waiting words

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(canon 5d mark ii / sunshine coast, british columbia)

i left my words hiding underneath the moss covered green of the home of my heart.  and now i am relaxed into my self so fully that i would be giddy if it didn’t take up so much energy.  i had a lot of words to use up and i left them in the wet rain dripped air of soft ears and kind eyes and even my journal mocks me from my bag, begging me to open up a crisp fresh page and string lines across blue ink waste.  but those words are playing out somewhere on the sunshine coast, stolen by those pesky fairies who slide up and down seuss like trees on a rain forest path that leads somewhere over crook and craigy dale.

and so i find myself quiet.  even more quieter than usual.  i am watching the fog sink deep over the heart of the city, the river rushing down a swath of melt hugged on either side by thick crusty ice topped with vanilla snow.

and i want to remind myself that doing nothing is in fact the very thing that i need sometimes.  doing nothing is actually a healing balm for my soul.  and the soil will unfreeze and the snow will melt in its own time and green will pour out of the quiet fertile wait.  and words will spring from my fingertips and find themselves on a blank page.  eventually.

Posted in notes to self

waiting for the roses

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(instagram)

i have been waiting for the roses to fill the air with their scent, to float their petals down in soft paths for me to lay my head.  i have been waiting for the roses.  but then today as the snow came down yet again, i realized that the rose hips were worth stopping for and that perhaps all this waiting was preventing me from breathing in the beauty right in front of me.  and so i stopped and laid my head down on softly floating snow and drank from centre of the rose hip, chewing quietly on my thoughts.

Posted in scraps of paper

fresh flowers

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IMG_9380 copy

(canon 5D Mark II, 85 mm f/1.2 lens)

i am easily overwhelmed by the world, the constant jag of sounds and opinions and stories and ideas and the flotsam of noise that skims the surface of green coloured ponds in the drone of a hum that sounds like too many bugs chattering on wings of gossamer thought.  i am so sensitive to my environment and i pick up on too many subtleties and i hear too much and it is so easy to lose the line that separates me and my emotions from the emotions of others. 

i am grateful for this gift as i believe it helps to make me a better writer, a better artist but i also recognize that i need coping mechanisms because i live in the heart of the city and i work full time in a demanding job and my time is so very limited.  for the longest time, i also had a photography and creative business and i blogged and hung out on social media in all the spare parts of my time.  but over the past couple of years i have let most everything beyond my home, family, my closest friends and the full time job that pays for my life erode.  it was the best thing i could have done for myself even when it felt painful like a tearing searing loss of something i thought i needed.  i realize now that i need to learn the lessons that solitude give me more than i needed to feel as though i belonged somewhere. 

i belong to myself and to the earth and to that indefinable breathe that is life.

i love the world and all its infinite possibilities and all the ways that people create and share and work and live.  going through my archives (and i am no where close to being done) has reminded me of what i have been through, all the stages of grief and the potholes of beauty.  i see myself more clearly as i notice the cycles that are tied so intimately with the seasons, the extreme seasons that are a part of the land that i sprung from.  i am falling in love with myself. 

i don’t need to fit in anywhere and i don’t need to be a lone wolf walking the contradictory path either.  i can just be me … an ever changing, evolving, de-evolving creature of the earth.  and in this moment,

  • i am tired.  exhausted to the bone tired. 
  • i am looking forward to my upcoming vacation and spending time with myself and with friends as i escape the bone white chill of the prairies and breathe in the power of the mountains and the lush green swell of an ocean wave. 
  • i am in a place of quietness, of words written out on pages, of contemplation, of grace.
  • i am filled with awe over the simple things, the way dough feels kneaded under lavender scented hands and the way light has a life all its own and follows the seasons much like i do.  winter light is gentle and soft and whispers and turns over in a way that makes the most ordinary objects softly spill out a calm that soothes my frayed nerves.
  • i am finding it hard to live in a society that is filled with demands, work harder, work faster, produce produce produce consume consume consume go go go.  there is a season for that but this is not the season.  this is the season to rest and to linger in thoughts.  the time to produce comes later. 
  • i am in rest mode.  spring will be time for planting my seeds and will begin the dance of energy.  but these last weeks of winter find me burrowing in as deep as i can while still meeting the commitments of my life which includes work both outside the home and inside the home.

Every weekend, I scrub my house and pick up any lost bits.  I wash floors and cupboards and clean out the fridge before filling it again.  I move around rocks and stones and arrange fresh flowers as I dust off every surface and shine up picture frames and change out art that no longer feels fresh.  Every weekend, I chop vegetables and herbs and soak dried beans and ready them for the week and I knead dough and chop fruit and wash rice and quinoa and taste granola on my tongue. 

My weekends are slow moving in their productiveness and I watch the light wash over the freshly cleaned surfaces and it soothes my heart.  I know it might not be in vogue but I need a home that doesn’t contain dirty dishes or clutter or hampers of dirty clothes.  I like to be organized and I need to breathe in beauty in the spaces of my relax.  I work outside the home and so my house is my sanctuary, the place I go to remove the masks that society requires of me … be pleasant, smile, work hard and don’t show any stress.  If my house is in dissarray, all the stresses that I am so good at concealing will come out and thunder around me and turn my sanctuary into a prison but if I am successful in creating beauty and order, my sanctuary gives me peace and comfort and I can relax and peel away the layers right down to the bone of myself.  and it is good.

I like this blog of mine, it has lessons to teach me and so I see myself coming here more often and chattering away to versions of myself and to versions of you if you find yourself here.

peace.

Posted in home and garden, little lists

dormant

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vines are dormant in the winter cold but somehow flourish and grow more with each passing year. 

c

(instagram)

i thought that i was being wishy washy and confused and well, sort of crazy.  somedays i feel sort of crazy.  and fragmented and lost even as i feel whole and complete.  i did away with all my archives on my blog a long time ago and i kept starting anew freaked out by too many words, too many pieces of myself.  i lost myself in the hum of voices and the drone of desire for something else.

and then.  i thought to myself.  self.  what if you brought all your blogs together, all of it since you started back in 2003 and what if you stitched it all together here.  so very slowly, i have been pulling in all the old posts, finding the photos, re-sizing what needs to be resized and threading the years back together again.  and though i still have a lot of work to do, i have been going over the past decade in bits and pieces and in the process i have realized how much i have grown and how rooted i am in my cycles and how the seasons tell a story.  i have witnessed what has remained the same and what has been left behind. 

i am realizing that i have been living a wonderfully rich life even in those moments of despair.  despair and grief and happy and joy and acceptance and connection and isolation and noise and quiet and all the spaces in between like a quilt that comes together over time and takes on a pattern all its own.  i am stitching myself together.  and finding myself whole.

Posted in hope

winter’s grace

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(polaroid spectra / polaroid image softtone film)

on saturday, it snowed. and it snowed.  and it snowed some more.  we got more snow in one weekend than we have had all winter.  of course, this happens mere weeks before i am due to hit the highway for a good 13 hour drive through rocky mountains and hills and valleys and more mountains.  in a fit of insecurity, i looked up the price of plane tickets and hyperventilated as i tried to convince myself that it would be five hundred dollars well spent.

and then i watched the way the snow softened the sun and i pulled out my big bowl of yarn and knitting and crochet needles and fell into a rhythm that can only be defined as grace. 

five hundred dollars can better be spent elsewhere and i have done this particular drive many times, in the dead of winter even.  and i reminded myself that i have driven through blizzards in january and in march and yes even that one time in july deep in the rockies for a harrowing 5 hours of slow crawl between jasper and banff with a 4 year old in the back seat.  and i am made of sturdy stuff even as i grow older and my eyesight grows weaker and i have gotten mighty used to letting my big strong husband handle the highways.

and i chopped vegetables and boiled quinoa and sliced an avocado and peeled big thick kale leaves off their bark like stems and the light joined me in a song that can only be defined as grace.

i am faced, daily, with a series of choices just as i have always been.  i move one way, fall down and skin my knee and adjust my course.  i grow cocky until i bruise myself on the fall down and then i have a good cry and begin again with a bit of humble pie strapped to my back.  i have been reading about a lot of fatal car accidents in the news lately and i start wondering if that is a sign to slow down and then i realize that i slowed down a long time ago when my belly was full of him.  and then i gave birth to death and i stopped trusting that my body was a safe haven for even myself.  but i am stronger than i look and more practical than i seem in between the lines of my life.  a fresh oil change and my snow tires and a trunk full of snow pants and quilts along with some sweetgrass for a ceremony by the ocean as i smell the green that won’t arrive here until sometime in april if we are lucky. 

i will fold my stones in between the spaces of light and i will plug in my music and i will not need to search for grace in the tired drive of a highway because i know that the light will converge over the yellow lines of my thoughts in a way that can only be defined as grace.

Posted in notes to self

stillness

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There are no bells and whistles going on over here and I am mostly just standing in my stillness.   It is a good stillness that may actually be more movement than stillness. 

Posted in scraps of paper

little griefs

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(polaroid spectra / impossible pz 600 silver shade film)

as i slow down more and more,

sinking into the cycles and rhythms of the earth, of the bones and blood and bits of dust that come together and create me, i find myself,
again and again, more often than not
whole.

little griefs as a good day ends, little joys of celebrations as i wander through and find myself whole at the end of a particularly hard day. slowing down has made my days longer, stretched out, one life time after another even as they all somehow flow together, waves of the ocean, flowing from the source.

as the weeks go by, i find there is less and less that i need from the world and i find that i spend less money, i seek less validation finding it instead in the hollowed out spaces of my self and the ache, the deep ache that i can’t define feels more like a companion on a journey that is starting to make sense in quiet conversations with friends, words passed back and forth in an offering of love, and the beautiful scratchy sound my pen makes as it flows over the lines of my journal.

as i slow down more and more,
there is an ease that feels deep and ancient
an ease of knowing
that slowly, in my own ways, i am living the life that i choose.

peace.

Posted in notes to self

the unravelling

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i am unravelling like a grey woolen sweater with bits of yellow yarn snuck in between the layers.

it’s okay.

the sweater didn’t fit well anymore anyway.

Posted in scraps of paper

january trees

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(polaroid spectra / impossible pz 600 silver shade film)

i never grow tired of capturing the trees, the trees that line my street and i can spend whole days just gazing at them and letting their wisdom soak through me.  the trees speak to me in stoic stanzas of strange settlings telling me what has been forgotten in the ways that we live and the ways that we endure and the ways that we celebrate our losses and gobble up the pieces of peace that find us reaching out to grasp the root. 

i hold on tight to the slow sleep of the waiting.  the january trees and their icy roots grown warm deep under the layers of ice where the earth’s fire pulsates.  they are not lonely or isolated because they choose the other, the quiet and the peaceful rejuvination.  after the parties and the twinkle lights and the brightly arrayed bulbs are pulled off of icicles, the loner in me reaches inwards, grasping for solitude, for slumber.  i have slowed down so much that i can feel time stretch out before me, a blue softly lit horizon that waits quietly for me to decide to live.

and finally.  i am ready to join the trees.  and a fire warms me deep down in the core and i feel the vibrations holding me gently and i have slowed down enough to know that i am living.

Posted in life and musings

she is a poem

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she is a poem
waiting
for you to witness
her ways

she is icy drama
turned to fire
burning your ears
as your eyes
turn away
averted in a shame
you should never feel

words that curve
endlessly longingly
thoughtlessly drip off tongues

fingers dug into nails
and quilts frayed with worn guilt

she is a poem
left out too long
in muted light
dusty and drawn
like a curtain
in the night
while tomatoes grow wild
under the sage sun

and your teeth sink in deep
and corn husks litter
that dirt road turned highway
and you are lost
in the red cheeked
ways of a prairie wind

that song
stuck in your head
as the dinner burns
and your thoughts fall away

again

and the frost
drips down
bare wood
rots

and she reminds herself
to give it a lick
of paint
before you next fall
into the winter snow.

Posted in poetry and prose