My Life

Today it is an old map ~ one of those paper maps, creased and folded with squiggly lines that are roads that I have traveled, straight 

lines that box in provinces and states that I have lived in and traversed. No obvious direction but always with a horizon ahead and behind me. The goal in mind was to gather education, to learn new things outside of a classroom, to learn how to be independent. Or does that mean growing up? 

And I have. 

With each travel down a squiggly road, 

my world and my life has expanded. 

Now I know there has always been a direction, 

I just didn’t know it would lead me back home.

“Always go with your passions. Never ask yourself if it’s realistic or not.”

~ Deepak Chopra

Sweeping Up

Thetis Lake, Vancouver Island,
May 2016

Sweeping up the dust, stray leaves and dried berries pushed by the wind into the balcony corners feels good. 

The shush, shush, shush of my straw broom, stooping to dig my fingers in the dry dirt of a pot, rearranging a garden gnome and rocks in empty pots. 

Sweeping up memories is like that. Dust and dirt are thrown away; my memories are stored in cupboards, drawers and closets of my mind. 

Some in very safe places! ~ especially 

those that land in a junk drawer! Those 

saved, I will take out, polish them with 

laughter or melancholy, share them over lunch 

or dinner, while I sketch bright new memories. 

 “I enjoy, occasionally, a day with my memories ~ 

these paintings hanging on the walls of my mind.”

~ Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

A City Walk

The plan: walk to an office, fill out some paper work, go for coffee, read my book and return home. It was simple enough. A city bus would carry me most of the way there and back. As I stepped on the street I felt a different kind of homeness

The home of this prairie city that is familiar and yet not. After a long absence, changes do not hide the bones of the city I love. Familiar buildings, all of them weathered from hot dusty winds or bitter icy winds. The dry cleaning shop on Albert Street, the library 

with its red, yellow and blue bicycle props, the city park in the city centre with old elm trees shading criss cross sidewalks, a cenotaph the centre ~ people stroll or sit on scattered benches. This world of nostalgia ended with orange wire fencing, the grasping, scraping noise of construction and signs indicating hard hats! Blocked one way, 

I followed a man delivering a bouquet of flowers through the maze. My business complete, I returned to the maze. Trails through the maze led me to the coffee shop. A quieter stroll along store fronts selling 

eye glasses or bride’s dresses took me to the bus stop and home.

“[Walking] is the perfect way of moving 

if you want to see into the life of things.”

~ Elizabeth von Arnim, 

The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen

(August, 1866 - February, 1941)

Being the Boss

‘If I wasn’t afraid, I’d do it anyway.’ A piece of wisdom I heard from a wise woman, or a six year old, or maybe an ancient scribe ~ actually I read it in a book. Fear is a funny thing when it comes to voice. Vocal cords seize up, the pit of my stomach is lined with grit and gunk, and I want to freeze in place until a still small voice whispers to me ‘if you weren’t afraid, would you do it anyway?’ That question, like a cat that curls around my leg and purrs, is soft and in the way. So I get up, 

get it a treat and try to answer the question. 

Make a decision. Do I want the cat or not?

If I do want it ~ the cat, that is ~ am I willing 

to feed it? Gentle it and be the boss of my fear? 

“Never be afraid to sit a while and think.”

~ Lorraine Hansberry, American playwright, 

(May 1930- January 1965)

Being Enough

Excitement could be heard from stands filled to the very edges with parents and fans and friends dressed in the colours of their countries as the youth of the world crossed the finish line, or threw a hammer the farthest, or won a basket ball game or, head down, raced trimmed down bicycles around a track to cross a finish line. The youthful strength of nations seen in sweat shining brows and muscles changed from intense focus to the excited joy of winning the race of their lives. 

The heartbroken, sometimes angry, disappointment of 

those who could not join in that excited joy, 

dampened my own excitement. Their intense focus was 

as great as those who passed them, but competition 

is like that. Once their bodies, hearts and minds 

are rested many will regroup and become the fastest, 

the best, the most talented at the craft of their 

competition while others will return to some 

other form of living and being enough.

“In every competition, there are no winners or loser, only learners.”

~ Brian Herbert, Dune: House Atreides (1999)

To Just Walk

Cruising down dusty roads,

while asphalt traipses across our land, is a thing of the past. The roads of my memory do still exist, gravelled and bumpy, dust rising in 

clouds from passing grain trucks or in puffs from my sneakered feet when 

I just walked 

to feel the silence of the prairie 

punctuated by meadow larks and kildeer,

grasshoppers, bees and wasps; to feel 

the burn of the sun that freckled my nose, 

the wind tousling my hair ~ these old memories 

take me out to just walk and learn the silence 

of the city within its rumble and thrum.

“Walking is man’s best medicine.”

~ Hippocrates

As a Cloud

Instantly, they turned,

as a cloud in the wind, or

the many voices of humanity.

“The human voice can never reach the distance 

that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi