Marion Agnew

1. More rocks. Thirty of them, in fact.  Yes, we already had plenty of rocks here. But going over to the beach at our little camp to pick up a rock, and snapping a photo of it, and then bringing it back to sit in a bowl in the kitchen were nice breaks from revising in November.  2. Something I don’t have words for yet, but if I did, one of them might be “ease,” and another might be “soft,“ and another might be “strength.”  I just realized that both “easy” and “soft” are antonyms of “hard.” A better antonym of “ease,” I suppose, is “effort.”  (Welcome to my brain.) In any case, I am feeling a form of strength. With ease and softness. (That sounds like an ad: “Double-concentrated Strength: now with ease and softness!”) Maybe because 2022 held some really difficult (hard) experiences, yet here I am. I imagine/expect/am unbothered by the fact that the future will hold its share of challenges, and I’ll survive those, too.  3. Gratitude (hmm, I say this a lot). I ap...

A thing or two. The maple with golden leaves. First. A more accurate sense of how much coffee I actually drink in a day. My husband is a master of self-discipline. For health reasons, he has decided to just drink one cup of coffee in a day, and a supplement that coffee with actual glasses of water. It’s almost the apocalypse, y’all. I have never seen him voluntarily drink water although I have occasionally handed him a glass of water and stood over him while he got over his objections and drank it.  Now, for whatever reason, things are different. He drinks one cup of coffee in the morning, and several glasses of water during the day. Which means I’m drinking the rest of the pot of coffee. Which means I’m also trying to limit my coffee drinking to at least the morning hours. Is it helping with my sleep? Sometimes. Second. A renewed understanding of the magic of revising one’s own words. I’m working on a novel. Yes, that one, imperfect and beautiful. Yes, still. I’ve had feedback ...

I'm revising again.  I seem to revise a lot, which is fine -- it's one of the most useful, beautiful, and unpracticed parts of writing, in my opinion.  I also seem to write about revising a lot, which is also okay. September was a full month that included travel myself plus visitors here, plus celebration of love and family. Also: the need for (shudder) mousetraps, plus an empty well.  It was not a "perfect" month, not that I know what that really is. It held moments I wanted to embrace, others I wanted to sustain, and still others that I was happy to release. Now I turn my attention to revising a project that's been close to my heart for a long time. Being me, I want it to be imperfect. It will not be. So I'm looking around. Down and up. And I'm finding beauty -- and imperfection, even IN imperfection -- everywhere. Like this. golden birch leaves, sporting holes and generally appearing crumpled, lie on the dirt A reddened leaf curls un-picturesquely; behi...

September brings the equinox and autumn. It's also World Alzheimer's Month.   By accident (or a grand design of which I'm unaware), two of my Alzheimer's-related publications have come out this month. Here, read my review at Minola Review of Four Umbrellas: A Couple's Journey Into Young-Onset Alzheimer's.  It's an exceptional book by June Hutton & Tony Wanless, in which Tony shares insights into his experience of dementia. Here's an excerpt from my review: We all have a near-inexhaustible capacity to fool ourselves. No one wants to acknowledge their own mental confusion. No one wants to see dementia in the face that is resting on the pillow next to theirs. It took great courage to write this book. We should all read it. Statistics suggest that if you don't know someone with dementia now, you will soon.  Luckily, people -- generous, motivated, creative people -- with lived experience, people who love someone with dementia, and perhaps have cared f...

I'm enjoying a hit-or-miss kind of September. Lots of hits of family and new experiences; lots of misses of being in my "upstairs office," doing work at the computer. I'll be back sometime later this month. Until then, enjoy. Rocks under water

So I’ve been thinking about looking deeply into things. Pulling back the curtain. Showing what happens behind the scenes. Incident 1: When I was at the dentist early this summer, he poked and drilled while I sat benumbed and reclined. Then he brought me upright in the chair and handed me a mirror. He was excited to show me the series of cracks in my back molars (and several other teeth), the stains everywhere, and the big hole he’d created and was about to fill. Yay! Because I’m a compliant person, most of the time, I looked in the mirror he was holding, but I really didn’t care. I know I didn’t muster enough enthusiasm to please him, but then again, a. No one could (he was pretty enthusiastic), b. I’ve been disappointing dentists and dental hygienists longer than he’s been alive so I’m used to it, and c. Basically, making a dentist happy is not my emotional labour to perform. Consider the hydrangea, if that's what this is: it neither toils nor spins. It knows for whom it performs ...

My courage with both hands, mostly. In September, I’m traveling for the first time since October 2, 2019. (I found a receipt in my US wallet.) I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do. But much of it is. So, a risk. Manitoba Maple starting to change Quantifiably reduced expectations. It’s really helpful to specify how many pages of an interminable project I aspire to finish in a month (and then cut that by a third), as opposed to hoping that somehow I’ll magically finish the whole thing and being disappointed when I don’t. I think this green plant is a lupin; it's spread farther in the ditch where they grew this year. Readying for next year? Wild blueberries, enjoyed this year and stored for next. I made a couple of awesome desserts, and we’ve got a stash of berries in the freezer. Since we had zero local blueberries last summer, a freezer full feels both magical and mundane.  Is the world, ever so slowly, righting itself again? Stabilizing? So, so slowly?  And if not -- or ...