My Pet Predator

Last week was the awards ceremony for the writing competition I entered. I was short-listed but did not win which was what I expected. But two other writers from my writing group and a husband (of one of the other writers) and myself headed into the city for the event. We went early enough to go for dinner beforehand and had a great meal at a tiny African restaurant just around the corner from the Art Bar where the ceremony was held. The winners in each category read their entries and then four people who were in a mentorship program read excerpts from their works in progress. One of the writers who came to the city with me is a poet and she was hoping to hear the winning poetry selection, however the winner was a no-show and they did not read that entry. Too bad, I think it would have been interesting.

We had a good time. I left Hapi with friends and unfortunately she howled most of the time that I was away. They were a little taken aback by that, they had never heard her howl. Separation issues I guess.

I took Hapi to the feed mill with me to get some seed potatoes, onion sets and pelletized lime. They let dogs into the store there. There is a feed mill cat who is unafraid of dogs and another customer had their dog as well. I let Hapi wander, I didn't think there was anything she could get into. Boy was I wrong.

One of the girls behind the counter had ordered chicks to raise for meat birds and her order had arrived and was sitting on the floor behind the counter. A big box full of very cute looking chicks. Hapi eventually made her way behind the counter and saw the chicks. She plucked one out of the box. The girl behind the counter was very fast, she got that chick out of Hapi's mouth in a split second. The chick appeared shocked but alive and hopefully not injured. I apologized profusely but she said not to worry, they were just meat birds.

I was a bit of a nervous wreck when I left the feed mill, I thought I'd take Hapi for a walk to calm my nerves. So we went to the Reservoir. There's a duck there with a nest. Apparently this is the second next that duck has tried to sit on, the first nest and its contents were destroyed by dogs. The current one is only slightly better hidden but I knew about it and roughly where it was from one of the other dog owners. On this particular day I found out exactly where the nest was. Hapi found it. She flushed out the duck sitting on the nest and proceeded to investigate its contents. Meanwhile I was running throught the bushes and across a ditch yelling, "No! No! No!"

I managed to get to the nest before Hapi could snatch an egg and I dragged her away. There were 8 eggs in the nest. A couple of male ducks had been patrolling the pond nearby and when the mother duck was chased off her nest squawking in protest, they joined her in the air, also squawking. I used to joke that those ducks were her bodyguards, but I think they are actually opportunists waiting to see if they can impregnate her again if the nest fails. At any rate the whole gang flew away.

I took Hapi home, thoroughly wrecked by the two incidents. What fun to have a predator for a pet! But I dare not go back to the Reservoir now, she knows exactly where the nest is and will continue to seek it out as long as it is there. Not that I think there is any hope that any of those eggs will survive, if the dogs don't get them then the eagles surely will. Not to mention raccoons, skunks or coyotes. But I just don't want Hapi to be the one to do it. So I am having to take her elsewhere for her morning walk.

Two geese hiding their babies on the left, beaver swimming by on the right

Today we went to the Gaspereau Canal. I saw two ducks, two geese, two eagles and a beaver. I saw the geese twice and it turned out that they had four goslings with them. When they saw Hapi and me they herded their charges across the canal and positioned themselves so that I couldn't see the babies.

Beaver lodge, just left of centre (looks like a heap of sticks by the water's edge)

The beavers around here are "bank beavers", they don't build lodges in the middle of a pond but on the banks of rivers. they don't build dams either, which is a good thing because if they tried to dam the canal they would be removed. One day last month the power company lowered the water level in the canal and you could see the whole beaver lodge including its underwater entry point (which wasn't underwater at the time).

Female eagle in tree, probably waiting for the goslings to appear

There are a lot of micro-hydro installations in this province. They are the original dams built back in the day when such things were quite small. The canal goes between two such dams operated by the power company here, my neighbourhood is powered by one of those dams. There is also a fish ladder around one of the dams for the Gaspereaux fish (they are called alewives in Toronto). Fishers along the river catch them with big dipnets every spring on their spawning migration up the river, and they are shipped to Haiti for food. Fishing season on the Gaspereau is a big deal, it just ended this past weekend. The power company is supposed to run their operation in such a way that the fish are not killed but periodically they screw it up and thousands of fish end up dead.

An expletive deleted children's story

The weaving project in progress

My big news this week is that I got shortlisted for a prize in children's lit. Actually happened over a month ago but I was sworn to secrecy until they published the official list, which just happened. It's terrible to be sworn to secrecy on something so exciting, and the release was palpable. I immediately fired off emails to friends and family and all of the friends—every last one of them—was just as excited as I was.

Deafening silence from family. A prophet in one's own land sort of thing I guess.

Eventually one brother, the one with the awful diagnosis, broke silence and the three sons one by one also chimed in over the next few days. Have not heard from brother #2, but I believe he does not check email regularly, or so I tell myself.

Anyway, I won't know till the end of the month whether it goes any further than being shortlisted and I don't really expect it will, but the shortlist is exciting enough. There's going to be an awards ceremony (multiple prizes in different categories) which conflicts with my weaving class and I almost feel like skipping the awards but that wouldn't really be kosher. Show up and congratulate the winners, hobnob with 'real' writers. Risk not finishing my weaving project due to too many skipped classes.

Being a 'children's writer' was not really what I was aspiring to but hey! I'll take it.

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The new couch

In other news I have rearranged and refurnished my living room. I was at a local building supply place a month ago to purchase a tool that was on sale and happened to see a couch there that interested me. It was in the paint and flooring department and there were a couple of customers sitting on it contemplating some flooring samples. I sat down beside them and decided it was comfy. My only issue was whether it would actually fit in my living room which is small and already overcrowded with furniture. So I took measurements and went home, took some more measurements and concluded that if I got rid of a couple of furniture pieces I might be able to fit the building supply couch in.

The old table

One of the furniture pieces that would have to go is my large dining table. It's a good table but it is too large for the small room and really only gets used for piling books and papers on. If it had a leaf that I could remove it would be fine but it doesn't. So I did a bit of moving stuff around and bought the couch. Huge effort to get it home and set up but worth it, I love the couch. Then some internet browsing to find a smaller table and thought I found the right table at the IKEA in the city. A trip to the city with a friend to look at it in real life, combined with a browse of the best Chinese grocery store in the city (or that's what the newspaper review of Chinese grocery stores said) and I came home with a Norden gateleg table (and dark dark soy sauce, noodles and dried mushrooms). The table's principal feature is that it has two huge hinged leaves so that it folds down to almost nothing.

This week I assembled the table. I had forgotten what IKEA assembly projects were like.

The instructions have no words, only pictures. There was a whole separate document of warnings, all in pictures only and some of them quite incomprehensible. At a certain point I was stymied, the hinge screws would not screw in. I tried an electric drill/driver but that did not help. The warnings document had a picture of a person phoning the IKEA store (as opposed to standing there with the manual in hand and a big question mark in a balloon above their head) so I did that.

The person with the heavy accent (I had to get him to repeat what he was saying numerous times because I couldn't understand him) told me to try harder. After huffily telling him that I had already done that (I think I used the F-word) he then told me to bring the table back to the store. I thanked him for his assistance and ended the call. The question mark was now multiple exclamation marks.

The electric drill was lying on the floor next to the offending hinges so I picked it up and selected an appropriate bit and reamed out the pre-drilled screw holes until the screws would go in. I may regret that in the future but for now it works.

I am happy with my new smaller table and the building supply couch. Hapi on the other hand is not, she hates change. She comes into the house and stands at the doorway to the living room and looks around with a big frown, then she turns and goes back outside. Aside from two brief inspections of the living room she has stayed outside ever since. Doggy disapproval is clearly communicated.

Off to a grumpy start, with flowers

Last summer I planted some nasturtiums in my garden but I did it late and they sprouted but not much else. So in the fall I dug them up and potted them to bring indoors. Now I have nasturtium flowers in the window.

My writing group has been trying to come up with meeting guidelines. We meet once a week to read what we've been working on and then reviewing/critiquing what we are listening to. There are plenty of examples online of such guidelines and various people in the group have sent copies around for our edification. Recently, someone thought we should finalize a set of guidelines for our group, that we could follow and also present to new members. So one set of guidelines was printed and distributed to the group shortly before Christmas, and about the same time it was decided (by the same person after discussion with a few of us) that we should close our group to new members.

At our annual Christmas get together a few people confided that actually, they didn't agree with that decision or with how some of the guidelines were worded, but did not feel in a position to object. I raised this at our next regular meeting, there was a discussion of the guideline document and the issue of closed membership, and an edited version of the guidelines was passed around via email for discussion. At our meeting last week some minor changes were made and the document generally accepted. Also, membership was officially reopened.

Through the process I changed my opinion from being fully in support of the guidelines to not wanting guidelines at all. I am in a minority of one, no one else supports my view. My viewpoint is, the fewer rules the better, we should only require rules for specific ongoing issues. While this document is intended to be only guidelines, nevertheless I have heard several people refer to them as the Rules and I think it's a slippery slope between guidelines and rules. I think that a solution to a particular problem often creates new problems while solving the original problem and one ought to be very careful in trying to solve a problem with a 'Rule'.

I asked the question, what is the problem we are trying to solve here and was told that it was twofold: too many people showing up for a meeting and thus limiting the time for reading and critiquing for each person, and some new members being disruptive due to no clear guidelines on how to comport themselves.

My view is, any new members who have been disruptive have moved on pretty quickly, they decided for themselves that they did not fit into our group, so why do we need rules for them? Also, we have been operating for a number of years without guidelines, why do we need them now? The behaviours deemed disruptive were arriving late and receiving cell phone calls during the meeting. The lateness issue was discussed at length, and while some people are bothered by it, others feel that occasional lateness can't be helped when travelling some distance to get to the meeting especially in the wintertime.

The obvious solution to me is just common sense: if you arrive late you may not have a chance to read if there are a bunch of people who arrived ahead of you. I also pointed out that we don't advertise and new members come by invitation only, so the inviter can fill the new member in on our current protocol in a brief conversation not requiring a written document (avoid lateness and turn off your phone or take your phone calls out of the room).

The discussion got a little heated and someone accused me of changing my mind from being fully supportive of the guidelines to fully opposed. I freely admitted that yes, I had changed my mind. Is that a problem?

Last night I was at a surprise birthday party for a friend and got into a conversation with another friend about "vision statements". She told me how she had wanted to join a particular local community group and was encouraged to do so, but when she was told that the next meeting of this group was devoted to coming up with a Vision Statement, she immediately decided this group was not for her. Having spent a career in various offices where Vision Statements were hammered out, she had concluded that they were a total waste of time and were of no use at all for busy groups just trying to get a job done.

I agreed with her heartily, the few times I have been involved in such exercises the discussion inevitably devolved into hair-splitting, and in order to achieve consensus the end result was a bland inanity. I have to say that that is my opinion of guidelines and rules as well. Such discussions are rarely useful and often result in creating new problems in place of the old ones.

I am starting off the new year being a grumpy iconoclast. Where will it end?

For a chuckle, here's a sign posted at my mechanic's garage:

What does a dragon mean?

I just got an email from a friend in my writing group who recommended reading a New Yorker review of a book by Kazuo Ishiguro. I have not read anything by that writer, let alone the book being reviewed (The Buried Giant). She mentioned layers of meaning within a dragon allegory. She thought of me because I am working on a fantasy that among other things has dragons in it. There was a quote from Ishiguro where he talked about the concept of genre (The Buried Giant is considered 'fantasy'), which he thought was essentially a marketing thing having very little to do with what he wrote or why he wrote it.

I guess I would agree with that, although I am not thinking in terms of allegory or genre. My dragons are characters in my story and I don't really have a particular idea that I am trying to convey with them, allegorically or otherwise. It's just a story. I sort of know where it is going, in the broad strokes, but the details constantly elude me. That's not entirely accurate. I have no problem writing the details, I am just not sure how they relate to what I hope the general trajectory of the story is going to be. When I sit down to write it is as if I am entering a different world, writing as fast as I can to record what I see and hear there. Sometimes I think I should write particular things or somehow massage the narrative in a particular direction. That trips me up, I soon find myself dealing with contradictions I'm not sure how to resolve.

I read somewhere else that the 'meaning' of art is in the eye of the beholder. When you look at a painting (or read a poem, or whatever) you are free to interpret it however you like, the meaning of that piece of art is up to you. The artist may very well have a point they wish to convey, their art may have a particular meaning to them. But you are not required to see it that way.

I'm on the third draft now, or maybe iteration 3.5, as at one point the story forked and then there were two separate stories. In an effort to rein in the complexity I am trying to ignore one of those forks and continue on in only one direction. I wanted to eliminate some of the characters (again, reining in complexity) but I have so far failed. It turns out that either a character up for elimination makes a very good argument for importance to the plot, or else some of the things I have previously written about that character are just too good to dump. One of the members of my writing group has started a genealogical diagram to keep track of my characters; I keep promising to provide a definitive dramatis personae, but so far it is just in my head. Too many characters, too many points of view.

A few years ago I participated in a writing retreat with a couple dozen other people. It was very productive for me, I got a lot of writing done. One of the other participants was also working on a fantasy novel, she already had one published. She said that finding a publisher for fantasy in Canada is very hard, there is certainly nothing available in the Maritimes. I doubt that I will ever publish, unless I self-publish, but I don't really care about that now. Not being concerned about publishing takes a bit of pressure off, I don't have to think about whether my story is publishable or whether there is a market for it. I also have no deadlines. I listen to the other writers in my group discuss these kinds of things and am kind of glad I don't have to take any of those concerns into consideration when I sit down to write. I can just enter that world and try to record what is going on there. It is enough.