“What you resist will persist” This was scrawled and partially obscured at the top of a dry-erase board, in a kitchen briefly visited. One of the most popular clichés of our time, it’s a fine example of backyard philosophy. Not subtle, but pithy. Useful, in a pinch. If you write it down in your kitchen, […]

There is not a tree here the species books would call perfect. They are bent and twisted, storm-broken and shallow-rooted. They share a mere skiff of soil, what sunlight they can reach and make the best of what they have. Ironwood, cedar, birch are the oldest. Sapling maple and ash have found space too, and […]

In right now there is reverence deep prayer, an endless, thunder-throated, steady dripping Love. The shore waves sing a slow ballad in 7/8 time. Good deaths are soft. A miraculous easing of release. A shedding a moulting a fall, then surrender to moss and insect to beautiful, fragrant rot: With my body I nourish thee. […]

The tarps work well. Easy to pull out and put away, which is required since sometimes rain comes unexpectedly at 3am. I am quietly and ridiculously proud of this. It occurs to me that I haven’t been myself for some years now. That the strong, creative me, fully open to possibles and wonder is only […]

Like Laurel and Hardy, Level and Sturdy are comedians. It’s the kind of funny that sneaks up on you a couple of days later, when you look at the framing you took a break from and there they are, tangled in the ladder, looking bewildered but earnest. You take off your hat, scratch your head, […]

Week Two Ratbastard is a new regular presence in my life. Has arrived, I believe, to teach me powerful new lessons in the kind of assertiveness that brooks no opposition. He requires that I maintain full, absolute ownership of the space I now occupy. He is nocturnal and extremely intelligent. Also pointy-faced and vindictive when […]

Day One Rain begins, tentative, at 8:50pm.  I can feel the hush of parched trees; the lake is still, the birds silent. Thunder is over there, eclipsed by the subtle snore of a cat.  Rain stops. There is no sound of water lapping.  This is uncharacteristic of the eastern shore, where even the gentlest of […]

Story Cake first instalment is coming – never fear.  It has been delayed by some time-sensitive physical and academic tasks, which have taken precedence over all else: I’ve been packing up the old and building the new. To the point where I’ve got twenty days left here: during which I find places for all this […]

Here’s a thing I’d like to do, in collaboration with you guys  – some I know, lots I don’t – who read this blog. This idea came to me out of ten years of astonishingly terrible experiences with people who I’d been close to for a very long time.  I’ve done at least a partial […]

A multitude of tasks and their stressor partners slow-dance around my house like dust motes in the sunlight; I am happily, if overwhelmingly engaged in the actions of living. Every so often pressures collide with sensibilities and swirl the dust mote dancing into a frenzy. Through and over all of this a thin cicada song of […]

The test for old chairs is in the sitting, and this one more than passes, happily. It’s an online auction chair, old and formal-ish in the picture that prompted me, upholstered outrageously  – in cream and white.  It looked comfortable in the photo, but this could have been wishful thinking. Old White and formal-ish comes with […]

So much anxiety. Even here, in this small town Shire-like piece of Ontario, we dutifully find our regular dose of Fox news or its equivalent so we can chew on our worry in a bizarrely informed way. If not Fox or Sinclair and the suspicious smell of fascism, or the use of our tax dollars […]