Annelies Pool

So what kind Of Christmas will I have, anyway?

2011-12-21T13:08:00.001-07:00

This year, I thought I would have the kind of Christmas where I would sit by the tree on Christmas Eve putting the last touches on beautifully-appointed presents, while a turkey roasts slowly in the oven. I will strum my guitar and sing “Silent Night.” My loyal friends will struggle towards my cabin, through a howling blizzard, laden with gifts and brandy-laced egg nog.

Whoops, I just remembered that I can’t play guitar. Plus, I have a vocal range of three notes, all of them off-key.

Okay, so no guitar and singing. Instead, I will put on my Three Tenors Christmas CD while Bill goes out into the boreal forest to find a perfectly-shaped evergreen which he will bring home by dog team while humming “Oh Tannanbaum” in a throaty lumberjack’s voice. I will lovingly hang ornaments, each of which has a symbolic connection to a beatific past Christmas.

Well, we don’t actually have a tree because we have propane lights and there is no safe place to put one. Plus, I don’t really like decorating. The last time I did it, was in 1991 when I bought a little countertop tree that I put out every year no matter disheveled it got, but that we finally threw out last spring while engaged in an uholy fit of de-clutterization.

No tree and no guitar, then, but I will lovingly curl the ribbons on the perfect gifts for those I love, imagining their faces of delight on Christmas morning.

Um, have to jettison the gift idea too. I gave up Christmas shopping and gift-giving a few years ago when I found myself stressed beyond belief, frantically running from store to store, looped tapes of Christmas songs blasting my eardrums, buying presents out of a sense of obligation, not love.

Okay, no tree, no guitar, no gifts but egg-nog with brandy and Gluhwein to warm the cockles of our hearts and set our souls astir while we raise our glasses and break out into a spontaneous rendition of “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentleman.”

Ooooooo, that won’t work either. I quit drinking many years ago, not long after the Christmas where we forgot the turkey in the oven and nearly burned the house down.

So, no tree, no guitar, no presents and no egg-nog, then.

But there will be friends. I will cook a turkey dinner and invite people into my home. Others will invite me into theirs and we will break bread together many times. Even though I don’t give gifts, I will find ways of letting people know how much I love them and how grateful I am that they are in my life. I will fill up my house with fresh flowers and put out the Christmas tablecloth that my mother embroidered 40 years ago. We will walk the dogs through a landscape covered with snow. We will open our hearts and we will laugh.

There will be peace.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

The Shackles of Dreams

2011-07-29T09:00:00.000-06:00

For most of my life, I've wanted to publish a novel but I've been busy living other lives and it is only in the last few years that I've become serious about it.

Now I am old enough to bump up against the possibility that it may never happen.

Instead of being depressed about this, I find great freedom in this realization.

Dreams can be shackles and to age well is to let go of shackles. The older I get, the more I realize how little control I have. This is forcing me to release my grasp and enjoy the ride of life with all its mountains and valleys. In the end, I will measure my life by how much I've laughed and loved, not by how many books I've published.

That doesn't mean I've given up on the novel. I'm working harder than ever. It means I can do it with a lighter heart.

I'm so sorry, Will & Kate

2011-07-09T14:28:00.000-06:00

It has just come to my attention that my book “iceberg tea” has become an international seller. I have sold the first (of many, I’m sure) copy on Amazon UK.

As soon as I heard the news, I began to wonder who in the UK would have ordered my book. Then it dawned on me that it must have been Will & Kate. It now seems obvious that they must have ordered it some time ago and their delight in the stories inspired them to include Yellowknife on their Canadian tour.

They must have been secretly hoping to meet me to get their copy of “iceberg tea” personally signed and dedicated.

Now I feel really bad for not going downtown the day they were here. I didn’t go because I wanted to do some work on my next book and I thought the half-hour drive from Prelude into town, the hassle of finding parking and the wait in the crowd would all take too much time out of my day. Besides, I thought, I could probably see them better of TV.

That was before I knew about they were fans of “iceberg tea.”

So what can I say now except, I’m so sorry, Will and Kate.

But, hey, next time don’t be so shy. Give me call and I’ll be happy to sign the book. Maybe we can even go roast wieners on the sailboat.

Thalidomide Characters

2011-06-16T07:35:00.000-06:00

My character Marty who lives in 1980 thinks that he should buy a brand spanking new red 1981 Ford pick-up truck.

I want him to buy a used 1968 Dodge camper van that was refurbished by an RCMP officer in 1972.

He sees himself bombing up and down the highway in his new truck impressing all his drinking buddies.

I say he could have sex with his girlfriend, Jen, in the bed of the Dodge van.

He says he can have sex with her in the back of his new pick-up which is a crew cab.

I say maybe he should ask her about that first.

He says she’s kinky enough to like it.

I say that if he buys the truck, he will throw a wrench in the story and I will never get it finished and doesn’t he care about my literary career?

He says it’s his story, what he does is none of my business and he never asked to be written in the first place.

I threaten to write all the money out of his bank account.

He says it’s too late, that he already took all the money out and now he’s got a big wad of cash in the front of pocket of his jeans.

So that’s what that bulge in your jeans is, I say.

Don’t be gross, he says. You’re old enough to be my mother.

I ask how he took the money out of his account without my knowing about it.

He says it happened the night I fell asleep without turning the computer off, that as long as the computer’s on and I’m not touching the keyboard, he can do whatever he wants.

What happens when I turn the computer off? I ask.

He says a big weight comes down in the middle of his chest that holds him in whatever place I left him until I come back.

Now you’ve brought it up, he says, maybe you could be a little more considerate about where you leave me. He says he didn’t appreciate being left down at the Old Town docks waiting for a cab for eight months.

Eight months? I say.

Yeah, eight months, he says. It was fucking cold and you shut it down before I had a chance to put on my toque. I got frostbite on my ears over that.

Oh, I say. That must have been when I got my new computer and I wanted to let your story rest while I worked with some other characters in another story.

Other characters, he says. I’m standing there at the docks freezing my goddamn ears off and you’re out whooping it up with other characters.

Suddenly I feel like the worst kind of uncaring author, the kind of author who spawns half-baked, malformed characters with gimps, brain tumours or missing legs who are then left to fend for themselves. Thalidomide characters.

I sit and look at the screen.

Marty lights a smoke, turns his back and walks toward Jackfish Ford.

My Continuing Love Story

2011-06-13T19:50:00.001-06:00

We went rowing in the rain today, the lake shrouded in mist, the air fresh as a new dawn. My pants were only slightly waterproof and as the downpour increased, I got soaked to the skin. I didn’t care because the loons were calling and the rain pelted bubbles in the water and the slick black rocks of the islands rose into the mist.

I have always loved rain, ever since I was a little girl, and today there were no bugs, the rain was warm and the lake calm.

We took a break and I looked at Bill, wet dripping off his blue hat, Princess sitting in the stern behind him looking drowned and miserable and wondering why these people didn’t have the sense to get in out of the rain.

Words bubbled from my lips unplanned. “I love you,” I said to Bill. “I love you because if I hadn’t met you, I would never have done anything like this and I wouldn’t want to have to missed it for the world.”

Bill said nothing but I could see a twitch in the corner of his mouth.

“I love rain,” I said. “I married you because you’re from Prince Rupert where it rains every day. I could see the rain in your soul.”

He smiled his quiet smile. More rain came down and he picked up his oars.

“This is a great hat,” he said.

“Oh, that’s the hat Richard gave you,” I said. “Richard likes to give gifts.”

“Yes, he’s a very generous fellow,” Bill said.

We said nothing further then, just rowed through the rain in tandem and I reflected how, over the years of a marriage, love keeps renewing at the oddest of times. I would never have learned this if I had been too afraid to risk my heart.

On burning my journals

2011-03-24T07:58:00.000-06:00

I started to burn thirty years worth of journals on Tuesday. It was a brilliant spring day when meltwater dripped, whiskeyjacks chirruped and winter’s back was broken. As I fed the pages into the bonfire, I realized that I was engaged in the ancient ritual of shedding old skin in order to expose the new.

Many people have questioned the wisdom of burning these journals.

The journals I burnt were not memories, reflections or stories. Rather they were a spewing forth of raw emotion, of anger, of jealousy, obsession, heartbreak. I have been on a healing journey these last thirty years, and the journals represent a purging of my inner poison. They are rambling, repetitive, disjointed and embarrassing. They are intensely personal. I shudder at the thought that anybody else should read them.

Nonetheless, I kept them for many years because I thought I might use them as material for the inner workings of fictional characters. This was not the case. I would fill up a notebook, throw it into a box and never look at it again. In time, I began to understand that the art of these journals was in the process, not the result.

The process of journaling has been, and continues to be, a ritual and prayer for me. It is a process of becoming and it has influenced everything else I’ve written. Its power comes from its utter privacy. All that is good and true in the journals has been carved in my heart, the rest has no value.

I decided to burn them last year when I was on an turbulent airplane. I have a fear of flying and whenever a plane starts to bump and shake, I think I’m going to die. As the plane rollicked through the clouds, I panicked that people would read my journals.

When I fed the pages into the bonfire last Tuesday, I felt cleansed of the turmoil of the past. As writing them had been a process of becoming, so was the burning of them. A story of death and renewal, of a spring day when snow drips and whiskyjacks chirrup as winter’s back is broken.

Facebook Status Angst

2011-03-11T10:41:00.002-07:00

One day several people tell me they like the things I post on my Facebook status.

At first I am delighted.

Then my delight morphs into a serious case of Facebook Status Angst.

I begin to imagine that the Facebook world waits in breathless anticipation of my daily status report and I feel pressured to live up to the expectations of my fans. I feel I have post something diabolically brilliant every day.

My mind goes blank. The only post I can think of is “I want a sandwich.”

It reminds me of the birthday card signing trauma where I get into thinking that because I am a writer, something more, something heart-warming, inspiring and original is expected of me. All I can ever think of writing is “happy birthday.”

As I look at my blank Facebook status box, I began to wish I were cause person.” People who are passionately devoted to a cause never have a problem coming up with a Facebook status. They just post links and comments about their cause, or causes.

While I admire people who are called to better the world through activism in various causes, I have never been a cause person. My contribution is to try to remember that everybody is part of our common humanity and to view them with respect and an open heart, regardless of whether I agree with what they’re doing or saying. I’ve managed to actually do this for moments at a time and maybe those moments reverberate throughout the world.

But I digress. This isn’t about my philosophy of life but about Facebook where I am still looking at a blank status box while my status fans wait breathlessly in the wings for another brilliant witticism.

Or so I imagine.

It occurs to me that I am being absolutely ridiculous. I laugh and post “human beings are most ridiculous species on the face of the earth.”

I am NOT on a Mission from God

2011-02-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

All my life, I have fought being a writer. I have often wished I could be happy as a with nine to five job that I do day in and day out with a good salary, a pension plan, house in the suburbs instead of the bush and 2.5 children. If that were the case, I would certainly have more money than I do now (especially if I put the children to work). But whenever I’ve tried this, I’ve become stressed and miserable.

I have to write. When I don’t, I get depressed and disconnected and the meaning falls out of my life. I am one of those fortunate people who has discovered fairly early in life what it is I am here to do, although it has taken me a lifetime to fully embrace that knowledge (and it takes only a moment to lose it).

If I had trusted in the beginning, it would have been much easier.

So it goes. Trust has never been a strong suit of mine (my strong suit has always been clubs).

I know don’t who or what decided that I had to be a writer. For a time I entertained the notion that I was on a Mission from God. I would get up in the morning and try to put myself into a trance, hoping to the get the connection and that the exact words that I was chosen to give the world would flow through me like mercury. I imagined publishing best-sellers that would impact the lives of millions and filling stadiums with my fans. When the words didn’t flow, as sometimes they don’t, I would fall into a morass of fear and self-pity because here I was FAILING in my Mission from God.

Being on a Mission from God was too stressful (and there weren’t enough parties). So I gave it up.

Now I just try to accept the simpler truth: I have to write. For whatever reason (it could be a brain malfunction for all I know), I have to write in order to be at peace.

And if I am made to write, there must be somebody who needs to read what I’ve written. Whether that is one person, a hundred, a thousand or a million, I don’t know. (I haven’t entirely given up on the millions . . . and the stadiums and . . . oh dear. . . shut up. I really don’t know where THAT came from.)

All I ask is that I write the best I can and that I find the way, through traditional publishing or otherwise, to reach whomever is intended to read what I have written. (And that I get a best-seller, and have a book tour during which I will be slim and younger and well-dressed and rich and. . . hey, that’s not true. I’m not really like this. Honest!)

Have I told you lately how great I am?

2011-01-21T11:09:00.000-07:00

Everybody says I gotta do it, but self-promotion ain't easy.

I’m a writer, for God’s sakes, a person who is at her best spinning wild fantasies alone in a room while indulging in demonic laughter or heartfelt tears. I spend my time communing with characters, the kind of people that most of you believe don’t really exist.

I wasn’t brought up to brag. I was brought up to say nice things about others but never about myself.

Besides, I’m the sensitive sort. When I’m telling you about how great my book is, I will notice by the rise of your eyebrow, the twitch of your lip or that slight glaze in your eyes that you really don’t believe me.

I’m so sensitive I even have trouble promoting myself to my own characters and they’re supposed to be my creations and do what I say. (Of course, they do tend to be cheeky and they’re never too shy to tell me to shut up).

I feel down deep inside that if something is meant to happen, it will. I like to set my creations free and let them make their own way in the world.

In fact, I believe the best communication plan is to sit by the phone and wait for it to ring. Whatever will be will be.

Problem is this isn’t working.

So I guess I gotta get down and dirty and self-promote like everybody else.

Hey, have I told you lately how great I am?

How to avoid writing a novel (or anything else): 15 tips even you can follow

2011-01-04T13:52:00.001-07:00

If you feel like you are in danger of writing a novel and your life has become unmanageable, here are 15 easy tips to get your writing life back under control:

1. Wait for the exact moment for inspiration to strike.

2. Update your facebook status.

3. Wait until you've had a stellar night's sleep and you are in tip-top condition.

4. Check your facebook newsfeed.

5. Surf the Net for inspirational stories that will help with your novel.

6. Check to see if anybody's written any new reviews about your last book.

7. Check facebook.

8. Answer all outstanding emails.

9. Read the Globe and Mail book section online and imagine somebody reviewing your novel.

10. Write a new facebook status.

11. Visualize your book tour.

12. Compose answers to interview questions about how much of your novel is autobiographical.

13. Check facebook.

14. Play 20 games of spider solitaire to calm your conscious mind so your subconscious mind can work on plot details.

15. Check facebook.

AND when all else fails: write a blog about how to avoid writing your novel.

New Year's Sunrise on Prelude Lake

2011-01-01T12:29:00.000-07:00

Hello 2011!

Greeting the first sunrise of the New Year on Prelude Lake, NWT. It is 10:17 a.m. and -29C. I am grinning like the Cheshire Cat behind the scarf.

Happy New Year, everybody!

My Writing Life: instant gratification

2010-12-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

For most of my writing life I've written short articles and columns for magazines and newspapers. There's a lot of instant gratification in that. You write it. You finish it. You see it in print and go on to the next thing. Feels good.

Now that I'm working on a novel, everything is different. The writing goes on and on and on with no gratification in sight. The more I struggle with this, the more I realize how hooked I am at getting that feeling of accomplishment you get when you've completed something. Even writing a chapter can be long and onerous for a gratification junkie like myself. I've found it hard to keep going to the end of the first draft of the novel.

I've considered giving up on the novel but that is equally impossible. My spirits sink if I'm away from for any length of time. I guess that's what makes me a writer.

So now I just write scenes. I find I can write at least one complete scene in a sitting and feel very accomplished at the end of the day. Days when I can write two or more scenes are a bonus. Eventually I'll organize these into chapters but that is a task for the re-writing process. Right now I'm focused on completing that first draft -- one scene at a time.

It's working well for me so far. Wish me luck.

And so I was thinking . . .

2010-12-20T21:22:00.001-07:00

And so I sat at my computer to write a Christmas message to you all.

I was thinking something along the lines of moon-shadows and snow, peace on earth, Bill napping in his chair, dogs snoring in front of the woodstove, the soft burr of propane lights and egg-nog and love and family and Christmas trees, chocolate, turkey and an expansive heart.

I was thinking of how we are all aging and getting more peaceful, wiser and fatter but that fat doesn’t really matter anymore because being peaceful and wise is so much more fun than worrying about getting fat – that is on the days when I remember to be peaceful and wise.

Then I thought of the mole I had removed from my temple earlier today and how the doctor asked if the pulling of thread for the stitches hurt and I said “this is what a facelift must feel like” and he said “oh, we’re doing that at the same time but I forgot to tell you,” and I giggled while he was stitching me up and everything was okay.

And I thought about how weird all families are, even the ones we’re not related to, the ones we make ourselves because we’ve somehow fallen into each other’s lives and come to love each other. I thought of how we can irritate each other beyond belief but that the love always wins out – sooner or later. I thought of all my weird family, the ones I am related to and the ones I call friends, and how I am their weird family too, and how I must irritate them sometimes, but that they love me all the same, I hope. I trust.

I was thinking all these things when the dogs awoke and thundered barking to the door, their hair stiff on their necks and I knew the fox had come into the yard or the neighbour’s truck had pulled into the driveway or the grader was making a moonlit pass along our road. And Bill awoke happy and refreshed so he could stay up late to watch the lunar eclipse.

Then I thought that before writing my inspiring message of peace and joy, I would look for an animated card to go along with it so I spent the next hour looking at animations on the Internet and giggling to myself.

I was having so much fun, the inspiring message of peace and joy never got written.

And I couldn’t decide on a card.

So I’m sending out two:

Xmas Blues

Sister Mary Margaret

Enjoy and Happy Christmas to you all.

Gas shortage

2010-11-25T10:24:00.001-07:00

I've never been so aware of our dependence on gas as I've been since Yellowknife ran out the day before yesterday. We live about 30 km out of town and we have enough gas for five trips in our car -- a few more in our truck. We are well-provisioned with all the necessities (wood, propane, diesel for our generator) so we are fine. In fact, we could go for a month or more by reducing our trips into town to once a week for groceries.

What we're experiencing now is really more of an adventure than a disaster. Even if the ferry doesn't go back in the water this winter, supplies will be flown across the river until the ice road is functional. Our only problem, at the moment, is inconvenience.

I can't help but think, however, how tenuous our existence here in the North really is. Yellowknife is completely dependent on our supply line from the South. If there were a major disaster, such as a war, that cut that supply line we would be in dire straits very quickly.

I imagine myself having to ski or cycle into town. While that works well when I'm thinking about it, it might not work so well when I'm actually trying to do it. I imagine snaring rabbits or fishing for food -- never mind that I don't know how and that game & fish might quickly get scarce because everybody else will be harvesting it too.

It all makes me want to become a survivalist and start stocking up on barrels of non-perishable like beans and rice and dried food. Of course, then I'll have to invest in guns to protect my supply when the hungry hordes come after me. Then, I would have to learn how to use them, without shooting myself in the foot. . .

It is all so complicated. Maybe the best thing is to relax, accept that life is essentially insecure, and deal with whatever happens when it happens.

New TVs, kitchens and constipation

2010-11-15T20:59:00.000-07:00

I walked into an electronics store the other day and found myself in High Density TV land, surrounded by a plethora of screens showing images so sharp and clear that, for a moment, I wanted to buy one immediately. I forgot all the evenings I'd spent scrolling through the 200-odd channels, bemoaning the fact that there was nothing worth watching. It now seemed that anything that clear and sharp had to be good. And maybe if I got one of those TVs, everything in my life would become clear too -- instead of fuzzy and incomprehensible the way it usually is.

I left the store and soon forgot about the TVs but then I began to imagine getting a new kitchen. I actually didn't want a new kitchen anymore than I wanted a HD TV, but our kitchen needs a major cleaning (beyond the daily wipe-the-counter, clean-the-sink kind of thing) and I don't want to do it. It all seems so tiring and I thought maybe if somebody from Ikea, or somewhere, came and put in a new kitchen, I could start over and everything would be so much easier. I was throwing away mouldy strawberries when I capapulted myself into a new kitchen reality where I would suddenly become a gourmet cook in a frilly apron, have friends over for brunch (more often than once in 2007) and I would serve lucious fresh food and I would never again have mouldy strawberries.

It all reminds me of a laxative commercial that I remember from the sixties which showed a frumpy woman with heavy black-framed glasses in an apparent misery of constipation. She took the laxative and in the next shot, her frumpiness was gone and she no longer had to wear her glasses.

Interesting how consumerism works, hey?

On becoming a real author

2010-08-05T11:34:00.003-06:00

When my book “iceberg tea” first came out, people would look at me like I was an angel who had recently descended from heaven. “You’re published,” they would say, with awe in the voices. I’d look back askance and say, “I’ve been published for 30 years. All that’s changed is the packaging.”

There is a mystique about publishing a book and all the stuff that I’d published in newspapers and magazines, including all of the stories in “iceberg tea” which were originally published as columns, didn’t seem to matter. You’re not a real author until you have a book.

To be honest, I’ve bought into that mystique myself. Why else would I have been wanting to publish a book for nearly as long as I’ve been writing? To be really honest, I’ve always had an inferiority complex as a writer because I hadn’t published a book.

It never made any sense.

The process is the same whether you’re writing a book or a magazine article: you sit in front of a computer in a room by yourself and either laugh manically or weep uncontrollably as you pound out the words; or you sit in front of the computer and wonder why you’re such an idiot because you can’t think of a single word to write. And just because something is published in a book doesn’t make it good—in fact some magazine articles are better crafted and more interesting than many books. They can also have bigger readerships.

None of that matters to the critic that remains camped out in a shady corner of my mind no matter how many years I’ve tried to get rid of him. He would often go to sleep, but when somebody would say raise an eyebrow when I identified myself as a magazine writer he would wake up and hiss “you are nothing unless you have a book.”

Now that I have a book, I have to admit to certain elation when I see the piles of my own books in the book store. There is a lightness in my step and I feel a little more real a bit more three-dimensional than I did before.

Bit at the same time as the world (and myself) finally sees me as a legitimate writer, I am spending less time writing, and more time being an author—promoting myself and my book. At least so far. I find myself asking: “isn’t writing what the whole thing was supposed to be about in the first place?”

It’s all very strange.

A rainy day in Europe

2010-06-20T11:42:00.001-06:00

On this rainy day in Yellowknife, I am reminded of a rainy day many years ago when I was still in my twenties and spent a summer working as a kitchen maid in a hotel in Uberlingen which lies in southern Germany on the Bodensee (Lake Konstanz). It was my day off and I took a ferry across the Bodensee to the old city of Konstanz. I dodged rain while I wandered cobbled and winding streets, ate a bratwurst mit brot from one of the many outdoor stands and when there was a break in the weather had a beer at an outdoor cafe. I sat under the overcast moodiness of sky in a square surrounded by stone buildings, gargoyles looking down on me, and wrote in my journal. In the the fresh smell of the rain overlaid by a vague sewagey smell and the smell of sizzling bratwurst from the outdoor stands, I was drawn back to the very early years of my childhood in another European city, Den Haag, where it rained often and it seemed that the rainy days, surrounded by my family and the sounds of my mother tongue, were the best and most secure of days.

I would visit Kontanz again later that summer with a boyfriend and we would spend an evening in a bar with a dog running unrestrained between the tables and we would meet an American woman and drive with her in a van across Europe to Athens, picking up young hitchikers from many countries on the way. We would camp in somebody's backyard with a bunch of other young travellers where there was a viscious German Shepherd who lunged at us whenever we left our tent and who would bite one of the others kids camped there. I would, in high spirits one night, playfully throw a piece of a sandwich at my boyfriend and he would never forgive me so that days later on a hilltop outside Venice, I would reach over and touch his hand and it would go limp and we would drive in gas stations in Yugoslavia and he would raise his fingers to ask for 10 litres of gas but only one hand would go up and we would only get five litres. We would camp on a patch of grass in the Greek hills and I would cry myself to sleep over this and wake up to the sound of a goat eating grass next to my ear, a peasant woman looking down from high above us. Greek police would chase us away for swimming naked in the Adriatic Sea and I would drop acid and hallucinate sarcophagi rising from the water. I would get stung by a jellyfish.

All of that would come later but that day in Kontanz, sitting alone in a cafe during a break in the rain, I was fully anchored in the moment and I belonged to Europe, to the rain, to my childhood, to the world.

About Iceberg Tea

2010-06-17T11:29:00.000-06:00

Iceberg Tea offers a collection of slice-of-life stories Pool penned from the vantage of her cabin on Prelude Lake, where she works as a professional freelance writer.

"This is non-fiction, but it's written very creatively," Pool said. "The way I put things together is not always exactly how things happened."

Pool blends memory with imagination as she recounts unusual everyday routines punctuated by encounters with the exceptional moments of midlife. She draws readers into the warmth and familiarity of each of her 50 compact narratives with playfully poignant prose.

“I was shocked to learn last year that I was growing a cataract on my left eye, just a tiny one, but a cataract nonetheless," she writes on page 123. "I didn't believe the diagnosis at first because I was under the impression that it was illegal for a young person in her early fifties, like me, to have such a thing."

Pool's subjects range from her clumsy attempts to embrace ancient Chinese meditation and navigate cutting edge technologies to her ongoing efforts to exorcise social insecurities and come to happy terms with her past. Other universal themes celebrate the love of family, friends, and the land.

"What I do is I write about myself and I make fun of myself quite a bit," Pool said. "The stories lighten people. If someone can have a little laugh at themselves, or at me – hey – what could be better than that?"

--Excerpted from "Twice the Excitement" by Daron Letts, published in the yellowknifer newspaper, June 4, 2010.

Join me in a cup of iceberg tea!

2010-05-11T14:55:00.000-06:00

I am thrilled to announce that my first book iceberg tea, a collection of my favourite columns, has now been published. At the same time I am bidding good-bye to my regular column Prelude Notes that has been running in above&beyond, Canada's Arctic Journal for the last eight years.

For more information and to order your copy of iceberg tea, please visit http://www.anneliespool.ca/Annelies_Pool/Iceberg_Tea.html

Here is my last column which appears in the May/June issue of above&beyond:

It’s hard to believe but I’ve been writing personal columns in the North for 30 years. I started writing Two Bits for the Hay River Hub in the summer of 1980 and while I don’t recall exactly what I wrote in that very first column, I think it’s safe to say that it had something to do with life in the bars. I was young, single and in love with the barroom life at the time and that’s mostly what I wrote about.
I do, however, remember how I felt after the first column went to press. As a writer, I have always been torn between the urge to write about my life and an innately private nature. After publishing that first column, I slunk through Hay River hoping nobody had noticed. That all changed when I got my first compliment.

Like many writers, I am an approval junkie. If we are writing what is honest, we are putting our hearts on the paper and that can get awfully lonely if nobody notices or cares. I have been very fortunate to be embraced by my readers throughout my career and this has kept me going. Somebody will come up to me in the street and tell me they have seen themselves in something I’ve written. Or send me an email saying how I have made them laugh. Then I feel it’s all worthwhile.

I wrote the column for The Hub for about two years before I moved to Yellowknife. I went on to write personal columns for News/North and then yellowknifer and finally for about 10 years or so, I’ve been writing Prelude Notes for above&beyond. My columns have documented my journey from the bar life to the bush life and have mellowed as I have mellowed.

It is impossible, I have discovered, to write the absolute truth because anything you have in your mind becomes limited as soon as you put it on the page. Words can never be more than symbols for what is real. And so I have often thought that in writing about myself that I have turned myself into a character. I have written a lot about my husband, Bill Saunders, and turned him into a character too and, fortunately, he doesn’t seem to mind. And when somebody calls him “Mr. Pool” instead of “Mr. Saunders,” he laughs.

Writing this column has been a fantastic journey but now it is time to put Prelude Notes to rest. I am capping my career as a personal columnist with a collection of 50 of my favourite columns which I am calling Iceberg Tea — a name inspired by the Nunavut custom of making tea from iceberg chips and an email from a reader in Ottawa who said reading my column was like “sitting down with a dear friend over a cup of tea.”

I would like to thank all my readers over the years and here’s hoping we meet again soon over a cup of iceberg tea.

Two Loop Walk # 16: Annelies is married!

2010-02-11T09:06:00.003-07:00

Cloudy, -7: I don’t know if I’ll walk today but it is a day for remembering.

Twenty years ago today, Bill and I woke to a bright Sunday when the snow sparkled like diamonds and it was 40 below. I put on my best dress, the one I bought four years earlier for our first date, and Bill put on his marrying and burying suit. We went to the Explorer Hotel for their elegant brunch buffet and when friends saw us there and asked why we were dressed up, we said “just because.”

After brunch we drove through the cold brilliance, 100 kilometres down the highway past Rae until we got to Frank Channel, a small collection of houses on a waterway that connects the Great Slave Lake with a smaller lake. There, in the kitchen of a JP’s house, with the JP’s wife and someone, also named Bill for witnesses, we got married. We hadn’t told anybody.

I was nervous and elated and mad bad jokes about the JP marrying me to wrong Bill by mistake. Bill’s hand shook when he put the ring of Yellowknife gold on my finger. When it was done, a wind of happiness swept through me. We had brought a slab of cake which we shared with the JP and the witnesses. Then, laughing, we were on our way into the day that now seemed brilliant just for us.

We bumped into a friend who was living and teaching in Edzo and she had us over for an impromptu wedding tea. Later that night, both Bill’s daughter, Lynda, and my mother were inspired to phone us, although they didn’t know why. My mother who had given up hope that her youngest daughter would ever settle down was jubilant and sang at the top of her lungs to my Dad in another part of the house “Annelies is married! Annelies is married!”

Two Loop Walk #15: Changes

2010-02-10T13:32:00.003-07:00

How many more times am I going to write this: another warm (-6), dreary, snowy day. Years ago before climate change became apparent, it was rare to have warm dreary days in January or February. We’d have cold (-30 to -40), crisp, brilliantly sunny weather day after day after day.

Now we have dank and drizzle, dank and drizzle, damp slippery snow.

There are magpies here that were never here before. And coyotes. There have been reports of cougars. All animals moving up from the south, much, I suppose, like people moving up from the south to work for government or the diamond mines.

This is what I think as I walk today. How things are changing. I’m almost looking for pussy willows in February which has always been unheard of. But now, I don’t know. Nothing is predictable anymore. If it ever was.

Two Loop Walk #14: Important Business

2010-02-09T14:04:00.002-07:00

Another warm (-5), cloudy day that sings to me of March. I crunch along the trail preoccupied with the introduction to my book which I was writing this morning.

I remember that these walks are an exercise in paying attention. I look at the little brown birch seeds scattered over the snow. Some of snow caps have blown off the posts. The blue park outhouse is silent and snowbound.

I retreat into thoughts about a story I want to publish on northern writers.

When I come to, I am further down the trail. Princess trots ahead with purpose, her tail curled high. She crisscrosses the trail sniffing, then peeing, then sniffing somewhere else. She acts like it’s important business and I think she ought to have a briefcase. I wonder what it’s like to see the world through your nose and never doubt the meaning of what you’re doing.

Two Loop Walk #13: Magic Light

2010-02-07T18:00:00.002-07:00

We went walking with friends in town today on the steep paths of Tin Can Hill and out onto the ice of the Great Slave Lake. It was only minus 5 and the sun gave off a magical light that made me think of hope, optimism, warm slippers, good friends and everything that is wonderful about life. I have only ever seen that exact quality of light here in the North.

Bill and Mark walked ahead while Gabby and I followed. The two dogs, Lily and Princess ran back and forth and around in circles in unbridled enthusiasm at each other’s company.

Gabby and I talked about the soul. About how to understand what it is our souls want. And about how, then, to find the courage to let it do what it wants to do, even though it doesn’t care about money, prestige, what the world thinks or any of the other concerns that entangle us on a daily basis. About how frightening it all is.

Then the dogs raced around us again. We forgot our deep musings, laughed and just luxuriated in the magic of the light and the day. Probably what our souls wanted all along.

Two Loop Walk #12: Well-being

2010-02-06T17:16:00.000-07:00

Well-being

The sky is dull grey, the air warm (-9C) and there is a brisk wind tormenting the birch trees. All the snow is off them now although a couple still cling to the crumpled brown leaves from last year. Today I am at ease. My mind is loose and ripples over the course of my life. I wonder how it is I have come to this moment in this place. Oh, I know the facts of how I got there, but the deeper story still eludes me. Yet the older I get, the more I sense there is a reason to it all, that everything fits together like a puzzle. That my being here in these moment in these woods somehow contributes to the well-being of everything else.

We must be careful for our lives because we are part of everything else and when we hurt, everything hurts with us.

Easy to hold everything in respect on a lazy Saturday when I have space in my day. Let’s see how I do when I am harried with work and sleeplessness.

Two Loop Walk #11: A tree is a tree

2010-02-05T10:53:00.001-07:00

Cloudy: -15C

When I first decided that I would go on 365 walks and write something about each on them, I took great joy in the idea. The walks added space and shape to my day and I looked forward to them. Now it is only the 11th walk and it seems like a chore. It has deteriorated into just another of the many things I have to do in a day.

I have to accept that not all of my walks will actually be walks. Sometimes there will just be the idea of walking.

I originally thought of this as an exercise in seeing, in being in the moment. It seems to me that the whole world is contained in every part of it. If you look deeply at the same thing over and over, you will see it differently every time and this seeing has the power to transform your life.

Instead of learning how to see, I am learning how much I don’t want to see. I don’t want to be profoundly present in the moment. I look at a tree and I see just a tree, the same tree I saw yesterday. The image of the tree glazes over the surface of my consciousness and barely leaves a dent.

Only when you are in the present is it possible to connect to Spirit. Is all this busyness and distraction so that God won’t get me? I wonder the next 354 walks or non-walks will teach me.

(If all this seems like old hippie thinking, I have come by it honestly. I came of age then and did all the things the era is famous for. Okay, maybe I smoked too much dope in my younger days.)

Two Loop Walk # 10: Nothing sacred

2010-02-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

It was -20. We were walking into the pink sunset when the clouds looked like cotton candy. I was imagining that I was Doctor Zhivago walking across Russia in the snow. Then Bill’s cell phone rang and he had a long conversation with somebody about our propane bill. Is nothing sacred anymore?

Two Loop Walk #9: Warmth

2010-02-03T13:23:00.003-07:00

It’s one of those cold (-25), northern winter days when the sun is so bright it cuts your eyes. The snow has smoothed the edges of the rocks. They look like rolling hills, rolling through snow and shadow, snow and shadow, under trees and away.

Princess runs down the road and I yell at her to come back. She’s the kind of dog who thinks a command is a suggestion. She ignores me. All I can see is the curl of her tail, bouncing behind the snow bank of the side of the road. I use my serious COMMAND VOICE and she comes back leaping with happiness. I wish I could be that unapologetically joyful.

For the first time this year I feel the barest hint of warmth in the sun. There is the promise of spring under the snow.

Two Loop Walk #8: Excitement

2010-02-02T14:38:00.006-07:00

Ohhhh, I’m so tired.

I am an excitement junkie and I was on an adrenalin binge about the work I’m doing and what I hope to do and what might happen. . . and so on, this morning. When it was time to go for my walk, I had crashed and just wanted to take a nap.

I went anyway. It’s warm for February, minus 20. We haven’t had snow in a while so the path is easier to walk now. The sky was grey with a hint or rosiness and just as I came back I could see a dim shadow in the sunlight.

Much more peaceful now. But, oh, it is hard to remember that excitement is just another form of fear – one that I like. When I step into that deep, abiding peace that is inseparable from joy, then I know that excitement is only ever a poor substitution.

Two Loop Walk #7: Paying Attention

2010-02-01T14:12:00.000-07:00

Paying Attention

Minus 20. The sun is pale as it shines on the path but I only notice it for a second today. Everything seems the same day after day, snow and trees, snow and trees. I’ve missed walking for four days and today I don’t care about the subtle changes in the landscape. I am more interested in the world inside my head where I am trying to figure out how to make money on a book project.

There is always something going on my head and I often don’t pay attention to what I’m doing. Yesterday I saw the dog outside and realized I must have let her out. “Where was I when I let the dog out?” I asked Bill. “You must have been at the door,” he said.

Today it takes a conversation with our neighbour to pull me back into the moment. He smiles at us from his truck as we pass him on the way home. He says Princess was over to visit yesterday him yesterday and that he lost a bag of spinach somewhere between his truck and his house.

By the time he drives away, I am already back in the nether regions of my head.

Two Loop Walk #6: Hitler Responds to the iPad

2010-01-28T16:43:00.000-07:00

Today I had enough of sauntering through the snow in the brilliant sunlight and having epiphanies and spiritual moments under snow-laden birch trees and blue skies. Instead I stayed in and watched "Hitler Responds to the Ipad!" Nyahhh, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Hitler Responds to the iPad

Two Loop Walk #5: A deep breath

2010-01-27T13:52:00.002-07:00

I step out into a blue and white world. The snow sparkles in the sun, the air is crisp (minus 23) but calm and everything is stiller than still.

I stop in front of a birch tree that still has rust-coloured, remnants of leaves left over from the fall and take a sudden deep breath. The kind of breath that loosens your joints and lowers your shoulders. The kind of breath that roots you back into who you are and who you were meant to be. The kind of breath that reminds you that nothing is as important as you thought it was.

Two Loop Walk #4: What things are not

2010-01-24T17:25:00.003-07:00

Colder again today, minus twenty, and grey, grey, grey.

Today all I could see was what everything wasn’t. The sky wasn’t blue. The snow wasn’t pink from the setting sunlight. There were no leaves on the trees. I was not energetic. I was not home sitting by the woodstove. I was not reading my book.

I couldn't wait to get back home.

Two Loop Walk #3: Peace in a hurry and a tree with Scoliosis

2010-01-23T14:45:00.001-07:00

I am tired. My Sorel boots feel like heavy weights on my feet. It’s another grey day, the temperature is falling, (minus 13 now), and the wind has come up. The snow is soft and my feet sink in about six inches as I follow the track. I trudge on and wonder why I’m doing this today.

Then I can’t help but smile as Princess tries, once again, to climb a tree. It makes me laugh every time. She greets every day with renewed hope that maybe today will be the day she gets to the top of that tree.

It’s the middle of a busy Saturday. I was awake at five a.m. catching up on my magazine editing. I had a little early morning email fight with my publisher, thought about resigning as I always do when I get mad, then carried on as I always do. By nine, we were in town for Tai Chi practice, then grocery shopping, home, lunch, nap and now walk. Out for dinner and theater later.

So I try to find contemplative peace in a hurry. It reminds of Philosophy Prof Jacob Needleman’s book “Time and Soul” where he writes learning how to hurry without feeling a sense of hurry on the inside. It’s a skill I haven’t learned.

I stop in front of a tree I’ve passed a thousand times before, a tall spruce, one of the tallest in the campground. Today I notice for the first time that its trunk is curved like it has Scoliosis. It is curved and yet it still reaches up, proud and high toward the metallic sky, perfect in its imperfection.

Two Loop Walk #2

2010-01-22T13:53:00.001-07:00

I am so busy I was tempted not to walk today but I looked forward to it all morning so I took the break.

A raven cawed as soon as we stepped out in the yard. Warm again today, minus 10, and overcast but. Unlike yesterday, the sky has in it the faintest hint of powder blue. There are rabbit tracks in the snow.

I walk with Bill in silence through the still landscape. We spend a lot of time in silence and I have learned to love the velvet and companionable texture of it. Silence is a great teacher of the heart. Today it seems to tell me “you are living your life in this moment, with this step, with this breath.”

I see how the snow fits the tendrils of a sapling birch like a glove.

We take a short cut home and walk arm in arm down the cleared road. I almost feel like a grown-up.

Two Loop Walk #1

2010-01-21T14:32:00.003-07:00

Today I did the first of a what I hope will be a year’s worth of walks around the two campground loops here at Prelude Lake Park where I live. For me, this is an exercise in awareness. At the end of each walk, I will write and post at least one sentence about it. It is a 15-minute walk in the summer and about a 40-minute walk through the snow in the winter. I plan to do 365 walks and posts in all, although not necessarily every day.

Two Loop Walk #1

I set out with Bill and Princess. It is a snowy day where the colour of the sky is a perfect reflection of the snow on the ground. There are flakes coming down and fresh powder on the snowmobile trails we follow. It is warm – only minus 6. Princess leads the way, her tail raised in an ecstatic curl. I follow Bill whose brilliant blue jacket is the only colour in the landscape. Then I notice the dark, dusty green of spruce needles under the snow and realize the colour is still there, but hidden.

Princess stops, crouches and creeps along the path like a mighty hunter, slowly, slowly, only inches at a time. Then leaps through the snow and slams herself against a tree. I wonder if the squirrel up high is afraid or laughing at this clumsy creature who can’t even climb trees.

Each of the snow caps on the posts that mark the camp sites is different. Some are round, some long and thin and there is one that overhangs the post about six inches. I wonder what’s holding it up.

We stop and look at a picnic table. The snow on the ground is higher than the seat. The snow on the seat is higher than the table. “Doesn’t even look like a table,” Bill says. He thinks it looks like a set of stairs. I think it looks like a World War II bunker.

The thing I notice most as we return is how little I notice. I’ve spent most of the walk thinking about the book I want to publish.

Life in the other snowmobile track

2010-01-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

"How come the other snowmobile track always seems better?" Bill asked.

It was a warm (-15) sunny day, full of optimism and promise and we were taking a walk on Prelude Lake. We'd had snowfalls in the last week so all the ploughed ice roads were gone. But the snowmobile tracks that crisscrossed the lake gave us our walking trails.

"What?" I said.

"Well the snowmobile tracks that I'm not walking on always seems better and smoother," said Bill, his steps crunching into the snow.

"I know," I said. "But when you switch, the new track is always just as bumpy, with just as many soft spots."

I was walking in a parallel trail and at that moment, my foot sunk down six inches. "One thing I have noticed, though," I added. "The one you're walking in is always better than the one I'm in. I've noticed that for years. You always hog the best one. I always sink in way more than you do."

Then Bill sunk in. We laughed.

"Guess life just always seems better in other snowmobile track."

Jan/Feb 2010 Prelude Notes: The night I saw Jupiter cry

2010-01-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

PRELUDE NOTES
The night I saw Jupiter cry

By Annelies Pool

It was one of those cold January nights when the stars were tossed against the midnight blue like diamonds. Well below minus thirty, the air was clear. Bill and I drove to the airport to pick up his sister and her husband who had come to visit. Vancouverites, unused to the northern cold, our guests wore borrowed ski jackets and boots. The short walk across the tarmac from the plane to the terminal building made them shiver. We wasted no time in bundling them and their luggage into our truck, then set off on the half-hour drive to the cabin, our home at Prelude Lake.

Halfway home, Bill veered off the highway into the parking lot in front a frozen lake, stopped the car and insisted we all get out.

“You have to see this!” he said pointing to the sky. “The Hale Bop!”

We scrambled out of the truck and huddling against the cold with our hands in our pockets, looking up. The Hale Bop comet streaked against the velvet sky, its tail fanning out behind it. The night was so silent, we could almost hear the comet swish. Everything dropped away and we were catapulted into that timeless state where all that exists is the universe in all its immensity.

A breeze rattled the birch trees and broke the spell. We realized we were freezing our butts off. Laughing, we piled back into the truck and as it sped down the highway, we agreed that Bill was crazy. Who but a crazy man would make his guests get out of a warm truck in the bitter cold to look at the sky? Yet all these years later, that moment watching the Hale Bop is what I remember about that visit.

Bill has been an aficionado of the winter sky ever since we moved to Prelude Lake 20 years ago. It’s hard not to be out here. We are away from the city lights and on the long winter nights the dark wraps itself around you like a shroud. Unless you learn to see the light, blackness will settle into your soul. Bill has learned to identify the constellations and the planets and he knows the phases of the moon. He watches the sky through a huge pair of astronomical binoculars. This always makes me laugh because when he raises them to his eyes, he looks like a bug-eyed cartoon character.

We go walking under the full moon when the trees cast long shadows in the snow. Or a quarter moon when the cold bites my teeth and the sky is alive with stars. Bill will point to the brightest star and tell me it’s Venus and even though it looks like all the other stars, there’s something magical in knowing that particular one is a planet. If we’re lucky, the Northern Lights will sweep across the sky and make us completely unmindful of the cold and dark.

I am always moved by the winter sky, but never more so than the night last year when I saw Jupiter.

I was already in my pyjamas, feet up, reading before bed when Bill went out to walk the dog. He returned, raced across the living room to get his binoculars, then was gone again.

Seconds later, he was back. “Come and see Jupiter’s moons!” he said.

“Do I have to?”

“Yes!”

I pulled my parka over my robe, jammed a fleece hat on my head, shoved my feet into a pair of Sorels and, feeling like an escapee from a dementia centre, went out. When I looked through the binoculars, I saw Jupiter with four moons trailing it like tears. I looked at the sky, then back at Jupiter, then back at the sky and it suddenly seemed like the whole sky was filled with Jupiter’s tears.

I have never been able to see the sky the same way since.

My Christmas Wish List for Everybody

2009-12-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

1. A full heart.
2. A peaceful day.
3. Warm and valued friends.
4. Loving family.
5. Good remembrance of things past.
6. Hope for things future.
7. Faces lit up with joy.
8. Laughter.
9. Song.
10. And if you're a puppy: a good bone.

Celebrate with open hands.

Love Annelies

Anna's Handy Household Hints No. 2: How to be appreciated for the work you do

2009-12-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

I recently spent 10 minutes scrubbing a hardened blob of jam off the wall in preparation for a dinner party.

Then I realized that all my work was for nothing because my guests would never know that the blob of jam was there. They would never know how hard I had worked to prepare for their arrival.

This gave me the idea of pre-visits.

A pre-visit takes place before you clean up, perhaps on the morning of the party. Invite the guests over for coffee. If you like, take them on a tour of the dirty areas in your house that you plan to clean.

Don't, however, show them the closet into which you've turfed every loose bit of living room debris for the last twenty years. If you trick yourself into having to clean that out on the afternoon of a dinner party, you can be guaranteed to turn into a raving maniac and your husband will have you committed to the pscyh ward long before the first guest knocks on the door.

During the pre-visit you may, however, be tempted to serve the appetizers you had set aside for later that evening. Give in to this temptation. Also bring out the evening's dessert. It may be that the pre-visit is so successful that you decided, by mutual agreement, that the dinner party is no longer necessary.

Then you won't have to do any more cleaning at all. You could instead spend the afternoon lolling about in your pyjamas and watching Oprah.

Weird browsing problems. Please Help!

2009-12-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

I have a website with the following address: www.anneliespool.ca

This link works perfectly from all my computers. It works from my Mac. And it works from my PC which had just had all its operating system re-installed. It also works from my iphone.

However, many people tell me that when they follow the link on their computers they get the error message "cannot find the server" and they can't get into my website.

I can't figure this out. I've tried removing all the cookies from my computer and the link still works.

The website was created with MAC iweb software and is hosted on my MobileMe account.

Is there anybody who can help me figure out what's going on? Any suggestions on how I can fix this?

Thanks in advance.

Family Spilling Over

2009-12-17T12:09:00.002-07:00

Read my new essay in Cup of Comfort for the Grieving Heart (Adams Media, Colleen Sell, editor). In my essay Family Spilling Over, I write about my great friend and mentor Thelma Tees who died of cancer in Yellowknife 10 years ago.

A Cup of Comfort® is a bestselling anthology series featuring uplifting true stories about the experiences and relationships that inspire and enrich our lives. These slice-of-life stories are written by people from all walks of life and provide unique personal insights into powerful universal truths.

A Cup of Comfort for the Grieving Heart is now available at the Yellowknife Book Cellar. It can also be ordered online through Chapters or Amazon.

A Christmas Conversation at the Co-op

2009-12-12T20:35:00.001-07:00

A conversation in the YK Co-op two weeks before Christmas:

How are you?

Fine. But a little stressed about Christmas.

Yes, it's a stressful time of year.

I don't really like Christmas

Neither do I. I always feel like I should feel happier than I do.

Face it, the world is divided into two camps. Those who like Christmas and those who don't. I belong to the latter.

Yeah.

I stopped buying gifts a few years ago after it had come down to exchanging Canadian Tire gift certificates with the neighbouts. It's much more relaxing now.

I only buy gifts for a few people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Hey Lana, Want to Share Your Milkshake?

2009-12-12T06:51:00.002-07:00

I am old enough to remember the story about how the famous actress Lana Turner was discovered while sipping a milkshake at a soda fountain.

Sometimes when I have exhausted the lastest list of publishers and I have received the last rejection letter, I imagine myself sitting in a cyberspace soda shop, starily moodily into space while jotting random meanderings down in my writer’s notebook, then having some publisher in a checkered jacket from, say, Random House, come barreling in and proclaim for all of cyberspace to hear, “Hey, Baby, You’re It!”

He would admit to being one of my secret readers for years, then slap a contract on the table and tell me to sign on the dotted line. And that would be it. I would be on the way.

How wonderful it would be to wake up to such an email.

Instead I am going cross-eyed looking through dreary lists of publishers, sending out proposals and, in the absence of contacts, hoping against hope that, instead of having the manuscrupt getting stuck behind the radiator in some Toronto office, the manuscript will somehow land on the desk of somebody who will look at it and see a spark.

I am trying to publish a volume of essays that I’ve published over the years. I’ve been writing them long enough to know that I have readers. Lots of them. But none of them are publishers. The kind of thing I’m trying to publish seems to fall between the cracks of what publishers publish.

So now I’m reduced to fawning on nice rejections letters. I’ve had some sweet ones, one that says my work is creative and that the editors have even enjoyed reading it. Do they say that to all the girls? Or do they mean it? Do they really mean it when they say they’ll respect you in the morning?

Then there are the philosophical implications:

Is a nice rejection letter better than a form letter?

Is it possible to be rejected if you don’t read your rejection letters?

Does getting rejection letters somehow build character in a mysterious way that nobody understands?

Does a rejection letter somehow invisibly reproduce itself on your forehead so that everybody you meet knows you’ve been rejected?

There seem to be, in fact, enough philosophical implications about rejections letters to write a book about it.

But it would probably get rejected.

Hey, Lana, move over. I’m not leaving the soda shop.

Check our my latest column in above&beyond

2009-11-15T10:58:00.002-07:00

PRELUDE NOTES
A morning in the “don’t want to” zone

By Annelies Pool

We had booked our holiday to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland way back in February. At the time, the trip seemed like a century in the future and I spent many hours since mentally luxuriating on the veranda of the beach house we rented and walking on the sand of the Bay of Fundy at low tide. Now we are suddenly barrelling up against our departure day.. . .See

http://www.arcticjournal.ca/prelude_notes.html

Readings on Oct. 29, 2009

2009-10-18T09:30:00.003-06:00

Over the years, I have written a number of personal essays about my great friend and second mother, Thelma Tees who died of cancer 10 years ago. I am thrilled that my essay about her passing "Family Spilling Over" will be published in "A Cup of Comfort for the Grieving Heart" (Adams Media) in December, 2009.

To celebrate the publication I'd like to invite you to a reading of the essay at An Evening With Northern Authors to be put on by the NorthWords Writers Festival on October 29, 7 p.m. at the Explorer Hotel, Kat B, in Yellowknife.

"A Cup of Comfort for the Grieving Heart" will be available at the Yellowknife Book Cellar when it comes out in December and can also be ordered (and pre-ordered) through Chapters or Amazon.

I will be sharing the stage with Fort Smith Author Richard Van Camp who is launching is new collection of short stories "The Moon of Letting Go," Jamie Bastedo who will be reading from his new novel "Sila's Revenge" and Mindy Willett who will be celebrating the publication of "Come Learn with Me," the latest in the series "The Land is Our Storybook." (Mindy is co-author with Sheyenne Jumbo. Tessa Macintosh is the photographer for the book.)

It should be a great literary evening. Hope to see you there.

If only I could be. . .

2009-03-17T15:56:00.000-06:00

Some time ago a friend came over for dinner and brought a homemade rhubarb pie. It was delicious. I inhaled two pieces, complimented her baking, then launched into what I thought was a humorous lament about my own pastry making deficiencies.

“C'mon over and I'll teach you how to bake pies,” she said. . .

Read the rest of the essay at http://www.arcticjournal.ca/prelude_notes.html

Fear and Authenticity

2009-02-06T09:37:00.000-07:00

My mentor Thelma was 23 years older than me, yet still often talked about her fears. When I was in my early forties I was still under the impression that I didn’t have much fear and that the fears I did have would soon be overcome. Although I never said this out loud I secretly thought Thelma’s spiritual practice couldn’t be very effective if she was still afraid at her age. Today that I understand the courage that Thelma showed in allowing her own fear, and it is only now that I am gaining that courage for myself. As I have gotten older, I’ve become too tired to hold the fear down and today I am learning to walk with it. I have come to understand that fear is part of who I am and part of what makes me authentically human. That is one of the things Thelma was teaching me all along.

Celebrating writing with Richard Van Camp

2008-11-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

Thank you, thank you to Author, Teacher and my good friend Richard Van Camp for putting on a spectacular writing workshop for 14 of us mentor-starved writers here in Yellowknife.

We were a mixed bag of writers, some just starting out, others well-published, some with stories blocked inside us and others with them gushing out.

Richard is a natural storyteller and this day was devoted to all our writing stories. My first reaction to this was an inward groan because it seemed like it would take forever and that we would never get to down to the brass tacks of the craft of writing. But the stories were wonderful, and Richard wove the lessons about the craft and business of writing through our stories and his own. Verv skilled. Very impressive. We listened, laughed and unzipped our hearts, so that by the end of the day there was a sense that we were a community of writers. That's how stories do their work.

Led by Richard's unrestrained and unapologetic cheerleading, it was also a day of celebration of all we had accomplished and will accomplish. In particular we applauded the publication of Fran Hurbcom's first novel "Going Places," Cathy Jewison's pending book deal for her collection of short stories, Jamie Bastedo's completion of a new manuscript and Jennifer Knowlans new Zine--and all our hopes and dreams which, if you believe Richard, will come true if we work hard enough and turn our setbacks into opportunties.

Richard also left us with a plethora of pithy acronyms and tips to get us writing, keeping us writing, make us work hard, overcome our fear of rejection, face the publishing industry and so on. These were all great but I don't remember any of them due to sleep deprivation as a result of the passions stirred by the workshop, and also because I never take notes (unless I'm getting paid for it), didn't even in high school or university--and really Richard should be grateful that I am now grown up enough to resist the temptation that I still have whenver I sit myself down in a classroom to disrupt everything by making wisecracks and throwing spitballs or something.

Thank you, Richard. It was truly wonderful!

The Blurring Line

2008-11-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

I was reading a story in the Globe and Mail about a massacre of a family in an eastern Toronto neighbourhood and immediately became worried about people I know in that part of the city. Then I realized the people I was thinking about were characters in a novel that I recently read.

The line between fiction and reality continues to blur.

A Sneak Preview of the Christmas Gifts

2008-11-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

After I found out there was no Santa Claus (my big sister told me when I was six), I became one of those kids who couldn’t wait until Christmas morning to find out what I was getting. I tried every Christmas to be good, but I could never resist the temptation to snoop and over the years I developed this into an art form. . .

Read more at: http://www.arcticjournal.ca/prelude_notes.html

We're All Mosquito Jocks Here, So Show Some Respect!

2008-09-05T13:56:00.000-06:00

I realized I was a mosquito jock over the summer when, while at a visit to my sister’s place in southern Ontario, I found myself poohpoohing the three mosquito bites she got when she walked down to the end of her lawn to get the mail.

“Three bites?” I scoffed.“That’s nothing. Where I come from, we swat mosquitoes in our sleep and sprinkle DEET on our breakfast cereal. We zap them with electric zappers until the air reeks with the scent of burnt bug cadavers, then . . .

Read more at http://www.arcticjournal.ca/prelude_notes.html

My six word memoir

2008-08-31T10:44:00.000-06:00

I love, then I run away.

How stories work

2008-08-12T16:03:00.000-06:00

I have been writing some of the stories of my own life, those that are important to me in terms of the way my life has gone.

It has occurred to me that what I'm doing is mythologizing my life.

I don't mean that I'm making things up that didn't happen, but that I'm looking at my stories in a larger context, the context of a whole life and the meaning of that life. I find as I write my own stories, I not only see my life in terms of a greater meaning but act of writing, or telling, the stories imparts meaning to my life. It gives me the sense of being linked to something greater than myself, to being part of a greater mythology, the sense that I exist on a deeper level than that of my ordinary day-to-day experience.

The other parts of telling our stories is having people listen to them, and listening to the stories of others. I am part of a recovery community where we spend most of our time telling and listening to our stories. Over the years, we hear how people's stories change as their understanding of the themselves and the Universe changes, and that helps us to deepen our understanding of ourselves. We find out that we are never alone, that we are connected to each other and that whether we know it or not, we are all walking together.

I've also been very privileged in my life to be able to listen to and write the stories of others. There is something in us that needs to be heard. I've always loved the Zulu greeting that translates as "I see you" because I think we all need to be seen, deeply and with love, in order for us to get a sense of who we are. For me, listening to people's stories so I can write has sometimes been a way to do that. It enriches and enobles in so many ways: the subject is enobled by the telling; I am enriched by listening, then further enriched by writing; the subject is again enriched by reading his/her story and other readers are enriched by reading the story ot another.

Mythology is so deeply healing and it exists in more places than we think.

Fear of writing

2008-07-31T19:47:00.000-06:00

Today I spent the morning working on my novel, as I try to do most mornings. I did my requisite 1,000 words and the writing flowed from my mind to fingertips with very little effort.

But the peace of that didn't sink in.

I was anxious and wanted to get the whole process over with.

What I really wanted was to have written.

To be acclaimed. To be famous. Maybe to wake up one day to discover I have magically arrived without having had to do all the work, like starting the army as a general rather than a private.

It's fear, of course. I know that. Even fantasies of being acclaimed carry within them the possibility that I won't be. Do I have the courage to find out?

Yet I have other writing days when the Universe lines up behind me, the world collapses at my feet and I know that all will be well. On those days there is nothing I would rather be doing than putting words on the page.

In anticipation of those days, I keep writing. Keep doing what's in front of me, one word, one day at a time.

It's all so simple, but so very difficult.

Not Separate Than

2008-06-23T19:11:00.000-06:00

Today I'm trying to learn that, despite appearances, I'm really not separate from anything or anybody else. Not better than, not worse than, but one among. Part of the Whole. It's really the only thing there is to learn, and I try to learn it every day. Every day I fail, then the next day I try again. Slowly, over the days, I am starting to see things differently.

Stunning the World

2008-06-22T19:19:00.000-06:00

I've had this blog for several months now, and I've done very little with it. This is because I am waiting to have brilliant ideas so that I can stun the world with the depth of my perception. This brilliance is slow in coming, and I'm tempted to give up blogging entirely.

Particularly since I'm pretty sure nobody's reading this.

However, I had it on the best of authority from fellow writers at the fantastic NorthWords Writers Festival in Yellowknife last weekend, that a blog is a "must-have" for writers in this day and age.

So what I'm going to do now is forget about stunning the world, and write whatever comes into my head. This is particularly easy since I'm sure nobody is reading, and that we're living in a Universe where we're all bloggers but none of us are bloggees.

Stitching contentment

2008-06-22T18:50:00.000-06:00

I spent this sunny afternoon sewing, and even though I don't much like sewing, as I ran the machine, I was suddenly as warm and happy as a well-loved, and cared for child. I had one of those moments where the bottom of the world dropped away, and there was nothing more that I wanted to do than sew by the open window and listen to the sound of the birch trees sway in wind.

It brought me back to some of the most secure times of my childhood when my mother and sister and I would spend whole days sewing and chatting, and all seemed safe in the world. My mother has been dead for eighteen years, but this afternoon it seemed as though her spirit were with me, even though as I was hemming some pants, I took horrible, sloppy shortcuts that, I'm sure, made her roll over in her grave.

Today I rarely sew. In fact, I only bring out the machine when I've exhausted all the alternatives.

It's hard to remember that when I was in high school, I sewed nearly everything I wore. It was the only way I could have new party dresses etc. That was before I became a hippy, and threw away my bra and started to live in blue jeans, rubbing cigarette ashes and dirt into the denim to make them look fashionably worn and faded. And before I became a dreamy writer who spends more time thinking about doing things, than actually doing anything.

Today I was content to sew, and to be reconnected with my sewing past, and my mother. I am happy also that I didn't run the sewing machine over my finger, as I once did, and that even though it's been so long since I sewed that I couldn't remember all the details of operating the sewing machine, I didn't once have to resort to reading the manual.

The benefits of having a family in your head

2008-05-24T20:31:00.000-06:00

I haven't yet been able to get into serious, up-to-the-moment blogging. So I'm cheating. Here's something I wrote about 10 years ago:

We live in an age were it is considered a characteristic of great sensitivity to admit to having an inner child and to coddle and humour that inner child shamelessly. But what about having inner children?

From time to time we hear about somebody whose traumatic experiences have caused them to split into 16 or 20 personalities. Maybe I'm weird but I have always been able to relate to this. No, that doesn't sound right. I'm normal, everybody else is weird.

Whatever the case, I've often felt like I have many different opinions vying for recognition in my head. For example, say I'm mentally debating the important topic of what to do with the million dollars that either Bill will win in the lottery or I will make writing a best-seller.

"Give it all to charity, a million dollars will ruin your life," says one voice.

"Give it to charity? You must be crazy," says another. "Spend it on a world cruise, quit working and be fat and happy for the rest of your life."

"Now, let's compromise," pipes up yet another. "Give some of it away and keep some it. For example, you should give some money to all your relatives. . . and maybe some of your friends."

"Your relatives? How much are you going to give them? Give them all the same or all different? They might start take you for granted as money-machine, you know. What's to stop them from quitting their jobs and then you'll have to support them for the rest of your life."

"That'll be bad for their character. Better not tell anybody about the million dollars. Keep it a secret."

"Yeah, stuff into your mattress and live exactly the same way you're living now and nobody will ever know the difference."

"C'mon, be reasonable, what's the point of having a million dollars, if you don't enjoy it?"
"Can you really enjoy money you haven't earned? If you haven't earned it, you have moral obligation to give it to the poor."

And so it goes, on and on until I practically have to scream to shut them all up. In fact, I've postponed writing the best-seller until I can get these unruly characters in line. (How's that for an excuse?)

If I were just a little further removed from reality, I could see how these voices might become separate personalities, all with their own names.

Now that I think of it, that might actually be kind of cozy, like having a loud, quarrelsome, extended family. They would be easier and cheaper to take care of than most extended families -- and you could keep most of your million in your mattress. You would only need a very small turkey for Thanksgiving dinner and putting clothes of their backs would be a cinch.

Hmmm, maybe I am a little weird. I blame this on the fact that I came of age during the sixties when it was fashionable to spend entire evenings listening to loud music, staring at walls and saying "Hey, far out, man," every hour or so. What can you expect from someone nurtured in that environment?

NorthWords Writers Festival and Zimbabwe Elections

2008-04-27T16:56:00.000-06:00

I am honoured to be a headliner at the NorthWords Writers Festival this year along with Canadian writers Michael Crummey, Lesley Choyce, Richard Van Camp, Anita Daher, Jennifer Storm, Bernice Morgan and local Yellowknife writers Cathy Jewison, Jamie Bastedo, Walt Humphries, Fran Hurcomb, Tyler Heal, Patrick Scott, Pat Braden, Mindy Willett and photographer Tessa Macintosh. The festival which takes place in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, June 12 to 15 is in its third year and on a roll.

And because I am absolutely thrilled to be reading and sharing the stage with some of these great writers, I sent my husband Bill an invitation on FaceBook to attend the Closing Gala.

Now you have to understand that while he is a prolific reader, hanging around with writers is not really Bill's idea of a good time. He would rather be sailing.

So when he got the FaceBook invitation, he replied "maybe."

"Maybe?" I jumped up from my computer and barreled into the living room. "Maybe? This is an important thing for your wife, and you say maybe?"

"This invitation is like a Zimbabwe election," he said.

"A Zimbabwe election?"

"Yes, they invite you to vote, but if you don't vote for whom they say, they shoot you."

I was aghast until I noticed the twinkly look he gets when he takes a firm yank on my leg.

Even though it's not the sort of thing he'd usually attend, he's proud of me and wouldn't miss it. And I know when he gets there, he's going to love it, not just because of me, but because he'll hear some great stories from wonderful writers. He'll have a great time, and I'll have a great time and there will be tons of people there and everybody will have tons of fun.

Is anybody out there paying any attention?

2008-04-27T11:48:00.000-06:00

A friend told me that anybody who is anybody is out here in cyberspace writing a blog. So always wanting to be a with-it, cool-without-regrets type of person, here I am engaging in the delicate art of bloggery. (Hmm, sounds like something you could have been arrested for in Victorian England, doesn't it?)

With all these blogs multiplying madly all over the place, my question is: Is any out there paying any attention?

Or all we all just shouting, "Hey, look at me! Look at me!" While nobody listens. Like the voice crying out in the wilderness.