© Photo copyright Heather Thomson. Sunset on the Ottawa River, August 2022. Sometimes, it’s easier to find the endings of things. —— Beginnings are a mystery to me. I’ve re-written or reorganized the beginning of essays dozens of times, before I get it “right”—or at least passable. Pasting blocks of text with the shortcuts on my keyboard. Wielding scissors for arts-and-crafts style, literally cutting and pasting printed pages together in slapdash fashion.  Often, it’s still to no avail. I can’t find the beginning—don’t know where to start. “It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and ..read more

I recently thumbed to the end of a book I’m currently reading (curious to see how many of the remaining pages were the main text, how many were notes and bibliography), when a sentence jumped off the page at me. It was this: “I have tried to compensate for the frailties of memory in three ways.” My eyes skimmed the rest of the paragraph, while additional words stood out as though bolded: supplemented recollections, … consulted articles, … reviewed transcripts … — official investigations, … academic journals, … video footage. The book was The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes–And ..read more

I woke up this morning* to a world bathed in white light. Snow, several inches thick, covered everything – the roads, the roofs, the wires, the trees — a shock after the balmy weather of last week. I’d already traded in my cross-country skis for my bike, received a pile of freckles, and even planted a few seeds (indoors). Winter had gone, spring was coming. But the topography of my world has changed overnight. It’s almost unrecognizable, like something in a dream. As I walked around the block with my husband this morning, each of us pulling a sled behind us before the sidewalk plow passed, I c ..read more

The few times I’ve attempted to climb mountains, I’ve experienced this counterintuitive physical phenomenon: it’s easier to climb than to descend. I’ve found this is also true on a smaller scale, with stairs. My legs can be fine all the way up, but coming down — if it’s a long descent — they tighten and cramp, as though I’m using muscles I didn’t know I owned. I thought it was just me, an idiosyncrasy of my own body. Climbing is pushing off, going against gravity, while descending uses it to my advantage. Shouldn’t it be easier to descend? I’ve thought this way for years, but recently had a br ..read more

I lost you last night while writing late, when you disappeared, without a trace, into the computer void. O lost writing that I should have saved! You are perfect in a way only possible of things things not present. You are gone now, never to be replaced. I should have seen the tell-tale signs you were sending all day. You were losing your memory, you told me, your disk was full. Delete some files, you said (which I did, a bit). But I kept too many windows open, and re-entered the failing applications which had paused due to overwhelming overload. In short, you told me you were no longer able t ..read more

I like to think I can receive feedback graciously: to willingly accept the small shortcomings, the glaring limitations, in short, the literary blind-spots in my writing that others have pointed out to me, and to do so with grace. I do it often enough — this giving and receiving of feedback — in other aspects of life, and see it as a positive, even necessary thing. Take driving, for instance. At least once, I’ve driven down the freeway and alerted another driver that his tire was completely flat. At a backed-up country road intersecting a highway, I’ve pulled up beside a pick-up truck full of g ..read more

Many of my personal essays are born of personal experience. Maybe I’ve witnessed some event, recalled some memory, or have some thought swirling around in my mind that won’t leave until it’s incarnated in writing. Whatever form it takes, a personal essay, for me, is always personal. This is a good place to start, but the temptation is to stay there, without venturing further than the recesses of one’s own mind. But this limits the reach of one’s writing, and its potential to connect in a more meaningful way with a reader. “Research,” Phillip Lopate asserts in To Show and To Tell, “inspires cur ..read more

Essays are beautiful shapeshifting creatures that can refashion their form to fit a whim, or slide into a pre-existing shell, like hermit crabs. They’re diverse and transgressive, modern and traditional, surprising and soothing; they can make you laugh out loud, or weep like a child; they’re often hopeful, usually reflective, but always unexpectedly delightful (that is, if they’re done right). Among such an unconventional, hodgepodge of a species — and one known for its nuance  — I wonder: is there a “wrong way” to start a personal essay? A professor of mine certainly thought so, or at least ..read more

Thrift stores are funny places for finding books — you often have to wade through a lot of rubbish before stumbling upon something worthwhile. At least, that’s been my experience. And while thrift stores are not my first pick for used books (small independent bookstores, library book sales, and the internet are those, for me), they do have their place in the book buying world. I often find something and, invariably, for a fraction of the cost. And so the other evening, it happened that I was browsing for books at a local thrift store. I didn’t have anything particular in mind — I learned long ..read more

I know it’s a faux pas to even mention Christmas before Thanksgiving in the US, but here in Canada with our turkey feast already passed, Christmas decorations have started to quietly slip into the stores, even as Hallowe’en decorations are still openly on display. Visually, the Christmas season has descended upon me, and so I suppose my mind regards it as a not far distant landmark. Now, this post is not so much about Christmas as it is about what I hope to accomplish by then. That is, to write 100,000 words on my blog — not starting today, but cumulative from when I began blogging. It happene ..read more