Day Nineteen

Today, among other things, I had an interview (of sorts) in regards to a freelance writing position for a special needs website. The position sounds amazing, and the woman I spoke with sounded like a kindred spirit in lots of ways. It's probably going to be a volunteer position for the first little while, but they're eventually hoping to get grants and sponsorships in order to pay their staff, so who knows what might happen in the future. AND it's based in Montréal, which leaves open the possibility of an eventual move to la belle ville if the position becomes more of a permanent thing.

So, all of that's exciting. But the most exciting thing about the phone call was the fact that she actually called me 1/2 an hour late because she'd got caught up in reading my blog.

"I love it!" she said. "It's so gorgeous -- one comes away from it really feeling like they know you, and you write so beautifully. I can tell just from this that you're a person I would love to know, and to work with."

And, well, that warmed the cockles of my heart, as they say. We even chatted a little about this 365 project that I'm doing. "Who knows," she said. "Maybe your work with us could bring you joy like that, one day."

Awesomesauce!  How lovely to be able to talk once again about loving one's job, or about one's job bringing joy to one's life. I feel like the world has softened just a little, and shown me a glimpse of possibility and hope beyond my present situation. (Which is absolutely not as bad as it could be, I know.)

Still. How lovely to hear that. I had a smile on my fact the whole day.

"Instructions" on the Indie Books List!

And now, for featured blog Numero Deux, we have an excerpt of Instructions being featured on the Indie Books List.

Fun fun!

In other news, today I braved the torrential downpour and rescued my copy of Annabel from the library. Have just spent a delicious 1.5 hours swimming in Kathleen Winter's luminous prose. How can one help but rejoice in the presence of books like this?

I'll write more about Kathleen Winter in a bit. Suffice to say, right now, that she's everything I want to be in a grown up.

Day Seventeen

Another small, excessively simple thing for today. This morning, my alarm went off at 5:00am, as usual. But I had the day off. So today I got to revel and rejoice in the supremely delicious feeling of turning one's alarm off and snuggling back into bed.

I dreamed of writing, and then woke up a few hours later and had a productive day filled with words.

So simple. So wonderful, in so many ways.

Days of Plenty

A small thing, for today. Which just makes sense, doesn't it? My days can't always be filled with moments of clover-eating, firefly-watching splendour. Some days will be humdrum. Some days will just be ... regular days.

Today was such a day. I worked. I tried very hard to greet everyone with a smile. But when that last worktime minute clicked by, boy, was I glad to march away. Stopped to get my watch fixed on the way home. And then ... I came home and had pizza. And then I watched three episodes of How I Met Your Mother, and ate more pizza.

That was my day, more or less. So: when a day is as pleasantly uneventful as the one described above, where does one find the moment worthy of rejoicing?

 Does one rejoice in the fact that the day itself was pleasantly uneventful, especially when one knows that over the course of a lifetime, there will be plenty of days that are anything but? Does one rejoice in the fact that one has a job, even a job one doesn't particularly GUSH over, and can contribute to the home front and feel at least somewhat like a productive member of society? Does one rejoice in the simple fact that one is alive on a gorgeous summer day, and healthy, and surrounded by loved ones? Yes. Absolutely.
Alternatively, one can rejoice over the fact that there's pizza to eat for dinner, and then proceed to eat far too much. Which is exactly what I did.

See -- a year ago, I was living in Edinburgh, trying fiendishly hard to pay my rent and my credit cards and my student loans. I paid my rent, and I paid my student loans. Sort of. And I paid my credit cards. Occasionally. Sometimes less than occasionally. Okay, so I was in trouble. Deep trouble. I carried the burden of my debt around like a stone. But I was surviving. I was eating. I was being responsible, as much as I could be, and trying to make sure that payments were at least being made at intervals.

And then I lost my dogwalking job, because my neighbour went out of work, and suddenly the money that I was spending on groceries disappeared.

I've talked about this before. Suffice to say, now, that in the span of a month and a half, I lost ten pounds, spent a total of £50 on groceries (around $75 Canadian dollars -- pretty slim for six weeks' worth of food) in that time, and found myself ready to cry at the smallest of things. It was rough. My roughest day centred around a "last supper" of frozen french fries and canned gravy -- the last items of food that I had in the house. At that point, I had no more money and no prospect of a paycheque for at least three weeks.

I sat at my table and ate, and then I cried, and went to bed hungry.


Of course, things got better. That particular story has the happiest of endings. And now, a year later, I live in a house with food everywhere. And so, tonight I rejoiced in the fact that I was full, and free of the stress that plagued every waking minute of my life a year ago.


Having said that, though, if given the chance to go back to Scotland, I'd go back in a flash. I'm sure that says all sorts of contradictory, ridiculous things about me. But ridiculous contradiction is the stuff that stories are made of, n'est-ce pas?

beauty and terror

Today, while waiting for my ride home from work, these lines from Rilke's "Go to the limits of your longing" popped into my head:

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

And suddenly I had a flash, a glimpse, a deliciously brief taste of what my next novel is going to say. Definitely something worth rejoicing over, even if only to myself.

Here's the whole poem, just because it's that beautiful.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.


These are the words we dimly hear:


You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.


 Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.


Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.


Nearby is the country they call life. 
You will know it by its seriousness.


Give me your hand.

(Translated by Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows)

Day 14: For the love of Pa

Family day today. Drove out to see my paternal grandfather for a few hours, and then drove a scant few kilometres down the road (my parents grew up within two miles of each other, went to the same elementary school until my mother was 10, and then met again when they were in high school, seven years later) and visited my mother's parents. Sat on their back porch and looked out over their yard. It hasn't changed at all since I was ten -- the trees are larger, and the vegetable garden is smaller now, but the air still smells the same.

My father's father grew up in Quebec, and has a Quebeçois accent to rival that of Jean Chrétien. It still surprises me to know that I didn't notice his accent at all when I was growing up. Now, of course, I notice it all the time. I love the way he talks. I love the way both he and my father get increasingly agitated when they speak (particularly when they speak to each other -- the French blood runs hot in these veins, let me tell you!).

And so today I sat with family, and reveled in voices and pictures and sounds from my childhood. It made me thankful for my dad, who can be so gosh darned stubborn and ornery and infuriating but never fails -- ever -- to make life interesting in the extreme. Must be all that French blood.

I'll probably have to write a story about it, some day.

Day 13: Surprises

I've only been at this project for two weeks. And yet somehow--slowly, bit by bit--I can feel it changing my outlook. Changing how I approach the world. Every day holds surprises now. What will my moment be? When will that unlooked-for moment of joy come to greet me? It reminds me of the memoir that CS Lewis wrote, Surprised by Joy (which in turn always makes me think of his wife, Joy Davidman/Gresham, even though the memoir isn't, in fact, about her). These days, I wake up knowing that joy will greet me somehow. Even in its smallest, most inconsequential of forms.


Today brought me three moments of bliss. The first moment came en route to town. I had to go in to Cayuga to get money and make my weekly trip to the library, and I had a heck of a time with the radio cranked. I love driving. I love driving while good music is on the stereo. More often than not, getting myself behind the wheel is a surefire way to bring on bliss.

So that, well, that was awesome. And then, later in the day, while I was out planting trees with my maman, she stopped for a moment and pointed to the other half of the property, which has been growing wild these past few weeks. (Seven acres is a lot of grass to cut.)

"Have you ever eaten clover?" she said.

I had not. So she waded into the tall grass and scooped out a few of the blossoms, then brought them back and showed me how to pick the purple bits apart and suck the white shoots underneath. I didn't taste anything in my first two attempts, but in my third time around that sudden burst of sweetness was there and unmistakable.

"We used to do this," she said, "when we were kids. Go out climbing in the fields behind the house and just eat the clover, and stare at the sky."

And then I got a photo of a daisy, just because I liked the way it looked ...

 

Later that night, my mother came and knocked on my door and asked me to come outside. I was almost asleep, but stumbled out of bed and followed her onto the porch.

And there were fireflies, all over the yard. Blinking madly in the trees down in the ravine next to the house. Shining soft in the air round the porch. I've never seen so many fireflies in my life. We stood there without speaking for almost ten minutes, just listening to the crickets and the bullfrogs and watching these little bits of light dance around us, all around.