Rebellion

I will not mourn. I will not grieve.  Let sadness step aside and find another friend. I will dance and laugh and thumb my nose at loss and pain. Grey cannot cling to me.  I wear no shawls. Shake off the weight and float in sunshine. Spin  Fly. My feet touch ground only to leap and jump. Graveyards have no magnet. Still cold stones with frozen messages are a comedy of waste. Burn the plastic flowers and carve the headstones into shapes of intrigue and motion.  Let them speak. No sitting still with knots at my centre tying me in a room of unbreathable air. I will lift, purge, open my arms to the expanse of the universe and insist on joy. Damn the funerals and the rows of black cars in the rain. I am not saving the little funeral card. I am leaving it in the pew and leaving my grief behind. I don’t need it. It can remain there tucked in front of the heavy hymnal. The songs I will sing will be of promise, laughter, devious joy that bursts from my eyes defiant and blissful. Why not? What good does it do to bow and cry? I will not. I will dance and breathe and skip in the rain, laugh at thunder, absorb the sunshine, smell the sea and coconuts and run on the sand. Fistfuls of jewels will glimmer in my palm as I toss them to the sidewalk. They bounce. They dance. I will love and abandon sense. Who needs it? The noise will stop. The pain in my ears will end. I will speak in colours and words will smell like grape bubblegum. My shoulders will drop. My head will lift. I reach to take and give in an ever circular hula-hoop.

Make it stop. The tired drone; the lunatic rage. Such hate eats the beautiful landscape. Gaping holes left where the future was to be. Dead and limp; wilted – wilted from the desert fury. Water will wash the burnt dust and morph it to green again.

I will not mourn. I will not grieve. The peace will make me bold and curious. Adventure is near.              Go then . . . noiselessly or blazing. I turn and seek . . .

(Written Nov. 21, 2012)

 

Slow train

This kind of waiting is a tenuous one. 

Sudden death with all its shock and fury, its swirl and spin comes at us with the mercy of a lightning bolt.

A flash and it is over and we are left with the burn. And the burn smolders on . . .

But slow death, a creeping concern, a heavy train on a one-way track and no stopping, no reverse, a heavy load on a solid, cold rail, a slow tick clack scrape to a certain end.

And we can only watch from the platform, left behind as she rides on. It’s an insipid pain knowing the track ends, the bridge is out, the wreck is coming and we will find a way to survive the crumple mess we saw coming.

And we are left with the scars. And the scars bleed on . . .

(November 11, 2012)

Hestitation

This little bird was in our back yard one evening in July chirping away.  It couldn’t fly and we doubted that it would make it through the night.  

But the second day it was precious to see momma and papa bird feeding it and darting around the yard protecting it from would be intruders.  They would fly away and return with a worm. They would flit to the bird bath and scoop water and drop it in the birdie’s mouth. They were flapping and coaching it to fly up one more level and over the fence and into a tree. They cared and carried on all afternoon. Diligent and tenacious.  Earnest.  And the bird did finally make it over the fence by evening.

I hesitate to tell the story because it didn’t have a happy ending. On the third day my husband saw a baby bird carcass out on the street.

Huge disappointment.  We know disappointment.

And the birds seemed to have a message.

Help when you can.
Give if you can.
Chirp when you need something.
Keep flapping.
Don’t hesitate to help and give and love like it matters – because it does – no matter what the outcome.

On the fourth day another tinier bird was in the same predicament in our back yard as the first fledgling had been.  Momma and papa hovering, flapping and feeding.  

This time the little feather ball made it.  

Don’t hesitate.

Dreary, Dusty Crap

Aiming to reconnect with my once-favourite hobby I was on the quest for a perfect photo and it was not to be seen.  All there was in March in Lethbridge was dreary, dusty crap. That’s how I was feeling to start with so I was thought I ought to take shots of rainbows and sunshine, or pictures of something profound, provocative or promising at least.  But nothing.

So I set out anyway to deliberately take a picture of dreary, dusty crap. And here is what I found.

This bird house sits in a dead tree in our back yard. To top it off it was a dumpster find. It was not quite in a dumpster when we found it in Victoria a couple summers ago, but just on the ground outside ready to be trashed or claimed. We claimed it along with a second cuter one. We gave the second one to our camping neighbours in the nearby RV Park.  The lady had been waiting on the results of a possible cancer diagnosis. We got to know each other a fair bit in our 24 hours parked side by side in the RV Park. She was thrilled to have the birdhouse.  We took this one home and Dan nailed it to the dead tree.  I think of Colleen often when I see the birdhouse and wonder and hope for her wellness. In our own dreariness, we have much to be grateful for.  Last summer a little, chirping family lived in the birdhouse.  Soon I imagine a new feathered flock will move in. Life and gratitude can thrive even among the dreary, dusty stuff in our lives.

If you drove by our house in mid-March you would have seen this dreary, scraggly bush, half dead, half scrabbling to grow out of the dirt. But after I took the photo of what I was certain was an example of dreary, dusty crap, I saw the colour. Never before had I noticed the vibrant red branches on this bush.  The external stems masked what at the core displayed bursting crimson.  It is true of ourselves – even if we feel dusty and dreary on the outside, we must know at our core we have beauty that always exists whether or not we feel it and whether or not others notice it.

We need to seek out the beautiful in ourselves and others even if and especially if we are immersed in what seems to be ugly, dusty crap. We all have the colour of human at our centre and can choose to love ourselves, forgive ourselves and celebrate ourselves - and then do the same for others, looking past the external to their coloured core that reaches down to their roots.

An author by the name of Robin Sharma has said "What you fill your mind with is what you get."
The objective being to fill our mind with the positive and the beautiful.
It reminds me of another writing from a couple thousand years ago: ". . .  whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -- think about such things." 

Sorting Beans

I have this memory – sorting beans with my dad. He tricked me into it, I guess, but in my pre-school head, I thought it was a game just like he said. He would pour a pile of beans from a Rogers Syrup tin onto the table. They made a musical clicking sound. A handful felt cool and smooth in my palm. Some were red, some white, mixed in with dirt, pebbles and straw. He called it chaff. He said this game was like herding cattle. You had to get the red cows in one pen and the white cows in another pen and leave the chaff behind.

Sometimes I wish for that time with him again – each of us at joining corners of the yellow and chrome kitchen table – talking and sorting. It was quiet. The fridge was humming. My mom and my siblings were somewhere in the house – each old enough and wise enough to hide from the bean-sorting chore. But I was conned – and wrapt.

Just my dad, the beans and me. 

We might never know which experiences one day might resonate with us on another distant day. If we have forgotten, we need re-learn how to be in the moment, absorbing the current experience. Demands and deadlines steal the ability for our heads to be quiet enough to hear the fridge hum, feel the texture of the table beneath our palms and truely be present.

Edge of the Earth

When I was a kid, growing up on the prairie, I wanted to drive to the edge of the earth and look over.
On the sunswept prairie the sky curves down to touch the earth.
I wondered how high a ladder you would need to touch the dome of blue with your hand.
My curly head could barely see over the dash of our Galaxy 500.
But over the dash was the gravel road that reached out to the edge of sight and bumped up against the blue wall of sky.
Yes, the sky went not only up, but out . . . and around.

When I became an adult I had assumed that every kid would have thought the same thing until they, like I, were politely told by some grown-up who knew better that there was no edge and that the earth was round and that the sky was not a lid on the land.

Not having a lid on the land became unsettling considering the world was not flat. How would we stay on and inside?

Too soon for me to learn about gravity.
Any wonder it did not work when I pointed my elbows in a wing shape and flapped as I jumped off the picnic table.
Birds did it. So that whole gravity story did not work for me.
Lot of this did not make sense. I knew I was getting snowed. Kids don’t get told the truth. (Proof? Boogyman. Toothfairy. Santa Claus.)

But in college I met friends who grew up in the mountains and laughed at my childhood memories of the edge of the earth.
Is it a truth only we prairie kids have to unlearn?

City adults who spent their childhood in cement, symmetrical neighbourhoods don’t get it either.

What a shame not to get out where you can see forever.
Horizons, or rather lack of them give you a sense of the eternal, something that fills the openness with more openness.

All that quickly erodes inside buildings, boxes, gridlock and deadlines.

We don’t belong in there.
We belong on the edge of forever, looking out.
Soaring . . .


The prairie has a palpable continuance, where there is no end and you are a part of it all. You don’t actually know in your mind but you feel it on your skin.
This is not new and it is not enlightened, it is simply like breathing air.
Sky, earth, we.