sister reunion | Victoria, BC

Sister Reunion in Victoria, BC (August 2013)
 
Good to see you, fart-bomb.  Hey...mind if I pocket this free hotel lotion? 

Silly sister antics aside, it was a pleasure as always.  While the big sis was working her big sis job, I got to roam a city that vaguely reminds me of charming downtown Ottawa, only uprooted and transplanted beside oceanfront.  I bought the coffee beans I like from Fernwood Coffee Roasting Co.  At 5pm, we met on the town, walked the cobblestone, sat on patios, chitchattered about life, family and boys.  She stayed up despite it feeling 3 hours later.  The next morning, we grabbed a quick coffee together.  I did my usual leave your bag with the entirety of your valuables hanging on a chair for grabs at the coffee shop.  Nice man called me back to claim it.   She smuggled me a scone and a sandwich and we parted ways.  Before I hopped back on the ferry at Swartz Bay, I managed to collect some blackberries in their juicy ripe glory.  I found a windy spot in the sun on the deck and  re-read the birthday card (read: book) she helped to make with Lilou and Davie (I knew because the N in M-E-G-A-N stood for "Nude, if you're lucky").   Sigh.  There's nowhere I'd rather sit at Peloso dinners than between Amy-loonie-tunes and hAmberger.  How else will I know when to roll my eyes, "Inappropriate!" or wind up with mashed potatoes in my ear?  Sister time reminds me that I'm not the only nutcase, and I love it.  See you in November and then....!

The fancy Fairmont Empress

A good little bluffs picnic spot on the bay

Dragonboat festival, and a group of kayakers

High tea treats!

Lanterns of light, wishes to loved ones passed

Work day over! Cocktails in the market

Lovely sight(s)! What a goof.  love ya toots.

Crazy carpets, British Empire is still alive

Swans Pub and Brewery

all that giggles

David (4) and Lilou (6) at Jericho Beach, last hour of sun

“Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists. It is by love only that one keeps hold upon reality, that one recovers one’s proper self, that one becomes again will, force, and individuality." - Henri-Frédéric Amiel


I honestly steal most of these snippets of brilliance from brainpickings.org because whoever picks them is my heart whisperer.  Anyway... This struck a chord for me today because I have had a delightful time visiting with my nieces and nephew, sister and brother-in-law, who are in Vancouver for a few weeks.  Through spending time with them, sharing in kids' fascination with everything and anything and catching up with my big sis, I have immediately felt a weight lifted and a support granted that only family can lend unknowingly, without even being asked.  I have, truly, felt more like myself, or more accurately the person I hope to be.  And you've got to celebrate the kind of unanticipated moment when you realize your wealth.  

So thank you for these children who hold my hand and offer me without slightest hesitation their magnificent views of the world and awaken me to its vastness again.  Children notice things; notice you. And they want to share what they notice with you. If you accept, that sharing brings you out into the world and out from yourself.  If you let it, and you let go, it feels cleansing and fresh.  

 

pause

for the sixth magical night in a row, the stars shone clearly overhead

i stretched my eyes upward and simply said

to the cosmos there

this has been really nice, Thanks

 

i wasn't just thinking about the gift of spring

but all that came in the parcel of that week

  

changing tides of the heart

wind currents lifting, loosening

 

airing the tension out

gently clearing cobwebs

replacing with fiery focus 

 

sensing tickles of energy on my neck

or just generally that anything can occur

 

http://lanaibeach.blogspot.ca/2010/12/magic-of-night.html

not just the weather

a palpable shift in fate  

On writing and balancing (battling?) intuition-rationality

"You begin to string words together like beads to tell a story. You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.” - Anne Lamott

It isn't easy.  And the wanting doesn't make it flow, only creates more urgency, desperate sporadic work.  A desire to share what I've learned to the best of my ability, so that my audience, however small, can appreciate without strain or pain a place and a circumstance that may not be accessible otherwise.  On the other hand, a yearning to let it out and let it go and get on with precious life in the freshness of the March breeze that I can nearly feel but merely sense sitting in front of this machine.  A balance between intuition and rationality.  A decluttering of inspirations, flirting with incantations and unsettling trepidations.  Swimming in thoughts that take me back to humid airs and a sheer curiosity, finding myself here, in my comforts, sorting them as though they are enumerable, amenable to a hesitant imposition of civil calculations, of new and old intellect.  What do I bring; what is worthy of counting; how do I prove it to you, to the others?  How do I make something matter for the beyonders.

| skis and skies | on grouse

(PS. and Mount Baker!)

Vitals signs and verses

A quotation that stuck.
And some thoughts I had.

"And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people.  Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared." (from On Beauty by Zadie Smith) 

Gender pains
The legacy of the world
Is disciplining girls
Enslaved if they behave
Reprimanded if they stand

We are all
Addicts of validation
Incorporation
What's the motivation

All out of wack
How do we get back
To the real and the raw
And give currency to sincerity


Lessons from running


The farther I look 
lifting my chin
Focusing forwards my gaze
I see my step complies
Follows my eyes
and takes me there...

As I strove to trust my feet to anticipate the grooves of the ground and look ahead, I began to wonder about looking down.  When we avoid the eyes of our peers, keep ourselves inwards,  inside our heads.  Is it a way of protecting ourselves from the risks of being in the world?  Is it also a way that we unknowingly surrender to our fears, allowing self-doubt to limit our own growth?  And then I consider, as I begin to feel a new energy coursing through my legs, what if by setting our sights farther than our reach, we surprise ourselves?  What if imagining the impossible makes it possible?
 

Jen the Cat

http://instagram.com/p/RWcEWjH4vo/