Perspective

I often make things bigger than they are. A job is life-defining. Self-worth hinges on a task. Someone’s e-mail could read as disapproval.

Noelle Stevenson commented, on Slate’s Working podcast: “I think the hardest thing about creating something is just believing you can do it. Personally, I need to trick myself into that a lot because the second I start thinking: ‘This isn’t good enough, this is not what they’re gonna want, someone else is gonna do a better job at this,’ that’s when I start losing my vision. (…) That’s when fear starts getting the better of me; it’s just not as real, not as from-the-heart, it’s stilted. I just think it’s one of the biggest obstacles to overcome.”

I play this trick on myself too. Once, I pretended I was no more than a person walking a dog that a train driver saw while rumbling through a European town. On a cloudy day, I pretended I was an old woman, not yet retired, who had a fireplace in her home - like in those artistic videos full of atmosphere - and that on that day she had a few students to counsel on writing… I was surprised how comforting it felt.

I didn’t have a single creative thought yesterday.

Not while walking the dog in the cold morning air.
Not while hurriedly brewing tea.
Not while advising a student to organize their thoughts like knives, forks and spoons for Kondo-style joy.
Not while delaying lunch to add up last month’s expenses.
Not while eating two eggs, basted, with toast.
Not while training the dog.
Not while grumpily answering the phone.
Not while following a recipe, or making broth.
Not while exercising on the stationary bike.
Not while eating Cheerios on the couch in front of Superstore on tv.
Not while back at my desk, finishing sums.
Not while washing my face and brushing my teeth.
Not while in bed, falling asleep.

Self-conscious

Sometimes I regret not taking pictures. Sometimes I wonder about the regret. Yesterday I went to Value Village, dropping off the results of a de-cluttering in the basement and stopping in the store, just to look. “I should take a picture” I thought, of things I saw that I liked but would not buy… Dainty earrings, intriguing necklaces, a gold picture frame, mugs from Niagara Falls. But I thought “no, just enjoy the experience of looking and wandering…” and I didn’t take out my phone. Pictures would have been more clutter. They would have been a different form of possession, a thing that said “look at me, looking at what I saw”. I felt self-conscious.

I found a plaid skirt and two merino-wool sweaters. At the checkout, the cashier had chipped black nail polish and a gold ring for each finger of his right hand. I often debate with myself whether or not I should voice my thoughts and decided to compliment the wearer’s rings. They clenched their hand into fists so I could see the rings better and I said they formed a nice collection. They smiled. Today, I still picture the dainty earrings, the picture frame, the gold rings. I liked them even better when shown me, when their wearer smiled.

I think self-consciousness too often holds me back. I was at Value Village for a change of scenery, to be reminded, as Liang writes, to “be generous to the strange, be open to difference, cross-pollinate freely” (via Brain Pickings.) It is like what Marilla says to Anne when the latter is fretting about leaving a good impression as a guest to tea: “The trouble with you, Anne, is that you’re thinking too much about yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest and most agreeable for her.” (Anne of Green Gables, p. 213)

Next time, I’ll take pictures.

Humility

Somewhat hilariously, I’ve been listening to a CBC podcast based on an American podcast’s recommendation, as if things, before they should reach my ears, must be American-approved. Have you ever noticed that? Those little moments that force you to rethink things? I’ve heard so much about Adam Grant’s latest book Think Again and I think fussily, like a person who has too many jotted-down titles of books they should read, whether it is really necessary to read this author’s take on something I suspect I already know?

The other day for example, I was in Wal-Mart and I passed two women who were considering a mass-produced painting of a Parisian street with the vague outline of the Eiffel Tower in the background. “I don’t know what it is, but I love this painting” the one was saying to the other. I inwardly scoffed. How can you fall in love with a fake-as-heck piece of reproduction art? What about supporting local artists, eh? But the next aisle over I chastised myself for the unkindness and remembered what my mother-in-law has often repeated: “tastes cannot be argued” (Les goûts ne se discutent pas!). Then, while looking for a lucite organizer tray, I came across stark white canvases with flower outlines in gold and imagined how nicely the frame would look against our slate-blue wall and protectively tucked this rectangle piece of decor under my arm all the way to the self-checkout.

I’m pretty sure that to be interested in history is to engage in a flexible state of mind. I grew up not caring about Canada’s problem with its Indigenous Peoples, but a few courses in to a history degree will force any student to re-think. I’m listening to CBC’s Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo, thanks to a recommendation from the Longford podcast. It’s well-produced. It’s also devastating. It reminds me of reading Halfbreed by Maria Campbell.

I notice in these moments how the book, or podcast, or documentary, or university course, provides a vantage-point with which to view the tiny space I occupy. It is humbling. It is also a source of pride. Like a person who has travelled to a new country and now brags of their visit there, I have gained some partial understanding of a minorities’ situation. I feel this as a kind of paradox. Learning more about Indigenous People is a good thing, it is one of the goals of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It’s also uncomfortable and I think the discomfort prompts the mind to race toward anything that might alleviate the discomfort. I’ve found myself thinking: “I should enlighten people with what I’ve learned!” But I’ve also found myself (I blush to write this), wishing I could express my admiration for the survivors whose stories I’ve heard, at great remove from them.

I think what is needed though, is humility. Humility is a fickle quality because once it is declared, it ceases to exist, much like when one observes happiness, it too can fly away. But it is worth pursuing in tangible ways… Humility, like Mother Teresa once said, can be found in being quiet about oneself, in keeping busy with your own things, in not wanting to organize other people’s lives. It can be found in not getting mad about minor things or pointing out other people’s flaws. I think that if humility is appreciated and cultivated, it doesn’t become too hard to re-think big things.

Enthusiasm!

I love witnessing enthusiasm! Lately two podcast hosts interviewed two enthusiasts: Debbie Millman interviewed Adam Grant on Design Matters and second, Steven Levitt interviewed Joshua Jay on People I Mostly Admire.

When Debbie Millman asked Adam Grant about the speed with which he completed his graduate degree, he answered that while he had an enormous headstart, “at the time I subscribed to the When Harry Met Sally philosophy of career and life decision-making (….). I’ve always thought of it as that line where in the movie, I think it’s Billy Crystal who says ‘when you know what you want for the rest of your life, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.’ I didn’t go to grad school to be a grad student. Yes, of course I wanted to gain all this knowledge and build my skills, that was intrinsically interesting to me, but I wanted to share my knowledge, I wanted to teach!”

On Dan Levitt’s podcast, Joshua Jay expresses SO MUCH enthusiasm for magic, I regret my near-dismissal of the subject. Dan Levitt concludes the podcast: “Young people are often told they should find something they love and pursue it with everything they have - I’ve never really liked that advice… The problem is, when you’re just getting started with something, whether it’s magic or economics or even a new relationship, you just don’t know very much about the object you’ve fallen in love with and, as you get to know it better, what you initially loved often proves illusory or fades in importance. I mean, I still pursue the thing I love over something more practical every time. It’s a great place to start, but it’s only a start. To crate a lasting love of something, you have to make it your own, or as Joshua says, make it three dimensional.”

Local news

There is much discussion about the death of local news. I checked Google just to make sure I wasn’t making that up based on American headlines, but no, it’s true. There’s an article about it in The Walrus. (Seeing The Walrus website makes me feel bad for not consulting it more often. Looks like a cool place…)

Anyways. Local News. Do you know what there used to be in local news? Right now I’m going through the archives of French papers La Liberté and Le Patriote from 1913 to now. A small town called Aubigny is the subject of my master’s thesis and so combing through archives provides me with a feeling of the life that went on there. In the 60’s a church group called Catholic Women’s League formed a press committee and submitted short articles about what was going on in the town. There were hockey match results, and birth and death announcements. When a couple got married, the author would sometimes plunge into details about what the bride wore: “gorgeous in her ivory brocade dress which ended with a graceful train. Her short veil was fastened with a delicate diadem. She held a bouquet of white orchids.” Bridesmaids were also named and described: “they wore identical dresses in gold brocade. A golden rose adorned their hair.” Even the couple’s mothers’ attire was described: “the two mothers (…) chose brown ensembles with brown accessories and their corsages were orchids.”

Trips were also noted: people visiting family, going away on holiday, attending a retreat. Accidents were recorded, minor ones eliciting prayers or sympathy, major ones eliciting their own separate headlines to mark the tragedy. Church meetings were summarized and gatherings were described. The latter included card games, holiday concerts, children’s groups, wedding anniversaries, and teas.

But there were articles prior to the 60’s, and the Catholic Women’s League press committee, with town news. They were often more sporadic and the subject matter varied from year to year. A farmer, it was noted in 1915, had a bumper crop of wheat. Conversely, the parish priest submitted a question about why his harvest was so low. Student grades were listed! I could, if I wanted, find out what my mother-in-law received in French as a young girl.

As a historian-in-the-making, I enjoy all this detail. However, I have trouble imagining that I would enjoy being the subject of these articles. On the other hand, you could argue that social media accounts provide heaps of information in comparison. Maybe it’s the ownership of the information? While others commented on what went on in the village, providing this comfortable sense of community, I am loathe to have anyone report on my goings on, even though I am fine with describing them myself. I think the feeling could be expounded because it reflects some generational gap; perhaps a divergence between a feeling of community and a growing sense of individualism.

Paralysis

It’s very hard being an adult when you were once a child that made herself quiet, that folded in her thoughts and waited for the occasion to express what she guessed the adult might want to hear.

It’s very hard to carelessly put words down when you were once the child of a person who found comfort in imagining importance in false-mystical interpretations (to which you did not detain the code) because banality contained for them too many occasions for pain.

It’s very hard to believe that the practice you invest in yourself is worth any time and any justification, when once you were the daughter of someone whom you could not convince of being worthy of love.

Scenes of parenting overwhelm

I always feel like cringing when I read or watch a scene of parental overwhelm. I was reminded of this while listening to the Rage Against the Minivan in audiobook format. Kristen Howerton describes a scene wherein her son accidentally rides his bike through dog poop on the way to the beach and how things devolve from there in a “this, then this, then this” reminiscent of Uma Thurman in the movie Motherhood.

I don’t know why this type of story makes me want to hide. Is it because I can always imagine worse? Is it because a feeling of compulsive organization creeps up on me and finds the ways in which the particular situation could have been averted, or rectified? Is it because the scenes are so typically framed within narrow cultural biases? Is it because the elements of the scene are too similar to sarcastic humour in that they are a kind of race to the bottom, where one mom tries to outdo another in what are very personal catastrophes?

Maybe it’s a writing problem, because when I think of the particular challenges of parenthood and how they are depicted, I think of Karl Ove Knausgard. His writing in My Struggle Book 2 for example is so searing that I don’t think of what the events are, but instead feel exactly the emotion it elicits. The fact that he is a male author makes no difference because of the trueness of the description.

I don’t want to criticize Howerton’s book because it undoubtedly fits an appreciative niche audience. After all, her description of visiting a therapist and finding out that her conflicting desire to parent lovingly and her own need for quiet was not a flaw but a feature of being an introvert, made me nod in self-recognition. I’m with you there! Now can we have more fun?

In praise of TikTok

Until December of 2020 I had not given TikTok two minutes thought outside a cursory glance to the news stories it was the subject of. Then arrived an issue of McKinley Valentine’s newsletter The Whippet in my inbox with this delightful intro:

I suspect the majority of readers will be like me, in that for TikTok they were like “nup, I’ve reached my limit of new social media things I can be bothered understanding. The kids can have TikTok for themselves.” 

But I’m a new convert and I love it so I’m gonna tell you what the deal is with TikTok.

Her arguments for TikTok compelled me to download the app. Like Deb Perelman, I can say “it’s become my favourite time suck”. There is so much I enjoy! Recipes, mountain skiing, dancing, sea shanties, dog training, mini adventures, and on and on… I enjoyed discovering TikTok so much that I convinced my siblings to join, just so I could send them funny videos. I enjoy TikTok so much that in this season of repentance, I’ve made a sacrifice of it and content myself with the inferior Instagram.

If we were friends, I’d give McKinley Valentine a hug for introducing me to something so fun.

Watching period dramas

My husband and I have a weak spot for period dramas: Outlander, Bridgerton, Medici… I remember excitedly comparing plot twists in Medici with the textbook I had for a class on the Italian Renaissance. As the seasons go on, it often feels as though the initial excitement wears off: characters develop predictable habits, love scenes follow a worn-out pattern, the show relies on plot development alone to maintain interest.

Take Medici for example. Season 3 opens with Lorenzo off to try and protect Florence from war. A council (called Priori) votes against going to war and Lorenzo goes home to his pregnant wife (see here, she strokes her belly, and there, again). His accountant and mother inform him, just like that, that he has no money to go to war. Lorenzo feels he needs to defend Florence, but doesn’t want to assume power to do as he thinks best. He wants consensus. The shots of his face can all be classed into a single category: Lorenzo is pensive. A monastery is taking in wounded mercenaries and monks quibble about caring for non-believers in a decidedly 21st century way. Lorenzo sends his wife and children away from the city (obligatory goodbye scene), and Lorenzo resigns from the council. There is a sprinkling of scenes of artists painting things. In one, a young painter labours over a line of green paint on buckling paper. Lorenzo goes to visit Leonardo da Vinci who is dissecting a cadaver (nbd) and confidently (nay, with swagger!) expresses an agnostic point of view, telling Lorenzo to live his life as he sees fit.

At this point you might as well throw up your hands and just accept the fact that what you are watching is a 21st century drama with pretty Italian Renaissance set decor and pigeons bearing imitation-calligraphy messages for cellphones.

I suppose this is why I was reluctant to get into The Last Kingdom. However, episode 2 of the first season has the main character Uhtred hiding and crying after killing an enemy, a playful relationship between him and Brida, and scenes wherein the characters aren’t sure about what to do next as they grapple with the constraints of the period.

The writing is alive, and I’m surprised to discover how “show don’t tell” applies just as much to a visual medium as it does to writing. So here’s a love note to the writers of The Last Kingdom, season 1: I noticed your work and I’m enjoying it!

The ways in which I'm lucky

I walked the dog this morning, came home, boiled water and made tea. I took off the damp cloth from the bundt pan containing 20 frozen dinner rolls and poured melted butter over them and then covered them in grated Cheddar, and returned the cloth to the pan. I ate an apple and cheese Ritz bits in alternating mouthfuls, feeding the apple peels to the puppy. I tethered the puppy to his sunny spot in the living room, went downstairs and transferred the load of darks to the dryer and started a second load of darks. And now I sit here at my desk, having read two Oliver Burkeman articles relating to creativity, and looking forward to continuing Titan while imputing names into a spreadsheet.

Memories of my Grandma

My Grandma died the other night, at age 92. I’m pretty sure she was 92. Maybe she was 93 but I don’t feel like checking, and what is another year added or subtracted when decidedly, it can be said, she was old.

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way when someone you knew died, but I get this urge to reach out and collect the stray memories. Death slips a person away and my thoughts eddy around the feeling of disruption. What place-keeper should I put to fill the new empty space?

I used to worry that snippets of memory didn’t count, especially on so large an occasion as death, but this short essay by Brian Doyle convinced me otherwise. It begins:

You will say to me that time passeth, that What Was is now only memory, that we cannot reclaim or resurrect that which is inarguably past, but I am going to quibble about this, and quiz and question you hard and close, for I don’t even have to shut my eyes and it is six in the morning, long ago and right now, far away and right here, and it is snowing heavily, and there is a silvery shiver to the world, and the house is silent except for how it sighs sometimes when it remembers the forest it used to be, and I am huddled deep under four blankets, and I know without even opening my eyes that everyone else in the house is asleep, for when you are a child you have the most extraordinary senses, and can tell the color of a bird by its song, and the day of the week by the thrum of the rain, and how amused or annoyed your dad is by the tilt of his hat. Why do we not sing these things as miracles?

And so, when I think of my Grandma, I’m transported to that summer day in Saskatoon when we are walking from Midtown Plaza and crossing 1st Ave to 21st Street. A car, its windows down, veered in front of us and Grandma called the driver a jerk for cutting us off. The driver’s response was to slow the car’s pace and follow us down the block while yelling insults at my Grandma. The whole thing was a fluster in my single-digit years, when my parents were the type of adults who discouraged me from saying “Geez” like my friends at school because it sounded too similar to “Jesus”. Thinking of Grandma, I think of food, of the way she added diced ham to scrambled eggs, or how she baked apple pies and white-wheat buns. These things were good and unpretentious.

I think I’m learning to be fine with the ambiguities of a person at their death. I think I can begin to agree with Elizabeth Bishop: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master;”…

Breakfast muffins

This morning I woke up from a dream, wherein I was eating out with Rita when a cook from the kitchen emerged with a roll of fried bacon that she set on a group’s table and demonstrated how it was to be unspooled over a metal bracket and cut to desired size with a fork. The cook was shiny with grease and the heat from frying the bacon and setting it on a spool almost blistered her throat.

Far less salty are these muffins I once served for brunch years ago. When I made the recipe more recently, hoping the children might like them in their lunches, they balked at so much fibre. I passed the muffins along to my mother-in-law who found them excellent. We’ve made it a routine: she’s happy to accept them, and I’m happy to make them.

Blueberry, Oatmeal and Flaxseed Muffins
From Merrill Stubbs on the website Food52

2 cups whole wheat flour
5 ½ cups rolled oats
1 ½ cups light brown sugar
2/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed
4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup neutral oil (vegetable, olive, and coconut are good choices)
2 cups buttermilk
2 cups blueberries (or use other fresh berries, or dried berries)

Heat the oven to 350°F and line 2 standard-sized muffin pans with paper liners. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, oats, brown sugar, flaxseed, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon.

Add the eggs, oil, buttermilk and ¾ cup water. Mix until the dry and wet ingredients are just combined, and then fold in the blueberries. Spoon the batter into the muffins cups, filling each cup right up to the top, and bake the muffins for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool completely before serving.

Vicarious passenger

I miss libraries. Perhaps that says a lot about the sort of person I am… the kind who finds that of all the COVID restrictions, not being able to browse books is the first complaint that comes to mind. Fortunately, the university has made many texts available online, and this morning I have an article to read.

If I make myself too comfortable for this task, I tend to doze off, so I read sitting at my desk. My desk faces a wall and to remedy the non-view and the perfect-ennui sound of a ticking clock, I pick a train video from Youtube and pretend I’m a passenger, somewhere in Europe. Today I’m in Norway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5t2RZj1ZkQ A few weeks ago, I was in Sweden: https://www.youtube.com/user/lorirocks777

Louis Riel Day

It’s Louis Riel Day here in Manitoba and the best thing about this day is a picture of my dad posing at Riel’s gravesite in Saint Boniface when he was still a young man from Rosetown Saskatchewan, only passing through Winnipeg.

Childhood pictures

This is me at one or two, but not three:

There are a lot of feet in this picture. It’s warm, but my parents are wearing jeans. Mom favoured flip flops for herself, but outfitted me with solid sandals that must have been exercises in patience to buckle. The decor at my grandparents place is full of brown, caramel and orange tones.

Sight-seeing, mom outfitted me in a bonnet. Her mauve stripes and my dotted onesie go together nicely.

Here, a hat, and perfect tresses, a pretty colour combination of white and yellow and pink.

It’s funny how viscerally I remember some clothes… This jacket was a comfortably-soft cotton middle-season jacket, with buckles that were decorative and a little fussy.

Here, I’m 5 and my brother has entered the scene. I have solid pink sandals and a red purse with a cat on it. The purse is used to transport Nuggles, my tiny stuffed bunny whose nose I would stroke falling asleep in bed. The beige bag is a diaper bag that I’m helpfully carrying.

Mom is painting the apartment closet and wishing for a house - and her face is pretty and youthful. I’m wearing a turtleneck. Mom was fond of using turtlenecks under sweaters. This style soaked into me and even when I tried wringing it out, this turtlenecks, turtlenecks, turtlenecks everywhere, it came back this year…. I’ve embraced their cozy-neck feeling and face-framing look.

Mostly, when looking at pictures from my youth, I notice mom’s attention to detail and her pursuit of aesthetically-pleasing portraits. That Pa was able to catch her at it probably earned him a chiding remark, and this spontaneous pose makes me smile. Mom liked pictures that were posed. I’m not sure if now, my pursuit of spontaneous moments is something from my dad, something that is generational, or something in reaction to all the posed moments of my childhood.

That cliché about kindness

Being kind is the sort of platitude even children get tired of hearing. In The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin writes “One conclusion was blatantly clear from my happiness research: everyone from contemporary scientists to ancient philosophers agrees that having strong social bonds is probably the most meaningful contributor to happiness.”

It’s one of those things that, heard so often, can sound cliché. But take this snippet of an interview from the Longford podcast, at 32 minutes, when Katie Engelhart says this: “Another observation I had, while writing this book and also other projects, [is] when someone is sick or dying and suffering, I think they can become - selfish is the wrong word, because it’s negative, but - really focused on themselves. I mean it’s something I notice all the time. Usually on an assignment, if I’m asking questions, people have questions about me, about my work and my job. When someone’s really sick, or they’re dying, they don’t ask those questions that much. They’re busy.” Isn’t it fascinating? Because it takes this cliché about kindness that feels a little shallow: be nice to people and you’ll feel better; and adds depth. Dying is this inward focused energy and living is outward focused and a sign of health is this out-going act of care for others.

Data entry

Since January I’ve been sitting at my desk and devoting hours to transcription and data entry. Eventually the data will pile up nicely and provide statistics. Then I’ll gather the statistics like wildflowers and put them into a graph like a bouquet.

Because the task is detailed and long, I listen to audiobooks on Libby. My favourite books are biographies. I agree with Rumaan Alam who commented on the Slate Working podcast, “I find them a very satisfying form when done well. (…) Biography can be stodgy in the wrong hands, but with a good writer, it’s not unlike eavesdropping - what could be more fun?”

I have enjoyed Empty Mansions by Bill Dedman and am 13 hours into Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. I had no idea that there were oil refineries for crude oil before there was was a use for gasoline.

082 - pause

I like entertaining. I like planning meals and inviting guests, baking dessert, sharing a new recipe, and going with the season. I like dressing up, if only just a bit and talking with guests in the living room. I like being the hostess and slipping away to the kitchen to move the supper along. But do you know the best feeling of all? It's peculiar and I think it only favours the introverts among us... it's when there's a reason – just before the meal, or maybe after when the kitchen is full of the clamour of dishes – to slip outside into the summer evening air even if only to put something in the garbage, where there is no one... You leave the noisy house and close the door and it is like a brief palate cleanser for the brain, from noise to nature, from performance to uninhibited calm. Notice the sound of a cricket, or neighbourhood kids in a game that doesn't concern you, or the blue of the sky, or the stripes on the moth's wings as it rests against the stucco.

081-School

School has started. In this case, the sentence should have an asterix. School has started.* And then the asterix would detail the provincial guidelines and then how those guidelines were interpreted by the division and how the principles then made plans for their school, and how the teachers took those plans and put them in place in the classroom. It's like a line forming to pass buckets from the well to the fire, each bucket sloshing a little on the way over to the fire.
In grade three, our teacher taught us how to play telephone, where she whispered something in the first student's ear, and then that whispered thing made its way, student to student up and down rows of desks in a 24 student classroom before landing back in the teacher's ear at the other side of the class. I thought the point of the game was to distort the sentence and so I added a phrase. It was something about Santa Clause coming, and I added that he'd be wearing black boots. And then, when it was time to repeat aloud the sentence we thought we'd heard, one student at a time, backwards from the end, I realized my mistake and was embarrassed. The student I'd whispered to said that black boots line aloud, and I did not, as though they had invented it, rather than hearing it from me. I was teacher's pet in grade three and did not want to risk losing that special feeling. I liked to seem smart, as when I answered a question about when one might have bad posture, and I offered "when sweeping" as an answer and was praised.
So school has started.
When I write about something in the present, I feel hamstrung. I don't know what to say about it. My opinions are half-formed. We bob along like players in a game of dodgeball.