Yesterday was spent exploring, driving through the rain and taking pictures of houses, main streets, beautiful brick and stone buildings. Secret little towns and areas that surprise us. Searching for a place we can insert ourselves. Adjusting expectations. Vague words are the best I have because vague thoughts are all…
When the lights don't come back after an hour, I start to grow anxious, imagining the worst (it appears prolonged blackouts have had that effect on me since 2003). And then there are reports of flooding in Toronto, which make me doubly anxious after the terrible floods last month in…
To those girls in the late nineties and at the turn of the century, those teenagers, who found each other through their blogs years before "blog" was a word. To those girls who resisted using the word "blog" when it did become a word. To those girls who felt the…
Recently I transfered a few old home movies from VHS to digital files to send to my brother in Germany. We discuss them over Skype, telling each other to go to a certain time marker and pay attention. What do you notice? What did that mean? Was this how you…
Winter has traditionally been my best writing season. My brain, which sloshes around sluggishly all summer, wakes up and wants to get to work. However, this winter I seem to still be "recovering" from the intensity of my Humber writing mentorship. Either that, or I'm still shaking off the holiday…
There's a new entry on Lumisilla mailla, the blog I write with my friend Susanna. I'm really enjoying making this blog with her. It feels like the cardboard "mailboxes" my childhood best friend and I kept on our front porches, and we'd write notes to each other and run across…
My oldest friend is visiting home, and we spend the afternoon discovering new pathways in the park, discovering washed-up bones and watching people fish in the river. We follow that river and find a spot to sit, and we sit talking for a very long time, as we tend to…
I had a bulleted list of highlights written out about my seven-hour day spent at the International Festival of Authors (mostly) with Teri, but for some reason it all seems so personal. I think it has to do with the feeling of being a fan in the way Teri so wonderfully…
My friend has loaned me a book. The author is half-Filipino, just like my friend and me. I read it eagerly. It feels familiar. The author's writing style reminds me so much of my friend's, and I relish the glimpses of the suburban neighbourhoods we grew up in. I read…
"Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know of grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as…
