I was going

Discussion among three schoolgirls
Pickering Library, January 2011
11:35 a.m. - 12 noon

I was going to buy a notebook, laugh at me, obvious, like, all this stuff we’ve learned, like, like, Imperialism, tests are easy, I don’t, oh, FaceBook without WiFi, nothing’s working? click on something, I’m on a profile, wow I can’t go on mine, search, no internet connection, quiet revolution or whatever it is, civil rights, on TV, all I know, page 246, looking over my stuff, didn’t study hard, so nice not having to study, after science, history tomorrow, so simple, whatever, no WiFi, there is WiFi, here, don’t know anything about Nellie McClung, wasn’t she, speaker, fought for women in the kitchen, right to vote, go on page 40, like she was, women’s christian temperance movement, in french, oh, whatever, I thought it was WTCU, or women’s temperance christian union, or is that just the same? Halifax explosion, bombed harbour, only know from going to Halifax, and time of Germany, Hitler came out of nowhere, sided with Japan, U.S. got cheesed off, Japan decided to bomb Pearl Harbour, Canada got mad or whatever, Japanese people being treated bad, Pearl Harbour so close to Canada and so are they going to bomb Canada also? No, Halifax Harbour, oh. I think it was an accident, I got confused when she said Pearl Harbour, I kept thinking of Halifax, so Japan bombed Pearl Harbour or Halifax harbour? bombs in water, remember in Finding Nemo they had those chairs? have to know about bombing, I lost a whole section, who were the Bolsheviks? wanted higher salary, revolution in Russia, communism, I found prohibition, WCTU during war, proposed factories, used wheat for food for soldiers and ammunition, 1918, WWI or II? What time period?

My Sweet Orange

'Books to Read' :Part One
Entries noted in Georgia O'Keefe engagement calendar, gift from Chead
From 1992 until ??

My Sweet Orange Tree -- by Jose Mauro de Vasconcelos
Letters from the Country -- by Marsha Boulton
The Debt to Pleasure -- John Lanchester
Everybody's Favourites -- Arlene Perly Rae
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- Mark Twain
The Little Red Buckets -- Lynda M. Nelson
The God of Small Things -- Arundhati Roy
The Secret Path -- Paul Brunton
An Experiment in Love -- Hilary Mantel
The Strange One -- Fred Bodsworth
My Journey to Lhasa -- Alexandra David-Neel
A Life of One's Own -- Joanna Field (aka Marion Milner)
Promise of Shelter -- Robyn Sarah
Visitors -- Anita Brookner
In a Land of Plenty -- Tim Pears
The Life I Really Lived -- Jessamyn West
The Career of Katherine Bush -- Elinor Glyn
Anything by Zora Neale Hurston
Death Rapture -- Carol Bruneau
Incredible Co-incidence -- Alan Vaughan
Surpassing the Love of Men -- Lillian Faderman
The Giving Tree -- Shel Silverstein
The Illustrated Man -- Ray Bradbury
Anatomy of Restlessness -- Bruce Chatwin
The Universe is a Green Dragon -- Brian Swimme
The Garden Letters -- Elspeth Bradley and Judy Maddocks
Marrow and Other Stories -- Nora Gold
Solitude of the Self -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The Power and the Glory -- Graeme Greene
Touch the Dragon -- Karen Connelly
Theory of Synchronicities -- Carl Jung
Read Barbara Gowdy
Read David McFadden
The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon -- Daniel Farson
Arctic Dreams -- Barry Lopez
Leonard Woolf?? wrote about hippies in S.F.?
Loving and Leaving the Good Life -- Helen Nearing
Laurie Colwin (food writer)
The Hungry Ocean -- Linda Greenwall (sp?)
Read Shirley Faessler (about early Kensington Market)
First Person Plural -- Cameron West
Read Alec Le Sueur (about Tibet)
The Tipping Point -- Malcolm Gladwell
Late Bloomers -- Brendan Gill
Let Evening Come -- Mary C. Morrison
Anam Cara -- John O'Donohue
Haley's Hints -- Graham Haley (household, etc., hints)
Girlitude: A Portrait of the 50's and 60's -- Emma Tennant
Ian Dengler (food historian)
Too Close to the Falls -- Catherine Gildiner
I Knock at the Door -- Sean O'Casey

Grey is the colour

After Lunch
Idylwyld Inn, London, Ont.
October 3, 2010

Grey is the colour of the pillars on the porch of the Idylwyld Inn; also the colour of the porch floor and the colour of both the hair and the suit of the man sitting on his walker surrounded by family, all of whom just came from the hotel dining room and now stand silently staring at him while he stares at grey porch floor and then someone says "Oh, you brought the Volvo," and, after a lull, someone else says, "Well, this sure is a nice spot," then another lull and the grey man on the walker looks to his left and here comes the Volvo and everyone is suddenly animated with goodbyes -- "Goodbye dad... bye, bye, take care of yourself," and there are hugs and the relief is palpable as dad is put into the Volvo and the sons and daughters and spouses become awkwardly chatty with each other as they take turns reaching in to pat dad on the shoulder one last time, then someone closes dad's door -- Bye dad! they all shout, all smiles now while dad sits alone, hermetically sealed in the unmoving car and the family shuffle on the pavement in silence and then one mutters to another about what kind of hydrangea this is growing in front of the porch and a few others quickly express their own muttered bemusement about the shrub until the driver starts the car and it begins its escape around the circular driveway and onto the street and the family, their backs already turned, search for their own car keys -- no one sees dad's face looking out the window as he's driven away in the Volvo, they barely say goodbye to one another in their haste to their separate (grey) cars, all long exhalations, shoulders dropping as doors unlock, slam shut, engines start; no one waves as one by one they also escape.

Not that it matters, but the hydrangea is 'Annabelle'.

Business Card: Changes

Contents of Phyllis' brown suede purse
November, 2010

Business Card: Changes, Family Hair Care, 'Alisia' handwritten in corner

IGA Receipt for $39.66 with list on back: rubbing alcohol, milk, butter, coffee

Sheet of binder paper folded four times listing grocery items in one corner, the name of a local nursing home in another and the number(s) seven hundred and thirty nine.45 in a third

Three mini post-it note pads

Receipts: Shoppers Drug Mart, Commisso's Food Mart, Jug City

Business Card: Scissors Hair Design, handwritten on back: Dec.15/04 $63 perm & set

Dunlop Seniors Association Membership Card (#637), for the year 2002

Prayer Card from funeral January 10, 1989

Medical Emergency Card, with list handwritten on back: bran flakes, soup, oranges, Kleenex, cold cuts, bread, milk, Javex

Swiss Chalet paper napkin with red lipstick smudge

Receipt from Scissors Hair Design, $14

Ticket Stub, #895933

Four Toonies, One Quarter, Two Dimes, One Nickle, Thirteen Pennies

cat dressed as skeleton

Faux titles for paintings
in Painters Eleven exhibit
Museum London, October 2010

Cat Dressed as Skeleton for Halloween
Hydro Lines
Duck and Doughnuts
Laundry in Storm
Mail
Nuclear Beach
Lost: Search and Rescue
Aerial View, Town
Aerial View, Space Town
Costco on Mars
Subdivision Colours
Downtown, Hot Wind
Interior, Dragon's Belly
Robot Eye
Blue Campsite
Vulture and Frog over Arizona Desert
Springs, Snakes, Sand
Glorious Car Crash/Quake
End is Near
Apple Core
HIghschool Disaster
Anchor and Weights/Scales
Burned Smoked Salmnon Pizza
Fiddler on the Greens
Socis in the Drainpipes
Candy
View of Rain Outside Window
Pre-history Colours
Family Tree(s)

White, White, Carter Empress

243 Westbound Trucks on 401
Between Woodstock and Kitchener
October 6th, 11:05 - 11:20 a.m.

White, White, Carter Empress, Churchill, White, Red, Papineau, Green, Brown, Coke, White, Red, Purple, ITS, GTA Traler, Yellow, Ryder, Mobil, White, White, Cascades, Steel, Black, Silver, White, White, Verspeten, Verspeeten Cartage, 16, Papineau, White, 4, Red, Connors, Midlaw, Turquoise, FedEx, CFI, Ryder, 14, DHL, UPS, M&M, 9, FedEx, 3, TIP, The Rosedale Group, Falcon, 4, White, 3, Muirs, Verspeeten Cartage, Verspeeten Cartage, 3, Sleemans, 8, Ceva, CFI, Warner, 4, Green, Ryder, Belden, Black, White, Orange, Schneiders, Everest, Robert, Donnely Farm, Laidlaw, 7, Green,, 35, Verspeeten Cartage, Silver, CN, Callenger, Chrysler, Westfalia Surge, Autobahn, Blue, 4, Westband, President's Choice, No Name, VTL, Autobahn, White, White, Ryder, Martin, Carger, JTI, Blue, Blue, Shaw's, Discount, White, White, XTL, C.A.T., Robert, 22, President's Choice, Black, TNI, 17, Verspeeten Cartage, White, White, White, MTS, Red, White, White, White, White, White, White, White, Chrysler, MacKinnon, Orange, Lime Green, 19, Ryder, Brookville, Blue, Gibson, MTS, 20, CFI, White, White, Verspeeten Cartage, White, White, White, Celadon, Caal Ark, 12, Red, Lime Green, Lessard, 8, Black.

young and ancient

List of phrases
found in an old notebook
No idea what I meant by them

young and ancient
the art of the sea
black earth appearing
marriage unique between
salute and burst
a fan of rockets
the tocsins were ringing
fertile still
now to evil, now to good
absorbed and disappear
held together by its land
quelques arpents de neige
Einstein's genius
gravitated like iron
baffled horse-player
guilt-neurosis
attungala
vastness is deceptive
exalt & magnify
against the abstraction
urbar giantism
old men remember their youth
propped against N. America