See also: church-goers, grocery-buyers. And car-drivers, joggers, sleepers in beds.

This poem, online at the Jellyfish Review.

More about Kathy Fish.

I don't recommend all these things, necessarily. However, I thought they had interesting points to make.

The cover of Jose Saramago's The History of the Siege of Lisbon, held in front of our sunny deck and red pines

The History of the Siege of Lisbon, Goodreads link

Our book club read this. The main character is a proofreader who--from frustration, perhaps, or perhaps from just growing awareness of his own agency--inserts a "not" into a history book and sets in motion a larger change in his life. 

I liked the idea of the power of the lesser-celebrated members of a book's production team. I said more about it on Instagram, where I'm (surprisingly) @marionagnew. You're welcome to find me there.

How Growing Up in the Digital Age Impacts Young Minds 

Salient quote: "A third concern about viewing habits among the very young comes under the heading of the displacement hypothesis: time spent watching video potentially displaces other more age-appropriate activities such as face-to-face interactions, creative or open playtime, physical movement, outdoor play, and reading, all of which are known to foster brain health in kids."  

I know my mind isn't technically "young," but I have been displacing some of my usual activities with other, media-based activities, and it hasn't been an especially rewarding experience. 

Also, now is the best time of year for my brain to re-learn about things like the physics of falling trees, bodily energy storage and consumption, the body's Vitamin D response to the sun. Et cetera.

The Making of Moonstruck

Salient quote: "[Moonstruck director Norman] Jewison once believed that, after reaching some arbitrary threshold of success, he would be able to call his own shots. Yet here he was at sixty, still hustling, still facing rejection. Those rejections were “very destructive for me at times,” he confided in an unpublished archival interview. “When I become depressed and disillusioned and forsaken and nobody believes in you anymore . . . you take it personally.”"

Again, I'm not a film director but I have experienced rejection--part of the business--and it's disappointing, and I don't like pretending it's not. (You thought I was going to say I'm old, didn't you? Well, that too.) 

However, rejection is not the end of the story. Sometimes you persevere and make Moonstruck, and even though you don't win the Academy Award for Best Director, you've made a classic that apparently experienced a resurgence of sorts during the pandemic.

Not bad.

And now, between rains, I'll go move dirt around, or move myself around on asphalt, or go lie on a rock, or something (maybe nothing!) else. 

Tra la, it's May. 

So, a lot's happening. Not with me personally, so much, but with (waves arms) everything.

Here's what it looks like around here these days.

the sun, high in the sky, filters through bare-branched birches  and various types of conifers

a birchbark-on-trunk closeup, a shot I take often

Spring has definitely, you know, and it's as glorious as ever. Now I wonder if I was somehow "too hard on" winter. If I complained too much, but beyond that -- if I went from impatient for spring, disappointed ("I'm not mad, just disappointed") with each ensuing cold snap and snowstorm, to actual anger. Of the shaking-fists-at-the-sky ilk. Futile rage.

Possibly. 

Here's what my toast looked like this morning. (Stay with me for a sec.)

slice of multigrain bread with a large baked-in hole

I adore this type of bread. I buy multiple loaves when it's in the store (it freezes well, an excellent feature when you eat as much as toast as we do in this house), and I was really looking forward to my first piece of toast from this loaf. 

And guess what!?! It was amazing. Hole and all. I don't love the bread less because this slice has a hole in it. 

I don't love this place less when there's a difficult season (outside or inside). I just love it, sans disappointment. (Not sans complaining, mind.) 

If the weather doesn't suit me this year, well, next year. Perhaps I won't be able to say "next year" someday, perhaps I'll be all-too-aware that my springs are numbered. 

I'm already more aware than I once was (pandemic? birthdays ending in zero? fatigue? sure, to all of those). Aware of all the clichés: time passes, everything changes, we all die, make the most of blah blah, the only thing we have to fear yadda yadda. Et cetera.  

Clichés because true, though unoriginal. As is this feeling of mine, that I love my toast even when it is imperfect, in part because it is imperfect--it has a history. Same with this place. 

I was tempted today to just post the three photos. In the words of Mrs. Miniver (from the book Mrs. Miniver, not the movie), when she's on vacation visiting in-laws in Scotland and drowsy while watching chaffinches, "It was too hot to work out the moral." 

I didn't think there was a "moral," exactly, to these photos, and I still don't. It also wasn't "too hot" (in any metaphorical sense) today for me to consider it. I just wanted to move on with my day, indoors and out. 

I'm glad to have recognized, yet again, that it is possible (necessary) to love the imperfect.

These really are the "good old days." They really are.   

Monday I sent my second-born off to college. 

***

I also recognized yesterday as my mother's 105th birthday. She's not alive on earth to celebrate, but I can celebrate: so I did, and I do. I celebrate her life, her choices, her determination and courage and mistakes and humour.

***

This morning, I found myself thinking about a woman from Ukraine, born in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century, who's lived several decades. She's seen much political and personal upheaval. At some point In the past two months, she packed up her life -- perhaps children and grandchildren, perhaps not -- to escape brutal attacks on her home and herself. 


This woman is a writer. 

When she fled, she bring her laptop? What about a flashdrive? Does she have some sort of key to her passwords (a mnemonic device, a list on paper, a list in her phone?) so she'll be able to access her work-in-progress from the cloud, once (IF) she lands somewhere safely? 


Will she be able to share her work with the world? Will she -- and her children and grandchildren -- even survive?


I don't know this woman, but I know she exists. Other woman, similar and not, make their way in the world. I hold space for all of them. 

***

This spring, I have moaned a LOT about weather, as we got snowstorm after snowstorm and more weeks than expected of temperatures colder than -20C. 

I have ALSO felt my creative energy returning -- beyond the "I received a grant so I have to produce" energy. The "Wouldn't this be fun to examine?" energy. The "I can't wait to get to the page" energy. The kind of energy I've experienced only in flashes throughout the past several years. 

The kind of energy that lets me BOTH celebrate AND let go, that lets me recognize my mother BOTH as a flawed and imperfect human (as I have written about her) AND as a multifaceted, complex woman who has raised another, in me. 

I chose to protect that energy yesterday, even as other things happened. 

***

It was ever thus: celebrations and mourning at the same time. Upheaval and safety. Creation, in its many forms, co-exists with destruction. 

We celebrate. And let go.