Stillness Like a Voice
**written at the “new” cottage, The Treehouse, Seeley’s Bay, Ontario**
Afternoon. Too beautiful to sit indoors. Shadows of leaves, the bay water, wind, Fooey watching videos, CJ asleep, big kids and Kev trying out a round of pitch-and-putt golf. I spent yesterday and this morning reading, all in a big sustained gulp, The Girls, by Lori Lansens, a book found here in the cottage. Couldn’t resist (despite bringing along two library books, now untouched). This was not deep literary fiction, though well-crafted and appealing. Lightish. I appreciated the small, quiet observations, such as how the most extraordinary situations don’t seem bizarre while they’re happening, it’s only afterward that one has to cope with them and reflect upon them and place them, name them–not just experience them–that the reverberations are felt. The narrator wonders whether perhaps we never get over our losses. It is funny how we’ve accustomed ourselves by that phrase to believe that human beings “get over” things, as if we could ascend a loss and then descend on the other side, walk so far we couldn’t see or remember it anymore. It’s more like the effects are embedded within us. Not that we’re doomed to spend our lives sad and ruined, just that life doesn’t permit us to be the same.
***
Is reading a distraction, or does it pull me into a different kind of now?
I worry often that I’m not present enough. And then wonder what presence really means.
Wondering–what will make me happy, satisfied, content, or is that mining false gold even to seek such ephemerals? Wondering–what will I choose to do with my days? Is it enough to cook, clean, preserve, parent? What more, exactly, am I craving? I want to fill these days absolutely to overflowing with meaningful actions; and feel a simultaneous and contradictory pull to let my days fill themselves naturally.
I used to think that writing was a way of seeking and perhaps finding permanence; certainly it’s been for me a form of solitary meditation. I’ve begun to think, however, that it leaves something out: the body. And I wonder–is doing, experiencing, being present oddly more permanent? I think about the families I got to know through doula’ing, and how my life and theirs are, for that speck of time, embedded with each other’s–because we were present and together at a significant moment of transition and becoming. My part was small, and it wasn’t my story, but I bore witness. Bearing witness … that may be where my talents lie.
Writing is one way to bear witness: the private distillation of experiences, physical and emotional, into words. It can feel intimate, but it’s also crushingly lonely. Reading may be another way, opening oneself to a larger world, to different stories. Also solitary. The appeal of the doula experience, upon reflection, is the shared human interaction; yes, it’s a way bear witness, but in a physical, corporeal way. It happens and then it’s over. You can’t write about it afterward (I can’t, anyway, not descriptively). The fact of it happening is enough, more than enough.
Come to think of it, that’s a lot like parenting.
***
Okay, that handwritten scrawl of a self-indulgent text required way too much editing. Writing directly to blog is much more efficient. And I didn’t come around, at the end, to any satisfying conclusions. Sorry folks. Above, an inundation of photos. Sorry, again. Guess I really really really missed blogging.
Home
I’ve missed blogging!
We were gone at a cottage for the last week, and I didn’t mention it here; maybe because I’m paranoid, or maybe because having the stroller stolen made me really really want never to experience that again; in any case, it seemed unwise to advertise our absence on a public forum. We thought there was no internet access at this cottage, so I happily went cold turkey. It was easy. (It turned out there was internet access, but I chose to pretend otherwise). Now I’m not sure how to catch up, or even whether that’s possible in this fast-moving always-present-tense blogland. Right now, I have the more pressing issue of an empty fridge and hungry family (and somewhat ill husband), so shall set out to hunt and gather at the local grocery store. We missed last week’s CSA offering, and Nina’s buying club, and I’m feeling the effects. Where is the wall of greenery to greet me when I open the fridge door? It isn’t summer if I don’t need a machete to fight my way to the soy milk.
Listen
My today involved two (2) recitals for Apple-Apple’s day camp. It was hot, someone kept shushing the babies, and I tossed crackers non-stop at my offspring, but hey, it was worth it. Here is the link to Apple-Apple’s first piano performance (be assured, it’s short). And here is the afternoon group singing a canon that I found very moving (plus Fooey mugging for the camera; she thought I was taking a photograph and offered a variety of facial poses … umm, what am I doing to my kids by photographing them so often? Which reminds me that this afternoon, while we were eating popsicles in poetical formation on the front porch, recovering from all the bleeping lovely recitals, Apple-Apple cried, “Get your camera! You need a picture of this, Mom!” and I said, “No. I need to sit down.” And so I did. Because sometimes, sometimes, I don’t need a picture. Which is long enough, methinks, for a parenthetical aside).
And, yes, that’s a gratuitous photo of CJ completely unrelated to this post.
Let Us Eat
Yesterday, our awesome contractor fixed our back porch, and built these brand spanking new steps, with railings included, so we no longer have to worry about CJ crawling off the side of the concrete bohemoth that stood here previously.
In other news, I whipped up some pretty tasty picnic food for our pre-soccer-in-the-park meal tonight. On the menu: tortillas stuffed with home-cooked mexican red beans and grated mozzarella, baked till melty and crispy, halved into finger food, with yogurt for dipping, and a topper of avocado (not local, nope, never), halved grape tomatoes, grated carrot, and Lettuce; and a totally homemade chicken salad scooped into Lettuce boats; because The Lettuce will not defeat me, no, we will eat it, every crisp insipid crunching raw leaf. (The kids chose our CSA box this week: strawberries and peas paired with heaps of Lettuce; on the vegetatian consumption scales, clearly the most coveted must be balanced out by the most prolific).
I didn’t follow a recipe, but the chicken salad was pretty delicious (if she does say so herself). Here’s how it happened: Boiled a whole chicken yesterday (the last of my Nina chickens); we ate some of the broth in a soup last night, froze the rest. Pulled the meat off the bones this aft, and chopped it, not finely, added chopped green onion and fresh basil, mayonnaise, salt and pepper and paprika, cider vinegar, and a pile of smushed tortilla chips. I suspect that curry powder would be a successful addition, but kept the flavours very simple for our outdoor outing.
Self-Serving Petition
Consider signing this petition, which protests the federal government’s plan to cut grants to small magazines (those with an annual circulation under 5,000). Or, consider subscribing to a favourite Canadian arts/literary magazine, because geez, how pitiful is it that virtually all Canadian arts/literary mags fit into that category?