Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Creating space…..
I left work in a bad mood yesterday. It’s just been one of those periods of uncertainty (ie: we are awaiting news of layoffs) and everyone is worn a bit thin. On top of that I had some bad interactions as a union rep and I was feeling sour.
But on the way home I decided not to carry it with me, and so I projected something good about what was going to happen next: that I would pick up fabulous groceries for a great dinner (shitake mushrooms, asparagus and tuna steak), and on my way I would run into a neighbour and have a connecting conversation, and then when I got home I would do some more emptying of my space and my mind to get rid of the day’s stress. Just projecting that was enough to get in a better state of mind….
And so I did, in fact, pick up fabulous dinner ingredients, and then I ran into a neighbour who was gardening and we had a great chat for about fifteen minutes, and then I came in the door and greeted the dog as I put the groceries on the counter. All as I had wanted.
And then the phone rang. That wasn’t in my projection.
Brian (who was out taking M. to piano lesson) was calling to tell me that our downstairs tenant gave notice earlier that day. Three days notice in fact. Oh, and he might not actually have his stuff out on the 1st, in fact it’s a little unclear when he is planning to have his things out. But he is leaving on the 1st, with no notice.
I said, “I guess that’s what’s going to happen then,” and I put down the phone, made my lovely dinner, and then emailed a friend who I know is apartment hunting right now.
While cooking (and eating) it was hard not to reflect on the fact that we have been on a week of getting rid of unwanted things in our home, and that my projection included getting home to another evening of emptying out space. And then, as if responding to that, our tenant decided that he was up and going too. Except I don’t think it worked exactly like that, and I believe he’s been planning to move for some weeks and failed to tell us because he is unable to think outside of his own self these days.
Though we will lose a little income towards the mortgage, I am glad with this turn of events, because it does fit with my emotional being at the moment (very much about creating flow and space), and because things with our tenant have been steadly degrading since last summer due to a combination of factors. Most recently, he has refused to speak to either of us in anything other than single syllable noises, which has put me in avoidance of any interactions at all. You can see how that might be tense-making for all three of us, and I hope that wherever he is going, it turns out to be a happier living situation for him too because clearly he is unhappy with us.
In the meantime I have a friend coming to view the suite tonight, and I really hope she takes it because she fits the tenant profile I am looking for. If not, it’s a very easy place to get someone for so I’m not worried about it sitting empty for more than a couple of weeks. I do feel like things in our home are shifting energetically in a positive direction, and at least some of that has to do with our intensive efforts at freeing ourselves from some of our possessions and making more room. It’s just interesting how things come together sometimes – you start one process in motion and suddenly it takes a shape you hadn’t quite expected. A little cosmic perhaps. But whatever is going on, it feels about right.
Breathing room
Now that I’ve started paring down my stuff at home, I can’t seem to stop. Just yesterday, I walked into my office at work and before I had even turned my computer on for the day, I started throwing stuff into boxes and shredding binders full of no-longer-needed paper. It’s as though I’ve just noticed that I am surrounded by things I do not require, and those things are making it hard to breathe.
And I don’t just mean material things, in this sense of “too much” I have long felt plagued by the number of emails in my inbox, the amount of junk mail that comes to my home, the number of windows I have open in Firefox at any one time, the amount of information coming at me from Facebook the 12 times a day I check in. It’s all TOO MUCH! And it’s been creeping up on me awhile – this sense that I’m distracted all the time, and that I have no control over the rush of information and things which seem to come at me from every direction.
But! I do have control. Or at least some control over that which comes into my life, my brainspace, my home. Not total – because none of us has that – but I’ve got a lot more agency in this whole affair than I’ve been exercising lately.
So in addition to the cleaning out of stuff that is going on in my home and office, I am also making two other moves in the direction of breathing room:
- I am unsubscribing from every single email list and advertiser notification I receive. As I see them come in, I am immediately unsubscribing or blocking them as spam. This not only frees me up mentally from having to look at so many uneccessary emails, it also prevents me from being tempted to purchase “deals” via Groupon or anywhere else.
- No more leaving Facebook open on my browser all day. No matter what I am doing at work, I always have a FB tab open on my browser which results in an almost-oc checking of the site every few minutes. Overall, that continually checking just makes me tense, and I know it’s terrible for my productivity so I’d like to cut it out.
As I clean out my physical spaces, I feel compelled to work on my mental space as well – for the two are intrinsically linked. Looking around our revamped office/sewing/tv room last night, I felt a lot more relaxed in there than I have in the past few months. Same with clearing off my desk at work. With each non-necessary item removed – be it actual or digital – I feel a little bit more relaxed again.
Bookshed and Giveaway: Round Mountain
Kevin and Zipper are the trouble cavalry.
And therefore, to be sure, an anachronism. Kevin and Zipper belong in a museum, or, if there were such a place, in a zoo for dangerous ideas. By all means let them be seen, visited. Let them be admired. For is theirs not the same material, the same force that produces the beloved heroes of romance: Roland, Lancelot, Coeur de Leon, the vainglorious Custer himself? In a world founded on trouble, trouble’s thoughtless cavaliers have a necessary place, an honorable place, a place of legends. In a world founded otherwise the ncessity is gone, the honor is gone. Only the legends remain, and they are reduced to constables’ reports, to the repetitious, digressive stories of the small towns and villages.
Thus, Kevin and zipper’s breaking into Condosta’s
From the story “Bandit Poker” by Castle Freeman Jr.
This is one beautifully-written book of short stories. And I don’t say that lightly – short stories are my favourite genre of writing and thus I have read my fair share. I have also stopped reading partway through many collections because I am fussy about what I want in a short story – and I can’t be bothered to read those which don’t meet my criteria.
It might be fragmentary, slightly prose-poemish, or otherwise esoteric in form. It might be stuffy, or humorous, or strange in shape and content. These aspects are what make short stories magical – little forays and experiments in setting, style and character. But at the end of the piece, no matter what, I want a whole story to be told. Not a piece of a novel, not a hint of more stories to come – but a complete entity unto itself to be enjoyed without reference to any other work.
In Round Mountain, Castle Freeman Jr. gives us just that. Though it’s a linked collection – each piece featuring the same characters and setting – the twelve stories in here could stand on their own, complete and compelling tales. And as a collection? A study of character and place that sneaks up on you, partway through. A portrait of life in a small town as a teenager, a cop, an aging codger, a good neighbour, a sensible individual, a frustrated husband….. each of these embodied in Homer (our main figure) as he provides the anchor for the stories woven around him.
Best part about this book? It was free, and not only that – I will be giving this copy away when I am done. I got this in the mail Monday from Concorde Free Press as part of a program to encourage charitable giving. You can read about it here. Basically, you get a book for free, make a charitable donation in exchange and post what donation you made on the Concorde website. Once you are finished reading, you sign the back of the book and pass it along.
Interested? Let me know if you would like this book when I am done (and can commit to reading, donation and passing it along) and I will pass it along to you! I think this is such an amazing project, I really would like to keep the pay-it-forward going via this blog – so please let me know in the comments if this appeals to you and I will send it your way.
Spring digging.
I had a bit of an epiphany last week when we pulled up the area rug in our living room due to our dog being copiously ill everywhere (she’s all better now)….. My realization being that our living room looks better without the area rug after all. Three years ago when we moved into our house, we felt that some sort of area definition was needed in our living/dining room, and thus the rug was bought – but taking it out now I notice how much larger the room feels without it. And in a living area as tiny as ours, any bit of space – be it real or imaginary – is more than welcome.
In the meantime, a bunch of books I ordered on home organization and de-cluttering came into my library branch and I took them with me to Victoria on the weekend. Simple books to read, I devoured three of them in two days (my favourite being The Joy of Less written by Francine Jay aka Miss Minimalist), and by the time I got home I was ready to tackle what has been driving me crazy lately: too much stuff crammed into too little space.
Though I doubt my ability to become any sort of a minimalist, at the moment I have to confess to a great glee in tearing apart our sewing/tv/office room and pulling out bags of stuff. As of yesterday, Brian and I are on our way to digitizing two shelves of DVDs, we have pulled dozens of books off the shelves (political books and posters to be donated to the Purple Thistle which warms my heart greatly), and in my proudest accomplishment of all I managed to halve my fabric stash.
A hearty pile of clothing from the closets (mine and Mica’s) awaits garage saling and donation, a box of books in the basement is poised for trade-in credit, and I’ve decided that to create more space for my sewing, I need to *get rid of* one of my sewing tables. Crazy right? But I realize that more horizontal space just means more junk piles up and then I have less space for sewing not more.
This weekend we’ve got a dump run scheduled and once the office/sewing area is put back together we will embark on the basement (overflowing, completely unusable), and then the upstairs bedroom, then the kitchen. End goal? Garage sale on the May 19th weekend, maybe a few bucks picked up via Craigslist – and a much tidier house for living in. One in which the cupboards and storage spaces aren’t overflowing. One in which workspaces are clear for the work they are intended. And so on.
So rather than spring cleaning, we are spring digging out – and I’m feeling relieved and energized by the process so far (all 24 hours of it).
In the Bookshed: The Storytelling Animal
At my writing group a couple of months ago, my friend Nadine launched into a list of all the things going on in her life that keep her from writing: full-time work, single-parenting, a new-ish relationship, a long commute, and the fact that all these things leave her exhausted and without a moment to spare. And besides, writing fiction can seem so frivolous when there is all that real life stuff which needs doing!
Discussion ensued, during which I made an impassioned defense of taking time for the writing craft – stories are a profound shaper of the world we live in, and at their best are the engine which moves us forward to a new perspective, attitude, or even social organization. In fact, I argued, almost everything our current civilization is based on is a story, told repeatedly, until it is “truth”. (Example: Tell me how it is that banks can lend more money than they have in reserve. The fact that there is no rational answer for that gives us a pretty strong clue that the economy as we know it is basically a fiction, tied to nothing except believe in the story we have concocted for it). Ergo, time for writing is not frivilous – it is some of the most important work we can do.
Turns out, according to a new book by Jonathan Gottschall, I might actually have been right about all of that – or at least some of it (he has nothing to say about the economy being a fiction). Just released this month, The Storytelling Animal: How stories make us human, is some inspiration reading for any writer (or fiction-creator in any media) who is asking the question why. Because as Gottschall will tell you, storytelling is one of our most fundamental and profound acts, and strikingly, it’s what makes us uniquely human.
Now, Gottschall isn’t making a deep or especially scientific case for any of this. He is an English professor, and it shows in his lack of hard science referencing, and in his abundant use of literary references. But what he does give us are examples from a variety of sources and studies that show the prevalence and power of fiction in the human experience. Conspiracy theories, religious stories, myths, the fantasy play of children, dreams, film and the modern-day novel are all examined as shapers of social mores and conscience, as a way of working out deep-seated anxiety, and as a way of ensuring social cohesion.
Along the way, Gottschall throws in some interesting factoids about the increased empathy of fiction-readers, the actual correlation between creativity and mental illness (actually much higher than you might want to believe), and the prevalance of conspiracy-theory believers in society. All fascinating – but what I appreciated most about the book is Gottschall’s use of story in what is otherwise a non-fiction work. Besides just giving description about his own inspirations and family observations, he plays a couple of tricks with brief fiction exerpts which are meant to reveal the power and depth of stories to you (and me), the reader.
Gottschall winds up making the case that across culture, time and technology, the fundamentals of fiction stay the same – that as much as we evolve socially, we are still bound within the same anxieties and fears which are the primary driver of story – and to that end, we are in no danger of losing storytelling from our society. To the contrary, the increasing access to on-demand fiction may propose the opposite – that we risk becoming a society increasingly lost in the fictions we create.
An engaging read, Gottschall joins scientific research and the humanities together in an easy style – so thumbs up. And if anyone wants to borrow my copy, you are certainly welcome to.
Red Cedar 