Limbo

I've been mulling over the direction that this blog might take, including ending it.  Interestingly, I've recently noticed that a few blogs I follow have posted their last posts in the last week or so.  Even when not posting regularly, which I've not been, there is a sort of pull - blog-guilt, if you will.  Meanwhile, Facebook is taking up entirely too much time.  (You can imagine what my new year's resolution is with regards to FB...)  I turned the comments off here a while back because I was getting spammed with ads for purses, go figure. 

For now, I've decided to put the blog into limbo - it's here, but for the time being will only be rarely added to.  I have one manuscript searching for a publisher, and two books that I've begun researching.  (I'll see which one emerges as the larger obsession).  What I'm finding is that I'm not reading nearly enough!  So many wonderful books calling to me - most of them from the to-read piles on the floor of my study! 

I'll still be checking in on my fave blogs.  I've also started posting pics on Flickr.  Have always found the process of taking photos to be helpful to my writing process.  Hope you have a productive year doing the things that inspire.....

Luminosity of Souls

Look carefully around you and recognize

the luminosity of souls. Sit beside those

who draw you to that.

(Rumi)

Olympia Le-Tan's Book Purses

Olympia Le-Tan's embroidered book purses/clutches are too divine for words.....

These images were taken from here. Some more can be seen here. And more here. A tiny interview with her here.

Can you tell I'm plotzing here? Also fantasizing about turning Red Velvet Forest into something like this myself. (If only I'd learned how to sew....the embroidery part I think I could fake). And we actually still have the piece of red velvet that Rob took used for the image in his painting which is in fact the cover of the book. How cool would that be?

I think I read somewhere that these lovelies go for around 2000ish Cdn...so am definitely just fantasizing. The also wonderful Rebound books are suddenly looking affordable though.

A Series of Small Waves

"From the top of the page to the bottom, from left to right, from one line to the next, I drew what resembled a series of small waves. Seven waves, then three, a little further on eight, followed by ten or so; in the end I just followed the movement of my hand without counting, but making sure that I had different shapes of varying sizes." (Helene Dorion, Days of Sand)

I talked about this passage from Days of Sand in a post many moons ago. Couldn't help think about it again, as I scribbled, filled a page with loops, to get used to the weight and line and flow of my new and lovely pen. A Faber-Castell Ambition in Pearwood. Pure pleasure - the feel of the nib moving across the surface of paper with a fair amount of bite.

Taken by the Urge

"Suddenly, I am taken by the urge to collect all the warm bread to be found in poetry." (G. Bachelard)

As for me, I'm suddenly taken by the urge to collect those moments in a text where a writer reveals various obsessions or attunements with the materials with which she writes. I've started to jot down quotations in a notebook - will see what patterns emerge. (This could take years...) Would dearly love to expand an essay I wrote ages ago, called "Try." (You can see it here on page 51 of the Garneau Review).

Since I began working part-time in a beautiful stationery shop my obsession with paper, pens, ink, notebooks, journals and etc has deepened. I've been collecting links to all sorts of sites run by people who are even more obsessed than I am and thought this would be a good place to share some of those intermittently. Of course, in the back of my mind I'm thinking 'blog project.' Would love to get writers to talk about their mode of getting their thoughts down. Are you qwerty-averse? paper shy? Hooked on Moleskines? An Inkophile? A typewriter addict? A fountain pen lover?

My current journal (still in decent shape even though I spilled half a glass of red wine on it) is pictured above, along with my Lamy Al-Star fountain pen (fine nib) and my favorite Lamy black ink.

Raw and Loose

A person oughta google herself from time to time I suppose. I've been neglecting to do such things lately, and then there's the 'what you don't know can't hurt you' aspect of it all. I'm not surprised that Red Velvet Forest hasn't much been reviewed. In fact, I can't say I'm sad that the usual people who hate my books have left it alone. A hearty thank you to them.

I was pleased though, I admit, to see these short few lines this morning (though they're from way back in September as it turns out) by Jennifer Still in the Winnipeg Free Press. Mainly because this is precisely the kind of reading/reader I was hoping would find RVF.

Suffice to say it made my day to read this:

"These are poems that read with an intense privacy, as diary entries, raw and loose, written as if never to be seen."

Yes, I Thank You

Why is it that at certain times I am drawn to this book of interviews, Woman to Woman - Marguerite Duras and Xaviere Gauthier? And I admit I know exactly what I'm drawn to - the 'wild and scraggly' parts of the interviews, those parts that Gauthier chose to leave in that others would have likely edited out. She says, "we know we are taking a risk in leaving them exactly as they were said." She allows us to know that the telephone rang, that a dog outside barks for some time and there is a worry that on the tape it will have drowned out their voices. There are pauses for wine to be poured, books to be leafed through and cigarettes to be lit. There are interruptions. In between the interviews they make jam. More than once, the tape runs out and then noticed, and an attempt is made, the conversation is reconstructed. We know it is not as intense as the original but we are grateful for what we have.

I am grateful for this sort of insight: "It was much later that I moved on to incoherence."

and

"I'm in an abominable state of doubt..." (Duras).

Equally so for these types of exchanges:

"XG: Could I have another cigarette?
MD: Of course."

or

"MD: Would you like a glass of wine?
XG: Yes, I thank you.
[interruption.]"

Life, as always, intervenes. Voices are drowned out by barking. Words go unrecorded, are lost. A friend of mine once suggested that she should write a book of the interruptions she experiences rather than what she was attempting to write. When I become more weary than usual of the interruptions (for interruptions there will always be...), I like to return to these polite exchanges. Would you like a glass of wine? Yes, I thank you.