thirty-one: ambition ecologies
I have two kinds of Septembers. One of them is bright and enterprising, high-energy, the first-day-of-school kind of September. The other kind is a bit more about encroaching sunset and the emotional equivalent of soil health. To be perfectly flaky: a season where I cover myself quietly in autumn leaves and mulch and just sink into it, so something can recompose for springtime.
It's definitely the second variety this year. I need an extended season in the ground. Which, after the last few years, probably shouldn't surprise me? The kind of rest and change that actually bouncing back from them demands was never going to happen overnight. I told a friend once, ages ago, that grief has a half-life; that he shouldn't be surprised he was still sad three months after ending a five-year relationship. It wasn't bad advice. I'm trying to take it.
So I've spent the month sitting very quietly and listening for more organic ambitions, instead of following particular party lines on what mine could or should be. And it's turned into a September where I've found myself feeding various ambitions like they're multiple stomachs: when one's satiated, another goes off. It feels very piecemeal, and very restorative: all kinds of skewed things shifting into new alignments.
can
Harvest season is kind of intense right now -- the last of many things, a massive supply of others. I've done a lot of food processing to help deal with the overflow. There are a few things that apparently we have to keep relearning through our whole lives -- every time I rediscover them I'm like dude, I knew this, why...? -- and one of mine is that thinking, for me, isn't a mental thing. I think with my body; I think with my hands. If I don't balance those modes, the physical and the analytical, things get out of whack fast.
I started the month with a fridge that needed working down, more produce threatening, and not much appetite. So: watermelon jelly, gallons of stock (shrimp and chicken), homemade harissa, pickled green beans, banana ketchup, pear-lavender jam, plum-anise jam, canteloupe-vanilla jam, mumallaengi.
I'm extra proud of the mumallaengi; it's the first time I've made it, mostly because our vegetable box has had a suspicious lot of daikon in it lately (I have a bad feeling it's because produce prices are high and daikon's affordable), and I had to do something with it. There's only so much do chua even I can eat. So: into the Korean banchan recipes. Result? Dried daikon leather that's sweet and spicy and just texturally comforting, and it's a weirdly great snack.
stitch
I historically run hot and cold on the knitting: go whole years without touching it, and then dive in for whole years at a time. Which means there's always a stack of yarn around here that needs working down, some of it old enough to be in high school, which feels a little personally embarrassing. So I put on six seasons straight of Elementary (a favourite thing, also full of excellent knitwear) and turned some of it into socks. I've had this yarn since 2008. Now it's a wearable object.
This month I also actually finished The Neverending Sweater. I did end up checking through other people's versions of this on Ravelry, and it's not just that I'm a slow knitter; this is a slow and very repetitive pattern (it's all the cabling). The finished garment is a bit bigger than I anticipated -- I wanted off-the-shoulder but it's a lot off-the-shoulder -- but it is very soft. It's like being encased by baby alpacas.
The latest, quickest project was a new pair of wrist warmers to replace ones I knitted ten years ago, and then wore lovingly into bits. These got done just in time for the cool weather, which was lucky. They're wool-silk: a little cool, a little warm, built to last.
I have plans for October: at least one more pair of socks (more depends on whether I can get a different size of needles or if they're stuck in the metaphorical Suez Canal), and then see where the wind takes me. There's still enough yarn here for a few planned sweaters and some light spring shirts besides.
act
I'm still on the data entry beat for our municipal election, which has switched from petitions and building up volunteer base to active canvassing and vote-pulling for progressive candidates across the city. That means the work's ramped up, and the turnarounds are faster: we have to get information logged and organized today to fuel tomorrow's canvassing plan. It also means wrangling electoral software, which -- whew. Someone design better polling and canvassing software?
This past Sunday, I also went out to a march down Yonge for road safety: cyclists and pedestrians walking together, lights on, for safer streets. There were at least 20 municipal candidates there -- two for mayor, the rest for city council -- doing a pledge for more multimodal streets. I was kind of impressed at the turnout? The field, in terms of people understanding that this issue needs work, is wide.
Also it felt really good to go to a march (a pretty COVID-safe thing to do!) and run into a half-dozen people I know, and just catch up a little. I haven't seen any of them in two and a half years, at least. It was a beautiful night out, and -- right. This is one of my places: in the middle of a major street, talking arts grants and rent protections. A little piece of myself walked itself back home.
draft (a few startling little victories)
The last week of September was a bit of a banner week for this. As it began, I wrote a whole first-draft story start to finish, all afternoon, no interruption, no structural gaps, no breakage. This is the first time that's happened since March 2020, and off a title/vague concept I've had floating around since 2015.
Midweek, an email from the Toronto Arts Council. For the first time since Above (so: 2008!), one of my projects has Toronto Arts Council grant funding: the Bradburyesque novella/incipient tiny novel only known as still driving. I didn't expect this, to say the least. I juried this grant in 2019 and yet strike out on it more often than not, partly because it's highly competitive. There are a lot of working writers in Toronto, and when I slipped into the professional category after Above came out (that 2008 grant was the emerging category)? I slipped into direct competition with some of the best poets, novelists, and journalists in the country.
It's an win that's definitely product of an earlier fallow season. I opened up the application this year and saw all the places it missed a step, was missing something, could have been clearer. And--well, there we go. It's a bit like living what I liked so much about Jo Walton's Lent. That sometimes we fuck a thing up, and again, and fuck it up some more, and then the sun sets and it rises and: behold. Tomorrow's here. All the doors are back open.
And then at the end of the week, Reckoning 5 took home four awards at the inaugural Utopia Awards, including Best Anthology for Cécile and I as editors. Play the broken record: I did not expect that. I tend to treat award nominations as the gift themselves and leave it be. We are now award-winning editors, opa.
This is a much different feeling when it's work you edited versus work you wrote. Not more, not less, but the flavour profile is markedly different. The celebration's in the collectivity: that the whole Rube-Goldberg machine came together just so. Feels good. :)
Which was a nice way to roll into some of the opportunities I'm applying for now, which might show up (surprise!) in three months, or a year. I looked at what I did, and what I needed to do, and am reminded: right. All I ever need to do with new challenges is find the way to, within what they're asking for, be myself again. Sit back, and see what grows; roll the marble into the spring and rest assured that someone will catch it.
things to read
I reviewed Isaac Fellman's Dead Collections -- a book about archives, vampires, fandom, and allowing yourself and others a certain emotional complexity -- for Plenitude Magazine. It's more than a little off promo-cycle due to interruptions, issues, and wolves, but this one's well worth picking up. It is both vibrantly smart and comfortingly fun.
"fertile week" will be in Reckoning: Our Beautiful Reward November 6th, which my schedule tells me is right around our next newsletter issue. I'll give a reminder then, too.
It's definitely the second variety this year. I need an extended season in the ground. Which, after the last few years, probably shouldn't surprise me? The kind of rest and change that actually bouncing back from them demands was never going to happen overnight. I told a friend once, ages ago, that grief has a half-life; that he shouldn't be surprised he was still sad three months after ending a five-year relationship. It wasn't bad advice. I'm trying to take it.
So I've spent the month sitting very quietly and listening for more organic ambitions, instead of following particular party lines on what mine could or should be. And it's turned into a September where I've found myself feeding various ambitions like they're multiple stomachs: when one's satiated, another goes off. It feels very piecemeal, and very restorative: all kinds of skewed things shifting into new alignments.
can
Harvest season is kind of intense right now -- the last of many things, a massive supply of others. I've done a lot of food processing to help deal with the overflow. There are a few things that apparently we have to keep relearning through our whole lives -- every time I rediscover them I'm like dude, I knew this, why...? -- and one of mine is that thinking, for me, isn't a mental thing. I think with my body; I think with my hands. If I don't balance those modes, the physical and the analytical, things get out of whack fast.
I started the month with a fridge that needed working down, more produce threatening, and not much appetite. So: watermelon jelly, gallons of stock (shrimp and chicken), homemade harissa, pickled green beans, banana ketchup, pear-lavender jam, plum-anise jam, canteloupe-vanilla jam, mumallaengi.
I'm extra proud of the mumallaengi; it's the first time I've made it, mostly because our vegetable box has had a suspicious lot of daikon in it lately (I have a bad feeling it's because produce prices are high and daikon's affordable), and I had to do something with it. There's only so much do chua even I can eat. So: into the Korean banchan recipes. Result? Dried daikon leather that's sweet and spicy and just texturally comforting, and it's a weirdly great snack.
stitch
I historically run hot and cold on the knitting: go whole years without touching it, and then dive in for whole years at a time. Which means there's always a stack of yarn around here that needs working down, some of it old enough to be in high school, which feels a little personally embarrassing. So I put on six seasons straight of Elementary (a favourite thing, also full of excellent knitwear) and turned some of it into socks. I've had this yarn since 2008. Now it's a wearable object.
This month I also actually finished The Neverending Sweater. I did end up checking through other people's versions of this on Ravelry, and it's not just that I'm a slow knitter; this is a slow and very repetitive pattern (it's all the cabling). The finished garment is a bit bigger than I anticipated -- I wanted off-the-shoulder but it's a lot off-the-shoulder -- but it is very soft. It's like being encased by baby alpacas.
The latest, quickest project was a new pair of wrist warmers to replace ones I knitted ten years ago, and then wore lovingly into bits. These got done just in time for the cool weather, which was lucky. They're wool-silk: a little cool, a little warm, built to last.
I have plans for October: at least one more pair of socks (more depends on whether I can get a different size of needles or if they're stuck in the metaphorical Suez Canal), and then see where the wind takes me. There's still enough yarn here for a few planned sweaters and some light spring shirts besides.
act
I'm still on the data entry beat for our municipal election, which has switched from petitions and building up volunteer base to active canvassing and vote-pulling for progressive candidates across the city. That means the work's ramped up, and the turnarounds are faster: we have to get information logged and organized today to fuel tomorrow's canvassing plan. It also means wrangling electoral software, which -- whew. Someone design better polling and canvassing software?
This past Sunday, I also went out to a march down Yonge for road safety: cyclists and pedestrians walking together, lights on, for safer streets. There were at least 20 municipal candidates there -- two for mayor, the rest for city council -- doing a pledge for more multimodal streets. I was kind of impressed at the turnout? The field, in terms of people understanding that this issue needs work, is wide.
Also it felt really good to go to a march (a pretty COVID-safe thing to do!) and run into a half-dozen people I know, and just catch up a little. I haven't seen any of them in two and a half years, at least. It was a beautiful night out, and -- right. This is one of my places: in the middle of a major street, talking arts grants and rent protections. A little piece of myself walked itself back home.
draft (a few startling little victories)
The last week of September was a bit of a banner week for this. As it began, I wrote a whole first-draft story start to finish, all afternoon, no interruption, no structural gaps, no breakage. This is the first time that's happened since March 2020, and off a title/vague concept I've had floating around since 2015.
Midweek, an email from the Toronto Arts Council. For the first time since Above (so: 2008!), one of my projects has Toronto Arts Council grant funding: the Bradburyesque novella/incipient tiny novel only known as still driving. I didn't expect this, to say the least. I juried this grant in 2019 and yet strike out on it more often than not, partly because it's highly competitive. There are a lot of working writers in Toronto, and when I slipped into the professional category after Above came out (that 2008 grant was the emerging category)? I slipped into direct competition with some of the best poets, novelists, and journalists in the country.
It's an win that's definitely product of an earlier fallow season. I opened up the application this year and saw all the places it missed a step, was missing something, could have been clearer. And--well, there we go. It's a bit like living what I liked so much about Jo Walton's Lent. That sometimes we fuck a thing up, and again, and fuck it up some more, and then the sun sets and it rises and: behold. Tomorrow's here. All the doors are back open.
And then at the end of the week, Reckoning 5 took home four awards at the inaugural Utopia Awards, including Best Anthology for Cécile and I as editors. Play the broken record: I did not expect that. I tend to treat award nominations as the gift themselves and leave it be. We are now award-winning editors, opa.
This is a much different feeling when it's work you edited versus work you wrote. Not more, not less, but the flavour profile is markedly different. The celebration's in the collectivity: that the whole Rube-Goldberg machine came together just so. Feels good. :)
Which was a nice way to roll into some of the opportunities I'm applying for now, which might show up (surprise!) in three months, or a year. I looked at what I did, and what I needed to do, and am reminded: right. All I ever need to do with new challenges is find the way to, within what they're asking for, be myself again. Sit back, and see what grows; roll the marble into the spring and rest assured that someone will catch it.
things to read
I reviewed Isaac Fellman's Dead Collections -- a book about archives, vampires, fandom, and allowing yourself and others a certain emotional complexity -- for Plenitude Magazine. It's more than a little off promo-cycle due to interruptions, issues, and wolves, but this one's well worth picking up. It is both vibrantly smart and comfortingly fun.
"fertile week" will be in Reckoning: Our Beautiful Reward November 6th, which my schedule tells me is right around our next newsletter issue. I'll give a reminder then, too.
***
A surprisingly long issue, this, for what felt mostly like a sit-quiet month. Lots happening!
Next month: Election fallout, poetry, apple season. Definitely playoff baseball. Reports back on what I found in the metaphorical ground.
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