Marion Agnew

When we went to bed last night, the lake ice in front (back?) of the house was still there--increasingly rotten on the surface, but intact.  This morning, it's not. Ice breakup is a huge sign that the earth really is invested in this new season. Spring is willing to crack the ice for us. Or perhaps for herself, with us as grateful beneficiaries. A while later, it started to snow.  Everything is happening at once. The fight against the pandemic is not going well in Canada and especially in Ontario.  Yet age eligibility for vaccinations is dropping all the time, and we have made what appointments we can.  I've long proclaimed a fondness for nuance, for "both/and," for "life is complicated." For one thing, life IS complicated, and in nuance lies the richness.  And it's also true, because both/and, that (as I have said before here, recently): spring is exhausting .  Much as I'd like to finish out this pandemic (at all) with the illusion that I'm self...

 This, too, is what Spring looks like. 

Signs of Spring, that is.  Here's one of our favourites.  Our deck. Look at all that exposed surface area! Look at all the snow that isn't there anymore! A year ago yesterday, in the shutdown's early days, I fell on sneaky spring ice and broke both wrists. I am expert in denial, so I acknowledged two months later that maybe something had happened. But! They're much better today, and I'm grateful and fortunate. And also: But! They will never be the same.  We will never be the same. The world, metaphoric and the literal planet, will never be the same.  The ravens, though, have found grasses and are repairing their nests. The eagles hunt, as does the fox. The deer come by to feed on whatever they find. I'm going to sit in the sun, plan our next grocery pickup, and ignore the house upkeep we should be doing. Yep, Spring is on its way. 

I find spring kind of exhausting.  Maybe it's all that spring energy, the energy for growing, gathering itself as the snow melts off.  Maybe I'm just that introverted. (Ha, no maybe there.) Maybe the exhaustion feels more concentrated this year because people are excited about the possibilities of vaccinations and seeing other people in real life. (I'm not immune, haha, to this myself.) Maybe it's something else. Or nothing. Regardless, I feel (yet again) as if people are talking a lot, producing lots of "content," as we are meant to say of artistic work, "content" that I must "curate." I'm not necessarily arguing with those terms but they're part of my fatigue, I suspect.  Earlier this week: the fox listens before pouncing.  More! More recognition! More lists! More podcasts, and more podcast episodes with more guests! More discussions and debates! More writing around my own writing to get recognition from readers and writers for my...

Note, by "planners" I am not discussing printed/written systems for tracking your days, although I certainly could because I love me some notebooks and systems and checkboxes, oh my.  Nope. I'm talking about thinking ahead with confidence. Enough confidence to imagine doing something in the future.  That's pretty small. But it's significant. As small things often are.  Last year at this time, I was planning to participate in an event that eventually got cancelled. We get a mulligan (*sports term: "do-over" for us non-athletes) this year.  The event: The Creative Nonfiction Collective's annual conference , mid-May. (You can look at a schedule at the link.) This year, it'll be online. Previous years' experiences have been well worth the conference fees, and that was back when I had to pay for travel and share a washroom with strangers.  I'll be presenting about mentorship with Susan Olding , whose guidance is largely responsible for the exi...