this was happened upon

The work of a writer is to create order out of chaos.  Always, the chaos keeps slipping back in.  Underneath the created order the fantastic diversity and madness of life goes on, expanding and changing and insisting upon itself.  Still, each piece contains the whole.  Tell one story truly and with clarity and you have done all anyone is required to do.
— Ellen Gilchrist

you can feel the sun

It must be light.

I feel energized and confident and am happily biting off just a bit more than I can chew. Or more accurately, trying to scrawl out a few more words than I really have time for.

Baby boy and I are alone this week while D. ventures far and wide across this country's west, and in spite of chaos and water-play and banana bread baking and the croup and subsequent quarantine, I am managing to meet my deadlines and reply to emails and generally feel like I'm contributing.

So I think it must be that brighter, longer, stronger sunlight coming through. It's working wonders.


Edited to add: okay, it's either the sun, or the Pixies. We are still young. THERE ARE NEW PIXIES SONGS TO LOVE.

today's menu

lake of the woods, ontario

Reading: Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country by Louise Erdrich, on Shari's kobo

Drinking: Traditional Medicinal's Ginger Tea, my third cup of herbal tea today.

Thinking: I read this book in one sitting, yesterday afternoon, and it has quickly inserted itself onto the worn bookshelf of my mind, between some like-minded others: books like Teaching a Stone to Talk and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. It's a wonderful travel log deep into ancestral territory accompanied by a nursing eighteen month-old toddler. Given the ever-presence of my own nursling, it's been just the trip I needed to take.

It is a bright, cold day in February and as I drive along slushy streets to pick up and drop off and drive through and errand-run, I find myself for moments drifting through sun-lit bays in Northern Ontario. It is a warm and safe and healthy place to be.  


Thanks to R. MacArthur for the inspired format that got this post written.

This winter's rabbit.

Last summer's rabbit (the one that ate all of my kale, my broccoli, my cauliflower, chewed luscious greens into tiny, hard stems; the one that I suspected was coming under the neighbour's fence and which I might have even thrown a pebble at to scare away — had one been handy), the very same rabbit, has been leaving tell-tale tracks in the overnight snow.

This morning, it appeared, coming through the drifts between the houses, and stopped at the bush with the red berries. I put down the dish I was washing and called my son and held him in my arms while we watched the bunny.