Two small co-incidences today, a friend emails me and suggests I might like Jane Rule’s novel The Young in Another One’s Arms at precisely the moment I am reading p37 of said novel and liking it.
In Campbell River I ran into a visual artist who generously gave me a lift across Quadra, we missed the ferry, drank beer, had a lengthy exchange on art criticism, literature, rooftop gardening. As we were driving across Cortes I noticed he was reading Tony Judt’s Ill Fares The Land and told him that I’d learnt of Judt’s death last night. He was shocked at the news.
We are trying to identify an animal spotted by Quinsam River he’s about a foot and a half long, he has a pointy nose, dark brown, bit ferret like, nothing remarkable about his tail, but he swam in, grabbed a salmon bigger than him (estimated at 4 pounds by riverside salmon weighing spotter) in his mouth, ran along stream using rocks as his cover, he dragged fish with him, pulled it into a hole. Disappeared with giant fish.
Moment of great excitement as I declared him a musk-ox, except musk-ox are massive, four legged, woolly mammoth creatures. He is not a beaver, he’s not an otter, not a marmot (!), not a shrew, he’s not a musk-ox, he’s not a musk-rat, and he’s not a fish.
Help! What is he? Aside from a potential member of the TV show Chips.
Did I mentioned it rained? I let out a yelp. I worried long into the night about my transplanted seeds. I worried so long I wrote to The Anglican as back up if the pagan prayers wouldn’t deliver. This morning The Anglican wrote by return to request I tackle World Peace by 3pm. I am fuelling up on eggs. I ate the best egg of my life in Pakistan, no egg has ever touched it, but these eggs polleny are coming up fast on the inside, over the hedge and down onto the last furlong … nipping at Karachi’s heels….
Campbell River, eggs polleny @Java Shack, familiar landmarks. All the way up, a man regaled me with his poker tales and his wife who led him a song and dance with her gin habits. They all come to Campbell River it seems, halos intact, to recover from the bold wimmin. Sad tales though, but like all tales they have their interesting bumps agus bruises! The other fella beside us on his way to a wedding ….
The latest on the forest fire situation is that things are lookin’ dicey in the area of Meager Creek. This could be an impending something else (landslide in fact), in anycase 1500 people have been evacuated. My point in recording it here is to say we live in the same geographic area of the world as you and we should give a shite and have empathy and awareness of this displacement because one day the old smoke may billow up against this very window.
What an emotionally taxing night in the jardin!
The woman North West plot to mine was having a depressive give up gardening moment. I had just shoved a giant dustbin of water across the big highway there and was having a bit of a “Gawd this is impossible without a water supply, but somehow on…” moment on that treacherous alley incline.
(Note to self: stop bringing pink handbag to garden, and then trying to push giant trolley with balanced water-loaded dustbin while holding onto it, cease wearing impractical mini skirts and clogs when gardening and get a proper clipper thing instead of wantonly snapping and ripping stuff off the plants).
But when another gardener is emotive, it is important to stay calm and practical. I gave the poor woman a speech, I absolutely do not believe a word of — but needs must. I pointed out that to labour the water to the garden plot is very useful (it is not a bit useful, it is an unmitigated pain), I appreciate hoses I told her (I do not. I want one.), I hate lawns I said (this is true). She nodded. We discussed a political and activisit approach to try to get City Hall to connect our water supply. At one point, the woman said “I was enjoying it, of her plot, but .. and she made noises along the lines of how ridiculous is this and it’s not worth …” and quelle horreur. I can’t recall what I said next, but it was basically a pile of auld ramble along the lines of it’s up and down and some days are hard and today the earth is so dry it all seems hopeless, but wait for your third year (it’s my second year, she said), yes but wait for your third year. Everything is great and dandy in your third year. (I do not believe this, but I am personally having a wonderful year in the garden, except today, where I stared at the soil and actively despaired and thought of the impending days and absence and despaired some more and then, hark, cut some beans and fussed over my lettuces and got a waft of my tomatoes, and back to the much more burdened woman kitty corner….
We talked potatoes. I offered anecdotes of great gardening moments including futuristic ones. Tomorrow I said six strangers will eat my zuccinis (I’d dropped three off chez quelque’ un for an impending dinner party. I reinvocated the potaotes and she called me to inspect hers.
But they’re ready says I. Let’s pull them.
At first it looked highly precarious and I was worried tiny little red dots emerge, but put my pink gloves and funky claw shovel thing (the ultimate gardening tool) into the soil, still nothing hectic. He planted them very deep, says she. So I burrow in earnest, tossing soil all over my sleeves, and finally there they are, lovely roundy red fellas. A deep handsome red. Now she’s excited. So we shriek, and I find more. She’s a pile of six. Go home and cook them I say and get your fork and dig up the rest another day. You just needed a boost, I tell her, so go home and enjoy your spuds. And she’s off and she’s happy and the downer moment is swallowed by the sight of the rising red fellas. Glory be to the potato.
Tony Judt
Tony Judt has died. RIP. Brave, brave thinking man. I really enjoyed his memoir essays in the NYRB over the recent months and many of his other essays. That image of libraries in the midwest will forever be with me. It’s an image I haven’t seen, an image he painted for me. Also his comments on the night and length of it and the difficulty therein. Despite his ALS he seemed so vital it didn’t register with me that he would die. Even tho’ I am sure at some point he probably inferred it. I think that’s is what comes of such a lively mind. His was a mind well used. Here’s to lively minds. Cheers.
Just did some repatriating of bewks to the new nation of shelves. It’s astonishing what one discovers when you lift things up. All my Virago titles from my twenties like Insiders: Women’s Experience of Prison (!), Marion Milner book, Judy Chicago, and an intelligent array of weather forecasting books and even one full of forestry terms (Pied Piper moment?) or on and on.
Recent research showed that sadly Attic Press are no longer publishing fiction, and Virago is no longer what it once was, owned as it is by the big boyos. I was reading some old Press Gang catalogues and was reminded how much publishing was once intertwined with activism and ideas for change.