Shiney Leaves

Well, I’m not happy with the gloss varnish on the leaves; I wish I’d gotten a satin finish. Still, I love the bright leaves and I can switch to a different varnish when I do the next batch of leaves. I worked on them yesterday afternoon.

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Poor Sheba; she’s so bored. Although I see little limping now, we still only do short walks. We walked in drizzle this morning but it’s lovely and warm, and this afternoon the clouds pulled back and we’ve had some lovely sunny periods that I took in whilst in the spa. 

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I have written to make an appointment to file my will! I’ve been meaning to do it forever but I finally made my decisions and write them down. It will feel very good to ensure anything I leave behind goes to good. My buddies, Bruce and Cathy, both had aneurisms; I do not want to be unprepared.

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I thought to myself this morning: “Monday again! Another week to get through, indoors.” But then I thought: “A week is nothing. I have the whole Winter to get through, indoors.” It seems daunting conceptually, but I know that there will be breaks in the weather that will see Sheba and I visiting our parks. I do love doing nothing, though, and I do it well. So Winters aren’t too, too tough!

Starting Work on the Leaves

Above are my first varnished leaves on the drying rack  improvised using my bread box. I had to rig up a way to hang them because I dip them to coat both sides of the leaf.

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There’s been a big change in the weather. It’s eerie out there, but I love it. As I look out into the forest this morning, I can only see a modest distance. The air is milky white but it seems less like fog than like the clouds fell ut of the sky. Everything outside is damp. It’s a day to spend by the fire and that’s just fine. I love slow, cozy Sundays. And now, in the early afternoon, there are shadows because the sun is emerging.

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The  park here—at least, for me—is Drumbeg. The route, once you leave the main circular island road, goes from pavement to gravel to obstacle course. Now, however, they have closed the obstacle course section for a week. It’s going to be re-graded and re-surfaced. And this is what I love about Gabriola: The local Lions’ Club undertook this work. 

The Club raised the funds (including getting government grants) because the dreaded section is in a provincial park and repairing our park access road it is not, currently, a provincial priority. And they’ll hire local contractors to do the work. Every time something is done here for the community, citizens do it.

I no longer recycle my plastic, tin or glass beverage containers. I save them in my shed and then call a local charity that helps people pay for veterinarian bills they cannot afford. The charity comes and picks up my containers and recycles them for cash.

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As I worked at my desk yesterday, midday, Sheba was making scraping noises as she harvested molecularly thin shards of sinew from the side of the bone I gave her. It went on forever; she provided the bass line. Fred was providing the melody by plucking on the spring doorstop in the bathroom—pulling it and letting it go. “Boing!” it would go, over and over. It was very Phillip Glass yesterday at Pinecone Park.

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Yesterday afternoon was a delight: Sheba, Fred and Ethel slept while I read the New Yorker  and then had a spa time. And … I watched Gustavo Dudamel conduct the Vienna Philharmonic playing Bolero.  I love Bolero! I watched it twice on YouTube; I think there was a single woman in the orchestra.

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This morning, Sheba and I did part of the big community dog walk and then we came home so I could do a little crafting, napping and anticipate tonight, the best night on TV.

A Carpenter's Fence is Repaired

I really loved my walk yesterday morning. It was a glorious morning, bright and sunny and no rain is in sight for another week.

I worked at Time/Life  on an exhibition from their archives way, way back. Every day I was there, as I was going to work, I thought to myself: “Me: Mr. Nobody from North Vancouver, is going to work in the Time/Life  Building in Manhattan!” I was high on the joy of it all and my pride. I get that same high here, every morning, because I live here.” (I don’t think of myself of Mr. Nobody any more. I’m Mr. Lucky!)

All afternoon and evening, I worked on the armature for my figure. I worked until I ran out of wire. I love how it’s coming together. It’s fabulous to see something exit my mind to become something tangible. I love building armatures; I love doing crafts. Building an armature is like creating a basic compositional under-painting with delicate light thin paint as a guide for the painting that will emerge over it.

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There is a short, but high,  wooden fence between my yard and the neighbour’s. It was here when I moved in. It serves, I think, to give privacy to the people next door. It cut off view, from my yard, of their front door and entrance deck. It’s built of several pre-fab sections and one of the sections is falling down. 

Yesterday’s task, therefore, was jury-rigging a temporary solution so that it does not fall further. Me: Hammering an unstable fence whilst standing on top of a high ladder. Me: Nervous as Hell! The neighbour: Young; perhaps forty. The neighbour: A carpenter. He’s done nothing for two weeks, but he’s a tenant so…. I think I did a great job!

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Today’s another brilliant sunny day. I’m going to take my recycling to GIRO, water the plants at Jay’s house and pine for the wire I’ve ordered from Amazon that’ll allow me to finish the armature. Until it arrives, there’s not much I can do with the figure. Instead, I’ll be tidying up my shed and chopping some kindling.

Which is to say, how I’ll spend another day alone with my pets. That’s how I spend every day and I don’t expect any visitors until April or May. I spend 4.5 hours per week with people on dog walks. So it’s easy to understand why I love the infrequent dinners I have with other islanders and my visits to friends in Victoria and Parksville.

Writers (Funny)

Every part of Pinecone Park is tidy, the cistern is full, I’ve plenty  of wood and kindling and the hot tub water is pristine. Everything is in its place; everything is working and we are all well. What we have is what we want: Homeostasis!

It’s time, therefore, to start working on my figure, so that’s what I’ll do when I come back from the dog walk. I’m excited about getting back to crafting. Today, I’ll start with the bold strokes of the armature. I’ll be trying to define the basic elements: arms, head and neck, bodice and dress—plus the tip of one foot. The hardest thing I plan to do is to create a paper handkerchief that looks real. It will require a particularly light wire armature that’s particularly difficult to build in a way that doesn’t affect the surface texture of the tissue paper that will cover it.

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And oh what a good old boy am I! I’ve got my revised will already to go to the lawyer’s. I’ll take it in next week; that’ll be another important thing done.

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From “The White Man’s Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon,” 

Cormac McCarthy purchased a powder blue Olivetti Lettera 32 mechanical typewriter in a Tennessee pawnshop, in 1963, for fifty dollars, and used it for the next five decades, producing an estimated five million words tickling its ivories. An author’s instrument is more than a tool; it is an extension of his very soul. With that in mind, choose your weapon carefully. (I use the Olivetti Lettera 22—an earlier model—myself*.)

Ballpoint pen: Let me guess—you probably have a great idea for a book that you’ve been meaning to write but haven’t actually got around to starting?

Fountain pen: You don’t use contractions because you think that they degrade the language, and your epigraphs are all in Latin. You include epigraphs in everything you write.

Electric typewriter: All of your protagonists are thinly veiled versions of yourself. You order rye at bars and secretly think that you should have been alive in the sixties.

Manual typewriter: You spent six hundred dollars on a typewriter that you’ve used twice.

No. 2 pencil: You keep one behind your ear because you think it looks writerly, but exclusively use it to jot down to-do lists.

Pencil you can only sharpen with a pocket knife: You have gone camping two or three times in your life and bring it up at least once per conversation.

Mechanical pencil: You’re taking notes in an Algebra 2 class.

MacBook: You like the idea of hiking more than you actually like hiking and are impressed with yourself for liking the Beatles.

Desktop computer: You are either a Serious Writer who needs to be cut off from distraction in order to focus completely on your art, or you are sixty-five years old.

Red pen: You are either grading undergraduate papers or you are a sociopath.

Micron: Your notebook is the type with the grid dots because you think that lines constrain your creativity but you still need to write straight.

Quill: You have gone to a Renaissance Faire unironically. Please, for all of our sakes, stop calling women “m’lady.”

Tablet: You type with a single finger.

* by Dana Schwartz