Pick yourself up off the floor, sweetheart, and go figure out what success means to you now. Way you go now, that’s it. The drama’s just a distraction you made up to keep you down there, so drop it. Get up, and get going. Something has happened; my starting point has shifted. No, it’s more … More Disruption
Today the breeze is playful and cool, pushes me out of bed, teases me out of my sluggishness – it was a long night of paying attention to good friendship, while L was in surgery. My liver was talking all night long. It went well, Kate writes, he is resting now. I’m in first coffee … More Morning
Lightning: it is wise not to make a target of yourself. Enlightenment: what you feel as you walk away, unharmed, if you successfully apply this to any dangerous situation. My Manifesto, then, as informed by the following list of encounters, ideas and experiences, as far as I can name them in the moment: J.F. Martel, … More Hamilton Residency 10: Manifesto.
Manifesto woman does not know what to do next. Baffling. Maddening. Humbling. Ego-flattening. Intensely educational. I’ve made at least twenty clear plans for these pieces in the past three months of this residency, and the only one that has lasted the duration is Surrender. I’m thinking this is at the root of what’s happening here. The … More Hamilton Residency 9: Manifesto 2
It took this tree about 100 years to grow and I’m burning it, piece by piece, in four months. It was the one mature tree I cut down to make room for this cabin – a twinned birch, now half gone. Every time I put a new log on the fire I’m aware of this … More Cabin 21: Poets
The lake is gentle again. I’m back home after a week of travel, grateful to be working outside on the upper deck where I can drink in this soft shore-song; I’d expected snow, but it was quiet rain instead, as hushed as I am, in this memory of warmth. I write solstice songs, work out … More Cabin 20: falling up
We had a lick of brilliant sunlight early in the week, golden trees against a rich blue sky – a day the fauvists and Tom Thomson would have rejoiced in, had they been here to witness it. Since then the lake is has been relentless, grey and broody with the wind whipping off James Bay … More cabin 19: rhythm on the shore
