Wild Woman Cafe

Stranger

2011-03-28T15:49:00.013-06:00

Today the glands under my jaw are swollen like golf balls. I have taken the day off to recover from whatever virus I have, resigning myself to reading in bed and puttering at the computer with hot tea in hand.

Perhaps I caught the virus at work this past week, but I've heard that it takes about 10 days for viruses to percolate in one's system. I've also heard that planes are good places to catch viruses. Ten days ago I was on a flight to Yellowknife. So there it is, and I am now processing both the virus from the trip and the trip itself.

There is an old but wise cliché that says it's better to regret things one has done than the things one hasn't done. This trip to Yellowknife has brought this cliché to surface, as I try to remind myself of all the reasons it was good to go back after almost two years of having been away – despite that my heart aches like hell. I don't know if we can benefit from measuring the quality or value of our experiences by how much suffering they cause. Many times we devalue experiences that cause us heartache, when really they are opportunities of major growth and personal insight.

My original decision to travel to Yellowknife, where I had spent 4 years of my life, was predicated on a need to attend a friend's wedding. It was important to me not only to be in attendance of an important life event of a dear friend, but as a person who had witnessed first-hand this woman's ascent into much deserved happiness with the man of her dreams. On the other hand, I deeply needed to see my cats, who I had left behind in Yellowknife a few years ago with my ex in my move to Edmonton from the house we used to own together. Never a day has gone by that I have not missed them, or remembered what it feels like to cuddle them and hold them precious to me like any mother would her children. I did not realize upon crafting my plans to visit Yellowknife how I might feel once there. That I would feel like a stranger, that my friend would not have time to visit with me at her wedding, that I would have to endure heart-break once again at saying goodbye to my cats without their understanding of the situation (where I have been, and that I would once again disappear). I did not foresee that I would feel alienated, that I don't belong – in Yellowknife nor in the life of my cats.

I keep thinking back to my arrival at the Yellowknife airport. I had arranged for a car rental, and so wandered in the airport like the visitor I was (despite that it was often the launching point for many an adventure, and my home harbour for four years), looking for the rental outlet. When I finally got my car, I felt as if I were on wings, and I flew through the surreal landscape of my old neighbourhood with only one thing in mind: to see my furry beloveds. My ex had generously left me the key to the house so that I could visit them alone, and I sped there to see them as a lover to a doomed but exhilarating clandestine meeting.

Walking through the front door was just as surreal as the drive through my old neighborhood to the house. Almost everything looked the same. No walls had been painted a different color, pictures on the wall hadn't been replaced, furniture was in its old place. New things had found their way in, but the old remained, too, lulling me into an old familiarity without the warmth it used to hold for me. Without hesitation, I immediately called Puss and Lumpy like I always did, like I've been yearning to do for the years I've been away. They both came running from the bedroom, attendant but with expressions of curiosity, too. My heart leapt. But where Puss would usually throw herself down before me on the carpet to have her belly rubbed, she only calmly sat, looking up at me without appearing the least amused. Lumpy parked himself close by, half awake and wondering what all the fuss was about. It was all so strange – the same but so different – and time was slipping through my fingers and stealing moments from me as they arose. Those moments I tried to commit to memory so I would never forget: brushing Puss' coat, feeding them treats, putting my head to Lumpy's fur while he lay in the sun and feeling his body rise and fall with each breath. Unfortunately the painful moments are committed to memory too: Puss not letting me brush her, then hissing and growling and running away, just to come back for more minutes later. Though she used to be mine and would tolerate me holding her in my arms like a little baby, things had changed, washed away with the tides. I found I could not hold her like that any longer without looking down at a growling cat that threatens of her growing unease in my arms.

I realize now that the two hours I had spent there, right at the forefront of my trip, was my undoing for the remainder of my visit. To walk away from a house that used to be mine, to cats that my heart has claimed as children, and to all the other nameless things that I used to claim as mine, placed me in a stark and barren realm where I was stranger. I came to Yellowknife as a stranger, and I have now left there as a stranger – even to those I love.

The cracks started showing almost immediately. Upon leaving the house, I tried using my regular car keys to start the rental car, which kept me puzzled for five minutes in the driveway until my ex (who had visited me there over his lunch) came over to help identify the problem. I think I held up well at the wedding that evening, but as the night wore on, I could not bring myself to dance or make any more small chat with people I didn't know. The smiling face that I wore all day started feeling like more of a mask to the strangers around me. The happiness I felt for my friend's good fortune was not enough to bail me out of my imminent sense of loss.

My friend Anne shepherded me back into the light the next day as we lunched together and rehashed, to the best of our ability, the past two years. We laughed, we shared, and we conspired as we had done before for the whole day through. It was what I needed, and I was grateful. She escorted me all the way to the airport, and sat with me some more there, too. She did all this without knowing the loss I was feeling, without being told of the place that I would sink to if left to sit alone in a world that used to be my home. She continues to be an angel in my life.

And so I landed back in Edmonton only a day after my launch into the old world, still feeling a little heavy. For the first time I got lost coming from the Edmonton airport – twice I drove off into nowhere. Maybe it was the dark and lonely part of myself slipping into a greater void, wanting to continue being lost. But a greater part of myself really wanted to be home. To my new home, my new life. And as I pulled in front of the house where this new life takes place, the door opened, and standing in the warm doorway, with the light shining from behind, was my beloved. Inside were candles, roses, and a table set for the meal that he was cooking for us on the stove. I had arrived back into the folds of the new chapter, no stranger to love.

The Family Legacy

2010-12-14T13:47:00.005-07:00

It’s that time of year again when all the baking supplies come out in full force and cookie tins abound. My usual Christmas goodie staple for the past few years has been chocolate macaroons (recipe provided in my blog index). But this year I really wanted to go all out and get back to my roots. I wanted to make Peppermint Cookies. But not just ANY peppermint cookies. This particular recipe that I have has been passed down through generations of women in my family, with its origins in old Europe.

The tricky thing about this recipe is that it calls for a particular ingredient that sets it apart from any other peppermint cookie recipe out there. This ingredient is baking ammonia (ammonia carbonate). In Europe, it is sometimes referred to as Hartshorn, which was a derivative of the horns of the red deer. Hartshorn was used in the 17th and 18th centuries in many European cookie recipes, and was a precursor to baking powder. It is a wonderful leavening agent, though specific to cookies – as the thinner mass allows the ammonia to bake off and evaporate (which is why you don’t taste it).

Because I am not living in old Europe, it is very difficult to find baking ammonia. Not many recipes call for it here in Canada, unless they are old fashioned recipes passed down through generations of immigrant families like mine. The only way to get this ingredient - short of hunting deer and rendering the horns - is through a pharmacist, and even then very few have this ingredient accessible to the consumer. I had called close to every single pharmacist in Edmonton today, and no one carried it in stock (which led me to asking myself how my grandmother ended up in possession of her supply). I did end up lucking out in the end: as it turns out, the ONLY pharmacy in Edmonton that carries this substance is Market Drugs. So now I will be able to share my family recipe with friends and colleagues.

These cookies sure bring back memories of my grandmother’s magical place that I loved to go to as a child, as she made these cookies frequently. And surprisingly, the ammonia itself also brings with it some memories. Not only was the recipe handed down through generations of my family: it was also a rite-of-passage to be the unwitting victim of ammonia sniffing. Ammonia in its pure form is a very strong, nasty smelling substance, and sniffing it is indescribably painful.

I recall being 8 years old and watching my uncle Tony removing a small pill container from my mother’s baking cupboard and calling me over. “Hey, come here and take a whiff of this”, he said to me. Because so many ingredients from that baking cupboard are wonderfully palatable, I willingly put my nose right over the container and took a good sniff. Immediately following, I screamed. It felt like fire burning right up through my nostrils and into my brain. I clasped my hands to my nose and ran around the house for about five minutes until the pain subsided. When I told my mother later she couldn’t withhold her snicker, because (being my uncle Tony’s big sister) she had done the exact same thing to him when they were younger. This discovery prompted my decision to share the pain as well: I offered the same experience to my little brother – who reacted precisely the same way that everyone else in the family had.

So not only are these cookies the most amazing, fluffy, minty cookies around, but they also embody a true family legacy of sibling torture that is likely unprecedented anywhere.

Dear Diary

2010-11-26T13:56:00.005-07:00

Dear Diary,

I can’t help but want to report on some of my progress as of late. I have become a champion of various titles. The score is now 4:1, me versus the world. The ‘1’ on the world’s side is the incident of getting poodled at a salon a couple months ago.

My victories started with a recent conquest of the ghastly perm job from Modern Urban Hair Designers. I walked around the office feeling like a bad rendition of Medusa for six weeks after the perm incident. During that time I had followed up with Dana at the salon, stating that something was very wrong with the job she’d done. That ended with her telling me that I looked really “Boho” (Bohemian), and sending me packing with a different hair product. Well, no more Boho the Clown for me, and it’s not because of the product. I found my hair straightening iron, purchased years ago when all I needed it for then was to tame a stubborn cowlick. Now the iron is taming a jungle. I now have straight hair, despite that I have to do this chore every morning. But still. No more afro.

My next victory came last week at my first Toastmasters session. I had decided that if I wasn’t going to medicate myself every time I give a presentation to our Board of Directors at work, I was going to have to overcome the dread of public speaking. Unfortunately I have had to give my last few presentations at our Directors meetings sporting hair that resembles road kill. However, I now have normal hair, and one Toastmasters session under my belt. Being considered a guest at my first Toastmasters session, I wasn’t required to take part in the impromptu public speaking exercises, but I did anyway. During one of the exercises I had to talk for 2 minutes about a topic in the news that caught my attention that day. I spoke about two gay men who had their house burnt down. Why I chose such a politically loaded topic rather than sports, weather, or any of the other news sections I had reviewed that morning remains to be understood. But I won that week’s trophy for best speaker. I don’t think I was the best speaker, but perhaps it was recognition for bravery. Not only did I recover some pride, but also some faith in the kind-heartedness of others.

Only days after, I found myself co-hosting a party for five 7 year old boys – one of whom was my boyfriend’s son who turned 8 years old. I had asked him if he wanted a store-bought cake or a homemade one, and unlike his sister, he prefers homemade. And I was certainly determined to deliver. So I endeavoured to make him a three-tiered cake with chocolate icing and M&M’s decorating the sides. What I didn’t realize was how big three tiers of cake actually is. Glad I bought extra icing supplies because the cake turned out to be about a foot high (at least) and appeared to dwarf the birthday boy. It was the Eiffel Tower on steroids. Everyone’s eyes were big, as the cake sat like a monument on the table. Candles were blown out, and then came the mission of trying to cut reasonable-sized pieces from it. Even a sliver of the cake looked daunting to eat. Carving the first piece went well, despite its sheer volume. The second piece went a little shakier. But it was the third piece that shook the castle. While cutting, the whole cake tottered. Then it did a giant upside-down face plant in the middle of the table. During that moment no one moved. No one breathed. Time stood still while mouths gaped wide. And in that moment when someone (including me) could have cried, I yelled “FOOD FIGHT!”. Though little Meredith immediately clenched the first fist of food, we calmly decided instead to just continue carving out portions of cake for everyone – some of whom decided to unleash their inner savage and eat without forks. I call this victory.

Last but not least, I won the much coveted trophy for our annual workplace chilli cook-off fundraiser yesterday. Despite being warned of the political heat around the cooking competition, I decided to enter anyway because the event needed more contestants. I came in with my ‘Texas Hold’em Chipotle Chicken’ chilli, and walked out with trophy in hand after the votes were tallied. Despite that I have never won a trophy before, I now have two sitting on my desk (though the Toastmasters one gets recycled back into the group next week). It’s amazing what a little determination and bravery can do.

2010 is wrapping up nicely.

The Perm

2010-10-04T17:08:00.003-06:00

Back when I lived on Vancouver Island (the good ol’ days, as I now call them), I had an amazing award winning hairdresser named Edwin Johnston. I never had bad hair back then. Since I have left the island, it’s been hit and miss – with the hits usually being anytime I’m visiting the island and can get in to see Edwin. But even the misses with other hairdressers haven’t been all that bad. Not until now.

My last few haircuts in Edmonton have been okay – as in very mediocre. So I had decided to try a place called “Modern Urban Hair Designers” or “MUD Studio" in Edmonton. Their reviews online led me to believe that it was a very chic place to go, especially if getting one’s hair done by the owner, Dana. Excited at the possibilities for zesting up my thin, lifeless hair, I booked my appointment with her.

Sure enough, the place was very stylish and trendy and I actually felt a bit underdressed for the occasion in jeans and a t-shirt. The hair stylists strutted around in all sorts of flashy attire: orange fishnet stockings and silver shoes, blue and purple streaked hair, tattoos, KISS-style stiletto boots that fit like a glove up to the knee. Surely, I thought, these women know about style, and I knew I needed some.

Shortly after I arrived, Dana came and sat with me on the big leather couch to discuss my hair and suss out what would look good on me. I started out with telling her that I’ve been trying to grow it out but it now just looks thin, shapeless, and boring. To which she replied, “You need a Body”.

“…A…..body?”, I replied, as if I’d never heard the word before.

And so, using her iPad, she showed me examples of what a “Body” was. We perused pictures of Meg Ryan, Madonna, and Charlize Theron while listening to some upbeat, trendy rock music. These were images of wavy, tousled hair. It looked oh so sexy. But wasn’t she talking about a ‘perm’? A small voice in my head (the common sense one that doesn’t always get air time) mentioned that this was, in fact, a PERM she was talking about, right? And so I trodded forth with trepidation.

“…. I’m not so sure…. I think my mom used to get perms….”.

“Oh no, dahling”, she said – with the utmost authority. “We don’t do THAT anymore”. And I thought I had understood what THAT was; the unspoken thing that went out with the 70’s. White chics with frizzy afro-perms, camel toes, polyester bell-bottoms, and ponchos. But I supposed that I didn’t have to worry. There are no perms, not at salons like this.

“I totally think you could rock a Body”, Dana said. And, looking at the celebrity pictures, I thought maybe I could, too.

For some reason, she instilled trust in me. Perhaps it was her confidence, the way she carried herself. She looked like an artist, sporting long black hair in a funky braid, big plump lips, and big knee high lace-up boots that looked like a saucy complement to her 8 month pregnant belly. She was so sure of herself, seemed to know how to handle anything, and appeared so certain of what I needed. A memory surfaced briefly before it sank back into the depths: that Edwin had made one thing really clear when working with my hair for those years back on the Island. That thing was for me never to get a perm. But I said yes anyway to this strangely compelling alchemist who spoke like she could work magic. And besides, I wasn’t getting a perm, I was getting a ‘Body’.

Flash forward to the day of reckoning a week later, at my hair appointment with Modern Urban Hair Designers. I am at the salon, getting my hair shampooed by a new gal there. “So”, she says in a sweet, welcoming voice, “you’re getting a perm today?”. At that point the spell broke and I felt like turning tail. Wish I had. But I wanted to keep believing.

I let Dana douse me with putrid chemicals once the curlers were in. I think it was ammonia but it smelled like 10 cats had shit on my head. Then more chemicals that smelled like some very bad perfume. I was determined to enjoy my time anyway, convinced that I would come out the other end looking hot. Stylists stopped by to chat with us, and Dana started talking about people in Newfoundland where she is from and how they are often stereotyped as being lazy – which she clearly wasn’t. One of the stylists told her she was surprised that Dana was on her third perm for the week, being that Dana recently told a client that she doesn’t really do perms. Uh-oh. I started getting worried.

Finally she rinsed me off and escorted me over to the station, and took the towel off. I saw the wavy wet hair, but it wasn’t until she started blow drying that I thought to myself, “oh shit”. It got curlier, and curlier, and curlier as it began to dry. I just wanted her to make it stop, but the curls multiplied. And my hair stank so much that I’m sure it could have been considered hazardous material. All I could muster to say at that point was, “…when will my hair stop smelling like this?”. I didn’t yet know how to form the words “how long will my hair BE like this?”. She finished it by putting some kind of product in it to tame down the curls and to cover up the stench. I couldn’t hold it in any longer and said that I honestly wasn’t sure I really liked it. “….it’s so….. curly”, I said. Likely I had the I don’t want to pay for this look on my face. And so she launched into a dialogue about how no one wears their hair straight anymore, and men like women with curls. I looked around the salon. Every hairdresser at the MUD studio had straight hair. Dana had straight hair. All the clients had straight hair. I was fucked.

It was a blur after that. I recall her continuing to try to convince me that it looked good. She told me that when she “had her lips done”, she thought she looked like a duck at first, but a week later went back because she wanted “more duck”. She then began selling me some products that I would need for upkeep of my new pet. I was put through the register. I think I tipped her, too, because she accommodated me on a Saturday when she doesn’t usually work. I had no reasoning ability at that point. I was holding in the shock. I walked back to my car, emotionless. All I could think was “I let a pregnant Newfie with fake lips perm my hair”. I looked in the mirror and it didn’t look any better than it did in the salon. I felt like a poodle. A very smelly one.

I drove home and I think I may have cried. I had a presentation to give on Monday morning to a federal board of directors. I had also promised my boyfriend that I would look ever so sexy that evening with new hair, and he was going to make me a special steak and crab dinner for our romantic evening. But now I had a stinky afro. I went from having thin, lifeless hair to having hair that has a life of its own. An entity. A planet with it's own orbit.

My boyfriend saw the hair, and said amicably, “it looks good”. He smiled encouragingly. But I knew that look and I know he would never want to hurt my feelings. Through salty tears I told him that I had a presentation on Monday morning and couldn’t give it looking like Crusty the Clown. He laughed – hard enough for me to see that there was some truth in the comparison. He tried to stop and insisted that it wasn’t like that. I went upstairs and cried in the bathroom, and then proceeded to think of strategies to tame the afro. But it wasn’t going away. I would have to live with it.

I assaulted my hair with various concoctions of hair products. It wasn't going to be okay anytime soon. It is kinky and frizzy, and at its very best, looks like I crawled out from under the tires of a bus. I kept telling myself it’s just hair. Just as some of the good hair I’ve had has come to pass, so will the bad hair. So I moved on. I was brought flowers that day by my lover, who also had cleaned the house and made me the most amazing dinner. The hair didn’t matter. And the next day we walked in the park and saw some buffalo, enjoyed the autumn air. I caught some bugs in the perm. The perm caught wind. But everything was going to be fine.

This morning rolled around, and it took me a while to tame the perm. Thoughts of “holy fuck what are people going to think” went through my head. But in reality, no one really noticed the perm during my presentation. I thought I imagined people looking at me a bit more, but not like I was strange. Maybe because I looked different. Whatever it was, people pretended not to notice that my head had sprouted like a Chia Pet.

And life goes on.

The Teacher

2010-09-28T13:08:00.004-06:00

Autumn is my favorite season. A time to reflect, withdraw, and begin the hypernation. This fall, I have complemented these natural seasonal inclinations with a meditation course that my boyfriend and I have both taken interest in.

The course is 6 months in duration, and attendance is required 5 nights a week, Monday to Friday. It is a unique style of meditation that goes for an hour in duration. The unique part about it is that the first half an hour is ‘walking meditation’. It is really quite simple, technically. Meditators are organized into rows. Each person has a two-tile width space for walking, which stretches about 15 feet long. We walk from one end of our marked space and back again. There is a pause after turning around. That’s the walking exercise, combined with our meditation technique.

But I am distracted by pretty much everything around me. Sights, smells, noises, personality quirks. Thus, being put in a room with 40 other people and trying to meditate while walking back and forth, my eyes being caught by strange socks and even stranger walking habits, is already quite a challenge for me. So far in my third week, I have walked beside people who look like they’re trying to walk a tight rope, or play hop-scotch at their turning points, or sneaking up on someone. Despite these idiosyncrasies that go on around me, I am the one who seems to have been singled out by the teacher for conformity. The first time was my initial evening, because I had missed the previous class that explained everything, and no one instructed me on how the walking areas worked so I wasn’t walking within the allotted lines. The teacher scooted me over onto my track. Okay, no problem. But then, after I had taken maybe 5 steps, she tells me to walk a little faster. Um….okay. I was still trying to make sure I was focussing my mind properly. I told my boyfriend that night that I had been talked to, and he said that he had never seen the teacher say anything to anyone else before. This lead me to feel special, but in the ‘special bus’ kind of way.

Things progressed, though, and I thought over subsequent weeks that maybe I had properly conformed to the exercise because I was left alone for a while. I did wonder, however, that the teacher was NEVER to be seen when I had freaks beside me doing their freaky walks. They would have been so busted. Instead, I had to somehow shut out their hop-scotching, or their tight-roping, or their sneaky-like paces. But I persevered, for the most part. I managed a few moments of focus in my half hour stretch of walking meditation. Then last night, I was busted again. Taken down. Apparently this time I was pausing too long after my turn. Again, I struggled with trying to refocus my mind after that. Why is it that no one else gets corrected? This was the pressing question that stayed in my head in place of the mantra I was actually supposed to be focussing on.

Later, the wise voice in my head (that has answers which are so hard to heed) tells me that I need to learn to focus and calm my mind, which is why I am there. What better opportunity to learn how to focus and calm, than in absolute chaos and injustice? By virtue of being one of the meditators closest to the door, I have been inadvertently selected for honing my skills to perfection, while all the freaks that she never catches get to continue being freaks and doing it all wrong. But somehow, despite reason, I just can’t muster up the gratitude for having been hand-picked for perfection.

I guess there is always next time.

Autopsy

2010-07-30T15:39:00.002-06:00

In regards to my previous post "Phoenix", and upon conclusion of eagle autopsy results, Phoenix was a girl.

Phoenix

2010-07-15T13:45:00.011-06:00

For the past few months, I have been watching a little eagle hatchling grow via a live webcam on Hornby Island. His name was Phoenix, and he lived high up in a large nest overlooking the ocean, carefully tended by both of his parents. He was born from one of two eggs - the other which never hatched. Unfortunately I never got to see Phoenix hatch himself, but shortly afterwards was daily witness to his life from a wee hatchling.

It was quite something watching him grow from a little grey piece of fluff with a black beak, barely able to stand, to a large, black feathered, gangly teenager who began to take up the entire nest while stretching out. As a hatchling, he would hunker down underneath mom or dad, and be protected by the elements which the open nest was so exposed to. As he grew bigger, he would stagger around like the most unmajestic bird one could ever see, almost threatening to fall off the side of the nest with one clumsy step. My boyfriend and I used to joke that perhaps his mother mated with a buzzard, for all the grace he had. When Phoenix would sleep, he was most un-bird like. He would lay on his side, stretching one wing across the span of the nest, and his two feet as far out in front of him as possible. I have never seen a bird sleep like that. And his feet grew so big and yellow, and we would joke about them as his 'yellow sneakers'.

Thousands of people across North America - and likely beyond - watched little Phoenix. The day was near when he would make his first flight, as he was beginning to hop up on the camera box and stretch his wings in the air. He had begun spending so much time on the nest parametres, looking out at the awaiting world beyond. It seemed only a short matter of time before he stretched those wings and let the wind carry him into the next stage of his life.

And so I was shocked and saddened to learn last night that little Phoenix was suddenly sick. Apparently Doug and Sheila Carrick, who own and operate the camera equipment, noticed his condition and tried to get an experienced eagle handler up to the nest to save our little friend. Hearing this news, I tuned in last night to the webcam, and there was Phoenix, taking laboured breaths. I felt helpless as I watched his little black body move up and down in heaving movements. I hoped someone might get up there to help the little guy, and quickly. But at 8:15 p.m. last night, moments after I logged out of the cam, Phoenix collapsed in the nest, took one more look at the ocean in the distance, and died.

Apparently the parents were keeping vigil in the surrounding trees. I later witnessed footage of the removal of Phoenix's body from the nest, which included a clip of the mother in a nearby tree. As his body was being taken away, the mother extended her neck and opened her beak a few times as if to give a good-bye shrill, or a protest, but no noise ushered forth. Then she flew away.

Posts have been pouring in from everyone on the Hornby Eagles Facebook forum. Just today there have been hundreds of comments from people about how horribly sad they feel, that they feel like they've lost a family member. These people, like myself, would tune in every day to see this little eagle grow - to witness his first glimpse of the world, his first steps around the nest, and the growth of his first feathers. A friend of mine told me that her dad, who viewed Phoenix daily on his big HD TV, will be heartbroken. "He spoke of that eagle like he was my brother", she said. For many of us, he was like a brother.

Despite that death is an intrinsic part of life, there is nothing more sad to me than an eagle who never got to feel the wind under his wings. But this is, for reasons unknown to us, as nature intended. I resign myself to the burden of acceptance, and say some prayers for a little eagle I once knew.

RIP Phoenix.

Angel 101

2010-03-29T09:49:00.004-06:00

About six months ago I was sitting at my desk at work listening to my worrisome inner dialogue chatter on about a few areas of my life I needed help with. I was, at that time, uncertain about my precarious employment situation (being in a term position) in the middle of a recession, and divine intervention seemed necessary. "I need some help here", is what I recall clearly stating in my mind amongst all the cluttered chatter. And so I sat there and, on a sticky note, drew myself an angel. I gave her a wee little heart. I coloured the picture in. And then I explained to her what it was I felt I needed after I pinned her to my computer screen (poor thing).

Since then, I have gradually seen a multitude of changes in my life. Somehow, amidst a recession, in a province that is still struggling to get on its feet, I managed to get a permanent job with the federal government. At the time I applied for the job, I did not really think I needed it. I thought I would stay on with the Alberta Government; that they would extend or make permanent my position with them. But something in me (or outside of me) said "APPLY". Similarly, when it came time to do the screening assignment and interview for the position, I didn't want to. After all, I was probably going to stay on in my current job, right? But again, something urged me on. "Do the assignment", "Just go to the interview". I did.

Shortly after doing the interview for the job with the federal government, I was told by the Alberta Government that they would no longer be extending me past my term with them, which came as a big shock to me and my team. They also said they could not tranfer me to another area within the Alberta Government, as so many other laid-off employees who had priority over me would be getting anything available. As you may recall from a previous post, I went through a range of emotions that most people go through when getting laid off. As I sorted through my resentment and feelings of inadequacy, I felt a different force pulling me into a state of acceptance and surrender. "Everything will be fine". And so I just drifted on, trying to stay open.

It was not long after that when I received news from the federal government that I got the job I had applied and interviewed for. I asked myself how it was so: with a hiring freeze in the Alberta Government, and the province struggling through the recession, weren't there a lot of people like me competing for that permanent job with the federal government? Positions in that area of work are sparse, even across the country. And somehow, I did it.

I have been slowly starting to pack up my desk at my current job, ready to make the transition soon. Last Friday I was putting away some files on a metal file rack that sits on one of my low filing cabinets. Because the files are thick, it took a bit of shimmying to get them in, which shifted the file rack around a bit. Then I saw this small flash of white from beneath the files. I moved the rack aside. And there she was: a small little porcelain angel. Beneath her dress was a small porcelain bell that made a sweet tinkling sound. She held a harp in her hands. I was amazed. Had she been there the whole time? How many times have I filed things onto that rack and never seen her? How long had she been there?

I looked over at my computer screen to see the sticky note angel I had crafed half a year ago. I peeled the sticky note off, and measured both angels against each other. Same size. Same short, fair hair, which matched the colours of their gowns. But the one I drew had a heart in her centre, whereas the porcelain one had a harp. I later said to my boyfriend, "but mine had a heart". To which he replied, "Harp?". "No, heart", I said. Heart. Harp. Hmm.

I took both the angels home, as a reminder that the universe is listening. Soon I will have the time and space to reflect on all the things I have learned over the past year. And I will continue on with my beginners class in Angel 101.

Liberation

2010-03-26T14:29:00.005-06:00

Something always seems to feel so good about ending a job. I don't think getting laid off is a great thing for everyone, but if you have another job waiting in the offing afterwards, being unemployed for a little while can provide some liberation. I particularly like that ending a job somewhere means that I also get to end a power relationship with that employer. It's not that all bosses are terrible tyrrants; it's just that they no longer have say over what I do. They just become regular people again, rather than overlords of the soul.

For a little while, once my current job soon ends, I will begin a journey back into myself for a while. I will wake up to a whole day that is my own during a weekday, and listen to CBC radio while wondering what to do with myself. And then I will do whatever suits my fancy, with hopefully few restrictions. I will ask the great questions in life while looking out the window, holding a hot cup of tea. I will sit on the deck outside and be delighted that the robins have come. I will plan a garden. I will repot plants. I will enjoy all the little things in life and somehow rediscover myself in the process.

It's amazing what the daily grind can do to a person. Somewhere along the path we forget who we are. I say "we" because of all the lifeless expressions of office workers I pass by on a daily basis, if not in the bus, then in the halls at work. I suspect I look the same. But give these office workers a taste of liberation, even if just in the form of a month long holiday, and watch them come to life.

I keep thinking back to some pictures I was recently viewing on a friend's Facebook album. It included some outdoor concert events that she attended with her partner and 2 year old daughter. Everyone looks so happy. Children are playing. People are dancing. Open fields, mountains. Tye-dye everywhere. A hippie-fest. A dose of life and carelessness. Why do so many of us forget?

Bitch

2010-03-11T13:17:00.005-07:00

Quite a few years back into my treeplanting days, my company came out one year with complimentary t-shirts for us to wear that displayed our team pride. On the front of the shirt was our company logo. On the back was simply "100%". We all thought the back was a bit hoakey. I thought it needed something. So, with a black felt marker, I scribed "Bitch" under the screenprint, so that it read "100% Bitch". I loved that shirt. I think someone else did, too, because it went missing one year in the dry tent.

The thing is, something like that is only titillating for others to see you wear if you aren't really a bitch; if you are just a 'pretend bitch', because you are just too sweet to be a 'for-real bitch'. Sweet women who get bitchy sometimes are tolerated. Or considered cute. Real bitches are hated.

The office environment is the perfect petri dish to try on different personas and see what happens. There have been office work environments that I have entered with a smile, willing to befriend everyone. Engratiating. Humble. Does this earn a woman respect? My assessment says no. You might make a few friends with the display of approachable, unintimidating behavior, at best. But respect? No.

After a few rebuffs at my friendy-faced persona in the past, I have tried the stone-cold bitch face: not bothering to say hi to people who don't usually go out of their way for me, and holding my head high while mostly expressionless. Being opinionated and cocky in the boardroom. Carrying myself like I don't give a shit about what people think. Does this win friends? Not really. Does it win respect? That depends. Because I've seen people pull it off. But they were all men.

Women who act like this are mostly considered to be bitches. Women who are uncompromising, women who don't cater, women who aren't submissively accomodating of others. These women are under-appreciated. But not by me. I admire the courage it takes to be true to themselves rather than spending enormous amounts of energy catering to others. I love their non-conformity.

Don't get me wrong, I love all my sweet, friendly sisters out there, to whom a smile comes naturally. I love my sisters who put energy into caring for others. I appreciate the men who do, as well. I think being friendly and caring and aware of others is great. But sometimes it's nice just to rest in one's own quiet power, and not give a shit about what anybody thinks of it.

Into the Wild

2010-03-10T14:06:00.008-07:00

Okay, things are looking on the up and up these days. Got a job offer with the federal government that I think I'm going to take. That I'm going to take. And it's a pretty juicy one, too. This will keep me out of the bush.

For a while there, I was contemplating heading back out into the wild, folks, after my looming lay-off from my current job. The wild has been calling to me ever since I left my 12 year long love affair with treeplanting (okay, perhaps it would be better termed a "relationship" with treeplanting, which might include 'love' but also includes a lot of other things on the love/hate spectrum). Oh, those surrounding forests filled with birdsong, the fresh air, the mountains, the sense of freedom and total disengagement from society, how I miss thee. I don't know if I was necessarily going to go back treeplanting this year (had it not been for the new offer), but I may have taken up an opportunity to do other kinds of forestry work with a former bush colleague who now has her own surveying business. And I must admit, that though the Wild Woman has been taken out of the Wild, the prospect of going back made my step lighter. It cleared my head. It gave me a glimpse of life without the chains that inevitably snake around your ankles when you are an office worker. But there is a downside to bush work: no benefits, lower pay, and being away from home, to be followed by periods of unemployment. Does that hold up to a cushy government job? Uh, no. Is it better for the soul? Yes. And the conundrum continues for the Wild Woman. But onwards we go.

I did have a dream recently that likely stemmed from my recent reconsideration of returning to the bush. In my dream, I was back in the treeplanting world, having returned after 5 years of sabbatical from it. I stood on the side of a dirt road, next to my assigned piece of clearcut for the day. Beside me was my cache of trees and my bags, with a few other treeplanters mulling around getting ready to start the day. I was wearing my classic orange caulk boots, feeling clumsy with their heaviness that I had become unaccustomed to over the years. I stepped on my water bottle, putting several small punctures in it. There went my water for the day. I commented to my fellow planters that I was feeling clumsy in my reaquaintance with planting life as I hauled on my heavy bags filled with trees. I scuttled up the cut-bank feeling that old familiar weight on my knees, the heavy load in my bags making my legs feel compressed. I planted my first spruce tree in a nice shady spot. Good micro-siting! I took a few steps and planted another, properly spaced off the large residual tree left standing. But as I worked my way over the hill within my piece, I noticed a lot of people everywhere, as if camped out. There were hundreds of them. Apparently they were some sort of cult. How was I supposed to plant my piece with a cult hanging out on it? And on the dream went, through a scenario that involved my subsequent negotiations with a cult leader. Who knows what it meant. But it was better than a dream I had many years ago about planting chicken drumsticks (meat side down).

So no bush work for me this year. Perhaps this will be the last time that I consider going back there, into the wild, to earn my living. The winds of fate have blown this little leaf into another office for now. Though I'm sure my dreams of the wild will continue on, as they always have.

Something Better

2010-02-17T15:18:00.004-07:00

There are so many things in one's life that can really put everything into perspective. If you're old enough to read, I'm sure you've gained enough experience to have stumbled upon at least one. Things happen that make us stand back, take stock, and reassess. Alas, I find myself in just such a spot.

Today I got my lay-off letter at work, compliments of the Alberta Government. I'm not the only one. And at least I saw it coming before it was committed to words and conveniently delivered to my desk while I was away on break. I had the "it's not you, it's me" break-up talk with the boss: "it's no reflection on your work, it's just bad timing". And like a break-up that one sees coming, I felt oddly relieved and liberated. I no longer have to skulk around the halls, paranoid about plots against my job stability. I have received my sentencing. Now I can move on.

I don't know if it's due to an innate tendency to avoid cognitive dissonance, but now that I know I'm scheduled to depart, I can honestly embrace all the things about being here that I actually didn't like but avoided admitting to myself before when I thought I might stay. The woman who has it out for me when editing my work; the chick I always bump into in the kitchen who never smiles back at me; the lawyer across the hall who is unresponsive to my friendly communicative gestures. As far as I'm concerned, they can bugger off. I no longer have to expend energy thinking of them in the slightest. And all the issues and files that keep getting assigned to my division: not my problem anymore. If I'm going to face unemployment, then I may as well revel in the pleasure of depleting my responsibility here. I am walking teflon. And it is liberating, my friends, to not care. If only we could practice that more often.

An old acquaintance of mine said to me once, "a sign of insanity is taking your job too seriously". I agree, don't you?

Anyway, I just couldn't resist inserting the trailer for "Up in the Air". But I'm not the guy in the movie who is devastated at losing the job. I am the guy not shown in any of these examples who says, "Oh yeah? Well fuck you. I've got something better in mind anyway".

The View

2010-01-05T13:40:00.005-07:00

A whole new decade stretches out before me. The last one was pretty interesting, and I suspect that this new one promises to be the same.

However, I am hoping that my current state of affairs is no indication as to how this next decade might go. I am now sitting at my desk at work, taking a well-earned break from the monotenous, ever-so-important work I do, with only one boot on and a compulsive temptation to unbutton my pants. It's not that stripping is part of my schtik here. Uh-uh. It's because I bashed the shit out of my foot a week ago from balancing on a very heavy, wet, slippery piece of porch furniture while trying to take the perfect picture of a rainbow. I don't know how things turned ugly, but one minute I was zooming my camera lense, and the next I was dragging my smashed foot out from under the tipped porch chair that weighed as much as a piano. I am now hobbling around the office in the only boots I can tolerate on my feet, and when I'm at my desk, the one boot comes off. As for the compulsive unbuttoning of pants - well, that is from a well-earned 10 pounds that I somehow packed on during holiday indulgences. To make matters worse, I gorged on chocolate macaroons last night to try staving off a PMS melt-down. It actually works, by the way. But I decided this morning that I either take the macaroons to work for everyone else to gorge on, or I will soon be buying a new wardrobe.

I would give you a "Best of 2009" reflection, but someone I know did that recently and it was just too hard a read. All I can say is that just when you think you've climbed high enough up a mountain to get the view you're looking for, you realize that there is still another crest to climb, with an even better view of things you've never seen before, but always wanted to see. That's where I'm at. Climbing. Seeing. Experiencing. And what a view.

Trainwreck

2009-12-16T12:30:00.003-07:00

This is an appropriate title for the Wild One lately. Was down with the Swine flu for a month, and it wasn't pretty. I was crawling on all fours, sniffing garbage, squeeling, and rolling around in mud. Actually, on a more serious note, it was a horrible experience, and though I'm still glad I didn't get vaccinated, this flu put the fear of God into me. It was my own little trainwreck, and I'm glad it's over.

This trainwreck lasted a month. It seemed like forever, but now I'm recovered. I know that we all have little trainwrecks here and there in life, and that's what makes things interesting, right? And that's what Christmas is for. With relatives.

Considering how difficult some of my own trainwrecks have been, I shouldn't gawk and snicker at the wreckages of others. But I can't help it. And the fact that I can't help myself means that I'm feeling healthy again. In the words of our favorite homemaker, "That's a Good Thing". Because if I'm not eating or evil-snickering, something has gone terribly wrong. All my friends know this.

I've been surfing the Lainey Gossip website over lunch hours lately because the weather here has hit record lows, competitive only with Siberian winters. Thankfully I have headphones, because this has entitled me to witness some of the best trainwrecks I've seen in a while. Enjoy. You really can't afford to miss these, so buckle yourself into your seat with a good cup of java and watch these clips. And be glad that your own trainwrecks never looked like this. Or at the very least, that no one was filming you while you had them.

Joaquin Phoenix on Letterman

Billy Bob Thornton meltdown

The Mystery of the Severed Feet

2009-10-30T14:47:00.019-06:00

In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I would write about something creepy. And what is more creepy than several mismatched, detached, decomposed feet washing ashore somewhere.

Since 2007, RCMP on Vancouver Island in B.C. have been stumped (pun intended) about feet that have been washing up on beaches in various Gulf Island communities. The feet are clad in shoes, mostly runners I think. All of the feet, until now, have been right feet. But the last foot that floated to shore the other day was a lefty. No, this foot does not match the others.

The fact that a left foot has made an appearance has CBC speculating that if they get some more left feet washing up, perhaps they can make a pair. My first reaction when I watched the following CBC clip reporting on the mystery of the severed feet was simply, do we really give a shit if we are going to make a PAIR sometime? I mean, are we on Sesame Street here, or would our energy be better put into speculating WHERE THE FEET ARE COMING FROM? I think the CBC on the island need to get off the weed.

For your amusement during these haunted days, I thought I would leave you with this savory little clip. A modern day version of Ichabod Crane, only this story isn't about a headless horseman. It's about bodyless feet. Lots of them.

The Confident Tuna

2009-10-28T11:28:00.010-06:00

I used to be a big fan of CBC. That is, until a couple weeks ago when the whole H1N1 media frenzy began creating mass panic and hysteria.

For almost half a year up until a few nights ago, I would listen to CBC radio while spending time in the kitchen. During any spare time at work, I would scan the media for articles of interest to keep informed of social issues, mostly visiting CBC online. But this whole H1N1 is starting to piss me off. Not because I think it's bad to keep the public aprised of latest developments on the virus. But because of the pandemic of sheer terror being created, for what looks like the sake of pushing vaccines which ultimately profit pharmaceutical companies.

What I find interesting, though, is the number of people who are refusing the vaccine because they don't trust it and want more information. As a person who spent a good year being debilitated from a vaccine that never should have been administered to me, I applaud some of these people for going against the herd and at least asking some questions and being willing to do a little investigative research. These people were willing to peel off the sticker from their forehead that reads, "I BELIEVE EVERYTHING MY GOVERNMENT TELLS ME", long enough to engage in some healthy critical thinking. But for every critical thinker who voices their criticism of the herd mentality, there is a lot of backlash. Critical thinkers are often the black sheep who are labelled as "conspiracy theorists", or "nutbars" while all the other sheep keep their heads down and listen to their herders. In this case the herders are folks in white coats who are peddling a product for corporations who don't always have our best interests at heart. If you are one of those 'rare' statistics that has an 'adverse reaction' to their product, don't expect a Get Well card. Expect a Not our Problem card instead.

CBS has published the findings of some of their investigative research, which shows that the H1N1 virus may not be as widespread as the authorities are making out:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/21/cbsnews_investigates/main5404829.shtml

Their findings show that many cases of common flu are being labelled as H1N1, when in fact they are just common flu. The bottom line is that health authorities no longer know how much H1N1 is out there, because, as they have stated in the media, they have stopped testing for it unless it is a very critical case of illness. Many people in the public are saying that they want to get their sick kids tested for it, but are told by clinics to stay home and avoid infecting others. What a mess. The authorities no longer know the extent of what's really going on.

The World Health Organization isn't liking the resistance they're getting from the herd on this one. And telling by the barrage of media stories about the dangers of H1N1 and the importance of vaccinations (up to four stories a day online), governments are pushing vaccine campaigns into high gear because some of the sheep are breaking free and looking up for a change.

Though I'm not reading anymore CBC online, and I have boycotted CBC radio for a while, I am still getting the odd trickle at work of H1N1 madness. One of the radio transcripts sent to me today really made my morning. Take in mind that radio transcripts often contain many mistakes from the transmission process from sound to print, so a simple phrase like "a can of tuna" could end up coming out as.....something else. This one is my favorite, concerning the H1N1 vaccine:

"THIS CALGARY FAMILY DOCTOR SAYS HE HAD MANY QUESTIONS HIMSELF BUT AFTER CAREFUL REVIEW, HE'S URGING ALL HIS PATIENTS TO GET THE SHOT. ONE POPULAR QUESTION INVOLVES THE PRESENCE OF MERCURY IN THE H1N1 VACCINE, A PRESERVATIVE CALLED THAMERASOL IS LINKED TO RUMORS OF AUTISM BUT THIS HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN.

THIS MERCURY IS AT A VERY LOW LEVEL THAT'S SAFE. THE AVERAGE DOSE YOU'RE GOING GET OUT OF A FLU VACCINATION IS LESS THAN A QUARTER OF WHAT YOU WOULD GET FROM A CONFIDENT TUNA".

But what about a really confident tuna? And does this mean that we get even less amounts of mercury from a tuna with really low self-esteem?

Hey, just askin'.

Creative solutions

2009-10-23T10:45:00.009-06:00

Getting to work on time isn't always easy. Sometimes while we are crawling along in our car at a snail's pace on the traffick-congested road to work, watching cars whizzing by next to us in the carpooling lanes, there is the temptation to join them, no? But what does one do to try avoid getting caught with below the legal limit of passengers for the carpooling lane?

Today, CBC reported a response to this question:

Man caught 'carpooling' with teddy bear
Last Updated: Friday, October 23, 2009 11:36 AM ET

A man in Gatineau is facing hundreds of dollars in fines after trying to pass off a teddy bear as a third passenger while driving in a carpool lane.

Police said the man was caught trying to fool police not once, but twice this week.

Const. Isabelle Poirier of the Gatineau police said officers first stopped the man on Monday, when they spotted a teddy bear buckled into in a rear car seat in the man's vehicle. The bear had been dressed up as a child in fall attire, complete with tuque and scarf.

The man was fined $144 and sent on his way, only to be stopped again the next day trying to pull off the same trick. He was again fined $144.

Poirier said the laws about what qualifies as a passenger are clear.

"This is not a real person. You have to drive in the lane with three people inside [your car]. Three real people."

I love the "Three real people" statement. As if to clarify that though teddy is a person, he's not a 'real' person. This article made my Friday. "What's that teddy? Drive faster you say?"

Now for all of you law-abiding, environmentally righteous folks, I'm sure you feel that justice was served on him for the fines he received. But the deviant in me applauds his creative instincts.

The hostages next door

2009-10-22T12:55:00.000-06:00

Back when I worked for the government in Yellowknife, I remember that upon occasion my colleagues and I might gather at one of the windows on some dark winter day and comment on an approaching lightning storm. It was fun to be away from our desks, looking at something that had nothing to do with work while our Director was conveniently away at some meeting (it was her corner office that we were often peering from). That our jobs made the weather and landscape seem like a mutually entertaining group experience probably says a lot about our jobs. Believe me, we were aware of it, and we looked on with indulged enthusiasm anyway.

My current government job in Edmonton affords the occasional group window-gawking activity, too. However, we are not surrounded by miles of rugged wilderness with a view of endless sky. We are not looking at things like approaching storms rolling along the landscape. We gather to check out things like, oh, hostage taking. But I suspected that what was an unusual diversion from work for me yesterday was just old hat for some of my city slicker comrades.

It all happened when some 'disgruntled' (a favorite adjective of the media in this case) WCB claimant lost it yesterday morning and decided to let his hunting rifle do the rest of the talking with the folks handling his file. And so he arrived a few doors down from us at the WCB building with his rifle packed all ‘inconspicuously’ into its carrying case, and asked a receptionist to see his caseworker. Now I have always been careful to treat the admin staff very well. This is a good example as to why every workplace should have Admin Appreciation days. Because these people are the folks who will be fielding all the nutters for you, like people asking to see you who are carrying full-looking rifle carrying cases.

The details are fuzzy, but apparently this guy fired off a shot in the lobby. Maybe the brave person at the front was doing too good a job at fielding people. Maybe that person was awake enough at that time in the morning to see that in all likelihood, that was not a guitar case the fellow was carrying. Regardless of any questions asked or accesses denied, the armed man headed for the 8th floor where all the caseworkers and adjudicators were. When he got there, he stuffed nine of them into the boardroom, and stayed there for a long time while the entire Edmonton police force and media assembled outside.

It was quite a view from the top floor of my work building. A big mess all around us of cops, cars, flashing lights, armed trucks, SWAT teams, and blockade tape. It stayed like that for the whole day while hostage negotiators tried to reason with the guy. One lucky hostage got let go early, in exchange for water and cigarettes for his captor. Don’t get me wrong - I empathize for those poor people who were traumatized by the incident - but I thought it would be funny if the hostage taker also asked for someone to put money in his parking meter so he wouldn't get a ticket.

It all ended as best as a situation like that can, with the hostages let go at the end of the day unharmed. Though I’m pretty certain he isn’t going to get his claim reconsidered now. What I wonder is if those traumatized WCB workers will have the nerve to ask for coverage for days off needed to recover, and if so, if they will get screwed over by WCB like everyone else. I also wonder if there will be job vacancies coming up there. Yes, I’m currently on a term job, and no, I’m not going to apply there.

It's interesting that so many people commenting on media sites took sides with the hostage taker, saying that WCB had it coming. I read some of the commentaries to a CBC article about it yesterday, and found some good ones that made me snicker:

Well they ain't going to compensate him if he injures himself now.

I hope they don't use a taser on the person. That would be cruel.

I sure hope all the people involved in this get out safely... and I really hope they don't have to apply for WCB because of anything that happens.

Anyway, that was yesterday's highlight. Back to my desk.

Boobs Beware

2009-10-16T12:11:00.001-06:00

Hot date tomorrow night, and I wanna look good. So on my lunch break I quickly trundled to the mall amidst the crowds in hopes of finding something to wear.

Now I realize I’m not a total bombshell. I was in Italy last year and I know what’s out there in real living flesh. But just because I wasn’t designed in the image of an Italian princess, such as the one George Clooney has hanging off his arms these days, doesn’t mean I’m unworkable. So when I walk into a store these days, I’m feeling optimistic that there is ‘something for everyone’, including me.

I walk into JACOB while in the mall and am surrounded by stylish clothes. I’m thinking in terms of a dress, or a skirt. It’s my lunch hour, so my eyes are quickly scanning the room. Aha! There are some dresses that look cute and um…date enhancing. I pick them off the rack and head to the change room with flinty determination.

Sometimes the change room experience can be a downer before even starting to get changed. The downcast lighting seems to make shadows on EVERYTHING. Maybe this was okay when I was 18, but not anymore. But this change room is nicely lit. I look at myself without wishing I could ask someone to please dim the lights. Women are so hard on ourselves, so I’m glad that this JACOB store goes easy on us. Whatever lighting they have, I want it in my bathroom.

I reach excitedly for the dress that awaits my eager clutches on the hanger. It slips on, and I’m thinking, yeah, alright, THIS little number is just what I'm looking for. And then I try to do up the zipper on the side. I give it a little tug. Nothing. I pull with a bit more force. Nada. I squeeze the two sides together at the top in order to ease the zipper’s passage. No chance. And the problem is obvious. My boobs are too big.

But there is no way that I’m a quitter. The dress otherwise fits quite nicely. I’m determined. So I take off the dress, do up the zipper, and try slipping it over my head. I get it to around my shoulders and keep pulling in hopes that it's going to pass over my chest. Then it is stuck. Now I can’t get it on, or off. One of the staff asks through the door how I’m making out. I try to sound all casual while feeling like it’s going to take the Jaws of Life to get this dress off me unscathed.

After all the wiggling and shifting and grunting, the dress that did fit, of course, was the one that had the polka dots. But there was no bloody way I was going on a hot date looking like June Cleaver, even if some of you think that’s kinky. So I left empty handed, and sped back to work thinking that, despite my failed endeavor, I was hopefully burning off some “upper body” weight (as my chiropractor often refers to my chest - the root of my back issues). I don’t know what I’m going to wear tomorrow night.

I was wrong. There isn’t ‘something for everyone’. Boobs beware. The world is cut for flat-chested women.

Ode to Helen

2009-10-14T20:33:00.017-06:00

A very good friend of mine who happens to be a writer told me upon many an occassion that in order to really get anywhere with writing, you have to put your "ass to chair" and just do it. And you have to do it regularly. So I started Blogging, because for years, I had been writing daily in my journals, which no soul gets to read, and the fact that my words were hidden apparently wasn't conducive to creatively honing a craft. Rather, it was mostly a bunch of moaning and pondering. I have some loose convictions about burning those journals, but it almost seems sacreligious to burn all that writing and all those memories.

Anyway.

I had discussed this Blog with my friend, and said there are many things that I feel inhibited about writing in it. Perhaps things about my personal life, or my real thoughts on sensitive matters, or my emotional reactions, or anything that others might really 'hang me out to dry' with. Her response was that in order for writing to be interesting, you have to make it real. It has to be honest. And that you cannot control how other people react to it. So just 'go for it', she said.

I think her advice is more broad reaching than just publishing one's written thoughts. It has to do with life. Why don't we put ourselves 'out there' more? Why don't we smile at the strangers in the street more often? Why don't we say hello to people we don't know at work upon passing in the hallway? Why don't we say what we really mean, and why don't we really mean what we sometimes say? Why are we so discreet about our personal lives, or about who we really are? Why are we afraid to be goofy in front of people we don't know? What happened to our devil-may-care childishness, our innocence and careless enthusiasm? Where did our openess go?

Here is an example of what happens to it:

I got this weird comment from a "Helen P." today, in response to my Blog post called "The Underling". Her post was simply asking how old I was, and to "Wake up". I guess it's not bad to have a Blog for a year and a half, and never have an asshole leave a dump on it (until now). In fact, perhaps that someone cared enough to actually leave a comment should be a compliment. But that aside, I was intrigued that someone would not only tell me to "wake up" because I was baffled by my boss wiping her glasses on my scarf, but that a person would care to leave that kind of a footprint on someone else's day by writing a rude message on a silly little Blog.

I really don't care about whether this person is or isn't titilated by my daily (or, more likely, 'once-in-a-while') rants. The other comment they left on another posting was just as asinine. But it does lead me back to my previous point about why people don't put themselves 'out there' more often; why people in our society curl up and shut down. Why people don't smile to strangers, or spontaneously try to get to know the people in the elevator at work whom they have probably seen a dozen times. It is because of the Helen P.'s of the world.

Well I have something for the Helen P.'s of the world. Because I refuse to 'Wake up', and prefer to keep one foot in the sandbox (as advised by one of my wise 50+ year old girlfriends), and because immaturity is fun, and I absolutely love being a little shit sometimes, I am dedicating this song to Ms. Helen P. as my Ode to Helen.

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch.
You really are a heel.
You're as cuddly as a cactus,
You're as charming as an eel.
Mr. Grinch.

You're a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.

You're a monster, Mr. Grinch.
Your heart's an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders,
You've got garlic in your soul.
Mr. Grinch.

I wouldn't touch you,
with athirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.

You're a vile one, Mr. Grinch.
You have termites in your smile.
You have all the tender sweetness
Of a seasick crocodile.
Mr. Grinch.

Given the choice between the two of you
I'd take the seasick crockodile.

You're a foul one, Mr. Grinch.
You're a nasty, wasty skunk.
Your heart is full of unwashed socks
Your soul is full of gunk.
Mr. Grinch.

The three words that best describe you,
are as follows, and I quote: "STINK, STANK, STUNK"!

You're a rotter, Mr. Grinch.
You're the king of sinful sots.
Your heart's a dead tomato splotched
With moldy purple spots, Mr. Grinch.

Your soul is an apalling dump heap overflowing
with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable
rubbish imaginable,
Mangled up in tangled up knots.

You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch.
With a nauseaus super-naus.
You're a crooked jerky jockey
And you drive a crooked hoss.
Mr. Grinch.

You're a three decker saurkraut and toadstool sandwich
With arsenic sauce!

Coffee snobbery

2009-10-08T15:39:00.003-06:00

I am sometimes surprised by the limitless variations on coffee order specifications at Starbucks these days. I’m sure it’s nothing new in the world of seasoned Starbucks consumers, but to me, some of the orders I overhear repeated by baristas have me wondering if some folks here in the first world need to tone it down a bit.

See, there is a brand of coffee drinker out there who isn’t just into 'good' coffee. It’s not about whether the roast is too bitter or too dark. It’s about entitlement, whim, and the sense of status that likely comes with being able to afford to spend $5 on a coffee that has a name which no one but an experienced barista can understand. They have taken their coffee consumption to a whole different level that says more about their psychoses than their taste or dietary preferences.

Today, while waiting for my simple little decaf Americano, I heard the usual calls from the register to the baristas for things like a “tall, skinny, caramel, no-whip, soy macchiato”, and a “grande vanilla, skim, no-foam latte”. It was the usual coffee snob fare that I long ago seized to blink an eye at. I finally got my unfancified coffee and headed to the cream and sugar stand to doctor it into something a little more fabulous. And then I heard a barista repeat an order: “104 degree grande latte!”. That one stopped me in my tracks. Someone specified the temperature of their coffee? And this was acceptable?

I looked over at the guy next to me. He looked at me. We were both thinking the same thing. He says, “I like my coffee at 140 degrees”. I laughed. I also had the urge to tell the person who placed that order to fuck off.

The Underling

2009-10-07T11:33:00.005-06:00

Apologies to my faithful readers out there – if I have any. I have been a negligent Blogger, though in the passing days my mind fills with all manner of things to write about. Mostly to do with my bus rides, but I’ve refrained from those rants for fear that I may have to change the name of my Blog if I keep it up.

Having managed another means of transport to and from work for the time being, my mind is free from the dark, convoluted journeys on the transit system. Despite that, life still manages to maintain its everyday dramas.

Here’s one.

In my previous post, I sung my praises and bewilderment about Galadriel, my boss who I’ve renamed based on her likeness to a dreamy elven queen. Oh how she glides. Oh how she dresses. Oh how glamorous and talented. Glowing skin, perfect demeanor, all that.

But this little elven queen has been playing with the ring of power.

She enters my office yesterday after 4 days of being sick. Already I am shrinking back in my skin, hoping she’s not going to be breathing Ebola all over me. Save that for the busses. But she comes no further while we are exchanging our daily greetings and updates. All is good. I relax. Everyone is smiling. Then she takes off her glasses, and reaches for my Italian silk scarf that is hanging ever so vulnerable next to the doorway. She uses this scarf to clean her glasses.

I don’t know what my expression was. I think I was still clinging to the shreds of a smile that I had worn only moments before. Maybe my mouth was open, though I was trying to stop my jaw from hitting the floor. All the while, the only thing going through my mind was, “you…are….wiping your glasses…on my clothes?”

I’m still confused. So was the person I told later on, who said they have never heard of anything like that before. It was suggested to me that I should go into her office and blow my nose in her scarf and see how it goes over. I already know where that would lead to, and I’m not going there.

What can I say. I’m an underling. The moment defined that for me. But even if I wasn’t an underling, I wouldn’t use someone else’s clothes to wipe the muck off my glasses. Even as an underling, I don’t use other people’s clothes to de-muck my stuff.

Perhaps this incident could have been the universe responding to my previous post, in which I said, "Like a battle-worn, beardy dwarf, all I can do is look upon the glitter with awe, hoping that perhaps a few of those sparklies will fall upon me". Well, if there were sprinkles to be had, they are now embedded in my scarf. I guess I should feel blessed to be so bequethed.

But all I can say is that there has been a perception shift. No more elven queen. Just a regular boss with nice clothes and strange manners.

Galadriel

2009-08-20T19:27:00.008-06:00

Days ago, I plugged in a Facebook status: "My boss rocks". I got a few responses, such as "you deserve it", and "I don't believe such a thing exists". I wrote that status after I went out for lunch with my boss, then off to Winners to shop for the remainder of our generous lunch hour (when you're with the boss, you can get away with 'stretching' lunch). So far, I really like my boss. She's nice to me. She is communicative. She appreciates my work and strategically says things to improve my sense of self-efficacy, which is a 5-star quality of leadership that most people in management seem to lack. I keep wondering if this could all be true. I'm afraid that it's a hoax of some sort.

But it's not just all about how nice it is so far to work for my boss. My boss fascinates me. She shows up every day sharply dressed in perfectly tailored clothes, glowing skin, and immaculately sculpted hair that appears not to be bound with sticky spray. Everything she says is expressed with complete self-assurance. She exudes health and beauty. She eats organic snap peas and bowls of blueberries for a snack. There is a small china bowl full of cherries on her desk at all times. She drinks decaf, and doesn't eat sugar. She has raised 3 daughters, as well as 2 adopted boys, all the while through those years working out and staying in shape. She still stays in shape by exercising over her lunch breaks: 1/2 hour runs. She does this despite the demands of being a Director. But that's not all. She has a massive multi-story house in some paradisacal part of the city, wrapped with numerous porches and surrounded by a yard comprised of tiered gardens. Every room in the house is perfectly decorated according to a theme; every object in those rooms has a purpose. For all of her daughter's weddings, she designed and sewed the dresses, because aside from everything else she does, she is a tailor. On her vacations, she sails on the west coast of B.C., and gets perfectly tanned. She is still perfectly tanned.

Normally I would be shaking my head, thinking "this can't be true, this can't be true". But it is. Such a person exists. Galadriel, the elven queen, in the flesh, working under the guise of a Director within the Alberta government. And she's my boss.

Like a battle-worn, beardy dwarf, all I can do is look upon the glitter with awe, hoping that perhaps a few of those sparklies will fall upon me.

The Bus

2009-08-11T12:14:00.009-06:00

I know myself well enough to foresee when a new thing will lose its charm. Not all new things lose their shine. But the bus ride to and from work definitely has.
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Surprisingly, it’s not even the nauseating bump and grind of the see-saw hell ride itself. It’s not the 40 minutes of mind-numbing boredom, or the same old scenery passing by from day to day. It’s not the quirky bus drivers, or the hair-curdling screech of the tires as they grind to a halt every couple minutes. Rather, it’s the freaks on the bus. And I knew on my first day of riding the bus that the novelty of the ride would be quickly worn down by those freaks.
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I now understand why the seasoned bus folks wear head phones. It’s to remove oneself from the slushpit of human psyche hideously confined within the tin can. This reminds me, I need to buy batteries for my gear so I can do the same. Perhaps then, I’ll be able to tune out the woman who compulsively chews gum every morning, producing a popping bubble every ten seconds. Or how about the guy who grunts every time he exhales air. Or the chick who talks to herself (I told myself that she’s probably wearing a cell phone headset and talking with a friend, until I saw that she wasn’t).
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It's fascinating how everyone in the front of the bus, at least within my view, slips into a heavy slumber on the way home. Kind of like natural, temporary, self-induced euthenasia. Yesterday I was noticing that absolutely every one of them had their eyes closed. One woman’s head was bobbing around loosely and, in an attempt to escape boredom, I watched for the moment when it was going to smack her neighbor in the chops. Admittedly, it wasn’t long before my eyes were closed, being lulled into oblivion by the alluring states of mind of those around me. That is, until the bus jerked to a halt, which happens about every 2 minutes. There goes the knot in my neck, tied just a little tighter.

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What I find amusing is that my car quit on me the day before I purchased my bus pass. She knew of my plans, and had some plans of her own: retirement. “Now that you’re all taken care of, I’ll be here in the driveway. For good”.
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Um, I don’t think so, car. The bus sucks. You’re going to the garage.

Fashion a-foot

2009-07-31T12:48:00.008-06:00

So I took my shot today at wearing traditional feminine attire. It's 'formal day' at work today because the Deputy Minister's assistant just bought a convertable, and she said she would take the best-dressed person out for a jaunt in it. Though I didn't necessarily want to go joy-riding with the DM's assistant over lunch, nor did I think I would be the 'chosen one', I thought it would be nice to participate as the office newby that I am.

I picked through my tickle trunk this morning, and there really wasn't anything glamorous in there. The stuff I have is more along the lines of 'costume': a medieval gown, a plastic dress, go-go dresses, a spiked collar. That kind of thing. But I did have one nice cotton dress from Turkey, and a pair of heels to go with it. I've worn those heels once, to a wedding.

I'll admit that I feel pretty conspicuous in a dress and pumps. As I walked to the bus stop this morning in my hell-heels, I wondered how on earth women everywhere could manage in them. I see women in them every day. The numbness from my crumpled toes immediately made me think of Japanese foot binding, whereby it used to be common practice in Japan for women to wear special shoes designed to make their feet small. Despite Japanese patriarchal conventions prescribing small feet as an indicator of femininity, the underlying dynamic has more to do with constricting women's power in a general sense.

And so there I was in my heels, thinking to myself that suddenly my mobility has been diminished, and that I had actually signed up for it. How uncharacteristic of me. And for what? Although wearing high heels may not be so extreme as Japanese foot-binding, I was really questioning the sense of fashion in our culture, all the while trying hard not to look like I was hobbling down the street. I wondered if I was actually going to make it from the bus stop to the office in those things. I tried using my hips more to walk, as nothing below the knee worked very well. What a mess.

Despite my plans to be a participant in the goings-on of the office today, I knew myself well enough to pack my sandals. You can be sure that immediately upon reaching my office, the pumps went back in the bag. Good riddens!

In case you're curious, the picture shown here is a result of Japanese foot binding. Yes, her toes are wrapped around her foot. That's how my feet felt this morning.

I'd say that at least wearing the dress was a redeeming experience, but as I was crossing the street today at lunch, the whole bottom of my dress fanned out like an umbrella, caught wind, and almost blew right up in my face. No, I didn't feel like Marilyn Monroe. Glad I decided to wear underwear.

When I get home today, I'm putting on my jeans.

Green is Good

2009-07-29T19:03:00.001-06:00

Third day at the new job rocks. With the legislative assembly only a few blocks away, I took my first stroll through the grounds over my lunch break, and it was spectacular. Beautiful green lawns spread wide under huge deciduous trees and blue spruce, dappled here and there with gardens, benches, and special little pathways. The hobbit in me was in downright ecstasy. Did I mention that within a two block radius from where I work, there is a Tim Hortons? Dangerously within arms reach of the iced cappuccino, folks. Dangerous. 'Tis my weakness, those are. And today I discovered that they unfortunately don't mix well with bus rides. Don't know why, but I'm sure my neighbor on the bus bench wouldn't have been too interested in causal explainations after my near-barfing experience in mid-transit. I was fucking GREEN by the time I got home.

Ah yes, the bus ride. I ride the bus to and from work - a 45 minute ride each way - to avoid the heavy cost of parking downtown. I haven't ridden the bus in years, so it has become quite the novel experience (the novelty of which just wore off today I think). Even after just a few days I'm beginning to notice some familiar faces on my route. There's the Italian looking cougar whose high-heeled adorned feet almost made me lose my lunch for all the horrors she seems to have put them through in those shoes. Varicose veins like snakes running from ankle to toe, looking like they are going to burst and squirt me in the eye. Gross. And then there is this wee little woman who looks exhausted all the time; wasn't a surprise the first time I heard her squeak. She sounds like a talking doll. The bus can be interesting for character studies, but sometimes the study gets a little too intimate when the bus starts to fill and people have to stand in the isle. At that point, I'm dodging exposed sweaty armpits while people hang on like chimps to the overhead belts, or getting bumped by someone's extended gut as they are banged around the isle like chubby bumper cars. It's all good.

So how's the new job, you say? The people are really nice and I get to be on the top floor with all the other hoitey-toitey government Ministry staff. I'm a policy analyst, and we often get put on the same floor with Deputy Ministers. This makes for a nice view when I can get to a window. All of the people are incredibly friendly and helpful, with the only quirk so far being that one of the female admin staff seems to look at my boobs a lot. But who can blame her? They seem to be growing exponentially with the size of my gut these days. Maybe right in front of her eyes, by the amount of attention they are garnering from her.

Anyway, folks, the wild one needs some exercise, and I better go do it before I change my mind. Maybe I'll cram down another piece of peanut-butter toast for good measure before-hand.

Ciao, bella!

Transition

2009-07-23T15:06:00.000-06:00

It's quite the adventure leaving a place and starting something new elsewhere, especially when it all begins with a 17 hour drive.
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Just over 3 weeks ago, I woke up at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night - when most Yellowknife drunks are only just barely getting numb at the local pub - showered, gathered a few scant things laying around a house that was no longer mine, and said my goodbyes. The cats were already up, pacing in preparation for my departure because, of course, cats know everything. It was a strange goodbye with them. Neither one really wanted the fuss of me crying in their fur. Lumpy tried to squirm out of my arms. Puss farted on me (a token odour that stayed with me for several hours).

It was strange leaving the house at 2:30 in the morning. It was a lot darker than I thought it would be; I thought the northern 'midnight sun' that had been keeping me up on recent summer nights would shed light on my departure. Instead, there was an ominous glow to the dim hour of my last glimpse of my former home. Puss watched me drive away from my empty office window, a behavior so unusual that the memory of it has been deeply singed into me and has brought me to many sober moments since.

With a car so loaded that I could feel my tires groaning under the weight, I rolled with heavy heart along a dismal, lonely highway. There was a lot to think about, but my mind was preoccupied for the first hour with wondering if my vehicle was actually going to make it over the 1,500 kms it was going to take to get to Edmonton. I rarely saw another vehicle on the road. And so I quietly sipped my hot chocolate while watching the rugged landscape pass me by like an old barren dream. I saw many small herds of buffalo beside the road, and passed by a wandering coyote. I tried to reflect on the last 4 years since I had travelled that road in that very same packed car on the way up to Yellowknife, but the severance was too fresh to gain any perspective. Sometimes you have to stand back to get the view.

It's almost been a month that I've been in Edmonton, and any concerns I had that I might regret the move here have diminished completely. I'm not a city girl, but I have to say that I actually like Edmonton. For a city, that is. The people are surprisingly friendly, the landscape shows signs of life, and there are endless things to do. As the days pass, I look back on my old Yellowknife life, and already it is an old skin that feels like it belongs to someone else. I wonder if in time I will ever miss anything about the north, save for a few special people, and the cats that I left behind. Yes, the cats. I've had a few meltdowns over letting them go. But the good news is that I'm not breaking out in hives anymore, I'm not sneezing and rubbing itchy eyes, and I feel a lot more clear.

I guess there are always blessings to be found in every situation if one looks for them.

And so begins a new chapter. Yellowknife had some hard lessons. I don't know why. Some lessons are just like that. But a close friend recently reminded me that not all learning has to be hard. It can be fun, too. And so with a lighter heart and a pocket full of optimism, I forge ahead into the new.

Goodbyes

2009-06-14T12:25:00.010-06:00

There are a million different ways to say goodbye. Some goodbyes are casual, over-the-shoulder affairs. Some are teary, heart hammering whispers forced through clenched throats. Some goodbyes really aren't said, but are delivered silently on the wind to their unknowing recipients. Some feel surprisingly relieving. Some leave us with a lot to think about in the time to come.

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I will cover the whole spectrum of goodbyes in the next couple weeks.
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In 13 days, I will climb into my car in the early hours of Saturday morning after carefully checking that my red kayak is securely fastened to the roof. That will be my last physical act taken with my feet still planted on the ground in Yellowknife. Then I'll hop in the car as if it were a time capsule ready for lift-off, and take a big breath, hoping enough air gets past the big lump in my throat. I'll put the gear in reverse, wave goodbye, and head down the neighborhood road in the direction I always do when I am on my way to work. But at the last intersection, I will take a different path. I'll turn left on the highway instead of right this time, and I will follow that highway down for over 1,000 kms before I take any other significant turns.

I will travel under the vast open skies of the North, through an endless expanse of wilderness. I'll see buffalo, coyote, and fox. I'll think about the only other time that I've driven that road, which was four years ago in the very same car, on the way up. I will have a lot of time to think while I'm alone in that car. But then, I don't really consider that I'll be alone. I'll be with a whole lot of people in my mind; all the people I've come to know in four years, including a few special ones that I would call true friends.

Thinking of leaving Yellowknife brings me sadness, and I'm not sure why. I never fell in love with this place. I've tried to appreciate its rugged, barren wasteland appeal, but it didn't really shine for me. Perhaps a few times last summer when I biked up the highway, the landscape sang for me while I listened to the wind in the grass and saw the sun in the trees. But mostly the magic was hidden like a secret to this little west-coaster. And a couple of the jobs I took here felt more like doing hard time, paying some kind of karmic penance for evils done in a past life (what a tyrrant I must have been). For the first time in my life, I became chronically ill, and for a prolonged period of time. There are a list of shortcomings I found in this dusty, dry little town, but I don't intend to indulge in them. When I drive away, I will probably think about some of them, but I will also think of what I've learned and how I'm going to use it to move forward. I will think of it as a rite of passage in my life. A passage into what will become more clear to me in time.

I know that by my second day of driving, the departure from my driveway will already seem like a world away. All the tears I've cried will have been spent over the course of the first 700 kms on the day before. On the second day, when I hop into my car, I'll be ready to enter into another phase of my life. I'll have closed the old door. I'll be walking through a new one. It might feel like breathing air for the first time.

The Feather

2009-04-17T23:03:00.003-06:00

Sometimes when I sit in front of an empty page, I don't know what is going to spill out from the keyboard. There usually isn't much of a plan. Just a blank page. But today is different. For the past couple weeks a memory has been pushing against the threshold of my awareness. Today it broke through. I think it's calling me back to an important lesson I learned long ago about finding a blessing in hard times.

In the spring of 1992, while I was a young hippie treeplanter in the open clearcut spaces of B.C., I met a Cree woman named Kathy Jacobson. I've always felt an affinity with Cree people because my grandmother was Cree, and therefore it's a part of me also. Sometimes I think Kathy was put in my path because my grandmother had passed on when I was young, and therefore was never around to teach me the important things I needed to know in order to receive guidance on my journey. If I ever catch up with my grandmother, I'll have to ask her about that one.

Kathy, who referred to herself as 'Wandering Spirit', was only in my treeplanting camp for a short while, eventually deciding that planting trees just wasn't as enlightening an experience as she thought it would be. But in the short time she was with us, we were very close. I managed to arrange that we treeplant together while working, using the excuse that I could mentor her on her planting technique. Instead, she was really mentoring me. We would drop our planting bags in the middle of our piece once the foreman was no longer in sight, and lay flat on our backs, looking up at the clear blue skies of springtime. Wandering Spirit told me about sacred messages. She said we are constantly being given guidance, but we just need to listen. She also told me that when your soulmate is nearby, things appear in two's. At that exact moment, two blue-winged butterflies flew together to touch briefly before our eyes, then departed again. It didn't seem odd. The world was a different place when Wandering Spirit told me things. Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of trees planted when we were together. But that didn't matter.

One of the things she said that always stayed with me was that sometimes a special feather will be put in our path. It's a sacred feather meant to signify that a great blessing is being given. Since she told me that, I had come across many feathers over the years. Among them, there was one that was very special.

I found this feather 4 years after I last saw Wandering Spirit, in the summer of '96. It seemed like a lot had happened in the years since I had seen her. I had moved to Bella Coola, bought property there, and started building a home with my partner at the time. But something had happened suddenly that shattered the foundations of what I had built my life on. I felt eviscerated by the force with which my beliefs had been torn from me. I was so raw that it seemed I had no skin to protect me from the elements. As I was processing the rush of pain like tiny shards of glass, I drove my car down the country road towards my home, the passing farms just a hazy vision as I sped through the open valley.

I clenched the steering wheel and drove faster. The summer wind whipped my hair into my stinging eyes while parts of me felt like they were flying out of the open windows. I let out one big sigh as if it were the last breath I had left in me. I stared straight ahead, trying to numb my thoughts until I could make it home. I quickly approached the Saloompt River bridge, beside which I often spent afternoons fly-fishing on much better days. Those days had seemed like they had belonged to someone else's life.

And then there it was. The feather. It was right in the middle of my car's path - the largest eagle feather I had ever seen. On any other day I would have stopped my car and picked it up. Feathers are blessings. But not that day. I ran it over. And while I drove away, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw it float on the wind of my wake, dancing high in the air. "Fuck blessings", I gasped.

I pulled into my driveway minutes later, turned the car off, and sat silently frozen to my seat. I stared at the towering mountain across the valley. The rest of the pain I had been sheltering myself from in order to make it home seared my eyes like fire until I was blind. I didn't have the energy to get out of the car, and so I sat there for a while.

It wasn't long before I heard something at the foot of the driveway. I looked in my car's side mirror and saw that it was my friend Rosalind. I hadn't seen her in months. She had no idea of what I was going through at the time, and I didn't feel like telling her. I also didn't want her to see me in that shape, so I quickly dried my eyes and put on a smile as I emerged from the car.

The first thing I saw after we said hello was a large eagle feather in her hand. "I found this on the bridge back there", she told me. "Here, it was meant for you". And as she passed the feather to me, something shifted. She didn't know that something special had just happened, but I did. After she left I sat in my yard, holding that feather and staring out at the mountains, wondering. I knew that the feather, which I had initially rejected in blindness, was a message showing me that somewhere in all this suffering was one of life's great blessings. That feather wasn't going to let me get away from what it needed to show me. As I sat there holding it, I didn't know what the blessing was that I was supposed to see. But I kept looking, and in time, I saw it all very clearly.

Then, I needed that feather. I could no longer see. I had become lost. But that feather showed me something. It was like a tap on the shoulder that said, "This is not all for nothing. Your suffering is only the shedding of your old skin as you enter into the new. This is a lesson. So listen carefully". And so I listened, and gained some wisdom. I learned how to see pain differently. With new, unpracticed wings, I learned grace for the first time in my life. Though I still bumble along in my clumsy flight through life, this grace comes through every now and again.

Whenever I go through a hard lesson like that one, I think of that feather. I go to my room where it sits on my shelf amidst stacks of books and scattered sea shells. It doesn't look as big as it once did. But it doesn't need to anymore.

Resurrection

2009-04-12T11:00:00.007-06:00

Snow and ice quickly recede under the strong, sunny spring tides of Yellowknife. Water drips from my roof, rhythmically gathering in shiny puddles. People walk outside on dry roads wearing sunglasses to shield themselves from the intensifying sun. The effluence of trash, previously trapped and held in the clutches of winter for eight months, is now transiently making its rounds through the awakening city streets.

Every day now, life is resurrected from winter hybernation. The garden pots on the deck begin to emerge from their icy prisons, igniting anticipatory daydreams of when I will sit quietly next to them to revel in my growing herbs and flowers. I look forward to the peaceful times I will spend outside in the months to come, listening to small, chatty birds sing the rest of the sleeping world awake. I will lay in the sun like a lion, basking in the sun's heat and letting the wind carry my thoughts away as they lazily unravel themselves.

Today I stood by the barbeque on the deck, turning smokies and closing my eyes momentarily to feel the fresh cool breeze on my grey winter skin. The neighbor's bamboo windchimes clunked hollow in the breeze. Busy ravens called to each other, their voices muffled in the distance. There wasn't anything else going through my mind. It was a perfect moment.

The Date

2009-04-10T09:34:00.015-06:00

I have no idea what's ahead, but last night's conversation with a friend of mine had me sputtering over my fears of being a single woman.
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This friend of mine had gone out on a blind date with a guy recently. As soon as she said that, I was cringing. Those of you who are familiar with the show "Sex and the City" know that these stories never seem to end well. Apparently my friend and this guy had exchanged pictures and correspondence with one another before ever meeting. Her pictures were recent, and she was pretty up front about who she was. She had assumed the same about him. She was really eager to meet this incredibly handsome guy (who apparently spends all his time exercising and certainly looked that way from the photo). He sounded outgoing, adventurous, creative, and very sensitive. A bit of a rough-and-tumble guy and an intellectual all wrapped up in one little burrito. Over the course of a week while they corresponded online, she had conjured up a distinct image of who this guy was, and became increasingly excited to meet him. He seemed just as eager to cut to the chase and meet up, which she interpreted as a sign that he wasn't hiding anything. So they made arrangements to meet up for coffee as soon as possible.

She arrived early at the coffee shop because she was so nervous about meeting this fellow, and sat there sweating it out over a cup of coffee while waiting for the big mystery to come walking through the door. He had told her what he would be wearing so she would know for sure it was him. When he did make it through the door, she knew it was him right away. But had he not given her a description of his clothes, she said that she would never have known that he was her date. He looked old enough to be her grandfather.

She told me she had been in shock, but being too nice of a person, decided to plow through the date politely. He was a nice enough guy, it seemed. While she sat there, she could see a shadow of the person who was represented in the picture he had given her. She told me that she couldn't decide what was more disturbing: the process of seeing someone age 20 years instantaneously just by simply walking through a door, or the fact that she was blatantly deceived by his misrepresentation of himself. She watched him go up and get a coffee. All he had talked about prior to meeting was how athletic he was. But the man before her had too big of a ponch for that apparently.

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When he finally sat down, he did all the talking. He never asked her one question about herself. She asked all the questions to fill the space. He eagerly answered them all. And in between his animated sentences, she said, he eyed her voraciously like a hungry wolf. She quickly understood why, in all likelihood, he didn't really care about what she had to say.

When she got home, she was in shock still. She called me, and with a deadpan voice, told me about everything in fine detail, saying that she was too shocked to even know how to react. "I feel like I just came off a date with my dad", she said. "I feel gross". I told her never to go on another blind date. I suppose that's all the advice I could give to someone so momentarily shattered and fragile. When I finally put the phone down, I felt her experience hovering close by like a shadow in the corner. It was that "oh god, what am I in for" kind of feeling. It was the recollection of all my past dating experiences, and the trepidation about the ones to come. Listening to my other girlfriend tell me only days ago that she found the love of her life after being single for only a month was easier on the ears.

I suppose the wisest thing to do is move forward, step by step, without any expectations whatsoever.

But I'm just not that kind of girl.

Sweat

2009-04-01T20:45:00.000-06:00

Another good day. I had some laughs at work, held my head high, and focussed on positive thoughts. I felt open. Not so raw.
.

In the afternoon I fell asleep next to the cat on the livingroom floor in a patch of sunshine. It felt warm against my dark clothes. As the sunbeam made its passage further west, I awoke and decided to go for a long walk.

I felt a bit like Forrest Gump out there, the time when he just decided to take off running from his driveway and kept on going through several states. I just walked and walked and walked. Thoughts came and went. Little barky dogs tried to accost my ankles as I trundled by their snowy driveways. I passed people on the sidewalk who gave me half smiles. I felt clear, relaxed. When I came to a point where I usually turn around and come back home, I kept on walking further. I felt like I could have kept walking right out of Yellowknife, down the highway and into Alberta. Finally I looped around through some neighbourhoods to come home. But I seriously almost just did the whole route again.

Instead I came inside the house, and shortly after, I hopped onto the elliptical trainer. I cranked the music and pumped away on that machine like I was never going to stop. I actually had to mentally intervene with my desire to just keep exercising into infinity. But when I got off the machine, I lifted weights, I did crunches. It was like I was still trying to fill this new empty space with something. Something alive and agressive. Sweaty.

I had to laugh then, because I recalled a memory of when I was single a number of years ago and living with one of my best friends. I rode my bike for an hour every day. Then I would come home and do at least 200 crunches. I kick-boxed in the garage. I went to the gym. I was unbelievably fit. I had six-pack abs for the first time in my life. Finally one day she said to me "Dude. You need to get laid".

I'm not sure if this still applies, but it sure made me laugh.

p.s. I know what you're thinking.

Alive

2009-03-31T10:25:00.010-06:00

Today has been a good day so far. The alarm went off this morning at 7 a.m., and instead of gaining consciousness with the looming burden of dread that has been sitting on my shoulder for the past few days, I tried to peel myself off the sheets looking forward to whatever good things may be coming that I have recently tried to make room in my life for. Slowly I tried again to accept this new skin, though it pricks like a thousand tiny needles when I wake up to a tender new world every morning.

*
It seems that whenever I go through life comfortably, I forget how resilent I can be. I forget that I know how to forge ahead, that I have unwavering determination, and that I am, of all things, an unrelenting optimist. When I'm comfortable and settled, I am tuned into one channel, one frequency, and my body and mind hover there, half-dazed and lazy. But when big change happens, and I shatter the thin shell that has enveloped me for so long, I feel electric. It's like all my senses are amplified. I feel raw, open, exposed. The ordinary takes on new qualities that I hadn't noticed before. Serendipity becomes the norm. Strange and beautiful things happen.
*

Deciding to do something life-altering is kind of like standing atop a high ocean cliff, looking down at the black, icy water, knowing that even though you have a choice not to jump, there is only one choice you are really going to give yourself. You know that the cold water is going to hurt like knives when you cut through the surface. You know you're going to be a bit disoriented when you're under. You know that you could be pulled deeper into fierce currents. You could bash your head on the rocks.

And then you jump. During those infinitesimal seconds that follow, every emotion you've ever been capable of races through your mind in a flash before you hit the water. But once you're in, you've never felt so alive.

Magneto

2009-03-30T14:44:00.005-06:00

I seem to have become an interesting phenomenon today. I'm not sure if it's because a friend of mine has been hammering away at me to repeat mantras such as "I will attract to myself everything I need in my life" or not. I feel blessed by all the loving people in my life who are scooping me up and dusting me off and giving me mantras to get me through the day, but maybe I need to take it down a notch for the sake of my safety.
*

In the Co-op today, I was a planetary force unto myself. An unstoppable magnet for things I needed. In my wake I left dented cans of tomatoes, broken bags of flour, and tumbled asparagus. As I reached up for a can of tomatoes, one just hopped off the shelf - evidently aiming for my hand (which was not ready). Ouch. A bag of flour that I needed fell towards me and broke open at my feet. I looked around myself sheepishly. What a Monday this is turning out to be. Just when I thought it may be my clumsy motor skills - though I swear I hadn't touched anything - a bunch of asparagus leaned over from the stack in the produce isle and tumbled towards me as I was picking out peppers. Um, no, I don't need any asparagus, but thanks. I decided to hurry my foraging before I got slapped by a turkey.

One must be very specific when asking for things. Like if we are asking for a new car, we don't really want to be run over by one, right? I guess I need to get my orders straight. Mantras should come with an instruction manual.

This could be a very shaky beginning back into the realm of being single.

Journey

2009-03-29T11:56:00.000-06:00

I haven't been all that inspired to Blog lately. I'll admit that it's not because I don't have the words, or the time, but because there seems to be this big filter on my impulses to write anything 'true'. A good friend of mine, who is a writer, told me during one of our many conversations about writing that every time I have the impulse to leave things out of the writing process, I should ask myself the reason why. Because writing about truths is what makes it interesting for readers. I often get caught up in trying to limit people's assumptions about my inner life, of protecting myself. Though you wouldn't know it by reading my Blog.
*

By comparison, Twittering, which to me looks like blogging 'one-liners' on what you're thinking in the moment, looks so much easier. How about something like, "I can't help but wonder what soft mitts my cat would make. Especially on days when he pisses outside the litter box". Okay, I'll admit that it needs some work. It's not really what I really want to say, which is, "I feel like I've been dragged behind a truck and have lost my will to perform daily functions". Which seems more true-to-self at the moment.

*
I don't know what it is about charting a new course in life that seems so scary sometimes. I've often thought of myself as an adventurer, someone who loves new experiences and gets excited about new things. But right now I am shedding my old skin and walking forward into the new, and it hurts. It's like the new light falling on my skin is burning me like fire. Maybe it's because I've been protecting myself for a really long time, sheltering myself with clothes that didn't fit. I thought that perhaps I could get the clothes taylored. I kept shifting them left and right with each step, thinking they may stretch. I outgrew my desire to keep trying to taylor, shift, or stretch.

Sigh.

Break-ups are hard.

I think that's about as real as I can get at the moment.

Nurdles

2009-03-21T17:32:00.006-06:00

One of my first thoughts today was about nurdles. This has been my buzz word lately. Nurdle. It is simply the funniest word I have heard in ages, and by simply uttering it, I laugh. I can't believe that anyone could have a serious conversation about nurdles. But that's just it: the first time I heard of nurdles was in a very serious context.

I saw it posted on someone's Facebook wall recently - a long description about the damage that nurdles are doing to the environment. Apparently nurdles are little round pre-production plastic pellets that are used to make a variety of plastic products. The plastic of your keyboard keys. Nurdles. Plastic parts. Nurdles. Plastic containers. Nurdles. Dishwasher parts. Nurdles. But apparently these harmless looking little plastic beads, which come in a variety of colours or none at all, are a total environmental hazard. About 250 billion pounds of nurdles are shipped globally every year, with many of them escaping their containers. Little animals and marine life eat these toxic nurdles, mistaking them for food. Not good. Advocates are lobbying for tighter controls of nurdles to prevent devastating effects on the environment.

Considering how evil these little things are, why the name? Who on earth thought to call them nurdles? I mean, can you imagine an international convention on nurdles? I can see the headlines: Invasion of the Nurdles. Oh wait a minute: here is a headline that I just found on the web: Just Say NO To Nurdles. Surely there could have been a more sinister name for this environmentally devastating product.

I can't help but want to appropriate this word and make it into something else. Morph it into something still derogatory, but unmistakeably giggly. I called my cat Lumpy a nurdle after he broke my CD player yesterday. I referred to someone I don't like the other day as a nurdle. After a somewhat mentally compromising week, I am going to say that I feel really 'nurdled out' today. Someone cut me off in the parking lot today: nurdle.

Nurdles for breakfast. Nurdles in my pockets. Nurdles who I know that bother me. Nurdles in my nose. I mean, really, this is the perfect word. I dare you to use it in at least one sentence to someone today, and report back.

Ostara

2009-03-20T16:43:00.010-06:00

In the spirit of sheer paganism, I wish you a Happy Ostara. Today is the day of the Spring Equinox, when the hours of day and night are of equal length, with the light becoming stronger as the world is renewed. In pagan tradition, this holiday is celebrated as a time of balancing and rebirth. The name for the occassion comes from the goddess, Eostre, whose symbols are the rabbit and the egg; symbols of fertility. This is traditionally the time that we should be celebrating with the painting of eggs and eating of chocolate bunnies - but the Christians, in their subordination of all things pagan, appropriated the holiday and buried it into 'Easter', which is held on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the equinox.

I can't say that my earlier compulsion to eat 2 chocolate bars was in the spirit of renewal and balance, especially being that I never really eat chocolate bars anymore. In fact, I feel rather green at the moment for having fulfilled my dire PMS-ing need for chocolate. I intermittently ate it with a few snacks of melted cheese and triscuits. I am only barely able to hold down this whole mess right now while writing, taking big swallows as it threatens to come back up. Pardon me.
*

I really feel like it's time to clear out the old and welcome the new. This winter felt dark and gnarly on several fronts. And it's still -25 degrees outside most days. Not exactly spring weather. But there is an abundance of sunshine, and this opulent light calls to me and promises that there will be green outside once more. Someday. And the green couldn't come soon enough. Every time I walk up the snow covered steps of my deck to the back door of my house, I try to imagine what that deck was like without snow, on the summer days past when I grew flowers and herbs there. And suddenly, while I'm clutching to this reminiscence as the icy breath of winter freezes my thoughts, I think I remember the sound of chatty little birds. Of life other than that of the frozen black ravens of winter.
*

I am beginning to forget the green world, but something about the light today is promising. This day is like a crack in the thick dark veneer of something that formerly felt impenetrable, and this, my friends, is something to be celebrated.

Down the Rabbit Hole

2009-03-10T15:48:00.007-06:00

I feel a bit like a Catholic in a confession box when I say to you, "It has been 3 weeks since my last Blog, forgive me for being absent". My life has been consumed with all manner of drama these days, but I'll save the excuses and descriptors for conversations with my cats.

*
I can't help but want to follow up on my previous entry. As expected, "Cunt" got a lot of attention. In fact, it received the most hits over any other Blog entry I've ever written. People from all over the world wanted to see what on earth I had to say about that little four-letter word. And I am most gratified in saying that I learned a lot about other people through that entry. Some people pleased me, some made me giggle, some rubbed me the wrong way, and some gave me a delightful surprise. The analogies I'll leave to your imagination.

*
It's interesting what comes out of the woodworks when a little word is flashed around. People either get curious, or kind of stupid. I had advertised the Blog entry on my Facebook status, with the word "Cunt", followed by a link to my Blog. One fellow, whose name I won't mention, replied to my status with a "??". Nothing else, just question marks. In the spirit of intolerance, I deleted him from my friend list. I mean, give me the benefit of the doubt that I'm not just posting profanities without some reason. I felt no remorse at the cull. Besides, I generally make a rule of not making friends with anyone who puts 'The' in front of their name when constantly referring to themselves in the third person. That should have been a freak flag right there. And my sentiments are that anyone who is that repelled by a four-letter word like "cunt" should be fed to the lions.

Another fellow who saw the Facebook post apparently decided differently. He saw my post and asked himself, "....hmm....what could THAT be about?", and saw my Blog link, and, as he put it, "decided to take the red pill" and head down the rabbit hole to read my Blog. The guy has some balls, not to be turned back by a dirty little word. Now that is something I have respect for. Obviously I am partial to red-pill takers.

And yet other people said nothing at all about "Cunt", because, well, it's just expected of me. The folks in this category know me well enough so that nothing at all shocks them anymore. I could walk down the street naked and these folks wouldn't bat an eye. All I've really learned from these people through my Blog is that I must be a real piece of work.

Anyway, I'm going to name this Blog "Down the Rabbit Hole", and laugh to myself while I make a cup of tea.

Cunt.

2009-02-11T14:37:00.002-07:00

It's amazing how a little word can create such a big stir. As Germaine Greer duly stated, this is one of the few words in the English language that still retains its ability to shock. Why is that?

There are so many derogatory names for other anatomical parts that we have used to degrade one another. Like, "that guy is an asshole", or "what a prick". But calling someone a cunt is a jaw-dropper. One can never be at a party, and say, "Man, my boss was such a cunt today", without having everyone within hearing shot swivel their necks to size up the person who could utter such profanity. If you use the word cunt, at least in North America, there is no turning back. You've been imprinted in a way that cannot be undone. You have sunk to the lowest level of vulgarity that language has to offer.

Over in the UK, on the other hand, the word cunt is apparently used much more lightly. It's not too unusual to be called a "daft cunt" by ones boss on a bad day, or be called "a silly little cunt" by one's Scottish grandmother when being..... silly (the latter actually derives from a story I was told about someone's granny). Why, in fact, I actually called my dad a "handy little cunt" the other day after he reported to have made a fancy meal for his friend.

But down at the bottom of it all, this name-calling business is deeply rooted in patriarchy. Apparently, cunt derives from the ancient word 'kunta', which means 'female genitalia' in the Sumerian language of ancient Iraq. In some other eastern and African languages, 'kunta' means 'woman'. Another spelling is 'quna', which is a root word for 'queen'. Many priestesses in ancient times, who possessed great power and skills as scribes, were referred to as 'kunta'. But with the rise of patriarchy, women were dispossessed of their status, and the conquerers appropriated such things as language, changing the meanings of empowering words to rather imply degradation and evil.

Feminists have tried to reclaim this word for these reasons, and also the reason that a name for the female genitalia should not have degrading implications. It should be a word of power. But no matter how much I have wanted to join in this campaign, I have not been able to say this word without the expectation that the recipient will not be blatantly shocked. I have never walked into my doctor's office and said, "there is something going on with my cunt". And if you can't say it to your doctor with wholesome intentions, who can you say it to? I am up against an entire culture that views the female genitalia as a dirty little secret. And the word 'cunt' is all part of this very impolite, uncivilized, yet powerful part of women.

We all enter the world through kunta; through woman. Women are supposed to be sacred, life-giving vessels. Yet cunt, an ancient sacred word, remains to be one of the most devastating words in North American culture. I guess that really says something. But I think the word, despite its apparent savageness, is incredibly provocative and intriguing. How much you want to bet that today's blog gets the most hits?

Laws of Attraction

2009-02-08T00:26:00.001-07:00

A friend recently shared with me that the older they get, the more they are surprised by the people they find attractive. When we are young, our criteria often tends to circumvent around superficial attributes. Nice ass. Hot body. Chiselled features. When we get older, we realize there is much more to sexy than how someone styles their hair, or, for all that matter, how much hair they have. I don't think this is a breakdown of standards. Rather, I think our standards broaden to include more intrinsic personal qualities, like charisma.

I have been plenty surprised by some of the people who have caught my eye, but I have yet to pin down what it is about them that I - and often others - find attractive. It's not always obvious, and trying to define it is like trying to capture a patch of air and name the shape of it. The picture is more pervasive than what meets the eye or, often, our rationale.

I'll never forget the first day of my second semester of Introductory Psychology when I was a university fledgeling in my mid-20's. There I was, sitting up at the front of the class like the keener I was, waiting for our new professor to walk through the door. In comes a tall, bulking man with long, white hair in a pony-tail, casual clothes, and what looked like some bone pendant hanging off of a leather necklace. He looked at us all, and said, "Sociology 360, right?", and let out a warm laugh when he saw our insecure faces. "Just kidding". He let out a big smile with bright, twinkling blue eyes. This was our professor for the semester.

I have no idea what it was about him that completely engulfed my attention for the rest of the semester, but from that moment on, I was spellbound. He was clearly older beyond my years. I had never before had a crush on anyone so much older than myself. I mean, the guy had white hair, while I was still running around in mini-skirts. Could it be his confidence? The way he carried himself? Pheromones? I sat there in every class while he lectured us, trying to find the answers to my bewilderment, becoming increasingly tangled in the self-made web of my own attraction the more I pondered what it was about him that entranced me so. When I found out he was an expert windsurfer I considered signing up for lessons. When someone told me he did his doctorate thesis on trance-dancing, I read his book. I wanted to be near him. I wanted to know more about who he was.

Then one day I decided to go to his office.

I cannot remember what I asked him about as he and I sat in his small cramped quarters across from eachother. All I can remember is that the colour of my burning cheeks were betraying me as I stumbled on each word. My legs felt like Jello. My fingers tingled, and my palms were sweaty. While I was likely bumbling incoherently and drowning in my own physiological bath of nervous rapture, he was scrunching up his face trying to decifer what it was that I was trying to say. I recall that he had quite a bit to say in response, but I can't remember what it was. My heart was pounding like a hammer and I was quickly losing voluntary motor skills. All I remember was the refreshing sensation of cool air on my skin as I walked out of his office, and the sweaty imprint of my palm on the textbook that I had been clutching during our conversation.

This experience initiated me into a world of attraction that I knew nothing about. A strange, irrational world that slices through the mental constructs we mistakenly think are so tangible and safe, plunging us into uncharted, deep, nebulous waters. Who knows what the architectural laws of attraction really are. I don't think there are any.

So when my friend recently shared bewilderment at one of her recent crushes and asked my opinion, all I could answer was, "I have no idea".

Sex, Secrecy and Scandal

2009-02-06T17:28:00.018-07:00

Freshly back from the circus of our Legislative Assembly. As one of the MLA's duly pointed out today, this government is like a season of "All of My Children". Sex, secrecy, and scandal, compliments of our elected officials. Someone suggested during lunch today that I focus my current screenwriting experiments on some government-inspired stories. There really is no shortage of marketable material. In fact, some of the acts that have been dancing out of the Legislative Assembly could qualify for full-length feature films.

Act One:

The Premier, while touting 'family values', was recently busted for screwing one of the Legislative Assembly clerks. He was hamstrung by MLA's due to the fact that this clerk was sitting in on Committee meetings of non-Cabinet MLA's, and allegedly leaking information from these meetings back to the Premier during some pillow talk sessions. Whether or not he informed his family of the affair before it was plastered all over the country by media is unknown. It is rumoured by those who know his 'Lewinsky' that he did dump his family (a wife and 6 kids) 2 weeks before this past Christmas, as did latter mentioned clerk - who was also married.

Act Two:

It was hard not to notice the empty seat in Cabinet today, which previously belonged to Sahtu MLA Norman Yakeleya. He now sits on the opposite side of the house after being stripped of his Cabinet portfolio last fall because of sexual assault charges of a minor. Yakeleya now wears a sticky note taped to his forehead, "Note to self: must not screw teenagers". Though he has yet to be convicted, the courts have deemed there is enough evidence to go forward with a trial.

Act Three:

The government made a highly controversial move in this budget to bail out Discovery Air with a 34 million dollar loan. Our Premier defended this action yesterday during the Budget Address, stating that in these 'uncertain economic times', we need to assist Northern businesses, such as Discovery Air. But many of us know that our finance minister, Michael Miltenberger, is tight with Chuck Parker, who was recently the Deputy Minister of Health & Social Services before moving over to Great Slave Helicopters - one of the businesses under Discovery Air. I guess having joint family vacations with a finance minister can get you a multi-million dollar bail-out. Either that, or you better have some really big boobs. MLA's were rightly angered at this covert deal, which they claim they were not properly informed of. In fact, before this budget has actually passed, one of the local reporters informed my colleagues and I that the ink was drying on the Discovery Air deal as we sat there listening to today's debates in the Assembly. Voting on a budget is just a formality.

For the sake of dramatization, I have chosen the most sensational government inspirations for my script. Sex, secrecy, and scandal sells. But besides these juicy morsels of immoral tinkerings in Cabinet, MLA's have had a long list of gripes regarding Cabinet that have to do with aspects of accountability, poor communication, and badly forged policies. And today, today, I thought we were going to see the hammer come down, as Hay River MLA Jane Groenewegen made a motion to remove Cabinet, and start from scratch.

I sat there for four hours today, some of them unpaid, like an eager bystander at the local guillotine, wondering if we would see some heads roll. After Jane made her motion for a mass beheading, those of us in the gallery listened on the edge of our seats as each MLA stated whether they were giving their support. Some of the presentations were good. My applause to Dave Ramsay and Glen Abernethy, who spoke from their gut, and really gave Cabinet a piece of their mind in no uncertain terms. Well spoken, articulate, and to the point. But things slowly started taking a turn once we ventured down the line. Yakeleya, as usual, was so incoherently disassociated from the topic that I felt like poking my eye out with an industrial sized rusty nail after 5 minutes. After his initial first sentence, he strays so far, so fast, that by the end of it he is practically talking about the colour of his boxers, and how he likes the colour pink on 13 year old girls (until someone taps the sticky note on his forehead).

By the time we got down to the dregs, we started seeing opposition to what felt like some nice momentum for support of the Motion. Beaulieau, Hawkins, and Jacobson all stated that they would not support it. All I could imagine was these little cartoon bubbles over their heads saying, "Blah blah blah, I've got no balls, blah blah blah". When they were finished, the Motion just hung dead in the stale air. Defeated. Before the actual vote, we still had to listen to the statements of Cabinet on the Motion, but it was a sure thing that none of Cabinet would vote to remove themselves, so the Motion would not be carried. Feeling let down, I was ready to start packing at that point, but my colleague wanted to hear Cabinet's response. I tried getting through it without making faces, but I was still struggling to dig myself out of the mental stupor that I had sunk into during Yakeleya's numbing monologue, and so was hanging on with two brain cells strung together like Christmas popcorn by that point. I looked around, and realized I was not alone: MLA Menicoche was inspecting his fingers carefully while Ministers gave their speeches, and after confirming that he had ten of them, resorted to colouring in his doodles. One of the clerks, visibly seated in front of the house Speaker for all to see, was poking his cheek repeatedly with a pencil while vacantly staring off into space.

After listening to the pleading promises of Cabinet to use protection next time - I mean, be better communicators - we gradually came full circle back to MLA Jane Growenewegen, for the closing remarks of her Motion. I enjoyed one last round of hits on the Premier as she called on him to resign. But we know that ain't gonna happen.

.
After the vote came down, 10 to 8 against the Motion, we all let out a collective sigh of disappointment and gathered our things, spilling out into the halls with dull spirits. I felt like a kid walking out of a candy store with empty pockets. But maybe it was enough to shake me awake during my winter slumber. Maybe one of these acts will make a really good premise for my flailing screenwriting experiments.

Wrong is Right

2009-02-01T16:35:00.002-07:00

I don't know where I acquired a sense of justice.
*
I do know that every time I got spanked as a kid, I felt that it was unjust. During the developmental era of which these spankings occured, I hadn't yet internalized the ethics and morals of my society. Maybe the rough hands of my stepfather spanked them into me. Eventually. But at the age of 5 years old, I was a bandit. With hardly any prodding from some kid at the playground, I turned into a little gremlin burgler who would run into the local Safeway to the nearest candy display, stuff candies desperately into the makeshift pouch I had made out of my t-shirt, then dash out before any adults really understood what was happening. Of course a kid with this much candy is suspect to their parents, and it wasn't long before my mother came across me and my lifted suckers, tootsie rolls, and Aero bars. Busted. Spanked.

Somewhere along the line, much later in life, (likely in my mid-20's) I internalized a sense of justice. I began to see the things that weren't right in the world, and I saw myself as a instrument of good. Many of my deeds had such variable results, that I could say neither yay or nay as to whether my interference was a good thing. But there was one instance where I began to question whether setting things to rights was actually just messing with something that should be let to run its course.

It was near Christmas time in the year 2001. I was at my cabin in Yellowpoint on Vancouver Island, up to my ears in gift baking with gold-sprayed tins, ribbons, cookies, and powdered icing sugar spread all around the kitchen. My friend Kate called. She told me about a loose dog she had found at one of our local parks, and that the dog seemed to have suffered some injuries but had no identification tag. Being the kind heart she is, she took the dog home and nursed it back to health over the course of a few days, but was wondering what to do. The dog was incredibly friendly and loving, and fit right in with her family. So the dillema was: should she keep it, or report the dog to the local shelter in the event someone was looking for it? I recall my suggestion being to report it, because likely a dog left in that condition isn't a dog that the owners cared much to claim, so likely she could do the right thing, and get to keep the dog. Justice.
*
Now let's go back in time.
*
A couple weeks before, my mother told me that a renegade relative of ours, who we will call 'Fred' for convenience sake, had kept a dog who had 'followed' his little girl home a few months ago. My mother had since seen signs posted around town for that dog by its owners, who obviously cared a lot for their dog. I asked my mom if she had let Fred know that the owners were looking for their dog, to which she replied that Fred was well aware, but wanted the dog for himself. My Spidey senses started tingling: this was clearly wrong. Well aware that pets are like family members in most households, I told my mother that we had to report to these people where their dog was. My mom got the phone number from one of the posters, and I phoned the people and gave them Fred's address.
*
A few days later, my mom phoned me to say that the people had reclaimed their dog. She had been on the phone with Fred earlier that day, she told me, and while Fred was talking to her and looking out the window of his house, he saw a red truck drive by a few times. "That's weird", he told her, "a red truck keeps driving by. Oh..... wait a minute. The truck has stopped in front of my house.... a guy is walking through my gate. I wonder what he wants?". The person walked around the house out of view. Before Fred could finish his good-bye to my mom, he said, "Holy shit. Someone just stole my fucking dog". This fellow had plucked the dog out of the yard, put it in the back of the truck, and drove off. Fred later walked to the house where he knew the dog to be originally from, and there was the red truck. Obviously he was thinking of stealing the dog back. No dog in the yard.
*
A few days later, there I am, in my kitchen, up to my ears in ribbons, tins, and baking, listening to Kate tell me about the dog she had found.
*
By the time Christmas actually came, Kate told me that someone had indeed come to claim the dog after she had reported it to the local shelter. She described a big, hulking man, not too bright but kind enough, who was apparently the owner. Kate was sad for a few days, but she eventually got over it.
*
I had Christmas dinner at my mother's place, and Fred was among our relatives there. After dinner, all stuffed and needing cigarettes, Fred and my mom's husband, Jamie, went to the local corner store. When they came back, Fred told me that someone had recently stolen his dog. Of course I knew that to be bullshit, but I smiled and nodded with interest. What he didn't know was that I was the one who reported the dog to the real owners, who snatched their dog back. What I didn't know was that the dog never actually made it back to its original household. He went on to say, "And while we were coming back from the store, I pointed out to Jamie the house where I had eventually retrieved my dog from, and he said it belonged to your friend, Kate! What a small world, eh?".

Then it hit me, as I stared at him blankly for a few moments.
I had reported the dog that Fred stole.
The owners picked her up.
She jumped out of the truck before they got her home. Dog ran around injured and confused.
Kate found her.
Fred picked her up from Kate.
The dog was back where she started before I intervened.
*
And as I stood there, momentarily dumbfounded, it seemed that the only thing that came from my decision to restore justice was the poor dog's injuries, which clearly wasn't a good result. The dog ended up back in the place where she was before I came along. With this, I pondered Fate and the need for it to run its course. It's a sticky world, this Fate stuff. Perhaps the part of the intervener is all part of Fate. But perhaps it's true that sometimes what seems wrong, is right.

Postcards from Bella Coola

2009-01-24T11:04:00.017-07:00

In the wee hours of the morning, I dreamt of that place again. The place that was mine. The place I swore I would never leave. My home. I think it may have been the blackberry jam that my cousin Lynn sent in my goodie package which came in the mail yesterday. The last thing I had before I slept last night was that blackberry jam on toast. Blackberries.... so abundant in my old home. I foraged through those blackberry bushes like a bear, every summer.
*

Twelve years ago, transfer papers were signed, and I said goodbye to 17 acres in the Bella Coola Valley in B.C. that I had previously owned with my ex-partner, Russell. The one piece of earth that I had internalized so wholeheartedly that a part of my soul still lingers there today. The part of myself that said it would never leave. This part of myself checks in with me every now and again, in these dream postcards.

In some of my dreams, that place is like I left it. Sun filtering through aromatic cedars and tall, majestic fir, the wind whispering through their soft branches. Glowing mountains looming tall in all directions, waterfalls flowing from hidden glaciers. The shrilling cries of eagles in the high skies, and the low, articulate speech of ravens. Robins do their hop-and-halt dance over the earth. Squirrels scurry up the bark of our old fir tree, keeping a careful eye on me. I watch silently, sitting on the stack of lumber that our neighbor milled for us out of the other old fir tree that we sacrificed for the building of our house. Sitting quietly, I look over the layout for our house. The pegs are still in the ground, ready for the foundation forms to be built, the cement to be poured. I look to my right and see the small workshop we constructed, with an attached living quarters and sleeping loft. In some dreams, this living space has become large, and includes things like running water, which we never had before. In some dreams, I even bump into Russell in there, although in these dreams, we are not together. In none of these 'postcards' is there ever much evidence of that we ever were together, despite that our joint projects, our dreams, lay bare to the winds. Waiting.
*

In some of these dreams, that piece of land that I used to call my home is no longer mine. There is a stranger living there. A new house. Oh yeah, I remember, I sold it. The only thing I recognize now is the old fir tree that we left still standing. A dog jogs up to me to inquire who I am. I stand at the end of the driveway, looking through the bars of an invisible gate, into a world that I can no longer enter.

In some dreams, the world there is covered in snow, and I can barely find this place that I used to call home. My old neighbors are surprised to see me wandering in that wilderness neighborhood after being gone so long. They greet me with happy faces and tell me where to find my old property. I go, and finally find the make-shift driveway that we had created all those years ago upon first arrival by carving our way into the forest with our chainsaw. I walk down the wide path, into a small, open space amidst an icy, snow covered forest. This was how it used to look when we had initially opened it up to move in, when we had only been there for a week. I stand there, feeling a cold east wind, listening to wet snow drop off heavy branches. I see my old cat Namu, who ran away when we separated and moved away from our home. I run toward him, calling, but he always seems..... just beyond my grasp.
*

I have often thought of this place like a ghost, haunting my dreams. But now I realize that I am the ghost, going there in my sleep sometimes, looking for my home again. And perhaps it is Russell's dream ghost that I bump into every now and again, as he wanders back there for the tools he left behind.

I know that, when the times comes, I will go back there to my home, to when I remember it best, and stay there. I'll watch the seasons pass, listen to those eagles. Watch the raven and fox sitting in an open field together, talking like they once did on a sunny summer day that I remember from so long ago. I will walk down the road from my home, past wild forests and green, open pastures, to the Saloompt River bridge. I will scuttle down the gravel bank next to the bridge, to walk by the river to that special place where the river bends. I will cast my fly-fishing rod, watch its line glisten in the sun. My fly will land on an open, shady spot, and I will watch it drift on the deep, green water. Waiting.

And if you ask me to, I will send you a postcard. Just close your eyes and dream.

Dark Moon Bear

2009-01-22T15:38:00.016-07:00

The beginning of the Dark Moon is only a day away. The phase of the Dark Moon is essentially the few days before the moon has waned itself empty and dark in the sky. Those from the earth religions see it as a time of deep power, a time of intuition, testing, and communion. For many women, this is a time when the womb also empties itself. A time of retreat and introspection.

The week of the Dark Moon, I am again my bear self for a few days. In this shapeshifting experience I lose sense of my humanity, shred by shred. It is a strange, painful, and enlightening metamorphosis. Like a neophyte in the desert mountains of old Mexico, having taken my dose of peyote for the journey inward, I am filled with body-wretching sickness while another form of vision takes hold. It is psychotic, agressive, and raw, but also deeply knowing and wise. In old times, women stayed apart from regular community activities during the Dark Moon; their power was considered to be too overwhelming during this time. So they would congregate for a few days in the women's tents, and enjoy some contemplative rest and communion with their sisters.

*
Despite my caution of segregation, I understand some of the benefits of allowing women to take time away from regular daily activity during these times. I personally think that I would be doing myself and those around me a great benefit to be gone during the Dark Moon. When the time approaches, and the metamorphosis takes place, I can no longer see as my normal self. Things become clouded and dreamlike. My nails elongate into thick, sharp claws. My senses and my instincts sharpen. My back hunches. I grow big and gruff. I let out long, deep growls with the exhalation of breath. My family run for cover as I slowly barrel around the house, carrying myself like the thousand pound creature I feel I have become.

Tomorrow is the start of the Dark Moon. Today, I can feel her pulling me in. I had a nap this afternoon while the sun was still high and bright in the frozen world outside. My cats guarding me like sphinxes on either side of the covers, I effortlessly slipped into the world between waking and dreaming, becoming shrouded in strange visions. I drifted in and out of a deep, hormonally drugged sleep, weaving the last threads of a blanket that will begin unraveling tomorrow. I know that kind of sleep means it's almost time. I can feel the tingling in my finger tips where the claws will break through. When I awoke, still groggy, I scuffled over to the cupboards and polished off all the 'forbidden' things, namely the rest of the shortbread. Carbohydrate overload. I think I just felt a button on my shirt pop. But I don't care, because I can't say no to the bear. She's hungry, and there is no denying her.

The Dance Hangover

2009-01-18T17:57:00.009-07:00

I have a dance hangover.

It has been about 36 hours since the dancing, and I am still aching and exhausted. The world has taken on a fuzzy, static feeling. Out for coffee with C today, I couldn't remember where my conversation threads originated, or where I was going with them. As usual, she was graciously forgiving. I felt hungover. It was a lot of dancing on Friday night. And, with my drunken friends, I even shut down the bar. What a night.

It has been a long, long time since I was out dancing like that, which is so strange, because I absolutely love to dance. Twirling, gyrating, booty-shaking madness. And, thanks to a new shirt purchase earlier that day, I got checked out and winked at several times. Every girl loves this when she goes out. Once you start climbing the hill, my friends, getting looked over takes on a whole new feel.

I have to say that the last couple months have been great socially. Rather than hobbiting away inside - as I have been known to do - I have been getting out a lot. Not necessarily to the bar (being a non-drinker has this effect), but out for lunch with friends, to brunches with new people, or braving the -40 temperatures to hike the trails around Yellowknife with some gals. Although I don't think one should necessarily judge quality of life by how much one socializes, I think the quality of people that we socialize with really says a lot about our inner life. And my inner life has really been blossoming.

But despite the social aspects that have lightened the cold, dark winter, that one night of actual physical dancing was good medicine. I am sore, and utterly exhausted, but in a slightly euphoric way, like a sweet liquor that saturates to the core. It was one more thing that I hadn't done since getting sick with chronic dizziness. It's not that I had never thought about it. I love playing the drums, and I love to dance. It's been on my mind. But I never did go out and do it, fearing that the room would start to rock or spin if I shook myself around too much. And when I finally did get out and dance on Friday night, the room did rock a bit. It spun on a few 90 degree rotations once in a while. I did feel unsteady.

But I just kept right on dancing.

Like the dream of being able to ride my motorcycle again, it was just one more part of me that is....well....mine again.

The Unlikely Neophyte

2009-01-13T15:22:00.011-07:00

Ugh.

UUuugh.

These are my sentiments after deciding to go for lunch with the gang today at a pub, then engaging in a yoga session about 1/2 hour after my last bite of burger and fries. I don't eat burgers and fries often. Nor do I do yoga often. The last time I did yoga was about 2 years ago. I hated it. It was supposed to be a beginners class, but within 3 sessions the instructor had us standing on our heads. It was a bit much. I didn't go back.

This class at an altogether different centre was a lot gentler, but the room was stifling hot, and, not knowing what to wear, and living in a current climate of -40, I was dressed for winter. So there I was, belly full of burger and fries, and roasting to beat the band while attempting contortions that feel somewhat unnaturally contrived anyway. Fifteen minutes into it, I started looking at my watch while stretching, every passing moment becoming one more victory of being able to hold my lunch in. I was green. But I forged ahead, and likely I will buy a Yoga Pass to continue with this endeavor, because I don't really think it's the yoga that makes me want to crawl into a dark corner and spill my lunch. I'm pretty sure the culprit was the burger and fries.

I don't know what it is that feels so 'bootcamp'-ish whenever I am disciplining my body and mind. Perhaps it is the bootcamp methods that I seem to employ when pursuing personal transformations. Years ago I was trained in the Vipassana technique of meditation, which requires extended periods of time of completely sitting still and surveying transitory sensations. Harder than it sounds (for a detailed synopsis, click on the link). My first 10 day retreat took place in Washington state. I got held up at the border crossing in my pick-up truck for saying that I was headed to a meditation retreat when asked about my activities and accomodation for the next 2 weeks in the US. The beads and medicine bag hanging off the rearview mirror didn't help ward off the bigoted meathead in the booth who looked like he was on assignment from the US marine corps. "Pull over", is all he said. Two hours later, after leisurely rifling through all my stuff, they let me go. Half driving, and half map-reading, I gunned it down highways at full speed, worried I was not going to make it for the retreat orientation early that evening. With my attention thus divided, not only was I a likely hazard to myself and all the other cars, but I was a hazard to all life forms. I had just finished checking my map for the name of a turn-off, when I looked up to see a flock of geese crossing the road right in front of me. Splat. The five minutes after that I spent bawling like a newborn baby and pounding my steering wheel, in complete horror and confusion as to what to do. I knew that turning back for them was futile, as all the cars behind me had finished off what I had started. The next couple hours after that, until the time I reached the retreat, I spent intermittently bursting into spontaneous episodes of crying and rocking back and forth. By the time I reached the retreat, I had cried myself dry and didn't have much resistance left in me.

It was a good thing I had completely emptied myself, or I may have had too much energy to panic at what was laid before me for the next 10 days during the orientation. The retreat is divided into male and female sections (to minimize distraction), and so I was sharing a large room with several other women. After our orientation, we were told to fetch our things out of our vehicles, as we were not permitted to return to them until the end of the retreat. An hour after the orientation was done, and after we had settled in, we officially began the retreat, and our journey into the 10 days of complete silence. Not only would there not be any talking to others, but any kind of communicative gestures were prohibited for the entire time. This is to simulate, to the best ability, the yogic tradition of isolation when undertaking a meditative journey. Some people may have panicked at the prospect of this kind of isolation, but I had nothing much left in me after taking out a family of wild geese, so I succumbed easily and willingly to purgatory. In fact, at that point I kind of felt that I had it coming.

I had many friends who frequented these retreats before me, so I vaguely understood what it entailed. I was aware that some people apparently 'lose it' after a few days. But 48 hours into it, I seemed to be doing alright. There I was, sitting on my mat in the meditation hall for hours at a time, all peaceful and almost smug in my ease of adjustment into what many would consider to be a difficult task. Despite that being smug is antithetical to what we were attempting to achieve, I was secretly smug. I didn't feel like I was going to 'lose it' anytime soon.

And then they moved a new person behind me who needed to be by the door. No problem. I went on feeling surprisingly and uncharacteristically well-adjusted. Until she belched into the back of my head. Every five minutes. The first few times I overlooked. But it seemed like that smelly, hot air would whistle past my ears like clockwork, so that after 4 and 1/2 minutes, I began to tense to brace myself for what I knew was coming. I was only 2 days into the course. How would I make it for the remaining 8 days without losing it? I could ask to be moved, but that wouldn't be right considering we were supposed to rise above our cravings and aversions, and simply 'observe' our way through the sensations. BLURP.....(5 minutes passed)....BLURB.....(repeat into infinity). I felt like I was close to the edge after 24 hours of this.

But it seemed that fate smiled on me, and rescued me from myself. Perhaps 24 hours of this was enough to atone for the slaughtering of a flock of geese. The women's counsellor tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I could surrender my seat to another woman who wanted to sit by the door. I guess people were starting to crack after all this social isolation and self-observation, and needed to sit by the exits in case they needed to flee from the unrelenting, twisted chatter of their unsettled minds. And despite all the teachings about rising above our aversions, at the mere suggested whisper of moving, I almost took out three rows of meditators while diving to the new location. As soon as I settled in, I let out a sigh of relief. NOW, I could really get down to business (which in real terms translates into 'get comfortable'). No hot belches on my neck. No tensing every 4 and 1/2 minutes. I was on the road to bliss and self-exploration.

And then there it was. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Coming from somewhere. A methodical ticking. It was coming from somewhere on my right. What could it be? I let it go. For a minute. Could it be a fly on the window? Although everyone was meditating with their eyes closed, I cracked mine open a slice and looked towards the window on my right. No fly. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Could it be my neighbor's watch? I peeked over to her closest arm. I didn't see a watch there. Maybe it was on the other hand. Tick. Tick. Tick. Holy fuck! I'm going to lose it! Okay, just ignore it. Focus on the breath .....on the breath ......in....out ....in....out .....tick....tick....tick. This is how I spent the next five days. Every day that passed was like a slow mental torture. Somehow I was surviving, only on a moment to moment basis. Each night I thought of gathering my things in the middle of the night and busting out. The poor girl who had taken my spot in front of the belcher fleed from the hall, screaming, after her first 24 hours there. I felt close to joining her some days. I looked for her after her fleeing episode, but it looked as if she was gone for good.

It was on the 9th day that I finally surrendered to the ticking. I let it go. Fly, watch, it didn't matter which one of them was the instrument of my self-imposed demise. I ceased to care. And when this happened, I realized that the ticking was actually my neighbor sucking on the roof of her mouth. Who knew? Instantaneous with my realization of this quirky habit of hers was the last rush of my agitation which flooded my senses blind. But as quickly as the desire came to want to rattle her senseless, I was overcome with relief, and a peaceful and compassionate sense of being. I had done it. I had liberated myself from the prison of my mind. For the time being.

On day 10, the 60 meditators broke silence in the evening, which officially marked the end of the retreat. People smiled blissfully and openly to fellow strangers. Within the 1/2 hour, the place was a bee's nest of talk. Several people admitted to being tempted to flee in the middle of the night, on several occassions. I pondered how funny it would have been if so many of us had acted on these impulses. We would have all been bumping into eachother in the parking lot at midnight. Would we have said anything to each other, or, in league with the times, silently escaped down the dirt road? But on day 10, it mattered not. We were so happy. I had never seen so many happy people. I think all those beaming smiles were expressions of accomplishment for doing something incredibly challenging. But also, they were smiles of joy, that thank god it was finally over.

I know this, because (to a lesser extreme) that is how I feel after a session at the gym, or after today's yoga stint. I was glad when I was done stuffing my square peg into a round hole today - trying to saw off edges to make them fit. But maybe losing those edges is a good thing. A couple months ago, I made a pre-New Year committment to myself that I was cleaning out all the things in my life that aren't healthy for me, whether it be food, lethargy, people, or situations, and making room for things that are. I don't think this is a linear process, or a comfortable ride at all times. But I do think that when we undertake these ventures, we can come out smiling - not because we are glad it's over - but because something good has just begun.

The Four-Cylinder Indian

2009-01-09T13:39:00.020-07:00

There are many times, especially when I'm alone, when I think I am hearing things that in fact aren't those things at all. Last night as I lay curled up in bed with my cats, reading the last few chapters of my book for that evening, I suddenly thought I heard something resembling an Aboriginal drum ceremony going on. I heard the drums and the high-pitched cries so distinctly that I actually sat up straight to listen more carefully. As soon as I had done so, I realized that this audio tribal symphony was just the washer banging around with its redundant thumping wish-wash rhythm. As per my last post, I have a fantastic palate of imagination, and so I am never too surprised at my mind's capacity to tranform the mundane. Perhaps my Aboriginal ancestors would even have considered me a visionary?

Okay, I agree, that is taking it a bit too far.

Although all stimuli that we come into contact with is delicately sifted and garnished with our own special processing flavor, not everything in my every day life makes it through my kaleidescopic imagination. Mostly it's just the usual humdrum input/output stuff that bores me silly. Sure, sometimes I hear chanting phonebooths on windy days, or drums on the wash cycle, but I'm pretty sure that I'm still on a level playing field with the stale norm, and not in need of pharmaceutical assistance anytime soon.

There have been a few times, though, when the input/output got a bit garbled, and left me laughing to the point of tears. One of these incidents really had nothing to do with my imagination actually, but rather my inability to interpret the strong english accent of a fellow treeplanter who I think, in hindsight, had some motor skill impairing LSD experiences in the 60's that left her tongue near paralysed. To credit myself, I was not the only one who could not interpret what she was saying most of the time.

We will call this treeplanter 'Sally'.

So there we were, Sally and I, treeplanting side by side on a flat, brushy clearcut in the back country of Merritt, B.C. in 1997. It was a warm, sunny day, and the last day of the shift before our day off. We were feeling unusually optimistic and very talkative, and our conversation meandered to different topics as we noodled our way through the brush to find open spots for our trees. At one point I asked Sally about England, where she is from. Once in a while during her response, I picked out a few words here and there so that I generally understood what she was talking about. Then she asked me about my heritage, and I told her that I am Metis - having 1/4 Aboriginal blood from my father's side. We then got separated by some bushes for a while, and when we came back together again, I started talking about a recently purchased car with an engine that needed work. And so I rambled on about the car between huffing breaths as I tried to pick up the pace a bit. I could only faintly hear Sally at that point as she trundled along with me, and combined with my scarce ability to translate her unique twist on the english language, I completely misunderstood what came next.

"What kind of engine does your car have in it?", was what I thought Sally had said.

"A four cylinder", I replied. I figured perhaps Sally was going to give me some insight into my car's engine. But instead, she just gave me a confused, blank look, nodded her head appeasingly, and said, "oh".

Later that day, when I rejoined the rest of my crew at the tree cache, one of my fellow planters said to me, "Hey, I heard that your dad is a four-cylinder Indian". Everyone was bent over laughing while I stood there perplexed, demanding to know what on earth they were talking about. Finally they let up and told me what Sally had been mulling over since our earlier conversation.

"She said that she asked you what kind of Indian your father had in him. To which you replied that he was a four-cylinder".

*
"So", they asked between gasping laughter, "how many cylinders does that make you?"
*

Back Into the Labyrinth

2009-01-08T13:32:00.005-07:00

Yesterday on my Facebook status I wrote that I was burrowing away into my imagination until the beginning of spring. Although I have delineated a limitation to this venture, by no means is my imagination ever really contained within seasonal limits. I am a pretty active imaginer all the time. In the cold, dark months of winter, however, I tend to indulge this innate propensity a bit more heavily.

Being an indulger in fantasies, daydreams, and general realms beyond the mundane, it is surprising that I do not have any functional issues. Despite the occassional ups and downs, my daily existence is only slightly hampered by my colourful cognitive life, such as when I am in meetings that require some tuning into the finer details of discussion. There are other skills I have gained to compensate for my compromised mental attendance, but that information is off limits to my Blog.

Back in the day when I was a life-drawing model, my imagination actually enhanced my capacity to sit and stare out the window for hours at a time while being sketched by students and professional artists alike. People often wondered how on earth I could do it, but as soon as the timer was set, I would assume whatever pose, and mentally disappear from the room into the labyrinth of my own adventure for extensive periods of time. Likewise, when I came down with an inner ear problem a few years ago that incapacitated me with chronic dizziness, I took solace in copious amounts of gravol for about 6 months, and surrendered to an imagination that delivered me well beyond the confines of my own suffering.

My mother often boasts that when I was a child, I could sit and play on my own for hours. But what she never knew was that, at least in my own imagination, I was never alone. No, it was not the stuffed bears or talking toys that kept me company. It was the wee people about 3 inches high, who were very shy but emerged from shadows, closets, and doorways when I was alone. I will never forget the one that would descend from my bedroom doorknob some nights, using a suddenly visible stream of silver rope. Slowly she would make her way, belaying down the door, looking around with darting, sneaky eyes. I would watch, eyes wide as saucers, not sure of whether to be glad for the company or terrified of possible harm. When she landed on the floor, she would skip towards the bed, and at the last moment I would sit up and cry out, "MOM!". But then this little pixie would disappear by the time my mother arrived. I hated the accusatory glare of my mother as she pulled the door shut on my desperate explainations, leaving me steeping in resentment as I stared at the hairline crack of light that glowed through the closed door.

The worst of it was when I was about 8 years old, at my grandmother's house on Vancouver Island. I was sleeping with my grandmother in her bed after scaring myself silly with all variety of dark imaginings in my own room. My grandmother had her back turned to me, and though I felt glad for the feeling of warmth and safety that sharing her bed afforded, I was still very wired from some of the ghouls that I had confronted in the darkness before calling for rescue. I lay there on my side, looking at the back of my grandmother's head, ready to drift off into sleep at the sound of her gentle breathing. Then all of a sudden one of the wee people arrived, with funny, curly hair that reminded me of a clown. This little guy was hopping around, pointing and laughing at me. "Shut up", I hoarsely whispered to him, and tried to avert my gaze. Still, he hopped around frantically with his taunts, laughing himself silly. "Shut up!", I said in a slightly louder, more threatening voice. My grandmother was sleeping deeply by this time, or surely she would have awoken. But with his further provocations, I completely forgot myself and everything around me, and took a few vicious swipes at this little guy while he disappeared beyond my angry clutches. It was only when my grandmother started screaming at me that I realized it was her hair that I was swiping at. My explainations did little to abate my grandmother's fury, and actually just seemed to make things worse for myself. After suffering this humiliation, when my little friend returned once my grandmother turned her back again, I just resigned myself to closing my eyes, and turned the other way.

After that incident, I never saw the little people anymore.

But if I did, I would never tell.

Outside the Box

2009-01-03T12:14:00.007-07:00

Brilliant sunlight illuminates the delicate snowy branches of northern birch in my neighbor's yard. Its soft glow almost induces me to trance as I dream of playful sunny days, thus tempting me to wander outside and feel the light on my face. But although these gentle winter scenes allure me t0 venture beyond frosted pane, I know all too well what -45 degrees feels like. Even with a full parka and snow pants, the very air one breathes out there freezes in one's throat like a brick as it enters the lungs.

It is quite the experience living in these temperatures. Neither of my house doors open or close properly because the house's shape has been warped by the constricting jaws of cold. The tires on my car freeze flat on the bottom sides overnight, so that for the first 5 minutes of driving every morning it feels as if I am hobbling along on four boxes. The locks on my car no longer work, and the steering column and clutch are almost frozen stiff even after 20 minutes of idling to warm things up. And then there are basic things, like skin being burned by touching anything plastic or metal. Exposing skin to these temperatures is not an option unless it is only momentary. I have almost been frostbitten twice this winter, and it is utterly painful. I understand why it is called frost-'bite'. The bite itself can literally feel like having flesh ripped from the bone with the most crushing teeth.
*
But despite the hostility of the cold, I am drawn to the light like a little moth that has been fluttering around in a dark room for what feels like forever. Sunlight is so precious to northerners now, because we only have light for a few hours a day in the deep of winter. And though I know my face will freeze, and I will catch my breath as it solidifies in my throat, I think I will venture outside the box today. And when I get back, I will put on another pot of tea, and finish reading my book with the cats.

There is something about being outside of the box these days that makes being inside feel so, so good.

Into the Beyond

2009-01-01T15:56:00.015-07:00

I am glad to say that after my reluctant domestication over the past few years, I spent my first moments of 2009 off the grid, in the wild. Last night, K and I drove 1/2 hour from Yellowknife into the middle of nowhere to a friend's house. As we headed down the highway with headlights illuminating the snowy, shrouded white trees in -45 weather, I began to get the distinct feeling of wilderness that I love so much and always crave. Travelling off the grid into wilderness in such extreme temperatures renews my reverence and awe of the rawness and fragility of nature in its pure form, and our constant vulnerability within it. I revelled in the heightened sense of feeling alive. And so I could not have imagined a better way to crack open a brand new year: pulling party crackers and making toasts amidst the wilderness under a dark, starry night sky.
*

For a wilderness lover, I see this as a portent of good things for 2009.

So today is the first day of a brand new year. I presently sit in the dark of our quiet house among candles, waiting for the power-outage to end. The occassional creaking of our house and clicking of my laptop keys breaks the fuzzy silence, but that is all. I am hoping that the power isn’t down for too long due to the extreme winter temperatures outside that have a way of creeping through our doorframes. The constriction of the brutal deep freeze has warped these doorframes into a size that no longer accomodates the proper closure or either one of our doors.
*
Much like Christmas Day, I am sure many people’s special New Years Day dinners will be compromised by this power outage. That aside, I am glad for the dimly lit silence. It plunges us into a moment of pause and reflection which is only fitting for the initiation of a brand new cycle. Although I tend more to count my cycles with the changing of tides or seasons, the transition of a calendar year is still a framework of sorts in which to delineate events and processes. And so, with time on my side in these dark moments by the naked flame, I think back on last year and reflect on some of the landmarks of progress and lessons learned.
*
The predominant theme for 2008 was change, and my first day of work last year on January 8th began with me walking into my boss’s office and submitting my letter of resignation. After a year and a half of feeling oppressed to the point of getting incredibly ill, I decided to sever the chains and walk out the door – leaving behind the best paying job I ever had. I didn’t know where I would go, or what I would do. I just gave my notice, and departed into the unknown. It wasn't the most dramatic resignation, but its long-overdue submission gave me a sense of liberty that I hadn't ever felt in my caged cubicle of the Health Policy office.

*
When I left that office, I was still dealing with a major health crisis that left me barely able to fold laundry or go on a walk without being in pain or exhausted. The simplest things in life seemed like massive efforts, and I wondered how I was going to re-enter the workforce in that condition. But with some of the time I had to evalute what I wanted out of my next job, and aided by a retreat K arranged for me on Gabriola Island in B.C., I wrote down what I was looking for and thought of it often as I nurtured my health. I thought of it while I walked down cool, shady forest paths. I thought of it as I rested or read inspirational books (I recommend The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho). I thought of it while cleaning the house, or getting up the energy to walk with one of my good friends in Yellowknife. I cut out pictures in magazines that made me feel good, whether they were of gardens, food, or forests. And while I waited for my vision to unfold, I gradually began to feel a little better every week. Despite my fears about employment, I was offered various jobs that paid as well as the one I had left, though I refused to make lasting commitments until I found the job I really wanted.

Three months later, I got my ideal job, and it includes all the things I asked for. Sometimes I wonder why I had to walk over hot coals to get to this place. But had I not had all those other experiences, I wouldn't have known what to ask for.

That kind of transformation isn't really too extraordinary, but it exemplifies a very sound premise of some fundamental life lessons. It's so simple, and sometimes easier to say rather than do. The basic principle that change is certain, and that with a bit of courage and some determination, we can harness the power within it to create what we want.

Whenever my grandmother told me this over the years, she always made it sould like ordering something at a restaurant. Kind of like, "I'll order the Happy At My Job with a side order of Marital Bliss". She said that when people place their orders to the universe and they come out of the kitchen cold or 'not quite what they had in mind', it means that people weren't ready to receive it, or didn't place their orders correctly. Perhaps she's right. But I have to say, from personal experience, that just because we ask for something it doesn't mean that it will come free of strings. Imbedded in whatever comes to us will be more lessons especially tailored to our own unique needs and patterns, and onward the journey goes.

Sitting here with the lights now on, listening to the hum of the furnace infusing the once-still house with sounds of warmth, I am ready to prepare the traditional New Years Day ham dinner, and continue beyond the threshold of this day into the unknown adventures of a whole new year.

Yuletide

2008-12-29T19:06:00.012-07:00

The magic of Christmas is slowly tapering off, though its spirit lingers. Ribbons and wrapping have been ushered away, chocolate treats have been consumed, leftovers have been devoured (we ate the same turkey dinner for 4 days straight). But although these things have come to pass, the spirit of community remains in small but significant gestures. After having dropped off Christmas baking for our neighbors last week, their reciprocated gifts are still trickling in, in the form of bottles of wine, or their own traditional home-baked items. Not only do these simple yet kind expressions remind me of the beauty of community, but they are a great way to learn things about your neighbors that you may not have otherwise discovered from talking over the fence in summertime. By simply receiving baked goodies from one of my neighbors, I learned that she used to be a Mennonite. Who knew?

Though Christmas is now past, and New Years Eve is fast approaching to launch us into a whole new cycle, I reluctantly relinquish the sensory and sentimental residue of Yule. I cling to the peaceful reverence and rawness of this emotionally loaded holiday. Like a sponge holding water at maximum capacity, I try to savor all that I have soaked in, not wanting to let go of an ounce. Even as I bury my face in the fur of my cats (hachoo!), I can smell the faint aroma of cinnamon oil that reminds me of our tree on Christmas morning - the very cinnamon oil which I had sprayed on the lower branches of our tree as cat deterrant. It's lingering scent smells so festive on their fur, though I suppose this indicates its limitations as the deterrent it was meant to be. But with the mice and birds that alight the branches of the tree, who can blame the little furballs for their iron-will determination to get past the branch barrier.
*

Though the occassion slowly recedes from us like the loosening fingers of an ocean tide, I cherish all the things that the waves have left behind. Like the warm, happy feeling from speaking with loved ones over the holidays, and all the laughter and excitement that comes with the heightened magic of the season. And like a brand new parka. This parka is the ultimate in parkas. Besides that it is beautiful and warm, it's practicality is so ultimate that it cannot be trumped: on the inside of my parka is a little label for me to put my name, address, and blood type. Yes, blood type. So this is no ordinary coat. This is the kind of coat you wear for survival, or identifying your body if survival was futile. The fact that this coat can even expedite a blood transfusion delivers me to a whole new level of northern experience. I intend on initiating this coat into the very conditions it was made for by taking it out snowmobiling tomorrow in -30 weather, though just so I don't jinx myself, I will not be filling in the inside label just quite yet.

*
The Yule tide has also left some goodies for our feline children. Though they become ever harder to please over the years, Santa hit it on the mark this year with catnip spray, a peacock feather, a crinkly bag, and a strange little red bug that jitters all over the floor and climbs walls. The strange thing about this little red bug is that it appears out of nowhere, and can never be caught! The appearance of this little red bug on Christmas morning had Puss and Lumpy dashing through ribbons and wrapping paper in a mad frenzy, almost blind to all else in the quest to capture and annihilate this unconquerable red phantom. Of course, this made K and I ridiculously smug, as all we had to do was wiggle the laser pointer from the comfort of the couch. The monkeys score again!

With K long since disappeared into his man-den with a bottle of wine to tinker some more with his Christmas goodies, I sit at the kitchen table typing away on my laptop, listening to Jazz on CBC Radio 2. Occassionally I look up to appreciate the sparkling Christmas tree that still graces our living room like a holy entity while the cats sleep quietly in the usual places. It's just another cold night of -35 in Yellowknife, but the still fresh memories of love and laughter keep me warm.

Santa's Elves

2008-12-23T11:12:00.012-07:00

The homestretch of the holidays is full of Christmas spirit, with K and I as busy as elves. While listening to Christmas sitcoms last night, we pushed up our sleeves and sat by the coffee table to throw ourselves into our annual Christmas tradition of rolling up all the pringle-bank change from the past year. All of the change from a year of tossing it into an old Pringles silo is then given to the local animal shelter, along with whatever old towels and blankets we've discarded over the last 12 months. It feels good. Our cat Lumpy, who we adopted from the local animal shelter, really gets into the spirit and bats around the coin rollers, sending his wishes to his orphan brethren still remaining at the shelter. Puss sits by the Christmas tree on top of the hot air vent, wondering what we are up to now.

In the spirit of creativity, we constructed our gingerbread house next. Getting those four walls up was a challenge. During our contruction I imagined all the parents out there, under the vigilant watchful eyes of their children, swearing under their breath to try to get the house in their gingerbread kits to stand. Perhaps some settled instead for an A-frame. But with much determination, and a lower standard of building code, we erected the house. Of course the funnest part was glueing all the candies on, and piping the icey goop to hang off the roof like icicles. I even licked some candies and put them back in the bowl to autheticate the gingerbread house experience. Now our little snowy candy house sits on the kitchen counter, emanating happiness and all things good (and tasty). It is just a matter of time before Lumpy the Crusher comes along to this unsuspecting residence, but I expect that this house might weather the storm.

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This is mine and K's first Christmas in Yellowknife, as we usually travel during this time. So I have never actually been witness to the spirit of this little Northern metropolis at Christmas. And how it shines! The people whom I pass on the street are all smiling. A stranger passing me by today on the sidewalk even wished me a Merry Christmas! And although some friends and family are far away during a time when I wished them near, they are with us in spirit, and seem to shine through in our surroundings. Perhaps the holiday season is a magnifier for what we choose to see.

The Answer is Butter Tarts

2008-12-19T21:05:00.009-07:00

It has been a very, very cold day. I made the mistake of heading out in 30 below weather today without a scarf or mitts. One would think that, with the protection provided by a parka, I'd be fine. Nope, gotta have the mitts. Simply by driving in a cold car from the Co-op, and carrying the groceries from car to house with bare hands, was enough to freeze my fingers enough so that I could barely manage to get my key in the door. My pinky finger was numb and felt alien to my body until I got into the house and warmed up. It is fucking cold out there.

This kind of weather makes me want to tuck in and drink tea while eating mass amounts of carbohydrates. I can see the force of nature at work here, playing upon my instinctual drives to gain weight so I'll put on fat layers that will keep me warm. The only thing is, I'm gaining weight and it's not keeping me warm. And I'm outgrowing all my clothes, which is definately antithetical to keeping me toasty. A real dillema.

Anyway, I'll just assume that nature knows best, and grab another homemade butter tart to take to bed, with a cup of tea and a movie. There are no good movies on the TV tonight, so I'll have to watch one of the many on my shelf. I know I've seen all of my movies a dozen times, but I still like re-watching them. It's kind of like visiting a familiar place or an old friend. Each movie puts me in a frame of mind.

The Horse Whisperer makes me want to go live in the mountains, far away from people.

The Matrix makes me want to slim down, put on a rubber suit, and kick some serious ass.

Seven Years in Tibet makes me want to go back to the Himalayas, and brings me a sense of peace.

Atonement makes me want to run through overgrown fields of wildflowers and fall in love. Now I only watch the first half an hour because the rest is too depressing.

The Shipping News makes me want to live on the rugged East coast and eat seal-flipper pies while listening to the accordian.

These are all places I like to go once in a while. But sometimes I can't help but wonder, particularly with the 'unrequited love' storylines, if the star-crossed lovers got to be together in the end, how long would it have lasted? I guess there are some questions that should not be asked. For everything else, the answer is butter tarts.

So here it is, a link to the best butter tart filling EVER. I put pecans instead of raisins in mine, but that's because my partner has a weird phobia towards raisins (something about resembling fat bugs). You can buy ready-made crusts in the frozen section of your local grocery store, or make crust using your favorite recipe.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to roll myself to bed.

Dances With Oranges

2008-12-17T13:21:00.004-07:00

The Christmas countdown is on, and whether or not you celebrate, we are all plummeting towards it in a collective mass hysteria that cannot be avoided. Christmas lights abound, both inside and out. Shoppers flood every store, looking, touching, squeezing, buying, and bagging. The line-ups at Postal stations become long and unruly, making it easy to decipher, by facial expression alone, the newly arrived hopefuls from the grumpies who have been waiting for 1/2 an hour. People are more ready with smiles on the street, though there is an air of desperation that makes these happy faces seem volatile.

Despite the crowds and line-ups, I have been enjoying the Christmas spirit. The building anticipation is one of the best parts, and I have been riding it like a chemical high. Last night I walked into the grocery store from the biting winter winds, and was flooded with warmth, decorations, and Christmas music. One of the Christmas classics was playing, and as I stood there in the fruit isle picking my mandarins, I had this overwhelming desire to break out into an exaggerated dance. I would swing my arms wide a few times while singing the song, then run and pirouette! pirouette!, do a couple high kicks, swing the arms again, then jump up onto the cucumbers and sing like a madwoman to the whole store. Then I would roll off the cucumbers back down to the floor, a few more pirouettes, juggle a few oranges and then let them fall and bounce away. I would twirl past the bulk nuts and, grabbing handfuls, would sprinkle them to the crowds in one sweep. I would sweep my dancing feet past the bread isle, and hold a loaf of Russian Rye between my hands while squatting in a Russian dance. Then toss the loaf over my shoulder for someone to catch. To conclude, I would take a last run, grabbing a torilla pack on the way, and drop down on the torilla pack to slide across the the floor with my arms wide while looking at the ceiling in total rapture.

And if you are wondering, the answer is, 'yes', I have always been this good at mentally entertaining myself.

I am also aware of how ridiculous this is, but I don't think we do enough ridiculous things in our lives. We are too tempered by social constraints and self-image. And tasers. But up until that moment when the taser squad came in, I would revel in my total violation of social norms. I would see all those dropped jaws, and know that I had done something to make those few moments totally unforgettable.

But instead I just finished bagging my oranges, and, with a smile, carried on.

The Million Dollar Question

2008-12-16T13:29:00.019-07:00

The million dollar question today is: how honest is too honest?

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This may seem like a strange question to be posing with the holidays approaching, but then again, it may be the perfect time as most of us slide headlong into the social mush pit. While some of us are anticipating a smooth and lovely holiday, others are dodging guilt and obligation. And it brings me to wondering if there is any way out of it with minimal casualty? And does honesty make minimal casualty possible?
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With Christmas comes great responsibility.

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It is a time when we are expected to reaffirm our bonds. This is done through gifts of various shapes, sizes, flavours, and utility, or through phonecalls, dinners, or visits. Hopefully for most of us, the whole experience is a pleasurable affair with lots of good times and bonding. But what of that old gnarly aunt who won't stop pressuring you into New Years at her and uncle Bob's place, insisting on knowing what other plans could possibly be keeping you from the shared occassion? Does one tell the truth that they would rather plummet headlong off a bridge onto frozen ice, or does one keep lying? When all tact is exhausted, what does one do?
.
I use the holidays as an example because for most people, this time of year is a social mine field. But we find these kinds of situations all throughout the year, as we manage our needs with those of others.
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In my early 20's I had a particularly close relationship with my friend G, who for some reason just disappeared out of my life. I mean, this person was like a sister, and for a long time we both made this mutual declaration about our closeness. Then, one day, it seemed like she didn't want me in her life any longer, and I could not figure out why. I realized there had been a series of distancing behaviours occuring on her end of things when I had gone to her house one day. I saw her through the livingroom window as I pulled up, and once she spotted me, she immediately ducked to the ground. I unwittingly thought that perhaps she dropped something. Then I knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked a few times, and nothing. I told her the next day that I had dropped by the day before, to which she said she had not been home. After this it didn't take me very long to realize that she had made a decision about our relationship. It bothered me that she didn't approach me about whatever the problem was. But then, was it any less honest of her to just quietly slip away? Would it have been better if she had listed all the things about me that bothered her? Her behaviour was sending me a clear message; the reasons seemed to matter little.

.
I think people struggle with these issues all the time. We often feel that we cannot just be honest with others about our needs because of the crushing responsibility that comes with inflicting harm. And so we are left with a tactical maze of trying to get to the cheese without running into dead-ends.

The bottom line is, how honest should we be, and at what cost?

The Dreamer

2008-12-12T13:11:00.011-07:00

My dream life has been pretty full lately. So full, that some mornings leave me feeling too tired to go to work.

In numerous dreams, I have been flying all over the place. In one, I jumped up and flew right out a window, shooting like an arrow through thick clouds that hung low between neighborhood buildings. The dense grey clouds felt cool on my skin, and I twirled through them like a seal playing in water. In another flying dream, I flew fast like a sparrow over hillsides and crop lands, so low that I could touch the streams and tilled earth with outstretched fingers. Then the land suddenly dropped away and I dove through the vast open space to rivered valleys below, tears in my eyes as I cut through the wind like a knife.

But not all of my dreams have been so free. I have had some recurring dreams of death that have left me feeling unsettled upon waking. In one of these dreams, I was about to be beheaded. I was told by the executioner that I had a mere 5 minutes to live, so that I had better make my rounds and say farewell. I recall how precious those 5 minutes were, so filled with the humility of terror, wishing that I hadn't spent so much time overlooking all the precious things that my complacency had blinded me to before. Suddenly I felt overwhelmingly gracious to everything and everyone, and in my last seconds of life, was reduced to an unwilling renunciation of all that I had taken refuge in, even the momentary graciousness that had defined the last few minutes of my existence. I was laid bare, with nothing to hold onto as I met the swift darkness that followed the swinging of the axe.

As my flying dreams free me from my bonds, so my death dreams reconfirm them.

Dreams that portray the last grasping moments of life inevitably leave their residue upon the day that follows. Following another dream-execution, I ended up having a conversation with a few girlfriends of mine about what we leave behind for people to find when we die. I spoke of all the journals I have written in since I was 17, which I have considered burning. This sparked numerous comments from those present, which actually alleviated the lingering heaviness of my dreams. Aside from people's usual fears about what people would find in the underwear drawer or nightstand, or the old love letters stashed away in some basement box, one of my friends told me about the lengths to which someone had gone to hide their dirty little secret during what they thought were their last moments of life.

While having a heart attack, a Jewish woman staggered to her freezer to get rid of the pork she had hidden away. One person's pork is another person's penitence, and in this case, they were both the same person. Hell or high water, I guess there are some dirty little secrets that some of us just cannot relinquish.

Forever Young

2008-12-08T17:19:00.012-07:00

Today's conversation with my fellow collegues in the pub over lunch had me in tears.

It started innocently enough with the subject of waxing, shaving, or plucking body hair. Any conversation involving body hair has got to have its interesting moments, and this one certainly did.

"I've got a few whiskers growing out of my chin", one woman said, "and I'll be real pissed if it leads to a beard".

"I go for a brazilian wax job every month", admitted another, "but the asthetician who I've gotten used to having down there has moved away".

"I know a woman who used to walk around with a full moustache", said yet another. "She finally shaved it after a few years".

"I know someone who goes to a clinic to have their bum bleached", said someone else.

We all looked at this person.

"WHAT?? Have their bum bleached?", asked one of my colleagues. "Why would someone do that?".

"To...er....return it to its original condition".

"Original condition? What do you mean, original condition?"

"Yeah, you know, like, wipe the slate clean from all the use"

"ALL THE USE? What use?"

We were all in tears at this point from laughing. "No, really, what use? Will someone explain to me what use?". Truly, our beloved colleague couldn't figure out what 'use' we were talking about.

"Well, think of it this way", I said. "It's kind of like using CLR on the coffee pot".

Honestly, I think the last time I laughed that hard must have been treeplanting, and the subject matter itself takes me right back to those times around the woodstove in the mess tent after work. No subjects barred. It totally made my day.

Even more hilarious is a website I just found that advertises this kind of, um, asthetic. The website, called BleachBum.com, claims that "anal bleaching is one more way Hollywood celebrities try to stay younger".

Wow, these Hollywood trend-setters, eh? How to keep up?

The Little Yellowknifer That Did

2008-12-06T20:31:00.013-07:00

After a week of work filled with political leafletting, media frenzies, and belting out rally cries on the sidewalks of Yellowknife, I have put all to rest. I gunned it through the week, often without breaks throughout the work days, knowing that after Friday, I would trudge out to the back shed and dig out the 5 foot long coffin box that holds our beloved Christmas tree. The thought of that tree standing in our living room once again, in all its magical glory, sustained me through some very tiring moments.
*
Despite the near frostbite during yesterday's rally, nothing could stop me from barreling through knee-deep snow to the back shed in the dark after work to get that huge tree box out. The journey to the shed was actually easier than I thought it would be. It was getting the massive box out of the shed and across the wide expanse of backyard that proved to be the hard part. I could not carry this box. I could not pull this box. So I had no other choice than to push this box with all my might. At first it glided effortlessly over top of the deep, snowy surface. I thought that perhaps I was going to get off easy. But the further I pushed it, the deeper the far edge of the box plunged into the snow. Before long, I was actually plowing snow with this box. Once this plow and I reached my motorcycle beside the back stairs, things got interesting. But with much determination to get this tree in the house, I skirted the bike by pushing the box to and fro, and then spent another 10 minutes trying to shove the tree coffin up the stairs. There were moments when I stood there staring at this box, pondering just leaving it there for K. But I am much too stubborn, and before long I was heaving myself at the box again, shoving, grunting, and swearing like a trucker. By the time I got the thing in the house, I was bent over and heaving air in and out of my lungs so violently that the cats scattered for fear I was either going to ralph everywhere or inhale them. I collapsed on the couch and reefed on my asthma inhaler until I found relief. Once the heaving subsided, off I went into the closet for the decorations!
*
In case you haven't already guessed, setting up the tree is one of my all-time favorite things to do, and something that has acquired it's own traditions in our house. After Eight chocolates are set out on the table. Lumpy plays in the box once the tree is out, often getting trapped (which I think he revels in). I drink Eggnog. K drinks scotch. Puss runs for cover until its over. The Christmas carols blast away while the Burning Log DVD is played. We marvel at how hot we feel when the fire is blaring on the screen, and figure that if we play Burning Log more often, we could save on our heating bill.

*
Now the tree is alight with small white, glowing bulbs that look like tiny fairies nestled into the branches. Upon its branches hang red and gold coloured bulbs, accompanied by ornaments of mice and birds. Puss sits quietly under the lower branches on her sealskin pelt, forgiving us the disruption. Lumpy looks up at a small feathered bird on a nearby branch, dreaming of good things.

A Day in the Life of a Frozen Socialist - Take Two

2008-12-05T18:45:00.009-07:00

The pro-Coalition government rally in front of our MP's constituency office today went really well. I agree with my boss that these events should be more highly attended because of what is at stake. But despite that, I was still very impressed when 25 people stood around getting chilled to the bone for half an hour on the sidewalk in -30 weather while listening to what speakers had to say on the topic of Coalition government. I was also very impressed that someone had brought their own, home-made pro-Coalition sign. Though we had placards for people to wear, we aren't permitted by our employer to bring signs supported by sticks. My guess is the liability factor of possibly having them used on us by overly contentious types with strongly opposed points of view.

Speakers at our rally included a rep from from the Labour movement; our Member of Parliament for the Wester Arctic; and two concerned members of the Yellowknife community. Our MP's speeches never fail to humour me. He builds a momentum in his speech, and people start to get on board with what he's saying. But then, consistently, he begins to unravel in about 5 minutes and seems to get lost in what he is saying while the words are still tumbling out. It is like watching an open jar of smarties topple in slow motion. At some point, he tries to put all the smarties back in the jar, but this could take a while. Today, in -30 weather, this was all happening while people literally hopped up and down to keep their toes from getting frostbite. Although I am one of his supporters, I always feel like I'm about to watch someone do a log roll whenever he takes the stage. Forward, backward, forward, backward. People begin to look around for someone to get the cane. But then he finishes with a few rallying statements and we can all shout, "Here, Here!", as temporal reality begins to take shape again.

Though I get a giggle out of watching him, I can't say I don't empathize. I absolutely detest public speaking. It's not that I'm all that bad at it, it's just that I cannot think at all when I am doing it. Today, I was the MC at the event, and though I had memorized and practiced my introductory speech about 20 times, my head felt like mush in front of the crowd. The words that I had so carefully prepared were swimming around in my head like stray Alphabets, only loosely associated with each other. I spoke, and the crowd hurrawed, but it was all a blur. I think this is what happens to our MP. But in the end, we are all championing a cause. We are all just people who are sometimes braving our worst fears because we know what will happen if we don't speak up.

When the rally ended, and all the media interviews were done, I stumbled back into my office, took off my boots and socks, and rubbed my feet. My little near-frostbitten toes felt like they had been crushed with a hammer. But while I sat there trying to rub the pain out, wondering if my feet would ever feel the same again, I felt victorious. It was just a small group of people ready to take on the world. But as Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

A Day in the Life of a Frozen Socialist - Take One

2008-12-04T17:31:00.008-07:00

Admittedly I'm in pretty rough shape today, mostly from the aftermath of getting wrenched by both my massage therapist and my chiropractor yesterday. But because I haven't been at my desk too much, I suppose I could spare some time punching keys. Even though my fingers feel like stiff and fat little sausages from fending off -25 temperatures all day.

I spent a good part of the day on the sidewalks of Yellowknife in the thick of passing crowds, distributing pro-Coalition flyers to anyone willing to entertain my point of view. Considering the contentiousness of the issue, I am surprised no one told me off. One guy waved me off, mumbling something about 'separatist bullshit', but it isn't often that Yellowknifers get papered on the street, so they weren't too cynical a bunch. Everyone who stopped me to ask which side we were on accepted a flyer once I explained that I wasn't on Harpers side of the fence. Even a few folks renown for their Conservative leanings graciously encouraged my frozen-fingered efforts with a "Good for you!". One of the local inebriated decided he liked me and tried to help my cause by hollering at people to take my flyers between staggers.

As a political communications person who has been scanning all the angry written commentaries that follow online media articles about Coalition government, I am delightfully surprised at today's outdoor endeavors. Despite that some written commentaries on CBC involved threatening to use firearms to stop the formation of a Coalition government, I didn't get stabbed, gunned down, or even told off. I left my station on the sidewalk bearing all limbs and fluids intact, though with slightly compromised cognition due to my unsuccessful efforts to dodge the marijuana smoke coming from a mysterious nearby location.

Though spending an afternoon trying to convince people to attend a rally in -25 weather is about as easy as herding cats, it all ended well. And so the saga continues tomorrow as we rally in front of our MP's office.

Hair of the Dog

2008-11-30T09:57:00.010-07:00

Major food hangover this morning after the staff party last night. I went full out. Who can hold back when there is a chocolate fountain involved? Yes, that's right. A fountain of chocolate. I grabbed my little fondue fork and dunked everything under that river of sin: strawberries, banana, chips, pickles..... too much to list. Just so you know, sweet pickles do not go well with chocolate sauce. There, now I have saved you from an unsavory experience, though you may want to try pickles and chocolate anyway just so you have left no rock unturned over the course of all of your sensory explorations.

*
I'm not sure that food hangovers work the same way as alcohol ones. My grandpa adheres to the ol' "hair of the dog" trick in the morning, and though he swears up and down by it, I could never manage to bring my pasty, hungover lips to a can of beer upon waking. I recall one morning when I was out on the ranch with my grandpa in my mid-20's, waking up at 5 a.m. after a morning of unabated drinking with him. I could see him stoking the woodstove in the cabin from my vantage point on the foamy mattress in the corner, and I let out a painful groan as my head throbbed in time to the ticking of the old clock on the wall. I couldn't believe my grandpa had already had his morning coffee and a cigarette over crosswords, and was about to go out and feed the cows at that unbelievable hour when I was still drunk. "Morning", I said in sound that sounded more like a choking half-gasp. My grandpa walked over to the fridge and came back with a can of cold beer. He tossed it over onto my sleeping bag. "Hair of the dog! Drink that and you'll be fine." I protested that I didn't think I could, and that I would be fine in about 12 hours.

This morning I was willing to subscribe to the 'hair of the dog' approach to my food hangover, because, of course, we are talking about chocolate macaroons. No sooner had I rolled out of bed, and I was at the fridge, eyeing those tasty globs of goodness. After three, I felt sated enough to leave the last one alone, though I know it will be calling to me all day. I may have to eat a grapefruit now to clear my conscience.

The dangerous part about these macaroons is that they are incredibly delicious, and unbelievably simple to make. They are redeeming in the sense that they are high in fibre. Everything else is just pure pleasure.

No-bake Chocolate Macaroons

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup milk (soy or dairy)

6 tablespoon cocoa or 4 tablespoon cocoa plus 1/4 cup of chocolate chips

1/2 cup shredded coconut - medium sweet

3 cups Quick Oats (make sure it says 'quick oats', not 'instant')

waxed paper

Combine the first four ingredients together in a saucepan, and boil it gently for 2 to 3 minutes while stirring/whisking constantly.

Take off heat, then add the coconut and oats. Stir well until all of the oats are well coated.

Line a couple of baking sheets with waxed paper, then dollop your cookie mixture onto the sheets using a tablespoon. Should make about 2 dozen.

Will be ready to eat in 2 hours if you put them in the fridge. They also freeze well!

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Enjoy! These are heavenly!

One Ring to Rule Them All

2008-11-28T21:48:00.009-07:00

Recently there has been an interesting turn in Canadian politics. For the first time in Canadian history, former rival parties are now considering joining powers to bring down the government. Some folks out there call this 'undemocratic' because the parties appear to be taking matters into their own hands without voters, but then here is another way to think of it: 63% of Canadian voters did not vote Conservative, yet that is who sits on the Throne. So does it not make sense to have a Coalition government that actually represents the majority of the population?

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Anyway.
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I have to say that this whole thing reads like a Lord of the Rings plot. Harper and his toxic, oozing oil sands in Alberta spreading its black cloud over the sun so that his corporate cronies can reap their profits under cover of darkness. Sending his advisors to rape and pillage social programs so as to render the vulnerable completely voiceless. His victory derives from the continuing rivalry of the other parties against each other. He rubs his hands together in delight as his opponents fight among themselves.

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One Ring to Rule Them All......

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But wait. A fellowship has formed! How could this be? The Great Eye sways above the tower, scanning the barren lands as its foundation slowly shows signs of cracking. How could he not have seen the strategy of these upstarts? He had depended on their divisiveness.

One Ring to Find Them.....

Harper consults his advisors in Mordor, and decides to delay the vote of confidence for a week..... it might buy him time to quash this rebellion.

One Ring To Bring Them All.....

Will Harper's propositions sway the building momentum of the Coalition? What will he propose? Will they stand together, or will they fall, divided?

And in the Darkness Bind Them.......

Milk and Twinkie

2008-11-27T19:35:00.009-07:00

Today is the 30th death anniversary of Harvey Milk. Yes, Harvey Milk. I didn't know that people with that last name existed either. Every time someone says his name I keep thinking of creamy chocolate bars and people with foam on their upper lip, and now, well, Twinkies. But on a more somber note, Milk was an important historical figure. He was an American politician: the first openly gay man to be elected into public office in California. He was a passionate lobbyist for gay rights, and succeeded in passing stringent gay rights laws in San Francisco. He gave hope to many disenfranchised gay people by standing up boldly for the LGBT community. He was a champion.

And like a lot of other ground-breaking champions in history, he was gunned down. It was by some guy named White who lost his position with the City of San Fran and, being denied his reappointment, took it out on Milk and the Mayor who he saw as responsible due to their respective roles in his dismissal. Many call this a hate crime.

I don't find it surprising that a politically aspiring gay activist was gunned down in the street. What I found shocking was that White got off easy because, well, he had eaten too much junk food the night before. He was apparently a health fanatic who fell off the wagon because his life wasn't going too well. He went on a binge and then just lost it. He had gone on "automatic pilot" from Twinkies. Twinkie madness. So the jury let him off of the mega murder sentence that would have warranted the death sentence in California, and gave him 'involuntary manslaughter' instead.

Needless to say, the gay community was in an uproar, which instigated the White Night Riots, whereby thousands of people stormed the streets in protest of White's lenient sentence. They called for justice, for revenge. Twelve police cruisers were burned to the ground. Stores were broken into and smashed. The cable buses were diswired and disfigured.

I mean, we are talking about a guy who claims to have lost it because of eating junk food. If the shooting itself wasn't a hate crime, the leanings of the jury sure were. The lunacy of this is astounding. Makes me want to smash something, too. Go raise hell downtown. Burn some police cars. When presented at court I would say, "well, I went on this Twinkie binge last night, and....."

Eagles and the Crab

2008-11-24T16:30:00.009-07:00

I had an Eagles flashback today. Not the majestic, bald, feathered kind, but a shake-your-bootie, pass-the-doobie 70's band consisting of guys with afro's, handle bar moustaches, and bell-bottom denims. And along with all these images of hair and denim flashing before me, are memories of my childhood aboard my stepfather's commercial fishing boat.

There he is, at the wheel: my stepfather. His own curly 'fro having taken on a life of its own and his month long facial overgrowth providing the finishing touches of what appears to be the grisly portrait of a madman. Cigarette hanging out one side of his mouth, Eagles blaring "Take it Easy", he swings the wheel a little to the right, then a little to the left, eyes scanning the horizon as we cruise the high seas in search of the big catch. Most of the time I would hang out and play cards with my mom or gnaw at my siblings if they were around.

Don't ask me what we were fishing for. Salmon? Cod? I do remember some pickled herring sitting out on the balcony at home, though whether or not that was the ocean gold we were searching for is still an unknown to me. All I remember about that herring is that, after a couple of years pickling away on the back balcony in those big white vats, it could have been liquified and sold as an explosive. But despite not really being in the inner folds of the fishing expedition, I did know what we were apparently throwing back in, such as dog fish. Though I recall thinking that they didn't look much like dogs to me.

Often I wasn't the only child to go on these high-sea adventures. My older step-sister, Lisa, and my younger brother, Robert, would occassionally have to do their time as well, most likely due to a lack of alternative childcare. I was always glad for their companionship: Lisa being a comrade and Robert being, well, someone to pick on when I got bored.

Whenever we docked somewhere for the day to get supplies or for the crew to make repairs, the three of us would go exploring out on the shore. Sometimes we were fortunate to find washed-up wood and chunks of styrofoam that had floated up on the shoreline, and we would try to assemble a raft. There was no forethought as to where we would sail this raft once built, and there never needed to be, because we never managed to find a way to bind all of our newfound materials together. For us as we were then, the product never mattered. It was all about the process of dreaming; the potential for great things was an adventure in and of itself.

One day we ventured from the docks out onto a beach of black basalt rock with small pools remaining from a recently receded tide. We spent hours squatting next to those pools, gazing, poking, and picking at the unfortunate creatures the sea had left remaining at our mercy. I loved prodding the tiny little crabs of different colours: purple, pink, green, and blue. Off they would skuttle, running for cover. All but a little green crab whose lack of resistance I took for friendship. Into my pocket he went.

We were finally called in for dinner by my step-father's loud, belching roars, and off we hobbled with legs cramped from squatting all day. Our boat was moored at a lower dock off of the main pier, and because we had done a great deal of doddling on the way back, we had decided to use the metal ladder down to the lower dock rather than the ramp to save time. First Lisa went, then Robert, who, being only 4 years old, needed her to grab him off of the ladder once he finished his descent. It was a tricky business getting from the ladder onto the dock, due to the instability of the floating dock that was always moving near and far depending on the whim of the waves. And so I crept down carefully in my flipflops and waited for the right timing when the floating dock would come my way. When it did, I stuck my leg out to embark upon it, but then suddenly it disappeared. Losing my balance in mid-step, the only direction I went was straight down, my hands sliding down the barnacled metal ladder until I was fully immersed in ocean water. I was so shocked by the whole event that I momentarily forgot how to swim. As I was gurgling and flapping furiously, all I could see were the watery images of Lisa bent over laughing and my poor little brother pointing and crying hysterically because my flipflops were slowly making their journey onwards.

I finally came to my senses and grabbed on to the dock, spitting water while trying to console my brother about my lost 50 cent sandals. Once I was shuttled back onto the boat by my uncle, I quickly surveyed the searing pain in my hands, which at that point looked like some kind of shredded white meat. My hands were bandaged into big, white lumps, and were for the large part rendered useless for the remaining week of the trip. No more excursions, no more rummaging, no more rafts. It felt like a sentencing.

But I did not spend those days alone. I had a little friend with me. A little green crab, who dined on mussels that my siblings had graciously collected throughout the course of their day's adventures.

I'll never forget that little green crab, who, for such a small creature, was a surprisingly good friend on the journey home.

Moments

2008-11-23T15:22:00.021-07:00

Sometimes I wonder when I'm peeling an orange, who picked that orange off of the tree, and what was their exact thought at the point when the orange was separated from its stem.

Today I wondered while doing sit-ups at the gym, laying on my back staring at the gym ceiling, what will my last words be? What were my first words, and were they the ones that everyone thought they were?

I wonder as I type these words, who is being born, who is dying, who is falling in love, and who is crying. I would love to be able to take a snapshot of the world and hold it still; temporarily suspend animation and make a collage of everyone's moment all at the same time. To be able to say 'this is it, right here. life.'

If I were to make a slideshow of some of my moments, I think it would look something like this:

I'm 5 years old and squatting in the driveway with an oil can, squirting oil onto bugs and watching them squirm free.

My first motorcycle ride when I was 6 years old, holding onto the shirt of a teenage boy I hardly knew, flying through a bushy trail with a huge smile and the wind whipping my hair.

Chasing my grandmother's chickens while I was in diapers.

Riding my motorcycle through Shady Mile, a deeply forested mile-long stretch of road in Nanaimo, on bright sunny days.

Running on the beach with a friend late at night in our bare feet.

Sitting atop Gokyo Peak in the Himalayas, looking out over a blue sea of white capped mountains and turquoise glacial lakes, the silence so loud that it hurt my ears.

Convincing my little brother to climb inside the dryer and the decision to follow through with turning it on.

Peeling back a patch of dirt with my treeplanting shovel and watching all the ants scurrying around in their nest.

Standing alone, face to face with a grizzly who was only 15 feet away.

Dancing.

Standing on the edge of a stump on a steeply sloped clearcut, looking out over a vast valley to a mountain on the other side, stretching my arms out like I could fly.

Laying on a stretcher in an ambulance as the peramedic wiped a wet strand of hair out of my eye.

Laughing with a friend so hard that I cried.

Watching someone's first breath as they entered the world. Someone's very first moment in a world full of infinite moments before them.

Thinking outside the Box

2008-11-18T19:36:00.009-07:00

As I was walking down the isles of the new local Shoppers Drug Mart today, I scanned the isle signs and came across something that struck me as odd. It's nothing new, but today it really stuck out.

"Feminine Paper".

Excuse me? Is this paper with.....butterflies and flowers? Do people use this paper to write letters? Make paper airplanes? What? I can only imagine the conversations that commercial advertisers had around the horribly taboo subject of menstruation products. "Well, we'll have to call it 'paper' in place of pads. Better that than saying 'feminine plugs' rather than tampons".

If we are going to settle for this 'paper' bullshit, then let's start putting things on that paper. How about a fortune?

I actually have some fortune cookies with me, so I'm going to grab one of them and, for entertainment's sake, see what kind of message one might find on a fortune pad.

(breaks open cookie)

"Encourage tranquility if you are feeling agitated".

Hmmm. I would have settled for "take a pill" or "don't handle sharp objects or firearms".

The Pilgrimage

2008-11-17T18:57:00.004-07:00

The summer of 1999 pulled me in many different directions, one of them being the birthplace of my Cree grandmother who had passed away long ago. She was born amongst the open stretching plains of Spirit River, Alberta, under all that sky. I don’t know why I felt compelled to go there, or what I would do upon arrival. I just packed my truck, and I drove.
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I drove through alpine meadows in the rain, surrounded by the towering Rocky mountains. I ventured along winding, deeply forested, single-lane highways on clear sunny days. I stopped to check out waterfalls and scenic trails, and made chilli on the back of my truck tailgate while parked in an old forest grove. I stopped to take pictures of vast open fields stained yellow with canola flowers. And finally, finally, I arrived in a dusty old town called Spirit River. Land stretched flat and limitless in every direction, clouds perched in the blue sky like thousands of cotton balls laid out in infinite rows on a glass ceiling. When I got out of my truck after hours of driving, I thought I would be swallowed whole by the openess. I was on a sea of land, with the line of the horizon as my only reference point for dividing earth from sky.
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Soon after arriving I made it into a small, dumpy gas station and asked the gum-chewing cashier where I could find the reserve. “Oh, there ain’t no reserve ‘round here no more”, the older woman said. “Those guys moved outta here long time ago. Went to Fairview”. "Oh", I said. I did not expect this at all. I inquired about a place to stay. "Hotels and campgrounds are all full at this point". She blew a gum bubble. Pop. "Though there is a bed and breakfast down the road that might have room. People there are real friendly". I had a momentary flash of lonely, repressed rednecks with strange fetishes, but shook it off. I asked for directions there, and was told to take a right on the first road, drive to an intersection, then take another right and a left. I thanked her and contemplated just moving moving on to Fairview, but it seemed an awfully long way to come, just to leave. So I hopped back in the hot truck and followed the rough directions she gave me.

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It wasn't long before I became lost. I had taken all the correct turns, but somehow found myself on a flat dusty road that seemed to be going nowhere. I followed it for 10 minutes before surrendering. I was really tired at that point and decided that camping out in some farmer's feild might not be such a bad option. I had been sleeping in the back of my truck for the past few days, cozily enough. So I pulled over next to one of the only shrubby alders for miles, hoping that it would shelter me from passing eyes. I got out of the truck and walked to the edge of the crop field. I don't recall what was growing in that field; all I remember was being completely overwhelmed by sky. It was so infinite and all consuming that as I knelt at the edge of the field, I actually grabbed onto the grass to keep myself from floating away up into the clouds like a stray baloon.
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As I sat there in the grass, looking out over an encompassing horizon, I felt a strange peace wash over me. I dug my fingers into the earth and watched the sun sink into the land, creating a kaleidescope of rich colours that exploded across the heavens like fire. I stared in awe as I felt myself dissolve into the very air around me. And though I clung to that grass like it were a lifeline, a big part of me let go. Just let go. I emerged from a hard shell, raw and exposed, and I felt like I could shatter into a thousand pieces and fall back to the earth like rain. All that was left was a deep sense of peace, and the feeling that although my grandmother's people had moved on to Fairview, my ancestors were with me there, at that moment, pulling a curtain aside so I could see the beauty of the world clearly.

I did not expect that what I was looking for would be found at the edge of some farmer's field. I did not even really know what it was that I was actually looking for. But when it arrived, I understood. I came looking for a grandmother that I never really got the chance to know. And she came and gave me peace.

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That evening, after the most magificent sunset I had ever witnessed in my life, I crawled into the back of my truck, pulled up the tailgate, and climbed into my sleeping bag. I lay there by the dim light of a candle, listening to the loud crackle and roar of thunder as a storm rolled in out of nowhere like a freight train. The wind rocked my truck back and forth, sheets of rain sprayed against the windows like bullets, and forks of lightening struck fields near and far.

I had never been so happy in my life.

The Butterfly

2008-11-16T08:52:00.008-07:00

The dark grey Sunday morning sky hangs heavy outside like it had too much to drink last night. Yesterday morning, trees were coated with thick snow as if they had been dipped in sugar, sparkling in the midday sun. Since then the wind has come and rattled them free, and they now stand bare, lonely, and exposed in the dim morning light as the day barely unfolds. I have been noticing lately that we are well on our way into the dark, cold plunge of winter. Soon it will be light for only a few hours a day, and although I usually go into hybernation willingly, today I am unyielding in my reluctance to enter the cave. I am like a rock, as heavy and nondescript as the winter sky. If someone threw me into the lake right now, I would go right to the bottom. I have the dolldrums that make Sylvia Plath look like Mary Poppins on Prozac.

Last night I watched a movie that broke through the icy static and catapulted me right into a teary, chest-heaving catharsis. I'm not sure this was a purge, or if it dragged me further down into the PMS abyss, but regardless, it was an unexpected emotional journey, right there on the couch. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is about a man who has a major stroke that leaves him completely paralysed from head to toe. He has what is referred to as 'locked-in syndrome', where he is completely cognizant but unable to use his body at all. His life previous, as the chief editor of French Elle magazine, was full of life, passion, and womanizing, but his stroke left him as a prisoner in his body, trying to come alive again through memories and imagination. What he accomplishes is astounding. The events are based on the memoirs of Jean-Dominique Bauby. Check out the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G69Zh7YIg8c

I have often been thought of as having an incredibly rare capacity for the morose: I'm not sure a day goes by when I'm not aware of my own mortality and searching for some container with which to hold it's meaning. Sometimes I look down at my body like it was a rented car, knowing that someday the contract will expire and my body, along with all it mental accoutrement, will be dissolved. Thus, the Diving Bell and the Butterfly really moved me. A man's life was taken from him and replaced with something else, without warning. And he spent time inside his new cage pondering regrets and steeping in remorse. But then something happenned. The life inside of him stirred, and his imagination freed him.

Sometimes I am hamstrung by my fear of unknowns, what-ifs, and ultimately, death. What about when we are ripped from the warm bosom of reality as we know it, stripped bare and thrashed by circumstances beyond our control. Or worse, just snuffed out like a candle flame. What then?

But I see this guy's story. What he did when he had only his mind, and one eye. And the resilience of it all makes me cry. But it also makes me smile.

Are We Ever Going to Get There

2008-11-12T15:21:00.017-07:00

On June 11, 2008, the Government of Canada issued a public apology to Residential School survivors. It was long overdue. First Nations, Metis, and Inuit people all across Canada had varied feelings about the apology, but almost all felt that it was at least a stepping stone to launch further conciliation between Aboriginal people and the rest of Canadians. According to polls, approximately 85% of Canadians supported the apology. To me this was heartening; if the majority of Canadians felt that wrong had been done to Aboriginal people, then perhaps we were ready to move forward. I was grateful to live in a country that recognized the wrongness of cultural genocide, and the rights of the people whose land and lives were stolen.

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This optimism was slightly extinguished recently while having a conversation with someone who works for a federal agency that deals exclusively with Aboriginal peoples. This person's opinion, in response to my statement about the systemic violence suffered by Aboriginal people in Canada, was that these people are playing victim - that they had problems amongst themselves before colonization based on being a 'contentious' people. This person questioned why Aboriginal people should recieve 'special' treatment, when other 'conquered people' don't. He/she went on to say that the Aboriginal way of life 'doesn't work', and they need to be assimilated. Needless to say, this person is white. And during those particular moments, I think my skin was some shade of red.

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To me, this was appauling for a number of reasons, aside from the obvious one that someone who feels this way about Aboriginal people has a job working with them on behalf of the Canadian government. It was likened to someone minimizing the effects of the Holocost on Jews based on judgements about problems within the Jewish community beforehand. The pro-assimilation statements, at least in my interpretation, support the tyranny of colonization and mass genocide, of which the Residential Schools were a part (Yeah, that was 'hard on them', this person said). It promotes the hegemony of the dominant culture, and silences those within the margins who have less power. Lastly, this kind of attitude completely negates the spirit of reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples, or any other group who has been slaughtered to silence by tyrants. "But THEY signed the treaties!", this person said. And I ask: what reasonable choice did they have?

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This person was not representing their agency at the time, only their own opinions. We are all allowed our own opinions. But it made me wonder, is the federal government comprised of people who see Aboriginal people in this light? If so, what does an apology from the Canadian government really mean?

Very recently, Margaret Wente, a columnist with the Globe and Mail, was declared by thousands of people across Canada as a white supremacist for similarly principled views.

Almost 60 years ago, a global statement in the form of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was developed, which helped to lay the foundation for international laws and principles. This statement speaks to the inherent rights and dignity of all people, everywhere. It speaks of equality, fairness, and non-discrimination. And I wonder, after 60 years of this statement's implementation, are we ever going to get there?

Are we ever going to get there when gay marriage is still condemned?

Are we ever going to get there when the oppression of women is still acceptable practice in many places in the world?

Are we ever going to get there when it is still believed that those with less power should be assimilated by the dominant?

God help me, are we ever going to get there.

Back on the Wagon

2008-11-10T13:55:00.015-07:00

I've just come back from the gym, being the reluctant new owner of a gym membership. I hate gyms so much that I am almost willing to starve myself to take off the pounds, but then again I love myself (and food) too much to do that. So I have hopped back on the gym wagon, hoping for the day when they invent goggles and earphones with exercise equipment that can mentally transport me to a virtual scenic park, or, better yet, an olympic stadium with people cheering me on. And when I look down at myself, in this virtual world, I would see myself back at my ideal weight. But then, if I am going to opt for a fantasy, why not give me the body of, say, Jessica Biel? Save for the shelf ass.

All this talk of exercise is making me hungry. Speaking of hungry, I made the most kick-ass veggie pate last night. You don't have to be a vegan or a vegetarian to enjoy this pate, which I find goes well with crackers or in sandwiches. It's a cinch to make, and because of the engivita yeast, it is chalked full of B vitamins. For those of you who aren't familiar with engivita yeast, it is purely a nutritional yeast and not used for fermenting or baking. You can find it in most grocery stores (even up here in Yellowknife), or in any health food store. Has a cheesy flavor, is good for you, and tastes great on popcorn!
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So here it is. Try it out!
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Sunflower Pate
Source: Veganmania.com

1 cup finely ground sunflower seeds
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup engevita yeast
3 teaspoons dried parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon dried sage 1/4
1 cup finely grated potato
1 1/3 cups water
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish -- or dijon mustard
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Grate potato and rinse it thoroughly in a fine sieve to remove all the starch. Squeeze and drain the grated rinsed potato until it is dry.
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Mix the remaining ingredients together, and stir in the potato last. Preheat your oven to 375 F. Generously oil a small loaf or cake pan, and add the mixture. Place in the oven and immediately turn the heat down to 350 F.
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Bake 35-45 minutes until firm to the touch (timing depends on what kind of pan you use. If you use a wide bottom pan, the mixture will cook faster, so check after 1/2 hour. If you use a small loaf pan and the mixture sits deeper in the pan, check after 45 mins).
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Let the pate cool for an hour then chill it thoroughly before serving to let it set completely. It is tastiest served at room temperature. This also freezes well - cut it into wedges and wrap in plastic wrap.
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You can experiment with this recipe by adding some cayenne for spice, some kelp powder for extra nutrients, different seeds/nuts, or whatever else.
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Now I think I'm going to go read a good book and contemplate shoveling the driveway.....

A Russian Soul

2008-11-09T15:22:00.011-07:00

Tiny shards of snow pile up in drifts on the driveway. It's amazing how such miniscule pieces can accumulate in whole inches of white layers within hours; a foot of snow within a day. I know this is going to create a lot of work for me later, but I revel in it like a child being tucked into bed at night. I am tempted to go walking in this wintery wonderland but to fully appreciate the magic, I would rather be in the woods rather than my neighborhood streets. The obstacle standing between me and the back 40 is a large pond, not quite frozen through. Perhaps I'll wait another couple of weeks and find myself some old cross country skiis. I've been thinking of skiing that lake since my first winter here.

My cat Lumpy revels in this stuff. He meows at the door now in subzero temperatures just as much as summer, begging for the chance to roll around in a fresh white patch. Even when he knows it's 40 below out there, he will stand by the door and cry in the most forlorn yeowling that would put a lone wolf to shame. And so I put his little leash on him (he's not allowed outside unaccompanied due to the many hungry predators) and open the door. He takes a few wiffs of cold air and sneezes a couple of times, then ventures out, bare paws on the frozen ground. It's more than I could do without shoes, that's for sure. Almost as soon as he's made contact with the snow, he throws himself down and starts to vigorously wiggle on his back as if he were making snow angels. It is the cutest thing in the world. I'm always impressed by this little unassuming creature's ability to bear such harsh extremes, even if he does come back in and immediately throw up all over the place. Right after he's done exhibiting his lunch he wants to plunge himself right back into the deep freeze.

Next he'll be asking for hits of vodka to go with these winter plunges.

You've got a Russian soul, Lumpy. A Russian soul.

Some Things are Worth Dying For

2008-11-07T13:50:00.012-07:00

Tea boils away on the stove. The dishwasher swishes away at yesterday's plates. Towels in the washing machine are washed and rinsed. I contemplate these sounds now while I reflect on what I have learned over the course of this week's Dene Nation National Summit on Environment and Water. We are headed into a global water crisis.
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I know, it sounds so sensational. It impedes on our mistaken sense of limitless abundance in the first world, wittling it away to questions about sustainability that we thought belonged to 'other', less fortunate countries. Water is essential for life. How can it be that it is going the way of an endangered species? And how is it that this crisis isn't a priority for our government? Before I attended the Dene Summit, I had only heard about this issue in whispers. I stumbled upon a book about the impending water crisis in an airport about 6 months ago. Like many others, I didn't buy the book, preferring not to shatter yet another delusion about the continuity of comfort. But this desire to bury our heads in the sand is exactly what governments hope we will do while they bargain off our resources to the private sector. Our ignorance makes us one less impediment to corporate profit.

You may be reading this and wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Looks like we have lots of good water, right? At least this is what our government tells us. Hopefully I can adequately paint a picture with a brief synopsis of some of the things I learned at the Summit, though for a much more thorough understanding, I would advise you to read Maude Barlow's books, Blue Covenant and Blue Gold (lots of info on the 'net as well, but beware of your sources). If you're not a reader, watch this.

First off, we (globally) are producing greenhouse gases at an alarming rate, depleting the protective ozone layer and warming the planet. Whole communities around the globe that depend on streams and rivers fed by glacial run-off will soon have no water from these sources, because these glaciers are rapidly melting. Some of these water sources are already gone. Additionally, these warmer temperatures are melting the polar ice, which assisted in deflecting some of the sun's rays. Now that the polar ice is depleted, things are going to start heating up even more, causing exponential increases in temperature, and thus, increasing threats to water supply (increases in temperature are non-linear: a 1 degree increase in the south may be a 7 degree increase in the north). Some people think that we can get away with making salt water drinkable, but desalination plants have a lot of toxic by-product, and they also do not remove the many contaminants, such as raw sewage, found in the ocean.

Considering this, one would think that we would be taking efforts to correct our bad decisions. Instead, we just keep on making more mistakes. The people benefiting from these mistakes are not folks like you and I. They are the big corporations.

Right now there is a major crisis going on in our own backyard, in the form of the Alberta oil sands. These oil sands represent the largest consumption of water in the Athabasca River basin. It takes between 2 to 4 barrels of water to produce 1 barrel of oil. Currently they are producing one million barrels of oil a day, drawing enough water out of the Athabasca River to sustain a city of two million people for a year. The majority of the water they are using for extraction cannot be reused due to severe contamination, and is pumped into some of the world's largest toxic waste holding dykes.
*
Because of global warming, the Athabasca River is decreasing in flow. Yet these big oil corporations, aided by our government, would like to increase oil production to 5 times their current output over the next few years. This problem is not isolated because water knows no boundaries. The Athabasca River is part of the Mackenzie River basin, which is a key contributor to many other rivers such as Slave Lake up North. So eventually, this crisis is going to spread. This is the kind of thing that is happening all over the world. In fact, as rich in resources as Canada is compared to other countries, we have been spared some of the devastation. Unfortunately, it is now on our doorstep.

In addition to scientists and lawyers, chiefs from the Athabasca region came to present at this Summit. What they had to say made the hair on my neck stand up. First Nations communities living in that region have been rapidly dying of rare and unusual cancers over the past 20 years. Deformed fish (some with two heads) are found in the lakes, along with other abnormal aquatic life. Toxic by-products from the oil sands are polluting the water in lakes and rivers. Although health authorities have expressed growing concerns over this dillema, Health Canada has refused requests by First Nations communities to conduct health studies to get down to the bottom of things. One chief said that a doctor who was working with them on the issue had contacted him one day to say that he couldn't do so any longer, because he had been 'warned' by the government not to.

As the world runs out of water, and our rapidly depleting supply is continually poisoned, water is going to be the number one commodity in popular demand. As essential to life as it is, we are in for some interesting times, especially given that the projected world population is expected to double in size by 2050. For the past several years we have been watching the U.S. bully the Middle East for oil in nasty wars fought under the guise of 'defeating terrorists'. Soon all eyes will be looking to Canada for water, which is much more essential to life than oil. And once the deal is signed, the water will be corporately owned. Every. last. drop. Our government is already in the legislative process of undermining our rights to water, as are 'international water councils' who claim to have our best interests at heart. Bummer that these water councils are comprised of the usual suspects: World Bank, IMF, and corporations. I know, I know, this all reads like a conspiracy novel, but a lot of people have put in the leg-work on this one, and it's all true.

*
An interesting element in this whole unfolding scenario is that First Nations people in Canada have constitutionally protected rights to the land under their Treaties. These Treaties are internationally respected agreements, and our government must abide by them. The water, being an inextricable part of the land, is essentially owned by the First Peoples. This was a major point emphasized by the legal professionals who attended this Summit. Aboriginal people are not stakeholders in all this business, as the government wrongly references them as. They are the owners. And these owners are getting mighty pissed off at what has been done to them and their home. We are about to witness some of the largest class-action lawsuits in Canadian history as these people rise up and reclaim what is theirs.
*

After listening to panel upon panel of experts at the Summit over the course of a few days, sinking into my seat in despair with every passing hour, I was relieved when one of the elders spoke and let out the battle cry. She shared what was on her mind while the NWT Minister of Environment & Natural Resources and some drone pencil-heads from the Feds were on the panel, and her commentary was aimed directly to them. "I AM TIRED OF LISTENING TO YOU PEOPLE TELL US WHAT TO DO. YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT TO TELL US WHAT TO DO WITH THIS LAND. THIS LAND IS OURS. I WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO FIGHT FOR THIS LAND. I WILL LAY MY LIFE DOWN FOR IT. I DON'T CARE IF I DIE. THIS IS SOMETHING WORTH FIGHTING FOR". This is really a synopsis of what she said, which in actuality lasted about 20 minutes while the panel squirmed in their seats.

*
It's not easy to hear a 70 year old woman's heart breaking, but it really brought home the message that there are some things worth dying for.

The Long Winter Ahead

2008-11-03T14:53:00.006-07:00

Yellowknifers are back to cursing the snow.

On the day of first snowfall, people do it jovially, as if they were putting up a grumpy front while secretly loving it like children. But after a week of slipping and sliding on the roads, shoveling driveways, scraping windshields, and slogging it out on the sidewalks, people become downright annoyed. The rapidly decreasing daylight adds to the malcontent.

Me? I'm loving it. I'm a westcoaster and we just don't get as much of the white stuff (snow, that is) as Northerners. The novelty hasn't worn off after a few winters like people told me it would. Even walking back from work, slipping over the same old patch on a particular section of street, feet scrambling like I'm doing a backwards log-roll, I'm unfazed.

These were my exact thoughts today as I pulled up the hood of my parka and braced myself against the wind with a smile as I left work. "I still love it", I thought to myself.

Off I scuttled down the street to my car, looking down at the ground, loving snow. And then...

POOF! Flat on my ass as I crossed the street.

"Shit!", I muttered as I collected myself and my briefcase off of the ice. It was the same.old.spot where I always slip. Today it got the best of me.

It usually takes me about 3 months of winter to fall on my ass. This has only taken me a week.

I might be in for a long winter.

Down the Rabbit Hole

2008-11-02T13:17:00.011-07:00

I considered not writing the Blog today. I've had the flu for the past couple days and don't feel very well. In fact, I feel as if someone took a hammer to my appendages and dragged my body behind a truck. Ow.
*

I'm also recovering from Halloween night.

Me and a bunch of friends had plans to attend the Rocky Horror Picture Show on Halloween night, fully decked out. As the hour drew nearer for our departure, I headed into the closet to pick a costume. I used to be the queen of dress-up, so within my wardrobe one can find go-go dancer dresses (complete with wig), goth (with spiked collar), medieval gowns, leather dresses, striped leotards, and a host of other regalia for a variety of occassions and shinanigans. I had even added to my collection earlier that day by purchasing some fake eyelashes.

*
Into the closet I went. I looked over a bunch of costumes I hadn't worn in ages. I tried stuff on. Too tight. I tried some other stuff on. So tight I couldn't get it over my chest, and if I could get it over my chest, it wouldn't zip up. I felt as if I had entered midget land. Everything was at least 3 sizes too small. Absolutely everything. Did I drink the GROW potion?

*
So I tried on my purple go-go wig anyway, but noticed it had become scraggly and blue at the roots. Wha?? How did this happen?

The only thing left was....the spikey collar. I debated just wearing that but it was -10 degrees outside. So I actually left the house on Halloween night in my jeans and a sweater. And, by that time, a headache accompanied by chills and fever due to a flu that was gaining ground on me.

If I could only find my way out of the Rabbit Hole.

In the meantime, I'll head to the gym.

All Hallows Eve

2008-10-31T15:52:00.013-06:00

The halloween lights are out on the deck and the candy is bought. All we do now is wait for the ghouls of All Hallows Eve to descend upon us with pillowcase in hand. My cat Lumpy, who seems to have made himself a girlfriend out of Ken's new pirate wig, is now racing back and forth from one end of the house to the other like Mario Andretti, tail flaired in excitement. Last Halloween a little bear about 3 feet tall came to the door, scooped him up, and paraded him up and down the hallway with his legs dangling, as he decided to go completely limp for self-preservation. He had never before seen a person under 5'4", never mind one covered in fur and whiskers. Who knows what tonight will bring?
*

As I was out shopping for last minute supplies today I couldn't shake off the strangeness of some of the costumed retail staff. An older newfie witch stood around bitching with a clown and a chubby woman in maid regalia that was three sizes too small and stretched to the brink in all the wrong places. As I waited at the check-out, I witnessed a most excruciating flirtation from the 50+ witch-teller on a guy who could have been her son. She kept plying him with questions about his life between girlish giggles and sideways glances, while he kept to formal one word replies and got out of there fast. I made a mental note-to-self about not hitting on men half my age when I am 55. But good on her for trying.

*
While I wait for the kids to come perhaps I will plug in a thriller and scare the shit out of myself - a favorite pastime of my youth. The movie, "The Others" does this quite nicely. One of the finest ghost stories around in my opinion, but not recommended for people with heart conditions.
*
There really is nothing quite like a good ghost story. If you're into that kind of thing and are in the neighborhood of Scotland, drop by Mary King's Close. Guaranteed to have you sweating through your palms and reaching for your friend's arm within 5 minutes of the tour. Mary King's Close is an underground tour of a series of closes (narrow alleys) next to the Royal Mile that were built over in the 17th century due to the Plague. Whole apartments were 'decapitated', cemented over, and left in darkness for centuries. It is reported that many people were left to die horrible deaths down there. The hauntings make it legendary. There are numerous reports of disembodied limbs and heads floating around, as well as phantom children still looking for their lost parents. As soon as we passed through the entrance with our tour guide, we quickly descended into a long, sloping alleyway, dim lights casting ill shadows that moved with our passing. Old tattered, colourless laundry hung limp on clothes lines between windows of the old upper apartments. It felt cold, and an damp, musty smell hung in the air. Old faded wallpaper from the 17th century still clings to the walls in peeling strips after all this time.

Did I see any ghosts, you ask?

No.

But not because they weren't around for the seeing. Likely it was because I spent the entire hour of the tour single-mindedly counting the seconds until we got out of there.

The Visit

2008-10-28T19:56:00.024-06:00

According to the Celts, October 31st marks the end of the calendar year. The harvest is reaped and stored, and the cycle of death descends on us as we make the transition into the cold dark clutches of winter. The transition between the old and new on the eve of the 31st is, as the Celts believed, when the boundaries between the living and the dead are blurred, and communication between the two worlds is possible. The Celts celebrated this time as 'Samhain', translated from Gaelic as "end of summer".
*
Though the veil between the worlds is said to be thin during this time, allowing for easy cross-over, I have never personally seen any ghosts or received any messages from them. Not on Samhain.
*

But I have indeed received my fair share of visitations.

One day in the early autumn of 1999 I was treeplanting on an old cutblock on Vancouver Island. The long, tiring season had left me bruised and listless, and I plodded along amidst the last remaining heat of the season in a trance-like state, lulled into a slow but steady pace by the occassional birdsong in the nearby forest. Thoughts came and went in their usual fluid, nonsensical pattern of commentary, sentiments, and images as I climbed over a log, planted a tree..... took another couple steps....planted a tree (repeat 1,000 times). And the rambling voice in my mind continued on, chattering away like a squirrel.

But at some indiscernible point the voice changed. On I planted, listening to this voice that was not my own as I poked and prodded and planted the earth. It was a soft voice, belonging to a man. It was an old, old man, whose voice was barely more than a mumbling whisper, and I found it soothing to listen to. On he spoke, slowly and deliberate, as if telling me a story. I planted about 100 trees as I listened. And then suddenly I stood still and looked around me as if seeing my surroundings for the first time. I couldn't remember the past 1/2 hour, other than knowing I had been listening to this old, old voice. And as I stood there, I realized I had no idea as to what that voice had been saying, because it had been in some other language. I was bewildered. And I wondered to myself, barely consciously, "what was that voice talking to me about?".

And the voice answered, "Little bear".

At this point I laughed at my ability for self entertainment and plodded along down the gently sloping hill.

And then I saw it.

There in the cool shadow of a large fir log was a small mass of bones and fir. As I drew closer I saw that it was the remains of a bear cub's carcass, long dried and decayed. I knelt beside it and stared for a long time, sad that it had lived such a short life.

That night I had the strangest dream. I entered an old house surrounded in mist, and walked up its crickety old wooden staircase, to a dimly lit room. I sat on the bed near a window, with just a faint light around me so that I could barely see my hazy surroundings. There was a nightstand nearby, some old, tattered white cotton curtains swaying in a draft, and old wooden floorboards. I felt slightly chilled in these dismal surroundings, yet strangely not afraid.

Then suddenly there was a hand on mine, soft and subtle so that I barely noticed it was there. I tried to see who was sitting beside me but I couldn't quite make out his features. And then I knew. It was him. It was my cousin Rick who had died 10 years before. He had been taken from us so young, in his early 20's. I felt so at peace sitting beside him; happy and disbelieving in the wake of the calm warmth that washed over me that I knew was my own joy. I turned to him but the features of his face still evaded me. And so I asked, "Rick....is that you?".

"Yes. It's me".

And as is the nature of all things, the moment did not last. I awoke reluctantly, still clinging to his presence in that room as his hand slipped from my desperate grasp, back into the mist. The dream, seemingly more real that my present surroundings, slowly began to fade into mere traces of shadow and light. Only my remaining feelings were real. And though upon waking I felt certain that something had truly happened, over the course of the next few weeks the certainty was stolen from me by my lingering doubts. I eventually reconciled with myself that I was clinging to the dream because I wanted so much for it to be real, as all people do who lose those they love.

A few weeks after this whole incident I visited my aunt Yvonne, Rick's mother. We often spoke of Rick, reviving him by breathing life into our memories. Some of my earliest memories were of Rick and I playing when we were just a few years old, hair flying in the wind as we ran like deer in the woods chasing one another from tree to tree and giggling furiously. I don't know what it was, but my heart always swelled and thumped in my ears whenever I saw him, and so the news of losing him was crushing beyong measure; a deflating weight that emptied me. My aunt was the only person who I felt really understood my feelings, and we often took solace in our shared loss.

During this particular visit, as we sat around chewing pizza we had just brought back to her apartment, Yvonne told me she went to a pipe ceremony just a few weeks before. I listened with interest, as my aunt is Cree and I loved hearing about anything involving the practice of our traditional ways - most of which have been lost. She carefully explained the protocols of the ceremony, and the passing of the pipe around the circle as each person smoked from it. She said this ceremony was to honour Rick's spirit, and to give prayer for his safe passage to the other world, even though he had left us long ago.

And then the pipe came to a Cree elder. He was a very old, old man.

He started his prayer for Rick. "A little bear has died. He was taken from us too soon. He left this world young........."

I did not hear the rest of what she said, or perhaps I just cannot now recall. All I remember now is the feeling of knowing that I had been visited.

At a time when the boundaries of this world and the next became thin, perhaps this elder finally sent Rick on his way. I'm glad I got to say goodbye.

The Ghost

2008-10-26T11:08:00.016-06:00

It's a fine October Sunday morning with the sky glowing soft and misty while I wait impatiently for snow that promises to arrive any day. My tea steeps away in its pot near the stove as the cat spreads out on the electric blanket like a lion in the sun, occassionally chattering away at birds brushing past the chilly window panes. I love this time of year, so peaceful and haunting as things are laid to rest so life can be renewed next year.
*

This reflective time feels perfect for a visit to the Calico Cat teahouse in Nanaimo, B.C. I love everything about going to that teahouse: the English-style gardens with ceramic fairies nestled into shrub and flower; the rambling roses that spill over the rails of the patio; the warm, tranquil traditional teahouse decor with lace and fine china. The place has a magic that pleasantly displaces me, delivering me into a sense of peace and timelessness. I love to sit and drink sugary tea there while gazing at the distant sun-kissed forests, quietly reflecting while awaiting the tea leaf reader. Apparently there is a ghost in the ladies bathroom, but I conveniently choose to be a non-believer when I have to go in there.

Tea leaf readings at the Calico Cat can be quite an adventure. The owner, Heather Frank, is a renowed psychic and people come from all over Vancouver Island to get a reading from her. I have witnessed on many occassions the effect that some of her readings have on willing participants, such as instantaneous bawling and crying from those whom only moments before were pleasantly smiling over crumpets. In between sobs and sniffles I would hear them say, "Thank you....thank you.....", and I would try to go back to casually eating my lunch as if listening to people having a meltdown over doilies and fine china was the most normal thing in the world.

*
One spring I decided to take my mother out for lunch here, and booked us both readings for entertainment. It had been a long winter for me, burying myself in university courses and feeling the weight of loneliness and regrets which had accumulated from some bad choices a few years before. The first of those bad choices had resulted in my much beloved cat leaving me for reasons I never understood. His absence was like a hole in my life long after I had reconciled everything else. Mysteriously over the past winter, as my eyes stung with grief and concern for him, I would experience episodes when I could feel him with me, nudging the covers in bed to be let under. One day I even found a striped piece of fur on my sweater that looked just like his, despite that I hadn't seen him in years. In my dreams I would find him in the forest, or by the river where we used to walk together, but he was always beyond my grasp. I wondered at these things, disturbed by own my tormenting imagination. But the more tears I shed that winter, the more these 'visits' would occur.

And so to lift the heavy hand of books and heartbreak, off we went, my mother and I, to enjoy some tea and lunch and laughter. After we had drained the teapot over the course of conversation, Heather came over to do our tealeaf readings. Upon seating herself at the table, she looked directly at me and said, "you first".

I went through the usual ritual with the teacup, turning it upside down, then turning it thrice clockwise, and placing my hand over it to make a wish. Heather took it from there. I looked over at my mom with a smile; she had never been to a reading before and I hoped she would find it fun. Heather talked a bit about school for a few minutes as she was warming up, and as per usual, I said absolutely nothing but listened and smiled politely. Then right out of nowhere, Heather said, "there is a cat who is very close to you. He is trying to tell you that he has made it to the other side. He wants you to know that he is in a good place, and he is happy". And at this I let out a loud choking gasp, followed by a tumultuous mess of sobs, snot, and tears. I wiped at my eyes with the palms of my hands but I had become a relentless fountain of gushing fluids. My mother looked at me as if I had just sprouted an arm out of my forehead, completely bewildered at my abrupt change in state of mind or what to do about it. She looked about nervously as if searching for an extinguisher nearby.

Heather continued on to tell me that my little feline wanted me to know that he had to leave when he did. That things were changing and it was time for him to go. And I sat there, smiling through my river of tears, saying, "Thank you....thank you"....

And the people around us looked on, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

Laughter is the best Medicine

2008-10-24T13:24:00.012-06:00

Today feels a bit heavy. It's the kind of heaviness that comes with the territory of helplessly watching someone you care about going through something that probably feels bigger than life.

A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with advanced Lyme Disease and she told me about it in an email this morning. And all through the day it has been sitting there in my mind like a rock. I try to shove it around but mostly all I can do is look at it, examining it's shape, size, and texture. It's strange to have something so big arrive so suddenly.

As I'm staring out my kitchen window, looking upon the bare branches bracing themselves for winter, memories of our youth together come flooding back. My friend (whom I will call 'Kate') and I have run the whole gamut of life together. We have laughed with each other to the point of tears. We have cried together, and sometimes because of one another. We have loved and hated each other with a passion that would put Shakespear to shame. We have been both inseparable, and completely separate during certain times of our lives depending on whether love or hate prevailed in any given episode. And the great mystery is, we aren't even family.

So as I'm there by the window at the sink, washing the curry pots from last nights dinner, I'm thinking of Kate. And I suddenly have this memory flash of us when we were 18 years old. At the time I was housesitting in the attic suite of an apartment-converted mansion. It was a massive house with a lot of apartments, and I was on the fourth floor with just one other attic suite across the small patch of hallway.

Kate came over one afternoon. She rang up to the apartment from outside, and I buzzed her in. I could hear her climbing the many sets of stairs at a slower than usual pace, with pauses at each level. And finally, I heard her knock at the door. I opened the door and couldn't believe what I saw.

There she was, standing completely naked with an armful of clothes in her hands. "Dude! Let me in before the neighbors find me like this out here!", she said as I stared in disbelief. While redressing herself inside, she told me that just for the sake of it, she had stripped down to the buff while climbing the stairs to the top floor.

"But it looks like I'm missing a sock".

And so I had found a kindred spirit.

Pandora's Box

2008-10-23T13:27:00.014-06:00

One of the big questions that surfaces from time to time is: whatever happened to those people who were such big players in our lives, and could we ever have imagined that we would arrive at the day when we no longer know them? Like socks in the dryer, they just seem to disappear. Of course friends drift apart due to factors of distance or commonality, but what about that handful of people who were major catalysts in our lives - whose presence completely changed everything? People who shook us to our core; entering the scene like a hurricane at the most unsuspecting moments, rendering our lives unrecognizable, then leaving in the same intense manner in which they came.

*
I recently read an interesting definition for 'soulmate' which I had never heard before, in the book Eat, Pray, Love, and I wonder if it applies to these cataclysmic individuals who take us by storm and leave us knee deep in rubble. In this book, a friend tells our hurt and confused protagonist that a soulmate isn't necessarily meant to stick around for a long time, and the experience of meeting a soulmate is not always pleasant. Sometimes a soulmate comes into our lives and shakes us up, causes a major existential crisis, then leaves. It's a time of great suffering and immense growth, showing us lessons that we would not have otherwise reached for on our own. I mean, how many of us would submit a request to the universe to have a good thrashing? (I mean, how many non-catholics)

*
These people, soulmates or not, may be in our lives for a few years, or maybe even just a few days, but they get under our skin and ignite whole new parts of us that we may not have ever seen before, or may be afraid to look at. And then we don't hear from them anymore. Maybe we see them in the supermarket once in a while and don't know what to say because anything of substance should have been said during moments that are long past. Or perhaps we just never see or hear about them for such a long number of years that the memory of them is barely more than a whimsical thought which lasts but a moment in one's day. And then.....
*

They surface on Facebook.

And we wonder, do I or don't I?

There it is, a window into their life. Do you pull the drapes closed and walk away or open it up and click on 'Request Friend'?

It could make all the difference. Or none at all.

Facebook: Fact or Fiction?

2008-10-22T14:04:00.006-06:00

Facebook definately has it's fans and foes.

Many fans esteem it to be an addictive social networking tool, enabling the continuity of close relationships, and the excavation and reconstitution of old ones. Aside from the ability to share an up-to-the-minute account of one's activities or frame of mind by speaking of one's self in the third person all the time ("George can't find his glasses" or "Pam is still fackin' drunk"), the possibilities for social archeology are simply unparalleled by any other web application out there. One can keep digging and digging through threads of associations and unearth people from the past who were otherwise lost in the folds of time and circumstance.

*
The most rampant point of contention issued by Facebook foes that I find most provocative is the question as to whether we can consider our relationships on Facebook to be real ones. Do the 'friendships' we have reconstituted on Facebook reflect any real connection we may actually have with the people we electronically interact with? I mean, you could hang out with someone electronically for years, messaging, poking, and gifting, but would you actually hang out with them if you lived in the same town? Is Facebook the new height of social superficiality, or is it real social interaction?

This question was ignited by a friend whom I had invited to join Facebook. His reply to my invitation was (at the end of a long rant) that Facebook was just "not part of the real world". Curiously enough, we were both students of the same Interpersonal Communication class in university. In that class we analysed the fundamental building blocks of social consciousness: our perception of self and other, and the interactions that occur in the shared space through use of symbol (ie, language). Upon reflecting on what my friend and I had learned together, I was surprised by his stout dismissal of this social tool as not being 'real'. I think many of the social theorists out there would argue that cyber relationships are every bit as real and consequential as physical ones. They are laden with intention, symbolic language, and shared meaning, albeit within the confines of a different medium. Every gesture in interpersonal communication is symbolic. The glance of an eye, the position of one's body, tone and inflection of one's voice, etc. What we say, and what we don't say, has shared symbolic value between recipients. Electronically, it's no different really.

Take a recent experience of mine as an example. On one rainy afternoon, I decided to perform another Facebook excavation after bumbling into the 'Friend Finder' link. The Friend Finder will go into your email account and scour it for people in your address book who are Facebook users. Then you can send them Friend Requests on Facebook, and hopefully add them to your accumulated collection of friends. So there I was, looking over the list of people in my address book who are on Facebook. I saw that my ex was indicated as a Facebook user. This was really strange to me because I had seen his listing before while surfing Facebook, and sent him a message asking if it were him or not (his picture was unidentifiable), with no response. So, in a friendly gesture, I ticked his name and sent him off a Facebook Friend Request. Months passed, and nothing came back. And I wondered, "hmm....maybe that tool doesn't work very well. Maybe he didn't get my request". Sure enough, I looked at his listing on Facebook and the "Friend Requested" link was no longer there, reading instead "Request Friend". And so I did. And then it read "Friend Requested" for a long time. Until one day I looked at it again, and he was gone completely. Nada. Disappeared.

A friend of mine who also used to be friends with my ex kindly responded to my bewilderment by saying, "oh, he probably just opted out of Facebook". You gotta love the protective words of friends. Instead I know that my ex had pulled the 'Invisibility Booster' on Facebook by making his listing unsearchable, effectively ending all communication with me. I was appauled. I had been blocked.

I mean, if that isn't real communication, then what is?

First Snow

2008-10-19T15:26:00.018-06:00

I was blessed today to spend a few hours with a good friend over chai lattes, sitting behind the glass of the coffee shop window watching the first snow of autumn. We watched hooded people come and go along the sidewalk while the wind twisted and twirled in jackets of white flakes like a thousand invisible dancers. I don't know what it is about snow that I love so much, but it feels so final and concilatory, like nature tucking you in under the blanket, lulling everything into a peaceful white silence. Soft and forgiving as feathers.

Good memories from my childhood are blanketed in snow. Many of them involve visiting my grandparents in their home on Vancouver Island at Christmas, amidst the farms and forests. Excitement would mount as we pulled up the steep wooded driveway of their property under the thick canopy of cedar and fir, the view of chimney smoke puffing away on a whispy wind while warm lights shone like beacons from within. As we climbed the wooden steps to the house, my grandma would open the door and hold her arms wide to claim me, bellowing out professions of total adoration and love. As she held me tight in her embrace, she would chirp on and on to me, calling me everything under the sun that was cute or sweet. "My little pudding! My little sparrow! Look how my little muffin has grown!", she would shout while burying me in her arms. And I loved every minute of it. At grandma's place, I reigned supreme. I saw her house as my palace. Nestled in a wooded wonderland, it was like an elven paradise, with crystal chandelliers and sheep skin rugs by the fire, and large framed paintings of mythical beasts and angels. The place had a distinct smell that was both sweet and earthy, like tea and flowers and toast.

My grandmother was nothing too unlike Galadriel herself, gliding around the house like an elven queen, humming in her high sweet voice to the rhythms of Mozart or Bach. I would nestle myself under a special knitted blanket by the fire and watch the coloured lights on the Christmas tree glisten like jewels as I braided the hair of my dolls. And when I wasn't doing that, I was apparently putting on a performance on the coffee table. I have no recollections of these preformances, but I have seen pictures of my chubby two year old self in diapers and a knitted shawl, arms raised as if conducting a symphony, my expression one of greatness and deep concentration.

I also remember one particular day when I walked through the woods between my grandma and grandpa, each one holding my hand to keep me from slipping on the trail. We would walk together along those quiet forest paths, the odd small bird alighting on heavy branch and shaking it free of snow, the sound so gentle and serene. My grandpa would point out racoon and fox trails, and I would pummel them with questions about where the creatures in the forest were spending Christmas, and did they get presents, too.

There isn't a first snow that does not remind me of those days, where everything in the world was good and beautiful and special.

A number of years ago I actually moved to a small cabin that was only a couple of miles away from that magical place of my childhood. The first year I lived in that cabin, I couldn't bring myself to walk down the road to my grandparent's old home. I didn't want to shatter those precious memories that sustained me through so many dark times by looking upon a strange and ordinary house. But on the day of the first snowfall in the second year I lived at my cabin, I hopped in my truck and drove down the road. As I slowly cruised by houses and farms, I scanned the landscape looking for traces of times long ago, but it was as if I had never seen that road before. New houses replaced the old forest and farmland I once knew. It seemed like I drove forever, and I began to doubt that the old house was any longer there. I kept looking to the left as I drove, thinking it had to be there somewhere. But nothing. I suddenly felt an impending sense of grief and loss as I scanned that road like a child searching empty pockets.

But then, as I neared the end of the road by a fenced lumberyard and was about to turn back, there it was. As if it had appeared out of nowhere, strange and displaced. I sat there in my idling truck, looking up the steep driveway to the house with smoking chimney. All I could hear was the sound of the ivy covered cedars dripping wet snow onto forest floor, and a dog barking in the distance. How I wanted to see that door open with my grandmother standing there, arms wide to greet me. I tried to imagine myself there as the little girl I was, having arrived at her sanctuary where the world was all magic and wonder. And for a moment, it was there. But as fast as the vision came, it was gone, and I was just a stranger gazing at a house that was no longer mine to cherish.

I returned to my cabin that day feeling strange at having visited an empty shell that used to house something of such value for me. But in truth, the essence of those things never leave us, and we recreate them in other ways in all that we do. It was in this spirit that I reached for the old knitted blanket that I used to wrap around myself at my grandma's house, plugged in my Christmas lights, and sat by the fire to watch the first snow.