Category Archives: imagination

When the world seems silent, the heart still has a voice.

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The whisper of real love

tickled my ears so long ago

and feels like a long forgotten conversation.

Those words,

those sweet nothings,

sadly,

no longer seem to be in my vocabulary.

But the book of love

still has music in it and

every so often I open that book.

Those notes play melodies on my heart-strings.

The familiar phrases of love,

the notes on the scales of romance,

still exist

and play wistfully in my memory.

Perhaps I am meant to hear that music again.

Just maybe the songs I hear from that book

are heard by someone else

and we haven’t yet had a chance to listen to them together.

For just a moment,

 I want to close my eyes and really hear the music.

I want the Book of Love

to play a song for me just one more time

and have it be the only song I truly hear

for the rest of my life.

You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind

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I am thankful I have always been a realistic person with a penchant for the optimistic side of the scale.  I have never been one to dwell on the unfavorable circumstances I have lived through but I have chosen to use those unfortunate times as lessons, and there have been many.  I could have opted to wallow in my misery but I continued forward, leaving those inopportune moments to collect dust while I moved on.  Had I allowed myself to exist in those adverse periods of my past, I would be in a very different place in my life today.

I am who I am because things in my life went wrong.  But I am also who I am because of how I handled those things with a positive attitude.  Even the most successful people have endured monumental setbacks.  These moments are how life teaches us to be better people and these moments are why hope exists.  That beacon of light in the darkness of our reality shines to draw us from the negativity that is ready to envelop us if we let it.

Optimistic minds see a glass as half full but truly positive minds will disregard that glass completely and only focus on its contents.  There is no line and, if you take away the glass, there is no halfway mark.  There is only the reality of what was in the glass in the first place.

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We need to embrace the messy, broken glass of our crazy lives and we need to drain every favorable ounce of life out of the remains when the glass is removed.  The substance inside the glass is what we focused on in the first place and, regardless of how it sat in the glass, it remains the positive part of the bigger picture.

Life is unpredictable.  Life will try to dampen your spirits and cloud your skies.  But life will always show you the rainbow if you are willing to see it.

I’m hearing the voices again….

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I have had a debate going on in my head for a long time.  I am a very spiritual person but I don’t devote myself to a particular religion. I don’t grace the interior of a church on a regular basis but I do believe in a higher power and life beyond this place we call our reality.

As I child I had a few “imaginary” friends.  I don’t recall their names, nor do I remember how long they graced me with their presence but I know, undoubtedly, that they were there.  I watched a movie years ago called ‘Heart and Souls’ with Robert Downey Jr. and the discussion I was used to only having in my head came barreling, full force, into my here and now.  Perhaps the innocence of my childhood allowed me to hear things beyond my three-dimensional limitations.  Just maybe my mind was permitted to be open to hearing the spirits that chose to help me on my journey through this physical world and those voices in my head were not merely conjured by childhood imagination.

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Similar to the plot line in the movie, those sounds in my head were slowly extinguished as I got older.  As my childhood innocence was replaced by teenage angst and the stress of being a young adult, the voices were unable to permeate the reality that had stolen my youth.  My ability to connect with those ethereal intonations was replaced by the clanging, brash sounds of adulthood.

I have been to mediums and people who are able to channel the spirits of those who have moved beyond the physical world.  Some have been a pure hoax and some have been truly blessed with the ability to connect with those voices that wait patiently on the other side for those who are able to hear them and willing to listen.  Through those people I have learned more about spirit guides and souls who have passed but are still connected to my soul.

I can occasionally hear those murmurs again.  Faint whispers land gently on my ears, each with their own unique way of communicating.  I like to believe that those voices have always been with me but I became too surrounded by the cacophony of life to hear them.  I take solace in the fact that I am never truly alone and if I listen closely enough, if I really stretch myself beyond the closed walls of my mind, the whispers of those friends and family will follow me through this journey into whatever adventures lay in wait for me after this one.

 

I should have paid more attention to my Physics teacher

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It never ceases to amaze me – the amount of hours one works in the real world is directly proportionate to the eradication of the creative mind in the artistic world, especially following a long season of working in the hospitality business.

I remember my Physics teacher in Grade 11 throwing around words like ‘inertia’ and ‘for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’ but I don’t remember studying the direct correlation of physical exhaustion to prolific brain death.  Sure, the basic functions in my body still happen – I breathe in and out, I walk and talk, but the rest of me seems to be on autopilot – like that object in motion that tends to stay in motion.

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I want to be an object at rest and I want to remain at rest for at least 48 hours.  I want to have my brain back – the brain that wakes me up at night, swirling words around in circles until I can grab them all from those cartoon word clouds above my head.  I want the ability to form those words into whimsical, thoughtful or romantic lines and be able to feel that creative flow coursing through my veins.

I wonder what Newton’s theory would be on my chances of winning the lottery and being able to spend my precious moments writing a best-seller?  Time + creativity = true bliss.  Until that moment, I shall struggle through the hours required at my job and hope my brain can keep up the frantic pace until Thanksgiving comes and goes.  Then, and only then, will I finally be able to strip myself of my frenzied schedule and bathe myself in lethargy.

 

 

Discovering what is hidden

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Admittedly, I am going through withdrawal.  I have not gone on a cleanse nor have I given up an addiction but I find myself recently emancipated from certain friends who truly know my soul and I feel somewhat lost.

Cultivating a friendship from a distance becomes easier as more time passes.  The initial shock of distress subsides and the feeling of isolation is adapted to and accepted.  But when that friendship is reanimated at a one-on-one level it makes the strain of separation that much more painful when those friends have to leave again.

I had effortlessly assimilated to a quiet lifestyle and one that I enjoy very much.  I had been very content to come home to an idyllic piece of property in a secluded location that I share only with my dog.  I had become ensconced in a life of post-work anonymity.   And then the axis of my world shifted.

After decades of being complacent, I found my mind wandering.  After years of feeling satiated, I found myself yearning for something I had not known I was seeking.  The thought of a different lifestyle became abundantly clear and my mind was in turmoil.

I have not invited any of these conceptions into the realm of my existence at this point, but knowing I have the opportunity to entertain these strange thoughts is exciting.  Having the ability to welcome these curious ideas into my life is liberating.  And just thinking that there is another chapter of my life possibly waiting to be written is extremely enticing.

“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.” ~ Francios de La Rochefoucauld

hiding-in-plain-sight

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I want to think I have not lost myself in the process only to discover I have missed out on writing that new chapter.  I wish to believe that the well of ink still exists and will allow me to continue creating the story that is my life.  And I will never know if that story continues here or exists in another place until I become brave enough to turn that next page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clearing my own sky

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Lost in the clouds,

wondering where I have gone.

Have I been trapped in the light,

or lost in the wisps of reality?

The true me is there somewhere,

obscured between the light and the shadow,

pushing my way out from behind my feigned existence.

I have been living,

but there should be more life in my life.

There is so much more to me

than the me I currently am.

But how do I harness that concealed energy?

How do I reign in

that part of me that exists in my mind?

How do I grip that vapor,

and turn it into something real,

something tangible,

something I can take from those clouds

and make it a genuine part of my world?

How do I brush those clouds away

so the lightest parts of me can shine?

The prodigious exultation of being a word-nerd

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Blogging has allowed me to become a true, and very contented, word snob.  I have always loved words.  As a teenager, I kept a duo-tang (who remembers those?) filled with lined paper and would make note of all the unfamiliar words I came across while devouring all the books I used to read.  Those words that eluded my pubescent mind became a staple of my vocabulary once I had defined them and cemented them into the library of my brain.  They circled my imagination and urged my cerebrum to come out to play.  They tickled my tongue and they began to flow like blood in my veins.

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(look at how lovely my penmanship was in high school)

I assiduously began to incorporate those words into as many scenarios as I could.  My teachers were duly impressed.  My fellow students merely looked at me like I had three heads.  My flamboyant wordiness was an ephemeral fantasy and I had to tone down my elevated rhetoric to become a conventional high-school student filled with angst rather than synonyms.

Today I still continue to incorporate those words into my daily conversations, not to sound more intelligent but, because I enjoy the way those words sound when I say them aloud.  I relish being able to use the phrase ‘alarmingly verbose’ instead of just saying “he talked a lot”.  I enjoy describing winter as arduous and not just “shitty”, although shitty can truly encapsulate the past winter months and potentially the ones to come.  And I will forever want to be mystified by language and not speak simply to communicate.  I want to thrive in my love for words.

My enthusiasm for articulate phrases has never waned.  It has followed me throughout my journey.  It has haunted my sleep and clandestinely pursued me during my conscious hours.  May those words forever churn in the maelstrom of my imagination and may I always be able to maintain my romance with the language of expression.

 

What life is really about….

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As the eve of a hectic work day pulls the shade of night down over the day, I am blissfully distracted from the bewilderment of the myriad of events that unfolded to create that hectic day.  I am fortunate to be able to cast those disquieting moments aside and dwell on the touching moment from the previous night.

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Making cakes is a process I enjoy immensely.  It truly allows me to lose myself in the creative process and pour my heart into something I love.  I create with the purpose of wanting to make the occasion that much more special by making a simple birthday cake into a much more personal experience.  Very rarely do I get a glimpse through the eyes of the intended recipient but on Saturday night I was able to see the joy from the other side.

I was the one holding the cake as the birthday song began.  I was the one to present the cake to a very surprised birthday girl.  And I was the one who most appreciated the tears of joy that welled in the corners of her eyes.  It was a truly touching moment for me.

Her reaction made every ounce of my effort worthwhile.  Her heartfelt emotion made every tedious detail on that cake worth each extra moment I took to make them as close to perfect as I could get them.  It may be just a Scrabble cake to some but to her it was the first personalized cake she had ever had and I was moved to tears to be the person that created that memory for her.

That one moment will play over and over in my head as I am laboriously working into the evening hours on my next cake project.  And when my wrists are tired from kneading fondant and my hand is beginning to shake with exhaustion when I am trying to pipe the last details on a cake, I will remember the look on her face and summon that next wind to keep going.

Life is about counting the memories and not the calories.

 

 

 

Oh, the things you’ll see

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cloud porn

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Hours after a summer rain,

the skies are host to what I like to refer to as “cloud porn”.

It is my guilty pleasure to watch the shapes change,

to watch what or whom the sky would like to reveal.

I didn’t see the face with the big sunglasses,

smiling from the sky,

until I added the picture below.

cloud1

 

 

The real perception of time

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To the people who work at Shamrock Lodge, the weeks of the summer of 2015 are flying by. It seems like only a few days ago we were saying hello to the first of our summer families but that was weeks ago! We have officially begun week five of our ten week season and it has gone by in a blur.

But time is a funny thing. To us it hurtles through some time-space continuum at warp speed while to others, to children who are anticipating their days at the Shammy, time moves slower than a turtle.

Their restless nights are spent planning their days in the Kid’s Klub. Their exciting visions of their little legs on water skiis, making it around the circuit for the first time, disrupt their sleep. Their predicted screams as they skip across the lake in the tube echo in their minds. Their week of fun and games at the lodge is as tangible as the parents longing for some quiet moments while the kids are busy being entertained from morning to night.

Many lounge chairs are filled with dozing parents while their children are, not only waterskiing and tubing but, playing soccer, going on scavenger hunts, bouncing on the water trampoline, building sandcastles, playing tennis and having canoe races.

Time, from the perspective of the parents and children who have already come to the lodge and returned home, has gone by in a blur of sunshine, laughter and memories. But for those children waiting for their chance at their Shammy vacation, time seems to go by one very slow second at a time.