Maureen Bush's Blog, page 15

The Quality of Light

The light keeps changing at my house.

When the neighbour’s beautiful spruce trees were cut down and the house demolished, we were flooded with west light. In the windows, in the garden. It was strange and delightful, but a bit of a worry, too. In the summer the west sun is very, very hot here, and we had no shelter from it. We have trees in our yard, but nothing to the west.

It didn’t matter, it turns out, as June was a deluge in Calgary (as you may have heard). The light was green and blue and dark as dusk; the rare sun joyous and strange. By the end of it we felt like moles, venturing into the too-bright sunlight.

Then the new house next door started to go up, and our light changed again. We have shade from the west now, but the walls aren’t solid, so light filters through. This morning, yellow-tinged morning light is reflecting off the wooden structure back into the west window in the office in a lovely glow.

I wish there was a way to capture that in writing. Perhaps there is. If I’ve written this well, there is.

Maureen

Mapping the Flood

There’s a map in Calgary that tells the story of the flood, and how it affects each person.

The evacuation zones are mapped out – and that’s the first question you ask someone when you first see them after the flood. Were you evacuated?

No.

Or yes, but we’re dry; that’s green in the evacuation zone.

Or yes, and we got some water, but just in the basement and we’re getting help cleaning it out and we’ll be fine. That’s yellow.

Then there’s red ­– and that’s the bad stuff. It’s defined as water deeper than the electrical outlets, so that it’s not safe to turn on the power. The reality of red zone buildings includes water as deep as twelve feet, houses pushed off their foundations, homes that had water flowing through them as they became a part of the river.

Those are the houses that may get the new colour – the black dot. Those are the buildings that are going to be torn down, too structurally damaged to repair.

It’s the red zone and the black dots that will define who is losing the most, in the randomness of the flood.

Maureen

Writing Through Distractions

I keep writing about working through distractions – oh those distractions – and thinking they can’t get worse. I have to stop that. They’ve now reached biblical proportions – flood levels through Calgary close to the flow rate over Niagara Falls.

We’re now rebuilding, in a desperate flurry to empty soaked basements and strip them down to studs and cement before mould takes over. I’m not one of the mud-bedecked volunteers because I’m allergic to mould and… well… there’s no point in my going down and making the situation worse. I’ve found myself another job, posting flood updates on Facebook, for friends who are too busy with the work of rebuilding to follow breaking news, or are out of town but want to stay up-to-date.

So I have a flood-job, but I feel the need to settle back into regular life a little, to remind myself that there is normalcy, even if it’s a new normal here.

I ventured down into one of the recovering evacuation zones and met some writers who were going to coffee shops and libraries to write anyway. That’s what I need to do. I think I just need to work. Perhaps I’ll have an epic fail – I’ll let you know – but I will make the attempt. It’s bum-in-seat time.

Maureen

I Love My City

Calgary is astounding.

We’ve been hit with massive flooding from torrential rains upstream, with just enough notice to evacuate low-lying areas. The two rivers that flow through Calgary both flooded. Close to 100,000 people were evacuated, (that’s 10% of the city’s population), but very few ended up in shelters. They just drove over to a friend’s house, or stayed with family.

Emergency plans were impeccable ­– no one in the city has died, there are no injuries, at least so far, although there have been some tragic deaths in High River, where they had no warning of the flash flooding.

Our mayor, Naheed Nenshi, has been astounding, the voice of calm, working tirelessly. Well, not quite tirelessly. During his second day with no sleep a new hash tag emerged – #nap4nenshi – as  people noticed how tired he was looking in his briefings. One of my favorite nap4nenshi tweets:

zahra al-harazi @zahrasays

#nap4nenshi best. hashtag. ever. @nenshi go get some sleep, your city is safe.

And so, after 40 hours, he went to bed. napforyyc emerged as another hashtag, urging emergency workers to make sure they got some sleep.

100 police officers from Edmonton came down, to help out our cops (so they could sleep, too). A military cavalcade drove down from Edmonton, to help in Calgary and Canmore, and poor battered High River.

And through it all, people remained calm and kind and generous. The Drop-In Centre for homeless people stayed open in an evacuation zone as long as it could,  taking in everyone from every agency that had to evacuate – and then moved everyone to a safe place when their building was no longer safe. But they had no food – no blankets. They sent out a call for help and within hours had line-ups of people delivering donations.

The Stampede Grounds are deep under water, but the show will go on. Not sure how, or what it will look like this year, but it will be the best ever, because we’ll all be there, even if most years we leave town to avoid the fuss.

As I’m writing this, I don’t know if the Bow River water level is dropping yet. There may be some more rain coming, dams releasing water upstream… we hope we’re through the worst of it but we’re still waiting.

But the sun is shining.

Maureen

 

When Writing Doesn’t Come

Some days, writing doesn’t come. I can’t just sit down and work on a story, even though I have words pressing into my fingers, wanting to come out, wanting to play. But I don’t know what they are, what story they belong to, or how to let them out.

On those days, sometimes, if I can sit and write, or type, without really thinking about it, letting my mind be quiet, watching the trees out the window, I can let the words come without looking too closely at them, as if, if I did, I’d spook them. They’re shy and deep and need encouragement but not too much staring, like a shy child who wants to be close but isn’t quite sure how to manage it.

Today, in the darkness of impending torrential rains, and the noise of the framers next door working on the second story floor, trying to get as much done as they can before lightning sends them for cover, I long to write. I’ve not been writing much for weeks, as I struggle to regain a writing mind after a too-long cold, a hack-up-a-lung cough, and a mental lethargy that makes thinking through anything a challenge.

Today, energy is stirring, at the base of my spine, in my throat, in my fingers – groping, searching for a way out, words looking for a story. And yet the story eludes me, and instead, I write this.

Maureen

 

The Texture of Beauty

There’s something about roses as they begin to decay that I find exquisitely beautiful – something I can feel on my tongue, not as a taste, but as a texture of beauty.

Maureen

 

 

Evernote and Scrivener

My organizational frenzy has faded away, as quickly as it arrived. But it has pushed me to continue to organize (reluctantly, I must admit). I have a new filing cabinet being delivered next week, which will give me enough space to organize the endlessly breeding piles of paper, and save me from scraping my knuckles trying to pry folders out of the crowded drawers.

I’m also organizing all my bits and pieces that I collect on the computer into Evernote.

An illustrator friend mentioned Evernote, after I went on and on about the joys for Scrivener, for writers. I think that Evernote is her illustrator-equivalent. Now I love it too. It’s like Stickies on the Mac, except the notes and images can be organized into notebooks. I tend to collect bits ­– ideas and images, story moments – usually in a tangle of files or slips of paper. Now I can dump them all into Evernote and then ignore them or browse them or pull out something when I’m ready to work on a story.

Of course, what I really want to be doing is writing. But writing in chaos distracts me – the time I spend organizing now will help me spend less time on admin work, and be quieter and more focused on writing, which is always where I want to be.

Maureen

 

 

Blatchford Park, Edmonton

I’ve learned that the former Edmonton Municipal Airport site redevelopment is going to include a large urban park named after my great grandfather, Kenneth Blatchford.

My mother’s grandfather, he was the mayor of Edmonton when the airport was opened in 1926, and it was named after him, as he was instrumental in its creation. It was the first municipal airport in Canada, important for the bush pilots in the north (including one of his sons, who went on to become a fighter pilot in WWII, with the RAF).

http://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/news/2012/visionary-redevelopment-of-airport-lands-honours-former-mayor.aspx 

Maureen

Writer-Maureen vs Admin-Maureen

Once again I’m not-writing-because-I-have-a-cold.

However, oddly, as I recover (except for the endless hacking-up-a-lung cough), I have energy and focus for the admin work I ignore because I hate it, oh, I hate I hate it! But somehow, this week, while I’m not writing, I’m able to dig through all the detritus of a writer’s life (and it is endless!), sorting, filing, mailing, planning, organizing. I’m scaring myself with how much I’m getting done. Who is this person?

I can’t wait for Writer-Maureen to return, but I know she will be very happy Admin-Maureen was here. Because she’ll have a clean desk to work at, and can ignore all paperwork, once again.

Maureen

YABS AGM

Yesterday was devoted to the Young Alberta Book Society AGM. The day began with a road trip to Lacombe with writer Jan Markley and illustrator Carolyn Fisher. Then an afternoon of sessions, including a walk with Nicole Luiken when we discussed what we do to become better as writers ­– we swapped tips on our favorite workshops, books on writing, and YA books. I did my spiel on Scrivener, and made a few converts, I suspect. The afternoon ended with cake celebrating YABS’s 30-year anniversary, complete with story-telling and awards for the best stories in 10 absurd categories. YABS exists to put writers, illustrators and storytellers into Alberta schools, and there were some wild stories. If there’d been a sniffling sneeezing coughing award I would have won, hands down. I won a better award, though, for raison-d’etre – why we do school visits ­– when I talked about finally connecting with a reluctant writer, on the last day of my writer-in-residency this spring. Then we dove into the annual pot-luck feast, hosted by Georgia Graham.

I feel full of comradery, after spending time with friends and newly met writers and illustrators and storytellers, inspired to keep connecting with kids through our stories.

Maureen