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Sunday, December 26, 2021

To Be Still

Be still and silent?

Me?

Sit in silence,

not just in the absence of sound,

but in the silence of the mind

when the whirling thoughts calm

as if in the eye of the storm?

And to remain there, perfectly still,

for as long as it takes?

 

There's a place in High Park I think about.

Not really isolated

(there's no real isolation

in such a busy park).

but quiet in a way that draws me.

I found it last summer

and imagined it as my refuge—

a place to sit and be still.

To read. To dream.

 

But it was never the right moment.

Each of my days was too busy

for a walk into the park.

Or I was too tired.

Or it was raining.

Or cold.

Or hot and humid.

 

But I know where this place is.

And soon, for sure, I'll go there.

Once spring is here.

Or summer.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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Sunday, December 19, 2021

The Round Moon Hangs

Through the upstairs rooms I go

to glimpse the moon.

Where is it tonight?

Just past the corner of the condo

east of us?

Not there.

Not there yet? Or already past?

 

Check the south-facing bedroom window.

No sign of a moon.

Maybe if I'm up at 3 (or 4, or 5)

I'll see it in the west window

hanging round and full,

readying itself for a farewell.

 

On the other hand,

its absence might be

simply that it's a new moon,

invisible tonight but preparing

to be tomorrow's thin sliver.

Hidey, hidey, little moon.

 

Find the hiding moon

and absorb its light.

When you finally do see it,

in whatever window,

glory in it.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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Sunday, December 12, 2021

My Annual Xmas Reminder

I send out this piece every year in early-ish December, mainly as a reminder to myself. (You might want to admire the way I reduce my own list of things-to-do by recycling this Scene from the Journey instead of writing a new one.) Here's the message:

 

This is such a time of list-making for me. The list I made this morning includes "make lists," proving that the high-tension time is well on its way. So I decided to make a new list for myself.

CALM
DOWN. If it doesn't get done, will the world end? Don't get frantic about trifles (or truffles, either, though I wouldn't mind having one right now).

SIMPLIFY. You envision a Christmas dinner made up of X number of dishes. Well, how terrible would it be if you served X minus 1? Or X minus 2? Or even X minus 3? (Is Chinese take-out completely out of the question?)

SMILE.

LET GO OF the idea that you are solely responsible for the holiday happiness of everyone you know.

Bring an OPEN HEART to every encounter.

GIVE to those who are less fortunate. Whether it's time or money that you give, and whether it's a lot or a little, giving will help everyone, including you.

And as a gift to all of you, I offer this prayer from the Dalai Lama:

May the poor find wealth,
those weak with sorrow find joy.
May the forlorn find new hope,
constant happiness, and prosperity.
May the frightened cease to be afraid
and those bound be free.
May the weak find power and
may their hearts join in friendship.

In the words of Tiny Tim, blessings on us every one!

Copyright © 2019 Ann Tudor
Musings blog:
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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Sunday, December 5, 2021

Leave No Trace

Isn't that what we're all afraid of?

That we will leave no trace?

That we will strut on this stage

for our seventy or eighty years

and then disappear without a trace?

No trail of bread crumbs to lead us back?

Or to lead others along our path?

 

Oh, what ego cloaks us when we think this way!

There is more to this business than we can know;

more than we acknowledge.

 

Not that I have the answers, either.

But I know other worlds and realities

accompany us along this journey,

and that we are leaving traces,

even the least of us,

in ways we cannot fathom

(nor are we meant to).

 

Forget about what you leave behind

and just do your best

(be your best)

in the moments you have.

The rest will follow

as the proverbial night the day.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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Sunday, November 28, 2021

The Very Truth of You

Well, isn't THAT a search,

a quest, a journey,

a lifetime's task:

the very truth of you.

The intensity of the hunt

changes

as you proceed through your life.

Some years it has so little importance

that you aren't even aware that

there's something to seek.

You simply go about your daily tasks

as if they alone constituted living.

Other years

(and am I wrong to say that

there are more of them the older you get?)

you chase that self—

the very truth of you—

as if your life depended on it.

As it may.

And then there are those few,

blessed from birth,

who know their very truth

from the beginning

and who can thus devote their lives

not to searching

but to simple gratitude.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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Sunday, November 21, 2021

Measuring

Measuring

 

We humans measure ourselves incessantly.

Am I good enough?

Productive enough?

Compassionate enough?

Do I have enough friends?

Enough shoes?

Do I measure up?

(Does anyone aspire to

measuring down?)

 

What a waste of energy,

this constant quest to see

where we stand in the pecking order

of life—

actually, of course, simply

the pecking order of the culture

in which we marinate.

 

Not all measurements are odious.

How tall are you

compared to your height at age 6?

Well, there's some measurable growth.

But those intangible measurements?

The ones that serve to demean us?

 

Drop them.

Stick to yardstick measurements

and let the rest take care of themselves.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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Sunday, November 14, 2021

Old Dogs, New Tricks

The accepted wisdom is that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Well, I used to think that I would put the lie to that! This old dog learned (or at least worked at learning) to play the cello. She learned to make CDs. She learned to write with her left hand (and more importantly, to EAT with her left hand) while the right was incapacitated. I was ready for anything. Show me a new trick and I'd learn it.

 

I spent the '60s and early '70s drowning in motherhood. I would read, usually after the fact—of rallies and walks and concerts-with-a-cause, and all of them passed me by. I lived through the '60s and I don't remember them, but not for the usual reasons. They passed me by. I might actually have felt like a part of that era if whoever it was hadn't said, "Don't trust anyone over 30!" I was 30 in 1966, and I took it personally (thus again living up to my mother's definition of me as someone who would cut off her nose to spite her face).

 

What all this means is that I never in my life attended a walk or a rally, even for causes that I supported. I was a rally neophyte.

 

But we all have a breaking point, and mine was the prorogued parliament several years ago. I heard about the rally (a friend who was to sing there emailed me). We were having dinner guests that night, but I made a time-table and decided I could fit in a trip downtown to Dundas Square in order to exercise my rights as a citizen. I planned to give it an hour, or maybe 90 minutes, before I had to get home to finish up the meal.

 

On the subway, I met a couple of neighbours who were headed toward the rally, so we traveled together. When we came up to ground level from the Dundas subway stop, I heard the shrill hectoring voice of a woman who was trying to start a chant. The audience (which nearly filled Dundas Square even at ten minutes before the scheduled start time) was half-hearted in supporting her. So all you could hear was that shrill, amplified voice screaming into the void. Not an auspicious beginning to me.

 

I told my friends that I'd make my way home when I was ready. And then I left them and crossed Yonge St. to join the throng.

 

It was like a dream as I drifted into the crowd, a sea of bundled-up protesters, an ocean I'd never visited before. Like Red Riding Hood (or maybe it was Hansel and Gretel), I slowly moved deeper and deeper into the forest of people. Would I be able to find my way back? I dropped no bread crumbs. I carried no basket of goodies.

 

The crowd seemed to be in constant motion, and yet many people were standing stock still. When I was halfway between the street and the stage, I stopped as well, and stood, moving from foot to foot to keep warm.

 

Finally the MC announced the opening of the rally. The PA system was loud but garbled. Either I was in a dead spot or my hat covered my ears too well or I should have worn my hearing aids. The fact was, I couldn't understand a word anyone said.

 

But surely that doesn't matter, I told myself. It's all about the energy. The friends I had come with, old hands at these things, talked excitedly about the energy. When we came up from the subway and I cringed at the loudspeakers, they were like seasoned war horses hearing the bugle sound "charge." But as I stood in the midst of the crowd, I found the energy dispiriting. At one point, I did hear the MC. He said, "I'll say "Democracy" and you say "NOW!" So he did and they did and I remained silent and unmoved.

 

I think I understand crowd energy a little, having grown up with Indiana basketball games. I remember screaming my throat out, standing up and screaming as a player tried for a free throw, screaming as the two teams galloped down the floor toward the net.

 

But I was sixteen then. And at that Saturday rally I felt no desire to contribute to the noise. After half an hour, as dreamily as I had entered the Square, I left the milling crowd and hoped no one would accost me and berate me for leaving the scene of the action at such an early hour. I went down to the subway and made my way home and finished the casserole of gigantes for our dinner.

 

Friends told me later of speakers and singers and of the march down Yonge to Queen, across to Bay and up Bay to—wherever. It was a great rally, they said, and they were thrilled to have been part of it.

 

I could only hope that whoever counted the crowd did it before I left, so that I added to the numbers. But for the rest of it, I just have to acknowledge there are certain times when it is true that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Put me down as rally-averse.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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Sunday, November 7, 2021

In a Canoe

The world under the surface of the water

lies still and waiting

as the canoe glides over

the surface of the water

in what we call our world.

 

Which world is true?

We pass through our world

on the surface of the water

but do we only dream?

Who lives in the world under

the surface of the water

dreaming of us

gliding over the

surface of the water?

Our paddles dip silently

dripping drops of water

onto the surface of the still river.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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Sunday, October 31, 2021

The Light Fades

The light fades.

Each 6 a.m. is darker than the one before.

I wince to see the passing of the halcyon days.

The kingfisher days are coming to an end.

It isn't exactly unexpected.

It may have taken me 50 years

            to become aware of time's passing,

but once I saw it . . .

Well, since then I have always sorrowed at

            the inexorable nature of Nature.

Even if we knew how to stop it,

it wouldn't be wise to do so.

 

Yet I accept it all (on a good day).

The aging.

The death watch.

All of it.

Except the loss of light so early every year.

The hallway is darker now when I get up,

and it will remain dark (get more dark, even)

for another ten months.

I ask you: is this fair?

It could be worse, I suppose.

I could be in the Far North with its light-free days

for months on end.

Time passes and that's okay.

But does it have to be marked by the loss of light?

Oh, bother metaphors!

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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Sunday, October 24, 2021

Colour Me

The hues and tints of my long life are

ecru, eggshell, cream, vanilla--

the dirty dishwater colours

of an unsure soul struggling for identity

and a modicum of stability

as my little canoe is battered by the waves

of this expanse of wet wilderness

beyond the capabilities of my fragile craft.

 

Now turn on the spotlights.

Those unsure off-whites refract the light

through prisms I didn't even know I had

and now even I can see, and say:

colour me brilliant and beautiful.

Red, yellow, blue—

these are just the beginning.

Read the colour wheel in all its combinations

to glimpse the harmonies and euphonies

that define me.

I sail in my untippable canoe

through all weathers,

wrapped in my rainbow.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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Sunday, October 17, 2021

Timing Is Everything; Scenes from the Journey, vol. 18, no. 42

I can't cook without a timer. Once I could. Once I'd remember things. In those olden days I could use a simple timer that went "ding" when the time was up. Numerous failures led me to know that what I needed was a timer with infinite settings, one I could clip on to my clothing so that it stayed with me and that had a continuous beep that I couldn't ignore. (Okay, I could push the little off- button and ignore my pot in the kitchen—but at least the beep got my attention, so it was a great improvement over the single-beep kind of timer.)

 I found the answer to these dreams at Lee Valley, the go-to place for all my wants. The package cost about $10 but there were two timers to a package. I had two timers! Hurrah!

 One of them I keep upstairs. The other lives in the kitchen. I set it and clip it on whenever I am cooking or baking, and then I leave the kitchen to do other things. So handy. When I'm finished cooking I unclip the timer and leave it on the counter for next time.

 And then, ten days ago, it disappeared. I hunted. I checked all the clothing I'd worn for the previous two weeks (because sometimes I would leave the timer attached to a sweater or an apron.) But no timer.

 Dino, helpful as always, made sure it was still available in the Lee Valley catalogue, just in case, and then, because this is who he is, he also found it on Amazon—at more than twice the price! He also (again, this is who he is) ordered a set of eight baby batteries

in order to re-activate the dead timer that I hadn't told you about because that story is long and boring. So as soon as the batteries arrive he will insert one into the old dead timer. If that doesn't work (for some arcane, battery-type reason) we can order a couple of new ones from Lee Valley.

 In the meantime, however, I had to make do with lesser timers—the kind that "ding" one feeble time and are then silent.

 This morning I was trying to put together an outfit to wear for a day out in the world--writing class, a theatre matinee, dinner at a restaurant. [This was written back in the days when one could go out and about with impunity.] As usual I locked myself into shoes first and then had to scramble to look pulled together above the ankle.

 I began pawing through my large tub of sweaters—most of them handmade and left from the days when I knitted one-of-a-kind sweaters for the world. I'd gone through the top four or five sweaters in the tub when I finally pulled out a store-bought black and white knitted coat-jacket. I hadn't worn it since early autumn. I knew I hadn't. Yet there was the timer, pinched onto the lapel of the coat-jacket. Big as life and twice as ugly, as my mother often said. It was the answer to my (admittedly shallow) prayers.

 

Sunday, October 10, 2021

The Point Is

The Point Is

 

. . . variable,

depending on circumstances,

depending on who's defining the point.

 

The point is to learn.

The point is to feel.

The point is to know yourself.

The point is to make a pile of money.

The point is to live well.

The point is to help others.

The point is to hug,

but the point is to be detached, avoid clinging.

 

Your point and my point are not the same

so one of us must be right, the other wrong,

I'll let you guess which is which.

The point is to forgive others

(i.e., those who are wrong),

because it isn't their fault.

 

The point is to pay attention

to everything.

But bottom line?

The point is to love.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
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Sunday, October 3, 2021

Fw: Oops! Forgot to include September's Book List

Here are the best of the books I read in September. Hope you find a few you like,
 
Ann


Ripeness

Ripeness passes so soon into the overripe.

The firm and perfect banana becomes,

overnight,

fit only for banana bread,

delicious if you have the wit to lard it with walnuts.

The inside Of your avocado morphs

from its smooth green

(the colour of a 1950s refrigerator)

to an inedible pulpy brown.

 

And as with these fruits

so it is with us,

the humans only too aware

of the future that awaits.

During the fateful decade

between 80 and 90

we also morph (more slowly than a banana but faster

than, say, a sea turtle)

into an overripeness

that begs for the surcease

we can attain by resisting

the insistent aid of those

determined to prolong our being

until we are of no more use

than the aforementioned avocado.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
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Sunday, September 26, 2021

The Workspace

Most home sewers dream of a permanent home for the sewing machine and its paraphernalia. To be able to strew pattern pieces as needed over the area and leave them there regardless of meals.

 

When we moved to Toronto I finally achieved this bit of heaven. The four upstairs rooms were allotted to sleeping teenagers. But the basement was unspoken for. No one wanted our basement.

 

Now, what constitutes a finished basement? The most minimal qualification must be: not a dirt floor. Well, there you are. We have a concrete floor. Before I found my sewing corner we also had created a room—the CBRA room-in the middle of the open underground space. Canadian Book Review Annual was a book reviewing service for libraries that DinoVino had started before we met. When I moved to Toronto, CBRA was in need of a manager, so I took on the job and we created an enclosed space (called a room) for the desk and the books, books, books that were the basis of the job. But still, even with the CBRA room in the middle, this was not a finished basement by anyone's definition of the term. Except, of course, that it didn't have a dirt floor.

 

I put up some shelves in a corner of the basement that wasn't the "room", using a door as my worktable and wrapping pressed-wood shelves in a cut-up Indian-print bedspread. I opened up my new Bernina 830, which had been a wedding present from Dino.

 

While the kids were at school, every afternoon I would sew. I had decided that one way to perfect my skills would be to make the same pattern over and over, in different fabrics, ringing all the different changes offered by the Vogue pattern. Displaying my usual ineptitude at choosing patterns (which pretty much explains why I no longer sew), I had picked a Vogue top with long, full sleeves. It was blousy and was to be worn over the skirt or pants, not tucked in. Full, in other words. The neck was gathered into a narrow band and the opening was a long, narrow placket with nine or ten tiny buttons and buttonholes.

 

As I write this description I'm thinking "Really? You thought this was the most flattering garment you could make?" I created a black crepe version and several in silky (but not silk) prints. I became very proficient at making that pattern, though it never became more attractive, no matter how many times I made it.

 

From September to May the temperature in that basement hovered around 50 degrees Fahrenheit—and it still does. After a couple of hours of sewing, my fingers would be so numb I could barely pick up a pin. My feet were frozen solid. But I really didn't care, because I was having a ball. I no longer worked for a crazy-making boss, and a bit of chill was well worth that freedom.

 

We had no radio in the basement, but we did have an old TV. My principles have never allowed me to put a TV in the living room; the upper floor was all bedrooms; so the basement, cold as it was by night and day, was the only place for the TV. The side effect of putting it there was to make watching it so unpleasant as to discourage the teenagers from parking themselves in front of the television for long couch-potato sessions (also, no couch).

 

But I, alone in the afternoons, made use of the TV set. It was in the CBRA room, with several walls and corners between it and my sewing space. Thus, I could hear it but not see it. Years before, in Alabama when the children were all under seven, I got hooked on soap operas. They ran in sequence: All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital, and the Y&R. I'm not proud of it, but I watched them regularly in those early years. And now—in the cold basement—I listened to them.

 

I still remember half-listening to those soaps, identifying (or not) characters by their voices. Though I had once known what the actors looked like, after a few months of audio only I completely forgot their faces (except, perhaps, for Susan Lucci and Luke & Laura). Given the nature of soap operas, it didn't matter if I missed crucial conversations while sewing a long seam. In fact, it didn't matter if I missed several days in a row—or even a whole week. There was never a danger that I'd miss the climactic moment of a plot line, since by their very nature soaps have no climactic moments if by that you mean a coming-to-a-head, a true climax followed by the denouement. A soap just goes on and on and on. If a story-line becomes unpopular or an actor gets a better gig and leaves abruptly, the writers simply drop that plot element or kill off the character. Occasionally a character simply disappears from one day to the next and is never mentioned again.

 

So that was the background to my sewing. And although I did improve my skills (for example, I got quite good at tiny buttonholes), I never became the talented seamstress that my mother, Eileen, had been. Of course, that didn't stop me from trying. Recently one of my daughters returned to me two wool pants suits that I had made for her when she was in grade 13, some forty years ago. Interfacings, linings, bound buttonholes. Projects that were way beyond my capabilities (and sometimes with fabrics that were too heavy or otherwise unsuitable)—with the result that they always had that homemade look.

 

Still, if Eileen gave me nothing else, she taught me to go for it, to keep stretching myself forward.

 

I made a disastrous prom dress for my other daughter. She chose a bias-cut slinky Vogue pattern and a pale-pink silk fabric that was probably too light-weight for the purpose. The draped bodice, suspended by two spaghetti straps, had no underpinnings. It turned out to be considerably more revealing than it should have been for a girl of 18, which was, I think, due to the pattern and not to a failure on my part.

 

The only way for me to choose a pattern is to try on a version of it that someone else has made. Otherwise I have no clue what it will actually look like on me. Buying off the rack is definitely a safer bet.

 

Them days is gone forever now, along with the teenagers. Now my workhorse Bernina sits in an actual bedroom upstairs, a room that is sequentially a sewing room, crafts room, computer room, exercise room, and guest room. But at least it's not 50 degrees. And I haven't looked at or listened to a soap opera for forty years.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
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Sunday, September 19, 2021

Secrets

Last week I was mulling over the idea of how secretly we live our lives. The thread of the essay made a firm warp as I began, lying sleepless, to weave the brilliant thoughts through it. I even (no slouch, me) was aware that I might forget all this brilliance once I'd finally drifted off, so I marked the main ideas in one corner of my mind along with the two key ideas of another brilliant essay that my mind was weaving. These two ideas were so concrete and accessible that I knew they would lead me back to the essay when I was ready. Well, we know how that goes, don't we? In the morning I did manage to salvage parts of my idea on secrecy and wrote these down haphazardly. The other essay—the one I'd tacked to my mind with solid clues—was gone completely.

 

I was thinking about how we (should I say "I" right out?) want to hide the evidence of aging even as I make a show of talking freely about it. Am I, at 84, to be the example, the beacon that guides my younger friends? At 70, when I wrote Hesitating at the Gate, I referred to myself as a Judas goat leading others to the slaughter (i.e., to aging) with reassurance that it wasn't so bad.

 

But do I now really want to do that again? The buoyancy and pep of 70 are long gone, which is a good thing. At least I've taken my head out of the sand. But does anyone want to hear what's here? The yoyo that has always characterized my emotions has gone off its string and is bouncing down the steps like a Slinky-toy. We all know that the Slinky goes down the steps but never climbs back up.

 

What is real? The ninety minutes of TV every evening watching old British mysteries? The three Oxford ones (Endeavour, Morse, and Lewis), Campion, Roderick Alleyn, Lord Peter Wimsey, Sherlock. Or the thirty minutes spent contemplating the immensity of the Multiverse that contains us and the solidity of mountains? The hours I spend reading? The painful withdrawal from everyone—occasioned by the pandemic but abetted by some interior force? The "shoulds" that accompany me more than I like to admit? The satisfaction of going to the kitchen mid-afternoon to begin prepping a meal?

 

I'm losing interest in all this. Oh, wait! That's one of the themes, isn't it? In response to an astrology column in the weekend paper, I have been watching in vain for the new enthusiasm that will come to me and that I must embrace—but be careful lest it turn into an obsession, I began a knitting project. Just a garter-stitch scarf, but nonetheless the first knitting I've done in over a year. I think I'm fairly safe from the danger of this turning into an obsession.

 

Let me go back to that secrecy issue I was thinking about before I digressed. Whole parts of ourselves are never revealed to anyone else. I don't mean to imply that this is necessarily a bad thing. Some things are, by their very nature, private. Lying in bed last week what came to my mind was a story I read some thirty years ago as I was looking for clues about how to manage menopause. It concerned a menopausal woman hosting a family gathering—maybe her usual Sunday dinner for the extended family. At the end of the meal, according to the story, her mother-in-law announced, brightly, "Joan had 13 hot flashes during the meal—didn't you, Joan?" The mother-in-law had counted the times Joan's neck and face had flushed red. When I read this I was shocked, imagining how it must have felt to be "outed" (though I'm not sure that was a word in those days). The invasion of privacy! The mean-spiritedness and pettiness!

 

So this story came back to me as I was contemplating privacy and secrecy in our lives. Surely each of us has the right to determine the level of openness we offer the world.

 

I think this ties in with reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and with the idea of writing about other people. Ah, yes. This is part of it. Anne Lamott talks about how, if people object (family members, e.g.) to what we write about them, then, well, they should have behaved better. But this isn't the whole story, is it? Because what we write about someone may have nothing to do with their good or bad behaviour and everything to do with our own home-grown psychological profiles of them—which may or may not be accurate. But writers, someone else has said, must be ruthless when they put others onto paper.

 

So is that what this has all been about? My personal justification for not writing the truth as I see it? Yeah, I guess it is. I'll have to limit myself to little poems about snow flurries of the day or the poppies that used to grow in my neighbour's garden.

 

 
 
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