snail
when i saw you there, unwilling to move from the wreckage of your fallen friend, i thought about size and my incorrect assumptions on your capacity to grieve.
i picked you up from the sad shells strewn on the concrete ground and you strained your fleshy foot away; one last gesture of your reluctance to let go.
i hope you know i sympathize; sometimes the only way forward is standing still.
beauty.
"go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy".
anne frank, the diary of a young girl
fall's fool.
it's getting to be that season! the fall one with the bright colours and the vegetable harvest and the charmingly rustic tractors, pleading silently to be photographed.
and while there's no denying the melancholy of summer's last gentle touches, fall is irrefutably my favourite time of year.
on a bicycle built for one
i think this is one of those posts where most people reading will be all like, DUH, YEAH OF COURSE, but i'm going to go ahead and preach to the choir anyways because this chorus member just joined.
BIKING IS LIBERATING.
in particular, biking ALONE is liberating.
jeremy is an amazing bike riding partner and for four years he's waited for me at the bottom of hills while i brake my way down with teeth clenched. it's certain, in fact, that i could never have ridden alone without his patient and encouraging support.
ain't that the beauty of love? that it pushes you away from dependancy and towards this place of self actualization?
i met jessica at a fork on the lower don trail on thursday. i arrived at the meeting spot early, not knowing how long it would take me and anticipating wanting to take some pictures to document my first solo trek.
i'm making it sound like i did the mountain leg of the tours de france and maybe for me, it meant something similar.
i had my mouth open in awe the whole time, (until i ate a bug), and i must have looked new because more than one cyclist asked me if i was okay, but gosh darn it i did it.
and i feel like an emancipated woman. freed from the shackles of cars and public transportation. and from my fear which obviously can't be trusted after keeping me from something so cool.
my bike and jessica's bike like each other. jessica's bike gets ridden a lot but never holds that over my bike's head. instead she is kind and accepting and finds my bike's spastic enthusiasm charming.
ring your bells! wear your helmuts! bike ride into a future dependent only on the power of you! and a husband who waves from the window while you glide down the driveway.
i dream of darwin (and the dream came true)
something wonderful has happened. something i started thinking about almost a year ago when i woke up from the kind of dream that pinches your backbone in a playful but pushy kind of way.
i had imagined myself a business.
i'd make animals out of second hand clothes, some small, some big, and i'd sell them online in a shop i'd call 'i Dream of Darwin'. everything would be inspired by nature, as an homage to how nature inspires me. i'd make stories about the animals to please my writing bone and i'd kiss them each, one time, square on the nose which is the thing that's missing from machine manufactured stuffs and will never once be missing from mine.
and last weekend, my shop opened!
many things inspired me to make this happen, a purchase i made on etsy, a dear friend at work i'd confided in early on, my best friend, my husband, my idle hands itching for some purpose. my younger self sitting in my memory, making robots out of wood and three legged dogs out of my mom's expensive fabric.
and perhaps the biggest inspiration was a desire for a handmade dialogue with the universe, for a connection to be forged with the things that i create and the place that they end up. me to you and something stitched between.
it took a year for many reasons, i had a plan mapped out at first but the organized manner of it felt funny to me. i wanted to enjoy all the steps including the beginning and pushing it forward according to a timeline felt like a cousin to the office job and a stranger to the creative process. i wanted to explore. try different things. watch as a style emerged, then make attempts that went against it.
i wanted to covet all my creations.
for a while i was striving for completion - i needed more things made, i needed large numbers of inventory, i needed to land on one style and unify everything into a packaged, clever little bow. realizing now that an end point will hopefully never come, i've based my shop on a philosophy of creation and exploration and an active, present engagement with my world and my way to explore it - through pieces unique, handmade and inspired by the natural world.
i hope you like it! i hope it speaks to you! i hope it inspires you to do something weird of your own and i hope you pass it on to your network of dreamers, the friends who'd most appreciate a hand-made narwhal in their lives.
isn't that just all of us? cleverly disguised under adult clothing? i had a dream it might be so.
the motion of objects through space
if time is something you invented to mark life’s sequence of events,
what is passing if not seconds?
what is waiting if not us?
i hear a penitent click on the wooden clock and think,
there is no click,
there are no seconds,
the future is an island where we send our one-day selves, that they may live there peacefully and work to learn their worth.
what is passing if not seconds?
what is waiting if not us?
i hear a penitent click on the wooden clock and think,
there is no click,
there are no seconds,
the future is an island where we send our one-day selves, that they may live there peacefully and work to learn their worth.
summerlicious
you know what was good? this dinner.
tomatoes, beet greens and poached salmon! there was corn-on-the-cob too which i ate before i could pick up the camera because loving corn-on-the-cob and eating corn-on-the-cob very quickly are two of my super powers.
fly me to the moon
when the sky is clear and the moon is full we walk to the park to have a look. i bring my binoculars, jer brings the camera, and the moon brings its glorious, bright shining face.
the moon was once a part of the earth, did you know? or at least that's the rumour around the science cooler. i like to imagine what part of the earth the moon was like the armpit or the knee or the section of the brain concerned with abstract thought.
love actually is, all around.
i've been giving a lot of thought to love lately. specifically how our concept of love changes as we go through life.
when i was little i loved joey mcintyre and kermit the frog when he dressed up as michael jackson in the bad video.
in grade eight, i loved scott jackson.
when i was sixteen i loved a tanned shouldered boy with long dark hair who never wore shoes, drove a brown pick up truck, and listened to led zeppelin.
for five years i loved my highschool boyfriend, duane rushton.
all of these early loves had something in common. the love i felt for them was very personal, highly analyzed and communicated in very boastful ways. like issuing a statement. like announcing i'd achieved something. like missing some sort of point.
i loved cameron but really more as a friend. i loved matt, but we barely knew each other.
and then i loved jeremy.
love is poems and pancakes and saying vows to each other in fancy clothing but it's also real and present and starting and ending each day looking at each other and not being able to imagine that the world, your world, could be any other way.
love isn't only in the clouds, you see. it's doing jeremy's laundry, it's folding his dress shirts, it's making his tea with just the right amount of milk. it's looking around at our house, the home that we've made, and having shared stories for everything in it.
it's knowing that when i ask him to be somewhere, he always will be.
there are so many different kinds of love in the world. love for a book, love for a song, love for franks hot sauce on just about everything. love for the ocean and it's strong, primal allure.
when i was little i loved joey mcintyre and kermit the frog when he dressed up as michael jackson in the bad video.
in grade eight, i loved scott jackson.
when i was sixteen i loved a tanned shouldered boy with long dark hair who never wore shoes, drove a brown pick up truck, and listened to led zeppelin.
for five years i loved my highschool boyfriend, duane rushton.
all of these early loves had something in common. the love i felt for them was very personal, highly analyzed and communicated in very boastful ways. like issuing a statement. like announcing i'd achieved something. like missing some sort of point.
i loved cameron but really more as a friend. i loved matt, but we barely knew each other.
and then i loved jeremy.
love is poems and pancakes and saying vows to each other in fancy clothing but it's also real and present and starting and ending each day looking at each other and not being able to imagine that the world, your world, could be any other way.
love isn't only in the clouds, you see. it's doing jeremy's laundry, it's folding his dress shirts, it's making his tea with just the right amount of milk. it's looking around at our house, the home that we've made, and having shared stories for everything in it.
it's knowing that when i ask him to be somewhere, he always will be.
there are so many different kinds of love in the world. love for a book, love for a song, love for franks hot sauce on just about everything. love for the ocean and it's strong, primal allure.
but all those loves, through the lens of the love i share with jeremy, are amplified, multiplied, boost-i-fied in the incredible way love is when sharing it with that one person who understands you completely.
aren't we all such lucky ducks? aren't we all just slaves to love.
let's see here
one day i'll get more topics than 'jeremy, camping, and clouds shaped like hearts' but for now! that's what you're stuck with! maybe you knew that going in? i hope so.
last weekend we were camping at balsam lake. it's about a two hour drive from toronto, heading towards the kawarthas, so even though you're on a highway it's a one-laner, passing chip wagons and drive-in theatres.
our site was a hike-in spot. it was quite secluded actually, if it wasn't for a trailhead close by and some trips to the beach when the sun demanded, we wouldn't have seen a soul.
we took pictures of mushrooms.
we took pictures of clouds.
we pulled all the nails out of this beautiful, silently suffering tree.
we spent a lot of time in the dining tent, safe from bugs and rain and the rest of the world.
we cooked over the fire, we read our books, we ate mel's cherry preserves with crackers and brie.
if you built a time machine and set it randomly to any one of our many camping trips you'd find it hard to determine in which one you'd landed. the changes limited to the length of my hair and the number of layers we have on, those key components, (the food, the set up, the close relationship with dirt), remain unchanged.
like my love for jeremy, my love for trees, and my love for peeing in the woods like a wild animal.
anyhooters
we heard this guy when we were camping! well maybe not this exact guy but his very close relative was very close by when we were sitting in the dining tent, drinking a beer and thinking nature's most definately where it's at.
i recognized it was a barred owl by his distinct call and if that weren't enough excitement for a year and a half, another one answered and we sat with our mouths agape catching flies and inhaling wonder through our nostrils.
we contemplated taking off through the woods to see if we could spy him but as an owler you know, hearing them is just as good.
owls, man. owls.
you don't make pickles in the bed
PICKLES! i love pickles. i also love making pickles and mini breaks that start in the middle of week and nachos. just now, (real time update!) jeremy walked out of the kitchen with nachos and some fresh salsa he'd just thrown together and you know what i'm thinking? i'm thinking i'm the luckiest meerkat in the manor.
life is good. and not just if you're a jar of pickles in a hot tub.
pickles are actually really easy to make you just have to keep everything clean and hot and it's more of a study in assembly, than cooking. and i adore assembly. and jeremy. not equally though i love jeremy more.
and now we wait for three months for them to be ready so we can finally have our grilled cheese party.good day to you! and good rest of your week, you're almost there.
x
a tisket, a tasket, a fruit and veggie basket.
mel borrowed our tent for a camping adventure and in thanks, she brought us a basket of produce. with the farm share we're doing this year and my proximity through work to people like mel, i can say my knowledge of fruits and vegetables has grown like the sprouts we jar at home, quickly and with enthusiasm!
i don't even know if i've ever done anything with eggplant before this summer? it's so delicious and versatile. also if i eat any more leafy greens i might turn into a leafy green. (i hope i'm kale, i hope i'm kale.)
we're still eating chicken and fish only and honestly an ever decreasing amount of both, too. i don't think i'll ever cut those out completely, i love sushi and chicken wings too much but in large part, we eat vegetarian. loads of vegetables like i mentioned but also beans, (good thing jeremy loves me), nuts, small grains like quinoi and lots of delicious soups and pastas. also wraps.
i know how to make my own hummus and jeremy makes black bean corn cakes and i mentioned it already but tomorrow we're going to make pickles. my dream is one day to have a cold cellar for our preserves like the one we had when i was little. and to make my mom's pickled carrots.
and to rescue a horse from a circus diving act.
all dressed up (with nowhere to go).
my wedding dress has been living in a bag in a closet for the last two years. it's just so special and pretty i wanted to preserve it, like the wedding, someplace neatly tucked.
but i wonder if maybe it's silly to keep something of such beauty in a closet in a bag where it's most likely having trouble breathing.
so i took it out for a spin.
i missed you, dress! i'm sorry i though it was more important to preserve you than to twirl you through the livingroom.
it won't happen again.
i'm right here, where you left me.
we like to move the coffee table out of the sunroom and pull the nest chair up to the window. we take turns sitting and reading in it.
i think tomorrow we're going to make pickles.
what is that wonderful something about this time of year? summer so long and lazy? it's gosh darn rejuvenating, i tell you.
but trust me on the sunscreen.
i used to think that sunscreen song was for me. you know that one that’s called everybody is free and then in brackets it says (to wear sunscreen)?
based on an article in the chicago tribune, the song version came out in 1999 and was addressed to the graduating class (me), read by a father type figure (to this gal who didn’t have one), belabering some worn out messages (dance, sing, floss) and driving home some personally important ones (wear sunscreen).
so many of the lines in the article/song are still staples i reflect back on. gems like ‘the race is long and only with yourself’ and 'your choices are half chance, so are everybody elses' are the kinds of things you hear and yell out YES to, pumping your fists in the air or nodding your head in the loudest, non-verbal way possible. even though it isn’t really my song and even though you’re probably familiar, i share it here for you to read and pick through, taking bits of gospel with you, as i have.
based on an article in the chicago tribune, the song version came out in 1999 and was addressed to the graduating class (me), read by a father type figure (to this gal who didn’t have one), belabering some worn out messages (dance, sing, floss) and driving home some personally important ones (wear sunscreen).
so many of the lines in the article/song are still staples i reflect back on. gems like ‘the race is long and only with yourself’ and 'your choices are half chance, so are everybody elses' are the kinds of things you hear and yell out YES to, pumping your fists in the air or nodding your head in the loudest, non-verbal way possible. even though it isn’t really my song and even though you’re probably familiar, i share it here for you to read and pick through, taking bits of gospel with you, as i have.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)