I agree 100%. I’m of your mother’s generation (took over her desk at The Examiner in the late 80s) and was blissfully unaware of the wrecking ball hanging over the industry. Newsrooms in that era seem like something from central casting now. Not one of us was like the other.
Drinks every Friday at The Pig’s Ear, no phones intruding on the raucous camaraderie. Happy chapter of my life.
So with you on the getting outside looking up bit. I’ve wrangled with anxiety/depressive issues all my adult life. Being outside on my own has pulled me up again and again.
We all need to step back and fast, as I have been doing selectively for a few months now. Sensitivity makes you the extraordinary writer you are. But the internet can leave you taking your temperature daily instead of focusing on the joys and triumphs of a smaller but much more real and beautiful world. I need more friends who are, like you and me, curious dilettantes.
I find my ways of letting go have changed. My grown children laugh at my love of a New York Times crossword (where I find peace and intellectual challenge at the same time). I let go as I enjoy a self-made ice cream sundae, savouring every spoonful. I read lots to gain information but I separate the need to 'keep up' with data/content by blocking time for poetry (the writing and the reading of it). A poem takes me to that place at the end of a cottage dock, where the sun is warm and the breeze is slight, and I let go.
Jess Housty of Nuxalk Nation is a frequent read from her lovely collection called Crushed Wild Mint. Right now I feel like I’m experiencing childhood thru poetry craft. I play w/o self-judgement. Sometimes reworking lines, sometimes singing them in the shower. Just letting the process be fun. A social media friend sent me a picture of her body’s imprint from lying down in a field of dandelions & I was inspired.
I’ve cut way back but mostly on TV news (pre US election MSNBC was always on in the background). I literally haven’t looked at it sine 1:00 am on Nov 6th.
I still read the Globe and Mail and other newspapers and magazines online but I’m much more selective in what I read beyond the headline. Most of my political commentary comes from Substacks written by people I admire.
And there’s you, and all kinds of other writers who talk about things more uplifting than earth-shattering. We’re going to live for a month in Bordeaux and I’ve already “made friends” with a cookbook writer who has relocated there. How did I meet her? Through another cookbook writer I read here! We’re going to meet up once I settle in. 🍷
It's almost impossible NOT to keep up. Try standing in a storm and not hear, feel and see the wind and water and the debris that's stirring in the maelstrom. Filtering is all; gumboots and slicker with hood. In the flow is stuff that's important to you and you can suss it out. I am reminded of a line Rip Torn had in the long gone Gary Shandling show about "unimportant news": "Two kitties down a well, who gives a shit". He had a filter.
Yeah. As for, "Try standing in a storm and not hear, feel and see the wind and water and the debris that's stirring in the maelstrom," we just had that experience again in southern Ontario last week. Most disconcerting since, not really just a maelstrom, but a foreboding precursor of what may be our new normal here. No filtering will help since the 100 km/hour gusts cannot be denied. It was only April. Do you have a poem that I could share with my grandkids and offer hope?
Hi Jack... I read your reply a couple of days ago. Not having a poem at hand, I thought about writing one, but nothing but tired cliches came to mind. But your question has stayed with me because I have children (two middle aged women), and grandchildren, all of tender years.
Hope is an insufficient answer to whatever may come in the future. It is a prayer, but no one with the power to answer will be listening. People who express hope can be desperate or high-minded, or anything in between, and it can reflect a state of powerlessness (I can't do anything but hope for the better, that somehow things will turn around) or the placement of a bet (I have done "this", let's see how it works out).
One does not want one's children (or oneself) to find themselves in desperate situations where they have no agency. So the best thing we can do is to inculcate self-confidence, determination, and persistence, and the responsibility to balance individuality with civility and civic responsibility. We can insist they become critical thinkers and to get educated, and to be active and not passive. Then, when, inevitably they confront problems and conflicts, when the selfish, mean-minded and cruel impinge upon their lives they can take intelligent action to do everything they can to oppose those who are inflicting themselves on themselves or society. Action produces results upon which a justifiable hope can be based.
I agree 100%. I’m of your mother’s generation (took over her desk at The Examiner in the late 80s) and was blissfully unaware of the wrecking ball hanging over the industry. Newsrooms in that era seem like something from central casting now. Not one of us was like the other.
Drinks every Friday at The Pig’s Ear, no phones intruding on the raucous camaraderie. Happy chapter of my life.
So with you on the getting outside looking up bit. I’ve wrangled with anxiety/depressive issues all my adult life. Being outside on my own has pulled me up again and again.
Omg, this is the BEST COMMENT EVER
We all need to step back and fast, as I have been doing selectively for a few months now. Sensitivity makes you the extraordinary writer you are. But the internet can leave you taking your temperature daily instead of focusing on the joys and triumphs of a smaller but much more real and beautiful world. I need more friends who are, like you and me, curious dilettantes.
xxxxx
I find my ways of letting go have changed. My grown children laugh at my love of a New York Times crossword (where I find peace and intellectual challenge at the same time). I let go as I enjoy a self-made ice cream sundae, savouring every spoonful. I read lots to gain information but I separate the need to 'keep up' with data/content by blocking time for poetry (the writing and the reading of it). A poem takes me to that place at the end of a cottage dock, where the sun is warm and the breeze is slight, and I let go.
What poetry have you been reading lately?
Jess Housty of Nuxalk Nation is a frequent read from her lovely collection called Crushed Wild Mint. Right now I feel like I’m experiencing childhood thru poetry craft. I play w/o self-judgement. Sometimes reworking lines, sometimes singing them in the shower. Just letting the process be fun. A social media friend sent me a picture of her body’s imprint from lying down in a field of dandelions & I was inspired.
Ode to a Dandelion
Oh the dandelion
a pernicious weed
yet so lovely to lie on
in fields so freed
Roots tenacious
yellow petals warm
makes wine so delicious
hillsides swoony swarm
Its changeable flower
yellow spikes to silvery sphere
soon creates a shower
of parachute spears
Sun, Moon, and Stars
a salute to heaven
Dandelions on lawns
must be forgiven!
I’ve cut way back but mostly on TV news (pre US election MSNBC was always on in the background). I literally haven’t looked at it sine 1:00 am on Nov 6th.
I still read the Globe and Mail and other newspapers and magazines online but I’m much more selective in what I read beyond the headline. Most of my political commentary comes from Substacks written by people I admire.
And there’s you, and all kinds of other writers who talk about things more uplifting than earth-shattering. We’re going to live for a month in Bordeaux and I’ve already “made friends” with a cookbook writer who has relocated there. How did I meet her? Through another cookbook writer I read here! We’re going to meet up once I settle in. 🍷
Oh how wonderful!
It's almost impossible NOT to keep up. Try standing in a storm and not hear, feel and see the wind and water and the debris that's stirring in the maelstrom. Filtering is all; gumboots and slicker with hood. In the flow is stuff that's important to you and you can suss it out. I am reminded of a line Rip Torn had in the long gone Gary Shandling show about "unimportant news": "Two kitties down a well, who gives a shit". He had a filter.
Yeah. As for, "Try standing in a storm and not hear, feel and see the wind and water and the debris that's stirring in the maelstrom," we just had that experience again in southern Ontario last week. Most disconcerting since, not really just a maelstrom, but a foreboding precursor of what may be our new normal here. No filtering will help since the 100 km/hour gusts cannot be denied. It was only April. Do you have a poem that I could share with my grandkids and offer hope?
Hi Jack... I read your reply a couple of days ago. Not having a poem at hand, I thought about writing one, but nothing but tired cliches came to mind. But your question has stayed with me because I have children (two middle aged women), and grandchildren, all of tender years.
Hope is an insufficient answer to whatever may come in the future. It is a prayer, but no one with the power to answer will be listening. People who express hope can be desperate or high-minded, or anything in between, and it can reflect a state of powerlessness (I can't do anything but hope for the better, that somehow things will turn around) or the placement of a bet (I have done "this", let's see how it works out).
One does not want one's children (or oneself) to find themselves in desperate situations where they have no agency. So the best thing we can do is to inculcate self-confidence, determination, and persistence, and the responsibility to balance individuality with civility and civic responsibility. We can insist they become critical thinkers and to get educated, and to be active and not passive. Then, when, inevitably they confront problems and conflicts, when the selfish, mean-minded and cruel impinge upon their lives they can take intelligent action to do everything they can to oppose those who are inflicting themselves on themselves or society. Action produces results upon which a justifiable hope can be based.