10
For when you can't sleep
Inspired by Theresa Kishkan's xmas blog post
https://theresakishkan.com/2024/12/25/wrapping-the-year-in-silver-tissue-and-raffia-ribbon/
Awake since shortly after 3 am with a lot of thoughts
Wrote a bit more of my winter epic after someone on Substack quoted Wallace Stephens’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: an afternoon of evenings and the way he described icicles. The hostility. Yeah.
Grudgingly admitting I'm getting my winter groove back and starting to enjoy it.
I'm famished. Last night's turkey dinner was stellar. It's in the poem.
Read Bruce Deachman's article on Ottawa’s homeless in the Ottawa Citizen. On Rideau,.so many people in tents or on doorsteps, sleeping bags, bad coughs. It's unbearable.
Thinking about a dear friend’s forthcoming visit. Getting excited. Fretting too much already about logistics. Trying to silence that nonsense.
A local sex shop has a smutty storytelling event but everyone seems to wear risqué clothing. I just want to read my erotic stuff in comfy oversized cardigans. I like being a kinky old crone. But truly there is no place for kinky old crone.
My aching legs are keeping me awake. This is new. It began a week or so ago. Is it our long walks, my fitness routine, age?
I want to ignore emails today and go to Happy Goat on Elgin or in the Glebe for coffee and people watching.
I love that we were both awake at the same time. Your 3 o’clock, is my 4 o’clock.
I hear you on the stress of logistics. And I want to reassure your gentle heart, that my visit will be a whirlwind, but one I do not want to overwhelm you. And that no matter what happens, I’m happy to know that I can trust you to know what feels right. That no matter what happens, your friendship feels magical to me, and I am just grateful for that.
Also that I am excited to see you, to be in my heart-hole for a bit, and that planning events…it’s my thing 💖 and that I know it will be what it’s meant to be.
(Thank you so very much for sharing your wisdoms, and for encouraging me be excited about my strange wild dreams of connecting with people over shared whimsies)
I wish I could help build a space for us cardigan wearing kinky crones! There is a such an important place in the creative ecosystem for people who’ve lived longer lives that we often ignore.
My friend Dixie with her Bawdy storytelling really makes a space for all sorts of people’s stories. And my friend Georgie, whom I met when she was 94, used to carry a tiny handwritten booklet on stage to comedy shows that read ‘Sex Secrets by Grandma’….and I loved her pithy advice.
Thank you for being you. I’m so grateful that you are in the world. And honoured to call you friend.