Solitude is my natural state as writer and artist; I’m in this 3-year residency to do my work, so I’ve had plenty of it. Monday’s call from Trudeau made complete sense to me: Stay home. We can do this together by staying apart. Let’s help one another with the practicalities of our self isolation, and […]
The beautiful winds. They picked me up out of sleep, made my first coffee then tucked me in for the morning write in front of the eastern window. A quick scan of the news has filled me with wonder – we all are navigating this new call for quarantine, for self-care, in isolation. Museums close, […]
Stories that want to be told come in through the eastern window in the morning, or sometimes down onto the roof with the rain. There’s a beautiful one that follows me everywhere I go now, about the water that washes the eastern shore on Georgian Bay and how that is like, and also not like […]
There were floating blue spheres in my dream, a room with a happy baby, Sam Orr playing with a string group on a balcony outside – she saw me and waved. We’d met in the reading room first – he was looking for an artist to step into his project, to amplify it. Lovely soft […]
Somewhere after the second sip time folded in on itself. It was 7am only a moment ago when I put my second coffee down to cool. I’ve done many things but 6.5 hours has felt like a moment. It has only become clock time again because my feet are cold. As is my second coffee. I’m […]
I feel something soft about the morning. I can see it in the pastel sky, hear it in the slow wash of tires on the wet street below. Sunday. Two crows barking. A wave of consumer propulsion towards all things pink, red and heart-shaped began last week and crested on Thursday and Friday when even the […]
This sixteen-year-old cat I foster spends her first week here under a blanket. She drinks water and sleeps. Processing, it feels like. The loss of her former foster dad, who had to move into long-term care. The four days she spent at a shelter full of a full spectrum of other cats, all negotiating and […]
The first few hours of the year 2020 are dressed with finely sifted snow. No hollering or screeching of tires, just the old trees rumbling peacefully in Gage Park. Some fireworks to the northwest begin at 11:55 and continue for fifteen minutes. I sense a breathing out in the world, like a photographer does, after […]
You look like a teacher, says the young waitress in the very loud bar the night the Tiger Cats lose the Grey Cup game. She looks like your neighbour’s odd tweenage daughter who dresses like her big brother, a closet spoken word somebody or maybe even closet hip hop but white and really short. I […]
One of the life skills required of me as an artist & performer is good facility at writing my own bio, in 50 words, 100, 500. I’ve come to understand that this is important and useful to everyone concerned, since I’m the only one who knows everything about where I’ve been, how I got here, […]
revolve. One cupboard cleared, one old pine chest emptied, two rooms of six reconfigured. Three boxes of books off my shelves and into the car for passing forward, a trunk full of clothing for VV. Winter wear rediscovered, pared down, and stowed in one kist, guest blankets in the other. I now have a better […]
We’re at full stop on westbound 401 and collector lanes, just before the Wilson exit. It’s been an hour of this, and I’ve been watching the construction truck inch it’s way across the gridlock for the past twenty minutes. The truck has a huge arrow on the back of it, pointing right. Rush hour folk […]