Monthly Archives: December 2021

Accidental self-reflection, about, of course, writing

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Hobbit hole. Baby, it’s cold outside, and the fireplace is roaring. The Giant Beast is sprawled on the couch beside me; the Svelte Beat is roaming the tiny apartment as if it were the Serengeti. I’ve got a cup of Turkish coffee beside me, and a lover tidying up in the bathroom.

I’m writing.

I don’t want to be self-reflecting, though. I realize this as I finish my morning pages, which flow well enough but which read more like a laundry list of the day’s and the week’s tasks than the “brain dump”—or space for self-reflection—that they’re supposed to be.

(A decade later, I’m still not sure if it’s possible to do the morning pages wrong, but if it is, mission accomplished. I think I do them wrong all the time. Still. I do them.)

The lover in the bathroom spent the weekend with me and between that and kids, I missed two days of morning pages since Thursday. So, no more. One missed day makes me feel off. Two missed days make me feel tetchy. Three missed days, and I am unwell.

So, I’m writing.

The people who love me value, encourage, and facilitate this need to write, be it the morning pages, these blog posts, the novels nobody reads or that other stuff.

That helps me stay on the path.

One word, one scene, one post at a time.

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I don’t want to be self-reflective and so I’m accidentally preachy.

(Side note: Flora and I debate earlier in the week weather accidental and unintentional are synonyms—I maintain that they are not, she’s not so sure. We also talk about the “Baby, it’s cold outside” lyrics, which she thinks are rapey, and which I think make total sense in the context and time in which they were written, and tell you a hell of a lot of about patriarchy and how fucked up gender roles and expectations still are, and, really, you want to combat rape culture, there are more practical ways of doing it than losing your shit over an American songwriter born in 1910, but hey, I’m old, what do I know.)

I definitely do not wish to be preachy either (man, it’s hard, when you’re in the mood to preach, everything‘s an opening–I am aware of what I did up there, thank you, let’s move on). One, nobody wants to be preached at—except, I suppose the people in church, but, maybe even there, really? They’re already converted: they don’t want to be preached at, just reassured. Preaching, kittens, is not how you change the world.

Two, who da’ fuq am I to tell you what to do?

Fortunately, the preachiness occurs primarily in the  morning pages and in drafts of posts I choose not to inflict on anyone else (except for that one, sorry, it slipped through). A moment of unintended self-reflection: if I’m preaching as a way of avoiding self-reflection, should I listen to what I am… Nah. I most definitely do not want to be preached at my myself.

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Today, I’m going to take the kids over to my parents for a pierogi-making marathon—assembly line might be a better metaphor—ok, it’s not a metaphor, it is a pierogi making assembly line.

I’m looking forward to it with an intensity that surprises me. Christmas is not the easiest time of year for me, but after last year?

Every holiday ritual, every chance to be with family, is extra precious.

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Baby, it’s cold outside, although not as cold as earlier this week. I’m a little bummed that you won’t get to read my panegyric about life in Viking Hell when it freezes over, because there are a few funny lines in there, but, alas, I’ve spoiled that with preachiness too. Still, nothing is wasted, everything is source material: the unpublishable blog post is still practice and process, and maybe I’ll use that turn of phrase elsewhere. Also, that particular cadence—I like it a lot. I’ll play with it some more, make it better.

The important thing is that I’m writing.

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I’m writing, finally, again, the thing that I want to finish too. It’s not going well yet. I’m rusty and I have a hard time holding the plot line in my head. I don’t remember what seemed so obvious, inevitable ten months ago. But it doesn’t matter. I’m writing. One clunky sentence, one awkward scene at a time.

Novels get written, life gets lived in 15 minute increments.

Less.

I’m writing.

🙂

“Jane”

Cowboy boots, 21st century love and the road less travelled

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I always wear my cowboy boots on my business trips to Toronto.

I don’t know whether your neck of the woods has a city that thinks it’s the centre of the universe and disses everyone who’s not from it—probably, eh? And then, the flipside: a city that knows it’s not the centre of the universe and works harder, parties harder … and has a bit of an inferiority complex in regards to the more sophisticated, snotty older sibling? It doesn’t help that that more sophisticated, snotty older sibling glories in putting down the upstart younger one—nevermind that the younger one, maybe, actually has more talent, a better job, a snazzier car and, damn straight, a better quality of life… but still isn’t the parents’ favourite?

That’s Toronto and pretty much every other city in Canada, especially my hometown of Calgary. As a Calgarian who has lived in Warsaw, Rome, Berlin, Paris, London and Montreal—and spent some time in New York, hush, we don’t need to mention my age at the time—I find Toronto’s attitude… cute.

I love visiting, don’t get me wrong. I’ve got fave clubs, restaurants and galleries—there a lots of benefits to being the biggest and having that population density. But when the city puts on its attitude—which it does as soon as you tell it you’re from Calgary—I like to hitch up my skirt, look at my boots, and pay homage to Nancy Sinatra.

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I’m in Toronto for six days, three pleasure, three business, although everything gets all mixed up in the end. I’m in town chiefly to visit my beloved and to try to figure out how, or even if, we’re going to navigate this phase of what has never been a typical relationship.

Love in 2021 looks like this, by the way: you leave your cat in the care of a new love while you go visit the one who left the city but not your heart, and nobody thinks it’s weird. Except possibly your parents, so like, let’s not talk about it.

You: You’re blogging about it.

Jane: Totally different. Hush. You’re breaking my flow.

You drive me to the airport at 4:30 a.m., and that’s also 21st century love, isn’t it, anam cara? Moments like this, I do think that we are changing the world, dismantling some of its most cherished assumptions one act of heartfelt kindness, love, desire at a time.

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I don’t know that I get any clarity as such during my visit. But I think a lot of things, all of them true.

First—there is no substitute for face-to-face, flesh-to-flesh contact. Professionally, personally, I don’t care: Teams, Zoom, WhatsApp, Telegram, they’re barely methadone. Sit across from me over a cup of coffee for 15 minutes, and we’ll have moved our relationship forward 75 Teams meetings. Kiss my eyes once and it’s worth a thousand texts.

(To clarify, the kiss my eyes comment is personal, not professional. Just in case any of my new co-workers are reading: I am aware there is an HR manual, and it’s pretty clear: no eye kissing in the workplace.)

(Although I do occasionally send “smooches” to my director via text in response to compliments and forgiveness. Maybe I should stop that.)

(Where was I?)

(Here: There’s no substitute for face-to-face, flesh-to-flesh contact.)

Second—Toronto traffic is unadulterated hell. I don’t remember how Dante splits up the circles of hell exactly, but downtown Toronto, in a car? This is where the counterfeiters, hypocrites, grafters, seducers, sorcerers and simoniacs are punished.

And this is during the pandemic.

Third—the view from my Toronto office is to die for.

Fourth—for me to have the sort of life in Toronto that I have in Calgary, I would have to earn four to ten times as much as I do now.

Also, did I mention the traffic?

Him: Alternative–the flight was super cheap.

Fifth—children. Which is really the first and the final, and while one might be in Kelowna right now, and another planning a move to Vancouver, the little has at least six more years of Calgary growing to do, and, yeah, this is why I’m here to visit, and nothing more.

Him: I did mention the flight was super cheap…

Sixth—We’ve never actually spent six days together, 24/7 or as near as, and, fuck, by day three, I need my space back and so does my love, although when I ask him if it’s been too much, too long, he gets angry.

Seventh—I have a fabulous time (mostly) but I miss my kids, my friends, my life—my new love—with a shocking ferocity.

Eight—I’m in tears and pieces and utterly heartbroken, again, when I have to leave, but also at peace.

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A frenemy once told me that whenever I’m faced with a choice between two things, I always choose the harder one. Even back then, I suspected they were right; right now, I choose the harder thing again and again. I know how the easy thing will go. How boring is that? So. Let’s try this. Let’s suffer, in this new way, for a while.

Him: Suffer?

Jane: None of it is easy.

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None of it is easy, but, actually, truly, honestly? I’m really happy.

True story: but every time I start to talk about how I’m actually pretty happy, I start crying.

That doesn’t make the statement untrue.

I’m walking a hard path sometimes, but, really… I chose it. And I’m (mostly) happy.

A little heartbroken, but perversely, even that feels good.

Him: Masochist.

Jane: You know it.

The cowboy boots make it all easier.

xoxo

“Jane”