Faded Florals

She found herself longing for a hazy summer afternoon- a kind of ethereal, sweet, warm couple of hours that don't actually happen in real life. She would spend it lazing on a checked blanket under a tree, with a good book, and some cold lemonade. She would be wearing old blue jeans with bare feet, and a navy-blue vintage blouse, with tiny white polka-dots on it. Wait - strike that, not navy-blue, that's not summery enough. How about a light pink blouse, with a faded floral print, tucked in. No, untucked is more casual. And now for her hair...it would be her perfect, yet ever unachievable hairstyle - glossy, healthy, and let's go with a warm, honey blonde. With every turn of her head, the mottled sun streaming through the leaves would shine perfectly off of her hair and skin.

She would be reading a book, but would soon find it uninteresting - those obscure authors can get so wordy. She would look around, there would have to be other people there, not too close, but just enough to notice her under the tree in her peace, and admire the relaxing, casual moment this beautiful young woman was enjoying. And of course she would pull out her ipod and self-portrait the moment, so that she would never forget it, never forget how she was able to truly enjoy this ideal afternoon, lounging fashionably under a tree. But soon she would realize that no one was actually noticing her, and that the breeze was picking up, and she would shiver as the sun would go behind a cloud. A slight ache in her back would soon get so annoying that it would force her to stand. Glancing down at her untanned, white arms, the empty plastic cup of over-priced, sugary lemonade, she would then check the time. Damn. She should have gotten out of here before rush hour. Now it's gonna take her 40 minutes to get home.

The Laugh. Part One.

She wanted desperately to tell him a story. It would be a story so worth telling, it would be captivating and colourful, it would compel him to her. But when she opened her mouth, the words fell flat against his face. His honest gaze seemed to hone into her mind, reading the story faster than she could create it. She stumbled. His brow creased, his eyes looked beyond her. She could feel herself shrinking away. And then there was silence. Words simply failed to materialize in her mind. She lifted a hand to her mouth as if to hide the absence of chatter, averting her eyes from his at the same time. Then, like the sound of horses galloping in an old western movie, he began to laugh. His laugh came nearer to her heart than any other laugh had been before; she could hear kindess and deepness, calmness and clarity. She began laughing, too.

Hearing her own laugh echo in the street reminded her that she was alive. And she felt as if the laugh was familiar, yet not fully her own. Almost deja vu, but the kind of deja vu where you are experiencing yourself in a way you always knew was inside you, but you have never actually lived out until that moment. It was a sun rising quickly within, streaming through into her laugh. It was a pulling back of heavy drapes to let daylight permeate the room. It was blinding, and it took her off-guard.

Tides.

One of my resolutions this year is to be less anxious. It's so easy to take for granted each moment of being alive by filling it up with anxiety. Anxiety robs the little moments of life, and so I am learning to let it wash back out when it rises, instead of standing at the shore with a bucket trying to scoop it up and save it. Strange how I've done this, strange how I've savoured it. But what a sour thing to savour.

Currently, I am discovering the joy of relishing more palatable things - winter sun, the movement of my hands as they prepare food, the softness of my dog's coat. The quietness of my day today is lovely. These are the moments I choose to gather up and save.

Awake.

It's a winter morning. There is no light coming in through the window, the world is still sleeping. You lay there listening to the quiet muffle of your radio alarm. Your mind is conscious of the day's beckon, yet you are still caught up in this dream world, so real and heavy. In your dreams you are crawling on the floor, in an old, empty church. You would rather not be crawling, you would rather be stretching in the warmth of the bed, feeling your limbs begin to move with life again for another day. Even when your morning muscles feebly hold you up in the shower, there is a crawling-like quality to your movements. Your hand crawls to reach the shampoo, slowly. And you let the water wash you in silence for several minutes, mechanical movements warming you slowly. Surprisingly, the dream-trance has lifted by the time you turn off the squeaky taps, and flick back the shower curtain in search of a towel. You have awakened; step into the sanctuary of your day.

About Writing.

It's one of those nights I feel like I could write forever. Words are on the tips of my fingers, playfully sputtering about on the page. The thing is, I don't want to try too hard, at least in the beginning. If writing is a craft, it must be perfected through practice, not guardedness. Actually, that's the way I look at all creativity, and all of life. I can walk around things, I can wonder, and plan, and prepare, but over-planning takes the joy and spontaneity out of living, and of art. Expectations are so different than reality. Please don't think I'm talking about art as spewing, without editing. I believe in editing, in the choosing of words, and the learning of a craft, but I also believe the greatest learning comes from participation, from engaging in a task - whether playful or serious.

With me, you see, and I suspect with you as well, there are things that come naturally. I don't mean they come naturally in the sense that I can do those things easily, perfectly, or with skill, I just mean I am drawn to them. And writing is one of them. Words and print have been my comfort and coping throughout so much of life - both other people's words and my own. Sometimes I share my love of words with people, sometimes I don't. But now, so much of my perspective on life has changed. I had cancer this fall, and it has given me the strange gifts of motivation, clarity, and gratefulness. I go for a test in less than a month to see if it has come back or not. I feel old and young at the same time. I want to hug all of my family, and hide in fear. And along with my loved ones, writing has been at my side, something to absorb anxiety and confusion. And even if I throw out the jumble of pages I've scribbled on, and delete the various documents with random journal entries, there will always be more words.

Lucinda Williams says it so well:

Deep down within me words move in phrases
Frozen and still ‘til they decide
To melt and drip over the pages
Until that moment they live inside

My words enjoy the feel of the paper
Better than mingling with your consonants
Once they get going they never waver
And they slip in between your if, ands, and buts

When my words are hiding between the lines
Then I’m afraid they won’t hear me call
What if they fail me without a sign
What if they hardly surface at all

Screaming and throwing your weight around
My words choose knowledge over politics
You can’t kill my words, they know no bounds
My words are strong and they don’t make me sick

They still remain my only companion
Loyal and true to the very end
They’ll never ever completely abandon
Ever give up the paper and the pen

Air & Altitude

Imagine you're knitting. If you don't know how, just imagine your fingers have become wise with muscle memory, and they take the needles, flinging the yarn back and forth, stitching together something you love. And the joy is that you don't have to look at it, or even think about it. Also, imagine you are sitting cross-legged, on a very high, grassy mountain, kind of like where Heidi, Girl of the Alps lived. The atmosphere is cool and comfortable. You look down below, through a clearing, towards the town. The people are like ants, their faces too small to see, only the general direction of their travels can be made out. Now take in a breath of fresh, fresh air, the kind that cools your tubes as it goes in. Now let out the breath. Notice how everything around you is quiet. Your hair lightly brushes against your arm in the breeze, and you realize it is very long, it has grown back, it has grown fuller, softer, like a wizard's.

All at once, you know you are now old. Although your hands move quickly back and forth with each stitch of yarn, they also feel thick and heavy and dry. The colour has gone out of them, and their skin is covered with age spots. You think of the years your hands have seen and felt. You think of the work, and all of the things they have touched. And you take another deep breath of that sweetness called air, and you gulp down tears of thankfulness for the moments in time that were yours all along, realizing you were there for every bit of it. You have been left changed, etched.

Here.

There is a quality I admire in certain people, people who can sit by a window sipping hot tea in the morning, people who can be quiet. An expatriate bundled up in a small apartment, in a cold, always-winter country. A mother who thinks deeply as she rides the bus on her way to pick up her kids from school, ipodless. A grandfather who sits on a bench, waiting for nothing, just watching. A friend who quietly crafts at her kitchen table, content with the rhythm of her hands. This is engagement - this ability to seep into a moment and soak in the light of a room, the tick of the clock. There is no rushing, no racing towards the future, no frantic mind-games of anxiety, only now; that's what I'm here to write about.