Grace in Small Things – 206

• Rising early, walking to the bus stop through streets still wet with rain.
• The orange flowers still blooming in one of the yards I pass on my way to the bus stop.
• Hearing some Persian words come out of one student’s mouth when she was on the phone with a family member. Hey, wait a second, I thought. There are no Iranians in this class. I got her to show me on the world map where she is from: Tajikistan. She told me that she does speak a version of Persian, but doesn’t write it in Arabic script! She picked up a piece of chalk (it was break time) and wrote her name for me in her script. I took the chalk and wrote her name again as it would be written in Iran.  You learn something new every day.
• Sitting in a cozy cafe for an hour with one of my dearest friends. Email, letters, phones are okay…but there is no substitute for being able to look into a friend’s eyes.
• Long, tight hugs.

Energy In, Energy Out, Energy …

Since it takes an hour for me to get to my practicum site (bus + loooooooooooong suuuuuuubway ride + bus), I was out the door by seven this morning. It is now after eight p.m. and I am plum tuckered out.

Looking back on my day, what is most salient is the flow and flux of energy. Some activities drained me a little, some a lot. Other events and exchanges pumped me up, some way up. It went like this:

• Up before anyone else in the house for a peppermint shower = energy in.
• Being trapped in the kitchen with host mom while I ate my oatmeal, listening to her whinge and gripe about the latest thing one of the students has done to cost her money (broke a light switch) =  energy OUT. Way out.  Toxic, toxic person. And toxic behaviour pattern of mine–to sit and allow the toxicity in. I need better boundary skills.
• Observing the class I’m going to be teaching next week = energy out. Yeah, I know. It surprised me, too. It was the opposite during my first practicum. But this class holds the energy of stagnation, frustration and blockage. Watching it drag on was taxing.
• Meeting my dear friend K from Waterloo = ENERGY IN! Big time. Being with someone I love, with whom I can be 100% myself, to whom I can say anything… yeah. Energy in. We hug spontaneously, reach out to touch one another, share secrets, cry. Anything goes.
• Talking to my classmate R on the phone = energy IN. She is one of those rare souls who recognizes (and cares about) a rare soul. It feels good to be recognized, and I think it feels good for her, too.
• Checking email and finding that the teacher has finished marking another one of my assignments. Reading her comments = energy IN. I became absolutely bouyant, as light as a dandelion seed after reading her words. She is a prof who does not dole out words of approbation liberally, so even the tiniest praise from her puts me on cloud nine. She used the adjective “lucid” to describe one of my arguments. I think I’ll get that on a tee shirt.
• Skyping with my sweetie and talking about our respective days = energy in.

So that was interesting…watching myself fading and wilting at one point in the day, then watching how another type of interaction or surrounding brought me right back to life.

I recognize that being in this bedroom is heavily oppressive and saps almost all my creativity and energy for school work. Since a lot hinges on how much preparing I can accomplish this weekend, I am going to experiment with taking my laptop into the kitchen and/or to the nearby library branch.

I am reminded of the time my good friend, who was struggling to write a dissertation, asked me if I thought place mattered. She had proposed to her therapist that she might have more success and progress more quickly on the thesis if she moved out of her small apartment and found an airier, sunnier place to live and write. I told her that I most certainly did think that writer’s block could be linked in part to the space in which she was attempting to write.

What drains away your energy? What recharges you?

Grace in Small Things – 204, 205

• All your comments and the love that I felt pouring forth from them. Thank you!!! :)
• These two young people. They paced themselves well and saved up for a burst of energy at the end. Aren’t they lovely?
• Green tea to wake up my brain so I can work on another assignment.
• The nice comment I got from the admin assistant yesterday about my marks when she pulled my file for me.
• The zingy, refreshing peppermint castile soap I got at Grass*Roots yesterday to refill my pump bottle. Wow, it’s very minty…and it doubles as a very nice shampoo!
• Spending time after supper last night helping G with English. He had talked a kind librarian out of an old copy of Utne Reader and was going through it with a highlighter to learn new words. Now that’s my kind of English lesson. We started with how to pronounce Utne. It rhymes with chutney. Ok, for those of you who mispronounce chutney, that’s an /ʌ/ as in BUT, not an /uw/ as in lute.
• Getting hugs last night, and not being the only one who was on the verge of tears.
• Hearing very briefly from my darling today that his consult in London went well and he’s feeling confident.
• Getting excited about tomorrow, which is when I meet my (second) practicum mentor for the first time. I will sit in on her class just to get a feel for where she’s at with the students.
• The possibility of a visit with a dear friend tomorrow evening, too!

Is It So Bad to be Sad?

This morning I sat at the big desk in my room (which was once a dining table) and worked on one of the final assignments, stopping frequently to look out the window at the sparrows that flit to and from the feeder next door. I could hear host mom puttering around in the kitchen. Laundry was flapping wildly on the clothesline. Over a period of three hours I did manage to finish writing my half-page to one-page essay answers to each of six opinion questions. Without printing it out for a final proofreading, I emailed it to E, the administrative assistant who date stamps all assignments before printing them off for the teacher to mark.  At this point I’m less concerned with perfection and more interested in getting one more assignment off my plate. With that one finished, I’ve just three to go.

Today I had a date to meet my classmate R an hour and a half before our last night class so we could go over her poem together. It’s about Toronto and it’s in Farsi. I’ve spent hours over the past weeks penciling in the English translation of as many words as I could find on Farsidic.com in wee tiny writing between the lines.

We agreed on 4:15 at the Green Beanery since the night module starts at six.  I wanted to drop by the school before the administrative assistant went home for the day so I could take a look at my marked grammar test–see what I got wrong so I’d know what to bone up on. I also needed to get my soft soap pump container refilled at GrassRoots, so I left the homestay house a couple of hours before I was to meet R.

Since my practicum is in Scarborough, today was my last time to take the subway to Bathurst Station.

Everything felt a bit sad.

I know.  I know all that stuff about flowers dying. We suffer not because things are impermanent, but because we fall into the trap of attachment.

I did become attached.

These fourteen weeks, separated by a 7-week break, have comprised one of the sweetest periods of my life. It has been like being a school girl again. It has been like an escape from the real world, that world I had to enter after I graduated university over 20 years ago. Ever since getting my B.A., with the exception of a few months after moving to Canada and a few months after moving to Windsor, I’ve been gainfully employed. And those two periods of unemployment were no vacation; I was desperately looking for work.

For two decades I’ve either been working really hard (keeners don’t know any other way to work) or have been stressing out about not having a job.  Once in those 20 years I took a two-week vacation. All my other vacations were shorter than that.  And typical of the overly conscientious, I often gave my coworkers and supervisor a number where I could be reached while on holidays…just in case a problem arose that only I could solve.

Now this!

It’s been like being allowed to step off the merry-go-round for four whole months. If I tune out the sound of my savings account going “sluuuuurp,” there’s no stress to speak of.  I haven’t even had to go grocery shopping or do any cooking during this second half of the course.  All I’ve had to do is get up out of bed in the morning, pick out something to wear, gather my books and go learn from 10:30 to 4:45.  Learn and bond with my lovely classmates and see movies.

Heaven.

I stood in the lobby of the coffee shop waiting for R.  Miss Manners says that waiting for someone twenty minutes is good etiquette. You’re not obligated to wait any longer than that when someone is late.  I waited thirty minutes. Thirty five.  Had it been almost anyone else, I might have gotten irked and left, figuring I’d been stood up or forgotten about. But not R.  She was either sick at the last minute or something had happened beyond her control. I decided to take a table, order something and read the paper.

She arrived at a little before five looking mortified. The southbound yellow line had broken down and passengers were loaded onto shuttle buses. She had left home at 3:15 just to ensure she would not be late for our meeting, then that happend. I reassured her that I’d been fine and was just glad she wasn’t sick.

“Relax,” I said. “Take a minute to calm down. It’s okay.”

Once she’d gotten her 15 apologies out of her system, we read her poem. She had written it out for me very clearly since I can’t decipher quickly-written Persian script, only careful printing that resembles what I learned in my primer.  It took us the whole hour to go through the pronunciation and meaning of each of ten stanzas, but it was worth it.  The metaphors made me smile, playful lines made me laugh softly. In the end she was disappointed that we had no time left over for me to recite it for her. She loves my accent, she says!

The poem has a sad ending. It is about the wind here, about being in Toronto and far from ones homeland, far from ones mother.

The teacher got us involved in a fun activity, so class went quickly.

I was acutely aware of all the things I was doing for the last time.  I wanted to go around and bid every silly thing farewell.

Good-bye, old tea kettle that takes four minutes to boil.

Good-bye, musty old school building with cracks in the ceiling.

So long, narrow little bathroom where the people coming out of the stalls have to make sure nobody is standing at the sink before they open the door.

I’m going to miss you.

Yes, I got attached.

Attachment is the root of our suffering.

We don’t suffer because things are impermanent. We suffer because we fall under a spell of believing them to be permanent.

But you know what? Though my eyes were leaking tonight, I was not suffering. There was sweetness to my sadness. I was sad because I had allowed myself to love. To fall in love.

With the cracked ceilings. With the tea kettle.  With all those precious rituals that wove continuity through the days: tea break at 11:45, playing Take Two at the lunch table with P and E, tearing the crossword puzzle off the back page of the Metro newspaper for J at my table. Every day we did the same things in the same way, constructing for ourselves familiarity from routine.

I’m going to miss the way we helped each other. Fed each other.

I’m going to miss subway tokens.

And pigeons on the platform looking for crumbs in the cracks between the tiles. (How DO they get down there and how DO they get back outside again when they want to?)

Of course you know that there’s not anything especially lovable about THAT tea kettle, that fire escape, that orange extension cord. It’s the associations I have with these objects. They are the objects from the physical world with which I will always associate this time of my life… like a certain scent you associate with your third grade teacher, or with summers at the cottage, or with your grandfather.

Instead of smells, I have a kettle. A staircase. The particular linoleum pattern that I will never see anywhere else ever again.

Is this suffering? Or is this engaging in life? Tasting? Allowing myself to love?

Grace in Small Things – 203

• Receiving an email from the prof to say I got 97% on the last exam I handed in. See, I do more than just go to movies!
• Sparrows on the window ledge finding the pieces of nuts I spead out there for them.
• A day so fine that I was able to sit in the garden with just a sweater for a wrap.
• Eggplant for dinner. Delicious!
• This. What a great idea.

The Monkey on My Back

Yes, I admit it. I’m a filmoholic. A movie addict. I can’t stop. Even though I’m supposed to be watching every penny and only spending on the absolutely essential right now… I can’t stop.

Today was Two Twonie Tuesday at the Rainbow. Any movie for $4. I saw The Men Who Stare at Goats.

As I was going in to update my films database (which I built in MS Access to keep track of what I’ve seen and what I thought of it), I realized how very many films I’ve seen already in 2009, most of them with Sylvain:

• Il y’a longtemps que je t’aime
• The Hangover (that one was his idea, trust me)
• Capitalism: A Love Story
• Adam
• Pontypool
• 500 Days of Summer
• The Girlfriend Experience
• The Informant!
• Inglourious Basterds
• Moon
• Anvil! The Story of Anvil
• Julie & Julia (twice)
• A Serious Man
• The Stoning of Soraya M
• Pirate Radio
• Cairo Time
• Bright Star
• The Men Who Stare at Goats

That’s a lot of movie watching in one year. And I’m not done yet! Precious opens later this month.

I look at it this way: as vices go, movies are a pretty tame and harmless addiction. These days I don’t have any hobbies that cost money, like sewing or quilting, painting or pottery. Getting out of the apartment and into a movie house helps keep me sane, and going to one film is a lot cheaper than a session with an analyst–even when you include the cost of a small popcorn. ;)

Movies by Myself and the Rose Beret Woman on the Subway

There is something delicious about sneaking out of the house after dark to see a movie by myself.

I love moving with purpose through the streets under lamp light, walking briskly, having somewhere to be. I love the smell of the night air. I love being on the bus at night, wondering where all the other riders are going to and coming from.

At the old Bloor Cinema with its art deco architecture still in tact, I choose a seat in the front third of the seating area, just to the left of centre. It’s not a movie house habit of mine. I sometimes sit in the very back, sometimes on the right. Once I sat in the first row just to see what it felt like to prop my feet on the stage as the kids were doing.

I’m early and didn’t bring a puzzle; in any case the lighting is too dim for reading. To pass the time, I study my surroundings. Are the curtains really madder-red or are the lights that shine on them from the stage just making them look red?

As I sit waiting for the feature to begin (Cairo Time with Patricia Clarkson), I study the people around me. I make up stories about them, or have little fantasies that I knew them in other lifetimes.

The man one row up, late 50s, greying beard and coke-bottle-bottom glasses? In another life, he and I were married. On the wall of his study, collections of South American insects were framed behind glass, largest beetle on the top left, on the bottom right a gnat barely large enough to bear the slender pin. On Sundays we attended free lectures at the university. He liked to wear my underthings.

The man three seats to my right? We dated once, though only that once. Mutual friends set us up. We still say hello when we see each other at the farmer’s market. He was a bit too devoted to his restored 1962 Lotus for my comfort. I sensed I would always be number two. Seeing who he’s with tonight, I imagine I wasn’t quite pretty enough for his taste. My, she has a long neck.

The Russian couple behind me? That’s Eva and Viktor. They were my neighbours across the back fence. I allowed him to prune the branches of the apple tree that extended into their yard after he complained about leaves blowing into their pool. To keep the peace, you know. They gave me a decent bottle of port one Christmas. In the summer, if they left their windows open, I could hear her practicing the cello. She’s not bad. They have a Siamese cat named Baudelaire who isn’t allowed outside.

Same row, but to my left, there’s a woman in her mid-thirties with her thick, unruly black hair pulled back with a red velvet ribbon. In another life, we were friends, having met in a pottery class. Every time she has me over, she serves something cinnamon. The last time I was with her we sat at her Formica and chrome kitchen table. There was a juice glass in the middle of the table serving as vase for a sprig of rosemary and cutting from the tea rose bush in her garden. I admired the arrangement so much that she let me take it home.  I rode home on the subway clutching my fragrant little still life, enjoying the stares this attracted from strangers.

=============

The movie was flawless. Oh, Patricia Clarkson just sizzles. Did you see her and Peter Dinklage in The Station Agent? I had to see that twice.

There were not many people on the subway platform at nine on a Monday night. A small Chinese woman in a rose-coloured knit beret approached a tall, portly young man in a black leather coat to ask him something, but her limited English only allowed for pointing at the piece of paper in her hand.

It was clear from her pantomime that she wanted to know if she was on the right platform. He told her she was in the right place, which she didn’t understand. “Stay here,” he said, pointing to the spot where she should stay, and walked on down the corridor.

When I smiled in her direction, she presented the same piece of paper to me, pointed to the words “Islington Station” and asked me something in her own language, again pantomiming and pointing to the track and down the tunnel from which the next train would emerge.

“Yes, stay with me,” I said, pointing to her and then to me and nodding a lot. “Three minutes,” I added, pointing to my watch and holding up three fingers.

“Ah, ah, ah,” she said, smiling. She sat down to wait.

When the train came, again she asked me something in her language and pointed to her paper and then to the train.

“Yes, come on, I’ll show you on the map,” I said, motioning for her to go through the doors.

She started to take a seat. I pointed to the route map above the opposite door. She saw what I was doing. Standing on tip toes, I managed to touch the word “Islington” at the far west end of the green line.

“Ah, ah, ah,” she said, nodding, then asked me another question in what was probably Mandarin. Assuming she had asked where we were or how many stops that was, I pointed to Bathurst Station. She then counted–in her strange tongue–all the stations between where we were and her stop.  I counted them, too.

“Twelve,” I said.  She repeated the number in her language. I held up ten fingers then two. She nodded and smiled, and sat back down facing the map.

I took a seat not too far away and watched her as she studied the map above the door. After we passed Christie, she looked over at me and I held up ten fingers then one. She smiled.

After we passed Ossington, I held up ten fingers. She smiled again.

When I got off at Dufferin, I said good-bye and “nine more,” holding up nine fingers.

“Sank you!” she said, smiling.

“You’re welcome,” I said, smiling back.

I want to do that for the rest of my life.

Grace in Small Things – 202

• A brown-skinned, large man dressed as Santa playing the oboe for spare change in an underground passage.
• The exotic birds that have been sighted in Ontario recently due to strange weather patterns…maybe not so good for the sulphur-bellied flycatcher and phainopepla, but exciting for local birders.
• The black squirrel I can spy on from the bedroom window. She likes basking in the sun belly-down on the black vinyl cover that is draped over the neighbour’s barbeque.
• Being in a gathering–like Quaker Meeting yesterday–where I’m offered soup and need not ask if there’s meat in it. There won’t be.
• That The Swell Season has a new CD out.

Persimmons and Pillows and GiST 201

The Friends Meeting House is so welcoming. As you walk up the path, a tame black squirrel stands on hind legs and sniffs the air as if to say, “Whadja bring me?” The enormous bay window, the sill brimming with jade plants, mother-in-law tongues, aloes, and bougainvilleas, seems to barely separate the office from the outdoors.

A middle-aged fellow is dismounting his bicycle and unstrapping his helmet as I let myself in.

I hang up my jacket and take a squirt of sanitizing gel, return the clerk’s hands-together bow that has replaced handshakes this flu season, and enter the meeting room where the chairs are arranged in concentric circles. I sit and settle down, gazing about the room at those already sitting in silence. There’s a grey-haired woman with peace sign earrings. She is silent. There’s a lanky young red-haired man in green. He is silent, too.

It occurs to me now how much this feeds me…to be in the company of smart, socially conscious people who gather for an hour to share silence.

More people arrive, entering the silent circle with reverence, much the way I approach a labyrinth.

One slight woman whose turquoise turtleneck sweater nearly swallows her enters the room gingerly, her hands still lightly pressed together. She looks like a praying mantis walking on lily pads.

About 20 minutes into the hour of quiet waiting, the first spoken ministry is delivered by a man one row ahead and five chairs to my right. He stands and says that this morning he was at the mental health facility where it was his turn to lead a worship service. He told us of a woman who paced nervously and asked him with some urgency if he could make her delusions go away. Would he pray for her, she asked. Would they ever go away, she asked. Why would God let her suffer this way, she asked.

His talk that morning had been from Matthew 7:7.

“We are all called,” he said. Not to say that we will have the answers, but we are each called to answer the door to the other, to acknowledge the other person’s humanity.

After Meeting, I made my way back to the subway station and to the St. Lawrence Market area for a movie at the Rainbow. I had to step over little folding chairs that lined the parade route. When I got out, the parade was about to end. I’ll have to explore the Market another day, since crossing the street to get there would have entailed sneaking between the bagpipers, horses, and a giant float shaped like a teddy bear. So it was back to the subway for me.  Fortunately, I move faster than 10,000 families with folding chairs, strollers and kids in tow.

• after Meeting for Worship, in the gathering room where I ate a bowl of soup: the way the sunlight played off the red and gold brocade pillows on the moss-green velvet chesterfield
• Inside the lobby of the Rainbow is a community piano. Anyone who knows how to play is welcome to sit down and play it.
• Staying all through the credits at the end of the movie as dozens of 60s album covers were flashed on the screen while I said to myself, “I had that one…and THAT one…hey, my brother had that one….
• When I got home, Y was boiling chestnuts and H was cutting up the persimmons they’d gotten in China Town today. They shared both with the rest of us.
• Oh, autumn!

Grace in Small Things – 200

• Today I learned how to make wee 8-page books out of one sheet of paper. (Yes, Elspeth, just like the one you gave me!) .
• Tom was nice enough to tutor me in cryptic crossword solving strategies.
• One of my classmates churned out four little story books and I was a character in one of them. In the story, each of the four of us table-mates had a special power. My super power was code breaking!
• Ginger chews! Thank you, Patti and Violet, for talking about them so much that I finally had to taste them.
• It’s the weekend! Since I spent all day today in a workshop, I might be able to justify sneaking out to a movie tomorrow. I’m thinking about Pirate Radio OR Cairo Time OR Inside Hana’s Suitcase OR Amreeka. Choices, choices. Want to guess which one I’ll pick? Of course, it will partly depend on the ticket prices. I have to call tomorrow and make sure there’s a cheaper matinée option.

Grace in Small Things – 198, 199

• All the beautiful stories we read today published by St. Christopher’s House and written by students of the literacy classes. We read a story by a woman who came to Canada from Somalia when she was in her 60s and had never held a pencil. She wanted to learn English so she could have a little chat with a neighbour, have a friend.
• The leader of our literacy workshop took us through an activity that might be used in a literacy class. Each table picked out a picture post card or museum-quality note card that appealed to us. We were given 1″ by 3″ pieces of paper and magic markers, and were told to come up with 15 words that the painting or picture inspired. Then she told us to arrange our words into a poem. We put our poems on the blackboard with tape. It was amazing to watch five poems materialize before our eyes.
• Sharing Gummi Bears.
• All the nice emails I’ve gotten from Waterloo friends and former coworkers expressing their condolences.
• Cryptic crossword day!
• Being invited to come along to a charming little microbrewery after class to celebrate the last day of the core course. (There’s still a workshop tomorrow, one more night module, a practicum and assignments to turn in, but the core course is done.)
• Sharing my sweet potato fries with the table.
• Having a nice talk with M in the kitchen once I made it home. And he gave me one of his mango Popsicles.
• Turning in #2 of six final assignments this morning. Only four more to go!

Grace in Small Things – 197

• A beautiful day…a bit chilly but sunny.
• L’s aunt’s banana bread, which L shared with the whole class.
• Getting out of bed early and beating the bathroom rush.
• Having enough money to buy more almonds when the “on sale” stash ran out today.
• The heart my table-mate drew for me and coloured in with red pencil. I told her about my GiST lists and that her heart was going on it tonight.

Impermanence (Anicca)

A friend sent me these words, which he’d found somewhere on the web:

“The Buddha implored us not just to talk about impermanence, but to use it as an instrument to help us penetrate deeply into reality and obtain liberating insight. It is true to say there is suffering because things are impermanent. And the Buddha encouraged us to look again. Impermanence is what makes life possible.

If I suffer, it is not because things are impermanent. It is because I believe things are permanent. When a flower dies, I don’t suffer much, because I understand flowers are impermanent. But I cannot accept the impermanence of someone close, and I suffer deeply when s/he passes away.

Aware of impermanence, I become positive, loving and wise: Impermanence is the instrument of our liberation.”

The teaching reverberates in me. What is happening in my life these days (two deaths, a job loss, an injury) are not just events to be tolerated with equanimity. They can be used to bring into focus the reality of impermanence. The awareness of impermanence can be used as an instrument, a way to penetrate deeply into reality.

Holy.

If I just try to understand these words with my beta mind, I can’t. The ego-mind is designed to protect us from the reality and keep us shrouded in a dream-like state of denial.

But if I stop thinking about it…

Grace in Small Things – 196

I alluded yesterday to yet another life-rocking event, but it wasn’t my news to break, so I waited. Today Sylvain has blogged about it, so you can hear it directly from him.

As with all things in life, you can choose to be resentful and bitter. You can choose to be afraid and worried. Going through any and all emotions for a period is natural, to be expected. And I am not one to tell anyone else what to feel. What do I know…I have never been laid off or fired.

I can only tell you what it feels like from my end.  What comes to my mind right off the bat are all blessings.

• He will qualify for Employment Insurance.
• He will get a severance package of some sort.
• We knew this could happen, but still we chose for me to come to Toronto for this certification.
• The timing could have been worse. Had this happened four months ago, I would NOT have made the decision to get my TESL Ontario certification and would still be trapped in an endless cycle of meaningless administrative jobs rather than empowered to pursue a dream.
• His last day is still over two months away, giving me time to finish up this course (Nov. 27), get back to town and start doing some kind of work, even if it’s just temping.

We have lots of options, including my moving back in with him if I get a good job right away and he needs help with his bills.

Grace in Small Things – 195

• Getting so deep in discussion with a classmate after class that we continued the talk in a nearby coffee shop.
• How mindfulness training gives me equanimity to face life’s ups and downs. Not always, mind you, but always more than I ever had before I started heeding the teachings of Ani Pema and her teachers.
• The fact that even though we didn’t end up being compatible for the long haul, P and I did have some really good times early in our marriage. I know both our lives were richer for our having loved one another.
• Weather so fine today that I wore a short-sleeved dress.
• Getting even more life-changing news today, yet feeling calm and unruffled by it. That Rashi quote keeps coming back to me: “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.”

Grace in Small Things – 194

• Olivia’s offer to help me with my statistics problem. It’s so nice to have friends like you all.
• Homestay host’s expression of contrition today about my fall. I did a lot of stretching all day and am on the mend.
• The weather today! It was so lovely that I sat in the garden to read a few chapters in my language testing text book.
• Being visited by the street’s friendly cat, a beautiful long-haired black cat who rolled on her back and enjoyed being stroked everywhere: head, back and even belly!
• The mating dance of the spatuletail hummingbird. Wow.

Some Tips for Doing Cryptic Crosswords

A woman named Theresa gives you an explanation of every type of cryptic crossword clue on her site. I have forgotten how to break down all but the anagrams and hidden words, so I’ll just show you how to do those. This will help you solve most of the puzzle.

For my example, I’m using the Toronto Star, Friday edition, puzzle # 1390 by Caroline Andrews.

The first thing to note is that your definition clue is at the very beginning or very end of the whole clue. The rest is the clue to how the word is spelled or how it sounds. So that’s what I do first, I try to figure out which end of the clue is the definition clue. I’ll try the first word or phrase and then the final word or phrase. Sometimes you don’t even have to mess with the rest of the clue. Sometimes you can just look at the length of the word, any other letters you already have, and the definition part of the clue.

One really good clue was 4 across: Put together awkward elm bases. (8)

The first thing I do when I see a word like awkward, crazy, mixed, etc. is assume we have an anagram. Then I look for which word or words are 8 letters long. That is the string I have to rearrange. Elm bases is eight letters long. So we can now break this clue into its two parts: Put together / awkward elm bases. We are looking for a word meaning “put together,” and we can find it if we rearrange the letters of “elm bases.”

I was once taught a trick that helps you see words hidden in jumbles. Write the letters in a circle! So I jotted down e-l-m-b-a-s-e-s in a circle, which made “assembles” pop out at me after a little staring.

Another good one from this puzzle was 6 Down: English earl in pastel gingham (5). When the clue says something is in something else, this often means that the word you are looking for is hidden right there before your eyes, no unscrambling necessary! I knew we were looking either for a word meaning English (unlikely, since there aren’t many synonyms for English), an English earl, or a word meaning gingham. Again, I don’t think there are any synonyms for ginham. So I looked inside “pastel ginham” to find the name of an English earl. And there it is! (Elgin)

9 Down was: “Fishiest Fish” is about vitamin T (8).  Well, I know there isn’t any vitamin T, so we are looking for a word meaning fishiest. At first I thought I should wrap the word “fish” around a T, but that didn’t give me enough letters. I did more of the puzzle and came back when I had _ H _ D _ E _ _. I knew we were looking for a superlative, so I went ahead and filled in the EST at the end.  Then I got it…SHADIEST. And only then did I realize that the clue “fish” was pointing to “shad.” Ha, ha. Sometimes I never do understand the whole clue, but I can work it out anyway.

17 Across was: Whole section of “golden tire” types (8). Can you find the division point between the definition clue and the spelling clue?  I tried it this way: Whole/section of golden tire types, meaning we’re looking for a word meaning WHOLE, and we will find it in a section of “golden tire types.”  Look through “golden tire types.” Can you find a word meaning “whole?”

That’s right: golden tire types

Well, this has just been too fun.  I still have not finished the entire puzzle from Friday. You can help me if you want!

3 down: A _ I _ S. The clue is: Sign that ocean rises around central marina (5).

16 down: A _ _.  Clue: Name last gondola left beside island (3).

21 across: I raid “Cat Dancing” and “Sea.” (8)  I only have _ _ _ _ _ T _ C.  I know the Atlantic is a sea, but don’t see how you get it from that clue.

How about 30 Across? T _ _ _ E _ _. The clue is: Returns large cheese cloth.

Sometimes “up,” “returns” and words like that can mean your word will be found in another word read backward.

Oh, well. Time for beddie.  If you like puzzles and have always wanted to try the cryptic, I hope you–like Karyn–will now give it a go.

Strange

The news I got? About another death close to me? It was my ex-husband. I don’t know more than that right now; I’m waiting for updates from mutual friends. A normal person would call. I should call my brother-in-law. But I don’t want to intrude on his grief right now.

Our divorce was amicable. We had remained friends and often helped each other out in the years after the divorce. When friends told me about a change in his life situation that had him depressed, I took him out for lunch, introducing him to Ye’s.  If a meal at Ye’s doesn’t pick you up out of a funk, well, you’re down deep.  The outing was appreciated.

But when I moved to Windsor, I cut ties, having given everyone–including him–a kiss and a hug.

I might blog more about him and our life together later.  I have him to thank for luring me to Canada, which I plan never to leave.

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There’s no arguing with gravity. My house slipper coasted across a puddle in the kitchen this morning and I fell flat on my left buttock. I’m really glad I didn’t hit my head on the way down, didn’t land on my tail bone, and apparently didn’t throw out my temperamental lower back. My homestay host better be very glad, too, that I didn’t kill myself, because the puddle was the result of her negligence… and frugality gone too far.

When I called her (she doesn’t sleep here these days) to tell her of the leaky ceiling, puddle, and my fall, she asked me to toss a towel down, then proceeded to gasp and sigh about students who point the shower head in the wrong direction when they bathe.  Her failure to acknowledge any culpability did not and does not sit well with me.

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I spent the day in a Computer Assisted Language Learning workshop.

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We got out at around 3:30, and the Bloor Cinema is just a block away from the school. Bright Star was starting at 4:00. I couldn’t resist. I needed some chill time after a day of instruction, certainly didn’t feel like tackling homework first thing when I got home, and didn’t relish the thought of hanging out in the dark, depressing old house for more hours than necessary.  Although the story was not very well chosen if my purpose was to cheer up, the 19th century English scenery was luscious, the actors beautiful, and the costumes eye candy for someone interested in sewing, texture, fabric. The movie was lovely and I’d recommend it, don’t mistake me. But the story of Keats’ life cannot really come out any way but sad.

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Grace in Small Things – 193

• It was sunny and mild today.
• The man who sat in front of me in the cinema turned around to say, “Tell me if I’m too tall.”
• I told him he was not in my way; he went to get popcorn and asked me if I would watch his stuff. Isn’t that cool? In a city this size? A stranger asked me to watch his stuff. I think that’s so cool.
• R’s striped tights.
• The way the deaths of two friends have made me even more aware of how fleeting and precious every day of life is. Not one single hour is guaranteed. Cherish each one.

Grace in Small Things – 192

• If all else fails, I can go to the library up the street and dig into a basic statistics book. (See last post re my linguistics survey.)
• Since about the second week into this course, I’ve noticed a pattern. Often there is a colour theme in our clothing so salient that you’d think we’d called each other the night before to coordinate.  I actually jot down that day’s colour at the top of my notebook page. Today someone else finally said something about it, making me feel less crazy. Today was purple day. I’ve found myself wondering if this means some of us are on the same wavelength. You know what? Instead of writing down the day’s colour, I should have been writing down the names of the students who coordinate to see if its the same people every time. Maybe it’s a sign of the degree of our bonding.
• I almost completed the entire cryptic crossword in today’s paper. I’ll save it as material for an upcoming post on how to do cryptic crosswords.
• It’s the weekend. I have a workshop all day tomorrow, but at least I have Sunday off.
• I found out today that someone else who was once very close to me died today. The Grace part isn’t that he died, of course, but that I found out immediately rather than months later through the grapevine. There is still time to order flowers or make a donation in his name, send his family a card.

Need Help with Statistics

Rats! I hate it when I am not totally self-sufficient. I am really struggling with running my survey results through various tools to find out if there is a statistically significant correlation between the answers and certain factors, such as age in one case, education in another breakdown, etc.

I found the cute little tools in Excel, like ANOVA for single factor. Or there are free calculators online that will do the Pearson product-moment formula on your data for you. And I remember enough of my university stats class to know what the p-value is, how to state a null hypothesis and that.

But no matter how much I read, I can’t seem to wrap my head around how to set up the data so the calculator is reading it in a way that renders an accurate analysis. So if any kind soul reads this, knows his/her statistics, and is willing to give me ten or fifteen minutes of his/her time, I would greatly appreciate it.  Or, if you prefer: If anyone is willing to give of their time, I would still be so grateful.