Announcing “Little Things”: The X Page Performance
artwork by Tarunima Mittal
For the past three years, I’ve been a part of a storytelling project that aims to foster connections between immigrant and refugee women in our region and the local arts community. The multidisciplinary workshop is named after the Lynda Barry writing exercise we use to find our way into the writing process: The X Page. Over twelve weeks, a group of women meets to write and revise original stories, collaborate on animating these stories through performance and artwork, and finally, to perform the stories for an audience.
This season, we’ve been transported by necessity into a virtual space, which has nevertheless felt like shared space, with room to explore, make connections, to listen, laugh, cry. For me, that’s the key to the whole project: to get to be taken inside someone else’s world, to hear what matters to them, the “little things” they’ve kept or lost along the way, and the themes to which they find themselves returning.
Lynda Barry’s exercise opens many pathways to the heart.
The trust involved in this process is immense. Each workshop session, I’m filled with gratitude for everyone’s efforts, kindness, generosity, and presence. This year, I’m working as the project’s coordinator, which involves me in almost every aspect of behind-the-scenes planning. We are in the homestretch now!!!! The performance will be live on the evening of Wednesday, July 7th, 7PM. Mark your calendars, register to attend (tickets are free, but registration is required), please come and please share news of this workshop with your friends.
The stories are beautiful. The art is beautiful. The connections are beautiful.
We chose the title “Little Things” for this season’s performance because the stories revolve around seemingly small moments, singular scenes, objects that have been kept and carried across borders, or lost along the way; and because even a little thing — held, cherished, and shared — is imbued with depth, meaning, promise, truth.
A story is a little thing. An offering. It is an invitation. Listen. Here I am. Here is something I’ve kept all this time, that matters to me, that I’ve carried all this way; do you see, do you understand? A story is a powerful little thing. Powerful good.
xo, Carrie
Approaches to absence
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
Appearing now
I laughed out loud when I heard that Donald Trump quit his blog because no one was reading it. As someone who has been tapping out and publishing blog posts for — eep! — 13 years or so, I would have been happy to predict (for free!) just such an outcome for Trump and his marketing team. A blog is old-school. It’s of the past. That’s probably why I like it so much! It’s like a dream journal, but with an option to press publish. It feels both personal and anonymous (maybe that’s a bit of fiction I use to allow myself to keep posting, but that’s honestly how it feels). Connections are made that seem random and serendipitous.
Other tech platforms have replaced blogs, but so far I haven’t felt compelled to move from this medium that’s as comfortable now as a worn-in pair of jeans. I see creative people posting videos of themselves journaling out loud on Instagram, or streaming on YouTube, and of course TikTok provides a dynamic platform that seems to vault some into viral sensations, something no blog could ever do. Those are visual and aural mediums, where personalities and characters can make a sharp, quick impact on the senses; and a blog is mostly composed of the written word. Of course, the blog has also been largely replaced by the subscriber-based newsletter. And the Instagram feed provides a platform for mini-posts that feel quite blog-like: photo + words.
Where am I going with this rambling reflection on digital communications? Maybe I’m trying to figure out what this blog means to me, and why I keep returning, when other, more popular self-publishing platforms exist. I think I come back because it feels easy. The pace is calm, based purely on my interests and time in any given week. There’s no expectation that something needs to be published on Friday morning, or Sunday night; no endless stream to keep feeding, to try to be seen, noticed, liked. It’s just me and this comforting box on the screen, into which I’ve been typing words for many years.
It doesn’t feel like I’m “creating content” here.
I’m just being me, in the comforting ways that this medium allows me appear.
I would appear as someone different, somewhere else, at least a little bit, and while that could be just fine, and maybe I will experiment and grow into different ways of presenting myself, I like the me that gets to be here, at least for now.
More later …
xo, Carrie
PS Do you blog? If so, tell me why in the comments and please link to your blog.
Someone is trying to tell you something
This is a photo of a squirrel eating tinfoil on our fence; there was also a cardinal, but he took off and is the streak of motion in front of one of the blue chairs.
The days have begun to whirl again. After such stillness and waiting, I can’t quite wrap my head around it. I’m trying to declare the weekends sacred, and Sundays for meditation, reflection; a worthy aspiration, at the very least.
The truth is that I feel energized after a long quietness. So I’m not resenting an upsurge in activity even as this new stage unfolds and unfurls. But I must be cautious, awake: I don’t want to drift back into the non-stop tumble in which we found ourselves, pre-pandemic.
But, listen. It’s good. I’ll have news to share soon on a couple of creative projects. I’ve got work that feeds my heart and mind, and wonderful people around me and radiating out in expanding circles in whose company I delight, and from whom I am continually learning. I’ve been hanging laundry on the line. My children make music in the living-room. The gardens are bursting and blooming. What more do I need?
(Well, it would be nice if everyone in this house each had a chore they really loved … the way that I love doing laundry… and if that chore could be complementary, say, if someone just loved cleaning bathrooms, and someone loved vacuuming, and someone loved clearing the counters … now that would be heaven.)
But listen, too: our community, our country, our land, the whole world, it is shook up and reeling and in pain and in need, and we can’t fall asleep or wander half-dazed into how it was before, we need to be AWAKE and AWARE and CURIOUS and HUMBLE. I want this place I live in to be a little bit better because I’ve tried, in whatever ways, no matter how small … and that means stumbling, and being quiet, and apologizing a lot of the time too. There is so much to learn, and so much pain that cascades through generations. Every ceremony, every ritual, every practice, every meal I cook food for someone else, every time I stop and listen, pause, listen, pause, reflect, sit, still, breathe, laugh, hug, cry … no action is neutral. This past week in Canada, 215 children were found buried in a secret grave on the grounds of a former residential school, and this is our present. This is not history. This is our now. So much cannot be fixed, must not be forgotten; bad governments, bad systems, hierarchies built to maintain power, no matter the costs. And here we are, human beings, whirling and bumping into each other, trying, trying, trying to figure this out. Individuals trying to look each other in the eyes, to listen, to say, You matter. I’m sorry. I want to help. Help me?
Slow down, sit, listen. Someone is trying to tell you something (not me).
That’s my present, right now. That’s my goal. Slow down, sit, listen. Breathe. Pay attention. Burn something, that too. A candle, a stick of incense. Ego.
xo, Carrie
I’ve been listening to Poem-a-Day and this is the result
I have written a poem
things I do not want to do with my aching eyes
look at screens
think
guess what you’re thinking
I woke with these words in my head — don’t use pity as a placebo —
profound? or just dream-jumble?
I only have big thoughts
when distracted or half-asleep
is it my soul at the door? no. it is my body
which is my mind
I could not think of so many words today — words gone missing, gone
why do poems always need to be called by their form?
not always, but often enough to cause me to want to rebel and say no!
but I almost never say no.
I say I don’t know
I say let me think about that
I say sure or ok or why not
no! no! no!
you are not said thing
you are not epistle or sonnet
you are you and you are at the door
xo, Carrie
PS If you want to listen to a Poem-a-Day, here’s how.