Archive for July, 2007
July 31st, 2007
Coffee on Cook street in Victoria. It’s early.
A feathering of light is dusting up some pleasing green on the backs of trees. Magnolia trees on the boulevard remind me of music, a song. “Magnolia, you sweet thing…”
A young girl from the twenties cycles by, straight back and arms on a big-hooped bike. Tweed jacket, jumpers, and white scarf floating below-pined up hair.
Across the street a small brick shop called Lifestyle Markets stays closed.
We observe. We dream. We long.
I return to the weight of return. My mind, already on the plane. So much for mindfulness.
Everything in me yearns for more of that early resplendent sun on my face. A dusting of restive light. More.
,
July 26th, 2007
Perhaps this post might be an encouragement and even a shot of hope across the bow of your life.
You see, I’ve discovered the secret to life in all its dimensions. And it’s this:
One really excellent decision will cancel out the idiotic decisions of a lifetime and help you make less idiotic decisions in the future.
I made an excellent one 21 years ago today.
Granted, it wasn’t always easy. (This being a second go for each of us.) Even our wedding (shown below) was rather surreal. Almost as though we were observers.
Still, as we’ve walked this married path, we’ve gradually inhabited ourselves, (you’ll have guessed where most of the credit must go for this) becoming, I believe, increasingly more of who we are and who we were meant to be through a long journey of self-discovery, which, ironically, must always be done through partnership.
Here’s to excellent decisions for all.
July 23rd, 2007
Andrea just keeps getting better.
Caught her at the Axis cafe Friday, along with an intimate crowd of friends and new comers.
With her husband, Chris Smith, a superlative guitar player with an impressive folk circuit history, and with the icing of a some sweet steel guitar playing by Bob (last name to be retrieved) the date was one of her finest.
But it’s her songs and poetry…and that voice, that both revive and intoxicate. She’s like a great pinot.
And so…good news! Talking to her after the show Andrea told me that this fall an effort will begin in earnest towards production of a new CD.
In the mean time, August finds her in New York for several dates. And how cool is that? See her site (sidebar link) for details.
Here’s to a far wider discovery.
July 20th, 2007
The valency of comfort plus fashion has finally come to the sport of competitive eating.
Marcy and Margo may not be in the league of Korea’s Kobayashi or America’s Joey Chestnut (66 hotdogs in 12 minutes) but when it comes to gastro-fashion they have no peers.
The stunning voluminous Emu sweater, pregnant with judge-appealing pattern, will ensure every bulge stays hidden. At the same time, while every drop of blood races to your gastrointestinal tract, the warmth of Emu wool will keep the hypothermic death-chills at bay.
Subtly complementing the Emu top, but making it all work, are the stretch pants. Made of a blend of Lycra for flex, and fiberglass for strength, they hug without the personal-space-constricting ways of your annoying uncle.
The secret is in the waistband which is anchored to your breastbone by a super-strength polymer adhesive. Comfortably positioned halfway between crotch and nape, the waistband, with inflatable option, absolutely ensures no embarrassing pant slippage during actual gorging, while minimizing the chances of regurgitation.
Not a gastric gladiator? No matter. The Emu sweater and stretch pants ensemble looks good and feels even better at every and any BBQ.
Enjoy the dogs, and have a lovely weekend.
July 17th, 2007
Here, on this patio on High Street, among the elm and spruce, the morning sun is refracting through needles and leaves and is falling in soft patterns on the pine-plank deck. One thousand miles beneath my chair the earth’s lower mantle is exhilarated. And somewhere, where the lithosphere is thin, a plume of recognition breaks the continental crust and bursts sunward, settling in low places, adding to this abundant earth. All because of this three billion year old patio among the trees.
Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. (Psalm 86)
July 16th, 2007
I was surprised to find an article I had written a few months ago surface in Saturday’s Journal. It was slightly edited for timeliness as it contained a reference to Ash Wednesday, but the reference isn’t critical to the message, which has to do with finding church and faith and God beyond the walls of the church.
Thank you Janet Vlieg. (Edmonton Journal Religion editor)
July 11th, 2007
The stir-stick I drew for my coffee this morning is elegantly grained. The graining is straight reflecting an elongated cut rather than a cross-cut. From a smooth honey blonde at one end, it goes to a deep brown at the other. At its dark end the wood fibres are slightly speckled becoming almost mottled near the centre. I stir. My coffee tastes that much better.
Things of wood give me deep satisfaction. I have a small collection. Bits, sticks and chunks of wood scattered across the windowsills and side tables of my life. I turn them over in my hands.
There is life in wood. More apparent than in stone. More personified. Wood grows, responds, bends, breaks, burns, forgives, regrow's and decays.
Wood is beautiful in grainy symmetry or knotted complexity.
All wood has different fragrances. And wood's perfume changes with the humidity.
The subtle hazelnut smell of rain on split birch takes me back to our first acreage. The smell of fresh sawn fir transports me to a green-chain in a sawmill in Port Alberni. And the sweet sticky smell of decaying poplar and cottonwood puts me on trails along Saskatchewan's Whitesand river.
In wine, if you've the nose, you smell the state of the woody vine.
Having stirred my morning coffee with balsam I imagine I taste its lightness and I feel as much. An arbour mystery. A mercy of wood.
July 10th, 2007
Among other events, thoughts on my friend Brian who this morning explained the fresh stitches on his forehead were from being rolled in an alley by the coliseum…
There’s a break in. Something’s stolen. An old piece of folk art, a ceramic ornament that was a gift, some collected CDs, a jacket that you’ve worn for years.
There’s a loss, a long planned vacation, a job, a relationship.
There’s an accident, a sickness, a death…
There’s no pain like your own. Personal pain does not admit comparisons. Personal pain only admits compassion.
How good it would be to find freedom, perfect freedom. The kind that never dies, is stolen or lost.
How good it would be to feel all the pain that needs feeling but feel it within a tenacious and splendid freedom. Like hearing a favorite piece of music even while the first shock waves roll over you.
How good it would be to always hear the music you need at every moment in your broken life. How right to see the art forming within all the bits of broken glass that is your soul.
To receive the comfort of an old jacket even while an iron wind tries ripping it off your back, that, it seems, is something like freedom.
And yet, when the loss comes with pain tagging along, we find ourselves in its grip, under its control, and sometimes the best we can do is admit our helplessness in the face of it, and hope we aren’t crushed. Seems to me that at more than one point in his life, Jesus too, knew this.
Technorati Tags:
Freedom Pain
July 6th, 2007
When my daughter learned to walk, she loved to wear colourful boots and carry a small purse at her wrist. Her boots, however, could never touch mud or snow. That would deface them and detract from the colour.
An early “screamer,” a sometimes crier, but no tears. She’s given to us, we discover, without tear glands.
A childhood with bouts of pain, and pain still. It seems she never quite reaches the full bloom of health.
And yet, inspite of, or because of, who knows, she grows and continues to grow a beautiful soul, a serene and buoyant spirit and the heart of a healer-poet.
Brighter than the sum of her genetic benefactors…this shows up in her curiosity of things biological, philosophical and literary.
And while it occasionally leaves her exhausted, she’s carried by a thirsty and generative energy.
But sometimes, moods can strike her, melancholies, poignancies, a kind of weltschmerz, and she becomes too introspective.
And too, she can be overly desirous of not disappointing.
There’s a part of her she keeps hidden, where she tends to a delicate flame. A flame she needs to guard. It’s this that I’ve seen burning deep in her eyes.
Through it all she learns to be a hater of injustice, a lover of compassion and kindness and equality. And she also becomes a card caring Green-peacer, a sign of her love of the earth and of growing things.
And now, for a summer “job,” she has given herself to a family, but specifically to a 30 year old woman who, from birth, due to a lack of oxygen, is without use of limb, speech, continency–a bent misshapen body, weighing only 70 pounds. But, I’m told, a beautiful face and eyes, harbouring an unseen intelligence.
Between the woman’s episodes of epilepsy, my daughter changes, bathes, reads to, sings to, and takes her for walks. She grows stronger by carrying her.
Teryl, a willow, supple, flexible, exposed; and beneath ground, so much going on. Part clown, part mystic.
July 4th, 2007
I’m going away. Two and a half days (a beginning, more to come I hope) of hermitage life at my cabin in the bush.
Life in the fast lane.
Life with the black-cap chickadees, nut-hatches and pine siskins. Life with the squirrels. And with the blue bells and begonias in the enclave that are ready to burst, and with the ferns that are running wild in the fen. And with the tiny wild strawberries that grow in our ditches.
Life with my fire pit and ax and dead fall and punky poplar.
Afternoons with eye-level green and shifting blue skies. And evenings with a book or two.
At twilight, perhaps a concession to a cuban…with the added benefit that it helps keep the mosquitoes away.
Life with the gill-on-the-ground that never stops growing.
Technorati Tags: Hermitage, Beauty
Previous Posts
Coffee on Cook street in Victoria. It’s early. 
Front Porch Pictures
