I am by no means a professional artist, but in the last eight years or so I have taken great pleasure in painting. I love to fill my free time with it and even though my hands can’t do what I see in my mind’s eyes, it doesn’t really matter. That’s a big thing for a perfectionist to say.
Last Saturday, I attended a couple of workshops in Woodstock presented by the Writers Federation of New Brunswick during their annual WordsFall festival. Not that it matters, but I had to venture out from Moncton in the rainy darkness at 6:30 am to get there on time. Details.
Trailing, draping, curling, twisting tendrils of flowering or fruiting vines—I love them, running riot over fences, arbours or trellises. Just a few streets over from my place is a brick house covered in wisteria. In springtime, the vine fairly explodes with dangling purple blooms.
Trea (pronounced Tree-a) was 11 years old when we put her to sleep this morning. She was a purebred Cairn terrier complete with an award-winning lineage and papers.
Tonight, as my oldest daughter graduates from high school, I realize my most significant period of influence in her life is over. The thought strikes me with force. If I failed to live in the moment in all the years prior, now I must live in the past.
The WFNB presents workshop on publishing: A June 16, 2012 workshop in Fredericton, NB, may help realize your dream!
Come on, admit it. Are you addicted to technology? Do your hands start shaking if you’re torn away from your handheld device for more than a few hours?
For an introvert like me, social media has fit my personality like a glove. I’m verbal and bold online in ways I would never be in person—and I get to practice my quips and one-liners.
One can never underestimate the self-sabotaging power of procrastination. I spent four days this week at a remote retreat center near St. Martins, New Brunswick called In the Stillness (www.inthestillness.ca) because I wanted time to jumpstart a special project. I whined about needing a place with no interruptions and no distractions. No stifling, familiar surroundings, no domestic duties.
Listen, folks, I am no wallflower. I breezed through the dissection of a fetal pig in my high school biology 122 class; I clean fish without batting an eye; I’ve watch cows being butchered, carried the heart and liver in for auntie to fry up. Poop, pee, farts and boogers…can’t scare me.
But Battle Royale (Toushun Katami, 1999, Haika Soru) made me wanna throw up.
Are there any new ideas?
I ordered Battle Royale today online, the 1999 young adult novel by Japanese author Koushun Takami, just to figure it all out for myself. You know, the big controversy? That The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins “ripped off” the story hook, line and sinker from Takami’s cult classic?
