shift

And then quirky becomes flakey.

I hate that...the wonderful becomes annoying...

The emotional soul looks to protect itself from the pain of separation...from the fall-out of a drug you can no longer have...ever...because it's gone...

And demonizing is the way to cope..."it wasn't very good anyways"...

"There were obvious problems" masked from awareness for infatuation...

Don't speak any promises when feeling joy...wait for the level...wait for the true tests that come only over time...in joy or in despair, speak not about love or hate...don't make those big declarations, those big decisions when deluded by infatuation...

"the saddest part of a broken heart isn't the ending so much as the start"

"the tragedy starts from the very first spark, losing your mind for the sake of your heart" Ms. Feist

I will lose my mind for my heart again...

I will lose my heart for my mind again...

Yes

Tickle my fancy and rot my socks. All of a sudden, it would seem all is lost.

How to regain, how to reclaim the SELF?

When is the stretch too much?

What is needed?

What are the lowest common denominators?

Time alone--for us introverts.

Sleep--for us who need sleep.

Beautiful food--for us beautiful, fresh food lovers.

Yoga--for us breathers and stretchers and lovers of delicious holds.

Outdoors--for us outdoor needers.

The dog--for us dog needers, dog pleasers...joy in the woods, all alone, watching, not talking, not thinking, just feeling, communing silently, ever so subtly with the dog, listening to body movements...joy in the woods, on the trail, with the dog...

Love---of self, be gentle with oneself, from others, from another, of LIFE capitalized, of learning, of mother, of siblings, of family, of her...

How much stretch is too much?

How much can we wait for something to be created?

What's NOT wrong?

There are no miracles...only this miracle...

twinkle

stuck lately on this theme of carrying the joys and hopes and pains and pleasures of our ancestors in our present days, in our DNA...

carrying unfulfilled hopes, carrying dreams, living out dreams, living out the unfulfilled lives of others...

as she walked, she was not just her...she was graceful like her grandma...and stubborn like her dad...or was that just her?...her only...how can you say she is but her and her only? the wry smile, the eye twinkle, the chin dimple, the thoughts about last night's dinner, the wanting to leave this place, the desire to go nowhere, the decisions about future pathes, the regrets about lovers lost...

she cannot possibly be just her...only this body made up of, what is it, 80% water, just this what you can see and only what you can see...

she is so much more---spinning inside is the feather-weight dream of all those who came before...

we are the individual, the collective, the past, the future, the never-will-happen, the did-not-happen, the regret, the joy, the answers, and, most definitely, we are the questions...

Shown

Walking with friends...drizzle...scouting high-bush cranberries...Crestview...in swoops the hawk...sweeping and screeching...

down low like, through the break in the trees, right for us, along the path...

And then up, away...over the hemlocks and away with her call of flight...

visited by the hawk...

Ownership

Will you understand?

I do not understand this divide between in and out, internal and external

Beauty, you see, is hearing the colour of birdsong

Love knows no ownership

The ghostly stride of the wolf is mine not hers; yours not mine

Speak to me not of what you know,

But bathe me in soft whispers of your mysteries

What part of me is just me?

What part of me existed before me?

What part of me is you?

What parts of me and you are carried by us all?

Lodestar

Can you love a place as much as another? Can you love a time as much as a place?

Beautiful baby bunnies...Stella by the shower drain as a puppy...green tops, twisted earrings and sunglasses pushed up on the forehead...

Samuel Glacier, mountain bikes, and heavy packs...wind-whipped tarps, dirty dogs, driving rain, and the laughter...of missing her...the insecurity of early days and missing her...

laughing because of it all...I am living this for others who would want to...and for me...for others who cannot...and for me...she is SO happy...to dance with green sweeping undulations, heavy misted ground-covered soft pleasures...

let's set up here, and eat...and sleep, and watch for breaks in the weather or not...pedal power---the absloute DEEP inner joy of physical exertion mingling with outdoor beauty, and beautiful souls...shared joys...common ground...

this is our common ground...shred it...worship it...kiss it with hiking boot rubber...kiss it with rolling, gripping tire...whip through trees and sing silent songs of desperate love for this northern dry silty earth...they are not white birches, they are trembling aspen...grey moutain, bald like a corpses skull, boogaloo, my trail, el camino, broken truck, ride on...

I don't know...

Lambchop sideburns. Tired eyes. Worn out. Just answer me these few questions while I search your being for answers to the question of how to live a life. Am I using you? Or am I curious about your long, beautiful path?

This man from Dawson. Very tired and now dying. Struggling for responses to my questions about his competence...about his ability to care for himself...about his SHORT TERM MEMORY...

Looking to please me...valiant effort until the end of days...fight for it.

I have to do my job. And take from him at the same time. Fill me with stories of traplines, and snowmobiles, and the colourful 5%, and mutterings of "never shake hands with someone you don't know", "that goddamn woman" "we shook on it."

How might I live? Like him? 96 years old and failing beautifully...ready for rest...determined to rest...quiet eyes open and close according to him not me...he's not on my schedule...the world does not revolve around me...this glorious life over in the beat of a dragonfly's wing...infinitely long...delicately uncertain...live it! Man, live it...

Walk the earth...

remember

The past holds answers to present challenges. Moving about through time, patterns emerge. Old ways of coping or not, show up again.

A past friend told me "to be gentle" with myself. This is beautiful advice...for us all...

I am presently falling a bit into fear...of the unfamiliar, of falling itself, of having left friends and family, of not knowing myself, of not having answers, of lack of control...I am feeling ungrounded and yet I know this place from past years...I know this place of fear very well...

And I know it is but the opposite side of joy and delight. I know the coming AND the passing of "good" and "bad." And I know the beauty in being able to experience the true and wide range of human emotion.

Awareness of emotion...allowance for distress...humility in happiness...receive without condition what it is that comes your way...

self-knowledge through repetition and pattern...

fear of fear breeds panic and reaction...soft, gentle allowance of fear breeds response, learning, acceptance, self-soothing...

outside inside

I am home. I will always be home. In me. Inside of me.

What of this boundary? This thin skin that keeps my bitter sweet bloody heart from falling to the earth. Outside of me. Why this containment of thought? Can't you see what I think of this and that?

Why not turn it all inside out? Bring the out in?

Give the in to the out. After all it isn't mine. I am made from the out.

So here--take it...take all of it...for I am of it but I own none of it...

I am me, and I am you...and I am of the trees and birds and mountains...

Separate, joined, apart, together...

Will you understand?

obligation

So perhaps it is such that happiness is a duty. The gentle pursuit of happiness is a duty. Pursuit being the wrong word. In my happiness I offer to the world innocent, anonymous gifts.

Bitterness, anger, jealousy, discontent are easier and weak. Weak being the wrong word.

Our obligation is to be humbled by our on-going attempts to live here now. Nothing is to be done simply to get it over with.

Other people have the answers to our big questions. To our small questions.

There is an obligation to find solace within. An obligation to be gentle with ourselves. This is it. It doesn't get any better than this moment.

What I am feeling is what I am feeling. There is no right way to feel.

These thoughts, at the moment, obviously coming forth from past readings in the buddhist realm...

an obligation to accept our reality and to also create it--to the extent that we're able...

self-respect

can i be proud of me? of leaping into difference...unconventionality...can i be proud of happiness? of letting go of struggle--of finding soul serving joy in the beauty of the land? in the beauty of the out-of-doors?

can i be proud of following something bigger than me that wants to see into the pith of the tree? to see right into the core? to be cooled by clear lake waters? to breathe dusty dry forest air? to sweat my salt onto the soft yukon earth? to stand and watch the sweet sweet flow of the river?

gate

I can feel the weight of the collective sadness of the world...curse or gift?

That weight lifts...for the grief runs as deep as the joy can climb...joy found in small places...away from you...away from me...away from the expressed energies of others and into the hills...

So let us retreat and feel no guilt for it is in living in joy that others may be free...

So let it be simple...step in for a while and breathe...retreat for a while and breathe...step in...step out...step in...check out...

So let me not feel guilt in my joy...joy in small places...scream joy in silence...warm, cool silence as the gate swings open and I walk through...

death and all his friends

Tendency...

"I'll find you and I'll kill you"...the tendency is to be drawn to the cemetery not the church...to the church not the store...to the grave not the cradle...and the tendency is to remember the dead houseflies on the orangy-yellow fly-paper hanging from the water-stained tile ceiling...

at the cottage...

the beautiful warm breeze drifting through the porch and the tendency is for solitude, at the beach, that morning...i must have been nine or ten...melancholic...awake early before my brothers and sister...the walk down the lane to the beach...the red sand, low tide beach...to dig clams by myself...the need for solitude...peace in solitude...the play of loneliness with peacefulness...lonely and happy, happy to be lonely, sad to be lonely, alone in the bitter sweet game of when is it all over?

show me what it is to have passed...to rest...sleep...take my body...give me peace...return me to mineral...not yet...

"and i thought you were the moon in the sky but it turned out you were just a street light..."

Were I not waiting for her, what life might I make for myself?

removed

We are not so far removed from stability. From safety. From decisions made for an apparent greater good. From what seemed like selflessness.

What is this living one's own life? What of this selfishness? What of this self-improvement? What of this having it all together? What of this self-actualization?

Isn't it supposed to be hard? To be a struggle? Life ain't fair, you know?

Life's tough, you know?

What do I do with all these options? I don't want them. Where did they come from? What should I do? Who changed the rules? Why?

Confusion. Watch from a distance. Hold back. Stay cool. Figure it all out. And then add another.

Watched

Coyotes are far from rare. But they are rare to me.

This morning, again, out playing with Indi...we were watched. Not sure for how long.

We didn't see her. She was standing beyond the fence in burnt out grass--and nicely camouflaged by the dusty, dirty blonds and browns...

Eyes meet. I am immediately struck by her curiosity. She looks to bridge a gap between us. Or is that me?

She exerts a playfulness...I imagine her striding over to play and jump and run with Indi...

I am somewhat surprised Indi doesn't see her...as, I think, in hindsight, that I sensed her presence in the moments before the meeting of eyes.

The ball throwing continues. Indi oblivious to the conversation I'm having with our silent visitor. She glides a few paces towards the tree-line. Stops. Turns to watch us. She wants to come and play.

A few more strides. Another stop and turn. I watch. And smile. And thank her for her visit.

moving still

In Whitehorse, the river runs though. With intention.

The push of the river lights the fireweed.

The push of the river sustains the light of day.

The movement of the river quenches the thirst for nothingness. For silence.

For space. For time. For rest. The push of the river allows peace.

Rest in the soft pull of the blue, blue mountains.

The cloud-shaded mountains that form the valley through which the river pushes.

Bob and weave

July 8, 2009

Out with the dog this morning, the air cool...The skies over Whitehorse grey. The sun, just up, is hazed-over orange. Playing at the school soccer field, the swallows are few today. Too cold for most of the mosquitoes.

The swallows are playful--dancing, bobbing and weaving, dive-bombing, nimble, aerial acrobats. The swallows arrive only after I hear the soft cries of the coyotes.

This morning I hear the crying, the calling of the coyotes.