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.
Three books that are interesting to read and consider beside each other:
Aritha van Herk’s “Judith”
Helen Potrebenko’s “Sometimes They Sang”
Marina Endicott’s “Good To A Fault.”
All three novels concern a single woman. Read them and consider the departure point for the women and their arrivals. In the case of Judith — the woman has left the city and a man and returned to the country (rural) and ultimately has a male dancing in and around her, in Sometimes They Sang, the woman has left the country (rural) to the city, where she does her own dancing. (term used liberally, not literally).
I am excited to be heading up to our family reunion on Cortes Island tomorrow. I’ve been going to Cortes for 10+ years and love to swim (my version of swimming, ie. brief but repeated flounder) in the sea there, everyone has a garden to explore and get tips from, my partner usually drags me to an Adobe hut to meditate together, last year I think it was, I ran into a novelist whose work I’d read and appreciated, so that slightly upped my enthusiasm on the Adobe hut front. (ie. chance of a good chat, precise opposite point of meditation).
I got a request to go tee-shirt shopping this morning, so there’s some kind of family tee-shirt making project in the works. We will be 11 people or is it 13 together. Fun times. Badminton and reading. Food, food, food. And the woodpecker outside the window…
There has been a weather event of sorts. A haze, think duvet of haze that has besieged us from the forest fires (carefully recorded on c’est blog).
I do not recall such a bad haze as this previously. This evening I read that some of it may be coming from Russia, via Prince George. I stared at the sky beyond VGH today and could not see no sign of any downtown building, let alone the normal mound of mountains, hither and thither.
My thoughts turn to the people who live or are evacuated away from the 400+ burning fires because if this haze is the blown South and dispersed version, Lord knows how their lungs must fare.
There are the usual government moans about the cost and budget to fight the fires. I continue to follow the numbers of fires, causes and so on rather than bellyaching about costs. The fact is the place is on fire and we need to contemplate it and mitigate, if possible, against it becoming even more forceful. I don’t know how, but there are some bold, bloody genius’s among us who may be inclined towards ideas. Bring on the backyard inventors.
I’ve read that a couple of blogs are closing their comment streams. The rationale in doing this merely confirms what we already know that human beings are complex and can be tricky to encounter and deal with. People can be a great deal more vicious online and hide behind anon tags. Or is it that people are generally just as vicious in flesh, and merely suppressing the urge to express it!
Lately I have found online reading can be a noisy experience if you’re not discerning. I am referring more to social networking where one must trawl through an enormous amount of positioning and senseless blubbing to find the one tweet that ignites an interest or is very funny or is David Lynch making another of his lovely woodwork projects or the much longed for, but rare as rain currently, Channel 4’s Alex Thomson tweeting on his vegetable plants.
If anything I blog more and use social networking less or use blogging to similar effect. The moment to moment thing can be compelling with twitter and I prefer to import that to my blog. But my mind is in a hefty reading mode at present and there are so many texts I want to devour in their entirety that I can’t accommodate the twit factor.
One thing that puzzles me is if the urge is to blog, why per se would you expect people only to listen and not formulate their own thoughts or response to what you’ve written? Isn’t this a sermon? An oration? If it’s a round of applause you’re looking for I am not sure blogging is where you find it. If anything blogging is a celebration of democracy and equal access and the right to speak over the final, lauded word.