Loverboy and I are supposed to reshingle Grandpa’s shop, where he kept all his antique tools and collectibles.

Grandpa had an old tractor seat he'd converted to a stool, which stood in the centre of the shop. He could often be found sitting there having a smoke or just sitting. On the day of his funeral, I went out there. A group of men was standing all around the chair, as if Grandpa was sitting in it. I believe he was.

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I’ve just finished reading Strong Voices: Conversations with 50 Canadian Authors.

They were interviewed in the late ’80s so it’s not an up-to-date book by any means, but it is still inspiring. It inspires me to write, to wish I was creative in a literate way. I get all fired up with the idea of creating characters and stories and the way you don’t know when you start what will happen, what you will come up with or what will come to you.

I get fired up about it, but when I get to the computer and sit down, nothing comes but This is What I See, This is What I Wonder.

Strikes me that This is What I See would make a good title for this journal.

Titles come to me all the time, plucked out of the day, from something I thought or heard. Often I’ve written them down, thinking I’d come back to them and write about the images and feelings the phrase stirred in me, thinking if only I could describe the subtleties and drama of those images it would make a worthy slice-of-life piece. But I don’t do it.

I journal instead. I write letters.

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