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Ami Sands Brodoff’s Writing Space

Virginia Woolf said a woman must have a room of her own if she is to write fiction.  I am grateful to have such a place on the top floor of my home.  My writing studio has a door I can close, even lock, and large windows overlooking the street.  I savour the enclosure, the feeling of privacy I enjoy in here.  I can venture inward and also look outward at what is happening in the world, on my street anyway.  I don’t mind the sounds of summer, lawn mowers and children playing that filter through the wide open windows, or the scratch of leaves being raked in fall, or people excavating their cars from the snow, shoveling their driveways, the plows roaring through my neighborhood during our long Northern winter.

When my children were small and life was hectic, sometimes I would retreat to my room just to daydream, to reconnect with myself as an individual beyond the rondo of rocking, feeding, changing my babies. Even if I did not write a word, it felt renewing and expansive to just be in this space alone and recharge.

I have a big old-fashioned mustard-coloured armchair that was my late mother’s.  It’s comfy and keeps me connected to my mom and is a favourite place to read or to edit work.  When I’m not sitting in that chair, my Brittany Spaniel Xeno is curled up there keeping me company until his next walk.

When I lived in New York, I bought my desk at a discount office supply place and I love how huge it is, over six feet long.  I can lay out notebooks and pages, journals and books for reference, as well as display mementoes, photographs, and tchotchkes that make me happy.  You’ll see new items, like the tiny pair of pinecones I found hiking in Jasper this past summer, as well as very old things, such as the Valentine my younger child Rosamond made for me in Grade 2 and the unusual paperweights my older child, Tobias, sculpted for me in elementary school. 

I keep an inspirational framed August Wilson quote on my wall which says, “What happens all too often is that we run from the parts of ourselves that we least recognize.  You have to be willing to stand up to that and push beyond it.  That’s where your writing takes a leap.”  Wow.  I believe in these words and reading and re-reading them gives me strength in creating, which can be terrifying.

I keep lots of books in my writing space, as well as copies of my own novels and short story collections, and journal publications. This is a reminder in the rough early draft stages of a project: I can do this! 

Though I do plenty of writing in here, I do a good deal of thinking, or writing in my head, while in motion: walking, hiking, and especially, swimming.  I will swim anywhere: the ocean, a lake, a pool.  I’ve gotten many of my best ideas and epiphanies while swimming, such as a motif that became a crucial part of my latest novel, In Many Waters, or the deep nature of the connection between Collier and Rachel, the two main characters in my TNQ story, Male and Female Created He Them. Writing often springs from the constant flow between inside and outside.

Ami Sands Brodoff is an award-winning novelist and short story writer based in Montreal. She is at work on a new linked collection, The Sleep of Apples.

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Photo courtesy of Ami Sands Brodoff. Header Photo by Lizzie on Unsplash

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Finding the Form with Susan Glickman

In March of 2008, I saw the National Ballet of Canada perform Marie Chouinard’s brilliant choreography to Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Opus 28 – one of my favourite pieces of piano music. One might expect a ballet company to give a very Romantic interpretation to anything by Chopin, with muscular men in tights lifting exquisite women in tutus who faint into their arms after prolonged flirtation and much fluttering of arms and legs. But this version was unexpected – fierce, modern, athletic and angular – counterpointing the music in ways that made one listen to it afresh, bringing out Chopin’s sharp edges, unexpected dissonances, and rhythm changes. It made me remember why I love the preludes so much: because of their undertow of mysterious emotion and the way moving from one to the next, around the circle of fifths, not only illuminates the sonic possibilities of each key but also tells you something, however cryptic, about the composer’s personal life.

Shortly thereafter I decided to see if I could “translate” the music into poetry in the same way Chouinard had translated it into movement. This project was justified not only by the success of Chouinard’s choreography but also by what Julia Kristeva says about intertextuality: 

The concept of Kristevian intertextuality enables an understanding of how “conventional” poetic devices, such as meter and structure, can indeed be worked by the poet in ways that allow us to partake in the struggle of being in language. Kristeva laments that intertextuality “has often been understood in the banal sense of ‘study of sources’” when in fact, “intertextuality denotes [a] transposition of one (or several) sign-system(s) into another” (KR, 111). A sign system, such as music, can be transfused into another system, such as language, in order to achieve new registers of experience (KR, 93). In Kristevian terms, the rhythm is what guarantees that the words will be more or other than the symbolic/denotative allows.

-Julia Kristeva, “Revolution in Poetic Language,” The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).

 

What this project involved was:

 1) Doing a lot of research about the 24 Preludes’ musical structure and the history of their composition.

2) Listening obsessively to Martha Argerich’s fantastic recording of the preludes on Deutsche Grammophon, and scribbling personal associations evoked during the listening process, many of which turned out to relate to travel and the negotiation of my place in the world.

Over several years, I wrote poems inspired by all twenty-four of the preludes. Initially they were governed quite strictly by their original form. First, I made an arbitrary rule that one page of text = one minute of Argerich’s (admittedly unusually fast) playing time. More importantly, I let the music govern line-length and stanza form as much as possible. I wrote the pieces while listening to the music, stopping and replaying it obsessively as though I were writing lyrics to a song – which my son, a professional musician, does all the time. I suspect I drove my family crazy the way he does, working towards the best version of each composition in his studio upstairs.

During that same period, I was writing fiction for both adults and children, working as a freelance editor, nursing invalids, and teaching creative writing at Ryerson and U of T, so my immersion in Chopin was not as uninterrupted as I would have liked. Chopin himself wrote the preludes during an intense burst of activity over a two-year period: mostly over a single winter in a drafty chalet where he was holed up with Georges Sand.

I often wonder what it would be like to have that kind of intense writing time and to have a patron who believed in my work enough to give it to me. But perhaps such rhapsodic attention isn’t my style. I have always gone back and forth between different projects and am not good at shutting out the world to concentrate exclusively on my art (even saying “my art” makes me embarrassed. It just seems too pretentious).

Eventually I realized that twenty-four poems, most of which were only a single page long, would not fill a book, so I started writing other kinds of poems as well as revisiting older work. Some of these pieces proved to be better than some of the Chopin exercises and ultimately, only fourteen of the “preludes” made it into the book published last year as What We Carry, scattered throughout to give it coherence rather than clumped together as a discrete section. Over the ten years I was working on my “preludes” they evolved from being fairly close transcriptions of the music to becoming more and more independent of their original inspiration – to becoming themselves as poetry. Still, I have always hoped that somebody, somewhere, some day, might decide to listen to Chopin’s 24 Preludes – maybe even to the Argerich interpretations — while reading them.

 

Susan Glickman lives, writes, paints, and gardens in Toronto where she works as a freelance editor. She is the author of seven volumes of poetry, most recently What We Carry (April, 2019). Her first novel, The Violin Lover (Goose Lane, 2006) won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for fiction and was named one of the year’s best novels by The National Post. Her second, The Tale-
Teller (Cormorant, 2012), was a best-seller in Quebec after appearing in French as Les Aventures étranges et surprenantes Esther Brandeau, moussaillon (Editions du Boréal: 2013).Safe as Houses was published in 2015, and The Discovery of Flight in 2018.

Photos by Susan Glickman and Toan Klein. Header by Spencer Imbrock on Unsplash.

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Finding the Form with Sally Ito

I have a confession to make.  When it comes to reading and writing, I’m a portmanteau sort-of woman.  A jerrymander-er. One who fools with boundaries. I’m a cross between a statesman and a salamander.

When I read, I don’t often read whole books to the end.  I read parts-of-books; I read off the internet – blogs, articles, FB posts.  I read the newspaper, newsletters, church bulletins, backs of cereal boxes and jam jars.  I read whatever I set my eyes on that is in print around me. Often that is stuff on my phone, but not only. There are signboards, labels, directions, warnings on paper, cloth, metal, plastic.

I am a flibberty-jibbet sort of reader. I Skip-to-My-Lou with words.  Words like Mea culpa. I am a flaneur of les mots, strolling through the lines and alleyways of sentences on a page or on the screen, and I’m not very good at dedicating myself to a single genre as a writer or a reader. 

I write and read This n’ that.  Mixed prose, sometimes poetry. A fiction or a-non.  That’s what I’m about in reading and writing. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.  My name is Sally Ito. I have a reading and writing problem. Genre scares me.  

Because, you know — it’s all about keeping it fresh.   

So, all this is preamble to tell you how I came to write the segmented essay in the recent issue of TNQ called Notes from Berlin: A Writer’s Baedeker.  In November 2017, I went to Berlin. A lot of things were on my mind at the time. And Berlin, in its sneaky, uber-artistic way, was just the right rumble ground for me to record both the inner and outer spheres of my existence at that moment in time.  The Notes from Berlin part of the title is literal. I kept a notebook with various jottings about my experiences in Berlin. At the same time, I was thinking about travel writing and about the excellent 19th century travel guides – Baedekers, as they are known – that the Germans produced for travelers. 

Travel guides let you experience another culture in words of your language. The words are a bridge from one culture’s consciousness into your own. They allow you to compare-and-contrast the personal culture of your mind and body with the minds and bodies of others. 

What Berlin showed me is that there is no monoculture — there is only and always intermingling and interacting, juxtaposition and association.  The city affirmed in me what I always thought about what it is like being a certain minority in a certain place with other minorities trying to carve out an identity for oneself in words.  

 

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Words come in different languages, of course, and my recent obsession with translation made me aware of that. Translation made languages seem like creatures to me – creatures with temperaments and sensibilities.  

What I said about writing and Berlin in English about Germans, Japanese and Japanese Canadians, Christians and Jews in Notes from Berlin was cumulative compilation of associated thoughts, ideas, and reflections of my experience in that city.

 

 

 Notes from Berlin began as handwritten notes in a journal I picked up in a supermarket. Then when I transcribed the handwritten notes onto the computer, I began to organize them into segments that I hoped would associatively link to the next segment.  When I finished, I sent out the essay to writer friends for feedback. It was interesting to see what they said. Most of them didn’t have trouble making the associative leaps from one segment to the next, but occasionally someone would say that a segment didn’t seem to fit or that it needed to be reworded differently to fit.  Others wanted some other things explored in the essay that were not there. Of course, my writer friends knew me personally so they were able to relate to my telling of my travel adventures. But how would this essay fare with the reader who did not know me at all? For some reason, this is the real test for me, the writer. Do I in my writing interest you?  Do my words grab you?

Ultimately, when I get a piece accepted for publication, I feel the answer is YES.  And I rejoice and blush because it’s a bit like hearing the words ‘I love you’ from a complete stranger who does not know me from either Adam or Eve, Shakyamuni or Maitreya.  

So herein ends the sermon with a quote from E.M. Forster:  Only Connect! Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest.  Live in fragments no longer.       

Photos provided by Sally Ito. 

Photo by Stylite yu on Unsplash.

Sally Ito is a writer and translator who lives in Winnipeg. Her latest book, The Emperor’s Orphans published in 2018 is a personal myth that explores Ito’s cultural identity and formation as a Japanese Canadian writer.

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What is Stephen Maude Reading?

My short story “Happy Enough”, which appeared in TNQ150, draws on biographical information about 1930s film star Jean Harlow that I gleaned from Bombshell, the definitive Harlow biography written by David Stenn. It’s relatively easy to get information like this about Hollywood’s big names. There are biographies or memoirs or at least Wikipedia entries devoted to them.

But the book I’m reading now, Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary – Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s (Edited and annotated by Cari Beauchamp), offers a different perspective altogether. Featuring the private letters of a twenty-something secretary, it’s a fly-on-the-wall glimpse inside the Hollywood studios during the sunset years of the silent-film era and the early days of the “talkies”.

In the summer of 1924, Valeria Belletti visited California with her friend Irma, but instead of returning home to New York City with her friend, Valeria stayed on in Los Angeles, landed a job as personal secretary to movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn and, as the blurb on the back cover of the book puts it, proceeded to trip over history in the making. 

…so even little things, like Valeria telling Irma that outside the window of her office three perfectly gorgeous calla lilies are in bloom, seem poignant to someone…

This is the second time I’ve read this book, and I’m still pondering why it is I find Valeria’s letters so captivating. Perhaps it’s Valeria’s enthusiasm as she relates her adventures, pouring out her thoughts, feelings, dreams, and disappointments in chatty letters to Dear Irma. Or perhaps it’s the letters’ unfiltered immediacy, written not for posterity but as a conversation between friends. Of course, the two friends are both dead now, so even little things, like Valeria telling Irma that outside the window of her office three perfectly gorgeous calla lilies are in bloom, seem poignant to someone listening in on their conversation almost a hundred years later. And then there’s the writing – vivid, witty, touching – 

Dear Irma, 

Tonight is so beautiful. The moon is so big and yellow and looks like a picture through the trees in front of my window.

Dear Irma…

[Referring to film star Ronald Colman] He is ideal – but I could never get excited over him – he is just a trifle too ideal to make me realize he is human. I like our fat little publicity man much more.

Dear Irma…

Flo is out with her Harry and Connie is out with her Dick and I’m here alone writing to you in my pajamas.

Stephen Maude’s writing has appeared in The Antigonish Review, FreeFall, The New Quarterly, and The Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2016.

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

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The 2019 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest Winners

We are pleased to announce the 2019 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest winners!

2019 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest Winners

Winning Essay:

♦   “Entangled” by Sarah Ens

 

Runner-up:

♦ “Post-American Variations” by Laura Rock Gaughan

 

Honourable Mention: 

♦  “Anomalies” by Anastasia McEwen

 

Early Bird Tickets Now Available for the 2019 Wild Writers Literary Festival

The New Quarterly is excited to announce the opening of online ticket sales for the 2019 Wild Writers Literary Festival. The festival is presented by The New Quarterly, Words Worth Books, and Balsillie School of International Affairs.  It will take place at locations in Kitchener-Waterloo from November 1-3. 

Wild Writers features a star-studded ensemble of prominent Canadian writers, who will host panels, workshops, and performances for readers and writers of any age at any stage. The Opening Showcase presents prize-winning authors Elizabeth Hay and Kathy Page. Workshops and panels are led and moderated by acclaimed writers like Pamela Mordecai, Casey Plett, George Elliott Clarke, and Helen Knott. The Sunday Brunch ends the Festival with Scotiabank-Giller Prize nominees David Bezmozgis, Michael Crummey, and K.D. Miller. 

Early Bird tickets for the festival are available from September 3rd to September 17th. Information on Special Groups Rates and All Inclusive Passes can be found here.

We hope to see you there!

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The 2019 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest Longlist

Thank you to all of our 2019 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest entrants. Our judges have indicated that it was an incredibly competitive year for personal essays. After thorough consideration, we are excited to announce this year’s longlisted writers and their phenomenal essays.

2019 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest Longlist

♦ “Entangled” by Sarah Ens

♦ “Post-American: Variations” by Laura Rock Gaughan

♦ “Modern Fables” by Mikka Jacobsen

♦ “Thanks for All the Lice, Pharaoh” by Tamara Jong

♦ “The Clouds Also” by Basma Kavanagh

♦ “Anomalies” by Anastasia McEwen

♦ “Piecework” by Susan Olding

♦ “Who Shot Meriwether Lewis?” by Concetta Principe

♦ “Who Could Have Lived” by Erin Soros

 

 

Stay tuned…

We will announce the contest finalists on Friday, September 6, 2019!

On Retreat: Pathfinding

Seth Ratzlaff is a writer based in Kitchener, Ontario, and he was one of two writers to win the Young Writers Bursary to the 7th annual Write on the French River Creative Writing Retreat, at the Lodge at Pine Cove, in northern Ontario. The bursary was founded by the Class of 2018 to support and encourage writers under 35. Seth’s mentor/instructor for the week was the inimitable Andrew Westoll.

Seth’s project, at the retreat, was a collaborative life story project he is writing with Indigenous activist Clarence Cachagee. Clarence’s “Mornings,” from their manuscript North Wind Man, appeared in TNQ 150, spring 2019, in our Soundings series.

–2019 retreat director, Susan Scott

In northern stillness, our canoe drifted beside the nearly submerged beaver lodge. Steam slowly rose from its top, the combined exhales of a family curled up inside. They were no doubt carefully listening to us uninvited guests, loitering beside the stick-and-mud walls of their home.

It’s one of those moments that instantly called for a description, before you have even taken in the scene for yourself. I’m sometimes uneasy slipping into that spectator view of the world, more concerned with the perfect metaphor than actually being totally present. But when you’re on a retreat with a bunch of writers, you can’t help but think about words, motivated by everyone else’s dedication to the craft—and their skill.

This was the second day of the writing retreat. My roommate, Steve, and I had risen early for the short canoe trip. One of the Lodge’s directors had driven us and two others to a small bay. From there it was a short paddle to a forest flooded with high waters, where we encountered the beaver lodge.

Steve and I were in the canoe together, quietly listening to the crow calls above, imagining life in this shelter below.

I met Steve soon after arriving at the Lodge, when I was brought to our cottage after checking in. He was a tall, slim man with long grey hair. I knew we would get along when he confessed that he liked to really explore the meaning of specific words, giving examples such as individuation, synchronicity, and love. By breakfast the next morning, we were working at the kitchen table together, sharing about our paths on life’s way, drinking coffee and listening to the sounds of the French River through the cottage’s screened windows.

 

Paddling back to the Lodge, I tried to appreciate my surroundings wordlessly. But my thoughts returned to that beaver family, crammed into the highest point of their home by unusually high water levels. Was it an omen?

Our paths on life’s way, it turned out, formed a surprising symmetry. He was entering a stage of solitude, his two daughters having moved out recently, into their own independent lives. Steve’s life as it had been for the past thirty-some-odd years was, for all intents and purposes, over. Transitioning out of their well-practiced roles, he and his wife had decided to take some time apart from one another, to find themselves again after nearly a lifetime together.

“Individuation,” he said.

I, on the other hand, was situated at the beginning of Steve’s path, preparing to get engaged and thinking about soon starting a family of my own. All of this, I confess, has been no easy thing for me to ponder (fear and trembling, etc.). The funny thing was: we were both worried about similar questions. Who will I become after this? What lies ahead?

When I pointed out the mirroring of our situations, Steve smiled.

“Synchronicity,” he said.

Paddling back to the Lodge, I tried to appreciate my surroundings wordlessly. But my thoughts returned to that beaver family, crammed into the highest point of their home by unusually high water levels. Was it an omen? As Steve steered the canoe, I was no longer present, thinking once again about words I needed to explore.

Header photo courtesy of James Walsh. For more information about James see www.sinamatella.com.

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The 2019 Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award Winners

We are pleased to announce the 2019 Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award winners!

2019 Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award Winners

Winning Story:

♦   “The Underside of a Wing” by Paola Ferrante

 

Second Prize:

♦   “Amphibios” by Andrea L. Mozarowski

 

Honourable Mentions:

♦   “After Walter” by Chris Masterman

♦   “This is About Running in Jerusalem” by Sivan Slapak

♦   “He of the Holy Birth” by Jennifer Batler

♦   “Touched” by Anna Marie Larson

I am Afraid of Everything: Pine Cove 2019

Nicole Smith was one of two recipients of the retreat’s Young Writers Bursary, founded specifically to support writers who would not otherwise have had the means to attend the 6-day intensive, Write on the French River Creative Writing Retreat at the glorious Lodge at Pine Cove, in northern Ontario. Nicole joined 20+ participants, instructors Helen Humphreys, Alison Pick, and Andrew Westoll, and resident editors Pamela Mulloy and yours truly for a week of—well, I’ll let her tell the story. Nicole’s mentor & instructor for the week was the incomparable Helen Humphreys.

–2019 retreat director, Susan Scott

I am afraid of everything. That is the truest truth about me. I am afraid of everything. Of night, plus also morning. New experiences plus old ones. Getting lost, being found, eating onions, bleeding. Being too much, being too little, getting married, contracting meningitis. I am afraid of heights, needles, planes, not putting myself out there, stretching myself too thin. Becoming morbidly obese. Holding my breath too long, halitosis, stepping on a nail, stepping on a snail, timbits. Someone once told me “timbits are the holes of donuts,” and I’m sorry, but no, nope, never. Absolutely not.

I spend a lot of time in my bathtub, where it is safe.

I do take chances, but only on things I probably won’t ever have to follow through on. Like winning the lottery. I will always buy a lottery ticket. I will never answer my telephone.

As a long-time fangirl of The New Quarterly, long before our glorious 6 days at The Lodge at Pine Cove, I knew all about Write on the French River Creative Writing Retreat. I knew all about it, because I’d looked at it longingly many-a-time, from afar. As a new, full-time writer-of-things, the week was outside my price range, but I’d dreamt every year of attending, while also imagining the type of human I might be if I was not so broke and afraid. Unfortunately, that type of human always has a dog, and I am afraid of dogs.

This year, sandwiched between the description of the beautiful cottages, workshops with prolific Canadian writers and editors, and daily hand-delivered breakfast basket, I read about a bursary for a writer under 35. A new opportunity, thanks to participants from the previous year, who had pitched in to raise funds for a bursary, to encourage young people to apply. (Two bursaries, as it turned out.) Heart racing, I immediately applied, confident in the knowledge that I would never actually have to go. Placing my grateful heart and instant coffee on the rim of my tub, I pressed submit and leaned back into the warm water, happy with all of the hard work and bravery I’d exhibited for the day.

“Nicole,” Susan Scott wrote back a couple weeks later. “Congratulations! You are a recipient of our inaugural bursary!”

Hands shaking, I dropped my phone in the tub.

“No—” I gasped.

“…yes!” She replied. “Hurray!”

“Is it really true?”

I am afraid of lies.

“It’s really true!” Susan assured me.

But I am afraid of truths, so I poured my coffee on my head and drank the lavender bubble bath. Lavender is good for anxiety.

I am afraid of isolation, plus also too many people. I am afraid of bears. I am afraid of being murdered, and Pine Cove would be the perfect spot for that, which I was sure to mention to everyone while introducing myself. I am afraid of being afraid, especially alone and afraid, so sometimes I try to make others afraid too. I know it’s mean, but I am afraid of being too nice.

At Pine Cove, others were not afraid when I mentioned murder. They laughed, actually. Margaret, whom I loved immediately because her introduction was I’m here for the breakfast basket, said: “No worries, babe. I have LOTS of pent-up aggression. If there’s a murderer, you just call my name. I’ll take care of it.” And then everyone laughed some more, and I relaxed, until I became afraid of Margaret.

When I pulled up to the Lodge, I was the first one there, because I am afraid of being late. I am afraid of being early, too, because when you’re early, you have to choose your bedroom, and all of them were impossibly gorgeous and spacious and built around a king-sized bed.

I am afraid of packing too little, so I packed too much. But I am afraid of waste, so I worked very hard to use everything I packed, including all of the wine.

That first day, I waited atop my yoga mat (my portable bathtub, portable safe space), after deciding on the first bedroom in the hallway. The room closest to the exit. I waited in the living room for my roommates to arrive, which overlooked the beautiful cove, which was blurry to me. I couldn’t quite see it at first – the beauty – even though I was staring straight at it as Maureen came through the door, holding her wine and yoga mat, beaming.

“Hello!” She said. “Hey, this’ll work!”

We gabbed until our third roommate arrived, at which point we stopped talking and listened instead. Sandy had the most fascinating stories to Cher. I say Cher because Sandy knew Cher (as in Cher) once upon a time. Upon learning this, I asked if we could facetime Cher, which was not an option.

Instead, we opened more wine.

We chatted about trusting our intuition.

“Yes. You HAVE to believe,” I said in a very Shiraz-specific way.

“It’s more than just believing, though.” Sandy said to me. “It’s knowing. Trusting your gut is a Knowledge.”

I took what she said about my gut to heart, even though I am afraid of all my body parts, and then asked: “But do you believe in life after love?” and she still spoke to me after that, which is a testament to her character.

I am afraid of Helen Humphreys, because I am afraid of all brilliant people, especially when they are funny and generous.

“Are you going to give me some of your writing to read?” Helen asked after our first group meeting. I had signed up to work with Helen, but here I was, looking the other way when she made her offer.

“YES I WANT THAT,” I’d wanted to scream, “BUT I AM SO AFRAID.”

Now we were outside, cell signals floating down the French River, the smell of burning woodstove and gourmet turkey sandwiches lingering in the air.

“I was just heading to my car—” I said. “Just for a little drive, I think. Not to escape. Not to run all the way home, screaming.”

Helen smiled. “I liked your writing sample.”

“Oh…” I said. “I like your dog.”

Helen Humphreys is (of course) the type of human who has a dog.

“I’m here, is all,” she offered, turning back towards her cottage. “Use me as a resource.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “But not today.”

Helen chuckled. “I think I’ll go for a drive later, too.”

And then, as if under a spell, everything in front of me began to sharpen.

The grass became greener. The sun became brighter. Suddenly I wanted to try a timbit. I didn’t, and I never will, but I wanted to.

What I realized in that very moment was 1. Helen Humphreys could be a witch, and 2. my surroundings weren’t blurry at all. I was just standing too close to them. Even from hundreds of experiences away.

I am afraid of realizations, because I am afraid of being too hard on myself, plus also not hard enough. But when we need glasses, we don’t hate the book. We don’t even hate ourselves. We just put something clear between us and the rest of the world. Space. Distance. Style, even. Helen allowed me all of my uncertainty, and then all at once, I focused. In a way I haven’t in maybe ever. Not in my adult life, anyway. As soon as I did, I could see that everyone was allowing everyone else the same. Curiosity. Inquisitiveness. Objectivity. Here, we just existed. As whoever we were and are. Because we had room to do it, time that was ours alone, and Crème Brulé served to us in little individual dishes every night.

I spent every next second writing. I had things to say almost immediately. I glanced back up at Helen. She was all the way across the bridge, and I could still see the pattern on her shirt. Seth Ratzlaff, who won the second bursary, stepped outside and stood beside me. We both rubbed our eyes.

“Is this really real?” I said.

“I know,” he said. “I don’t know.”

I ran back to my cottage and took a bath just for fun, and when a spider fell from the ceiling and landed on my phone, I waited a whole second before whipping it across the room, cracking my screen.

Helen read all of my writing. We had a number of meetings over the course of the week, plus a world of rich and enlightening group discussions. Our group consisted of eight women, each of whom inspired me deeply.

Evidently, Breakfast Basket Margaret came for a lot more than the croissants, because she worked nonstop the whole retreat and churned out something dazzling. Other Margaret (we had two of them in our group) made me laugh every day. She made fun of exactly all of my Elizabeth Gilbert quotes, which was refreshing. Deb and Ali and I have decided to start a writer’s group, and Charlotte was from Warsaw, Ontario, which I now know is a place. Helen read every piece of work we brought her. She gave an outrageous amount of time and energy to each of us. On our final day at Pine Cove, Laura and I sat together on the couch. She was working through a phobia of her own.

We shared eye contact with the Canadian Shield, finally growing used to the natural kind of safety it provided. She said to me, exhausted in a way I know all too well—

“Are you afraid of anything?”

And all I could do was laugh, because I was too afraid to cry, which we both did when we hugged goodbye a few hours later.

As I drove away from the Lodge, I think it was Laura but it could have been me who said: “thank you,” and on my way home, I stopped for a timbit in Port Severn, and I promised to never forget all of the transformative things I learned in our 6 magical days on the French River. Days I will hold onto for a lifetime. Touchstone days. Days I would not have had if not for the generous souls who saw fit, or the magnificent instructors and organizers who lent what they already know to each of us, or everyone who stepped out of their own worlds and comfort zones to retreat. It is so scary to be vulnerable, I thought. This is the true beginning of my vocation, I thought.

And then I remembered the term “donut hole” and spit the timbit out in my hand, because no. Nope. Never. Absolutely not.

Photos courtesy of Nicole Leona Smith.

Header photo courtesy of James Walsh. For more information about James see www.sinamatella.com.

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