Eramosa · River · Journal

Paula says I have an affinity for stone. We have been working a few days at a time on the patio and pond. She doesn't enjoy making precise measurements so much of the actual stonework has fallen to me. In this formal design the stones have to be perfectly aligned and neatly trimmed along the edges. Paula is a farm girl, so meanwhile she has been happy to slog away in The Pit, that rectangular hole we're creating for a pond with koi. Read more about my relationship with stone in my latest post in The Yarn.

And here is the odd hydraulic device, called a guillotine, I use for cutting stones to fit around the edge of the patio. This is a bit old-fashioned, but Paula is averse to saws, and it's pleasant to avoid the dust and noise.

Apart from helping Paula, the contract with Les has not commenced as anticipated, work has been scarce, and anxiety has frequently been over the top. As usual these times cause me to recoil into the privacy of computer games at the end of the day, so I have not much been present here.

At least I have been busy. It is exciting to find The Yarn continuing to unfold from some fertile inward grotto, and see the quality of the stories influenced by the colourful process of knitting. Danny and I took a blissful retreat to Lake Fletcher last weekend, although this time I was unable to stop worrying. Now dakoopst is here for a few days' visit, which is providing a welcome distraction.

Last night we went to a DJ dance party at Ed Video, a local media arts establishment that has been around at least since the 80s, but which I have somehow never visited before. Several OOTS folks were there, including Brandon, the DJ. My friend Jen and her friend did an invigorating yoga dance routine that the whole audience participated in. Then someone I didn't know, a choreographer, presented an idea she is working on. It reminded me again what interesting opportunities and connections are available in this city.

I could stand to get out more. Hopefully moving closer to downtown on August 1 will facilitate that. I have barely started to pack.

This photo appears as sidebar to a recent post in The Yarn about this wildflower. I thought the blue-eyed grass in my rock garden had finished flowering, but today is a new sunny day, and a fresh ring of flowers opened this morning, so I wasted no time in recording it. The plant has bloomed steadily since I brought it from a garden centre a month ago, and has been more tolerant of the sunny, dry weather than other transplants. The flower of this 'Devon Skies' cultivar is the size of my thumbnail, slightly larger and showier than native S. montanum I find in wild meadows.

I am considering writing Pilgrim's Cross from the POV of a supernatural character, a famous one at that. How can an atheist do this credibly?

I have been an atheist, and also an evangelical Christian. Through my childhood I considered myself a Christian without even knowing what it meant. And for a while after I stopped calling myself a Christian because of the terrible things done in Jesus name, I continued to believe in him but considered the Bible antiquated nonsense. So I have experienced many flavours of Christianity.

I could point out that this is fiction and dismiss the question, but that would not satisfy anyone, certainly not me. Fiction should be true or it will fail.

Whenever someone sets out to tell a story, they create another world. The more sincerely they believe in the world, the more they can enrich it with detail, the more they can persuade readers to let down their guard and take a voyage.

I have believed in this character in different ways over the course of my life. These days I believe in metaphor. It offers a creative way of looking at truth.

When you believe in something deeply enough, it takes over your life. This afternoon, working at the public library with my study buddy Michele, I tasted that sweet writing obsession for the first time in I don't know how long. Years?

I took a new attitude toward my narrator and set down two thoughtful paragraphs, fondling the words. It was wonderful. I can't wait to return to that space.

Paula just called to ask whether I am available to work for her for a few days. She is a good friend of good friends, a pleasant denizen of my wider circle with whom I share mutual admiration, but we are both strong introverts so affection has never drawn us closer. Actually she is one of my favourite people. Paula is the archetypical "soft butch", as I remember quirkstreet calling it. She carries an aura of patience and calm assurance. People who know her well respect her.

She is a landscape architect who grew tired of working in a firm and left her job to start her own business doing the kind of landscaping that feels worthwhile. When she mentioned it six months ago, I remember saying that if she ever needed help, I would love to work for her.

So I suppose this is one of her first jobs, and she needs help loading dirt and gravel. I seem to have earned a reputation for willingness to do heavy stuff. That's fine with me (maybe I am the other side of soft butch). It will take three or four days. Tomorrow I need to buy a pair of decent work boots.

There is so much good stuff coming out of the blue this week, I think I'll go cry now.

An opportunity has arisen for me to move into another affordable, two-bedroom apartment closer to downtown Guelph. Anyone who has followed this blog for the past six years will know what a horror story this place has been. Things have been more peaceful lately, but maintenance doesn't happen unless I write angry letters, which isn't my style. I decided long time ago, I need to move, but I didn't think anything else this cheap was available. Well, I was wrong. Now isn't the best time, but the new place is exactly what I'm looking for. I don't expect a door like this to open again. Read more about this on The Yarn. The building is within sight of where this icon photo was taken, Guelph Farmers' Market.

This evening en route to the bus station we allowed an extra few minutes to stop and admire the black locusts, which are just coming into bloom around Queen Street hill. We want to monitor the development of seed pods for a dye source, but the flowers themselves are lovely and shed a sweet, intense perfume. On still, mild evenings, the aroma pools downhill, along Elizabeth Street, but tonight was cool and breezy, so we had to get close and intimate with the trees. Most of the branches in the park at the top of the hill are too high to reach, but one tree by the Red Chevron Club has lower limbs laden with blooms. We'll take a step ladder there later this summer.

I feel a loss when a season goes by and I miss an exquisite flower or natural aroma.

For the future, black locusts bloom at the end of lilac season. Probably also about this time, the linden flowers are opening. Theirs is another favourite fragrance, but the closest trees I know are in Toronto.

I mentioned Ranger Rick magazine on The Yarn a few days ago, and this morning Senior Editor Libby Schleichert commented there. Cool!

After 18 months the Writers' Circle has suddenly taken on a life. For a year it was just me and Sarah quietly working away on our stuff. Then four weeks ago Nicole showed up and added some spark to the mix. Last week we were joined by Marion, who recently moved to Guelph. Last night I managed to recruit two more acquaintances through Out On The Shelf, Natalie and Jen. We yacked, wrote and critiqued, and everyone seems keen to continue.

The blanket thing is consuming me. By the time I finish knitting one square I am eager to move onto the next, but first I must write the story to go with it and wait until daylight allows me to photograph the square so it can be posted in the blog. A backlog of squares could easily accumulate, but I will not allow that. The process of picking yarn, thinking about what the colours and textures mean, and using the visual exercise to meditate on the prose is turning out to be fertile for me. While knitting I think about the story, and write it once the square is finished.

I'm a very visual person, and sometimes my writer's block takes the form of frustration about spending so much time in the etched black-and-white world of words. With this project the visual and work-with-my-hands aspects keep me enthused, and the words have time to percolate without getting stuck. The last post, Ged's shadow, was an important story about a difficult subject. It required much thought and rewriting, which I did in three sessions over 24 hours. Even this offered a welcome change of pace, and the incentive of moving onto another square kept me engaged until the story was right.

As for the knitting, this is the first time I've made it up as I go along. No pattern.

I love this process. My mind is constantly intrigued: "What next?" Curiosity is what I need. It's a little like doing photography and then writing about the images, but there are even more layers.

This morning a post at Lavender Knits about Long Beach, Vancouver Island, reminded me of my visit there in 1987. It inspired me to create a square about Pacific Rim National Park. This afternoon I discovered with surprise that some photos from that trip were among the very few that were not destroyed in the first of two floods that hit my apartment around the time Mom died last year.

I already had an idea about what story to tell, but those photos suggested how to represent it visually. This evening for the first time I literally completed a square in one sitting, including developing a concept, choosing yarns and knitting it. It took about two hours. I had planned to take the work to knit night at Studio 490, but the meeting was cancelled. Instead I stayed home and listened to a Sibelius symphony and four tone poems while knitting. The story and photo I'll do tomorrow.

This is ecstatic task at its best. It has been a long, long time since I've felt so focused.

Twelve squares done, 226 to go. In order to complete the blanket in a year, I would need to make four or five squares a week.

Try this challenge from Digital Photography School: "Your challenge is to grab your nearest camera (could be the one on your phone) and to take up to 10 shots with it within 10 meters of where you are right now."

If you do it, please post a link in my comment section, too.

See my gallery of six photos on Flickr.

Something very strange happened yesterday.

I had been on LJ for six years and 10 days and during that time made hardly any local contacts. A few months after joining I virtually bumped into machineplay and her partner themage, who I had met in person a few years earlier. Otherwise I know of only two other Guelph LJers who read The Eramosa River Journal.

Compare this to Facebook, where 54 out of 141 friends are people I knew previously in Guelph before connecting online.

But this post is not about FB, it's about LJ, specifically those "other two" Guelph LJ peeps. I had never met either of them.

Yesterday afternoon djjo and I wandered into All Strung Out, the new yarn store downtown. "Knit and Chat" was going on. One of the women at the table said, "Aren't you vaneramos from LiveJournal?" She was liadra.

Yesterday evening djjo and I attended Guelph Spoken Word at its exciting new venue, The Guelph Guggenheim studio and gallery. I participated in a poetry slam, and what a slam it was: truly thrilling and challenging entertainment. During a break, we found ourselves alone in a side room with someone I had never met before. He said to me, "Aren't you vaneramos from LiveJournal?" He was eniastoa.

It took me six years to meet in person a new friend in Guelph through LiveJournal, then it happened twice in one day, independently. It is just too strange not to mean something, but I don't know what.

My friend John Stabler died of complications from cancer early this morning. His sister was with him, and it was relatively painless. He worked occasionally with me and Les building the big organ at St. James Anglican Church in Dundas, but was too sick to attend the inaugural recital last spring.

I'm off work early this afternoon, and I finished the previous square for The Yarn last night, so I'll go to the green armchair now and knit a story about John. I expect to post it tomorrow.

djjo and I went for a walk around Bruce's Mill Conservation area Sunday morning after hangnaildhole's 40th birthday party. hangnaildhole and atldaddybear live on the edge of a sugarbush in a park. We heard a Northern Parula and saw blue butterflies. I want to live in a place like that.

The sky was achingly clear, the air cool and windy. It fomented the maples and cast dramatic light through the understory.

It strikes me that all the stories I've written so far for the story blanket have been sentimental, and the one I'm doing now is no exception. I need to start knitting the darker side of yarn.

Yesterday we went to High Park and walked the labyrinth based on one at Chartres. It is a course of meditation. It was amusing to see people get frustrated over the lack of choices, skip turns, hurry to the centre or give up, cheating themselves of an opportunity for reflection.

A sign encouraged us to enter with a question, so I did. It occurred to me that knitted yarn is also a labyrinth, a single path convoluting upon itself, moving toward a destination. The goal is meaningless apart from the journey.

I have launched a new project, a real and virtual story blanket. Last month I began knitting squares for an afghan, made with leftover bits of yarn from finished projects. Eventually it will incorporate about 270 squares, each with a story attached to it. I have started a new blog, The Yarn, to chronicle the project, one square and story at a time.

But wait. The stories will come from my life, and my friends are part of that. Do you have a story or yarn that should be part of the blanket? Read the most recent post to find out how to participate.

Today in Kensington Market I stopped at King's Café, a Chinese Buddhist restaurant I've previously raved about. It has been renovated and the menu expanded, but the prices are still very reasonable. The new menu also lists branches in various cities...

Guelph! What?

Online later, I identified this mysterious Guelph branch as the Zen Garden on Surrey Street. I know where I'm dining out next.

One of the three cheese stores in Kensington was selling Oka for a dollar-something per 100 g. I balked, considering another one of these stores was implicated in the rash of listeriosis cases last year. But what is a C addict to do?

I also revisited Wanda's Pie In The Sky bakery to see whether they had any of the gluten-free delectables they offered last time. Sure enough, there were three of these things called dulce de leche, a dollar-something each. I bought them out.

Maybe the internet would offer enlightenment on this item, too. A recipe perhaps?

No luck this time. Dulce de leche is identified far and wide as a caramelized, sweetened milk sauce. One recipe involves simmering unopened cans of sweetened condensed milk.

This bears no resemblance to Wanda's Pie In The Sky chewy cookies which contain nothing more obvious than coconut, possibly some other ground nut and an alternative natural sweetener. It's reminiscent of baklava filling, but not as heavy. And not a hint of caramel or dairy. Wanda probably uses the misnomer as a red herring to throw us off the trail of her valuable recipe. I am doomed to unsatisfied curiosity.

Kensington Market: earthy, colourful, a good place to hunt for bargains. A wide, slippery trail to the Pit of Gluttony.

Analekta has released the recent recording of Beethoven's Symphonies Number 7 and 8 performed by Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra conducted by Bruno Weil. Danny, Dad and I heard the live performance last spring, and I had eagerly awaited this CD. It is an exciting and refreshing take.

I had wondered what a Baroque orchestra could say about these monuments of early Romantic repertoire. The intense Seventh has always been my favourite Beethoven symphony, so I hoped to be impressed, and was. And like polishing antique silver, the orchestra recovered the Eighth's remarkable wit and charm, making me a new fan.

In live performance, I was swept away by the invigorating tempi. Weil casts aside the heavy Romanticism large modern orchestras have taught us to expect. New energy is evident even in the the 7th's funeral march. The 8th's Scherzando reveals the remarkable humour which is integral to Beethoven's music, but seldom properly expressed.

The freshness of the performance is even more obvious in the recording. The thing is, these were revolutionary works at the time of their composition. In a documentary DVD included with the CD, Weil says he wants Tafelmusik to present the music the way audiences would have first heard it, something vital and new.

He succeeds. The Baroque strings exude a rawness that cuts through custom. Clarity pervades. Near the end of the Seventh Symphony's first movement, that grand evocation of dance, there comes a quiet moment where the main theme is first addressed by the oboe, then passed gracefully to flute, then clarinet and finally bassoon. The interpretation is lucent, stunning. Normally the individual voices are drenched in orchestral sound, but here a row of pearls comes to light.

Vividness achieves orgasm in the Seventh Symphony finale, one of Beethoven's most tempestuous statements. Tafelmusik sets such a feverish pace, you expect them to collapse into chaos at every turn. Not for an instant do they lose precision.

To see Tafelmusik perform live is an unusual experience. The musicians frequently establish eye contact with one another, and not only the conductor, for cues. It's like watching a jam session. You can tell when someone has done something witty or inventive (which is often appropriate when an instrument receives a solo passage in Baroque music), because no one hesitates to smile or chuckle aloud. Their ecstatic interaction is obvious in the recording of this thrilling final movement.

You can listen to all the movements in streaming audio (and apparently even download that memorable funeral march) on the web page.

I'm spending a long weekend in Toronto, but wanted to see some spring ephemerals, so yesterday afternoon djjo and I drove to Mississauga to hike along Sawmill Creek. I was disappointed not to find any Marsh Marigolds, but there were plenty of Trilliums and other flowers such as these Claytonia virginica.

Like most people, I have perceived Mississauga as a wasteland of endless, soulless housing developments. It was a revelation to drive up Mississauga Road past stately old homes on vast, treed lots.

On Thursday afternoon I met Sylvie for a weekend of birding at Point Pelee, using Dad's place as a base.

Friday at noon we caught the MV Jiimaan ferry for Pelee Island (the photo shows Sylvie on deck nearing arrival). It was my first visit, though I grew up practically within sight of it. What a revelation! It had the lush, flat landscape of Lake Erie shoreline I know and love, but felt quiet and secluded as northern cottage country. It is "ten miles long, five miles wide," a friendly person on the ferry told us. And it is the southernmost place in Canada.

After exploring various parks and conservation areas, we found dinner at the Anchor & Wheel Inn. Prices were on the high side, but the food was outstanding. The menu offered a wide range of fish entrees along with a few pasta and chicken dishes. Sylvie had lightly breaded yellow perch, five generous double filllets, with a large dollop of garlic mashed potatoes. I had ten hefty blackened Cajun shrimp on a hill of rice and black beans. Room rates were relatively cheap, so I hope to return for an entire weekend sometime soon. On the way out we noticed a rainbow sticker in the window.

The next two mornings we rose at 5 a.m., grabbed quick breakfasts and spent the days chasing vivid songsters at Point Pelee National Park and Hillman Marsh, collapsing into tired heaps around 3 p.m. The weather was glorious, but I was mildly disappointed by the showing of migrants. I tallied 84 species. During a series of annual spring trips to Pelee during the 1990s I regularly saw close to 100. But an ornithologist explained that the birds arrive in waves, and good weather doesn't necessarily bring a crest, because during ideal conditions they're likely to carry on without stopping on the point. So my good luck in the past simply did not repeat itself this year.

Still, we saw many interesting birds. A Grasshopper Sparrow hopping among the Prickly-Pear Cacti outside the Visitor Centre was a life bird for me. Several others I had only seen once a long time ago—Willet, White-winged Scoter, Rusty Blackbird, Ruddy Duck—and several were life birds for Sylvie. What I missed most were the Cerulean Warbler, Hooded Warbler and several of their kin, live baubles I look forward to seeing once a year, which this time failed to appear.

New to the scene were Wild Turkeys. Reintroduced to Ontario a few years ago, they have spread far and wide. In the midst of breeding they strut along the roadside and walk in front of cars. Yesterday morning we encountered 10 in the short distance from the main gate to the Visitor Centre. They're ugly birds, but when the males spread their tails and fluff their bodies to double proportions they look grand. Sunrise angling across the road sets their brown plumage alight with fiery bronze iridescence, rendering them splendid, almost erotic. Then they gobble ridiculously and spoil the mood.

Perhaps the most stunning creature we found was this Snowberry Clearwing moth, Hemaris diffinis, on the ground at Stone Road Alvar, Pelee Island. Drizzle and a keen wind had just moved in. The torpid moth crawled onto my figure and let me carry it to the car for a photo (I have sworn not to take the new camera out in the rain without adequate protection). Sylvie had mistaken it for a bumblebee, but didn't mind holding it after I demonstrating its mothy harmlessness.

This was the first time in many months I've gotten away from everything, forswearing all worry, spending three days in nothing but pleasant activity with a friend. It was just the medicine I needed. I arrived home yesterday exhausted but happy.

Here is the new entrelac scarf I started knitting about 18 months ago and finished last week. The yarn is Noro Silk Garden #249. Once I mastered the technique, this piece was a pleasure to knit.

How can I write, with a new universe erupting beside my head? Maybe not a universe, just an unexpected Amaryllis.

Mom gave me the bulb for Christmas in 2007. All winter while she died, it erupted. After it bloomed I didn’t know what to do. Mom used to set her Amaryllis pots in a shady part of the garden for the summer and next winter they would bloom again faithfully, but I had no such place. I couldn’t throw it out (most inactions attributed to laziness are actually deeply-disguised emotions). I didn’t water it. The pot sat on the back of my toilet all last year, its strapping long leaves defying my passivity. When they finally withered, I stacked the pot on a pile of junk in the hall. There it hung precariously for months.

Several weeks ago, a bud appeared. Out of nothing comes this Big Bang of vascular, erotic tissue, life out of death. The only plants that flourish in my apartment are ones that like to be ignored. Those fat leaves had absorbed all the nutrient needed to recreate themselves. Photosynthesis is a marvelous phenomenon. If I feed the plant a little now and neglect it for another year, will it repeat the performance?

The flower is an image of the universe: nothing gives rise to infinity and then implodes again.

Actually that’s an obsolete image, because latest cosmological models suggest implosion is unlikely. On the other hand, multiple universes are probable. Somewhere out there (In here? Just behind my shoulder?) various realities pop into existence at the same time.

Or not the “same time.” Time is an illusion, at least the orderly procession as we perceive it. It bends around ideas. Somewhere it even ceases to exist, though such places mean nothing as far as daily life is concerned.

Wrong again, now that I think on it. Some mornings feel like black holes. Perhaps the stuff inside a singularity is particularly meaningful, but how can I know, if the mind can’t go there and no information can escape?

There I go again with more inaccuracies!. Some scientists theorize certain information might escape, but I can’t remember what. It must have seemed irrelevant when I read it, but who knows? I was probably wrong about that, too.

I’m bumbling along, trapped within the meaning of an Amaryllis. I can’t even remember the name of the cultivar, the star that exploded, or the identity of this universe in relation to others and their inconspicious bulbs. This is the reward of sloth: leave something alone for 10 months or 13 billion years and it will surprise you. If I were diligent or fastidious, the space within these walls would be far less interesting.

Speaking of mind warps, here is the first published photo from the new piece of technology.

More rough going these past two weeks. I should stop making predictions about my state of mind. If I could, I should entirely stop gazing at the precipice and pay attention to the ground where I stand at any moment, and make the most of it. It isn't easy to do.

I've received some good news recently. Generally that hasn't helped my mood. But today there are a few things to celebrate, and that will be the focus of this writing:

• This week I worked 41 hours on the organ at the big St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in downtown Toronto. It was my most solid week of work in months.
  
• During the week Les received news we've awaited for months: one of his proposals for a new church organ in Vancouver has been approved. He expects to have a contract by the end of the month. It should provide me with full-time work for at least a year.
  
• The instrument we built in 2007/2008 at St. James Dundas had an electric action, but this will be a tracker organ, with mostly mechanical action. It is a more traditional construction, which Les considers the superior and more durable option for smaller organs. Also Les plans to build the wooden pipes in our shop, and much of that work will fall to me (for St. James we used many vintage wooden pipes, and new metal ones must be contracted out to shops with appropriate facilities). So this will be a learning experience.
  
• I spent an excellent, pleasant weekend with Danny, including a field trip with OOTS friends Lori and Sarah M. to the Ontario Alpaca 2009 show in Orangeville.
  
• Since January Danny and I have been playing Starship Catan regularly on weekends. It is a complex, strategic two-person offshoot from the Catan games. I am awfully good at board games and difficult to beat, but along the way I've given him strategy tips and this week he started winning frequently. I have met my match. It is sometimes frustrating but mostly more enjoyable.
  
• The Waterloo-Wellington Rainbow Chorus plans to commission a new choral work by a prominent Canadian composer, and the favourite text under consideration is a short piece I submitted based on my poem Agape.
  
• This morning I finished knitting the entrelac scarf that was started at least 18 months ago. I loved the yarn so much that I wanted the scarf to be perfect, so at one point I started over, ripping out many hours of work. The finished scarf is entirely satisfying. It is the loveliest knitted thing I have made. I still have to block it, and will get Danny to take a photo next weekend.
  
• Speaking of photography, I've done hardly any photography this winter, due in part to exasperation with the Canon Powershot; some dust on the sensor was impossible to remove. For my birthday Dad bought my first DSLR camera. I spent several weeks shopping around, but this afternoon we drove to Downtown Camera in Toronto and purchased the new toy. It is a Canon Rebel XSi. I'm charging the battery tonight and can hardly wait to start using it.
  
• I have most of this week off. Financial concerns are mitigated by the prospect of steady work. I look forward to communing with the river, getting to know the new camera, and writing.

With free time this week, and finally back into a routine, I have been working with a passion on characterization for Pilgrim's Cross. Research has carried me into topics like fundamentalist churches, and the experiences of Native Canadian women.

I was pleased to discover Out On The Shelf has several books on the latter topic, including an erotic collection by Chrystos, one of the few First Nations lesbian poets whose works have been successfully published.

Some strange things have turned up. While looking over conservative Christian churches in Ontario, I came across Wikipedia's entry on Great Commission International, the mostly-American movement to which I belonged from 1983 to 1995.

Guelph's Grace Community Church, formerly University Bible Studies, was the only successful Canadian congregation.

The article details history of public criticism I was ever only vaguely aware of. One ex-member claims Great Commission fostered "learned helplessness" in members. That has been an issue for me, though I never heard the term until four years ago.

Wikipedia also mentions University Bible Studies was banned from University of Guelph campus in 1989. I remember that. In fact I was president of the club at that time, although I was just set up in that role to fulfill university club status requirements, and possessed no authority.

Even stranger, the reference link turned up an old Globe and Mail article. This referred to a close friend of mine since public school, who had previously had a born again experience, came to visit me in Guelph one weekend, loved the church and decided to move here.

The Guelph investigation... was prompted by complaints to the university from the family of a woman member of UBS.

Members of the family, not identified by the university or the students to protect their privacy, said, they believe their daughter, who is in her early 20s, was forced to marry a UBS member.

The family complained to university president Brian Segal that they lost virtually all contact with their daughter after she joined the Bible club two years ago while studying at the University of Windsor.

They said she underwent a dramatic personality change, rejected her family, then transferred to the University of Guelph. They thought she was continuing her undergraduate studies in Guelph, but discovered later that she was not enrolled as a student but was working as a UBS recruiter.

What an odd, irresponsible article, claiming to protect the innocent in order to obviate appropriate sourcing. No one coerced my friend to come to Guelph; she was a stubborn, devout young woman who desired escape from an interfering mother. Upon arrival she quickly found a job as a nanny, which she loved. The pastors preached strongly on the matter of honouring one's parents, even above church authority, and did not encourage my friend to cut off communication with her family; quite the opposite. The university and newspaper unwittingly served the family's agenda of denying responsibility, casting blame on the church and shame on their daughter.

UBS deserved to be evicted from campus. It had previously excommunicated several people, including a confessed lesbian, an engaged Asian student couple who admitted to having premarital sex, and at least one other person for unspecified reasons. These shunnings were consistent with the church's teachings, but were insupportable in the university community.

I severed ties with her along with everyone else when I left in 1996. She and her husband also moved away, and I hear their marriage ended badly, which is sad.

Now I understand why the church did not formally excommunicate me when I ceased an attitude of repentance about my gay identity. The movement had come under wide criticism: among other things, for shunning an estimated 500 people between 1976 and 1986. Great Commission has made some effort to respond to complaints and mend its ways; of this too, I was only vaguely aware (the public relations problem was never discussed publicly in the Guelph church). If I had wanted to remain friends with individuals, some would have encouraged it, but a few treated me badly. I knew there was no place for me in that church. I was in sad shape, even suicidal, and needed to make a clean break.

No wonder it is hard to get around to writing this book, with so much difficult personal history to be avoided. But now here I am, getting around to it.

My mind is like a cancer, metastasizing through realms of ideas and intrigue. If I scrutinize too closely the task of assembling all the threads of this novel, I become overwhelmed. Living in the present must prevail. I have no useful time frame to consider except this particular afternoon, this hour, the laptop screen and the shaft of sunlight near my shoulder.