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.

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.

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.

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?

Face lines.

After the test on Monday, the doctor said I was all clear. I can't explain the feeling - it was relief and hopefulness, yes, but other emotions, too. I go for tests every three months for the first year, so I'm still anxious, but the doctor said there is a very low probability that the cancer will come back. All this is good.

I guess I feel lucky. And just....changed.

The next day I was sitting in my hair salon, and there was a man getting a haircut a couple of chairs over. I heard him talking about his experience with cancer. He was explaining how he recently had a piece of cake, but still couldn't really taste it. Yet, he was so positive, his voice was full of sincerity, happiness. He was saying that the cancer had been a blessing, that it had improved his relationships, his life. I silently felt a connection with him, even though I can't truly imagine what he must have went through, it sounded like he had experienced a long and difficult battle. I looked at his face and could see that he knows how precious life is. I could just see that in the lines on his face in the mirror. And then I felt a peace, and continued to eavesdrop.

Power trip.

I can't find that place anymore. Because you are here now. I no longer own my nights, to be frolicking and not trying hard, to be kept awake by my racing heartbeat. There was a time when I could leaf through ten magazines, when I could settle into hours of gluing, cable tv on. But now, I do not own those times.

You have assured me you want no part in dictating which side of the light I play on.

But I still stand here with my hands out, making a cup shape, holding something invisible.

It's up to me how long I will stay. Only I can extend this offering and keep myself, for so long, from getting back to me.

Small.

I have these memories of being outside as a kid. I wonder what it would look like to have it all on film, to look back. I'm sure it wouldn't capture the fullness of what I was feeling. It was not the feeling of being lost, but of being small. And kind of the feeling of being held.

When we lived in Edson, it was my tomboy phase and I had more boys as friends. Sometimes on a summer night, we would play till almost dark. I had this skateboard that my parents bought me for getting on the honour roll list in grade four. So, we would be out in front of the house trying to do fancy stops and turns on the skateboard. Or riding bikes and kicking the soccer ball around. And at the end of the day I would bring my browned and grungy self in reluctantly to have a bath.

I was quite a fearful child, fearful of someone breaking in and robbing the house, or of evil witches from my imagination coming to life. I also had a strong hatred for baths, and the thought of soap getting in my eyes was a real distress. But I didn't fear growing up, or what would happen later in life. I always had great dreams for my life, and assumed that I could be or do whatever I wanted. But honestly, like most children, I'm sure, I didn't give adulthood too much thought.

Now I realize I am craving for that familiar feeling of being held, held by a long summer day spent outside. The feeling of being wild, running around in bare feet with dirty fingernails, innocent and energized, that's what it means to be childlike. Even being afraid of unlikely or imagined events gives the sensation of being small. Small and held.

So I look around myself, and I wonder how to satisfy that craving. I know that, ultimately, people can't do that. Spirituality is a whole other topic for me right now, too. And, when I question the deepest of deep in me, I know that I get that wild, small feeling when I'm doing my work, as in writing, singing, using my hands. So for today, that's my choice. I choose to engage in my tasks, and to even embrace the fear that comes with that, just to let myself feel small again.

Shake.

I go for my test in two days, to find out if the cancer is still gone, or if it has come back. Either way, I'm getting cupcakes. I must admit, I have totally bought into the cupcake craze, and am still loving them. I have been told of a place on Whyte that sounds good. So, after I'm done at the hospital, I am going straight for a cupcake.

After finding out about the cancer this fall, I had this strange visual of myself. I pictured myself as a tree, a Christmas tree, that was given a good shake. All the ornaments and dead needles fell off, and I was left with only what mattered. I had clarity.

It's funny, because I don't know what I could have done to give me this clarity, if not for the circumstances that happened in my life this fall. Actually, I don't think I would have gained this clarity if it weren't for the cancer. I kind of see now why people say cancer can sometimes be a gift, because it has certainly given me much: a completely new way of looking at and experiencing life. And I am also extremely lucky, as it was discovered so early that I only needed minor surgery, no radiation or chemo.

But in addition to giving, it has also taken away my sense of stability, safety, and invincibility. I know that's probably a good thing, but it has also been painful. It's painful to be woken up when it was easier living in an illusion. It's painful to question the very roots of your life and previous beliefs. It's painful to be unsure of your future. It's painful to be afraid.

I don't have any grand conclusions to state, or any eloquent way to end this post. I read in my psych text that courage means having fear and continuing to act. That's kind of the theme of this blog, it's about not letting the fear eat me up. Instead, I will stand on these two quivering legs and keep walking today. Maybe this is a message for my future-self to read, I don't know. But here it is.

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.

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.