Hi all,
First, a note: I am looking forward to hopefully seeing some of you at the drop-in at the Sidney Library on Saturday September 16 at 1pm. We took the summer off, and before that I missed a few drop-ins for health reasons, so I’m really excited to get to one finally! More information here.
Second, another note: I am also looking forward to reading at the Salt Spring Island library on Thursday September 7 at 7pm. If anyone reading this lives thereabouts, please come! More information here.
Third, I wrote a piece about climate sorrow for this newsletter after driving through smoke on the way home from The Lake a week or so ago, but it feels too raw and too painful to share, so instead I will share some thoughts about gulls, written the same day as the sorrow, by the ocean, back on the Island:
A gull’s call forms a keloid in the air, rounded, proud, bigger than the original interruption. You hear a gull’s cry after it has finished, forming into the silence between the waves.
Gulls are good flyers, though we often don’t notice. We see “rats with wings” (one of my sisters’ epithets), and not the acrobats on the back of wind that they actually are, like those pink-leotarded ladies who used to perform on the backs of white horses in circuses (now that there are no circuses, where did those ladies go? They’re probably wearing black sweatpants).
My brother says I must not call them seagulls. I say, what about when they are perched on the rail of a pier that stretches out into the sea? Even then, he says.
It’s hard to tell gulls apart. Even accomplished birdwatchers have trouble because there are so many different kinds, and young ones wear different coats. I imagine the yearlings are so proud of their dappled grunge look.
Some gulls have a little red spot on their beaks, not unlike a small clown’s nose on the underside, that reminds me of the darker flesh close to a peach’s stone.
Gulls will survive after many species have died in the continuation of the Anthropocene, because they live well among people, don’t seem to mind ruined ecosystems so much, and eat garbage. They can fly away from wildfires.
FROM THE SPIRAL NOTEBOOK
Here’s a tiny flash piece I wrote a long time ago, from a photograph you can see here. It’s a fairly sad piece (be warned), but that’s the kind of mood I’m in just now.
Sally Mann, “Candy Cigarette” 1992
She has seen her mother smoke, knows the way to hold even a candy cigarette between two fingers, other arm across her stomach, her father’s old watch on her wrist dwarfing her arm, showing how small she still is. The eyes she gets also from her mother, the long stare.
Other girls copy the lipstick look their mothers give the dressing table mirror before going out with Dad for date night. Other girls look at their dolls the way their mothers look at their baby brothers during bath time in the sink.
This girl looks at us the way her mother looks at her on Friday nights after three coffee cups half-full of gin.
This girl knows what that look says, even though her mother has never said it out loud: you were a mistake. Suddenly, when I was too young, you came along and I married a man I didn’t love and dropped out of secretarial school. You’re the reason old men pinch my bum at the diner and I have to laugh when they do it because if I complain they don’t tip.
This girl knows all that, and that her dad feels almost the same way and that’s why he’s started selling steak knives from door to door instead of working at the plant which would bring in steady money at least. With the steak knives he can take a sales trip to the next city over and sleep in his car or sometimes an old divorcee’s bed, and not have to look at the wife and child he never wanted.
This girl will love chemistry for its predictable reactions, for the drawings of atoms on the dusty chalkboard in Mr. Stevens’s class in high school. Mr. Stevens who will be kind to her but not too kind, who will say “you’re pretty sharp, kid” when she asks a question he doesn’t expect in class. This girl with the old eyes will be the first in her family to go to university.
She will go far.
NOTES
Please feel free to reply to this email, either by hitting reply (it will only go to me), or by commenting on the Substack website (there are little speech bubble things at the top and bottom of the letter) if you’d like to be part of a larger discussion. You can also “like” the post if you want.
Also feel free to pass this along to any friends who might be interested. They can subscribe, if they like, by hitting the big blue button that says “subscribe”.
And thanks, as always, for reading.
Yours,
Kelsey
Ooooh that’s a fierce little piece, Kelsey! Yes sad…but feisty. I like it! And about gulls, have you ever had the opportunity to be standing above one (like on a balcony) and they tilt their head sideways to look at you out of one eye only? It’s quite remarkable—like they only have the bother to give you one eye of attention. Ubiquitous, filthy, fascinating creatures!
Ooo, sorry I missed this Kelsey :)
I'm quite fond of Seagulls, and especially like our smallest one that is commonly seen migrating through our area: the Bonaparte's Gull.
That's a very nice photo your mum took!