yoga, writing, cooking, and whatever else catches my fancy
People celebrated 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II on the throne last weekend with street parties (it looked cold in the UK!), reminiscences about her reign (like this secret 1970s lawn chair party in Manitoba), scones and Pimm’s, and staggeringly expensive memorabilia.
My memories related to Liz are much more, um, visceral. Yes, I mean related to intestines or digestion.
Continue reading ““Be the Queen””
I’m just weeks away from the end my Post-Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing and feeling out of my depth reading stage plays and film scripts and TV treatments. This term is all dramaturgy and I’ve taken solace in short fiction.
As the photo of me reading as a child demonstrates, escaping into story is nothing new—and I’ve got three more absorbing reads to share.
Continue reading “Selected short-story reading (vol. 5)”
I’ve been writing short aphorisms with my left hand nearly daily since the middle of February. The plan is to write a full hundred of these short, often blithely meaningless sayings, before the end of May.
Do I expect to be ambidextrously proficient after 100 days of left-handed scrawling? Probably not.
Will I at least get better at it? On day 28, my progress looks minimal, but I’ve got another 72 days to improve! And my intent is practice, not advancement.
Continue reading “The start of 100 days”
It’s been a year since Sofie died.
Twelve months adjusting to her absence.
A full 365 days of missing her.
She’s still very much a part of our lives, so much so that she inspired one of the eleven poems I submitted for my term assessment in December.
Continue reading “A fundamental force of nature”For the first year ever, I religiously tracked the books I read in 2021. From technical tomes on poetry and required reading for my Post-Graduate Creative Writing course, to cookbooks and the trashiest of romance novels, everything went into Goodreads. (Yeah, I’m not thrilled about it being Bezos-owned and the interface is pretty bad, but it’s the devil I know.)
The book-centric site can’t, however, capture all the smaller bits; the short stories, poems, and personal essays that fill my laptop screen or are thumbed through on my phone. Since starting the Creative Writing course, I’ve maintained a series of Google Docs where I sock away the best of those smaller bits. It’s useful when reflecting on what I read and how it influences my own work (a requirement for the final term assessments)—and it’s a great source for recommendations!
Continue reading “Selected short-story reading (vol. 4)”
At the start of my regular Tuesday meditation sessions, the teacher usually asks how we’re coming to practice. Yesterday, I said I was feeling a lot of resistance.
After her regular thank-you-for-sharing affirmation, she encouraged me to question what was feeling threatened by the practice. THREATENED. The word hit hard. The question caught me off guard.
Partway through the meditation, I found my answer.
Continue reading “Resisting stillness”
The report from the most recent MRI on my right knee is filled with words I don’t understand — and not just because they’re German. ‘Subluxation’ is the same in English and auf Deutsche. ‘Chondral degeneration’ and ‘joint effusion’ are pretty close. ‘Arthrose’ translates neatly to ‘osteoarthritis.’ And meniscus is readily understandable with a ‘k’ instead of a ‘c.’
The meaning of the medical terminology is opaque in either language. The effects on my life, however, are obvious — and leave me wondering about what osteoarthritis and a host of complications mean for meditating.
Continue reading “Meanings, meditations, and modifications”