I voated

Once again I have fallen off the registry list which is tedious, but reregistering is a snap so.

Jeff and I walked down together a little after 8:30.

I have finally reported the dead vehicle on my street (no tags since August 2014) to Parking Enforcement.  It’s not like the street is crawling with parking spaces for the number of cars we have.

92 words yesterday.

OH IT WAS SO GOOD TO SEE ALEX.  I have forwarded some video to the Great She Elephant.

HE LET ME PICK HIM UP twice – I pointed him at a light switch to play with.  After 30 seconds he got squirmy.

Also, he was refusing to nap so I took him outside so he could get really really upset and nurse himself to sleep, a mean trick which worked.

 

Horrible symptoms

I won’t describe them, but I am very poorly.  I’ve been wondering all day why I feel so puny and as I staggered on foot between here and Planet Bachelor to feed Ayesha, I realized..

This is a migraine.  I can barely type, can’t spell, and while I won’t get into details, I am seeing and feeling things that aren’t there – how jolly when I’m alone in the house!  I feel very slow – but my reaction to red light made me realize yeah this is a migraine.

My sleep has been very disturbed and I’ve been peculiarly sore.

Anyway, I was much cheered earlier in the day to have Katie and Alex stop by.  He says many word like things.  Yeah Yeah Yeah, Wow. etc.  It’s very charming.  He made strange for a while but afterward he was sociable in his way.

 

Wonderful time

Yay, there’s now beer in the house.  Also, Lions Winter Ale is back for fall YES LIFE IS GOOD.

I bought Keith a growler of Steamworks Pumpkin Ale.

Mark and Paul and I had a fab time singing and playing yesterday. It was exactly the right amount of fun and conversation. Mark is only 22, but we try not to be ageist in our gang, and he enthusiastically endorsed the notion of coming to a musical evening.

No words yesterday, but I ain’t worried.  Time for some COFFEE.

Pathetic fallacy part 900

It’s overcast and dull and perfectly fallish outside. So after the glorious sunshine of Ontario, and the glorious sunshine upon my return I am feeling poopulous.

440 words. I’m at 80000 words.  I should start editing the first one and yet as long as I’m working on this one I don’t want to.  Also the more likely I am to start savagely rewriting the first one, and I DON’T WANT TO DO THAT UNTIL THEY ARE ALL DONE so I can use the magic of technology to search and replace and retcon and hang lanterns on things, since I already know I have severe timeline issues, which I have decided for the most part to ignore and to actually include them as being normal because Sixers don’t distinguish between the near past and the far past the way humans do. And in fact the way their memory behaves is pretty fucked up. Oh well.  Yes, the more I think about it.

The less I’ll actually write.  Time for an Artist Date.

Paul and I walked in the quiet rain in Oakalla yesterday.  People drive like idiots in the rain.

Today Mark (a friend of Katie’s) and Paul and I are getting together to make music in the afternoon at Planet Bachelor.

I could do a long rant about how disappointed I am in this year’s new crop of old shows, but the TLDR is that I am kinda done with Castle and NCIS; the characters are boring the hell out of me and the scripts are floppy. NCIS LA I still enjoy the characters but the scripts and storylines are enough to make me want to fly somewhere and kill something, except I’m lying down and feeling like reading library books.

Madam Secretary and The Good Wife continue to please, however.  Marvel’s Agents of Stupid Henchthingy’s Idiosynchronously Edited Lesser Diversions is grabbing my attention as well, since they seem to have decided to make every episode this season as exciting as a season finale.

Miss Margot and Buster are scrapping, which means he’s chasing her around and she’s hating it.

Not in ranting mood, sorry.

A thoroughly satisfactory day

Go see The Martian.  This constitutes the entirety of my review.  Also, read the book.  They are equally good for different reasons.

From 1 until 3ish yesterday Paul, Keith, Katie and Alex and Dax and Suzanne and Mark and Jessica and Ellie ate and talked and played.  Alex was in the best shape I’ve ever seen him.  He handled the influx of visitors into his space with amused aplomb, and his primate calls of joy upon seeing Ellie, his bestest and most favourite friend, were something to witness. They chased each other around (they’ve been walking for scant weeks now, Alex with an assurance that is truly remarkable) and stole each other’s toys.  At one point Alex mugged Ellie for her purse.  We laughed and laughed, and Alex chuckled right along with us.  Various other people took pictures, but I wanted to watch, and it was so completely and utterly lovely that I am quite overcome trying to describe how great it was.

Mark and Paul and I are making plans to get together and jam Thursday afternoon.

Then the cake, and then Paul and I and Keith met up with Jeff at the theatre for the cheap matinée and damn it was worth it.

250 ish words yesterday.  It’s a bit easier but still very hard.

Success defined as the ability to feel gratitude

If you’re walking around thinking that people will only remember the kind words you say — you are fooling yourself.  It’s the mean shit they remember now, and keep on remembering.

Be gentle in the words you say/ keep them soft and sweet / you never know which of your words/ you’re going to have to eat.

NB: Of course if these words are applied to you when you’re a young woman growing up in a fundamentalist household they will feel different.

I hope that gratitude, which holds my place in life’s big lineup, keeps being part of my daily practice.  I hope that it is gratitude for the great life I have, marked today by the first birthday of Alex the G’baby, and our acknowledgement of his place in our lives, that keeps my brain open to other teachings.

Wrote 353 words yesterday!  Nereus and Slider were the main recipients of my attention.  It is not a record day but I committed to getting back to work and it is a measurable and hopefully duplicatable result in this adventure / experiment called life.

 

Walking distance – a consultation with the spirits

Back in my 20’s I read a book or a manifesto or something about how you should walk every inch of the city within a five km radius of your house.  Yesterday I learned to recognize that as wise, yet again, having forgotten it.

Slept over at Mike’s after a wonderful supper of the salmon of wisdom, the preserves of friendship and the taters of sustenance.  A deep, roborative sleep.  Then astonishment, as the whole city was fogged in and we were above it all in the Eyrie, watching it burn off. Then a brekkie of coffee, hash browns, bacon and eggs. We went a-walking in Byrne Creek Ravine park.

The day signs were most impressive; the Trickster appeared, facing the sun. Then three black dogs.  The first two were on leashes; the third was free walking with her owner. Then a Korean family, joking in English and Korean. Then a troupe of dancers rehearsing Chinese opera on the tennis courts.

THEN a dry big-leaf maple leaf, in the shape of a death’s head, lodged against the ivy twining up a snag.

Then the old man.  He came down, down down the steep incline to the water, and as soon as he saw us he BACKED UP THE TRAIL, never taking his eyes off us.  When I saw him later I tried to acknowledge him, but he would not meet my eyes, although twice I caught him staring at me. Most unnerving.

Each leaf swayed and sang; there was a deeper stillness in the plashing of the water; I could feel my brain trying to calculate things, all the tiny incremental movements, as if they could be calculated.  My vision cleared.  It was a wonderful feeling.

As we paused, walking back, looking down at the ravine from the railing on the other side from Edmonds station, a young First Nations family walked by.  The mother was saying to the toddler while the father pushed an infant in a stroller, “You can’t go climb down to the stream! You’ll scratch your bum on the blackberries!”

Safe back at the Eyrie I asked the spirits if they could help me find my family crest. I’m not knowing what to do about the answer.

At first it was all random stuff, a doodle in white letters against my closed eyes; it looked like Kufic script, and then script in no human language.  I was sad, because I could not interpret the dancing, ever shifting letters.

They gave me the bones of a salmon, the curl of a fern, the head of a vulture, a toad, and strange, gap-toothed cogs, fitting into all these things.  Ground and figure were constantly shifting, but it all felt fitting, and as I’m receiving these teachings, I’m thinking, yes, this is right, this is as it should be.  The salmon and the fern are how the land and the sea connect, the head of the vulture is the acknowledgement of the cycle of birth and death, the toad is welcoming the stranger and the orphan, the cog is the knowledge that all things fit, the gaps the incompleteness that comes with being human.  Then the last part.

It was the outline of a subdivision.  I think I know what it means – that I’m a colonial born and bred and living on the land on sufferance, but damn it is NOT what I wanted to hear, and so it is probably the most valuable part of the teaching.

All these things were interwoven.  As I looked at one thing, it turned into something else.  Everything kept shifting; animal faces into letters, into stylized hands and fingers, curving railroad tracks with swaying ties. All rendered in brilliant white, as if the world’s most skilled tagger was drawing it on my sensorium at the speed of light.

At this point, on behalf of Cousin Gerald, I would like to interject, “Wot, no MOOSE?”

I remonstrated with the spirits, who laughed very heartily at my tears (I was weeping pretty much continuously at this point).  A great woman’s voice said, “It’s nothing for you to parade around! You have no family crest! You couldn’t draw it even if you could understand it!” Then, after a pause, as if reconsidering, the same voice said, more quietly, “It will be there when you close your eyes,” and I’m back to myself and Mike’s handing me Kleenex.

It never ceases to amaze me, what’s in my head.  None of this was real, but I assure you, it happened.

Today I’m going to go keep a promise, but this time I get to drive.  Paul and I are going to Nanoose Bay for a restorative justice conference, or at least the part of it he is presenting at.  I had meant to bail, but all things considered I have a few things to tidy up before I get back to writing.  The characters are once again speaking, though. Theo came and sat with me while I was in the forest.

“I was not a philosophical person, and now I am.  At first I was angry, because I did not need to think about what it all means.  I was happy to move around in the space my people occupy, which is life and death and reproduction, and possibly looking at beautiful things. Then I was angry, because all my previous understanding was not wrong, just too small. I had thought myself as big as I needed to be.  But since I got philosophy I can only think of myself in relation to others, and that makes me angriest of all, for I don’t like most Sixers and hate most humans, and now I am stuck with them all, and I really don’t have the temperament for a philosopher.”

Poor Theo.  There’s nothing worse for a hard-core narcissist than waking up one morning and finding out you’re too small.

Meltingly grateful to Mike for his most restorative and sacred hospitality.

I’d also like to thank mOm for her bracing phone calls of late.

Tom U. is back working with Mike again, isn’t that wonderful? One half of the lunch bunch is back together.

Points north and east

The sad news first.  Chipper and I are at the extremity of friendship where we may still have business but I’m too upset to talk to her or receive her calls.  I have brought my sadness to people who can understand it and since the internet is forever further comment would be unwise.

The weather was very nice for the trip.

Due to a communication difficulty – entirely my fault – I wasn’t one of the named drivers for the trip so Paul did all 1200 km of  the driving.

One of the days we were in Cornwall we drove up to Ottawa to see Tish and Terry’s daughter and their new grandson, Malcolm, who is tiny and adorable, but was in hospital due to his precipitous entry into the world a wee tad early. (He comes home today praise be.)  Paul and I kinda bent the rules about who is family since babby was in the equivalent of a NICU and I didn’t even ask to hold him but it was amazing to see such a tiny little mancub and I am so grateful he’s okay.

Then we had a picnic in Britannia Bay.  While we were there the wind was blowing perpendicular to the beach so we were treated to a scene of dozens of brilliant white sails, staying in the same place, but getting smaller.  A great illusion.

As always the food was amazing. Terry makes these cookies that are beyond wonderful. The food was very good in Madawaska too. Okay, I’m sad again.

Tish and Terry have a beautiful Brittany Spaniel named Butter, who is exceedingly well trained AND extremely boisterous and strong.  I spent a lot of time gazing into his green eyes (a colour I haven’t seen on a dog before) and gently pulling burrs out of his ears and coat.  I haven’t liked a dog this much in decades; he’s a wonderful addition to the household even if he can chew the floor. Yes, he chewed the floor in front of the back door.  And the stairs.  And a few other things.  He’s liver and white and quite the most elegant figure of a dog you can imagine.  His muzzle is narrower and his frame is more slender than other dogs of his breed you might see on the internet.

Yesterday Paul and I went to the gravesite of Simon Fraser, which, splendidly enough is walking distance from Tish and Terry’s (although we drove through the spun sugar that is a crisp and sunny fall day in Ontario to get there) and I found a remarkable headstone where two women from different families are on one stone.  I don’t know whether it was the frugality of their Catholic Scottish highland husbands, or their friendship, that made such a thing possible.  If I can get it off my phone I’ll post the picture (it’s on my facebook feed.)

A couple of days ago we were in Ottawa (no time to visit Leo and Linda although I publicly apologize for not calling them) to visit Deb, her dog Winnie, the most adorbs pitbull ever, and her spouse Jim.  Just as we were getting into a most riproaringly fine political discussion we had to leap in the car to get back to Cornwall for dinner.  DANG.

Large sections of the 138 have been paved so that it is a wonderful road now, so getting back and forth between Ottawa and Cornwall was a snap; the trip inbound to the airport was wonderful, and unlike many other parts of Canada, the signage made getting to the airport, barring that nasty little last minute left hand turn, was super easy, and despite the loads saying we weren’t getting on we did get on…. onto two broken seats.

My tray table wasn’t working and the audio jack on Paul’s seat wasn’t working.  What are contingent passengers good for??? sitting in seats that the paying customers would complain about.

The man sitting next to me sniffed all through the flight.  I was going to be mad at him when I realized he was suppressing tears and trying to read Robert Ludlum.  My nosiness fought with my compassion and in the end I left him alone rather than ask him if he was okay.  The woman sitting next to me was reading Coelho’s novel Adultery and talked to the flight attendant about her recently finalized divorce, which is a little on the nose, don’t you think?  Stunning woman, though, magnificent eyelashes.

I was so exhausted from travelling that over Paul’s objections I got a taxi.  I’m glad I did.

Unpacking, writing, playing Otto and helping Paul with his presentation on Sunday, and watching a LOT of tv on the pvr.  That’s my day.