"The Land of Clouds" / new story

I'm very happy to have a story published in the current issue of The New Quarterly. It's set in Oaxaca in Mexico where I stayed for three weeks in 2017. 

Working on travel stories in this last year while we haven't been able to travel has helped keep me sane. It's my writerly version of taking a trip. 

You can read it here: https://tnq.ca/story/the-land-of-clouds/

 

january #walking

Remember making snow shelters or forts or whatever you called them? Packing the snow, digging out a hole, crawling inside. The light  through the snow, seeing how snow wasn't really *white*. Peeking at the world if you'd made a few windows.

I saw lots of snow sculptures in the last week--lots of people taking pictures too. But no one was looking at this grimy snowperson slumped against a pole, gravel eyes and twig arms. So I did.  

How lucky can a person get? Not one but TWO truss bridges only a few moments' walk from where l live. Both cross the Lachine Canal.

holiday #walking

I didn't imagine this exact scene when I bought R the hat in Mexico in 2019, but I imagined that we would one day be walking in a monochromatic Montreal winter and he would be a spot of bright colour. 

We didn't have snow, we did, then we didn't again, then we did.  

Croissants don't--and shouldn't--belong to a healthy squirrel's diet, but it probably shouldn't belong to mine either, so I finally shared mine. Holiday time after all.

I was always glad to see people out walking, moving, striding along, whether with a friend or alone. 

I wondered if the dog would have liked to take his human to the parlour for grooming.  

I stood below this tree and saw a torso twisting up into the night, branches raised in song, a gown of snow. It was New Year's Eve--an aria of farewell to 2020. 

 

Happy New Year and stay safe as we wait to see what 2021 holds...