almost too much to carry

Friday evening, and plans already being made for Saturday morning at the Uzes market where I will go with my daughter who is here visiting from Toronto... A happy enough evening, until  the sick, awful shock from the American news about the school shooting in Connecticut...And I note that on my "followed blogs" there is a response to this tragedy from my good friend Lauren, who has posted music, "Prayer for the Children", being sung by the Baylor choir... And what else can one do, in such a situation? We need to find ways to connect, to relate, to spread out threads of compassion among friends and strangers to draw us together for however long it takes to gather strength from each other and weave ourselves back into some cohesive idea of what it means to be human... and to somehow go on, bewildered by evil and fearful of the constant threat of violence. Now, I don't mean that the threat we feel is only a "it could happen to me" personal fear..... No, our entire planet is threatened by violence, of so many different varieties that my head spins crazily even contemplating this notion. Clearly a subject to be addressed in blogs-to-come...

Lauren is a Canadian fiction writer (I believe I've mentioned her and her work earlier, and I'll speak of her most recent novel, OUR DAILY BREAD, another time)... For now, you might want to check her site, which can be found at http://laurenbdavis.com/blog




And you look at this box of children's toys, for sale at a flea market here in Anduze not long ago, and  you begin to truly consider the origins of the violence that intrudes even into the lives of small children... where does it start and how can we stop it? And can we? Or are we meant to accept it as part of the human condition? Oh, surely not...
**

I also notice some mail in this evening from another wonderful writer-friend, Elizabeth Hay, who has become one of Canada's foremost novelists in the past few years (although she's also a dab hand at short stories). Lizzie and I have been friends since being introduced many years ago by our mutual friend Sheila -- with whom I hitch-hiked my way through Europe back in the mid-60s, you may recall that  I've spoken of her recently as she came down from Amsterdam for a visit with my Dutch friend Conny....

I cannot imagine my world without Lizzie.... An indispensable friend... une amie indispensable... (SAME word, but it sounds utterly different in English or French, depending on the syllabic stress....And I find my attitude toward the word itself alters slightly too... Somehow I prefer the French sound of it...)  You no doubt already know her work,  so check out her blog too, she only posts when she has something elegant or funny or insightful to say... www.elizabethhay.com/blog/

And while I am speaking of friends with blogs, it's a good time to mention my dear friend Beth Kaplan, who came here to LE MAS BLANC WRITER'S RETREAT at the end of March for a few days, and who posted lots of photos and info about my place on her site... I follow her now -- as I am learning the ins and outs of this new world of blogging -- and am always rewarded by what I read, whether it's her personal take on events in her life OR her writerly overview on something she's read or heard. I always come away feeling richer and wiser.... www.elizabethkaplan.blogspot.com/



 and here we are, Beth and me, last March when she was here at LE MAS BLANC WRITER'S RETREAT...
we were supposed to be discussing her latest draft, but I have a pretty good idea, looking at this photo now,
 that we had edged over into more chummy terrain...we go back a long way, after all... Beth read "Celia Behind Me" --from THE ELIZABETH STORIES -- back in the 1980s on CBC Radio's ANTHOLOGY, that incredible repository of Canadian short stories, under the careful and affectionate guidance of Robert Weaver.