Shine on, run long
run, Kevin, run
This week has been run, Carrie, run. Next up we have shine, Carrie, shine, as I’ve got a variety of upcoming work-related events and appearances.
Tonight, I’m visiting a friend’s book club to talk about The Juliet Stories.
On Tuesday, I’ll be at DVLB in uptown Waterloo @ 7PM as a “special guest” (that’s what the invite says) at the book launch for new story collections from Greg Bechtel and Tom Cho. I think I’m going to read a Juliet story I haven’t before.
On Wednesday, I’ll be in Hamilton at Bryan Prince Bookseller @ 7PM with The M Word’s editor Kerry Clare, and others. I’ll be reading from my essay in The M Word, but of course.
On Thursday, I’m headed to Toronto to meet with my publicist at Anansi to make plans for launch of Girl Runner here in Canada (Sept. 6th).
On Saturday, I’ve been invited to be a guest bookseller at Words Worth Books in uptown Waterloo. Words Worth is celebrating its 30th year in the business. (!!) I’ll be there around 11AM, if you want to drop by. (Apparently, working the cash register is not a requirement, for which we can all be truly grateful. I hope no one ever asks me to work as a guest waitress. Or guest latte-maker. Both jobs which I tried and at which I failed spectacularly. I would make a pretty decent guest stable-girl, or guest copy-editor, or guest babysitter, however.)
Finally, yesterday I found out that an essay of mine, “Delivery,” which was published last year in The New Quarterly, and also in the anthology How to Expect What You’re Not Expecting, has been nominated for a National Magazine Award. The New Quarterly has invited me to be their guest at the gala, which happens in June. The word gala kind of paralyzes me, I confess. But I’ve never been nominated before, and I would like to go and be a fly on the wall. Maybe in a nice dress? Maybe not. We’ll see.
I think that covers it for now in the shine, Carrie, shine category. But it’s more than enough to keep me running.
Girl runner
focus
Yesterday was devoted to running.
I started by running 10.5 km early in the morning, before and then during the rain. My Tuesday running partner couldn’t meet up, so I headed out alone. It was very dark and extra-early, because I’d taken swim girl to the pool first. On early dark mornings I stick to neighbourhood streets, when what I really want is to run out toward the open sky. But on early dark mornings that path feels isolated and unlit; I err on the side of caution. I’d gone a dull 4 km when I saw a familiar jacket ahead. I ran faster to catch up. A friend! (Not my usual running partner.) Running with her livened up my route immensely.
Basically, aside from the odd evening out, my social life is anchored by early morning exercise with friends. And texting. And threshold conversations, such as when dropping a kid off, or waiting on the sidelines/poolside/at music lessons. Does this sound familiar to anyone else?
I spent the day reading through the Girl Runner galley, sharpened pencil in hand. This is gruelling work, I’ll admit. Because I’m still reading as the writer, still working to improve (not to say perfect) the words on the page, I can’t read as a reader. After many hours of this, all I wanted to do was run.
Maybe I was inspired by Aganetha.
Kev and I were tag-teaming supper prep, but it wasn’t ready in time for soccer girl to eat before soccer practice. I was taking her. I grabbed a handful of almonds, dashed upstairs and came back down in running gear.
Kevin, in the kitchen, puzzled: “Didn’t you already run this morning?”
Yes, but. That seemed ages ago, like it belonged to another day, another season. Plus, at soccer practice I can run out under an open sky. And it had stopped raining.
So I went, and I ran. And as I ran, I didn’t think about anything in particular. I didn’t think about punctuation or trimming words from sentences. I didn’t think about publicity planning. I thought about running. I repeated a few key phrases that remind me to improve my form, or push harder, or to relax. Quick feet. Tuck in. Shoulders down. I decided I would complete a half-marathon distance in one day, this run being the second stage. And so I did. And that’s what I thought about, really. That’s all.
change of focus
Daily life is a mixture of noise and quiet, connection and interiority, an ongoing attempt to stay focused on whatever is the priority at the moment. To not get distracted. I spend a lot of my daily life trying not to let myself get distracted. Maybe I need a few key phrases, like those I use while running. If I’m with someone, I want to be with them. If I’m working on something, I want to be working on it. It’s where squeezing everything in breaks down, attempting to do too many things all at once, splitting one’s focus. Am I tuning out the right things? Tuning in to the things I mean to? Our brains seem wired to get off on distraction. Quick hits of excitement. But really it’s focus that’s deeply satisfying. It’s running and emptying the mind. It’s reading a stack of picture books to a kid before bed. It’s listening to what a friend is saying, not jumping ahead to what you’ll say next.
State of baking
If you notice I’m writing here a little less frequently, it’s due to writing elsewhere a little more frequently. On balance it all equals out, although the other things I’m writing don’t receive instant publication.
It feels really really good to be writing, especially new fiction. It’s so deeply satisfying to my brain. Like scratching a hard to reach itchy spot, or discovering a stretch that eases a tensed muscle.
I’ve been reflecting more deliberately this month on my word-of-the-year, which is SUCCESS. Such a daunting word to take on, yet it keeps calling out to be wrestled with. Any change in identity causes disturbances within the self, even positive change, even success. Even the meaning of success changes depending on the kind of day I’m having. It’s really personal. I also find myself rolling over the idea of how much a person can change, fundamentally, throughout a lifetime. Do the same insecurities that arose in childhood continue to affect my behaviour and choices now, or am I wise enough to stand counter to the pettier of the emotions and weigh my reactions rationally? I don’t have the answer to that.
On instinct, I continue to do the things that ground me. I set the alarm early. I run. I read. I spend time with friends. This weekend I also baked. In fact, I went on a baking tear yesterday afternoon. Kevin was out most of the day with the older kids at two separate soccer events, and therefore I was home alone with the younger ones, who still need supervision. For a fruitless hour around noon, I kept trying to arrange their happiness so that I could go into my office and work. Best-case scenario involved being interrupted every few minutes with reports from CJ’s latest invented back-yard soccer match, while Fooey and friends played tea party with soapy water in her bedroom.
So I capitulated. I picked up the cards I’d been dealt. I wandered into the kitchen and remembered baking. Remember baking? I used to bake all the time. Then the oven broke right before Christmas and by the time it got repaired, two months later, I’d kind of forgotten all about it. But yesterday I remembered. I now know why I used to bake so often — because it gave me the satisfaction of being productive while looking after young children. I tuned in to CBC Radio, tied on my apron, and went to town. First, Fooey and friend and I baked brownies from a box. Then they went outside to play, and I carried on, sans boxes. I baked granola bars, I baked granola, I baked mac & cheese, and I baked bread. The afternoon turned to evening, Kevin texted me updates from the soccer sidelines, the radio kept me company, and it didn’t feel like an intrusion when CJ ran in and out of the kitchen to report on The Crushers vs The Avalanches of Doom, both teams of ducks, he said, whom he was training up to play soccer.
All of this was made easier by two things: one, that I have some really heavy work to do this week, going through two sets of page proofs for Girl Runner, and I probably needed the mental break, and two, that I had gone for a long run the day before, so I figured a day of rest wouldn’t hurt.
I’m not playing soccer this summer.
I miss it already and find myself mourning for my soccer-playing self. But I can’t take the risk of getting hurt again and being unable to work or think, especially in the lead-up to this fall’s challenging workload. So to comfort myself, I’m doing more distance running. Soccer tended to beat me up at the best of times, making distance training a challenge, so I’m looking at its absence as an opportunity to run long.
I announced this intention at a family meal last Monday and my little sister literally rolled her eyes at me. I know, I know. This is my idea of fun? And comfort? But it makes me feel good. Grounded. Strong. Present.
It’s what I need. I’m going on instinct here.
Let’s call it spring
Very briefly, last weekend, it felt like spring.
I took these photos on Monday, when the big kids were at soccer and swimming, and the little kids and I hung out in the backyard, basking in the sunshine.
Then it went and got all cold again. So we haven’t basked since.
But I’m still prepared to call it spring. It feels like things are happening, or about to happen, fomenting under the surface. Late bright evenings, early bright mornings. Reading, running, playing, being outside again. It’s about to get really busy and, I hope, really colourful.
What’s precious
We spent the Easter weekend on the farm where Kevin grew up, and his mom still lives.
We helped her begin to sort through and organize the rooms, the closets, cupboards, drawers, nooks and crannies. This is no small project in a house that’s been home for nearly forty years.
I boxed up books to give away, many of which had been bestsellers at some point in the past four decades, already out of date, out of style; some were too musty even to donate. It was an odd conflation of realities, having just spent several days at the British Library, where I pored over printed texts that were four or five centuries old. By what random chance did those books survive? Nothing I read in the BL would be considered great or lasting literature, though some was popular in its time; survival over the centuries was a matter more of being kept by generations of someones who were not like me, I guess, as my instinct is to purge, rather than to cling to, at least in a general sense.
The work got me thinking about how transitory and brief are our lives on this earth. Consider my files of manuscripts in our attic. I wonder, should I burn them now so as to spare my children having to decide what to do with them, some day? What’s precious, after all?
I come home thinking that what’s precious is today.
But today is also ephemeral, which is why we keep so much, trying to keep what can’t be kept. We’ve all got our means and methods, our junk drawers, our shoeboxes. I say this as an inveterate collector and curator of the daily now, in the form of this blog, knowing that what I’m compelled to do is only fractionally more lasting than the day itself, and then only because it freezes and distorts the complicated layers of each beautiful breath and heart beat into a small, glancing story.
I come home thinking that it’s really really important to pay attention to what you’re pouring your life into. I think: don’t worry about whether or not you’re making things that will last. Don’t worry period, actually. Make and do the things that bring you and those around you some daily sense of being loved and cared for. Be as alive as you want to be, while you’re here.