Errant Travellers

Opening an imagined window to the future, I see many roads and sunlight. 

No road signs giving directions to errant travellers. Leaves one to 

believe the directions are not in the mind. Where are they? Will a little bird tell us? 

Should we listen to the whispers of our hearts?

“If you don’t know where you want to go,

 then it doesn’t matter which path you take.”

~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

My Way

Openings for how to grow, how to learn, are not obvious. Not a guy on a street corner holding a sign: 

“Openings here!”. If it was, 

would it mean an opening 

for a job, an opening for 

a door, or an opening for

opportunity? And would 

anyone pay attention to it,

other than to say, ‘what’s 

that old guy up to now?” 

No, openings for growth 

are tiny and most often 

unseen but struggled 

through like putting on a 

new pullover. Takes some 

stubbornness and even after 

the pullover is settled and 

smoothed the fit won’t be 

recognized for years. 

Of course, unless some 

teacher or parent claps 

excitedly and produces 

a gold star. But most of 

the growth and learning 

that happens is accidental, 

with no grades, no gold 

stars and no one clapping 

and cheering along the way. 

It is merely a singular journey 

needing nothing more than 

curiosity, willingness and

‘I did it my way’. 

At least that’s what 

Frank Sinatra sings about.

“The first step towards getting somewhere is to 

decide you’re not gong to stay where you are.”

~ J.P. Morgan

Unsettled

How do I fill myself up 

when the air is calm, 

when there is no turmoil

in the sphere of my life

when I think I feel empty

the calm is unsettling,

unfamiliar, waiting,

opening a channel

to a void to be filled.....

....something that flows?

....colour, beauty, song?

What will I choose?

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”

~ Nelson Mandela

Soul Seasons

Opening doors 

to an unknown future ~

like green sprouts that push 

through moist wintered earth ~

beauty lent to each new season 

for growth, strength and acceptance.

“My soul, be satisfied with flowers,

With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them

in the one garden you may call your own.”

~ Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

Blue Light

Iridescent cactus flowers bloom,

opening into moist Victoria air,

to grow and to glow.

“Beauty surrounds us.”

~ Rumi

Openings

New directions coming up
Just under one month from now.

Possibilities opened suddenly
Opportunity accepted

Stepping into new territory
Still following the plan.

“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

~ L.Frank Baum

Family Time

Short and sweet
Dexter, Eva, my grand dogs
Jason, my youngest son - also very grand!
Opening with a visit tonight,
Breakfast tomorrow,
Walking the dogs in white crisp night air!
City night noises settling the neighbourhood.

“My family is my strength and my weakness.”

~ Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

Furious Expectations

'Shutting down fury and fear in order to get on with my life does not mean that either go away

In strange days of date and time, edges loosen, unrecognized openings ease tendrils of black fury into day light.

What was previously 
a blank white page, is now discoloured and gray.'

                 ******

Phew!  Now that was a burst of anger!
Reminds me of the black smoke and ash
from a candle blown out with a puff of breath
curling up into the air, staining the ceiling,
tickling my nose with burnt waxy wick odor.

Rejigging my expectations of others is a disappointment.
Yet our beliefs and motives as different rocks and grass
are still part of the scenery sharing a common ground
beside the same stretch of water.

“Often expecting immediate returns for goodness

in this world is a sign of a normal human being.”

~ Adil Adam Memon

Home Time

Dry fluorescent glare opening onto soggy crisp darkness.
High atop slippery wet silver poles dampened rays of brightness shine weakly through an almost mist in suspended drift that clings and clouds a single car’s windshields.
Spiny tree branches wetly back-lit by city glow stand silently beside shiny dark asphalt.White armed vehicle sized lots lie empty and patient beneath star dark sky.

“Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected

and stepping outside your own experience.”

~ Masaru Ibuku

The Making of a Recipe

Recipes ~ ingredient list first
Listed in order of amounts
Flip through recipe books
What fits with contents stocked in cupboard, fridge and freezer
Nothing ~ almost ~ well maybe
Opening my mind and my cupboards, ideas inched forward
Historical aromas and tastes had nose a-twitch and tastebuds aquiver.
But I could use this and
I could use that and
oh, yes I’ve got this in the freezer
salt and pepper not a problem 
spices? hmmmm? rosemary’s good for taste and colour
Spices and foods shuffle and shift places in my mind til
click! ~ it all should work.
Light frying, chopping and stirring 
The recipe book lies forgotten on the cupboard
transformed into a mind booster not a recipe finder.
Cooking debris of dirtied pots and pans, spoons and stirring things cleared up, washed and put away.

No pictures ~ dinner tucked quickly away in stomachs, fridge and freezer.

Chicken with Rosemary Potatoes

Pre-heat oven to 250 degrees.

Four chicken legs and thighs
Two medium potatoes
Two Roma tomatoes
Rosemary
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
1/2 thinly sliced onion
Parmesen cheese* (optional)

Separate chicken legs from thighs. Sprinkle salt and pepper on each side.  Heat 2 Tb of  olive oil in a (cast iron) frying pan.  Brown chicken legs on both sides. Remove from pan to a baking dish.  

Put onion, cubed potatoes and cubed tomatoes in frying pan. Stir to combine, just warming to coat all with the chicken drippings in the pan. Sprinkle with small amount of rosemary.

When thoroughly coated, spoon over chicken in baking pan.  Sprinkle again with pepper and salt (optional). Scatter two tablespoons of rosemary over all.

Place in preheated oven for two hours. Fifteen minutes before two hours are up, sprinkle parmesen cheese to taste over the vegetables and tomatoes.

Serve with a salad or other hot green vegetables! Mmmmm good!

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. 

In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

~ Julia Child

Lest We Forget

Discussions about senior care in nursing homes and residences abound since the tragic fire in Quebec. Much of my nursing career has been caring for the elderly in hospitals and dementia units. While I listen to the various discussions, whether at coffee with friends, at work with colleagues, or on the radio, I hear an interesting - and disturbing - level of detachment. Discussion is about policies and protocols about safety and security, what should be done, what hasn't been done. Discussion frequently turns to the equally tragic deaths, deemed murder in the press, of patients killed by another patient in the same facility.

Opening and improving policies and protocols, and the enforcment of them, is paramount. Protection of all  patients and clients is also paramount, while respecting their individuality. These men and women, these parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers have failed and failing neurological systems. Social filters that were learned over decades for polite skills are clogged and ineffective, maybe no longer even existent. For some, learning the same sort of social skills may not have been part of their experience.

Our society has placed, quite indiscriminately, these elderly and frail of mind individuals from usually very disparate upbringings, values, education, and cultures, in closed environments, with limited numbers of caregivers and health professionals. Education and levels of experience can be as varied as the patients in their care. If there are sufficient funds and family support, there may be an opportunity to live in a more pleasing and fitting environment. If not, it’s a crap shoot - pardon my blunt cynicism.

Have we forgotten that these individuals ~ not ‘this demographic’ ~ but these individuals, deserve care that does not judge, that does not punish but that provides them with respectful and safe care? 

“Our society must make it right and possible for old people

not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of 

a civiliztion is the way that it cares for its helpless members.”

~ Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)

Painting the Past

Broad brush strokes paint pictures lacking little dust and colour from yesteryear.
Imagined ‘what if’s’ and ‘must have beens’ fill in empty spaces.
Visiting with a someone that was there ~ growing up and growing into ~
dips the brush into other colours, suggesting sound and fury.
Some memories stream frightening or painful moments forward into light of to-day.
Given enough time and a kinder life, openings into the past may arrive.
Until they do, many questions can wait.

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

~ L.P.Hartley, The Go-Between

Incremental Success

Rates of growth measured in outcomes

drawn on spread sheets and punctuated with dollars and cents

Which success is measured and measurable?

Business outcomes or individual outcomes?

In a business where outcomes are viewed as either side of a line to be easily stepped over,

no one can see the tiny ripples, blips and hoops to be navigated,

narrow, undulating openings with ever changing guideposts ~

like an obstacle course for seasoning new recruits, 

sideline beckoning of drink and drug ~

temptation and forward movement wrestle for control

individual success opens up in small increments, not sudden dramatic change

Ordinary individual successes play out in families, friends and community

“Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.”

~  Dalai Lama XIV

Hang on to Your Receipts!

Ah my friend, CBC radio! Tucked amid news stories of tragedies and wars, politics and celebrity came another bit of trivia.  

The early morning item on ‘sales return fraud’ spun me down memory lane to a summer day in Regina, Saskatchewan in the ’70’s. It was around noon. A lovely day. In my memory, the amazing blue sky that I love so much was domed brilliantly over a busy downtown. On a minor shopping trip, my then husband and I had just pulled into a parking space in a large and busy downtown lot. In years gone by, this same lot had been busy with people boarding passenger trains to Saskatoon, Calgary or anywhere else the Canadian Pacific Railway or Canadian National Railway traveled.

Gary, sharp eyed and alert, called my attention to a young man and an accomplice breaking into a car one row in front of us. The illegal opening before us presented us with a choice ~ turn blind eyes or slip on figurative trench coats! We bravely, or naively, shadowed them at a safe distance. Surreptiously following the thieves for several blocks down crowded sidewalks, jaywalking and zipping into and then out of The Bay, we were in complete detective mode! In quick agreement, I split off and found a police officer. Gary and two police officers gave chase ~ literally ~ including leaping over cars! Justice was ultimately served in the courts.

And how does this relate? Stolen from the front seat of the car was a bag of merchandise with the receipt also left in the bag. The merchandise was ‘returned’ to a clerk, with the ‘proof of purchase’. The young men in question pocketed the cash ~ but only temporarily, their petty crime foiled by two newly minted ‘detectives’.

To this day, I still keep all my receipts in my purse. Once home they are destroyed by my hand. Any merchandise left in my car, is locked away and hidden from sight.

“Things gained through unjust fraud are never secure.”

~ Sophocles

Technology and/or Humanity

This opinion piece is being written on my laptop. A piece of technology. Radio is often being listened to at home, on CBC of course. An early technology - relatively speaking. Countless tools and conveniences used at work, at home or for recreation are all pieces of technology in various stages of development. I am always pleased to be able to use them when they make my life easier, cook my food more quickly or just enhance my fun times.

However, this morning, on satellite streamed radio, I did hear about a piece of technology recently discussed at some research or computer level. A World Wide Web for Robots. So said robots can learn more about tasks they are designed to perform. Rather than opening my mind to possible benefits to human kind, I immediately thought of many episodes of Star Trek, The Next Generation and the Borg ~ a collective of human and bionic parts that ‘thought’ with one mind.  When that ‘one mind’ wasn’t connected, the Borg were inactive.

Maybe it was just too early in the morning to be hearing about this scary technological advance. However science fiction over many years, has continually pointed in the direction of human beings ultimately having so much technology that we push ourselves out of the world’s picture. And I have had this disturbing thought rattling around in my mind for quite some time.

The most disturbing? An example of various nursing tasks being done by robots!

Paranoia - or science fiction? What does the future hold? Will we all be drones or Trekkies?  I think I'll just go to bed now and sleep on it.

“The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”

~ B.F.Skinner

Flow

Openings between souls and tasks
in the busyness of a work or play,
flow together seamlessly
in great streams of energy.

“I trust the flow of life.”

~ Marketa Irglova

A Meeting of Minds ~ 1

Five adults around a boardroom table sharing cookies, tea and information.

A Service dog snoozed

beneath the table, 

close to his owner.

Service dogs for epilepsy 

one topic of conversation.

Details of life with epilepsy.

Opening up to each other with questions and ideas.

New diagnosis

Long lived experience.

Desire to be free of stigma.

Medication, 

    surgery, 

        triggers, 

            life style

                self awareness.

Normal folks with different forms of this invisible neurological abnormality.

What feelings came away with me at meetings end?
Sadness that my family, 

including my young sons, 

had to witness my seizures.

Gratitude that my form of epilepsy is easily managed.

“Feelings are much like waves, we can’t stop them

from coming but we can choose which one to surf.”

~ Jonatan Mårtensson

Working to Relax

If I were to paint a picture of how I have felt today it would be this stubby little plant.
Stems all woody, with just enough life to shoot out another fragile bit of greenery.
Today has been all about relaxation and I have certainly  worked hard at it!
A very strange juxtaposition -working to relax - but that is just what I have done.
Staying in pj’s as long as I could - that was easy (with a cuppa).
Guided relaxation exercise with my creativity coach.
Opening mind and shoulders, letting the weight of work week tension drain out my finger tips and filter away through the space around me.
Then Aquafit.........one hour of guided cardio in chest high water with a class of twenty.
Kicking away all of that same tension while the cool water wraps around and supports me.
Opening wide arms and chest, breathing deep to expand rib cage and heart.
(water support is a good thing!  I couldn’t do some of these exercises on dry land.)
A few minutes in the hot swirling water of the Jacuzzi before home and quiet.
Not feeling quite so woody this evening, I’ll read a bit more Alice Munro.......

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”

~ Chinese Proverb

Criss Crossing Boundaries

Gates placed strategically along borders and fences
Entries from one plot of land to another
Political gatekeepers maintain structure and function.
Diverse cultures welcome shared safety of family life and home
Ethics and morals can easily criss cross cultural differences
Curiosity and acceptance create person to person openings.

“Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what 

the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity 

and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.”

~ Michael Palin