April 17, 2021
Thirteen tabs open on my browser, two of which have been up for weeks now. Why, I wonder. Two beautifully designed and printed Emergence Magazines beside me on the table, an accompanying ‘practice book’ over there which inspires me to make my own. From where I’m sitting now I can see two bookshelves and imagine four more, three in the cabin and one upstairs in my morning room where I paint. One row of philosophy and poetry, another of fiction, a third much longer one about ecosystem, natural environments, ecologies. Mythology, storytelling, folk tales, art, maps and symbols – interpretations of the natural world. Four volumes of the Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada.
The Norton Anthology of Western Music and other tomes like it are in a box, over there. They’re boxed because I needed to make room for books that explore Time. The books in the box are relics; we think differently now than when they were published. Many important things are missing from their pages, like music written and played by people who are not white men. This is an example of academic historic scaffolding that does not hold up – a one-legged stool.
Notebooks with pens on every surface in my apartment – purple, green, royal blue, black, gold – all with drawings and writings, colourings and figurings, witnessings and energetic lines pointing and moving forward and up. Doesn’t matter where I sit, there’s a book and a pen there ready to catch a thought when it appears.
Out the kitchen window a female cardinal skips and chirps along the eavestrough, a little dance of worry. She and her partner are my alarm clock in the backyard tree every morning and I’m concerned now, too – that something has happened to him. Ah but there he is now, red and resplendent, supportive on the roof beside mine.
We are in a third wave in Ontario now, and police have authority to stop me, ID me and fine me if they believe I’m in contravention of the new lockdown rules. I’ve spent my morning reading and listening to reports, and what appears to be true without any doubt is that Provincial Governments west of New Brunswick have failed to take the clear actions recommended to them by health experts, in favour of appearing to support the ‘economy’. Here’s a good rundown of that insight from a Justin Ling opinion piece published by MacLeans.
I am feeling real anger on behalf of all essential workers at grocery stores, Walmarts, meat processing plants, and Amazon warehouses who are getting Covid from their coworkers who cannot afford to stay home, because they do not receive paid sick leave. On behalf of all prison inmates, I am angry that even reasonable efforts to protect their health have not been made. On behalf of all physicians and healthcare workers who are facing the cost of all this in human lives, I am angry.
Once again my Friday list appears on a Saturday. They are now Saturday Lists.
2. Think about what these lists are for and why I write them. If I’m just buying in to the general pandemic-fueled anxiety-laced need to MAKE UP MORE THINGS TO DO, then stop it. Just stop.
5. Make a short video with my face in it, and whatever else comes to mind.
3. Read Emergence 1 and respond with drawings and one paragraph per article in the purple notebook.
1. Write to D. Ford and J. Trudeau to insist that they legislate paid sick leave immediately. Keep writing and insisting.
4. Find five reasons to smile, whenever you think of it and at least seven times every day.