Small town summer feels nostalgic and safe. In my version of small town summer, there are bees working, firepits smoking, and the sound of birds and grass and bugs. Small town summer also has chunks of history - little fragments, like old fences and sheds in yards of houses that have been remodelled, which are still linked to the summers of the fifties and forties and thirties, when your grandparents were young, and they had one summer dress and two pair of trousers. Small town summer is going barefoot on the prickly grass, and slow stillness in the afternoons.

Summer Doze.

Hello & tid-bits.

Summer is here, or so it seems, green buds opening up, fruit trees blooming, scent of lilac, barbeque, cut grass, ozone, and the neighbour's pot, huge bumblebees blundering around - I catch these colours and smells and am intoxicated by a summer mood. I feel my little heart dancing with a new kind of joy - a joy that is "cancer free!!!" and so very grateful for living.

I've been away. I did a 14 hour drive to Vancouver and back with my sis-in-law to find an apartment, which we did, it's all lovely with blue, yellow, purple, and red paint, lots of windows, and most importantly allows us to keep our dog, Ares.

Life lately has been a bundle of joy, excitement, anxiety, hopefulness, fear, and anticipation. Our little house just went up for sale yesterday, and our fingers are crossed. I found out I got into grad school. We will be moving, sometime. So many things.

But anyway, I haven't stopped writing, or forgotten about this blog. I hope to get back to it now.

Threads.

Wow, it is one of those mornings where the sky is gloomy, but the birds are still singing. I have the upstairs window open a crack and a fresh breeze is filtering in. Life is like weather. It's unpredictable, really. You can make a forecast, but in the end you have to wait and see what the day actually brings. That's where I'm at in life right now. I still have symptoms of bladder cancer, and have been to the doctor and it is not an infection, so I fear the worst, but in reality I know my odds are actually low that it will recur. And I just can't know - not until my next test.

So, one thing I have been doing to remain in the moment is practicing meditation. It's amazing how a few minutes of it can really clear the mind. I love to visualize, even just visualizing the breath. And the other thing is music. I have been happily working on some super strange (for me) songs and feel excited. When I came from the doctor yesterday, all I wanted to do was be upstairs working on my songs.

What a thread of beauty and solace music has been for me throughout my entire life. I am so grateful for it! Can you relate? What are the threads in your life that seem to have kept things strung together for you over the years?

breathing life.

There is a whirling that you do in life sometimes, when you have to work hard to get through it. This whirling brings up a restless jumble of your desires and steadiness that unforeseen circumstances can cause to teeter, and you get the quick sensation that this moment truly is all that you have. You don't know about tomorrow, really you don't. You can plan and predict but there is no life there, there is only life right now in each short breath.

April Snow

It's a regular winter storm out there, with blowing snow and whiteness. I must be so used to it, because it doesn't bother me. It's forgivable for the way it temporarily covers all the spring drabness in a blanket of purity. It does kind of suck knowing that my dad has to be out plowing the roads when it hits where they live, though. As for me, I'm super-spoiled lately and don't ever have to go far if I don't want, so today it'll just be a quick grocery store jaunt and over to the arts centre where I volunteer on Thursdays. And right now, I get to enjoy the beautiful swirling from the upstairs window, in my cozy sweater and my mom's old knitted slipper socks.

I don't even know why I'm posting this right now. Maybe I just want connection to the outside world, and I like the feel of my fingers on the keyboard. I guess those are reasons enough. Alas, I will listen to Ani's song "Soft Shoulder" and finish my coffee.

Still Moments.

Today there is sunshine on brown streets and my anxiety is back. Life is a million things at once: anticipating my next screening in a month, preparing the big move to Vancouver, and the seemingly endless tasks, uncertainty, fear, and excitement that goes with all of it.

Right now, I am reminded of why I began this blog. It's about living and engaging in the moment, it's here for me to sink myself into my writing and let that be enough because it usually is. It's about enjoying life and it's wildness, even when things are scary and unsure, it's about feeling all the feelings, instead of numbing them. And when I can do that, I get stronger, I realize that I can get through whatever life brings. I realize that I can plan, but that life is unexpected - that's what makes life painful, but it's also what makes it so precious and endearing. Writing helps ease the anxiety - it brings me back to the feeling workshop I used to give at my old job - it's a healthy way of coping with an emotion.

So now I'm looking out at the sun on the street and how it is drying up the dirty snowbanks in the fronts of the neighbours' yards. Crinkly brown, bud-less shrubs and trees loom around three white houses. A bald man in jeans walks by, sun gleaming on his head. I hear the deep breathing of my dog in the room. And for this moment there is only stillness.

old song.

here's the lyrics to an old song of mine:

if i was a fire

i'd be burning down

right about now

raging flame through the night

glowing embers in the morning

if i was on time

and knew all my lines

maybe i'd find

new peace of mind

if i was a fire

right about now

i'd be letting go of my glory

warm now, fading down

to the moral of the story

watch me now

as i burn down

leaving behind this chaff

watch me now

as i burn down

leaving behind this chaff

The Laugh. Part Five.

She is still up in her apartment on this warm, saturated summer evening, lazily rocking in her creaky thrift store chair. It's too hot to sleep and so she sips on iced tea and directs her eyes toward an old TV that is quietly murmuring in the corner of the living room. The windows are all open, the sun has not completely set, and air is weighted heavy with memories of earlier summer nights spent out in the streets. She can't shake her teenage feelings tonight, when she would sneak away with friends to drink in the park and wander main. Life felt so much more purposeful then, when she at least had goals, even if the goals were to simply get a few thrills. She wants to crawl out onto her balcony and whisper to someone below that she will meet them in the parking lot in two minutes. She wants to pace the floors of this heat charged room. But instead she rocks slowly and runs her fingers over the velvety arm of the rocker. It's this unsettled feeling, even though all around her the evening breathes contentment.

Ingalls' Influence

I was reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's "The Long Winter" last night. It seemed fitting, given the weather my province has been experiencing - apparently we have not had this much snow in one winter since the mid '70's. Anyway, as I was reading, I was brought fully back into the wonder that I felt when I read the Little House series as a child. I also realized how much of an influence they have had on me.

Reading about life when it was simpler is somehow grounding. In the spanse of human life on earth, I know we haven't been living with technology for that long. I feel more connected to my human-ness when I am closer to the earth, and doing little things in life that connect me to my ancestors, things like growing my own food, making bean soup last a few days, and taking time to sit and make things with my hands. Last week I made two large pots of borscht, and was surprised at how the simple, small list of ingredients made such a flavourful, filling soup. I thought about my Ukranian and Hungarian great grandparents and wondered what their borscht tasted like.

I don't begrudge technology though. In fact, I owe my life to modern medical science in a way. But I just think, to feel full and connected to life, it's important to feel dirt on my hands every once in a while.

31.

Today, I am 31.

I think about sitting on the shore of an ocean, looking out at the drizzly atmosphere, the warm grey sky gripping my body. I can feel the water in my bones, that ancient connection to the waves, pulling me. And I can hear the birds in the distance, driftwood washed and floating at my feet. I flip off my shoes and roll up my jeans, ready to feel the coldness on my skin - this is life.

Spring Cleaning.

Life never stops moving. I have often felt like a gyspy without any roots, because I have moved so many times in my life. If we move this fall, I think that brings it up to number 30. And it's going to be a big one. We have been in this house for four and a half years, and transformed it from an almost unlivable, neglected rental, with an overrun mound of weeds and junk for a yard and broken everything, into a quaint little family home. In fact, we'll be leaving it almost exactly the way I always wanted it.

So the other night I was home alone sorting some of my junk, sort of feeling sad about letting go of "stuff". I was listening to Fleetwood Mac and the song "Gypsy" kind of brought me back to earth. Change and movement is the nature of life. I will always be going "back to the gypsy that I was". I had thought for a time that we may live permanently in our little house, but was is permanence, anyways? There's no such thing. As hard as it is to uproot again, I know that the move is necessary and will bring so much growth to both of our lives.

passing through paris.

"Don't let your love slide", he is in earnest, this dusty man, singing on the subway. I can't understand French much, but this is in English. I reach for a few coins to put in his hat. His sad melody continues, and I stare out at the city as we sway by. I can hear the creaking shifting weight of the old train, and the overwhelming sense of nostalgia fills me up. I feel a connection to the ghosts of musicians, artists and writers who haunt these tracks.

Of course, I don't feel at home in Paris in the ancestral kind of way at all, because I'm not French. But being among such beautiful buildings, where people travel to appreciate the many great works of art that the city houses, there is a feeling that who I am is valued here. As long as I keep my mouth shut, I can blend in.

Back at home, tho, I am a part of the open prairies and the gravel roads. I am a part of the ugly, dumb rolling box store parking lots, and I am a person who appreciates being able to pop into the gas station in my sweats and a hoodie, late at night. I am a part of small town history, where you drive two hours to the city on a weekend to shop at the big malls. I have lived in neighbourhoods where you just don't wear pretty dresses to walk the dog. I am a part of the culture that travels to Paris assuming her high school French classes will suffice.

As I pull my tired feet along the streets, passing the patisseries, cheese shops, and every beautiful old building, I know what it means to not let your love slide. It's a kind of digging your heels into the parts of life that make up who you are, and at the same time being willing to expand, to open up to possibilities that you have not thought of before. It's knowing that Paris may not be your home, but you can find a piece of yourself in the beauty of it.

Shell.

I am stone, they tell me. I am weather washed, beaten by harsh waters, eyes shut tight at the crash coming down. Flinching permanently, closed like a tomb, my soul shows no outside signs of life. No wisps of joy escape my sealed countenance, my eyes harden unintentionally. What I experience as fearful non-stepping on toes, they only know as my winter silence. I am ice carved, non-melting, living at the poles. Could I but carry a conversation I would surely melt and soak into the carpet, or find I am only crumbling river-slate, soft and nervous.

Not a mask.

How can you say what you're feeling when they're pouring through you so quickly, when you are a sieve? And when the sieve has a hole, and the soft solid fandangled feelings that you were supposed to save are washing down the panel that is your face - slow strawberry sludge settling between the lines of your eye creases, and around the corners of your nose. So obvious, like a grease stain on your clean white shirt, so glaring, so messy, so apparent. How can you say what you're feeling when you're wearing them.

The Laugh. Part Four.

She remembers how it fizzled out slowly, like a can of pop left open in the sun. It was simultaneous with her quitting smoking, the time she quit for good, when she stopped wanting it. After thirteen years. At the very beginning, he had been an exciting shot to the head, but soon became an expensive habit, and what was she paying for this habit? She had the sense of life being dulled, things had become tasteless, numbed. Could she blame it all on a person? Was it all his fault? No. But, at the same time, she knew asking him to leave would be one of the bravest, most important things she could do.

So, it had been four years now, and she felt like a huge goldfish loose in a tiny, backyard pond. There was no one to meet in this little city, in this corner she had chosen. Some afternoons at the restaurant, she would stand by the window and take a big breath, like a smoker, but without the cough to follow. She'd look out across sleepy main street, at the cars parked on angles in front of shops, at the two lone teenagers on the street, skipping school, hand in hand.

The laughing young man had disappeared. She remembered him in a romantic way, but it wasn't that she had been attracted to him. It was more the kind of romance in a children's fairytale, the unreal, glittery kind. Maybe she had dreamed it. Still, she was affected by him - it seemed like yesterday when they met, but she knew it had been months. Three months. Canadian summer was in full bloom now, the huge trees on the streets were green and full. And she couldn't keep down the buzzing in her mind.

Plaster Memories.

I want to write about the light in the room today, how it is a dusty, soft, white light coming through the faded, paper-thin 1960's curtains. My gramma made these curtains, and they used to hang in my mom's room when she was a teenager. We had them in our house growing up, too. In one place we lived, they were hanging in the spare bedroom where my sister slept when she was delirious with pneumonia. She always remembers seeing dad's face in the floral pattern of the curtains, and can't stand to look at the curtains now because they remind her of being so sick. That brain memory happens sometimes, like the way I would see the little worm wearing a hat on the paneled ceilings of different trailers we lived in. Always, I could lay down, look up, and see that friendly little worm.

The house my husband and I are in now has old lath and plaster walls, covered in a texture, too much texture. When we were using the bedroom off the kitchen, my husband slept next to the wall and once found the shape of a boot, right in his line of vision. From then on, his eyes always fell on the boot. He would sometimes mutter about how he couldn't stop staring at the boot.

Our ceilings and a wall are being re-done right now, because of water damage due to ice-dams this winter. As I type, there is a contractor taping and mudding in my kitchen below me. When they took down the ceilings, they found tons of old empty players cigarette packages. Who put those there, and why? I often wonder about the other people who spent the past eighty years in this house. Who were they? I always felt like we kind of rescued this house, as it was in disrepair when we first got it. So many layers of paint cover everything. I get curious when the paint chips to reveal dark, hardwood original baseboards or five panel doors.

For some reason I like to keep as many traces of the original house around as possible. It's like with the curtains, I wish they wouldn't fade, I wish the sun wouldn't do what it always does. I wonder if whoever lived in this house in 1942 could walk through now, and still find their way around, still recognize pieces of the house that their brain has committed to memory. In reality, without continued work, houses fall apart, and when we move on, who knows what will come of this one. The curtains are pretty much useless at keeping light out now, and they don't match my bedding, so I am planning on sewing some new ones soon. These material things come and go. Rust and moths. I can't latch onto them.

On Beekeeping...

Beekeeping takes up all of the senses. It starts on the drive out to the hives - windows rolled down, the sweet scent of beeswax filling up the car. At the hives, your ears are filled with the simultaneous quiet and buzz. Your nose is alert to all the smells – sometimes the scent of the wax is really strong, and you’re always smelling to make sure things are right. There’s also the burning of twigs and burlap in the smoker, which sometimes you accidentally inhale and it chokes you up like you took a big drag of your first cigarette. Then there’s the rush of having thousands of bees humming and buzzing in the hive, flying up and out, and crawling on you.

There’s always lifting involved, too, and honey’s heavy. If it’s hot, lifting a box off the hive can put me into a terrible sweat, and I’m standing there, bees getting louder, and time shortening. My dad, who has been known to wear a veil but forget to close it and therefore get stung on the neck or the face, has taught me to work through the panic I feel sometimes, and basically trust the bees. Last season I was only stung once, at the very beginning of the spring. It’s a wonderful feeling to get through a hive check, or having to do a bunch of cleaning and pulling apart the hives in the spring or something, when the bees are all around you, and to feel calm.

Today's Playlist.

I love to listen to music when I write.

Here's my current playlist:

Anyone's Ghost - The National

This Loneliness - El Perro del Mar

Valerie - Amy Winehouse

Soft Shoulder - Ani Difranco

4th Time Around - Bob Dylan

Let's Break Up - Hayden

Reckoner - Radiohead

Not Fade Away - Buddy Holly

Wild World - Cat Stevens

Sorrow - David Bowie

Bloodbuzz Ohio - The National

Trust in Me - Etta James

Barely Friends - Hayden

Reseraction Fern - Iron & Wine

I Don't Know What I Can Save You From - Kings of Convenience

Twistin Postman - The Marvelettes

Ramblin' on My Mind - Robert Johnson

Travellin' Shoes - Ruth Moody

Come Pick Me Up - Ryan Adams

Size Too Small - Sufjan Stevens

Food.

The fog has been clearing, colours are brightening, and I've been getting back to my creative work. I'm sliding comfortably into some of my previous habits, but I've been opening up new realms in the process, too. After having a brush with cancer, along with other health issues, and making a career decision to pursue further education, it has become clear: music and writing are my lifelines, I must be immersed in them. And not only in the creating part, actually, more in the enjoyment and soaking up part. For, the music and words of others are my food, and only when I am full do I have enough material to spill over into my creating process.

I was reading on this blog that a good rule for writers is to read four times as much as they write. That seems like a lot, but not when I remember my childhood and teen years: I had a book with me wherever I went, and read in the in-between moments, and read myself to sleep every night. It's kind of exciting to think of all the books and authors I haven't read yet, that I will discover. So, I've been getting back into that, and with music, too, getting into new-to-me artists like Robert Johnson, El Perro del Mar, and Edith Piaf, and learning old blues riffs and chord progressions on the guitar.

So, for anyone reading, what are your favourite authors, musicians, films/directors who feed your life, your imagination, and your art?