Mary Lake, Muskoka - but first a word about inspiration

Often, family and friends will ask me if they can read some of my work that has been recently published in a literary journal. If the piece is in a print journal and they don’t have a subscription, I have a few choices, I can lend them my copy, buy them a copy, ask them to subscribe, email it to them, or this new thing I’ll do here: publish it on my website in my Notebook temporarily (obviously after the journal has published the piece in print).

I’m grateful to Prairie Fire magazine for first publishing this poem in their Roots & Routes issue (Vol.42:3). I LOVE literary journals and would recommend everyone subscribe to them, but even I can’t afford a subscription to every journal, so in this space I’ll give a bit of a blurb on the origin of the piece and/or my inspiration for writing it.

Growing up, my family visited our cottage on Mary Lake in Muskoka (Ontario, Canada) religiously every single summer. It didn’t matter how far away we lived. We would drive from Alberta across the country to visit family and spend at least a few days at the lake. When we moved to Ontario, we spent many weeks there during the summers. Over time, I watched it change, influenced by what was called ‘acid rain’ in the ‘70s and when that problem was cleared up, a steady decline in clarity with the growing number of cottagers and the aging of their septic systems. It was such an insidious, gradual decline that those who visited regularly didn’t seem to see it as starkly as I did. The lake was like my barometer on what was happening in the environment.

It made me sad to write this piece because, for me, the lake is like a person in my life. We live in BC now and don’t get to visit very often so she’s become like a grand lady in my imagination, kind, calming and all that. I’ve written many positive poems about her, this one not so much. Still, sometimes we have to write the hard stuff because the world is becoming a challenging place in new ways and although we don’t want to carry the heaviness of it in our hearts every day, I think it’s good to reflect on it at times.

Mary Lake, Muskoka

Mary is one sister in a long line

of watery siblings: Penn, Fairy,

Skeleton, Vernon, Joseph.

She’s evenly proportioned, but shy

and alone, a long river’s remove

from the closest to her, Fairy

and then Vernon side-by-side to the north.

The thin cord of river that connects them is such a long umbilical

it offers her little.

But her head gathers the scraps and flushes

them through wind-pushed waves, white and rippling.

There was a time of balance

when Mary’s waters ran clear

but she would be the first to falter,

so alone,

so removed.

I’ve known her fifty-eight years

and in this time, I’ve seen her belly

washed with acid so that the fish

died, relinquishing her shallows

to lonely beds of clams in the mud,

their shells opening

and shutting like finger tambourines,

exposing white jelly thumbs.

She was irradiated and made sterile.

This in the time before

the pH in the rains and the runoff from her septic-loaded shores

caused her to reek

of algae. Before I began to notice

that my ankles soaked in the funk of swamp,

like weak tea, darker than my swimmer’s tan.

Mats of algae carpet the sand, plaque in her arteries.

I step into them and they split, guilty green.

I slip on the hairy skim of her rocks. Ducks and geese

have come in flocks to swim on Mary’s skin, feed

on her futility, her stillness.

The New Quarterly Shares Writing Spaces

I remember when I first seriously started out studying writing at the University of Victoria. I stalked every writer I could, read interviews in the Paris Review and listened to the CBC programs, Writer and Company and The Next Chapter. I hadn't yet met any writers in workshops and I was curious about how the whole thing worked. I wish that at that time there was the wonderful series, "Writing Spaces", part of the The New Quarterly's Blog page. It allows you to hear what writers have to say about their process and also takes a peek at the space they write in, or the space they wish they could write in. And there is such a variety! I was thrilled when they invited me to contribute, albeit a little conflicted about whether to take an honest approach and reveal my chaos, or stage an ideal pristine corner in a room with large windows and plenty of light, perched on a knoll with views out to an endless imaginary sea, a place where dinner was prepared for me and my bed was made.

Now back to reality. If you're interested in taking a peek through the door to the chaos that is my office and writing life... yikes, click here. Thanks to TNQ for including this on their website!

To Blog, or not to Blog

As a writer with a lot of schooling behind me, I’m not a stranger to the advice that we should get ourselves ‘out there’  in the interest of marketing future books and published works. The general consensus in the writing workshops after receiving such coaching is a grumbling among the older students and knowing nods from the younger ones. I was not nodding. It’s not that technology intimidates me. Some days it feels as if I use the internet constantly to do research for whatever project I’m working on. Or I’m checking email and my Facebook account. After all of that and realizing I haven’t left my office or even looked out the window, I really can’t imagine cramming in more time to maintain Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or a daily or weekly blog post.

I have many friends who start blogs but few who continue past a year or two. Eventually, the novelty wears off. What purpose do you feel they serve, I ask them? Most times, I get the response that they’re just thoughts or reflections, and I think, well that’s what my journal is for, except it’s ‘private’, not public. How do I make the leap to sharing thoughts and reflections with an invisible world? And who’s really going to care, anyway?

So, I ask myself, how long has this been going on, this turning inside out of one’s heart and soul? Apparently a college student wrote a personal homepage that resembled the first ever blog in 1994, but the term we have become so accustomed to hearing wasn’t coined until 1997. These are the years my two daughters were born, so I have an appreciation for why I missed any initial hoopla. Back then I didn’t have time to reflect on the latest sale on diapers, let alone string coherent thoughts together to create an intelligent sounding blog.

Then, I begin to think about blogs I like to read. Some days, I just want a friend to tell me his or her thoughts on a particular trip, or a recipe, or how they manage to stay focussed while writing. There are so many other topics that run the gamut of my mind through each day. Sometimes I really just want to relax and connect with those of like mind. But, if I pick up the phone, there’s a chance friends will likely be out. If I text, there’s the possibility of a delayed answer and then a conversation of clipped sentences. Discussions with my husband? Well yes, but chances are I already know his thoughts on a given topic and need a fresh perspective. If I turn to blog posts on the net, I have almost instant gratification, a peek into someone else’s personal life at my fingertips.

Now, I have had the wonderful privilege of developing this sparkly new website with talented web designer/photographer, Melanie McKay and she tells me we need some sort of missive to put in the Notebook Section so that, going forward, I will know how to post and edit future blogs. It seems that somehow I now instantly have a ‘blog’ and I’m actually looking forward to it. It’s time to join all of those people who push their thoughts and feelings forward into cyberspace and brace for impact, or lift off.

Bring on the hate and the love. I’ve never been the person to push my opinions. What I will do, beloved reader, is share whatever measly or falsely profound reflections I have on life in a few paragraphs at irregular intervals, as necessity or inspiration dictates.