Saturday, March 19, 2005
December 2004. Galiano Island.
I haven't really posted any pictures of the last week that Matt and I were together, when we rented that cabin on Galiano Island. Partly because I haven't gotten mine back and so I've only got the ones that Matt took and partly because I just haven't really been able to, sissy I, and partly because I hadn't actually paid my share of the cost to Matt.I still don't have my pictures back but I am now able to look at the pictures and, as of yesterday, that particular bill, as well as a few others I've been so behind in, now sits at ZERO.
There is too, that I am not going to be here until later tomorrow, so this could really be construed as a 'lazy' post.
We climbed to the top of Mt. Galiano and this is the panoramic view from there.
Seven bald eagles circled the sky above us. They were so close and I wished I could reach up to grasp a wing and catch a ride with them away from the pain of knowing Matt was leaving. Instead, I pulled out the guidebook to try and figure out which island was which. Rather than pictures of the eagles, Matt took pictures of me. Maybe he knew what I was thinking.
OH! So that's it. It's My *Flavor*
 Buzz buzz, I am Coffee flavoured.I am popular in the workplace, even though I am often bitter. I am energetic to the point of being frenetic; buzz buzz, out of my way. I tend to overwork myself and need periods of recovery time. What Flavour Are You? |
lyric at post:
..I am a question to the world
not an answer to be heard
or a moment that's held in your arms..color>
Friday, March 18, 2005
Six of One....
What The Kids Are Doing For Fun These Days
Earlier this month, Soapy Goldfish wrote I Wish Them All Dead (here's a little piece of it)...I think that everybody has at least one news story that floored them. That caused them to burst into sudden, spontaneous tears when they read it. If they don’t, then they should have.
I have one.
The first half of this post, then, is about mine. The following bits came from the Canadian papers this week.
A teen charged in the death of a Maple Ridge gas station attendant who was run over and dragged beneath a car for 7.5 kilometres (4.6 miles) was high on methamphetamines and trying to get the injured man to a medical clinic for help, the teen's friends said Wednesday.
The accused, a 16-year-old Maple Ridge resident who cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, appeared briefly in Youth Court in Port Coquitlam Wednesday charged with second-degree murder.
He is accused in the death of Grant De Patie, 24, who worked at the Esso gas station across the street from Garibaldi secondary school, which the youth attended.
Police have said De Patie tried to stop the accused, who was in a stolen car with a 15-year-old, from driving away without paying for gas early Tuesday. They say the accused ran over De Patie and dragged his body underneath the car for 7.5 kilometres.
Several students said the story spreading through the school halls is that the teens were under the influence of methamphetamine and were frantic when they heard De Patie screaming underneath the vehicle as they sped away from the Esso station.
They say the story is that De Patie's body was dragged for such a long distance because the teens -- in their drug-induced state -- were trying to find a medical centre where they could drop him off.
Several students said they heard the teens initially drove to an SPCA shelter on Industrial Road before realizing it was a place to treat animals and then continued on in search of medical assistance.
It was just over $12 worth of gas. They let the second kid go.
For those of you who may want to read the news articles, here are one and two. I could hop on a soapbox here and tell you what I think should happen to that "child" but I think I will just put another little portion of that post from Soapy Goldfish...
A Half Dozen of the Other....
Silbo - The Whistled Language of the Guanches
We see tragedy every day, in fact, the last few years it seems like we live, collectively, surrounded by endless appalling cruelty and pain but I think we far too easily forget that for every tragedy there is something incredible to discover, to see, to learn. We forget that the astonishing things are just as plentiful as the terrible things.Last week I learned that turtles can feel exactly where you touch them on their shells. That it's not 'just' a shell that protects them as I'd always thought but that there are thin lines of nerves running all over it that can pick up pressure differences. A small thing? Maybe. Two galapagos tortoises will fight over territory or a female mate by seeing who can stretch their neck higher over the other. Some land turtles can actually outrun a human on level ground. More small things? Yes. But just take a minute and imagine.
Part of the problem, I think, is that bad news and terrible things are handed right to us every day because, as they say, good news doesn't sell. I think the other part of the problem is that we, as individuals, just don't look for beautiful things outside ourselves. We've stopped. We don't look around. No one will hand the beautiful things to us and we forget, don't have time, can't be bothered to look for them ourselves. We are lazy and in that laziness, it has become easier to see the bad first and foremost above all else - no matter what our second thought is - the first is usually not a good one.
Which brings me to the next little story....
At this point in my life though, I have a year to organize it all, compact it, deal with it, read it, see it, look it up and get it out. At this very moment, I have four notebooks. At first, you know, each of them is for something specific. This one - quotes. That one - things I need to do - to the website - for the trip - a list of things I wanted to get for Matt. Over there - things I want to write about, things I wonder about. But then, eventually, I can't find the quote book so I use the idea book and so on and in the end, all the books are just one book - taking up four times the amount of space. And four times the amount of time when I think - oh, I wrote that down, except which book did I write it in?
It's a world of so much information now and I wouldn't want it any other way but I haven't the time to organize the information I've got, let alone *do something* with all of it. And I don't even DO anything with my time these days so I can't even imagine what it's like for people with actual lives.
Anyways, last night I started to whittle it down by pulling out things that I'd written down in passing to research and getting together one list of the books I want to read. Turns out there's 142 of *those*. So far. I still have nomoreozone's list to go through.
And the whistling tribe of the Canary Islands is one of the things I had written down to look up and learn about one day. These are short articles, so if you've got a moment, why don't you learn about them too?
The language has 2 vowels and 4 consonants and more than 4000 words can be expressed. The Guanches have been extinct since the 1500's but the language was adopted by the Spanish settlers to the island and survives only precariously today.
Here's the Wikipedia info. A BBC article and an article on how the brain processes the information we hear as well as *two audio examples* of the language.
I'm trying to teach myself that Wonder is everywhere. In the smallest things, as well as the largest. You just have to make the effort to look.
I'm just as guilty of not doing that as everyone else but one of the things that the last couple of my own beautiful and tragic years have taught me is that to survive and grow to become the person I want to be, I have to go out and find those things. As many as I can. No matter what. That the things I needed to learn here have been learned but that now it's time to learn new things. The greatest disservice I can do to myself and everyone around me is to stay in a place I don't belong and.... stagnate. Get by. If I'm working towards something then I have to honor it by actually making the next step. To get past the fear and the challenge to the accepted life-path that is ingrained in all of us, to take what I've learned and then go a step further. And a step further after that.
This struggle is largely what this site is about, in the end.
I'm doing this because I've always wanted to. Because I've never been happy living the life I've lived. Because I know, in my heart, that it's time to move on. That there is absolutely no reason I should be living this life anymore. Because I want this for myself. Because maybe the balance I bring to my life will lend a little of itself to the world around me, in turn.
I'm going to do my best to make as big a dent in "see everything, learn everything" cliche as I can, even if it's just all little things.
If I have a goal to hold inside of me then it is this - one day I hope that I will have made enough of the wonder and the joy of this life such a permanent part of me that it will be the first thing I see, the first thing I look for and the first thing *you* see when you look at me. Not the second.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
I've Been Remiss - A Poem
I actually have a huge post but it's still mostly in my head so you're going to have to wait. I have, before going off to read a couple of new books I picked up off my list tonight, added a new list in the sidebar to the left. Of what else? Books. Starting with the three or four I can remember immediately without taxing my brain, then continuing from nowIn the meantime, an e e cummings poem. One of my favorites.
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
love never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
New Friend
Today was a brilliant day. And brilliant days are kind of boring, are they not?At least from your point of view....
So good in fact that I even managed to mostly ignore that the bank took my mortgage out 2 days early, two days before payday, that is. Since it's automatic withdrawl, it could only have been done by manually forcing it and god only knows why they'd do that. This caused the cheque I wrote for my LOW-FEE account to bounce.
You know, the 'ol mortgage and bills in one place where the paycheque goes and spending money transferred by cheque to the low-fee bank theory? Doesn't work so well if all the fees you save in an entire year are spent in one fell swoop by the NSF charges at two places for writing an NSF cheque to YOURSELF.
Which I didn't. So they'll just have to get their shit together tomorrow. I think my bank has finally succeeded in numbing me to their "booboos". Quite an accomplishment, that.
I don't know if the aforementioned boys come here - they've been told they can, but all day I've been picturing Yeti mumbling, "Oh, the horror, the horror." Sorry man. I was kidding.
I'm going to go 'way, relax and play with the frog I caught...now, where the hell did he go?....
lyric at post:
..all the way to heaven is heaven
caught between the spirit and the dust
all the way to heaven is heaven
deep inside of us..color>
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Who Needs Outside Entertainment?
I'm Perfectly Capable of Amusing Myself
Okay so most of you, in fact, 99% of you, will more than likely not get what I'm about to say at all but I have to say it anyways because it made me laugh all the way home (and it's a long drive).Thinking, and no, I don't remember why I was thinking this, Butterfly Boucher on the cd, maybe?
"Did Yeti have a job when he came back to Canada last month? Why did he come back? And to G...P... to boot? Could it be for the girl? Is he just shunning his own country? How does his country feel about that? I wonder if he wants to stay here in my country?...
Heyyyy, that would solve any potential issues about a 1 year tourist visa - what if I like it there in his country? What if the spiders decide to keep me - will they be able to get me papers? If Yeti wants to stay in Canada then we could just do the marriage of convenience thing and then we'll both get what we want....
.........
So that would work out to - First, I meet Tim, then I absolutely adore Tim, then he brings Matt and Yeti, then I fall in love with Matt and then, a little while later, I marry Yeti."
I started to guffaw at that thought. All.the.way.home. Seriously, if you're thinking of visiting a foreign country such as... Canada ... and planning on stopping by to visit, ooooh, say ... me - DO NOT travel in a pack. Leave all your friends AT HOME. Please. I beg you.
My heart can't take it.
Monday, March 14, 2005
The Inherent Dangers Of Nature
I'd forgotten what this was like. Nine years living downtown in a city. A city virtually without a flea population (I never saw one, despite living with a dog in a building full of animals). In which the only spider I ever saw in my condo froze to death in about five seconds when I put it outside. In April. I'm pretty sure there was a wasp problem but I never had to deal with it. Let's face it, anything that survives most of the year gets wiped right out when it hits -20. If not before.And now, here I am, on the farm.
And the bugs, oh the bugs, they are a'coming.
I know this because the frogs multiply nightly, the car was full of little flies of all kinds today because I left the window open last night and even though I cleaned and dusted on the weekend - there are five spider webs here again already. In fact, there's one beside my keyboard hooked to the speaker and the blind with a little teeny spider crouched in the middle of it.
The truth must be faced - I live in the farthest possible thing from airproof, bugproof and today - second cat proof - home. Let's get this straight though - spiders.scare.me. When I was a kid, a 5 inch wolf spider in the bathtub reduced me to a gibbering wreck for hours.
Let's just take a brief look at the wolf spider, shall we? (since now I'm not sleeping tonight anyway. or putting my feet on the floor)
Wolf spiders are usually large, hairy spiders that are not associated with webs. These spiders are real hunters and have excellent eyesight. They are rather big and are easily spotted on places in the sun often at damp places. They do not spin a web but roam at night to hunt for food. Their name "wolf spider" is derived from the fact that people erroneously thought they hunted in groups like wolves. They can even been found on the water skating over it and even diving under the surface catching small fish and insects. Some of these spiders actually fish, by putting one of their legs into the water as bait.
Rather large? Hairy? Hunted in groups? HUNT? Small fish? erg. ack.
I won't kill them - that is far too ingrained in me by MaJen. The spiders are helpers, musn't kill them.
And of course, I'm torn. TORN.
Because they're the animals, you see.
To this day, I will not walk by a worm on the sidewalk after it rains. Yes - I will stop and pick it up and put it in the soil. You heard me.
Every morning on the way to work I have to talk myself out of pulling over two or three times to move the dead rabbits, raccoons and cats off the road.
Today, those little flies trapped in the car? Did I open the window to let them out? On the highway? Are you mad? I brought them home and shooed them all out, where they'd be 'safe'.
I say hello to the spiders who shower with me every morning.
Right now I'm watching a teeny fly get oh.so.close to the little web beside the keyboard and I'm trying to shoo him closer to the web.
Because the problem is - I can't stand the thought that they may not catch anything. Then they'd die. That's just not acceptable - they live with me. They are my responsibility. They are part of the family now.
Even though they scare the shit out of me. Not so much the littler ones - the size of which I'd more precisely define for you but it's all about looks really - - like the ones in the article at the bottom of the page - millions in every field around here, all shiny black and plasticy looking, smushed all over my bare feet as a kid ..... *shudder*
In Australia, however, there are something like 130 species in nine different genera. And whatever that means (for all I know the genera could be 'dinner plate' 'dingo sized' 'bigger than a breadbox' 'mammoth' etc) - it can't be good. I'd bet my sanity, however, that at least 99.9% of them are BIGGER than the ones here. So, Australia, you win, finally,the size thing. Are ya happy now?
I'm too afraid to even *look* at Ecuador.
I have to get over it though, don't I? The fact that I love bats and I could wake up with a entire team of rats in bed with me without blinking an eye and that I'm actually looking forward to making a large snake vomit so I can see what it just ate (like I learned on the snake documentary last night) and I would probably hug a crocodile if I could convince myself it would hug me back with those cute little stubby arms without biting my head off won't mean anything if I step outside with a flashlight in Aus to pee and see the shining eyes of a spider the size of a dinner plate just hanging out in a tree. (their eyes shine. no shit. trust me, I know these things)
For those of you who can stand it - Australian spiders.
And a story in my province about some freaky spiderish phenomenon - which is actually pretty cool. Unless you take the 'maybe it was an effort collectively by these spiders to try and catch a sheep.' comment a little too seriously.
I think something just bit my toe...
lyric at post:
..I'm a gun for hire, I'm a saint, I'm a liar
Because there are no facts, no truth, just data to be manipulated
I can get you any result you like....what's it worth to ya?..color>
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Monday Bumper Sticker #10
Don' wanna go ta work.
lyric at post:
..and when my mind is free
you know a melody can move me..color>
