The Serendipitous Spine

Revision in Real Time

The names we are given at birth are so often inadequate for the lives we are actually meant to inhabit. We spend our years quietly editing ourselves, casting off old skins in a bid to align our external worlds with the hidden truths and talents inside. Sometimes this revision happens across decades of careful concealment; sometimes it takes root over a three-hour lunch in Old East Village, over a plate of chicken parmigiana and a massive panzerotti. I am a chef/restaurateur by trade, which means I understand the meticulous, deliberate structure required to create balance, but I am also a writer, which means I am constantly at the mercy of unexpected currents that threaten to rewrite my structural layout entirely. Since entering semi-retirement, I have felt completely compelled to journal, finding a creative space and a rhythm that I was simply unable to cultivate well while stewarding the daily, exhausting demands of the restaurant. Over a decade ago, I took the step of adding Parker, my family’s maternal name, to my own moniker, establishing a distinct line to separate my essay writing from my professional culinary life and food writing. When I first did it decades back, a few armchair critics told me the change was pretentious, but it was a necessary act of differentiation, especially since there are several other writers with a similar name, a reality I have noted in my Substack before.

I woke up yesterday morning with a singular, fierce determination that today would be my ultimate, uninterrupted reading day. My night table is a carefully curated moment of anticipation. Stacked there is Rachel Aviv’s essay collection, You Won’t Get Free of It, its title a haunting theft from an Alice Munro story. Beside it sits Ann Patchett’s novel, Whistler, and Suddenly Light by Nina Dunic, a handpicked recommendation from Jenny Berkel, the owner of Little Wren Books. I also have four back issues of The New Yorker to read and return to Penn Kemp, and an anthology of verse and short prose by the London Writers Society. My literary trajectory felt entirely secure, buoyed by the lingering creative hum of Saturday, when Gary, Penn and I held an indoor picnic and Penn and I mapped out the preliminary plans for a collaborative writing project.

Jenny Berkel, the owner of Little Wren Books

The books on my table are artifacts of a deeper lineage. It was only a few days ago, returning from that long lunch at Tony’s Famous Italian on Dundas Street, that I detoured into Woodfield to visit my parents. Tony’s is a neighbourhood staple entirely unchanged by time, offering old-school comfort through its classic booths and vintage charm, though stepping inside that day felt like entering a different era of austerity. Gone are the familiar red tablecloths and the classic logo imprinted placemats. The Chianti bottles adorning the brick walls remain. There was a steady, rhythmic stream of traffic flowing through the dimly lit dining room, but it took a long while for my eyes to fully adjust from the blinding summer sun outside and the heavy, sepia-toned smoke drifting from the distant wildfires.

My lunch companion was Julian, a former librarian, music teacher, Assistant Professor, and writing counsellor at Western University, who has been a formidable, comforting presence for decades. Revered by generations of students, he is celebrated for his approachable style, his impeccably structured essay guidelines, and his rare clarity when unpacking complex rhetorical concepts.

He is a meticulous soul who loves nothing more than to sniff out editing mistakes. Most writers deeply appreciate a second set of eyes, and Julian is always right on top of things. He recently corrected me after I mixed up St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s cathedrals, later texting: “I wouldn’t worry about it too much… I don’t think it’s a mortal sin or anything.”

Though long interludes pass between our visits, he remains a champion of my life’s dual landscapes. He offers unstinting validation for both my culinary career and my journey with the pen. However, as a true purist, he recently questioned my use of sun-dried tomatoes in my Chicken Marbella. Julian’s skepticism is historically accurate. The famous dish, originally popularized by the Silver Palate Cookbook in 1981, relies on a specific balance of briny, sweet, and savoury elements. Sun-dried tomatoes are a modern twist.

We shared a Caesar salad that afternoon, intentionally devoid of bacon and tossed with commercial croutons, while the lingering anxiety of the latest widespread lettuce scare drifted quietly through my mind. Over our meal, our conversation drifted from the childhood pages of Enid Blyton into the heavier, unpredictable currents of memory. Three years ago, Julian had told me that his life was coming to an end, a stark reality of bone cancer that now lends a quiet, profound weight to his every word. He has outlived his expected expiration date and then some, but he soldiers forward. We spoke of St. Paul’s Cathedral, where he was once a parishioner, visualizing the brilliant light streaming through its historic Tiffany windows. Then, he spoke of a more personal architecture: how, when his mother died, he changed his name from Chris to Julian.

He is a natural-born raconteur, a man who still amuses me with a brilliant, unexpected Sandy Dennis impression, recalling an afternoon I spent with the actress and her assistant some thirty years ago, channelling her frantic, breathless intensity from the film Another Woman. “I’m not being theatrical! I don’t know what you’re talking about. We didn’t just drift apart, Mary! I withdrew.” With a sharp flourish, he would lean in to deliver her scathing accusation: “Your conversations were full of subtle flirtations. Full of meaningful little looks and little gambits designed to seduce!” He would capture that exact, trembling defiance, then pivot seamlessly to describe his youth in France, working as a live-in cook and male au pair for a family called the Fourquaux. He would recall his exceptionally tenuous command of the language, with only Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child’s classic cookbook for survival, and the endless, hilarious travails of trying to purchase fish that was deemed good enough for the family cat but strictly forbidden for human consumption. I could listen to those stories of his French tribulations forever.

Speaking of France, I am a great fan of the baker and cookbook author David Lebovitz, and I had been thinking about a recent video of his where he visits G. Detou, a famous, historic chocolate and food shop in Paris. He steps out of his own kitchen to examine the craft of other masters, driven by the same restless curiosity that compels any maker. Leaving that heartbreaking lunch with Julian, I stopped at Little Wren Books to buy four titles, driven by the acute reminder that we must support our independent booksellers before their spaces vanish entirely.

Yet, despite the beauty of the stack waiting at home, my momentum shifted early this morning. The weather had finally turned, breaking from the stifling heat and heavy humidity of earlier in the week, leaving the afternoon air clear and inviting. Perhaps that was why Margaret Atwood’s On Writers and Writing caught my eye from the pile. I am currently working on a piece about Atwood, and I found myself drifting through twenty pages of her text.

My project on Atwood explores the intersecting yet divergent paths of two foundational pillars of contemporary Canadian poetry: Margaret Atwood and Penn Kemp. While both authors utilize feminist reclamations of mythology and ground their work deeply within the Canadian landscape, their stylistic and philosophical differences are profoundly shaped by their paternal heritages. Atwood’s literary lens reflects the clinical, scientific detachment of her entomologist father, resulting in a preoccupation with existential dread and ecological collapse, and a view of nature as a high-stakes arena of survival. Conversely, Penn’s poetic sensibility mirrors the fluid, metamorphic world of her abstract-painting father, a pioneering regionalist force who mentored iconic visual artists such as Greg Curnoe and Jack Chambers. This artistic legacy leads to an auditory, community-driven practice that views nature as a cyclical sanctuary. By synthesizing their respective recent memoirs, Book of Lives and Colour Fielding, my essay demonstrates how reading Atwood and Penn in tandem provides a comprehensive dialectic of the Canadian poetic psyche, balancing sharp, analytical critique with rhythmic, communal healing.

Mulling over these dual landscapes of critique and healing, Atwood’s thoughts on the writer’s craft acted as a strange, migratory catalyst. Rather than anchoring me to my writing room, a space I have recently resolved to no longer refer to as my office, the words nudged me outside. I had a small obligation to fulfill, a friend’s cat to feed, a task that came with its own minor trials, but the pull of the weather was too strong to ignore. Drawn by the collective joy drifting from the core of the city, I detoured into the Pride celebrations at Victoria Park.

The park was alive with infectious energy. I found a spot under an umbrella directly in front of the bandshell before the parade arrived, letting the sharp beats of the DJ wash over me. In a beautiful irony, my reading day transformed into a writing day. I sat there listening to the music, scribbling into my notebook, entirely immersed in the festival’s atmosphere.

It was during this vibrant detour that I met the author Monica Miatello, who was there to speak about her newly released memoir, Erasing the Five O’Clock Shadow. Intrigued by our brief conversation, I purchased a copy right then and there. I opened to the first page and was instantly, completely enamoured by her narrative voice. Her opening chapter pulled me into a world of striking contrasts: a Roman Catholic Italian upbringing, varsity hockey, and an internal knowledge from the age of five that she was living a life mismatched with her true self. Reading about her navigating gender dysphoria in the isolation of the 1970s, and later running a small-town Ontario pharmacy as a parent before transitioning in the 1990s, was utterly mesmerizing.

The parallel between Julian’s renaming and Monica’s mid-life transition struck me with immense clarity. Both had looked at the structured identities handed down to them by circumstance, family, and history, and both had chosen the radical, terrifying act of revision. They understood that to live authentically, one must occasionally rewrite the very title of their life. It felt ironically fitting for Pride. More than that, it felt deeply essential to my own creative headspaces.

I am currently expanding a narrative essay, a project exploring the parallel traumas of surveillance, institutional exile, and repressed identity through a reunion between two estranged brothers in Southwestern Ontario. Set against a vibrant Stratford diner backdrop, my story contrasts Silas, a deeply repressed minister trapped in a hyper-controlling, anti-adornment religious sect, with his brother Gideon, who is traumatized by a recent exile. Meanwhile, a sudden framing shift reveals Gideon’s acute paranoia following a forced retirement from a thirty-five-year career, a ruinous downfall engineered by a clinical, bureaucratic whisper network.

To read Monica’s real-world triumph over fundamentalism, institutional surveillance, and the mandatory cruelty that weaponizes suspicion was profound. It was a direct mirror to the thematic structures I am writing about, a reminder of the high stakes involved when an institution or a culture tries to police who we are allowed to be.

Eventually, I left the park and began my trek home. I found myself following a gaggle of geese down Albert Street, their slow, deliberate march guiding me onward until I reached the Blackfriars Bridge. I wandered across with a completely rewritten day. The water flowed beneath me, reflecting an afternoon that had moved in entirely unpredictable currents. The meticulously planned reading stack waiting for me had temporarily ceased to exist, replaced by a triumph of authenticity that directly fed my own manuscript.

I stepped back across the threshold of my newly changed writing room, knowing I had volunteered to make dinner. There is a familiar, comforting rhythm waiting for me in the kitchen now: preparing an artichoke polenta with Spanish olives, thick pork chops paired with sweet Ontario peaches, and a rich cauliflower and goat cheese mash. The chef in me will look for structure, but the writer in me knows that recipes are only guidelines, and that the best days, like the best stories, are the ones that refuse to follow the strict rules. For now, with the weight of Monica’s book in my hands and a fresh creative clarity in my mind, everything else could wait. BL