Holiday album, summer 2017
Being tourists outside Notre Dame cathedral in the old city of Montreal.
We’ve been on holiday. A real holiday! Away, not checking email, not doing any work, not cooking meals, no laundry. Just spending time together, exploring landmarks and historical sites, walking long distances, eating at restaurants, staying up late, sleeping in, and reading for pleasure.
We went to Montreal and Quebec City, with stops in Kingston to visit family on either end.
First lunch in Montreal: Vietnamese subs in Chinatown.
My pilgrimage to Leonard Cohen’s house in Montreal. Imagine “So Long, Marianne” playing on my phone to get the full atmosphere.
Mount Royal in Montreal. We climbed all the way to the top, despite several of us (me and CJ) suffering (dramatically) from fear of heights.
Montmorency Falls, outside Quebec City.
The two of us stayed on the lower end of the falls, while the others climbed to that bridge up there and waved at us.
Picnic lunch on the Ile d’Orleans.
Soccer on the Plains of Abraham.
On the walls of the old city, Quebec. I couldn’t make it up to the top, which is why I’m so well-positioned to take this photo. So many steep hills in Quebec!
Augustine Monastery, which called me off the main drag and into an early morning yoga and meditation class on our last day in Quebec.
The only problem with being on holiday is not being on holiday anymore.
Today is also the birthday of our younger daughter, who is now twelve. A lot has happened in these past twelve years, so I won’t say it’s disappeared in a flash, but it has gone. The years have gone. She starts junior high next month: a new school, an earlier day, a new route to walk. I’m pleased that she wants me to continue being her soccer coach; somehow I’m less embarrassing as a coach than as a mother.
Birthday girl.
Birthday breakfast was pancakes with M & Ms (made by Kevin). Her siblings are making the cake. We’ve got soccer practice tonight, and we’ll have cake and gifts after that. Home again, home again….
xo, Carrie
Lists: six questions for you
I’ve been making lists.
Every night before bed, I make a list in the journal I share with my fourteen-year-old daughter, and she replies with her own list. This is a list I made up on the spur of the moment, six simple questions to focus the mind, capture the day, and provide an opportunity to be thankful and reflective. It really works, and the answers can be as short or as long as you want.
For my last class, on Tuesday, I finished by asking the students to answer these six questions, as a way of reflecting on their experience in the class.
These are the questions, and my own answers:
- Something that surprised you? Surprised by how easy it was to teach during the day.
- Something you’re proud of? Proud that I kept thinking of ways to make this time slot work. [I taught twice a week in 90 minute chunks, rather than once a week in a 3-hour chunk.]
- Something silly? Me at the front of this class. Like basically every time.
- Something happy? Listening to my students share their work.
- Something sad? Worried I was boring students. Having to assign marks to their work.
- Something you’re thankful for? Thankful for summer, and bike rides through the park to and from work.
At the end of each term, there is a magical feeling in the classroom. It happens each time, and each time I am nevertheless surprised. Each time, I feel a joyful inner peace, welling up from the depths. I think of what Lynda Barry told us at the end of her workshop last summer, that she is just the person pointing the way, that what she’s doing isn’t magic. What we’re feeling, when we overflow with gratitude, is appreciation for a deep connection to something we thought maybe we’d lost; our gratitude should be directed toward ourselves, not her.
I understand afresh what she meant.
Because the outpouring from students this term has been so genuine, so unforced, like something spontaneous that can’t be stopped up, and I know that while I facilitated their experiences, it was the students themselves who tapped into their own wealth of knowledge, their deeper consciousness, or unconscious minds, and that is what brought them feelings of peace and joy. It wasn’t me. Anyone who went there — that was of their own doing. Anyone who was pulled into the spiral and moved by the recitation of Rumi’s poem, “The Diver’s Clothes Lying Empty” — that was something they found for themselves. I could never make them do this — I could only invite them to try, with the tools I understand to have worked for myself and for others.
A student visited my office on Wednesday, to give me a book by Eckhart Tolle that was meaningful to him. After he’d left, I opened to the first page and read:
“A true spiritual teacher does not have anything to teach in the conventional sense of the word, does not have anything to give or add to you such as new information, beliefs, or rules of conduct. The only function of such a teacher is to help you remove that which separates you from the truth of who you already are and what you already know in the depth of your being. The spiritual teacher is there to uncover and reveal to you that dimension of inner depth that is also peace.”
When I read these words, I thought: that is what I’m trying to do. My medium is the written word, and images, but my goal is to open you to yourself. I can offer you technical information, and I try to, but the point of all those exercises in class is to facilitate opening, diving to the depths of the self, adventuring down and in and emerging with something you can hold and look at and read and share. What you return with isn’t the thing itself, but a record of what you’ve experienced, a record of your imaginative travels. Will this process, repeated over time, make you a better writer? Honestly, I don’t know. But if you go there, you will write things that matter to you, which is a good start.
I accept that my methods won’t work for everyone. It’s been hard to come to acceptance; I want to reach everyone, and I can’t. But for those who connect with what I’m offering, the connection is deep and it is meaningful. It seems to give people the opportunity to feel emotions they’d forgotten they could. It gives people the chance to play, to imagine, to be silly. And to be still, in a world that moves quickly. How often do we get to sit and not be distracted? These exercises can be reminders of the better world that is within reach, that we can access if only we remember how. If only we are given the excuse to go there.
If you can spare a few minutes before bed, consider sitting down and answering six questions about your day. Even better, consider sharing the ritual with someone else.
- Something that surprised you?
- Something you’re proud of?
- Something silly?
- Something happy?
- Something sad?
- Something you’re thankful for?
xo, Carrie
We talk in terms of conquest
“We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a very tiny part of a vast and incredible universe.” – Rachel Carson, 1963
xo, Carrie
The summer day
A memorable week that I can scarcely recall lies behind me. Hosting cousins who live far away, playing pickup soccer together, visiting, early morning exercise, teaching, marking, cycling, reading stories, watching feminist movies, coaching practices and games almost every evening. I staggered to my Thursday practice and recognized that I was almost sleepwalking; yet somehow practice went ahead, I was running around the field, instructing, demonstrating, playing. I drove home in a haze, stopped to put gas in the little car, arrived to a houseful of awake children, Kevin racing out the door for … more soccer, I think? I’m not sure. All I know is that I needed to get the children to bed, and myself.
I sat down beside one child and rubbed her back, briefly, and it was enough to set her on the path toward bed. It’s the little things. Yelling, cajoling, ordering — these are mostly useless tactics; or these are tactics useless to me. Patience, empathy, a gentle touch are infinitely more effective. I’m trying to decide whether exhaustion makes me a more effective leader or a less effective leader; logic would suggest the latter, although oddly, the fog of exhaustion can create an aura of peaceful calm through which I gaze, slightly disengaged, but also without the energy for upset.
This is my current definition of balance.
Yesterday, I worked from 8:30am until after midnight, non-stop, to finish all of the things I needed to finish in order to shift my focus to a soccer tournament this weekend.
None of those things were writing.
The questions currently plaguing me are tangled up in my mind … Can we (I) afford for me to be doing so much volunteer work? How could I earn more, more consistently? Is there space in my life to continue pursuing writing as a career, or, when surveying the landscape, should I accept that writing has been relegated to the level of hobby? Do I want my writing to be more than a hobby? If so, what am I willing to change or drop? And finally, should I be prioritizing earning money, or … what’s the or? How does it change my outlook and goals if I were to prioritize earning money? What would I be doing differently, and is that what I should be doing? A person wants to live a purposeful life, a useful life; a person doesn’t want her family to suffer for her choices. We live a life of many luxuries: our needs (and “needs”) accumulate and become normalized. What would we (I) be willing to give up? And for what?
This post was going to be about a bird. Yesterday, I spent an hour working outside, sitting in a lawn chair beside a small grey bird that had flown into our dining-room window. I heard it strike, and saw it fall. After googling “how to help a stunned bird,” I concluded that keeping it safe from predators was the most straight-forward course of action. The bird had righted itself. It did not appear wounded. I sat, reading, taking notes, watching. Gradually, the little bird began looking around. Finally, it startled and ran under my chair, and then it disappeared, and I couldn’t find it. Had the little bird flown away? Or had it kept running, was it hiding in the vines and undergrowth of the house next door?
I could only hope that the bird would survive.
Was this act of witness useful?
Is it for me to judge what is useful? But yes, I think, I must, so that I know how to direct my energies, so that I can be sure and focused and committed, every day. How can I make critical changes in behaviour and priorities if I don’t know? Am I going to keep sleepwalking, sleepwalking, sleepwalking? Here is the poem that comes to mind, and calms my mind. It’s a poem I must commit to memory along with the few that are there now, rattling around my brain — as useful as any tool I’ve found.
The Summer Day
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?—Mary Oliver
xo, Carrie
A country without a literature is not a country
“A country without a literature is not a country.” – Elaine Dewar
It seemed apt after musing yesterday on writing in Canada, that this morning I would hear an interview with Elaine Dewar, author of The Handover, which is published by Biblioasis. Her book is about the sale of McClelland & Stewart (aka The Canadian Publisher) to a German rival, years ago, when I was working at the National Post (so I have a dim memory of how it rocked the industry at the time). This subject may sound arcane, but it’s important to everyone who has an interest in Canadian culture, as distinct from other national cultures.
You can listen to the interview, here, on CBC’s The Current.
The Canadian book industry is contracting very rapidly, warns Elaine Dewar toward the end of her interview. This caught my attention. It sounded like news of the icebergs melting.
Of course, this is bad news for anyone who hopes to earn a living as a writer in Canada. [Side note: does anyone hope to earn a living as a writer in Canada anymore? Or do we all recognize that if we want to make a living as writers, we must sell into the exponentially larger American market?]
The discussion on publishing in Canada continued between the show’s host, and John Degen, executive director of the The Writers Union of Canada and someone with the Association of Canadian Publishers (could not find accurate info online to identify him, but his name is Glen). They dug into the issues raised by Elaine Dewar, and I’ve paraphrased the main points of their conversation, below.
Q: What is it like for writers in Canada, today, to get published?
A: This is really a global issue. There have been major changes in the industry. It’s a blockbuster culture that sees it being increasingly risky for a young writer to break into the industry—if you break into the industry and don’t make it right away, you have a greater chance of never making it at all.
What we really need is diversity. Canadian publishing wants to be playing on a level playing field. When we allow cultural policy to erode, at the federal level, it damages the playing field. We have 115 companies publishing in Canada [wow, is that true?], but very few of these are large enough to compete with international publishers [both in terms of purchasing rights to books, and in terms of purchasing assets that go up for sale]. For example, due to the sale of a major distribution company, decisions about book purchases for Canadian libraries are now made in the US. [think about that…]
There is government policy in place to keep Canadian cultural assets under Canadian control, but a long litany of decisions honours the policy in reverse, in secret. Canadians should have access to purchase the assets of these companies when they’re up for sale [a recent example is Harlequin, which sold to HarperCollins in the US]. If these assets are not purchased by Canadians, then the government should exercise its mandate to keep them in Canada.
Q: But shouldn’t publishers adapt to the market?
A: We’re just through on era where books were declared dead, and they’re now declared back to life again. Canadian publishers are prestigious. We punch above our weight. We’ve shown resilience in developing Canadian culture. We’re up against the border of the largest exporter of culture in the world. We publish in English. Without direct subsidies it’s very tough to compete with that.
It’s part of the Canadian project to decide whether we will be active in this medium in the years to come.
And there the interview ends.
So what do you think? If government is going to subsidize the creation, publication, and distribution of Canadian culture, including literature, how should it best direct its support to build a healthier, more resilient, more diverse system? Personally, I’ve found that the public grant system for artists offers spotty support that could never replace, even short-term, a steady income. Additionally, many of the opportunities for residencies, etc., are impractical for anyone raising kids, or working another job.
It’s precarious for all of us, publishers and writers alike.
The only reason I’ve had the luxury to develop as a writer is because my husband was able support us financially for the years (many years!) when I earned next to nothing; and he continues to provide the steady income that allows me to teach part-time and write part-time now. It takes a long time to develop, as a writer, and you need permission to experiment and fail, too. (In other words, it can be an unprofitable undertaking for long stretches of time, even after you’ve had some success.) Is it worth it? Depends on whether you’re measuring in terms of money, or in terms of something else—what’s a thriving culture worth?
I’m absolutely certain that important voices, necessary voices, are missing from the conversation because of financial limitations or lack of connections. If we can’t solve this, Canadian literature will represent only a small, mostly elite segment of this country’s voices. I want so much more from our literature. If you’ve read all the way to the end of this post, so do you.
xo, Carrie