Grand Gestures: It is Not Enough to Suffer

It is not enough to suffer.

Enough.

"Enough is a verb, a conversation, a fugue, a collaboration. It is not a static state, something achieved or accomplished. It is relational, by nature unpredictable, punctuated by wonder, surprise, and awe. It may feel dangerous and inefficient. It demands that we stay awake, pay attention to what is true in this moment, in our hearts, and make the choices always and only from that place. Then whatever we decide brings a sense of rightness and sufficiency, arriving with an exhale, a letting go, a sense that this, here, for now, is enough." (Wayne Muller, A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough)

I was with beautiful friends last night and we were talking about having one night left to live and what we would do with it. I love conversations which bring me back to the perspective of my mortality.

My own mortality, always right in front of me, reflected in my people, through the grief and loss we’ve been moving through together as a family, for a couple of generations now. It is not unheard of for my family to be talking about funerals, wills and who gets what when we die. It is not unheard of for us to all be meeting at a funeral, so soon after the last one. I don’t know if it’s healthy or a morbid family dysfunction that comes with so many, many deaths, but I realized long ago I am good at conversation in times of crisis. Sometimes I think we only know how to talk to each other in crisis, express ourselves when faced with our own mortality.


So when she asks me, “What would you do if you had one day?” I answer without hesitation. I know what I want to do with my last day on earth. But being human and also being a human being who is rarely satisfied, I want two days.

Here is how it starts....

It starts with.... an invitation.



Dear Angela,

I know you like grand gestures....

And I will say yes. Because I do. I do, I do, I do! The grander the better. I love that she knows that.

It will start early in the morning, before I have my bearings, early early when I wake up and imagine the amazing miracle of the sun coming back for yet another day. Where I feel like I am just waking up for the first time. I will sit and talk with an old friend, my elder and we will make a journey together. Yes, this is how the grand gesture will start. With this beautiful elder, who wants to talk about plants. Oh! This is how the journey will begin, this pilgrimage to the ocean.

We’ll fly on a tiny plane to a beautiful island on the edge of the world. I will arrive in a storm. I want to arrive in a storm. When it’s fresh and windy and you can smell the dirt and leaves and smell the rain. I want to arrive breathless, swept away with the wind all around and to feel at home and so very calm. What an amazing feeling it is to feel so very much at home. To be greeted by amazing beings. What it means to be whisked away, undercover, to a magical place at the end of a long road.

The beauty in climbing steps I know so well. To pass the woodshed and walk up to the little cabin and sit down in the chair. The joy when even though a year has passed, the cat remembers and jumps right up into my lap.

Oh! That we have tea and laugh and talk excitedly and pinch each other because it’s real, but are we dreaming? Oh! What it feels like to have a tension headache from laughing and smiling so hard.

I want to lie under the window under the trees and watch the rain come down until I have motion sickness, from the swaying treetops and the rain drops. It will be a miracle to take the journey out onto the beach, have the sun come out and to watch out from atop rocks, to sit and keep vigil, over the ocean.

To nap and lie on ancient rocks and fall asleep under new sunshine and to feel exhausted, happily exhausted from whispering prayers into the cracks and crevices, the tidal pools and to shout them out across the edge of the world into nothingness.

It will be beautiful when the heart expands napping beside beautiful friends, as we chill the elderflower and huckleberry wine in a tidal pool.

Here is how it will go.

We will laugh, and talk. We will make candles, dipping them awkwardly at first, not knowing exactly how. I will laugh and tell you about the time I first made them 25 years ago and we will laugh because we think that’s a long time, even though, much farther in the future we will realize that 25 years has passed us by and we are still creating things awkwardly at first until we find the inner motion, the turning that lets us create anything. I will be grateful that you were there to help me, make so many candles. Even though they started out bumpy and odd shaped, and perfectly perfect in their imperfections.




I will cry. I always cry. It happens like that. You will be fiercely protective of me and my emotions.

We will have dinner by candlelight, and fairy lights that twinkle in the darkness. We’ll chop wood. When the sunset comes we’ll say to each other, “How about it?”

We’ll all answer "Yes, let’s go!"

It won’t take but two minutes before we’re out perched on a log with a beautiful bottle of blackberry wine from the south. Then the sun will set over the ocean waves and we will say for the hundreth time, can it get any better than this?

Continually we will look each other in the eye, put our arms around each other, smile and laugh and keep on talking. We have a lot to talk about. Because life is always changing, because nothing is ever perfect, there are so many things to say.

Not any of us is perfect. It’s true. Flaws galore from me! Flaws all around! We are best with our imperfections. There is nothing better than voicing your insecurities out loud with your most trusted friends. Even better, better than just imperfections we are best when we bring our imperfections out into the light, for each other to inspect, and acknowledge and see. It is not enough to suffer, but with these friends I have enough. Angie will remind me, suffering is not enough. She will read to us aloud in her calm and gentle voice and I will listen, and take it in and remember.

Suffering Is Not Enough Thich Nhat Hanh
Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, like the blue sky, the sunshine, the eyes of a baby. To suffer is not enough. We must also be in touch with the wonders of life. They are within us and all around us, everywhere, any time. If we are not happy, if we are not peaceful, we cannot share peace and happiness with others, even those we love, those who live under the same roof. If we are happy, if we are peaceful, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace. Do we need to make a special effort to enjoy the beauty of the blue sky? Do we have to practice to be able to enjoy it? No, we just enjoy it. Each second, each minute of our lives can be like this. Wherever we are, any time, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other, even the sensation of our breathing. We don't need to go to China to enjoy the blue sky. We don't have to travel into the future to enjoy our breathing. We can be in touch with these things right now. It would be a pity if we are only aware of suffering.


In the morning we will have breakfast together, and talk more and eat more and feel our way around enough. We will know when we are nourished.

Then, after such a long time of chosen estrangement and the holding my own space I will go and see friends I haven’t see in a while, a dog and a man. I will want to see them because I missed them and I want to know if we can still talk to each other, despite everything. I want to see them because suffering is not enough, and everyone in our family should benefit from peace. I will want to see them because we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine and the presence of each other and because in a world full of estrangement I don’t want to be separate from my family. We will walk out in the sunshine, and the dew will hang heavily on the spider webs. We’ll notice one at first, then two. The looking out across we will notice all of the webs, little universes, many different universes going on all at once, unaware of each other.

Oh! And as I walk my heart will be bursting with joy because my favorite dog in the world will be bounding on ahead and all the time apart and the longing for her will just disappear. We will forget pain when happiness is standing right in front of us, four legs and all, asking for a walk and some love.

We will walk and talk the way we do. (Maybe I am talking too much) Maybe when I recognize that - I will try to be quiet for a while and let him have some space in our conversation. I will laugh, and it will be loud. It always is. He’ll say something nice about it, and for a minute, I get to see him, as he is. I will have this overwhelmingly wonderful feeling like I am making a nice new shiny memory, and it feels so good. Because sometimes all there is, is making new memories, when the old ones no longer serve us.

I know that everything that ever happened and anything that will ever happen is all happening right now in this moment, and I have enough.

Whatever I ever wanted and whatever I will ever want is all happening in this very moment, there is no need and all the suffering has its balm, joy.

In the present moment it is all perfectly enough. Sometimes when I have forgotten the joy I listen to the voice of suffering and hunger and expectation and it turns into the starving and the wanting. But when I’m listening to that moment, in our fleeting world where I only know nourishment, when I remember to look around because it’s always right in front of me. Then, then- sometimes I feel like I’ve had enough.

Enough in all its forms, in its conversation and collaboration, wonder and surprise. I want to have enough and to stay awake. Most importantly I really do want to pay attention to what is true in this moment in my heart and make my choices always and only from that place.

I want to make my choices that way so that whatever we decide brings that sense of rightness and the sufficiency. I want enough to arrive with an exhale, in a wind storm, under a sunny sky, in the moment of letting go, of awe and wonder, despite everything. I want to maintain the sense that this, here, for now, is enough.

I want to be really alive. I’d totally spend my day that way.

Then, too there is a new compass. The one who is now directing where I am headed, the compass in poem form. Pointing directly to...the center...

All the Hemispheres (Hafiz)
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadow and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new watermark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.


So... yeah. I went home for the first time in a year. Made some amends to the ocean, on the anniversary of my cousin’s disappearance at sea. I had my grieving period, about so very many things, and then laid them to rest. Started my first pilgrimage fire, unexpectedly, but started. Saw my girls. Walked with a friend and my favorite dog. Got some roots. Loved up a cabin. Nothing better.

It happened. It is happening. It will happen again.



My love as always,
Angela

Beautiful Road: inner loner rears her head

I woke up from a dream this morning. I was riding a bicycle down a long dirt road.


I dream about the road all the time. I dream of roads, streets, squares and houses. I’ve really got a thing for roads in dreams and in my waking life.
This road was a beautiful road however. I was heading towards a village on a long dirt road, it was warm morning and the sunrise was coming up and I was just getting a look at the road as the light came up. I am gliding along and looking up, I can see the trees. The trees are blooming, and they are covered in beautiful flowers. They are overflowing and so abundant. On the road in front of me are little bundles, piles of gifts. Continuing to the village, the road and the flowers and the gifts were stretching out. I was gliding into an ocean of beautiful flowers and gifts.
Last weekend I went to a radical herbalists gathering, camping out for a couple of days. I have to tell you all, in case you get some other notions, there is nothing radical about me. It’s like the realization my sister had about herself when she realized she’s not funky. My inner loner reared her head.
I actually think my neurosis came shining through. Last year something happened and I was no longer able to be alone. Friend after friend after friend has entertained my life away this year. Before, I wanted so much to be left alone I didn’t know really know what it mean to be lonely, because I never was. But this year I didn’t want to be alone and I felt so much loneliness.

04 to be alone with you
After years and years of really wanting space and taking time alone and wanting to be by myself, I couldn’t be alone. My inner loner has been on holidays and she came back at this crazy inopportune time, in a crowd of a hundred. I suspect it was merely I arriving back, having been away so long. I suspect it also has to do with being past a certain age where you know who you are and what your place is in the world. So I got a little bit of a taste of the pushing my edges challenge. That’s all good. I am not radical. It feels somewhat liberating. In the aloneness and the taking of space I had the opportunity to walk off down a long road into the full moon in solitude and contemplation. I wanted out of the trees for some reason, and walked out of the camp. Waiting for me at the end of the road the beautiful full moon shone out and pulled me in. So I walked towards her and had this beautiful memory of Billy telling me ``I am the moth and you are the moon.” I felt like that, that I had so fallen in love with the moon I was being pulled toward her, the light. I stood on the road. Not in the middle, but on the side of the road, for a long time. I put my feet half on the dirt and half on the pavement, stood for an hour in the moonlight looking far off into the bush on the other side wondering what it means to have one foot in one this world and one foot in another world. What it’s like to stand on the edge of something, and wonder. I felt twelve. I was alone and happy.

09 - The Dark Leaves Theme
I have had a year of beautiful blessings. I guess this is the road I am on. I don’t mind this road, then, the one filled with flowers and gifts. I took a whole beautiful year to myself to claw my way up to the road and get back on it. Damn Pluto Shift! Okay, well I am grateful. Life pulled this way and pulled that way, until finally life put me in one place, but still on a road.
This road is close enough to my sister to come back and be with the girls, whenever I want. This weekend I came and babysat while Dawn and Ben went out biking. The girls were great.
Me and Gracie
Grace is very loving right now. She throws her arms around me and holds on so tight. She runs to me. We just hold on tight, and love, love, love. We flew kites, went and saw the salmon spawning in the channel in D’arcy.
Went with Dawn and got plants, soooo very many plants and herbs from her garden and her potatoes. We went to the beekeepers and got honey and flowers. We canned plums.




She dug me potatoes from her garden. We got hypericum and raspberry leaf and so many plants from down the hill, went out to the meadows, got fresh roasted coffee. And I cooked. Really cooked. Like got out the joy of cooking and made a meal. Also, another first. I haven’t made a cooked, cooked in a year. Not since last fall. For many reasons. But this was lovely. It was pretty much great.
Love all around.
All my love, Angela

Embracing the....

I’ve just come home from being out west with Helen. Her horse is injured and so we journeyed out to attend to her. She`s got a new baby with her, the horses just came down. Mariah taught me the name for Balsamorhiza in Tsilhqot'in. Today Helen bought me a beautiful costume, a brilliant blue dress. Sigh! Now I have something special to wear to my last weekend at school.


I just made a very lovely spreadsheet detailing my plant gathering and medicine making endeavours. Totally geeking out, I don’t know which I am geeking out more on, the satisfaction of seeing all my plant data right there or the order and perfection in which the spread sheet displays the information.
Ah, the integration. As things become clearer for me there is a certain amount of satisfaction going on about how I can integrate all the different aspects of my life, together. Embracing all the parts.
I have had a momentous week. A few massive realizations and some very realistic conclusions to be made. I feel somewhat like I grew up. Let go of some nagging things. Put to bed this idea that I have been fawking around and not making any progress in my life, that I have been wasting time and that I made the wrong decisions, because I didn’t and I need to stop listening to my doubts or the naysayers in my life. Hopefully I am moving into a space where I can integrate what I have learned. Life comes full circle sometimes and I feel like the two edges of my life are coming together to meet each other for the first time in years.
I think I may have even danced around the kitchen, it was that good of a week. I felt happy for the first time in a long time. I think I could even call it excitement. I had extra time on Salt Spring and got to gather some plants with Jasmyn and Kevin, and then I spent the rest of the week at my sister’s house, making medicine and sitting on the dock staring up at Mount Currie. Stripped and tried for a swim but I sunk into the muck at the edge of the lake and that was it for me, couldn’t go back into the water. Panic ensued, hyperventilating and voila... no swimming for me. The trick is, jump in off the dock, don’t touch the bottom. I have an irrational fear about lakes and bodies of water in general, and if we start off weird with each other, I panic. It’s like eating eggs. Conditions gotta be just right.

The kitchen dancing is preceded by news, Mio and Sebbe have bought an apartment in Nice, France. Oh, how lovely. It is incentive, to not accept this life I am living. Pam and I have already made travelling vows. OH! French. French French French. I could fall in love with France like I fell in love with Italy with Mio and Sebbe. Actually Seb always loved Paris, and I had distasteful memories of Paris with the heat and the Eifel tower and the tourists... but he says I just don’t know his Paris. This is true. With some practice, I could embrace France. Wine and baguettes and cheese and fashion and whores and rude French men. Embrace France with the inscrutable bosom of the known meeting the unknown. Nice looks absolutely beautiful.

Charlie and Angie called me that night on Skype from the Sparegirl Cabin. We had a dinner date. The table was beautifully set and we all had dinner together and drank wine and chatted. I had a place at the table, and it was lovely. It was French night, by the by. Technology can be a wonderful thing. I felt right there with them and my heart didn’t ache as it does. So all it will take for us to have dinner together though apart, is skype. The only disadvantage is not being able to hug them.

I have put the finishing touches on my master plan, which is of course flexible but precipitates an eventual move back towards Vancouver. I am super grateful for this experience here, and very grateful for the knowing I gained, but it’s not the place for me right now so I just have to be realistic and embrace the city once again, though with everything I have learned, it will be a different journey this time around. I have big goals and friends, there is nothing aimless about it. I am so so so over aimless. I am so so so over poor. My opportunities are limited in small towns. It’s hard to put into words the battleground that is my resume when looking at the last three years.

It is May and time has flown by, the time has come. It is time for the big embrace; include, contain, comprise, incorporate, involve, hug, welcome, support, take on, accept, cuddle, encircle, hold in your arms and finally, squeeze.
And wait for it...wait for it.... something big is coming...... embracing it....


Adieu.... Angela
PS.. check this out
http://cleanbinproject.com

Lost Coastlines: Midhusbandry, Maya Arrives

Lost Coastlines: Midhusbandry, Maya Arrives

“Deep in the wintry part of our minds, we are hardy stock and know there is no such thing as a work free transformation. We know that we will have to burn to the ground in one way or another, and then sit right in the ashes of who we once thought we were and go from there.”

lost coastlines

I am standing in the middle of my road. It’s a long one. Here under a canopy of trees in the moonlight I know there isn’t much farther north to go from here, there isn’t that much south to be had, on either side east or west there is the oceanic pull of coastlines.



Seemingly alone there is finally no where else to run. Gasping for breath I can feel the pull of coastlines in my chest and the heavy roll of in and out as the blood pumps painfully through my heart more laboriously than on easy days of living. I want to cry because there is something that begs for crying when you reach the end. I want to drop down on my knees in the middle of the road in the mud and the muck and sob my guts out because there is something to be said for reaching the end of trying to hold your head up high. I want to drop because there is something to be said for giving up at last and surrendering the security of your own two feet to the earth and allowing in that sweet surrender however dirty it might be.

At least I know that whatever impasse that is between us, is a geographical one. The mountains and valleys and rivers and oceans are real, not imagined ones.
Until my “I don’t knows” are gone I’m going to focus on the things I know.

I know there is something better than this.

Because there is so much that I know, I don’t cry. I don’t drop down. Sometimes the knees know where the heart can rest. The silences between us are dynamic in my times of ill communication.

I am for the first time in my life directionless. My inner compass marks no course. My bearings are obliterated and tossed off the edge of the cliff into uncertainty. But there is light here that shines through the trees. The trees here remind me of my people and in times of uncertainty it’s always best to get back to my people.

Our real reasons for things are never our real reasons. The more I think I know why I have done something the more surprised I am to find out what the real reason happens to be.

Until the “I don’t knows” are gone, I’m going to focus on what I know.
Oh! I know this, this grand companion I have always had with me, that allows me to be alone and not lonely, this inner companion, beloved, I will never be stranded, this I know; this inside thing that rises and rises and rises, will always continue to rise.

There is so much I do know. I know there are people, my people, out there when this all seems so futile. I know that in the face of everything, there is a way forward and my people are at the end of that.

No more frittering time away on useless endeavors. It seems like it has been nothing but months and months of that. The lack of joy has been so underwhelming. I know what I know and once I start making compromises about what I am doing and who I am doing it with I betray myself. I need so much more, more art, more romance, more warmth and giving and beauty; much, much, much less surviving.

I know I need so much more thriving.

The beautiful things that have been happening, this I know. The church is amazing. On Mondays Shauna does her Yoga class and its all by candlelight and the room is always full and people don’t want to leave at the end of her class. I look around at the space and even I have to draw my breath in. Toby is doing Aikido and movement and I am getting request after request to use the space. My friends and I are going to start doing co-operative weekly services at the church and I’m going to do some events and some workshops. That’s lovely. For the first time in my life I have a friend who is a writer. It is amazing. I’ve waited years for a friend like her.

I am more in love with my little cabin than ever. A load of wood does wonders. I could spend days and days and days out on the beach and not bother to see anyone and that makes me contentedly happy. I have a few writing projects going on. I have books to read. I have shifts at the transition house and am for the first time in my life part of the country’s unemployed population.

I know this is temporary. To know this now feels like relief. To know that this is not a permanent state, this is not a permanent place, that this is an inward time. The old time of running away and hiding is hereby acknowledged and left behind like trash on the curb. All the clinging to some special idea is once again thankfully gone.

I am okay with this inward bend of time because I know there is soon to be a time for me when I’m going back out into the world. I have people out there waiting for me, amazing people.

Like Maya. Who comes into this world by way of my Monzie. Or Dave’s Monzie to be exact. Oh Dave! The role model for males, Dave. Monzie of my heart.
Dave and Monz and Liam and now Maya.

hey momma

I can not repeat this story in the same way as Monz has done so wonderfully. I hope she forgives me but this is her story of how her newest child, Maya comes into the world.




“Well, it has been a long time coming, but finally on November 14, Dave took a brave step and transitioned into a new career. It was a decision he had to make quickly, considering the circumstances. Our midwives have confirmed it: Dave has earned his honorary degree in Midhusbandry.
At 1:20 in the morning, Maya flew through the barely-filled birthing-pool, like a torpedo fish, into the hands of her father. The labor happened so quickly that even our midwives didn’t make it in time to deliver her! From the first contraction to birth, labor only lasted 45 minutes. When we realized that nobody would be there to assist with the delivery, Dave called 911 for guidance. He quickly realized there would be no time to take instructions, dropped the phone, and improvised.
Shortly after Maya was born, however, 6 men in uniform (2 EMS, 2 police men and 2 firemen) showed up to greet her. Each one wanted to be the hero in his own way, only to find a happy and healthy baby nursing in my arms. One emergency worker really wanted to use his oxygen tank on our breathing, happily-nursing newborn. When we politely asked him to leave the baby alone he packed up his equipment and stormed off, citing that he, after all, “was here to help us.” If only he had arrived 5 minutes sooner he may have had the chance to play the hero, but that title rightly belongs to Dave!
Maya created such a stir that even our neighbor Georgia came over to make sure everybody was okay. Liam, of course, slept through the whole event in the bedroom next door, and was very surprised to find that his baby sister was no longer in mummy’s tummy when he awoke. He asked if this is indeed mummy’s baby, noticing that the big belly is now gone. I assured him that this is mummy’s baby, and Liam’s baby and daddy’s baby – at which time Liam politely pointed out that this is not daddy’s baby because daddy still has his big belly!

Yeah! I have the best people in the whole entire world. Thank you all for the wonderful support you have given me lately. It is duly noted and much appreciated and will no doubt be celebrated at some point in the near future, hopefully over a glass of champagne or something of the like. Who knows what the future has in store. It doesn’t matter. I know what I know.
As my lovely sister would tell me, should we be together, close as shadows, “A boat is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what boats are built for.”
Patience my loves, soon enough I’ll be back.
Until then,
My love as always,
Angela

The Birth of Venus

Birthed at 1:59 PM on October 15, 2008, weighing in at 7 pounds 9 ounces, Grace Lucia Cleland in all her Venusian, Aphrodisial Cytherean, Libran glory completes my father’s all-girl baseball team. What would we know about a boy anyway? (No offence boys)



19 Little Child

All is right and well in the world. Sola gratia, Grace alone.
I give thanks to the Three Graces, Greek goddesses of nature in Greek mythology, charm beauty and creativity. With this in mind, traveling through the city for the month, keeping in mind “There but for the grace of God go I.” How many times have I seen somebody and thought that to myself recognizing the thin lines that separate all of us humans.

Proud Papa.


Grace arrived. She was going to get Lucy, as a middle name but we all talked it out and Lucia came up and there she was, Grace Lucia.

First day in the world.



Well, some of you know this, some don’t. Dawn and I spent time in Sweden and it’s really funny, because we were both Lucia on her Saint Day in December, and wore a crown of candles. I was getting wax out of my hair for weeks, and I could sit on my hair then. Lucia brings the light to the world in a time of darkness.

Santa Lucia
The night goes with weighty step round yard and hearth and around the earth. The sun's departure leaves the woods brooding. There in our dark house, appears with lighted candles. Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia.
The night goes great and mute. Now one hears its wings in every silent room murmuring as if from wings. Look at our threshold. There she stands white-clad with lights in her hair. Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia
The darkness shall soon depart from the earth's valleys thus she speaks a wonderful word to us. The day shall rise anew from the rosy sky. Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia.
Oh! Bringer of Light!

Dawn tried her damndest to have a natural birth again and at the end of the day, it just could not happen.

The Whole Family


Mom and baby are healthy.

We’ve been back in Pemberton and I’m pleased to report Dawn is on the hiking trail once again. Ben and I went hunting the other day and the leaves are falling off the trees here in droves, in all the golden glory.

Violet’s two years old almost, what more can I say about that, other than I prefer her at other ages that aren’t two. I am sure I will like her much better when she grows out of two. I love her, but man almighty.


Beatles - I Will

Cute completely ignoring the fact that “Teeth are Not for Biting”


Escape from the stifling confines of this Million Dollar Lodge on the Lake.


We are going home tomorrow to Williams lake and that’s good. Neutral ground, hopefully. I am excited to see Tori and Mesa and Rae-Lee.

Time in the city was lovely to a certain point. Exciting and busy to start and then boring and old again, funny! It was lovely to visit the city and I really understand what I do and don’t miss and what my limit is and how unwilling I am to go beyond it. It has been a good month of review about where I am going, what I am doing, where I want to go and what I want to do.


Afternoons have been hours of new baby cuddling, and right now all I want to do is cuddle Gracie-Lu even if she pukes on me. Violet is so over cuddles and if she let me I’d cuddle her too.


Hot Dogs Rock




I am sure I’ll have some updates in the future. I am going to Williams Lake tomorrow and then who knows when the next time I have computer will be. Ross and I take the ferry home on the 6th of November.

Home. Six weeks away is a long time.


14 - golden slumbers

Until then,
All My Love,
Angela

Wool Socks & Changes

SHANA TOVA LE KULAM! Happy New Year Everyone!
It’s Rosh-Hashanah, starting yesterday. I hope the year brings much sweetness.


I’ve gotten used to wearing wool socks. Normally always barefoot and free, my wool socks are the first thing I’ve been reaching for all summer. Well, granted it has been somewhat cold, but this behavior is so unlikely for me. Its like my boots, I’ve gotten used to gum boots, lined boots, somewhere along the line I have gotten used to appropriate foot wear. I am sure all my nannies and aunties would be proud.

I have changed. I have been irrevocably changed by a place.



For a while there I’d been stubbing my toe. My left toe, throbbing and in pain had been screaming at me and the minute I forgot about it, felt it subside, it reasserted itself onto the environment around; a kick, a trip, a slip here or a twist there.

I admit I am wounded, but how?
Is this a mere thrashing up against the unknown, the details of the future?

I merely ponder these things in jest.

I think to Nadia who would remind me of my never ending Grrr at the spiritual or emotional causes behind some of the injuries I’ve been incurring. She would remind me about what I’m supposed to be paying attention to, get me back on track.

But here it is the never ending worry about future details. For some, who’ve planned their future out methodically and without the whim of the universe intervening, this concept is irrelevant. Good for all of you!

For me, I am on the move again. It is a life of contrast at the moment and the times when things are really good, seem to also parallel confusion for me. Maybe I make life harder than it has to be, maybe it should be simple? Where should I be, what should I be doing? Am I wasting time? Is this valuable? What is all of this?

All these questions, "Hello Ground" will explain everything, particilarly from the perspective of the Sperm Whale or a Bowl of Petunias.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=h02a2HSB58M

On the Equinox Ross and I were standing on the deck and looked out, and saw a great orange light in the sky that kept getting bigger and brighter and we actually got to see the moon rise up out of the ocean, on fire and glowing orange.



Jenny Bourne was on the beach that night and took this picture.




On the plane to come from Masset to Vancouver I was sitting with my friend Jewel and I looked down into my purse and low and behold there is my headlamp, a reminder that I should stay when every fiber of my being says run. Who falls so deeply in love with a place? Sometimes great things bring out my instinct for flight. Running sometimes brings something wonderful, though I can’t run forever, I need to remember stand my ground and hold on until the storm passes and I can think clearly again. Mostly none of this matters anyway. It is all a dream, an illusion. I have no way to know if this being is the right way to be right now, so the worry is irrelevant. This body, these thoughts, this world, its all on loan, nothing is permanent, most things don’t last forever. All I know is I have to make sure I get back home to Haida Gwaii, where else would I use a headlamp?

Before I forget, make sure you get out and vote. Check out Moonwomans great political astrological blogs she's been doing leading up to the election.
http://wisewomaninwoods.blog.ca
Check out Elections Canada: http://www.elections.ca
There were changes to the Canada Elections Act in 2007, you might want to check those out...


In my day to day life, I did another Novel in Three Days contest, third year in a row. That was fun in the little cabin with no power, especially when the battery kept dying every couple hours, finally I begged Erin to let me come over and write. A novel I’ve started with some Williams Lake content, all my friends should start panicking; jokes.

I finished the dreadful airport gig with no love lost, and helicopters and planes and people all in chaos. I can’t imagine how I ran around shouting at pilots and guests and employees all summer, a condition and state of being for Angela that will not be revisited.

Last week my friend Frank had a chieftainship potlatch and it was really great to see this peaceful man become a leader. He and I have been chatting this summer at the airport, when he comes to drop off parcels for his grandson.






I am not at Alaskaview this winter, and I’m in the city for sometime while Dawn is going to have her baby. I can’t believe Violet is almost two years old. I have a funny feeling Dawn is going to have the boy, finally.

Well, we will see. But I’m thinking, with all this chaos going on, all these feelings of being conflicted, and plans being overturned, its got to be some sort of switch up to keep me on my toes in preparation for the boy. I predict a hellion.

Dawn is also experiencing a lot of chaos, as well. Okay, it may not be the boy. It won’t be fair, oh Dawn and poor daddy. Me in my lacy pink stirrup pants and legwarmers and every girlie item you could imagine. At least my father got to take Dawn to buy her boys sweat pants and running shoes every once in a while. At least SHE took shop in school as an elective, not to mention that winning first prize in the smoke show at school with all the boys and HER in her supped-up pickup truck that had TESTOSTERONE written on the back window.

I predict a boy. If it is a boy I pray for one thing. Dear God, give us this one thing, make him strong so he’s not emasculated by the strong willed and overbearing females that surround him on eight sides, oozing with feminine charm, wiles, ideas, schemes, games and many, many girlie costumes.

<

Yesterday in the wild my sister and I went for a hike up to Birkenhead Lake, hiked around and came out with some beautiful pine mushrooms. Of course seeing the sun for the first time all year, there has been a lack for me in Haida Gwaii, in the stifling 25 degree heat we got naked and went skinny dipping, Dawn a sight to be seen with big pregnant belly wading into the lake.

I even wrote her a poem, so lovely was it.

Where Sleeping Dogs Lie

My legs splayed up and around a log
Under infinite blue
Under a green tree lined ridge
Below snow covered mountain tops
On grass peppered with autumn leaves
One eye closed and squinting to see you
Naked below me and curled up
With arms around pregnant belly
Your back against a weathered log toasted in the sun
The dog asleep at your feet
Drying from the lake where we’ve just emerged
Naked with luminous skin
Droplets merging and running
Down soft pliant necks
Far reaching perpetually embracing arms
Watersheds down spines of steel
Under ample bottoms
Down legs that will never surrender
You look as though you’ve swallowed the moon
Luminous as the suns rays reach out to you
Or your light reaches the sun
These are our bodies, the center of all,
By this log, by this lake,
By this mountain,
The sound of the creek, the breeze,
The bees, dragon flies and crow
Stretching out into infinity
What more to life is there to know
What I already know is enough
What I don’t know
I don’t need to know yet.


Well, fair winds and follwing seas my friends,
Hope everyone is well and in good Autumnal spirits wherever you are.
My Love As Always,
Angela

Happy New Year! Stars.......

It has been some time since I updated this blog. I have been writing...

Highlights for the year in chronological order:


1. My sisters kids, seeing them, being with them and hearing about them
2. Traversing the sphere and ending up in Italy with new and old friends
3. Quitting my job, and becoming a writer at long last
4. Fitting my beautiful and cherished apartment into a storage locker
5. Having six glorious Calgary summer weeks with Rita
6. Seeing Art Garfunkle in Concert (plus Joey McIntyre at Dancing With the Stars!)
7. Moving to Haida Gwaii
8. Seeing my best friend get married in Mexico
9. Anticipating the arrival of babies by way of the most lovely women I know
10. Celebrating holidays with Claire, Jeff and Lara in Haida Gwaii

How could this not be the love of my life?



Her favorite book is the Dalai Lama’s Book of Transformation.

Favorite Quote for this year:

“There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.” Ernest Hemingway



What a difference a year makes. Last year was the hardest yet most rewarding year I have ever experienced. Life has not been the same since July 04, 2007. Independence, life could not be better. Life just has this way of surprising you. On my birthday, the 31 of December I looked over at one of my best friends and previous work companions and said, “Lara can you imagine a year ago if we told each other here is where we will be? We are together in Haida Gwaii and the landscapes of our lives is fundamentally altered.”
Last year: http://www.reverendangela.blog.ca/2007/01/

Last night Jacob and I sat on the living room floor and made maps. Some of you know what I mean, for you others who are not familiar with this process… at certain times in my life, when I want input and direction and clarity seems a million miles away, I sit down and let my subconscious take over, flipping through magazines to find sayings and pictures that will help me create a vision of where I am going. I don’t think had about it, I just use my instincts and what is appealing will come out in the end product. It requires little effort, a glue stick, some magazines, a pair of scissors and piece of poster board, a cheap and easy thrill. It works for me. Writing in my journal works for me too. Unless I am using some form of expression – I prefer the visual tactile form, to show myself where I am going, I am lost as a person and importantly as an artist. I feel I can realize my goals when I have a direct line of vision to see them, even if abstract and highly personal to me.

This was a three day process. It has been that big of a year. I sat down and wrote on a big what poster board where I am going. What projects I am going to work on this year. What I am going to use my energy doing. Then I spent the day ruminating about it. Letting everything sink into and clarify in my bones. Highly sensitive and emotive, I like to get the feel of things as a realization before I feel I truly understand them.

I have sent out the papers to get my church established. Next, on Monday I am sending out a manuscript. I am writing, writing, writing. Also am on the board of Directors for the community Association here, which is great and fulfill my need to contribute to a community. That and the people know so much, how could I not learn from them? How great!



I had an extremely cathartic experience shortly after Christmas. A situation which has slowly gotten worse that I have known in my bones was time to let go of. I have had these moments in my life, paralyzed with grief and incapacitated falling to my knees on the floor crying. It was one of those nights, and good at the same time.

Whooping and wailing and what not.


Do you ever find that once you let go of something, all the energy you wasted holding onto it, and giving it attention came back the minute you intentionally let it slip from your hands and drop? One day something means everything to you and then next day it means nothing? I had never felt that before.

I think this is what reclamation is, the function it serves, how reclaiming feels.
On my new map I have a line that says:

“You will question every decision you have ever made, except the one that got you here.”

That is this year, already for me. Things are right in my world, for the first time.
I know what I need for myself. I know what I want for myself. I know how I can get there from here. It’s great. I suppose it really has been a “grow up” kind of year.

A “Let it Go” for realsies year. It ended with a bang. Just a big bang, clarity shot. It is totally true, I am questioning every decision I ever made except the one that got me here. This is so the right place for me. It has happened several times where I have looked around me and had a very conscious thought that I never want to leave here. It happened to me in the White Church on Christmas Eve, at the Christmas carol sing-along, my neighbor was playing the violin and my friend, another neighbor was there with his accordion and everyone was singing and I looked around me and all the people from the Road were there ( Tow Hill Rd) such a community and then looked up at the clock and thought to myself here in this time and place is the exact moment in time when I realized, 12:45 on Christmas Day, that I always wanted to be here and this is home.


On my birthday I woke up and was sick with a cold. I got this fortune for my birthday.

The card read:
Yellow Pond Lilly - Letting Go.
In the knowing of who I am I float free. In the knowledge of who you are I let go. No emotional baggage to weigh me down. No emotional drama to consume my energy. Chakra: Throat (ha - what with the cold an all) and water card.

My friends were visiting for my birthday. That night we shucked clams and scallops we picked from the beach the day before and we made a seafood feast of the things we found outside of my house for my birthday dinner.

Lara and I had tickets to go to a New Years Party at Haida Bucks. We got there and there were many Haida elders. The band was awesome and we saw my friends and got the party started.

Have you ever had it happen that you are in a crowded place and you looked up just as the door opened and in sailed some handsome, beautiful, bashful man in a black suit walking tall with defined features and a few grey hairs around his temples that emphasized amazing smiling sparkling eyes like a character you wrote of once and you were starting to wonder if you wrote him into your life or it was just a coincidence and you couldn’t help but feel relief that he was there finally? Have you wondered to yourself on the last day of the year, which is your birthday, after having a cathartic experience after a terrible, terrible year that maybe you are exactly where you are supposed to be doing exactly the thing you are supposed to be doing? I don't wonder that anymore. I got here. That was good, it is good to be here. Sometimes its not even about physically getting here, it is about mentally getting here.

We all danced and that was cool. The girls were so much fun. The party started to affect me and I began to feel very drunk, as is all my birthday and New Years celebrations. It was all just good fun. I think my birthday, the days proceeding and in the wake of my birthday happened to be transformative.


For my birthday I really wanted to do a hike out to Rose Spit. New Years day, hung over as hell we had an impromptu beach polar bear swim with ten other girls and their husbands here on the beach. They came with their multiple kids at the last minute and the house was transformed into cookies and hot chocolate and a warm inviting feminine environment. Moms and a fire and celebrations. What a way to start off the New Year, it made me feel really good.
That afternoon Lara and I decided the next day we would Hike to Cape Fife and up to Rose Spit and then down North Beach. This hike is a triangle that would take us across the island and then north up the East Beach to a 5 KM long spit into the ocean, the longest spit in BC which is the Haida birthplace of the world called Rose Spit. Then it is back down North Beach to Tow Hill.

This is the place where the Raven picked the clamshell apart and the men came out and walked up out of the sea onto the land. From my AlaskaView Blog:
http://alaskaview.blog.ca/2007/10/08/alaska_view_adventures_the_raven~3105967


Here two separate bodies of ocean meet- Hecate Straight on one side and the Dixon Entrance on the other. You really are on the edge of the world. The wind and waves blow in from both directions and crash together and meet. You feel like you are standing in the middle of the ocean. Really there is nothing on either side of you at the tip of the Spit but the ocean crashing into itself.

This was my birthday present for myself. It was hard. We hiked 13 hours straight with a half hour break. The guide book told us the hike would be 10 hours. It was definitely longer.

It is really hard to walk on the beach. Especially gravel on the beach. I am finding out later this is a camp over hike usually. Lara is a hiker and has never hiked that long or far.

We rose to the challenge foolishly and completed the 35 KM loop trek to my Rebirth place at Rose Spit. The guide book I have failed to mention it is usually a 2-3 day hike.

I found a heart shaped rock over the course of the day’s journey and a rose colored stone appropriate for an offering to the spit. The long hike up the beach gave me a long time to think on the 17 KM walk down East Beach. About the things I want in my life.

As we walked I told Lara the story of Sedna. Who wouldn’t take a husband, who met a fisherman, who was married off to the birdman, who was rescued only to be betrayed moments later by her father who pushed her out of the kayak and chopped off her fingers with a paddle only so that she would fall to the bottom of the ocean and transform into the goddess of the sea. I told Lara about how the fisherman took his shield off his heart and one day Sedna decided to get caught and he hooked her and how with his beating heart in her hands the beat put the flash back on her bones again and she became a whole person after all.

This book I want to publish. It is my favorite. I love it, still. This gets sent off this month. That’s what I wished for at the end of the spit, what I really want is this one published.

I threw my red rock off to sea on the Hecate Straight entrance. The whole time I was walking out to the spit I was thinking about Sedna and the book, sending my energy out to the universe that I want to publish the book.

Hecate is goddess of wilderness and childbirth, also sorcery and is Queen of Ghosts. She rules the crossroads and is also associated with rebirth and as the Ghost Queen guards paths that cross, the real world and the spirit world etc.:

"For to this day, whenever any one of men on earth offers rich sacrifices and prays for favor according to custom, he calls upon Hecate. Great honor comes full easily to him whose prayers the goddess receives favorably, and she bestows wealth upon him; for the power surely is with her".

Then I threw my “heart” out to sea off the end of Rose Spit on the Dixon entrance side and so rebirth to the world, and free and open.

After being reborn from the ocean, and a long, long year behind us, Lara and I started the long journey back to ourselves and home.

Along the way the funniest thing began to happen, delirious and exhausted, with brutally blistered feet, in order to think of something other than my aching feet. I asked Lara what her happiest defining moments were and we started talking about our Grandparents, our ancestors. Here on the beach. We begin to talk of the things that shaped us as people. I tell stories in times of crisis – like when you walk too far.

The moon was no where to be seen. It was dark and we must have walked hours on the beach in the dark. We had the chance to see the sun set as we walked back from Rose spit down to North Beach. Then the dusk comes on. After the dusk came the dark. We walked past the tree line, past the drift wood. Down North beach we walked steadily foot after foot over the gravel and down the beach. Our flashlights were pointless and we chose to walk without them on, in the dark you begin to see better when your eyes grow accustomed to the light or lack thereof. And then we began to notice things around us. We walked past a shipwreck.

Down the beach in front of us you should see the fingers where there was gravel and then the hard packed sand. We cried in relief for the hard packed sand once our feet started walking on it.

There were some amazing things too. Like the sand was wet and for the most part stretched out ahead of us like a mirror. I said to Lara, look you can see the stars above us reflected in the water on the sand below us. So that the whole world in its darkness was surrounded by sparkling diamond stars. We were enveloped by a blanket of stars and it was truly wondrous despite the fatigue. I am sure whoever wrote the Diamond Sutra (the oldest known dated printed book in the world) wrote because of walking on a beach on a night like that night.

“Thus shall you think of this entire fleeting world: A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.” In other words, live the beauty of this life to the fullest as everything is impermanent and fleeting. "The Diamond Sutra beats with two hearts: one is wisdom and the other is compassion. To be wise is to know and understand the essence of awareness. To be compassionate is to know and understand the essence of intention. In the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha shows us that ultimately, compassion and wisdom are one." —from the Introduction by Master Hsing Yun

How many shooting stars did I see that night on the beach? How many of my dreams will come true because of what I wished for there and then? Many.

We struggled to push onward. To convince myself that this was nothing, just a long walk I thought: Dawn was in labor with Violet longer than this. You can keep going. If you think you just can’t carry on because you've just walked 35 kms, you have got another thing coming. She was in labor for 36 hours. Think about that.

We did it though. Tow Hill got bigger and bigger to us. We had a moment of panic, when above Tow Hill in the sky off to the left a lightening flash burst out of the sky. My blistered limping legs started to boogie after that. There was no way we were going to be on the open beach in a lightening storm.

When we got to the end of the trail Lara was swinging her flashlight around.

Oddly enough I could have sworn I saw an old Haida guy standing in the bushes. I gasped and then stopped and she stopped but I didn’t want to freak her out so we carried on.

Fell exhausted with relief into the house, on safe ground just in time to call our steadily panicking “safety” people
and let them know we were home, and search and rescue wasn’t needed.
When Lara and I got home we had Birthday Champagne and Strawberry Cheese Cake.

Transformative indeed, I believe it is going to be an amazing year. I am ready for it all.


All my love

Angela




"And all the stars came crashing down as I laid eyes on what I'd found"

So I don't forget, a video from this fall, Tow Hill with Derek and Jeska.