Carrots

Children are a mystery. Just when you think you have them figured out they ask for carrots at bed time. Yes, carrots. Not cookies, or toys, or a drink of water, or one more story, but carrots. This is why I think my son has completely figured out life. On some level he must know that eating a vegetable, any vegetable, is the only thing that would give him another twenty minutes of delay before bed. Maybe this is something only another parent would understand, but as he sat on the couch, doodling with a pen and paper and munching on carrot coins, I felt truly delighted and proud… and bewildered. Even more so when after finishing all, yes all, of his carrot, he went happily back to bed, no arguments.

So to all parents struggling to get their kids to bed, or struggling to get them to eat something other than noodlesbreadpotatoesrice, miracles do happen, we are living proof.

Calgary Folk Music Festival

There is pure magic in outdoor music festivals. It nourishes the wildness we all crave when we have spent too long within the confines of home and office. It is a mini escape to the natural ebb and flow of living a life affected by weather. It is so necessary, being outside, almost as necessary as music. A restrictive person might try to convince you that nature and music are luxuries, and I suppose they might be if we lived in a developing country. But music is the heart’s call for connection, from one human being to another. Music creates community and defines cultures. And nature… Nature is the first beat, echoed on the drums throughout the world. Being outdoors not only unites us as people but it unites us with the world where we live. I am so grateful to these brilliant festivals and festival organizers and volunteers. They create an oasis of music in the heart if the city every year, and that is a lot to be thankful for.

Bend

Being flexible… it is the definition of youth. Flexibility in both mind and body. It is the essence is adaptability; being able to respond to new conditions with strength, ease and grace. Over and over I am reminded that strength is not in rigid thoughts or restrictive behavior, but in sensitivity and suppleness. It is yin, the ultimate feminine principle, to achieve great strength through subtlety. Such is the power of the ocean, based on one simple concept, water flows downhill. From that, a great strength is gathered that can both sustain and destroy. The adaptability of water itself is a symbol of the flexibility that makes a person strong. Holding no shape, it molds worlds.

Tea time

 

Cakes for tea?? (Photo credit: joanneteh_32(loving Laduree))

 

I was reminded today of how much I loved teatime as a kid. Full with tiny cups and saucers and air for tea. I still love it. Though now I use actual tea and hot water instead of imagination. Today though, I used the playtime teatime to bring my imagination to my writing. Huzzah!

 

I often wonder if we are at our most creative when we are four or five. We would be old enough to have some pithy experiences in life, but young enough to not be ‘schooled’ out of our inherent imaginative play. Perhaps creativity as an adult is only based on tapping into the imaginative youngster you used to be.

 

Joyfull new beginnings

Joyful new beginnings surround me
As I step from old to new.
The pace of life ebbs and flows like the soft tug of the moon on the massive ocean. A tiny tug that whispers, “Over here! Over here! Follow me! Follow me!”. The long space between waves, the held breath. Poised and waiting for the next ride.

Time warp

Deja vu. Have I really been here before? Have you? You seem familiar to me.

Is it repetition or memory or a slide sideways through time?

Picnics in the park

I love summer. I shamelessly love it. I love summer an indecent amount. I revel in sunshine and summer storms. Yes, I love the rain and hail too! I love summer unconditionally and full throttle, nothing held in reserve.

As soon as June clicks in on the calendar, there is a slow internal count down that happens within me. And if you live in northern latitudes, you know when that count down stops; the day when you know that summer is over and it is fall. The end of summer where I live comes early, sometime in September.

Now it isn’t that I dislike the fall or the winter, I actually like them quite a lot. But it is a ‘like’ bordering, teetering, on love, similar to the depth of love you could feel on a first date. Full of possibilities, but there is something just… Hmm… odd about the season. And spring, well spring is just a gateway drug to summer.

The absolute best part of the summers where I live is that they are short. Yes, short. This glorious season, that I love, is best short. Because this wonderful sun only lasts a few short months, every moment is claimed. There is a space that opens up in life when everyday is savored to the fullest, and that savoring is easy in the summer. So even on a Monday night after working all day, it is the perfect opportunity to picnic in the park, just because the sun is shining.

If we were to write…

When I was about ten or eleven, I had a pen pal. She was my Grandma’s cousin and was about 50 years older than me. She was one of the coolest people I have ever met. She was the first person that I knew who talked about meditation and sustainable logging, long before either were cool. She traveled and wrote to me about her adventures. It was fantastic to get a letter addressed to ME from someone who was obliviously living a grand life.

It dawned on me that pen pals are a thing of the past (How many times do you write an actual letter in a year?). But this blogging thing, isn’t it a bit like having the whole world as your pen pal? How cool is it to connect with people, instantly on the other side of the planet. More and more the boundaries that once separated all of us fade in the wake of technology. It is easy to forget that not that long ago things were different. There was no need to unplug because we weren’t plugged in. Communication was slower, and some people could argue that the slowness and effort required made people value communication more then than now. But the sheer number of people blogging and twittering and posting tells me that the desire to hear and be heard to as strong as ever. It is just far easier now.

Still… if you wrote me a letter to tell me about your life, would it be more special than an IM?

I Appreciate

• playgrounds
• superhero pretend time
• movie dates
• sunshine
• farmer’s markets
• dinner on the balcony
• a good stretch

Writer’s fuel

 

Body Mind (Photo credit: DanAllison)

 

Words.

 

Words fuel writers.

 

More than that, it is the direction of creative energy through the body mind of the writer to the page (or screen). Writing ‘in the flow’ is a blissful thing. Hooking into this transcendent state is the drug that a writer joneses over when they get ‘blocked’. The process of writing, any kind of writing, is the primer for the pump to get that flow going. Writing keeps you writing.

 

Finding the freedom from having to be perfect or pleasing or any other conformity is a primary process in generating a mind that can plug into this ethereal ‘flow’. Surrendering to the process of writing in its most simple form, pen and paper, and letting go of everything else can open you and sweep you toward the page, now filled, with juicy sentences and luscious paragraphs.