Ev Bishop's Blog, page 14

Introducing . . .

Some of you have expressed curiosity, even impatience, for more details about some of the changes and “new, exciting future things” that I’ve alluded to in recent columns and posts. Thank you! Your enthusiasm fuels mine.

There will be a flurry of new information and updates in upcoming months, and to kick them off, let me introduce my new passion, plaything, and workhorse: WINDING PATH BOOKS.

Winding Path Books is a boutique publisher that will predominantly publish works by me, though future plans include occasional short story and/or poetry anthologies.

The website isn’t up and running yet, but I’ll be sure to announce its birthday after a hopefully-not-too-lengthy period of labour.

And thus, to sum up Exciting Announcement One, I have officially entered hybrid author land.

p.s. Do you like the logo? It was created by Terrace artist Chancey Hall, and symbolizes the whimsy-filled, magical, crazy-winding-dream adventure I find the writing life to be perfectly. I love, love, love it!

Storm the Beach!

Photo by Mackenzie Black that reminds me of my childhood.

I was zipping along in my little white car the other day, the sun was shining, the grass along the gravel shoulder was greening, and a warm, springy breeze danced through the open window. All of a sudden I was kissed, clear as anything, with the memory of a feeling that occasionally overwhelmed me when I was a kid playing outside on my grandma’s farm: a fantastic, totally-free, move alive-than-alive, rampaging, powerful, crazy, silly feeling. It was pure happy, the sense of extreme possibility and promise, and the conviction the world was full of good things and future adventure all rolled into one.

More often than not, when the feeling hit, I’d lift whatever stick I was carrying over my head (I was almost always carrying a “staff”) and charge down the nearby hill or into the field’s waist high grass, yelling a mixed roar-cheer: “Arrrrrrrrr!”

When I think back on those bouts of intense delight, a combination of recollections gather, so maybe the feeling was birthed by mingling factors: the smell of sunshine on dirt, the scent of sap from budding trees, the chitter-chat of squirrels, the chirping of birds, the give and take of the ground beneath my bare, calloused feet—and the joy of being enmeshed in whatever epic story I was living out as I trekked around. And something else was a huge contributor, too.

I was always by myself when the feeling hit. I didn’t have any adults, well meaning or otherwise, telling me to “keep it down,” to “be appropriate” or to “not get carried away.” No one asked pointed questions about what I was so happy about anyway, or helpfully outlined the reasons I was wrong or naïve to be feeling wildly joyful and optimistic. There were no kindly suggestions that I manage my expectations so I wouldn’t be disappointed. . . .

I’ve definitely, thankfully, experienced lovely pure-happy as an adult too—but as with a lot of adult emotions, it’s usually more convoluted and layered, a bit shorter lived. I tend to diminish it by analyzing it.

And I’m trying not to do that anymore. I don’t want to squash my growing glee or kill it before it fully blooms. I want to revel in. Enjoy it. Laugh out loud and shake my head and shout with it. Spin down a dirt road with my arms out to my sides ‘til I’m dizzy.

I want to live life. Really live it. I don’t want to put off things I really want to do in the wait for some perceived magic age or stage where I think I’ll have more time, more funds, more clarity, more whatever. . . .

Maybe you need to heed my advice too? If you’re unhappy where you’re at, make changes. If there’s something you really want to do, start doing it sooner rather than later. Will it be difficult? Maybe. Maybe not. In hindsight I always realize the time I’ve spent resisting change I know I need or want is more excruciating than the actual leap ever turns out to be . . . but either way, easy and smooth or a tough uphill climb, the effort is worth it.

A bunch of things came together for me last week. I know why I had the ocean epiphany I wrote about last month, why I’m being surprised by random fits of euphoria, and experiencing deep, peaceful, standout-noticeable moments of happiness these days. I’m being more vocal about what I want, what I believe, and what huge questions, fears, doubts, and insecurities I have. I’m sharing the things I’m excited about, even proud of. I’m making changes. In my thinking. In my doing. In my being.

I haven’t charged down a hill recently, shouting at the top of my lungs, brandishing a stick—but I make no promises about the near future.

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“Storm the Beach!” by me, Ev Bishop, was originally published in the Terrace Standard, April 30, 2014 as my monthly column “Just a Thought.”

Have Passport, Will Travel

So many sights to see and creatures to meet! Photo copyright Ev Bishop.

I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate the past twelve months. Until October 2013, I’d only ever been out of Canada twice in my life (both times, pre-passport days). This year I’ve been to London, just returned from southern California, and have plans for a Hawaii or Mexico trip.

And I do love to holiday just for the sake of a holiday—a break, a specifically set apart time to rest, relax, and play. It’s not just the pure sloth I enjoy, however. I think seeing new landscapes and terrains, experiencing different climates and cultures, and meeting people who come from different places than you is valuable.

Having lived in a small town my whole life, the exposure to huge groups of people in one place is thought provoking, and I think it was beneficial for our young nieces who were with us, too. There are so many different types of jobs and opportunities in larger centres. It opens your eyes to possibilities for work, for art, for exploring. It’s a big world!

I’m an adventurous eater but even so, various regions have their types of food—stuff habitually eaten because it’s grown or produced there, or readily available because of the mixed backgrounds of people living in an area. Terrace offers high quality, quite diverse foods, but funnily enough, though California is West Coast too, it’s far enough South that some of the food was different than I’d ever had before. Yay!

And I could go on and on about the beauty, inspiration and wonder to be found in exploring a different geographical place. I was awed by the crazy abundance of flowering plants that grow as perennials—well, not even perennials. They don’t die down; they grow perpetually, like our trees do. People have cactus beds in California, the same way we plant flower ones . . . yet daffodils and “spring blooms” flourish there, too.

And the ocean, the ocean, the ocean! I adored the sun, sand and surf. Did you know that the Pacific can be warm and welcoming to swim in during March? It was wild fun, literally, to be playing in the waves and suddenly see dolphins not fifty feet away—or have a line of eight or so pelicans swoop along just beyond our heads.

Visiting other places also helps adjust any preconceived notions you might have. Stereotypes about “Americans” have long driven me crazy because the U.S. is so huge, with so many people, that it’s ridiculous to me that anyone would colour the whole, extremely diverse, country with one brush—but I won’t rail away long. Let me just say, with one exception, where we think my big, brawny husband might’ve scared the pants off a guy fishing off Newport Pier when he approached him after dusk, and asked jovially, “What are you fishing for?” everyone was incredibly nice, extremely polite, genuinely-it-seemed interested in chatting and getting to know us a bit—before and after they knew we were tourists.

People are people wherever you go, and we all have more in common than we usually think. And that’s a wonderful lesson to have reinforced from time to time.

I’m not pretending that my holidays thus far—or those hopefully in the future—were taken with any loftier goal than to have some fun, but for me, the best fun occurs when I feel I learned something too. And even if the take-aways are simple things like I really enjoy authentic Mexican food, it’s weird that plane seats are smaller and less safe feeling than the seats on Disneyland rides, the population of the state of California is greater than the population of the whole country of Canada, or that Grey whales go down to Mexico to have their babies, and then make their way up the coast (yup, they pass us too) to Alaska . . . well, those are great observations to experience first hand.

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“Have Passport, Will Travel” by me, Ev Bishop, was originally published in the Terrace Standard, March 26, 2014 as my monthly column “Just a Thought.”

Good For What Ails Me

I’ve been experiencing lovely, productive-feeling days this month. (I say “productive-feeling” because I think most days my output is the same, just sometimes it feels like “more” somehow than other days!) Maybe if you’re feeling less than prolific, inspired, or motivated, today’s Déjà vu Thursday, originally published here Feb. 18, 2013, will cheer you.

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Photo copyright (c) Marriah Bishop

Sometimes I romanticize the writing life. (Well, pretty much every aspect of life actually, but I’ll just focus on the writing aspects for now.) And while normally I feel this is a lovely quality, it has a downside. It can make me feel, when writing sessions are more tedious than magical, that maybe it’s because of some inherent flaw in me. Maybe I’m an impostor. A fraud.

I want “perfect” writing days:

Sessions where every penned nuance and detail is rife with significance.

Times with the texture and quality of embossed leather or whiskey soaked velvet (though if I think about it, I’m not really sure how either of those would describe a day at all).

Sprees filled with rambling, writerly chats, obscure poems found wedged between the floor boards in a bedroom of a long vacant house (again, a detail that seems sort of impossible to randomly happen upon when my butt is planted in my office chair, but don’t over think things: this is a perfect day, people!), and wine drank from pewter goblets.

Weather that’s all sunrise, sunset, or storm. Lavender-grey sky. Charcoal-soot clouds. Pounding rain that bends the trees and echoes my heart.

Hours when time pauses and my prose falls effortlessly upon the page, as moving and powerful as a wind that shakes leaves, bends boughs, and changes the season.

I want to be the poet in the turret, the crazy longhaired maiden-crone in the attic (but one whose family doesn’t disown her!).

So, although I often find that the reality of being a writer is pretty great, by comparison to the stuff of my daydream writer life, it’s sometimes a little disappointing. Or a lot, depending on the day. I’m continually surprised that writing is actually work—sometimes really hard work. It’s something I have to schedule in. It rarely just happens. And often it’s painful, like I’m a surgeon charged with the task of removing my own organs without anaesthetic and spreading them around for the world to see. But worse than the pain is the fear.

The fear that I actually have nothing to say. That perhaps the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was written with me in mind (“Aren’t they beautiful?” “Isn’t what beautiful? There’s nothing there.”) Fear that I am mediocre at best. Fear that people will see me naked and laugh, or worse, avert their eyes, turn away—ashamed, unable to relate, embarrassed for me. And even more fear: that I will never be read or connected with at all. I will send parts of myself into the void and be met with . . . silence.

How silly I am to worry about such things hit me afresh yesterday.

I’d fled my computer for a break to work in the yard. The air had a quality that, I don’t know, just made me want to laugh. Sweet and fresh, yet here and there, tinged with the earthy scent of dead plants, no longer frozen, freed to rot. The fecund smell of approaching spring is so ancient and independent of human involvement that it always seems almost otherworldly to me—yet also somehow makes me feel like every dream is possible.

The sun was trying to warm the winter-cold earth, and a brisk breeze carried an invigorating lesson: New life erupts from death. Growth springs forth from decay and rot and . . . well, shit.

Creation can be painful—just listen to my chickens. Yet, day in and day out, they each lay an egg—and though they complain bitterly during the process, they squawk equally proudly about the results of their labour. And as inglorious and common as laying an egg every day may be to some, each speckled brown oval is its own miracle too.

Does the chicken question whether it can lay an egg, or if it can, will it be a good enough egg, or if its worthy of even attempting to lay an egg in the first place? I’m not a chicken whisperer, but I don’t think so. Hens definitely seem to have more of an “I’m a chicken, dammit. Of course I lay eggs. Get over yourself and get cracking” attitude. Can I do any less or be any less pleased with my output?

And the chickens lay regardless of the day, temperature, or individual mood—mild and balmy, or bitter and hideous. And likewise, my hedge puts out buds when it’s supposed to, despite the wind, the danger of frost. . . . It seems to like it when I fuss, but it does its thing whether I’m there or not.

I have perfect dreamy writing days occasionally, and they’re amazing. I mean who doesn’t love to feel their work is going well, that they’ve connected with something deep within themselves, and enjoyed the process? Who doesn’t revel in a bit of romance?

I wonder though—perhaps ironically—if my writing is better on the days it feels like organ-extraction? Or if maybe the revolutions between between angst and toil and ecstasy and pleasure are all necessary? Maybe writing is like the rest of life, a continual shift of seasons. Some more enjoyable than others, perhaps, but all crucial, all inevitable. And maybe it’s just something I shouldn’t think about too much—just enjoy and accept (with a little squawking occasionally!).

Cracked Open

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Ahhh, Ocean! Photo Copyright Ev Bishop.

I’ve just returned from a very restful, inspiring, sun-drenched, sand-filled, saltwater-soaked vacation in Newport Beach, California.

I loved playing in the white sand that was hot under my feet. I adored wearing flip-flops as I tripped along the boardwalk, knowing friends and co-workers back home were in their winter gear, suffering fresh snow and below freezing temperatures. (Sorry guys!) And it was very special to spend do-nothing-but-have-fun family time with my husband, nieces, sister, stepmom, and daughter. The biggest impact of the trip, however, came from the ocean.

I was amazed by her. Awed.

Obviously, living where I do, I’m already familiar with the Pacific—but let me tell you: her waters are very different up in northern British Columbia than they are in southern California.

I spent a lot of time playing in the surf, being knocked down and getting up again, being dragged back into deeper water as the ocean readied to send another wave, and, most fun of all, swimming out over my head, beyond the crash line, where even the hugest waves were just starting as rolling swells. Above me, the sky was so blue and just . . . huge. And all around me, as far as my eye could see, was water. Since it’s California’s “winter” too, there weren’t a lot of locals in the water. Sometimes, for hours, I was the only one.

And maybe it was the salt pulling things out of me, the same way soaking in Epsom salts releases toxins. Or maybe it was because it was the first time in far, far too long where I didn’t have anywhere to go specifically or anyone I had to see, and my mind was deliciously free and uncluttered. Or perhaps it was the sounds of the ocean working to bring the tide in or out, the sea birds calling and swooping about, blotting out any noise in my head . . . But whatever the reason or combination of reasons, something deep inside me cracked open, and I had one of those strange epiphanies, where you can see so clearly where you’ve come from, where you are, and where you want to go next.

Sometimes it’s easy to lie to ourselves, to make excuses for why we’re standing still instead of moving forward, to justify our reasons for sticking with things that are no longer a good fit.

I found that out there, salt-crusted, saturated and awed by the unmitigated power, depth and magnitude of the ocean, it was impossible to be false with myself. I might as well have tried to keep the surf from crashing, or the sand from pulling away beneath my feet in the after effects of the waves. But it wasn’t a negative or self-condemning sort of feeling. I didn’t beat myself up for work not done or goals not accomplished. And it wasn’t merely a giddy, momentary flash of newfound enthusiasm (though I did feel those lovely bursts too). The feeling was a deep sense of readiness, of quiet resolution and surety. A sense that change is coming, and instead of fighting it or being afraid of it, I was going to welcome it and move with it.

I kept waking up my first couple of nights home because I missed the sound of the surf—and I’d only been away eight days. I’ve carried the decision I arrived at in the waves with me, however, and while my suntan’s receding, my resolve hasn’t waned.

I’ll be making some exciting announcements the next two months or so. In the meantime, if you can somehow sneak away to a beach—ocean, river or lakeside—to do some thinking and dreaming, I highly recommend it.