home for a rest

I looked up “home” in the dictionary today. This is the definition I liked best:

“A place where something flourishes, is most typically found, or from which it originates.”

After a very busy three weeks, I needed some time to rest and recharge. The place I usually go to do this is my childhood home.

There’s something sacred about the farm I grew up on. There are memories woven through every room of my grandmother’s house. There is magic hidden just beneath the floorboards of the barn. And there’s something that sits, waiting, just beyond the trees. Something transcendent, and nameless, and huge.

At Hillside this weekend, a poem was read in one of the workshops I attended. With it came an image of this particular spot in the forest, where I used to sit as a child:

Lost by David Wagoner

Stand still.
The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, and you must treat it as a powerful stranger, must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you.

before I head out...

We can't live in the light all of the time. Sometimes we have to take all the light we can hold into the dark with us. -Libba Bray

breakage

And this is what happens when Kristen rushes to get things done.

art on the street

I'll be in Guelph this saturday, participating in this lovely little thing:

Hope to see you there!

A Wordy Weekend

I finished two books while vending this weekend. My anti-social behaviour was made possible by this handsome guy:

(that's the second draft of my novel he's reading)

So. I fell completely in love with these two books:

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman was beautiful and tender and a little bit scary. It's about a boy raised in a graveyard. This is my favourite part:

Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead."

"Yes." Silas hesitated. "They are. And they are, for the most part, done with the world. You are not. You’re alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you’re dead, it’s gone. Over. You’ve made what you’ve made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.”

Silas was my favourite character.

On to the Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. What an amazing book! I sometimes forgot to breathe while reading it. From page 1 it dug it’s oily, grimy word-claws deep inside me and refused to let go until the very end. Here’s a snippet from my favourite part:

Family. It was just a word… The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family. Everything else was just so much smoke and lies.

Well, that's all for now. Goodnight everyone.

(my candlelit display)