do you care if I stayed.....

I've really started to love biking. My car has been out of commission all week and its probably the best thing that's happened to me lately because I've discovered that I LOVE biking. Last night I biked to Whyte to meet Sarah Choi for a pint and as I rode through quaint residential neighbourhoods and messy back alleys the sun kept angling lower and lower until I pulled into the last back alley just south of Whyte. There were puddles in the pot holes and the sun shone straight along the brick walls and the streamers from the car dealership were shimmering and whispering in the wind and I cruised towards the sun with the slow shwipp-shwipp-shwipp sound that my chain makes following my shadow across the rutted pavement. It was beautiful.

run, run, run, run, run, run, keep running back to me....

I'm back at home in Edmonton. For the first time in over a month. My car is dying and so until I can get it into the shop, I'm using transit to get around....which I usually enjoy but today it's raining. Quite a bit. Pouring actually. I've thought about buying an umbrella about 25 times this summer but never have...a fact that I'm regretting now.

I stood on my porch this morning watching it come down on the half mowed grass in my yard, on the pavement and sidewalk outside my fence, on the wheat fields across that road....it sounds beautiful. The eaves are overflowing now and a sheet of water is pouring over the steps up to the house. The wind is picking up and it looks like a hurricane out there. I'm listening to Basia Bulat's "Run" which I first heard last weekend at Edmonton FolkFest. A seriously beautiful song.

I'm trying in this moment to stay in the present, but so much of me is pulling forward into the future to see another moment like this. Another moment when I'm standing watching the rain and music is playing somewhere else in the house and Patrick is sketching something at the table and the kettle is going on the stove.... And so much of me is pulling back into the past, watching the snow fall from the kitchen windows in Reykjavik, listening to Patrick Watson, processing photos, feet up on the heater.... I find I just can't stay in one place in my mind. I've felt like this before; then I went to Bangladesh. And later again, and I went to Iceland.

Better start saving for a trip.