Time out on Manitoulin Island

"Give me nights perfectly quiet, and I looking up at the stars." Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)

There is very little to cheer about this year. I still take time, however, to try to remember what I love about summer, and to do the things that make me happy.

Here, in no particular order, are some of those things:

1. Reading. I've been reading and re-reading Whitman, Melville, Shakespeare, Virgil, alternating each with modern authors. Reading is my greatest love and in this horrible time of pandemic, I've revisited old favourites and discovered new ones: I finally read Middlemarch! 

Here are Goodreads reviews and books I'm reading.

2. Playing guitar. My second great love is to create music. I've played guitar since I was eleven, and I've put out three albums with my editor, Allister Thompson, over the years. 

You can listen on YouTube here: Philippa's Guitar Music. Spotify and other links at right.

3. Manitoulin Island... this place is quiet, peaceful, and I try to visit every year or two. COVID kept us away last year, but this year we managed to visit. We've been visiting for 20 years now, the same cottage, the same fields, the same wildflowers. I sit on the porch and read, or write, or play guitar. Then, walk the lane to the farmhouse with Molly the farm dog. Or go for a swim. Or look at the night sky ...

4. Writing. I've been writing a lot during the pandemic. I can't promise that what I've written has been terribly good, but I have had a weird urgency to keep writing. Poetry, short stories, a novella, two middle grade novels (need polishing before I can submit them anywhere). AND, big news, I finished the sequel to OCULUM. 

It's OCULUM ECHO, and I've been working hard at it, although honestly it's been weird writing a book about a post-apocalyptic world with a ruined environment and a plague stalking everyone. I wrote the first book in 2016 and DCB published it in 2018 ... it's a little creepy to be so prescient and accurate, but writers are futurists, observers, smart liars. In fact, writing OCULUM ECHO has been cathartic too, since I get to imagine my characters healing and starting a new world, by being brave, and kind.

Here's more about OCULUM ECHO.

I've been so lucky to be able to write, and escape into my head. I hope that you have a creative outlet too, dance, music, art, soap bubbles, whatever it is, embrace it. Art will carry us through.

5. The Olympics, Tokyo 2020! I know, I know, it seems frivolous, to watch young athletes athleting their hearts out right now during a pandemic, but that's exactly why we SHOULD watch it. Human endeavour, challenge, striving, small acts of humanity, coming together as a global community to compete in play, joyous in winning or gracious in defeat. It's what makes us human, I think, and we can't forget to watch, to remember, to celebrate. 

I love that the IOC didn't change the name of the competition year, it's still Tokyo 2020 even though the events are happening in 2021. I think it's a small act of defiance in the face of COVID; the pandemic has taken so much from us all in the past year, but still we celebrate and compete as though it hasn't, and strive and live, read and write, play music and walk the country lanes, despite it. 

Or look at the wildflowers on Manitoulin Island, right after it rains ... 

All posts on this blog about the Pandemic