art is a lie...

...that helps us to realize the truth. ~ Pablo Picasso

in the middle

I love being on vacation and finding myself in the middle of it -- only in the middle of it -- with an equal number of vacation days ahead.

Lots more time for playing with friends, lying on beaches, sitting by rivers, picnicing beside lakes, ferrying to islands, walking over bridges, meditating for peace, and creating inside out.

So much quality time near water.

forgetfulness

you are so beautiful to me

don't take anything personally

"Right, it's all about you!"

I've been thinking tonight of how I've never liked the sarcasm of someone saying that to another. It sounds like an unkind reaction, especially to the face of someone who has just expressed some concern or taken in some offense, some pain, or some rejection that didn't belong to them in the first place.

It sounds a bit like "how dare you take what I think or say or do personally!" "How dare you invade me with your reaction to me!"

And it could so easily be responded to with "right, it's all about you!" And, where would that lead?

There must be gentler ways of reminding each other not to take each other personally. Kinder ways to hold boundaries. More humane ways to admit that nothing you think, say or do really has anything to do with me. You are all about you. I am all about me.

The upside is that I am free of taking responsibility for your stuff -- your thinking, feeling and behaving. It's not that what you think, feel or do can't hurt me. It's just that it really isn't about me. So I may suffer, or I may choose to save my pain for the big bad things that are likely to happen in a lifetime of interacting with others.

And in the meantime, I can continue to take your flattering thoughts, feelings and actions towards me personally, but as good as that might feel in the short run, I think that's just another perilous route when something as simple as the time of day can change the sea, which in any case is not about me.

This is all so elementary. You'd think most of us would have learned by now to
a) simply love ourselves and
b) take in from others just what fits and shake off the rest.

I suspect some of us are doing better at part b than part a, which explains why we are so adept at taking in what doesn't feel so good. And, whether you are one of us or not, I hope you won't take that personally.

for a neighbour who comes for tea in tears

childhood

beached

mending wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

~ Robert Frost

tracy triptych-ish

f-stop blues

Jack Johnson lyrics

Hermit crabs and cowry shells,
Crush beneath his feet as he comes towards you,
He's waving at you.

Lift him up to see what you can see,
He begins his focusing,
He's aiming at you.

And now he has cutaways from memories
And close-ups of anything that,
He has seen or even dreamed,
And now he's finished focusing.

He's imagining lightning,
Striking sea sickness,
Away from here.

Look who's laughing now that you've wasted,
How many years and you've barely even tasted,
Anything remotely close to,
Everything you've boasted about,
Look who's crying now.

Driftwood floats, after years of erosion,
Incoming tide touches roots to expose them,
Quicksand steals my shoe,
Clouds bring the f-stop blues.

Look who's laughing now that you've wasted,
How many years and you've barely even tasted,
Anything remotely close to,
Everything you've boasted about,
Look who's crying now.

precarious

together

Our first collaborative wordle and blog post, little E and me. She took about a hundred photos this morning, too. Here are just a few (plus one).

she can't believe...

... I've never made pizza at home before. (I am, afterall, ten times her age!)

So we make a plan that she will show me how. Then she lists her favourite toppings for me to purchase before the big night and passes over the rest of the briefing details to her mother.

I don't resist. We are long overdue for another evening together and how to make pizza is just one of the many things I am learning from my bright and handy little friend.

She's no slouch, either. Doing the dishes together before dessert is her idea.

And I think she's quite the little photographer, too, gently coaching us just how to pose for her.

norman

Norman, last time I saw him, 19 years ago when he was 66

I had a Father's Day chat this week with dear old Norman who teaches me that each time he tells me a story from his past he is telling it for the first time and if I listen to it as if I am hearing it for the first time, I hear it deeper or catch a nuance I missed from previous tellings, maybe something he is more comfortable telling, something that his telling has reminded him about.

Norman's wit is sharp and his maritime accent is thick as his short-term memory seems to fade. Or, does he remember that he is retelling? Is he needing to retell, needing to copy some of his memories onto my pages for safe-keeping?

He speaks of loves and losses, shares the recordings of old conversations he has stored in his mind and takes care to use the right words to express what he means, correcting himself when a word doesn't quite fit.

He does not shy away from expressing feelings. Sadness, regret, disappointment, gratitude, anger, love.

He is an unburied treasure. Probably a bit like my father would have been as an old man if he'd become one. This is a new reflection for me, a new understanding of part of what draws me to my connection with Norman.

He is my old friend Norman and that would be enough, but he is also a gift from my father. Or a gift of my father from Norman or from me to me.

A gift, no matter how I wrap or unwrap him.

soaking the wounds

They're playing on the far end of the path as I trudge home from work. They see me from a distance and come running, squealing my name and their latest good news that Grammy is here for a visit.

So much to show me. First Grammy. A few new moves. And then look how fast we can run now. Big sister and little sister racing back and forth across the path and grassy slopes. Until big sister stumbles on the stump of a small tree and is halted by her injury. Wincing. Bleeding. Limping. Home to the little back yard where big sister announces to her Mom that she must go to my house. She's been there before to soak dirty foot injuries in a basin of warm salt water. Not to mention the first aid kit she helped me to assemble and its abundance of brightly coloured bandages. Little sister winces and limps at the very idea of not being included.

So I follow my patients to my house.

And twenty minutes later Step-Dad arrives to collect them and seems just about to take off his own shoes and socks when Mom arrives to collect her disappeared family.

Poor Grammy has been left with instructions to come for them all if they're not home before supper.

what can i say?

Now that I think about it with less shock clouding my thoughts, I realize that I was very fairly warned.

I can say that the need for caution and consideration couldn't have been more definitely stated up front.

I can say that I took a risk with my eyes wide open, though in kindness to myself, I did lose sight of my impaired vision.

I can say that I thought I was turning a kind eye, but turned a blind eye to what I didn't want to see.

I can say that I heard myself say out loud that I didn't trust my attractions.

I can say that I didn't give enough attention to my own words.

I can say that I was naive.

I can say that with so much grief under my belt, I was over-confident about having had my share for a while.

I can say that I am grateful for how this leaving leaves room for something new to emerge.

I can say that I'm not sorry to have taken the path that led me here.

Sad yes. Deeply sad. Sorry. Not so much.

a page bereft of words

"A couple of poems I like a year look like a lot when they come out, but in fact are points of satisfaction separated by large vacancies." ~ Sylvia Plath

"Who then tells a finer tale than any of us? Silence does."
~ Isak Dinesen

poems in transit

Two poems into the mail yesterday.

Scores of poems sifted through and sorted in my own little collection today.

Readying myself for the next wave of poetry releasing.

Early to bed in pursuit of reinforcing my creativity with one of many good sleeps and earlier morning risings.

Re-creating my poetic rhythm.

Feeling so supported in my recreation.

drawing a blank

self-knowledge - a life's work

" I search in these words and find nothing more than myself, caught between the grapes and the thorns." ~ Anne Sexton

to fear or not to fear

"Fear is only an illusion. It is the illusion that creates the feeling of separateness--the false sense of isolation that exists only in your imagination." ~ Jeraldine Saunders

delicate

taste tested

Not much of anything this evening, but many nutritious morsels.

Two poems readied to go.

Another handful of wildflowers left at my door.

A few minutes of rain, just enough to stand under and soak in the smell of without getting drenched.

Another bag of garbage hoisted into the dumpster.

Another bin of recycling trekked to the curb.

Another round of dog hair sucked up into the vacuum.

Barely a sink full of dishes stacked in the draining rack.

A few more clean clothes hung in the closet.

A walk, but a short one taken for doggy and not-the-best dog mom.

A pair of good neighbours heard confirming the acceptance of new community members.

A sleepy word or two exchanged with a cherished one.

A lavender bath drawn and ready to sink into.

All told. A very tasty evening.

unable to say

"The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say but what we are unable to say." ~ Anaïs Nin

closer

So easy for me some days to lose sight of those dark and silent pools of grief, those all alone places of sadness, fear and despair curled up under layers of letting go and moving on, imagining themselves released and free. So easy until the sound of someone else's pain awakens my own and I let myself dip back down into the cold and murky waters.

twaddle

"Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all." ~ Katherine Mansfield

luna blooms

En route to becoming a good dog mom tonight, I took Shadow for the long version of the bedtime walk, the full checking-her-pee-mail experience. And while she was busily engaged with that, I had time to relax into the hushed warmth of the sleepy streets and to catch the breath-taking view of the round golden-orange moon just beginning to rise over the darkness of the park.

How golden-orange was it?

confusion: a writer's asset

"Try to find your deepest issue in every confusion and abide by that."
~ D.H. Lawrence

poetic process

"In the writing process, the more a thing cooks, the better." ~ Doris Lessing

Three more poems almost ready to cool.

i thought you said we were going for a walk

waiting room with a view

I'm on the short wait list for cataract surgery now. It may be three or four (maybe five) months before my turn or it may be as soon as two months away. Probably not sooner, but anything is possible.

And yes, to Sky's comment about the many causes of cataracts. The specialist mentioned yesterday a number of other causes including exposure to sunlight and the side-effect of some anti-inflammatory prescription drugs.

So now I wait -- while carrying on with the rest of my life.

A lot of beauty is still attracting my attention, including the view from yesterday's waiting room in that 16th floor office. The irony of such a view from a room where most of the attendees (at least the ones I observed) were experiencing some degree of blindness was not lost on me either. Maybe an added incentive to do everything possible to preserve or restore what eyesight we can.

Here's to yours and mine!

do or do not

"If you write, good ideas must come welling up into you so that you have something to write. If good ideas do not come at once, or for a long time, do not be troubled at all. Wait for them. Put down little ideas no matter how insignificant they are. But do not feel, any more, guilty about idleness and solitude." ~ Brenda Ueland

elm and chestnut

You can create your own poem clouds with a little help from wordle.net

cataracts

Despite a few moments of tearful frustration, some discouragement with how much longer everything takes to do, a bit of bemuddled confusion and disappointment in not being able to meet my own expectations of competency and clarity, I am still able to see well enough to enjoy most of what is within my view.

I'm still taking pleasure in colour, shape, sound, scent, taste and touch, even though my eyes are missing some of the details. (I'm particularly enjoying bright colours.)

Cataracts. I resist saying or writing the word. I euphemize. I pretend I am playing with words, then realize that I am expressing my internalized ageism, not wanting to be thought of as "old" or "blind in any way related to aging". Sounds as if I am less concerned with going blind than with being slotted into the category of "old". All of which leads to a shame-on-me feeling and that's not very useful in helping me to change my thinking or my behaviour.

Ageism. I have no resistance to the 20% senior's discount that Shoppers Drugmart has been giving me for the past four years nor to the ever-increasing possibility of a seat on the bus, but I can't spit out the word "cataracts" because I don't want you (any of you -- or me) to think of me as old or older than I feel or in any way past my prime or at all diminished by the number of years I am fortunate to have had the privilege of living.

So, it is becoming more and more clear that it definitely is time to check my perception. But in the meantime, I have an appointment with the eye surgeon on Monday. Cataracts begone!

I'll deal with the rest of the flaws in my point of view when I can see more clearly.

a writing habit

"Facing fear, developing a one-pointed mind, nursing a writing "habit," cultivating daily writing periods, finding the middle way, and burning yourself completely--all belong to the "how" of regularity--to making writing a practice."
~ Gail Sher

oar of the heart

strutting in the breeze

These happy-go-lucky leaves always make me smile. I imagine them walking along on those pointy toes with those padded little shoulders like wee cartoon characters.

I want to pick one or two and bring them home as pets, but which ones could I leave behind?

What a silly effect they have on me.

Every day on the walk home, I look forward to our encounter, to their reliable cheeriness, even on the bleakest of days.

Though I certainly haven't had many of those lately.