Sometimes my life seems to swing back and forth from a wide open expanse to a tiny broom closet. I'm not sure what it is that throws me into the smaller space, but maybe my strategies aren't strong enough yet. I remembered today, for the first time in a few months, why it was so easy for me to not eat. It was because a convincing voice started to ask, "Eat? Why would I?" And I didn't have a good enough answer to counter it. The healthy voices somehow got buried - lost behind a big brain fog and a big ache in my heart. I know this will pass along, and I don't know if I should bother writing about it. But why the hell did I start this blog? I wonder if I should have kept this blog more private, and if it's inappropriate and weird to throw this out to whoever should happen to read it. I don't know. Today I was feeling that very big ache in my heart again - hey, c'est la vie. I really wondered why I would eat. It seemed odd that I would. But I put the food in the body and I went out for a walk with Cocoa, the lovely dog I'm looking after, and I felt better. All those waves of shame and humiliation that keep coming - I just have to let them come I guess... I know that the sense of futility is a trick, a real bad trick. A lot of movement happened this year, even under hard circumstances, and I've gotta keep trusting that I'll be able to get where I want to go. Big heart aches and all.

today's altitude

I am all dirty and my feet hurt, and I feel good. Hiked all day with an old friend (who is also a friend that is old... er.) He's a character, this man. Can scamper up mountains like a billy goat; spends most of his time working on trails (as a hobby), maintaining and clearing hiking paths, removing fallen trees, digging trenches, etc. He's the B.C. west coast's unsung hero of the mountains. It's not often that he lets himself just do a hike, for pleasure, and today was one of those rare occasions. We went up past Whistler and hiked up through some old growth woods into alpine meadows. Took us 4 hours to reach our destination before we turned around, and for me, that was a-plenty. But oh man, it was gorgeous up there. Wide open valleys sprinkled with alpine flowers; streams, tough old trees in huddled patches, and glaciers stark against the sky. The air was cold and fresh as snow.
By the time we got back down, I knew my feet were a mess - damned hiking boots! - skin came clean off both my heels, and toes blistered right up. But I was just so happy that my legs and lungs carried me uncomplainingly. I'm kicking myself that another summer has nearly passed without any overnight hiking. It's such a unique feeling, being up a mountain. I always wonder how in the hell I'm going to get back down. But I know that somehow I will; isn't that a beautiful thing?

..

crumb castle

Had about 1,000 good moments yesterday. Feeling so much better about this year ahead and its challenges. S and I mapped out the solar systems we intend to navigate, and spun ourselves into a tizzy about life and its possibilities.
Two days ago, I wrote something for a blog, and then abandoned it. It was this:
[It's vacation time. Challenge = stay on vacation. I've had 5 days off now, and have 4 to go. I think my Restless Leg Syndrome has been mis-diagnosed. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've got Restless Everything Syndrome. For some reason, every evening my legs fill up with ants and it is absolutely intolerable to lie still. Drives me mad - always lasts till the morning. I'm noticing a parallel sensation in my head during the day... I think it's the same ants! How did they get in there and how long have they been there?
My producer has been away for almost a month now, so I feel funnily on-pause with the album. I get squirmy all over with the feeling that I ought to be doing something. What the ants do is go marching all around collecting crumbs of guilt to bring back to the Queen, in the brain. They've built a crumb-castle in there, and it's a burdensome weight of evidence that I am making a mess.]
But that was a couple days ago. I do struggle with needing to feel productive. Not churning out much music right now - piano sitting right there. But I don't play it right now cause I don't need to - feeling so good being outside in the sun. Head full of music but not anything that I would grasp at and want to write down. More on this later maybe... I have a busy day of TCB ahead.

Rosey noseys

S is here - we had an awesome day together. No sense trying to recap. Just goodness from start to finish. Here's something very telling about us: we live in 2 different cities, neither of us buy a lot of stuff (ie. accessories, clothes etc.) And we both have near-identical hand bags. Black cloth, hand-made, little wooden buttons. And inside we have wallets that are identical except for colour. I promise we did not plan this. That's just how we are. Linked!

I am less Amish than I look...

Lily and I in a peaceful moment. I imagine there are lots of people who would call me an idiot for doing this.
I wouldn't feed an animal out in the wild. (Bowen doesn't really seem like 'the wild' for deer, since there are no real predators). I respect the natural order of things. But Lily is clearly already habituated to humans, and she has a pretty busy life of finding food for herself and her young, whether or not I feed her. Anyhow, she gets all the compost foods - like this bowl of green beans that were dry and mealy. She feasted like a queen on them. It's an amazing feeling to have a non-captive animal friend who regularly comes to visit. Even if her motives are plain. It takes the edge off loneliness, that's for sure.

Going back in time

Red sky from a forest-fire haze.

The Lobster

I needed 2 more credits to finish my degree a few years ago, so I took a painting class. I was very bad at it. Painting is unbelievably hard to do. (Well, obviously.) But you just can't understand how hard until you've tried it for a while. I kept a couple of pieces as a reminder that I was not born for the visual arts. But I don't like accumulating stuff, and during today's impromptu room-purge, I decided the Lobster has to go. That's what I call this painting: "The Lobster."


This painting, though less offensive to the senses, is also saying goodbye. There's one little tree in the painting that I like, and it was an accident. It was painted from a beautiful photo of a beautiful day, and the memory I have of that day is much happier left alone. At least I passed the painting class, and learned that acrylic paints are super fun, as long as there is no expectation of them revealing any hidden talent buried deep within me.

Heh heh.
..

Clumsy peacock

I think it's time for new hair.

I have a friend who is quite an artist when it comes to hair. I've known her for about 6 years now. We hang out at her house and I tell her to do what she likes on my head, and how crazy I'm feeling, and then she starts painting and cutting and wild things just happen. I haven't seen R for a little while, and my hair is a-suffering. We decided to let me look like a human this last year, so I've been brown-haired, and recently, a little more blonde. But I am starting to itch for some tropical birds 'dos again. I'm glad to have some pictures... these are some of the 12 or 15 hair masterpieces she's given me over the years. It sure has been fun.
Even though my friendship with R means that the process never costs me very much, there are never-the-less some drawbacks that made me want to take a hair-dying break: It takes 5-7 hours to do, stains the hell out of pillow-cases (and shower-walls if you're not careful), tends to make the scalp a bit unhappy, and draws a lot of unwanted attention. On the up-side, it can give people a conversation starter if you're craving some more human interaction, gets great reactions from kids, gives people the impression that you are really bold & gutsy (?), and requires much less tending and washing than healthy hair. (The bleaching and chemical processing leaves the hair so dry that you don't want to wash out the natural oils very often.)
So, maybe I'll just go see R and ask her if she feels inspired.
Anyways... this is the kind of blog that gets posted when a blogger is lying around, and impatient to go outside but overcome with weird dizziness and suspicious sensations in the head and legs. Okay, well, time's up on the lying around. Dizzy or not, I've got to get out of this house.

Maybe I'll come back later and fill up the rest of this empty text space.

Bye!

...

Well, I came back to write a little more. I took off one of the pictures. In fact, I almost deleted them all, then thought maybe I should just make them all tiny, and then just decided to leave it alone. (Then I came back 3 days later and took all of them off but one.)

I am going to call myself on something. I told someone the other day that I want to be transparent, and that I try to be. Well, that's bunk. I do try to be honest. But I hide lots of things too. What a stupid, lofty statement for me to make.

Why would I want to be transparent, anyway? Open, yes. See-through, no.
I also said something to the effect of, "I'd answer any question a person could think to ask me. People just never ask." Those are some high n' mighty words, all right. And I would like to take them back right now. I've got some long, deep roots of inadequacy, and the thought of someone just seeing all of me, for who and what I really am, is not very comfortable. And that's the truth, my friends. I am sometimes very open. And sometimes very closed. I guess it takes a lot of practice.

Here was a perfect moment from today:
Drawing slow figure-8s on my bike, on a quiet road a few hours ago. It was so quiet, truly so quiet, that I could hear air streaming past me, even when I was circling at a snail's pace. My ego-mind just went to sleep and there was a voice that said, 'shh, don't wake her...' Just tiny whispers of wind in my ears. I think that was me seeing all of me... and there was a lot of space. What a relief.

Lily and her long lashes, a harvest, and heart peels.

My mother is a respite-care night-nurse. Her job is to go to a family's home and look after an ill child so the parents can rest. These are always sad cases. 24-hour-care children, with respirators, tube-feeds, you name it. My mom takes this in stride - actually, it's a very tame gig for her. She used to work in a Hospice for dying children. Before that she worked for 12 years in adult Palliative Care, nursing the terminally ill. Mostly AIDS patients, lots of cancer, cases that often presented in horrific and gruesome ways at the end. She knows what death looks, smells and sounds like, and she knows the intimacy of grief & its bereavement. When I was a kid she used to take me to the wards sometimes. This was good for me. She didn't try to shelter me from those odd-smelling, strange-feeling, quiet rooms, and it was scary. But the patients always seemed happy to see a child, and after my fear subsided, then my pity would turn into sympathy and then, I think, compassion. I was always in awe of my Mom, speaking in her hushed tones and asking about their pain. Could sense that she was just how they needed her to be. She does not lose herself in the face of others' pain or panic or grief, but holds everything calmly in a big wide space, and is loving. Am thinking about all this today, because Mom told me about her new patient last night. Without going into details, let me tell you this is just such a sad, sad story. An exquisite new baby girl, perfect in every way except that she has been born with a rare and cruel disease that will make her life short and full of suffering. How can anyone stand this? Those poor parents... I am glad my Mom will be there to help them.

Of the countless number of physical failings that could cause me true physical pain and discomfort and limit my life, I currently have none. If I have a baby one day, that baby may not be so lucky. What then? Could I live with myself for having rejected my gift of perfect health? This thought makes my heart constrict. But I am not feeling low today. That kind of constriction sloughs off the hard outer peel of my feeling, makes me more soft and receptive. I woke early, left the house quickly, walked through the forest for a long time. I ate well. I swam in the ocean (today so clear!), and slept in sunshine. Spent an hour harvesting fruit and came closer than I ever have to my deer friends. Lily ate a bowl of green beans out of my lap while I stroked and stroked her neck. I am a tiny speck of life, still poised in the air, and that is some kind of miracle. That's about all I know.

...

outside

S is here now, and she visited me on my lunch break ; we talked fast and hungrily, stoked up each other's dreams. The rest of the day I spent in anticipation of coming home. Ahh. Stopped at a produce market on the way; loaded my backpack full of peaches and nectarines. (Mouth was watering for them.) Changed into island scrubs on the boat. Stepped onto land with a deep exhale. Walked home slowly, re-acclimatizing the senses and the mind to quiet and small details. I don't practice noticing things enough in the city. (Don't want to notice?) So I just walked and tried to pay attention to everything I'd been missing.

A swallow nest high up the trunk of a tree reminded me of one I discovered in a parking garage during the festival. The odd half-bowl of dried mud was molded to a concrete wall, just below the ceiling, and crammed with baby birds. I only found it because a swallow skimmed over my head one day, and I heard a tiny racket above me. Looked up at 6 open mouths! They were so big and the nest was so small, it seemed impossible. A few days later, my heart jumped when I saw a little fledgling on the ground. Injured? But then it flew up and away, and I found the mud nest empty.

Part of my walk is along a main island road. I noticed garbage on the shoulder today. Uck. Why do people do this? Why? It was a large ziplock bag. I picked it up, thinking about all the times I see garbage outside and feel irritated but do nothing. Then there was more garbage. And more garbage. I filled up that bag to the brim. Filthy sock. Cigarette packet. Paper, plastic, etc. Then I emptied it into a garbage can, continued on, and filled it again. I mostly just felt strangely about never having done this before. It makes me wince to see this place I love disrespected with human filth. So it felt like kind of a repentant act to clean some of it up. Thank you, sweet earth. Sorry about all of this.

Then I saw blackberries. Lots of them. Without thinking, I plucked one, and then stopped myself just before it went into my mouth. (Whoa- garbage hands!) And then noticed a tiny little winged insect on my fingertip. Pale green and translucent, quite pretty. It was trying to fly away but one wing was stuck to me, probably with blackberry juice. Spent a good minute carefully peeling its delicate little wing off my skin, holding my breath in fear I would tear it. And then it flew away.

...

Get-well-jail

Apart from the usual ickiness of back-to-back days in town, I am heavy with some serious questions. Concerning 3 months of my life.

So, I've been on the wait-list for the St.Paul's residential eating disorder program for a long time. I've been on the wait-list for several programs, actually, and on Wednesday I finally was admitted to their out-patient program. (These wait-lists can be up to 12 months long.) I'm really glad about this, because it means that they provide me with weekly individual councelling (in addition to the weekly therapist I've been seeing for the last 6 months), a personal nutritionist, and group and family therapy if I want it. This all takes place at Vista house, which is their residential treatment centre. So I had this long meeting with the coordinator there, and she told me that I would stay in the out-patient program until my name comes up for the residential program. And the deal with the residential program is this: I'd live at Vista house (with 6 or 7 other patients) for 3 months. Every day we'd have breakfast (monitored), and then go to St.Paul's for an all-day therapy regime, come home for dinner and reflections, etc. If I wanted to leave Vista I'd have to get a day-pass. I've known about this for a long time, but I didn't think my name would come up until the winter. But, in fact, later that day I got a call to start the Readiness program, which you have to graduate from in order to start at Vista house. So it sounds like if I decided to go into Vista, it could be as early as October.

Holy shit!

My mind has been slightly blown these last few days. Firstly, I feel like such an imposter - like they've mistaken me for someone else. I don't look anorexic anymore... was that all just a dream? Did I invent it? But they don't admit anyone who hasn't already done a whole bunch of work, gained a healthy BMI, and is committed to full recovery. Still I feel like they might kick me out after a week or two. (They tell me that all anorexics think they don't deserve to be called anorexic, are not ill enough or thin enough to deserve treatment.) Secondly, the thought of living with other anorexics is slightly horrifying... as is being trapped in an inconspicuous east van house with nothing beautiful around it. Thirdly, this is 3 whole months of putting my life on pause. No work, no socializing, no hanging out on Bowen, no marketing of the album...
My first instinct is to turn it down. Without it, I'll still have 2 weekly therapists (!), a nutritionist, medical supervision, and access to group programs. Surely, that will be enough for me to really conquer this in due time. But on the other hand, Vista has rave reviews as being an incredible, transformative experience. It's a precious resource, and I am damned lucky to have a chance to use it. I won't have to pay anything. And maybe it's what I need to truly uproot this thing. But how can I leave my job for 3 months? What about my tropical escape in the winter? What about my music?
Blargh.
Input on this would be most welcome.

...

ribbit

Time to put on my frog-suit. I'm goin' into the city.

Shared Waters

Some deer have just shown up for snacks. One of them looks a lot like Lily, but she's not as ribby- maybe younger. She's got a little fawn too. Today grapes are on the menu - overripe ones. These ladies love them. They're all gone now, but the Momma deer is still standing about 10 feet away, staring at me expectantly. And now she has huffed at me. Actually huffed in exasperation. I guess she wants another plum-feast like yesterday! We have a big plum tree in the fenced part of our yard. I collected all the bruised ones on the ground and threw them over to the deer. The fawn could barely fit the little yellow plums in her mouth. They just kept shooting out of her jaws, getting more and more slippery with each attempt. Finally, she'd get a hold of it between her grinders, and GOOSH! Juice and pulp everywhere! I think she got some in her ears, because her mom came over and gave them a good cleaning afterwards.

It seems weird, I guess, to be typing on a computer while I'm sitting outside in this beautiful calm scene, but the laptop is working much better for me than pen and paper these days. Feeling so good right now. I was given another day off, unexpectedly, and so I got to ride my bike again and swim again, and nap outside again. After dinner, tangled in the blackberry brambles, with my pajama bottoms tucked into my wooly socks against the skeetos, and garden clogs, and comfy sweater and still-pruney fingers and salt-wirey hair and skin stretched out from sun and smiling. It struck me, so simply, that I don't need much more than this. I really don't. Now I've got my Charlie cat sniffing around, and the deer are gone, and I just feel so whole and calm. Wouldn't I just love to buy a little parcel of land on an island - even a remote and inaccessible one - and build a home... I don't know how to build a home, but I'd love to do it all the same. Maybe a home with lots of different spaces, separate suites even, so I could live there with family or friends. Not be alone, but not be crowded. And all that space and all that quiet everywhere around me.

I read a book once that I loved called The Curve of Time. Thinking about it today. Want to re-read it cause the details are all lost. It was a biographical book about an amazing B.C. woman named M. Wylie Blanchet. It was 1925 or so when her husband died and left her with 5 young children. They didn't have much... but there was a boat. A boat just large enough for them all to sleep in, if they were stacked up on every surface. She'd learned enough from her husband about navigating in the ocean, so she up and took her kids out in this boat, for 4 or 5 months straight that summer. And then did it again every single year after that. Up and down the B.C. coast, exploring all the islands, all the inlets, and the totally untouched country. Just unbelievable, these stories. She's one of my personal heros.

Some great lines I came across today - Wordsworth remembering his younger self visiting his beloved countryside. Saying he was "...more like a man Flying from something that he dreads than one who sought the thing he loved. " I want to always be sure that wherever I am, it is from seeking and not hiding.

...

Thimble-fulls of neutrons

Today is a perfect day. I had a good long bike ride, a good long walk, and even a good long swim. Well... maybe it was more like a short swim and a long float. This is a pic of my Dad and I talking about Outer Space. My Dad is a physics & space nut. Nothing makes him more happy than to be asked questions related to those topics. So I thought I'd make him happy and asked him about gravity and why the moon doesn't fall down, etc. (I seriously can never retain stuff like that.) So we talked about how you could hook up a Great Glass Elevator if you just had a 25,000 mile-long cable, and pull yourself up to the space station. I learned that a thimble-full of matter from a neutron-star can weigh more than a mountain. Wow! I also learned that the moon is falling down. Really slowly.

Anyhow, I certainly got my exercise today. My legs are feeling we-eak. I won't get my strength back by next week, that's for sure. Which means that when my Montreal darlin' comes to visit, she will kick my butt going up the mountain.

I haven't really talked about S yet. I used to call her my best friend, but I'm not a big fan of that term. Cause if you can have a best friend, then you can also have a worst friend, which is stupid. Instead, I call her my bosom friend, because I can tell her anything at all that's in my heart or on my chest. That's what Anne of Green Gables called Diana. You can scoff, if you want, but that was a bloody fantastic book. And they were fantastic friends.

So, S is about to start her second year in Montreal, where she's working on a Doctorate. She studies post-colonial immigrants in France and cultural tensions and racism and art and whatnot. I have her Master's thesis here, and I admit I've not yet really dived in. It's daunting, you know. She's a brilliant girl, and I want to do the thing justice and be able to discuss it with her. I don't know how she ever became an almost-30, almost-Doctor. She doesn't look much different from when I first knew her in high school. Just stronger, more self-possessed, more beautifully blazing. She has her own heavy battles, but pushes through it all with such spirit. Becoming a master ass-kicker with Taekwondo, delving deep into therapy, conquering the world of Academia, stoking up all her fires - truly inspiring.

S and I got piercings together in Grade 11 (she: eyebrow, me: nose) and we did ridiculous things all the time. We smoked huge cigars once and made ourselves really ill. We also made ourselves really ill with other things, and skipped class together to lie in this lovely field on an Indian Reserve on sunny days. (Until we were discovered and got kicked off.) We both played the piano very seriously. We both lived in the same suburb but went to a school far away. We both felt like pariahs, ostracized by the cool and the pretty. We both had outrageous and fantastic notions about what life should be, and we were both way too good at school and felt terrible pressure to be perfect successes. And then we both kind of fell apart after high school and got really lost. Our friendship phased out and in several times over the years, but we phased back in, in a major way, just over a year ago. Now we're both imperfect technically-successes moving towards completely smashing our notions of success and just trying to be happy and fulfilled instead.

There is a third person that with us makes a triangle, and his name starts with J. He's played a big part in our rotating lives - he was my best friend, then S's boyfriend, then S's best friend, then our shared best friend. I'll write an homage to him sometime too... But for now, this is my homage to S, the most devoted and kindred friend that I've ever had. The beautiful, brightly singing bird that flits outside my window, trills up in the trees, and beats her little wings so bravely.

I love you, S!

Lily

Almost a week since my last blog... I think my time went into a vacuum.

I know I have said this often, but that city-time is really hard for me. The work was really rewarding and I had some awesome encounters with human folk, but just being in the thrumming vibe of the city for that long brought me to a lower point than I've been at for a long while.

So I came home yesterday, low and tired and empty. Put a blanket under a tree outside and napped. Woke up, tried to stay awake, and took another nap. By evening, after a total of 8 hours spent in deep dreams, my headache was gone and I felt human again.

Mom and I took a walk before dusk, starting down a path where I often encounter this beautiful fawn. And there she was, looking down the hill at her mother, and watching us a bit nervously. Her mom had somehow climbed up a steep embankment and was buried in a clump of bushes. Her head was poking up at us from the side of the hill. When she saw us, she abandoned the bush blossoms and scrambled up towards the path.

She is my favourite deer on Bowen. Such a pretty face, such a gentle way. I call her Lily. There were blackberry bushes behind us, so I picked a handful and offered them to her. Lily's fawn dashed out of sight at my first movement. But Lily was unafraid, and she ate them from my hand. I repeated this, and each time I was able to get a little closer, until she let me stroke her head, her neck, her back. It was so beautiful. It restored me.

I hope that Lily is not this friendly with everyone. I have never encountered a deer that was so unguarded with a human. Please be careful, Lily with the big brown eyes.

water water everywhere . . .

Stealing a few minutes to write some words here. This job is finally wearing down my composure. I'm tired and I need a good long walk. I think that's the ultimate uncomfortable feeling - unexercized legs. Been getting home too late and leaving the house too early in the morning to do anything other than sleep and - well, okay - write. I guess I could sacrifice the writing time to do some walking. Miss my forest paths tho. My brain is limpy with too much problem-solving. I'm looking forward to Sunday.

Stole some time this morning too to write some music. It was good; it was a relief to pour off the overflow. This is week 3 of almost continual city-time, people-time. Ick. Not terribly interested (please don't tell) in hearing more esoteric music tonight. Or putting on the smiley presenter face. I want to be a drummer! I want to have a loud drum-kit in a sound proof room! Blaaaaaagh!

well, bye for now.
..

to take into the air my quiet breath

I've had a few drinks, so I'm feeling generous towards myself. Fantasizing about things I think I have this feeling that I think I maybe should do.
I want to write about these things, but sometimes I get a superstitious feeling that if I talk about crazy dreams, they might not happen. Better just to put them out there, in confidence, to HRH Universe. Plant seeds in secret and water them when nobody is looking. (And then take the fence down when the garden is already beautifully growing..?)

Hob-knobbing with some special people this evening. I guess you could say they are 'important' people. (I just have paused to think about that word and look up its origin, cause it's a funny word. What's the connection with "import?"... Oh, 'to bring in' from the Latin.)
Okay, so I was hob-knobbing with people who really 'bring it in.' Weird to be in that position... to be fluffing the pillows, so to speak, of these folk, but also sharing drinks with them, being asked about my own life/music, etc. And yet... it's not weird at all. I had this kooky thought on the way home that I might as well have been having a beer with the President. There, I said it. It was just like that - I imagined myself having a beer with the President, and it was very natural.

That being said, I'd much rather share a beer - no - a bottle of wine with Leonard Cohen. Because I'm very very curious about his poetry. And would like to talk about other poetry with him. Not in an analytical way. Just... to rave about stuff together.

I'd say, "Leonard, isn't this just one of your favourite openings to a poem, ever? :

'Oh solitude! If I must dwell with thee,
let it not be amid the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings!' "

And he'd say, 'Sure kid, but what about...' And quote one of his own. Ha ha. I bet he would, too. God bless him.

I have to say that this memorizing of poems has been really great for me. I've got Ode to a Nightingale totally in my brain now, and it feels amazing to have all those words at the tip of my tongue and to be able to recite them in my car when I would otherwise be thinking stagnant thoughts. Next one has to be Tintern Abbey. And then skipping way ahead to Octavio Paz. Mm.
I'm not sure why all of a sudden I'm into poetry again. I have an awful lot of volumes that have sat on my shelf un-looked-at for years. I even sold a few of my special antique books of poetry on a spiteful and kind of desperate day. Maybe it's taken me this long to get over the connection I unwillingly feel, to a certain person from my past. Anyhow, I'm glad to have poetry back for myself. It gives me the same feeling I get when I'm within feet of an ocean, say, lying on the beach with my ear to the ground. Sense of time kind of drops away. It's all the same, always has been the same. How many unfocused gazes have dropped into the sea since creatures first had eyes? More than enough to refill the ocean if all the water disappeared, I think.

Can't please 'em all

Quokkas! Ha ha ha!
Just learned about a new animal - what a face. He's got a bit of the capybara's rugged good looks, don't you think? Quite tiny, like the size of a small bunny, but with a miniature kangaroo body. I swear.

Woke up from this really frustrating dream where I was riding my bike over these gravelly dunes by the sea and I was wearing the purple and red pom-pom slippers my Grandma knit for me. Had to get off my bike and go get something from two weird ladies in their creepy apartment, and when I came out, I was miles away from my bike and it was getting dark and stormy. Bike left alone and unprotected. And me in my pom-pom slippers. Tarnation!

Just very quickly.... Oh, what a concert last night! Monteverdi (& contemporaries) Madrigali. Man, do I ever wish you could hear music like that more than once a year in Vancouver. What a stunning group. Interesting... so this is late Renaissance/brand new Baroque, 16th and 17th century, and all the poetry is pure heart-gushingness. They all kinda go like this: "You don't love me and I am dying. Dying, dying. Each look stabs me and I love it, love it. Kill me some more, you brutal demon, and let me kiss your feet - if you spit at me at least I'll feel your hot breath. Please just tell me you love me before I die. It's all too much torture and delicious despair." And this is all in Italian, and with incredible word-painting. Word-painting! Makes everything that came after sound like dentist-chair music.

Okay, now I'm late. And I didn't have a chance to muse about my FNC. Or about those impossible-to-please people that I was gonna scorch a bit. Maybe tonight.
..

Day off with naps and rain

Oh yay for rain. I had such a ominous feeling about this drought. Mmm- it smells like thirsty drinking out there.

5pm and I'm ready to start my day.
Was wiped right out from this week. By the time I got home last night I swear every time I blinked I slipped momentarily into a dream. Slept for 10 hours until I was woken up by one of 'the artists', so got up and had breakfast, then slept for 2 more hours, talked on the phone for a while and dealt with more work stuff, had lunch, slept for another hour. And now I'm awake. Finally feeling like I can keep my eyes open. Jeesh! Lots of thoughts jumping around now. I'll have to divide them up into chapters.

ch.1)
Aren't these pictures amazing? This first one gives me a twang of aerial-gliding envy ... i want to go in a plane to look at stuff from way up high!! Not just to jet through clouds to some place far. How will I make that happen?
Second one amazes me because I think about the total dedication and patience the photographer must have. How much time does he spend just waiting, in some high wilderness spot, for an animal to emerge? For two giant birds to fly out and make mirrored Vs with their wings? Wow, I love people who capture this stuff. Photos are nothing to experiences, but they heighten my sense of possibilities.

ch.2)
Those feathers look like long piano keys. I wonder if I built a keyboard instrument with irregularly sized keys that fanned outwards, what it would mean for the instrument hammers and strings? What would it sound like? Part of the great thing about my job is being around lots of old zany instruments. I've decided that I'm going to learn how to tune keyboards. Starting with harpsichords. It's such a pain in the ass to always be looking for a tuner... it would be great if I could do it when we're in a pinch. And then... if I knew the basics of tuning pianos, I could start messing around with pitch and temperament. Someone once teased me for not knowing how pianos work. It was duly noted! It's kinda just magic, how you press down those smooth keys with your fingertips and a whole series of vibrating reactions under that black hood make sounds. Sounds that can tweak me right out or put me to sleep. Nowadays, almost all music is performed at A=440 (440Hz or soundwave cycles per second). It's a pretty arbitrary labeling... I should look up the origin. Anyhow, in the late Baroque, musicians preferred A=415, a semitone lower. In the early Baroque, pieces were often performed at A=465. But more interesting than just pitch variations are the different temperaments used. A piano is set to equal temperament, which means that from one octave to the next octave (say A=440 to A=880), the difference of hertz is divided into exactly 12 units, making the 12 semitones all equal. So because every semitone on a piano is equal, that means you can play in any key- say, transpose a piece from D major to Ab major- without having to re-tune. The only downfall of this is that it compromises the tuning of individual intervals. If you were only going to play in one key, then you could tune the octave so that the 5th of the octave would be high, which creates a much more pure sound, and one that would have more overtones and more, er, emotional impact. Major 3rds would be low, minor thirds would be high, etc. A capella choirs have the luxury of being able to tune that way, and so do non-chordal instruments like violins. Anyhow... back in the day, they hadn't thought of the equal-temperament idea (until Bach), so they would tune organs and other keyboards to favour certain intervals over others, for effect. There were even composers that would tune intervals deliberately over-sharp or over-flat for a horrifying, dramatic effect. Sometimes there would be a very long pause between movements while the organist re-tuned his instrument to play in the next key. Crazy eh? Well, I'd like to try that with the piano. Don't know how much tightening or slackening piano strings can take, but it would be really interesting to write with an unequal temperament. Someone with a house full of harpsichords has offered to show me how to tune, and then let me work away at all his instruments. I'm excited!
I wish they taught useful things like that in music school. But I guess it would be kinda musically... anarchistic if they taught us how to ditch equal temperament.

ch.3)
I'm gonna look like Veruca Salt by this evening. Just a human blueberry. My favourite food on this earth has always been blueberries. So perfect cause they always start to get really good around my birthday. I've had plenty this summer, but they've been disappointing. I mean, yummy enough, but... I started to think maybe I was getting over them. I didn't get that little quiver down my spine of "oh delicious!!!"-ness. But today turned it around. Finally had a batch that took me back to bluet-ecstacy. If I had a sports team we would be called "The Blueberries." If I was a super-hero I would be the "Blue-Bearer" and if I had a pirate ship we would fly the Blueberry flag. I'm especially pleased about this today because I've been feeling rather indifferent about food. Now that I've gone through my list of forbidden-foods and had them enough times to get bored, food is not much of a thrill ever. Guess it's not supposed to be. Had bread with cheese and tomatoes every night for dinner the last... 2 weeks almost? Too busy, and not interested. Feels good to be really stoked about my old blue friends again.

ch.4)
Wearing a new mail-order swimsuit around the house to remind myself that it's still summer. Actually, because I tried it on and it was comfortable and I was feeling lazy. Whoa, is mail order ever fun! No stores, zero shopping time. Course if it doesn't fit you're screwed. But I ordered 2 suits to try, because I'd like to become a better swimmer and making myself go to a pool when days get colder and darker would be good for my depression. I don't want to be on drugs forever.
But also because it helps me keep my 'winter-away' in my conscious mind. Was talking to a 70-something woman who just got back from Peru. Holy cow- Peru! Do I ever want to go to Peru! Just made me start to think more about where I could go. On one hand, Maui would be restful, peaceful, stress-free in terms of every-day needs. On the other, I'd so love to experience different kinds of hot climates, and especially different cultures. Venezuela and Panama come to mind first. Not so much Cuba, and Brazil and Argentina can come later. I know it would be way cheaper to live there, but also would come with tons of challenges, like language and internet and who knows what. I'd have to be able to work from there, cause I don't want to feel useless or destitute. But I would love a break from N. American culture. Would love to go study percussion. Oh God, scratch that, did I say 'study'? I meant play - learn from some folks who live for it and don't try to squish it into academic slots. Bust out on the pandeiro!

ch.5)
About the energetic-thing... I'll just finish my thoughts on that quickly. It's a cultural loathing and shame of fatness. It's hard to see women all over the 'classy neighborhoods' of town that are bone-ass skinny and all glossed up. And women who are quite clearly (at least to me) anorexic. But it's not just what I see, it's the vibrating energy of self-consciousness and body-scrutiny. You can just feel it in the air. We're all so worried about it. You'd think we were worried about bombs being dropped or an imminent invasion. But we're worried that we're not acceptable as women. Last night I came late to a dinner party of the Faculty I'm working with. A bunch of late 50s, brilliant and kind-hearted folk who all are self-assured, eccentric, content, and generous of spirit. Now that's a different energetic. I was wrapped up in cozy blankets of warm vibes all night. So how can we change the self-defeating vibes that are messing with good people?! We need a super hero. "Goodvibes Man". And he should be able to crumble exercise machines with his ray guns and magically transfer people into other bodies for 24 hours so they can appreciate their own bodies when they go back to them. And zap fear out of people for long enough for them to eat a proper sandwich and wear comfy shoes to work.

ch.6)
Consider this the denouement and also conclusion. I was planning to do another "Friday night challenge" (tho it's saturday) because it's been a long time since the last one. But can I really do it? I'd have to take the ferry back into town in 3 hours. Ugh. Maybe I'll feel more like it after another nap.

...

Okay, you know what it is? I think it's an energetic thing.

I have never given too much thought to 'energy field' type stuff. But my Alexander teacher talks about it all the time, and on a straight-forward practical level, it seems indisputable that energy plays a huge part in everything.
I always go on about how bad I can feel in the city. And part of me feels a bit guilty about this. Because people are just people, and a higher concentration of them doesn't mean a sudden decline in human-goodness. People aren't meaner or... um, corrupted cause they like living in dense areas. So I wonder why it is that I can find cities so confrontive and provoking...
I guess it's because people living similar lifestyles all subscribe to similar ideals and worship similar idols. If they didn't, they would vamoose, I think. It would be too lonely and weird. So, even though intellectually some might be opposed to what is being slurped up by all their cohorts, they still end up eating out of the same trough... because that's what being served up.

God, I sound like I'm trying to write an essay. Okay, I'll nerd-out on this another time. I'm getting late-night 'the sky is falling' work phone calls. Argh. I take back what I said about being the boss lady.

...

Marching one by one

Awake nice and early this morning, but after a good sleep - 7 hours! -

Whoo, mind is buzzy with energy this morning. Was watering some plants in the backyard, and noticed the sky had clouds way up high that looks like ice flows. Which reminded me that last night was supposed to be Northern Lights! Argh, I totally forgot. Which reminded me of the only time I've been to Whitehorse, and it was 40 below and quite shockingly beautiful, and I admit I just was too wimpy to go out and wait for them at night. The worst part of 40 below for me was in the eyes. I don't know how anyone can stand it.

Then I interrupted the ant crusade to make a cup of tea. I almost feel like I'm intruding on something important. They seem to be on a search and rescue mission. Maybe for some fallen ants, possibly ones that I flicked off my arm or unknowingly stepped on. They go over every inch of counter space, again and again. There is not a speck of food anywhere, so they couldn't possibly still be looking for crumbs to take back to the Queen. It's about something else now.

After tea I was ready for another round of 'sprinkler predict', the new game I've been playing every morning. It goes like this: turn on sprinkler for front lawn (house owners really want their grass to stay green), and watch it start up, and smoothly start to rotate back and forth. Try to guess where it's going to get stuck. Go inside for a while, and then try to surprise it! Then try to determine if it's been stuck in that position the whole time, or if it only just stopped there when I jumped outside. This involves grass-examination and really wet arms. Actually, I sense a good suprise opening right now. Back in a second! ... Cuss. Ultimate defeating move: frozen in 90 degree angle, water going straight up and straight down. I've cheated too many times by trying to fix the damn rotating cuff, or whatever you call it. Water's off, game's over.

You know, I really miss my Bowen mornings. Why water grass?! WHY?! Grass should just get long and soft and golden brown in the summer. So that animals can hide in it. So that other things can grow amongst it. So that the ground doesn't look like a golf course everywhere.

The other thing I really miss, realllllly miss, is piano time. I'm so itching to play. Which is ironic, considering I'm surrounded by pianos. There's a grand piano in my office. Unfortunately, there are also other people popping in and out of my office constantly, needing things. I kind of like being the boss lady; I like having the power to actually do something about something, make exceptions for people and get to oversee everything that's happening. But I also miss being alone in a room with a piano. I have so many itchy ideas. Prokofiev is giving me so many mad ideas these days! He was so bad, like heavy bad good. I should try to find a biography - it makes me really curious about his life. Also love Steve Reich again - this one piece in particular, "music for 18 musicians". And I'm kicking myself for not having any Bjork handy, because I'm craving Vespertine and Homogenic.

One more thought and then I'll stop this random chatter.

Time to get a new tattoo. I've been thinking about this one for a long time, and I have some birthday money that I need to spend on myself soon before it gets sucked into 'paying off album' funds. See this pic above? It's the closest I've come so far to finding an image to go off of. Imagine that it was just one island, covered in these tall thick gangly westcoast trees, and it's all black silhouette. That's what it should be. But I can't draw and I can't find an image (oddly!!) on the net of just one such island. I hate bad tattoos, so I'd rather not just leave it to the chance imagination of my tattooist. If you come across something, or hey, happen to make a quick doodle (big wink* to someone in particular), me and my upper left arm would be really happy.

Okay, day 11 of playing Miss Management in a city-life awaits. I wish I had a raven friend that would sit on my shoulder and nip my ear occasionally. That would make this stretch easier.

...

Correction

Okay, I'm being called on saying I was sexy 40 or 50 pounds ago.
I meant to say "I thought that I was..."

Isn't that stupid? Maybe from now on I should try to believe the exact opposite of what I assume people are thinking.

At least until I can stop thinking about what other people are thinking.

Changing topic to something else that has been on my mind: animals in human spaces (that we took over from animal spaces).

Nests, baby birds - swallows I think - in the underground parking garage at work. And also flocks of pigeons. Ants all over the house. Skunks living under the front porch. A beaver in Kitsilano. A raccoon strolling down the sidewalk on the Stanley Park causeway. I half expect to find a goldfish in the toilet bowl or a slug in the sink.
I don't really have any insights about this - I've just been noticing. Doesn't it strike you as somehow poignant? Kind of twistedly ironic and beautiful?

...

2 sizes

It would be nice to show this photo uncropped. But I'm a stickler for privacy and it always makes me crazy-mad when people put pictures of me on the internet without asking. My nephew is too young to give consent, and therefore, I will respect his web-anonymity! But just so you know, he is the the most - and I don't say this boastfully but factually- the MOST beautiful and radiant baby I've ever seen. Hands down.

Hands up!

This picture was from my weekend visit with Baby. He had never played a real piano before. So I sat him on my lap (he is just 7 months, by the way) and played some twinkle-little-star-like variations. Oh my heart! As soon as I started really playing, he turned his face up towards me in surprise. And broke into a huge smile. And sat there, staring straight up at me, in some kind of mystified awe, eyes beaming, as if to say, "How are you doing this?" It was just so moving. Baby, baby. Already full of music, and still so brand new. What a gift for me.

...

mossy ways

I am starting to think too much about an audience. When I started this blog, I didn't really intend for anyone to read it, except maybe people who knew most of my goings-on anyway. But now there's at least a handful or two of folk who glance at this, and so I find myself second-guessing what I write about sometimes. Today, I was wanting to write about - guess what - body battles, and then thought, Oh no- nobody wants to read any more about that. Then I realized that I'm taking responsibility for an imaginary audience. Apologizing to my diary. That's just plain foolish.

And anyhow, you people know how to take care of yourselves and avoid boredom when you need to. This blog is about my 29-year old brain that's caked in some thick mud. Trying to scrape off some of the mud means talking a lot of touchy-feely talk about my mental illness. So please redirect yourselves at will.

I am hating this elephant-phase of my anorexia. I'm not hating my body so much as I'm hating my mind that has let it get to this place. I feel like I'm wearing an inner tube of extraneous flesh. Water wings, a marshmallow jacket. It wasn't very long ago that I was a master of emaciation, and now this extra weight feels irreversible and cruel. The irony is not lost on me that the only time I've ever felt inscrutable and safe in my body is when I was too weak to do anything with anybody, anywhere. So much for showing the world how strong and aesthete and maybe even sexy I could be. I was sexy (or at least more attractive) without these 40 or 50 pounds I'm wearing. What am I now? I can't see through this mud, though I'm scraping away at it. Scraping away. Every week with my therapist I go looking for more roots. And re-sharpen my weapons for another week of self-self-defense. Saw my therapist (I'll call her L) today. She is so good - really demands a lot of work on my part. I am supposed to challenge every thought by asking for the evidence. What's hard about this is that I feel like the evidence is right here, is all over me. I look at my body, with what I think is careful discernment, and the evidence seems very very plain. I would not show my body to anyone right now.

It wasn't a sad or dreary night. It wasn't. I finished work late and went to the beach - sat there for a long long time, til it was past dark, appreciating solitude and slow morphing colours in the sky. I'm halfway through memorizing Keats' Ode to a Nightingale. I love this poem. There is something so balming about speaking someone else's words out loud, without having to read them off a page. I can get inside them in a different way. And it tricks my brain into thinking that it's speaking its own beautiful thoughts. That it wrote the line, "that thou, light-winged dryad of the trees, in some melodious plot of beechen green and shadows numberless, singest of summer in full-throated ease."
And maybe this:
Here there is no light
save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

Anyhow, it puts me in that place where these kinds of words come from, whether they're mine or not. I love to be alone. I love a beach when people slowly trickle away, until I am the only one left, alone to begin with, and alone to end with. It feels very familiar. I adopted aloneness when I was a lonely child, and since then have most often chosen aloneness over feeling alien in a crowd. I know that I am completely well and completely myself when I am alone and feel closer and more connected to everyone/thing. If I am not so well, the echo of loneliness gets louder and louder until it's a roar that deafens me, swallows me up in a silent black room. I have to be careful that I'm not choosing aloneness as a way to hide again.

oh- gotta stop now. g'night.

.

horse-lion-beaver-pig-cat-hamster talk

Ah. Nice leaden feeling in my legs - some cold alcoholic thing in a fancy bottle in the fridge that's going down nicely. These days are dense. Dense and wide. But it feels good. I like the feeling of a day that's gone somewhere.

The only thing that could make this evening a little nicer would be some company. I would like to have a nice capybara for company tonight. Capybaras are the biggest rodents on earth. They look to me like a cross between a horse, a lion, a beaver, a pig, a cat, and a hamster. I suppose it's possible.

They also remind me of Wumps. (Remember that book?) I think that a St. Bernard could probably stand as tall as a capybara, but it definitely would not be as calm and industrious and all-knowing. If I had a Capybara, I would name him Wumpy. Or maybe Stuart Little, because of that clever little gleam behind the eyes.

It's good I don't have company tonight, rodent or otherwise, because I've been missing writing. Dense days! And I've been fantasizing about balance. Like teeter-totters. I used to teeter-totter opposite my brother, who was bigger and always pretended that he would be fair. And then he'd sit at the bottom and let me wriggle and scream and plead for a while, legs dangling in the air. "Don't drop me!! I hate you!" Then I'd go on with my sister and play the same trick on her. Fun.

I also would like to try an even teeter-totter though. A balanced routine like this: Early morning walk, tea and letter writing, several hours of intense work, then an afternoon siesta and playtime (swim, kayak, hike, garden, bike ride, ice cream) then a little more work, and finally, downtime. Every day a balance. Every day, meditation and thoughtlessness, lightness and hardness.

And then I think: have I ever actually done that?

I am not really a slow and steady gal. I often would like to be. But I always end up in periods of blistering intensity, when I am driven by purpose. Then I hit a lull. Sometimes it's just a perfect-vacation-length lull. But sometimes it lingers... and then the lull starts to scare me. It makes me suffer. If I have a sense of purpose, I am well. If I have no sense of purpose, I am ill. (So are we all?)

I've always known (without having to think) that my tool for etching something into this life is music. That's what I've got. It's hard and light like bone, this tool. And keeps growing like rodent teeth. If I stop using it, it pushes right through my gums, my chin, through my chest, through my heart and lungs. Gross, but true. These rodent teeth grow by inches, incessantly; they need to be used. I get real sick from not using them. But even though I know this, I get caught in a kind of paralysis, an anesthetizing fog of - hopelessness. Maybe cause I'd like to chew down the whole bloody forest to make my dam, and don't know where to start. And maybe cause I am afraid that I don't have the right to take down any tree, and that people will think I'm a nasty foolish rodent and throw stones at me.

I don't know. I get too caught up in metaphors and then I stop making sense to myself. Dammit.

One day I will reign in the metaphors!

This is a conversation I overheard between 2 capybaras that I really related to:

You can't do it.

-But I have to.

You can't tho. You don't know how.

-I still have to.

No! You always start and then you stop.

-I know. But...

No. Look at yourself. Just look at yourself.

-But, I think I have to. Or I'll die.

Yeah. It's pretty sad.

-C'mon. Pleeease.

Too bad you didn't learn to work harder. Too bad you're so lazy.

-I want to kill you.

Just go back to the swamp, Wumpy. Go back to the swamp.

.....

Anyhow, I feel his plight. I really do. That other capybara is such a jerk.

I guess purposelessness has to be there to balance my purposefulness. But it's just not a very good balance yet. I'm coming out of a long, focused stretch of incredibly satisfying creative work. And now comes the lull, the lull that scares off my pants. This brings me to 8000 more things to say. Later.

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