Growing Versions

A person will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push that door. - Ludwig Wittgenstein

 Industries and economies rely on us seeing weeds.  What would happen if economies relied on us seeing seeds instead?

(Source: Gooselane Editions, 2013) Back when I was a feckless university student, I ended up going one day to an exhibit of Mary Pratt's work at the Art Gallery of NS.  As undomestic as I was back then, her work moved me tremendously and she instantly became one of my favourite artists. She paints, with breathtaking results, objects that you find in any home, often the kitchen. Her images of bowls of jelly, saran wrap covering food and fruit are so realistic it is hard to believe that they are paintings and not photographs.  There is a retrospective exhibit in Halifax right now celebrating her work and recently there was an article on cbc.ca quoting her impressions of her own work. As I read her thoughts, looking back at many of her creations, I really understood where she is coming from.  Time and time again I see in my midst things of beauty. Symbols of where I am today that I feel compelled to capture somehow, albeit it with oceans less talent and skill than Mary ...

A friend and I were out for walk on one of the very first hot days of the summer season.  As we walked, we reminisced about really great summers we've had.  Some of the summers that linger in my memory are the summers I did not necessarily do a lot that was exciting, but rather were times when I was able to fully respond to the moment. The summer I got married, I moved back from the west coast and spent the summer picking berries, making jam and wedding invitations and swimming at the beach in between.  Another summer, we moved to an apartment in the city with just one bag each containing only just enough clothes and toy and books to keep us going all summer. The common denominator, of course, was simplicity.  Everything was boiled down.  There was less stuff to keep track of and maintain.  The time we saved by not being absorbed by all the stuff, that seems to bog me down now, we put to good use.  Those precious summer days were savoured becaus...

(i do not know what it is about you that  closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is  deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands e.e. cummings, 1935

"Where am I going tomorrow?" Preschool. "What about the other tomorrow?" That is a free day.

The other day I had a migraine.  I have had them before.  However, before Friday, I did not realize that I had.  I have been incapacitated for a day or two here and there by, yes, a headache, but also a range of other symptoms, that all this time, have been preventing me from seeing them for what they were, migraines.  As I slowly climbed out of the hole of weakness and a certain flatness that the migraine had dug for me, I finally started to connect dots that have likely been sitting there for years. The next day as I stood in the hot shower,  and let the steaming water run down over my body, the realization that this is what had just happened and had happened many times before, made me feel slightly stupid. Relieved, but stupid. Everyday I allow myself to be inundated by information. On a daily basis, I read pr-ified versions of other people's lives and reviews and memes and essays and news stories and progress reports and information letters and school...

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. -Albert Camus

 I often am up with my kids in the night, although their needs at night are considerably lower than they were 3 years ago.  Being up at night with my kids is a sure source of aggravation and stress.  Their restlessness, illness or excitement impose challenges to me being awake alone or asleep. However, every once in a while, we are awake together at night and I see them in new, lower light.  I see their silhouettes against the sky, the stars and the moon. My daughter pretended to be a Parks Canada interpreter on our moon lit walk. "These rocks are 570 million years old." "The moon controls the waves." "The  lighthouse keeps the ships away from the rocks" "I see one star, I see two, I see three, four, five, six, a million."

I had the best nap once.  My mind still floats to the moment when I awoke from it.  I was lying in a bed in an old cottage. The roar of the ocean could be heard in the distance.  I had been so overcome with sleepiness when the nap settled in, that I bisected the bed diagonally with my body.  As I awoke, I remember my eyes flicking open and staring, upside down, at a wall painted turquoise, bathed in the late afternoon light--slowly remembering where I was and what I was looking at. My eyes rested on that spot for several minutes while I soaked up the feeling of being truly rested. I was exactly the right temperature and feeling awake in a way that I had not for many months.  I felt a seam in my world open. I stood up and walked right through it into a new life.  There was my life before  that nap and the new one after .  I was held aloft for hours by its elegant perfection.It must have been good, since I can remember it so well 4 years ...

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.-Henry van Dyke

"Right after I landed, I could feel the weight of my lips and tongue and had to change how I was talking," he recalled. "I didn't realize I had learned to talk with a weightless tongue."-Chris Hadfield If you have not seen this version of Space Oddity, you should. It is special because it was sung with a weightless tongue.

Last night, as I was teaching my kid to ride her two wheeler, I kept saying over and over: "Don't think about it, pedal through the wobbles.  The wobbles are normal. They do not feel normal but keep biking. Don't think about it." I am wondering why I feel so sure about this advice when it comes to biking, but not so sure at all when it comes to anything else.

I read this beautiful article  this morning by my column writing idol Mary Elizabeth Williams. It moved me so much I thought I should share it with you. I spent my mother's day taking turns with my husband napping.  I was so tired.  Like many holidays, I'm always a little leery about mother's day.  I am conscious that it is not always a day of celebration for many women. I am also conscious that it might not always be so sweet and uncomplicated as it is right now.  For now, I am savouring the waffles my daughter made me, and the sweet little "doll show" that only cost a stick of gum to get into and the beautiful card that my son made me.  Inside his card, he wrote (with his teacher's help) "I like to catch raccoons with my mom."  Me too, honey, me too.

Dawdling has many benefits. 

First it was a stick he wanted to be, so he could sail down the sewer into the harbour. Yesterday, he tells me would love to be a toy car so he could get played with on ramps and get swung on ziplines. However, he has a stipulation.  He would not like to be a car who gets played with by a baby.  Likely, he was heavily influenced by Toy Story 3 where it is made clear that babies play with toys much differently than older kids.  Babies don't understand that toys don't want to be thrown around willy nilly.  For one thing, babies don't know how to build ramps.

I have heard that many people who fish on boats can't swim.  At first, that seems perplexing.  It seems like a crazy contradiction. Recently, I heard a seasoned fisherman explain that when you've been on the ocean long enough you come to understand that you are but a speck out there.  Your power has little on the ocean's. I love swimming. I can't get enough of it, swimming in the ocean is my favourite. Ocean swimming invigorates me and evaporates the rigid boundaries I usually encase myself in. Last summer, I began to understand a little more deeply why many people who work in the fisheries don't bother to learn to swim.  I went on a whale watching tour.  It was an open zodiac with four little children.  I was on edge the minute I got in the boat. The kids themselves and the adults (from what I could tell) were thrilled to be where they were, but for me, I was severely dislocated, practically disabled by my fear. I felt stranded in a place that seeme...

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”-Arundhati Roy

These days, with spring rains coming on, the storm drains are fuller than usual.  The grates themselves are also more visible, as all remnants of the snow, ice and rotting leaves have subsided. This is a great time to throw stuff down into them. Pebbles, acorns and sticks get thrown down into the mix. Today, on the way to school, my son found a cool stick and pushed it down through the grate.  He jumped up with glee, declaring, "I wish I could be a stick! I could travel all the way to the ocean in that tube." As we walked towards preschool, he predicted where the stick was as we walked.  I am pretty sure, according to his estimations, that the stick got to preschool before us.

Last night, it was a beautiful sunshiney evening.  We felt celebratory, the air was nice and warm, an important report I had been working on all week was complete, and so, we head out for a supper out. During supper, I was introduced to a new number by my daughter.  She attests that there is a number between 8 and 9 that no else knows about.  It looks like this: and it is pronounced heref (a.k.a backlesek) : I thought I knew 8, I thought I knew 9, but I realized, in that brief session, that I had never really given any thought to what might be between them.

These are the days I begin to remember a whole other aspect of things. I forget that weather can dry my clothes, not just drench them. It's all starting to come back to me now.

I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly.-Leonard Cohen

 Instead of resisting the idea of a lemonade stand for weeks, and finally giving in,  I decided that this year I would keep ahead of the curve and have supplies on hand. If the mood arises, as it is bound to do,  we're ready to set up a lemonade stand at the drop of a hat. That way, all those weeks of ramping up (by my kids) and delay tactics (by me)  can be avoided for what ends up being a very short work day. Cell phones and debit machines have really taken a bite out of the lemonade stand trade and that tends to be pretty discouraging.  So, we've got the cups, we've got the lemonade crystals, we're ready for when the next entrepreneurial spirit strikes.

I came across these budding lilacs today. They are so tight and small, only a faint hint of what is to come. I remembered that they would be there, against that wall. Those lilac beginnings granted me a sense of belonging, a sense of belonging that includes a concrete wall on the edge of a parking lot in May.

Since technology has stepped up its hold on me over the past ten years, I have been resorting to new list keeping tactics. Before, I used to stick to envelopes, bits of paper, old scraps or officially designated "Erin" stationary.  Now, I've got lists in more places, in multiple formats.  I have a running shopping list in the online bookstore Chapters.  I have never really gone all the way and actually ordered books, but I do regularly consult it when I order (and often never subsequently pick up) the books at the library.  In turn, the list of previous holds on my online library account is yet another list of books I hope to read someday . I also have about 25 lists in my iphone.  Some are old and out of date, it appears that I needed both bacon and marshmallows on February 8th. Of course I did, (when don't I need bacon and marshmallows?). I regularly email myself a reminder of things to do or buy or remember that I refuse to open until the task is done-...

 When I was a little kid, my dad was always an early riser (still is).  It was perplexing to me at the time why some one would purposely get up early, especially when everyone else was asleep. Now I understand. It is part body rhythm, part on purpose that I rise first in our house. I have time then, when it is still dark, to be awake without being exhausted. I have time to be free of a job description.  How about you?

I went away for a whole week.  Everyone was fine.  Nothing bad happened, despite how central I seemed to think I was to everything.  I learned again that I talk too much and listen too little.  That pretty much sums it up.