couch-ed

When I was growing up, my siblings and I spent a lot of time with our paternal grandmother.

When my mother went to out-of-town radiation safety conferences, my dad and two siblings and I would show up at her door with a bucket of KFC. (Since we got fast/restaurant food so infrequently as children, I remember these incidents vividly...)

We did Christmas en famille at her house until there was too much famille to fit around her table.

I think my granny even did a stretch of after-school childcare...all of which you can take to mean that I was familiar with every nook and cranny of her house, including the possessions that my dad and his siblings left there after they moved out.

This couch, roughly eight feet in length, was a mainstay in her living room. It was where we sat when she read me stories or when we leafed through photo albums. From the couch's vantage point, you could see the chair where granny sat when she was alone, with a bird book splayed open on a bookshelf nearby and a small pair of binoculars.

As my granny got older, she was less and less able to get upstairs to her bed. So she slept on the couch, which accommodated her five foot two inches (or thereabouts) nicely.

(More after the turn...)

After my grandmother died, my aunt Katie inherited the couch. And that was that. But last year, my aunt got some new furniture and wanted to shift the couch out...so she called me and asked if I (or any of my siblings) wanted it.

I did. My siblings didn't, so I wrangled a van and talked M into moving it with me, not telling him in advance what a beast it was. It had a wonky leg, which was the only reason all of it fit in the van at all.

Since we had recently re-upholstered our existing couches, we didn't really have room for it either but I wasn't going to be foolish enough to let my granny's couch out of my grasp. So it lay on the floor at one end of the living room, on its side, for a month or so.

And then I had a brainstorm. Since Aqua's large second floor (which includes the two events rooms and the writers' studios) had been largely furnished with antiques but still had room to spare, the couch would be a nice, albeit temporary addition.

Bookstore owner Kelly agreed to my nefarious plan.

So I wrangled the van again and we (okay, mostly Kelly) somehow got the couch up the stairs. He even got the wonky leg fixed. At events, I urged people to sit on the couch. I'd take mini-breaks to go sit on it for a minute or two.

Basically, it made me feel better - just better - even catching a glimpse of it.

And then, a month ago, we bought a new house, which had a third floor loft (i.e. my office). And I started having powerful daydreams about sitting in a lozenge of mid-afternoon light, on my grandmother's couch, in my office, reading.

So when moving day came, I coerced the movers to Aqua. I further coerced them into considering carrying the beast-couch up two flights of stairs to the third floor.

When they said they didn't think it would make the turns, I quickly re-thought my nefarious plan (part the second), and decided to put the couch in the little room off my bedroom. Where my clothes were supposed to go.

And so, with much straining, the movers hoisted it over the balcony. M and I pushed at ground level so it would clear the balcony lip, then ran upstairs to help lift it over the rail.

And now I can see it from my bed, when I go to sleep and when I wake up.

I don't feel that rush of pleasure when I see it now, but I can't wait until we're settled and I have the leisure to sit in a lozenge of mid-afternoon light, in my bedroom, and read. On my granny's couch.

Art from the HEart: recap

This was the 10th anniversary of Art from the Heart. It was one of things I was looking forward to, after weeks of focusing intently on houses, both mine and other people's.

(Which is a rather cryptic way of saying that we bought one house and sold another in the last month...)

The last two show + sales featured lots of artists and lots of people looking at the art, and this year's Art from the Heart show was no different.

One hundred and forty-seven artists had three pieces each on display and hundreds more came out to see, which meant that the MERC community center was packed.

My usual modus operandi is to do a quick tour and find out where my art has been hung, so I can sit somewhere and watch people look at the work.



I found my work quickly and noted with some dismay that one of my pieces was hung sideways. But, since we'd dropped off our pieces without hangers attached (we went straight from the framer's to the art drop-off location), I couldn't in good conscience complain about that.

So I didn't complain.

I also try to make two-three circuits of the room, one to make first impressions of the other work on offer, to see what draws me and what doesn't, and then another and another so I can properly shed those first impressions.

At some point during these go-rounds, I read through the programme, which includes pictures and bios of the artists.

There were several returning artists this year, whose work I hailed while dodging the throngs of people. There were also several many new artists whose work said any number of things...



Finally, I usually like watching the people buying art, how quickly they walk, how quickly they decide...except this year, it was different.

Instead of a headlong rush on the art in the first half hour of the sale, there was apparently a steady stream of sales in the last few hours.

I was tickled, while walking from the community center playground with M and Aa towards the end of the sale, to see a girl unlock her bike with one of my pieces under her arm.

One thing the organizers did this year was to offer artists a ten minute consultations with visual art professionals - in this case, arts writer/educator Amy Karlinsky and artist Racheal Tycoles.




I met with Tycoles, whose work "depicts the post-industrial landscape as a reflection of the romanticism of the past, the dystopia of the present and the search for the sublime." She also works in photography, which I thought was almost too too apt.

So I turned my upside-down piece right-side-up so she could see it, and listened.

And then I accepted the money for my piece & trucked my other two pieces home in the late November fall sun.

I didn't wear a frock either Friday or Saturday. And I was a little overwhelmed, first by the crush of people at the opening reception Friday, and second by the rush of buying/selling houses.

(Don't even ASK how the manuscript-editing is going. But give me a few weeks and I should be chugging along...)

Reprint: The Next Chapter

A few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of swallowing the last gulp of my first cup of tea - and my nerves - before walking the block and a half to the CBC building.

I was scheduled for an interview with Shelagh Rogers of CBC's The Next Chapter, a weekly show about things bookish.

"Monday, November 9th, 2009

Lorna Crozier grew up poor in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, and later became one of Canada's best-known poets. Lorna writes about her upbringing and particularly her tough-and-tender mom in a memoir called Small Beneath the Sky. Jane Christmas recalls her extraordinary trip to Italy with her mother, a journey that was supposed to lead to a renaissance in their difficult relationship. Jane's travel memoir is called Incontinent on the Continent. Andreas Schroeder describes his strict Mennonite father, and Ariel Gordon starts a project to photograph the hands of Canadian authors."

The producers had gotten wind of the Hands On Project, something I conceived of during HOT AIR (i.e. the official blog of THIN AIR, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival).

Basically, because of my intense dislike of taking pictures of people, I hit upon the idea of taking pictures of writers' hands. No coaxing, no summoning of intimacy, just a writer's hands, plonked down on a table.

Plus, writing being frightfully reliant on hands, I thought it apt.

So, even though I wasn't half as eloquent as I'd hoped, it was fun to chat with Shelagh about the hands project. Even if she didn't mention that I'm a writer. And that I have a book out in the spring.

Fair's fair. I didn't mention that we'd met at the Manitoba Book Awards in the spring, where M mistakenly referred to her as "he," which led to a discussion of underwear (hers) and bathing suits that fit like bras (mine).

Or that my boss, Aqua Books owner Kelly Hughes, had been up to his usual on-stage tomfoolery at her expense.

The piece aired this week, and the podcast is available on the website, so...click click.

(If you want to hear my bit specifically, its the last segment & starts at 43:48.)

Reprint: The Montreal Review of Books

A review of Buffalo Runs Press' Rutting Season anthology, from the newly e-updated Montreal Review of Books:

"Rutting Season is essentially three chapbooks filled out with a conversation by the poets. The shop talk must have seemed a fine idea, but it seems too mutually congratulatory.

This is not one of those anthologies that justifies itself with a new approach to writing, a common programme. The poets are talented, especially Ariel Gordon, whose work is an image-driven sequence about the profound intimacy between a mother and a nursing child.

Michael Lithgow's work is more leisurely and meditative. He has the lyric poet's eye for revealing details and a good sense of when to modulate away from grand statements, but at the same time is interested in narrative and character. His poems are reflective and don't offer easy gratification. No fast food there."

(More of the review after the turn...)

"Linda Besner writes about recognizable human experiences; a trip to the eye doctor or the butcher, but she defamiliarizes the language by writing words backward, or occasionally rhyming consecutive words ('om comb').

She doesn't go as far as Erin Mouré or Steven McCaffery in undermining discourse, but she creates momentary nodes of unexpected meaning when the mind pauses over phrases like 'sag oven' or 'such a long emit.'

When we are told that a character wrote 'YAG' on his forehead with eyeliner, we perceive the strangeness and arbitrary quality of the term 'gay.' The next step might be a more radical (as in 'root') dismantling of language. On the other hand, there are advantages in stopping where she does: language retains some of its normal functions even as it is being mildly subverted.

Gordon, Besner, and Lithgow are poets to watch."

In the category of should-go-without-saying, but...fun!

Art from the HEart, yr. 3

Art From the Heart
10th Birthday Party
Art Show and Sale

Opening Night: Friday November 20th, 7 - 9 pm
430 Langside St.

Party attire please. Entrance is free, donations welcome

Saturday November 21st, 10 am - 4 pm

* * *

Join the festivities on Friday night with a giant birthday cake pumping out some sweet tunes at centre stage with DJ Mama Cutsworth, and some sweet treats and great Birthday 'give-aways', this art Sale will top the charts!

Celebrate 10 years of beauty, creativity and lots of cash going into the hands of inner-city and low-income artists. Over $30,000.00 has gone directly into the hands of our local artists over the past ten years, lets make this year another record breaker!

If you're shy of crowds come Saturday and enjoy the artwork in a more humble atmosphere.

For more information see our website at www.artfromtheheart.ca

* * *

This'll be my third year of placing art in Art from the Heart and M's first. Though it seems like a year-and-a-half since we dropped off our artworks, there's still a week or two before the sale...

Today I have two thoughts/feelings regarding said event:

1) gladness at another opportunity to show my images &
2) dismay at the phrase 'party attire.'

There's nothing like two weeks of moving gak to de-frock a girl...

packing up

We moved all this junk on the weekend, mostly because we suddenly bought a new house a week and a half ago and so suddenly had to have our old house clean and tidy.

Look Ma! A moving van full of what the home decorating industry calls "clutter." But which consists, I think, of all the things that make up a life: heaps of books, dog-eared and spine-split.

My high school English essays.

Picture frames that looked promising, once...

Except maybe for the George Foreman grill thing-y in the foreground, from my mum's buy-gifts-from-the-TV phase. Foolishly designed & hard to clean, it made it through three brunches and three post-brunch-clean-ups before it was tucked away.

[Why are you moving it at all, you ask? Because it is destined for a humdinger of a garage sale in the the spring, that's why...]

Flatteringly, the rental truck was wheezing louder than we were as we made our way the six blocks from the Spence Neighbourhood to Wolseley.

I've carefully NOT packed the notes on my sadly neglected manuscript, thankfully due at the end of December.

They (they being my unfailingly-supportive-writer-friends) say that this neglect will mean good things when I finally can stop living lightly in the old house (i.e. when it sells) and move into the new & newly-cluttered house. And can use my writing days, to, well, write.

I have also kept track of which box the books of poetry for December's poetry column in the WFP have gone into.

I also know where the lawyer/banker/insurance agent/real estate agent papers are. That's all.

More later! (And thanks to M. for letting me steal another image...it hasn't been the greatest six months for image-making, I hafta admit.)