Archive for the big purge category
March 2, 2010
ELIMINATE THE OLD!
2010 equals change.
MAJOR change.
So I’ve decided to get ready to move out of
this place I’ve been living in since 1982.
Yes indeed, even though I have no idea where I want to go or how I’ll find the means to get there, I firmly believe that on or before July 1, 2011, I will move out of this housing co-op and into a beautiful, loft-like / open space home. And since I have no intention of dragging along a bunch of old stuff, I will be eliminating as much of it as I can over the months to come.
Thus, Ladies and Gents, March is all about cleaning out
the two storage facilities on my back balcony.
STORAGE 1
STORAGE 2
I will be posting the “zen look” pictures at the end of the month.
ATTRACT THE NEW!
March is also about using the tools at my disposal
for ATTRACTING my perfect home.
I need to revisit my Law of Attraction books, improve my meditation and visualization techniques, and make sure to focus my thoughts and actions in the right direction.
I’M MOVING INTO MY DREAM HOME
Do YOU have any plans or goals for March?
REFERENCES: The 12-Notch Plan — UPDATE / Week of February 22 to 28 AND Notch #2 Trophy — The Big Purge — Official Paper Purge Launch
April 6, 2009
That’s the title of the book I’m reading
– a complicated kindness.
(No caps in the title = just so you know it’s not a mistake.)
The author, Miriam Toews, is my new she-ro: every single book she’s written to date has won and/or has been nominated for an award.
And she’s Canadian — w00t!
Born in 1964 in the small Mennonite town of Steinbach, Manitoba.
Obviously inspired by her own life experience, Toews tells the story of Nomi Nickel, a 16-year-old trapped in a small Mennonite town (hello?) who lives with her father Ray and spends her days trying to piece together the reasons why her mother, Trudie, and her sister, Natasha, have gone missing.
I’m about one-third into the book, and Toews’ style and wry humour remind me of J.D. Salinger’s; so I’m laughing a lot and can’t get myself to stop reading.
Here’s an excerpt:
We’re Mennonites. As far as I know, we are the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager. Five hundred years ago in Europe a man named Menno Simons set off to do his own peculiar religious thing and he and his followers were beaten up and killed or forced to conform all over Holland, Poland and Russia until they, at least some of them, finally landed right here where I sit. Ironically, they named this place East Village, which, I have learned, is the name of the area in New York City that I would most love to inhabit. Others ran away to a giant dust bowl called the Chaco, in Paraguay, the hottest place in the world. My friend Lydia moved here from Paraguay and has told me stories about heat-induced madness. She had an uncle who regularly sat on an overturned feed bucket in the village square and screamed for his brain to be returned to him. At night it was easier to have a conversation with him. We are supposed to be cheerfully yearning for death and in the meantime, until that blessed day, our lives are meant to be facsimiles of death or at least the dying process.
Once I’m done with a complicated kindness, I’ll be reading Swing Low: A Life (Miriam’s memoir of her father’s troubled life), and then summer of my amazing luck (“Delightfully humorous, subversive, and naughtily clever,” says the Prairie Fire) — all of which I’ve borrowed from my local library.
Her other two books were taken, so I reserved them: a boy of good breeding, and her latest novel, the flying troutmans.
After reading through Toews’ entire works, I’ll either be hungry for more or totally nauseated. But one thing’s for sure, it’ll be the end of reading other people’s stuff for a while: I’ll have memoirs of my own to write.
Which brings me to an update concerning my big paper purge: the way things are going — and they’re going honky dory, thank you — my prediction is that by the end of June, I’ll be done with the whole mess. That’s when the real fun will begin.
I’m happy and excited… yet calm and serene.
All good!
August 20, 2008
…but still rooted.
I met this sunflower, yesterday, on my way to a friend’s house.
I know exactly how it feels.
As soon as I’m done digging through my past,
I’m going to get out of my hole
and fly!
Are you stuck in a hole?
August 19, 2008
Woke up this morning, remembered the Paper Purge,
broke out in a huge smile, felt happy, excited,
and ALIVE!
I didn’t lose any time on the internet; I had breakfast, made myself a cup of green tea, put Charlie Haden’s “Nocturne“ album on the stereo, and got down to business.
I noticed a stack of documents still sitting on one of the shelves.
They have since joined the pile on the floor.
Choosing what to go with first was easy. Yesterday, when I emptied my cupboards, I noticed a package wrapped in brown paper, marked 2002. Bingo!
And that’s how it all started for me, today.
Nothing more to say.
Except…I LOVE YOU 
August 18, 2008
I’m not the only one who’s been waiting over 19 years
for this Paper Purge to happen.
The people at the Canada Council for the Arts
have also been very patient.
In 1989, they granted me $13,532 as part of a program which I can’t even remember the name of, but it was for an artist’s first attempt at getting their work “out there.” In my case, I was to write a book — largely based on my life story — and get it published. En français.
Well, needless to say I went bananas when I got the phone call telling me I was among the chosen few in Canada to get what I had asked for: one year’s salary ($13,200); expenses such as paper and ink cartridges for my Apple ImageWriter printer ($352); and last but not least, their vote of confidence in my talent and my determination to make my dream come true.
After the excitement,
I panicked.
I totally sabotaged my dream. And right about then, my whole world started to take a turn for the ditch. After a series of sad and sometimes tragic events, the ditch collapsed under my feet and I went down, down, down, till I finally hit bottom around 2003.
All through this hell, I tried — year in, year out — to write that darn book. When I’m through reading everything in the pile you see up there, I bet I’ll have found over two dozen manuscripts, almost all of them identical, relating my birth and the first five or six years of my life. Once or twice, I went as far as to recount parts of my teenage years and one time, I even wrote about meeting the man who was to become my husband. But after writing about the wedding, I became very sad and depressed. You will, too, when you get to read that part. Then again, we might all have a good laugh, because I hope to give it a shot of humour. A real BIG shot.
This is why I’m so grateful to see that not only am I now willing to plow through the pile, but I feel emotionally and mentally ready for it. In other words, I’m definitely eager and curious and enthusiastic about the whole journey.
Yeah…I know…we’ll see how I feel next month or even next week, hardy har har! Still, I’m sure all will go smoothly if I get plenty of rest, go out and walk every day, meet with friends on a regular basis, and practice breathing, meditating, and being in the moment. Being in the moment is without a doubt the key to an enlightening, joyful, and fun experience.
So there ya go…
Wish me luck
P.S.: Somehow, I thought the pile was going to be much bigger.
Why did it seem like such a MONSTER all these years?
