O, Urban Hiking...

The kids have spent copious hours on the phone with friends in TO & negotiations with their Dad, so I went off to a tiny Chinese company that I do long distance through, which was actually in a very expensive office tower downtown, to pay the $18. I owed (isn't it cute, owing that little), but gave them $30., they don't have payment by Internet banking, so it's usually a cheque in the mail, but when I realized their address, why, that's a trip downtown... so I've been trying to get down there all week, but yesterday afternoon was finally gorgeous & sunny.

Downtown looks like downtown but is emptier than the downtowns of big megalopolises... I walked around, enjoying the downtowness, the buildings of every shape, size, colour, from old and tiny squashed inbetween to glittering glass stretching up to the sky, the flower beds of tamed nature, the tiny parkettes with their miniscule splice of nature so vastly different to the wilderness, the close crop of streets, endless cars & the anger of drivers, and wandered down to the water, by the Shaw Tower, the reclamation project a much larger slice of land now, smelled the salt air, watched freighters go by and sea planes land, pondered the lush North Shore, the clouds rushing over the mountains, thought about life and Vancouver and what I'm doing here and am I going to stay, or go, what's possible and impossible, and eventually meandered through a bunch of streets until I found a skytrain station and went home.

The wind was blowing the clouds over the mountains, I was glad that it would be clear enough to see the Solstice moon...

Despite my childhood in the wilderness, and even 20 years of living in the crowded downtown core, the heart of the inner city in Toronto hasn't dulled my love of the beauty of cities... I enjoy hiking the streets of any downtown... even the obnoxious smells of buses doesn't bother me, and as a transit rider I laud their great number going in every direction constantly. I gaze at the dressed-up business types in expensive suits and the hair-matted, clothing-soiled druggies, the young and the old, the energetic beautiful people and the tired grey people, feeling neither desire nor disdain nor pity for anyone, enjoying the mix of people, the flow of the movement of bodies and the various shimmers of the fabrics of clothing on the streets, enjoying being part of this fabulous and strange humanity... in my urban hikes, which are not shopping trips and which can be up to five hours straight, I don't stop at coffee shops, though I wish I did... I always feel it would be nice, to stop & write at oases, and then move on, but I don't, I can't, I'm either walking, or standing staring at something, the ship-heavy inlet of ocean, a flying buttress of architecture reaching upwards like Babel, a group of vibrantly red tulips each drizzled with perfect drops of rain if you look close enough, the madness of wind and clouds mirrored in glass towers, the way birds fly through this urban landscape, fluttering down for crumbs and scraps, nesting in the eaves of inexplicably white painted stone Churches... I'm a great wanderer of cities... need to wander in way more cities too...

(click on photo for its source url)

Solstice blessings...

"Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage." Anais Nin

Updating my life: yesterday I was offered a mat leave job in a company I really like, but not until December, which is so far away it's impossible to think about. My son has a job at a construction site today cleaning up, sweeping and vacuuming, thanks to John, my friend ZsuZsi's partner. My daughter has just gone through the halycon she always goes through before the 3300 km journey to her father's for the Summer. Why does this trip bring such anger, sadness and terror for her? As a mother do I worry unecessarily? But today is a new day and sunny; if the promised rain doesn't come, it's going to be hot. It's been cool here and I welcome and savour the heat, the way it relaxes us all.

Yes, Anais, life does shrink and expand according to one's courage, very much so, but when you're looking for work you need contacts. When you've moved to a city where you know almost no-one it's hard to find work because you have no network to draw on. That's what people are now telling me, and it makes sense. Also the 2 year mark is a make it or break it mark. I'm at the crux.

We would like to return to Toronto, and I may be able to just afford the moving costs, but need help at the other end with finding affordable housing. My children's father, who is ideally suited to the role of 'house finder,' he'll get his children back, afterall, has said a flat no. And blamed me for moving out here in the first place. None of which makes much sense, given that he'll have weekends with his kids, be close to them again. Nor can my family help, either no car, or works nights or, in the case of my mother, in her 80s and too frail. Friends? I'm not sure anyone is in a position to find housing for us to move in August. But I'll see.

Just the normal chaos of life, with its multiple decisions...

To brighten this post, because folks in the blogosphere like images, here's one I added a lens flare to and put in my sidebar to replace the one of me reading a book with blonde hair...

Now that 'light' could be a vision, a fairy whispering delightful secrets, a higher consciousness from a space zone, a light-master from a New Age dimension, a lover whom I am dancing with, an echo of the Solstice sun in the lens, or the courage that expands our world, offering a bright future. Perhaps on this morning of new awakenings, new realizations, new hope, you could tell me what you see...

*hugs xo

On Solstice, the official entry of the abundance of Summer, a solar apex, this year with a Solstice sun and moon nearly aligned, O, the fulfillment of all our dreams and wishes...

Phoenix rising...

I went dancing tonight. Feel like a phoenix rising...

(my son took the photograph)

My daughter's poetry...

My daughter wrote some poetry yesterday, which she shared, I love it when she shares her creative writing, and then she said I could post it. The second one is in the form that she wrote it, but the lines can be broken up to "look" more like the poetry they are. There's beauty, sadness, love. She's 14, and very, very sweet...

*

I look up at night
planets are moving at the speed of light
and the world's expanding
you're forever fading
see the world in black and white
no colour or light, nothing right, nothing right
you're part of the human race, all the stars and outer space
the world's spinning

and no one seems to notice...

*

The leaves formed a perfect drop, a drop of the sun, rested upon its self, held together by mixes of light, of sky and rain, 50 million leaves, they swirl around me, they dance with my love, sing with forever beauty, in the sunset, they break the world, the universe trapped inside a city, and no one seems to notice, but me, and your world is all the sun sees, hidden by darkness, the white shadows revealed and I'll wait for them, until my days are done, history is in the past, it was somewhere and then it was lost, and no one seems to notice, but me, so I'll float through my memories, cause they're all I have, everyday I create a memory, every second of life, could be my forever memory, so I'll always have a place to be, inside of me, I'm creating my world as it fades, and I can't hold on, and no one seems to notice but me, we're swallowed in the sea, and no one seems to notice but me.

The Move

I need to put a disclaimer in here. I am the author but not the character. There are points of similarity with my life but "The Move" is also fictionalized and parts are made up. It is necessarily more brutal than my life is for the purpose of drama. Since blogging is largely lifewriting, one does need to clarify when one moves into fiction. I am in crisis, yes, and am letting that be a diving board... but I am not writing in the confessional mode; rather this is the imagination of a life...

***

THE MOVE

She stares uncomprehendingly at the Notice To End Tenancy, holds it in her hand like an entropic text. It is composed of financial hieroglyphics and it has a greater power than all of the magical texts in her library. Its final incantation is homelessness.

She sips coffee, looking at the light of the clouded sky, how silvery it is, and wonders what will become. She snaps a picture of a fading rose on the window sill, and transfers it to the computer where she draws fiery lines like fireflies leaving trails on the soft pink lips in the core. The stylus a burning ember, she sears the tips of the labyrinth of folds that the petals are while she scores them with light. Tracing the delicate trails with her lit sparkler, is there a path that she could perceive if she could only fathom it in the dying fragrance of the blossom? Perhaps this tracing is an oracle of prophetic signs on dusty, fading petals that can be read even as they are crumpling inwards, and dropping to the floor.

If you go deliberately into the uncertainty of the darkness will you find the light? Will you find answers to the direction that is hidden but already opening out? Or is there no direction but what is willfully asserted onto the crumpling inwards and emblazoned in the clouds of the morning sky like a scroll of truth?

Even as she flees she is being drawn into the molten core of what is dissolving. But then she's given to drama, especially after a sleepless night and the worry that encroaches her vision like the smudged glass of the window she looks out of.

She finishes her large mug of bitter, aromatic espresso coffee and takes it to the kitchen to rinse. There are no answers, only questions. This is the mantra.

The house is on the market. It has come to this, and she is moving, but does not know where she shall go. Her home is crumbling and she is losing her beloved abode. This brings a stream of thoughts on the protection of shells, exoskeletons, abodes. How is it to live without a shell of protection? Shall she live under the open sky emblazoned with the starlit lanterns of the Milky Way? What is a home, a house, a place to live? And how is that an expression of the architecture of our souls? These are the questions she begins with as she starts the arduous process of packing up her house.

Or has she already left, already fled into exile, already been broken by the isolation that strangers are accorded, and is trying to return?

Has the breaking apart of what is warm, enclosing, protective already happened, and was there a fleeing of the shards of that broken shell for a new place only to turn and re-seek them?

And where does the compass point now? How is she to read it when its heavy glass is fogged and the pointer spins uncontrollably? If there is no centre, how can the world revolve? Without a home, a grounding, what orbit does one spin in? Empty boxes pile up in all the rooms, some still flattened, some already made, waiting to be filled with the accumulation of hers and her children's lives.

How many lives does a cat have? How many times has she landed on her feet, and has she run out of chances?

***

O, Clarity...

Woke soon after dawn, lay in bed for an hour, wishing direction would become clear. An hour hugging my soft, clean, silky dog, who was curled in a ball, sleeping, who I shampooed yesterday after her swim in the lake in the park. I lay in the early morning light, wishing that what's possible would manifest clearly. I can feel myself walking the hot, polluted streets of Toronto; I can feel my reunion with my friends and dancing at The Move on Friday nights; I can hear the long conversations with my family; I see myself walking onto campus, returning to York University. It all feels very happy. That perhaps I was exhausted, at the end of what I could cope with when I moved out here and now after two years I am mended, renewed, ready to return and continue on. The return is becoming so real in a feeling-sense and I'm not sure why. Funds for a move back aren't here/there/anywhere at present. And no temp work this week. Stress. Though I did have 6 hours of unbroken sleep, a gift. And as I sip coffee, looking out at the clouded day of silvery light, I wonder what will become, and I began taking pictures of a fading rose, drawing fiery lines in its core, like fireflies leaving trails on the soft pink lips…

A Letter of Love...

My entry in the Creative Writing Challenge, "Tell a story in the form of a love letter..."

Many thanks to Chez Couronne, who runs the site and blogring.