First, good news, FYI, the garden workshop is sold out.
Second, it's hot but not as hot as France, and it smells glorious here on the deck because it poured last night. Everything is fresh and sweet and soft. But it's especially Wayson's gardenia that scents my life right now. I miss him every day.
But this post is about aging. My friend Annie was over today; she's a few months older than I, 69 already, also grandmother of two, working full-time but retiring next year. I can't imagine someone so powerfully focussed - she works with the Jesuit Forum on world-changing issues - without work, and I told her about Lynn in France, turning - no! - 70 in a few weeks and busier in retirement than ever. We talked about Mick Jagger prancing about after heart surgery, and of course, my indefatigable Macca, touring the world at 77. How our definitions of old have changed.
But when I told Annie that I'd be taking a nap after our lunch on the deck with rosé, she laughed. She doesn't have time, but I have started to nap almost every afternoon, especially if I'm teaching in the evening, but even if not. Until recently, I never ever napped.
I have 3 medical appointments coming up shortly - a mammogram, an eye exam to test for glaucoma, and a dermatologist to remove the hideous white bumps on my forehead. They're minuscule, but I can see them and I hate them. Trying to keep the physical plant going and keep the unsightliness to a minimum. But it's there - the crepey drooping skin, the brown mottles on legs, chest, arms, hands, the deep grooves in the face. I spend at least ten minutes a day fixated on the magnifying mirror, to see what horrible thing has sprouted recently - pimples! moles! miscellaneous bumps! - and removing hair on upper lip and chin.
What's wonderful, though, is that I really don't care. It used to matter so desperately how I looked, but now - who sees me? Who cares how I look? I haven't given up, I still keep fit and try not to wear clothes that would make my children cringe. And yes, to keep the hairs to a minimum. But otherwise, feh.
And don't get me started on the body, the sore knees, the swollen fingers - I need to put cream on my hands at night to get my rings off - the creaking joints.
BUT I'm sitting on the deck with the magnolia and roses wafting my way, sparrows fluttering at the feeder, the garden lush and green - oh look, a dove and a cardinal and seven rosebuds about to open. I've just had supper - ham and fresh asparagus from the market this morning with more rosé. Randy Bachman is on the radio and later there are interesting shows on TV. I have money in the bank, health, healthy children and grandchildren, many things I like to do and work I love. Soon I will be 69, and I have to say, these are the best, the very best days of my life.
Yesterday Ben was over. He found a calculator and pressed it so rows of numbers came up, which he counted. "There's fives - one, two, three, four, eleventeen, nineteen, twenty six."
Decided that I'm eleventeen and shall remain so.
Saturday, June 29, 2019
Thursday, June 27, 2019
writers and truth and Eleanor Wachtel's Books on Film
An amazing home class tonight, five of us sitting outside with cheese and wine, reading and telling our deepest truths. How privileged I feel to host encounters of such depth. This time, as well as listening to theirs, I told and read mine and received valuable feedback. What an endless journey it is to be a writer. I joke to my students that if they think the Nobel prize-winning Alice Munro says, yawning, " I think I'll toss off another story," they don't understand the business; that it's never easy, even for Alice Munro. Maybe especially for Alice Munro.
Not back to the drawing board for me, but work to be done. I read a memoir scene from my profligate youth, when I was living in a house with cocaine dealers and sleeping with the dealer across the hall, and what my listeners wanted was - more sex. More grit. I had to say, I don't remember! But that's the job. Unpack. Go back. Even to that not very pleasant time, the memory that makes me wince - go back and bring it to the light. Make them see and hear and feel it.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Well, not right now, anyway, it's after 10 and I'm sleepy. Time to go to bed and pick up Middlemarch, which is fabulous but a long slow read.
Yesterday, the smallest class I've ever had - two students at Ryerson, two brave souls who read and we discussed and then went home early. I'll give them extra time next week, when a few more will be there. It's hard to be in a classroom in summer, and it's definitely high summer here - 30 degrees today, feeling like 36.
On Monday, Eleanor Wachtel invited me to be her guest at the Writers on Film series at TIFF, for a film, Lore, based on a book called The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert. It's the kind of gruelling film I would never have seen if not invited by a dear friend, about five very young German children after the war forced to travel through a ruined country to safety. It was an excellent film, really about how Germans continued to deny what their country had done until the facts made it impossible to deny any more, and afterwards, the discussion between Eleanor and Seiffert was of course fascinating. The book is based on her German mother's story, and she told us about her mother's parents who were fervent Nazis. The evening ended with a very gloomy diagnosis of today, the rise of the far right and fascism; Sieffert said she felt we are in a version of the thirties. Very scary.
But at the same time, uplifting, because wise writers are making sense of it all with art. Going to the uncomfortable places, because that's the job.
Not back to the drawing board for me, but work to be done. I read a memoir scene from my profligate youth, when I was living in a house with cocaine dealers and sleeping with the dealer across the hall, and what my listeners wanted was - more sex. More grit. I had to say, I don't remember! But that's the job. Unpack. Go back. Even to that not very pleasant time, the memory that makes me wince - go back and bring it to the light. Make them see and hear and feel it.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Well, not right now, anyway, it's after 10 and I'm sleepy. Time to go to bed and pick up Middlemarch, which is fabulous but a long slow read.
Yesterday, the smallest class I've ever had - two students at Ryerson, two brave souls who read and we discussed and then went home early. I'll give them extra time next week, when a few more will be there. It's hard to be in a classroom in summer, and it's definitely high summer here - 30 degrees today, feeling like 36.
On Monday, Eleanor Wachtel invited me to be her guest at the Writers on Film series at TIFF, for a film, Lore, based on a book called The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert. It's the kind of gruelling film I would never have seen if not invited by a dear friend, about five very young German children after the war forced to travel through a ruined country to safety. It was an excellent film, really about how Germans continued to deny what their country had done until the facts made it impossible to deny any more, and afterwards, the discussion between Eleanor and Seiffert was of course fascinating. The book is based on her German mother's story, and she told us about her mother's parents who were fervent Nazis. The evening ended with a very gloomy diagnosis of today, the rise of the far right and fascism; Sieffert said she felt we are in a version of the thirties. Very scary.
But at the same time, uplifting, because wise writers are making sense of it all with art. Going to the uncomfortable places, because that's the job.
Monday, June 24, 2019
Downchild Blues
When I saw the Toronto Jazz Festival was producing a free concert on Saturday - the Downchild Blues Band with guest Dan Aykroyd - I couldn't imagine where it was. The map showed somewhere on Bloor, so I imagined they'd taken over a small courtyard somewhere. But no - there was a stage right in the middle of Bloor Street near Avenue Road. Thousands of people gathered around, and the best, the absolute best music, raunchy, joyful rhythm and blues. Carol and I did not stop moving to the beat from start to finish.
A beautiful night, great music in the middle of the street - and then, on the way home, we could have walked down Church Street and immersed ourselves in Pride if we'd had the energy, which we did not. So much going on.
And ... an important realization about publication: in my typical fashion, I've been looking for a short cut, which has in the end wasted more time - sending the ms. to the wrong people who happen to be people I know. The only way forward is to submit: what an apt term. To send the thing out over and over again and wait to hear. Submission is how it's done, and that is what I will do. And I will look on it as an adventure.
So - as my beloved much-missed friend Wayson loved to say - Onward.
And ... an important realization about publication: in my typical fashion, I've been looking for a short cut, which has in the end wasted more time - sending the ms. to the wrong people who happen to be people I know. The only way forward is to submit: what an apt term. To send the thing out over and over again and wait to hear. Submission is how it's done, and that is what I will do. And I will look on it as an adventure.
So - as my beloved much-missed friend Wayson loved to say - Onward.
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Write in the Garden July 21
Just received this email:
I attended a lovely summer writing session in a garden in the east end of Toronto years ago, I'm thinking in 2012 or 2013. After some sleuthing online, I think you might have been the person who hosted this.
Are you still doing these sessions? I'm going to be in Toronto this summer and wanted to try and attend another session.
You've come to the right place and yes, I am. Welcome!
marketing summer
Spring is over; it's summer, it's hot, and Toronto is overflowing with activities: this weekend it's Pride, plus the arts festival Luminato, plus the Jazz Festival and God knows what else - a superabundance of interesting things to do. Good times. Anna wanted to take the boys to Pride yesterday, so we arranged to meet on Church Street. Pride releases people's kinks in a way that can be quite shocking, so I wrote to her, "Are you concerned about what the boys might see?"
"We live in Parkdale," was her reply. Enough said.
And it's true, nothing astonishes her boys, who were more interested in the playgrounds nearby than in the nearly-naked people in bondage gear strolling around. Tonight, my old Ottawa friend Danny Aykroyd is fronting the fabulous Downchild Blues Band for a free street dance, and I might go. Though it doesn't start till 8.30 - pretty late for this old bag.
I am settling back into daily life in Cabbagetown. The winter is a blur, and much of the spring too - the reno and travels to Europe and Vancouver, the conference, finishing work on the house, teaching. My friend Carol, who lived upstairs on the third floor for 5 or 6 years, is visiting from her home in Ecuador for the summer, staying here this week and for the month of August. She is knocked out by the renovation. "You've improved things yet it's somehow the same, the character of the house unchanged," she said. She's out right now, grooving in the hot sun at Pride.
Mostly, now, my focus is finding time to get the memoir out, yet yet yet again. My student Margaret Lynch has taught me a lesson. She started writing in my class four years ago at Ryerson, took other courses and then the MFA in Nonfiction at King's, which does a lot to prepare their students for publication. She has since published a feature in the Star related to her memoir, which I wrote about here, and has had a piece on the CBC which was turned into a beautiful video'd interview with her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdBORLe8rXo
It's been shared thousands of times. This is known as building your platform, which is how you interest publishers. Her methodical approach to publication is inspiring. My approach is to run at it with my head down and try to crash through, as I do most things. Methodical is not a word in my vocabulary. To my chagrin.
So the process begins anew - preparing a cover letter, a précis of the book, a resumé about me, figuring out where these things should go. This is the part of writing that I hate. I HATE it. Marketing is one of my least favourite words, up there with the words Doug Ford. But unless I want to self-publish again, I have no choice but to do this tedious thing, sending and re-sending and re-sending. Trying to sell myself. Trying to build a platform.
My actual platform - the deck outside my kitchen - was taken apart this week to inject it with termite poison. There's surely a metaphor there.
However, in happier news: dancer Sara Porter, who's an editing client and a fan of my writing book True to Life, has written that she'd like to use my chapter titles as prompts, not only for writing, but for dance. She's thinking of using them in her next show.
Chapter 41 “Take your time”
Maybe that's what I'll encourage my students to do: get up and dance. Works for me.
And ... Ben, who's 3, graduated from preschool last week, with a mortar board and diploma. Extremely impressive. And, if I say so myself, extremely cute.
"We live in Parkdale," was her reply. Enough said.
And it's true, nothing astonishes her boys, who were more interested in the playgrounds nearby than in the nearly-naked people in bondage gear strolling around. Tonight, my old Ottawa friend Danny Aykroyd is fronting the fabulous Downchild Blues Band for a free street dance, and I might go. Though it doesn't start till 8.30 - pretty late for this old bag.
I am settling back into daily life in Cabbagetown. The winter is a blur, and much of the spring too - the reno and travels to Europe and Vancouver, the conference, finishing work on the house, teaching. My friend Carol, who lived upstairs on the third floor for 5 or 6 years, is visiting from her home in Ecuador for the summer, staying here this week and for the month of August. She is knocked out by the renovation. "You've improved things yet it's somehow the same, the character of the house unchanged," she said. She's out right now, grooving in the hot sun at Pride.
Mostly, now, my focus is finding time to get the memoir out, yet yet yet again. My student Margaret Lynch has taught me a lesson. She started writing in my class four years ago at Ryerson, took other courses and then the MFA in Nonfiction at King's, which does a lot to prepare their students for publication. She has since published a feature in the Star related to her memoir, which I wrote about here, and has had a piece on the CBC which was turned into a beautiful video'd interview with her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdBORLe8rXo
It's been shared thousands of times. This is known as building your platform, which is how you interest publishers. Her methodical approach to publication is inspiring. My approach is to run at it with my head down and try to crash through, as I do most things. Methodical is not a word in my vocabulary. To my chagrin.
So the process begins anew - preparing a cover letter, a précis of the book, a resumé about me, figuring out where these things should go. This is the part of writing that I hate. I HATE it. Marketing is one of my least favourite words, up there with the words Doug Ford. But unless I want to self-publish again, I have no choice but to do this tedious thing, sending and re-sending and re-sending. Trying to sell myself. Trying to build a platform.
My actual platform - the deck outside my kitchen - was taken apart this week to inject it with termite poison. There's surely a metaphor there.
However, in happier news: dancer Sara Porter, who's an editing client and a fan of my writing book True to Life, has written that she'd like to use my chapter titles as prompts, not only for writing, but for dance. She's thinking of using them in her next show.
Chapter 41 “Take your time”
Chapter 32 “Don’t be nice"
Chapter 31 “Try out your light voice”
Chapter 17 “Unblock”
Chapter 16 “Start anywhere”
Chapter 15 “Make it matter"
Maybe that's what I'll encourage my students to do: get up and dance. Works for me.
And ... Ben, who's 3, graduated from preschool last week, with a mortar board and diploma. Extremely impressive. And, if I say so myself, extremely cute.
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