Calgary Flood

As I sit here dry and warm, the rain drums on the skylight in the ceiling of my study. Normally this is a soothing sound. Today it serves to remind me of the 100,000 Calgarians who have been evacuated from their homes because the Bow and the Elbow rivers are in full flood. There are helicopter shots on the TV networks and Facebook and Twitter are full of photos of devastation. Many people have asked how they can help and Mayor Nenshi has requested that we simply stay home and leave the streets which are not flooded to emergency vehicles. Tempting as it is to go out and do something or just to look, we are staying put.

We are lucky. Our foundation was patched last year in the course of our basement renovation and the drainage from next to the house was improved. We live on a hill, not the highest in the city, but quite far up from the river. So far, we are okay.

We talked to my father-in-law this morning and he said there has been nothing like this in his lifetime. There certainly has been nothing like it in mine. It is a strange surreal experience to see video images of the pathways where I trained for so many races now completely under water. Friends who just moved to Bowness in the last week or so have had to evacuate their new home which is now flooded, and, although the Bow has supposedly crested, it continues to rain. One Facebook post announced that the water had reached row 14 in the Saddle Dome in Stampede Park.

The route my walking buddy and I take on Mondays includes walking over the top of the Glenmore dam on the Elbow River. Water is now coming over the top of the dam and there is a huge lake behind the dam. I do not know this city in which I was born and raised.

All this water reminds me that, although we can do marvellous things with our technology and our engineering, we are no match for the sheer power of the natural world. It's easy to forget that. I am shocked by the devastation but also humbled by the realization that people in all parts of the world experience this sort of thing regularly. And so, as I listen to the rain I will stay inside and be grateful to those who are working for the good of the city, for those who have done without sleep for so many hours so they can pluck people from their homes, for the employees who pump water from the basement of the water treatment plant so our drinking water is not compromised. We human beings can be incredibly good to each other and one of the results of a situation like this is that it brings out that good.

The Right Way is the Way that Works

One of the first times I attended a Freefall workshop was right after a day of cycling in the mountains. Richard was going to drop me off at the workshop and he was giving a ride home to another cyclist. The other cyclist seemed a bit concerned that I was willingly walking into some kind of cult. Then I didn't know what to expect. Now I do but that doesn't seem to help me explain what goes on in a way that someone not involved in the workshop will understand.

I don't think I'm often at a loss for words but when people ask me questions about the workshop and I try to answer them I know that what is in their minds isn't even close to what I experience when bunch of writers get together to focus solely on the process of writing and listening to each other's work. A common question is, “What do you write about?” Seems like a straightforward question but it's hard to answer. The general answer is, “anything that comes up.” Sometimes I have an inkling of what I'm going to write about when I go to bed. (We always write in the morning.) Sometimes I'm thinking about a dream I had when I sit down at my computer. Sometimes I have no clue what I'm going to write about. When that happens I usually fall back onto my training as a poet and begin by observing and trying to describe my surroundings. Often I find myself taken back in time to something in my family of origin. In the most recent workshop I found myself engaging in a rant at an author whose work made me feel inferior and stupid. Sometimes I sit down thinking about one thing and in a few moments the writing takes off in an entirely different direction.

It's not process whereby I sit down to write a poem or a piece of memoir or a short story although all of those things have come out of it. I admit that, at first, I mistrusted this way of writing having been in many writing courses of one sort or another. There I saw people who sometimes had many pages of writing that seemed to have no form. They were desperately looking for someone to help them make all these words into something, anything, and in those classes the usual suggestions for tweaking abounded. “This image really works. You could take out that part, extend this metaphor. ” Often the owner of the writing would go away looking puzzled. It's not easy to bring together the rush of creative imagination and the form and structure of a particular genre.

Having now experienced the process of Freefall writing as Barbara Turner-Vesselago teaches it and more conventional process taught by many other gifted instructors, I am incredibly grateful for both types of experiences. Freefall has helped me to, “get out of [my] own way,” as Barbara often says. I am also grateful for the years in which my more critical self was developing. All writing experiences give me more tools for my toolbox and the knowledge to pick and choose the best tool for the best job. After I have written a piece I can put it away for a while and then go back to it and identify, to a certain extent, where I can compress the writing and where I need to find more accurate words. Sometimes I can do that better than at other times. In working with hand tools we call it, “workmanship of risk.” Just because I cut a perfect dovetail yesterday there is no guarantee that I will cut a perfect one tomorrow. Sometimes the writing flows effortlessly and has tremendous energy to draw me in. Other times it is stagnant and flat and no matter how hard I search around for something that has more life to it, it remains flat. Perhaps the not-knowing is part of what draws me to woodwork and to writing. I could set up jigs on the machines in the shop to get the same results every time but I find that I quickly lose interest. I'd rather be trying something new even if it doesn't turn out very well in the end.

The only way I will run out of projects to do in the shop is to run out of things I can think of. The only way I can run out of things to write about is to stop thinking, period. If I can think about it I can write about it. Much of what I write will not move beyond the computer screen just as many of the things I make from wood will remain with me because they are too flawed to give to anyone else.

Barbara has written a book which helped me place Freefall in the context of what I already knew about writing. It's a good read, an interesting read if you want to know more about writing.

Writing Without a Parachute

If you're interested in seeing an example of where I am in my work, in part, because of Freefall you can find my first attempt at writing for Kindle Dreaming over Water

Happy writing and happy reading to all of you regardless of which side of the text you currently inhabit.