063-Routine

I'm sitting at the laptop in my studio, which is in fact a desk built into the corner of the garage, a garage which just now has remnants of the BBQ smell of the porkchops Christian cooked earlier. 

I'm at the laptop, finishing a beer and munching on chips I've portioned into a blue kids IKEA bowl reading the latest post in Writing Routines. The interviewee talks about daily contact with her manuscript, about waking up and writing first thing. Something of Anne T. Donahue's sarcastic voice has infected my head and all I can think is "cheese on a cracker I hate waking up to write". I could really go on about disliking waking up, but the point here is routine. 

Summer spreads like syrup over routine. Rigidity is smoothed, right angles are lost in a flood of beach days, swimming pool visits and evening prolongations. To speak of routine, now, in August, is anathema. Nobody, especially not parents with children, wants to hear of your good habits. Tell me instead, they say – not with words, but with shorts and suntans – how you celebrated your kids’ birthdays, what you are doing with the seasonal tomatoes, where you’re going this weekend. Save me from your productivity until September.

And yet, nothing satisfies me more than having something to show for these two months when my husband is home.

062-Righting thoughts

I talked to someone the other day so convinced of their view of things, the grand sweeping view that melds truthful bits with invention and fantasy, that I left the conversation wishing to run out into the street and stop a passer-by, a dog-walker, an evening routine exercise-taker, anybody, to ask them questions with obvious answers, just to reassure myself I had not slipped and lost my sense of reality.

There is this Mr. Rogers quotation that floats around online whenever there has been a tragic event. Surely almost everyone has heard that phrase, “look to the helpers,” given the number of tragic events that have piled up like rotten fruit. It might be argued that a variation on this theme could apply, for adults, in times of confusion: look to those who are doing good, those who are calm, those who are thoughtful.

061-I like

I like those blogs wherein you can catch a glimpse into family life. I defend the voyeuristic taint of that sentence by declaring that these glimpses are more comforting than anything... I don't really care what they're about, as long as the gaze is simple, somwhere between cared-for and unpretentious. Snapshots of our days would include Lego, kids on the couch with a book or an iPad, games with their Dad and the collection of things we do outdoors: play with the dog, eat popsicles, splash in the inflatable pool. My snapshots would be kitchen-themed: our first test of Strawberry Milk from Prune, Niçoise salad with beans from our garden potatoes and tomatoes from the market; pineapple chicken, banana muffins, and rice crispies. They are as much to satisfy my need to nurture as they are to feed the family. But mostly, I have a craving for normalcy. I have a craving for pictures that say "hey! here's what I've been up to! here's a little piece of my world, what it looks like, how it feels and some not very deep thoughts about it. how are you? I hope you're well! here's a recipe!" 

Teju Cole writes about the photography of objects in Object Lesson and concludes this about it: "We look at them for the way they cooperate with the imagination, the way they contain what cannot otherwise be accomodated, and the way they grant us, to however modest a degree, some kind of solace." I find this especially trueof pictures of abandonned places. I'm tempted to take pictures of objects to try to replicate the effect. How do you capture a hovering presence? A recent absence? How do you make a frame around something so that it imparts naturalness... There is a talent to communicating a relaxed feeling. 

You can often find advice along the lines of doing the thing you wish were already done... Of filling a perceived gap. I don't think there are gaps, really, but maybe just not enough of the particular thing I like. 

060-Whiteshell

We took a hike in the Whiteshell today. It wasn't going to rain there, so that's why we picked it. And then it was maybe going to rain, only 60% chance and only in the evening, or maybe late afternoon? We’d be gone anyway. Basically, we tried to plan an outing on a hot day, with cooling water at a location where there would not be rain. Largely, we succeeded. The Whiteshell is stunning and full of sapphire blue lakes. 

We ate a picnic lunch, doused ourselves in mosquito spray and took a hike to the rapids. We looped back on another trail clambering over the rock surfaces of the Canadian Shield and met hikers. The views were very pretty. Our puppy is an eager hiker. 

We came home and the boys were put in the bath, I washed myself clean of mosquito spray and made supper while drinking beer. The stuff we’d packed was put away, everyone was clean and supper was ready: that creamy bacon and shell pasta recipe we like. 

We take a day, make an adventure, and when there are so many bugs, when the dog meets nose to nose with another dog whose owners have thought it was unnecessary to put theirs on a leash, when my son has tears because a bloodsucker has attached itself to his foot and when the scenery is best appreciated fleetingly because of the bugs, again, so many bugs, it's all fine by me if it means I can be home in time to prepare supper and eat it in clean skin.  

My appreciation for nature has an eight hour limit.

059-Double rainbow

On that evening when there was a double rainbow in the sky, I was on my bike, making a 40 minute loop through neighbourhoods near my own. Biking is the closest thing I get to feeling what a runner must feel when they run. 

I was at the farthest end of my loop when it started to rain, golden drops in the setting sun. Then the rain increased and the wind too, and all I could see was gold filigree against the asphalt and thought of breathing in order to chase away thoughts of tornadoes. At the intersection two men were standing with their bikes in the bus shelter, a solution that had so perfectly presented itself, while the rest of us were surprised, doused, bedraggled.

The storm abated and the sky changed. Now my tires made splishing sounds with each puddle. The men from the bus shelter passed me and I was just thinking to myself how the second one might be the father of the first one, when, quick as a sneeze he fell, his bike slipping out from under him, and he, his back on the pavement, wincing at the sky. The younger left his bike and ran back to where I stood and waited. They were a pair with few words between them, and me even fewer. The younger man looked at me and said he thought it would be ok, and so I left.

At the next intersection there was the backdrop of the sky, so full of colour and calm and two rainbows, like the triumph after a saga.

058-Noise

I sit here in my tiny studio with the garage door ajar and the sound of wind, traffic and a distant lawnmower. On the windowsill to my left, the resident spiders have made a graveyard of sucked-dry insects I'll eventually wipe away.

Further than that, the view has triangle pieces of blue sky fringed with trees that sway. Our small deck's white lattice is covered in a grapevine that sends forth longing hopeful shoots in every direction. It is green against the beige northern wall of our house.

I went for a walk in the sunshine and met only a few other people: park workers, a woman outfitted with accessories (water bottle, phone, hat, glasses, poop bag dispenser) and a dog all fastened in various ways to her body, a jogger, a couple on a bench. Boys were at the riverside fishing while listening to music. The wind makes noise. 

Back here at my desk, the freezer hums beside me. It is full of loaves of bread, pizza pops, popsicles and chicken stock. My thoughts are so noisy, I haven't found a clear path to one story. My hands pause between sentences; "What's the story? What's the story?" The story is this: there is a lot of noise.

057-Cilantro

I used to think that eating cilantro was like eating cigar smoke... I don't know how else to describe the effect it had on my palate except one of dusty, but not literal, suffocation. I kept using it though, because some recipes called for it and I was loathe to disobey the cooking and garnishing instructions. 

It's funny how reliably cilantro is maligned. It risks becoming one of those clichéed words in which people categorize themselves: I love everything except capers and cilantro. The Barefoot Contessa herself resists the use of cilantro and Anne T. Donahue writes: “Here is what most of us already know in the year of our Lord 2018: for a very long time, everything has been feeling scary and bad. Everyone’s feelings and emotions are heightened. Most of us are walking the line between cynicism and feeling absolutely bananas, sensitive to the point of wanting to strike down anyone who disagrees about how disgusting cilantro is. (It is extremely gross!!!).” (Nobody Cares, p. 13). I wonder about being so categorical though, considering how our taste buds renew themselves every week and parents of children with picky palates are encouraged to expose their children to new flavours with patient repetition.

Cilantro is inoffensive though... it comes from the same plant family as carrots and parsley and is used in multiple types of cuisine. It proliferates wherever it is planted.

Have you ever paired something and been surprised? Christian and I once dipped fresh strawberries into a glass of oaky wine and thought we had culinary creativity. On a November day when I made Ree Drummond's Butter Chicken and dusted it, as instructed, but still sparingly, with chopped cilantro, the same thing happened. Suddenly we understood the use of cilantro and have since dusted things with the suggested amount, from lentil and corn salads to fajitas.

Did you know capers are in fact little flower buds? I had no idea.

056-Gratitude

I'm touched by this bit of Hopkins's poem that Teju Cole inserts at the end of his essay titled Gueorgui Pinkjassov, which begins: “Glory be to God for dappled things –” This feeling of looking upwards, of finding perspective amid multiple tiny worries, is like taking a long breath.

Cole is not Catholic. When Aleksandar Hemon interviewed him – the transcript of which is included in Known and Strange Things – and talks about existential pessimism, he asks Cole what he believes. Cole answers: “imagination, gardens, science, poetry, love, and a variety of nonviolent consolations.” This is faithfully represented in his essays. 

Gratitude is an expression of confidence. It is professing a belief in generosity. It is saying: “there is enough.” Then, sometimes, I lose the feeling. Gratitude is a stranger. Or worse: gratitude becomes a caricature – an exercise repeatedly recommended by self-help authors that becomes a sort of skimpy inventory; here we count things that have not yet been taken from us: health, eggs and toast, the children’s laughter, today’s sunset. Listing them makes the items subject to disappearance, or forgetfulness.

Writers restore meaning to words. Where gratitude becomes worn, like love, writers who revive them should be blessed. For their effort I am temporarily lifted out of the quagmires of doubt.

055-Puppy diaries

I miss sleeping in on weekends. It was one indulgence I still clung to. Now I wake up at 7:10, Monday through Sunday and take the dog for a walk. 

The quiet and the dog’s incremental improvement hit me once I’m on the pathway. When there are few pedestrians taking their exercise or walking their dogs, I can imagine that I’m a tourist in England somewhere and that the backyards I pass are what you would see riding a longboat in a canal. If you play this trick, even dilapidated fences have charm and variations on a theme are artistic.

(I used to watch videos like these while reading textbooks. It was relaxing!)

054-Wine

The problem with drinking wine is that it makes you sleepy the next day. It became a kind of habit where we'd have a glass on a Friday night, maybe with chips, maybe with popcorn while we watched something on Netflix. It was the way we spoiled ourselves deprived as we felt, since having kids, of going out. Popcorn got in my teeth, so we gave up popcorn. Chips made me feel bloated, and so I restricted myself to only small quantities. How unwillingly we let go of little allowances. How disinclined I was to growing older, to becoming more attuned to the body as it is. The body doesn't care what the mind decides is an allowance, a little bit of freedom, a little bit of letting go. Bottles of wine add up in a year, and so we subtracted them from our spending. You have to get to tricking yourself into deriving a greater pleasure from clear-eyed mornings, a congruence of good feeling and health. I wonder sometimes though, if these things I change for the better are not some form of tightening... tighter, tighter, pop. Or is it just a way of learning a new kind of freedom? A freedom from the tyranny of a clichéd idea. 

052-Reading

I don't know where this idea of reading one book at a time came from. I followed it for a long time, pushing through books in chunks, like eating a meal, laboriously. Then I paired serious reading and self-help books. But lately, given the way the libraries are working, with book requests and pick-ups, starved for the chance to browse for ideas, I ordered a variety of essay collections. 

I always love starting a book, finding out what its flavour is. And so, right now, I have bookmarks in Nobody Cares, Known and Strange Things, Literary (V.S. Naidal), Boom Town, The Power Broker and Harold Brodkey's Stories in an Almost Classical Mode. And this buffet of books is especially pleasing for the contrasts it provides. Caro and Anderson are both talking about cities, but how differently they go about it! Cole and Donahue offer such different perspectives, and even though I might be tempted to grade them on a scale of personal preference, I think that would be wrong. Nobody grades flowers for blooming, comparing a lily of the valley to a geranium... they are so different. Or perhaps, more accurately, I am reticent to write an opinion. When asked “Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?” for a New York Times “By the Book” interview, Gretchen Rubin answered: “I don’t want to supply the titles of any unfinished books […]. As a writer myself, I know how much work and love goes into every book.” (Link). The interview was printed in 2016 and that answer has always stayed with me. 

051-Trends

It is silly, isn't it? To take pride in bucking trends? It's this illusion of standing apart from the crowd when such distinctions are, yes, a little narcissistic. It's like saying, "I win!" to no one, for nothing. It all started with toilet paper.

Toilet paper

I went to Costco and did regular shopping just as the Coronavirus loomed on the horizon. I pretended not to care. I looked down my nose at the gentleman in a jean jacket and silver white hair who had a cart full of toilet paper and nothing else. I did not buy toilet paper. It wasn't on the list, and I wasn't going to panic. Two days later, my mother-in-law needed toilet paper. I hadn't checked with her before going to Costco and now Costco had lines that circled the parking lot and the weather was cold and I refused to stand in line like that. We haven't been to Costco except recently, for dog food. 

Bread-making

I haven't made bread yet. I kind of wanted to join in on this one, but also, I'm realistic about the commitment and plan to only make bread when I have less things to do: i.e. when the children are teens or the dog is trained, or school starts with attendance.

Hobbies

I love puzzles and complete thousand-piece ones in the matter of a week. Buying puzzles would get expensive. Besides, our dining room table was being used for school-at-home. I got back in to crochet. I made a blanket and started a second. The weather turned warm and this second blanket is progressing more slowly because there are weeds to pull instead of stitches to count. I started blogging, daily, as an exercise. I have a hundred-and-a-half-day streak of learning German on two apps. Learning German was intended to crowd out other iPhone distractions.

Dog-owning

We got a puppy, but to anyone who mentions that everyone has got a dog, we offer this useless précis: we hatched the plan to get a puppy last year. It wasn't a last-minute Covid-related decision. Nonetheless, we realize, we were lucky... puppies were in high demand this year.

Potatoes

We plant a garden every year: beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peas, potatoes. These are the things that grow well in our yard. This year, there are no potatoes. The greenhouse had a shortage of seed potatoes. It feels a little strange: potatoes are in our ancestry, both sides.

I wonder about that need for distinction, apartness. I'm pretty sure, writing this now, that it is an illusion. Or maybe more of a game really. Have you ever been in front of a door as it was closing, and successfully judged that you could slip through without getting caught in the handle? Gauging your life against the trends feels like that.

050-Maria Goretti

Mom used to say that because of my prayers to Maria Goretti, I got a brother. As proof, she would point out that he was born on July 6th, the saint’s feast day in the Catholic calendar.

When I was three, my parents took me on a pilgrimage through shrines in Italy. If I can trust the memories that stamped themselves into my mind at that time, the shrine to Maria Goretti is there among them, and I am held in an Italian bus driver’s arms, he has a gold bracelet, and I can peer down at the bronze statue of a young girl on the floor, an iron fence around her. 

There are six years between my brother and I. Boredom might have prompted my unthinking request for a sibling. Who knows. I don't remember asking. These things fade. 

My birth was hard on my mom. The labour was very long before the doctors finally conceded and gave her a Caesarian. After one Caesarian, mom was automatically of the group of women who were offered Caesarians on subsequent pregnancies. At least, I think that's how it worked then, in the eighties. It was clouded in mystery as far as I was concerned. There were appointments at clinics because I remember walking to them with my mom. At these appointments, you could schedule your Caesarian, like you could schedule a manicure. 

As a young adult I used to schedule manicures and pedicures before important dates. Then, out with my husband on that evening, my nails would shine, and I had the conceited satisfaction of having organized myself well to be the attractive wife who proved her love right down to her nails.

049-Narcissism

Annie Dillard says that there are things you circle back to, drawn to the subject because you have a contribution to make, because you haven't found the answer out there, in the world. For me, narcissism is one of those subjects. It both repels me and draws me in. It's like a hobby fascination. I'm at the beginning of the research on the subject. It's a vulnerable time because I can't claim expertise. I can say something from experience, but I haven't read the books to back me up... I don't have confident conclusions quite yet. I'm only just beginning to articulate my own ideas. 

For reading, I started with academic research. While the university libraries are closed, some publishers have made things available online. One of these is the Handbook of Trait Narcissism: Key Advances, Research Methods, and Controversies. It was published recently, in 2018. In the preface, it states that according to one site "there have been over 1600 peer-reviewed journal articles published on the subject of narcissism since January of 2011, a more than 50% increase from all those published since the Narcissistic Personality Inventory was published in 1979!" The authors say that it is an explosion.

In spite of the academic researchers who say that narcissism is on the rise, it is something I struggle to define in the course of casual conversations. Narcissism is trivialized in that old fable of the king who could not leave his reflection, as if it were a mere problem with vanity. There is so much more to it than that. I wonder if the author of that fable wasn't trying to convey instead a broken self-image, that the king was dogged with being unable to know himself and therefore took to staring obsessively at a reflection. For now, that is how I describe it - narcissism is a kind of disease wherein the person suffers from a broken self-image and has employed a variety of defenses and coping mechanisms to survive. The research is divided on the subject of the origins of narcissism. Some say that, yes, it is a compensation “for deprivation in their bonds with parents, and specifically, when their parents are cold or indifferent toward them.” Others argue it comes from parents who “cultivate narcissism in their children by seeing them as more special or more entitled than others and treating them accordingly - a phenomenon labeled parental overvaluation.” To me, these are two sides of the same coin, so to speak, because they feature parents who have distorted reality for their children. Perhaps they have done so unknowingly as narcissists themselves. Narcissism, according to research, can be inherited.

I’m not interested in clinical psychology, but I am interested in phenomenon. I’m interested in how difficult it is to define narcissism. I'm interested in its manifest rise in society, and whether that is true or not. I am especially interested in the nuance of our definitions of the “I”: ego, self-esteem, self-image, pride and confidence. Narcissism is more than pride and selfishness... it's a profound disorder in the way a person understands themselves. It has serious consequences. I think these consequences could be mitigated if narcissism was better understood.

Understanding, it should be clarified, doesn't mean labelling. People seem reluctant to use labels because they suppose a kind of confinement; a dismissal. However, I would argue that the label is a kind of first step. A person, once they are recognized as a narcissist, should be allowed to express, in a way, all the peculiarities of their disease, like any other disease with varying but still recognizable symptoms. The people who fall within the sphere of the narcissist should be allowed anger, but also, with time, the tools they need for a generous disarming of the narcissist’s power. Because narcissists do have power! They are leaders, bosses, spouses, parents and members of religious communities. Because of unfortunate circumstances in their youth, they have built around themselves an impenetrable armour and it isn't society's job to smash it, but rather, society’s job to learn how to flourish around them. In a way, a narcissist is a profound challenge to a regular person’s sense of self. This too is fascinating.

If this website is under my name and this blog an expression of my interests, then I admit, even prematurely, that narcissism is one of them.

048-Terminal patient

I'm struck by that quote of Annie Dillard's meant to motivate writers to do their best work... write as if you are addressing a terminal patient...

When my dad was dying, I was struck by how procedural it was; consciously his efforts went to relinquishing life and even as he knew this and we knew this, still, there were days when carried up on a draught of feeling incrementally better than the day before, hope could sneak in and whisper lies about miracles. I don't know if there was anything I could have written for him then. I was, then, even younger than I am now. I felt, very much like V. S. Naipaul, that I was a writer, but that I had a “writing blankness inside me.” So I could only tell my father, whom I called Pa, that I would dedicate my first book to him. (I have a vague idea it will be about agriculture.)

For now, all I can imagine offering terminal patients is silence. Maybe a view of the sunsets: look how beautifully the day flames as it dies.

046-McClung

There are a handful of biographies about Nellie McClung, including her own two volume biography. McClung was born in 1873 and is considered a Manitoban hero for her involvement in the suffragist movement. In 1914, Winnipeg held a mock parliament as a fundraising event. This had been done in other cities, as early as in 1893, and it consisted of a role reversal in which Parliamentarians were women deciding the fate of men. It was a lot of fun. On this particular occasion, in Winnipeg, a delegation of women had been to the Parliament to demand the vote, and then staged their play the next day. McClung had been particularly attentive to the premier Roblin’s arguments and mannerisms, this not having been her first political encounter with the premier, and her impression of him made the play’s renown. 

The fact that McClung was such a prolific writer overshadows her talents as a speaker, and it is a pity that only a measly recording of her voice is left, a few seconds of an acceptance speech many years after this period. Writing gave her the authority of being a published author, and therefore a ticket to being a public speaker, but it wasn’t her talent. The fact that she is so often singled out for credit in getting the women’s vote to pass in Manitoba is unfair to the other women who were also involved, but attests to the popularity of her speeches. She made people laugh, and she passed a message while doing so. This was instrumental to the women’s cause and it made her name recognizable. In turn, this helped the sale of her books, 16 all told. 

She wasn’t a woman of great depth though and nothing illustrates this quite like the 1919 Winnipeg Strike. By that time, McClung was living in Alberta, but she continued to receive speaking engagements across Canada and the United States. The Strike which ran from May 15th to June 21st was peaceful when McClung decided to stop in Winnipeg on June 6th. McClung attempted to understand the issue at stake, interviewed a striker, took notes for a manuscript that was never published and left with an unfavourable view of the whole thing. In fact, she tended to agree with a conspiracy that posited the laborers were being directed by Russia. 

James Shaver Woodsworth’s attitude and actions are an informative contrast. Woodsworth and McClung were both Methodists, were born within a year of each other, and had both been involved to greater and lesser degrees with their church’s social movement, most prominently embodied at the All People’s mission in Winnipeg’s North End. Woodsworth left Methodist ministry and subsequent a very public stand in favour of pacifism in 1916, he lost his job, moved to Vancouver, and could only find work as a longshoreman. Notwithstanding the humiliation, the wage of a laborer was, he discovered, insufficient to support a family. His own wife and children could barely afford necessities in food, clothing and school supplies. He eventually joined a union and began advocating changes to the economic system. His understanding of the problems at stake earned him an invitation to speak across Canada in favour of the labour movement. He was scheduled to speak in Winnipeg on June 9th. According to Woodsworth’s biographers, the Winnipeg Strike made an impact on his life. Not only did he become personally involved in its events (he was briefly jailed as a result), he worked for years to undo two legislative amendments (one allowing for the deportation of immigrants, and the other involving free speech) enacted at the time that were unfair, successfully repealing one in 1927 and the other in 1936. Woodsworth, having lived the experience of a labourer understood their situation in a way that McClung could not.

McClung was a mediocre writer. For a long time this bothered me. How do you explain this woman’s renown against her bland literary legacy? For this, Simone de Beauvoir provided an answer I can’t help but quote at length. These authors “very often remain divided between their narcissism and an inferiority complex. Not being able to forget oneself is a failure that will weigh on them more heavily than in any other career; if their essential goal is an abstract self-affirmation, the formal satisfaction of success, they will not abandon themselves to the contemplation of the world: they will be incapable of creating it anew.” And: “instead of enriching the woman, her narcissism impoverishes her; involved in nothing but self-contemplation, she eliminates herself; even the love she bestows on herself becomes stereotyped: she does not discover in her writings her authentic experience but an imaginary idol constructed from clichés.” In Nellie McClung’s case, her writing was a springboard into an essential role in the women’s movement. 

She should be forgiven for her shortcomings, but we should not fall into the trap of singling her out based on a lazy familiarity with her name. This happened for example when in 2016 Premier Pallister argued against the Bank of Canada’s decision to cut her name from the women shortlisted for a banknote. What we need now are more historians who can take on the job of finding long-lost actors to diversify our pantheon. 

045-Puppy diaries

I was telling my sister about how I was disappointed in myself for not immediately falling in love with our new puppy. 

The older I get, the more I realize what a grouch I am about transitions. What’s wrong with me, I sobbed. There couldn’t be a cuter puppy...

“This is how you are” she said. “You always love things gradually!” And she listed examples.

I remember in elementary school, my classmates who were popular girls, would become infatuated with members of a band, or, the name I remember in particular, Dennis Rodman. Me? I fell in love with Mr. Bhaer of Little Women. 

Loving someone, some place, some thing, has, over and over again, always required effort. The effort of care and time spent together. 

I need to be patient with myself. I need to call this “The Process” like Sam Presti “the architect of OKC’s basketball success.” I only know about “The Process” because I’ve just finished reading Sam Anderson’s book Boom Town.