the value of poems isn't dollars

Life keeps on truckin. Like...

... a truck? One of those big noisy and powerful transfer trucks? (That I always call "transford trucks" in my head. Do you?)

I'm listening to hiphop in earphones, and rocking out in my desk chair, swaying at the hips. It's Acadian rap, too. I'm too lazy to link to it, so if your interest is piqued, get that old Google going and type in "Radio Radio". Two dudes - or maybe more dudes than that, I don't know - from somewhere in New Brunswick that make rad music, no pun intended. Danceable and groovy and well put together, and yet silly at the same time. The best kind of music if you ask me.

Spring comes to Cape Breton, again. And again and again. Little fluff balls on the ends of maple trees, fill with water droplets on yet another misty day. I drive by them and smile, and think of Dr. Seuss. People complain about the week's forecast of rain. I like the coolness of the air, and all the different tones of greys and blues. But, I do like sun too. I like all the weather. I'm pretty easy that way.

On the weekend I was part of a poetry workshop. From 10 am to 4:30, with a break for lunch and a few random breaks for coffee and tea and fresh air. In a small hall that used to be a schoolhouse, and still has that wavy glass for windows. A professor from the local university, and maybe six others. We sat around a table all day and talked about poetry. We read it aloud to each other. We showed each other poems we'd written, read them aloud too. Talked about the lines, the images, what worked, what didn't. Lines can work like people can work. In all those different ways.

Now, I'm thinking that I'm in the midst of a kind of coming out. I'm realizing that - despite what culture tells me, despite what my family might tell me about "earning a living", despite how I think I shouldn't feel the way I do - I'm really attracted to -- poems. I am a poet. I was born this way. This is how God made me. I can't help it. I read poems and my heart beats a little faster. My skin flushes. Words together, on top of each other and flirting with one another, well they make me want to be in a room alone with them. It's sexy. It makes me feel alive.

But it's scary to admit this to yourself. And to go sit for a whole day with other people who are the same way - to openly admit it's valid to love like this - well, it's a little overwhelming. It's a door opening and then going to look and see what's behind it. Wait, there was a door THERE?

Because culturally, poems might as well be pieces of paper plastered to the sidewalk and walked on. Rained on. Mudded on. But some of us stop and look down and read them and say "hey, this is a talent, this person had, in order to do that, put those words like she did."

For example: Mary Oliver. "Logos." From "Why I Wake Early" (part of my new and growing collection of poetry books. Oh, they're so slim, you hardly notice you're buying it, and they all look so nice on the shelf together.)

Here we go, here's her poem:

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love,
the fish explode into many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don't worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.


***

OK, this is me again. Doesn't that just kill you? Or the opposite of kill you?

So the value of poems isn't dollars. It's love.

chopstick basket, part two

 

A friend on Facebook commented and asked about what it looked like, folded up. So, there it is. The chopstick basket folds up, and that's what it looks like when it does. So nifty! I love this basket more and more each day. And don't worry, Grandmaman, I have no intention whatsoever of painting this puppy.

***

Over on Kal Barteski's blog last week, people - mostly women - have been responding to Kal's request for "ugly beautiful truths." Kal started it off by admitting she writes thank-you cards but never mails them, she feels lots of pressure to keep up with the Internet's bloggers and crafters, and that she only washes the sheets once a month. It touched a chord in lots of her readers, and people felt compelled to leave their own ugly + beautiful truths. Some left their real names, some didn't. It's in the vein of "Post Secret", that website where people send in anonymous postcards with secrets. There is something very freeing about reading them, and also about writing your own. A release. 

It's gotten me thinking, certainly. Also this week, I started doing a writing exercise where I write for 10 to 15 minutes, just free writing, whatever comes to mind. Then at the end I rip up the page. Just rip it up so no-one can read it, or put it through the shredder. It's been really interesting - an exercise, literally, in letting go. I'm so used to writing in order to keep information, in order to be able to refer to it later. But with this, you really can't. You write it, then it's gone. No way to hold on to it. Even if you like the images, even if it would make a great poem, rip it up. Try it - it's really freeing.

Earlier this weekend I found myself in another town with a whole morning just to myself. No-one could reach me, I was on my own with a room (with an adjoining bathtub! So exciting for me, at home we only have a shower) and some time. So I took advantage of it. I did my daily writing exercise. As I was ripping it up, I liked the look of the random scraps, with little pieces of writing. Like mosaic shards. I arranged them. I took a picture to show you.

I also had the Globe and Mail, Saturday edition. Feeling a little guilty ("Oh, I'm ignoring world events!") but trying to let that feeling go, I only read the Style section. I came to a piece I really liked, about a designer who works with type and had made a table with her own letterforms etched in to it. I thought about keeping the page, and using it down the road in collage or somehow or other. But I decided instead to engage with it, then let it go. Here's what I did:

I didn't have any scissors. I just had my hands. So I ripped up the quote I wanted to save, and arranged it so I could fit it all in one photograph. Once I'd done that, well, there was nowhere else to go but into the recyclables. Rip up and squish the pretty, perfected plan. And then look - there's beauty there, too.

***

Then I got to writing. This past week was also International Women's Day. Some people question having such a day. "We don't need it anymore," they say. I feel like what happened on Kal's blog (what's still happening - have a look) dovetails with this holiday. Here's the free-writing I did that flowed from it.

The ugly beautiful truths

We are all here. We are imperfect. This is news? Yes, it is. Because: we live in an age of glossy magazines, of TVs that blare at us, we can't see for the glare of perfected images. Sexy and sexiness and giving in and giving it up for rewards - as women especially we are told to part our lips and make a low moaning sound. These roles can be fun but it is not all of it. It is not our every day reality.

The whole, the perfect product, comes after a lot of hard work. This is what the ugly beautiful truths is teaching me.

And I expect the opposite, I expect to just snap my fingers and have it be done. A great poem. A cake baked. A bed made. A relationship crafted and loved. A house dusted and vacuumed and kept that way. A body honed, toned. Babies raised and taught and helped to become good people. A world fair and just, with punishments for shitty deeds. A job where you feel competent and creative and conscious. A connection to the world around me, to the leaves and the trees. Actions made, having thought about them (instead of just posting crap out into the world, typing it out and hitting "post" or "send" without rereading, rethinking, letting time do its distillation of truth).

And reading these comments that women are leaving on Kal's website I see I am not the only one. We are all here, we are all imperfect. This is news? Yes, it's the daily news. It's breaking news, heart-breaking. And then, heart-making. (You've got to break things apart to make new things. Mosaics - sharp bits of ceramic.) We are all poems, we are all stories, we are all houses waiting to be dusted, we are each an equal and hearty part of a relationship in the middle of being crafted, loved. We are blood, we are feet and toes and hair and bellies, weight that stayed after making a baby, weight that came without warning, without reason, weight that won't go, weight that goes too fast, weight that just is without trying. We are hearts, minds, loves, hates, annoyed and convinced and contented and mild and strong and and and - all emotions and adjectives that men have too. We are the reason International Women's Day exists. Jill Scott asks "what would you do if I were gone?" I can't even believe the questions still exist, questioning that feminism has a need, a place.

But then again I can't believe all these amazing women have all these ugly, beautiful truths, and are ashamed of them,

and yet we do. I do.

I pick my nose.
I change my sheets three times a year, at best.
I am jealous of other women, who I should actually be supportive of.
I
I
I

I could keep going, for a long time. But I'm going to put that out there and use this exercise to get stronger. To get better at recognizing my own beauty. My own worth and inherent right to be here, imperfect as I am.

chopstick basket

A couple of weeks ago when I was in PEI, I went shopping. One of the stores I went to was called Moonsnail Soapworks, that had all kinds of neat stuff like soaps, scarves, lamps, cards, artwork. I let myself go a little nuts - almost anything that struck my fancy, I decided "I'll have it." That included this basket, for $20, made out of old recycled chopsticks. (They've been steamed and sanitized.) It made me happy the second I saw it. It folds in half for easy storage and transport, but more than that, it looks so cool!

It reminds me of interlaced fingers, like holding hands with a lover, but also it looks like it's floating. It also has a shape reminiscent of a boat hull. I like the way it plays with the light, the way the stripes run, the way it has texture and pattern and depth, on top of being useful.

It sits, by the way, on the windowsill of my bedroom. These shots were not staged or set in any way - mostly because I didn't have any extra time this week for cleaning and prepping. What you see is what you get. What you get is what I see, each day.

***

I'd been thinking about some ideas that I wanted to write about on here, this week. (Basically, as the week goes along and I'm at work or shovelling the ever-loving driveway or walking somewhere or driving somewhere, I mull stuff I'm thinking about and ask myself, "What will I get to write about or light upon this week?") Something that kept coming up in me is the importance of being earnest - of being yourself, as a writer or as an artist or just as a person. I think we live in a time when, especially for twenty-somethings, being hip and ironic is the best way to guard yourself. Being earnest and expressing emotions and feelings is the opposite of that, but - the flip side of it is that - the artists, writers and people I like most are the ones who can be earnest, who can speak truth. Speak their own truth.

And I've been thinking about how that all plays out with things like personal blogs and Facebook and all those outlets we have for presenting ourselves, for expressing "who we are". I think we all spend a lot of time crafting our image, and trying not to be vulnerable - i.e. trying not to say earnest things and express emotions and feelings.

(I do think that it's possible to be earnest and express one's truth in these media forms - I try to do that here, for one, plus there are other great folks out there doing their best to do the same - but I think it's hard. I think the tendency is always there to guard oneself - for good reason - and it's hard to put personal information "out there" where anyone can read it.)

Then I heard Adele on Q this week - who, by the way, is BLOWING MY MIND with her new album, oh my god what a voice - and caught the following snippet from her interview with Jian:

Jian: Did you have any concern about outing yourself so publically? [Her new record is all about a break-up.]

Adele: I did at the beginning....[after some tabloids printed stuff, I thought] Oh that's it, I'm never writing about myself again! But I have to believe in myself, you know, believe in my songs in order to part with them and let people hear them. Do you know what I mean? Cus the artists that I like, I believe every word they sing. So I gotta make sure that I believe every word I write, otherwise I'm doomed!

And I thought - yes. Adele's work hits me in the gut - it's raw, it's real, it's young AND it's earnest AND it's also unpretentious. If she's feeling these same things and still producing art and words that really work, then I'm on the right track. 

slushy rain and sushi in Sydney

Last weekend I headed for North River. The same people who put together the fabulous writers' festival, partnered with Cape Breton University and offered a workshop. A way to get the university out into the community. Six hours of writing. Thirty dollars. A professor to talk about narrative and short stories and beginnings. 10 am on a Saturday. I'm not a fan of giving up my free time but this seemed a no-brainer.

It's a thirty minute drive but there's construction on the way. I gave myself lots of time and ended up being early. So I was able to stop on the way, park and take some pictures and look out over the water. Think, how lucky am I. (Above is: my jeans, my pink Lole coat, my blue scarf. In dreary late Fall, I've got to have fierce colour.)

I kept going. I held the camera up as I drove. Snapped randomly, hoping it would somehow grab the beauty.

The Oregon Road. I took a short walk down it, since I was early. Thought about how many times I had walked or biked or drove down this road, heading to a piece of land, to friends, to a lover. How much that stretch of road used to mean to me. Still does mean. The friends and the lover have gone back to the US, their buildings and land no longer lived in or repaired. I've lost touch with those people - I haven't kept in touch. And unless I'm there in North River, I don't really think of them. Then I walk down the road and it's like I'm back in time. Back there again.

I really liked the way these raspberry canes by a brook looked, with green at the bottom progressing upward to yellow then red, so uniformly. Like something Andy Goldsworthy would have done on purpose, yet here it just was.

In the hall, coffee was on. We filled mugs and sat around a big table. Do not forget that though you may be discussing prose, imagery, symbolism here in this hall, it is also used for darts. For other community gatherings. And they are no less meaningful. Useful.

(The hall is also used for Bingo.)

Driving home in the slushy rain with so much to think about. Stopped for the ever-loving construction. I love the way headlights and streetlights look through a rain-covered windshield.

Boats up on stands. This gravel was used as a parking lot all summer. Now it is storage. The boats people came to float away on, now hauled in and put on jack-stands. Supported, settling in for winter.

Another day this week I drove to Sydney. Coming over Kelly's Mountain there was some rain, edging towards snow. I stopped at the lookoff, I had to, there was this massive cloud over the Seal Island Bridge. This above is what you saw looking to your left. Then below is what was to the right.

Driving into Sydney on Kings Road, a sign advertised sushi. "Oki Maka Sushi, 196 Charlotte St." What?!? Sushi in Sydney? What I've wanted for so long? I've got to check this out. I decided I would  look for it after my appointment.

Walking into the building where my appointment was, I saw this graffiti. Close enough, I thought. Looks like today is sushi day.

And so I found them. With an hour to spare before they closed. I think I'll probably end up doing a whole post about them - I took more pictures than this. Overall it was good, a little on the bland side but fresh. I liked the spicy salmon roll the best, I suppose because it had the most flavor. But honestly? I was really happy just to be IN a sushi restaurant, on Cape Breton Island. Smelling pickled ginger and soy sauce.

Back to work. The calendar here at work - with the lovely typography, you remember - has this image for November. I think it fits - as dreary as it is, because hey, November IS dreary! Some dude out shooting with his dogs. The leaves off the trees. The sky grey. I can almost hear the lonely singular sound of the gunshot. Then grey silence.

The tree under which I park my car. Look up, look way up. This is November. Already, here it is, the second last month. We get ready to fall back an hour - I don't know if I'll ever entirely understand Daylight Savings, but whatever - and keep on falling, falling into winter. Falling in love with our own projects. Our own faults and flaws. Nature changes and time relentlessly moves forward and so with it, do we.

cabot trail writers' festival (october 1-3)

Every week I come to the blog posting time feeling a number of things. One is excitement, that jazzed up feeling of getting ready to create, of feeling good about creating. Inspired to present my life and my past week, to be inspired by it. The other is a nervousness, somewhat similar to when I write creatively in other ways or paint or make art (although these days I haven't made much art). The difference is that with this creation, once I click on "publish," it's out there for the world to see. That makes me want to spend more time refining it, reading it over, checking it to make sure it's exactly how I want it to be. The impression I want to make (or think at the time that I'm making). And most of the time I don't actually have the time for this kind of revision. In fact, sometimes I even write while at work, while standing at the front desk computer, with the phone ringing and customers coming in and out. Not the best way to focus!

So here we are again. The eve of a Thursday. I'm at the library - although not working! sitting at a computer in the CAP site - thinking that perhaps it's a good idea to invest some downtime into a blog post, so I don't feel rushed and frustrated about it. It's a quiet evening in Baddeck, although there are still tourists around. It's the middle of Celtic Colours week - a 10-day festival celebrating Cape Breton celtic music, and the various offshoots of culture. Like dance, Gaelic, story-telling.

Last weekend, not the Thanksgiving one but the weekend before, I attended the second annual Cabot Trail Writers' Festival, held in North River. I used to spend summers in North River - from 2002 all the way to 2006. I could say more about my time there - and what it was like to go back there - but first let's get started on the photos.

Above: On the way to North River, stopped for construction. This is the season for road-building, it seems. They're re-doing a big stretch of the Cabot Trail on the way to North River, as well as the road between the village of Baddeck and my house. Yes, it's a pain in the butt, and yes, I was late when I took this photo, but at the same time it's fun to watch the work being done, and feel the new, smoother road beneath your tires.

This is the second floor at Kathy and Donald's, the house where I used to board. The feet are all mine.

So I got to North River that Saturday morning and spent the day in workshops with the likes of Michael Crummey and Sheree Fitch. It was really good to sit with other writers and talk about writing. About the guts of it, the mechanics of how it is done. Although, I'll admit, it was scary and kind of intense, too. Mainly because I was tired - and social situations always take a lot out of me. And because it was one of those things where you want to get as much as you possibly can out of it - meet as many folks, learn as many tricks. Which, is tiring.

That evening, after a brief nap and meal back at Kathy and Donald's, I went back to the North River hall. A local playwright had adapted an Alastair MacLeod short story into a cross between a dramatic reading and a play. The above photo is the empty stage waiting for players. And some empty chairs both in the audience and onstage.

And after the play? Music, of course! Festival attendees and local people talked to one another while Rocky Shore played traditional tunes. It's funny how photos are quiet - but the scene when this photo was taken was quite loud!

Up on the stage a little bookstore was set up. A local potter made these little plates.

I stood on the stage to take this photo. I love that my friends Ruth and Aaron are dancing in the background.

The next morning - Sunday. I woke tired, but determined to take in the last of the festival. I left the car at Kathy and Donald's and walked to the hall, the same walk I used to do every day to work in the pottery shop. This is the view from the North River Bridge, looking north.

And this is what you see when you walk across the bridge, turn left onto the Oregon Road, and walk up the hill, turn around and look back.

Then, from the same spot, you look up the road. There is the pottery shop where I worked for six summers! It is in an old schoolhouse, and the building is over 100 years old. Just behind the pottery shop and out of view of this photo is the small community hall which served as the hub of the festival.

That morning we gathered for a panel of the three featured authors. From left: Marq de Villiers, Sheree Fitch, and Michael Crummey. Behind them is the stage with the bookstore. I love how colorful Sheree is!

Another shot of the writers who make a living from their work. (And of whom I am therefore in awe.) That's Frank MacDonald of Inverness, himself a published author, on the right, acting as panel moderator.

On the walk home to Kathy and Donald's, I walked slowly. Letting my brain relax, my legs and arms move. Checking out the beautiful weeds, plants going to seed in the ditches. Like this one.

Kathy's barn. The low mountains beyond. Some colour coming into the trees already. This view is etched into my heart like a wood carving, from six summers of walking by it. Looking out over it.

Kathy's barn as viewed through her gate. K is for Kerr. Pronounced like "car". Can you see the horse between the letter K and the barn? She's brown and small and fades into the background.

And then. Oh, and then. This week, I started to read the copy of Galore I had bought at the bookstore.

A little piece of the Rock for me - and it's the kind of book that sucks you in, holds you hostage. A true "tale". A yarn, spun around rocks and bays and ice floes and people. Tied to your finger. Marvellous, marvellous. A saga - and goodness knows I love a good saga! A Newfoundland outport called Paradise Deep, and its people, its plants and animals, its mystery and magic. This novel is seriously good stuff - you don't even really notice you're reading, your eyes are following words but you're in the story. Man, he is good.

(Not to mention, it has lovely typography.)

Going to the Writers' Festival - and reading the work of someone who is both a Canadian bestselling author and also a down-to-earth person I met and did a workshop with - show me that like yoga, like gardening, like anything you want to learn how to do better, what it comes down to is your daily practice. It's not necessarily a stroke of genius you have one day and then you suddenly spit out a bestselling book. It's putting yourself where your dreams are. Getting out of bed in the morning and showing up to events. Workshops. And practicing. Practicing. Over and over. Beginning again every day.