Sat out back with a small glass of wine. The moon was rising. Night so cool, so pleasing against the skin. The quiet calms. And darkness makes tomorrow possible.
I’ve been packing up books and clothing. We leave Edmonton in two days and onto an altered trajectory.
Transitions and change can unsettle, and the animal heart longs for consistency. That’s why it beats the way it does.
But, as Octavia Butler said, Life is change.
Change also makes new things possible.
Sounds like a title from a romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and, hmmmm… Jude Law! Why not? (But who would carry the baby? I think it ought to be Hugh Grant. What with his comedic tortured and sheepish brow schtick.)
<grin>
Next week we will be travelling back to Burnaby. 9 1/2 months have passed! So very quickly I don’t know what can be said. We will head south on the #2, and stop in Calgary for a few nights before taking that familiar pass through the Rockies. I wonder how many times I’ve driven that route? Too many. Now that I’m in my forties I’m finding it more difficult to do the drive in one day. I think this might be my measure of whether or not I’ve passed the threshold into a particular kind of “older” body. Whether or not you have the endurance and stamina to drive for twelve hours straight (with a break for lunch).
You could have gotten your learner’s license in AB and helped me drive home, I told my daughter. Yah, helped you crash, she scoffed. Both my children (tho my son, now, is legally an adult!) have no interest in getting their driver’s license. It does not signify a rite of passage, nor do they associate it with autonomy and freedom…. We can get where we want on transit, they say, with a careless shrug of their shoulders. But, what about in the case of an emergency? I ask. We can call 911, they say. I shrug! On an environmental level, it’s great that they’re not aching to buy a car and add to the emissions problem. On another level, a dated and raised-in-the-country level, I cannot understand their lack of desire for a driver’s license! Maybe it’s a split between an urban and rural frame of mind. I grew up knowing that I could only get to where I wanted after I had my driver’s license. I think there’s some hard-wiring involved as well. The fight or flight wiring. I feel the need to be confident that I can drive away, whenever I want, should I have the desire or need. When the pandemic sweeps the country (Tiptree, “The Screwfly Solution”), when the aliens land (H.G. Wells’, The War of the Worlds), when the rapture goes bad (Jim Munroe’s, Therefore Repent!) … you’re not gonna want to stand in line at the Greyhound station. I told you so! I’ll tell my no-license children. Shut up, Mummy. Drive!
In fact, the very first functioning time travel apparatus could well be a novel. Imagine– you pick up a book and follow the life of the central character from infancy to adulthood, into old age, then death. 300 – 400 pages, say. I could read it in one day. Yet in reading the book, and if it’s well-written, I can feel the experience of time via the vehicle of the characters, and in the midst of vicariously experiencing fictional lives, I experience an intact alternate time bubble while simultaneously existing in my own. They’re just words on a page! Super trippy!
I knew there must be something written about it, but a quick cursory search didn’t bring up anything that I wanted. So I turned to a feminist SF listserv I belong to and posted my question to the group mind. I had two lead within seconds. Literally. The people on this listserv are well-read, wide ranging readers, and if it’s in any way connected to SF, and books (as well as a great many other areas, I kid you not) someone will have a suggestion. In seconds! Two members offered up these suggestions:
Time and Narrative (Vol. I, II, II– clearly, there’s a lot to write about!!!) by Paul Ricoeur
About Time: Narrative, Fiction and the Philosophy of Time, by Mark Currie
Einstein’s Dreams, by Allan Lightman
I’ve been thinking about the importance of constructing a believable bubble of time in narrative fiction because during the fantasy writing workshop I facilitated last weekend, I briefly mentioned the connections between time and setting…. There needs to be an awareness of how much time is passing in the novel, for the characters, and the semblance of its ‘natural’ flow in and around setting. Even though most readers are not focussing so keenly on how time is playing out, their intuitive sense of perceiving time will be twigged when it’s not flowing seamlessly. We can be snagged by something that yanks us out of the illusion of fictional time.
Writers new to their practice might find themself trying to fix time and setting in particular ways. Time-relative words like “Now” signify different moments for the character, the writer, and the reader. Pointing to “now-ness” actually points to the impossibility of making it mean the same thing for everyone at the same time. It’s a time connundrum. In order to keep the bubble of character time intact, there’s no need to use the word, “now”. Now is already implied if the character is just doing things in her space-time. A similar thing happens with spatial words like “here” or “there”.
Time…. I marvel.
Wiscon was intense, wondrous and inspiring! Sooo many feminist writers and readers– I didn’t realize just how many until I saw everyone at the Tiptree award ceremony and GOH speeches. Holy smokes! I wondered. This is a power indeed. Greer Gilman was awarded for her complex and profound novel (tho clearly it breaches the borders of “novel” just as it expands notions of gender), Cloud and Ashes, and GOHs Nnedi Okorafor and Mary Anne Mohanraj gave stunning and deeply inspiring speeches. Met many amazing feminist writers of colour, like Neesha Meminger (Shine, Coconut Moon) and was so grateful…. I also couldn’t help myself and was all, well, dog-like fawning (hmmmm, why a fawn? are they “fawn-ish”?) over Carol Emshwiller and asked if I could take a photo with her. ^___^. I am such a huge fan of her biting, hilarious intensely feminist novel, Carmen Dog. It’s brilliant.
Now it’s time to change the channel. I’m facilitating a creative writing workshop at Women’s Words this coming weekend. After that I’m looking forward to the plunge back into the deep and dark waters of writing and writing. I need to submerge. The darkness calls.
I was just skyping with my ex girlfriend and I was bemoaning the latest gender fiasco that I experienced during my flight back from Toronto. A young francophone mum (with hair cropped as short as mine) was travelling with her young daughter, who was about three years old. We had just pulled up to the accordion gate and people began turning on their cellphones, etc, retrieving items from the overhead bins. The little girl was banging her little suitcase back and forth, the extended handle coming rather close to my face.
Don’t do that, the young mother said, in French. Why not? the girl asked. Because you might hit the garcon, the mother replied.
Garcon? Garcon?! How old is a garcon? Is that a young man? A boy? Wasn’t man, “l’homme”? I wondered. At what point is a boy a man? I was so caught up with the finer points of the translative and the decoding of age that I by-passed gender. At least, I fumed, let me be my age, woman!
Garcon, because my hair is cropped, I don’t wear makeup, and I was wearing a blue shirt? It’s also our height, I said to my ex girlfriend, who is also my height, and sometimes mistaken for a boy. When our height is inserted into this equation, it’s been sealed. ( But, I’d like to point out, I have grey hair at the temples…. And, I see numerous shorter Italian Canadian men at the Italian market!) So, race is a factor too.
Maybe she didn’t really look at you, my sister suggested. Maybe her eyes skimmed over the “shape” of me…. Does this matter? I’m not sure. It speaks of the young mother’s worldview– not mine. I wonder if there will come a day when no one will make assumptions of gender based upon appearance, and that will be the normative practice. How marvellous that would be! To be free from the limitations and prescriptive narratives that have been married to the notions of “woman” and “man”. Clearly I’m not there, yet, because it bothers me to be called a “man” or “boy” (or garcon) and I’m identifying the mum as a woman and her child as a little girl based upon the normative cues she is using to decode me…. Confounding! The difference might be that I’m aware of the filter and can peel it away, whereas I have a sense that she does not know that a filter even exists….
But it’s not at just the level of gender– it also swirls with race, height, age. The perfect storm, I said to my ex girlfriend.
Why not just say, “person”? <crooked grin>
I’ve been bemused and hopeful about the gender thing, however, because my teen-aged daughter and several of her friends are enamoured of a Japanese rock star called Miyavi. He has the prettiest and most beautiful face I’ve seen in a very long time…. He is married to a beautiful young woman, and they have a new baby and he can totally ”pass as a young woman” (see! I’m still trapped by that code!!!!). I ask my daughter questions: are all his fans female? No, he has male fans too, my daughter informs me. Gay or straight? Both, she says. He’s eye candy, she says. Interestinger and interestinger.
He’s really good on the guitar!
He’s a lovely gender role model for the 21rst century.
My poor ole’ iBook has been on its last nodes for many months. I’d been losing various capabilities, one by one, kinda like Tom Hank’s raft in Castaway. First I lost youtube, then, my camera for skype was next to go. Last week I lost my printer. Maybe it’s time, my friends and family said, gently and compassionate. I can still write on it! I exclaimed. But that little grey rectangle message, the one in multiple languages, telling me to turn off the power and restart…. Ohhhh, that little message felt like the beginning of the end. Maybe I’ll write a letter to the Public Relations department at Apple, I told my friends. They must have programs where they send refurbished laptops to school classrooms as a charitable act. I will write them a letter and ask them very nicely for a refurbished laptop so that I can continue writing my novels. It’s not that I think I “deserve” one– only that I truly need one and I’m not too proud to ask! Also, what if they say, “yes!” ?! The worst they can do is say, “no”, and I wouldn’t have lost anything. My Wilson is almost gone, anyway….
Do you know how to use a PC, my sister asked. I’ve worked on them at the last three wirs, I said. I don’t do anything special. Just write stories, look at photos, go to youtube, and Skype. I’m a simple online creature…. My sister and brother-in-law have sent me a new Dell! It is so sleek and blue and the letters aren’t faded off the keyboard! I am deeply grateful and so touched. You can use it until you’ve saved enough money for a new Apple, they said. I’m gonna use it until the letters have faded off the keyboard like Wilson! Now I can do research at various sites and it won’t freeze. (My daughter informed me, when I told her that she shouldn’t go to dubious sites because it’s gonna pick up bugs, that the toad-licking site I went to was the worse kind of place possible. <teehee>) (Note: licking the toad will not make you high.)
I wonder if writing on a PC will affect subject matter and content? Who knows? I mean, a road trip in a camper trailer is gonna be different from a trip taken in a convertible. (And I’m not saying which is which, either! (~__^)
Thank you, sister and brother-in-law!
Note to folks who are considering writing as their career: even with numerous books and lovely gigs like writer-in-residencies, you might not be earning enough income to easily go out and buy a new laptop when the old one bites it. This is not a sob story– it’s just real. But if you have friends and family who support you, who are cheering you as you keep on reaching, you will be able to make the long haul…. I mean, it’s not like I go drop by friends’ houses right before dinner time in order to score a free meal…. Heeheeeheee. (Tho I would if I had to. Okay, maybe not! I dunno!). You gotta really love the work that you do for it to be “worth it” (how one measures is subjective). And, if you’re blessed with family and friends who also believe in the work that you do, ohhhh, how amazing. A gift immeasurable.
I don’t think I properly understood what the Forest of Reading events will be like at Harbourfront Centre…. Apparently there will be THOUSANDS of children and youth, there. Wah! That’s a lot of people! I dinna know. My friend and poetry collaboratuer, David, will be my guest during the festivities. (If we’re all lucky he will dress up as Alice in Wonderland, and steal the entire show!)
Thursday and Friday are the library readings and Friday evening David and I will be launching our little poetry book at Toronto Women’s Bookstore. Please join us for boozy poems, treats and a little drinkie. Please make a donation for the bookstore at the door!
Later this afternoon, I’m heading out to get new author photos taken by Kiely Ramos. I love her photos– usually I hate the pics people take of me (you know how it is: that negative voice that tells you, “You look too_____
1) Professional photographers are losing gigs big-time because of the proliferation of photos online. Magazines/journals/dailies/publishers/etc. can duck into these publically accessible photo storage sites and sift through amatuer shots and buy them for super cheap rates. Fewer and fewer professional photographers are being hired for specific stories/projects. It’s a bad situation for them. So– if you need publicity photos, hire a pro! You’ll look great, and, it’s keeping money in the professional arts!
2) As my father used to say, “Be Pu-LOUD!” Be proud of your age, the experience etched upon your skin, the lines of character, suffering, and yes, even sun damage that’s a part of aging. Aging faces are interesting and beautiful, distinct and complex. I hate beauty products that are called, “anti-aging”. Against aging?
“Do you want to live forever?” Valeria, from Conan the Barbarian
The morning howled, and spring was pelted senseless. I trudged to the bus stop, bent over like a question mark, my red mental illness toque barely visible in the gusts of white out. I had to run across the road with my eyes closed because I was facing the wind, and the pellets of snow were scoring my eyeballs. “Wahhhh!” I shouted, as I lurched Russian roulette-like, through the slush.
The poor yellow and red tulips in front of the house are covered in gingerbread icing snow. The new tender leaves on the trees.
(My red mental illness toque doesn’t signify that I’m going through a depressive stage– I bought it when I was depressed, and it kept me warm, then, because I was so very cold. When I had to move to AB I thought, hey, it’s gonna be damn cold in Edmonton! Where’s that mental illness toque? Some people get tattoos to mark their significant moments. I got a toque!)
I had told my daughter that it was too warm and utterly unseasonal to make any more oden (Jpnse stew) until the late autumn…. Looks like there’s time for one more pot!
* * *
On May Day I was invited to the Edmonton Institute for Women to visit with the book club there. It was an amazing experience and the women had read Half World with such care– I was totemo arigatai…. On May 8th and 9th, weather permitting, there will be a book sale fundraiser with all proceeds going to the Edmonton Institute for Women Library. If you’re out and about that day please stop by at 10706 -84 Ave. 10 AM-6PM.
It all slipped between my fingers as if I had been cupping water. Obi Wan, can you make a difference? Last weekend I was in Calgary for a book club meeting at Monkeyshines. The book club participants ranged in age from 4-5 years old to in their late 50s. Generations of readers and eager, inquiring minds. I could not keep up with their fast-paced questions and I left, bemused, and happy. I also found out that Leonard Nimoy was in town for a comics con! Leonard Nimoy, I screamed. I loved SPOCK! Spock saved my LIFE as a child, because through him I could see a better world guided by calm and reason rather than the unwieldy mess of rampant human emotions. Should I go to the con? I wondered. Should I stand in the 3-hr line up to see my childhood savior???
The actor is not the character, my daughter said in her dry voice.
I know that! I said, more than a little defensive.
Sometimes it’s better to keep our childhood heroes in our memories and not meet them in person. Because then it will alter everything, my sister said.
Damnit, Jim! Why must they be so logical!
everything in relief or cut-out silhouettes. blackness. a house across the street is only there because of the orange light of the window. imagine.
only a window.
night.
how dark this room. the reflection of red tail lights suggests the car. a silhouette walks along the sidewalk. if he sees the glow of the laptop in my face.
a pale moon inside a black window.
how still
