...In the end, everyone is aware of this:

nobody keeps any of what [s]he has,

and life is only a borrowing of bones.

Pablo Neruda

This poem fragment describes my realization of, and gratitude for, the fact that everything I am and have builds on what is given and available to me. I recognize myself as interdependent, as interconnected. And bones — such an earthy, almost spectral image! But there’s something wonderful about bones. Set within us, so many of them, and varied, yet each one vital. Making the shape of us.

This blog will probably take me in all kinds of directions — who knows? — exploring and borrowing the bones of my heritage, my environment, my responsibilities. The bones of books, articles, poems — writing, that is, whether mine or others’. The tone may be reflective at times, or informing, probably opinionated on occasion, and (I’m hoping) humorous now and then. I happened to grow up Mennonite, which informs my comment and curiosity, though I prefer the label Anabaptist for the faith piece of it.

Biography:

Dora Dueck is an award-winning writer, former editor, avid reader, and lay historian. She is the author of four books of fiction, as well as articles, essays, and short stories in a variety of journals, and, most recently, a book of non-fiction, Return Stroke: essays & memoir (CMU Press, 2022). Her novel This Hidden Thing won Manitoba Book of the Year prize in 2011 and her short story collection What You Get at Home won the 2013 High Plains Award for short fiction. Her novella “Mask” was the winner of The Malahat Review’s 2014 novella contest. (Please see more about her writing at the relevant pages.) She and her late husband Helmut have three adult children and ten grandchildren. She grew up in Alberta, lived many years in Winnipeg, and now resides in Tsawwassen, B.C., grateful to spend these years on the beautiful traditional territories of the Tsawwassen and Musqueam and other Coast Salish Peoples.

Welcome here! — Dora Dueck

NOTE:  All rights reserved: all posts/pages on this blog, except for links to other sites or attributed material and comments by others, are the sole and copyrighted property of Dora Dueck and may not be reprinted without permission, except for standard web linking formats. To use in other formats, or to contact:

dueckdrd (at) gmail.com.