My very own world

Around the man made lake, Lake Aquitane,
The dog and me. Me and the dog.
Her head down, snarfling a thousand smells.
My head up drinking the night sky of a thousand stars.
Both of us sprinkled in snow dust.

The worst of the winter-cold behind us now.
Maybe.
The worst of the winter of emotions
Faded to grey. For to-now.
Maybe.

We scamper around the lake.
The dog and me. Me and the dog.
Houses huddled in the distance. People huddled inside.
Captured in the blue light.
Captivated. Entranced by
Anna Nicole Smith and Britney bare-head.

We meet not another soul out there.
The dog and me. Me and the dog.
And that is perfection itself.
In my very own world.

It was like this......

She spent a lot of time with Saint Ignatius out in the garden, digging and planting it for a few years now. She'd go on about the kids and her ex-husband who married The Wan. She'd thought Ignatius had special powers, that he could intercede for her.

She'd bought that expensive Italian stuff once Fr. Ryan had told her the big news. The silver bottle was for the eyes, it took away the wrinkles. The gold bottle was for around the mouth. Made especially for smokers, she thought it said. There was no English translation. She'd heard it removed accordion lips. All she could do was hope. And of course pray to Saint Ignatius.

She told Ignatius to intercede again on her behalf to get rid of the wrinkles. The smoking kept her weight down. She would listen to the hunger grumbling away in her stomach, puffing on her cigarette as she leaned back on the stone bench to take a rest, looking up at Ignatius, flying in the sky he always was. Ignatius flying over the garden, over all her hard work. Over all the wild colours of it. As if he were admiring it too.

Fr. Ryan had said it was spectacular what she'd done with it all. She nursed the word for a few months. A month ago Fr. Ryan had said she'd the hands of an artist, an artist of God, as he came out through the French doors and held one of the trellised roses between his fingers before bending down and smelling it and smiling at her in that special way.

Afterwards she'd looked up at Ignatius and winked at him and said it was great to be appreciated. It was something her ex-husband had never done. Her time had come, maybe.

A week ago Fr. Ryan had said he'd something to tell her, it might be a shock. He took her elbow and sat beside her on the bench, Ignatius swooping in the air above them, drinking it all in.

I'm leaving the priesthood, Maggie, he said, I can't fulfil my vows anymore.

She found herself blushing, waiting, anticipating. She cleared her throat expectantly, ready to announce her feelings too.

But when he stood up in the silence, she looked up at him. He was blocking Ignatius.

Why Father? hope slip-jigged inside her. Her voice was huskily attractive to her own ears which was unintentional. That would be the cigarettes. Her belly held a spreading warmth.

The sins of the flesh, Maggie my dear, I'll have to say goodbye now. Tou're a good woman, a very good woman.

And he'd immersed her hand in both of his, blessed her and then bowed and left through the French doors.

You'll be in touch? she'd asked the closing door. But he didn't hear her. Of course he would be. That would go without saying.

She weeded the lily of the valley circle which was nestled in all the yellow and purple of the claspea.

So Ignatius, she sat on her haunches and looked upward.

You'll take all that to Himself, right? You'll do the interceding for me up there? It's been a week and he hasn't called me yet. It must take a while to leave the priesthood and get your affairs in order. But I'll be ready for him. I'll be waiting.

Heartbreak & Irish Bread.

It's a sick feeling. Like something green and slimy sitting in my stomach slithering long tentacles into my bowels. I can't see stuff right in front of my nose. Where's the big yellow bowl, I yell at the dog, it was right here under my nose, I took it down off the shelf and now it's gone. Look? Where is it? And I knock other stuff off the counter looking for it. And it's right there, after ten minutes I see it, the stupid thing, yawning its creamy shiny insides at me, teetering on the edge of the sink.

My reality is gone sideways on me, I keep trying to put it upright. Every bloody thing is an effort. I have a brunch tomorrow with a lot of people coming and I have to prep for it which is a very good thing as it keeps my mind off IT.

I make couscous and my Irish brown bread and my strata dish with eggs and ham, broccoli and cheese and bread and mustard. I made my hummus - which is very special as it has Irish chili sauce in it, and I make Irish crepes which have potato and onion and mushy peas stuffed inside. And IT pounds into my brain and pierces my heart from time to time.

Was it the bible, was it my father, it doesn't matter, who said there is nothing worse than an ungrateful child? And by that I don't mean an endless litany of thankyous but the disdain and the verbal abuse and the you've never done enough for me kind of thing that keeps getting thrown at me over and over again. Until my heart breaks yet one more time.

All I know is I did the best I could with what I had, I loved them dearly and too much it seems for the pain to be this great today.

The stories in my day

Like this.The long call from Dublin, my friend since we were five. Telling me of her daughter who left the husband and almost the baby too. Her other daughter swimming upwards from bi-polar to teach dance to the elderly.
And this
An email with a joke and a howonearthareyou from a friend in Hong Kong airport.
And this
A friend sharing the news of a wake for one of her friends, died of cancer, ten years younger than us. Gone just like that. Leaving smiles and an unborn grandchild.
And this
A friend grieving her husband's fresh drunkeness, her son's stillborn child. He blessed it and wrapped it and comforted his devastated wife.
And this
And over dinner with a friend, sharing our thoughts on the rage, The Secret, why the focus on money? It is so American. What happened to passion and purpose?
And this
And meeting a man from Sligo, an old old man on a stick who spoke of being expelled from every boarding school in Ireland and how, in disgust, his father wouldn't speak to him for months on end.
And this
And a caring email from a brother at the end of my day, telling me his story of a wonderful weekend in Mexico with love and laughter and a wild ballet of colours on a magnificent stage and I post a picture of it here.

Ordinary stories in an ordinary day. And how extraordinary it all is when I write it down.

Thinking of the gannets at Cape St. Mary's

The snow of winter piled up against the back door. Brave sparrows defy the ingenious squirrels who could crack Fort Knox if there was birdseed inside.

And the gannets of the summer come to mind. The millions of seabirds at the Cape. Outnumbering in hundreds of thousands the avid birdwatchers, outkeening the whir of the cameras. We are in a cathedral of birdcalls. The stained glass of the cliffs and ocean the backdrop of eternity. The crash of the waves like the pipes of a celestial organ. We are cowed and awed. What place do we have on this precipice?

My soul yearns to go back there.

To stand in reverential humility.

Struck by a phrase and holding it...

This happens more than I'm aware of. Some I just print off and place on my bulletin board - like this one from Ray Bradbury~

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

And from Orhan Pamuk~

The writer's secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where that comes from - but stubbornness, endurance. The lovely Turkish expression 'to dig a well with a needle' seems to me to have been invented with writers in mind.

We sit at tables and desks with pen and with paper, with fancy notepads, with silver pencils and leatherbound journals purchased in Paris, with computers and typewriters, with fancy Maccy colouredy sleeked sci-fi-ish screens and wait for the muse, the magical one to touch us, to find the word, the letter, the phrase that will resonate underneath the story of the inner people we harbour and nurse through all the toils and troubles of our everyday lives with everyday jobs and everyday relationships.

How grand the passion, how passionate the grandness of our desires.

For that alone, this trudge along the earthly plane is worth every sling and arrow.

Clueless in Canada

I wish I knew how to link other bloggers that I admire to this site.
I wish I knew how to update my own website.
I wish I knew how to create another website.
I wish I could get my blog to look like the swishy other blogs out there.
I search and research.
I feel like a two year old.
I feel I should hire someone to sit with me and coach me seriously in these matters and not roll on the floor and laugh at me.
I do so many things and very well too.
I really know my way around knitting.
And tax returns.
And accounting.
And financial advice.
And business consulting.
And writing.
And piano playing.
And walking.
And art galleries.
And opera.
And movies.
And fighting for a better planet.
And the environment.
I guess I need some fine tuning on this aspect of the 'internets'.
And some patient saint to teach me.
I retain well.
I retain well stuff I'm interested in.
I retain well stuff I'm interested in and can utilize.

Sprawl

Posted this today to an article on urban sprawl at Alternet.
Redefining the 'Good Life'
[Report this comment] Posted by: wisewebwoman on Dec 14, 2006 9:22 AM

And this is what it's all about, right? When did we get it all so twisted and why? I know couples, empty-nesters, living in McMansions of 5 bathrooms. When did we ever think we would need all these space for two people? The word that comes to mind is obscene. A disease of 'more' has taken over the nation, fed by mass media corporate marketing and our incompetent governments who encourage the auto industry, sixteen lane highways running everywhere, lack of funding for urban enhancement, transit and off-the-grid self sustenance. Every time I see a Hummer I look at the driver in shock and awe at the overwhelming moronic instinct that tells him (and they are all 'hims') that this is OK, to drive this gas belching behemoth through a city street on his way to his McDrive in Suburbia to join others of his ilk.
Yes, I live in a small one bathroom in the city, affordable, I rent out half of it to a tenant and have bought some acreage, cheaply in the country and am investigating off the grid living out there for the coming crisis and it will be a crisis, the free sprawling ride is over, wake-up everyone and put plans in motion today. Turn off the TVs, get out in your communities and look around you, stand on a bridge overlooking a highway at oxymoronic 'rush-hour' and think of oil. Ending. Soon.

Gentle thoughts for an estranged child

And child of mine she stays, my baby of nearly thirty-seven who loved ironing and feeding the poor and drawing and writing and expounding on every theory with her encyclopaedic knowledge of just about everything. A fierce scrabble player, Harley Davidson rider, music lover, drum player. And on. She lives in Ireland and there shelives and loves well, I hope.
Written yesterday and emailed to her, my gorgeous, brilliant, Irish daughter.
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Reflections on a Steam Iron

The steam from the iron
Threading the needle eye
Of the crack in
The laundry room window.

Floating upwards to the
Sky above and across
Four thousand miles of sea
And falling softly on

You
There.

Ironing too. Pressing
Cutting butter edges
Into soft cotton trousers
And razor creased sleeves on
To Goodwill linen shirts.

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Disconnection

Disconnection

I was taught in early days
For the good of the whole
Give to the church.
And it would take care of Africa
And those pagan babies.

I was taught in middle days
Me first, live and let live.
I’ll take care of me
And you’ll take care of you
How neat. And end of story.

No and no and no
Is there such a thing
As loving detachment
From the pain of
A limbless child in Iraq.

From the frightened
Face of a teenage whore
On Jarvis Street.
From the smelly mound
Of a sleeping bag on a filthy grid.

I teach myself in elder days
That the child is me
The whore is me.
And I’m inside the fetid bag
Of my own blindness.

Micro Economic Study 1983-2006

Some things are hypothetical only. Like the effects of cheap (read exploited impoverished workers, some children)Chinese labour on the economies of the so-called First World. This was brought into my face in cold hard reality the other day. One of my basic philosophies is that I don't buy big box (Wally World, Home Despot, etc.) and that sometimes results in a so-called 'deprivation' for me (read frustrated consumer with deferred gratification psychosis).

So when a flyer arrives in my email announcing a sale of cappucino makers at Canadian Tire at $24.99 the other day, I just about raced up there. My cappucino maker, given to me by my children in 1983 had been smashed to bits, by accident, by a friend about 10 years ago and I had lived in the desire of a new one ever since. I had never seen one on sale in a non-Big Box store since then. So I secured and tested my new cappucino maker and felt smug and satisfied with my 'bargain'.

However, it set me to thinking of the old cappucino maker and how my kids had saved up for it to make it a really special gift and it had cost them around $250.00 over 20 years ago. Now in the terms of today's dollars that would be over $1,000.00. And here I obtain a very similar maker (actually more streamlined and smooth looking)for the pocket change of $25.00. Good on me.

But wait - at the cost of how many local jobs, how many Canadian/American workers? There is suddenly nothing to gloat over, some Chinese child putting the streamlined bits of my coffee maker together? I look at the unit and ponder on all of this. This micro-image of global market distortion and wonder when the Chinese people will claim their rightful and abundant place on this fragile planet.

A life not a lifestyle

Read something about this the other day. How us baby boomers never grow up, we are trapped in this childlike state that necessitates instructions for all aspects of our lives, like fashion, like furniture, cars and houses. Restaurants, vacations, briefcases, computers, coffee - all so-called lifestyle choices. Got me to thinking about solutions, office solutions, clutter solutions. Not to mention all those silly notices on things - "warning coffee is HOT". Duh. or "don't immerse in water when appliance is plugged in." Right. As if we are all two planks ignorant and more insensate than a turnip. Are we? Do I need a little plaid jacket for my dog? Or a pink Ipod? How about earth tones in the dining room - everyone HAS this year? Are these all the Great Distractions to counteract the Great Decider? Are we so busy with lifestyle we forget our lives? So we drift along as Great Consumers, on to the next Vogue Declaration of what we need? Like infants? Is there original thinking anymore? Is it rarer than a hen's tooth? Can't I have my style and you have yours? Would that be OK? How many magazines would that put out of business? Not to mention TV shows and interior designers and paint shops. Would that mean then that we could be free to collect seeds and march against the war in protest and just grow our hair and use lanolin on our dry skin and make our own soap and.....just wondering.

20 (or more)Things to do before I die

Live to be a great-grandmother
Get a book published (or 3 or 4)
Get a line of cards featuring my photography and poems.
Have a retreat/workshops/organic/off the grid house/farm/centre in St. Joseph's.
Have a small pickup band with my daughter and granddaughter and SING and PLAY music.
Dine with someone every night.
Be married (happilly, natch)again.
Teach knitting and writing.
Grow vegetables and herbs and happy chickens
Grow a great garden
Own a boat
Fish
Build a wondrous kitchen
Be self-sustaining in a simple life.
See the Northern lights
Be healthy and wise
Adopt another dog
Plant trees
Build a labyrinth
Become a good carpenter/cabinet maker
Teach people about longevity
Grow my hair very long

10,000

Well that seems to be the magic number that keeps popping into my consciousness lately. 10,000: it sounds like a lot of anything, doesn't it.

Firstly, I saw it in a health and get well type e-magazine. 10,000 steps a day to health and a positive outlook.

I did some further checking, how much mileage would 10,000 steps cover? It turns out to be around 5 miles, more or less, depending on the length of the stride. And how many calories would that burn? Around 600: Your lunch or a good breakfast. How hard is it to walk 5 miles a day? Well, it's not that bad but you have to map out the time for it. Make it a priority.

And I have, and it's astonishing the sense of well-being I have after a few weeks of this daily 10,000 steps. I actually look forward to the time and get to see and hear my neighbourhood at different hours of the day and night. Not the safest of neighbourhoods, but what is these days. Gentle police on patrol have stopped and said 'be careful' but my dog is insurance, I feel. Only one semi-nasty encounter with a lout and his unleashed dog. (Ever noticed how the owners of unleashed dogs never ever poop-scoop?)

10,000 hours of writing practice was the time given to become a successful writer. Anyone, they said, could become a highly proficient writer with 10,000 hours of practice. I've been writing since I could - 5 or 6 years old. 10,000 hours of it are hard to grasp. At 8 hours per day and clicking these numbers along on the e-calculator that translates (with vacation time) at about 4 years of steady writing. Does school work count? Probably not. Even now (and my output is not dismal), I write about 10 hours week. Not intensive enough by a long shot.

But it sure gives me a lot to think about in the creation of a fulfilling life.

A slice of Spam

My day's beginnings are like many, I suspect.

After breakfast, I go to a little room I have designated as a sacred place for meditation, journalling and contemplation, a place to ease my sanity back into my head when I become too disturbed by the frightful machinations of the insane that we have put in power.

I then ease into emails, thankful for a spam-catcher that takes a full 98%, and counting, of all my incoming emails and deems them garbage. Fully 50% of these trash-emails have the heading "She wants a better sex?" and I wonder in what non-English speaking nation this email has originated and continued blissfully on sliding twenty five of this same old question daily into my ever thickening spam-folder for well-nigh five years now.

It's the 'a' that does it for me. *A* better sex. She would like to be a man? Is that a better sex? Or possibly androgynous or haemophrodite? Would that be a better sex for the lady (whoever she is)?

Who opens these emails anyway? Is it worth the spammers' efforts? I've never wanted a better sex but perhaps some women do. Unhappy with their naughty bits, wanting to trade up to something a little more refined, more classy and upscale. A testicle or three. An extra nipple, more streamlined labia.

Or maybe men open them, baffled as to why the little woman is unhappy with what she's got and hoping to help in this trade-in for improvement.

One of the great conundrums of this IT world.

And, erm, no thanks, I'm really happy with my gender assignment.

Living Life on the Halfbeat

5//Worldpress.org, US--PORTUGAL ANNOUNCES NEW WAVE ENERGY PROJECT (The viability of harnessing waves as a lucrative renewable energy source received a boost last week following the announcement that the world's first commercial wave energy project will begin delivering wave-generated energy to the north of Portugal later this month. The first stage of the European Union-funded program, the result of two decades of research at Lisbon's Superior Technical Institute, will bring the first 2.25 megawatts ashore at Aguçadoura, in northern Portugal, and will power 1,500 homes through the national state run electricity grid system according to an Inter Press Service [IPS] report. Funded by a consortium headed by leading Portuguese renewable energy company Enersis, the venture uses groundbreaking Pelamis wave devices manufactured by Edinburgh firm Ocean Power Delivery, considered the world's leading wave technology. "This project, begun in 2003, is now in the world vanguard," said Rui Barros, Enersis director of new projects, to IPS.)
_____________________________________________________________________________________

such good news from Portugal
_____________________________________________________________________________________

I often wonder why, when I look inside the windows of the local gyms, why all that energy isn't harnessed and used to heat and light the building and warm the water heaters for the showers? Has anyone ever done that? It would turn what I perceive to be a narcissistic self-absorbed energy burn into a reasonably positive and self-sustaining one. Just a thought.

And the half-beat is a good place to be. I'm on the miles and miles of boardwalk tonight by the lake and I encounter one runner and three too-young-for-a-driver's-licence cyclists out there. In a city of 3 million. And it was only 10.30 p.m. and it is staggeringly beautiful and the other nearly 3 million people, I see some of them in the apartments overlooking the boardwalk, TVs (mainly), computers, cleaning up, none that I saw just sitting and staring at their million dollar views. Not one.
And most of the time I feel like the wealthiest woman in the world when I nightwalk this city and breathe it all in.

Random Remarks

I walk past a billboard on the trail, something advertising James Woods in a TV something, a TV being something I rarely if ever watch. And I think, did James Woods ever imagine a day when one could see every crater on his face, every wrinkle around his eyes, every groove along his cheekbones, every sad, sorry, thinning hair like pencil lines on a pink notebook? We were not meant to see this utterly imbecilic magnification of ourselves. It is TMI as my granddaughter would say.
And I buy a red carriage lamp, yep, red glass to hold a fat white candle which looks red within and it casts a red glow around my sunny yellow kitchen and it cheers me up.
Oh glorious YouTube, I can watch Fred and Ginger dance and North Korea and Iran and the White House Moron seems ten thousand miles away and I'm grateful we're still breathing easy on this tiny little planet spinning so effortlessly in space, held by all our positive energies tonight.
And me and my red lantern pray to The Goddess for peace on earth and the goodwill and forgiveness of the Amish to shower us all. Amazing Grace indeed.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/42458

That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It provides the basis for the President to round-up both aliens and U.S. citizens he determines have given material support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of undesirables.

In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Seventy-three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

No surprises here for any of is monitoring the installations for the past year. All ready for AGINUS (as in you're either 4US or AGINUS)3 squares and a kip will be a bonus in the post-apolyptic world of the cabal.
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See my response:
End of Days?
[Report this comment] Posted by: wisewebwoman on Oct 9, 2006 10:39 AM

In every sense of the word. Nowhere anywhere do I see that the existing Dems could be in the pockets of the Reps, we know the Diebold machines are and the Supremes are, why not the Dems. It would explain just about EVERYTHING going on at the moment. There is no valid opposition or debate to any preposterous and outlandish seizure and trashing of the Constitution this Vile and Evil Cabal imposes. All we know for sure is they have wealth beyond our wildest dreams and are using it, why not to buy dissident voices? Just a thought. And yes we've passed on info on these new prison camps for nearly a year and no one has believed us. And it's going to get far far worse. Suspension of all civil rights and electoral process. Look at the lining up of nuclear warheads in the Arabian Gulf even as I write. Is it time for another civil war yet?
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Elsewhere, in the world of Toronto and surrounds, warm, warm weather, trees turning colour, long walks on the trails. Canadian Thanksgiving unfolds as it should. A world on the edge brings the gratitudes into focus in crystal fashion. The ordinary is celebrated for another year.

The Beauty of the City

Sparkling cornflowers pressed against the sumach
Brightest blue against outrageous red.
The trails in this city offer feasts for the eyes,
Birds, rabbits, feral cats, raccoons.
Signposts commemorating long gone railway stations.
Old stone seating placed hither and yon.

Dogs greet each other like old friends
Humans hesitate, frown in response to a smile.
Suspicion, slight alarm, armour of citification.
Newfoundland is a universe and beyond from here.
But beauty is everywhere, more resonant when shared.
I'll keep this secret to myself.

Screen Sucking

Sucking the moods of YouTube
Browsing the Well-Tended Bloggers
Feeling Shock and Awe
At the Blazing Lies of the Great Decider.
Seeing the navies arm up, ride high on innocent oceans
Shaking our fragile planet to extinction.

Hearing the pope say no limbo no more.
Counting the lone voice of Keith Olbermann
Telling it like it is.
Wondering if this is the time, is now the time
We should be gathering seeds and one shot pills
To end it all when death storm comes our way?