Sitting in the grass, living the good life this morning, i wondered about these guys.  I liked to see dandelions of all generations going at the same time.

I missed a biology lesson somewhere, though, and can’t figure out the order of things.  And also, if you ask me, it seems as though dandelions subscribe to a spiritual system which involves reincarnation.  Is that yellow bloom first or is the seed one, and does it just keep going like that forever?

And are we like dandelions?

And i left the park with yellow dandelion dust all over me.  What is that about?

(deliciously luscious grass post spring rain…)

And this is so beautiful (courtesy of my goddess-friend Chrissy.)

‎”What if our religion was each other, if our practice was our life, if prayer our words. What if the temple was the earth, if forests were our church, if holy water, the rivers, lakes and oceans. what if meditation was our relationships, if the Teacher was life, if wisdom was self knowledge, if love was the center of our being…”

~ Ganga White

It’s a super-moon this Saturday, bigger and closer than a run-of-the-mill full moon.  And Wesak!  To honour the birth and the death and the enlightenment of the Buddha.  Pretty big day.

We will be encouraged (that’s maybe a nice way to put it) by the lunar push and pull to get out of our comfort zone.  (Yay.)

I read yesterday that the May full moon doesn’t give us a choice.  Growth is supported powerfully and unstoppably by nature.  We better just make sure our focus is on something that we want to grow.

Probably we look just as lovely as these guys when we bloom.   (I can actually feel this video in my heart.  It flutters a bit.  Do you think that means my heart wants to open?)

Or you do at least.

(Eulogy from long ago or yesterday maybe.)

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there existed a sweet fairy-girl.  She lived a lovely life in that fantasy land where fairies dwell and she was free and happy.  But, she would often fly low and look down upon the earth and its children, wondering about life there.  Many of her days were spent in a state of pure awe and amazement at the beauty she saw.

And then one day, after much careful thought, the sweet fairy decided to shed her wings and join the souls who walked instead of flying.  She was reborn.  She became part of a family that loved her immediately and entirely.  She was a beautiful child and though she breathed no word of her secret past, it was clear she was very special.  Her shimmering spirit could not be dimmed inside her new human form; her brilliance would shine through and was evident in the halo-glow surrounding her and by the magic that flickered in her ethereal and honest auburn eyes.

Time passed and the girl enjoyed her new life.  She realized though that she saw the world differently than most people did… always as if it was the first time she’d cast her eyes upon it.  For this she felt blessed, and as she loved her people deeply wanted for her gift to be everyone’s gift.  She wanted to show them how to see the beauty.  She knew what she had to do….The girl opened her eyes and her heart as wide as she could, she let her guard tumble gracefully down, and answered a calling to make art of her life.  

It wasn’t hard; she found inspiration everywhere.  The creativity flooded out of her in big, sweeping waves which she offered freely to all those who wanted or needed.  Her life became an easel, the earth her muse, and she; the paint, the brush, the light. The gifted girl probably didn’t know how majestic was the impact of her work, but there was no life left unchanged by her existence.  And so she went on for many years.

Until one day…
She began to feel very tired and weighed down.  You see, because she was so open and trusting, the child truly experienced the world.  While most of the things she saw amazed her, some were oh-so-heavy and hurtful for her to bear.  Her passion had somehow exhausted her and she didn’t know how to change that.

Her wings began to reappear.
And so, after much careful thought, the girl sat down one last time, gathered all of her inspiration, courage, and strength, and let every ounce of energy that remained flow out of her left hand and into one final masterpiece.

And then she gracefully set down her pencil, ceremoniously removed her shoes, reclaimed her wings, closed her eyes, smiled peacefully, and flew home.

(With wishes of a deeper rest and a lighter heart than ever.)

While I spent my afternoon doing my taxes and talking to my internet provider, she slept in the garden with her head on a bed of chives and rhubarb tickling her feet, sometimes rolling over to rub her back on the gritty, satisfying, and sun-warmed soil.

One of us totally knows what going on.

It’s not me.

Two things:
1.  How come dogs and trees are so resilient and forgetful of tragedies and just put all of their energy into enjoying being strong and happy?
2.  And why do humans (or some? or is it just me?) have such a hard time with this?

Do dogs remember less?  Do trees not think of the past or wonder how they’ll ever regrow their branch or limb?   Do we have bigger tragedies than them? (yeah right.)  Is it in the tree’s DNA to just keep its head up?  How did we develop this condition in which we spend so much time thinking and analyzing and forgetting how to just be joyful?
How do they get over things so quick and go back to their natural, peaceful, happy state if you just give them half a chance?
I’ve had lots of half-chances and whole chances and still, I’m no dog or tree.  (Though I’m a pretty peaceful guy much of the time, other times, much less, always working on this though the dogs and the trees don’t appear to need to try.)

Maybe dogs think in sanskrit?  Trees too.
As far as I can tell, they don’t speak much of resiliency in sanskrit.  Go figure.  Not much talk about falling and getting up again. No word for ‘turning things around til they didn’t suck anymore.’  Not much reference to that time when things were awful and you made lemonade out of it.

But you know what there is?
There’s this word Abhyasa.  (Missing an accent which i don’t know how to make on my keyboard.)

This word feels like a warm salve on my mind today, when i have immersed myself in wonderings about why the heck we humans have such a hard time being happy sometimes, (by happy i mean peaceful and at ease and healthy.)

I’m going to oversimplify, certainly, but that’s how my mind works so please be forgiving;)

Abhyasa is the beautiful idea of settling our mind (heart?) on the things that make us feel peaceful, balanced, sattvic, harmonious.  Again and again.  In all kinds of ways.  All day long and all night too.  Until we remember that our natural state is that.  It is the practice.  It hangs around with it’s the other side of its coin, vairagya (non-attachment.)

Here it is in a diagram.

and here it is again

and i think this is what it looks like in practice

So does everyone else know how to do this inherently?  I asked Portman, but she just smiled and fell back to sleep. Where did she learn this?  And who teaches her to practice it?  She’s a genius, for goodness sake, with all of her detaching and smiling.
 

Things i found today.

1.  A sweet ear, shoulder, & heart in my sister-friend.  It is good to have your heart heard and to hear hearts.

2.  This song, courtesy of my Da.

(I’m as enchanted, i bet as the other musicians who are staring at him with sparkly tears in their eyes.  I’ve listened to it six times in a row.)

3.  This too:

4.  And Mother Teresa saying this:
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

I feel like they’re all related, clues of some sort, but I can’t put my finger on just how.

The prairie takes its land back right in the thick of things.

This blue building and prairie landscape are a pretty balance if you ask me, in their mutual effort to be.

Yesterday morning and most mornings (and afternoons too), a man from the neighbourhood takes his black retrievers out into the treed space behind all the houses and sits.  They explore and be dogs, and he always just sits.  You can find him sitting like some sort of a medicine man in all kinds of precarious locations around here.  He told me once about the medicine wheel and the symbolism of Frog medicine and I’m pretty sure he’s either making things up or a genius.  I think both.  

These trees are near to where he was sitting yesterday morning at 6 am, as the sun came up.  I like them because they remind me of the beauty that nature puts all over the place if you sit still for long enough.

This is this girl’s favourite thing.

My favourite things today were:

• The rain, even though i am haunted by waters.
• Seeing so much growth in the form of little buds on trees.  Here we go again, but in a good way.
• Moving extra slowly; it feels nice on the nervous system
• Remembering again today that our normal state is health (yay!)
• Thinking of possibilities (lots of them!) and letting my mind wander all through them
• Reading about the donkey totem.  Not something i’d normally do, but when the universe directs, you gotta do it.
• A famous blue raincoat.  It’s my favourite thing.  Every time.
• And resurrection, of course.
• And also poodles, as much as I hate to admit it.  They’re such nerds, but kindred or something.
• And also how quickly the tension (all kinds) can drain away if you (i) let it.
• And number one is my soul-sister and brother growing a plum (or something just a little bigger.)  Hooray!
• What’s yours?  Like top three?

i can barely believe that this was just a little more than one week ago.  i practically don’t believe that this snow was even here at all, it went so fast.

you can tell it’s spring by the way that the trees are all clapping their hands and the dogs are rolling in the grass blissfully; maybe it feels especially nice as it comes back to life.

other things too; geese on dates, the sound of birds in the air, the smell of a breeze just warm enough to throw windows open.  and death and rebirth that spring always brings with it.  bittersweetest of all the seasons.

This is what the water looks like when it makes its way downward (which it always does.)  I wish I could insert sound effects.  You know the sound; echoey, constant, splashing in some unknown place below the earth.

This is what legs look like when you jump in every puddle you see.  (This is also my inspiration for the transition that water always likes to bring.  It’s not so bad with the literal puddle jumping.  I can handle that.  It’s the figurative that I’m not that good at.)

Imagine how unsettling the springtime would be if we didn’t know what to expect with all of its draining away and the end-(or beginning)-of-the-world feeling that it carries in the form of soft spring breezes and fresh, empty air.

I think it would be scary, if I didn’t know, but I have this thing about the water so maybe that’s just me?

There is certainly a moment between the quiet dead of the winter and the hopeful promise of a new day and a rebirth that is difficult and much-too-quiet and terrifying (for me.  How bout you?)
I’m in that, in a little way, right now.  You’re living, so I bet you are too.  If you are, please read on.)

Dear M, and dear other humans,

If i could bottle the sigh of relief when I read the following words at the just-right-moment, it would have dried all of this sloppy springtime up in a millisecond.  But what fun would that be.

“And she said gently that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.”

― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“First I imagine something.
Then I store it in my mind.
and wherever I go I see it.
It may take a long time… but because it stays in my mind I will eventually make it.”

-Sentayehu Teshale

I bet you would like it if you watched this.

ps.  Eyes on the ball.  (Portman’s bff.)

7:35 am

9:25am (still-same day)

(Almost same spot + same morning, but a whole different world.)

I once learned about an exercise that illuminated impermanence.  It was just writing down a list of things that have changed in the past two months, and it inspired feelings of sorrow and relief (at my human tendency to attach or resist.)

I don’t feel like doing this right now, i have fish to fry so to speak.  But i can think of a thing or two with which I wouldn’t mind seeing the rule proved.  I can think of a lot of things too that I won’t mind the rule leaving alone for now, but those former couple things?  They can be impermanent for sure.  Anytime now.

Julia Cameron, author of the Artist’s Way (and many other masterpieces) urges her readers to practice Morning Pages.
Morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, stream of consciousness-style, pouring out of body onto pages and are done each day, best in the morning hours, and are not the funnest thing ever.

My friend/very amazing person at yoga was telling us about her consistent practice of Morning Pages.  I know a lot of people who have read about it and wanted to do it, intended to do it, but only she who has actually followed through and done it consistently.  Thanks, R!

I’ve never kept a journal, I feel a bit nauseous at the thought of solidifying some of my mind’s meandering in such literal terms, and it’s unbearably vulnerable to write stuff down ever since that time that i tried to keep a diary for three seconds and my sister stole it and locked herself in the bathroom with it while she read all of my embarrassing words at the top of her terrorizing lungs.

Despite all of this, I was inspired.

The practice itself is not inspiring at all, but a little difficult and sometimes less and sometimes much more.  The result, i find, is life-changing.
Each morning since lent began (but sometimes not first thing and sometimes not in the morning at all) i’ve sat down with an ugly Hilroy notebook and my favourite pen and written three pages of thoughts, worries, fears, anxieties, boring things, ideas, dreams, things i would never say out loud, things that were resisting being put into words, things that couldn’t be even if i tried, and a lot of things i didn’t know were there.
I have not gone back to read any of it and I don’t want to.  Julia Cameron even says that you can destroy them immediately if you must.
It’s not the point.
The point is learning to express things that you don’t want to.  And also getting dirty in the murkiness of your mind.  And also just plain old-fashioned writing.
I get the feeling, actually, that as i write, my right arm is acting like a drain onto the pages and away from me.  It is quite a thing.

And the nicest part?  The stuff, that pesky annoying stuff, the big deal stuff, the stuff that wants your attention, the dreamy heart-shaking stuff, -all of it-gets to have a voice.  Satisfied, it settles down a bit.  These terrifying blank pages, this slate that you make dirty with your stirrings, leave you feeling a lot lighter.  I can appreciate a lot lighter most days.

The other day, in true Winnipeg style, the prairie sky dumped piles of the whitest, drippingest from tree branches, most blankety, fluffiest, cotton battingy snow all over the place.

A morning walk home was good, though brain admittedly whirled in early day circles of change and anticipation of more.

Seeing the happy faces of rosy-cheeked people smiling with their whole faces, looking alive with the work of trudging through snow helped.

Some part of me knew better than the brain, and looked up.
I couldn’t see this tree in any other way except for sprouting hearts.

I tried to see it like a regular tree, globbed with snow between its branches, but only the hearts.  Like when you try to blur your eyes to see one of those pictures with the hidden secret picture, except for the hidden secret picture was the normal.

Can’t we just make like trees and all get along and hold each other when we fall?

If you say yes, i dedicate this day of sunshine to you.  And a giant bucketful of thank you.

, especially when it’s an act of fun that never hurt anyone, and especially when it’s on the off-limits (to me, on foot) golf course and there are no skis heading up toward it because it wasn’t a skier, but rather was a guerilla artist testing his/her luck at trespassing.

In any event, this unconventional snow being made my day.

After the snowing, which had already made my day.  That was the best.

This happens often, in grass, in snow, in poo.  It brings me joy to see such reckless abandon, especially with my tendency to keep things contained neatly.  Well, reckless abandon might be a bit much for my stretching beyond comfort when it’s in poo.
But otherwise, it’s a delight.

Sloppy wintery wednesday evening + a semi-vibrant downtown street spattered with streaks of light and cars moving slowly + CBC playing some gentle jazz music makes for a surprisingly delightful errand.

A day of romance.  The morning of which is pictured above.  Romantical, right?

Sweet music.  A bit of slowness.  And hanging around with the romantics; leonard, johnny cash and his boyfriend bob.  And otis redding.  Now to teach asana and take care of our sweet-and-gentle hearts.

Also:  Lemony Snicket is a gd love genius.  This is my mantra now.

“I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it.
I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear dagger proof tunics, and as a dagger proof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.

— Lemony Snicket

I went out wandering last evening around dusk, such a calming and mysterious time of the day that says: enough now.
Somehow, i’ve arranged my life in such a way that i am usually working during the hours when the first star pops in to the sky, or rather the eyes pop open to see it, and i miss it.  Last night, i thought i was looking for that big fat full moon (i don’t know where it was) but nope, it was this star.  The first one.

And also it was a coyote! in the thin bushes, but he escaped my lens.  In fact, i didn’t even try.  He was curious, but a little fidgety that he had been snuck up on and he quickly snuck away, looking back with several hesitant glances of times while he went, and in the low light of dusk I didn’t stand a chance.  Take my word for it.  He was pretty cool.

The mood around here today includes but is not limited to the following.

Glorious blue backdrop indeed.  I can’t believe that trees dipped in frost was only three days ago.

+

 not my picture, but elle moss’.  It just felt the same as today.

+

This.

(don’t judge me, I can’t help it; I grew up on road trips with a dad and a sister and constant country ballad going in the foreground, with wistfulness and freedom sharing our air and my dad’s ringed finger tapping the gear shift in time with the music.  My love of cadence, i suspect comes from moments such as these, seeping into my cells while i fell asleep with peace around me, my head settled against the car window that separated me barely from the infinite prairie landscape.)

Something’s in the air, that’s for sure.

Yesterday morning’s ambiguous sky and its fog, keeping the river and the trees a secret.  (As seen from the Osborne bridge.)
These two crows shot through, betraying the ambiguity.  Stark, starling, sombre, stealing my breath and cutting through the disorienting fog.  Like some sort of eclipse, but opposite.

There are your fog people & your sun people, he said.
I said I wasn’t sure which kind I was.
He nodded.
Fog’ll do that to you, he said.

-Brian Andreas

I’m a fog people!  Or at least I love it, the fog.
I forgot about this when i said yesterday that I don’t like grey areas.
I do, even though they give me the creeps a bit.

In fact i like all weather that feels heavy and mysterious and makes me feel like i’m in another world that may or may not be filled with partly or wholly invisible things that my brain can’t even wrap itself around.  It’s nice sometimes; to get to wonder about what will come next, instead of knowing.  It’s nice to fumble a bit.

The fog enforces slow moving, which makes you miss less stuff (and feel it more), even though it’s practically invisible.
Isn’t that weird?

What kind of people are you, besides super-cool, like?  And why?

Nature was so pretty this morning, when the air shifted just perfectly to produce this spectacle.  A refreshing (or startling) shift to cool air, settling on all the yesterday-melted winter dew.

I  love when magic marries black and white.  The part of me that likes (demands) concrete and is anti-grey area is content (appeased) with the clarity and crispness of everything and settles back to let the other part that loves to be enchanted explore.

So thankful for this equilibrium this morning.

a path to the heart;
dogwoods, forest’s arteries,
(an especially good guide in)
black & white winter

How to have  a great day:

Get a new ball that fits into your mouth even better than your old ball.  Play with it like crazy, as though this was your first and last chance ever to play.  Don’t worry about what comes next.

How to find magic on a Sunday morning:

• Try not to let it ruin your day that a grumpy skier tried to bully you for walking near the ski trails with threats of trespassing charges.
• Try not to feel guilty about making fun of him for acting like the ski police and a professional skier and also his outfit.
• Try not to feel disappointed in humankind for not being able to ski and walk on the same giant land.
• Stop trying.
• Walk on a meandering river.
• Open eyes.
• Turn corner.
• Stumble upon handmade skating rink*/**

* That should do it.

**If it doesn’t, watch as a dog tries to run across said skating rink.

I got startled awake today by this little bridge, these blacker than midnight trees, and this prairie sky.

Your soul won’t spill out all over the floor for everyone to see leaving you empty and with nothing left to offer, your jaw won’t come unhinged, your face won’t get less beautiful-only more; letting go is divine, you won’t run out of steam, or chutzpah, or power.  You won’t suddenly be in a glass house with a sign on it that says throw rocks here.  No one will know all of your secrets suddenly, but maybe you’ll feel more like sharing them.  You won’t appear silly.  You won’t fall asleep forever, you won’t get blown over by a mean and ferocious gust of wind, but you could get moved around by a playful one, and it will probably feel nice.  You won’t get sad, at least not forever.  You won’t be washed away by tears or water or anything else that is fluid.  Your mistakes won’t look messier.  The shit won’t hit the fan.  Your potential for joy won’t slip away; you will get more.  No one will see the centre of you and want to wound it or judge it or hate it; they may witness the centre of you and will see pure, unbridled beauty.  Your face won’t fall into a constant tired frown, but into an eternal half-smile.  You won’t go reeling away like a top spinning.  Your breath won’t be taken all away forever, you will inhale again and then exhale and so on.  You will for sure not be bored.  You won’t die or give up on anything, except for things that make you hold on too tight.  You won’t be scared.  The tensions in your body that you have been holding won’t stop protecting your old wound; the old wound will stop being.  There will not be more pain, only less.   You will not be less safe and sound.  Your feet won’t melt into the ground and disappear.  You will not be disappointed that this is all there is.

Things that will happen:  It’s a surprise, but a good one.
This is sort of what it will feel like, I imagine.

ps.  It’s a new moon and a chinese new year.  Maybe it’s like a new year do-over?  Auspicious times for letting go.

“Awake, my dear. Be kind to your sleeping heart.  Take it out into the vast field of light and let it breathe.”

- Hafiz

I know, i know; it’s cold outside.

I went out today carrying a heavy load of guilt courtesy of a well-meaning person (hi mom!) who told me it would be abuse to walk a dog in these temperatures.   Mixed in with the guilt was defiance (you’re not the boss of me!) and fear (what if my mom is right?), but thank all the gods!  playfulness won out.

Tom Robbins says:
“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”

It is painful for me to admit that I didn’t have a happy childhood.  I have a tendency to be able to spin things around til they look good to me.  The childhood thing has me beat.

My favourite way to have a happy childhood nowadays is to dress up in layers that get so numerous that they are silly and you feel tiny and lost inside them and this makes you feel like laughing.   To go outside in this and get frosty eyelashes that stick together, but still melt when you close your eyes (startling you by being cold and warm at same time), and your cheeks look like apples, and you are happy because it’s a winter day and you aren’t fighting against it and you are part of something bigger and much more powerful than you.

And it’s a good feeling to be a child, but with adult perks like that you can afford a really good jacket if you want.
I find it empowering to be able to do this for myself, this dressing warmly and meeting the weather smiling.

And you know?  As if all that wasn’t enough, this dog-child loves to play in the cold.  She just thinks it’s fun and I respect her choice to have a happy childhood the first time around.

ps.  In case you think the look on her face is sad about the weather, it’s not.  She thinks her boots are dumb just and she’d prefer to feel the weather against her feet.  But I am my mother’s daughter.

• harder walks due to heavy boots sinking deeper into earth hidden who-knows-how-deep-really snow
• sweet potato cookies (to make hibernation smell sweet)
• white ground reflecting up and creating bright nights
• tracks on ground as evidence of who has been there before you; it’s harder to be snuck up on.
• layers and layers and layers of clothes and snow and fun.
• crusty scarves, with frozen breath on them.Sideways snow the other night.  practically the first day of winter.  Could have been terrible without proper preparation in attire, but luckily preparation is my strong suit.  (Pardon this terrible pun.)

  

   

Walking on an especially bright morning (sunny and then i bet further brightened by the fresh snow sheet on the ground-finally!- and then some residual full moonlight left over from the night before) i wait-without-waitingly walked and stumbled upon some deer antlers (four-pointers to be precise) that had just been freshly shed.  I figure it’s auspicious or something to find freshly shed deer antlers, as I suspect they are shed to make room for new growth or at least to lighten their load.   Who needs antlers to impress the ladies when mating season is over?

Excuse me but what are your antlers?  Like right now?  What is heavy in your load and not useful anymore?   (This is not rhetorical.)
I hope that with the ease that this guy dropped his outdated antlers down, you intuitively know just what to do to shed your thing too.  (I’m continuing to practice the shedding of grudges, grief, and guilt.  Heavy antlers.)

and then seeing some too.
Lucky break.

I love this:

‘How to See Deer” by Philip Booth

Forget roadside crossings.
Go nowhere with guns.
Go elsewhere your own way,

lonely and wanting. Or
stay and be early:
next to deep woods

inhabit old orchards.
All clearings promise.
Sunrise is good,

and fog before sun.
Expect nothing always;
find your luck slowly.

Wait out the windfall.
Take your good time
to learn to read ferns;

make like a turtle:
downhill toward slow water.
Instructed by heron,

drink the pure silence.
Be compassed by wind.
If you quiver like aspen

trust your quick nature:
let your ear teach you
which way to listen.

You’ve come to assume
protective color; now
colors reform to

new shapes in your eye.
You’ve learned by now
to wait without waiting;

as if it were dusk
look into light falling:
in deep relief

things even out. Be
careless of nothing. See
what you see.

(Sigh.)

These are only two thirds of the deer herd that i managed to wait for without waiting.  I got much closer, but then decided to just look at them.  Especially since luck was being pushed, having the deer tolerate me and two dogs and all.

nor am i an arborist and in fact have the opposite of a green thumb*, but even i can see that the strength and power in a tree’s roots (even if they are snow-reflection roots) are directly proportional to the tree’s upward growth, ability to thrive, and its beauty.  See?

Probably this is an analogy or something, and I am probably considering what i am doing in this new year to feel grounded and nourished and secure before working on growing and changing and doing.  You too?  Great!  What are you doing to give to yourself?

What makes you feel safe?  And held?  And most importantly nourished?
No growth without those.  Not in a tree with reflecting roots and also not in you or i.

++++++++++

As an aside:

*I’m killing my rosemary, green thumbs!  How can i support my rosemary to make it grow?  I’ve tried everything that i can think of:  A medium amount of water, lots of love, speaking to it (as my eccentric -for other reasons- grandmother always told me to do), neglecting it, letting it dry out, keeping it halfway wet with water, watering it well but only after letting it get really dry, a bright window, a half-bright window, a full moon, classical music.  Suggestions/advice welcome.

Smokey aftermath of new year’s eve tapas, on imperfect floor.

If all of my dreams + wishes +  ethereal imaginings + most luminous intentions for really livin’ this coming year (any year, really) got melted together and put to music, this is what would happen.

Watch it all, would you?  And see how he is so full of something that it busts out of him?  And look at how she looks at him.  Let’s all look at everything that way.

This year is so totally going to rock my gypsy soul.  Yours too.

This is what it looks like to be peaceful.  This is my view several hours a day.  I suspect that this fact is responsible for any part of me that is healthy.

Today, in honour of transitions into new years and seeing the path before us, we lit candles.  It was a bit magical.   This is also what magic looks like, then.

Dear friends,

Are you carrying around a heavy load of grief sometimes?

Me too.

Not always, but sometimes like when a perfectly healthy and happy family dog dies running his passionate heart out.   And also when I hear of my deep heart friend’s grandmother passing and i think of her grandfather, carrying their heavy memories around alone.  And also when I hear of a marriage crumbling while no one noticed, until they look up one day and nothing is left but rubble and weeds.

I heard once that if you let yourself feel all the grief that it uses up that energy and eventually only the sweetness is left behind.  Then you’ll be able to remember back and smile with joy instead of resist your sadness.  Do you know if this is true?  Sometimes grief is too heavy a load to bear unless you know for sure.  Please confirm.

Incidentally, good medicine for grief is seeing the resiliency and joy in these guys on a bright wintery day.  Not a bit of guilt for having fun when there is sadness to be had.  Not a single stitch of holding back.  Hairy heroes, macro and mini (seen in this picture) are.

To move through the post-holiday lull, beavers appear to just keep on eating.

This was boxing day dinner.

There is a mob (did you know that’s the name for a gaggle of deer?  Also called a herd, but mob is funnier, whenever does a deer mob anything?) of deer hanging around the back of my house?  Last week,  a twelve-deer herd was seen, mobbing single-file as though it had just dropped santa’s sleigh off somewhere.  Today i saw two of them, but there could have been four.  It was hard to tell; their camouflage is so good.  I had dogs, one of which is scared of deer, one of which seemed to fancy herself a huntress, so i couldn’t get closer, but i like how much the deer blend in.

I can’t help it.  I love her.  She’s so weird.

Mid-air, arms + legs akimbo, showing off poodle haircut.

This year’s Christmas ornaments.

Each year we go and pick out a new ornament each, around here.  It’s great fun, practically a tradition, one my favourite part of the holidays, because i think errands, like ritual, make good structure.  And structure is best thing for a guy like me with a mind that is all air and ether and dreams.

I don’t know how i feel about cutting down a perfectly good tree and putting it inside to die, but man alive! does it make a good vehicle for decorations and lights.  And besides, it’s locally grown; does that make it better?

Sometimes I find objects on my way and feel that what a pity they have been discarded and I try to find a use for them, like wearing them for a moment at least.  And then some orange dog demands to wear them too.  But not really, and she hates it when we do this.

Since the world opened up out back with the freezing of the river (it’s kind of a big deal around here), I feel like i’ve just stepped into a place that is a secret among deer and beavers and I’m really only on borrowed time.  As if i wasn’t before.  I’ve already been doing the math to check how many months we’ll get to play on the river.

And then someone else makes a skating rink on it and everyone is happy and seems like they’re kids from another time and it’s like a remembering of how to have fun happens and it spreads into me too and I’m reminded to get back into the moment and just smell the beautiful simple air and listen to the crunchy snow under my feet, for goodness sake.

There are a lot of guys that live out there all year.  I started checking out all their homes.  Deer are homeless itinerant wanderers.  It appears they just lie down and sleep wherever the urge strikes, leaving a big melted deer-shaped imprint on the path.  Birds build houses.  (I know this is crooked, but so is everything.)

Some birds are more traditional.

And these other animals seem like jerks.

(Probably they forget, like me, that we’re borrowing everything in this world.)

More life to come.  It’s my favourite thing.

Did you see the eclipse this morning?

I didn’t hold my breath because the moon news people said that it wouldn’t be that visible from the middle of the country (west coasters were meant to see it more clearly), but it worked.

It eclipsed and disappeared and reappeared.  My favorite part was the reappearance.   It looked especially beautiful, so i took a picture, ’cause it would last longer .

A transformation took place overnight almost.

There are two giant green spaces nearby, neither of which you are allowed on without paying and without golf clubs and if your companion happens to be a dog.

And then suddenly everything changes.  The sky dumps buckets of white and inconvenient beauty all over the place, the green space becomes white space, and we get a free ticket onto it anytime we want.

Today was a great day with the exploration of the un-golf course.

I like my sunsets unobstructed by buildings and so I live in this town which has three sky scrapers and even those barely scrape the sky.

When I lived in the mountains, which were nurturing and hugged you all day long, i felt thankful for the support, but there’s nothing like the prairie for making you feel like you can’t fall very far.

The prairie is also pretty good at pink horizons.

I’m feeling a little bit lot enraged after watching an especially graphic video sent to me about animal mistreatment at various farms and other establishments that deal with ‘growing’ animals.  Humans are capable of such ugly behaviour.

I feel a lot like punching one of those bad guys in the neck and i feel like there is mostly anger running through my nadis, but also sadness.  While I feel like doing stuff fuelled by the anger, I’m going to pick to look inward and see what cool, positive stuff I can contribute instead, otherwise I’ll just be being an ugly guy too.

For starters, I’m planning a field trip to go look at how a few local farms run their shows.  And to spend my energy supporting good farmers.   In other news, look what someone graffitied out back this morning.  (I mean, if you’re going to graffiti a tree, i guess this is the way to go?)

My tea cup gave me an important message today.  I decided that this is worth suspending my disbelief for.

It was a bit hard for me to leave a cozy dimly-lit house this morning.  It was a little hard for her not to.  Here’s a picture taken after a real winnipeg overnight snow.  The trees were supposed to get all the attention, but Portman, elated and running laps, is a ham.

Somedays you get to not have to make any big decisions.  Aren’t those great days?  Yesterday, I only had to decide which library to go to (the mosaic one!) and how many toques to wear (two!)  As such, i was able to use my extra energy walking around in the radiant sun, blending in with libraries.  What did you decide today?

Do you ever feel not like some unique & irreplaceable & separate snowflake, but rather a functioning and useful part of the bigger ticking pattern?

That’s what I feel today; and I let out several giant sighs of relief about it.   It didn’t take much.  I just moved someone’s garbage can or something and remembered to be nice and responsible for other guys a bit.  And to get out of my own little existence.

And then to extra remind me, I walked around in the world and saw this manhole cover and the exquisite pattern carved impermanently on it.  These snowflakes could be unique and individual, but who cares?  They just look nice because they create an intricate mosaicical picture.  Like bigger than the sum of their parts.  Or better together, like.

Mostly i’ve been listening to these guys again.

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me  

~fleet foxes 

How cozy the world gets when it’s winter and you have somewhere warm to be and you can bake mini muffins while you gaze out at the big old trees holding up a canopy of snow, the smell of cinnamon and ginger lingering, some tea brewing, extra layers of clothing making you feel grounded and held.

There’s a lull between fall and winter, and I don’t know which clothes to wear.
But the trees seem to handle it with grace.

(Can you believe how pretty this path is?  Lower left corner: my everyday-walk.  Twenty-seven thankful steps from my front door.)

I am a pretty big fan of winter and all of its sparkle and dazzle.  It makes me feel grounded to sit still sometimes and wait for things to thaw.  Here is the view from inside a car, even, on one of these first cold days.

Instructions for loving Winter:

1. Dress much more warmly than you need to.
2. Make a ritual of finding your winter clothes and play dress up in them.
3. When your dog looks a little wary about the white stuff all over her yard, make your voice excited and tell her that snow is the best invention in the world. Go out and play in it with her so she believes you.
4. Realize that the way in which you convinced dog works well with self too.
5. Go for a walk on a street with giant trees that have seen many more winters than you and that don’t seem to mind and in fact look very pretty.
6. Bounce around in snow endlessly. Dip nose in it. Jump and smile. Enjoy being a child of the universe.
7. Come home to your cozy space and drink warm beverages as you snuggle into slippers and blankets.
8. Make clearing off cars with a snow brush an adventure. Fake this part until you believe it.
9. Enjoy winter adventures no matter how cold and snowy, following instructions above.
10. Remember how cute/radiant/beautiful you look with rosy cheeks and snow-flaked eyelashes.
11. Notice how grounding the wet and cold season is. Notice how heavy and earthbound winter boots feel. Enjoy the sloppiness or the crunchiness underfoot.
12. Get a companion to walk in snow with. It’s the most romantical thing around.
13. Observe how bright the world gets with snow on it.
14. Play
15. Remind yourself how tough you are to live in the arctic (practically.) You can do this thing. And it can be fun.
16. And if nothing else works, go play with this guy…

This one time I went to mexico following a deep and crumbling loss.

I traveled with a friend of mine, a traveling companion extraordinaire/poet/artist/visionary with great childlike vision and a zest for life (he taught me the german expression for this and i kind of remember but I always mess it up), leaving the mountains where we lived for warmer climes, humid air, and sand between toes.

I have truly never felt so alive, if alive is vibrant and beautiful and painful and nearly unbearable. My heart felt heavy. My heart felt much too light, as though half of it was missing. As though my touch stone had disappeared, which I suppose it sort of had.

One fine evening, the thick air illuminated with fireflies, we walked down a gravel road after dinner. It was deeply magical and weird. I started noticing these strange, kitschy, vibrant and skull-clad displays in the front of nearly every home. Pictures of people, food, drinks, marigolds, beads, trinkets all filled these little altars.

I found an old Mexican gentleman to ask what it was all about, and he told me in the lowest and deepest voice I have ever heard, deepened further by the thick air, contrasted by the fireflies in it, all about Day of the Dead.

He explained that each year you build an altar in your home, at the graveyard, on your front step, dedicated to a person who has passed away. You put all of their favourite things on it: an offering.

The belief is that the deceased comes back to visit and infuses the objects with their spirit. The belief was a salve to my soul.

I went directly home and built a tiny altar in the cabana where we stayed. It was makeshift, the altar and though big in spirit, there were few objects; one photo booth picture from the day said sister left, a necklace, a shell. That’s it.
I woke up in the morning refreshed, not quite so unbearably light.

Each year since then, I build an altar in my home in the week before day of the dead. It’s heavy; the sifting through objects to see what will go on this year. It’s beautiful; the revisiting of the very few objects I have that represent Cortney. It continues to be the most nourishing thing for me; a little impossible visit.

The feeling in the days and weeks (and longer even) afterwards is the unbelievable (yet not!) feeling that I have just had tea with my sister. Except she would have made it be a beer (or three;)

May you feel the peaceful touch of someone who has past on from you today.

C; Safe and beautiful travels.

Witty wearing Portman’s Hallowe’en costume.

I know.

It’s weird.

Why doesn’t he just get his own costume?

Pretty big difference a day, a bit of fog, and a cool spell full of hail can make, huh?

There’s this film called Smoke.  Have you seen it?  I saw this movie years ago, and have a hard time taking a picture without thinking about it.  The character Augustus (played by Harvey Keitel!) each day for years, walks out to the same spot in front of his cigar shoppe in Brooklyn and takes a picture.  Each picture kind of looks exactly the same.

I thought it was a great idea and had always meant to do it, though put it off, citing that I didn’t have the right spot for it yet.  (This excuse defeats the purpose of the exercise, I know.)

Paul Benjamin:  Slow down, huh?
Auggie Wren:  That’s what I recommend. You know how it is. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Time creeps in its petty pace.
~Smoke

Well.  If someone didn’t pass psychically past my little home and perhaps peek into my window or my soul to see just exactly what would make my day, i don’t know what.

The other morning, i woke up, and being a bit of hound dog who can sniff out differences and out-of-the-ordinaries instantly, in the half-lit morning,  these sweet little guys caught my eye from their position in the front yard nestled into a big dead planter.

Only guy that noticed them first was a deer that ate the heads off some of the flowers.  This added to the charm.

Random acts of kindness are sweet because they’re nice, but they’re wonderful because they’re unexpected, and they’re amazing because they remind us that the world is still magical.

Thank you, universe, and gardener of it.

I had an aversion to this 99% thing, not out of lack of compassion for those of us in need, but out of compassion for those of us in real need.  

As if we aren’t all in the 1% ’round here in the big picture, you know?  With our places to sleep and our food.

Not to mention our sweet luxuries to grow flowers and have pets and shop for candy and pay people to cut our hair.  In the big scheme of things, and in this national sangha, I would say we’re doing pretty well.  Like top 1% well.

However, a dear and open-hearted friend pointed out that still, peaceful protest is awesome.  The fact that people are thinking of these things and reacting not-angrily is so inspiring.  Tents, with people sleeping in them, in Winnipeg cold Autumn is cool.

And it’s sweet too.

The vibe by the legislature was nothing short of Winnipeg soft.  But firmly standing their ground.  I’m proud of Winnipeg, for standing up for their beliefs in such a gentle and sweet way.

Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.   -turkish proverb

Well if the new across the street neighbours from my work aren’t the sweetest, I’m not sure what is.  (I hope their coffee is good, but that’s secondary.)

Do you know that today is the holiday called the sweetest day?  Is there anything better than that?  I guess it was invented by confectioners to bump sales, but no reason to have to celebrate it in the usual way.
I declare a day of enjoying the sweetest things our lives have to offer!
…Smelling and tasting and feeling each intricate sensation.   What is sweetest in your life’s landscape?
I’ll be soaking in the sweetness too.  xo

ps.  I haven’t thought of the new topics, so i’ll stick with sweetness for the week.

Ninth night

This is not actually from the ninth night, but from a mid-evening in early September, driving down a prairie highway that is my favourite of all the prairie highways and all the highways.

It’s just that’s the pinkest thing I’ve ever seen and we are not in the season of pink anymore, so I chose to borrow it.

This rainbow and the sky and the whole gigantic master plan of it all appeared to my left, driving home on my favourite highway, on a week that was meant to make space for murky emotions (like grief and sadness!  fun holiday, right?)  The week there didn’t work, they stood their ground; my grief and sadness like to unravel actively, on their own sweet time, and under rainbows.

When i looked up, I gasped at the spectacle, grief turned watery, and I felt (in a way one only can when she is caught off guard by it) as though every loss I have ever felt was reaching down to me and saying:  we’re still here.  

8th night

Last purple standing.

7th night

One year ago, to the second, I was in san francisco, garbed in red, walking to a giant red bridge that had grown a soul in my imagination if not in real life, with a bunch of amazing!  beautiful!  sparkling! guys, silently making the meandering walk through city and trees to the golden gate bridge on the 7th night of Navratri.

It left a deep imprint on my spirit, that walk, and so today, again with the red, I followed a meandering route through city and trees to find a littler Winnipeg-style variation.  It felt meaningful, indeed.

Instead of a leaf like that other time, bits of atonement got dropped (hoping that Saraswati smiled upon me and I would be wise enough to know what to drop and what to keep around.)
The walk home was a little lighter.

6th night.

Oh hey.  Guess what…  This isn’t actually from right now.  It’s from winter last and if it’s not white, I don’t think anything is.  But it is.  And it’s beautiful.  I can’t wait for winter boots.

Autumn Haiku

Tender leaves smell sweet,
Sloppy piles, good for hiding
if you are orange.

4th night

I heart the prairie sky.
An avid fisherman i know says, of this sort of sky, lots of rain in those clouds.

I like that it sounds like the sky holds the water and then dumps it abundantly, all over the place when the timing or mood strikes.

3rd night

As if it’s not the sweetest gift to find a bright red apple with a happy green heart on it in your batch of apples that you are making thanksgiving day pies with.  Auspicious and a half.

The second night.

What is the recipe for the most perfect autumn colours?  Warm and windless weather leaving the leaves where they are, coinciding with dramatic dimming of the days, enough to signal to the leaves that the times are changing?

The next day, the winds came and now the yellow is on the earth, as pretty, but one step further along, back to the beginning.

First night of navratri.

A sky-ful of blue, skylight in the crooked midst of brokenness destruction, and a bird (and its calls of freedom) perches between the two.  Perfect image for Kali, who destroys to make space for liberation.

Nine nights to honour the various forms of the goddess Durga.  Beginning at the beginning, with Kali, the destroyer.

In India, there are colours associated with each night.  I’ve asked what the colours mean and why we are instructed to dress in them, and each person I asked explained that it was so that there would be a spectacle of colour.  Indians are geniuses at colour.

In any event, this comes just in time for my paint colours to be finished.
(Here are the colours, if you’re curious:

Too big for her britches with all of the too-large-for-her-branches that came falling down during an autumn wind last week.  Not to mention being a branchport-brown-eyed girl.

A lot of people organize the books on the bookshelf in their home by colour, I bet.  Where else do they go to find Largo Teal when it is the season of hallowe’en orange and chimney red, and the world looks more like this

Not exactly camouflaged on city street, but to be fair, city street feels a bit like lazy cottage country, so I understand the confusion.  The deer, in their camouflaged outfits, then bounced right down Bonnie’s end of the street.  They were young and silly and cute.

And were so camouflaged, in fact, that this guy just kept sniffing other things.  

Faded sunflowers find autumn sky alluring.

Heads still lifted, and they have become the colour of wheat.  It’s cool to be hopeful when you’re doing well, but it’s beautiful to be hopeful when you’re feeling faded.  Inspiring little fellows, no?

What a reminder, geese and their travels are, that life is unfolding just exactly as it should.

Does a single goose ever forget to congregate with its others, as they intuit the precise moment when they are compelled, naturally to fly south?  Do they need to think about what comes next?  Do they worry about what they are leaving behind?  Where they will stay when they get there?  Is there ever an existential crisis;  should i just not go this time and why do we go anyway?

They seem certain and as sturdy in their listening to (and being) nature as can be.  I have loved walking to the mint these past few weeks, seeing an overwhelming skyful of graphite coloured specks beings, of showing portman the birds that she would be hunting if she were in nature.  I have loved the moment when they lift off, in unison, at the exact right moment, filling the crisp autumn sky with honking.

I loved the authentic feeling of melancholy when I went back today, after just the right number of cool days, I suppose, to see an empty field.

“Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.”  -Rainer Maria Rilke

Isn’t Buxton Blue a lot like Wales Grey (the colour of my dining room?)
Wales Grey should not be confused with Whale Grey, a much whalier colour, a confusion which did indeed happen once when K went to pick up paint from the store for me.   Attention to detail is not his thing, really, but lots of other things are.   Like being handsome.  And also forgiveness.

The precise colour of leaves just after they’ve released dewy and vibrant Summer and just before they surrender to the sweet melancholy of Autumn: crispy and crumbly and red-or orange or golden yellow.  The yellow-green leaves last three seconds or so, and suspend themselves in time so briefly that you can only assume it’s a miracle that they happen to happen just directly on the pale avocado day.

On the tenth day of September, a rare instant between Summer and Fall, when the days are still steamy hot, but the nights cool off enough to wear a couple of cozy layers of clothing on your morning walk (if it’s early enough), the sky fills up with soft, smoke from farmer’s fields, nostalgic in your nose and the sky has parallel jet streams in it, and your dear friends get married.  Auspicious Saturday on all counts.

I don’t like heather gray that much.  It sort of seems like the colour of a mosquito or uninspiration, if that had a colour.  I think it’s because i once moved into a loft apartment and the previous guy had painted every wall and ceiling and surface this very colour.  It took forever to paint over its murkiness.
So, you can imagine my resistance to seeking it out some more, but I’m stubborn and did anyway.  And you know where I found it, finally?  Standing outside my house in the form of an especially sweet-faced Buddha, a birthday gift from my dearest friends who are getting married tomorrow!
I love this Buddha and am thankful that he has taught me to drop my resistance to a lot of things.  Including heather gray.

You know what we (or I at least) don’t do nearly enough?

Align ourselves around what already is.  This place was charmingly respectful, with its tongue in its cheek, and with its oak tree directly, smack dabbedly, everlastingly, in the middle of its driveway.  It sent me home wondering about the ways that i could stop moving nature, changing things, and going against the river.

To a season of accepting what is, now.  I can start with my body’s deep yearning to move slowly, and softly, and can go from there.  Is there a way in which nature is putting its foot down, and you are trying to steer it?

Wedding preparations, though not mine, have taken me to this guy (thrice in the past week!  I despise alterations and dresses that don’t fit!) and only on time three did I notice giovanni, the tailor’s, quirky bella blue venetian blinds.  I liked him better for them, even after he told me i have a body like a boy;)