What We Leave Behind

Social media, on it's best days, brings back kind memories. Today it reminded me of the two of us beauties, shining in the Hawaiian sun. You are fresh from picking wild oranges in our beachside haven, presenting them to me like a kid on Christmas. 

It is a Good memory. 

It makes me realize that as time passes it allows memories to come in from the side, now untethered from whatever darknesses our mortal selves cling to. 

Who cares about the other things, the imperfections, the mistakes, the time we did something wrong, the ways we fucked up, and even the way we did something tragic to end ourselves. The residue that matters is the smile that arrives when I see our sweet faces pressed together on that beach. There is nothing else that was important about you, or any of us, except our essential goodness.

It is the best parts that are the only parts of us that we leave behind. 

Ocean Remembrance

I can float on top of it as long as I want, but you have become it. 

What if I had stayed? 

I was willing, my many years ago self.

Maybe we both would have been better off. 

Me learning to accept your departures of spirit,

Your disappearances into the netherworld of a darkened mind. 

Allowed you that and understood it as a temporary state. 

But that is a fabrication 

Made up of things that were not meant to be.

You were made of such light, 

But the kind that can't sustain itself.

You were not temperate like me but winter and spring, 

Locked below a cold layer of snow for months at a time, 

With the promise of a blossoming. 

So many ardent hopes and aspirations, 

Too slippery to get ahold of in the grip of your cold hands. 

Spring was not long enough 

For the flowering you needed. 

But just long enough for the shoots to poke up above the dark earth.

Promising redemption. 

Unsilenced before the next round of winter stillness crept in.

There is a raft of sea lions. 

Sunning themselves in the sparse winter light. 

Maybe below them parts of you are settled quietly, 

Like dust on the dark sea floor. 

Mingling with kelp, 

Disturbed by the occasional pass of a piniped hunting fish

Amongst the dormant roots of an oceanic forest.

Something near the surface drops a piece of it’s meal,

And it too becomes you. 

While you become the sea, 

More and more as time passes. 

Your particles pulverized by the constant motion. 

You becoming more dispersed,

Each cycle of the moon.

Thaw

The snow is melting rapidly as this new year begins. I have spent the last week finding myself, at least the part that has been hidden, tucked away but still living. She was left behind, waiting for me to rediscover her alive and well. Abandoning me because I had abandoned her, my present self a traitor to her heartfelt and hopeful way of being in the world. She is true resilience; untracked snow. She is impervious to the marks left by the departures of others and the constant heartaches of being alive. She is impervious and resilient, unmarked. But not hardened. 

How did I find her you might ask? Through some deep soul searching meditation, angst filled journalling, or, my personal go-to, the gruelling solo journey into the wilderness? Not at all. It just snowed. 

Here in this evergreen world, where we expect snowfall to turn to water almost upon impact, or to fall wet and turn into a crusty slushy mass for a day or two, it snowed and stayed cold for a full week. Perfectly timed  for the quiet lull between Christmas and New Year. Enough snow to cover the rocks and roots of the forest trails behind the farm, and form a base up into the network of hills beyond that. Enough to make me think of those skis I have, largely unused these past couple of years, packed away in their bag in my tidy little gear shed. 

I love walking these trails and do it daily, but the snow is like a beacon to me, showing a path that is iresistable and keeps me out, wandering for hours in the crisp air. The farm is on a slope, and there is an unploughed road in the park behind us, accessible by a 20 minute ski through the snow laden cedars and another 30 minutes up. I make a skin track over and beside the foot-trammelled trails, and one morning early enough to make first tracks in new powder. After reaching the top of that long slope, I make cruising turns on the way down. I carve a snaking line where there are the least footprints and essentially glide almost all the way back to my door. Some days I just let the dogs out and we run laps to the top of the farm and back, through the small winding path just beyond the gate, the snow-covered salal brushing my gore-tex pants. I leave the two gates open so I can slide uninterrupted down the hill. My dog Kimik knows what to do - he is a born ski dog who understands the purpose of the up and covets the chance to run behind my swooping turns on the downs. The other dog, Bolt, looks at me uncomprehending the first time I stop at the top and fuss with my gear before turning downhill. "I thought we were going for a walk?" his look says. But after 3 or 4 runs down he starts to get it and watches me intently when we reach the bottom, his feet dancing in anticipation of another lap. 

As I write the snow is melting with the return of the soft Pacific wind and the rains to come later today. I walked up the trail this morning in my rubber boots instead of my mukluks. The cedars had shed their white blankets and the forest shone a familiar dark green against the white of the moisture-laden snow still on the ground. White was starting to give way in spots to the browns and greens of the forest floor.  Here and there a salal bush has spring up out of it's snowy encasement. 

I was reminded at the end of 2021 that I am more winter than summer. I love the water, but I love the snow, and the cold that comes along with it more. My body comes alive and the reclusive parts of my nature dissipate or are transcended. It tells me to that I have become someone different than who I was ten years ago. It's not about age, but about the fact that I let myself get hung up like loose wool on barbed wire, I let myself lose hope in the existence of a world in which magic is commonplace. My trust in all that is unseen was usurped by things both within, but mostly out of my control. 

So I return to what I know myself to be - complete, with the recovery of parts left behind. These moments of true winter brought me back to myself. The crisp air, snow crystals floating down from the branches in a sub-zero night and sparkling in the shine of my headlamp. The world engulfed in a blanket of white, at once muffling and amplifying sound. Hiding and enveloping the green world below. The way Kimik's nose hones in more clearly to the scents the deer and squirrels leave in their tracks, and how I could tell which way he has gone to follow them. Late on New Years eve, I went with a friend to climb the big hill once more, looking out at the lights from the summit  and carving out our soft turns down in the final darkness of the old year. Into this new one I will pick up the part of me that is better than the weights I carried in her stead. She is more winter than summer, and so am I.

The thaw is coming, but I will not forget.

White Lies

 I told you to keep singing, 

Even though you were tone deaf. 

Because you loved it

And hoped one day to make something of it. 

Although mostly because I could see

It was what you loved. 

You were born to make music 

Spring from your fingers 

And your lungs

And your pores  

Undeniable and important. 

In striving to find yourself in the 

Meandering chords and melodies 

You would dissapear. 

Head bent into that guitar 

As if you were falling 

Into a stringed rabbit hole. 

Your eyes closed, 

Or simply not seeing. 

Not hearing anything else but the song 

Realeased from your fingertips, 

Wavering into the air through your imperfect voice. 

When you asked me about it 

I would tell you white lies. 

Knowing that my ears too are imperfect,

and remembering that there were moments. 

Small and sometimes nearly lost in the confusion 

Of flat sharps and broken phrasing.

The static would clear, 

And that one pure sound 

Would escape your lips. 

Your sound 

Flying out into the world 

In perfect timbre.

Intervention

 Those of you that know me may recognize that the art of noticing is a skill I try to practice. To pay attention to whatever internal noise arises and do my best to allow it, hold it, and not let it drive me. Today the world, the universe perhaps, offered up an opportunity for me to do just this. I'll refrain from telling the details of the story, in part because the story of what happened on the material plane is not the point, and I'm allowed to keep them to myself. I sometimes forget there is no shame in holding certain things close. And some stories have layers of complexity that are hard to communicate in a quick telling.

This was an event that stirred up a deep sense of self blame, shame and fear. I got home afterwards and noticed all of these feelings churning away and my sense of moral and ethical integrity buzzing like a siren. I also noticed that I immediately gravitated towards some things on social media which always make me feel particularly bad about myself. Like a punishment. I had a sense of what right action was but was kind of terrified by the prospect of that action and it's potential consequences. At other times in my life, I have sometimes struggled to come clean when I make certain types of mistakes, when there is an option to avoid detection and in particular when truth telling involves considerable effort. While I strive to meet things head on when it involves people I know or care about, in this case, it didn't involve anyone I know or would likely ever meet. I'm sure you're curious to know what happened, but it's not the point, so I'll continue. 

There are times when I've avoided uncomfortable conversations, when having the conversation was harder than not having it. I'm not afraid of confrontation, but I am afraid of strangers (true story and probably a throwback to being an extremely shy kid) and I'm most definitely afraid of making people angry or losing things that matter to me. Today I had to decide between staying hidden or stepping out into the harsh light of my own failures. And today the pull of my internal compass was what cut through the fear, shame and anxiety about an unknown outcome. 

Coming clean involved going to an area I am not familiar with to find someone I do not know. I had to extrapolate using Google Maps to find where this unknown person might live, brought along my mask and imagined ways to knock on a strangers' door in the time of Covid. But I did not want to be a coward, and I am driven these days to keep things as clean and in integrity as I can, to find the right path, whenever possible. To me the right path involves not hiding from my own mistakes, even when there is a cost.

On the longish drive there I noticed my mind wanting to explore various theories about what might happen, little vignettes involving forgiving kindred spirits on the one hand and gun-toting hotheads on the other. With every story that arose came a wave of anxiety, or hopefulness,  acute feelings in the body more than anything else. And each time I just noticed, and kept driving through the heart palpitations. I breathed into my belly. I told myself that the universe has a much better imagination than me (which it most certainly does) and that whatever happened would probably be something different than the various predictions my mind was offering up. 

As it turns out this was true. I'm trying to keep perspective and not have this be about ego, because to be honest an action I took today inadvertently caused a loss for someone else. But it feels like the universe had my back, and big time. As I drove down a road in search of my stranger I was intercepted - there is no other way to put it. In my search to find a human needle in a geographic haystack I had narrowed my search to a single neighbourhood. I was putting up a sign that would not be missed by the locals. A note to this unknown person in their unknown neighbourhood, taking responsibility, apologizing and offering amends with my contact information. As I started to drive away, a van drove up and someone got out to read the note. I felt the urge to drive off, but paused myself again, and noticed that through the clamour of avoidance there was something calmer. I opened my window and leaned out. A short conversation there in the road with the driver of the van meandered widely but also provided me with uninvited but informed counsel. Strangest of all I realized we had met before, although I did not know her well. As we parted ways my note came down and was tucked into the woman's pocket to be passed along if needed. And so the arc of this story may not yet be over as it has been entrusted to her. 

I can sometimes poopoo the idea of divine intervention, or of a kind and karmic universe. It feels cliche, and I often wonder if the reality is much more chaotic and nonsensical than we orderly little beings would like to believe. But I can't help but feel that what I was given today was protection from forces that could have harmed me. I followed an internal bearing along what felt like the best and most difficult line, and was met. Timing, fate, or something else did find me on the path of integrity and intervened. 

Descent

 There is something about this time of year. As the sun lowers itself across the darkening horizon, I am reminded of it. Suddenly this week I am feeling into the melancholic and reflective drift of fall. I have been so happy this past year, for many reasons - all of which are profoundly ordinary. There have been no lightning bolts of synchronicity, no mad love or material windfalls, just a slow unfolding of mundane and beautiful circumstances that have supported my wellbeing. 

This evening I sat in a chair on the driveway, three of us watching the sheep we had set loose to trim the grass on the edges of the pavement. Drinking beer and laughing about the personalities of our small flock. The small sounds of their grazing, soft noses picking out the best bits of clover, the quiet cropping of green grass. When they first arrived a few months ago the ewes shied away from us at the smallest movement, but now they will clamour and bleat at the gate for handouts and scratches. I give them the carrot tops my new horse friend won't eat.  

This year has been punctuated and populated by shed building, the arrival of 21 tiny chicks, 5 sheep, newly planted garden beds, first eggs, and a feeling of intense contentment. Over the summer I spent the better part of two months floating on the Pacific - a trip that started and ended at the beach at the end of my road. An adventure long anticipated that took a shape not quite so symmetrical as originally conceived, but still perfect in its own way. A gift of time and freedom in a strange year. I had to tear myself away from this new home when I left in June. As these things tend to work, I had to tear myself back out of the addictive rhythm of expedition life to return to this settled way of being. But now I am fully returned. Kimik the dog and I wander out the door in the mornings, out the back gate into a forested trail network that could take days to fully explore. 

I have frequently found myself looking around my life marvelling how nothing at all seems to be missing. There is no hole to fill. Even though I am on my own, I do not feel alone. I was struck by a feeling of belonging, community and connection when I returned home this summer. Loneliness is a feeling, not a true state of being, it is a trick of the mind. I sometimes catch myself wondering if there is something wrong with this state of contentment - is wrong to feel so fulfilled by such simple things? To be so intensely at ease and at home. 

And so the rains have come. Beating against the tin roof of my small bungalow, reminding me that with the slow descent into winter comes a comfort hard to find in the intense glare of summer. There are moments I can feel my body and mind rebelling against the lack of sun, the early darkness. But  I also welcome this quiet moody season, and I am not afraid of the dark.

Love, Fire and the Sea

There are maybe a hundred unfinished pieces hiding behind this one. I sometimes worry that my thoughts scramble before they hit the page. But that's what blogs are for, I think. At least this is what they are for me. A place to download, often quickly, the passing ruminations of a life lived as well as I am able. I am often composing something as I move.

This one is about love, fire and the sea.
I took a long walk down a short beach this morning, past the nudists with their beards and spread-eagles, and through the rotting sea salad that delighted the dog with it's putrid scents. Weaving my way through red alder and big leaf maple branches, slung low over the high tide cobblestones. Patches of sand, and the soft sea air and diffuse sunlight of early October. We are perilously close to the yearly storm cycle, but it's so beautiful today. At the same time it feels to me like the end of an enduring storm season of my own.


I read somewhere recently about a ceremony, a way to cleave away from what haunts you. It sounded good, and maybe everyone needs a little ceremony sometimes. So I took some supplies and kept walking past the populated and narrow band of intertidal zone just as the tide was pushing into its last rising hour. My dog Kimik travelled parrallel to me in the way that he does, sometimes lost in the bushes, only the soft padding of his feet and jingle of his tags as an occasional reminder of his presence. At times I there are glimpses of the white tip of his flag-like tail, and something about that makes me profoundly happy.

It might be worth mentioning that there was a lot of warning about the nudists. Painted on driftwood logs the word "NUDE" is emblazoned across salted wood. Say no more. Beware all ye who enter here.

A thousand years of storm seasons
compressed.

The beginning of my storm season is marked in my accounting of things by the death of my father. That same year there was a series of events, one after another, that seemed to be stacking in layers of loss and magic. In the years after that, although spread a little more generously across time, there was more to come - much of which I was unconsciously engaged in creating, some completely out of my control and all utterly my responsibility to integrate. It has not all been about grief; there have been other things, both miraculous and mundane, like lines of sediment. Gain and wonderment. Pain. A disruption in what I thought was the trajectory and order of my life. A loss of myself, then a re-understanding that is emerging of what I am becoming. A new kind of spaciousness. I have descended, and now I find myself rising back into the light of my own eyes. Emerging slowly at a pace more suited for the shaping of river rock than short-lived humanity, but emerging nonetheless. And I have come to believe that that is ok. It's the best I can do, and perhaps how I am built.

Today on the beach I noticed an internal sense of steadiness, a calm in my bones. I have so often seethed in my impatience with the process. But there has been no rushing it; it has been a complex type of grief, and this period of repair has been long and deep.

Today I am willing to be slow and deliberate. To persist despite a malfunctioning lighter and damp wood. I let the fire burn all the way down, witnessing the pieces of memory, the tokens and words of the past be consumed. Fragments of moments long gone but inexplicably haunting, are reduced to fine white ash and smoke. The fire is ringed with a circle of beach stones. They are disappointment and disillusionment. In the end I take the hot rocks in my hands and toss them away one at a time; they hiss as they made contact with the surface of the ocean.

While I was engaged in this little ceremony, the nudists had arrived. I always find it a bit nerve-wracking to pass by naked people on the beach when I myself am fully clothed. Especially at high tide it's so hard to pass at a distance that feels ok. Even worse because Kimik insisted on getting as close to them as possible, to sniff their dozing faces. But in my becalmed state I had a thought about this discomfort. As I walk by their bare and uniformly tanned asses, I imagine that I myself am returning from my own nudist retreat. For some reason it makes me feel better, even though it isn't true. A subtle yet profound shift in perspective.

I am wandering unguided across this territory of aging. Maybe we all feel that way. Our culture is so steeped in bullshit about age, gender and power.

I have found the cure for heartbreak. This time not in corporeal form, curled up and tangled in a lock of my own hair, even though I have let it grow long again. I found it in the passage of time. In noticing what is close and what is far, and learning to accept that for what it is. In travelling deep into the heart of my own imperfection. In finding all the sharp edges that I still contain. Doing it in my own disorderly and circuitous way.

I am burned down to white ash. And released.