Time and Light Switches

I’ve been told many lies in this life and I’ve been told half as many truths. I’m in the last months of my twentieth year and I feel ancient. I could hear the wind before it reached me and there was a dragonfly near. I am ageless and adrift in the sea of stars.   It’s just where I am, I don’t really get it. It’s a poetic way of saying, my process in incomplete. I’m a ‘work in progress,’ a, ’this file will finish downloading in?’ I’m just not done. Not perfect.  Not ready to give up, but I’m tired. This process is tiring and I’m ready for a nap.  It’s a sad way of saying, please handle with care. The heart you bear. You only get one, your own. So don’t be so quick to break it. I guess what I’m really trying to say is, don’t give up, please, I’m begging you. There’s hope on the horizon, but if you’re sad it’s okay to take a nap.  I wish someone had told me that a long time ago.  I’ve been told less truths than lies, but the one thing I know to be true all ...

A beaver, rain, and the smell of manure. At first glance and first thought these three things have nothing to do with the other. I went for a walk last night, and sure enough all these three things played a crucial part. It was all much more than I had bargained for.   I have a rout I take when I go for a walk, it’s right out of the drive way and up the hill, then right again and past the trees. I only made it to the top of the hill last night. My mom was with me and it felt quite the treat, to be choosing health even when we didn’t really feel like it. But we made it as far as the hill and that was good enough. We had meant to go on.  But in choosing to ally with our human instincts we stoped to look at the pond. There were two ducks there, one green and one brown, a family I suppose. And then most exciting thing happened, we saw a beaver. It was more likely a muskrat but a beaver is what I’ll call it. Because having lived in Canada for more than 10 years never seeing a b...

To stand on a precipice is to be given a choice. To jump into and towards endless freedom, or to sit down and stay awhile. I choose the latter.   I had arrived to somewhere I didn’t know I was travelling to. But once I was there I knew it was where I needed to be. I knew I could easily keep going, take a swan dive of the cliff into the great unknown we call the future. I also knew I had a choice. So I choose to take a seat.  It was peaceful here, the wind a calm touch and birds diving in and out of the horizon, as if they were sewing the sky to the sea. As if they could tie down the sea and its wild unapologetic love of changing. And yet they continued to try, as if the act alone was an expression of adoration; it had to be done.  The pink sky frozen in a moment of true artistry and beauty. Golden clouds still ever so slowly making their great trip across the firmament. It tasted like the salty spray of the sea. Looking down I could see my swinging feet hit the clif...

When you read a story there is this inevitable moment that we the reader always see coming. That moment when the character is taken completely off guard and thrust into some form leadership, or adventure, or some life changing event from which they will never be the same. In most stories it all works out in the end, the character better off for being a part of some dramatic change.   I think we tell these stories because we need proof that it’s all gonna be okay at the end of the day. That when life throws us a change we’ll have a story to draw courage from. We not only tell ourselves these stories of victory and triumph but our children and their children too.  One of my favourites is the story of Percy Jackson, a kid thrown into greatness by destiny but denied by those in power. It’s wild and fantastical, and it gave me so much hope when I was kid.  My current favourite is the story of a woman who was irrevocably broken, kicked down by the world and life she was d...

My mother once said “tears soften the hard ground.” I don’t know where she heard that or if she was the first. But what I do know is that she was right. At the time I was crying and angry that I was in fact crying but she said to me, your tears are not a weakness. I didn’t know what she meant then. Many tears later though I get it now. I sit on my bed each morning and more often than not, I cry. I cry because what I am reading is a devastatingly beautiful truth. I cry because I feel known amongst the pages of written beauty. I cry because I am known. Weeping each morning didn’t start out feeling beautiful and right though. It felt petty and savage; it felt wrong. But oh so slowly it became a release. Something to look forward to, something to be valued. Because I was free, free to cry and scream and be. Those moments in the morning full of tears and a speaking heart, they are unlike any other.  I thought to myself that first fateful morning, this may just change my life. And ...

Walking down the road I happened upon a girl. A young girl sitting in a mud puddle. She was dressed in red, her very best dress. And there she was sitting in the mud. Her head in her hands and shoulders shaking. She was crying.   I know her I thought, I know her very well and its been quite some time since I’ve stopped to say hello. Kneeling in the mud I draw her into my arms, just to hold her.  I say to her, “I won’t leave you this time, I’m not gong to ignore you this time,” “I’m here for you this time.” Gesturing behind me I wave my estranged friend forward, we had been on a walk, he didn’t know where I was leading him. He comes to sit on my shoulder. He’s a cross between a golden puppy and a crow. Snuggling into my neck he come to rest in our little embrace.  He’s never followed me down here to where the young girl lives. But this time is different. He truly sees her this time, it’s raw. He desires to comfort her, where he usually only designs to tell her the lo...

I have a wicked fear of abandonment, and not out of a deep insecurity but because that is what people taught me. That they will leave when it suits them no matter the coast to me. But I love the phase ‘run with reckless abandon.’ That's it. That's how I want to live. I want to run at life with reckless abandon. I want to arrive to my death in love with life and have lived it as best I could. I want to have lived so bravely and freely that when my kids ask me what was it like to be their age I can tell them. So maybe I’ll struggle to tell them about the younger years, but these years; the ones where I found true lasting freedom. These years will be a grand tail of my many adventures and wilds.  I want to live wild and free. I was never meant to live in a box. Which seems a rather obvious conclusion but its taken me a long time to understand that. I can’t wait to breath in all the different kinds of air. I can’t wait to be amongst the great wild yonder and taste the very esse...