It would seem that a new life can come at a person from any direction, even from an old one. With the gentle rain falling outside my window, I am looking forward to an indulgent day of reading, curled up on one of my pretty new love seats, with an old cat purring on my lap.

When I moved away from the farm last fall, it was only partly because the addictions experts advised me to do so. The theory was that by leaving my husband with the house and the wealth of responsibility that went with it, I could help him appreciate the consequences of his alcoholism and addictions and encourage him to get help. With my love and support, they told me, he was more likely to come to grips with his multiple problems and be able to lead a clean, sober, happier life. In the end, by his own choice, what has transpired with him had almost nothing to do with me. 

My own private reason for moving out was that I’d seen it all before and didn’t want to become a statistic. When a marriage ends or is in trouble, it is somehow always the wife who gets left with the detritus, seemingly destined  to rattle around in the matrimonial home, with the kids (in our case many animals), the old furniture, the wedding gifts and all those memories of things past. It is almost a given that the husband will move on pretty effortlessly to a brand new and uncomplicated life with someone else.

So it was that I wanted to break the mould; and I was fortunate enough to have friends who made it possible for that new and uncomplicated life to belong to me. Although there was no someone else on the scene, everything was different from the existence I'd had here on the farm.

With my ex in residence on the homestead, I lived nearer town, on a river, in a modern cottage with all the amenities. I sipped wine with friends in the evenings on a deck and I slept in a beautiful loft. Although I missed them terribly, I had no farm animals to feed, almost no lawns to mow, no cares whatsoever except to heal and try somehow to find a path of my own. I indulged myself in long bubble baths in the whirlpool tub, with a book and a glass of chilled white wine in my hand. For the first time in years I had soft, uncallused feet. I lunched, did volunteer work, walked by the water, took up my camera again. I spent most weekends entertaining house guests, dining out, or visiting friends in lovely parts of the province I hadn’t seen in years. Slowly, with time,  I felt my single spirit coming back to life.

So it’s funny now to be back here in the country, especially on my own. True to every one of the cliches, my ex husband lost no time in establishing that proverbial new life anyway. Blithely, without a backward glance, he eschewed the important first year of solo recovery to replace me with a woman younger than I am and nowhere near as well educated or as bright. Because she is living near Chester, that’s the only place on earth he wants to be. By the late spring, like our marriage, the farm and everything on it had faded easily into his "then" while, in the ensuing chain of events, inching its way gradually back into my "now." I am so grateful that it did.

In the end I have come to be the one in residence here, returning at first temporarily to care for my critters, and then of my own volition, to the place I once so fervently intended to leave behind - to the unkempt acreage and the aging animals and the dear, decrepit old farmhouse whose charm I fell in love with all those many years ago.

Thanks to the long months I spent on my own elsewhere, I have learned that our happiness lies not in our geography but in our selves; and that just because the standard scenario usually plays out, doesn’t mean it is always a bad one or that it won't be fulfilling for me.

I am sitting in my bedroom back at the farm, a place I’d resolved never again to be. It is really only from this place that I can write this blog, because it’s hard to seek a life of the mind while living a practical life on the farm if you aren’t actually living on a farm.

Until last month, when to my great surprise I returned here for good, I lived on the LaHave River in an exquisite small cottage owned by two of my dearest friends. How and why I came back here is a story for another time. 

My marriage is completely over and has been for a long time. This time, no attempt was even made to save it. Although my ex husband and I are cordial, we have not really managed to remain friends. He has no idea how to do so, and I am far less invested in this notion than I was when we separated all those months ago. It was the romantic in me, I suppose.

Sadly, right after his return from a residential treatment programme in the Valley, he began a sexual relationship with a woman in his recovery group, thereby foreclosing on his chances of becoming self-sufficient and creating an immediate new set of co-dependencies with her. He is now deeply enmeshed. Although he appears to be clean and sober, his complicated interior problems have obviously not been resolved and this makes the chances of relapse far greater in the long run. As unfortunate as this may be, it is the path he has chosen to follow. With all the challenges that lie before him, I wish him nothing but the best.

In the year that has passed, I’ve had a great deal of growing to do on my own behalf. I’ve worked with a good therapist, had the help of an incredible support group, and benefitted greatly from the emotional and practical generosity of my friends. Slowly I have found my way back to reconnecting with the woman I once was and the woman I want still to be - free spirit, idealist, adventuress, dreamer and warrior in the cause of creating a better world.

Without the constraints of the film business to circumscribe my leisure, the enormous beauty of the Nova Scotia summer has made itself once again wonderfully apparent to me. And then there is the companionship of my girlfriends - kindred spirits encountered anew and woven, this time forever, into the fabric of my life. I am a lucky woman and I know it.

So from this place that was once our home and where I’ve begun to make a life on my own, I plan to live in nature, care for the animals, work, love, dream and, in countless other ways, live out my story. To make this my own sanctuary, a cocoon of serenity and comfort, a haven for friends, I began by painting the kitchen and living room pink. May the warm glow cast by these pretty walls envelop all who come here and invest this lovely old house with renewed life.

When I made the decision to learn Italian this year by pairing audio lessons with some enjoyable armchair travelling, I obviously had no idea what I'd be getting myself into. Suffice it to say that things haven’t been heading in the direction I had planned. 

The truth is that all this language learning and dreaming about things Italian was really intended to be a motivational exercise, a practical scheme whereby I could both beat the winter doldrums and propel myself toward a lifelong dream - a real, in the flesh, trip to Italy to soak up the great art treasures of the Italian Renaissance while partaking of some beautiful scenery along the way. Rome, Florence and Venice, I imagined, were the three places I absolutely had to see before my time on earth ran out. With the clock ticking away, this seemed like a good time to get the job done.

However, as I’ve been flipping through the guide books and watching travel videos on You Tube, I’ve noticed how often words like “crowded” and “expensive” abound. “Expensive” pleasures can somehow always be downscaled, but “crowded” is another matter entirely. I was horrified to discover that there’s even a special word in Italian to connote bumping into someone while taking one’s passagiata or ritual evening walk. 

In Florence, we are told, there are knock-offs of Michelangelo's David on street corners everywhere you turn, yet it costs money to see the real one. I discover to my genuine horror that nowadays, due to crowding, you have to make an appointment if you have any hope at all of getting into the Uffizi. One pays extra for a reservation to avoid long hours in line and there’s no such thing as an untimed visit either, all of which makes me wonder whether the splendours of classical Italian art might not more pleasurably be experienced through an expensive coffee table book in the leisurely comfort of home. 

Any dream I might have nurtured about Rome, or the Vatican or the Sistine chapel ceiling, died on the spot when two of my dearest friends recounted their nightmare visits there. The words “crowded” and “expensive” figured so heavily in those anecdotes that, Michelangelo forgive me, I'm beginning to think I can do without. My urbane and witty friends hated Florence for the same reasons and couldn’t wait to get into the countryside. They were tired of being crushed by the tourists, and if I’m not mistaken, even found that city to have an offensive smell.

As for Venice, what can be said? Described in virtually all the travel guides as "a must see" that is both “crowded" and "expensive,” La Serenissima, we are told, is best visited off season. However, anyone who has seen the Nicholas Roeg film, Don’t Look Now, won’t be at all seduced by the dark, dank vision of the city that fall and winter seem to provide. Pair that with the news that gondola rides are only for the very foolhardy (or at least for those touristy types with serious money to burn) and a bit more of the bloom falls off the rose. Do I really want to be laughed at by the locals? Suffer pigeons dive- bombing me in Piazza San Marco? Drink cappuccino that goes for eight dollars a cup? And just how deep is my long cherished desire to sip a Bellini while perched on a stool in Harry’s Bar? The price I’d have to pay for that one, even if I could find a seat, seems pretty “expensive” too. White peaches notwithstanding, would I be missing all that much if I stayed away?

The other part of my plan, the language learning component, has also encountered some mild difficulty. It took me a few days to opt for Pimmsleur over Michel Thomas when, despite good reviews, the phlegmy intonations of the latter began to drive me insane. Who needs water on the ear? It became absolutely unbearble!

I also passed on anything whose title mentioned learning while driving a car, partly because my vehicle has no facility for docking an i-Pod and partly because I’m stuffy enough to believe that, while driving a car, people ought to be concentrating on driving a car, not daydreaming in the foreign language they're immersed in while behind the wheel.

As discouraging as some of this might sound, I'm certainly not giving up on my Italian fantasy life or on my New Year's resolution to add a new language to my skill set. As my vocabulary is expanding by the day, I am merely moving my dreams a little further off the beaten track to those places in Italy where a curious and adventurous woman might find delight in less famous things.

If that means that, thanks to Frances Mayes and her ilk, most of crowded Tuscany has to fall off the roster too, so be it. There are lots of other places left to see. The only thing that's certain right now is that the journey I’ve begun in my head has already done wonders to take me away from the dreaded winter blahs. That in itself is magnifico!

Even without a calendar I can always recognize the turning of the year by my sudden craving for salt. By New Year’s Day every year, the chocolate overdose that accompanies the Christmas holidays just somehow seems to catapult me into a totally savoury world. Lindt, of course, has tried to have it both ways with their amazing dark chocolate bars seasoned with fleur de sel, but right now I’m having none of it. From today on, when snack time rolls around, I’m back to pretzels, hummus and pita, bruschetta, crackers and cheese. Anything that doesn’t involve chocolate.

Right now I’m sitting in front of the fire on this first day of a brand new year trying to resolve what to do about resolutions. Looking backward at the mostly failed ones I put forward last year, it seems prudent this time either to forgo the ritual entirely or somehow to decrease the possibility of failure so that something truly encouraging might actually come to pass.

This year, I’ve decided, I’m only going to make one resolution. I’m going to pass on all the stuff about exercise and healthy eating and go straight out into left field with something entirely new. I have resolved in 2011 to learn to speak Italian. 

For anyone who is cringing right now, trying to push away the nascent apprehension that I’m embarking on a cloned Eat, Pray, Love kind of experience, please have no fear. I’m not working through my marital angst by planning a year of travel to Italy, India and Bali. I’m actually just staving off the inevitable winter blahs with a fantasy life that includes the language of another climate, and mental images of another place and time.

Some weeks ago, while rooting around in some of the boxes that Sasha has packed up for give-away, sale or disposal, I came upon a CD set of Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun. Since this is not something we’d ever have bought, neither of us has any idea where it came from, but it did fit nicely into the CD player of the little Ford Focus I purchased this past fall. I listened to it all.

Despite the cloying southern drawl of the narrator and the total massacre of the Italian language (why do they let authors record their own works?) I fell totally in love with the descriptions of the landscape, the culture and food of Tuscany, the idea of an escape to someplace else.

So I have downloaded a good set of audio Italian language lessons to my iPod, found in my own library a number of wonderful books involving things Italian, bought a small English/Italian dictionary and a Fodors.

Now, over steaming bowls of ribollita or minestrone, I’ll be all set to fantasize at will. This winter, as I swan around in my fat pants intoning phrases like “Mi piace la pasta” or “Dove il bagno” I’ll be getting two things done really well. I’ll be dreaming the edge off reality and I’ll be learning something new. What could possibly be better than that?

I am definitely more of a “broad” than anybody's notion of a “girlie girl.” An old boyfriend once disparagingly compared my walk to that of a football player and, despite a certain verbal grace, everybody knows that I can have the mouth of a stevedore as well. I laugh loudly and am highly opinionated, I shovel manure, I am not particularly domestic and I definitely take a back seat to my husband when it comes to the baking of cakes and fussy pies. There is nothing about me on the outside that explains the stuff most people never see - the love of candles and firelight, of French milled soaps, pearls,  “green” perfumes, handmade lace, silk ribbons and the novels of Colette.  Somehow, underneath it all, I'm an incurable romantic at heart.

I am also the daughter of a seamstress, a woman who once apprenticed herself to a tailor in order to learn some of the finer points of making beautiful clothes. Growing up, I had the good fortune to benefit from her abilities in a number of different ways, from exquisitely tailored jackets to beautiful lingerie; and although I live now almost entirely in blue jeans and sweat pants, I have never lost the love of running my fingers over fabric that is still on the bolt, or the knowledge that in capable hands, lovely textiles can be wonderfully transformed into almost anything a  person could desire.

At some point in the last decade, prompted by an impulse I now can’t even recall, I made the somewhat peculiar decision to spend the rest of my life sleeping only on pure white sheets. To be precise, only on pure white cotton sheets, and pillow cases trimmed with hand made white lace. Although Sasha no doubt considered this to be a rather extreme eccentricity on my part, he must have found something charming in it too, because that was when my white “revolution” began.

In a world that has online shopping and especially eBay, it was relatively easy to replace the existing household prints and colours with a beautiful collection of vintage bed linens, all in pristine condition, for relatively little cost. Not only were such things terribly out of fashion and not at all politically correct, but by most modern women they were also regarded to be dull, labour intensive and totally unhip. To me, they were the very embodiment of romance, calling forth from the imagination the promise of cool breezes blowing gently through gauze curtains on starlit summer nights. Even now, these long years later, my crisp white sheets, lightly sprayed with lavender linen water, make crawling into bed at the end of every day an almost indescribable delight.

The second thing I decided, flowing naturally from the thing about the sheets, was that I would also only wear white nighties. No PJs for me. Pretty white nighties made of natural fibres are a commodity not easily to be found, particularly if one lives on a farm in rural Nova Scotia, so it has always been a challenge finding something decent to suffice. My favourite Eileen West nightdress, a treasure purchased years ago in Boston, recently became tattered beyond redemption and turned out to be hideously expensive to replace. Not sold in Canada, and available only through the smallest handful of online sources in the US, gowns like my beautiful Eileen West are costly in the first place and absolutely prohibitive to import, especially when exorbitant shipping tariffs are applied.

No longer having anything special to sleep in and recalling the days when I had the luxury of custom made clothing right at home, it dawned on me finally that the best and surest way to solve my white sleepwear dilemma was simply to choose  the fabrics and notions myself and have everything made to order, so this is exactly what I have done. 

This afternoon I returned happily from the seamstress with no fewer than three gorgeous white cotton nightgowns to sleep in and enjoy all summer long. Prettily pin tucked and trimmed with white silk ribbons and beautiful bits of vintage lace, they are the stuff of any girlie girl’s dreams. Given what I went through to acquire them, obviously they are the stuff of my dreams too and I thank Susan Richards with all my heart for every perfect stitch.

It seems that all I think about nowadays is either blue food for Sasha’s film gig or his pending appearance in Small Claims Court where he is being frivolously sued by the photographer, Sherman Hines. Both played a part in our weekend because it was the only time that Sasha could be here at home and that we’d have any chance at all to get caught up on anything. So, while dipping cold cuts and cheese slices in blue food dye, we reviewed the legal situation while toasting our nephew’s twenty seventh birthday with pink champagne. I guess you could say that we got a lot of bang out of the weekend buck.

In my own small world, my maiden effort at blogging, Sherman’s Behind,  apparently got itself noticed by another blogger last week, someone who writes about marketing and communication, who has suggested he’d like to include it in an article about “how the internet makes the David and Goliath story obsolete.” His readership, he tells me, is about five thousand people, but so far nothing further has happened on that front. 

In the particular situation detailed in my blog, David has yet to score a victory and Goliath keeps coming on strong, so I’m not sure I can agree with the premise anyway just yet. In the meanwhile Sasha has started a  new Facebook group called People Supporting Sasha in his Claim against Sherman Hines, so the saga continues in that universe as well. As fascinated as I am by social networking and the power of the internet to disseminate information rapidly, I am beginning to find the entire thing quite fatiguing intellectually and would far rather focus my own attentions elsewhere. If I didn’t believe so strongly in this particular struggle, I’d have packed it in a long time ago. 

When I’m not reflecting on the vagaries of the legal system. I am still enjoying myself quite a lot these days. One bit of happy news is that yet another broody hen in another habitat entirely, seems to be sitting on another clutch of eggs. This time I had the wit to turn to my friend and mentor, Ron Rogerson, of Oaklawn Farm Zoo, for some advice on how to achieve a happier outcome this time around. According to Ron, it is likely that the previous hen had, at some point in the past, eaten an egg or two and that the behaviour just resurfaced again in the barn. Cannibalism can apparently lie dormant sometimes .

With a new opportunity before us, this time we are planning to take Ron’s suggestions and handle the situation a bit differently. We will, by night, remove the broody hen and her eggs  to an apple box or bushel basket which we will then cover with a small blanket or a towel. This we will remove again to a secure and private habitat in which no other birds will be present and the hen and eggs will be left in peace. Apparently, once uncovered, the hen will hop in and out of the box (or basket) for food and water and the eggs should be quite secure until they hatch. Unless she’s another cannibal, that is. 

If that happens, we are definitely giving up.

Isn’t there an expression somewhere about screaming “blue murder?” Because I had occasion to scream those two words a few times myself this past weekend although not in the same sentence and not in the way anyone might think.

I should have seen something coming last week when my absent spouse posted to his Facebook a photograph of his right hand on which he sported several fingers that were partially stained blue. I was aware, of course, that the movie he is working on involves that colour in a big way and that virtually all the food consumed by the actors has to be coloured blue. Although I certainly recognized that film food comes under the purview of the property master, I also know that it is often contracted out to caterers, which is probably why I made a little joke of his photograph and didn’t give it any further thought. I thought he was just messing around.

Like a lot of other parts of our domestic existence, Sasha’s return every week-end is usually planned to be relaxing and low key. At whatever time he might arrive, I try to prepare something quick and simple for us to eat (this week it was a lemon pasta/green salad combo), and after sharing a bottle of wine and some of the week’s biggest news, we turn in and make it an early night. With the animals, there is always a busy workday lying ahead.

This past Friday, however, when he arrived from the city carrying the usual duffel bag full of laundry, his book bag and computer case, my husband also handed me a large shopping bag from the Bulk Barn, asking me to take it with me into the house. Thinking it was a gift, I opened the bag eagerly and realized right away that I was in for it. The contents could have no possible relevance to me. 

What was I ever going to do with a supply of blue ‘chocolate’ baking chips, blue jelly beans, blue cake sprinkles, a bag of blue cake “sparkles” (which looked like the same thing to me), a tiny vial of blue food paste, three small bottles of blue food colouring, two tubes of royal blue ‘decorating’ icing,  four tubes of something blue called “sparkle gel” and two aerosol cans of another blue product called food colour spray? In another bag, from a restaurant supply house, arrived an additional litre of blue food colouring and a vat of blueberry puree. There were also some disposable storage containers, a Granny Smith apple and a small jar of mayonnaise. A frisson of anxiety gripped me then because, having lived through similar circumstances, I could see the Food Experiments coming on.

By mid Saturday morning I was taking the mumbling non-sequiturs in stride as my partner had begun to think aloud about the making of what he was now describing as “a ton” of blue food. My feeble inquiry about using a caterer received the slightly testy reply that it was still his responsibility to “work out the logistics” before the actual food production could be consigned to someone else. 

Early that afternoon, after his "emergency" run for yeast and flour, I could hear him cranking up the bread machine which soon began to conjure large amounts of wretched looking smurf blue dough. Pools of dark blue water sat in a number of bowls and pots in our white apron sink. Worried about staining the porcelain, I reached in at once to dump the offending liquid, emerging from that fiasco with a pair of hands that were smurf blue right up to the wrists. They probably heard my screaming several kilometres away. That’s when the word “murder” came up. 

Luckily for him, Sasha is pretty proficient at removing stains, having needed this skill on his own flesh many times over the years. However, the tension between us continued to escalate when the isopropyl alcohol he first recommended failed to do the trick. After I had scrubbed hard with the heavy industrial hand cleaner that he keeps in our mudroom, my mitts paled to the soft robin’s egg blue with which I will apparently have to live until the colour fades on its own. 

Less surly on Sunday morning, and attracted by a large, expensive bag of frozen crab legs and claws, I assisted voluntarily in the enterprise of removing all the crab meat from the shells (most of which were long, multi-jointed legs) without cracking them at all. Snapping at the joints was a no-no because the resultant tube-like receptacles were later going to be dyed blue and filled with marzipan. Blue marzipan, of course.

My participation in this effort was motivated purely by self interest, I confess, possessed as I was of a hankering for crab cakes made with the Old Bay seasoning a friend had brought me from the Carolinas. Since the meat was a superfluous by-product of the blue food experiment, I saw my chance and took it.

While I fried up the crab cakes for brunch, my happy husband stood beside me mushing up two big tubes of marzipan and dyeing them, once again, the now very offensive bright smurf blue. We ate our meal as the unbroken crab shells boiled on the stove in a huge pot of vibrant blue water.  Suffice it so say that things remained blue here for the remainder of the day.

When he left this morning with his bags full of colourful food props and supplies, I think Sasha felt the weekend had been a big success. I couldn't relive it if you paid me.

Much later today, when all the evening chores have been done and I can sit down in peace with a book and a drink in my hand, it sure isn't going to be blue Curacao. I can definitely promise you that.

This past weekend in Halifax marked the opening of the European movie made from Steig Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a book I thought to be both interesting and well written when I read it a couple of months ago. Although, largely because of the violence, I’d originally decided to defer succumbing to the two remaining volumes in the trilogy, the truth is that I went on to burn through them like wildfire and am now really keen to see how effectively the content translates into film. Since Sasha has just begun another job in the city, our time together will once again be fraught with outdoor practicalities so I imagine we’ll probably pass on our frequent weekend matinees and just rent the DVD at a later, more convenient time. I am no stranger to delayed gratification.

Here in the country, with proximity only to a smallish Blockbuster, anyone with tastes veering beyond the latest box office hit finds the local pickings very lean. We do have a wonderful film society, though and we maintain a membership with Zip.ca, both of which make a broader cinema culture more accessible.              

The other thing that ups the intellectual ante on rural life is the possession of an iPod Touch, a device I  don’t think I could live in the country without. Although for me useage began with music and the convenience of having something to listen to while waiting for car repairs or using the treadmill at the gym, I soon discovered the richness and diversity of podcasts, and after that, the amazing phenomenon known as iTunes U. With the ability to download courses from many universities, it’s possible for a person to think, learn and grow intellectually even down here on the farm. An excellent blog that helps sort through the various options can be viewed by clicking here.

The last component to my cerebral well-being is listening to audio books, a habit to which I often turn when battling insomnia or working out of doors. A lot of offerings are downloadable for free from sites such as LibriVox and Project Guttenburg, but for a great collection of contemporary works or for those still under copyright, I love audible.com, where my inexpensive subscription allows me to download one book every month.

In fact, I just listened to a chapter of War and Peace (the whole of which is sixty hours long in audio) while mucking out the barn. Depending on how well a person keeps up with all the names, you really can’t beat an experience like that, and since I am married to a Russian, it hasn't been too awfully hard for me. Think of all the work I'll be able to get done before it ends.

The miserable cold with which I’ve been afflicted has lingered on and on, causing the last week to have become a total blur. Apart from crawling to the barn twice a day to feed the animals, I have spent most of that time in bed, coughing and wheezing and lapsing in and out of sleep. It’s a good thing my professional workload has been light. 

Without a voice with which to talk on the telephone and with a head too stuffed up to read with enjoyment or comprehension, I decided to make a companion of the small television set in the bedroom where I became transfixed by the new DIY channel that has recently hit the air. Watching women with power tools renovate old bathrooms was a particular favourite although my drowsiness never permitted me to catch a single episode in its entirety. 

Just as I would warm to an episode showing someone adapting an antique bureau to accommodate a sink, I’d doze off again and waken to a crew on the following programme that I’d never seen before, ripping the cabinets out of an out-dated kitchen. One show morphed into another and eventually into my dreams.

Still, when the time comes to tackle the bathroom in this old farmhouse, I hope I’ll have osmosed at least some appreciation of what the job requires. At the very least I’ll have a much more enlightened view of the possibilities.

In the meanwhile, having wrapped his film in the city, Sasha came home for the weekend and could mercifully tend to the household routine and to me. Although he still has three more days in which to complete his returns and all the attendant paperwork, the hours are much shorter and we can begin to ease back into normal life. 

Savouring a steaming bowl of his wonderful garlic soup,  I can scarcely contain my relief.

I’ve always believed that somebody ought to write a book about the film business. I don’t mean how it works, or what impact it has on the economy or what the various stages of production really are, and I don’t mean anything at all to do with Hollywood stars. We already have lots of those. 

I mean that somebody ought to put together a chatty little tell-all from the point of view of the beleaguered spouse - those of us men and women who keep the home fires burning while our partners abandon all domestic reality from time to time for the adrenaline, creativity and fairly substantial paycheques that the business can provide. I am talking about the flip side of the mad rush to camera, the undocumented back story, the numerous little sub-plots that nobody has time to notice except those of us who inhabit the roles.

At the moment, quite true to established pattern, this particular film spouse has a cold. It is not a country cold that snuck up on me during the week,  but the same vicious cold that has been making the rounds on the production that has taken Sasha to the city for the past month or so, the production that lends me back his exhausted carcass once in awhile for so-called “days off” during which he will either work, obsess about working, or pass out mid-sentence from sheer fatigue. Bringing home a cold is just part of the territory.

When he is here, of course he will do his best to give me an account of his adventures and ask me for the news of my week. He will also do his utmost not to nod off when all the words I’ve saved up for the occasion suddenly come spilling out of me in an almost deranged monologue because our daily phone calls have become so brief and perfunctory, revolving around call times and menu selections and whether he has been able to get any sleep. 

Even words like “I love you," when they get spoken at all, sound like memorized lines from a script. For both of us, loving the other person at all during the making of a film is hard work, sometimes seeming like just another job to be added to an already formidable list. He is simply too bushed at this point to reach out to anyone except in the line of duty and I am too seasoned a warrior to ask for more attention than he has the wherewithal to give. I resent this at times, it is true. Somehow, we both try our best to stay connected in a dance we have been practicing for years.

When he has settled in, I know I can count on him to ask about each of the animals, make time to take care of anything that might have broken in his absence, tweak my technology if required, and climb the steep ladder to the hayloft to throw down enough hay for the sheep and llamas to do for the coming week. The man stuff. 

He knows that I will cook and serve food and that I will do everything I can to keep the outside world at bay. There are no social engagements. If something doesn’t need his attention it won't get mentioned. I will keep it to myself. He doesn't need the pressure and I'm an old hand at coping on my own.

The name of the game is to maintain at any cost the equilibrium that holds us together as a couple yet enables him to make it through the shoot. Even when he is here, the truth is that I am alone and I will be alone until wrap. I learned long ago that each week until then, on those mythical "days off," less and less of him will come home to me intact. It is what it is and I have to accept it.

That said, while my partner in crime is immersed in the grueling demands of making make-believe, I have ringside seats to the arrival of Spring. What I am living here is both joyous and real.

Whatever extra work I might have to do doesn’t consume fourteen hours of the day. I get plenty of sleep in my own bed and have time that is all mine to spend (or even squander) as I please. I have total control over the budget, nobody gives me directions, and if my call sheet changes without notice and I suddenly have to "wing it," the possible consequences are minor because it's usually been my own choice.

Even with the dubious and inevitable "gift" of yet another miserable film business cold, I am still the one who has it easy.

And he will be home again soon.

My retreat into solitude deepened yesterday with a storm unlike anything I recall in a very long time. Torrential rains and howling winds came late on Thursday night and continued almost until this morning, disrupting routine and shaking our old post and beam to its foundations. Sometimes I could  even feel small gusts of wind blowing through the house. Accustomed to solitude and unafraid of being here alone, I still had my resources tested by the darkness and drama that a spate of heavy weather brings.

Somehow in the morning the wind disrupted the radio reception in the barn, creating a whole new soundtrack to my labours, in the process making me significantly more aware  of the auditory universe  the animals no doubt prefer to the CBC.

Most dramatic were the loudest sounds - competitive crowing from three roosters backed by the clucking of their hens, the braying of a hungry donkey, wind-driven branches tapping on the windows, and the pounding of heavy rain on the corrugated tin up on the roof. Occasionally the old ram would add his deep throated baa-ing to the mix. More softly came the susurrus of hay being pulled through the slats in the mangers, then contented chomping sounds and the occasional satisfied “hum.”

Unable to allow the animals outdoors, I took advantage of my reprieve from heavy mucking out to do the abbreviated version of the chores while handing out peanut treats, touching velvety noses with my own and enjoying the comfort and safety of this second of my homes.

In the house, later in the afternoon, the power went out entirely and as the day wore on without restoration, I made myself embark on the precautionary manoeuvres that would see me safely through to another day. I assembled candles and flashlights and hauled buckets of water from the well. Luckily we have a propane fireplace as an alternate heating source and a propane stove that makes it possible to be quite comfortable even without electricity. It was the deepening darkness that I minded most and, truth be told, the absence of theoretical contact with the outside world. Like it or not, the dependance on technology runs deep.

Having done all I could, in the candlelight of early evening, I  finally curled up with my iPod touch under a warm throw in front of the fire. The wind still howled and the rain continued to beat mercilessly on the windowpanes. Just as I was warming to the romance of the moment and looking forward to my talking book, Nova Scotia Power ruined the spell and thrust me back into ordinary life.

As the lights first flickered then came back on, my first sheepish move was to make a beeline for my Mac.

These are the facts of life. This morning Ceiara’s body lies wrapped in a black plastic tarp in an outdoor paddock just outside the barn. Since Sasha is away until the weekend and it will take both of us to bury her, the bitterly frozen air will keep her from decay. I can’t bring myself to look in her direction.

Every human knows by adulthood these certain truths about mourning - that with death there will be emotional pain, that big hot tears will come often and unexpectedly, and that much time must pass before the memories so newly piercing to the heart will be able to evoke (and be transformed into) smiles and even laughter. One day a lovely warm feeling somewhere deep inside will assure us how lucky we were to have loved in the first place the one for whom today we grieve so much. 

That day will not come soon for me but I have responsibilities here and life has to go on. The other animals still need me.

Feeding time in our barn is an extremely hectic experience, every movement carefully choreographed to minimize the chaos of large hungry animals in lively competition for the food. There is a hierarchy in the herd that needs to be respected, there are special diets for the older animals and for anyone who is thin. There are chickens to feed and eggs to be collected. There are buckets of water to haul. All this must happen in the midst of a sort of free-for-all complete with warning sounds and occasional gobs of spit. Be efficient, keep your eyes open, move quickly and be prepared to duck.

Today when I entered the barn at chore time, I discovered there a silence so pervasive that it took my breath away. As I worked my way, strangely unmolested, through the usual routine - small buckets of grain for the oldest or the thinnest animals, fresh water for everyone, and then mangers filled with hay - I saw the entirety of the female llama herd standing absolutely still, oblivious to my presence and utterly disaffected by their food. To a one, they were huddled together, clustered in the doorway, each facing outward to the black tarpaulin lying before them in the snow. Once again, I couldn't stop my tears.

In stillness they remained there until I finally went away. They will eat when they are ready. Humans, it would seem, have no monopoly on the rituals of loss.

Sasha is in the city today working on a film and I am writing through a veil of tears that somehow will not stop. 

This morning our veterinarian arrived at our barn to administer that painless but fatal cocktail that will terminate an animal’s life. The diagnosis for Ceiara was so dire and the rate of her decline so rapid that it became intolerable to endure. 

By yesterday we were unable to keep her sternal, which means that every time I checked on her she had flopped over onto one side, her lovely long neck no longer upright but flat to the ground. The veterinary examination determined that Ceiara’s spinal cord had been, by whatever means, so badly damaged that she could feel no deep pain in any of her limbs. She would never walk again, never graze in the fields with her companions, never be able to leave the confines of the barn. By this morning she had ceased to eat or drink, her neck curled awkwardly behind her, her big beautiful eyes empty and very far away. 

Over time and over buckets of tears, we have come to see this stage of the journey, replete with all the heartache, as an integral part of the responsibility that accompanies our stewardship of all the living creatures in our care. We are family, after all, and our hearts have beaten in unison for more than a decade. To end her time with us was an anguishing choice and not one taken lightly, but we are long past the metaphysics and the guilt some would have us feel for “playing God.”  It never gets any easier.

Before daybreak this morning as we positioned her listless body in the barn, agreement came without any words. We have loved Ceiara far too long and far too much to let her suffer any further. Although my partner needed to be elsewhere, I was there to cradle her neck, her companion until the moment when she crossed the rainbow bridge. I owed her that much. 

In pacem requiescat, my beautiful girl.

Sometimes the life of the mind has to take a back seat to the life of the heart. As I write this, one of our beautiful female llamas is very ill and the odds in favour of recovery are unclear. 

There is an old saying that “a down llama is a dead llama," but we know that this isn’t necessarily so. However, Ceiara has just gone down and seems to have little if any sensation in both her front and hind legs. We found her this morning at feeding time, lying on her side with her limbs spayed out around her.

Ataxia of this nature is the usual result of trauma to the spinal cord caused by parasitic infection. Since all the animals received the appropriate wormers at the appropriate time, we are mystified as to the cause. We are following a treatment protocol developed at Ohio State University and working with our vet to give the necessary care. Just as with human patients, sores can be the uncomfortable byproduct of lengthy periods of recumbency just as limbs tend to atrophy when they are not exercised. So for the next many days we have our work cut out for us. Food, medications and injections, physiotherapy and lots and lots of love.

The numbers who have joined the Facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, is growing at an amazing rate and I am, however cynically, riveted to the debate that surrounds the issue on all fronts. If I can’t concentrate any better on my work, I’m going to turn the radio off for awhile and glue my nose to the grindstone. I have deadlines that won’t wait.

Here things are otherwise very quiet. On Tuesday evening, with our friend Peter in tow, we went to see the Coen brothers newest film, A Serious Man, courtesy of the Lunenburg County Film Series. It seems that their work is always good for a spirited debate  which is exactly what broke out as soon as we got out of the theatre. Peter and I were generally very positive and even enjoyed the film for the most part, but my better half absolutely hated it on the grounds that, as film makers, the Coens are inordinately obsessed with violence. I don’t think he’s ever recovered from No Country for Old Men which I also disliked intensely. But then again, I don’t think I’ve ever met a single soul who didn’t love The Big Lebowski and that was done by the Coen brothers too.

Despite the likelihood that they will probably not be kept, New Years Resolutions, at least a few of them, get made around here too. I will watch what I eat, stick with a regular gym schedule,  take a yoga class, join a book club, plant a garden. He will write every day, spend more time in contemplation, keep up with the fencing, do some careful exercise for his bad knee. As a unit, we will entertain more often, see more movies, drive into Halifax more regularly, and get back into the habit of making our own wine. And so on.

In a joint effort to spend less time consuming mindless re-runs and other forms of junk television, we have recently committed to at least an hour each evening of quiet reading in front of the fire. For me this comes complete with a lap throw and at least one cat sitting like a tea cozy on the arm of the couch, near enough that I can just make out the sound of her purr. It’s a Norman Rockwell picture that may or may not last until spring.

My large holiday novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by the late Steig Larsson, is drawing to a close and I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. A posthumous international sensation, according to the reviews, it was the first in a trilogy of thrillers written by the Swedish novelist before his sudden death at the age of 50 in 2004. I chose it after reading about Larsson’s career as a journalist, his lifelong fight against racism and right wing extremism, and his creation of a female protagonist, Lisbeth Salander (the girl with the tattoo) who cut very much across the usual grain. She’s a very angry, very punk computer hacker, for one thing.

The book is intellectually complex, tightly plotted and violent in the extreme. The investigative partnership that eventually forms between the male protagonist, Mikael Blomquist, a journalist, and Lisbeth Salander is like none other in the genre. The glimpses into Swedish life and Swedish law are fascinating, but there are so many gruesome crimes perpetrated against women and sometimes animals that the reader literally gets a chill, despite the correct political agenda.

Will I read the second volume, The Girl Who Played with Fire? Probably. But not until I’ve put something else in between. This might be a good time to return to the Picasso biographies or the Susan Sontag journals, where any ‘violences’ are not nearly so overt and the subject matter is somewhat closer to home. Sometimes a thriller can get too "thrilling" even for me.

The world outside my windows is a winter wonderland, the kind of landscape that cries out for boots, warm hats, scarves and mittens and the exhilaration of a long walk in the snow. Now past is my favourite part of every year,  when all the  Christmas hubbub and heavy eating are over and there are still a few precious days  that can be devoted to doing exactly what one pleases before the routine of normal life begins anew. 

Today reality sets in. For me this entails some domestic paperwork and the resumption of the legal research that earns me my living. Now that the Land Registry System in the province exists to a large extent online, I am fortunate to be able to work at home,  from a jumbled desk in proximity to my own coffeepot. Unless I have to concentrate deeply, the CBC provides the soundtrack to my work. 

This morning too we drove into Bridgewater to the annual book sale at Sagor’s Bookstore which is, believe it or not, one of the reasons we moved to this area in the first place. Run for over twenty years by Ron Topp and Susan Goodwin, it is one of the South Shore’s greatest treasures, a surviving independent  book shop of incredible variety and relevance in the era of the big chain store. 

The store was full of customers, browsing and chatting and careening cheerfully toward the cash. Since we missed the beginning of the sale, having chosen to remain cocooned here on the farm, the choicest selections had largely been scooped up already by others, but I did come home with  “Cezanne’s Quarry,”  described on its cover as “an elegant murder mystery” based on the premise that the painter, Paul Cezanne, might have committed a murder. Because my purchase was based on a fondness for art historical content and not on any reviews, this may or may not have been a wise choice.

To complete the return to reality was also a reappearance at the gym. Although we live in a small rural hamlet we are fortunate to hold memberships in a state-of- the-art fitness facility in a village some eleven kilometres down the road. Donated by the late lumber magnate whose family mill is the locus of employment in the area, it is well used yet somehow almost always empty when we appear to sweat and moan. This gives the experience a certain luxury unheard of at other facilities in the town.

Now exhausted, with a hot cup of Earl Gray, I plan on cracking the covers of my new book.

It was a perfect New Years day. The snow that began to fall in the early morning continued throughout the day and well into the night. We ate croissants and French scrambled eggs for breakfast, with mimosas and our own home made preserves. In the afternoon, following a ritual we have observed for almost twenty years, we watched Casablanca by the fireplace and sipped prosecco from the lovely stemmed glasses that are so impractical in our everyday life. We also followed Roger Ebert’s commentary on the film and it reminded me again that this should probably be the year that I find the discipline to study the history of cinema and not just think about doing it. I’d like to join a book club too and spend more time in the company of like minded others.

In the small rural community in which we reside, there are no like minded others. Two former urbanites who came to Nova Scotia from elsewhere, we are doomed to be eternally other, ‘come-from-aways,’ outsiders who are never quite going to fit in. As a couple. we are too eccentric, too well schooled, too left wing, too exotic in our tastes, too shy, and too closely bonded to find a comfortable  place in village life. Although I respect so many of the members and appreciate the good work they do, I am not the Women’s Institute type.

We enter this year quietly and with more political frustration than personal joy. The Canadian government, for the second time in recent history, has prorogued our parliament in a shameful attempt to forestall further inquiry into the situation of the Afghan detainees. It is difficult to contain the anger engendered by such blatant contempt for the electorate and more difficult still to think of productive ways in which to channel it.


As I write this, the snow is falling again in what is now predicted to be the "real" storm. I am going to spend the day reading fiction.