December Light
and a little something special
December 3, 2024
Hello You,
November was GLOOMY here. Remember when I wrote about that beautiful sunny, unseasonably warm day in early November where I took my typewriter on the road for a lovely outdoor poetry pop-up? Well, that bright, gorgeous day was followed by twenty-four damp, grey days of cloudy skies — with and without rain, (mostly with.) Even with daily doses of Vitamin D, and my trusty UV lamp by my side, it still felt pretty bleak.
Yet, in the middle of all that gloom, there was remarkable beauty to be found. The bloodgood maple in the backyard hung on to her stunning scarlet leaves for nearly the full measure of the month, and beneath her glowing canopy, one of my sweet hellebores decided to break all the rules and blossom in November instead of waiting for spring. Even the forsythia sent forth a few cheerful yellow flowers in what seemed to me to be an act of botanical solidarity. Scientifically speaking, odd weather patterns (we’d had a very long stretch of dry days before the sudden turn of relentless cold and wet) make for confused plants, which in turn leads to stress, and a survival mechanism called “stress-induced flowering,” to be exact. Thanks, Mother Nature for reminding me that there’s still beauty to be had in the middle of disruption, confusion and stress, and that we’re all just doing our best to survive.
Keep Calm and Make Something
As the daylight hours grow shorter, I’ve been trying my best to embrace the long evenings and turn my attention towards making light from within. There’s so much talk these days about AI taking over the work of writers, and as someone who devotes much of my life to crafting stories, it honestly has me pretty confused and frightened and stressed. Looking to my bookshelves as well as my own work, I’ve been asking the questions, “What gives a book meaning? What makes a story human?”
Several years ago I went to a yardsale and discovered an old book of recipes that had been assembled by women in the community of Habitant, Nova Scotia. I’ve got a few other books of a similar nature in my cookbook collection, but this one was unlike any I’d ever seen. The size of it is small, (I can hold it comfortably in one hand,) and each of the pages is a mimeograph copy of a recipe typed on a manual typewriter. The covers are made of a deep red cardstock, with the front cover bearing a hand-lettered title and a sweet illustration of a duck flying over a the marshy landscape of the Habitant River. Two holes punched at the top of each page allow for a length of sturdy red string to hold the whole thing together. The recipes inside reflect the tradition of most community cookbooks, the titles of the recipes meant to entice or lend confidence, (“cocoa walnut dreams,” “easy rolls”) with the name of each contributor prominently displayed at the end (Clara Thorpe, Stella Weaver, Hilda Hazel, Mrs. John Boersma, etc.) Some of my favourite recipes are the ones contributed by immigrants, such as “BANKETLETTER” (from Holland,) contributed my Mrs. John Westerhuis. The book as a whole is truly an object of beauty to me, representing care, community, usefulness, tradition, sharing and meaning.
After taking it off the shelf the other day, I was inspired to make a notebook by hand, using old scrap paper for the pages, and cyanotypes I made with seaweed last summer for the cover. Who knows what words it will hold? What stories? What meaning?
A December Special!
Annual Paid subscriptions to The Cure for Longing are 30% off this month!
So, if you’ve been thinking of becoming a paid subscriber, or giving a subscription of The Cure for Longing as a gift, now might be the time. You’ll automatically get access to the Voice of the Moon monthly, past, present and future!
Speaking of the Voice of the Moon, last month’s extra featured a new short story that comes from the world of my current novel-in-progress. Told in the voice of Destiny, “Connection” is a 15 minute audio story about a widow, two strangers, and how regret, wonder, and light, ties them together. Here’s a small sample from the opening:
"I think about people I don't know, a lot. Not celebrities or well-known figures generally, but specific somebodies who I might've passed on the street or sat across the aisle from on a plane, or who's name I discovered inscribed in a used book. And for whatever reason, I wind up holding their stories, however gauzy or detailed they may come, in my heart. My sister says I worry too much as it is, so adding the lives of strangers to my daily considerations is a mistake. I don't see it that way at all. I mean, I don't butt in and make myself known to them or anything like that. Maybe I should.
If you happened to listen to the whole story, I’d love to know what you thought!
The Awe Report
This past weekend I had the great pleasure of taking the Notes from Destiny Poetry Project to the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts for their Holiday Community Arts Sunday. What a magical day it was! It was an absolute joy to be able to sit with so many wonderful humans who’d wound up in Nova Scotia from so many places across this beautiful world. We shared conversations about what JOY, HOPE, PEACE, and LIGHT mean to us, and then, taking inspiration from the connections we made during our time together, I created personal poems for them. (Twenty poems in three hours! )
A million thanks to the Ross Creek staff and volunteers for all they do to build a community of inclusion and kindness, and to my dear partner in creative whimsy, Ian, who designed the lovely prints that inspired the day’s Notes from Destiny conversation prompts. A truly awesome experience!
Closing thoughts
What makes a story have meaning for you? How do you make light in the darkest of nights?
Wishing you peace, hope, joy, and light as you move through your week, and as always, may you meet your share of MAGIC along the way.
P.S. We had our first snow of the season yesterday morning. This is what I saw:
Those mimeographed recipe books are such a treasure! I hope they bring you years of joy as you pick out and make the recipes! Old community cookbooks are the best!