“Oh, this has been one of my better Decembers …and that included chopping off part of my finger.” was my summation of the holiday season to a friend of mine last night. Kinda sums up what I think about Christmases in general. I boycotted the whole thing this year; vastly improved my quality of life. Continue reading
I miss that zip-zip sound corduroy pants used to make when I was a kid. Cords seem to have lost something from the ribbed pants of my stripey-shirted, yes-avacado-is-a-colour-and-it-goes-great-with-pumpkin, 70′s childhood.
So, I’ve been wondering as I walk around, my pants more of a stuttered whisper than that zip-zip I used to love, what’s changed? Continue reading
There’s one hell of a wind out there today. As I watch the trees outside my window I marvel at their flexibility. The spruce branches are waving like undersea fronds and a poplar branch as big as my thigh still has the give to sway broadly as the wind gusts. As I sit cozy and safe in my home, I’m thinking there’s probably some really good metaphor about resiliency in there; the ability to bend and accommodate whatever gets blown your way.
When I took the garbage out, wind-kicked pinecones stinging my legs, I came across a bottle picker working at my dumpster. We chatted briefly as I tossed in my garbage and fought to keep my hair from blowing in my eyes. We naturally talked about this bloody awful wind; he seemed surprisingly cheerful and invigorated by it all. There’s probably some good lesson on resiliency in there too.
It’s all making me feel terribly grateful right now. Grateful for the warm sheltered home I have, able to watch those dancing branches from a place of comfort. Grateful too, for the Chinook wind that brings change and better weather. And more than anything, grateful for the ability, when the change comes too fast and roughs you up a bit, and unlike that homeless fellow, to be able to step out of it and take a break from it when I need to. There’s a pretty good metaphor in there too.
So maybe today, while you’re sitting cozy at home, and wondering what to buy people for Christmas, maybe instead you could click through and make a donation to the Calgary Homeless Foundation in lieu of gifts this year. Someone else could really use a safe place to step out of stormy weather.
It’s funny how much a snowfall can change everything.
All Fall I’ve been slowly grieving the end of summer. As the days got shorter, the nights cooler, the landscape shifting into sepias, you could almost hear the wailing nooooo! coming from deep inside me.
So you’d think when I woke up to snow this morning it would be the last devastating blow to my clinging to summer. Not so. I was really excited, thought everything was fluffy and beautiful. Even in the throws of a headcold I got out my snowboots and toque and headed out for an adventure down along the escarpment – including using my squishy corduroy backside to slow my sliding down the ravine I had to descend to retrieve the sunglasses I’d dropped (same philosophy as snow tires: something softer, wider surface area, better traction than just my boots).
The light filtering through the trees, thin and horizontal even in the mid afternoon, had up ’til today seemed like a disappointment, a failure to be summery and warming and strong. Through the leafless trees, glinting off the snow, it finally seemed somehow right. That slow decline I’d been railing against all Fall wasn’t the end of Summer, it was the start of winter.
And I realized as I walked back to my car, that’s running a parallel with my life. An inability to let go and accept a dormancy, a period of darkness. I’ve been clinging to a summer that’s long past, a period of bright activity and lush growth that has already moved into something else, whether I thought it should or not.
It’s not been a peaceful Autumn in my soul. But waking up to winter, metaphorically as well as meteorologically, is gonna help.
I broke my brain a few weeks ago, a remarkably frightening experience. Now, I’ve had cognitive burnout before, it’s pulled me out of school on many occasions: an inability to study or take the ideas in my head and find words for them. This was nothing like that. My brain suddenly seemed incapable of any kind of complex processing Continue reading
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