OOTD

Christian and I were invited to attend the wedding of a couple from Congo who settled and raised a family in Winnipeg. My wardrobe felt inadequate to provide the colour I was searching for for this joyful occasion and so I left my outfit fate with the thrift store gods and took myself browsing on Monday. Thrifting with such conditions isn’t easy… I checked dresses, skirts and blouses and was hours into this hunt when I started on pants, before landing on these, Diane von Furstenburg, my size, for 12$. I paired it with a blouse I had seen earlier and considered the hunt a success.

Reading

I finished a massive 1261-page book of William Trevor’s Collected Stories, begun months ago when the weather was cold and the skies were clear. (The book is so big that when my 87 year-old mother-in-law spotted it on my lap, she asked if it was a dictionary.)

Collected stories have a chocolate-box-like quality to them, and I find that I often forget a story after a little while, despite enjoying the experience of dipping in and letting my mind settle into a scenario. One story that does stand out in its entirety is titled “Her Mother’s Daughter” - its ending so perfect in its poignancy. Or perhaps I just found the themes relevant.

But more often than not, it’s sentence here or there that I particularly like… Like, in “The Teddy-bears’ Picnic” where Trevor writes, “Their choice of decor and furniture was the choice of newlyweds who hadn’t yet discovered a confidence of their own.” Or, in “In Isfahan”: “Normanton wandered away from it, through dusty crowded lanes, into market-places where letter-writers slept on their stools, waiting for illiterates with troubles.” Another book off the list, done!

Satisfying

TikTok is full of satisfying videos… like the lawn-mower owners who clean up an overgrown yard (SB Mowing), gift wrappers (Bee and Blooms) furniture flippers (Build it like Becker) and sometimes the unexpected wedding dress restoration…

Perhaps I find them pleasing because the hands-on-ness of their subject is in contrast to research. This (it’s kind of long…) Youtube titled “Why Are Movies About Research So Addictive” in Patrick Willems’ dissection of how Hollywood has found a way of portraying an almost un-portrayable job. (Via)

Postcard

In lieu of the usual horizontal format, a nice vertical view of Albert Beach at the end of a nice afternoon, courtesy of Christian!

Intro

I feel a little like the whole news situation involving our neighbours is akin to being in the vicinity of an argument. There’s tension in the air, therapist-like suggestions on social media, and people who go about willfully business-as-usual. I’m fine, but I’m a little distracted?

Pot-pourri

In the midst of Spring Break, there is still time to read, thank goodness. Reading from all kinds of books yields a collage of quotes… There’s William Trevor’s short story “Broken Homes” in which the main character is 81 years old:

The dread of having to leave Catherine Street ordered her life. With all her visitors she was careful, constantly on the lookout for signs in their eyes which might mean they were diagnosing her as senile. It was for this reason that she listened so intently to all that was said to her, that she concentrated, determined to let nothing slip by. It was for this reason that she smiled and endeavoured to appear agreeable and cooperative at all times. She as well aware that it wasn’t going to be up to her to state that she was senile, or to argue that she wasn’t, when the moment came.

In Goodbye to Clocks Ticking, Joseph Monninger catches himself feeling annoyed because cancer is forcing him to accept letting go of control.

What I rejected was the possibility, the absolute likelihood, that I needed help. That I needed guidance. […] As a former English professor, it reminded me of Regan’s statement to her father and liege, King Lear, when she points out that he needs governance.
Regan. O, sir, you are old!
Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine. You should be rul’d, and led
By some discretion that discerns your state
Better than you yourself.

In Olivia Laing’s book Funny Weather, I met Derek Jarman, and find his last creative project, his garden, so arresting.

If this all seems a little bleak so far, all a little too old age and dying, there’s this curious incongruity in what Canadians consider their “back yard” and what the British consider their “garden”. I found this while reading A History of Domestic Space by Peter Ward:

A pair of French doors led outdoors from the dining room at the back of the dwelling and, as we stepped outside, I mentioned what an attractive back yard they had. 'Garden,' he corrected me, one of the endless small cultural confusions that bedevil Canadians in Britain. Two words had betrayed my rough postcolonial origins. In his world a garden was a tranquil enclave of lawns and flowers. In mine a garden might be a plot of worthy vegetables or a handsome floral border, but it formed part of something larger and rather more crude - a yard.

This, he writes, comes from the farm where our farming ancestors had yards

taken up by kitchen gardens, chicken coops, animal pens, storage sheds, and the like. In any case, the grassy swards and floral bowers found in occasional farmyards did little more than decorate utilitarian spaces.

And should we push the fun of contrasts just a little further? This week, I was listening to Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall and this made me smile:

(Have you heard of Harry Belafonte? I’m pretty sure that prior to this 1000 Recordings adventure, I had not. Which isn’t the point… I’m young, he’s dead, my musical knowledge is only beginning to expand. But what a delight to listen to his voice! This album was really nice.)