The land is watered from
dawn to dusk and into the night.
If I close my eyes and listen
I am on Vancouver Island,
yet with a fresher touch of cool.
“Light - dews - breezes - bloom - and freshness; not one of which
…has yet been perfected on the canvas of any painter in the world.”
~ John Constable, painter
(1776 - 1837)
Rhythmic flow ~
a sway and swing from the centre of our being before
we know the dance that
tells us that we are alive
our soul hears our rhythm
before music heals our hearts,
before despair touches shore ~
listen and feel the rhythm.
“The rhythm of life is intricate but orderly, tenacious but fragile.
To keep that in mind is to build the key to survival.
~ Shirley Hufstedler, Judge
(1925~2016)
Listen
Listen for changes that
come with a shift in
consciousness,
alertness,
knowledge
to reshape beliefs,
to mould the heart
Your mind will tell you
the direction to take
the star to follow
The message may not be
written in words, or
sung in song but
from deep within
laden with intuition.
“The intuitive mine is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift,”
~ Albert Einstein
I like to think I’m
turning on the radio.
like the old brown one
we had at the farm,
with the gold trim on
the front and the grey
knob that we twisted past
the static until we found
either CJME or CKRM.
It was usually to hear the
news, the grain report or
football or baseball game.
On the weekend it was
Howdy Doody. In the fall,
before moving to town,
the hockey season would
start. Howie Meeker called
the play. Were any of the
curling matches broadcast?
I don’t recall - maybe they
weren’t as interesting to me.
Now it’s all wireless.
“I’m going to get myself one of those, um,
movable computers ~ what do you call them….?
Laptops! I am bad. I still call my radio a wireless,”
~ Katherine Parkinson, actress
 |
| From The Immersive Experience of Van Gogh's paintings - July 2023 |
E is for effort ~
An odd word that sounds
like too much work but
for dreams and goals
to blossom, the effort is
to listen to our heart,
to learn the nuances of dreams,
to mold and shape our visions
and make them visible.
“The only ones who survive trying times are those who are trying,”
~ Aegelis, Specks of Shadows, Flecks of Light
Running on empty, I barely made it to the gas station at the bottom of the hill. True story!! I had forgotten my dad’s instruction to always fill up for a long trip and as soon as your tank reaches 1/4 empty. This was many years ago as I made a trip to my home in Kelowna from Victoria, B.C.
A car has a gas gauge - what part of my body or mind would be the equivalent of a car’s gas gauge to tell me when to stop and fill up. Tired behind eyes that can barely see, feeling a kind of shaky that wants your feet up and your bottom down, just plain cranky ………. When do we listen to our bodies, to our voices, to our minds. We can look at the numbers on our car’s dashboard, but it is only our senses that we can rely on to tell us to put down the knitting, turn off not just the TV but everything, slow down our pace coming from work. Just as a car depends on it’s owner to keep the oil and gas topped up, our bodies and, yes, our minds, depend on whether we respond to our senses when we are running on empty ~ or not.
“There’s just something obvious about emptiness,
even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.”
~ Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
we listen to our dreams. They drift away,
fraying at the edges until our eyes open to
reality. Keeping sounds low, home stirs
awake. Sleepy chirping of birds, uncertain
weather rattles window panes or the silence
of a rising sun suggests whether to shiver or
be glad. Cars and trucks shush by, garbage
trucks rumble down alleys, and passenger
laden buses bustle and wheeze. With the
steady tick of the clock, voices grow busier,
laughter bubbles til at days end, family
sounds take their places wrapped up in screens and sitcoms. Pillowed dreamtime returns and still we listen. But how much have we heard?
“Everybody has 24 hours and the question is, what do you do
with your 24 hours? That’s what makes everybody equal.”
~ Stedman Graham,
educator, author, businessman, public speaker
It troubles me when I learn of the travels of friends and family, or overhear a conversation in a coffee
shop about the wonder and frustrations of a latest trip to Timbuktu or the Arctic Circle or some other far flung and exciting place.
What troubles me is that I have no desire to travel ~ at least today, and maybe tomorrow but that can always change.
If there were the teleportation of
Star Trek fame, I may consider it;
but that is far in the future and
probably not in what remains of
my lifetime ~ which still has a
couple of decades to go. However,
technology, racing along like an
uncontrolled teenager, may bring
to life that fantasy. But by then, my
already old bones will be a lot older
and wouldn’t necessarily handle
the molecular pin ball that
teleportation seems to require.
Regardless, I am content to enjoy
my home without looking for the
history of the world or taking photographs
of buildings that lose their grandeur in
a digital album. And of course, I will
not miss the noisy bump and shuffle
of airports and their waiting areas.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
~ Marcel Proust
 |
| September 22, 2014 Qu'Appelle Valley |
Well, that was a day! A wiener roast with friends out in the country at a sweet 3 year old's birthday party. Successful and fun! I was a mere passenger on a great drive there and back. We drove past beautiful rust, brown, and gold prairie fields that are just amazing. Then back in the city, shopping for crafts and whatever else took our fancy ~ only partially successful. After all of that it was definitely time for coffee and cake - a day of the visiting that covered that last two weeks and multitudes of family updates, needed a break. We ended the evening at the French Press on Albert Street. Successful, with more visiting and just a darn good day.
“At the end of the day, if I can say I had fun, it was a good day.”
~ Simone Biles
p.s. Too busy talking to take an updated photo, but the colours are the same as in 2014!
Distractions are easy to avoid ~ as long as they are outside. At a store, on a book shelf, anything that can be cleaned, a TV on the wall, out to a movie….But inside the mind!
“Come on! You need a break
~ it will help your research ~ you’re just curious - it’ll only take a couple of minutes……” Before the thought is fully formed, hands and feet are already busy with the duster that seldom gets used,
or rearranging the furniture,
or maybe taking a walk just because.
All those distractions can be good things ~
letting that too busy mind mull over the
most recent project and plan a next move,
or it could be simple avoidance. I choose to
believe the mulling over theory and keep my
hands and feet still till I truly listen to myself.
“Most of what we say and do is not essential…
Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’”
~ Marcus Aurelius
