Canopy of Change

Sometimes I forget how easily the sight of a bird in flight, in flit, in air fills me with contentment. 

In the same way that soaring along a ravine path under the canopy of the newly-adorned trees fills me with a certain type of ecstasy: wind rushing through my hair, against my ears, into my face, with the sweet soundtrack of serendipity that is nature.

Or the whimsical pleasure of having random grandmothers - throughout the day, and quite independent of one another - strike up conversations:

"We ought to get a discount for this, don't you think?" says the white-haired little woman, as we disembarked off a bus that stopped 15 feet from the actual stop, making us walk further to the intersection.

"What soup is that?" enquired a smiley lola, "... oh, I've never had lentil and kale soup in my life!" 

"yes darlin', is the weather of romance I tell ya," winked a Jamaican momma, upon catching me smiling as I walked home, swinging my bag.

Maybe it's the season: Spring has always filled me with a burgeoning sense of joy. The beckoning of warmth, the tendrils of hope, the aroma of a beautiful tomorrow tantalizing our senses from around the corner. 

Maybe it's more. I've always pondered about my relationship with change. I've written about it often enough...and sometimes I wonder whether it's a love-hate relationship. The idea of new things, new ideas, new possibilities, new opportunities fills me with a sense of being. It's hard to describe. Sometimes I just put it down to my innate sense of curiosity and irreverent urge of pushing boundaries.

Maybe its - well, that's for another post. Before the next thunderstorm drops, I've to don my running shoes and hit the ground running for another dose of ecstasy.

The Chaos of Reckless Loneliness

Lately, she's stopped being alone. And yet, she finds herself lost in a starker, darker, loneliness than she's experienced in a long while.

How did she allow this door to open again? She's kept it shut, locked tight, waterproof—almost—for a very long time.. and somehow, without realizing, the door's eased its way open again.

She's put up too many guards over the years — successfully building out an empire of aloofness and detachment that's only served exceedingly well. And in the blink of an eye, somehow she's allowed it all to vanish, evaporate, in the blink of an eye.

And yet this loneliness seems the worst sort. It's addicting, calls her name in the middle of uneasy dreams, whispering into her ear whilst she's otherwise occupied. She's constantly seeking it out. It's a strange ache: she's catapulted head over heels into a black hole of chaos. She's not sure if its killing her or she's only revived.

And yet, despite it all, she's always been one to jump into the deep end, launch herself into the air without a parachute ... so maybe this time, despite the agony, despite the reckless hope — perhaps, she'll finally fly.

Crossroads

I woke up today with a dull, but intimately familiar, sense of melancholy. I am feeling the twinge, that effervescent strumming of heartstrings that resound in a song of hope yet with an underlying whisper of torment.

I find myself once again at a crossroads, or rather, in one of my favourite spaces: a state of liminality. I've broken free of the cage that has held me from fully stretching my wings to its utmost to truly soar. And still there is something that makes me hesitate; for I have flown beyond expectations and broken ceilings...nevertheless, I still find myself as guarded as ever with this strange feeling that's so familiar and yet so different in the best of ways.

I've wished that I had been able to return here - my comfort zone where I can pen my feelings and thoughts in the comfort of my words. But in the last several years, this too has been tainted with that disconcerting sense of peering eyes; watching and prying. It's a feeling that has prevented me from truly returning to writing the way I have before.

I wish, as always, that I had been able to record those moments that were less melancholic. I've put myself more into living in the moment - and in doing so, I've detached myself from dwelling. Dwelling in the form of sitting here and writing, dwelling in nostalgia, or perhaps running away from the possibility of hope. Perhaps I've been running from myself even whilst saying that I've focused on the now, at the cost of sacrificing the one vehicle that has always been my sanctuary. It's now the stirring in the air, coupled with this strange stirring that I find within that's yet again spurring me to write.

I recognize that I am now on a threshold. I'm trying to pace myself in enjoying things at a slower pace even while experience a crazy rush of strange emotions coming at me all at once. It's driving me crazy but I think it's safe to say that underneath it all I am enjoying every moment of it.

Slowing it down

Just because you have one plate doesn't mean you have to fill it up with just one dish at a time. It's okay to take just some at a time, putting a little of this and that, or a little of everything—allowing you to savour your favourite bit that much more.

What is This Season

Sometimes, on days like this, when the coolness holds hands with warmth, all I want to do is lay back on the earth, and smile at the sky. 

Sometimes, I can almost pretend that every cloud out there holds the answers, holds the secrets to unleashing my dreams.

Sometimes, as I loll in the grass, with the smell of the undomesticated ground surrounding me like a new perfume, I feel as if I could almost become one with the raw warm fertile soil.

Sometimes, I stretch my hand up to the sky, and it almost seems as if I can catch hold of the great blue above me.

Sometimes, I wonder how much of this Mother Earth is made of the dust of all her children, and how it might be to be that way too, fragmented ash flying around the world free.

Sometimes, I feel as if I could take these unfulfilled parts of me, my dreams and desires, and throw them back up at the sky to rejoin that great emptiness, like caged white doves set free.

Sometimes, on days like this, the earth warm on my back, the sun warm on my face, I smile and feel maybe yes, it is fine to be alone; yet the wind smoothly blows over my cheek like a warm, sweet-smelling caress.

artwork: pascal campion

Resilience

Perhaps it's okay to break, afterall. Maybe that is actually the true purpose of life, if ever there was one: that living isn't about finding a form or function that is impermeable, infallible, indestructible. Living is in breaking, in drowning, in falling—living is even in hurting.

Long time ago, when I was stuck deep in my med-sci studies, one of my university professors said something which, obviously after all these years, stuck to me. He said, "The Earth will become a huge snowball, we will all die. Sure. But who are we kidding? The Earth is more resilient than we give it credit for. It's going to perish, sure, but it will still be there, and it will thrive again, light years after we have wiped ourselves off the face of it."

Maybe it is OK, therefore, to let yourself trust and be broken. It is OK, to feel the fifty million thousand frequencies of loss and despair. It is OK to paint your world with shades of anger, sorrow, melancholy, and grief. It would almost be wrong not to. Like being able to paint as many colours onto a canvas and never touching all the colours of possibility.

In breaking then, despite the many ways that the cracks seem irreparable, the way they creak and hurt again and again, like a misaligned patella that you fell on when ice-skating that many years ago and whenever you stand up or try running down stairs the pain comes shooting up your leg in remembrance, all it takes is not avoiding the pain but embracing it, exercising it.

Even when you feel that you have lost out, when your trust has been brutalized again and again, maybe sometimes the pain is the best opportunity for you to look it over and realize that those moments had more worth than you ever even knew, even (especially) when you were actually living it. There are moments that make you remember exactly why that trust was so deeply ingrained in you, why that Jenga piece was so vital to your sense of self. Perhaps that person gave you a mirror to look at yourself in ways you never were able to before. Maybe they gave you a blanket, just for a while, sometimes, if you were a bit cold. Maybe they lent you an umbrella, not expecting that the relationship would develop further than that casual transaction. Maybe you spent hours and hours, learning to be yourself for once in your life, because this person gave you the space to be that, with them.

These were beautiful moments, and yet moments always have an inexorable place in the past. There are echoes of that laughter which permeate even into the very present now, telling you, reminding you, that you have never laughed as much in your life or smiled as much as you did then—and even if it is gone, it had at least existed.

Perspective is such a compelling narrative.  Even that moment you fell, where you hurt so much and thought that was it: that was the end, that was life, goodbye, time and perspective allows you to see that 5 year old little child that you were, falling on the playground and skimming your hands with gravel embedded under the skin. Adulthood is no different from that child, because we are always lost children seeking something more: a best friend, or companionship, a better snack, or a great exhilarating experience on the slide; and we are always growing in ways even we do not know—until we break.

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. — Corrie ten Boom (quote that popped up in my inbox after I finished writing this post)

 There is a reason we can forgive, and maybe even as we cannot forget because we are still scared—maybe now more than ever—to trust again, we learn to forgive ourselves. We are all broken children, but in breaking, and breaking again and again, we have learnt to become a little more accountable to and for ourselves.

Sometimes you realize that the trust you thought was shattered is actually only a small dwarf planet compared to the huge expanse of a neverending universe of that patient, deep-abiding, resilient love within which it revolves.

Enduring

"Now, just turn your head a little to the left...Yes! Gorgeous!"

The photographer beamed at me from behind his camera, while I wondered if I was allowed to scratch my nose. He was quite particular about his subjects.

***

After having met him and having a little chat while we settled on my outfit, he had positioned me in my chair and fidgeted around me while I told him to make sure my hair looked good—because I knew my face was quite excellent already, just, my hair needed a little loving care because of medical conditions—but he instead started paying more attention, strangely enough, to my necklace.

"Just need to make sure it's captured perfectly in the picture," He mumbled as he adjusted it, then stepped back, examining it from different angles.

Umm. What about my hair? I thought. What about, you know, me? I need to be captured perfectly too!

"Just got to get it right," He said, stepping behind the camera to see how it looked behind the lens, then again stepping quickly to the window to check how it looked in the light.

"Hmm, just a...yes, that might be it," He said, again, brushing my hair behind my shoulders so that the precious necklace got to be center of attention.

"Um, it's okay," I said. "It's just a necklace..."

"Just a little bit more this way..." He was totally focused on the silver necklace with two hearts intertwined (ostensibly forever) together.

"No really," I said a little more forcefully. "Just take the damn picture, leave the necklace. The...the man who gave it to me dumped me," I said as bluntly as I could, verbalizing in the very words I could never bring myself to say until then that most private of information now being proffered to this stranger, hoping the the shock value would stun him into retreating behind the camera and taking the goddamn pictures.

"Oh," He looked up, yes, stunned. He looked balefully at the offending piece of jewelry, now, as if it had broken his heart.

"Yeah, so it's okay," I nodded at him.

"But you still love him," He said, looking at it sitting in that hollow above my heart. It wasn't a question.

"Of course I do." Definitely not up for debate.

He nodded, briskly, somberly, understandingly. There really was no need for anything else to be said.

"So! Then, will you be taking your photos with smile, or no smile?"

"What are you, crazy? Of course a smile!" I beamed a 100-watt at him.

"That's a girl," He said, somewhat admiringly. "You keep that attitude!"


Honestly, though? I was secretly glad, deep down inside, that it got that much attention; it felt sort of right: that in trying to capture whoever I was, that one thing, this emblem, was made to shine brightly.


So, of course I smiled.



~in memoriam of a breaking heart, 6 months to the day.~

Thought of the Day

Little things can become the biggest things—can become your whole world—when you have almost nothing.

Synchronicity

"Geez, Madeline," I said to my colleague, giving her the side-eye while we stood from our seats as the meeting broke up, "Are you trying to conjure up snow again?" I pointed to her incongruous "Ugly Christmas Sweater" embroidered all over with yarny snowflakes.

"What? Oh," she said, looking down at herself, "Ha, yeah maybe, why not?"

Why not indeed, despite the fact that it was supposed to be officially Spring, and finally the weather had kind of accepted this state of things and let the sun come out, the winds ameliorated and the grass, yellow and pale and almost dead, finally showing.

"Well, when it snows," I said cryptically, "It's going to be your fault."

"You mean if it snows," She laughed. Because the forecasts all said rain. Of course. BECAUSE WE TRUST THE FORECAST.

And with that, we went our ways.


The next morning I open my front door, only to be met with a winter wonderland vista spread out before me, almost as if I were in a magical realism story opening a magical portal to a magical world that was totally...well, magical.

Because, it definitely was. Quiet. White. Soft. Even somehow, warm. Thick piles of flurries coming down as if it were a million buckets of feathers. Muting all sound, even your own footsteps were faint echoes (and I was wearing heels so that's saying something). I walked through that magical world in almost slow-motion, and it was almost as if I really was alone in that world (until I reached the main intersection that is).

It matched the huge snowballing feeling that was accumulating within me. A feeling I still am not able to articulate, the way it is perhaps with most loss.

The strangest thing is, that heavy wondrous storm lasted almost as long as my own walk. I fell asleep on the commute as I always do, and when I woke, everything was melting again. I almost wish that my own sense of loss could easily melt away, but things are not ever that easy, and I suspect that it is the one thing I will never actually lose. But even as the snow that had accumulated thickly as blankets melted, it went away revealing the most magnificent transformations: thick, lush, vibrant verdant green grass. Maybe in the same way that loss can only flourish with the agony of hope.

Please Play Again

Finding that tiny scrap of paper changed everything. Or at least**


"Why does Tim Horton's hate me? WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU, TIM?" I lamented, clutching my ripped up coffee cup. I had rolled up the rim and discovered that I was a winner of un beigne.

"A donut! What the hell is wrong with this world," I shook my head. Donuts are a secret walk of shame, it is the outcry and signpost of those who try to pretend they are really quite cool but do not realize they are buying into a corporate confederacy that everyone who is truly cool actually shuns.

Or anyways there is that recent scientific evidence showing the direct detrimental effect it has on intelligence, sexual performance and attractiveness. Ugh.

But I don't eat sugar. I do occasionally, but it is a crime, among other things. So I went up to the Timmies boy in his little beige uniform, and told him that I had won a donut. I held the offending scrap of coffee cup aloft like it was tainted with a highly infected disease.

He beamed at me, "Wow! Great, which one would you like?"

I gave him a gimlet stare of death and told him, "None."

His smile faltered and then extinguished. "No?" he asked, uncertain now.

"No. I don't eat donuts. It's a health thing. They have sugar which causes lots of pain to my insides and sometimes this pain comes outside and it makes other people feel pain as well."

He looked somewhat bewildered, but then, casting around for a solution, he straightened his shoulders and said, now much more confident: "I will ask my manager!"

And he disappeared into the back.

I looked behind me at the very long line waiting to get their coffee. I sighed. This was just supposed to be a simple thing. I just want a coffee instead of a donut. What is so hard about this.

The boy re-emerged, now accompanied by his manager.

"Hello maam," the manager said, "Do you have a receipt for the coffee you bought?"

"What, why do I need a receipt? I have the winning thingy from the coffee cup itself right here, and I just want a coffee instead of getting a free donut, even a small coffee is fine, this isn't supposed to be a big deal"

"But you know, we have to make sure that we are not committing a fraud. This is why, you should go back to that Tim Horton's coffee shop that you got your coffee from and tell them to give you a receipt and when they do that then you can come here and get your free coffee."

Was...was he really serious? No really. All I wanted was a coffee. And because I am secretly a sexy hothouse plant when indoors, exasperated, I again turned to face the glass front doors so that I could look out at the sunlight struggling to meet me. I turned back and he seemed to brace himself.

Instead of telling him I bought my coffee at this same exact location, I shrugged.

"Give me a donut," I said.

I emerged 20 seconds later out into the bright, cold, downtown of Toronto, and handing my newly packaged sugary parcel to the homeless man sitting outside the Tim Horton's front doors, I went along my day catching the rays as long as they were out struggling.


**But now, days later,  I was just about to board the approaching bus, and stepping up to the curb, something caught my eye. I looked down, even as the bus came closer, and then I bent down and picked it up.

It was a tiny scrap of paper with a message that told me that sometimes things can make sense in the weirdest randomest ways, and sometimes yes, maybe karma is real:

"Win/Gagnez: Un Cafe/Coffee"

You Will Be Well

I actually spend some time each day going back, retracing steps, remembering old times, rereading old words. There is an empty place where that time was given to other things: to other people/someone else. It feels wrong to fill it in with anything else, but even if it were possible, trying to cram anything else in doesn't work. That hole just keeps spitting everything else out like an inverted blackhole.

Today, I went back to my old - much older - blog posts. As I've mentioned here a few times, these are hidden in my lucid iridescence blogs and some older tidbits where I used to post 'thoughts of the day' are hidden in my golden memories blogs. Each time I revisit, reread, I am so mesmerized by that person who is speaking - even though it was me.

I actually have a bad habit of never editing any of my blogs. I write whatever that comes to mind and other than the perfunctory skimming for spelling mistakes, if any, I just usually submit without further revisions.

Sometimes I feel like I would love to have an interview with myself. The younger me with this older, somewhat more cynical (though I averred I was the most cynical when younger) me. I have a lot of posts that are dedicated to love and I used to write a lot about this enigmatic prince charming/soulmate who I knew would be mine...one day. If I one day forgot this fact then maybe I would in future wonder who I was writing to, where did that person go. And the stranger thing now is that even with a flesh-and-blood model, the substantiated version of those dreams, I could almost ask the same thing. In fact, one of the problems I have with life is that I could pretty much ask this of everyone I've gotten close to. "Where did that person go?"

Maybe, just maybe, I could ask the question of that young and dreamy-eyed writer of posts. Maybe that is what I am doing when I go back and hover my cursor over the words she once wrote - sometimes with big grin, sometimes with a quiet smile, sometimes and too often, with a lot of tears. Maybe this version of me going over those words somehow, over a time-space continuum, actually makes contact with that younger girl who scribbled down words while tears coursed down her face; maybe while she was writing, she was able to compose herself and find a way to straighten her shoulders and face the world again because, if no one else did, this older me was able to peer over her shoulder, to caress her head, to tuck away a strand of hair tenderly, to kiss her tear-stained cheek and tell her, telepathically, that you will survive because you are my reason and remembrance for continuing ever more.

Missed Beats

I have, in the last several months, questioned almost everything: life, my own identity, my purpose, my worth, everyone else, love, trust...and God. Somewhere along the path of broken, sharp shattered glass on which I've had to trod on barefooted, I came to a really weird realization that maybe somewhere I lost a belief in this big G entity. I still have strong feelings about the physics of the cosmos though, as in a greater force, maybe big F.  This F is found in smaller, (arguably) less overpowering things, like music. Like, laughter. Or even tears. In that really really really great feeling that comes out of really really really great and insane friendships. And even those really really really horrible feelings that come out of them, when things are out of sync, and even in love. Like music, sometimes we just have to wait and find the rhythm again.

323

And again, it's a beautiful day. I just want to say that I have been opening each and every day (still) by observing that it's a beautiful day.  Despite the general existential sense of disintegration and epistemological dissonance, externally and quite personally, somehow through it all I can still come out and tell myself it's a beautiful day. Even in heartbreak, calamity, destruction, bereavement, maybe this is the ruler we actually use to measure our status of survival.

Sorrows of Stagnation

I dread that sensation of waking up with that deeply rooted sense of dread. And it usually happens when the days have settled into mundane routine. When the new things have lost their shine and the permeated odour of freshness has become stale.

Things have sucked for a long time, and as you can probably tell, I refuse to let them remain so. I mean, things can suck in context, but I am determined to let my perception similarly cloud and distort. If things aren't new, maybe I just gotta infuse that newness into the day myself. Even if I have to kickbox it in.

Day 33

The snowstorm of the year (I suppose the headlines demarcating it the "worst" were written by snow-haters: another instance of perspective being arbitrary) set my day back by a four-hour commute, a day that began with a long hike through the neighbourhood's accumulated knee-high snowdrifts, missing in the process two busses (buses?!) that apparently decided to declare undying love and proceed along the route back to back enforcing a prolonged wait for the next - sigh - but the walk itself was beautiful.

The evening sky as we head home was a paintbrush of rainbow; blue, yellow, orange,pink and violet, streaking across the frozen tabloid as if denying the stark white of our earth its monochrome supremacy.

Wiarton Willie, in Groundhog day tradition, decided to contest the findings of his colleague. Jury is still out on whether Spring will arrive early.

But who needs our furry friends to tell us? Spring, I have decided is already here. Its peeking under the snow piles, and winking from behind the frostbitten pines. It is waiting for us to notice that its already hidden in the icicles hanging on the bare branches, and doing the boogie under the eaves.

It was here all along, and in fact never left. So many times I have suspiciously looked around, with that sensation of someone watching you, hearing a tee-hee in the breeze, and catching a glimpse in peripheral vision. Sometimes you could not help but notice, like the day I left the office to be stunned by daylight - daylight at 5 pm! - or when I happened to step outside and encountered Spring chilling at the dumpster in the back of the building like your typical teenager skipping class. I tell you.