to steal time for myself. I couldn’t have guessed how it would change me. I was hooked — not necessarily hooked on hot yoga, although that has served me well over the years, but hooked on moving my body, becoming present in my body through physical challenge. I’m now entering my seventh years of serious and regular physical practice: running, walking the dogs, cycling, spin class, weight training, boot camp, kundalini yoga, hot yoga, swimming, soccer, dancing, cross-country skiing.
In 2011, I focused on competition and races.
In 2012, I first learned how to work through injury.
Also in 2012, I joined a women’s soccer team and became a teammate. I hadn’t participated in team sports since I’d last played soccer at age 11. I had a fun season that summer, but we moved to the country and I didn’t play soccer again. Later, I would have said definitively that team sports was not for me; was it trauma and shame from having been, often, picked last in gym class, a lingering sense of not belonging, not knowing how to belong? We moved often when I was a child. I was often the new kid and new kids who are shy are picked last in gym class. But that wasn’t my interpretation at the time; instead, I thought I was bad at team sports. If you’d known me as a teen, you would never have thought, oh yes, Carrie will make a good coach someday. Belonging to a team as an adult changed me, and it has changed my outlook on team sports. Seeing my kids belong to teams, even during times when they’ve struggled, has given me insight into the potential of being part of something bigger than oneself.
Also, it’s just plain fun. Have I mentioned that part?
Today, I turn 41 years old. This is middle age, if you’re honest about average human lifespans. Today, I don’t mind being older. I’m grateful for a body that is able to move and stretch and participate. I do not take it for granted. Much brings me joy in this rich and textured time of life. Connection to my children. Soaking up time together as a family. The adventure of writing. Opportunities to be a mentor, to teach, to coach. Sharing and receiving the ongoing story of our daily lives with friends, with siblings. Getting to hug my mom, and my dad and stepmother. Reading wonderful books. I’m humbled by the luxuries of my life. If there’s one thing I want for the year ahead it is to seek out, look for, and recognize opportunities to serve, to offer what’s mine to give, and also to share. To share a sense of adventure. To have fun. To play. May none of us ever be too old for that.
xo, Carrie
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