Introduction
Since our co-written piece was published in Understorey Magazine last fall, we have continued to email and chat online and with each other via video technology, which freezes constantly, to keep expanding our project “Field Notes: Desire Paths, Women, Land and Body.” With the incredible world-shifts due to the novel coronavirus COVID-19, our conversations have also shifted. In these excerpted emails, we discuss where we were a mere eight months ago–Assisi, Italy–and where we are now. We edit a new piece, so comments go back and forth in relation to it. We marvel at how life in a pandemic is very much all Field Notes, desires, and desire paths held while we keep ourselves and each other safe, and worry about friends and family nesting all over the world, or out fighting for others’ safety and health.
Excerpted emails
From: Jenna Butler
Sent: March 14, 2020 12:31 PM
To: Yvonne Blomer
Subject: And with intro
Hey you,
I am super behind and incredibly sorry.
How are you guys holding up, first and foremost? Are you on Spring Break now, and safe at home with the boys until the schools decide what they’re going to do?
We worry about whether coronavirus will come to campus, and we’re all waiting to see what the college will do. So far, it hasn’t said it will close its doors, but we’ve been allowed to move our courses online. Most of us have been doing that this week, trying to rewrite the final four weeks of class so we can teach from Blackboard and e-mail and still get our students through to graduation.
I’m at home sick, thinking it is just a cold, watching the coronavirus count, but also trying to watch lighter things on Netflix when I can, and planning the garden for the farm this summer. Extra rows of potatoes and carrots and beets for the Food Bank. Extra flowers to help lift spirits because this is going to be a brutal year, whichever way you slice it.
I owe you one more ghazal, I think, in this piece. What do you think of the intro? Longer?
Hope your heart is doing okay through all this, my friend. What a crazy week.
Jx
From: Yvonne Blomer
Sent: March 25, 2020 4:07 PM
To: Jenna Butler
Subject: RE: And with intro
Hi Jenna
I’m only properly reading this now because I’m only really getting back into my studio now. Yikes to maybe having Covid-19 on campus, but of course, I’m pretty sure it is everywhere, and that we should multiply our numbers by 22 or something. I read that somewhere yesterday.
We are, yes, home. Colwyn’s last day was Wednesday, as I pulled him for Thursday and Friday (staying slightly ahead of the curve, I pulled him from Spring Break camp yesterday, and they emailed last night to cancel it, which I thought was a bit slow on the uptake, but whatever). Spring Break is on for two weeks, and we are on hold. Rupert was told (but after he left school) to bring his school computer home in case they were on a longer break … he didn’t because he got the email Saturday, but he can pop back if he needs it.
Scary that you have a cold. I have a mild chest cough!!! Which has caused me no end of worry, though no other signs of a cold, a few sniffles, and seriously, I’ve been self-isolating since finishing being Poet Laureate in 2018, so I think I’m ok. That’s a bit of light humour, which many are not getting these days. No surprise there.
Yes, we put in a big seed order this week. I love your plans for extras for food banks and flowers. So lovely. It’s pretty uncertain. I was thinking … we should write on this, too. There was a great interview piece between two women writers talking to each other posted to FB, but I can’t find it now. (The two women are Patricia Robertson and Joan Thomas at www.thescalesproject.com).
Anyway, I’m going to run in and see if Colwyn is awake—he’s not been able to fall asleep at night, so is napping now. Then I’ll eat and come back to you for 10 my time.
Hugs and love and hang in there.
xo y
From: Jenna Butler
Sent: March 24, 2020 11:27 PM
To: Yvonne Blomer
Subject: Re: Most recent
I’m sending this essay back to you, my friend. I know we’ve been working on this since before the pandemic started, but for my last entry, I’ve added a piece to the end that’s a bit less lyric and more functional about all we’re living with now. There’s a tonal shift, for sure, and a rapid one, but maybe it works? After all, the pandemic was declared just as suddenly.
Jx
From: Yvonne Blomer
Sent: March 26, 2020 4:31 AM
To: Jenna Butler
Subject: RE: Re most recent
Hi,
This is lovely. I will have more to say tomorrow, pondering if the dates can show enough the shift in thinking from women out in the world to women nestled in due to the big changes … am giving a bit of my evening to iced rum and editing “Death of Persephone” (we’ve run out of wine!).
It’s all so very surreal in my mind tonight. I chatted with my dad, and he just can hardly believe it. Can recall his parents talking about WWII in the way he’s feeling about this now. Pretty crazy. We were out and about a bit today–I hand delivered Sweet Water to a few locals, and then a walk at Thetis Lake. Also a stop at the post office, which was my first time in a place or business in over a week … how easily the nerves nerve up.
Hope you are beginning to feel better. My cough is back, but I talked a lot today, gabba gabba gabba!
Colwyn did piano lesson with his teacher on FaceTime, so cool. We should try FaceTime; it may be more user friendly–less freezy than Messenger.
xoxo Yvonne
From: Jenna Butler
Sent: March 27, 2020 3:36 PM
To: Yvonne Blomer
Subject: Re: most recent
Hey you,
Yeah, I was trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between life and then, suddenly, coronavirus! When I’d started my piece, it wasn’t really an issue, and then the curve suddenly blew up like crazy! I don’t know whether that jump in focus is distracting or reflects how the pandemic blossomed so quickly. What do you think?
I’m so glad you’re working on “Persephone” and fighting for the time and space to do that. The pieces already published from the manuscript are incredible! I cannot WAIT for this book.
I went from having a book coming out in June to having a closed publisher and a delay until at least the fall … and a request to add to the book! So now I’m writing about beekeeping and farming during a pandemic. Feeding community, feeding spirit. It’s a lot, but I’m grateful every day for the farm and its potential to feed our friends this summer. We’re planning the biggest garden we’ve ever planted. I know you know how good that soil work is for the heart. Healing stuff.
We’ve been pretty house-bound, just going out to forage plant medicines or get some sun. I’m teaching online until the middle of June (end of winter term, then spring), and very grateful for the work, even though I don’t know what the next year will look like. We’ll move out to the farm full-time in a few weeks and get the garden started, then slowly empty the house and settle in at Larch Grove for the summer. If we can, we’ll rent our little investment house in RD to one of my colleagues at work. If I have to teach online next year, I can do that from Larch Grove. I think it’s going to be very important to be on top of all the wild harvests on the land this year, as well as what the garden offers. People are going to need that food.
I’m super glad that Colwyn can keep up with piano lessons and routine during this crazy time! How has he been adjusting? How have you all? YES to FaceTime. Maybe it will give us a clearer picture and not all the weird pauses in the conversation.
Hope you’re hanging in there, Y. It seems crazy to think that we were wandering carefree around Italy eight short months ago, and now there’s all this death crushing that beautiful country. Last summer seems as though it existed on a different, blessed plane…
J xo
From: Yvonne Blomer
Sent: March 31, 2020 9:50 PM
To: Jenna Butler
Subject: RE: Re most recent
Our conversation felt strange … I hope all is ok. I think the tech and the phone dying and etc. was making it more awkward. I hope it was only that and you are feeling ok. Of course, if we are awkward, that is ok, too. These times seem to allow for anything, don’t they?
I’m aware of how easy we have it … not addicted to any drugs, not on the street, healthy, job security for at least part of our families, etc. It is horrific to imagine Italy. It is impossible to imagine how people in parts of Asia, India, Africa, and in refugee camps are living.
Still … there are many ways to struggle, and I accept that this is a struggle for all of us.
Sending love and hugs,
xo Y
From: Jenna Butler
Sent: March 31, 2020 10:20 PM
To: Yvonne Blomer
Subject: Re: most recent
Hey you,
Just a quick note as I come off the treadmill to say noooo, I’m not uncomfortable with you AT ALL, and I hope I didn’t come across as if I was! I’m just reading too much news, as we all are, and worrying for loved ones, as we all are.
We are very boxed in here in Alberta, really home-bound by a government hell-bent on wrecking the province in its care, and by the weather, and perhaps it’s just that, too … wanting to be out, wanting space, but having so little access to it. I won’t take safe movement for granted ever again. Thank goodness T and I are good friends and great supports for one another. And the cats! Thank god for the pets!
Yes, we are so, so lucky here in the West, but you’re right that we’re all struggling in our own ways with this pandemic. Keepin’ on sending you guys so much love through these rough days.
Jx
From: Yvonne Blomer
Sent: March 31, 2020 11:30 pm
To: Jenna Butler
Subject: RE: Re most recent
Hey,
Love back at ya. I came in and read my book, and then we watched the news. Bah.
Love and hugs. Maybe bundle up and sit in the sun for a bit if you can tomorrow. Well done on the treadmill.
Xo y
From: Yvonne Blomer
Sent: April 16, 2020 10:44 AM
To: Jenna Butler
Subject: Desire and Longing
Hi,
I just put on my denim dress I wore so much on our summer travels and have become overcome with a big longing and lump in my throat for that time and all this change.
Love you.
From: Jenna Butler
Sent: April 16, 2020 2:30 pm
To: Yvonne Blomer
Subject: Re: Desire and Longing
Awwww, my heart! That brings back such wonderful memories of our time last summer–freedom and ease and discovery. It feels like half a lifetime ago, and it feels like yesterday, too.
Love you right back.
