So many thoughts

I have a brain that is very busy all the time. What about you?

Meditation is helpful, it calms me and centres me and focuses me. As does knitting. 

I love me a good knit. Or taking photos or writing fiction, which takes me outside of myself. 

I look forward intensely to alone time. More than people time. I have never been able to manage small talk. When I was in public office I would wander around with a camera which worked like a charm to keep people at a distance. I never know what to say apart from a series of stock clichés.

I live in a building which is full of small talk. I put on a nice face, being well practiced at my advanced age, and do my best, I remember things about people which soothes them. Like where they used to live and I ask about that. "Have you been back there recently?" Weather is a good coverup. And I range through my string of tropes and haul them out which seems to soothe others: inflation, weather, health status, weather, grandchildren, weather, new tenants, weather. 

I scan my list of internal topics of off limit stuff, climate change, Sudan, Ukraine, Somalia, floods, arctic collapse, rising sea levels and about a 100 more and shut my mouth. Along with the stuff I love to talk about, books, theatre, good films, art, seniors' concerns which usually draws a blank with most. Those I would chat to about such things are all gone to the great beyond of stardust.

One of the enormous voids of old age is losing those with whom we went to the opera or concerts or great theatre or a new showing at the galleries. Those who had this commonality of interests and could discuss such enhancing wonders with kindred spirits.

I imagine if one has a soulmate, old age is much more enhanced by shared interests but then again, if the soulmate dies it leaves one very unprepared for the loneliness and isolation to follow. So six of one and half dozen of the other.

I am so used to being alone and it's totally by choice as there were a few opportunities over the years to change that. I had a few great loves, one particularly of such depth and magnitude that I was only recently able to write about it in a memoir. He was definitely "The One" but there were far too many barriers in that time and place so very many years ago to take it further. 

I am grateful for so much in my life that often I find myself tearing up. I realize that any of us with family love and respect and living in the privilege that is Canada are so very fortunate and find myself crying openly at the child massacres in the US - the Gunster Capital of the world - and when the Ukrainians arrive on our island here with their hope and their pets and their little children, leaving everything they held dear in the appalling mess behind them.

A long post. I stop myself here as I could go on all day and never stop.

I never had to kiss the Blarney Stone. When I was a kid, I would ride out here on my bike from home, about five miles, and wait underneath, and pick up the coins from the tourist pockets as they bent over backwards to kiss it.

Going Underground

I've been working far too little on a memoir I am writing about a certain time in Toronto way back in the mists of time. I didn't want to do anything with it until a whole bunch of time had passed and key people in it would have passed on.

It's been a long project with scattered notes and old notebooks and many chapters written on line and thoughts in coffee shops committed to little notepads. Some chapters I printed and workshopped with a group who were very excited about the premise and the secret life I led. (There's a teaser right there!)

I think I am ready now to pull all the bits and pieces together. And send it off. But I need to pull away from everything else for a while and sit and nurse this whole thing together by the end of February. 

Daughter has been super encouraging, though she's not aware of the content. I would love to get away from all distractions to get this finished but that's not in the realm of possibility at the moment. I will try and disconnect where I live and relive and breathe all these memories that have never left me and still linger with a miasma of sadness at the choices that had to be made then.

So adieu for now. I will back on March 1st. 

Hopefully, not too battle worn.

(Not me!)

Head Above the Parapet

It's been an interesting break from the writing point of view. I was overwhelmed at times with both prepping for the writing workshops I was holding and the one-on- one sessions with the various writers. I set a deadline of May 31st for all submissions to be in my hands for a final edit, with a publication date of sometime in July in the midst of Come Home Year Newfoundland when flocks of our exiles will be returning in great numbers from around the world. The title will be the unimaginative "Write Around the Bay, Volume 2." An anthology of stories old and new with some poetry interspersed with both fiction and non-fiction pieces.

On my own writing front, I have tackled my memoir of one of the most significant six months of my life. Certainly a hugely important time for me and one of deep connection. It is just about finished apart from polishing but I'm not happy with it as my writing failed me more than a few times in recording a transforming relationship. My notes from the era are excellent, but it's in the emotional I run up against blocks - more to do with skill than anything else. I have put it aside for now and will return.

During this process I learned how to format a novel/book/anthology which took a good five hours but well worth it, I think. I am very pleased to learn a new skill at my age (78) and I believe it's good for exercising the brain.

I'm going to visit y'all very soon and get caught up on the various doings of my blogmates.

I leave you for now with a photo of one of my happy places. Middle Cove Beach which soothes my soul and is within five minutes of where I live.

Mad Writer

 I'm in Mad Writer mode lately. Churning out a lot of my own memoir about my first year in Toronto. A year in which so very much happened, much of it kept hidden and secret. For very good reasons. Held in a locked closet in my mind for fifty six years. I'm very glad I have such a memory for detail and notice, through the Sibling Zooms every Sunday that we all share that ability.

Along with that I have the online writing workshops I'm facilitating. We are all missing the live ones, and these real enthusiasts are producing wonderful work. Which I am critiquing. Which takes oodles of time as well.

I've missed writing here which I will try and rectify but sometimes I just want to throw the keyboard against the wall and do something utterly different.

I love the goings on in Ireland at the moment with the Russian navy off the coast of West Cork.

Daughter sent me this earlier on.  I sometimes forget how the country of my birth has such marvelous humour.

Listening to Irish radio this morning they had a CNN reporter who was on location in West Cork. The reporter was a Kerryman who is based in America. At the end of the discussion about the fisherman taking ownership of standing down Russia (ha) the host of the show then said something like.."C'mere to me now. You're among your own here so I'm gonna ask you what everyone in Ireland really wants to know....did you get paid to come home and visit your Mammy?"

Memoir

I started this memoir a few years back. A chap book (strictly for family) about my mother. Two of my family members have read it so far and are enthusiastic about it. I feel if I don't write all of it down and quickly, my memories will start to fade. Letters (she was a prodigious writer to me being an emigrant) have survived which I will include. And some photos, particularly of her outside of her maternal experience as mother to us, her children.

She had first hand experience as a young child of the horror of the Black and Tan era in Ireland and the blowing up (by the IRA in Rebel Cork) of the local barracks in her village.

She was put out to service at the age of twelve to the local merchant even though she had skipped a class at her village school as she was so bright. No opportunities then. For anyone.

Through this process of writing down her life I feel I am getting to know her all over again and with the distance of her passing, see her struggles and evolution more clearly.

There is never a day goes by when I don't think of her. She died far too young and I surmise she would only have gotten more interesting with age.