It feels like travel, this wee trip to Rosthern and Saskatoon. Last night, opting for the country motel experience, I bought a room at the Parkland in Rosthern after the Sask. Book Awards roadshow group reading at the beautiful Station Arts Centre. At the end of a gorgeous day, the night was lovely—open, fresh, a slip of new moon.
The motel room, though, would have been a downer after a travel day in Portugal. The hot water worked, and the wireless connection. As for bed, pillows, thin walls, all-round smell—well, I was up and out of there by 6 this morning. Next stop, Saskatoon, where I’ll be leading a writing group workshop starting in an hour. That has given me plenty of time to drink tea in cafes and overhear conversations (of a bunch of Asian folks—the one word I understood was “Blackberry”) and watch pelicans.
And watch pelicans. Shiny white below the weir on the South Sask. this morning, diving in pairs but not catching much, as far as I could tell. Through my Eddie Bauer binocs, one of them looked like my landlord—that tuft of hair sticking out the back.
“If you give it all up, where will you go,” Dave Carpenter (part of the SBA roadshow) asked me after the reading last night. I’d told him a bit about my euro trip and how I haven’t done much since. “Don’t know. Somewhere with a more moderate climate” was how I answered him.
For now, I'm hanging at that Nutana hotspot, the Broadway Cafe, admiring the tea, the overheard conversations (“They don’t even want to talk to me” / “Well now that you’re working it’s more of an investment decision” / “I thought of all my old buddies but . . .”), the pelican, the six hours of poetry talk ahead. After that (as the Asian guy answers his Blackberry) I’ll catch the Habs on tv—last night one of the roadshow readers pulled a Habs jersey from her bag and put it on before beginning to read; Go Leafs, I hollered—watch the sun go down, get up tomorrow and go visit my grandson Davey (he’s turned me into a non-stop singer/hummer). Put a period at the end of one sentence, start another.
Sunday, 16 May 2010
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Ideas That Didn't Work (yet, anyway)
1.
A "Regina By the Sea" thing, photos of every commercial operation here that begins with the word Sea--this after spotting the "Sea Breeze Laundry" on Dewdney.
(Pause here to remember the potato breeze of the Hawthornden kitchen where our clothes dried.)
But the Sea Breeze is the only one ("Seaboard Insurance" turning out to be a subsidiary of another business).
2.
Housework. Great for focussing attention on anything else, like this blog entry.
3.
"Hockey" as the first word of the latest in a series of imaginary pubs ("Pub Scrawl") I started at Hawthornden. The Back Inn, this one might be called, as if it's got about getting back somehow. Hockey in every direction, for starters. Perhaps this leads to talk of service and Euro cafe/pub culture and, before too long, to something else.
4.
Something beginning with duck, as in
I spotted a duck
on the corner of Bryant
and Munro--a duck and an Old
Dutch bag and a grey squirrel.
The duck didn't mind a Ford turning right,
didn't mind me watching.
He sipped from a puddle, walked into
the lawn at 106 Munro.
Since then he's memory, that sure of himself.
[then something or other from the spot where
this is remembered] I recommend the duck,
the lone duck making afternoon
like pepper in a shaker made of glass.
A "Regina By the Sea" thing, photos of every commercial operation here that begins with the word Sea--this after spotting the "Sea Breeze Laundry" on Dewdney.
(Pause here to remember the potato breeze of the Hawthornden kitchen where our clothes dried.)
But the Sea Breeze is the only one ("Seaboard Insurance" turning out to be a subsidiary of another business).
Housework. Great for focussing attention on anything else, like this blog entry.
Tom's coming home this weekend and I'm hosting the family Mother's Day brunch. (Quiche Lorraine x 3, here we come--with bacon, pancackes, fruit and some kind of sweet cake Emmaline and Allen are bringing ("sweet cake" not code for Davey, their new son).)
3.
"Hockey" as the first word of the latest in a series of imaginary pubs ("Pub Scrawl") I started at Hawthornden. The Back Inn, this one might be called, as if it's got about getting back somehow. Hockey in every direction, for starters. Perhaps this leads to talk of service and Euro cafe/pub culture and, before too long, to something else.
4.
Something beginning with duck, as in
I spotted a duck
on the corner of Bryant
and Munro--a duck and an Old
Dutch bag and a grey squirrel.
The duck didn't mind a Ford turning right,
didn't mind me watching.
He sipped from a puddle, walked into
the lawn at 106 Munro.
Since then he's memory, that sure of himself.
[then something or other from the spot where
this is remembered] I recommend the duck,
the lone duck making afternoon
like pepper in a shaker made of glass.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
A Line (I'd String If I Had Some)
I like to say to writing students:
"Keep the line (which has movement)
from breaking down and becoming
a hole into which we sink
decoratively to rest" (W.C.Williams)
after which I've heard myself say:
If the poem doesn't have action in the lines
it doesn't have much.
[to the tune of the Sibelius 4th on CBC]
as if poems should have.
"Keep the line (which has movement)
from breaking down and becoming
a hole into which we sink
decoratively to rest" (W.C.Williams)
after which I've heard myself say:
If the poem doesn't have action in the lines
it doesn't have much.
[to the tune of the Sibelius 4th on CBC]
as if poems should have.
Sunday, 2 May 2010
Weather
Can you think of a less interesting title? +21 in Lisbon today, that warm in London the week I was there. Only +5 in Regina today. Snow would have fallen, but the season beat it back just enough to keep it at rain, and a light one at that.
Twenty to nine, light still haunted a night-time sky. I do believe we've beaten winter at last.
Tonight I'm wearing one of the shirts I bought in London. First I walked Notting Hill Road in shiny blue running shorts with a bright red running shirt. Not even my sexy Spanish sandals and my flat cap from Lisbon could save that get-up, which I was sure people gawked at from the top of the double-decker buses. Later that day I visited the nearest clothing store, a Gap, and bought three shirts and a pair of non-shiny shorts, which I was prepared to wear out of the store, forgetting about the security fitting clipped onto the right leg.
The shirt worked with my new grandson, who was fussy until I picked him up, wrapped him up tight, and left him no choice but to wave his eyes over the vaguely hallucinogenic pattern I was wearing. He dropped off soundly to sleep. (Not to give all the credit to my shirt--I was humming a down-tempo version of "Please Please Me" at the time.)
This baby doesn't know it yet but he's born into an uncivilized climate. Today I lead a Jane's Walk through it, talking about Hillsdale. And tomorrow I get to work after an unmotivated week at home after my travels, weather promising.
Twenty to nine, light still haunted a night-time sky. I do believe we've beaten winter at last.
Tonight I'm wearing one of the shirts I bought in London. First I walked Notting Hill Road in shiny blue running shorts with a bright red running shirt. Not even my sexy Spanish sandals and my flat cap from Lisbon could save that get-up, which I was sure people gawked at from the top of the double-decker buses. Later that day I visited the nearest clothing store, a Gap, and bought three shirts and a pair of non-shiny shorts, which I was prepared to wear out of the store, forgetting about the security fitting clipped onto the right leg.
The shirt worked with my new grandson, who was fussy until I picked him up, wrapped him up tight, and left him no choice but to wave his eyes over the vaguely hallucinogenic pattern I was wearing. He dropped off soundly to sleep. (Not to give all the credit to my shirt--I was humming a down-tempo version of "Please Please Me" at the time.)
This baby doesn't know it yet but he's born into an uncivilized climate. Today I lead a Jane's Walk through it, talking about Hillsdale. And tomorrow I get to work after an unmotivated week at home after my travels, weather promising.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Hillsdale by the Sea
If that's the title, a traveller remembers watching in any direction to the sea. Sometimes, as in the Guadiana at Vila Real de Santo Antonio or the Tagus at Lisbon, he watches a river, calling it sea, which it is within a mile or two. Everywhere he walked was toward the sea . . .
This remembering goes on overlooking a hotel parking lot at the west edge of Hillsdale (not counting, the traveller adds, the western sky, just now retired into dark). Wind blows in his open windows.
21 in Lisbon today, the same in Hillsdale. As he would have done at the bottom of Alfama, across from the Lisbon waterfront, the traveller today found a cafe for a cup of tea. He read the paper, which probably would have been a day old Guardian or Telegraph over there, by the sea.
In either place there was all sorts of remembering, broadly understood as a matter of invention, which might turn up in this paragraph once it's longer.
After that the traveller goes home, where he misses sea the most and, as if denying his sense of loss, watches hockey on tv.
This remembering goes on overlooking a hotel parking lot at the west edge of Hillsdale (not counting, the traveller adds, the western sky, just now retired into dark). Wind blows in his open windows.
21 in Lisbon today, the same in Hillsdale. As he would have done at the bottom of Alfama, across from the Lisbon waterfront, the traveller today found a cafe for a cup of tea. He read the paper, which probably would have been a day old Guardian or Telegraph over there, by the sea.
In either place there was all sorts of remembering, broadly understood as a matter of invention, which might turn up in this paragraph once it's longer.
After that the traveller goes home, where he misses sea the most and, as if denying his sense of loss, watches hockey on tv.
Pigeon Update
Many of you have asked for
a pigeon update. (As you may recall,
I called them "rock doves" until
my birder friend said "they're pigeons".)
(They were taking over. I rigged up lights,
electric prods, a track of nails. I sent away
for netting and fibreglass spurs meant to burst
to sharp pieces next to birds. But when it came
right down to it I had to wreck a home by
picking up an egg and chucking it, then fighting off
the mother for a while. I guess they were
discouraged after that.)
They didn't arrive this spring, at least into
Sector 25, where I've had to lay off night
staff, Perimeter Unit.
Makes for a dulll evening until
T. and L. and L. show up
and I try out Belen's paella
(with chicken, Duquesa) and regret
not buying saffron in Spain.
a pigeon update. (As you may recall,
I called them "rock doves" until
my birder friend said "they're pigeons".)
(They were taking over. I rigged up lights,
electric prods, a track of nails. I sent away
for netting and fibreglass spurs meant to burst
to sharp pieces next to birds. But when it came
right down to it I had to wreck a home by
picking up an egg and chucking it, then fighting off
the mother for a while. I guess they were
discouraged after that.)
They didn't arrive this spring, at least into
Sector 25, where I've had to lay off night
staff, Perimeter Unit.
Makes for a dulll evening until
T. and L. and L. show up
and I try out Belen's paella
(with chicken, Duquesa) and regret
not buying saffron in Spain.
Friday, 23 April 2010
Getting There
You’re a couple from far away, on a hot afternoon. You stare out the window of a hotel shuttle bus from Pearson airport in Toronto but don’t see much beyond the freeways of the place, its sky everywhere.
You hope that the bus is heading in the right direction and will stop at the right time, that you replied correctly to “You don’t have a ticket, correct?” (the bus driver offering this in a loud voice, smiling, one eye on the other passengers), that your hotel reservation holds, that the water is hot and the bathrooms clean (that you have a bathroom in the first place), that somehow you can get some food.
Arrival is easy when you know the place. In my case, the shift from the British Airways 767--pause to acknowledge that I showed up at Heathrow yesterday with an Air France reservation, which they’d cancelled on me--to my hotel room in Toronto with a slice of pizza in one hand, the first of two Blues in the other, and the Globe in the one after that was so smooth that I’m not sure it happened. (Except that just now, next morning, I phoned back to the hotel about what I’d left behind.)
Yes, and knowledge is easy when you know. We don’t label our street corners, our trains (oh right, we have no trains), in general our systems and procedures for everything from shopping for groceries to unlocking doors, for people who are new to them.
I feel for the young man I saw this morning check in at WestJet. He checked a mammoth hockey bag and a backpack the size of a barrel. That left him with a smaller suitcase on rollers, a smaller backpack, a camera bag, and his jacket. Approaching the counter, he had to walk backwards to manage it all.
If he’s by himself when he arrives, I hope he finds his way.
You hope that the bus is heading in the right direction and will stop at the right time, that you replied correctly to “You don’t have a ticket, correct?” (the bus driver offering this in a loud voice, smiling, one eye on the other passengers), that your hotel reservation holds, that the water is hot and the bathrooms clean (that you have a bathroom in the first place), that somehow you can get some food.
Arrival is easy when you know the place. In my case, the shift from the British Airways 767--pause to acknowledge that I showed up at Heathrow yesterday with an Air France reservation, which they’d cancelled on me--to my hotel room in Toronto with a slice of pizza in one hand, the first of two Blues in the other, and the Globe in the one after that was so smooth that I’m not sure it happened. (Except that just now, next morning, I phoned back to the hotel about what I’d left behind.)
Yes, and knowledge is easy when you know. We don’t label our street corners, our trains (oh right, we have no trains), in general our systems and procedures for everything from shopping for groceries to unlocking doors, for people who are new to them.
I feel for the young man I saw this morning check in at WestJet. He checked a mammoth hockey bag and a backpack the size of a barrel. That left him with a smaller suitcase on rollers, a smaller backpack, a camera bag, and his jacket. Approaching the counter, he had to walk backwards to manage it all.
If he’s by himself when he arrives, I hope he finds his way.
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