Category Archives: Editing

Daily sojourn

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I often despair of my monkey mind, the jumble of thoughts that keep me from noticing what’s present. At the same time, I appreciate my tangential mind. I love following its pathways through shadowy tunnels of white-flowering hawthorns. I seem to always turn a corner to find myself in an unexpected field of light. 

Today as I ate breakfast sitting at the kitchen table, I started to examine the ceramic trivet my father gave me years ago after a trip to Granada. The trivet is decorated with an Arabic design: a mandala in teal, navy, red, and cream. I love the waving flower petals that seem to be in motion, dancing in the wind. The Arabian design on the Spanish trivet took my mind to the poem I’d just been reading by St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), a mystic living in Spain after 700 years of Arab culture. St. Teresa was intimate with her God; you can feel it in her language. I re-read the lines,

A woman’s body, like the earth, has seasons;

when the mountain stream flows,

when the holy thaws,

when I am most fragile and in need,

it was then, it seems,

God came

closest.

God, like a medic on a field, is tending our souls

And then, a few lines down,

Why this great war between the countries—the countries—inside of us?

From “When the holy thaws” by St. Teresa of avila

My counsellor tells me that I aggress against myself—a pattern in my life. An ongoing war rages between the countries inside of me. I like to think of God as a medic tending to my wounds, lifting me off the battlefield, holding me close, bringing my countries to peace. I remembered the stage six mandala I drew recently, with a little girl and a dragon (my warring countries). I wrote tenderly to myself, “lay down your sword, little one.” Perhaps the holy is thawing. 

I’d snagged that wonderful book, Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, from a cardboard box of free stuff. I love our neighbourhood. There is a little clearing across the street near the mail box where all of us take things we don’t want anymore. Neighbours and visitors from other parts of town come to adopt old things and bring them to their new homes—a brilliant system! 

This book caught my eye. What a great find. But boxes of free stuff and friendly dogs are not all that’s on offer here. The neighbourhood has other delights. Yesterday, I started work early in my home office in the basement, checking copy edits for a book. At 10, I took a break from the highly focused work. Michael, Marvin, and I walked down to the Gorge where a pop-up concert was in full swing. A local musician, Danielle Lebeau-Peterson, was playing her guitar and singing under a white tent. Danielle is the daughter of my eldest son’s first music teachers—Connie and Niels, and I marvelled at the “small world” (we’re all connected) feel of Victoria. Her mouth is like her mother’s.

The clouds in the sky threatened rain, but so far it was dry, and children and their parents gathered around Danielle as she sang and played, smiled and bantered. She knew songs from Disney movies, which delighted the younger crowd. The Tillicum-Gorge Association folks had set up a table with a big urn of Tim Horton’s coffee, cartons of donuts, and boxes of Timbits. There was a clipboard with paper and the question, “What do you love about our neighbourhood?” The cheerful woman behind the table filled my cup with coffee, and I took up the pen and wrote, “Everything.”

We sat on the grass listening, and when Danielle asked for requests, I called out “Blackbird,” that gem of a song written by Paul McCartney. It was one of my father’s favourites, and she played and sang it perfectly—her clear ringing voice floating up and over the Gorge: “You were only waiting for this moment to be free.” I smiled while my tears fell on the grass, and Marvin tugged at his leash, tried to smell the woman sitting next to us. This is the first Father’s Day I’ve lived without a father. But he was there in the high, truthful notes of the song. He is still with us. 

And now, I am still sitting here with the book of poems on one side of me and the trivet on the other, back from that pleasurable sojourn, ready to fill the hummingbird feeder with sugar water and play with the dog.  I love my mind and my heart. I love the rich stuff of daily life that produces all of these memories, feelings, and thoughts. The tangents take me unexpected places, but they always lead me back home to love and beauty.  

Legacy of Loss/ Swords

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Legacy of Loss

“The American experience, the focus on individual achievement, the acquisition of goods and money to prove one’s social value, is built on this sense of loss, this alienation from the warmth of the home culture, isolation from genetic bonds. This separation from one’s tribe creates an inner loneliness that increases as one ages.”

Annie Proulx, “A Yard of Cloth” (p. 20) from Bird Cloud.

I read this passage last night, and I had to get out of bed to copy those sentences. They struck a chord in me. I too feel that “inner loneliness that increases as one ages.” My mother, who died on February 14, 2019, distanced herself from her family as a teenager. When she coloured her hair blonde, her father was furious. Either he told her to leave, or she left voluntarily to flee the strictness of their farm in Lodi, California, I’m not sure which. She ended up in Los Angeles, working the switchboard at Kaiser Hospital. She would later meet an older woman, Phyllis, who became a kind of mother to her, paying for her therapy. My mother would go on to complete a BA and MA at University of California, Berkeley. 

Not only did my mother reject her parents, she spurned most of her seven siblings as well. However, she had a special bond with Fran, a gentle older sister who worked as a nurse. My mother claimed Fran saved her life by preventing their parents from treating my mother’s Bell’s Palsy with some kind of horse medicine. Most of these stories are so garbled in my memory. They seem half-fantasy and half-truth. I’m sure I have most of the stories slightly wrong. 

But the feeling is real—of striking out, fleeing family, rejecting those who engendered you, separating from tribe. That was an element in my mother: brutal independence. I don’t need you. I depend on nobody but myself. I remember the last time I visited her in Toronto, her brother, an Evangelical preacher living somewhere in the States, called her, and I picked up the phone. Apparently, he called regularly, wanting to reconnect, and she always hung up on him. When I tried to hand the phone to her, she wouldn’t take the call. I was shocked. You won’t talk to your brother? He’ll just proselytize, she said. 

My parents migrated from California to Toronto in 1965, another “alienation from the warmth of the home culture” that Proulx writes about. My mother left her adopted mother, Phyllis, which must have been heartbreaking for her, and my father left his mother. We three daughters were already used to being without a large tribe—we didn’t know most of our cousins or aunts and uncles. We were a nuclear family with no extended family to fall back on. I look back on how we grew up without the cushion of uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents and how hard it is to survive that way. But we didn’t know anything different. 

Then, repeating the pattern of migration and loss, my first husband and I left our home in Toronto with our first child. We left our parents and siblings—it felt exciting and freeing. We started a new life in Victoria in 1988. My kids grew up without getting to really know their Ontario grandparents. 

I am thinking of my mother this weekend. It will be three years since she died. She was fierce and proud and insisted on individual achievement as the sine qua non. In her actions, she was a feminist. In elementary school, we were sent home for lunch every day for a 90 minute break, which necessitated mothers stay home to serve their kids lunch. She fought to get the school to allow us to stay there to eat a packed lunch so she could go out and work. Later, she pressed back when the bank wanted her ex-husband’s signature to get a mortgage. But she wouldn’t be called a feminist because she didn’t want to be seen as part of group of women who supported and uplifted each other, challenging the system together. All of her achievements in life, she thought, were due to her own hard work and merit plus a little help from individual friends. And it’s interesting how I’ve inherited some of this thinking, especially an unwillingness to ask for help. 

My mother and her father

As humans, we work so hard to connect. It is our default—we need each other. I treasure my sisters now, and I create my own chosen family in my friends. However, that profound sense of loss lingers at the edges of life. It’s the legacy of leaving family behind and striking out on one’s one. 

Swords

Swords are weapons of destruction and tools of discernment. 

Swords are on my mind.

About a year ago, I created a website for my new editing business and wanted a brand identity.  The Queen of swords from tarot seemed a perfect symbol for a female editor—the independent, unbiased woman, a seeker of truth, with clear boundaries and a direct style of communication. She sees problems and figures out how to solve them; she knows where to cut the extraneous to reveal the truth. Queens are about heart and swords are about mind—so she brings heart and mind into harmony.

I didn’t use a Queen of swords image from a tarot deck due to copyright laws. Instead, I planned to use an excerpt from a painting in the public domain, John Gilbert’s (1817-1897) Joan of Arc. I sent a mock-up of the website, including a sword image, to a few friends for their opinions. One of them noted that the image of Joan of Arc’s armour and sword was martial and scary and didn’t really reflect who I am. I agreed. I decided to let go of the sword as a metaphor for editing because of its primary associations with violence. 

And yet, swords keep coming up. On December 31, 2021, Michael and I each drew a tarot card to guide us during 2022. He drew two of swords; I drew Queen of swords. Evidently, the sword has much to teach both of us this year, so I am listening. As Michael has been studying the tarot for several years now, I asked him about swords. His words are a synthesis of all he has read and studied from various sources (but his main influences are Mary Greer, Rachel Pollock, and Anthony Louis). 

 “The suit of swords is aligned with the element of air, which is the suit of mental processes and thoughts. Swords are aligned with thinking, intellect, reason, yang energy, severing unhealthy connections, and the courage of the warrior. They’re about logos, problem solving, things we have to work through before we can find serenity. 

Swords are aligned with prajna, deciding what to accept and what to reject or cut; it’s the suit of discernment and decisiveness. Also, because swords are about mental things, they can also be about willful blindness, about illusion. Swords is where we discover the obscurations of mind that trap us. 

Two of swords shows a woman blindfolded, and the eight shows a blindfolded, bound woman surrounded by swords. However, these are mental obscurations – imagined entrapments rather than actual physical imprisonment. The four of swords has a person lying on their back with three swords above – this is contemplation. Swords is about how you use your mind. Some sword cards are about meditation: training, calming, and taming the mind. 

Swords are not just about cutting, but they’re also about piercing – which is penetrating insight.”

I asked Michael about his tattoo of the three of swords. “Well, threes are energy, vitality, motion – they arise from loss or partnership or conflict. Three of swords is heartbreak, alienation, and sorrow—mental alienation and loss. The three of swords invites us to find the sweetness and wisdom beneath our sorrow –that’s my take on it. Go underneath the sorrow – penetrate and pierce it.”

Cutting and piercing are the work of the sword. And underneath the pain is sweetness.

Recently, a client asked me to cut 40% from several of her book chapters—truly an exercise in figuring out what’s most important. Same thing in life. Look at what you most value and treasure it. Let go of what you no longer value.

As the Queen of swords accompanies me throughout this year, I would like to continue to examine the mental obscurations that trap me and prevent me from experiencing serenity. For example, much anxiety arises from worrying about the future, but I know there is no future. There is only today.

Michael’s tattoo
Joan of Arc
N. Churchill
My niece Sarah’s tattoo

Look back, look ahead

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I know it was a horrible year, and yet it was somehow a good year for creativity. The work wanted to be made.

Writing

I finished the first draft of my first novel—as yet untitled. I have been living my own dictum. You only learn to write by writing, I tell the students I teach and tutor in academic writing. The more you write, the more you experiment, the more you learn how to write.

James Hillman said that “truth is revealed. It cannot ever be told. It has to appear inside the telling or through the telling.” Never have I found this more resonant than in writing fiction. I started out with a vague idea for a story, but it has only been inside the telling that truth has been revealed, an exciting and serendipitous—perhaps even magical—process.

I was privileged to have the first six months of the year off work and the second half working at home. This flexibility allowed me to establish a regular writing time in the mornings, so most days I wrote at least a paragraph and sometimes several pages. The novel is about 300 pages long. I will leave it to rest for a few weeks before I go back with an eye to editing. My small but loyal writing group helped me stay motivated, and I am grateful to them. I loved hearing other writers in the group read their work.

I published 18 blogposts in 2020. Long ago Michael helped me to be content with “3 plus me” (it’s written with a wineglass writer on my mirror). That just means if I like it and three other people like it (Michael is inevitably one of the three), then I am happy.

One of the posts this year was a beautiful guest blog by my sister.  And we collaborated on a second one. I love collaborating on blog posts and I welcome any of you to get in touch with  me if you want to write together.

Editing

This year I was accepted into Simon Fraser University’s Editing Certificate program and I have completed 3 of the 12 courses. I aim to finish in 2021, and intend to start my own freelance editing and writing coach business. I have done this kind of work as a side gig for years, but now I am ready to formalize my training and freelance in a serious way. Editing is a profoundly creative act. All of those decisions to be made about word choices and paragraphs, sytnax, architecture, punctuation. . . .

In my reading about editing, I came across Susan Bell’s, The artful edit, an interesting book about how to edit your own prose and hone your understanding of other people’s. I loved the way she takes the reader through the masterful editing of The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald and his editor, Maxwell Perkins. She has provided me with so many ideas both in editing my own work and as I apply my skills to my clients’ writing.

Sewing

I sewed in fits and starts this year, but as I look back I realize I was productive, though it often didn’t feel that way. I finished the textile art piece Eight Worldy Winds early in the year. The piece now hangs on my office wall to remind me of the transitoriness of feelings, fortunes, and life itself. Then the pandemic shifted me into giving mode—I wanted to make small gifts for people. So I started with potholders I had promised to friends a long time ago, then I delved deep in my scrap supply to make one-of-a-kind bags for other friends. After that, I sewed masks. I have to admit, that was a duty more than a joy. Then I started making aprons for people I love. By the final apron, I felt I’d perfected the pattern. I almost forgot about the blue cape I made (my courage cape) out of an old wool blanket. So much fun!

I went back to a bigger project with the Rhapsody in Blue quilt. It’s one of those weird quilts that actually look awful close up, with the mishmash of colours and patterns. But the total effect is pleasing. I started machine quilting of the top today, after pinning the whole quilt with safety pins. It’s the first time I’ve tried using curved safety pins to sandwich a quilt, and I like it. In the past, I’ve used the spray adhesive between layers, but I find it is not secure over time, and sometimes it takes me a while to finish a quilt top (now, especially, with a puppy).

There is something incredibly liberating in free motion quilting. And it’s a physical act; my whole torso sways and moves as I push the material under the needle, forming loop de loops. 

Puppy raising

Raising a puppy is a creative act. Just as raising children calls for creativity every day, so does having a puppy in the house. I used to make up games and stories, craft activities, and innovative ways to distract and delight my children. Now I am doing the same kind of thing with Marvin.

Going forward

I put sewing and writing on hold during our first few weeks with Marvin because it was an immersive experience—all of my energy was need to do my paid job and engage with and train the puppy. Those few weeks taught me an important lesson. I felt drained and bereft without my creative outlets. It is not just a luxury to take time to write and sew. Creativity is my lifeblood; creativity gives me momentum to keep on going; creativity feeds me. Especially in this year of the pandemic, I have leaned heavily on creativity, and I am so grateful to have the time to pursue my creative acts.

This year I let go of some things—drawing and my aspiration to learn to play the ukulele to accompany my singing. I just can’t do everything. So I focused on writing and sewing. I’m not sure what I’ll focus on in 2021. Some contemplation is in order.

Remember, creativity is your birthright. It’s not granted to just some people—we are all born with innate creativity. As children it seems more accessible and we rarely question it, but then its force seems to fade for some people. I encourage you to spark your creativity if it’s dormant. Write a poem, cook something new, learn a song, write a song, draw a comic, sew something. Make a birthday card for a friend. You never know. . . . 

All my best to all of you. Thank you for reading. 

 

An eye for detail

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This morning I sat at my desk in my pajamas, writing, enjoying the way the light spilled from the lamp onto the scarred surface of the wood. Appreciating these last couple of days of not working. After a whole year off, I go back to my job on Thursday. My phone was on silent, but I noticed a missed call pop up on the screen. It was from the hair salon where I had booked an appointment for 11 a.m. Lots of time yet. I called back and asked if there was a problem….Did they need to reschedule?

Detail from a drawing by Michael Carpenter. Pastel on paper.

“Well yes, your appointment was at 11 and it’s 12.”

“It’s 12? No, it’s 8:58 a.m.” Pause. “Wait a second, where are you?”

“Alliston, Ontario.”

“What? Really? Oh my God, I am so sorry. Aren’t you the Gallery Salon on Yates Street in Victoria, B.C.?”

 “Where? Victoria? No, we’re in Ontario. Our salon is the Gallery Salon, and we’re on Victoria Street in Alliston.”

I was deeply apologetic, and then we both had a good laugh about it. After I ended the call, I thought about the details that I should have twigged on yesterday. I was looking online for a local salon that had a high rating—the Gallery Salon came up, located on Yates Street in Victoria. But I couldn’t find their website so looked for a Facebook page. Sure, the Gallery Salon has a FB page, but I didn’t notice it was a different Gallery Salon, one located in Alliston, Ontario. I tried to book with their online app, but got a FB message to call them to schedule an appointment. 

Why didn’t I notice the 705 area code when I called? In the back of my mind, I figured the area code was some new cell phone code, like 778, which startled me when it was first introduced. The owner mentioned HST when we talked about pricing. Why didn’t that detail wake me up? in British Columbia we charge Provincial Sales Tax (PST) plus Goods and Services Tax (GST), whereas Ontario businesses charge a combination of the two, called the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST). Perhaps I had temporary amnesia and thought time had slipped back to 2011 or 2012 when B.C. briefly charged the HST. 

In any case, my mind had done a superb job of filtering out information that didn’t align with my expectations. Selective perception? Frightening, really. 

What does it mean to have an “eye for detail”?  I expect myself to have eagle eyes because I am an editor-in-training. But each of us notices some details and not others. It depends on your focus, your task, your mood, your intention. Today I was interested in the details of lipstick shades. I was writing about Phyllis’s lipstick:

“Her lips, Geraldine noticed, were the colour of the heavy hardcover Roget’s Thesaurus she kept under her bed. Claret red. Revlon’s “Certainly Red.” The shade matched Phyllis’s certainty, her sophistication. Not like her grandmother’s “Candy Pink” from Avon, sold by Wilma from upstairs, the Avon Lady and Garnet’s babysitter. No, not that silly, girlish, domesticated pink. Far from it.” 

I looked up Avon and Revlon lipstick shades from the early 1950s and old book covers of Roget’s Thesaurus (Geraldine, a 13-year-old philologist, keeps a dictionary and a thesaurus under her bed). So many shades of pink and red. Burgundy, geranium, candy floss, salmon, cherry, garnet, ruby, watermelon, and blood.

Some days I notice almost every plant we pass on our walks, marvelling at variegated leaves, unusual blooms, the shape of needles, the saturated cobalt blues and plums of the hydrangea petals. Other times I barely register my surroundings, my attention drawn inward or wrapped around an intimate conversation. An eye for detail, like everything else, is variable, relative, and contingent on context. 

As I finish my first course in the editing certificate and work on the final assignment this week, I am grateful that I can switch on my eagle eye when I really need it. When it’s time to proofread, I can shut out distractions and use a ruler to move slowly down a page of text, my antennae out for anomalies, typos, extra spaces. When it’s time for big picture detail, my mind can range like a camera viewfinder, alert to where prose needs a signpost, where a key transition needs ballast. 

I have reassured myself that if I weren’t so distracted yesterday by multi-tasking (making a hair appointment while reading my email), I would have noticed I was talking to the owner of a salon located 4,274 kilometres away from my hair. When I set my intention, I have a grand eye for detail.

And yet, I still need a haircut. . . .

Update

In my last post, I said that I would let readers know the results of my fundraiser. Thank you to Barbara Churchill who purchased the Four Seasons quilt for $260—all proceeds went to Black Lives Matter, Vancouver B.C. 

No takers for my piece, the Eight Worldly Winds, but that’s okay. I like to see it hanging above my new desk, which is actually a used kitchen table we bought for $20 last week. I’ll be working from home now, and this is my home office. Thank you for reading. Stay safe.

Eight worldly winds hangs above my new desk

The magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted and inspired way

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We’ve been drawing and writing and sewing around here. Michael ordered a drawing bench from Nicole Sleeth and arranged to pick it up on Saturday. Sleeth is a painter, but as a sideline she sells handmade benches that are great for life drawing, as they comfortably accommodate the shape of your body when you are facing a model. I asked Michael if I could come along for the ride, expecting to simply pick up the bench and head home again. But when we knocked on the door, Sleeth welcomed us in, beckoning down a long narrow passageway, past her two little sausage-shaped dogs, into the studio, a long, light-filled room. I was excited to visit a working painter’s studio and see the canvases in progress; new finished work hanging on the walls; shelves of paints, supplies, and curious objects; huge windows facing Fisgard Street; a couch where, once they were tired of barking, the two dogs curled up and observed their owner chatting with us.

 

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Last September, we visited Sleeth’s show “All Eyes on You” at Fortune Gallery. Her work “centers on the female figure as an exploration of power, connection, and lived experience.” Standing before each monumental painting, I felt the personality of the woman before me. The unashamed, unadorned nakedness of women looking comfortable in their bodies startled me at first, but I was soon drinking in the honesty of these representations. I enjoyed that exhibit so much, I saved the postcard. It made me realize I am more at home in my own ageing, sagging body now than I ever was in my twenties or thirties. Later that day, I revisited the studio in my mind and appreciated Sleeth’s gracious unexpected welcome, another one of many small adventures we’ve been having this year, my year off work.

The second half of my year’s leave hasn’t gone as planned—Covid-19 cancelled our trip to Haida Gwaii, where we would have been this week, exploring the parks and learning more about the Haida Nation. So instead of travelling afar, we focus on home, neighbourhood, and our creative journeys,  all of which bring contentment. Now that I’ve finished the Eight Worldly Winds project (more on that next time), I will start working on a Courage Cape. The cape is my idea in response to a life coach who asked what I could do to grow my courage as I set out to start my own editing business.

Earlier this month, I had a free life coaching session on Zoom with Lori-anne Demers, who helped me to figure out what I need in order to be/see myself as an entrepreneur. When I go back to work in July, I will concurrently develop a plan for eventual self-employment as a writing coach and editor. Having skills and experience is one thing—I have a PhD and many years of experience in writing, editing, and teaching. In June, I start the first course in Simon Fraser University’s editing certificate program to consolidate some of those skills. But it’s the chutzpah of charging what I’m worth and facing the world with confidence that scare the shit out of me. So Lori-anne asked what I might do to feel into my courage—what symbolic creative act will give me fortitude as I launch this new enterprise? “I’ll sew a Courage Cape,” I said.

 

The Courage Cape idea just came out my mouth–no premeditation. I love sewing quilts, pillows, bags, and potholders. Lately, I’ve been eager to graduate to sewing garments. I recently ordered Stylish Wraps Sewing Book, by Yoshiko Tsukiori, from Bolen’s Books and picked it up on Saturday before we visited Nicole Sleeth’s studio. The hooded cape—one of the easier patterns—looked like just the ticket, I thought yesterday as I browsed through the different styles. I love capes; wearing them requires the kind of panache that I aspire to. But Tsukiori’s recommendation to use boiled wool to construct the cape had me worried. Boiled wool is about $30 a metre, and I know I make mistakes when I sew something for the first time. I didn’t want to waste money.

So today I got on my bike. It’s a glorious day—sunny and warm. I cycled the E & N trail to Store Street, admiring all of the graffiti along the way. I locked my bike in front of Value Village. They’ve reopened with new safety protocols. A vivacious young woman with purple hair, a plexiglass face shield, and a ready smile was stationed at the entrance, spraying each shopper’s hands with sanitizer. I headed straight to the back.  I found a big royal blue wool blanket with understated green criss-crosses for $5.99. It’s in the washing machine right now. I’ll use this wool for the first rendition of the cape. We’ll see how that goes. When I finally make a Courage Cape I am satisfied with (who knows, it may be the first iteration), I see myself wearing it with confidence as I edit a mystery novel, my feet crossed casually on my desk.

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Forty-five days left until I return to work. I counted this morning. May I treasure each adventure. May you treasure each of your adventures.

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“Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted and inspired way.” Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape. I keep this little piece of paper on my desk to remind me that I have all I need to be content with  life. It’s all here.