THE FRONT & ITS DEVICES
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
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Marry Me, John.
Photos by Meg Kroeker.
Mine was one of seven bowed heads around a family table, hands by our sides, not joined. I was caught off guard, instantly grounded by words so familiar and simple. A moment taken to pause before a meal, grateful for food on the table before me, the smell wafting up to greet me - soaking in ineffable relief - is not something I do enough. Invariably, this is the response that rises when I do take a second to slow. It feels good. Grounded.
///
She pulled the tab fully intact off the aluminum can of free beer. She held it up in triumph to the small room crowded with bodies, not particularly caring (for once) if anyone paid attention or not. It was a mere confirmation of what she already knew. He loved her! Undoubtedly. Earlier that day, while reading words that confirmed the very same thing, it occurred to her that no matter how much she wondered and doubted and feared, they were inextricably linked. Each altered by the other in a way that meant they wouldn't ever fit with any other person quite right. Perhaps they could be comfortable with another, different, soul and certainly with time, the mismatched edges would rub against each other enough to make them forget that they didn't fit correctly in the beginning. Surely, the aforementioned process happens to any two people who choose to walk the same path, but what it is mistakenly chalked up to myth is perfect alignment of two people people carved from the clay. Corresponding pieces. She thought for just a moment about saving the beer tab as a reminder of her epiphany, but it wasn't the sort of thing one forgot. She placed back down on the table, smiling, and returned to her game.
///
“I thought I was through with this day. All I wanted to do was unplug the phone, pour myself a bourbon, glance through the clippings concerning a particular case, just to check, and switch off the lights except for the old lamp on my desk. Maybe I’ll fall asleep right here, in my office. So there I was, sitting alone in the feeble light and silence, when she came in. Annie. She did not knock before she entered the room but quietly closed the door and turned towards me. I was barely able to see her, but I could imagine her large eyes, her smile. She whispered an ethereal ‘Hello’, her voice mingling with the plumes of smoke. The night had just begun...”(Stolen from La Blogotheque)
Friday, 06 November 2009
Monday, 02 November 2009
-
Easier.
I hear the ring of bell. It is not dinnertime, it is barely morning. The dark crowds us for more of the day than I like to admit to - and yet the gray, pale morning light still illuminates the dust on our black desk. Yellow light inside. A screenprinted poster is in the mail from the U. K. which was beautiful, beautiful, very fitting for our room and cheap AND it faintly reminded me of Bartholomew Cubbins. Bartholomew Cubbins is a dashing hero who defeats ooblecks, silly kings and the like and incidentally, is my favorite of all Dr. Seuss's created characters. I look up at my crack of sky and blue sky has been revealed in only a few minutes inattention. The dark is forgotten.
This past summer, a new friend made my day by posting photos of my beloved morning light. (ABOVE, photos by Andrea Mclaren) It was a terrible day and I remember, tears were spilling out within a second of seeing the photos and the album's title - For Elizabeth Ashton. She wrote, I remembered today that we take pictures of the same sun. Lately, I have been rather horrible to some people in paricular. People I love very much. Horrible not in the way of scheming terrible things via Blair Waldorf, but perhaps in a more damaging way. Disengagement, too much sarcasm, general unfeeling, and unseeing. To be unfeeling, I think, is the very worst. I am not alone in this, and on Halloween night seeing evidence of this very thing - before settling down to a somewhat scary movie projected on the wall of the mature lounge and a huge amount of candy, chips and pop and pillows, I sat in my room, sad. Why aren't we gentler to each other?
With all my rules and constructs about how things should be, how I/we should be, and all the things I/we want to do - why isn't that one of them? We are quite, quite fragile and yet, it goes unrecognized and hidden behind masks of fine or sarcasm - why aren't we gentler? I think this would be good. The poster in the mail (BELOW, by handcooked).
Thursday, 29 October 2009
-
Currently
Dark Was the Night
By Various Artists
see relatedHey Snow White.
Paintings by Sadie Cha.
A second round of sickness has re-muddled my mind. Words creep through my head instead of flash, blankets hamper my ability to type and there's an ever present pile of kleenexes within arm's length. My temperature is up and down like a kangaroo baby sans ritalin - I shed and pile on layers in between rounds of nausea.
Words from friends are welcome in my (these days) shrunken little world. I have holed up inside brick walls, 8,000 square feet and with over 20 housemates. Yet, my thoughts are so often with people scattered across the country - Meg in her new home, Eoin on tour and all the LV's, my family in their beautiful house on Angus, Joh and Ben in their house cooking - all this cords tying me to different places then the one I inhabit. I'm not going to venture to guess what this does to my sense of home - which, honestly has always been a little strange - bringing me back to a different sort of befuddlement.
A single drop rolls down my wall, the misty rain leaving it free from pattern today. My head however, is a million patterns, criss-crossing and confused, though hopeful, at what comes next. Hey, Snow White - it's gonna be alright, be allright, be allright.
I'm gonna take my cue from that pale lady, as I match her today in pallor, and lay down. Boring, yes. Unbelievably comforting? Oui. Bonne nuit.
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
-
Currently
The Midnight Organ Fight
By Frightened Rabbit
see relatedThe Days Go By.
ABOVE: MEGAN HUNT.
All I can see is the wall outside my window. The pattern today is the early stages of a Pollock painting. It's raining - we held off the perpetual rain for quite some time - but there's no denying that the trade-off for mountains, ocean and no snow is months upon months of rain. The thought of eggs made my stomach revolt and so here I sit, instead eating toast with honey, coffee and an apple in my grey Grandpa sweater, gearing up for the another long day of putting fancy words on paper and wading through textbooks.
Yesterday was a shit day. A walk to clear my head turned into leaden limbs barely making it back through the door and into bed with Kramer vs. Kramer, dozing in and out. Meryl Streep is/was a babe. Do the twist in the twisting outfit, the loose tie with the loose limp wrists, lift your dress enough to show me those shins, let your hair stick to your forehead. Another go at homework with a brain unable to string words together led to me curling up on the floor in front of my heater, just like old times, head and shoulders on a huge white pillow. Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight turned up loud. In and out of consciousness, the last dregs of sickness working itself out of my body. Twist yourself around me, I need company, I need human heat.
Are you a masochist? To love a leper on his last leg.
Today, though, I am back in the books, listening to pitter patter of the rain outside and not heart wrenchingly missing people far away. Time passes quickly. Mornings come, and the dreaded 2 and a half weeks of school hell will pass into memory.
Back to the books,
B
Friday, 16 October 2009
-
Cloud of Light.
There was a small boy sitting on a concrete ledge while I waited in line for my cappuccino. He sat, swinging his short legs off the edge. We drove away, after getting bread and we were stopped at a light. In front of me was a man sitting, leaning against a building - he had a beard and a hat and a very lean face. He held up to his mouth a tinfoil wrapped something and with great pleasure, dug in. I felt his satisfaction & was content in matching it - not as a voyeur, but as a stranger sharing a simple pleasure. I watched the light turn and we continued on. I am in the bath, languid and brown limbed. I hear water trickling through the pipes overhead. Books are piled on either side of my glasses and I sit half in, half out of the water, writing of people I do not want to slip away and be forgotten. I want to hold them between these pages, not captive, but remembered.
//
The dedication of Rolheiser's The Holy Longing:
For Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996, our generation's Kierkegaard. By sharing his own struggle, he mentored us all, helping us to pray while not knowing how to pray, to rest while feeling restless, to be at peace while tempted, to feel safe while still anxious, to be surrounded by a cloud of light while still in darkness and to love while still in doubt.
//
Come back darkness, come back muddled mind, do not yet disappear into the light of thought - there's only so much genius to be found in sanity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I wake, I stand before the bathroom mirror, eyes half open, lost in a dream. I feel it's a good time to take my pills - when I am half lucid and the other half crazy. I hear voices. I long for comfort. I have to take 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 pills. Medication, supplementation. I brush my teeth vigorously, my teeth bleed. I spit 1, 2, 3 times - fascinated by the way my blood looks mixed with saliva in the sink.
//
Happy Birthday Timothy James. It's the 16th of October.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
-
Currently
Hymns for a Dark Horse
By Bowerbirds
see relatedThe Woman in a Yellow Dress
Photographs by Joseph O. Holmes
of New York CityThere are floor to ceiling curtains that need to be steamed. There is tea and coffee to make and doors to open - beyond them is restoration. Curled in chairs, afghan swaddled, we sit. We rest. We remember, something. There are homes to make like magic, they contain us after late night inky black bike ride, snow flakes falling, the streetlights guiding us home. Most assuredly, I would curse an October snow if I remained in my home province, but hearing of its descent I was immediately nostalgic of the kind of winters I don't get to have in my current place of residence - romanticizing the hell out them. It's all fireplaces and warm drinks and cuddling up with something (ex: down comforter) or someone you love. And that pristine winter snow, thick and blanketed overs trees and ground through frost dusted windows.
Back to the present. The no snow present. I crawled around on bookstore floors searching for the perfect book for you. But I didn't find it. Shit. They were all too expensive, all the ones I wanted. I got rug burn from one shop and bruises from the other. And maybe a neck crick. Crack. Crick. Damn. I scanned their spines reading each vertebrae, searching for everything - for everything you ever wanted in a book.
I'm dreaming of trains and cross-Canada trips. And beds and candlelight, and endless books. And record players in new homes with a top bunned woman. I want to hear the strains of vinyl reach around walls and fill rooms - its warm sound is an undoubted a winter essential.
Adieu snowflake babies,
I go back to my rain.B
Sunday, 04 October 2009
-
Currently
Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West
By Jeffery Paine
see relatedHoping for Everything.
Astolphe's boy would turn up and sit on the stool across from him, with his grin, his desire for, it seemed, every possibility in the world. perhaps Lucien himself looked like that when young. Like a slim combed hound, mouth open, breathing fast with eagerness, hoping for everything. (from Divisadero by Ondaatje)
I have a new place - a very much needed place to construct dreams. I build them up, giant constructs of matchsticks, impossibly huge and very real. I inhabit them eagerly, far before they are sturdy and safe, clambering up up up joyously. I survey the view from the top, inhaling deeply and with satisfaction until a stiff breeze blows apart my precarious bare bones of a structure and I tumble down with it. I am left sitting among the remnants, missing the view. I am strange bird in a matchstick nest.
I have a new place to recovery from all my flights of fancy, a place to ground me - a twin chair to mine for friends to inhabit beside me when they come to seek me where I am most often found these days. I have recently lost the ability to make a good cup of coffee, which is very much off topic, but is no less baffling in its sudden arrival. Back on, I am mostly shrouded from the world - from my chair I can only see a slice of sky and a tall concrete wall, which on rainy days becomes patterned by the falling drops. Every rain day pattern is different and I anticipate with some eagerness the many I will see in the coming months. I am without heat and sending fervent prayers in all directions for ours to be fixed soon (A, I am jealous jealous of your repaired broiler and consequent warm apartment) so I too can hear the his and hum of the radiators coming alive. My new place and icy fingers are currently an inseparable pair.
On the wide black slab of a desk, there are ceramic coaster from Prague and Greece for the tea or coffee nearly always at hand. One is square with a black and white pattern of Kafka sihouettes, the other round with a spot painted a traditional guard blowing his horn in fornt of the Acropolis. Pieces of travels which tie me to those locations in time. I remember the elation I felt upon entering Kafka's blue house in a cobblestoned alley; the awe at I felt at the Acropolis, the cold wind chilling me even though the sun shone bright overhead, high above Athens. I felt wide open, barely able to keep my breath as I opened my eyes wider and wider to take it all in. Waiting for everything.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
-
Currently
Yellow House
By Grizzly Bear
see relatedShort Sentences and Ragged Sleeps.
I came across a blog today
(and not for the first time)
was struck by her minimalist prose
Inspired
I will follow
and break down what I have to say
into small groups of black on white -
only the essential slices.
Coffee and walking
in the cool night air
of the downtown eastside
before
chopping for twenty
I last longer than my partners
but eventually the vapors get to me
and I cry like a baby
with a pile of translucent cubes to show for it.
A room to myself
and a hardwood floor
I wake up a lot
disoriented
but warm.
Sunday morning cappuccino
and sunny Main St.
plus scones
Rolheiser in a deck chair
while the church bells ring
Jim's socks
overtop my pants
to keep me warm.
Soup for lunch
the children talk about Smallville
I feel tall
and happy.
We sit three floors up
on a deck top patio
overlooking Vancouver
drinking beers and talking philosophy
squinting into the sun.
Homemade pasta
drying on racks
and garlic sauteing
we eat after the darkness drops
by candlelight
again on the rooftop.
We leave
because library voices is playing
and besides the fact that
they play good music
I really love some of the people
in that band.
After the show,
we are lingering
as usual
as they load their gear
I am not helpful.
A small apartment full of people
We go out for a cigarette
and don't come back.
Van benches are
too small for two people
even skinny ones.
But it doesn't matter
because the late night
crumbles walls and guilt
you laugh as you tell me a story
and it works again
I'm relieved,
close my eyes
and go to sleep.
Thursday, 24 September 2009
-
Currently
Parc Avenue
By Plants and Animals
see related
I awoke to a chorus of baby birds chirping, nay screaming, for their breakfast. Then the swoosh and flurry of Mum comes silence them. It is becoming a routine. Except that they never seem to be silenced and soon they will grow up and leave the nest and my room will be without screeching little bird babies and although I extend grumpy feelings from my bed out the window and into their nest, I have a funny feeling I'm going to miss them.
I like the bustle of morning traffic. Secondary education, buses and I walk hand in hand (maybe all buses are really school buses in disguise). The busyness is not overwhelming in the morning, the sounds are half swallowed by the lingering night. Everyone is still yet waking up. The birds chirp, as do the walk lights and as they turn the corner the cars and trucks start small whirlwinds on the ground as the first fall of leaves. A young biker rides past - cute - arguable too young for a second look and I envy his calves. All sinewy and muscled, they speak of a commitment, of discipline, of a willingness to get up earlier than necessary to hop on his bike to get where he needs to get. Enviable.
Although I have very affectionate feelings towards the bus, the noise within is much less pleasant than at at the stop. The rush of traffic, the rustle of the leaves, the yellow husk brushing each other in bursts - it's a different landscape of sounds altogether. The chatter of people, the buzz of the bus radio - I do not miss it as I step out into the cool morning after my short ride to school. It is not yest crisp, but it is dim lit, grey - school appropriate. The kind that makes you want to sit down and study.
Monday, 21 September 2009
-
Currently
Harvest
By Neil Young
see relatedI have been reading.
I now have access to a whole new library with my student status. Of course, this is very exciting news. Pictured, and courtesy of UFV are: Divisadero (novel) by Micheal Ondaatje, The Cinnamon Peeler (poetry) also by Ondaatje, and Re - Enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West by Jeffery Paine. I now have access to a whole new library with my student status. Of course, this is very exciting news and along with school, it will have a delightful effect on my social life.
Friday, 18 September 2009
-
A Globe by Lamplight.
ABOVE: BENOIT
I want to disappear into the bathwater. Steam rising, sweat beading, slow exhaling, limbs extended over the edge of the bathtub, head inclined back. More commonly though my head is leaned forward towards an open book, my eyes moving at an unfrenzied pace across pages. I rarely rush and trip over words while reading surrounded by the steam and quiet. It is instead a slow absorption of story and character, which I unwind as I sink down into the warm water. I step out clean and satisfied and tousle my hair with a towel, realizing for the millionth time that I have forgotten to put on the fan before stepping in and consequently it will take a much longer time to unfog the mirrors - always completely obscured.
I have played many roles in the last few days - a schoolteacher preparing a classroom by lamplight, hanging a globe above another which contains the constellations. One which display the world we walk on - with continents instead of stars, rivers ribboning and mountains looming - in theory anyway, this particular globe is not the one of my childhood with raised ridges. I used to spin the globe and plant my finger firmly and pretend that where it landed was where I would live in my most certainly exciting future life. I was one of the many who did this - and yet I was sure that mine would surely prove true because it so often landed on Sri Lanka. The same place! More than a few times! I thought. It had to be a sign. Other roles I have played - scorned lover, forgotten lover, inconsequential friend - mostly in my own imagination which mostly fills in the cracks (these days) with dire predictions. I have had an immense amount of trouble finding peace or being still or reflecting with any sort of clarity or wisdom for weeks. Restless, ever restless.
Frustrated. Immature. Uninspired. But fine.
And keeping a hawk's eye on the mail (what a phrase!)
Good night and good luck lovelies, I'm off to snuggle with my pillow, book and reading lamp.
Monday, 14 September 2009
-
Currently
Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
By Neko Case
see relatedHold on, Hold on.
I seem to be playing catch up lately - the words forming into sentences too fast and at inopportune moments - moments where I have no pen and paper, or no will to go and acquire them.
I read Meg's blog today and missing gushed out of me like the pockets of air she described, puffing up from the earth as they walked through the forest and through mossy swamps - spraying trees and outfitted in protective gear like a kind of earth astronaut. This is all in my imagination of course and when I see her photographs of the said people and gear I am sure I will realized my imagination has made a sort of grave error in its imaginings, but, for now, I am content with my approximations.
I feel as though missing has been spilling out in large floods - only now do I feel the distance between BC and Saskatchewan, the miles between my family and I, my parents and brother and those few others who are so close they are only separated by a hair from those who share the same blood. I had gotten quite practiced at removing myself from these feelings of disconnection and distance, treating miles like hours instead of days and phone calls like we were face to face instead of voice to disembodied voice. I now see why I, so long ago - when leaving home for the first time at 17, enforced this. Because to really realize how far you are are from some of the people who are most dear to you - is quite painful. And leaves you with an ache that doesn't really leave, just stays steady. A dull ache. A dear ache actually - that word seems to assign to it a kind of triteness or cuteness not due it at all. It just is, nothing to feel sorry about. It just is.
Tuesday, 08 September 2009
-
Currently
In Our Bedroom After the War
By Stars
see relatedThe Weekend in Parts.
Illustrations by Jeffery Fisher.
FRIDAY: I have turned the lights off and the lamps on. Lamp light is so much warmer - so much lovelier to hole up and stow away in, cross-legged on a refinished wooden floor and a bed much bigger than I. Today was a good day.
First came COFFEE. The wine and the late to bed last night necessitated coffee as soon as possible on getting out of bed. It was a somewhat early hour (while refusing to sacrifice mornings, I do not refuse to sacrifice sleep) and I headed to the kitchen for caffeine and breakfast. Tiff and I met in the hall and upon reaching the kitchen we began preparing our separate breakfasts. We were soon joined by Ali, Tess and Tim and we all gathered around the sturdy and round dark wooden tables for our morning conversation - last night replays and general merriment. We were quite merry this morning.
SATURDAY: I love short stories and having spent some time trying to pinpoint why exactly I have such a fondness - I have found one of the reasons. Short stories are like collecting small pieces. I referenced Maira Kalman the other day and her idea of "thinking small" in order to handle the to-muchedness of it all and the way I feel about short stories directly relates. Short stories take these small bits of life, of people, and focus a light on them. They are easier to hold close and to take in - it's not 500 pages of ideas and story - it's 5 -10. Carol Shields does them brilliantly. I wish I could write story about the warm feeling I had yesterday as I made coffee and, ground the appropriate amount of beans for the day's portion and looked at three different sizes of french press - one cup, four cup, 8 cup and two teapots (one for loose leaf, one normal). Dave's (I think) bombilla and tiny little mate gourd sat on the top of the stove, a funny pair, the giant and his tiny mate implements - we are serious about warm drinks here.
The rain is coming down outside in torrents. Torrents and I am, for second night sequestered in my bed by lamplight.
TODAY: This weekend was full of warmth. It contained projects in our new home and more people moving in - the count is now up to 13, with another coming tomorrow. It was the beginning of fall (as it is the first day of school) and contained much rest. It was a good weekend. Beth is back from Calgary - Jainee and Timo get married tomorrow and I begin working as a contracted (out) designer with Columbia as of Thursday. I am back to school on Thursday. Along with fall, change is in the air.
Wednesday, 02 September 2009
-
Currently
In Our Bedroom After the War
By Stars
see related
NOT EVERYTHING IS NOW by Neruda
Something of yesterday remained today
shard of a pot or of a flag
or simply a notion of light,
algae of the aquarium of night,
a fiber that did not waste away,
pure doggedness, air of gold:
something of what passed persists
diluted, dying by the arrows
of the aggressive sun and its battles.
If yesterday does not endure
in this dazzling independence
of the dictatorial day
in which we live,
why like a marvel of gulls
did it turn backward, as though it would stagger
and mingle its blue with the blue that had already departed?
And I answer.
Inside the light
your soul circles
winding down until it dies out,
growing like the ringing of a bell.
And between dying and being born again
there is so little
room, nor is the frontier
so harsh.
The light is round like a ring
and we move within its movement.
There is so much change in the air. For me, but also for those surrounding me. Which is both scary and exciting and hopeful all jumbled together. The unknown is always a little scary, but the accompanying exhilaration of it always bridges the gap enough for me to jump. That being said, I am quite a good jumper, or to be more precise, I am a plunger. I'm usually underwater before I have had a chance to truly soak in a situation, which I with neither denounce as good or bad. It just is.
Good night and good luck, lovelies - I am off to bed at a reasonable hour, with very good intentions of getting up early and making breakfast and coffee before scrambling off to work.
Monday, 31 August 2009
-
Somewhere I Have Never Travelled.
Jordan and Carmen are now husband and wife. We were up at Hemlock most of the weekend for the wedding. It was beautiful. They were, it was, we were. I was asked to provide the "vintage" photography by bride and groom and I happily did so. I tiptoed around in my two inch heels and little black dress during the ceremony trying to balance being quiet and unobtrusive with catching on film the beauty of a wedding at magic hour.
The next day brought sun and calm hand in hand. Away from normal life - we hiked, puzzled, blackjacked, swam, hot tubbed, pancaked (ate pancakes, that is), reclined and read. It was much needed. Since arriving back in BC, I have been weighed heavy by weight of worry and thoughts about "it all", so Maira Kalman's observation (above bottom) was a welcome perspective. I have read Mandela's words (above top) mostly as another way of saying, THINK BIG - which I have (just now) decided is ridiculous. What I mean by that more specifically, is that this is ridiculous for me because my version of thinking big turns a seed of thought into something something dizzingly huge in approximately 1.5 seconds. I think that Kalman and I could possibly be alike in this way and perhaps that is why I thrill at her style of observing the world. "Thinking small" is not a synonynm for settling. It is instead a way to stop carrying a million pounds of things around all at once. All invisible, but very real. I will leave you, on this last day of September, with a further meditation from Maira Kalman.
Thursday, 27 August 2009
-
Currently
Post-War
By M. Ward
see relatedAbsent.
Night has become unfamiliar to me, an old friend I don't seem to know anymore. Often, with the coming of night comes a tending towards a more melancholic version of myself.
My computer has been in the shop. I have flown from Regina over the patchwork of the prairies and the rocky spines of mountains back to Abbotsford - the transition between the two always shakes me at least a little. This time I've been shaken a lot. I am still somewhere over the mountains - not there anymore, but not back yet either. I have been settling into a new place to live (Atangard) and culling my belongings with a vengeance. My anxieties have been spilling over onto most of the people who innocently ask how I am - and that, really, is the biggest part of the missing words. I have no desire for those to spill out here as well - and thus I will post photographs, not yet of my trip back to Saskatchewan, but from before I went. (I am in the midst of 7 roll photo pile up.) Here are a few shots from the last days of summer in Abbotsford and area. Upon my return, fall is too close for it to really feel like summer anymore - school is around the bend, pencils are at the ready and cooler nights carry us to sleep.
BELOW: So many Saturday mornings were spent for me at the Farmer's Market. One of my favorite parts of summer. I have my favorite baker - his scones are unparalleled. Jim and Tim in the back of Steve's truck on the way to Cascade. It was really really really hot back there. Dan, Tess, and Aaron pause before we all hike up and consequently plunge into water and clamber over rocks for the remainder of the day.
Friday, 14 August 2009
-
"Utopia is waiting in a patch of sun, a smudge of mud, a chalkboard message professing heavenly joy, a little bit of blood in the small nostrils of a boy baptized with everyday dirt." The photographs above are by Taj Forer. The quotation opening this paragraph is pulled from the back of his book, Threefold Sun. The cup I am drinking my third (smallish) cup of coffee from is ceramic, handmade and as such has a place to put my thumb while sipping.
God.
This exhalation proclaiming in a single breath everything I don't understand. Or everything I do. It comes, when I am overcome with the good or the bad, as a single thought. Glowing (good) or a puff of grey smoke (bad) or black smoke (very bad). A friend wrote me - who has given me lately this amazing gift of seeing me, of taking what put out in word and image and connecting - this line. Your recent post/s have made me cry, not out of sadness, but something to do with familiarity/understanding/heartbrokenness and something on that very thin line between hopeful/hopeless. That articulation is one I could not have put down, but truly echoes the state I've been hovering (hovering? I can not find the perfect word to fit in here) in for some time. But the thing is this - when I really reflect on how I am, when people ask me, people that I will reply to honestly - I say, truthfully, that I am well. Really well. So to keep on bumbling, overcome by this line that I'm hovering around, hopeful/hopeless seems a little silly - the truth is that I am well. And that is good. And it's honest. And I should remember it.
I am so glad to be back in Saskatchewan and I am enjoying it so much, yet I really miss my home and my people (after a remarkably short absence in the big scheme of things) in BC. It's said. Scary and true. I've settled down sans regret for the time being. Aight. I'm off to find food I haven't cooked and get photos developed. Until we meet again, screen to screen.
Sunday, 09 August 2009
-
Currently
Seven Swans
By Sufjan Stevens
see relatedIt turns out.
It turns out that Chapter 19, From Faith to Wisdom, in New Seeds has taken me approximately 3 days to get through. Some sort of sign/comment on my personal journey? Perhaps.
Perhaps not actually - as I do not think this small (in size only) book is conspiring against me - making a snide remark on how slowly I progress between these two - yet if it was, commenting, that is, it would be correct. It also turns out that my parents backyard is a regular hangout for cats in the neighborhood. From my comfortable chair in the corner of their covered deck (some sort of deck is essential to a home) I heard scrabbling. Two squirrels, I thought. Looking up, I realized I was mistaken and was intrigued to see instead an adolescent cat chasing a small brown squirrel. This cat is new to the game, so although I at first felt some concern for the squirrel, assuming he would be the pawn in this game of cat and mouse, I soon realized it was not so. The young feline was too hesitant and overconfident at the same time and Squirrel Nutkin soon climbed too high too fast, high up into upper branches that would not have supported his pursuer even if was quick and brave enough to have followed. He escaped via the top of the trees while the young one still waited at the base of the tree, flicking his tail.
I have spent this Sunday morning so far on the back deck, surrounded by books - Merton, Dillard - the borrowed Olympus, coffee and computer. I heard the strains of church bells at 10 or so, and now the glory of the early morning has gone and we are into midday.
There is a din of trumpets up-beat and indistinct, like some movie score for a love scene played on a city balcony; there is an immeasurably distant light glowing from half-remembered faces...I stir. the heave of my shoulders returns me to the present, to the tree, the sycamore, and I yank myself away, shove off and moving, seek live water. /// Live water heals memories. I look up at the creek and here it comes, the future, being borne aloft as on a winding succession of laden trays. you may wake and look from the window and breathe real air, and say with satisfaction or with longing, "This is it." But if you look up the creek, if you look up the creek in any weather, your spirit fills, and you are saying, with an exulting rise of the lungs, "Here it comes!" /// The pure trickle that leaks from the unfathomable heart of Tinker Mountain, this Tinker Creek, widens, taking shape and cleaving banks, weighted with the live and intricate impurities of time, as it descends to me, to where I happen to find myself, in this intermediate spot, halfway between here and there. Look upstream. The future is a spirit, or a distillation of the spirit, heading my way. It is north. The future is light on the water; it comes, mediated, only on the skin of the real and present creek. My eyes can stand no brighter light than this; nor can they see without it. (Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
eja_crepusculario
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- Name: Beth
- Member Since: 3/25/2005
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