Catch up birthday
gummi worm volcano cake
We had a big windstorm overnight, and a power surge that blew out part of the hydro wire running to our house in rather spectacular fashion with firecracker pops and flashing blue light, which made it hard for everyone to sleep last night. Luckily, the line is being held up by the tree in our front yard, so it’s not downed, and is still providing electricity. Don’t worry, we’re doing all the things we’ve been told to do, it isn’t a danger to anyone, currently (so to speak), and all will be repaired soon.
But it was a disturbed night. And it’s AppleApple’s birthday. Maybe we should let the kids stay home from school today, came the pre-dawn thought.
Really?! Yes, really. The joy was unanimous. Some are still in pajamas and it’s nearly 4pm.
I also intended to catch up on things left undone, but have only been partially successful in that.
Still, it seems we all needed this catch up day. It ends at 5 o’clock when the evening activities kick in, but it’s been sweet.
On the weekend, we celebrated AppleApple’s birthday, a small party with long-time friends that allowed her to relax, play, and hang out, which seems to happen not frequently enough. It was a “baking and board games” theme. The girls baked the cake and fashioned a gummi worm volcano in the middle.
We had spaghetti with meatballs and caesar salad, and I thought, looking at the table, that I’m a lot like my dad in my over-estimation of food amounts: ain’t nobody going hungry at my table!
still ten
Here’s the birthday girl last night, when she was still 10. She had a loose tooth, which she pulled right before bed. “Don’t forget about the tooth fairy,” she said, and when, about half an hour later, I climbed up to her bunk with a toonie to exchange for the tooth, she whispered, “Mom, I’m still awake!” “Do you want the tooth fairy to come tonight?” I asked, being on my way to bed. “Mom, I’m actually asleep.”
definitely eleven
And here she is today, officially 11, blissed out with dogs and book. Yeah, she’s wearing the same pajamas she was wearing last night. I think that means she’s having a happy birthday.
Lunch date with poetry
Lunch date with Kevin. We took the food back to his office because sometimes we like to do take-out. We don’t always eat at home. It’s not that we don’t have enough to eat home, just that sometimes we like to get take-out. I’m sorry. I can’t help myself. All I can do is move forward.
This was going to be a serious post about serious things, and what could be more serious than poetry? A friend in my poetry book club made copies for the group of an article in Harper’s Magazine, by Mark Edmundson, from July of this year called “Poetry Slam: Or, The decline of American verse.” Whilst waiting in my quiet office for students to come and talk to me, I read through it, underlying bits here and there and scribbling arguments in the margins. What spoke to me directly was his suggestion that it took three qualities to write “superb lyric poetry,” (and in my mind I couldn’t help but substitute “literature” for “lyric poetry”).
First, the writer must have something of a gift: she must be able to make music, command metaphors, compress senes, write melodiously when the situation demands and gratingly when need be. … [Second,] she must also have something to say. There must be some region of her experience that has transfixed her and that she feels compelled to put into words and illuminate. … [Third,] the poet still must add ambition. She must be willing to write for her readers. She must be willing to articulate the possibility that what is true for her is true for all.
He goes on to say that ambition might just as rightly be called courage. I like that view of ambition, frankly. Moreover, I like that view of what’s required to write well, and plan to offer it up to my students before the term ends (two more classes, my God, it’s not enough!). I think most of us who are drawn to writing come with the first talent: a facility for language. It’s why we’re drawn to writing. It may also be what stops many of us from moving on much further, and why agents and publishers tear their hair out trying to get young and talented writers to write about something, and not just beautifully or masterfully or lyrically. That’s why theme is so important. You have to have something to say. But I knew both of those things before reading this article; it’s his third point that is a new idea for me. And I like it, very much.
Ambition. Courage. Willingness to put one’s grand ideas on offer for public critique. The daring required to engage. No wonder a writer needs a hide tougher than a rhino’s. How does this willingness to stand out, to say something out loud, to take a stand, to care about something publicly, how does all of this fit with the necessity of being vulnerable? Because if you’re writing about something that compels you, something you care about, you can’t not be vulnerable. It’s what makes what you’re doing matter. We all know it, as readers.
One more thought from the article, on writers who teach.
Teaching poetry means talking about it in a highly self-conscious way. It means bringing the judging facility to the forefront. … But poems, especially vivid, uncanny poems — ones that bring stunningly unlike things together in stunningly just and illuminating ways — don’t come from anywhere close to the front part of the brain, the place where (let us say) judgment sits.
Now. I like to think that teaching creative writing this fall has forced me to distill and make useful much of the knowledge I’ve gained instinctively over my years of practice. I appreciate being forced to bring the judging facility to the forefront. But I’ve written next to nothing of creative content this fall, and though it wouldn’t be fair to blame this entirely on teaching, I do wonder if he’s got a point. By picking something apart, analyzing its pieces, well, the thing you’re dissecting is dead, isn’t it. It had better be, for the sake of all involved. When I’m writing, it’s like coping with a living thing that seems almost unrelated to the suggestions and guidelines I keep trying to share with my students. Sure, there are rules. There are excellent, tried-and-true ways of doing things. But I’m not thinking about them. I’m writing. I’ll save the analysis for later, for revision and editing.
For the record, I had the pork belly with the papaya salad, and Kevin had the fried chicken, and both were very very good. If you live in town, follow @westofseoul on Twitter for menu updates and to find out where the truck is parked from day to day.
Be forewarned and be reassured
Be forewarned: I’ve got nothing particular to say. Be reassured: the one thing I’m not going to do is to ramble on about Rob Ford, the spectacularly awful mayor of Toronto, even though it’s just about the only news penetrating the wall of fog that seems to have lowered itself around my noggin. It’s these early mornings, one after the next after the next.
I’ve been wondering about my inclination to get up and exercise, no matter how tired I am. Is it helping? Is it making me a calmer, happier, fitter, stronger, more productive person? I sleep better when I exercise, and that counts for a lot. And I’m often up early anyway, so it seems like the practical thing to do. But I also know that tiredness can bleed into the whole day.
I’ve got a sick kid home. He read me a whole book, with some help on tough words here and there. “Did you know you could read that book?” I asked in astonishment, and he shrugged and said, Nope, he had no idea.
There are only three classes left in the term. Tonight I’m tackling creative non-fiction, a subject that makes me nervous, as my level of expertise is not as high as when we’re talking about the short story. Still, creative non-fiction fascinates me, and it’s worth tackling, assuming my fogged-up brain can make sense of my scrambled notes.
This is where I sat last night to compose those scrambled notes and find readings to support my claims and generalizations. I will miss this office, quite a lot, actually. I will miss the quiet, and the routine. And I will miss the camaraderie that’s been created in the classroom over the course of the term, that I will miss a lot. It will make life easier, not to have this extra obligation, but my preference, as you may have observed, doesn’t generally skew toward easier.
Tonight’s supper: turkey noodle soup, with buttery corn-off-the-cob on the side.
Last night’s supper: grilled salmon, and macaroni-and-cheese made with leftover noodles and real buttermilk.
Yesterday’s after-school activity: music. In this beautiful sunlit building. I’m about to leave for campus, to teach. The kids are home, and it’s our quiet evening, with only one extra activity — karate — to which the boy has a ride, thankfully. I’m letting everyone eat the Halloween candy as their after-school snack. And I’m grabbing some to go. Be forewarned. Be reassured.
Oh, the places you’ll go
our Canadian celebration: fast food at Harvey’s, Sunday evening, 6:15
Sometimes it looks, from the blog, like I’m hyper-productive. And sometimes that’s true. But not always. Today, for example. Today I got up at 5am, yet I’ve done nothing more productive than a load of laundry. I just heard the washing-machine buzzer go, so if I get up off of this twirly stool (formerly part of a drum kit) and toss that load into the drier, that will be two loads of laundry, making me twice as productive.
I exaggerate only slightly.
office, with dogs, Monday, around noon
I took photos of most of the places I’ve been over the past two days. Maybe I need a day like today to do nothing and not be productive, who knows. A body can get tired, and so can a mind, worn down and flattened to dullness by the necessity of production. My energy and drive are renewable resources, but maybe to renew them, I need to sit fallow now and again.
Here’s where I’ve been, since leaving the wild Wild Writers Festival on Saturday afternoon, flying home filled to brimming with words and names and ideas and emotion.
That same evening, Kevin and I went out together to a dinner hosted by the festival, and then to a reading afterward. It really is a treat to be surrounded by writers, to hear about their struggles, and their secrets to survival. I rely on this blog, frankly, to keep me connected to other writers, because I really don’t move in literary circles. My actual physical circle is basically my neighbourhood, and includes friends I’ve known for years, and friends I’ve made since having children. In some ways, I think I’ve been protected by this, and allowed to make my own mistakes and explore my own interests, but in other ways, I miss the camraderie of running into people who do what I do. It’s why I love the Wild Writers Festival, and feel blessed by its existence, and thankful to those who put their energy into bringing it into being.
Kevin and I did not stay late. That is the theme of our lives at present. We do not stay late. Ergo, our social lives are somewhat shrunken. I wilt around 9 o’clock. That’s my glass slipper hour.
Wayne Gretzky Sports Complex, Brantford, Sunday afternoon, 1:15
Sunday saw me and swim girl driving rainy country roads to a swim meet. It was her second day, and she’d already won a bronze medal in the 200m breaststroke (looked after by her coach, as neither Kevin nor I could be there). I failed to appreciate the significance of this accomplishment until arriving at the meet: it was a big meet! Teams from all across southern Ontario, from Toronto to Windsor, and there was my kid in her purple suit swimming to another medal — silver, this time — in the 100m breaststroke. I got to hug her immediately afterward. I spent much of the meet crouched on a stair-step on the jammed pool deck, reading Ann Patchett’s THE STORY OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE, and wishing myself more tolerant of violations of personal space. I’m so Canadian that way.
Home from the swim meet, we went out for a family meal at Harvey’s. We had a gift certificate, that’s why. It was ridiculously fun. Hey, maybe we can count it as our Canadian celebration.
Up early yesterday for kettlebell class. I’m back! And symptom-free! And my muscles ache! So yesterday was kettlebells, followed by nap, followed by getting kids to school, followed by office time. Blissful peaceful office time, with dogs snoring underfoot. I’m sifting through my HAIR HAT stories. Not much happened for many hours, and I enjoyed it. Because by 3pm it was kids home, and snacktime, and laundry folding. So much laundry! Three days of laundry! Despite a full half hour invested in folding, I had to abandon the still-overflowing basket because it was time for the hellish Monday swim commute. From our house to UW’s pool (where AppleApple swims) to the Rec Centre is probably less than 4km, all told, if we could go by bike or on foot through the park. But we can’t (aka don’t want to) because it’s dark and snowing. This trip via car, is beset by road closures and heavy traffic, and takes us a full half an hour. We arrive at CJ’s swim lesson just in time, every time.
swim lessons at 5:30 on a November afternoon
I sit in the stands, and breathe. I watch him kick, kick, kick, and move less than an inch, yet he doesn’t seem discouraged. His googles (as he calls them) are too tight and leave marks around his eyes, yet he doesn’t me to loosen them. He talks non-stop in the shower, by the locker, in the parking lot, all the way home. This is a good stop along the way.
At home, there are 15 minutes in which to devour a tofu stir-fry that Kevin’s whipped up in my absence. My mom has arrived too, to babysit and let us borrow her car for the next portion of the evening’s adventures, as Kevin and I will be going in two different directions.
soccer field at RIM park, 7pm
I get to go to Albus’s indoor soccer game! I don’t do enough with his boy, and he notices, so I’m making a conscious effort to do more. I believe showing up is a big part of parenting, and matters more than anything I could try to say with words. And it’s doable: it just means shifting things around a little bit, here and there. Kevin will take the gymnastics run (Fooey and her friend) and pick up AppleApple from swimming, instead. It’s companionable with my boy, and I manage not to embarrass him with my (inevitable) running commentary and encouragement from the sidelines, if only because he claims afterward not to have heard me (phew!).
gymnastics club, 8:50pm
We’re home again. I help load the dishwasher. I dress CJ in pajamas and leave the bedtime tucking to Kevin, because we’re off again, me and Albus, to stop at a convenience store for milk and bananas on our way to pick up the gymnasts. “I forgot my camera!” I say, and Albus reminds me that phones have cameras these days. I finish off the mini-this-is-where-I’ve-been session with a few terrible shots from the gym.
blurry gymnast daughter: damn you camera phone
And that’s where I’ve been.
A wild Wild Writers Fest
This is the little park at which I stopped to take photos on my way to this year’s Wild Writers Festival. I was running late, due to a croupy son, and half a night spent lying beside him listening to his breathing, and then accidentally sleeping later than expected in the quiet morning house. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” I said to Kevin, as if it were his fault, and he should have been my alarm clock. He whirled me a breakfast shake, and made coffee while I tried to look presentable and gathered my supplies.
The night before I’d been at a book club. Actually, it’s been a busy week, and all the nights seem to have been late ones, with class prep on Wednesday, then class on Thursday, then soccer and running and a book club on Friday, and then the croup. I chugged the shake, slapped on mascara, and took the coffee to go.
But I stopped to take photos.
This was my destination, yesterday morning: the CIGI building in uptown Waterloo, where the Wild Writers Festival was being held; a six-minute walk from home. In some ways, it’s convenient to attend a festival in one’s hometown: the six-minute travel time, for example. But in other ways, it can be harder to leave it all behind and dive in. I knew, six minutes away, Kevin was stuck with two soccer coaching gigs, a sick kid who needed to be taken to a walk-in clinic, and a swim kid to send off to a meet.
But there’s no point in being somewhere if your mind is somewhere else. So I arrived, and dove in.
I sat in on a publishing panel that featured my Canadian editor, Janice Zawerbny. And then it was my turn to lead a panel titled “From literary magazines to small press success,” though I’m not sure we covered the topic, exactly. My four fabulous panelists were Claire Tacon, Colette Maitland, Nancy Jo Cullen, and Elisabeth de Mariaffi, and part of the pleasure of being moderator was getting to know them all, through their writing, in conversation at the panel event, and then less formally afterward, when we were all feeling more relaxed, perhaps even giddy. From here on in, I will hug every moderator of every panel I ever sit on, because oh boy, moderating takes far more effort than I’d previously appreciated. The hour and a half flew, however, which seemed like a good thing.
Then it was on to lunch, which I ate in the green room, catching up with Miranda Hill, who I met while sitting with her on several panels at writers festivals last year. After lunch, I sat in on her panel on MFA programs, which was really fascinating, especially given that I’m dipping my toe in the teaching of creative writing for the first time right now, and still trying to figure out the value of that enterprise — not so much for me, as teacher, but for my students. The session ended movingly with all three panelists (Leesa Deen and Helen Humphreys, along with Miranda) remembering the work of Bronwen Wallace, a Canadian writer who died too soon. It was an unexpectedly moving moment.
It was then nearly 3 o’clock, and I felt, guiltily, that I should go home and relieve Kevin. He’d been texting me updates throughout the day. I was in the green room, gathering my stuff, when I heard that something exciting and romantic was going to happen at the poetry panel, the last session of the afternoon. And then I knew I had to stay.
The panel was terrific: Bruce Taylor, Amanda Jernigan, Kerry-Lee Powell (whose collection The Wreckage I had to buy after hearing her read), and George Murray. And at the very end, as rumour had promised, George Murray read a poem to us all, that was clearly meant for his girlfriend, Elisabeth de Mariaffi, who was sitting in the front row. It was called “The Proposal.” And then he proposed.
It can’t get more wild than that, really, can it?
Then I went home, practically flying. There’s more, but I’m out of time because today I’m taking the child to her swim meet. Which isn’t wild, but shall be done.