It’s Sunday by the time I’ve been able to publish this. But, hitting publish, even if later than usual still gives me a feeling of satisfaction and I prefer that over feeling defeated by the week’s busy-ness. These points spin in the orbit of my ongoing reading of Virginia Woolf’s diaries and my daily walks.
1.
Originality. A few students I tutored this week felt like they couldn't express any originality given the assignment they had in a history class. It looks that way, at first, reading these other people's work and then writing an analysis. It feels a little lame to say "but how you analyze, that's your own...".
I remember in Grade eight, we were instructed to write a story... I couldn't conjure an idea and desperately wrote something moralistic about a misfortune well lived, the ending being something where the characters are reunited, looking at a sunset. The smartest girl in the class invented one dramatizing an episode in the life of a Kleenex... it didn't want to be used on a human nose, and as chance would have it, got swallowed by the dog instead. I was in awe of this story and her ability to turn something simple into a saga.
Today, I see how scholarly articles can be original, how they reflect their author's voice, and I'm happy to be working on my own. It's lots of work, and sometimes I imagine that “just” inventing a story must be easier work than digging and sifting and arranging research. (The grass is always greener...) It's good to have writers like Virginia Woolf to remind me that no matter the endeavor, there's always work... In 1934 she writes, “I don’t think I’m fresh enough, though, to go on ‘making up’. That was the strain - the invention: and I suspect that the last 20 pages have slightly flagged.”
2.
Books. I went to the public library downtown to find its fourth floor closed for renovations. The library has changed so much since my pre-Covid visits that in a fit, I ordered the maximum amount of holds I could place in a day. Thursday I went to retrieve the ones that had arrived and found my name, not on the shelf, as usual, but on the ground, where two baskets overflowed with books. Sometimes I crave a whole book bath; an immersion in a bunch of genres, a dipping into a variety of voices, a soaking in pictures and vocabulary. I’m in good company though… Virginia Woolf writes: “What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me!” (August 24, 1933)
3.
Kitchen experiments. I like finding recipes that can convert an ingredient someone doesn't care for into something they kinda like... (A classic example... Netti Cronish's Tofu Neatballs). It doesn't always work though... I don't care for onions beyond their flavour-enhancing capacities. I'd rather pass on onion soup, onion rings, and onion sandwiches. This week I wondered if Deb Perelman's Bialy Babka could magically transform this allium. It didn't. Some things can't be changed. It's a good lesson.
4.
I was walking along the river bank this week and found this piece of broken porcelain. On closer observation, the flowers and seal were drawn on and not part of its original design. I'm intrigued! It made me think of The Artifact Artist.
5.
Taking pictures on walks keeps the mind alert for little changes... one day this week the sun shone at just the right angle to gently light the mushrooms on this tree...
Happy Sunday!