noisy forest

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. October 10, 2013.

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All the overweening ambition of the past year has caught up with me. Which is to say that I'm lousy with deadlines but seem to spend most of my time feeling achy and tired (or complaining about same. See?)

And I haven't been to the forest for ages. After a good run of once- or even twice-a-week visits, I managed to find compelling reasons to not take myself for good long walks.

So this morning I drug myself to the forest.

And it was beautiful...but noisy. Two trains rattling along Wilkes. Multiple airplanes, taking off and landing at the nearby airport. Ambulance sirens from Grant. Trembling aspen leaves, trembling. The jangle of dog collars. The flick of leaves as they fell to the ground. My feet, crunching leaves.

I had trouble finding mushrooms under all the leaf litter. I was distracted by all the movement in the periphery.

But I walked. And calmed down. And took some pictures I was happy with.

A Nice Cup of Tea

I have been drinking hot sweet milky tea since I was eleven. I love everything about it.

I like going for walks with a cup of tea in my travel mug. I like sitting at my desk and writing with a cup of tea at my elbow. I like making M make me tea. (And, when the girl is old enough, I will teach her to make me tea.)

Over the years, various people have tried to shame me over the amount of sugar I use in my tea. And I mostly shout at them until they go away.

A few years ago, realizing that my metabolism was slowing down and that I do use too much sugar, I foolishly tried to cut out some out.

After a week or two I realized that I was fiddling with the one thing that consistently makes me happy. And that I relied on the boost the sugar was giving me in addition to the caffeine.

Well, today on Facebook, someone shared a link from a 1945 essay George Orwell wrote about making the perfect cup of tea.

And I was mostly in agreement with him until I got to these two paragraphs:

"Lastly, tea — unless one is drinking it in the Russian style — should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

Some people would answer that they don’t like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again."

I promptly got M's attention and read the offending paragraphs to him, mostly because I wanted him to feel better about himself.

I felt good about making him feel good, until he said, "See!?! You should try going two weeks without sugar!"

I stared at him, flabbergasted, and retorted, "Only if you cut the sugar from your coffee!"

"Fine!" he said.

We stared at each other.

"Starting when?" I asked.

"Tomorrow morning," he answered.

And now I'm going to have to do it. Because of George Orwell and M and my bloody metabolism. All of which is to say: WAAAAAH!

Holiday reading

So I have nearly three weeks off this holiday season. 

And believe-you-me, I need every goddamn minute to recover from this hellbent-for-leather fall-and-winter. Soooo many new-to-me projects, soo many grant apps, so many deadlines. 

While it was all stuff I wanted and needed to do, I've been feeling rather...blowsy...of late.

As such, this holiday is all about resting but also getting-the-fuck back to work.

I've earmarked a pile of titles for this holiday season and thought I'd share them with you...

You WIN Reads:

A Page From the Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster (from Brick Books via Goodreads)

Honore Jaxon: Prairie Visionary by Donald B. Smith (from Coteau Books via Facebook)

Pressmate(s) Forever:

A Peepshow with Views of the Interior: Paratexts by Aislinn Hunter

Hummingbird by John Wall Barger

I bought these titles as a part of Palimpsest's 3-for-2 sale, which means that I'll also be getting Hard Ass by Sharon McCartney in spring 2013.

It's About GODDAMN Time Reads:

Archive of the Undressed by Jeanette Lynes

A Book of Great Worth by Dave Margoshes

Monkey Ranch by Julie Bruck

Winnipeg 1912 by Jim Blanchard

Serendipitous Bookstore Finds:

Steveston by Daphne Marlatt and Robert Minden

And, having purchased seven copies of Imagining Winnipeg: History Through the Photographs of L.B. Foote for friends/family for Xmas, I plan to spend several hours with MY copy over the next coupla weeks. I feel like I haven't looked at the photos in ages...

Pumpkinhead!

* * *

(Clockwise from top left): The ghost pumpkin M carved into sugar skull goodness doing double-duty as my noggin; soontofu chigae and all the fixings from Kimch'i in the Exchange with my friend Perry after a morning of postering for UMP's Grassy Narrows event; still-life with slippers, specifically, M's and mine on the floor in front of our bed this morning; Kirsten Wurrman introducing Cheryl Miki and I at an Imagining Winnipeg event at Westwood Library,

* * *

Is it just me, or has this fall been particularly pumpkinhead-y? (By which I mean chock full of deadlines and events...)

But in amidst the tearing around and the bleeding eyes (and that cold that lasted three weeks), there was lots of good stuff that I sort of wanted to acknowledge for myself, if no one else.

Like dressing up Aa in a sugar skull costume that involved an involved face painting and watching M apply all his small/precise skills to the ghost pumpkin he'd picked up.

Like unearthing my slippers and noting ruefully the wear pattern in the rabbit fur that edges it. I hate the idea of being predictable, but apparently I cross my ankles the exact same way every night, when sitting on the couch watching TV with M.

Like all the events, some for UMP and some on my own behalf. I sometimes forget, in the midst of planning and promoting said events, how necessary they are, not for selling books (or not only) but also for connecting, as people, with audiences. 

For instance, I spent an hour or so on election night in the basement of Westwood Library. I was there because I was doing a slideshow/talk from UMP's Imagining Winnipeg photo book with my smart-as-a-whip colleague Cheryl Miki. And I couldn't help but notice how everyone was made just a little bit happier by sitting in the dark, looking at photos and talking about bad old Winnipeg.

But after the outward push of effort out in the world this fall, I'm greatly looking forward to the blank slate that is the winter. I have one last deadline and then my writing days are ALL MINE.

Which is such a goddamn relief.

Has your fall ALSO been a great and marvelous gongshow? I'm curious...

Dry Hump!

My books were here! And I wasn't! Sob!

M'aidez!

On May 1st, the fifth year of the May Day Poetry Project will whir and hum and kick and come to life again.

This means poets and poetry and commentary on said poetry.

For me, it means thinking about the poem I'm going to write today, tomorrow, later this week. Thinking incessantly about poetry.

Fun, especially after the month I've had...illness and deadlines and nasty unrelenting weather. And then the nice hippy lady that enables my writing by accepting money to care for Aa did something bad to her knee. ..

(Um, before I forget myself, what with the complaining: email me if you want to sign up!)

* * *

UPDATE: Last night, M and I trolled the internet in search of a spring hat for May Day (i.e. a new template).

We found a modified Wordpress template called Coffee Desk and installed all its bells and whistles in less than an hour.

And so, I would like to take this opportunity to take back all my complaints about M's various internet frenzies...

I would also like to note that almost all our regulars are back this year. We've got one new poet - Linda Besner, my fellow Rutting Season author - and I'm looking forward to one or two more tyros.

whistling dixie

There's a giant D engraved onto one of the ridges that enclose St. George, Utah, where we've taken up a temporary residence. At night, the D glows. Eerily.

The state university, located among the motor hotels and real estate offices of downtown St. George, is called Dixie State.



I have no idea what a "dixie" is or even where this post is going, but, for M and I, this trip has been all about "whistling dixie."

Between Aa and our various committments, we've been fairly run off our feet.

Which has been well-documented here - I've even had to invent a new topic category called "complaining."



Which will hopefully cease once I settle into the new routine, mid-March or thereabouts.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share a few pictures I took late today, when in the midst of laundry and Aa's meal-time, M and I were told to take a walk.

So we drove ten minutes out of town and pulled into a small-ish parking lot just off the highway.



Five minutes later, we were billy-goating from one crag to another in Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, rock-picking on the flats and horizon-tweaking on the edges.

And, for nearly ten minutes, we sat and held each other and took deep breaths.

And it was bright and fine and I do like my love very much and I'm so glad for the opportunities I've been given and also earned this past year.

sorely

Does anyone want to sleep for me? Because I'm finding it took up a lot of my time this week...two, count'em two, nights I feel asleep before 10 pm.

And both times I fell asleep in places not-my-bed. Once it was the floor in the hallway, listening to M try to talk Aa down from her pre-bed mosh-pit-routine in the crib.

"Aa, can you sit down for Da-da?"
Silence, then crashing-type noises.
"No, sit."
Silence.
"Aa, can you lie down?"
Silence.
"What a good girl you are!"
Beat.
"Dan-cing! Dan-cing!"
Jumping-type noises.
"No, Aa, sit down!"
Repeat.

The other was on the bed in Aa's room while M read Aa a story.

And I'm still tired and feeling very sorry for myself. But I won't go on (and on) as is my wont when I am feeling woe-is-me-ish.

Instead I will list off my upcoming deadlines, even just as a way of naming and numbering them for my own purposes:

Review for the Winnipeg Free Press of Anne Simpson's new novel.

Article for the spring issue of Prairie BOOKS now. Undetermined subject, most likely poetry.

Curriculum for the upcoming Creative Retirement poetry workshop.

Sample column for as-yet-confirmed weekly column.

Marketing materials for upcoming Aqua Books event (FYM: Spousal Support).

Finally, I have to do another draft of Hump before sending it off to a press. And I also have to re-commence my reading of Edisonia for the libretto I'm writing.

All of which makes me want to go to sleep. Yaaaawn.

(And I'm unhappy to report that my submission to the CBC Literary Awards was not shortlisted for the poetry prize, despite my fervent hopeful hopes...)