“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” — Virginia Woolf
At a potluck in Western Canada, we could talk politics but restrain ourselves. Though before dinner, we bemoan the outcast state of health and education in the province. The public presence of White Supremacy. And the catastrophic weather elsewhere. Deadly hurricanes gather and let off steam in the Atlantic. Six thousand missing in the Bahamas: that much grief as unfathomable as the turquoise sea around Abaco Island.
It started with a new friendship. And a dear friend whose cooking is legendary. What better excuse for a shared feast. With Doreen Prei returned to the Art Gallery of Alberta’s Zinc Restaurant,* the menu lights up. The six-course tasting meal - a good idea, says my friend. And why not wine pairings too? A welcome extravagance.
Wherein a woman walks and muses. The shape of the woods sounds like birds. Writers abound. The stories cross oceans and wave. All this to try to stem the tide in her head of climate catastrophe and the rise of authoritarian regimes here there & everywhere. Keeping a world on self-destruct at bay.
What days - feasts of friendship, feminism and this. Sunday, 25 August It began with a brunch ...chez Sheena with her loving extended family. Xander grins when we stand back to back: Ha! surpassed the height of this petite doting auntie. After Ajay’s crispy bottomed eggs, (a specialty, observes Shanda,) and other treats, we visit… Continue reading 48 hours in a life unfold – a long read
I'm thinking of a trending metaphor. After half a lifetime of labour, retirement feels like pitching yourself over the sticky glow of the honey-dew event horizon into the oblivion of a black hole. Edging closer, you peer into a black as deep as your own cornea. Up close, you witness your existential erasure in the maw of an absent nothing. What astrophysicists call the "singularity." Then it becomes more complicated and you hear Steven Hawking's hunch that black holes sport an exit.
(Multitasking is a myth. Working mothers simply work more.) My generosity has limits in these first days of retirement.
