Yesterday was a decidedly sedate autumn day, without any rain and still quite warm, all things considered–perfect for a visit to Granville Island (even though it isn’t really an island).  I love going, though I seldom get over there.

See Maiwa’s blog

One of my favourite stops is Maiwa, a textile and fibre arts bit of heaven. I managed to not succumb to the call of many and sundry whatsits, limiting my purchase to India Flint’s book Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles and a handful of Indian textile stamps.

I also joined the Malaspina Printmakers Society and plan to attend a workshop or two some time in the future. They have quite a variety of classes and workshops available, even on weekends–cool! I’ve always felt that printmaking was an under appreciated art form.

After enjoying a delightful lunch from Curry 2U and Rubina Kitchen at an outside table on the covered patio, I must admit that the highlight of the day was getting to feed about a half dozen starlings with my tandoori chicken scraps directly from my hand. They were tentative at first, but once the first few were satisfied with their score without coming to any harm, they unabashedly sat at arms length along the backs of chairs until the chicken scraps were depleted.

Dessert consisted of an apple struedel from another de rigueur stop, La Baguette & L’échalote Bakery, which also provided this morning’s breakfast of pain au chocolat to accompany my coffee. Besides, it’s one of the few places where I can bust out my French.

Plans for today are to head over to the market to pick up some chicken and beef for roasting, to accompany the root vegetables that I will be roasting as well. With a number of ripe bananas sitting on the counter, if I’m feeling really ambitious, perhaps a batch of espresso banana muffins from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking may be in order.

a pair of bottles, untouched.

“For curly hair” they said, sunlit and resolute.

Never one to heed a label,

I gave one a squeeze, recently,

breaking its shrine-like aura,

washing my uncurly tresses, remembering

the smell of his hair,

how it felt to run my fingers

through their length;

what it felt like from the inside out,

in awe of an emotion I thought

I’d long forgotten how to feel.

The other day,

I found a stray hair of his

resting on the shoulder of a sweater.

It had been a long winter

and I may have worn it

during our last days together,

or the hair may have fallen, unnoticed,

during one of his forays

into the depths of the closet,

migrating of its own accord,

like a lone camel scaling desert dunes.

Strange how something so innocuous

can bring back so many moments,

carefully encapsulated in memory

and not held at it’s edge

for easy access, but deep, until triggered;

then there it is-remembrance,

with all of the good and the bad of it,

its power slowly relinquishing its hold

on my heart and spirit, leaving behind

a sort of dispassionate, clinical registration,

awareness of the passage of time

and emotion, shifting like the sunlight

creeping through my window and across the walls

on this Indian summer day.

Silence broken by

the hushed hum of the fridge,

the shrill whine of a circular saw splitting wood,

the occasional sounding of a car horn.

In French it’s called klaxon

and it makes me giggle a little.

I’m tired and feel slightly off,

like barely curdled milk or overripe fruit

with the pip splitting open from the centre out.

My insides are roiling in protest at the one too many

scoops of hot salsa or the extra glass of rosé I shouldn’t have had,

or something else that I just haven’t quite figured out.

A nondescript bug.

I feel I’ve accomplished much, though, these last few weeks.

Sorting and organizing always cheers me;

it recategorizes possibilities,

resets my creativity button,

invigorates.

I’m finding I have a lot of stuff I don’t use anymore,

things I thought essential to my creative process

which now merely clutter up the pipeline.

I’m plugging away slowly at unplugging.

Seems my body is mirroring the process.

And now to rest,

as the sound of a plane engine

scrapes across the sky.

“I shut my eyes in order to see truth” ~Paul Gauguin

From early adolescence, I was on a mission of sorts. On a deep level, I felt there was more to life than what met my eyes. I read many books on various and sundry esoteric subjects and over the next several decades, while progressively becoming more myopic as the years unfolded, I turned myself inside out, discovering multiple times exactly what was meant by a dark night of the soul.

I received an email newsletter a few days ago professing the virtues of raising your vibration. The light chasers are everywhere. There is a sort of fear in them, one that denies the cycle of darkness and light… and growth.

So many are looking for an answer. A panacea. A magic pill (or in this case, maybe a crystal?). A ticket to heaven’s front row seat. THE answer. I could be flippant and say it’s 42, but… ::smile::

I remember that feeling well, because I was one of those seekers for the longest time, looking outside of myself for an answer that can only be found within. I was seeking with a sense of mounting urgency and desperation, as though I just HAD to find out the answers to the mysteries laying beneath this reality, or else.

For years I’d wished that some great guru would manifest and come and guide me toward nirvana.

For years I expected someone else to tell me what to do with this crystal or that mantra, and expected others to guide me–to show me the way to wisdom, not trusting in my own intuition to discern right action.

In the end, the journey is our own. No one else can show you which path to take because your feet are the first ones to lay foot on the journey to the center of yourself. You are unique–none will be like you after you have gone, nor has there been anyone quite like you before.

As one of the lessons that has been particularly succinct in this lifetime for me, I am learning to take personal responsibility for all aspects of my Self, from my material parts to my immaterial ones. What I do always remains my choice.

In many ways that is the most difficult thing of all, this understanding that I am embodied with all of the wisdom I will ever need to become Conscious. It is understanding that the duality that we must acknowledge in this physical manifestation is not to be rued but to be used as the source of our growth… and to embrace its potency.

And so… there is no one alive (or disembodied) who can wave away your pains with a wand, or banish your sorrows or your miseries with a spell. That task is yours, and yours alone. You are embodied with the same god stuff that flows through the highest of the high. You, at your most still centre know this to be true. You also must allow it to manifest in your life or none of the wand waving and well-intended wishing will ever bring it into being. At least not so that it sticks.

Several years ago, as my own vision became foggier due to cataracts, especially one of a very rapidly developing sort in my right eye, within three months I had gone from being merely myopic to being besieged with a soupy haze so thick that I’m sure it rivaled the worst London fog. Though my vision was, through surgery, restored, I chose to look upon this particular experience through mystical lens, noting the parallels of my vision challenges to those in myth, others whose eyesight had been lost and then restored, or simply imbued with an altogether different sort of Sight. Odin. Horus. Erebus. Tiresias. Tyche. Ploutos. Themis.

So I humbly entreaty you to learn. To read. To shake a stick and dance the watoosie. To receive good vibes and build protective egg shields… if that is what will being you closer to the centre of your Self.

And when you find it, don’t be frightened of your greatness or your callowness.

Embrace all of who You are.

Accept your humanity even as it is inexorably interwoven with your divinity.

See it in yourself.

See ALL of yourself.

See it in others.

Be patient, all around.

Be fearless in the opening of your inner eye, because it will lead you true.

It will show you things you may not want to see; drag your sorry ass through your own personal hell (multiple times, even). But in the end it will lead you to your own, personal, Jesus… your Christ Self that has always been, and will always be, within you.

Out of emptiness

When will you find your way home, beloved?
You’ve been wandering the shores of distant lands,
while I have been waiting for your return,
brimming with news of your travels
and stories of what you’ve seen,
waiting for you to tire of the journey,
aching to moor yourself in my slip.
I feel you when I dream.
Through nocturnal threads of sleep,
our hair and limbs tangle and wend
like the branches of a willow tree,
our mingled breath the whisper
of a breeze through its leaves, catching
in soft gasps of recognition,
of joy and surprise.
Of pleasure.
Out of the emptiness comes the moment of purity – śūnyatā.
The word is like a sigh, soft and patient,
ancient, like the void of which it speaks.

photo courtesy Linda Treger (c) 2011

Oh how I love the ocean. It is a place, on a sunny day, when all four elements unite, with me at its locus, a nexus of spirit holding it all inside, woven into each other and indivisible.

Many years ago, during a most challenging time –though truthfully, they all feel strung together, these times, like a very long necklace strand of beads, with only the size of the beads varying– I would escape from the office I worked at near Del Mar and head to the beach. It was only ten minutes away and I could get in a good half hour walk.

Sometimes I would start with my feet firmly planted in the sand, right on the edge of earth and sea, and with eyes closed focused on the solidity of the earth, the tendrils of the sun reaching out to touch my shoulders and upturned face, the wind stirring against my skin and the waves of the ocean rhythmically washing over my feet.

In those moments I would find a sense of peace and balance that mostly eluded me otherwise.

P.S. Lynda–I miss you, you beautiful soul…

I feel tired. Yes, I’ll take my iron.

My car wouldn’t start this morning. I think it’s my battery. I need jumper cables. Or a new car. Or an overhaul.

I received news of Jack Layton’s passing this morning. I am lighting a candle for him this evening, though it may have to be before 9; that’s almost way past my bedtime.

Fine humans come and go all the time. Our job is to remember and honour their memory, and live our own lives fully and mindfully, to be kind and generous as we are able. A smile is free.

With photos of Jon Bacon emblazoned all over the news since last week, I will light a candle for him, too. May it light his way to a better place than the one he was anchored to in this life. May his loved ones find peace and their mourning be soothed, because losing a loved one hurts no less whether the soul of the one lost is blemished or blemish free.

I’ve forgotten my cell phone on my desk at the office and feel like I’m missing an appendage.

I took transit today, and liked it.

The Mexican food place I got my taco salad at lunch today refries the black beans too. Even though I’m not a huge fan of Mexican food, I miss Baja Fresh, Chipotle, Jardine’s de San Juan Bautista and Don Jose’s, not necessarily in that order.

It’s raining again, and feels like it’s settling in (like a guest that was coming for a weekend stay but ends up hanging around, grazing his way through the contents of your pantry while you are away at work), though they promise that it will stop by tomorrow. I don’t believe them.

I live in a rainforest. It’s beautiful. It’s wet. Sometimes the two are not mutually exclusive, but mostly they are.

I have renegade ferns lining the stairs along the side of the house that lead down to my front door. I wanted to take a photo of them but my camera battery is out of juice. So depending upon whether it recharges by the time I am done composing this post, the top of the page may or may not have a pretty picture of a fern on it.

Everything is green outside, but don’t let that fool you; leaves have begun yellowing and are falling out like hanks of hair. And then I remember that summer has begun waning since June 21st, even though it feels as though it only just arrived. I miss it already.

Just now my neighbours upstairs sound like a horde of pygmies engaged in dancing a jig. It must be in thanks for the Wilton cake decorating books I unloaded on them this weekend, which I’d decided had done their job (and long ago outgrown their usefulness, seeing that Gabriel no longer wishes for cakes festooned with Godzilla upending tall buildings or cakes shaped like a Nascar with bright red icing).

Most other times what I hear is a trail of thunderous steps pound across the ceiling. I must remind myself, again, why it is that I choose to live on a bottom floor beneath people who have (clearly) previously never lived on a bottom floor.

I love fall. I love the woodsy pungent smell of wet leaves, and how they feel when, dry, they crunch underfoot. I love how the air is crisp like a freshly picked apple, and the darkness holds promises of things that can’t be reached during any other time, and the veil feels so thin that I can almost reach over and pull it aside… almost.

The scent of pumpkins and cloves and cinnamon make me happy.

I walked in through the door this evening and was greeted by the sound of lovely flute and sitar music; I’d left the music playing when I left this morning so that the peace that reigned yesterday during my very long meditation would endure. It has.

My left trap and sub-scapular muscles hurt. I have fantasies about acupuncture needles, envisioning becoming a human pincushion. This is a way to anticipate the relief from the pain that has yet to come.

I am contemplating dinner; a protein shake is about all the effort I wish to exert in the way of food preparation. Which means I must wash the blender out first. I wish I had a dishwasher; human or mechanical, any kind will do.

I am looking forward to reading some more of The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur, a book I recently picked up and have begun to read.

The scent of frankincense, myrrh, sandalwood, gopal, sage, cedar, benzoin, dragon’s blood and palo santo lingers. I wonder if anyone else has ever concocted such a satisfying and cross-cultural combination to represent the air element.

The words of Gavriel Navarro have the power to move me and I am grateful; at the end of my soul’s movement, hope stirs.

As I sit here this morning, sipping my coffee and staring down at my hot stone massage rocks, I’m thinking one of those would be most welcome. I’ve torn apart the living area and now have piles of things everywhere (though it really is much better than it was when I first started, as I’ve reshelved many books already).

This all started with my wanting to get rid of some magazines, progressed to having the shelving put up in the art closet, to of course culminate in the moving around of furniture and a massive reorganization of all of my currently visible possessions. The good news is that I now know (for the most part) which books are living in these three bookshelves.

Well… back to the coffee and the longing for a massage. As I unloaded shelves and pushed furniture around (because each time I’d try to budge it with books still in it, it would merely creak and sway-I could almost hear a “yeah right, lady”), I believe I’ve had my own little all day workout session. Moving can do that.

Well the point of all of this is not to share the physical challenges of my under muscled self, or of the supposed lack of space, but rather of the process through which order is created from chaos. It parallels the healing process, and healing is an ongoing process, is it not?

When I was younger (and sparser of possessions, no doubt) I would clear and organize my belongings regularly. Ordering them makes them useful, because without order you don’t know what tools and implements and RESOURCES you have to work with. You know… like buying the same jam each time you go to the grocery store because you like it so much but can’t remember whether you have any left only to get home to find (after digging through the cupboards) that you’d already gone through that exercise twice and now have three jars.

So I am happily going through and organizing… everything from the cupboard contents to my inner ones. I know that this doesn’t mean I won’t have to unload the bookshelves again in the future in order to move furniture around (in fact I am quite certain I will do so in the near future) but until then I know what I have to work with.

And with that I leave you with an interesting and inspiring video from Angi Sullins, who shares thoughts on the richness of the creative product that arises from ash. In the end we are our own burnt offerings, to our better and more arable future selves, and the cycle repeats itself like the balls going round and round in a perpetual motion machine.

It’s 6:20 and I’m in bed, hunkered down under my cotton throw with a belly full of protein shake. It beats the chips and banana cream pie slices I’ve been indulging in for dinner all week, and I had two other “sensible” meals today. I guess you gotta start somewhere… or maybe it’s sometime.

Steve says I’ll make an awful empty nester. Maybe so, judging by these summer training sessions. Maybe by the time it happens for real I’ll have gotten the hang of it, gotten a life pulled together that revolves around no one but myself.

But I’ve always been a communal sort. Odd, really, as this is juxtaposed right next to my natural tendency at introverted solitude, and quiet withdrawal. So much so that people mistake my quietude for snobbery and attitude. Until I smile.

Yet communal interaction doesn’t require a constant thread of communication. Sometimes more can be said by sitting silently together and sharing a meal. Giving up the mouth as the primary tool for communication to the task of biting and chewing, it is the hair and the eyes and the shoulders that speak, carrying on their secret conversations. Arm hairs bristling like morse code.

But I like quiet. I like sitting, side-by-side on a comfy couch, legs outstretched and intertwined, feet turned toward the fireplace, like sunflowers to the sun.

So as the day wanes, I’ll read a bit, until my eyelids droop as though they weigh their weight in gold and resolutely refuse to lift until the day starts anew.

I wonder why I feel so broken this time, why a relationship that lasted but a year is capable of dissolving me into the putrid mess I have become. I wonder if it was simply the tipping point, the drop that made the bucket overflow, bringing with it all of the water that I had thought to be of the under the bridge kind.

I am mourning a loss but don’t understand why this man, who didn’t care about me deeply enough to be honest with his intentions (though I don’t think he was honest with himself, either), is worthy of my sorrow.

Why is it bothering me so much this time? Because I am older, and sometimes not wiser, and certainly faded in all of my physical attributes, the ones I had relied upon growing up and prior to marrying, imagining that if I picked carefully, I would only have to do it once?

Self-worth has always been an issue, but moreso now, as I look at what it is that I can offer to the world-not much, in my estimation, but I know on a deeper level that that is wrong, that is my inner critic speaking.

Or perhaps it is my mother at her most cynical, in her moments when she would scream at me at the top of her voice, letting me know that I was a choice, that she could have had me scratched out, like the several before me, how she suffered to bring me into the world and how I was an awful, awful child, always misbehaving. Fortunately, I was oblivious of these things as a young child, this being brought to my attention only as a young adult.

And fear grips me. The fear of being obsolete and useless. The fear of not being able to better myself or my situation. The fear of not being able to figure out how to fill out an application to resume my long-abandoned education and the fear of not being able to absorb the material or even qualify for entrance.

Why an application to college fills me with dread and befuddles me to the point of paralysis is beyond me, but it does.

I wish for a hand. One to hold, that will guide me through the process, slowly and methodically, never faltering in its support or wavering in its faith. One that knows something I don’t, has done something I haven’t yet but aim to do, and has triumphed. One who knows that I will triumph too.

Mostly, I wish for kindness. Kindness and the kind of love that is deep and compassionate. One that will not threaten to scratch me out.