when your eyes are all painted Sinatra blue...

This morning I woke up and realized that I have the house to myself this week. With Bethany and Joel gone to San Francisco, it will be very quiet here the next few days. Not only that, I sent my computer in to be fixed this week so I don't have my usual companion around either. I was feeling a bit unsettled about it all, but when I woke up this morning, I started to think about what I would all do and I came up with...pretty much anything I want to. I think today I would like to spend the whole day at home: doing laundry, frying bacon, baking cookies for my lunches this week, listening to music, reading a book or two, drinking tea. I think it will be a good day.

On a totally unrelated note...or maybe not. I have been thinking about seeing all of Canada lately. I absolutely love that I am a Canadian and, in particular, a western Canadian, but there is so much more of this country I haven't seen or experienced. I feel like if I were born as any other nationality, I would have Canada as the number one country I'd like to visit. I have a vision for this Canadian experience. I have recently fallen in love with Via Rail and I think I'd like to fly out to Victoria and then take the train all the way to Halifax. I am going to pack my camera and laptop of course, but other than that I only want a backpack with a few changes of clothes and a bag full of books. I want to watch the country move past my window like a stream of consciousness narrative. I want to listen to music and make playlists for each province and write about them. Write about the people I meet, the things I see and the way in which I experience them. I want to take photos of these things so that I can express what my words lack.
I can think of a few people who I would love to make this trip with, but I also think I might experience it just as well on my own (of course calling to check in regularly , Mom). I usually am not a big fan of traveling alone. I get lost inside my own head pretty easily and I fear if I were to experience too long of a time by myself I would re-emerge into society a very strange person. I also think that, as it says in "Into the Wild"...Happiness is only real when it is shared. An experience of beauty on your own is nice, but when you can share it with someone else, it takes on a life of its own. However, I think on parts of this trip it would be important for me to just be on my own and listen to myself. Anais Nin says "We don't see things as they are, we see them as WE are". I have discovered that most of my travels consist of 25% discovering this amazing world I live in and 75% discovering who I am and my place within this amazing world. I think its time to embrace that and recognize it and document it with that kind of awareness, perhaps for no other purpose than my own understanding.