Can't Lit.

This week, I failed to read the following books by Canadian authors.

Galore--Michael Crummey

And I had such high hopes for this one. He's a former Kingstonist, and was engaging as hell at Kingston Writer's Fest. And it's a sweeping Newfoundland saga with all those elements of epic-ness that slay me everytime--characters with names like King Me and mysterious strangers washing up on shore and all that. And yet I never even bothered to stick a bookmark in it. Instead I used a wadded up Kleenex, and my apathy probably should have been a tipoff (for anyone who borrowed this book from the library and is worried about getting my germs, I assure you it was unused).

February--Lisa Moore

I always recommend her books to other people, but I've never actually read one myself. So I tried, and then stopped trying. I can't quite pinpoint what I didn't like, but then at work today, one of my colleagues mentioned that she's never been able to read Jane Urqhart because she's like the Alex Colville of writers: Stylistically perfect but somehow emotionally incomplete (I'm paraphrasing, but seriously guys, working in a library is this awesome 78% of the time.). That kind of rang true for me as far as Lisa Moore is concerned. It was beautiful, but I couldn't find the heart. At least it had one really great scene, with one of the characters ordering a tea from the world's slowest cashier in the Tim's at Pearson International Airport. I think that might be the most Canadian moment I've heard described in awhile.

The Carnivore--Mark Sinnett

This guy was equally charming at Writer's Fest, and I feel extra bad about not finishing this one, because I'm going to be on a panel with him on Cogeco cable in a couple of weeks (no, seriously.) and I'm worried he might ask if I've read it or something.I blame my inaction on not really feeling like reading a book about a failed marriage, but I'd still totally tell you to read this book. It's about Hurricane Hazel hitting Toronto in the 1960s, and it is fucking crazy. I don't know why they didn't teach us about the monstrous natural and human disaster of it all. So much more awesome than the peasants' revolt of 1837.

See, I think it's really important to read Canadian books. As, like, a civic duty. And I try to keep up on the new stuff, because I like to be that asshole who, ten years from now, will say things like "I TOTALLY knew they'd give Crummey the Order of Canada. I called it that day in 2009." So when I can't get into the books that everyone is telling me I should be into, I get nervous. Not being able to read books like these is like not digging The Stone Angel (arguably the best Canadian novel about an old lady taking a shit in the woods). Actually, I dislike The Stone Angel, so maybe this whole theory is totally out to lunch. Nevertheless, I feel like I let Canada down this week.

I atoned by singing this to myself all the livelong day.



Oh Neil, you're so right. About everything.

Sincerity alert.

My mother bears the proud distinction of owning every single copy of Canadian Living magazine ever published. She bought the first few on the newsstand and then promptly started subscribing by mail. For as long as I can remember, we've had stacks of them kicking around the house at all times, mostly splayed open to the recipes section. Some issues are so well-used that you know exactly what random CanCon celebrity was featured on the page next to a beloved dish (cinnamon roll-ups? they're near the feature on the 1992 World Series winning Blue Jays, DUH). Canadian Living is a personal touchstone for me, partly because it reminds me of my family, but also because it's about exactly what it says: living. Day to day stuff. Making a nice dinner and rearranging your closets and hanging out with people you love. This magazine is maybe the only non-cynical thing I actually go out of my way to read.

When I moved out, one of the things I looked forward to on my trips back home was flipping through the latest issue. Something about the complete lack of irony, the incredible earnestness, and the food just made me feel like I was home. And as of yesterday, I won't need to wait for a visit to my parents' place to get that same warm hug feeling--I now have my own subscription, and my first issue has arrived (Pet Special! Save on Vet Bills! Room Makeovers!). It's everything I dreamed it would be: a well-researched article on workplace hazards, a recipe for an all-locally-grown Cobb salad...this is the stuff of my dreams, folks.

But I think the thing I like most about the magazine now, at this thoughtful stage of my life as I try to figure out my place in the world, is the Letters section. I love that people in Antigonish Nova Scotia and Morinville Alberta are making the same cake and are so excited with the results that they've sent in their photos. I love knowing that people all across this huge, scary country are as excited as I am to bake and learn and just do things for the sake of being comfortable and cozy. We don't focus on the little things nearly enough anymore.

The full article on local cheese doesn't hurt too much either.

Here's to the happy couple.

I've been stewing and stewing over how to address the sad and extremely deeply felt event of John Hughes' death all week, to the point where I've given myself writer's block in the process. Not good, friends. Not good. So instead I'm putting those feelings on hold for now, because this weekend is pretty much going to be the best weekend of all time. Saturday is my best friend's wedding. I never get tired of saying "my best friend's wedding," partly because it is the name of one of the goofiest movies ever made and no pop culture reference could be less apt. But mostly I never get tired of saying it because it is going to be so frigging fun, and because I love the happy couple so frigging much. There's nothing I enjoy more than tripping out in my head about how fast life moves and how much things can change and stay the same all at once. This party's going to be a big old object lesson in that very thing, with a side order of spinach dip and love.

This morning when I woke up, my mind was on this funny channel-surfing kick where different ridiculous Freya moments kept passing through my head--the time I played After the Gold Rush and made her cry, the time she wrote out a whole Gord Downie poem in a letter to me from a tree planting camp in Alberta, the time Greg, then only a casual twinkle in her eye, showed up on our Walmerhaus doorstep bearing Balderson cheese for one and all, the time I came home to find her curled up watching one of my My So-Called Life videos proclaiming, "Cait, this explains so much about you." So much has changed in the last ten (TEN!) years, and yet so much is still exactly the way it always was, and either way it's all the way it ought to be.

Which probably makes this next thing fitting. My favourite love poem, and maybe my favourite poem, is "Departure," by F.R. Scott, which maybe isn't even a love poem at all, since says goodbye more than it says hello. But more than that, it's about the vast landscape that becomes a part of every relationship when you live in this snowy minefield of a country, the eternity of the natural world and of the love you could find there, knowing it might not last forever but hoping that it does.

Departure

Always I shall remember you, as my car moved
Away from the station and left you alone by the gate
Utterly and forever frozen in time and solitude
Like a tree on the north shore of Lake Superior.
It was a moment only, and you were gone,
And I was gone, and we and it were gone,
And the two parts of the enormous whole we had known
Melted and swirled away in their separate streams
Down the smooth, granite slope of our watershed.

We shall find, each, the deep sea in the end,
A stillness, and a movement only of tides
That wash a world, whole continents between,
Flooding the estuaries of alien lands.
And we shall know, after the flow and ebb,
Things central, absolute and whole.
Brought clear of silt, into the open roads,
Events shall pass like waves, and we shall stay.

--F.R. Scott

Here's to you, Tony and Lily. I searched the annals of YouTube for "We're Hardcore" but clearly Gord hasn't left the digital footprint one might have hoped for. Anyway, this one's just as good, and just as true.