Smoke and wine

It was during the summer of the big fires, when the mill and half of Barriere was burnt to the ground and the blaze threatened to snake north through the rest of the Thompson Valley. The summer when the sparks played roulette with Kelowna houses and an area the size of a small country went up like a torch in the matchstick forests of the Chilcotin.

I remember standing outside at the reception at my cousin’s wedding, looking at the moon glowing red through the smoky haze and thinking that I was heading into the apocalypse. Weeks before I had agreed to do some last minute holiday cover for the weekly newspaper in Clearwater, a town just an hour north of the evacuated town of Barriere. There was no power in Clearwater and the residents were on constant alert, informed they may have to evacuate at any time. All it would take was for the wind to shift and the monster would lunge.

I didn’t want to go. I tried to get out of it. No luck. So I went, spending the next two weeks living in a hotel that was being run on generator power, writing my stories longhand while struggling to find contacts in a strange town that was existing inside a surreal cloud. And I mean that literally. Every morning I would go out to my car to find it covered in ash. We breathed it in. We watched it fall. We were conscious of the subtlest breeze. People held giant barbecues to try and make use of the all the thawing food that was going to waste from their freezers. They took water from the river, they established rota systems to share their generators with their neighbours. I went to the grocery store, where all the batteries were gone.

Outside on the curb sat a small old man who was so wrinkled he looked like he would eventually resemble an empty leather satchel. He wore one of those once-white hillbilly hats that was bent at all angles. Beneath his blue eyes, which shone like diamonds in the desert of his tanned skin, his toothless mouth chomped steadily in a pensive half-smile. I remember thinking that the fire had started to drive the hermits from their cabins. Soon the town would fill with reclusive creatures dancing on the fault line of madness.

At the end of the first week I had to drive a hour an a half to the nearest sister paper in 100 Mile so I could use their newsroom to design the paper. I fell short of copy and we ended up printing a massive satellite image of the fire area on the back page. Then back into the smoke and the strange solitude again.

The way to get information in a small town is often to just ask around. I wanted to talk to an old-timer who might have been around during forest fire scares of years past. Someone with a story or two who could put all of our fears into perspective.

So much of those two weeks is lost now, like my mind doesn’t think most of the experience is worth remembering. But I recall the feeling of being lost as I drove over what was supposedly a road, toward his homestead. His house, which his father had built and where he now lived alone, was a tinderbox, surrounded by firewood that was so dry the slightest ember would have set the stacks aflame. Beside the door was a small bag of his belongings, there for him to grab if he needed to head out to his truck at a moment’s notice. He was old, stooped, with the large, gnarled hands of a man who had worked hard his entire life. But he had an easy smile and seemed thrilled to have been asked to relay some of his experiences.

Here comes the part that is burned into me, the single memory that erupts in my mind like a saga bound into just a few moments. The porch at the back of the house overlooked a small marsh. The smoke settled over the still water like the eerie mist in a gypsy’s crystal ball. There were no birds, no sounds, no wind. Just silence and the smoke. We settled down and he handed me a glass of wine.

No. Not a glass.

He gave me homemade plum wine in a mason jar. It was dark like a harvest moon soaked in old blood and wrung out, together with whatever clouds were lingering nearby at the time. I don’t even remember the taste. Only the overwhelming sense that it was, in essence, a concoction. A dream steeped through bark and earth, spiked with a few hot rays and the pleasant drifting scent of hay, then poured into a barrel and left in the still darkness to concentrate.

I asked the kind of open questions I knew would give way to long answers, and he supplied the stories. He had lived in the area his whole life, with years spent working for the parks service, fighting fires in the summers and guarding against poachers in the winters. He still had the double-edged axe he had used to cut into the earth and create lines try to stop the fire from jumping. No use when the thunderous wind a forest fire creates for itself can toss a burning pinecone several kilometres. The prisons would send him inmates to help battle the blaze, the incentive against trying to run being not knowing which way to go in order to ensure not being killed.

One winter his feet became terribly frost bitten. But instead of going to the doctor, he simply waited for them to heal, continuing to force his toes into his boots even when the dying skin would bubble and the puss would leak from his wounds.

“When I walked, it would squish out.”

This is the only thing he told me that I can repeat from memory. I also remember the sheepish smile he gave when he said it, as if ignoring the threat of gangrene was something that a naughty schoolboy would do. It took until July for his feet to heal.

Today I don’t even recall his name. It was seven years ago but I still think of him often and that precious scene on the porch, drinking plum wine and looking out into the smoke, enveloped in calm amidst the burgeoning destruction.

It remains one of the best memories of my life.

Lids not included

A thoroughly grey day, with a drizzle so meagre it was like the raindrops were fainting from the sky in boredom.

I’ve not written because I have been watching all of the BBC’s Last Man Standing programs. It was a lot of work. Six athletes from various fields, three from Britain and three from the USA, are schlepped all over the world to compete in various sports, from water buffalo racing in Indonesia, to wrestling in India and canoe racing in Brazil.

I love this show. There is only one episode left and I shall be sad when it ends. Part of it is being able to witness, again and again, how these men can fall into forgetting themselves and let their bodies do the thinking, or how they can change tactics and make their minds override their weakened muscles and pounding hearts. How they trust themselves completely, body and mind.
Perhaps part of me is also curious at my own body’s abilities. I am naturally strong; it takes little effort for me to steady myself like a tree and lift something ridiculously heavy. I carry a lot of power in my legs. So I wonder if I actually made the most of my body’s physical capabilities, how much I could actually do.

Mostly however it is the places the guys end up, plunged into the cultural life of each village where they stay, taught by local experts in the sport they are trying to master. My favourite is West Africa’s Burkina Faso. Heat, dust, strange rituals, sacred crocodiles, women with lips plates. My body lurches with longing for some parts of the world and I do not understand why. My mind often slips away into thinking about one desert scene or another, parched landscapes that give way to the ocean, or perhaps a sliver of green where a river has carved through a valley, allowing life to spill its banks. Why do I yearn for these places when I can’t even sit in a hot sauna for more than 30 seconds? My body thrives in cold weather and in the summer I close the curtains and stay indoors.

My new Songlines Magazine has arrived. I am listening to it over and over, not letting myself read about the songs because I like to just let the music affect me, the rhythm and the voices. It fulfils some of my desire for adventure, to suddenly find myself beside a fire in the mountains of Spain, chewing on a piece of chorizo and watching the local women dance as the men look on, shifting in their seats as each stews in his own lust.

Not that today was without adventure. With the holidays nearing, some of the folks at work have started handing out cards. This is not for me. Giving a card doesn’t feel like enough of a statement. I need at least a little bit of drama and flavour. So I have set myself a task of making things. Truffles, Spanish almond and fig balls, mixed with a bit of brandy and rolled in sesame seeds (very good with cheese, so I have read), a chutney of apples and apricots and finally some sweet chilli jam. There are quite a few of us at work and I wanted everyone to have a little something. But I needed jars. So off I wandered to Lakewood, home of many kitchen supplies. I found jam jars and some larger preserve jars, stuffed them in the big bag I had brought with me and began the trek home. The long, long trek home. Never has the walk felt so far as it did today, carrying what turned out to be painfully heavy glass jars. I can lift heavy things, but distance under pressure is not my forte.

Finally I got home and rested for a few minutes before hauling out my prizes. As I looked for a way into the box of jars, I saw it. A simple sentence, all in capitals. LIDS NOT INCLUDED. Damn. That meant a bus trip all the way back. I fought the crowds and bought the last two bags of lids. Now, having spent almost the entire day searching for jars, I will be putting off the making of treats until next weekend and shall focus tomorrow’s efforts on writing and just being splendid.

In other news, my precious headset is broken. The mic doesn't work. A replacement will need to be found in the New Year. Also, my attempts to find a space lamp have failed. I shall continue the search.

There are, at the moment, 13 candles burning in the living room. I have also placed two candles on the floor of the kitchen. At least this way I’ll be able to see the wee rodent when he scuttles out to mock me with his genius. The trap now contains ultra expensive truffle chocolate. Perhaps he has a weakness for quality. Palate of doom. Succumb, little mouse, to the palate of doom…

Mantra of the busted tub

Crackpot. Crack. Pot.

Yes indeed, the secret is in knowing that the world is built upon one big skewed smile running through the belly of an earthenware jar. It's like seeing that slip of a thing sprawled across a billboard, a perfectly cut danger waiting to spring out and sell you something. Or like the confusion in your body when you haven’t seen your lover for weeks, until the sleek shock of penetration sends the silent language scrolling again through your limbs.

I know them when I see them. The old men who venture out in order to be just that - out. The one today carried a Somerfield bag but the bag was clear and I could see that he had gone all the way to the shop to pick up a flyer. Plucked from a litter of thousands it lay cradled against the weak plastic walls. The man’s wild white hair crested from one temple around the back of his head to the next, the top of his skull gleaming as he lumbered under the street lights.

It’s not the oversized coats that gives the story away, although I suppose it could be, because when they are that large they have been bought from a charity shop when there was nothing else going. But no - it’s the shoes. Giant black loafers with wide soles and rounded toes. And with each step a flash of bare ankle beneath too-short trousers. The rest of his life can be imagined. You don’t even have to get up close to let the smell fill in the clichés. Maybe it’s twenty minutes on the bus to the grocery store in another part of the city, to pick up a single packet of digestives biscuits that he could have bought a block away. Or a visit to the coffee shop where they haven’t washed the floor in what could be years, but it’s warm and the girl behind the counter lets him chat to her while he nurses a single cup of tea for two hours. He keeps talking, even when she barely murmurs in recognition before turning back to text her friends with news completely unrelated to the presence of an old man whose name she does not know. When one day he finally stops coming in, she will not even notice.

I like to think there is one great pleasure in his life, something other than the arrival of the weekly free paper that flexes him out of his routine. I like to think that he meets up with a friend each week, perhaps in the park or a suitably dismal café, and that they spend some time talking and arguing and maybe even laughing once or twice. I like to think he watches the quiz shows on television and yells out the answers, huffing to himself in pride whenever he knows something the contestant does not. Finally I like to think that sometimes the tunnel of his vision, worn smooth with time, opens up like the roof of a giant stadium on a spring day. And that into his mind pours light, wonder, and the welcome weight of contentment.

When couch potatoes attack!

I opened A Spot of Bother to chapter 24 and had to laugh at just how perfect it fits my recent emotional state:

“Jamie parked round the corner from Katie’s house and composed himself. You never did escape, of course. School might have been shit, but at least it was simple. If you could remember your nine-times table, steer clear of Greg Pattershall and draw cartoons of Mrs. Cox with fangs and batwings you pretty much had it sorted.
None of which got you very far at thirty-three.
What they failed to teach you at school was that the whole business of being human just got messier and more complicated as you got older.
You could tell the truth, be polite, take everyone’s feelings into consideration and still have to deal with other people’s shit. At nine or ninety.”

At work I have told/warned a number of people that I am trying to lose weight and that at times I may be more emotional than usual. I don’t mean that this should be an excuse for lashing out at people for no reason, but it helps me to give myself a little extra room instead of trying to force myself not to experience negative emotions. Well, two pounds down and the process seems to have started.

Today I ate really well and my blood sugars are nice and level, so I feel much calmer. But I have no doubt that intense ranting will occur occasionally, as well as slobbering bouts of solipsism. Thanks all for your thoughts and kind comments.

I have always lived on an emotional teeter-totter. It is not “bad” - I have learned this and must keep reminding myself. Despite my sporadic tales of woe, I would like to stress that I am, in fact, very happy. My job sometimes annoys me but overall I find it an exciting place to work, filled with potential and promise. And I have never ceased to feel grateful for being allowed to stay in this country.

Though I often feel very isolated and disconnected from my fellow humans, I have always felt this way. There are only a handful of people to whom I feel really connected, and I feel very blessed to have them in my life. And for the first time in my life, I have met a man who I actually believe when he tells me he adores my body. If I waltz in wearing something low cut, I swear that by the look on his face I can tell that his brain has momentarily switched off. This makes me feel wonderful beyond measure, and is a huge influence in the gradual unwrapping of my witchy goodness.

So there you have it. Overall, a happy potato.

NOW GIVE ME SOME FUCKING CHOCOLATE!!!

Heh. Just kidding. You can come out now.

It all gets better when Seasick Steve is in town

Okay so I've been a bit sad. On Friday I found out that I have Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Now I am facing the big woman's mountain of hell known as "must lose weight." No choice now.
The number is 50 pounds. I want/need to lose 50 pounds. Losing this amount still won't put me in the "normal" category, but it is where I know I will likely feel comfortable and there is (hopefully) a good chance losing that amount will help to balance out some of my symptoms and lower the risk for greater health problems. Not surprisingly I am full of self-doubt, combined with intense bouts of self-loathing (it's like the worst emotional smoothie ever).

Today I cleaned the flat and spent a long time clearing out the fridge and even defrosting the freezer. I like to think it is a fresh start. At least part of me likes to think that. The other part says I'm procrastinating.

I am also not one of those people who can follow an "eating plan," whereby one is told by a piece of paper what to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. This takes away the pleasure and leaves me feeling trapped, desperate and depressed. My typical response to being told I can't do/have something is frantically negative. I obsess over the thing I can't have until I rebel and go and get it.

The trick is to make the whole thing about "yes." I like yes. I'm a yes kind of girl. So far however, I don't know how I'm going to do this. But I can feel the lines of support rising around me, and this makes me feel better when it all starts to get too much.

In other news, the Seasick Steve gig last night was one of the best performances I've ever seen. The man obviously loves being on stage and seems to still be in awe that he is where he is instead of living next to the train tracks and using stale bread as a sieve to get the goods out of rubbing alcohol. Opening for Steve was Amy LaVere, a petite, child-like creature who plays a mean upright bass and writes incredible songs like "pointless drinking" and "killing him didn't make the love go away."

The Queen's Hall is a wonderful venue. An old church, there are not only pews on the ground level but two levels above the stage. It feels like one of those old-time revival churches - the kind where voices can gather to "raise the roof."

The only thing that dampened the night were the complete and utter losers who spent the entire show talking, despite Steve asking several times for people to be quiet. Steve kept a baseball bat next to his chair and while he picked it up a few times with humour in his eyes, mocking threats to those who would simply not shut up, at one point he did start to walk into the crowd with it and you could see he was really frustrated. He is a strange, wise, fantastic character and I feel blessed to have seen him play. Over and over he looked out into the sold-out crowd with wonder, standing up to bow so the folks at the back could see him. He also didn't mind sharing swings of Jack Daniels ("Tennessee soda pop") with members of the audience. He played wild and hard, as did Dan Magnusson, a most fantastic drummer, who Steve rightly pointed out looks surprisingly like Animal from the Muppets.

Another favourite moment: "If you thought the three-string was a piece a' shit, this is the real piece of shit," he said, hoisting his one-string "diddley bo" before breaking into "Save me." Finally, the beautiful ""Walking man" which he sang to a woman he invited onto stage. He wrote on a CD for her: "Justine..thank you for bein' my gal...for one song."

That's that. Only two candles are still burning and I still have to make up the bed before I can crawl in. After weeks of not seeing him, JP will be here in about eight hours. I have missed him so. Tuesday night we are going to see Mary Rose at (where else?) the Lyceum.

Sad musings/questions on a stormy day

I wonder what shapes your mind makes, whether your thoughts are built up in towers or whether they crawl lean along the ground like pavement.

Where do you find curves in the city?
The arc of steel inside a sculpture, the swoop of a café mug.

How do you find the music to fit the storm?
First, listen to the wind. It is gusting softly through the fire grate like a grandmother blowing on a child’s too-hot porridge. Then choose Chris Garneau.

You are imagining you have all the time in the world. Time enough to learn to oversleep guiltlessly. Time enough to turn the small spoon inside the coffee cup over and over, the San Fran clang clang reminding of you of your grandfather.

How do you keep from mourning?
When the leaves you brought home from the park begin to dry out and curl, work hard at feeling nothing at all. If you cannot, make more tea.

I would like to see…a little more propriety
Cooperate with me
and answer me
without a plea
I know now, I know now, I know now…
I’m never gonna tell on you.

Sometimes you will forget why you are here. You may start to wonder at your place in the world and whether you take up too much space, or not enough. And you may feel like a puzzle piece who is dancing around the board, mixing and mingling and trying, trying trying…to fit in.

Why does the wind change directions so often?
That is Big Mother trying to get the kinks out of her back. All that hoisting billions of babies.

Strange how you have forgotten how it is to be alone. After all that time wearing it like an old coat. And it amazes you how slowly one drop of water can take to slide down the window, which defends your silence from the squall.

What is worth waiting for?
For the rain against the window to disguise the world as a cold, opaque dream.

I’m wearing me out
I’m wearing my old clothes
I’m writing all new poems
I’m riding in my car

Horror and Beauty

Behold the charming surprise John left for me in the fridge this morning, knowing I would discover it before going to work. Ah, yes - the old severed, bloody finger on the plate gag.

In my own tale of gruesome, I had two moles removed this morning. I have added the occurrence to the list of 33 new things I have to experience or accomplish before my next birthday. Call it one more sign of getting older. My blond hair may hide signs of grey, but my fair skin has suffered a few nasty sunburns over the years (never go to Vegas in June after a sun-starved Vancouver winter). Gone now is the large dark mole on the back of my neck, about which mother has nagged me for years. And while I am not bothered by this, I am saddened by the loss of the other one. It was on my back, a small brown dot that I remember adoring even as a young woman.

At my consultation with the doctor I had mentioned it almost as an afterthought, but when she looked at it closely with her little magnifying device, she saw a small darker spot in the centre, which concerned her. This surprised me and felt a bit like a betrayal by a part of myself I had always considered a mark of beauty - a tiny island against my pale skin. I always felt there was something alluring about it, a subtlety that a lover would notice and remember, like the faint red birth mark on my left leg that I’ve always thought of as a map to an undiscovered continent. A tiny piece of my body’s magic - marks that were given to me and have stayed with me all my life. Until now. Once the stitches come out (there are five, which is quite a lot, considering I only had 12 in my head after plunging my skull through a windscreen), a small scar will line the place where my mole once was, like a pair of lips that have been sealed.

Beauty is heavy on my mind at the moment, following last night’s sojourn to the King’s Theatre to see Matthew Bourne’s production of Dorian Gray. This was both my and John’s first experience of modern dance theatre (one more for the list), and while I was at first shocked at the sexual intensity (we were in the front row - I could see the sweat drip), I was soon taken away by it.

The dancers were incredible, my favourite being Aaron Sillis who played the doomed Basil, struck down by his beloved. I loved the confidence with which the dancers moved their bodies - I loved the flex and curve of their limbs as they jumped and rolled. They seemed to swim with each other, each becoming the water for the other’s strokes. My favourite scene was right after Dorian (played by the stunning Richard Winsor) kills Basil in the bath and in his shock at what he has done, begins a tortured dance as he struggles to distance himself from the blood that smears his hands, his clothes, his face. John and I also agreed that the giant disco skull during the club scene was the coolest thing ever.

I was going to write more - about rhythm, beauty, movement, desire. But instead I’m going to take some pain killers and drag the ice pack into bed.

Sunday ramble

I have 45 minutes while the haggis boils.

I had planned to see a show today - Simon Callow reading Dickens. But I am staying home instead, sinking blissfully into my introversion like it was a warm bath. This morning I finished reading Lovely Bones. Some books you don’t want to end - you get a sense that the characters have more ahead of them that you need to be a part of. I feel that way about Tom Robbins’ novels. With other books it is a relief when you reach the end, because you are glad be experiencing some kind of closure. Lovely Bones was like this. I liked how Mr Harvey’s isolation keep the reader from despising him completely. In the end we don’t really care about him anymore - he is literally cast aside.

(You wouldn’t know, but this letter was interrupted by two wasps that flew in and swept through the living room and kitchen like fighter jets trying to stay below the radar of the enemy. My fear of bees and wasps has not diminished over the years. Up I leapt, almost tossing Stephen Fry (my laptop still goes by no other name) onto the coffee table while chanting “oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” I grabbed a green tea towel and stood hovering in the doorway of the hall, periodically venturing out to lunge at one of them. Eventually they both flew out the window, which I hastily closed. Once again, I am calm).

There is one week left for our show. I will be glad when it is finished. I work all day but I struggle with making myself go home and just STOP. I cannot make myself leave until I feel settled that certain things are in order. Not everything, because that is not possible. But my lists must be made and I have to know what might be looming for me the next day. My plans aren’t real ones - they are more like Jackson Pollock paintings - ideas and maybes splattered on sticky notes and plastered to my computer monitor. But the process relaxes me, which is what I need before I can peel off my manic state and close the door.

The season is changing and MY season is moving ever closer. The peaches are finished - buy them now and you will find them grainy and dry. Now is the time of the plum. They are heaped on the shelves, their skins tight around flesh that itself bulges away from the stone. So along with the haggis lasagne I am making as a form of payment for Graham’s computer wizardry, I am making for myself a plum, hazelnut and chocolate cake. Heady, sticky, moist and just a tingling bit of bitter…pleasure.

While walking to the Sainsbury’s (I spell out the name of the grocery store so that Craig can relive the experience of perusing the aisles) I noticed there is a new butchers down the street. Various African flags are painted over the freshly painted, blindingly white doorway. My chance to learn to make curried goat has now arrived.

That’s my news. I'm going to make a cup of tea.
Song in my head: Drive Like I Never Been Hurt - Ry Cooder

The Longest Day

It’s been ages since I wrote anything decent. By that I mean when words stack up into sentences and paragraphs and pages until the whole thing resembles to me something I could skin. I once watched my brother try to skin a frozen moose carcass that was hanging in our carport. The hide came off in pieces the size of quarters. He was at it for hours - I could almost feel his fingers going numb. Blue dead of winter, out in the cold to earn a few bucks. This kind of patchwork peeling represents most of my creative life. Now I am thinking of the grandiose slick sweep of final destruction, like the single pop and pull that releases the rabbit’s soft fur from its flesh.

If I could find the story. Somewhere. All I have is a moss garden of metaphor, so complex and inviting but sure to scratch you if you rub hard enough. Over and over again, one gluey image after another. And no characters. Not one. I keep waiting for the amiable but unfulfilled waiter to peek out from behind the door, or for the non-repentant sacred whore to roll over next to me, blow smoke in my ear. Please….come out come out wherever you are. I’m here. Fingers at the ready, so willing to peck you into life.

You see, if I had a character, the story could walk, it could move, go places, fuck and repent and live and die and do it all over again. But for me, nothing is really believable. Everything has a vague dream-like quality to it, so when people talk to me I am noticing the shape of their lips. I am particularly fascinated by the thin lips of some old men, the way their mouths seem determined to be sucked into their throats, like there is a funnel in there, slowly pulling their faces inside their skulls. I am so lost in the moment, so tossed in a salad of image and sensation, that I lose the story. I fail to keep up. The threads are missing and once again I am left with a pile of fragments.

I picture myself standing on the Charles Bridge in Prague, frantically rubbing my sleeve against the small space of polished brass, but not for luck. To set the frozen people free, and hope that they will choose to follow me home.

Maybe….maybe the characters don’t want me. Maybe they see me as a risk too great to take. I am one known for not finishing what she starts. Nothing worse that to be a half of someone. To grow a nervous twitch and a softness for child sponsorship adverts, but no particular way of dressing, no specific line on your skin where your jeans sit, just exposing your hips. And no real premise to go anywhere, do anything. You have no reason for living. And that is what I can’t give a character - a reason for being. Really - would you put yourself in my hands? Would you take that risk?

Still I’m asking. But you have to tell me where to take you and why you want to go there. Because I’m telling you, I don’t know. I can’t help you. What I can do is make the process of your life feel like a metaphor for something you can’t quite understand. May sound like a curse, but there is something explosive and divine about it, trust me. So what do you say…

Friends?

Jetlagged and mumbling

It has just tipped over 4am and I can't sleep. It's starting to get light out already, the muddy, grey light of an overcast Scottish sky that will look the same at 3 this afternoon. I'm feeling a bit muddled myself, which is how I usually feel when I go back "home." I am still thinking of the smell that seemed to make the air bulge - willow sap mixed with that of birch trees. The leaves were big and new, just entering their peak when they are so alive they seem indestructible. Teen aged leaves. I tried to hear the Grease songs in their rustling and hustling. Funny - I didn't take any photos of the trees. No angle seemed like it would do the image any justice, so I waited until it was too late and now I wish I could have a sliver of that green against blue, even if it wasn't perfect.

Before I left I had time to kill time before I needed to be at the airport, so I hopped a bus to my old Vancouver neighbourhood and had a hot chocolate at Characters, which still remains the best used bookstore/coffee shop I have ever seen.

It is just hitting me now how much I have moved around so far in my life. I take myself back to these places sometimes in order to witness my emotional response, feel my mind reel or my stomach churn, or just to sit in the emptiness of detachment. For example when I took Nifer to see Linlithgow, where I lived for two years, I became agitated on the train and remained so throughout much of our stay. I had not been back since Andrew and I split and I think it was too soon to return - all the feelings of stress that led up to our separation seemed to be lingering in the stonework and every familiar street. Except the chocolate shop, which was still a glorious haven.

Being back in the Cariboo, out near where my parents live, makes me feel dreamlike, as my body remembers the smells of the trees and earth from my childhood. When I am in 100 Mile I don't feel much of anything, other than a noticeable inner twinge whenever someone recognizes me and calls me by my old name. This always makes me imagine I am being erased, all the more recent building blocks of my spirit being flicked cruelly with those two syllables, like a wet towel on a sore spot. The wrong part of me keeps getting recognized, and since I am not a fan of launching into explanations I usually say nothing, which this leaves me feeling helpless. This sense of agonizing transparency is only relieved when I am with Mikara, who I know can really see me.

Last year I got to visit Tofino and Ucluelet again, as well as Williams Lake and Kamloops. I retain no emotional attachment for the city of Kamloops, and even the nauseous feeling I used to get whenever I would hear the beepboop of a pedestrian crosswalk signal has passed. When Jerry was in hospital all those years ago and I would go to visit him, I would have to cross the street over to the hospital and somehow my body absorbed that noise and associated it with ache and sickening confusion.

Williams Lake fills me with warmth. There is a familiarity about this town for me. My two years there were relatively happy ones, as least in retrospect. I lived in my cabin and felt a new connection to the earth. I met countless interesting characters and discovered a mysterious richness to the area that has always stayed with me. Perhaps it is because the Chilcotin rubs up to Williams Lake so closely. Highway 20 is always there, like a string to a place of bold beauty that never feels the need to explain itself. I recognize this as Freedom.

My feelings for Ucluelet and Tofino are not wrapped up so much in the landscape as in my deep love for two people who live on a boat. This clouds my reaction somewhat, although the lingering distrust between me, Earth Woman and She, the undulating Pacific, is still apparent. She stays on her side and I on mine.

Since I haven't had a chance to wander through Fort St. John or the other areas of Vancouver where I used to live, this brings me to good old Marpole. Most of the stores are exactly the same, except the Safeway looks even more squat and in need of a polish. One of the poignant geographical spots for me is the crossroads of 70th and Granville. It just hovers there like a decision that needs to be made over and over, with all those people in their cars oblivious to the lines of power they are driving through. A terrible sense of loss settles into my stomach, as my heart is reminded of all the times I have gone the wrong way.

I wonder how I will feel about Edinburgh in the future. I know that eventually I will move back to Canada. The scent of the willows told me that. When is a question I cannot answer. I wonder if I will ever be able to be solid in a place. I have spread my spirit over so much area that sometimes I feel that I may succeed in my desire to dissolve completely into Things. Except, that is, for this lingering sensation of homelessness, and doubt that I may be going about it the wrong way.

It is nearing 5am, and maybe if I try hard I can still sleep a couple of hours.

Who gets stresed over an unmowed lawn? Really?

I can't cut the lawn! It's growing everywhere! There is at least one weed that is well on its way to becoming a tree! There is a small sea of clovers! Our tiny patch of garden madness is buffeted by pristine, perfectly cut patches of lawns belonging to our neighbours. I feel like I should throw a rusted, burnt-out shell of a car in the middle of ours, just to finish the look. Sigh. It's been raining everyday for two weeks. Dark clouds are once again looming overhead, and it is expected to rain and thunder and lightening all weekend. I just about ran outside today with this little pair of shears that are basically big scissors. "I'll just trim the really tall stuff" I thought, but then I remembered watching my mother march herself to heat exhaustion through a huge field behind a clunky push mower. ("Doesn't it look nice?" she had asked dreamily after she was finished and was swaying softly from side to side, her face beaming from the power of a thousand burst capillaries). So I decided not to go down that path. Next I'll be scrubbing the pavement with a toothbrush. Breathe....

It all begins again

Rain has been sweeping over the country for days, the sky bursting in fits of shuddering deluge like a guilty teenager who can't even keep water down on a Sunday morning. The news shows songs and scenes from the annual Glastonbury mudpit. It is the kind of weather that makes you rush to the window the way you did as a child, just before the thunder was due to roll. I like to open the window so I can hear the hiss that erupts then from every surface, and I think that the Great Snake is meditating again.
The cool air still holds the languid ease of summer; the breeze doesn't rush and when it pours it does so straight down. During the intervals small birds fly to the power lines and sit, their round bodies twitching slightly to keep balance. I suppose I could say the air is fresh, but it is more than that - it is like those few moments of lucidity after a fever has broken, when the room seems strangely empty and you haven't yet decided if you will ever speak again or if you will just stay here in this new bright space, your spirit sandwiched between a whisper and nothing at all.
Looking out I try to see the world as in a myriad of tiny pieces. One feather of one wing of one bird. The arch in the green spine of one leaf. The march of rusted nails along the neighbour's shed. The way the weeds can grow between the cracks in a brick wall. The glimmering streak of a single raindrop signaling that now it all begins again.

Falling into words

Ayub Ogada. The word Kenya printed in black letters on the green stripe of the Real World rainbow. The album is En Mana Kuoyo. I used to play it when I cleaned the cabin – I like the airy clean feeling of it – the bright spaces between the notes and the way the notes themselves topple over each other like children playing in leaves.

It is the album I play when I am stressed, when I know I need to relax. Much of the time my life feels like something foreign that I am trying to balance, like I am holding on to a falseness just so I can continue to function in the world. There are few times when I say “yes” to myself- to who I am. These moments come sometimes during times of solitude, when I allow myself to remember the wordless wonder of things. But it is getting harder to do as I get older – it is like I am going numb, the inner light dulling – scrubbed by routine, by stress, by fear and by a lingering sense of isolation that has been like a shadow throughout my life.

One of my self-guided therapies is free-flow writing. This is like stretching, like dancing and letting my limbs go all floppy. It is for when I recognize my need to find a place without barriers, a land where metaphors can travel and come back, springs and rubber bands returning with the clinging vines of wildness and the snagged thorns of other people’s memories.

I was going to touch down running to Ayub but it feels too fast now. I need to change. Something either earthy or ethereal, but slower.

Illumination is a cd Craig made for me some time ago – the lofty medieval tones of Hildegard von Bingen. I am drawn to mystic religious music – I don’t care what label the divine is wearing. It is the expression of rapture that I love.

There is a language pressing on me from the inside. I fear the flow of it, released through the sieve of my limited abilities, will sound trite, egoistic, flowery and pretentious. But the pressure doesn’t leave until I write, so I’ll just open the taps for now and say yes to what comes.

The only time your hands didn’t shake was when you stood naked beside the sea, the darkness draping over your outstretched arms like cloth. I want you to feel the sand between your toes, accept the fact that you might sink. And yes, you might step forward and walk on water, and yes, I might follow you. But for now you are looking into the gloom. Not just looking. Seeing. The air on your skin is warm and moving over you at the speed of a breeze and a wind, if the two were first cousins that had married. What I mean to say is everything about this moment is specific. Never to be repeated. Precise and beautiful, full but fragile. And I can offer nothing else but a leaf of understanding, that I have acknowledged this lovely moment. It is not framed solid in my mind, but still, on a cool day when the setting sun is warm on my chest like a curled cat, I can let it move over me like the darkness moved over you. And see you standing there again. Watch the fingers of beckoning water and your smile, pulsing with pleasure as you sway in the rhythm of it all.

XXAnd with that, I bid you goodnight.

The point she is trying to make

Three cheers for new digital cameras. Unfortunately, earlier in the day, the old batteries were dead and I was unable to capture a photo of the man wrapped in cling film and jumping about the Mile.
The festival grinds to an end, and two days after the Tattoo has finished, I have succumbed to a cold. It feels like someone wearing sandpaper skates has been spinning doughnuts at the back of my throat. It also feels strange be to home before 9 pm. The last month was terrible and hilarious and wild and exhausting, but I would do it again. And now every heat wave seems to have departed for other shores and each gust of wind is a plume of cold - the feel of autumn is everywhere. I am well into a book about the spice race - giant ships dashed against the coral reefs of distant islands, islands that they could smell before they sighted land. Such is the power of nutmeg. The shortening days and cooler air is causing me to instinctually load up on butternut squash and beets and corn. Baked apple season will start in just a few short weeks.
I've decided this harvest season's kitchen music will be Nick Drake. Time to turn the oven on.

Why I loved today

I loved today because the mist rolled in. It was a moving white tingling mass, like God finger painting with spirits. I could feel the smallest points of moisture touching me, and then I watched a clear valley form in a dramatic swoop over one of the old churches, like a huge invisble thumb had pushed down into the mix. On the train on the way home I saw, for just a moment, far away in a distant field, a pony, which was the colour of honey. This morning, also on the train, I stood and tried to read and wished please please please for the woman next to me to stop filing her nails because it was a torturous sound. The bird book traveled with me, and, as predicted, has sustained some damage to the soft cover.
Scottish Women. When they get fat, they grow the most delicious round bellies, jiggling Buddha bowls with soft cavernous navels, small round shadows that hover under their shirts. They wear their soft love handles like fashion accessories, with bright fabric curved over yielding flesh. One such woman walked past me today, thin brazen pinkpurple shirt (a sieve for the cold wind), little glittering beads diving in a V to her cleavage.
That's it really. I'm terribly enthusiastic about the squishy bliss bellies of Scottish women. And also I learned from yesterday's post that trying to hurry is useless. Because it's Tunisia, not Tanzania. I think I should just avoid sports altogether.
Finally, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah has arrived, along with its sister mix. Thank you N! I have listed to CYHSY and thought of David Byrne during his Talking Heads days and also Dan Bern of his balls as big as small dogs days.
Speaking of burn, the mist is expected to burn off tonight and tomorrow the sky will wash with blue. It will be hot, and I will be uncomfortable. But that's ok, because today was good. I loved today. Really.

His timing, strangely perfect

I go the same route to work every day. I leave the train, usually at platform 1, walk through Waverly station, up the stairs and toward Market Street. From there I am less than a minute's walk to the shop.
There are weeks when I see him four days out of five, shuffling along in his dirty, oversized winter coat (blue with great smears of soot - black that has lost its edge) and his half-full backpack hanging crooked. He's always carrying at least one bag of shopping and I can never tell what's in it. He wears a hat - kind of a tweed flat cap that old men wear. I couldn't even guess how old he is - he walks at such a stoop I can't see his face. I know his cheeks are slightly swollen, I know his bulky outline under his jacket, and I know that the hair that sticks out from under his hat is dark brown and extremely greasy. He walks so slowly, with extreme care and patience, like he is afraid he will crush something fragile.
Everyday the same routine. If I stop in the station or if my train is late, I do not see him. When I don't see him for many days, I grow anxious. I worry about this man about whom I know nothing. Today I saw him again, his blank stare seeming to light the way ahead of him on the sidewalk. As soon I turned the corner and he came into view, a great feeling of relief came over me. "He's still OK," I thought.
Small pieces, familiar moments in my day - sometimes I cling to them in a way that surprises me. After the man with the shopping bag I look for the man in the Fruitmarket Cafe who is smoking and cleaning the floor. He wears a long, greying ponytail and sometimes stands in the doorway when he's finished work, a soft scowl pulling down his features. I also know where the various Hare Krishna monks and nuns work, selling cds and books on the street. Michelle stands near Waverly station on Prince's Street, the baby-faced man is always near Castle Hill, and the dark-skinned beauty wanders near South Bridge. Sometimes I buy them milk, offer a shy "gouranga" before marching away over the cobblestones.