old notes

Going through some old notebooks to collect notes for the story I'm working on. Found these two little bits:

The comedy of how much control I want versus how little I have. I want the laundry to stay in its pile rather than be dragged across the floor. I want her to let me read to her without tearing/biting throwing the book. I want to decide how long I can stay in a store, or outside for that matter. I'm sure I should learn something right now about giving up control.
(January 2009)

I watch the snow become less each day. Out in the courtyard the ground gradually shows more. The layer of ice is softening and weakening. Now you could pick up parts of it in your hands.Under the ice on the lake there is surely subtle cracking and shifting.

You can also feel this in yourself, and your own desire to melt. The knots in your shoulders would like to melt. Your whole body would like to melt and remember that melted trusting feeling you knew before.
(March 2006?)

Dog-watching

It's interesting how Astrid already has her own personality, and is interested in things on her own terms and not always on mine. For instance, she's a dog-watcher. She sits in her high chair at breakfast facing the window so she can see out and see people walking by in the street. What she gets excited about are the dogs. There are lots of people going by walking their dogs and she always notices when one walks into her frame of view. She then yells loudly at the dog, trying to get its attention and greet it. If out of her chair she bangs on the window trying to get its attention. And she becomes very happy and excited.

I have not previously been much of a dog-watcher, but now, because I know how happy it makes her, I am always on the look-out for a dog to point out to her. It's nice to feel myself get excited about a small event like a dog-sighting. She's good at this; reminding me to slow down and notice the little things.

Hearing clouds

It's snowing a little bit. Montreal is still largely undiscovered, and I like this. I'm here in out apartment in the middle of it with so much happening around me, and yet our apartment is quiet. Astrid is sleeping. One hears somehow in the sound of the traffic going by that it's cloudy and that there's snow on the ground. Or would I hear it like that if I hadn't seen it?

I am thinking about things I usually think about: how to dive and leap in order to create something, how to find time in my chaotic life as a mother to still say something. Thinking about action and how you don't always know what you're going to do before you do it. Wanting to be more active with writing and with creativity. Wanting to keep the wolves of doubt and practicality at bay.

Are things so difficult? Is it me that makes them like that? Is one allowed to be more child-like, more trusting, more joyful? Or maybe the question is, can one allow oneself to be that way? A little bit. In between all the calls groceries clean-ups make-ups business money worries responsibilites.

I was surprised yesterday how little it took to make feel a sort of skittery, butterfly-like joy. (after a day of feeling somewhat oppressed by winter and business things that needed attention.) I went down our 2 flights of stairs and a little down the street to a café to get an espresso late in the afternoon. I talked about french espresso terms with the clerk while a guy was playing an old piano in the corner. He was playing an old song, wartime music or old jazz. It was upbeat and he was playing his heart out and I felt so uplifted, it was like the first time I really knew the meaning of the word.