Words of advice from a hundred year old spinster: You just live...you're you...and that's what happens.

There is no happiness like mine
I have been eating poetry

I love the sign in my Vet clinic.

I think I've finally figured out how to focus the camera on my phone!

John Steinbeck's novel, Of Mice and Men, was published 78 years ago today. It would have been published earlier if his new puppy, Toby, had chewed up half the manuscript setting Steinbeck back two months!

Everything will be all right in the end
And if it is not all right, it is not the end.

Yes...I am clearing files rather than clearing rooms...it is much more satisfying!

We will be friends until we are old and senile and then we will be new friends!

 

A former student wrote: Do you remember me skipping almost all of grade 11, and you having me sit down for several hours in your office at the end of the year to write out a handful of assignments so that you could give me a passing grade? I shall never forget it. And clearly, the bits keep coming.

Did I get away with a lot when I was a teacher?
Or did they know but trusted me?
Or did they know but could figure out what to do about it?
And more importantly, did I realize I was getting away with anything or was that just the way I was?
Or were they afraid of me?

 

I have more trust in my Inner Teacher. She is subtle and humble because she hopes to be understood. She contains contradictory opinions without betting indigestion. she can mediate between the arrogant artist self who mutters, "I don't give a damn if you don't understand me," and the preacher self who shouts, "Now hear this!" She doesn't declare truth, but offers it. She takes a Grecian urn and says, "Look closely at this, study it, for study will reward you, and I can tell you some of the things that other people have found in this pot, some of the goodies you too may fine in it."

An afternoon with Machin is…a slice of breath.

That made me smile!

The first thing one must do every morning is swallow a live frog…

My friend's husband woke up the other morning on his eightieth birthday and said: I made it!

So I said to a friend:

It’s hard business trying to run the world...

To which she replied: Yup, that is why Diggy is here to 
help me. She is connected to the universe and tells me when to stuff it. 



Of course this is Diggy!

A stolen quote:
Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.

Dandelion phase three?
In one way I am reduced to taking from others...in another way I like sharing from others...

 Dear Reader

Through what precinct of life’s forest are you hiking at this moment?
Are you kicking up leaf litter or stabbed by brambles?
Of what stuff are you made? Gossamer or chain mail?
Are you, as reputed, marvellously empty? Or invisibly ever-present,
even as this missive is typed? Have you been to Easter Island? Yes?
Then I’m jealous. Do you use a tongue depressor as bookmark?
Are you reading this at an indecent hour by flashlight?
Plenty of scholarly ink has been spilt praising readers like yourself,
who risk radical dismantling, or being unmasked, by rappelling
deep into sentences. Your trigger warnings could be triggered every
second, yet you forge on, mystic syllables detonating in your head,
the metal-edged smell of monsoon-downpour on hot asphalt
raising steam in your imagination. You hold out for the phrase
with which the soul resonates, am I right? Reading, you’re seized
by tingly feelings, a rustling in the brain, winds that tickle your scalp,
bubbles erupting from a blow hole at the back of your neck.
You forget the breathy woman talking softly on TV across the lobby
(via TiVo you’ve saved her for later.) Birds outside are cracking jokes
and cackling. Reader, smile to yourself, rock the cradle, kiss
everyone you wish to kiss, and please keep reading. It beats
fielding threatening phone calls for $15 an hour which is what
yours truly is meant to be doing right now, instead of speculating
on the strange and happy manifestations of, you, dear reader, you.

Amy Gersler

It's not quite dandelion time but I couldn't resist! I wish I could actually say this: I'm sorry I'm late but I didn't want to come!

The other day I think I accidentally ate too much cheese and my lactose intolerance kicked in big time. I really thought about my mortality and then I realized that I couldn't die quite yet because my apartment was just too messy to leave behind...

This is a rather long entry...but I think it is worth it...and since I make books of my blogs (yet another cry for self-discipline) I want to keep it. It is a reply to a posting from someone I knew in high school who wrote of depression and suicide on Facebook and I just couldn't ignore him.

David, it’s Pat...

I’m terrible at Facebook...as you may see and so I don’t really know how to share or really post or anything, but I talk with friends about depression and I have been in therapy...I didn’t know why at the time except that my dad had died and I realized at the end that I didn’t know who I was...I was fortunate to have a therapist who chose to help me find my strengths rather than my weaknesses...(She said I was all too aware of them and perhaps saw more than were actually there!) We are taught in this society to work on our weaknesses rather than our strengths...I think...I don’t know if you knew that my father suffered from very bad depression...he was hospitalized several times...and when I read the passage from Black Dog I identified with it...in the sense of being the person outside the depression... and the words Black Dog rang true...there was little I could do for my dad save for not sweep his  condition under the carpet...and he taught me that...he taught me how to listen because he was a listener. And he taught me a sense of the absurd which confused my poor mother no end because she just didn’t get it! But most of all he taught me that the words - I don’t understand. You have so much going for you. Why don’t you just get over it? – are ridiculous words to use or think when someone is suffering from mental illness.

And perhaps most importantly he taught me compassion or not to judge although the pragmatic side of my Irish grandmother sometimes interferes! But I have to admit both of them taught me laughter...

I sort books with a very earnest friend at the local library for the annual book sale. We are buried in books. In the midst of sorting yesterday I got the hiccups. My friend said to me,  “Turn your back because what I’m going to tell you to do will be hard to do facing me.”  Did I say he was very earnest? So I did. And then he said, “Stick out your tongue as far as it will go.” And I did...but I broke up in amusement. And then I did it again and it worked. It evidently is an East Indian remedy. And as I write, I think of my dad because if I had told him that story, he would have loved to use it in a sermon or a children’s story.

It’s the kind of story I tell via email to my friend who admitted to suffering from depression so she knows I am there...and she knows I’m walking with her but not telling her to get over it!

Oh and my dad taught me to be obsessed with children’s stuff! At the age of 77 (I’m younger than most the class because Auntie Gertrude was teaching grade one and wanted me in the class because she was best friends with my mother and she thought Barbara Joan and I could be best friends so she got me into grade one early...Barbara Joan and I never were best friends!) I still do origami when in doubt...

I don’t really do Facebook but I did do a blog which I should be keeping up except that I have the attention span of a fly with a lobotomy (one of my students pointed that out!) but it might make you smile to putter through it...

I can't keep going back to see what I have and what I don't have...I'm just going to have to accidentally repeat myself until I take more pictures...yet another loss of discipline!

But I did save this fortune cookie bit: You have an unusual talent for success. Use it properly. I think said talent is that no one expects me to succeed...so I can do it without pressure!

I have absolutely no self-discipline...that is why all my dreams are those of catching up with the correcting I never finished. So now I owe fourteen entries for February if I want to catch up...and some of said entries are going to be pathetic...but I have to learn self-discipline before I turn 80...it is a mandatory entrance into old age.

My problem I have realized is that I am normal...I am so normal that I have no stories to tell save the stories of others...I remember once finding the definition of anticlimax: The rest of all the acts of Asa, and all his might, and the cities he built, are they not written in the chronicles of the kings of Juda? Nevertheless, in the time of his old age, he was diseased in his feet. 

Alas I have built no cities...but I do have sore feet! My friend gave me hope the other day when he suggested that I was just slightly manic...at last...a condition!

This is a stolen photograph! My friend, Babs Lapointe, takes fine pictures...she is the one who made me conscious of clouds....
It is a full moon and the demons are definitely dancing...

These are the three men of my family. I think I told you that when I was 17 I was standing at a bus stop in TMR and a car stopped. A woman got out and asked: Are you Pat Machin? It threw me. Yes...and she introduced herself as my uncle’s fiance. She had never seen me or met me – I would have been five when he died – but she recognized me from him...and he was six foot five or so...She said to give her love to my grandmother and left...I said very little...I was too surprised. As I reflect back now, it would only have been 12 years since my uncle died...she still could have been grieving...she and my grandmother were close....they even went together to choose her engagement ring...my uncle had wired my grandmother the money...  

When in doubt there's always something on Pinterest!


The poem, the one that runs
along side and through your
life, pay attention to that
poem.
Nayyirah Waheed

I worry that I am too old to have cats...that I am not playful enough...but the presence of a cat or two in my life is sheer joy and I have it arranged that should anything happen to me....That having been said I lost one of my cats for a moment and panicked. Had he escaped into that hall he is so curious about and I hadn't noticed. So I took the house apart whilst he watched!

Anything too stupid to be said should be sung.

Imagine being the artistic director of the Summer Writing Program of Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics?

Some messages are worth repeating:

Whispered message

of each new wrinkle:

Rejoice! You’re still here.

On the topic of poetry:

Like a piece

of ice on a

  hot stove

    the poem

must ride on

       its own

   melting.

Robert Frost

Ironically...that is a complete sentence!!

If I had the time, I would go back through my blog just to make sure I'm not repeating my pictures and words...but I don't have the time at the moment...and I have to catch up since my goal is to make 365 entries this year...This time it's the sky I'm looking at...not the cheetah...and a quote stolen from Pinterest:

Poetry is a story that is so good it doesn’t need complete sentences.

My friend is in Africa at the moment doing the Safari that I did over ten years ago. We have the same pictures. I know that seems impossible...but it is so...the same animals are posing! I never thought I would go to Africa the first time around...I never thought I would want to return but I do...her pictures make me yearn for that experience once more...

I have this new gesture, the windshield affect. One can wave one’s hand in front of someone’s eyes and they won’t blink.

The Vet that gave me back Liam had that windshield affect...one could wave one’s hand in front of her and she wouldn’t blink. The technician also had it as she showed me how to put stuff up Liam’s nose...in the cage. Neither had put the cat on the floor. If they had, they would have realized that he couldn’t walk...that he was dying...Your cat’s a bit wobbly – don’t let him near the stairs.

The man that I work for might have it. He admitted to me that next week would be the first time he would actually go to an Adult Ed center...these are the people he’s writing the books for. I’ve never actually seen his eyes so I don’t know.

The chair of the group I volunteer for has it...they stare straight ahead no matter what...so she writes about a meeting. I write to say if she needs me I’ll come for comic relief. She phones after the meeting to say...why weren’t you there? I say: You didn’t respond so I assumed you didn’t need me.

The Korean mom below me has it as I try to explain to her that her son can’t play the drums in my bedroom at ten at night and perhaps she should move them to another room and she says: But that’s where I sleep.

My other vet has it was she tries to think of another test she might use. I guess that’s it...the lack of ability to see the problem. Take his temperature...but it might be...take his temperature...but perhaps we should...

One could wave one’s hands slowly or desperately in front of their eyes and they wouldn’t blink.

It’s a lack of problem solving.

I’ve been gathering examples...

You’re never going to kill story telling because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it. Margaret Atwood

Some birthdays are never forgotten. Grannie's birthday was January 25, Robbie Burns' day! And her favourite flower - a sample of which fell out of her books? Queen Anne's lace!

I’ve never killed a man but I’ve read many an obituary with a great deal of satisfaction. Mark Twain

If I start checking my entries I might find repetitions but that would stop me from my goal...I want to make 365 entries this year...it is a matter of discipline. I was watching the women's march and thinking about the power...
I think back to the Montreal Women's Symphony. I wrote to a friend about the event: what I would have said to all of them was you should have come just to find out what these women did. Not as advancing the cause of women – that wasn’t their goal –but to follow their passions...they found out they could do
whatever they wanted! Stark put together this higglety pigglety orchestra in ten weeks with women who had never played those instruments before...You
want to play? We’ll play.

I just read a book called The Angle of Repose. The angle of repose or the critical angle of repose or granular material is the steepest angle or descent or dip relative to the horizontal plane to which a material can be piled without slumping. It's the idea of how high can one pile the sand before it falls down. The author uses the concept to explain how far the character can be pushed before he crumbles. One has to hold on to the angle of repose. That is the moment before everything crumbles.

I have a stunning memory for stories. I may not remember what i did yesterday but I remember people's stories. I was with a friend last week and remembered the story he told me of his grandmother thirty years ago. I still use his story of going in to
call his grandmother for supper and finding her with a nylon stocking wrapped around her neck like a scarf shouting at the moon: It's not true!
The first part Mike figured out - astronauts had just landed on the moon and his grandmother was protesting. No big deal.
"But why do you have a nylon wrapped around your neck?" he asked.
"Oh that," she replied, "I've had that on for a week. I was waiting for someone to notice..."

My mind is whizzing around in circles and accidentally brain storming...Fragments fly and I'm trying to catch them and put order into the
world...

This is a long one! I'm going to count it as two entries.

I do belong to two book clubs...I’m not sure I would call it a membership...One I joined, one I created...

The one I joined is filled with librarians who usually make good choices...but they tend to “present and be pedantic.” Unfortunately one of them has taken to finding authors on the street and insists on bringing the author and the book...both of whom should have been left on the street!

But I have to get my act together for them – they usually choose my book for me (they see me as the experimental one) and I like that...so I reviewed A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan for them...and if I think about it A Constellation of Vital Phenomena – the structure of which fascinated me. As I write I realize I have to get going on their next choice for me – Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flannagan.

The book club I created is a hoot. I “rescued” a cat whose owner was desperate. Her husband had developed asthma to the point he fainted. It was the husband or the cat and there was a moment...but...

So she would visit the cat and he would shun her...she had had him for ten years...she was devastated. He would lie under the bed and we would lie on either side on the floor talk to each other about books. And we created a book club, BOGG (Because of Gillie Group). The truth was that we hadn’t realized – she was Jewish, I was Wasp...and for the first time this group of women who had grown up in the same city and were all of the same age met over the love of books and we have even gone so far as having a summer picnic in the park in Pointe Claire near the yacht club.

When one of the original members died, her daughter had a celebration in her house and it was then that Peggy, one of the Jewish members, realized that her son and the daughter had dated!! Peggy’s husband was commandant of the Pointe Claire yacht club in the 60’s which we couldn’t believe...

Sometime I must map the connections that have been made in that club...they are far ranging...

Peggy’s step mother is in the local senior’s home...she knew the manager because he had worked at the yacht club. I knew the manager because I taught him in grade seven...

We didn’t make any of these connections until we were in our 70’s!

I could sit and dream for hours or until my rotor cuff gives out...and then I worry about the remaining hours!

And yes...I found another obsession...that of bird houses!

And now I see them everywhere...

It was my friend Babs who pointed out the clouds to me when we were in France...I hadn't really thought about them before and now I see them all the time...such is the gift of the camera.

And clouds...trees and clouds...
I realize how privileged I am to wake up in the morning and say what shall I do today...and not answer housecleaning! Mind you it wouldn't hurt...house cleaning that is...but I don't know where to start!

Entry 4. I think I could easily become obsessed with trees!

I dream of a better world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned.

Entry 3:
Two more lines from Blackish.

Over fifty million people can't be nuts or racist or hate women...it is time that we stop calling each other names and started to talk...

I have been lucky enough to raise four children, to see a black man in the white house and a white woman run for president...

Entry 2: Yes...I was at the museum and found this creature charming...Alas, today I met Charlotte, a Chinese Crested who twirled for treats and stole my heart. The breed is described as fine-boned, elegant and graceful...an adept climber ad jumper who often grips his toys (or his owner's neck) tightly with his paws. Some will bark (or howl) and some are clever escape artist who can scale high fences or dig under them. But listen to this! Housebreaking is very difficult as this somewhat primitive breed is inclined to excessive marking of his territory.

So I have nine entries to make up!

Entry 1: I found last week's Blackish astonishing. One of the lines: "The day after the election we all knew what it was like to be black..."