Yearly Archives: 2015

Turn off the light on the vacancy sign

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Drawing-Room-Empty

The hotel in my brain had been open but every room, on every floor, seemed to be empty.  I got home from another 13-hour work day yesterday, opened the laptop and stared blankly at the screen.  The lobby in my hotel was lifeless, the elevator was stuck on the ground floor and there was no movement in the confines of my cranium.  The hotel in my head, for all intents and purposes, was closed for business.  The hamster on the wheel of creativity was dead.

After a much-needed ten hours of sleep, the elevator is faintly humming once again.  The front desk staff are present and smiling and the bellman is waiting patiently to assist me with my words.  The neon vacancy sign still hums but the ideas are slowly coming to check in and the hotel is back in business.  I’m hoping after a few coffee breaks the writing staff will be comfortably ensconced in their suites, ready to work, and the writing hotel will soon be sold out.

I have enjoyed the interaction with other people over the last five days but I will eagerly anticipate the required maintenance being finished at the hotel in my brain so I can hop on the elevator when I get home and reach the penthouse of idioms upon my return.

The vacancy sign of inspiration is flickering because the ideas have begun to occupy the rooms in the recesses of my brain.  I’m hoping by tonight the prolific hotel in my mind will be sold out.

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I’ll show you a full moon!

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Yesterday was an interesting day.  The energy in my work space was charged with an unknown element and the entire day felt like I was living in an alternate universe.  People were doing inane things, the simplest conversation turned into a painful thirty minute ordeal and the tension could have been cut by nothing less than a chainsaw.  My rhetorical question was to ask, “is it a full moon?” and the response was an embellished “yes”.

Although there is no direct correlation between the phases of the moon and human behavior, the full moon gives human beings a fantastic excuse for acting like idiots.  The blame is put solely on the celestial orb, taking the onus from the one acting completely out of character but, when the sky is dark, strange behavior is accepted as exactly that with no other plausible justification.

full moon

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Many of our references to luck, or the lack thereof, are written in the stars.  We wish on a falling star.  Our horoscopes are creatively tied to constellations in the sky.  And we blame a magical orb of light for any unfavorable happenings during the phase in which it finds its truest beauty.

On those days that society deems the moon to be the cause of all of its woes,  the child who still resides in my mind hopes that the fantasy man who inhabits that enchanting sphere is truly giving us the full moon.

You only live once

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It is not often (or ever) that I have put a load of pure crap into a subject line but there is a first for everything.  Let’s dispel a myth.  The truth really is you only die once, you live every day.  And there are those, like me, who believe you live more than one lifetime.

Living is done on per diem basis and can only be defined by how much life you put into your life.   We all think that life is about spending countless  hours finding ourselves but, really, life is about creating ourselves.  Each day we wake up and we yawn.  We pull ourselves from the cocoon of covers we have created during the night and we stretch.  We take a deep breath to start a fresh day with a fresh outlook.  This is not our one shot to live.  This is our chance to wipe clean the slate of the previous day and draw a unique plan for a new day.  It is our constant do-over.   The thought of only living once is a complete fallacy.

Life is an amazing gift.  To look at it as a one shot deal is sad. We are afforded countless days to live.  We are given a blank canvas to create our own masterpiece and, as we tread through our days, we add the colors in which we find true happiness.  We paint the shapes that give us structure.  We create the lines that separate the things we wish to keep at a distance and we pencil in the shades to mask the things we wish to avoid.  We also have the ability to erase the things that we thought would fit into our portrait but those things just didn’t seem to blend into the bigger picture.

The beauty of our life’s canvas is that it can be recreated.  An intrinsic piece of art can always be remastered and designed to portray the life that we want it to convey.  The Mona Lisa, had anyone wanted her to, could have had a completely different smile.  Our opus is our own. No other person has the power to tell us that our life must follow a set trajectory.

Use the spectrum of color and live your life.  Live it every day and live it to the fullest, but live that way because you want to.  Believe that your life is your canvas and change the lines whenever you feel the need.  Erase the colors and start with a new palette and, while you are splashing those pigments to create a new spectral portrait, laugh in the face of those who think you only live once.

Drawing from the things that matter

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A couple of weeks ago, my friend Mike wrote this post about creating his family seal.  It originated from a homework assignment that was given to his son but it really sparked something in my mind.  My need to create went into overdrive and I spent many days thinking about the things that are most important to me and the things that would warrant space on my family shield.

What I thought would be a daunting task became relatively simple once I stripped away the trivial matters and whittled my thoughts down to the basics, getting in touch with the things that are at the core of my life, and coming up with this.

shield

My family and friends will always be first.  They are the anchor that hold me in my place.  They keep me honest and that truth allows me to enjoy all of the other aspects of my day-to-day living.

My home, albeit small and in need of updating, is my castle, my sanctuary.  Its walls are my defense shield and its roof, my shelter.  In this home I allow the chef hidden inside to come out and create tasty and aesthetically pleasing meals, even though most days I cook for one.

After the kitchen has been cleaned of any signs of being inhabited, I sit down for a quiet evening filled with words.  Whether I am ingesting words written by someone else or spewing forth words of my own, language envelops me and keeps me company in the waning hours of daylight.

During those evening hours I become lost in language, my puppy is ever-present.  Her eyes watch my every move and if she falls behind in her duty, the owls and butterflies that frequent my landscapes remind me that my mother and father are still making sure that their past exists in my present and my future.  And if life ever begins to get my down, I remember my dad always saying “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”.

I am thankful that I took the challenge to strip my life down to the basics, to really look inside myself and understand what are the most important things in my life.

If you were to take the same challenge, what would your family shield hold in its strong embrace?

 

 

 

I fall at your feet

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falling

I tumble weightlessly through my dreamscape,

I cry out, but no words can be heard.

My arms circle in a frantic pattern.

I fall through layers of emotion.

There seems to be no bottom to this chasm,

no earthly pillow to land upon.

I catch a glimpse of you,

standing with arms outstretched and I fall.

I float freely with no need to cry out,

knowing you will be there to catch me,

to wake me from this nightmare.

Your eyes beckon me to trust.

My body drifts through the haze.

No longer questioning, I gently fall at your feet.

~~

Image Credit: http://richardgeorgedavis.com/free-falling-dream/

A cottage in the woods

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“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

I am going to make the gross assumption that everyone has thought, at least once, about what they would do if they won a big sum of cash.  I just had a dream the other night that I was handed a cheque for $500,000.00.  When I woke up, my brain rapidly began to compile a list of my desires and the list was (not surprisingly) simple.

Haliburton

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I want this house on a big piece of land that affords me privacy, sunsets and a vast array of nature.  I want the peepers to chirp me to sleep at night and I want the caress of the morning sun to touch my cheek while I rouse.  I want to sit on that top deck and enjoy my morning coffee while I watch the dogs chasing squirrels.  I want to glance to my right and see the roof of my garage which also houses the space I can use to dabble in wood-work.

This house has always been the house I want to build.  It is small, charming and has a big kitchen so I can cook and bake to my heart’s content.   A picture of this house is pinned to a board on my refrigerator.  Each time I look at it, I send that wish into the universe hoping that some day my wish will be turned into a reality.

Many times I have closed my eyes and pictured myself sitting in my eclectic, but not expensive, living room.  The candles on the dining room table are lit, soft music plays in the background and the smell of roasting lamb permeates every room in the house.  The wine is a perfect temperature and every now and then I urgently run upstairs to my writing room to document my latest burst of creativity.

My happiness is not waiting for me in distant geographical locations.  My happiness does not consist of collections of things.  My happiness lies within those four walls and the grass and trees that will surround it.  I want to love everything about my life, I want to live deliberately and I want to do it in this house.

What would be your wish if you were able to afford anything you wanted?

 

And the Heavens opened when I realized it had pockets

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I have mentioned before that I am not the most delicate of females.  I have always been, and most likely always will be, a tomboy.  It is me in the truest form of myself and how I feel most comfortable.  I am capable of donning a dress and feeling pretty but yesterday upped that ante by about 90 percent.

I went dress shopping for the dress that I will wear to walk down the aisle as maid of honor for my best friends’ wedding in September.  I began to sweat as soon as I walked through the door of the shop.  For those of you who have not experienced a bridal shop, it is a sea of chiffon, satin and lace and had I not controlled my breathing to calm myself I may have broken out in hives.

It is a daunting task to find a place to begin, especially when my fashion sense is based on jeans, hoodies and a baseball cap.  The first dress I picked was lovely.  I locked myself in the change room and, as soon as I tried the dress on, the metamorphosis had begun.

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The dresses kept coming but I kept looking back at that first dress.  All the other dresses paled in comparison and made me more self-conscious about wearing a dress than I already was.  I put the first dress back on again and I thought, for perhaps the first time, this dress could reflect my true personality without the baseball cap, the jeans and the hoodie.  This dress brought out a part of me that I have ignored.  For the first time in a long time, looking in a mirror, I felt beautiful.

Maybe it took finding the right dress to recognize that long-lost piece of myself.  Perhaps this was the a-ha moment Oprah always talks about.  And just perhaps a certain friend of mine may have been right when he said, “just find a little black dress, put it on and get over it”.

It’s not black and it has pockets but, I get it now.  Maybe there is that one dress that can be the sum of all of  your parts while making you feel better than you thought possible.  I think I found mine today.

 

 

 

I really did have a senior’s moment

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I was working on an itinerary for an upcoming bus tour this fall and flashed back to a bus tour we had last fall.

old couple-743330

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Was I guilty of ageism?  Perhaps.  But when the senior’s euchre tournament bus tour arrived at the lodge on that fateful Sunday, I was genuinely dreading the three days that would follow.  I made an egregious error in judgement.

Admittedly, the tour had not begun well for the 42 participants but the fault was not ours.  A slight hiccup in their agenda had caused them to arrive an hour and a half early and we were thoroughly unprepared for the sudden onset of walkers, luggage and upset elders.  We did our best to scramble and be as accommodating as possible.   I made a witty speech welcoming them on behalf of the owners and staff and my words were met with sullen stares and moderate contempt.  It was a bumpy start.

Once we regained control, our momentum increased and we began to get everyone settled into their rooms. I had entered first and once Betty and Rose reached those three stairs Betty took the lead.  Once she was at the top, Rose began to follow.  Betty reached for the door frame and found nothing but a handful of air.  As I turned to look behind me, Betty, doing her best impression of a tree being felled in the forest, fell straight backwards and took Rose out, using her as a cushion for the fall.  The two ladies I had escorted to their room had just fallen and couldn’t get up.   Thankfully we got them into an upright and relatively stable position and, after many unqualified examinations, we deemed they were medically stable.

The group’s first dinner was an interesting event.  Still unsure of their surroundings, many uttered complaints that hung in the air like angry cartoon balloons.  There were threats of husbands being called to retrieve them the following morning and the night was punctuated by another woman being hit in the head by a heartily kicked-open kitchen door.  In the span of six hours, we had potentially concussed three women.

But then something changed.  Over the course of the following 60 hours, attitude and understanding rapidly evolved on both sides.  We understood the nature of their initial frustration and they understood the nature of our good will and hospitality.  By the end of their three night stay, I was calling them all by their first name and I was truly sad to see them climb the stairs to get back on the bus.  There were many hugs and talks of seeing them again next year.  I will admit that I was close to tears saying goodbye to these lovely souls.

Perhaps it was the sideways glances I got from Rose that reminded me so much of my mom.  Maybe it was that bond of parenthood I have been missing since my mom and dad passed.  Whatever the reason, I will be ready and willing to welcome that next bus tour with open arms and use this enlightening experience as a lesson for the future.

You breathe in while I exhale

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You breathe in while I exhale.

Every molecule of our existence

is suspended in a moment of time.

Energy,  moving in an undulating wave,

 is passing between us. 

Intensity burns.

Your breath invades every part of my being.

The air is charged with electricity

and my breath is caught for a moment.

Your eyes reflect mine,

and you see the piece of the puzzle

that has been missing.

you breathein

Our eyes close,

but we see each other more clearly

than we ever have before.

Your touch only confirms what I believe.

Our love existed before we met,

in a time long ago, destined to happen again.

We knew we would meet once more,

we didn’t know when,

but our souls will meet over and over.

You breathe in while I exhale,

because this breath will always belong to us.

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In youth we learn, with age we comprehend

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I did a lot of things as a child – some are noteworthy and deserve mention and some I’m not so proud of, so I won’t expound on those moments.  I did make amends for those things that were not becoming of a young lady and I’m sure I learned from my mistakes because they were never repeated.

As much as I think I learned from those errs in judgement, I did not truly understand the consequences of those fateful actions until I was much older and reflecting on my youthful days.  The mirror has become a time portal and, as I gaze at my reflection, I see a much younger version of myself.   The translation was naive, a girl who thought she got it, but she was so far from “it” that she could never comprehend that distance.  It’s like the old adage “if I knew then what I know now”.  But if that were the case I probably never would have made the mistakes in the first place to teach me the lessons that I would come to comprehend so much later in my older and much wiser years.

Reflections-of-Time_2

Time is a fickle mistress.  She has a way of seeping into our conscious realm when we least expect her.  She inadvertently brings up memories from our long-buried past to insinuate a lesson that we may have overlooked.  I can say from personal experience that there are many things I may have “learned” as a child, even as a young adult, but the learning portion was a mere drop in the bucket compared to what I truly gained from the comprehension of the true meaning of that lesson as I got older.

There certainly are things I would tell the younger version of myself if I could go back in time but, for the most part, I would live my life again because it shaped the person I am today, flaws and all.  Those misgivings I had as a child, the uncertainty of who I was, led me to make mistakes.  There was a fine line between being good and being bad and for a while I hung on the precipice, unsure of which force was stronger and which power would pull me in.

Looking back at those moments, now that I am beyond that cataclysmic time in my pubescent life, I can truly understand how those stages of life burrowed their way into my brain.  They were stored until the moment I could truly appreciate the lesson that was entrusted to the vault in my memory and now I really do get it.  What I may have learned in those formidable years I can truly understand now and appreciate the message.

What lesson do you appreciate most, now that you are old enough to understand its true message?