Let me leave

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I will fall into your solitary abyss

Submit to this pain

Break into ruins

If it means I can go home

I will let go of all my dreams

I just need the mountains

I am part of the green island

More cedar than stone

I will leave quartz and amethyst

For a potential tsunami

I am sick of winter hurricanes

And ice in my sinew

If going home to peace means

You beat me with ice

I will take off my parka and let you

Take my books

Rip my pages

Steal my words

Just let me leave

Alive

Letting the obsolete go

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I have been working on lightening up my life lately. When I go back to BC I will have to squeeze my life into a much smaller space so this big memory trunk filled with all my notes from university and my journals from my life just had to go.

I am not a sentimental person. I rarely look back on the past, more interested in the future. I also do not like holding onto things. My kitchen is the only place where I have a lot of "stuff" but I use it, all of it. These notebooks? Why am I holding on to my silly words?

I thought I was going to be a professional writer. I went to school dedicated to this idea. But it never really happened. Looking through these journals I am beginning to see why. I was writing how I thought a writer should write. Or I wrote about boys, a smoke screen to family pain. Later on when I got sick, all I could do was write about pain. Until I couldn't stand those words any longer.

I still have the journals. I am considering letting them go into the recycling bin. I did let go of my academic notes but I held on to my papers. I worked hard on those. Each day my life gets a little lighter. Perhaps one day this raft I am building will be light enough to float its way home again.

I think it is time to wake up from adolescent dreams. It is time to be honest. Maybe it is time for a new vision of myself?

Stepping into the creative void

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Back in the dark, hiding from the rain, I sat at my desk and listened to it pour outside my crafts room window. Recently I bought these beautiful keychains, overwhelmed with a sudden desire to turn them into necklaces. They looked like perfect pendants to me. I like to "go with the energy" but it has been almost a year since I wanted to make anything and here I was, drawn to these sacred stones.

Not knowing what this meant, I drew a card from The Pagan Tarot and got the Fool card. This particular fool walks on stars and faith through the universe.

This is the first time I have gotten any message from "out there" that I am on a path. I am listening. I will continue walking. At least now I feel like I am going somewhere. I may do nothing with them but for once I feel the energy moving and little encouraging whispers speak to me.

Wreck Shannon's Journal

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When my sister Shannon was visiting we took her to Peggy's Cove and she had the fantastic idea of taking her journal out for a swim:

Great wrecking! In fact, the journal had many adventures here in Nova Scotia but I will let her tell her own wrecking stories on her blog.

Personally, I have lost steam. I loved watching her come up with fantastic ideas and I helped her with some of the creative problem solving. I may be done with the book a little ahead of time. My energy has been quite low lately, I think despite getting two nice days of weather I have just given up hope that summer is ever going to get here.

I wanted to thank my sister Jamie for doing such a great job getting us all to dig in to our wrecking potential and unleashing our inner rebel.

Shannon goes home **sniff**

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Shannon is now safely home and celebrating her birthday! Happy Birthday Shannon! We celebrated while she was here a lot. Here she is at the infamous and nostalgia Chicken Burger in Bedford.

This restaurant has been here forever!

My husband is on holidays this week and we "share" the computer so I probably won't be back to "real" posting until next week but it's been nice to have stuff to do and places to go. We only got two nice days of summer while Shannon was here and now we are back to dark and dreary.

What a treat to have family visit so we could hang out, laugh, watch movies and just relax together. It is always hard for me to say good-bye but after such a great visit, it just makes me look forward to getting to spend time with Shannon in the future.

Tall Ships Festival

Shannon had absolute perfect timing with her trip, she has been here during the Tall Ships Festival! I hope you enjoy the slideshow of the tall ships, they always transport me back in time. What a treat!

Shannon visits Peggy's Cove

The sun finally came out and as a rite of passage for visiting Nova Scotia, we headed out to Peggy's Cove. We were not disappointed, the waves were quite spectacular and could not have picked a more beautiful day. This is the first time we were in summer sun and being outside for well over a year. As a result I actually ended up getting burned a little!

A day by the ocean in the warm sun, talk about regeneration! And Shannon finally got to see some of Nova Scotia.

Update in the dark

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The weather continues to be so dark here and yesterday when we finally had the chance to go out and DO something it POURED! The air was white with torrential rain. So we made tea, ate cake and watched more and more fantastic movies that Shannon brought with her.

The weather report says that it's going to be warmer and potentially less depressing starting today but so far we aren't seeing it. Let's keep our fingers crossed because there is much more to Nova Scotia than my neighbourhood for Shannon to see.

Neglect This Journal

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It started to rain the other day and with Shannon visiting, I decided I was going to Neglect This Journal just a little more. Actively and consciously this time. I went out while it was raining and left it besides my also-neglected culinary herbs.

We watched the journal get rained on from my living room table as we ate our lobster lunch.

I let the rain soak into the journal for a while and then:

Hung it out to dry from the clothesline in my backyard. That is as much as I could do this week but at least I did something!

For those new to my blog, due to health reasons I can not roam the internet universe like I used to so please do not feel pressured to comment but if you want to, you would make my day.

Spoiling Shannon

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We started off our first full day of hanging out together with getting lobster! It's quite a story, I will write about it on my foodie blog sometime, but we got the most amazing lobsters from the Superstore. I made garlic butter and our Mom's cucumber salad to go with it. What Shannon wasn't anticipating was...

Shannon, a little overwhelmed with homemade goodness

Pecan pie with homemade caramel sauce for dessert! She had never dreamed of dessert with lunch but as rich as lobster is, we needed something to fill us up for a while because I had my curry chicken with rice pilaf and glazed carrots to make for dinner.

Yup, I am spoiling Shannon rotten and loving it! Perhaps I won't go so crazy with food today, hold back a little but I don't know if I can. Nothing makes me want to cook, bake and eat more than being with family. 

She totally spoiled us with bringing a ton of movie and we watched JCVD with our dinner last night and was blown away! My husband and I love martial arts movies so we are big Jean-Claude Van Damme fans and I knew this particular movie probably would never make its way to Nova Scotia. Good thing we have the Movie Moxie with us! The movie was phenomenal and my heart went out to JCVD, what a stunning performance and he himself was so heartbreakingly wonderful. 

We have rain on the way but today is sunny, I can hear the lawn mowers going. It's going to be another great day, I can feel it.

Shannon's here!

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My sister Shannon the Movie Moxie is here! I can still hardly believe it. Can you tell we're happy to see each other?!

Here she is with my husband who is so looking forward to watching all the international martial arts movie Shannon brought with her! I am too but wow, getting to watch horror movies with Shannon? I can hardly wait!

I had to include this funny picture Shannon accidentally took of her foot in my kitchen with my new camera! LOL, oh yes, the silly madness has already begun. I made homemade pizza with strawberry spinach salad and fresh local strawberry crepes for dessert. I wonder if Shannon's ever going to want to leave?

We have already had a few giggling fits and my husband looked at me so happy to see me laughing, it's been a long, long time. Nobody can make me laugh as hard as Shannon. She has already brought me to tears with silly joy already from a misunderstanding on how ice cream grows on plants. (Long story)

So perhaps there will be some lightness and fun to my personal blog and life for once, this may actually end up being a less gloomy place for you all to visit. What joy but hey, that is Shannon's specialty. 

Toto, there's no way in hell this is home

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My counsellor out in BC who is helping me keep sane until I can finally really connect with my new counsellor out here recommended I listen and read more of Caroline Myss' work so I ordered the CD Fundamentals of Spiritual Alchemy from the library. In it she discusses how in your late 30s or early 40s that if you have not evolved enough out of your original archetype, life is going to make you.

She uses the example of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz who gets swept away by a tornado so she can end up liberating herself in Oz. She goes into very specific details and over analyzes the story IMHO just a tad but it got me thinking about this stupid path I myself am on.



Is this my Oz? I took this picture while lying down on the floor in my room. I am a horrible listener and my back was hurting so I decided on this dark day to just flake on the floor and look at my life from an alternative perspective while listening to the CD.

When we found out that we were in fact moving from BC to NS, we were given three days' notice that the movers would be coming and that our flight was in a week. This was two days after my husband had come home from training and had been away for six weeks. We had two days to laugh and be happy about him finishing his course and then the tornado hit.

Less than two months later we had a head-on collision less than two blocks from our house and were taken to the hospital in an ambulance. It is as if we had spent all that time up in the safety of air and sky and it took six weeks for us to fall to the ground in one giant crash. I had the bruises and sore ribs and breastbone to prove it.

Since then, it feels like darkness has followed us. We have friends and family to help us down this crappy brick road so we are not utterly alone but still, I can not help but think there is no place like home.

Where is the witch I need to defeat? Is she me? I mean, this is all my fault. Coming here was all my idea. How do I douse myself and turn into goo? When can I go home?

Caroline Myss says that Dorothy always has this power and so do we. To be honest, sometimes that is utter bullshit. Sometimes you get stuck. Sometimes there is nothing you can do but scream.

I just know when I go back, when I am truly able to click those heels and go home, I will never look back.

Confessions of a complete and utter loser

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I admit it. I have no energy left to wreck. I am wrecked. I am done. Exhausted. Depleted. Broken. 

I wanted to do something to the book this week. I was hoping to do it yesterday. But yesterday? Well, it sucked. 

I went outside to find out the someone has yet again put my plastic, glass and metal containers in with my paper to be recycled and so I got another notice telling me that I wasn't recycling correctly and have yet another week's worth of recycled material hanging out outside my house. My husband thinks it may be someone trying to do identify theft. They probably just took any bottles they can get money for. Still, now I have to call the RCMP.

Then I saw these kids crossing my lawn, going down my driveway and hanging out on my property. I went out on the deck and told them to get off my property. I'm sure I will now be a victim of some kind of vandalism. I don't care.

At my wit's end, I was down to the bus stop to go to an appointment with my therapist. The day before I was wearing fuzzy socks and a heavy sweater, it was that chilly. Yesterday it gets warm. The bench at the bus stop is inside an all-glass box and it had all sorts of flying creatures stuck inside. I had gotten there early because the buses are completely erratic here. My head starts to ache from the sun baking it through the glass ceiling. I start to feel dizzy. I stand up and go outside and call the bus stop number. The bus runs every half hour. The recording says a bus will be there in 20 minutes. What the hell? I have been here half an hour already, how can that be? 

I wait another five minutes and then call my therapist, telling her I was on the verge of passing out. She told me to go home. I trek through the muddy path and start to cross the little garbage-filled river to go home when I hear the bus go by! There are not enough swear words to cover what my brain was thinking. I went home fuming mad.

I go home and think to myself, trying to stay positive, well now I have time to make the Olive Garden Breadsticks and Salad recipe I wanted to make but did not have the time. When I made the dough, the bowl got completely wedged and I could not get it out. I hammered at it with my rolling pin and broke off the bottom part of the handle. I put my head on my counter and turned on my radio so the neighbours wouldn't hear and I cried. I cried a lot. 

There are some bright spots to my day though. Bohemian Mom who so completely rocks my world sent me this book she got from Value Village about a woman who lives in a haunted town home in Greenwich Village. Nothing cheers me up more than ghost stories. I had some sunflower seeds which is my favourite book-reading treat and I hung out and cooled off in my living room and got lost in a fantastic ghost story. The paranormal always calms me down for some reason, LOL. I'm just weird that way.

My husband comes home today. He has only been gone a week and I seem to have pathetically fallen apart without him. Some feminist I am. He is my rock though. He brings me such joy and we have been through absolutely everything together. It will be nice to not be entirely alone and have my best friend back home with me.

I can also now finally announce that my sister Shannon the Movie Moxie is coming to visit next week for over a whole week! OMG, I still can't believe it. It's like a dream that she will be here hanging out with me. Oh the movies we will watch! The fun, the food and the giggles. Stay tuned.

So I guess I am not a complete loser. There are days that I feel like that though. Like nothing will ever go right again. I am so grateful that I have friends and family that are determined to prove me wrong. To drag me out of my despair and make me laugh or spook me out of my apathy. I hope that next week I get to do some real wrecking with Shannon and show the world that this mega rebel is back. With a vengeance.

The land that doesn't care

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For the first time in my life, I hate going for walks. I put them off. I make them task-oriented and get them overwith as quickly as possible. Perhaps I just notice things other people don't see. Perhaps I dwell on the crap but I can't help it. More and more I know my totem is the owl. I see the truth. I see the darkness with the dark. 

We have a FREE electronics recycling program near us and yet this guy dumped his computer monitor in the ditch in front of his house. The lamp he put out is now sitting in his neighbour's ditch in front of his house. They will be there indefinitely. One house once dumped a couch upside down into their own ditch one day. Thankfully someone did finally come and pick that up but the stroller that got dumped by the little river here is still there, the green growth is now swallowing it up.

This morning I woke up to yet more Tim Horton's cups near my driveway. That's better than the puke from the teen kids who party every weekend at the flop house down my street. How many times do we have to call the cops? One guy took a cigarette lighter to our front lawn and my husband was getting ready to take out his baseball bat when the cops showed up and ushered over 30 kids off our street. We have had them hiding in our backyard and on our deck before. We have considered barbed wire but unfortunately that is illegal.

This is where I live. This is why I don't go outside. Why? Why should I? 

No positive thinking is going to make a difference to a place that does not care. I can not be a full time cleanup crew for the boneheads who live here. 

So I turn to an inner life. I watch a lot of TV and read books. I go out and buy my food and rush home and lock the door. I escape in my kitchen. 

At least today, the sun has finally come out. Maybe I will not rush home this morning and enjoy the light. 

Going wild

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Believe it or not, these are survivors of my garden. I planted a strawberry plant last year and forgot about it. I was told that the plants must be replanted each year so I thought it was a lost cause. The other day I was shocked to see that the suckers from last year had planted themselves and there were strawberries everywhere! Most of them rotten and resting against the ground but I did find these red jewels who survived my lack of gardening enthusiasm.

Last week Jamie's wish for Wishcasting was, "What do you wish to nurture?" Sadly, I felt queasy just thinking about it and knew I was not going to participate with coming up with a wish because I have no interest in being a nurturer and I realized, that is totally OK.

I have often heard people say that all women have maternal and nurturing instincts in them somewhere but I can say that is definitely not true. I have no interest in taking care of anything. This does not make me a bad person. I still love, I still care and I still help but I do not nurture. I am not maternal. 

I have gotten more attention and backlash for not being a mom or motherly than any other controversial element in my life. Many people find this notion to be completely unnatural, abhorrent even. Even I have felt ashamed, that I must be selfish and a horrible person to not want to nurture others.

When I look out my kitchen window at the herbs on my deck, I see my basil is withering away to nothing but the rosemary has gone completely crazy, growing in all directions. The oregano is blossoming and I think the thyme is doing OK. I have not watered them. I have rarely visited them. I am letting them go wild. 

If I could live anywhere, it would be on Vancouver Island with a large property where everything runs wild. Nothing would be cultivated or domesticated, including me. 

To just be and let others be, including the animals and plants, that is what I am about. Freedom. 

Breaking out of the darkness isn't easy

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Believe it or not, this is my kitchen at noon this past Sunday. The original photo was even darker, this is the LIGHTENED photo. As someone who does food photography, I am beyond frustrated. I am also sickened that both quotes I got for painting this kitchen all white were over $1000. I even said yes to one company who continuously forgot to cash my deposit and refused to call me to arrange a time to come and paint it. So I stopped payment on the cheque and said, screw you.

I was used to living half the year in the dark. To live the entire year in the dark, well, there just is not enough Vitamin D to make up for it. Sure, we will get a little view of the sun here and there but for the most part, I live in darkness: physical and metaphorical. Even the moonlight will have a hard time cutting through the night-time fog.  


Downtown Halifax after the Tattoo (I don't live in Halifax, my friends had to come and get me)

The Blessing Moon was this morning and I woke up to a fibro flare in my left leg. The other night I had night terrors all night. So I woke up and asked The Pagan Tarot Cards to give me a light in the dark and I got:

The Eight of Cups. What does that card mean to me? Escape. Leave! Run away and never look back.

Thanks. Thanks a lot. Now I know why people in horror movies don't just leave their haunted houses. It is not that simple. 

What I am hoping for is that the cards are telling me I will one day escape. I will get back on my path of light. Hold on, don't give up hope.

For now, I can barely walk and somehow have to get food and right now, just getting up my steps is a huge journey. But I am going to do it. I need to get out into the wan frail sunlight for a little while to pick up my library books and get food for dinner. 

Each day is one small step out of here. I have to believe this. It's the only thing keeping me sane. That and my books and my food. 

Of course after I posted this the sun came out! Oh well, whatever works right?

...and it's gone again. Good grief! What a tease. At least I got to the library and grocery store so I have more books and food to keep me going. Thank you for your comments, reiki, light and good thoughts. I'll get through this, with your help. 

The Mirage in the Desert

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More than six years ago was my last desert period. We were broke, my husband was laid off from his job, we lived on a mountain in BC and were screwed. I lived in fear of becoming homeless on that mountain for three and a half years before our life turned around. While I was there I was threatened by cancer and escaped its grasp. I even encountered a bear who I had woken up during a hot summer afternoon to his complete and utter fury. Fear, yeah, I know it well.

I first heard of the term "desert period" from the psychic Sylvia Browne. When we could afford the gas, my husband would drive me down to the library for me to pick up books written by Sylvia and those books got me through this long period of waiting for life to get better. She says that a desert period will come upon you in life where you feel scared, helpless, alone and there is absolutely nothing you can do to get out of it. You just have to keep walking, survive life, until you come to the end of the dessert and this could take years and years.

Until I had gotten this book out of the library, I had never heard of such a thing before. A period of helplessness and despair and powerlessness, could there be anything more terrifying?

Recently I wrote about how I have no connection to nature here. It does not matter where I go, what I see...I feel nothing. I am not connected. It is as if all of nature around me is only just a mirage within my existential desert. I can see it but I can not feel it.

I am not completely without feeling though. Watching Harper's Island, each time I see the islands off the coast of BC it's like a dagger in my heart. To see Hatley Castle in Smallville, I start to weep. I do not know how many times I have taped shows on time shifting to have recorded something on a BC channel where suddenly we see our forests, our waters and my husband and I grab our chests, like our hearts are going to leap out and leave us for the west coast.

I moved away from home 14 years ago. I have moved almost ten times since then. I think nothing of packing up and leaving for my next adventure. Until now. And now I am stuck. People show me the beauty here, thinking it will change something. But it doesn't. In this desert, nature here is all smoke and mirrors and brings no comfort to me at all.

So I will keep walking. I will keep reading. I wait. I wait for the day that this is all over. I will cook, bake and sleep. This desert has to end sometime.

Seeing in the dark with Hekate

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"Hekate embodies both the beauty and the terrors of the night. She was the patroness of psychics and fortune-tellers. Her mood and atmosphere is the one you feel when you see a huge yellow moon on a dark night. She belongs in the dark places - alleys, corners, alcoves - and therefore is the perfect patroness for your dark night of the soul."

~ Thomas Moore

In Moore's book Dark Nights of the Soul he describes Hekate's gifts in great length. She is a lesser know Goddess which is ironic considering she is the one who sees and lives in the dark. He recommends connecting with that part of yourself that is there with her. What do you discover when you turn off the last of the lights?

To indulge this idea I decided to rent scary movies. I love horror movies (although I just say no to slasher movies, that's a different kind of horror). I rented Repo! The Genetic Opera and even though I was disappointed with the movie overall, I did adore its Gothic sensibilities among all the gore. 

The element that stuck out the most was for me was Sarah Brightman. Her character Blind Mag gave me goosebumps. You see, when I was in high school I was obsessed with Phantom of the Opera which probably dates me a little but I don't care. It was Sarah Brightman who inspired me to take singing seriously. She was everything I wanted to be. Turns out that voice only blooms once in a generation. So I found my voice on the page but still, when I see her, oh how I yearn to be like her.

When I saw the above image of her in Repo, she was Hekate to me. A woman who was blind and now can see better than anyone, a little frightening looking...this is who Hekate is to me. I have printed this image out and will put it on my altar. Although she may be scary at first, she is absolutely riveting to me now. I will try and see in this darkness with her, let her teach me the blessings of my long and dark nights.

Blessed be.

Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo

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My fantastic friends Mike and Jen took me out to see the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo last night (what would I do without you guys?). We had no idea what we were in store for, we just knew this was a popular event and was all about the military and it was amazing! OK, well, if you do not like bag pipes you may hate it but I love them.

I was expecting marching bans but the Paris Police Force Gymnastics Team?! Nope! They completely blew everyone away with their synchronized gymnastics.

There was a lot of local dance troop talent but then you had these amazing women dancing in the sky or filling the air with ribbons! Lovely. 

Our military competed against each other by completely taking apart a jeep and then putting it back together. 

Some flare-like baton twirling!

And tons of music. I really did love the flare of the Belgium military band who danced around as they played swanky music that made me laugh. 

But it was the American fife and drum band that stole my heart. Wearing period costume, they swept me away with their music. The drums solo was absolutely fascinating but when the fife flutes played their solo, it was as if the entire stadium was filled with the song of birds. Absolutely my favourite moment of the night. 

Click to enlarge

It is hard to describe the grand scope of the evening. Let's put it this way, when we reached the intermission I was convinced the show was over, we had seen so much and I could not imagine getting to see more. I could have done without the dancing cowgirls with the RCMP officers but hey, that's just me and my taste. There was definitely something for everyone at the Tattoo and I am so glad I got to go! Bagpipes and all.

Especially the bagpipes, LOL.