Returning

I am back to walking despite the bitter cold. The question of purpose comes up not just for me but for others in my milieu. The young are confused and misinterpret their daily acts as trite and unimportant. I often think if only X would happen then I could do Y, Z. Well here's a news flash. X is happening! I picked up trash today on my way home. I picked up a big plastic cup, a plastic sheath from one of the salmon reparation saplings that flew off in the wind, and an empty bottle of vodka before I found a discarded grocery bag to put it all in. I filled it up pretty quickly. I have been meaning to do this for a long time but haven't. The trash annoys me. Beer cans, coffee cups, fast food bags that like magnets pull the dog off course. So today I did it. It felt good, and it gave me a totally different perspective on my walk. I may never write a great novel and there may be no purpose to any of it but I will be able to walk down my road without hating humanity and that's something.

P.S. Someone on my road drinks a ton of 100 Proof Vodka in plastic mickey bottles. I hope it isn't a kid.

Warm and Cool

I took the car in to get fixed yesterday afternoon. I strapped my bike to the rack in the carport only to discover that the cat piss covered faux Persian rug I have stored in the roof trusses was hitting it, making it impossible to back out. I took the bike off doing my best not to let my frustration over take me and backed the car out sans bike. In the back of my mind I was thinking I should put water in the car but I was sort of beyond giving a shit. I got the bike on the car and even tightened the rack, interestingly I do give a shit about my bike falling off the car. I drove with confidence along my bumpy gravel driveway. At the car place I was prepared to wait for the work to be done but decided to stick with my original plan of riding home. I had a mission in mind to photograph some Rosehips for a poster I am about to begin working on. Some friends live along the way and I considered stopping in but decided I wasn't up for the distraction of conversation so I rode on and was pleased to find some Rosehips at the side of the road. A free opportunity to do my work without the complication of human interaction is appealing. I parked the bike and climbed up the bank and took a few photographs. I like the Rosehip. They are smooth red orange and I have a vague but pleasant memory of eating Rosehip syrup as a kid. I took a few photographs on the way home of the hills and fields now stripped of their corn. The marriage of warm and cool air leaving a translucent veil over the landscape made me wish I could paint.

I walked the dog earlier in the day, my 3 mile walking meditation, and on our way home she wanted to go down to the creek for her habitual drink but lately I have decided not to let her do it. The creek is low after 2 months without rain and I wonder if the salmon will be able to make it up to spawn, I also worry about parasites that might present after the long spell of warm weather. The edge of the road is shaded and wet so instead of drinking from the creek the dog walks there purposefully and seems to enjoy the feeling of the wet grass on her legs and belly. I half expect her to lick the wet blades.

I spent the afternoon in my office and around 5:30 went into the house to prepare for the evening. The dinner hour is challenging for me. I feel sort of alone in my tasks of making supper, getting the fire ready and remembering to bring in supplies from my studio so that I might get something done in the evening. I made a quick trip next door to get some veggies from my neighbor and when I got back, much to my surprise Pearl offered to cut up all the veggies for the stirfry I was making. This simple act made me so happy that the whole mood of the evening changed for me and I was able to work a little on a painting I had been neglecting. I am still not working on the Smithers piece although I tried this morning. I don't know why I am making it and what I am trying to say. Then this morning while surfing the web I found a lame little DIY blog post about making a chalkboard and written on it was "think less, do more". No shit. Anyway not sure what the fate of this piece is. I feel more interested in understanding what I like to do and what I want to make, it seems odd that at this stage of my life I don't have these answers.

First Full Day of Spring

It's hard not to feel happy on the first day of spring.

Then nothing.

I wrote that line last week. It was all I had in me.

On the first day of spring I passed a white dove on my walk, how ridiculously romantic is that?

The neighbors wave as I pass by and everyone is feeling the overwhelming positive haze that spring brings. All are compelled to get out there, slash and burn, sweep and hoe. We move in unison in Spring.

I keep walking, the work keeps coming and while my brain goes in a million directions I stick to my routine.

I bought pea seeds, I wonder if I'll plant them.

Untitled

So it's day 13 of the meat bird project and day 24 of the 90 Day Novel. I hope I don't confuse the two. I jut moved the chicks out of their stock tub into a child's swimming pool which felt like pure genius to me as the tractor I have for them felt too big and drafty. The pool offers some additional protection. I had one death yesterday, probably from  a heart attack due to rapid growth. These birds are genetic freaks, their thick post like legs tell the tale. I continue as I am told, to imagine the world of my story, the characters are emerging like slow moving zombies out of the primordial ooze. I am still distracted so I am reading the The War of Art which is all about resistance. It encouraged me to blog today because as we know too well not blogging is akin to becoming constipated. I have issues but I am trying to train my mind away from them and toward the world of the story. It's more interesting.

Amy Butler Shirt

I have been spending a lot of time in my bedroom lately. I am rich in places to be creative in my life. I am lucky to have an entire building dedicated to myself and I am also fortunate to have a large bedroom that I don't have to share with anyone. I have been sewing there and am trying to finish things in a short amount of time so that the season for which the garment I am making was intended does not pass without me being able to sport my hard work. I am interested in training myself to have better habits, to do things with more care and sewing falls into this category. I have always done it but I have not always done it well. I used to get so frustrated that I often ended up in tears. I also made a lot of clothes that were not exactly constructed well but they were good enough and I wore them. I am in a wholly different place in my development these days and I find I have amazing focus and am not afraid of ripping seams out to replace them with better ones. More precise ones. I am not trying to achieve any kind of perfection, rather I am attempting to really be in the process of making something and really do it until it meets with my satisfaction. I see precision as a viable goal. So the Amy Butler Liverpool Tunic is complete! I still need to put some buttons on it and then it will be ready to wear and I can start on the next thing. Each completed project signals permission to begin the next thing and so I go, making, making, until the end of time.

Thursday

So god-damned black out this morning and wet, like the inside of a dead cow complete with matted fur laying upside down in a deep ditch, half submerged. I turned my light on at 6am in an effort to pull myself up out of the dream I was having which I have no memory of now. I wrote about the darkness, what else is there to write about? Thankfully Pearl was cheerful at 6:30 when her alarm drew her out of her little cave across the semi hall. She poked her head around the corner of my closet and mumbled hello. I said, I am having trouble getting up when she returned with a tada around the corner 10 minutes later, naked with her head wrapped in a towel. I was grateful I would only have to motivate myself into action. I made the bed, an act which seems to help sort me out in the morning and she instructed me to start the eggs. Roger. I got dressed in basically the same clothes I have been wearing since Monday night when I last showered. They get so nice and soft I reasoned and I lack the mental capacity to choose a whole new outfit most mornings. By the time we left for school the sky was barely beginning to lighten and I commented on how it felt like the middle of the night. We are sleepwalkers, dreamily feeling our way around in the dark. I know the light will return and so its all okay.

In Between

Pearl went back to her dad's today for the duration of the Christmas break. I went to see a friend and drop off a little gift and then did some shopping to replenish my vegetable supply. I feel like all I have been consuming the last 10 days is alcohol, sugar, flour and animal fat. I am waiting for my gout to reappear and for my ass to sprout another ass. Oh well. In the parking lot at the local specialty food store a Volvo load of good looking enthusiastic people waved at me like crazy and for a minute I thought, do these people really know me because I have no idea who they are. I immediately thought this is early Alzheimer's, loss of recognition of people you have spent long hours in meaningful conversation with. In the store they apologized for mistaking me for someone else and I felt so relieved to not know them after all but also I felt good because they were attractive and obviously hip and they had mistaken me for one of their tribe. I stood a little taller then as I stuffed my overpriced purchases into my shopping bag hoping I wouldn't later be accused of shoplifting. It was a gorgeous day and I felt good even though the doomsayers predicted snow, I saw no evidence of it. I can't quite get down to work even though there is some to be done. I still just want to knit and sew and read and eat candy and float around between the house, my office, the chicken coop and woodpile. It's late now, the dark hours and I am up working because what else is there to do but sit and type and listen to music and think about this life I have created. All possibility and perfection like a freshly made bed that you could dive into or lay out all your things on, a vast plane of discovery. A place to line up the words that are the signs of where I want to go in the next year, words, garments, books, a space for lovemaking, journals of blank pages to contain all that I am thinking this moment and the next and the next.

Happy New Year dearest readers.

Starting Anew Again

Two weeks since my last entry. Sad. I blame the IRS. I fell into a brief funk around Easter but managed to rally during the second half of spring break. Strangely it felt good to be back at my desk crunching the numbers from 2009. I enjoy reliving the past year, transaction by transaction. I have sorted the paper, added up the numbers, ground my teeth. In between I found myself doing other things. On Sunday and Monday I sewed a pair of pants, the fabric for these pants was purchased well over a year ago. Loose ends now tied. Today I roto-tilled the garden. Mark offered to do it, sighting my need to work but I said no way. I wanted to do it, I needed to do it. I was supposed to be designing a decal for a racing car but I wasn't ready for that so the tilling got done instead. Tax season is like the real start of the year. It's a new chance for me to change the way I do things, pay myself first, deal with the mail, all the mail. Face up to the realities of my adult life and feel good about doing it instead of shitty because I am this age and I didn't do what I should have done when it really mattered, compound interest, retirement savings, blah blah blah. It's all in the accountants hands now but it's entirely up to me to change things for next year and maybe I'll do it this time and it will be the start of something good. Maybe, lets hope. In the meantime I am going to plant some pumpkin seeds and make a pair of flannel boxer shorts for myself, because I can now that the taxes are done.

Change in Venue

Cross section of Russian nesting dolls, an apt illustration of my routine within a routine

I am naturally restless. I believe it's got something to do with my existentialist beliefs. On one hand my routine is what keeps me together, on the other hand the sameness sometimes feels like a noose around my neck. Where this feeling manifests itself the most is with teeth brushing. I am pretty committed to excellent oral hygiene but occasionally at bedtime I just don't have it in me to perform this small meaningless task. I see myself before the mirror growing old, brushing my teeth each night getting closer to death. It's heavy. But like everything in life there are dichotomies and dualities and the routines that horrify me at times are also enjoyable and keep me on the straight and narrow. "Off the streets, and out of the river," as my father says.

Mark comes to my place at the weekends and generally retires to his home north of the border on Mondays, at the latest Tuesday. This week was a little different and of course it got me thinking about this routine. Whilst out retrieving a pizza for us on Tuesday his car refused to start and so set into motion a particular chain of events. His Wednesday radio show at CITR in Vancouver was canceled and the whole week was altered.

I need to be delicate here in how I describe this because I would not want anyone to infer that I do not enjoy more than life itself being with my partner. I did however recognize this week how much I enjoy the time I spend completely alone at home during the week. Now granted I did consult my calendar and noted that I was in a particular phase of my menstrual cycle, irrational crankiness abounding. It was fun having Mark there on Wednesday, it was novel. We went to a friends house for a little birthday party. It's always nice to go out as a couple/family. Thursday found Mark replacing the baseboards in a few spots in the house that never had them, very helpful. I focused on work and stayed close to my office, and took a walk in the rain to try and calm my anxiety about additional cooking duties and the general chaos two more people in the small house generate. Friday came and we were all still together. I felt guilty about wanting to be alone in my routine and it made me realize just how lucky we both are that we have this amazing flexibility in our relationship.

Friday afternoon we packed up our stuff, tidied the house and set out north. Driving out of my driveway I felt relaxed and excited to be going somewhere else, a change of scene, a change in latitude albeit very small is comforting to me. Now I just have to work on my little control issues around the house. My mother had this too, she feared chaos and worked hard to keep it all under control. I do it too and it can be a lot of work and really hard on the people around me. I need the structure of the big routine and the small sub-routines with the addition of the occasional anomaly in the form of a side-trip away or surprise house-guests. The tooth-brushing still has to be done but it feels less desperate when done in different bathrooms, in different countries.

Going softly into that good night

I am rolling slowly down a hill into the deep trough of winter. It's not terrible, it's just dark and things are moving slowly, rolling the final steepest part of this descent before hope returns on the Solstice. One year on the Solstice I felt the earth's gravitational force change as the days gained more strength against the weakening night. That is what happens, the night gains strength up until December 20, lengthening her reach, ending later, starting earlier, casting the pall of winter. Then bang, night loses hold and day starts to win. A classic struggle between good and evil. I have always thought of the winter solstice as the first day of summer. I am an optimist to be sure. That first day where we know the sun will be returned to us and we will wear thin dresses and our cocktail glasses will sweat and we will go without socks for months and months. Today I put away 7 pairs of wool socks. I might have cried but I am numb, a form of mental hibernation has set in. 4 days to go. I'll double up on the vitamin D and give up trying not to fall asleep before 8 and in 4 short days this cycle will end and another one will begin and I will be well rested and ready. Cheers to the Solstice!

Friday again, already

I keep checking on my blog to see if I have anything to say and to see if anything I have said has prompted anyone else to say something. I check in on my Facebook page, I look at my analytics page and then I go back to work. I have had little to say this week but it's not because nothing is happening it's just because what I have to say is best left unsaid. The things that I cannot say have been eating up my insides like a cancer. On top of these things that are heavy and unsaid was a constant nausea from the flu I am getting over. Topping the nausea was a persitent headache and on top of that like the whipping creme of despair there was a hearty dollup of fear. It's like a suitcase I carry around with me, I long to leave it in a station somewhere where maybe some other traveler might mistake it for their own and carry it off but somehow I never lose it. It sticks to me covered in labels from the various places this malaise springs up. I keep it closed, I dont need to look in and see what is there, it watches me, silent as my clothes.

I learned a new word this week. Optimalism. It's a combination of optimism and realism. This week I was a little too stuck on realism, I have high hopes optimism will return as I get back to walking and maybe the sun will come out for us this weekend. That would be nice. I could use a little nice.