Intriguing experiments are often done at home, usually not accompanied by double blind studies or are ever peer reviewed. I can say I do feel rather blind when I ask myself the question: ‘I wonder if…….’ As for peer reviews, when it comes to attempting a new culinary challenge, I’ve had many guests ~ friends and family ~ that have provided me with a degree of peer review. Always polite, their truth of these culinary results is often in question. Especially when I know that a dish was too salty, or missing something else, bread too tough, or not strong enough to support the thinnest sandwich.
Scientific experiments begin with a question, followed by background research and then comes the hypothesis. Clear steps to define procedure, trouble shooting, re-experimentation, results that support or do not support a hypothesis. A ‘home’ experiment really has the same steps - usually beginning with the question: ‘I wonder if…..’ There are times when I do some cursory background research, but when the experiment is about my own abilities there are times even I seem not familiar with them and there is no data base to delve into ~ except maybe years of journals, but journals do not typically provide an index. A much too time consuming bit of research, I have tried and dispensed with it. (Another experiment) But, there is usually a gut instinct that I know the answer. My curiosity often is that I want to find out if I am actually able to answer my own question. Returning to the issue of food preparation, I may wander through my cookbooks for possibilities. The best cookbooks are the ones with pencilled in side notes by previous cooks. I seldom have a hypothesis, as a hypothesis is an educated guess about how things should work. Once again, in my own home, testing my own abilities, if education about home and food is missing from my personal data base, that hypothesis merely becomes a ‘what if?’.
My longest running experiment has been this blog, Standing Still Slowly. I started it in December 2011, at a time when my mood was extremely low, I was relatively new to Victoria and was in new stages of early friendships. My question? I wonder if I can write and post one small piece a day for one year. That year has telescoped into just over seven years. I have learned so much about word crafting, and developed a daily practice for writing. Being accountable to myself and, with much appreciation, to those of you who read my posts regularly has been a real learning curve for this home experiment - no one to set rules for me. From poetry to essay, prose to story with the occasional rant thrown in, I’ve written daily despite my circumstance or my mood. I have included memorials to so many precious family and friends that have passed from this world since opening Standing Still Slowly. On days when circumstance has prevented me from writing a new piece, I have reposted from my personal blog data base.
My new experiment is: ‘I wonder if I can maintain and, at the same time, develop my writing practice both long hand and blog posts on a daily basis for this first year of retirement.’ I feel confidant that I have the ability and the authenticity to dig deeper into this most intriguing experiment, creating a richer data base for any future personal research.
“Life is a concept, like the “universe”, that expands
as soon as we reach what we think is its edge.”
~ Kamand Kojouri, author, poet
Inching forward each day, finding my way into my home. My home that I missed most Thursday and Fridays for the past several years. Oh, yes and the worked weekends that were tossed in for good measure. I still have stacks of papers, books, art supplies, writing books, books written in, boxes of photographs, clothes that have seen their best before date and some that will no longer see the inside of a nurses station. The scheduled, hurry up and get it done, side of me - only for a second or two - wants to roll up my sleeves and dive in. Get rid of it all…..or some of it…….or……. Overwhelmed I start taking things of the top of the nearest pile. This morning I chose from the top of the pile on my dining room table a small coil notebook that hadn’t been opened for years. The title and date at the top of the first page: Road to El Paso April/06. I recall that trip with fond memories. It was my first trip back to Lubbock, Texas since returning to Canada in the fall of 1999. My good friend from my Lubbock days, David Lusk and I were taking a road trip to El Paso, Texas. The little water colour picture is one I sketched while on that road trip using watercolour pencils, completing it when we stopped for the night. Here is my writing from April of 2006:
Challenging opportunities arose with either terrorized fierceness or deep, peaceful calm throughout this beautiful novel. Set in British Columbia, the novel opens on Frank Starlight polishing and closing up the home where he was raised by ‘the old man’ - his only words for a man that was like a father. Far away in an unnamed town, Emmy, and her six year old daughter, Winnie barely escape with their lives from Cadotte, a man, violent and angry at the world. While he and his friend Anderson were passed out from a night of alcohol and fighting, Emmy saw her opportunity and grabbed it with both hands. Saving her daughter from any abuse from these men fuelled her rage. Winnie, fought as desperately to protect her mother. The story that follows is the long road they travelled to get as far away as possible, with the knowledge that Cadotte would come after them. Emmy had no money to provide for her daughter or herself. Along the way they steal food and clothes, siphon gas and count on Cadotte’s old truck to carry them away. 
Intriguing experiments are often done at home, usually not accompanied by double blind studies or are ever peer reviewed. I can say I do feel rather blind when I ask myself the question: ‘I wonder if…….’ As for peer reviews, when it comes to attempting a new culinary challenge, I’ve had many guests ~ friends and family ~ that have provided me with a degree of peer review. Always polite, their truth of these culinary results is often in question. Especially when I know that a dish was too salty, or missing something else, bread too tough, or not strong enough to support the thinnest sandwich. 
