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pocketing belladonna in the loose pocket of this grey wool sweater
shifting all attention to the letter to be written on the couch.
learning the pathways of love,
boiling water for rooibus chai,
soothing a sore throat of words unspoken,
grief spilling through the locks.
i dream of wading through murky water
tossing around plants
my grasping attempts to filter it.
they get caught in the undertow and re-circulate,
thrashing about,
no place to find root in the turmoil.
i realize today that this is my grief:
turning over and back on itself
going nowhere
not given proper avenue to pull clean water through.
later on shore,
someone appears
who is not you.
i relax into her
relief at having found my way.
there is so much i don't know
about her
but she wants to tell me
and...
you ask if i have grieved,
the death of my gramma.
you are trying to show me the tools.
i grieved her loss before i lost her.
now you are ignorant of what i need.
to grieve you i need to talk, or maybe to just be
with you in space,
until the hurt moves out and understanding moves in.
but there is no time for that, and i misunderstand how important i am.
and i wonder what is important.
and i blame.
you don't hold the reigns to my feelings
like beck's sea changes swell the tides of happiness,
some days.
others,
feed a stream of melancholy,
grey as a week of no sun.
three am last night the pain in my left nostril woke me,
so much burning i tossed and turned for an hour before sleep found a way back in.
this morning i sleep late and dream of letters un-sent and getting left behind, friends taking off in a horse and buggy,
my arms full of clothes and cameras as i try to find my way.
wake to the sound of the mail slot,
just before noon.
today is not sunshine
but partial clouds.
tomorrow will still come.
act 2.
i made a journal for you,
i keep wanting to give it to you.
there is an absence in my life
that you used to occupy.
the fugitives find me here
soft songs of remembrance
pushing into the space you created.
bon iver follows
telling me to be patient,
i turn him up
sending out all sound but his voice.
night brings on the soreness in my throat,
that endless cups of tea or hot water can't smooth out.
will this continue until you hear me out?
i can't wait that long.
i won't.
he sings over and over,
what might have been lost?
and i'm riding a wave with no end.
the journal is called
'sou-venir'
because of my love of language.
how souvenirs have come to symbolize
inexpensive trinkets people bring back from two-week vacations.
literally it means
memory or recollection.
but also,
broken down,
underneath and come.
how will you take it?
as a cheap remembrance of something brief
or
a space to place things
that once held meaning.
(entr'acte)
i have determined to grow lichen on my front steps
as a memory of love passing through.
a petroform made,
in a brief slice of someone's day
reads:
hi (heart) ks
she has no idea i intend this to last as long as the rocks on the canadian shield near betula lake,
formations of turtles, people, snakes.
attracting visitors from provinces away.
written about in guidebooks and attended for healing ceremonies.
a note on the front door says, all visitors to the back door please
my steps are going to last for centuries.
a testament to the strength of love.
(resume)
i could stay up all night writing half-baked poetry.
piecing together memories of dreams
applying them to you in a questionable sort of sense.
boiling pot after pot of water,
looking up words in the dictionary to make this fit the hurt.
but
the battery on this computer is running out.
bon iver is getting old.
tomorrow i need to do things that don't involve sleeping late to dream,
my yard awaits garden beds before
winter wraps me in those unforgiving arms.
if i drink any more tea my guts are going to liquefy.
and tomorrow night is hip hop,
so maybe i will dream of her
instead of you.
sadness over feeling dislocated
becoming a doula
reading about writing and dreaming of a winter of reading
thinking about the garden and how i will move the shed
feeling removed from a culture i belong to
hip hop is a foreign language.
tight tanktop and running shoes
an aggregate of ballet, modern and improv
tries to crump
and crumbles like shale.
a mass of movement resembling nothing in particular.
plaid shirt, baggy sweats, hair falling out of ponytail
teaches us "house".
[watching your hips roll
i imagine.
watching your hips roll
i tempt the lava to flow through my gangly limbs,
tight tanktop and running shoes
not meant to be hip.]
what if you took your hands,
climbed me.
like a wall of granite maybe then
i'd be solid,
rock.
the taste of your skin
a new word in my language.
i fumble over it
mispronouncing the formation
of vowel and consonant
til my tongue becomes familiar.
pronunciation affected by location:
the soft hollow behind your ears requires
a whisper, a slackening of consonants.
your breasts elicit
a language mix of old and new.
your belly,
a frenetic spill of mispronunciation and
unintelligible sound.
traveling further,
the words all blend together in a slurry
the lullaby of a foreign tongue.
ok, so it looks like i'm not much of a summer blogger. i got hi-jacked by heat and fun and lakes and music and the long-day-looseness-of-time.
now it's that september time of change again and i feel an upheaval of all sorts of things.
i bought my house, for one, and it's lovely, but there are things i need to adjust to. and being unsettled with all my stuff in boxes makes my adjustment just a little more difficult. it is the sweet cabin in the city that i wanted, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need work.
tonight, in the slow unfurling of change, comes a little poem of remembrance...
she uprooted her life
on land with an ocean view
to work at a flower shop
in the bustling city.
85 acres of rock, moss, rain-forest,
tides that marked the days,
vines drooping flowers
hiding paths over bridges.
vines that she planted
with calloused loving hands.
chickens and tipi and tequila,
cats whose names have escaped.
harvest seasons of tireless bodies
busy minds
meals cooked
jars scalded
conversation made,
before dormancy and saying no to company.
i had the pleasure of you there.
sure-footing rocky trails to visit you,
in the solid wood house balanced above the sea.
we swam nights neck-laced by phosphorescence.
was it you who taught me phosphorescence?
instilling in me a knowledge i went on to yield casually,
hiding my pride.
here a star flickers in my window,
a distant cousin to the light in the forest night sky.
i am countless cities away,
scratching the surface of sacrifice.
you are only one,
and i wonder if the smell of flowers in your busy city
is enough.
in my dream the lemon was rotten
and i carried the whole mushy mess of it
in my mouth to the kitchen sink.
you had already moved
to saskatoon
and it left a hole
the size of that lemon.
your family was renovating the house,
unintentionally removing all trace of you.
your brother said i looked hot
your mother wanted to take a photo
of the lemon before i threw it out.
earlier you found me in the relics
behind simon and brans new house.
i told you how to get there,
you needed a treasure map to find me:
ten steps straight east off the back porch,
curve Right around the oak, take 25 more
giant steps heading east/northeast past the boulder
then close your eyes and turn left.
everyone is moving away from this city,
their loss burns sour in my mouth.
an excerpt from 'cherry' by chandra mayor...
'you forget that summer happens, you forget flowers craning up from the grass, you forget getting the mail barefoot, you forget naked arms. you forget sweat. you forget earthworms drowned in rain puddles. you forget rain. you forget making love without blankets. you forget kissing in the sun on a blanket. you forget fishnet stockings. you forget sunset after nine. you are a marionette controlled by the strings of your mittens. you sleep in flannelette and dream of wet wool. you forget that there is more to winter. you forget.'
i wrote this a few weeks ago now and forgot about it until i found it tonight....
i can believe. i am here to believe in beauty. in possibility behind what i perceive as wrong. past adversity. i am here to see the possible in what they say i cannot do. i am here to say yes. to say i believe in you, in your beauty and that i have faith in what you think you can do. i see beyond what looks like the commonplace. i know when you say yes i can, you mean you can. i know that smile will come.
“In adversity, it is necessary to cry out, ‘Hope! Hope! And yet again hope!’” victor hugo
i believe people will tell the truth without being asked for it. i believe we are made of goodness and sometimes we can slip. i believe in second chances and taking life slowly so we can savour it and revel in it and feel it deep. i see your beauty even if you can’t right now. your beauty moves past borders of what you think is worth it. i see how your smile disarms even the most critical. i will be here seeing you until you can again. i see how the way your lips purse over unspoken words is more exquisite than a supermodel’s pouting lips. i see how your girth cradling me in softness is sexier than fitting into jeans two sizes too small. i see how the way your nose turns upwards and presses itself against your cheeks is more clearly definitive of beauty than blending in with what magazines like to tell us is perfect. i hear your voice curl itself into parts of me that have not heard such pure song until you filled me, and i see how that is what matters. more than anything else.
i believe in change, every new moment a new chance. i believe that love comes first and that we can stick with it. i believe in what they don’t want me to. i believe a smile can heal something that may be broken. i believe in the benefit of believing in what i feel is good.
make no mistake, it is a dead bird. but oh how beautyfull. i had trouble placing it back on the dirt and not taking it upstairs with me, my permanent pet. imagining what it would take to stuff it. taxidermy my new occupation.
though right now it is still soft, freshly pressed itself against the pane of glass that became it's end. stuffed it would be hard, no give to it's neck, stretch in the tendons that still allow the wing to unfold, wishing at flight.
my days and evenings have been spent looking for a house. i feel busier now than i did in school when i thought i was as busy as i've ever been. you know what i look forward to? when i do find a house and i've moved in, and things are becoming in order, or perhaps already are, and i have time again to just relax. to lie in a patch of sunshine listening to good music, reading, drinking tea. just being, and knowing at least for a little while that there are no time pressures.
looking for a home is not something i want to rush, but there are time constraints, so the trusting that this will all work out is challenging me again. the worry of finding a place to live before my lease runs out. but, thankfully, the worry is beginning to be shoved aside and i am starting to enjoy the process of looking for my perfect home.
and i'm not saying i can't currently chill out on the bed in the sun with a book, but when i do things, i do them intensely. so i don't tend to leave room for relaxing in the middle of things, unless i'm forced to. and oh, to have a house of my own, where i know (or at least hopefully) i won't have to move for a long time, where i can set things up and leave them. i am looking forward to this. a place where i can garden and build up perennials. the bushes i have always wanted: honeysuckle, clematis, roses galore, wisteria, lilacs. and other beauteous things: hollyhock, rhubarb, raspberries, medicinal herbs, lavender, strawberries. mmm, here i come.
today is the listlessness that follows the completion of something huge. all shows are done. no more rehearsals, no more costumes, no more classes. time for summer to take me in its arms and carry me along on it's whims. for me the first day after finishing a major project can never be long enough. in that day i need to fit in hours of repose in my pink chair with a good book and mugs of hot water, sleeping in, cleaning up the miscellaneous by-products of the past days or weeks of project (food jars, water bottles, dirty clothes, numerous smaller projects shoved by the wayside to make time for the larger one), begin the other projects that have been waiting for me to have free time (fill the balcony garden buckets with soil to plant the straggling seedlings that have been living by my bedroom window), finally make a hearty decent meal after days of quick omelettes on the go, and really, just some plain easy sitting in the sunshine would be lovely.
such a satisfying thing, completion. completing something well. and also knowing that even if now it's done, now is only a break on a much longer journey where in the future you will be faced with challenge again, and will again have the satisfaction of struggling and overcoming. moving on through.
yesterday ended with eight of us riding around on bikes, one of which was a bmx, which was SO cool. the seven if us felt like a steady planet riding along, each of us at a different pace, sometimes falling behind, sometimes weaving forward and through everyone else, and the whole while being orbited by this fast and wild moon, spinning circles around us and dodging passing asteroids (any curb or stairs or potholes that needed to be jumped or dodged). until yesterday i'd never given bmx-ing a thought, but i think i'll need to re-think the thoughtless-ness.
and in the middle of the culmination of dance, i received an email from the national screen institute saying they've accepted my dance film 'loss studies' to be screened in their online film festival in august! i am so stoked! so stoked, and more to do in the write-up of paperwork they need me to do.
life keeps going, and it is just so good, isn't it?
and the trees are blooming into their green.
okay, so those pretty fern heads i put in the last post? i've decided to eat them.
if i am correct, they are matteuccia struthiopteris, or ostrich fern. if i am incorrect, there may be no more posts. hee hee.
i'm kidding! i did my research. for the longest time i thought what people considered the edible "fiddlehead ferns" were sword fern shoots, but apparently i am wrong. the only somewhat poisonous fern i could find was bracken, and this is definitely not bracken. funny though, bracken is considered a delicacy in japan. with my limited research i found there's question of whether the ingestion of bracken (considered carcinogenic) is connected to the higher incidence of stomach cancer in japan.
while out there gathering dinner, i found this little creature. fragile and soft and creepy too. are all dead things creepy? maybe because of it's not completely formed state. maybe that's why creepy. it looks prehistoric, doesn't it?
i've been dreaming of gardening, building beds. perusing books full of photos of unconventional houses. wondering how i can get away with chickens running around my yard. the little bird baby reminds me of our history.
and the shows went great. thanks dear friends for your well wishes. please pardon the quality of the above photos, they're video stills.
pants full of burrs, room full of sunshine.
in between the beginning.
renewal. new growth. shelter and sustenance.
care.
taking each others hands and leading in times of blindness.
trust.
-
it's my second free evening in a row and i am relishing it.
making french fries. omelette full of orange pepper, leek, zuchinni, broccoli and mushrooms. about to watch one of my new favourite things, animation movies about romance and magic by hayao miyazaki (thanks shona).
we've now finished five straight days of dress rehearsal and tomorrow is the show.
mmmm. it feels good.
