my romantic tryst with cancer

Indulge your senses in one of my favourite authors and a treasure of our generation, Jeanetter Winterson, reading from her book, Lighthousekeeping. Click:  LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING  for the audiocast.

“Never,” said my father, “Never cut a pomegranate through the heart. It will weep blood. Treat it delicately, with respect. Just slit the upper skin across four quarters. This is a magic fruit, so when you split it open, be prepared for the jewels of the world to tumble out, more precious than garnets, more lustrous than rubies, lit as if from inside. Each jewel contains a living seed. Separate one crystal. Hold it up to catch the light. Inside is a whole universe. No common jewel can give you this.” Afterwards, I tried to make necklaces of pomegranate seeds. The juice spurted out, bright crimson, and stained my fingers, then my mouth. I didn’t mind. The juice tasted of gardens I had never seen, voluptuous with myrtle, lemon, jasmine, and alive with parrots’ wings. The pomegranate reminded me that somewhere I had another home. - Imtiaz Dharker

We love as though we know not better. A trick, biology, it claims more worthy selves and gentler aims, And still this doom is ours. We sought late wanderings, and soft light, dims. And then the first embrace, The touch as if those hands were all the world– For such their beauty seemed; He carried gods with him. And these loves, so celebrated, sang, so painted, danced, idolatrized, These seems are but the tantrum of our genes, which we their slaves, embellish– Strunglike puppets, till they break their strings, And all that’s left are our own imaginings. - Kezia Speirs (read on the TTC in July 2007)

By Michelle Singletary in the Washington Post I’ve spent my whole life talking to myself. “No, Michelle you don’t need to stop and get food. Go home and cook and save money. “No, Michelle you shouldn’t buy that dress. You can wear what you have to the party.” “No, Michelle you can’t spend that raise. Put it toward your retirement savings.” I’m pretty good at fussing at myself. And yet, I still have some regrets. I would have more in my 401(k) had I not been so afraid of investing in equities. For years, my retirement account was too conservative overloaded with fixed income investments with low returns compared to the S&P 500 Index. I could just kick my scared younger self. With the help of a financial planner and increasing my retirement savings over the years, my 401(k) is doing well. But my portfolio would probably be worth 20 percent to 30 percent more had I not been so risk-adverse. Last week I asked: If you could, what retirement planning advice would you gi...

"The only dream worth having,... is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead." - Arundhati Roy

Dots and dashes: How artist Madhvi Parekh developed her own language to tell stories of her youth Entirely self-taught, the artist depicts fantastical creatures, fables and divine beings in a style often compared to the Spanish painter Joan Miro.  Share  Tweet  Email  Reddit  Print From a distance, Madhvi Parekh’s early paintings look like Kantha embroidery. Dots and lines add up on the canvas to form whirlpools, waves, a stretch of road. These guide the eye to focus on the fantastical animals, mythological figures, trees, and people that populate her work. A new retrospective of Parekh’s works,  The Curious Seeker , at the DAG Modern art gallery in Delhi has 70 works made over five decades, and at least as many examples of how the dots and dashes foreground certain elements and give cues on how to read the work. In  King of The Water , a work from 1980 made on paper with pen, ink and glitter pen, for example, the dashes and dots are...

His tongue shorn, father confuses snacks for snakes, kitchen for chicken. It is 1992. Weekends, we paw at cheap silverware at yard sales. I am told by mother to keep our telephone number close, my beaded coin purse closer. I do this. The years are slow to pass, heavy-footed. Because the visits are frequent, we memorize shame’s numbing stench. I nurse nosebleeds, run up and down stairways, chew the wind. Such were the times. All of us nearsighted. Grandmother prays for fortune to keep us around and on a short leash. The new country is ill-fitting, lined with cheap polyester, soiled at the sleeves. by Jenny Xie https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/naturalization

The Gift of Death : By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 11th December 2012 Pathological consumption has become so normalised that we scarcely notice it. There’s nothing they need, nothing they don’t own already, nothing they even want. So you buy them a solar-powered waving queen; a belly button brush; a silver-plated ice cream tub holder; a “hilarious” inflatable zimmer frame; a confection of plastic and electronics called Terry the Swearing Turtle; or – and somehow I find this significant – a Scratch Off World wall map. They seem amusing on the first day of Christmas, daft on the second, embarrassing on the third. By the twelfth they’re in landfill. For thirty seconds of dubious entertainment, or a hedonic stimulus that lasts no longer than a nicotine hit, we commission the use of materials whose impacts will ramify for generations. Researching her film The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard discovered that of the materials flowing through the consumer economy, only 1%...

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things" from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998.

People judge you by your writing, so getting a word wrong can make you look bad. Be sure to avoid these common writing errors in your next email: Affect/Effect:   Affect  is a verb;  effect  is a noun. It affected him. The effect was startling. All Right/Alright:  Although  alright  is gaining ground, the correct choice is still all right . A Lot:   A lot  is two words, not one.  Allot means “to parcel out.” Between You and I:  Nope.  Between you and me  is the correct phrase. Complement/Compliment:  Things that work well together  complement  each other. Compliments  are a form of praise. Farther/Further:   Farther  is for physical distance;  further  is for metaphorical distance. How much farther? Our plan can’t go any further. Lay/Lie:  Subjects  lie down ; objects are  laid down. He should lie down. Lay the reports there.

Dragon’s Den co-host talks about her attitudes towards money and why material trappings can be a trap. By: Adam Mayers Personal Finance Editor, Toronto Star. Published on Mon Aug 31 2015 Arlene Dickinson is best known as one of the tough-talking, no-nonsense venture capitalist co-hosts of CBC’s Dragon’s Den. The highly successful businesswoman, who the broadcaster bills as a multi-millionaire, came by her success the hard way. She arrived in Calgary as a three-year-old with her immigrant parents, who were fleeing South Africa for a brighter future in Canada. “My father and mother wanted us to have a better place to live,” she says. “But we were the typical immigrant family, with five dollars in our pocket. Growing up, we had very little.” That upbringing has influenced Dickinson’s attitudes toward money, the trappings of material wealth and the things she is trying to pass along to her five grandchildren. Dickinson left the Den in January after eight seasons, and now shuttles between ...

 By Rebecca Faust letter to my transgender daughter I made soup tonight, with cabbage, chard and thyme picked outside our back door. For this moment the room is warm and light, and I can presume you safe somewhere. I know the night lives inside you. I know grave, sad errors were made, dividing you, and hiding you from you inside. I know a girl like you was knifed last week, another set aflame. I know I lack the words, or all the words I say are wrong. I know I’ll call and you won’t answer, and still I’ll call. I want to tell you you were loved with all I had, recklessly, and with abandon, loved the way the cabbage in my garden near-inverts itself, splayed to catch each last ray of sun. And how the feeling furling-in only makes the heart more dense and green. Tonight it seems like something one could bear. Guess what, Dad and I finally figured out Pandora, and after all those years of silence, our old music fills the air. It fills the air, and somehow, ...

I'm sorry if I caused confusion. Yes, everything is OK. The regret was about missing the flexibility the old job gave me to be where I was, when I wanted, which is impossible now with days just filled with meetings. I missed being able to play with the kittens, sleep in with D. But I don't miss the anxiety and bullying and intimidation at the University. As dysfunctional as the public service may seem at times, it matters that you're not alone in it, and it isn't personal... I know I made the right move. It's a forward in life, not work. No regrets, just this temporary tinge, and then it passed...

"A tinge is to be expected. There are few decisions that come completely cleanly - most have pros & cons. Important thing is to learn from past & look ahead ." Shared with me by J Aloisi this unsettling morning.

I found this beautiful so am sharing 😊 My Child My child isn't my easel to paint, Nor my diamond to polish! My child isn't my trophy to flaunt, Nor my dummy to taunt! My child isn't my badge or my honour, Nor my respect that he/she must protect! My child isn't an idea or a fantasy, Nor my reflection or legacy! My child isn't my puppet or my project, Nor my pawn or my cadet! My child is here to fumble & stumble To get in & out of trouble! My child is here to try, To fall & to cry! My child is here to unravel the mysteries, To educate oneself & rewrite histories! My child is here to make his/her own choices, To exercise his/her freewill & experience the consequences! As a Parent, My task is to make my child able & capable, To keep aside my ego & be by his/her side! My task is to guide & educate, To let be & not frustrate! My task is allow him/her to ponder, And see my child grow into a Wonder!

After stepping into the world again, there is that question of how to love, how to bundle yourself against the frosted morning— the crunch of icy grass underfoot, the scrape of cold wipers along the windshield— and convert time into distance. What song to sing down an empty road as you begin your morning commute? And is there enough in you to see, really see, the three wild turkeys crossing the street with their featherless heads and stilt-like legs in search of a morning meal? Nothing to do but hunker down, wait for them to safely cross. As they amble away, you wonder if they want to be startled back into this world. Maybe you do, too, waiting for all this to give way to love itself, to look into the eyes of another and feel something— the pleasure of a new lover in the unbroken night, your wings folded around him, on the other side of this ragged January, as if a long sleep has ended. - by  January Gill O’Niel For D, ... this poem, chanced into my ma...

Thy soul shall find itself alone ‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone; Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead, who stood In life before thee, are again In death around thee, and their will Shall overshadow thee; be still. The night, though clear, shall frown, And the stars shall not look down From their high thrones in the Heaven With light like hope to mortals given, But their red orbs, without beam, To thy weariness shall seem As a burning and a fever Which would cling to thee for ever. Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish, Now are visions ne’er to vanish; From thy spirit shall they pass No more, like dew-drop from the grass. The breeze, the breath of God, is still, And the mist upon the hill Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken, Is a symbol and a token. How it hangs upon the trees, A mystery of mysteries! - E...

Written yesterday, in another context, to another person: "I saw a movie with my parents earlier today called Enough Said . It was a pretty good film. A few lines in it stayed with me though. It was one of those moments that something holds you, because you're open to it, and perhaps you need to hear it. The female protagonist in the movie is symptomatic of our generation. She's single, divorced, a wonderful person, searching for a partner, smarting still about her past, trying to live her life fully... but in her effort to protect herself, and a few bad miscalculations, she fatally undermines a very promising relationship. (I'm not a movie buff by any measure, but I wanted to give you a bit of context.) After the she's messed up their relationship, her now-former love asks her "why?" [she acted out the way she did] "I wanted to protect myself", she replies "and what about protecting us?" he asks back and therein lies the heart of the...

on my fridge door A selection of Maya Angelou's quotes, collated by The Guardian . "Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option." "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain." "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." "I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt." "We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty." "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them." "My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style." "Try to be a rainbo...

I just got back from a screening of the film adaptation of The Normal Heart I'm staggered, by how we (as in people) can let so much come in the way of something as simple and honest as love. The purity of grief, the honesty of tears, the willingness to love. We are our worst enemies, just as we are our best friends. I'm sitting with these feelings. Aware of age, of time, of stories that are being told, and of my own. This will have to hold them for tonight....