Questions for God

I have started a routine – halleluiah! (I even plan to discuss this schedule with my clients in September so I can stick to it). I get up in the mornings and take my coffee and notebook down to the front patio to work. Getting away from my computer helps my creativity and so does being in the world first thing in the morning. I usually write/edit for one to two hours. Today I edited for one and wrote for one. I am working on a key piece in my manuscript: Questions for God. I can’t get this one right– not the timing, not the tense, not the order of occurrence. Today I realized I needed to write two other stories in order to get to this one. So I did. One story involves a book I was never allowed to finish, Forever by Judy Blume. I realized today I have never actually read this book after my mother confiscated it.

The Tall Mammals Come for a Visit

Last weekend, the tall mammals, L&M came to visit me. In our (and everyone else’s) race toward the end of summer we ate well, drank too much, talked over a fire, swam in the ocean and walked along the beach into lower Gibsons where we ate the best carrot cake I’ve ever tasted. Oh and M played three games of facebook scrabble as the morning turned to afternoon.

Fishing for Titles

On an early morning, I went to Davis Bay and talked with b about the importance of titles, the economy and specificity of words to draw the reader in. Saw men in waders flyfishing in the shallows. I could’t figure out what they were fishing for.

Policing the Community

This morning I woke up thinking of naked evening swims. I decide this is something I will do before the nice weather retreats.

Then I remember the bull-horn.

In Grantham’s Landing, the community owns the wharf. They bought it for a dollar several years ago. Since I moved here, there have been many times this summer–mostly when teenagers are on the wharf–that someone who lives in the landing takes it upon himself to police the community. With a bull-horn.

Today it was when some teenage boys put their motorized dinghy on the dock to clean it out.
“Get that boat off the dock” a loud voice booms from somewhere to my right.
“Why?” the boys yell back.
“You are not allowed to have boats on the dock” the voice booms back.
The teens swear, which the water carries across to me (and the guy with the horn).

What is wrong with people? Why is it that with every community project, there is always one person who decides it is their job to police the others. It’s creepy.

I think about all this as I plan my naked swim.

Michael Crummey on poetry and home

 

This morning I went to the first event of the first day of the Sunshine Coast Writers Festival. Hard to get over the festival is celebrating its 25th year. I thought—at 9 a.m.—I would be one of a small number of people in the theatre, but it was almost packed! Michael Crummey, Newfoundland writer and fantastic storyteller was a hit. Normally I don’t go to hear fiction writers read or talk about their work. I am drawn to poets and creative non-fiction and memoir writers. However, the write-up in the program said he has written 3 books of poetry. I thought of my friends Rob Madden and dianna hurford who write incredible, lyrical narratives, because of their strong roots in poetry. So I was hoping Mr. Crummey would begin from his roots, his family, his own stories.

He did.

He read from his first book, Hard Light, which he described as a love letter to his father. It made everyone in the theatre (including me) laugh out loud. The stories were filled with things I love to read: lightness, darkness, humor and small moments of beauty. Then he read from his latest novel, The Wreckage (2005), which was definitely good writing, but not as home for me as his early poems. When someone asked him if he still writes poetry, he said no, not really. That the work a novel requires leaves little else for writing any poetry. He also said he has been writing for 20 years and has only made any money from it in the last 7. I also suspect this is why he switched forms. While everyone shuffled off to buy his latest novel and get it signed, I came home and looked up Hard Light in the SFU library catalogue: it’s in!

I was also wondering if it was just a bad haircut the day he shot the photo for his book jacket, or if he actually looks like that. Mystery solved: he looks exactly like his photo.

What is this narrative about anyway?

Today was a day of celebration for not working in an office anymore, and the creativity that allows. Utah Phillips said it best “Why should I rent the contents of my brain out for 8 hours a day and expect it to be returned to me in an un-mutilated condition?” It is impossible.

I went to yoga class at 10:30 and when i got to the top of the hill, someone said it had been canceled. As I turned to go back down the hill I actually stuck my bottom lip out! Pouted all the way down the hill!

After I finished my paid work and a conference call with another contract at 1p.m., the sun came out and I decided to ride my bike to the beach to write. I am supposed to hand in my *as-is* manuscript to Jane and Danielle on Friday. Suddenly I am not so sure of my form, my narrative, my mixed-up sense of time. And it doesn’t help that strangers are asking me what my book is about, and I can’t seem to find the easy answer. Lately I have been calling it autobiography. Yes. autobiography fits better than memoir. That I can live with. I came to the conclusion that it is a difficult, intense narrative that requires a lot of the reader. I love these kind of books, so I know there are some readers for it out there.

O.k., so after I wrote myself through this crisis, I met the local nudist on the beach, who said he’d seen me before (I don’t think so) and then biked home. No bugs in the teeth today.

Returning to a quiet life

 

 

Last week I worked in the city and lived in the west end. I traded my place in Grantham’s for t&e’s place in west end. I am still transitioning: city/cottage life; cottage/city life. Still trying to find a balance of paid work/unpaid work (my writing). Saturday I spent at English Bay writing and pretending to work. I do this often. When I arrived home on Saturday night, after watching the grapefruit sky, I unpacked and went to sleep with the waves on the shore in my ear.

 

(Re)inventing Memoir: blogging a year of collected moments

So I have started this blog for several reasons: to practice writing every day; to practice living in the moment; and to use the window in my home-office as a space to see this year. Memoir doesn’t have to be a lifetime, it can be one year, and so here, I am going to collect the moments that will add up to a year of living in Grantham’s Landing. When I quit my job in March, my relationship in April, and my city life in May, I never expected to find myself in a small town. But here I am. Loving it. And it is partly because I am drawn to the sea. I recently read a quote that said “go where you feel a pull” and: here I am. I officially moved to Grantham’s Landing in June, and so have collected several moments since then. I wonder where i will put all these back posts?

 

Collecting

Today i went to secret cove early in am to collect driftwood and write. i was the only person on the beach for over an hour. While there, i saw the most beautiful shade of red in some sea-soaked cedar bark that washed up beside me. I did share the beach with a deer and a fawn, who kept looking back at me as if it sensed my sadness and I wrote a long piece in response to her.

Swallows

Today the swallows flit and bounce and chase each other outside my window. A welcome distraction from the dry annual report i am writing.