so alot has been going on and i guess i should write more.. but i don't like writing about what happens.

so i'll just say that i feel life pulling apart from something that was before. certain people have been becoming so comforting, reassuring. it's a relief to be around them. because certain others it seems are uncomfortable and it is making me uncomfortable. it doesn't make sense to me and probably never will, and i am coming to terms with that. i can't change it. i can't make them comfortable.

so as the year comes to a close, i look forward to the new year. it is exciting and terrifying and if nothing else, i feel very alive. i will take on some new challenges and i'm grateful for the opportunity. before i could even know what was happening, i asked for something and got it long before i expected. i'm pretty sure i still don't understand fully, but i'm glad it's that way.

i'm listening to music that is new to me but reminds me of a spring gone by nonetheless.. it's her voice i guess. i'll have to patch together what i can. it's a process i love. it involves the antique sideboard and the lake and thoughts that get to be spoken quietly over a sunset. it also involves a newly renovated building full of business and problems and solutions and resposibilities. i will drive back and forth between the lake and the responsibilities.

it's amazing what a photograph can bring back. the shifting back and forth of the train. the exact warmth and weight of a mans hand in your own. the way his top lip would push slightly upward as he exhaled, and the relief that was being conveyed when that would happen. the feeling of getting out. the feeling of knowing we had something that was the same.

his hand, his hand.. the trains movement, how free we were. how the others saw it. how hard i cried in the toronto station. how the guy who took my ticket looked at me like, "oh!..." and lit my cigarette, back when i still smoked cigarettes. the coffee, the kitchen, the late train and long delay that i loved for the time we had with the train to ourselves as it slept in the station.. the old man named coleman. the time we saw him on the bench and he knew..

everytime i'm in toronto, i make an effort to touch the walls of that station.

i am behind on keeping the pen in motion, i really must become more diligent. it is good to keep a record. especially when the moments are so amazing. how many have i forgotten? today i walked by a woman with her child in time to hear her repeat what he had just said, "you're beautiful?" she echoed it back to him in question form (though i'm sure she agreed) followed by "okay" and i was ecstatic to have witnessed it.

i am on the horizon of something new. i keep feeling it coming through. unmistakeable. anticipation..

it is time for a change. i am already in it. the change is already in motion, it is just time for me to follow suit. it is time to not sit still and when i do sit still, to actually be still.

it is important every now and again to take inventory. what do you have. what have you lost. what do you hope to gain. who is present with you.

the last question is a tough one at these days. and i guess a refreshing one if i look at it in the right light at the right moment. it is a hard one because i am alone. and it is a refreshing one because i don't like stale air.

and yet i have been allowing stale air all around me. i have allowed my house to not be a home. i have allowed friends to speak ill of me or me ill of them. i have allowed my body to be at rest too much. i have allowed my life to be easy.

i have also allowed myself some successes. i have given my mother a smile i can't ever forget and have made my father proud. i have surpassed my own expectations in my career. i have decided to consider a challenge i recently did not believe i was capable of. i have cleaned out the kitchen cupboards.

i have also found myself recently having a change of heart. i'm not sure if i normally have this change of heart. maybe it's about the leaves and the prettiness of the trees. maybe it is the cottage and the woodstove. maybe it is the trails in the forest. but it feels like something different this time. of course, it is absolutely all of those things. but i think every season may bring those things this year. soon it will be the pretty white sign that spells noel in cursive with stars that hang from it sitting on the sideboard with tealights lit all around. it will be the way the sky gets purple on a mild evening and the way the moon is low in the sky just when you had forgotten to look for it. it will be the way the heat smells the first time you turn it on. it will be walking in snow shoes on the lake and the relief when the cottage finally gets warm. my heart would break. and then it will be the river breaking and the wind getting soft. it will be the first day the sun actually warms your back and you smile automatically. it would be bittersweet. and then of course, it would be the windows open, the water, the midnight summer storm through the windows of the cottage.. it would bring a deep longing..

i no longer want to be alone. i have wanted to be alone for so long. even when i didn't want to be alone, i wanted to be alone. and i wonder whether to trust the feeling, as i always seem to return to solitude. but it is just where i am most comfortable. it is where nobody grasps at me. it is where i am not saddened by how little i am understood and how little my partner actually feels like a partner. i have only truly experienced the difference once. and perhaps that is why i stand here, wanting sincerely someone near. not for a moment or a day. but for every day, in silence and in conversation and in happiness and sadness. i am perhaps finally getting over him. i am perhaps finally ready for what he taught me can exist.

i never used to have a pretty white sign that spelled noel in cursive letters with stars hanging from it. i was in the little store near the cottage yesterday and i saw it and just picked it up and bought it. and then i realized that i was nesting. i was creating a warm home for a man. i have this yearning to clear a space at the foot of my bed for his boots. to cook for him a warm meal.. i want to live in a way that would make him proud. it's been awhile since i've wanted to do that.

and so i have been making room. it's work but if ever i have the chance again to love the way i loved and to feel love the way i felt love, i want to be fertile ground for it.

oh, and i think i may travel. if my career takes a turn that it has possibility of taking, i would like to first travel. for at least a month. europe maybe. central america possibly. i think it's europe. it is no longer australia. for the first time in a few years now, it is not australia.

i'm spending my days remembering. sometimes the light and heat are just right in the house and i walk through and the music floats out the windows into air that's neither heavy nor light. the floors feel solid, the dogs lye stretched out, satisfied from the day.

i'm satisfied as well. i've come across these things of late: some antique furniture, home-made raspberry jam, a new spice, pickling cucumbers, some photographs.

things changed and then i smelled the dill in the garden and everything went back to how it always was.

these pages echoe like a vacant room, but i like the sound, so i write..

tonight i painted over the walls in my bedroom. it was surprisingly cathartic to see the old walls disappear. i cleared a space. i ended a fight. i smiled where i may have cried. i can almost feel the old things end and some new things begin. life is this way when we allow it. it may be years since some of those tears but it still feels a relief to see those walls dissapear..

i am overwhelmed sometimes with all i have been given. and now a new room where there is room again..

it is hard to describe where the sadness comes from, but it comes. and it's a peaceful moment. it comes when you realize you are on your own, even amidst those who love you. and that seperation reminds you that you are fine. being fine alone is what is sad. and that sadness is peaceful because that peace is what makes you fine.

sadness is appropriate. it is not depressed or flattened. it is full of texture. it is like a beautiful fabric that only you can touch. it remains a photograph to appreciate to anyone else.

it's just hard because we're so used to satiating ourselves and sadness leaves us with our hands tied. it comes when we have a moment to feel it. when everything else stops. when we have no choice but to sit it out.

there's more, but that's all for now.

i got home and my house smelled the way our old house smelled when we'd been away at the cabin. outside it smells sweet and warm and colleen said it would storm. there was just a bit of thunder and i turned on a lamp.

i've been forgetting again and while forgetting is hard and painful, remembering is as sweet as the air outside at midnite before a storm. the weight of it all lifts off and i try to remind myself to remember. are we meant to forget just so that the remembering is sweeter?

life gets complicated and sometimes the reminders are of the hard things. of the times that still to this day you can't attach beauty to because you both forgot too much and you forgot to keep remembering. and just when you can't stomach to go through it again, a kinder word is spoken. and then friends gather between storms to watch a movie on a projector and the large screen is filled with love and it's more real than you would expect off a screen and everyone remembers their own things..

life is full of people as strange and wonderful as ourselves and there are no expectations when we have no expectations. there is only love amidst all the other stuff.

the weekend as i had looked ahead appeared to be ordinary and then i remembered to find a dinner shared with friends and a projection screen and suddenly the air outside and in were unordinary again.

if spring won't come to us...

then we'll go to the trailer park boys

colleen and i went on a mission today. a mission that was nonsense really, driving around downtown winnipeg with a coffee looking for the trailer park boys because that's funny. we went to 92 citi fm and the A channel and the fairmont and the inn at the forks. we looked in the concourse. while walking through the concourse we saw our old boss and while the moment passed too quickly, we would have loved for him to stop and ask what we were doing down there. because the answer would be so exactly what he would expect from us. and we would have all laughed and he would have shaken his head and hopefully remembered that we used to all make some pretty good jokes at one time. . but the funniest thing would have been that we were really looking for them. they were going to a book signing at chapters in the afternoon, but that's too easy.

so we searched and found nothing but a stunning carefree day. we took a break so i could get some work done and met back up for the book signing. i won't bother with details other than to say that we ended up conquering our mission with a last minute dash to the airport where we said, sorry for showing up here, but.... and so ricky, bubbles, julian, colleen and i met at last. and i'd like to think we all enjoyed.



a good day in the world colleen and i sometimes live in. and the seasons only just beginning....

it's time...

for a new look. it's spring and the old blog is full of winter and while there are lovely things back there, the change of season is upon us and it feels just like a new page. green like all things young and new. undoubtably the trees will sprout young leaves and the river will break up. in the north the whole town will talk about it.

i feel on my own so much these days. in a way that i find appealing and appropriate. and while i'd love to have someone to watch the river break with me, it feels right to watch it alone for now. i think when i'm not on my own, i miss some of the qualities of each process. alone my days fill up with beauty and i somehow feel less alone.

today it was chivonne. bonnie can attest to this. chivonne is a young black girl of 4 or 5 years old. she radiated warmth and happy energy. she approached all of the children around her with her warm smile and touched both of her hands to their face with such love. she was more gracious than most adults i've met, and had a deeper spirit than most as well. she had a little jump in her step and to me, she glowed..

and so the days go. some people glow and some don't. sometime we ourselves glow or don't.

monday the weather will be warm and i will find a photo for this post.

the new things

i guess i never really formally introduced charlie murphy. he's the newest creature roaming around our home and he's lovely. named after himself and eddie murphy's brother, he lives up to his reputation as a funny black guy.

the other new thing maybe i'll premiere in a couple of weeks.

i guess i have more to say than i have time for right now, but i'm really excited about life. i keep doing wrong things, but i see that. and i think it will only get easier to do right things. the wrong things keep giving me the right messages and i'm learning how pointless certain negative processes are. i keep trying to eliminate negativity from my life and while it comes and goes, it gets harder and harder to accept it and as time goes on the belief that it is wrong gets deeper. moreso, the belief that positive thought, action, etc., bring about positive results becomes stronger. negativity is starting to feel like a splinter each time. the body knows there's something in there that doesn't belong and pushes it out. even where people around me say it's justified, even when i think it's justified, i know deep down that even if justified, it's destructive and unneccesary. and i know that it's a choice, regardless of how much it often does not feel like one.

i've seen how much a healthy mindset without boundaries has helped me in certain area's of my life and i would like to now extend that into other area's. certain negative thought patterns i have held onto for a long time because i think i felt i needed them for some reason. seems sad and unfitting to say that but it's true. i wasn't choosing enough of the right things so i had to keep some negativity around to make myself feel better. there is also the need to speak when i know something to be wrong around me, but i am seeing that speaking of it is essentially making me part of something wrong. complaint is a very tough one to get rid of but i know that will get easier and easier as it gets harder and harder to accept from myself. i am truly coming to believe that it is wrong. not intellectually, but further than that. it is like quitting smoking. i knew it was not what i wanted for years and tried over and over to quit and it wasn't until i believed myself stronger than it that i was able to give it up and then suddenly i put out a cigarette and said it was my last and it was a simple as that. our negative patterns feel like our friends in some ways and therefore we think we need them. i believe i am strong enough to give up complaint.

well...

i guess i'll start slow. it's my birthday. a year went by.

colleen still came over to my parents for dinner. she was charming and funny. we relished in our own jokes just like last year.

last year my parents bought me all those beautiful plants. colleen put together a photo album of the two of us. after i drove her home i went home and felt calm and nervous all at once. and then i went to the airport and picked him up.

and i still can't write it all, but a year went by.

and i'm still happy.