Earth Day 2011 Playlist

Yes, I know David Suzuki already did an Earth Day playlist. But I have PROOF that I did one last year. Meaning it was my idea. (Oh yes, I invented the concept of playlists. Somebody tell Steve Jobs. He'll probably want to hire me.)

However, given that everyone probably already knows how I feel about David Suzuki by now (not-so-secret intellectual crush, strangely compelled to ogle his nude Suzuki-as-Atlas publicty still from The Nature of Things, circa 2009) I'm obviously cool with him borrowing my idea. Hell, he could borrow my favourite pair of shoes if he asked.

Here's my Earth Day 2011 Playlist. (Not to be confused with David Suzuki's Playlist for the Planet(http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/playlist-for-the-planet/), which you can and should purchase on iTunes, partly because it's really good, and partly because the money goes towards saving the world.)

1. Ani DiFranco, Joyful Girl

I'm starting strong: It might be impossible to get any more granola crunch-crunch than good old Ani. But this song is the only DiFranco tune that doesn't make me want to grow my armpit hair. It's about her mom, as unsentimentally as she introduces it in this concert footage. ("I'm actually not shitting you, but this song, I wrote for my mom.") And it contains a very compellling lyric: "Because the world owes me nothing, and we owe each other the world." Not a bad Earth Day sentiment.

2. Let's Stay Together, Al Greenhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COiIC3A0ROM

When you've done something really bad to someone you love, and you want them to forgive you, this is a good song to play. (I know. I've tried it. It works.) I think we probably owe more than a few songs like this (plus back rubs, flowers, policy changes and environmental legislation) to the earth.

3. Pulling on a Line, Great Lakes Swimmershttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-0HgSHYu2Y

Because this song makes me think about fishing, and overfishing--and also, because it's just really pretty.

4. Furr, Blitzen Trapperhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-0HgSHYu2Y

I think this song is about becoming a wolf, and then going back to being a human, but never forgetting how it felt to run wild. But I'm not a songwriter, so maybe it actually has nothing to do with becoming a wolf and I'm just being literal and obtuse. Regardless, I like it because it makes me think of being part of nature, and also because of the line, "I'm a rattlesnake babe, I''m like fuel on fire". (Which, for the record is NOT very earth-friendly; perhaps he needs to say, "I''m a rattlesnake babe, I'm like a hot solar panel" ha. ha.) I also like it because he sounds like Bob Dylan. So it made the list.

5. Seeing Stars, Meg Hutchinsonhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xODb39DFudE

This song always makes me think of my best friend and the many summer nights we've spent at her cottage in Muskoka, watching the stars. Oh, if that dock could talk--well, then we'd have to kill it to preserve our secrets. This song made the list because stars are one of my favourite things about the universe--they're so far away and mysterious and awesome and just generally inexplicable. (Well, yes, I know scientists can and have explained stars, but when I stare at them and think about how what I'm actually seeing is a zillion lightyears away, and how I could travel a trillion lifetimes and still never reach a star, it all feels inexplicable to me. Which makes me feel small, in a very good way.)

6. Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTQubWecuv8&feature=BFa&list=PL2FD156B5E0813AE5&index=30

I had to. I love Joni almost as much as I love David Suzuki. I wanted to make my Joni Mitchell playlist song Carey (From the first line, "The wind is in from Africa, last night I couldn't sleep", to the part about her going "down to the Mermaid Cafe and I will buy you a bottle of wine, and we'll laugh and toast to nothing and smash our empty glasses down", I feel like I'm reading a short story, and I can picture every scene. I love it when music does that.) I couldn't find a good YouTube link to Carey, though. So here's Big Yellow Taxi instead. "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone?" (Not to be confused with the uber-crappy Counting Crows version, by the way. Bleck.)

7. This Charming Man, Starshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yle6ZZmUQxg

"I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear ..." (This IS a cover, of a Smiths song, but it's a worthy cover, so I'm allowing it.) This song always makes me think about going out and buying clothes. And, conversely, especially these days, about how important it is not to buy cheap, shoddily constructed clothes made using unsustainable and morally repugnant practices. I truly believe ethical fashion can change the world. And I'm not just saying that because I want an excuse to go shopping.

8. The Passenger, Iggy Pophttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEY6_jcrzI8

I think this song should be played at every party. So Happy Earth Day, everyone! Party on!

xo, Marissa

/Waterfall_14.jpg">

Quote of the Week

"Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice." --Mr. Arable, from Charlotte's Web

Autumn Reading, Ottawa Eating

I just finished reading Superdad: A Memoir of Rebellion, Drugs, and Fatherhood, by Christopher Shulgan (he's an award-winning Toronto writer, and fellow Key Porter author). Shulgan`s memoir is the anti-thesis of any daddy and mommy memoirs and blogs you may have read that make perfect parenthood seem not only attainable but required. (These perfect people terrify me, naturally. I admire Jackie O greatly, for example, but she once said, `If you bungle raising your children, I don`t think anything else you do matters very much`. Reading that statement in a magazine article when I was pregnant with my first child made me break into a cold sweat.)

And although Shulgan admittedly was not always the perfect parent--there was the small matter of the crack-- it was from his book that I learned a very valuable lesson about parenting. He wrote about how it took his son an hour to traverse about a half block of sidewalk. Instead of being impatient and hustling his son along, Shulgan saw the value in allowing his son to explore things the little boy had never experienced before in his life. As adults, we travel through the world with a very been-there-done-that-seen-it (and if I haven't, there's always the internet.) attitude. But to babies, everything is new. And this passage in Superdad made me realize that I need to appreciate this. I am always guilty of rushing my kids down the sidewalk, but this week I have consciously slowed down, and the beautiful moments that have ensued (ecstatic leaf fights, the reverent discovery of a snail on the bottom of a blousy late fall sunflower, the two of them joining hands spontaneously and then walking, slowly and carefully towards no destination at all.) have been worth all the waiting. And also, it's not really waiting. It's almost like meditation, just standing on the sidewalk, watching them be.

And speaking of my babies, this is what's number one on their autumn reading list: This is Silly, by Gary Taxali. I'm currently being asked to read it about six times a day, which is fine with me, because Gary Taxali is a great artist and all around nice guy, and this book has definitely tapped into exactly what toddlers and pre-schoolers want. (Namely: silliness. A lot of it. As much as possible. Maximum silliness, please. With a tickle on the side.)

I'm also being asked to read Oh, The Places You'll Go every night. (I think this might have something to do with the fact that it's an extremely long book and thus an excellent component of the Stall Tactic repertoire.) For a Dr. Seuss book, it's not that silly. It's almost like a cautionary tale.

Example:
You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.
You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don't.
Because, sometimes, you won't.

I'm sorry to say so
but, sadly, it's true
that Bang-ups
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.

And while part of me wants to protect my children from the knowledge that Bang Ups and Hang Ups can indeed happen to them, I figure Dr. Seuss is probably doing a good job of breaking it to them fairly gently.



And speaking of hang ups ... (and no, I'm not reaidng Growing Up Jung to my kids. This one is firmly on Mommy's Reading List. For now, at least) here's something else I've been reading this autumn, and this is a photo I took of the book, whilst dining out during a recent trip to Ottawa. It was a business-related trip, and I was on my own, and just before I left, my mother called, very concerned. "Men will try to approach you," she cautioned. "A woman alone on a business trip is like shark bait." (I don't think she actually said 'shark bait', but she did say something to that effect.) Her final words of advice: "Always have a book with you when you're dining out." Her tone was so ominous, I complied, even though I actually don't mind dining out alone at all, and almost never feel the need to hide behind a book. But, to make my mom feel better, I took Growing Up Jung with me to every restaurant I went to during my two days in Ottawa. (The one above happens to be the best dim sum I have ever had in my life. It's just that I lost the receipt and can't remember the name of the restaurant. I also can't expense it. Darn it! All I recall is that there was a picture of Jack Layton at the front door. Apparently it's his favourite dim sum resto, too. I can't figure out if that's a good thing or a bad thing.)

And speaking of food, and my trip to Ottawa, this is the only other picture I took, of another meal I enjoyed alone--well, me and Jung--at a restaurant near Byward Market called Mezzo Note. Yes, I definitely felt like a geek taking a picture of my food. And I don't have a phone that takes subtle pictures, my cell phone is about ten years old and I'm lucky I can even send text messages, so took this photo with my giant Nikon with mega flash and everyone stared. I just tucked my nose back into Growing Up Jung, and tucked back into my pasta--garlic everything, as I remember, including mushrooms, shrimp, and scallops--and even ate the edible orchid on top (while hoping fervently it was pesticide free.)

Mmmmm.

xo, M.

The Wedding Gift

Autumn always makes me feel a bit melancholy, in a way that isn't all bad: sometimes I think writers enjoy feeling just a little heartsick at all times. Grist for the word mill. Something like that.

Also, autumn makes me clean and purge, something I do not do in spring, because in spring, I want to be outdoors, delighting in the feel of the sun on my skin after a winter spent cowering away from the cold. (I despise winter. Abhor it. Yes, I will ski. Yes, I will skate. Yes, I will toboggan. But during all those activities, I will be cold. And I do not like to be cold.)

This autumn, my purge has purpose, because it also involves procrastinating. I'm meant to be finishing the line edits for my novel. When the process becomes too arduous, I go into the cold cellar and start going through boxes.

Today, I found a candle in a red box covered in cloth inscribed with Chinese characters. The candle was constructed in two pieces, each with a wick, one side red, one side black. Yin yang. The pieces fit together.

I remembered the candle had been given to us as a wedding present, by the mother of my husband's childhood friend, and her artist husband, along with two place mats from our gift registry. Strange, I'd thought to myself at the time, to give someone two place mats from a set. And I'd thought the candle pretty, almost too pretty to burn, so I'd put it away.

This morning, as I looked at the candle for the first time in years and thought of those two place mats, I blinked back tears, sudden and insistent. She died, that woman who gave us the wedding gift, a few years ago, after a battle with breast cancer that no one believed she'd lose. At our wedding, her head had been wrapped in a scarf but she'd seemed so strong, and the scarf almost like an accessory.

I didn't know her well, but she was my kind of person: I could tell that after meeting her only a few times. She was the kind of woman Carly Simon sang about in the song Touched by the Sun, which she wrote about Jackie O, after she died of cancer. This woman was vibrant and kind. Thoughtful. She had depth.

When we were presented with this wedding gift, I never stopped to consider the thought behind it. This morning, it hit me. The gift of a beautiful, yin yang candle from Thailand, and two place mats. A gift meant especially for us as a young couple coming together in marriage, a gift given with the hope that it would bring us together over a meal, or maybe many meals, and also make us realize our differences as we burned the candle between us. Yin yang are complementary opposites within a greater whole. Yin yang constantly interact, never existing in complete stasis.

As I thought about this gift, I also thought of the sad husband, left behind. We see him sometimes, and he seems like half of this candle, incomplete without his other half, always a little lost.

I wish I'd said thank you for this gift properly, not by simply saying, 'We appreciated the place mats and the candle', but also, 'We appreciated and understood the thought, your wish that we would dine, together, for always, the two of us so different but also so necessary to the existence of each other.'

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it. Bittersweet autumn has that effect on me.

Dog Day Blogging (As in, Lazy. Regretful. Wishing for More.)

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon. The two most beautiful words in the English language. -- Henry James.

And oh, Summer Afternoon, how I wish I had appreciated you more when it seemed there would be enough of you to sustain me through the long winter I can now sense a sinisiter hint of on the breeze... -- Me

Then, I found this Albert Camus quote: 'In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.'
-- Albert Camus

So that's my goal for this winter: to find within me an invincible summer.

And in the meantime, I'm embracing the end of the non-invincible summer by going to The Ex.


xo, MSP

Simple Pleasures

Parenting-related guilt (if you're a parent, you know what I mean. It kicks in the moment a child is born and is as relentless as mosquitoes in Manitoba) always drives me to justify myself when discussing my enjoyment of the time I spend without my kids by employing the caveat that I of course of course very much do enjoy the time I spend with my kids, too. Which I do. (Am I protesting too much?) I love my children. So much that it hurts, in a way that is at times a frighteningly physical feeling. For example, yesterday, when I was walking with my son and reached for him to cross the street, I grasped his little fingers in mine and tried to command my mind to remember exactly the way it felt to hold his small but rapidly growing. I nearly cried then and there at the thought of him being too big to need me to hold hands with him when we cross the street. And when my daughter hugs me (she gives, hands down, the best hugs in the world—ask anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of one: she puts her entire body into it, and you suddenly feel like you're special and cherished and are never going to be alone again) I do the same. Because I know one day those tiny hands will be full-sized, and those full body hugs won't be doled out with such guileless frequency. (Or maybe, never. Excuse me, I just need to go grab the tissues.)

Ahem. But my love for my babies doesn't make spending my days caring for a 2 year old and a 3 year old any easier. Alas. I am not one of those Wonder Moms who bakes (cookies that do not come from pre-made dough) and cleans (on the weeks when the cleaning lady is not coming) and thinks up crafts (other than gluing painted pieces of paper to other pieces of paper and calling it art) and never loses her patience and says that motherhood has fulfilled her every wish and dream. (To be honest, I don't know any moms like this. Good thing, or the guilt would likely become unbearable. Also, I probably would have told one of the Wonder Moms where to go by now, cuing up even more guilt and potentially getting me kicked out of Play Group.)

I'm enjoying their baby-ness, because I realize this time is fleeting. One day, they're going to be Grown Up. One day, they'll be Off To University (like my kid brother, fourteen years my junior, is doing this fall; I did the same trying-to-remember thing with him, holding him in my arms and willing myself, even though I was only fourteen and could hardly comprehend why it mattered so much, to never forget what he was like as a baby. It worked: I still have that memory, of his olive skin and navy eyes and us in the dark near his crib, on the same rocker I've now nursed and rocked my own babies on. But it doesn't make it any less shocking that he recently climbed out his window to attend a party or that he'll be heading to London in the fall to live it up, and possibly drink beer from a bong, with the rest of the frosh-men. Or that one day, my babies are going to be just as tall and out of my grasp.)

But I digress. (Quel surprise. Yeah, yeah, I know. I need to start leaving trails of bread crumbs so I can find my thought paths.) As I was saying, there is going to come a day when my own babies go off to school, or do whatever it is that they choose to do, which may not necessarily be ascribing to mine and my husband's admittedly bourgeois and conformist university-job-family-and-all-in-that-order hopes and dreams for them. My son may very well say "Eff university, Ma, I'm going to be a rock star." (In which case, I will say to him, "Fine, I support you, but I'm not lending you money. Okay, fine, I will lend you money, but for the love of god, don't call me Ma. It makes me feel ancient.") And my daughter ... well, I can't even think about the ways in which she may stray from the path I envision for her, given that she is my daughter and already showing signs of having my wayfaring personality. Yes, it all turned out in the end for me (so far, at least) but I truly hope her path towards getting to Where She Needs To Be--as Rhiannon, the main character in my book would call it--is a little less circuitous than mine.

When my children have wandered off into the great big world, I'm still going to be me. I'm determined to be a good mother, a great one even, the kind of mother that my kids will talk about long after I'm gone, and say things like, "Wasn't it great how she always read us a story or ten before bed, and sang us the Sly Old Gentleman?" and "Remember how she always took us on those REALLY cool outings, and that time we went to Paris instead of Disney World?" (I also get that the fact that I want to take my kids to Paris instead of Disney World may make them hate me instead of adore me. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.) But I'm also determined not to lose myself in the act of parenting. I enjoy being with my brood, but I also, truly, enjoy being alone, and reading, and writing, and walking, and engaging in simple pleasures that can make a morning special.

Like today, when the kids and my husband went off for a swim at the inlaws, and my husband said, "Why don't you stay home and write?" He can't possibly know, every time he offers me a few hours to write, how much it means to me. Or maybe he does, which is why he offers it so often. I did write, and then I went for a walk, to get a coffee from my favourite coffee shop (Crema), and to visit a cheese shop that recently opened in my neighbourhood (Junction Fromagerie). I was inordinately excited about visiting the new cheese shop, and I spent way too much time there and had more fun than it seems normal to have in a cheese purveying establishment. (Don't tell my husband, but I also spent more money than I should have. The cheese samples went to my head. Guess I'll just take the money out of the kid's university fund, ha ha. I mean, considering they might not go anyway. Faulty logic, what?)

I walked home with the small hunks of cheese and artisanal baguette tucked in my canvas shopping bag (and also some olives and feta stuffed, brined peppers), the coffee from my favourite coffee shop (iced cappuccino in summer) in my hand, and I felt really, really good. (Kind of jittery because it was my third coffee of the day, but good no less.) I was happy to know my children and husband were on their way home to me, but also very happy to have spent a few hours on my own engaging in the simple pleasures that give my life even more zest than it already has. (As in writing. And cheese. And caffeine. Hmm, I wonder what this says about me?)

The truth: at times I do look forward to the days when a few hours spent alone won't be quite as hard won as they are when raising toddlers. However, I'm already aware of what a bittersweet experience it will be when my children are officially grown—even thinking about it makes my throat ache and my heart feel leaden. But that's a good long time away yet. For now, I'll work on enjoying all the facets of my life—the days that are full of tiny hand holding and super tight hugs and spills and thrills and mundanities that sometimes make me want to cry--and the mornings when it's just me, myself, a simple pleasure or two, and the pleasure of the knowledge that I'll see my darlings soon.

Happy Weekend! Xo MSP

p.s. Speaking of simple pleasures, this has been a banner week for them: I also spent a day at the Radisson Hotel's rooftop pool with my dear friend and fellow novelist Chantel Simmons. We brought our brand new mini laptops and wrote all day. Okay, we didn't actually get very much work done at all. We talked, about life, and love, and handbags. This is a photo of us working hard/hardly working. Best. Day. Ever.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light ...

I'm doing more Food Network guest blogging. This week's post is about making the most of late summer's harvest bounty, and I try my hardest to be both literary and food-y ....
You can read the blog here.
xo, M.