An Afternoon at Victoria Writer's Festival

“Sparks flew. The energy of the room changed. An aura of calm, dogged discussion had pervaded the committee room for the past week. With only one comment, severely edged with frustration, heads turned, pens and pencils dropped and chairs scraped away from the long scratched and well used boardroom table. Paper coffee cups, empty water pitchers, yellow legal pads and crumpled paper littered what was really just a work table.

The same thorny issue had been presented to them every day. Each morning the mundane housekeeping of the society was dispatched easily. As the week progressed, the issue took up more and more time. It was a Friday. A decision had to be made ~ how will we address Sex and Family Dynamics at the Writer’s Festival!”

*****

The above is my imagined sketch of just one of the meetings that would have occurred to establish this second annual Victoria Writer’s Festival. Fastidiously planned workshops and panels, a book launch and readings have carried attendees through story and poem. After attending two more sessions of the Victoria Writer’s Festival this afternoon with three friends and in the company of a host of writers, it was obvious that decisions made about Sex and Family were very successful. The Writers’s Festival began on October 17 and is, at this writing is just concluding. Gray skies, red and gold trees, and fallen leaves decorated the grounds of Camosun College, on the Lansdowne Campus where the majority of the Festival is being held.

Reading in Bed: Sex Between the Lines at 1 pm bluntly, but poetically, described ‘Prostitution, burlesque, Playboy Bunnies, ancient Greek hotness, eco-eroticism, and the minutiae of gay life’. It was followed by Love Familiar: Our Families, Ourselves at 2:45pm with readings of prose about ‘Family in fiction, in poetry and in a writer’s life: on boundaries, making strange, exposing, confirming, escaping, inventing and offering family’. Each author on both panels read from their literary works. Following questions from the facilitator, the panels answered questions from members of the audience about their experiences with writing.

“Don’t bend;don’t water it down;
don’t try to make it logical;
don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. 
Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

~ Franz Kafka

Shyness Spirals

Peeking from behind a door jamb

Slipping quietly down the stairs

Trying to be invisible in the crowd

Feeling left out and lonely

Desperate to be unnoticed

Spiraling inner energy

Threatens to shatter the soul

“Clearly she was expected to say something, but panic 

at having to speak stole the thoughts from her head.”

~ Shannon Hale, The Goose Girl

Grandmother's Tablecloth

Grandmother's Tablecloth

Non-descript and almost useless. An old rag that needed washing or throwing out. Lillian picked it up from the floor where it had lain useless and in the way. Not one to tidy her house on a too regular basis, she had let things pile up again. Dishes in the sink. Unmade bed. Papers and bills needing attention littered the dining room table. Lillian decided that today was the day for a good clean. Why did she choose to pick up this old rag first? Lillian had thought it might make some good floor rags. She threw it and some other rags in the washing machine and went about picking up, straightening up and in general getting ready to wash and polish. Lillian took the rags from the dryer, folded them leaving the old table cloth till last.When she folded and felt the soft clean fabric, the old rag transformed with the energy of memories bubbling into consciousness. A long time ago this small tablecloth had graced her grandmother’s breakfast table.  

An ecru coloured linen tablecloth. Ecru. That word, funny sounding to Lillian’s five year old ear, was easy to pronounce.  She ran her hands over adornments of translucent red plates and pitchers, apples and flowers, green grapes and leaves that traced around the linen borders. Lillian remembered reaching out her tiny hand and gently touching the pretty pictures in fabric and dye. Brown patches from grandmother’s old cast pressing iron had burned the fabric and become part of the beautiful old tablecloth.

Lillian remembered the day her grandfather had given the tablecloth to her grandmother when on a weekend visit with her grandparents. It was a Sunday morning in the spring before breakfast. Sunshine filtered through her grandmother's precious lace curtains that framed the kitchen window. Birdsong twittered in through the wood framed screen door.

Used only for Sunday breakfast, the table cloth was always put carefully away, wrapped in tissue paper til the next Sunday, after being washed by hand and dried on the clothesline stretched over the garden. Many times, little Lily had said to her grandmother: “Why do you smile when you’re ironing the tablecloth grandmother?”  

“Well...." and then she would tell me again how grandfather had saved secretly to buy her the linen table cloth because they had few pieces of finery in their early home. Her grandfather knew how much she had missed fine linens and bone china from her childhood home. As her gentle voice rose and fell with the story, sometimes a single tear would roll down her cheek. Over the years the tablecloth began to be used on any weekday. No one really knows why, but I suppose over time the magic of that first Sunday morning got lost in the burns and tea stains on the ecru tablecloth with pretty red decorations. Those special Sunday breakfasts had stopped as well. When my grandmother died the table cloth was given to me.

Now here it was in my hands again. Soiled, torn and wrinkled.  Picked up from the floor where it had lain, a non-decript rag needing washing or throwing out. I  washed it, dried it and ironed it. Each spot and stain, like the wrinkles on my hands and face showed a lifetime of work and enjoyment. Digging through tubes of saved wrapping paper, I found white tissue paper, wrapped grandmother's tablecloth carefully and put it away with my sewing. It would be part of pillow covers I was making. The story of my grandmother’s ecru tablecloth would be stitched into my granddaughter's going away gift.

“Adversity, and perseverance and these things can shape you. 

They can give you a value and a self-esteem that is priceless.”

~ Scott Hamilton

Author's note: Based on real events 

Weathering Science

Moods darken and roll

Bones and joints stiffen and ache

Migraine headaches pulse

Plantings push through black soil

Seeds are planted by the light of the moon

Heavy cloud rolls out sodden blankets

Weather downshifts into darkness and wet

Thunderstorms crack and split the skies

Winds rise, whipping the world into a frenzy.

Full moon rides high and bright

Biometeorology studies what many feel deep in their bones

Documented research will examine ‘old wives’ tales.

Will the energy that connects all beings be revealed as truth?

“The atmosphere is much too near for dreams. It forces us to action.  

It is close to us. We are in it and of it. It rouses us both to study and

to do. We must know it’s moods and also it’s motive forces.

~ Cleveland Abbe

**The International Society of Biometeorology can by found at:  http://www.biometeorology.org/

An Otter Day

Cool, still, crisping air. 

Leaves golden and crusty, drift into gutters and against tree trunks.

Warming sunshine dappled sidewalks and lawns.

Glittering bay reflected cloudless azure skies.

Energetic onlookers cheer, clap and encourage marathon runners as they doggedly moved towards the finish line.

Just a stairway up from the ocean on a barren cement landing just below street level, a river otter snoozed, thick brown coat gleamed in brilliant sunshine.

Bright warmth from above and below seemed the only concern.

Otter was alert to curious humans by the flick an eye and a twitch of the nose, curling then stretching with relaxed energy into the warmth of the afternoon sun.

“Just relax. Everyone around you is working too hard.”

~ Bauvard, Evergreens Are Prudish

In Thanksgiving

I feel I should be writing about gratitude this weekend of Thanksgiving. Many things have gone through my mind today ~ my home, my family, my career, my friends and all seems so trite and cliche. Doesn’t everyone say they are grateful for all of these things ~ or at least aren’t we all supposed to be grateful for all of these things?

However that may be, what I am truly grateful for is my learned ability to be independent ~ not of my family, friends, career or home, but independent of the epilepsy that I carry with me. I carry epilepsy with me as surely as I carry the hair on my head or any other feature of my physical being.

My independence has come at a cost. The cost has been in limitations recognized and respected so that life can be and has been shaped and moulded carefully and calmly. (Well, maybe not always calmly.) The rewards I have reaped have been much greater than the cost. Relationships continually being restored, renewed and developed. A driver’s license held for 35 years. A successful career that has spanned over four decades.  

Gratitude has been a gently driving energy that has shifted many moody gears throughout these constantly moving years. When enjoying a good ‘pity party’, gratitude for what is in the present, what has gone before and horizons yet to be discovered has helped me blow out darkly burning candles and light new, bright and colourful candles.

“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart,

it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”

~ AA.Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh