Gratitude
I am grateful for family, the light that casts beauty across shadows, music that lifts emotions, a little house and garden filled with colour and love, friends and inspirations, the beauty of nature, the ocean’s cold spray, the soft barnacle skin of the grey whale and the possibilities that exist in life.
Category Archives: art and writing
where dreams live
So, I went to Paris. And it was even more beautiful than I imagined it to be.
I know. I know. I write and have been writing for a long time now and have written scripts that were performed on stage and poems that were published and non fiction pieces that I’ve even been paid for, not to mention all the writing I do at work, the sort of writing that identifies my name as draft. I have taken writing workshops and heck, there is that english degree and all. but. Even within all that context of being a writer, the thought of actually writing a novel has always caused my heart to pound, my hands to shake and it has actually felt like something that I could never do. I have critically analzed great works of fiction, weeped at words that struck a chord in my heart and read more books than I could stack in my the rooms of my house. I have to tell you that coming here and proclaiming that I was going to write a fiction book this winter felt like one of the most scary statements I have ever made in public even if to only a handful of people who stop by on there way to somewhere else.
I first told a group of open hearted women last March on the California sands of Pacific Grove that my dream was to write a fiction book. They didn’t laugh or look at me like I had grown two heads. They actually believed I could do it. Hmmm. I wasn’t convinced. I told a few more close friends and they weren’t the least bit surprised by my declaration. It started feeling sort of good to say the words, to let them float out into the air like that. I mean, its not like I haven’t said it a hundred billion times when I was in highschool, when I was drugged out on something in those lost years of losing myself while finding myself, when i was in university but. but. the older I got, the farther away this dream seemed and I stopped talking about it, stopped even believing in it. And then when I found myself on the shores of manzanita in June with a relative group of beautiful strangers who became instant friends, I said it again. Tentatively. They didn’t think I was crazy either. Out there in space of open hearts, an expansive sky and a beach that stretched out like a blank canvas teaming with life, I wrote a mission statement.
“meditate in love, surrender to the vastness of the universe and write with all the joy of my being”
And then, I told my boys and they were all yes, of course you are, finally. And then I wrote out my intention here and a dear friend, said. Nanowrimo. And I thought, yes that is the perfect way to do it. And so I did.
i never realized i
possessed this kind of discipline. i have managed to surprise myself. what
a gift that feels like.
i have learned so much about myself, where i belong in the world, what it is that truly brings me joy. not the hot flame fire of excitment though there is that but a calmer, sustainable happiness that creates a calm in the deep core of my centre. writing calms me as much as it excites me. every single part of my life has benefited by this practice of writing, creating worlds of my imagination, finding my way through the blank page. i have learned that discipline brings out the muse dance waves in a way i never could have imagined. and even if most of what i write is dumb and badly formed shit, the gems are spectacular and make me weep. i wish i had known this years ago but i suppose i wasn’t ready yet. i am grateful to be ready now. i have walked a lot of different paths and i am grateful for each and every one of them because in walking them, i found my way here. home.
when i wrote the words “the end”, i felt like that was the most beautiful beginning.
i have a circle
and am forever grateful
for the way you teach, the
way you cry and dream and hope,
for the real and the imaginary and
all the words and pieces that you share
and the spaces in between
where you hold back because that is what you need
in that moment.
I honestly don’t think I would have gotten to this point of trusting myself enough to try if it hadn’t been for you, for the circle that is.
and, i have to say, i am proud of me for this:
Also posted in nanowrimo, wishes and dreams
5 Comments
writing
What is it about writing that makes me crave the long hard drag of a cigarette burnt smoke rising curling through me. What is it about writing that leaves me flushed and wanton, somehow satisfied but longing for more, drunk on a word soaked in another and lost in a thought leading to the burnt edge of a quick long soft inhale. exhale.
Comments Off
nanowrimo, day 1
(polaroid spectra / polaroid image softtone film)
She stood on the edge
of something
it was always more complicated
than she could imagine
so much more simple than she could accept
but standing still
didn’t seem to be an option anymore
and breathing
was like choking
when the moment left you
for something else.
I am here, procrastinating of course. It is my way. Today was day 1 of nanowrimo. 50,000 words in 30 days. I did the calculation. Of course I did. So, I know that I have to write at least 1667 words a day to finish. So far, today, I have written exactly 2457 2551 (because i just went and wrote a few sentences, just like that in the middle of this) and here I am wasting words, letting them drip from my fingers click clack knowing that I could be further ahead if I wasn’t wasting them here.
I’ll tell you a secret but then of course, it will cease being secretive and perhaps that is my hope. Secrets are only powerful if they remain sneaky and secretive. I think I read that somewhere. Recently. Anyway. Last night, I still had no idea what I was going to write. My outline was and remains a collage of photographs that I have pasted up with pretty purple japanese tape above my computer screen and filed away in my head, moving them this way and that. I started writing today and so far I seem to have two characters that appear to be writing themselves into my non-existant story. I don’t really know who they are but I like them even as they remain somewhat secretive and thereby holding all the power over me. They are moving rather slowly, pretending to be going somewhere but I am unsure where they are going though they are filled with such delicious possibility that I have sort of fallen in love with them.
Will the nameless one ever actually leave the city that she has imprisoned herself to by choice or so it appears and what really goes on in that bookstore or is the bookstore a red herring. I just don’t know. And what to do about Jeffrey. I mean is he even human? I can’t tell at this point. Hell, I don’t even know what kind of story this is yet. It could be sexy or dangerous or adventurous or magic or mundane or … well, you get the idea. I just don’t know but eventually I will find out.
I was excited to get here to this place where I am learning to accept the not knowing. The not knowing is filled with possibility and though I am fearful and know that there will be days when this all seems impossible because there are always those days, those moments when panic rises and you wonder if you can keep breathing but then you somehow find your lungs filled with that new breath of air that finds you before you find it. I will carry on and find my way through those days, those moments but as a good friend said to me yesterday when I had my little freak out, “you got this”. Yes. I have this even as I somehow sense that this, this also has me.
I wonder if my blog posts will turn into the blatherings of a raving lunatic as the month progresses. I can see that happening actually, my days are full and disjointed with work and then I come here to blinking curser, music blasting through me as the dark night spills black ink across my thoughts and I give myself over to the muse that holds me in her damn secretive grip until at last I fall into the dream void of that other world.
(canon 5D, Mark II / southern Alberta)
I would prefer to just lay my head down on the dying sun, pitch my legs deep into the earth and not have to choose my next direction. I am exhausted by all the mistakes I have made in my quest for something different, keep moving, try this and then try that in my search for the elusive something different. If I stack the layers of versions of myself onto each other, I find myself. whole. fragmented. all at the same time.
I am standing in the middle. soft skin fragments of blurry vision memories and the dust of the wind blowing my thoughts across a pale sky. I am standing in the middle of the not knowing and the knowing. I am trying to embrace this moment before the next one comes and demands my attention. Is it too late to change it all again, to find myself looking left and then right and forgetting to look behind and then forward as the sky falls down on me and the earth rises up and I forget why I am even here in the first place.
At the end of August, I mentioned that I was going to write a book. Since that time, two months have passed me by in a whirlwind but I have not forgotten and I have been preparing. Since that time, I have gathered up the thousands of books scattered around our house. I have sorted through them, organized them by category and then by author. They now live in two rooms in bookcases to the ceiling. I have cleaned closets and organized almost every inch of our little house. I have cleaned, deep cleaned everything from the walls and baseboards to having the dirt and grime dust sucked out of our vents. I am not finished but I am close. I am clearing away and creating the space I know that I need for the words to come. I have driven hours and hours and on three different weekends have ventured out with friends and alone to stand in the wind of the prairies and let the space blow through me, the windsong of the prairies rolling grass like waves waiting for the icy winter blow of isolation. I am ready. I have decided to participate in Nanowrimo this November. I have no idea what I am going to write but I have listened to the silence and I am surrendering to the universe and trusting the process. I will write and the story will come as stories generally do. I recently wrote to lovely friend these words,
“a few years ago, i was in montreal at the train station and i met a women who told me the story of how she went to paris for the first time that year. she said she had built it up in her head like this big huge wonderous thing until it almost seemed unattainable. she had been aching for paris for 20 years when one day, she just went and bought her self a ticket. i’ll never forget how she looked at me with wonder in her eyes and a shake of her head saying over and over again, it was just so easy. i had no idea it would be so easy to go to paris. i just went. just like that. and i loved it even as i wondered why i took so long when it was so easy. writing my first novel, yeah. that is my paris.”
I am releasing my fears and any expectations about writing this book. Releasing them here in this space of mine, releasing them to the winds and to the sky, to those of you who find your way here reading my little offerings, my little fig soup of ideas and thoughts strung on a lace string of poetry and scraps of bar napkins scribbled over funny faces and ink blot thoughts.
I have been filling my paper notebooks with words, draining myself every night, making space for a different set of words, ideas and illuminations. I am feeling ready for paris. It has been a long time coming but my ticket is purchased. Writing my first novel. Yeah. That is my Paris.
I might think that I would prefer to just lay my head down on the dying sun, pitch my legs deep into the earth and not have to choose my next direction. But that is not the way and I might be in the middle but I am nowhere near the end.
change
Its all changing. Of course it is but I sometimes need to remind myself because it is important. I can get caught up in continuing to do the same things even though the world around me has altered so much that when I see it, my breathe catches in that gasp of realization.
A long long time ago, I met a boy and we talked about our dreams, the big ones, the ones that you almost have to whisper because they feel that sacred when you are pushing through the novelty of newness that comes with taking big chances in your twenties. When you are running so hard to escape from a life that seems to want to chain you in its dark grip that you don’t even realize that it is far to easy to chain yourself.
Do you want to know a secret? I am a contrary sort of soul and I try hard not to be and I wonder where it comes from. I was always this way and used to argue black was white just for the sake of examining the content. Then I spend time with my mom* (hi mom!) and I see it because it seems that no matter what is said, she will disagree with it even if it doesn’t matter (sorry mom but it is sort of true). I don’t want to be contrary but I feel it deep in my bones sometimes. So the blogs that I read will talk about dreaming big and following your dreams and a part of me starts to gag and push back, it is an impulse I have that I can’t seem to shake. If everyone starts talking about how much they love blueberries (and I love me some blueberries and remind me to tell you how as a child I would toddle along behind my grandfather and pull blueberries out of his bucket and pop them into my mouth because it was easier to pick out of his bucket than to pull them from the swampy muskeg of a ground), I will suddenly out of nowhere say how much I can’t stand blueberries and how they stain your fingers that red blue colour (remind me to tell you about my favourite white shirt that got an ugly stain from the fingers dipped in blueberry juice). So yeah. Fuck dreams man. Says my contrary soul.
But everything is changing. Last night my son drove me to dairy queen in the truck that was once his grandfather’s. The truck that now sported a fancy new windshield and a new starter along with other assorted bits. The truck that broke down out of the city earlier this week but was completely handled in a much more mature way than I could have handled at my advanced years of temper tantrum throwing. Last night my son drove me to dairy queen and as I ate a small dipped cone, I admired the way he drove and tried to forget that I once tickled his toes and wiped away his tears among other things. He starts grade 12 in just a few days and in a blink he will be graduating, turning 18 and suddenly I am reminded of those early days of realizing that I once had a shit load of wasted time and now I was slave to the needs of a baby, a toddler, a kid who needed rides from here to there and everywhere. I finished my degrees with soaking pads of milk and a backpack filled with diapers and I worked hard to make a life, to be a mother, to forget about certain dreams that I no longer had the energy for.
But. Its all changing and I wonder how I seemed to miss the fact that while yes indeed it is all changing, it has actually already changed. Even with a demanding full time job, I seem to have a new abundance of time on my hands and I realize that as time started opening up, I managed to fill it with more and more stuff like blogging, like social media, like working on other people’s creative dreams, like creating a business, like taking online courses that I never actually finished and then there were the voice lessons, the yoga classes, hula hooping, learning to garden … but over the past year, I have pulled back into the groundedness of my life. I have cleaned out the cobwebs and have gotten a pretty good system of taking care of the business of life going, I am developing some good routines and as I crunched the last bit of that ice cream cone I realized that I raised this capable manchild and maybe, just maybe I sort of raised myself in the process.
And so. That whispered dream. Well. It is starting to sing deep down in my gut. There is a roar that is taking over and I remember the dream so well and how it has always guided the way I dive into life, the way I ran towards experiencing everything I could possibly experience, the way I leaned into the optimism of it all, even the painful parts.
And so, I tell you in a quiet but intense whisper. This winter I am going to write a book. A fiction book. I have no idea what it looks like but the pull to write it is so strong and the more I thought about it and the more people I told in a leap of bravery, the louder the roar and the deeper the pull.
I am going to write a beautiful book. Or a not so beautiful book but even that will be beautiful to me.
and
I am going to play the guitar and practice daily and turn my poetry into song while continuing my hooping practice and I might even swim once or twice a week because these are all things I love. But mostly, I am going to write my book.
I have time again. Time for me. It really is my turn to truly live within the dreams that live in my soul.
peace.
*I don’t blame my mom for my contrary soul but it was interesting to me to note that we are more alike in some ways than I would have admitted to even a year ago.
Also posted in life and creativity, wishes and dreams
8 Comments
apples fall
(polaroid spectra / polaroid image softtone film)
I always know its autumn when the apples start falling and my kitchen starts simmering with the tart delicious harvesting of the garden. And after a murky grey summer, the sun has finally decided to grace us with her presence and oh how i missed the blue blue sky and am excited to take my polaroid out this weekend and capture the light.
in the meantime … i would love you to visit me at Life as a Human and would love to read your first whispers of autumn or see a link to a photo that represents autumn …
Comments Off
me and jenna
(dar and jenna / photobooth in seattle)
My friend Jenna over at The Word Cellar writes a twice-monthly blog series about the craft of writing which totally brings out my writing geek heart. I love this series and even though I studied writing and literature at university, it is such a great reminder for me and helps me so much in my writing practice.
Jenna is doing a wonderful giveaway and all she wants from you are your questions about writing. For the rest of July, anyone who asks Jenna a writing question will be entered to win a copy of Lanterns: A Gathering of Stories. (I’m one of the contributors and that pretty photo on the cover is also mine so I may be biased but its a fabulous little book jam packed with inspiration and if you already own it, it makes a wonderful gift for a girlfriend or mother or favourite aunt) She’ll choose the winner randomly, and there’s no limit to how many questions you can ask.
Leave your questions in the comments of her blog or email them to jennifer{at}thewordcellar{dot}com. Small questions and big ones. Vague questions and the very specific. Questions on the writing life, the writing process, and the craft of writing. Ask away! IIf you like, you can even ask them in my comments and I will make sure and forward them to her!
I know that personally sometimes I can feel a wee bit intimidated about asking a question wondering if I am the only person who doesn’t know the answer. but what I have learned over the years that those are usually the questions that so many others really want to know. all questions are worth examining especially, I think, those that pertain to the art of writing.
Speaking of questions, in the photo above … I had written underneath (me and jenna) but then my mother’s voice rambled in my head, “is jenna mean?” and so instead I put (dar and jenna) but that feels weird because now I feel like that Seinfeld episode with the guy who always talked about himself in the third person, dar is writing a blog post and dar really likes the way her pretty green ring sparkles over the black keyboard. creepy much. Jenna?? help ~ what IS the proper protocol or am I overthinking this?
********************
I also wanted to say thank you to everyone for such a fabulous response to my e-course ~ you guys are so fabulous and have made me even more determined to move forward with continuing to creat a course that will be empowering and valuable to all of you who so wonderfully embraced my ideas. More soon!!
Also posted in inspiration and elsewhere, love and friendship
3 Comments
hodge podge
i live in a the bright shadow, toppled over face first into the wet dream of a thought
wishing you could see it through the looking glass of my eyes
as i break through the surface
dripping drops of yesterday into tomorrow’s today
***********************************
a week ago saturday, i had a party outside in the hot sun, i burned my shoulders as my fingers painted onto a thick large piece of watercolour paper. last saturday (yesterday), i wandered greenhouses and bought lovely new perrenials that i can’t plant or even put outside, not because of the rain but because of the icy fingered cold. i live in a land of extremes as i walk the balanced tightrope. when i surrender completely to my life, when i trust in the life i have spent years creating, i find a strange balance. there are periods of intense work followed by giddy play and laughter and then the deep lidded slumber of rest. tomorrow is a holiday and i am going to spend it rejuvinating, bare feet curled as i flip pages of a book and drink the quiet relax of myself.
***********************************
It’s amazing to me how much the weather can affect my mood. When the sun is shining bright and the sky sings a pale blue smile, my heart feels lighter. When the thunder clouds roll in and lightning streaks across the sky … (more of “mood swing” at life as a human)
***********************************
and … i realize that my city is not on anyone’s list of top 10 places they want to visit or likely not even the list of 100 cities to visit but when one of your best girlfriend’s comes all the way from a coastal paradise to visit and totally gets why you live there and what you love about it … well … makes me so happy … do go read, maddie’s post, I like you Edmonton ~ very much and then come visit me already.
peace and light.
Also posted in inspiration and elsewhere, poetry and prose
Comments Off
light
(polaroid sx-70 / 600 film)
she used to smile and say, “the light is kissing your face” as we lay watching the dust dance in the triangle stream like sparkles revealed by the magic of the sun. we never truly leave childhood loves behind us, we carry them with us in a pouch buried in the cracks of our soul, the cracks that let the light in and the cracks that allow our light out.
i have found a space inside of me that becomes so mesmerized by the differing light depending on the angle of the day or the filtering of the trees and clouds and bits of fluff that we use to hide behind, so mesmerized that my daydreams lose all time and thought. my words are caught in the flame of the sun’s heat and burn up trickling ash along the soft floorboards of time.
******
There are days when my smile comes as easily as my feet hitting the worn floorboards in the early morning rise. On those days, it’s easy to think lovely thoughts and the world seems … (full article at life as a human)
******
inspiration station: back to jail (her heart and her talent for writing and living add an extra sheen on the light of the world)
Also posted in inspiration and elsewhere
Comments Off
sneezy seeds
(polaroid sx-70 / 600 film)
sneezy seeds float along the shine sun of blue sky as green buds unfurl and reach their hugs out to the sun and i smile
it has been unusually warm here, hot even, feeling more like the end of june than the end of april but i’m most definitely not complaining even though i am calling the rain to drench the ever dusty landscape and feed the green with nature’s wet joyous tears. there are clouds moving shadows across the sun today and that makes me smile as we celebrate the earth … today and everyday …
I live in the heart of a city, but when I look outside my window I breathe in the blue of the sky and the towering elm trees that create a canopy over my … (read more at lifeasahuman)
instagram addiction
