Are the Dandelions 8" High?

 This house next door is a distraction from writing. The eaves have not been cleaned in two years, in spite of many notices from the city. The view from my bathroom window is quite lovely, but the water that runs down into the space between the houses and thus into my basement is another matter. As for the dandelions in the back yard next door, the city will remove them if they are 8" high and charge the owner for doing so. After whatever amount of time it takes to provide notice. If last year is any example, about the end of July when nothing has happened city employees will come and cut the grass and weeds down.


Well, maybe it's just a convenient excuse not to write this morning. Or to write a blog post rather than add to the manuscript I am working on now entitled May I Have This Dance? This is a collection of short fiction with some flash fiction at the beginning, a middle section of linked stories pertaining to dancing and some other stories written fairly recently. How it will evolve is still a mystery, but the work is progressing. In the meantime, my mystery novel languishes as does another novel and a memoir. All progress though, albeit slowly, with the focus of work shifting from time to time.

These are the dandelions, just waiting for a breeze to waft over into my yard. The ones in the front were removed by a midnight posse! Or that's what I think happened.  In any case, those weeds ended up in my recycle bin and were collected by the city.

Fiction. How Do You Write a Novel?

The man walks at a slight tilt from an old ski injury, a gait that makes me think of a platypus.  Even though I've no clear vision of what a platypus looks like. Or even if it's an extinct species. He'd know. And about the blue footed boobies in the Galapagos Islands where he traveled by boat and took slides of the birds and animals. Iguanas. Seals. Birds and wild flowers of vivid, exotic colours. There are also slides of markets in small towns and cities in Ecuador and some of a train that took him high into the mountains of Peru.

            He also knows how to eat skilfully with chopsticks, something he learned from his Chinese wife from whom he is now separated.

            Were I to write a story, I'd show him sitting at his teak desk, fingering through papers with hands covered with blotches of brown and knuckles with arthritic bumps. I'd dress him in the yellow sweater the Chinese wife knit that he wore sometimes when he felt lonely. I'd describe him as a wealthy businessman who loves to travel and has explored the depths of oceans and has swum with sharks. Trekked through the Himalayas to sleep in tents under the stars. Seen Thailand's treasures.

            And also a man who doesn't know he still loves the woman who appeared in the court room on the day before his birthday and wrote NO on the list he'd made beside the items she didn't want to return to him.  The writer would be included as a very minor character who perhaps added some intrigue and excitement to his life for a while.

            The nuances skilfully captured in weaving the tale would convey the pain he felt. Although otherwise he would have a life quite unrelated any longer to this man's. He might have another wife. Perhaps a Japanese one. Or a Portuguese one from Brazil. Maybe he would come from Quebec instead of some European country. With a French name now badly mispronounced. Many things could be different. There is nonetheless a major question the man asked that will never be answered.

            "I wouldn't know how to write a novel," he said, walking at a slight tilt. "How do you write a novel?" 

            The writer in the story thinks, ah well, some learn about spread sheets and blue footed boobies and how to eat with chopsticks. And others notice knuckles with bumps and when yellow sweaters are worn.

            “Ah,” she says. “Just like a business is built. By trial and error.”

             "But where do you start?"

             "Where do you?"

              He nods. Perhaps even understands.

the end

p.s. It's not like making cookies! There is no recipe.

            

Out and About in Toronto. May 12, 2011.

Hot Docs Finale. May 2011.

My last two films at Hot Docs were People of a Feather and Love Shines. Unfortunately, I missed You've Been Trumped, at the last minute making time available for out of town guests I hadn't seen since last summer.

My experience at Hot Docs was quite wonderful, including the lineups that were usually in spring sunshine. Meeting interesting people surrounding the events is one of the highlights. I heard about films I hadn't seen and told others about ones I had.

People of a Feather is set in the Belcher Islands in the Arctic and is about the Inuit, the eider duck, the effects of hydroelectric dams and climate change. It was a very beautiful and effective film, also a strong political statement.

Love Shines is about the musical career of singer and songwriter Ron Sexsmith. Not knowing much about how songs get put together and out there in the public sphere, it was fascinating to me. Also to see the creative process, the various people who work together, the studio, the associated insecurities of Sexsmith, the acheivement of his solo show at Massey Hall. Sexsmith was very honest and exposed a lot of his own angst and personal story, which I would imagine took some courage. Afterwards I bought the CD in which the moving song, Love Shines, appears on the track. Sexsmith appeared for the Q&A along with the director, Doug Arrowsmith.

Apparently You've Been Trumped was a good expose of Trump's attempt to build a golf course in Scotland. Gives a sense of a man who wouldn't be the good president he claims he would be! Integrity doesn't seem to be a high point. I like films of this nature about contemporary figures that expose the ways in which they mislead the public. Or perhaps are deluded themselves.

My favourite is still Mama Africa.

Now that the Festival is over, back to writing fiction!

Hot Docs Festival. Toronto. 2011

Have seen a number of interesting documentaries this week at the annual Hot Docs Festival. Among my favourites were Buck and Mama Africa. You can go to the website (see below) for information on the whole list.

Buck (Buck Brannaman) travels the US giving four day sessions on training horses. His philosophy, somehow garnered from his own childhood of extreme abuse, is to recognize and respect each horse. By gentle means, and recognizing the horse's fears, he gives us wise lessons on not only treating animals this way, but also on treating everyone thus. Gently, respectfully. And the horses are beautiful, such handsome animals. There are a couple of cameo appearances by Robert Redford who learned from Buck on the set of The Horse Whisperer and expresses in this movie his awe and respect for the man.

Later in the day, I saw Carol Channing, at ninety still an impressive figure. Makes aging seem not quite so daunting! Especially when she has found late life romance with her high school sweetheart.

Yesterday, Love Crimes of Kabul, has young lovers in jail facing charges for crimes such as premarital sex. And sentences that could be as long as fifteen years. One couple married before the trial with much reluctance on the part of the man, thus avoiding more jail time. Hard to watch even though I know about the plight of women in Afghanistan. The stark reality of watching the stories of these young people is always more difficult than simply reading about isolated incidents.

Position of the Stars. Filmed in Indonesia and set in the context of the political situation. Story of a poor family, trying to get an education for a teen-aged girl who would be the first of their kin to thus raise herself out of an impoverished environment. The grandmother, the main character, is determined. Yet the girl is often concerned only with herself and ungrateful. As well as the story itself, the film follows close-up scenes of something as seemingly insignificant as a cockroach scooting around the periphery of the family's life and looking down on it.

hotdocs.ca

PHOTOGRAPHY in Toronto.

Structure and Symmetry. Photographs by Dieter Hessel - a show that opened on Sunday, May 1st, at Heliographics Gallery on Queen Street East at Leslie St. There are galleries across Toronto participating in the Contact Show of photography throughout May and Dieter's prizewinning work is one place to see interesting, dynamic and first-rate photography. The show was curated by Colleen Clancey.

Before seeing the photograhy show, I went to another movie, New Castle, in the Hot Docs series. While it was interesting and gave one a glimpse of the hardship of life in rural China, it was way too long!

Finally Spring.

 These flowers are my tribute to spring. The daffodils actually grow just under my back door. Not only is it spring, but the Hot Docs festival is in town (Toronto) for the next week. Last night I saw Mama Africa, a film about the life, music and political activism of Miriam Makeba.  It was a wonderful film about a woman of remarkable talent and courage. Over her adult years, exiled from her country, South Africa, she advocated around apartheid at the United Nations. She achieved fame in the U.S. and around the world with the help and support of Harry Belafonte.