still golden

Another glorious day, the birds yammering at the feeder, the scarlet of the Japanese maples as deep and dark as blood. I'm about to go for my piano lesson, and here's the great thing about being a grown-up: I have been too busy to practice since my last class, and he can't yell at me or tell my mother. I'm sorry, but sometimes there's just too much going on. The good stuff - yes, it's real Dorothy, this is a brand new Canada. Watching PM Trudeau on the news last night was mind-boggling, as he chatted with Peter Mansbridge about being raised to be responsible and thoughtful and thankful for privilege. Is he real or did I imagine him? Yes yes yes, he's real. My friend Richard says all the damage Harper did on myriad fronts has not even begun to be revealed. We escaped in the nick of time.

And other stuff, not so good. Such as - today, finding out that I need extensive roof repairs to fix the leak that had water pouring into my dining room last week. Woo hoo.

Such as - finding out that the vintage dealer Cynthia Findlay is going to charge me $100 for changing my mind and getting my jewellery back from her. That's what it cost, apparently, to send my pieces out by courier to be assessed and repaired and to bring them back. So not only did I not sell all that stuff, the transaction will end up costing me. I'll say this: her store is chock full and amazing, but she is a very hard-nosed businesswoman. Deal with her only if you know what you are doing. Which I most certainly did not. I'll be very glad to get my stuff back, at only the cost of $100 and a lot of wasted time.

First world etc.

Here's a quote from a great article on editing by the essayist John McPhee in the Sept. 14 New Yorker:
Writing is selection. Just to start a piece of writing you have to choose one word and only one from more than a million in the language. Now keep going. What is your next word? Your next sentence, paragraph, section, chapter? Your next ball of fact. You select what goes in and you select what stays out. At base you have only one criterion: If something interests you, it goes in - if not, it stays out. That's a crude way to assess things, but it's all you've got ... Write on subjects in which you have enough interest on your own to see you through all the stops, starts, hesitations, and other impediments along the way.