gasoline rainbows

These are the places you will find me hidin'...

2011-11-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

It's been a while. 8 months to be exact. I'm sure anyone who ever did follow this has long since lost interest in "following" but that's okay because I want to write this to remind myself of it, months, years from now.

I want to remember this fall.

Driving the endless back highways of western Alberta in early November. I want to remember dark mornings driving from Hinton to Drayton Valley, Efterklang's Natural Tune bringing in the sun. Too dark at 6:30 am but orange streaks eating away at the night from the tops of hills and trees until the sun becomes a metronome of light hitting the highway, the tires, my eyes through forested roads. Cattle grazing in cleared fields along the highway, their breath hanging in pools around their noses and feet, clinging to their legs.
I want to remember this.

I want to remember quiet mornings with Henk curled in a corner listening to the keyboard's clicks punctuating Head and the Heart's new album. Bundled up sweaters and slippers on hardwood. -30 celsius outside and poetry books laying open on the floor next to recipes.
I want to remember this.

I want to remember waking up warm in a cold house, squished between husband and cat. Shallow and deep breaths, snow on the rooftop next door. Cookies for breakfast. Thick, jean stretching long johns and feet in boots two sizes too big in order to fit properly warm socks. And sweaters under jackets under sweaters with mittens that need mending.
I want to remember this.

I always fall in love with an open door, with a horizon on an endless sea....

2011-03-09T17:47:00.000-08:00

Almost 3 months since I last posted here. There are reasons for that. Here are a few:

- things going on in my head that I'm not ready to put words to
- the dead feeling you get from doing office work for weeks on end
- holidays
- topdocumentaryfilms.com
- sidereel
- laundry
- wedding planning
- a birthday
- doing too many things after office hours
- having more disposable income than usual
- getting an Edmonton Public Library card
- Patrick living in Fort McMurray

Here are some reasons I'm deciding to write another post tonight:

- bruises on my knees and palms and cuts on my knuckles
- exhaustion
- having/working for less money but more free produce
- doing less after work hours
- topdocumentaryfilms.com
- getting an Edmonton Public Library card
- the way you feel after working outside in freezing temperatures for days
- hanging all day from a scaffold 15ft up in the air
- the feeling you get when you see the skeleton of a greenhouse and imagine what will grow in it
- Patrick living in Fort McMurray
- good music from a great birthday cd from a friend too far away
- being reminded that distance doesn't always equal being far away
- needing to put words to something, anything, even if it isn't naming what I'm thinking
- a helium filled balloon floating for weeks

I'll taste the devil's tears, drink from his soul, but I'll never give up you....

2010-12-20T19:17:00.000-08:00

Christmas is in 5 days. I can't believe it. The time has gone by so fast...and that was the point of this job I took this fall....to make the time that Patrick and I would be apart, go by fast. But coming to the edge of Christmas and the new year, it looks as though another long stretch of separation is ahead of us again. Tonight is the winter solstice. The longest night of the year. That means it's all uphill from here on in, right?

I'm listening to Angus and Julia Stone right now, my feet on the register under the desk, wearing one of Patrick's old hoodies covered in paint spots and fraying at the sleeves. The plant beside me continues to die despite my best efforts to bring it back...too much water? too little water? too cold? too warm? It never seems to make a difference. Maybe I'm exaggerating when I say dying. It's just not thriving. The leaves are still strong and wide...tropical looking really...but brown and yellow spots have started to appear on them. They're drying up an edge or a patch here and there, but it continues to grow. It's okay, but it's not as good as it could be.

I'm taking tomorrow off work, which is probably a good thing because other than meeting for 15 minutes with one prospective student today, I spent most of the day doing non-essential tasks. Well, more than non-essential...non-work really. I do enjoy the office on days like this though. Wanda, Diana and I spend hours watching YouTube videos and reading pages and pages of DamnYouAutoCorrect. My greatest accomplishment today was taking my pants off in the middle of the office...which has a story behind it, but not one I feel like sharing at the moment. Suffice it to say that I am the epitome of office professionalism.

Well, I feel like I'm not saying anything and since I have two loads of what seems like never-ending laundry waiting to be folded or hung up or stuffed in a drawer, I guess I should be done with this post. However, before I go I would like to leave you with a song. I've come into some new music lately and I'm loving a lot of it, but at the moment this song in particular is absolutely blowing my mind. Peter Gabriel covers The Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage". It's kinda long but put it on, turn up the speakers and do nothing but listen to it for the next 6 minutes...trust me.

Bri, these are things you should remember...

2010-12-06T11:21:00.000-08:00

So it's December and I haven't posted in months. But in my defense, I have been busy. I've seen a lot of this gorgeous country in the past few weeks and I think I'd like to write up a little of what I like best about each place I've been. And this is more for myself when I am thinking back on the past 6 weeks of whirlwind traveling I've been doing....(and there's probably more I'm already forgetting about)

Niagara: the fantastic signs on the railings demonstrating that you should not climb over them and into the falls. And the cute little Italian restaurant I found on a side street made a decent pasta for a good price.

Ottawa: the adorable old french farmers that set up in Byward Market to sell their apples and veggies and berries and squash despite it being really very cold. Also going for drinks with Lisa was really nice. I like seeing people you haven't seen in years and remembering why and how much you like them.

Toronto: the Gladstone Hotel. And Shanghi Cowgirl. And Queen St West. And seeing OCAD. And the sushi....... and so much more

Rural Ontario: most of my driving in Ontario involved intentionally taking back roads and side roads and roads that ended up to be dead ends in swamps and forest. I love that. I love seeing the lift locks and the "corners" at every intersection and the just barely still fall colours.

The Kerby's: Two years before I left Toronto before Patrick's parents came to visit for the weekend. My fear of meeting them was the only reason I left. This year I found myself spending a couple days with them without Patrick....and it was wonderful! I feel like I got to know them better for who they are as individuals, not just who they are in relation to Patrick. It was important. And good. Very good. I also spent a morning with Patrick's aunt (and cousins) up the road and that's something I've always wanted to do...but with 6 kids running around it's not always so easy to get into a good conversation with her. I'm glad I got to. I really love that whole extended family and I'm so glad I'm marrying into it. It's nice to know that I'll legally be "one of them" soon!

London:I hung out with Carmen and Rhys and it was wonderful. I like them very much. Because it was raining, Carmen and I spent most of a day lounging in my hotel room watching nothing tv and drinking wine and swimming. Also, that place we went where the pub was a house....that was good. Need to remember that name...

Peace River: the drive through Slave Lake and High Prairie to Peace River is beautiful. The trees, just newly bare, the fields full of bales and stubble and all the old abandoned houses stole my heart. I love it. I'm gonna drive it again for fun in the spring and this time, I'm taking my camera!

Calgary: The Wild Rose Brewery was fantastic. Went back twice because I liked it so much. Need to remember this and stop at it for lunch on my way through more often!

Vancouver: Hailey is another good friend that I hadn't seen in a while and got to see her life in Vancouver, meet her boyfriend Jon and remember why and how much I like her. I also really liked the Alibi Room when I went there for supper with Trixie. Definitely a place I'd like to go back to. I need to write that down somewhere so I remember it the next time I find myself in Vancouver.

Victoria: Staying at the Empress. Yessssss! $16 cocktails in the Bengal Lounge. Valet and porter service...walking around the inner harbour at night with no particular place to be. Beautiful! In particular I really liked "The Patch" where I bought some awesome new wood earrings, I liked "The Bard and Banker Pub" which has a really cool layout and a good "2-mile" beer taster and my encounter with Capt. Paddy and his pirate ship are among the best things about my trip. Also, the jacket I liked and tried on 3 separate times but made the responsible decision to leave it for someone else to love.

HWY 1 to Nanaimo: through forest to the edge of the ocean and back again, I loved this drive. I drive a lot on this trip and this 2 hour jaunt was one of my favourites.

Smithers: First of all, the butcher shop has the best venison and cranberry sausage. LOVE IT! Gonna try to pick up more today. Also, the Alpenhorn has better food than any restaurant I've been at west of Toronto....and I've been to a lot of restaurants west of Toronto in the past few weeks. My adventure hiking up to Twin Falls was pretty awesome too. Too bad I never made it. Guess I'll have to come back when the road is open sometime.

Kitimat: Seeing family I haven't seen in ages! Around the town, the Native Village was probably my favourite. Also, reading stories to nephews and a niece before bed was a favourite too.

Have two more days yet, but in 'heading home' mode already. I love seeing the country, but also can't wait for my own bed.

In general, things I have learned from my travels:

- Holiday Inn Express is a fantastic hotel.
- Four Points are also good but usually older....however they always have a restaurant attached and often have local craft beer on tap.
- Brewery's tap rooms are wonderful places....and some have excellent food....especially the small ones.
- Seafood is much better on the coast.
- ask for upgrades...hotels, airlines, rental cars, etc. You usually get them.
- Rent a vehicle with heated seats in the winter....and if you can, automatic start.
- Take a little bit of time, a drive around town or a minute or two of research before you choose a place to eat. There could be something really great around the next corner.
- Always bring a book...hard cover if you care about it, paperback if your luggage is already overweight.
- Use the work out rooms and hot tubs at hotels!
- Always start a conversation with the person standing in line next to you (you do a lot of waiting when you travel)...everyone has interesting stories and if you're lucky, you meet some really great people.
- Know that you made the right decision not to go have supper on a pirate ship by yourself, but let yourself feel sorry that you didn't.
- Never watch scary movies or intense crime drama when staying in motor inns by yourself.
- Always sit at the bar. Talk to the bartender, find out what places they like best in town. They know best.
- Try local beers, then go see the breweries you liked.
- Dress in layers. Always. Wherever you go.
- Eat when you're hungry...not when the clock says you should.
- Take snacks.
- 9 times out of 10, the history channel has the best programming. Why watch anything else?

and finally....
- use your camera! Take it EVERYWHERE!

you who are my home...

2010-10-13T06:41:00.000-07:00

It's just starting to get light out. I'm already dressed and packed for work and finishing some toast while I look out the window of my livingroom. There's a difference in the morning air this week. By the time 5pm rolls around and this sun is making everything golden, it still feels as though summer is hanging on, but in the morning, winter is close by. I like the kind of blues that this weather and temperature put into the sky though. It's gorgeous.
This week is full of big dreams and ideas and decisions and my emotions have been all over the map. Mostly I feel young and small and not ready to make the decisions we need to. But in this moment, when the air is cold and the trees are bare and the sky is that blue with just the beginnings of pinks and reds on the nearly invisible clouds, I feel okay. I feel like I can breathe.

lights go off around you like some, photograph...

2010-09-27T18:27:00.000-07:00

It's 7:30pm and the temperature outside is absolutely perfect. I'm sitting on the back porch drinking beer that was a gift from a friend, listening to Blue Rodeo and watching our cat Henk jump on the yellow leaves that are punctuating the still very green grass. The heavy frost last week took care of most the bugs that would still be out and so the perfectness of this night is not lost to any buzzing or swatting. It's quiet out, only a few vehicles coming past and the strings of Blue Rodeo's "What Is This Love" are filling the space between the porch steps and the tree branches that arch over the roof and reach past the fence. I'm sitting in a t-shirt and shorts and the weather is just right where I'm not cold or too hot. Jodi finished work and came to sit out with me. I like living with my cousin. She's really full of energy and life and I like her being around. A few years ago she did the same job with King's that I do now. In some ways I think she was better at it than I am. Jodi gets people excited about things, and I am more apt to make people think about things than get them excited. Maybe we should have done the job together. Well, I only have about 4000 photos to work through so I should stop sitting around on the porch spilling stream of consciousness onto this blog and get back to work. I just am hesitant to let this moment end... . . . . . . .

that's when i miss you...

2010-09-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

can't get enough of this song.

do you care if I stayed.....

2010-08-18T16:09:00.001-07:00

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....

2010-08-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

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.

how near, how far, how near boy, tell me how far.....

2010-07-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

I'm on a train cruising through the outskirts of Montreal on the way to Belleville. It's still quite light out but you can tell its getting to be softer light, evening light. I'm listening to Cinematic Orchestra and every so often I can hear the train blowing its arrival. The old churches and 100 year old brick apartment buildings are thinning out and I'm beginning to glide through forest and field and rivers and small town gas stations that pop up along the tracks. The corn is almost as tall as the young trees already out here and the light catching their tops as they bend towards the train in the wind is stunning.

So far this week, I've been in Fort McMurray, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Montreal and have had no access to internet in the past 5 days....so where do I begin? Maybe I'll just give a few highlights. A week ago Patrick and I were camping in the middle of a gorgeous forest outside Ft McMurray. I loved it despite the off and on weather and it was such a beautiful way to be just the two of us for a few days before his new job and my new job keep us apart for 6 months. After that I came home and packed and K-fern came a took me to the airport the next morning. I appreciated it because it's a pain to get the shuttle to the airport and its expensive to take a taxi or leave my car for two weeks but most of all, it's just nice to hang out with her on the way there and so I left Edmonton feeling good.
I spent 3ish days in Winnipeg, and there were lots of good moments but I think the best was when I met up with Jamie after her night class and we went out for supper at Stella's. The food we ordered was great and we drank and talked and enjoyed each others company until we were the only people left in the place, until the waitress asked us to settle up, until they started mopping under our feet. We then made our way home in the humid, Winnipeg night and fell asleep with Jayda the cat purring between us.
In Montreal I saw Geneva, who I haven't seen in a long long time. In years. I fell in love with the city immediately. It rained a lot. Probably every few hours. It would be hot and sunny and beautiful and then you'd hear a peel of thunder and you would hardly have time to run to any kind of shelter before it POURED for 20-30 minutes. A lot of Geneva and I's exploring was interrupted by this weather and we spent a lot of time hovering in the doorways of businesses and bus stations and bars. On friday night we went to a few bars in Old Montreal and found one we really liked. St Paul Pub is just a door on the street but it opened up into a beautiful second floor pub with window seats over the port and the street. Margaret was our server and was super sweet. We came back to that place this afternoon and spent most of our time drinking Creemore and watching the street below with the place mostly to ourselves.

And now I'm on the train to Belleville to spend some time with the Kerbys. I really love the train and I'm really loving Quebec and so it makes me really happy to be rounding out this week sliding across this landscape with this beautiful, soft light. These are the moments that I wish I could take everyone I love and share this with them.

and when you let go i will let go too...

2010-07-11T20:39:00.000-07:00

JULY 10, 2010

We’re in Gregoire Lake Provincial Park. We came to stay two nights. This may have been a mistake. Yesterday we were still in the beautiful Sir Winston Churchill Provincial Park (an island in the middle of Lac La Biche). By 9 am there, we were in swimsuits and flipflops, thinking about having an ice cream and walking along the beach. We stayed only one night there. That WAS a mistake. We got to Gregoire about an hour before the rain, stepping out of our car and changing hurridly into warmer pants and sweaters. The tent was set up on the only available surface, gravel. Patrick jimmied up a tarp over the table with what little rope we had and a stick from the dense forest surrounding us. The trees are mostly poplar. Reaching bare white bodies into the sky until a scraggly mass of braches and leaves decorate its top and make them sway dangerously in the slightest wind. When the rain came it poured angry, giant drops and creating rivers and ponds under our tent before the clouds started to break apart twenty minutes later. I used the back of the axe to dig trenches away from the largest lakes under our tent. After the skies cleared, the wind picked up and it continued to rain from the leaves at the tops of the birches waving in the wind. The fire was doused by the rain, the remaining wood wet, so Patrick and I crouched at the table under the tarp playing rook until it was too dark to see. Then we took cover in the tent and read Emily Carr by flashlight until we were too tired to talk.
Today the rain came off and on between breakfast and the early afternoon when we decided to take a nap and ended up sleeping through most of the only sun we’ve seen here so far. I woke up warm from the humidness of the tent and went to put on shorts. Patrick is gone to collect our daily allowance of wood, “only two buckets night, only available from 5 to 9 and don’t park in front of the gate”, and I’m watching the clouds swirling past those swaying birches trying to calculate how much time we have before it rains again. Blue Rodeo is playing out from my speakers and over it I hear the wind making its way to me through the underbrush. When it hits me, it’s cooler than I expected. Patrick drives into our site and starts to unload the firewood. Time to put jeans back on and pull things back under the shelter of the tarp.

the sun is up, the sky is blue, it's beautiful and so are you...

2010-06-29T16:28:00.000-07:00

I'm driving almost the whole length of the province of Alberta this week. Today Patrick and I are making a day trip to Fort McMurray and later this week I'll be driving south....way south....to shoot a wedding. Right now we're somewhere between Fort McMurray and Lac La Biche taking highway 881 which keeps turning from a small paved road into a large highway and then back to the small two laner that will take us most of the way home. Forest and lakes have been lining the road all the way there and back so far, but my favourite I think is the forests of dead evergreens...all still staning, all with little tufts of vegetation at the top. They look like a swampland of giant cattails. Along the highway, on a large patch of bare ground someone has taken long pieces of these dead trees and spelled out C+M. I like that someone took the time to stop and do that. We're listening to the Beatles and the sun is streaming in and the window is open and we're singing along. I'm loving this moment and trying to hold on to it in my mind because this roadtrip represents the beginning of a 6-month separation. And though I know that I'll still be seeing Patrick every few weeks, it's the everyday things that you miss and that make you lonely. No spontaneous movie watching on saturday afternoons curled up on the floor, no coming home from work and drinking a beer together on the porch, no holding hands while grocery shopping.... So today, I'm going to hold on to this moment and try not to already miss him.

so i'll wait for the sun, i'll wait for the light...

2010-06-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

I came across this photo in "The Commons" (http://www.flickr.com/commons/) on flick the other day. It's a pretty cool place. Full of photos from all over the world and from every time period that's been photographed. Anyway, I came across this one:

The caption to the images reads like this: "Juichende jongens bij de voetbalwedstrijd VSV-DFC (1-0) als VSV scoort. Velsen, Nederland, 18 oktober 1931.

Boys cheering when their favorite team scores.
Collectie Spaarnestad"

I found it in relation to world cup things I've been looking up, but I've been unable to close the tab in my browser for a few days. I keep looking at this photo and thinking about it. I keep thinking about these boys. I wonder how many are still alive. I think about them cheering at this soccer game and I can't help but think about the timeperiod. October 1931. They had no idea what was going on in Germany and what they would witness in their lifetime. They didn't know their young adulthood would be stolen from them by war. That their friends, parents, relatives might die in the terrible battles that would rip the Netherlands to shreds in the next decade. These boys are around my grandparents age and I've heard stories about the war's reach in Holland. Stories of the Nazis taking my grandfather right off his bike on his way to church. Stories of my grandmother hiding him in her mattress when the soldiers came to the door to find young men for work camps. Stories that contributed to my grandparents decision to leave their home country and come by boat with their two small children to a country they'd never seen. However, the point that I think about when I look at these boys, is that they were unknowingly on the precipice of a catastrophic disaster for the human race and that every generation to some extent or another has this experience. It is the lesson of every history that what one generation breeds, will come to fruition in another. Maybe not right away, maybe in combination with other forces and factors, but always to devastating effect.
I worry about this. Our world has obviously not (and may never) outgrow full out, undeniably violent, unjustifiable warfare. There is a significant percentage of our 6 billion brothers and sisters who live in constant fear of violent death within the context of conflict. And I worry about that. But in the city where I live, in a province like mine, in the country I call home, violent conflict is not always at the forefront and we forget that we, like these boys in the Dutch photo, are on the edge of something so terribly destructive that it will change every aspect of our lives and culture.
I'm talking about the way my generation and the generation before mine have treated the earth and its resources with disregard and outright violence. I worry about what I will live to see. What I will witness and how the lives of my children and grandchildren will be affected by the choices we make today as a culture, as a community and as individuals.
What I worry most about is the relationship we have with the earth in terms of its power to GROW. This summer, I gave up my lucrative landscaping job to return to the market garden farm I worked on years ago. This was not a good financial decision. Today I spent 8 hours walking long lines of broccoli and cabbage going after weeds with a hoe. This kind of work gives me a lot of time to think. I like doing physical, outdoor labour in the summer, but I particularly like this work. I think about the people who will buy these veggies at market and feed them to their families, how they made a choice to buy local food from people whose hands are still ingrained with the dirt that the produce was sitting in only hours before. I think about what it has taken to get this food to their table and I am proud of what I do. I have had the opportunity to receive an education that only the very privileged of this world obtain. I have a degree to my name and though that might not be so outstanding in Canada, in global terms, I am privileged indeed! I've had this degree for 4 years and I'm still labouring in fields. And it's exactly where I want to be. I am a part of growing food locally, sustainably and full of flavour that the produce that gets shipped across the globe for days and weeks can't compete with.

And yet I worry. In a world that puts more oil consumption into its food than its cars, in a culture that demands cheapness and convenience as a replacement for nutrition and quality, how do we instill a sustainable, realistic and powerful sense of food and land in our generation and the one to come? We are sitting on the edge of the consequences of our poor decisions and we have no idea how desperately it will impact us and the generation to come.

singing in the rain...

2010-06-07T16:42:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in Room At the Top (RATT) at the university. It's not the nicest place in the world. Actually it's kind of run down...but not in that way that produces a lot of character or anything. It has the UofA internet connection I need to do work and cheap beer and food (and the food does indeed taste really cheap as well). Patrick's having hot wings and ricards and I'm having a blue cheese burger and fries with a pilsner. Its been warm and muggy all day, raining on and off. The RATT is on the 7th floor of the SU building at the university and all four walls are all windows. It's quite a nice view over the river to downtown and across the very green looking campus towards my house. We're sitting in the north west corner of the pub and the rain is turning view out the west window into a monet painting. I'm eating a blue cheese & bacon burger that leaves a lot of be desired (like the texture of real meat) but the fries are pretty damn good for being $2.30/basket. I'm hoping they play world cup games when it begins next week so I can work and watch at the same time.

no one is the savior they would like to be....

2010-05-16T19:26:00.000-07:00

two beautiful things this weekend:

- Selling flowers at market and the busker closest to our stall playing music from the Amelie soundtrack on his accordian.

- Sitting on the back porch tonight after hanging out with friends at Sugarbowl watching the heavy clouds break up and the air being so so so still.

these are some of the good things about this weekend.

and we'll undress beside the ashes of the fire....

2010-05-02T11:14:00.000-07:00

Today is a very April day. I woke up this morning before 7am with the sun shining so brightly into my eyes that I couldn't hardly open them. By the time I was heading for a McDonald's big breakfast with Patrick the breeze had started up and the sky was clouding over. Now, as I sit at my kitchen table finishing up photos for Dawn Stiles Design, listening to Iron and Wine, the sky behind the tree in my yard is turning a very particular shade of grey-blue and the wind is whipping the green buds on the tree limbs against the fence and the roof. I love this kind of April weather. Would I prefer to be sitting outside reading a book in the grass while its 20+ degrees? ...maybe. But there's something really beautiful about this kind of day.

I've slipped up in writing something here every week so today I have two inspirational 'things' for you to enjoy:

First, is this Old Spice commercial which makes me very happy when I watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

The second one is this quote from...of course, Barbara Kingsolver (again)!

"People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around."

**sidenote: last night I fell asleep watching old episodes of America's Next Top Model and dreamed of Tyra teaching me to walk a runway. Don't know what to make of that in light of this quote!

with our minds on our hearts and our hearts on the line....

2010-04-15T11:03:00.001-07:00

I baked bread this morning. Tried a new recipe, a new technique. It's cooling now and the kitchen is full of that thick smell of yeast and heat. I've been spending some time reading about Barbara Kingsolver and came across this wonderful bit she writes in her book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life".

"When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable."

springtime and the promise of an open fist....

2010-04-14T16:49:00.000-07:00

I've been real crap at blogging lately. I don't know why. I want to blame it on lack of time...but that's not true. I want to say I've been doing other more useful things, but quite frankly, I can't call watching back seasons of America's Next Top Model particularly useful. So while I was reading all the new posts from my lovely blogging friends this afternoon, I had an idea. A new idea for blogging for the summer. At least once a week, I am going to post something that has inspired me or caught my eye or something I am thinking of. It might be a poem or a photo or a song or a bit of a book I'm reading, something I had to eat that day...anything really. And in doing so I hope that the rest of you all who read this will find something interesting or inspiring in it too. I will begin this trend today with this poem:

Scenic Route

For Lucy, who called them "ghost houses"

Someone was always leaving
and never coming back.
The wooden houses wait like old wives
along this road; they are everywhere,
abandoned, leaning, turning gray.

Someone always traded
the lonely beauty
of hemlock and stony lakeshore
for survival, packed up his life
and drove off to the city.
In the yards the apple trees
keep hanging on, but the fruit
grows smaller year by year.

When we come this way again
the trees will have gone wild,
the houses collapsed, not even worth
the human act of breaking in.
Fields will have taken over.

What we will recognize
is the wind, the same fierce wind,
which has no history.

Lisel Mueller

and I took this photo recently that makes me think of this too:

we'll get lost in the warm...

2010-03-27T17:57:00.001-07:00

It's beautiful today. Warm and sunny and 15 degrees. All those things you hope for in a spring day. The air smells of thawing soil and there's messy puddles in the ditches. I much more beautiful day than yesterday. Yesterday, I woke up to snow. I got all bundled up to walk to the LRT in the snow and grumbled about the snow all the way down my driveway. When I got to the LRT path though, I realized I could hear birds. Lots and lots and LOTS of birds singing to each other. All different kinds too. I kept looking around in the trees and the field and couldn't see any, but apparently they were loving the spring snow. It made me shut up about my grumbling and enjoy the rest of my walk in what might be the last snowfall until winter again.

Today I was extremely productive. I bought a deep freeze of a perfect size to hold all my meat for a good deal which in turn really helped out the Med student I bought it from who was moving to Ontario. I feel good about buying used things when I know that I'm happy and the person who sold it is happy too. There's so much stuff lying around in this world because everyone wants something new. There's a line in a movie I watched recently that says "things aren't made to be fixed these days". I thought that was really true and really interesting. I think things have a certain lifespan and are indeed, not made to be fixed, but made to die prematurely to give way for consumers to buy NEW things. I'm not trying to tackle revolutionizing this kind of thinking because capitalize runs on these ideas...but instead, I'm trying to make sure that the things we choose to buy and use, live as full a lifespan as possible rather than tossing more half-used items for newer, more fragile things.
Anyway, I bought a freezer. And it is lovely. I have desperately needed one for my food for so long and it feels good to open the garage door and see it there humming away.
I also baked bread today in my crockpot for the first time. It was good, but it got a little dark on the bottom. I tried to scrape off the worst parts and took some to the Fernhouts who have graciously housed my meat in their freezer for the past few months. In between all this I made some chili and did a number of hours of work for the university and transplanted my garden...which is growing out of control so I also measured out the garden boxes I will be making in the next week. I played some darts with Patrick and took a walk on the farm and am planning to do some laundry before the night is through.
But right now I'm listening to good music, sitting on my back porch in a t-shirt and watching the sun make long shadows at 7pm. I'm cautious to say it but....I think spring is finally here.

everything I want that I never knew I needed...

2010-03-14T17:52:00.000-07:00

There's something to say about having a job where you feel productive. I spent three summers working at a job that paid me well for...well...not much. The longer I worked there the more I found myself stretching hour chores into day chores into week long chores until I was simply just driving around wasting gas and time until the clock said I could go home. Working at the farm is just the opposite. I work until I'm exhausted and then I work some more and at the end of the day when I go home, I have all this extra energy that comes from pushing through and getting things accomplished during the day. And that carries over to the weekends too. So far this weekend, I've cleaned, vacuumed and washed the inside of my car, put in some good hours for the university work, read most of a book, planted seeds in starter pots for my garden, did my taxes, held a photoshoot with a band, cooked interesting and healthy meals AND am currently doing some laundry.

These are all reasons why I love doing things that make me feel productive and good about what I've accomplished.

ANYWAY, last week we went to Vancouver for a couple of days. It was beautiful and green and full of birds...ducks and pigeons and pretty little yellow ones that hop through back alleys and make Patrick jump and declare it to be a rat. It was a trip full of visiting and relaxing. We came with no agenda other than to spend time with those friends we missed at Christmas. I like visiting Vancouver. I'm not sure it's a place I could live, but I really like visiting it. And I really like the people who currently live there. Sarah was conveniently available the entire time we visited which was nice to be able to sit back and chat over a cup of tea or walk along Wreck Beach and enjoy that friendship that we have never outgrown. She made us fresh bread the first afternoon we were there and it was amazing. There's nothing quite like fresh bread.
One night we all went out to this place in Gas Town called 6 Acres. It was all brick walls and low lighting and enormous beer list and I loved it. As Trixie and Jon and Sarah and Patrick and I all sat around that small table drinking our beers and talking about each other's lives and pasts and futures, I felt like it was one of the most beautiful moments I've had in 2010 thus far. There was something so comfortable about, yet so charged with everything all of us are planning to do and all the things we admit to not knowing yet. I loved it.

well i'm waiting, 'till I don't know when, 'cause I'm sure it's gonna happen then...

2010-03-06T06:31:00.000-08:00

I woke up early yesterday morning and drove out to the farm for my first day back working there. It was a quiet drive. Cold. I watched the sun rise behind the refineries. Before most people were on their way to work I was reaching the outskirts of the city. As I hit the gravel road that winds its way down to the river, the most incredible fog came up and made it almost impossible to see the edges of the road. It only lasted a few minutes though and cleared as I crossed over the railroad tracks that made a sweeping left turn back into the fog. It wasn't a particularly hard day of work. We were getting stuff ready for market so there was some potato grading and bagging and some cabbage cleaning and then some packing it into crates into the truck for the morning. It was beautiful. As I walked around the yard doing the various chores that needed to get done, my shoes were alternately slipping on ice and slurping through mud. The sun was bright and warm and by noon I was down to a t-shirt and jeans. In the afternoon we swept out some sheds and then organized multiple pallets of bales of garden mix to get them ready for the plants coming next week. The bales were almost as heavy as I am and it took all I had in me to pull them down off one pallet, carry it across the shop to the next pile and hoist it into position to thaw. We were done half way through the afternoon so I went home early and as I drove through the city, my window was down, my music was up and I felt better than I have in months.
This morning my arms are sore. They have a few cuts and bruises, but I'm wide awake at 7am watching the sun creep across my wall and turn the whole room golden and it feels like it's going to be another good day.

in these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die...

2010-02-12T18:26:00.000-08:00

Recently my friend Danielle called me...from Australia. It made me very happy and has since made my days better because she pointed me to this Australian band I hadn't heard of before. They're called Mumford and Sons, and I love them. Especially The Cave and Little Lion Man. I'm sitting here tonight on a Friday evening sorting through wedding photo sessions for my website and drinking gin and tonic with grapefruit ice cubes. I'm enjoying the empty feeling of my house tonight. Beth is out with friends and Karen is gone to enjoy her reading week elsewhere and I'm at the kitchen table. The only light on in the house is above me and the banjo and piano riffs are tinkling out from my computer and disappearing into the dark around me. Soon the house will be filled with the sounds of visitors and I am so looking forward to that, but tonight, it's just me and some good music and some good gin. And there's something about that, that allows me to expand into this place.
I feel like I've spent so much of the past year always moving, always containing 'myself' into a book bag or a suitcase and that has taken a toll on me that i forget about until I have moments like these. It feels like it has been a long time since I actually "lived" in a place. I'm in the process of feeling out what "home" means to me and how to create and nurture that. As I write this, Mumford and Sons are singing "where you invest your love is where you invest your life". I think I've found some pretty spectacular things to invest in in the past few years. I find it strange that I've only really discovered photography 4 years ago and to look back and to see what has come from that is incredible. In only 4 years. Sometimes I find myself panicking about what I should "do" in life. I always find that I love too many things to really simply immerse myself in only one. And I'm realizing bit by bit that loving and pursuing lots of things at once is okay, is healthy, is part of who I am.
And so I will book more weddings to photograph. I will put on more photography shows. I will read more biographies. I will take more classes in English Lit and Sociology. I will put time and effort into my garden and into growing things. I will write more. I will travel more, and I will love more people whose paths I cross. I will do all of these things because I love them all and its less about making time for them as it is allowing myself to follow all of them. Does that make sense? Maybe.

don't you wanna get out of cape cod, out of cape cod tonight....

2010-02-03T21:41:00.001-08:00

So I did some scanning of interesting things in old books today. I find myself doing that a lot lately, but some days are more interesting than others. Today was incredibly interesting. Mostly all because of one book. I'm starting to realize that poor penmanship was the norm in the 1700s & 1800s but in today's documented 1835 publication of the complete works of Byron, I discovered not one, not two but THREE handwritten letters.

The guy who bought the book or owned it at least, is Bufus Prime or Prince (best I can make out) and he's written at least one of the letters...the four pager about Vampires, which I will get to later.

The first handwritten note I found was a poem. A love poem. I don't know whether it was a Bufus Price/Prime original or a Byron or whatnot. I haven't spent much time looking at it really, but it was interesting to pull out of the first couple pages. The best part about it, in my opinion, is the embossed 'P' on the top of the page. It was a nice kind of paper. Thick. Liney. Like Linen.

Further in, I found an incredible four page letter folded neatly and pasted into the pages of the book sent from Venice by Mr Prince/Prime to Paris:

Now, here's my favourite part. Turns out that guy in Paris had been publishing work referring to our dear Mr Prince/Prime as the author of a certain work on vampires and not only that, citing biographical details about Mr Prince/Prime's past travels. Apparently Mr Prince/Prime took great offense to this and makes very clear in his needlessly long 4 page letter that he is not the author of that work or the traveler of those stories. In this letter he is asking Mr lack of fact checker in Paris to publish a 'contradiction' to set the record straight. My favourite line is when, after listing the reasons why he cannot possibly be this man being referred to, he states: "I have besides a personal dislike to vampires, and the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce me to divulge their secrets."

Now, the last letter in the book kinda makes it look like maybe he was divulging too many vampire secrets, despite his little acquaintance with them and the vampires didn't like it. Looks like they got to him. That is, of course, if a decrease in grammar and sentence structure and penmanship indicate a vampire attack.

time has a knack of changing me...

2010-01-26T14:01:00.000-08:00

I've been away from this blog again for too long. I've had a lot of things to write here and I've been thinking a lot in the past couple weeks, but for some reason or another, it hasn't been transferred onto here. Lets see...I'm sitting in my room, on my futon with the afternoon sun streaming in through the window and splashing across the side of my face, so much so that it's difficult to see the computer screen unless I squint. So, what's new. My show at Sugarbowl is coming to a close. It's been really awesome. The owner of the place has already booked me in for another show next year and I've sold over half the pieces which means I've more than broke even! Plus, I've got to meet a lot of interesting people who are purchasing my work. The person who is buying my favourite piece of them all turned out to be this awesome girl who I had a 2 hour conversation with. Turns out she's part of this excellent band called "100 Mile House". And right now, you need to go look at their website and listen to them (www.100milehouse.co.uk) - Jamie and Sarah, I am speaking specifically to you here...but everyone who reads this should go have a listen. My current favourite songs are: Fight, Jonah and Songs we all know.
In other news, I've lined up some refreshing spring/summer work. There's been a lot of anxiety and trepidation for me in the job market area. I've spent the past three years relying on the knowledge that I would landscape in the summer and make a decent wage. Well, three years of landscaping has taken its toll on me. I'm so desperately sick of dust and dryness and dead grass. So I called up a market garden farm I worked on for a summer 4 years ago. They have a spot for me doing work in the greenhouses in the spring and then transplanting into the fields in the early summer. The money is about half of what I made landscaping, but I can't begin to say what growing things and using my hands to bring things to life from soil and water will do for me. It will be healing. And I'm in need of some after this past year.
I went to the King's IS Conference last week. It was on Homelessness and one of the session speakers was a local Anglican priest who is running a photography course for street youth. He was so absolutely passionate about it and I really enjoyed hearing about the project. I talked with him after and ended up meeting him this week to talk about potentially being involved in the project myself. It sounds pretty cool and he's got some awesome long term plans for it, so I'm going to start becoming involved when the next course runs in March/April.
We got to talking about a lot of things during my chat with him and one of them was about recognizing trends in our art and style. I'm starting to notice that my photography is so based upon S-P-A-C-E. I'm still thinking about what that means. Maybe I'll have more on that next post.

Happy Tuesday!

Body to body, heart to heart...

2010-01-12T14:29:00.000-08:00

So its been a long time since I've written here. Like a LONG time. So, as per Jamie's request, I'm writing. I don't know what to write about exactly though. I've been working at the University lately and its been fun. Except lately, when the internet is not allowing me on. So I'm limited to having internet only at home. Which I suppose, isn't that different from how I usually spend my summers, but in the winter, I feel like the internet plays a bigger part in my life. However, I feel that this lack of continual connection is becoming a growing experience for me. I'm finding I'm wasting less time surfing around on the web and sending more emails, learning more important things from it and spending more time just listening to music and reading. In fact, I find I'm being more intentional in what I take in in a day (music, video, etc) in general.

That being said, in the past few months I've really been interested in WWII. I don't know where it came from really, but suddenly I'm reading biographies about people on both sides, I'm watching movies and documentaries about it, I'm spending my time on the internet learning about the concentration camp system and the allies who found them and what happened to them after. Its been very interesting.

Also, I've been planning a lot of visits. In february, Patrick's sister is coming to visit for her school break and I'm pumped, despite the fact that I think Edmonton, while FANTASTIC in summer, is only perhaps mediocre in winter (this has less to do with Edmonton than it does with my distaste for cold weather). Then it's off to Vancouver in early March to make a very short, but very overdue visit to some wonderful friends out there. After which, most of the rest of Patrick's family is coming to see Edmonton! From there it's only a burst of hopefully spring weather in April before I jet to LA to see a good friend there. I have only ever been in LA once before, and I spent half that time puking on the curb and half the time curled around my luggage in a gravol induced sleep - this was after a flight from Tokyo which was also the worst turbulence I've experienced EVER. I hope to remedy this view of LA with this trip.

What else do I have to say...I LOVE my slow cooker. I now own two cookbooks for my slow cooker (thanks Jamie!) and have been using it regularly. Seriously, its the best cooking invention ever!

Other than that, I've decided I'm going to try to take photos more regularly in the next few months. I can't remember the last time I took photos for myself intentionally and I need to return to doing that more often.

As a final note, I've been listening to Cher while I've been writing this (not intentionally, but due to "random" on iTunes), and I'm kind of feelin' it.

2009-11-27T09:25:00.000-08:00

while catching up on my friend's blogs (long overdue) I came across this beautiful gem from Lisa (you can see her link on the right hand side cause I'm too lazy to make her name a link in here right now).

My lover asks me:
"What is the difference between me and the sky?"

The difference, my love,
Is that when you laugh,
I forget about the sky.

Nizar Qabbani

your hands are cold...

2009-11-27T09:01:00.001-08:00

I'm at my sister's house. Babysitting her kids while she visits friends in Vancouver for a few days. Patrick is downstairs watching some poorly produced Hannah Montana-esque movie with them while I clean up breakfast dishes upstairs. Its snowing outside, big, beautiful, floating flakes. The kind that makes you remember that Christmas is less than a month away. I'm sitting at a clean table in a clean kitchen that still smells of breakfast (in the good way), drinking eggnog and listening to the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack while I watch the snow. It came late this year. This is the first real snowfall that has felt like winter. It has been such a strange fall in so many ways. Lately I've been feeling like I don't know where to begin...in the way that things have kind of all been melding together for the past number of months. Even when I finished up something or started something new, it all just felt like it ran together. I don't like that feeling. I love the way things transition and wind down and open up to exploration. I could never live in a place that doesn't have seasons because so much of myself is bound up in the constant cycle of change and movement in nature. That hasn't happened this year, for many reasons in my life, and the long, unpredictable autumn hasn't helped.
But today, watching the snow fall and breathing and listening I feel like something is moving again. Something is beginning again.

told you through the glass...

2009-11-02T13:48:00.000-08:00

Its 2:48 in the afternoon. I'm sitting in my office at UofA listening to Album Leaf and watching the sun reflecting golden against the windows in the offices across from mine. I'm holding a book in my hands. An old book. A book that has survived the people who created them, bought them, passed them on to following generations. A book that has seen centuries and wars and disease and natural disaster. A book that has traveled continents and thousands of bookshelves to arrive in my hands right now. Its my job here to document this collection of books in images. I get to scan all the interesting parts of them and I get to photograph them in such a way that gives a sense of the book as a physical object. I like this job a lot. Sometimes it gets monotonous and boring yes, but for the most part, when I look at the images in these books and the knowledge written in them and read the author's name and see them through my camera, trying to get an angle that will make someone half a world away feel as though they are holding it in their hands, I am far from bored. Part of it is the books themselves. They're all manner of texture and shape and colour and they're beautiful to hold and look at and read. But what's more interesting to me is thinking about the people these books represent. The authors who wrote them, the noblemen who paid for their production, the printers whose hands were covered in the ink that pressed against their pages. And then I think about the people who bought them originally, whether they read them, whether they were simply collectors or people who spent a quarter of a month's wages to learn from it, for their children to learn from it. I think about who may have learned to read when they were holding this book or who had this read to them while they lay sick or dying. I think about all the people who have held this book before me in the past 200 years and I am overwhelmed. There's something very personal about history to me. I have a hard time explaining it, except to come back to Dorothy Livesay's poem "Eve" again and again. There's a line in it that I just can't separate from "In fifty seconds, fifty summers sweep and shake me". That's how I feel when I hold this book.

don't you feed me lies about some idealistic future....

2009-10-26T13:27:00.000-07:00

Today (well, the past 24 hours) has been a day of both technology and brain failure. Last night while I was cutting an orange I sliced the tip of my thumb off. This isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. It's all wrapped up and should be fine, but it was followed by a sink full of blood and a lot of swearing. Also, in trying to keep it elevated so it doesn't throb so much, I constantly look like I'm giving a thumbs up. great. This morning I got my hair cut and right after took the train to UofA to being my new job. Unfortunately, I forgot the powercord to my computer at Patrick's and also took his keys accidentally. So I had to take the train all the way back downtown to switch. There are a LOT of stairs between his apartment and my office. A LOT, trust me. Anyway, i got down to the train station only to jump on the train that takes me to MY house, NOT patrick's. I got off at the next station feeling sheepish at becoming confused on edmonton's straight line LRT system. I got the cord, dropped off the keys, walked back down HUB Mall into the Humanities building got into my office and remembered my disc drive is broken so I couldn't install the scanner software I needed. Patrick found it on the internet and so I went to download it from there but discovered that my computer can't connect to internet without my UofA which I will be getting next week. So I packed up again, walked down the long HUB mall AGAIN and the seemingly 20 flights of stairs and over the 5 blocks to Remedy. Where all the outlets were full. Zee (the owner) saw the desperation in my eyes, got me a beer and an extension cord from the kitchen so I could plug in and download. Now I am finishing my Dos Equis and breathing and remembering that I've been able to enjoy the 10 degree weather in all my running around and that this will perhaps be the last nice day before winter. breathing. breathing. ... and hating technology.

with all your livin' on landmines....

2009-10-24T06:55:00.001-07:00

Its 7:30am. I'm the only one up. The house is quiet and its still dark outside. The only light on is the one I'm sitting under at my kitchen table. I'm watching the branches of the tree outside sway in the cold wind and I'm praying it won't rain/snow for the wedding I'm shooting today.

But above all, I'm thinking about Hafiz. I'm thinking about that poem that talks about loving people. Well, lots of Hafiz' poems do that, but I'm thinking about this one:

admit something;

everyone you see, you say to them,
'love me'

of course you do not do this out loud;
otherwise
someone would call the cops

still though, think about this,
this great pull in us
to connect.

why not become the one
who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,

with that sweet moon
language,

what every other eye in this world
is dying to
hear.

I sometimes forget, but I need to remember to read poetry more often.

have you seen my ghost, staring at the ground...

2009-10-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, I said I'd write more about those things I mentioned in passing in my last blog, but instead, something else is on my mind. I've been thinking a lot about overwhelming things. Well, not overwhelming necessarily, but just really really big things. There's been this quote from the book Gilead (which i haven't read in a long while) just stuck in my head. One day a month ago or so, while I was picking debris out of soul sucking subdivision skeletons, it just came to me. I wasn't trying to remember it or even thinking about anything related to it but it kind of imposed itself upon me. Since then, it keeps trying to make itself heard... both at moments when I need to think on it and at moments when I am simply making tea or folding laundry or waiting in traffic. It goes like this:

"Strange are the ways of adversity . . . My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience."

Since it has been a constant refrain in my mind, I've been thinking on it a lot. I've been thinking about what that means for me, what it means for the people I know, the time I live in. What it means for the past and the future and when I think about any of these things, I feel very very very small. Not small as in insignificant...in fact, just the opposite (but I'll get to that in a bit).

For those of you who don't know, I'm in a bit of a situation in this moment in time which has been a huge stress and frustration and pain to me. And there seems to be no explanation as to why I am here having to deal with all this. (yes, that's as specific as I'm going to get on my blog right now)
Anyway, this quote has been repeating in my mind and has started entwining itself with my process of dealing with all this. Over and over again, I come to the conclusion that there are so many things, so many movements, so many issues at stake that I cannot possibly begin to understand the answer to the question of "why?" I don't know if that makes sense. Let me try again.

I really like novels/movies/etc that have many different storylines/lives that eventually overlap in some way. For example, the movie Crash. It was pretty popular a few years back and maybe most of you have seen it. Anyway, all these different lives and stories seem to exist separately to the individuals within them, but the audience can see the smallest overlap of lives has important and unfathomable results. It's like that. I feel like its impossible to face unexplained adversity of any kind without feeling part of a greater movement. Of something that has a much greater scope.

I feel I am doing a horrible job of expressing this. But I will add one more attempt which may just be the last nail in this blog post's coffin...

I've been playing a lot of cards lately and I've been thinking its kind of like that. Kind of like laying a seemingly insignificant card for no real reason 8 hands ago and now seeing the implications of that on the turn at hand...but if you are the 7 of spades being laid, you never get to see or understand that you were laid then to ensure that the 5 could take home that last point later.

"My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience."

Okay. I'm gonna quit now.

Besides I have to go mark papers. Happy late Thanksgiving.

And hearts beat better in a bed when they're missed...

2009-09-29T17:48:00.001-07:00

I have been thinking about a lot of things today. I can't write about them all, and I feel like they are deeper than I can make sense of right now, so I will just be listing them here as reminders for me to think about on their own more later to write about them better then.

- Carla Jessenia Dominguez Lopez of Varsovia
- No one is interested in something you didn't do
- "I'm just unlocking the door because patrick will be here in a few minutes"
- winter sky blue
- geese
- garbage

coffee black and egg white...

2009-09-20T09:48:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I was at market with Patrick and found a type of apple cider I haven't had in years. When I was a kid my dad used to buy it is huge quantities because I liked it so much. They're just these little plastic brown jugs of syrup that you mix with hot water, but they're so so good. I bought a jug of apple cinnamon syrup. This morning, I made myself one and as I sit here at my table looking out at the definitely autumn day, the smell of the cider beside my computer brings me all the way back to sitting in my parents living room in winter watching tv and being really careful not to spill as I leaned over the coffee table, balancing on my knees to take a sip. Today is a different kind of day. Its not quite autumn yet, but the leaves are starting to go yellow on some trees and though its been 30 degrees all week, its only supposed to reach 15 today. The wind is strong and chilly and the hammock is almost continually straight sideways like a giant rainbow sail. Everything seems to be moving with the wind...the christmas lights hanging from the porch, the thermometer on the steps, the yellow birdhouse that isn't all the way nailed to the tree and sways in the mix of green and yellow leaves. Everything in my view is moving except for the stone buddah Jamie left on the porch that is looking out at the road giving a peace sign.
I'm gonna miss summer. If I had to pick a favourite season, summer would be it...but my favourite time of year is the couple of weeks between seasons...any seasons. Maybe the move from summer to autumn is my favourite though. The energy is so different than any other time of year. When fall turns to winter, it brings silence and stillness and retrospection. When winter turns to spring, there's a freshness about everything but it is kind of a transition of patience. Everything seems to be a waiting game. When spring moves into summer it feels like everything goes in slow motion. Afternoons of laying in hot sun, evenings that stretch into the night and light that lingers on the horizon long after you've expected it to disappear. But when summer transitions into autumn, there's a kind of electricity, and urgency, and energy that you can feel in the wind, in the cold morning air and in the sunsets that slide away in a hurry. I like Autumn, even though it ends in winter.

I'm gonna end this post here though because I went out to feel the bite of the wind and sun and when I came in, the smell of bacon and eggs had filled the house. Patrick is at the stove and its almost time for breakfast!

I'll leave you with this...

Song for Autumn - Mary Oliver

In the deep fall
don't you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the nedless
freshets of wind? And don't you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come - six, a dozen - to sleep
inside their bodies? And down't you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

all these places feel like home...

2009-09-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

Each morning when I get up the sky is darker and darker. I always forget how quickly the season change comes up here. On Tuesday the leaves of the tree in my yard were still full and had turned bright bright red. By the time I came home from work that night it was almost bare. Now when I'm driving down to the shop in the morning I watch as the streetlights flick off in a row going south and the sun is just coming over the horizon as reach the top of the overpass where I can see the whole south east of the city. Yesterday was 33 degrees and today was 17 and rainy. Autumn is on the way.

you wanna, you wanna, you wanna, you wanna.....

2009-09-01T17:57:00.001-07:00

I bought really cheap wine last week just on a whim. I opened it last night and it was really really good. Surprisingly good. I'm always surprised when something cheap like that is so enjoyable. I sometimes get too caught up in the idea that for something to be good, it has to be expensive. Which is strange because most of my favourite things are inexpensive, if not free. I am making a brief list of those things here:

- $9 wine
- cool wet grass on a really hot day
- ivy
- walking past a house when its cold and they're doing laundry and it's steaming out of the vent and it smells so cosy
- sunlight behind leaves
- hearing a song at just the right moment when you didn't know you were craving it
- raspberries that are picked and eaten right away and still hot from the sun
- seeing a parent really truly enjoying themselves playing with their kid
- early morning light
- tanned shoulders
- the smell of a peach
- Cobbs pastry in the morning
- plaid flannel button ups

can't you hear me when i go...

2009-08-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in Patrick's living room. The only light on is in the kitchen and I am drinking wine and listening to him sing along to the low music coming from his computer.

Tonight, for the first time in a long time, I feel my life humming with potential. Tonight, for the first time in a long time, I am envisioning my future with anticipation and excitement and courage. There are so may thing so much larger than I am.

“The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.” - Anais Nin

I'll carry you up on my back, send for me now to tend to you now...

2009-07-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

feeling in a Leonard Cohen mood today...

THE REASON I WRITE

The reason I write
is to make something
as beautiful as you are

When I'm with you
I want to be the kind of hero
I wanted to be
when I was seven years old
a perfect man

who kills

----------

ANTHEM

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

crying at the doorways of those armies of salvation...

2009-07-22T17:34:00.000-07:00

I am bad at writing on here in the summer. I work long hours in the heat and then there are so many things to do when I get home like Taste of Edmonton or camping in Jasper or seeing Cirque Shanghai and Capital Ex. And that's just this week. But right now I am laying in my hammock in the backyard and looking up at the tree above me. Its been real hot today. 28 degrees actually. There's a birdhouse on the tree and the mom bird is sitting in the doorway watching me as she flaps her wings like crazy inside to cool down the babies. Its pretty cool actually.
I went camping in Jasper this past weekend for the first time. I know I know, I've lived in edmonton almost 7 years now and had never made a visit to Jasper. It was beautiful. I got off work early and so Patrick and I rolled into the park as the sun was making everything golden. The lakes and rivers, the trees and mountains, the sky and even the goats were amazing. On Saturday, we went hiking. Well, we went climbing...okay, it was more like scrambling, but for someone like me who has never really um, hiked, well, anything, it was a challenge. Patrick, who works in front of a computer every day, loved it and ran ahead over shale and tree roots and ridiculous inclines. I, who work physical labour every day, struggled to the top of every rise and spent a good few minutes trying to catch my breath at each one (note to self to ask doctor about asthma next time I have an appointment). All in all, I made it well above the tree line and ended up stopping only about 30 minutes short of most everyone else I was with, so I'm proud of me. I'm kind of glad I stopped there while the others continued because it gave me a good amount of time alone at "the top" of this incredible mountain. I did a lot of thinking. I spend almost all my waking hours with people. I wake up, drive to work, drive in the truck and work all day with my crew, come home, go to Patrick's or he comes here and there are friends and roommates and crowds of strangers at the festivals I go to and so I am very rarely alone. I do love being with people. Especially now that Patrick is living in town, but there's something about unsolicited solitude (I think Bethany once or twice has made reference to this...or even maybe coined it?). But as I sat there, hunched behind a rock to stay out of the wind, looking over the valley that I could see well past Hinton, I did a lot of thinking. Mostly I thought about fear. I'm not someone who is easily scared, but lately I've found I've allowed myself to live out of fear too often. I thought about the friends I have who I have a connection with that is often beyond explanation. I thought about the kind of lives I see them having. I thought about how they see my life. I thought that those people are the most important to remember when you start making decisions based on fear, limiting yourself, being too cautious, because they, more than anyone else have a reliable vision of your potential. I don't really know how to explain this, but the friends I have deepest, least explainable connection with, I feel are most reliable and trustworthy when it comes to having a perspective about your unknown future. That wasn't a good way of explaining it. I don't think I can. I can only feel it. My computer is low on batteries though so I must stop here. Maybe I'll pick up this thread again once I've had some time to think of it off a mountain top.

the colour of our planet from far far away...

2009-07-09T20:08:00.000-07:00

I haven't written here in a while. No real excuse this week. It has been raining quite a bit and so I've had a decent amount of time off - also known as time without pay, unfortunately. I've been doing a lot of photo processing and some laundry and cleaning of various areas of my life.
I've been doing a little reading as well. Not as much as I'd like, but a little. I've started "The Diviners" by Margaret Lawrence again. So far, so good. I like the feel of that book.
I've also been paging through my quote book recently and came across this one from the book Gilead:

"Acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honour them is to do great harm."

I love that.

like a chariot at the trumpet call when we're all unsaved....

2009-06-28T20:19:00.000-07:00

I've started a few blog posts in the past week. Never really got further than a sentence or even a couple words. Each time I open the post, I scratch what I had done and try again. This time though, I decided to open a whole new post and just share with you the only words left hanging in the past one I've been trying to construct/reconstruct:
"There was a point last week where I was holding a half full garbage bag of weeds with my teeth..."

-------

That being said, I see a pretty big discrepancy between the life I lead at work and the life I lead when I'm off the clock. There is some cross over. I have a struggling but beautiful garden which I water every day while I practice hack...which isn't much different than what I do during the day hours. But for the most part, I lead a bit of a different life away from work. Should you have met me yesterday afternoon, you would have seen me stretched out on the grass at the Edmonton International Jazz Festival, clean (well, relatively at least), wearing casual flowy (even bordering on feminine) clothes, leaning up against Patrick and drinking a beer. The only tip off to my day job would be my tan legs ending abruptly in very very white feet which are hidden in steel toes all day long.
You wouldn't have guessed that I spend my mornings and afternoons pulling weeds and garbage out of mulch beds and ditches and water features and construction sites. You wouldn't have guessed that I have the ability to heave a 50 pound garbage bag of dog shit into my one ton dump truck and cart it to the city dump. You wouldn't know that I can securely strap two john deere Ztrack mowers onto a 12 foot trailer in less than 2 minutes and should one of those 4 straps come a little loose, that I can jump out at a stop light on Anthony Henday drive and tighten them all back up before it turns green. aaaand...you'd never guess I can carry a bag of weeds with my teeth while fielding a phone call from the subdivision supervisor and directing my crew onto the next task. So many life skills. ha.

I have been reading a lot of poetry lately. I can't read poetry in my head. It's always, most definitely an out loud thing for me. The words slow down when I speak them. They don't just fly through my head while my eyes run along the page to catch up. Instead they linger in front of me, I can see them, dissect them, turn them over until I can feel the pulsing of their meaning. Patrick moved here this week. Moved. Permanently. I am so happy and have so much more to say about that but I can't translate it from smiles into words yet. Anyway, seems how Patrick is here now and part of everyday life, he's been getting to/having to listen to some of the poetry that has been surrounding me lately. I've become completely taken with Lisel Mueller recently and so have been seeking out her work. Today I like this one:

Why We Tell Stories

1
Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug,
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground

and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers

and because before we had lungs
we knew how far it was to the bottom
as we floated open-eyed
like painted scarves through the scenery
of dreams, and because we awakened

and learned to speak

2
We sat by the fire in our caves,
and because we were poor, we made up a tale
about a treasure mountain
that would open only for us

and because we were always defeated,
we invented impossible riddles
only we could solve,
monsters only we could kill,
women who could love no one else
and because we had survived
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
we discovered bones that rose
from the dark earth and sang
as white birds in the trees

3
Because the story of our life
becomes our life

Because each of us tells
the same story
but tells it differently

and none of us tells it
the same way twice

Because grandmothers looking like spiders
want to enchant the children
and grandfathers need to convince us
what happened happened because of them

and though we listen only
haphazardly, with one ear,
we will begin our story
with the word and

you are the blood flowing through my fingertips...

2009-06-11T19:49:00.000-07:00

I'm laying the the back yard in the hammock. Its warmer out here than it is inside. Summer finally arrived today. 29 baking hot degrees. I loved it. I worked for Habitat for Humanity today. It's hard for me to explain just how much I loved it. I had to wear jeans and a t-shirt in the blistering heat and so ended up sweating buckets, but it was beautiful. I like building things. When I woke up this morning, I heard the paving guy outside doing the finishing work on the sidewalk by my newly paved road. He was singing. At 6 am. All to himself, while he pulled posts from the ground. At that moment, I knew it would be a great day.

The birds above me in the tree are squawking loudly at me. I don't think they like me swinging right under their nest. But I feed them, so sometimes you just have to put up with it. Sorry birds.

Buck 65 is playing on my iTunes and I am in a pretty perfect space. My garden has been hurting in this painful drought but I plan to spend most of tomorrow laying in the backyard in my swim suit, practicing hack, reading and jumping through the sprinkler as it waters the garden. I remember Bethany spending large amounts of time weeding the garden this time last year. That's not something we have to worry about right now as nothing...and I mean NOTHING is growing except for the odd dandelion.

It's sometimes hard to remember that my life is what I choose it to be. With so many circumstances out of my control lately, I feel like I've been swept along without any ability to know really (and yes, I'm fully aware of what this sounds like) who I am. There have been glimmers though of me reminding myself not of who I am, but who I want to be. Each moment, each circumstance, each decision and response has the potential to bring me closer to that person I intend on being. There's no space for me to say "well, I'll do it this way this time, but ..."
I've been trying to act in a way that doesn't follow what I feel like doing now, but how I think the person I want to be would act. I've been discouraged by the amount of times I find the discrepancy between the two, but also encouraged by the discovery that I do indeed have the strength and courage to follow through on these decisions. It gives me faith in myself and hope for what comes next.

As I say that, I'm reminded of a poem by Galway Kinnell called "Prayer"

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

sleep on the floor, dream about me....

2009-05-28T20:18:00.000-07:00

Tonight I should be sorting laundry. Or processing wedding photos. Or calling my grandma. Or making a lunch for tomorrow. But the sun was so beautiful, I couldn't do any of these yet. I've been sitting on my back porch reading poetry and sipping wine and reading poetry. I've done a lot of poetry reading lately and it has been good. Very good. Hard to explain good. Tonight was a Hafiz night. I have two to share:

--------
Resist your temptation to lie
By speaking of separation from God,

Otherwise,
We might have to medicate
You.

In the ocean
A lot goes on beneath your eyes.

Listen,
They have clinics there too
For the insane
Who persist in saying things like:

"I am independent from the
Sea,

God is not always around

Gently
Pressing against
My body."
----------------

The pawn
Always sits stunned,
Chained, unable to move
Beneath God's magnificent power.
It is essential for the heart's coronation
For the pawn to realize
There is nothing but divine movement
In this
World.

-----------------

now if my sky should fall...

2009-05-27T18:19:00.000-07:00

Two weeks have past since my last post. As I write this Patrick is back in the air flying home to Ontario. It's been a much better past two weeks. It's been busy, as I've had to work most of the time and Patrick's been out apartment hunting (and scored a really nice one!) but it's still been good. As I drove away from the airport tonight, the most beautiful rainbow I had ever seen was right out in front of me. I didn't have my camera so I will try my best to explain them. First of all, it was a double rainbow. And a really crisp one at that. No fuzzy line of mist between colours or anything. Both rainbows were clear and perfectly bright from one horizon to the other. The first rainbow though, was a double decker...what I mean is, as soon as the violet band was finished a red one began and another rainbow was right underneath it. No spaces. And then of course, there was another one above those two. Seriously, it was incredible beautiful. Tomorrow marks the beginning of a month of straight work. The grass here is finally growing and I'll be busy cutting and landscaping 6 days a week. And hopefully by the time Patrick moves out here for good at the end of June, things will be a little more under control so I can help him get set up.

In other news, I recently re-read "The Colour Purple" by Alice Walker. I love that book and this time I came out with more quotes I need to remember.

It? I ast.
Yeah, It. God aint a he or a she, but a It.
But what do it look like? I ast.
Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself.

----------
God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.
You saying God vain? I ast.
Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the colour purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.
What it do when it pissed off? I ast.
Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

----------

Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?

before we turn to stone...

2009-05-08T20:15:00.000-07:00

I've been kind of silent on the blog front here for a while. I've had an eventful past few weeks...not necessarily in the good kind of way. Its been rough actually. Really rough. I went home for a week for a break. It was nice.
And now I'm back in Edmonton. Working landscaping. Its nice to be outside again all day, but it's terribly lonely this year.
After work, it's finally the time of year when the sun streams into my kitchen windows for most the evening and I can simply sit and sip wine and enjoy it, but Patrick is half a country away and so that makes home feel kind of lonely too.
I do have Jayda around and though she's become pretty sweet towards me, she mostly just brings me dead mice to deal with and covers my sweaters with cat hair.
I am continually flying back and forth between stable and solid and confident and then in the next breath, feeling as though I am, my life is, completely unravelling. Recently someone asked me what has made me thrive lately. I had no answer. I'm mostly just focused on breathing, trying to only deal with the moment I'm in without being overwhelmed by it, let alone being overwhelmed by the future moments it is connected to.

I have been watching the clouds lately though. All these spring rainstorms we've been having this week have made for some beautiful skies. I like to put my iPod to something epic sounding and just look up and watch the sky and breathe. I got to the shop early on wednesday morning, about 6:40 am, and sat on the side of the gravel road, put on this song and watched the sky...some of it looked like this:

it's the risk that i'm takin'...

2009-04-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

I came home from work a little early tonight because I am working it alone all day tomorrow. The past few days have been crazy sunny and beautiful...today was different. The sky has been pretty cold, flat grey all day. Not that flat white grey of winter, but that flat blue-black grey where every moment feels on the verge of rain. Its stayed that way all day without a drop falling. Tonight I'm sitting at my dining room table, supper on the stove, screen door open, windows open music loud...and there's a serious breeze coming through the main floor. I rarely experience indoor wind. Its a strange idea, but as I sit here watching the pots on the stove and sipping my wine, I like the way the air is cool and humid and I my hair keeps rising and falling against my neck as the wind moves it.

For the first time last night, I noticed the tree was completely full of buds. I laid in the hammock and stared up at it and thought about how the branches look so bare and have looked so black and empty for so long. Its hard to remember the tree so full of leaves that it covers the corner of our roof and reaches way out over the fence. I honestly can't really remember it. Well, that's not true. I can remember it but in a way that is distant. The kind of way that you remember your childhood. The kind of way that you remember the light as the sun dipped down along the horizon on your favourite holiday. The kind of way that makes it impossible to imagine it could happen again. But there's the tree, just outside my window, full of buds ready to burst.

The whole idea of being a part of something that I cannot even imagine at this moment in time has been following me around lately. Yesterday I was going through quotes I love from authors I should really reread in the near future. This one is from CS Lewis:
"If we let him – for we can prevent him if we choose – he will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine."

I also happened to open up an old journal I had laying around as well and came across this verse from Habakkuk 1:5 "Look at the nation and watch- and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told."

you've gone a million miles, how far did ya get....

2009-04-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

I've been through the full gamut of weather in the past 24 hours.

2:15pm Monday: I was napping on a sunny hillside in Stirling Ontario.

3:30am Tuesday: packing up and leaving Stirling in darkness to make my early flight out of Toronto

8:00am Tuesday: flying back across the country over fields of yellow and green and brown, watching spring from the air

9:05am Tuesday: a collective groan through the sold out plane when we broke through the low cloud cover to descend into a snow/sleet covered edmonton

10:21am Tuesday: making it to work just barely late with wet socks and shoes from navigating my way through a slushy alley way while being blinded by sleet coming down sideways at me

1:25pm Tuesday: sitting at work watching the snow slow down and the wind pick up, whipping around the tops of the evergreens in the river valley

3:15pm Tuesday: venture out of the shop for lunch to find it much warmer than when i arrived

4:21pm Tuesday: wind slows down while the clouds break from dull, flat winter white into puffy chunks that glimmer white/gold at the edges and hang heavy black grey in the middles.

5:00pm Tuesday: between the wind and the sun, all that slush and snow melts and dries to reveal a no longer brown edmonton.

6:15pm Tuesday: the brown/yellow grass I left in my backyard on wednesday is suddenly all green and shines almost neon as the sun sets against it.

This country is really beautiful. I need to see more of it.

where the windows are breathing in the light...

2009-04-05T16:46:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this while I sit in my bedroom windowsill... legs dangling out on the roof, feet soaking up the last of the warmth from the shingles, leaning against the window frame watching the sun sink lower and listening to the Cinematic Orchestra.

--------

I love the smell of earth thawing. Almost every spring, I can recall the first moment that I walk outside and for the first time that year year, smell the earth thaw. My very first memory of this moment was when I was about 8 or 9 maybe and on a break from school and we were in the middle of a good Chinook look it up here. My mom and I went through the pasture and ditches along our farm in sweaters and rubber boots and stomped through the thin layer of ice covering all the puddles. I think it was one of my favourite days ever. I remember though, there was this moment. In the ditch at the end of driveway on our way back to the house. My mom had climbed up onto the driveway and I was standing in front of the last puddle left to crack. When I lifted up my boot to step on the ice, I smelled it. That scent that is impossible to describe...that earth thaw.

Last year, I was unemployed and though locked in for another year of landscaping, had yet to begin. It was early in the afternoon and I was walking behind the Saville Sports Center...actually more like slipping over the ice in the field behind the Saville. I was on no particular mission, no real agenda, just filling up time and soaking in the sun on a beautiful almost spring day. As I slid down a hill of yet to be melted snow at the back of the parking lot, I smelled it. That moment, that second where everything whips around you while you stand still and just feel....connected to everything, to the change in nature to the wind on your face and the dirt under your feet and the sun in your hair.

It's no secret that I love summer. The heat and the long days and the physical labour that I tend to associate with it makes me wish it would never end. But there is also something about the transition seasons...I don't really consider Spring and Autumn to be full seasons because I've never lived in a place where they seem to last for more than a week or two. But there is an energy about them. An energy in spring that, for me, is caught up in that smell of thaw. As with everything in nature, I associate everything with wind.

This afternoon, I was biking through some rather large puddles on the farm and getting absolutely soaked. There was enough wind that I was starting to get a little chilled and so turned my bike around for home and in that moment, that second when I turned my tires back to the house, I could smell it. And not just smell it, but feel it and taste it...earth thawing. And I know with the spring weather we've been having that it has been thawing for a week or so now, but I'm talking about that definitive moment, that breach in reality where everything is at once only existing as energy and light and you are not a single observer of it but lost within it...a million pieces fragmented into the wind and sun and soil.

---------

That Home

Where the doors are moaning all day long,
Where the stairs are leaning dusk 'till dawn,

Where the windows are breathing in the light,
Where the rooms are a collection of our lives,

This is a place where I don't feel alone
This is a place that I call my home...

- The Cinematic Orchestra

listen to it here

of all things visible and invisible...

2009-03-31T07:12:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking lately about "naming" and how the ability to NAME something has so much power behind it. This isn't really a new idea for me as most of my women's and colonial literature training has touched on this topic many many times, but lately its been coming back to me. A few weeks ago Karen, Bethany and I were talking about marriage in light of Melisa's upcoming wedding. The three of us got into an interesting discussion of the purpose of marriage outside of a traditional or religious viewpoint. I immediately, instinctually came up with the fact that, for me, the major importance is the ability to name the relationship you have with that person. And yes, I understand how people who buckle under or feel uncomfortable with the expectations and connotation that go along with the traditional and religious views of marriage have a hard time reconciling themselves to agree to be in a relationship that borrows the language of these institutions and traditions, but when it comes down to it, we live in a cultural context in which it is essential to be able to name that important relationship in a way that others can understand and relate to. Does that make sense? Maybe, maybe not. It does to me.
Anyway, marriage is not the only area that this idea of naming has been popping up in. I've been thinking a lot about how 'naming' is such a powerful action; how it can be both empowering and oppressive, liberating and restrictive. I think I need to do some more work in English Lit on this idea because I've been trying to publish this post for the past three days and just keep coming up with fragments of ideas that need to be followed through and worked out.

However, I do want to leave you with this excerpt from a book I finished recently. It wasn't an amazing, blow you away book to be honest. I've read better from Paulo, but I liked this paragraph and this idea...

Many many years before on a night like this, Jacob has not allowed God to leave without blessing him. It was then that the Lord had asked:"What is thy name?"
The essential point was this: to have a name. When Jacob had answered, God had baptized him Israel. Each one has a name from birth but must learn to baptize his life with the word he has chosen to give meaning to that life.

- from Paulo Coelho's "Fifth Mountain"

they don't love you like I love you...

2009-03-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

I've decided to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. I like what they stand for and I like doing work with my hands. So the two seem to have potential to be beautiful together. Plus there are hints of spring in the air and I am daydreaming about being out in the fresh air getting dirty and tanned and strong and scraped up. I'm a pretty big wimp for the cold, but as soon as it hits that 0 degree mark, I'm itching to be outside. I think Habitat for Humanity will be a good thing for me. I realized that I am involved in very few volunteer things lately. I used to spend a LOT of time doing work that could only be classified as "volunteer" but in the past year, not a whole lot comes to mind. Now, I know a lot of people who do good work that I could get involved in...half of the staff at The Mustard Seed are good friends or at least acquaintances of mine, King's is always running projects that need volunteers on a local or even international level, our Lendrum community league is constantly looking for volunteers for their events, and the list could go on. I chose Habitat for Humanity though for a few different reasons. First of all, I don't really know anyone involved in it and getting out of your social circle is sometimes a very healthy and important thing to do. Secondly, the housing crisis is severe and the need for stable, good quality, affordable housing is desperate. Working landscaping in ritzy new subdivisions all day long for a few summers hits that home pretty powerfully. Thirdly, I really like building and fixing things. Especially things that are made out of wood or drywall. I really enjoy the act of construction. I need more building in my life.

I feel as though this will ramble on into monotony if I don't stop it here because I'm really more interested in the sunny blue skies outside my windows than writing this at the moment. Happy Weekend everyone.

Tables and chairs worn by all of the dust...

2009-03-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

I try not to read/watch/listen to much news. I know, that makes me sound ignorant. I used to pay a lot of attention to current events and I do like knowing what is going on in the city/country/world I am living in. For the past few years though, I've tried to insulate myself a little. I'm not what many people would classify as an overly sensitive person, but the news really gets to me. Today I watched a few top stories on CTV and CBC and I hate how it all makes me feel. Germany: a young man goes on a shooting rampage and kills 16 (mostly high school students)...including himself. Beijing: the ongoing trial of a 19 year old man who stabbed a 22 year old canadian model to death last year. Darfur, Sudan: a montreal based nurse and an italian doctor working with Doctors without Borders get kidnapped from the compound they were authorized to be working in. Alabama: in a small town of 2000 people a local man writes a "hit list" and kills 10 people before killing himself. Brisbane: a Hong Kong tanker loses tons of oil which devastates 60km of beach. Afghanistan: more canadian soldiers die after being hit by a roadside bomb. Red Deer: a man posing as a police officer abducts and assaults a 16 year old girl. Bangladesh: 72 officers murdered by their men in a mutiny over wage.
And that's just a sample of the overtly horrifying events. This comes nowhere near touching on the political, economic and religious decisions and declarations being made which will act as the root causes of future violence in our communities, to our environment, to the world as a whole.
All of these stories make me afraid. Afraid that I will be caught in gang violence when I walk across the street to have lunch with Patrick. Afraid that I will be abducted while getting into my car in the dark, quiet parking lot after work. Afraid I will be hit by a tired truck driver on highway two on my way home to visit family. Afraid an engine in the plane I'm riding in will malfunction and cause a fatal crash. When I watch/read the news, I am terrified of the world I live in. The problem is, the life I try to and intend to lead requires a significant amount of empowerment, requires a significant amount of faith in humanity, requires a significant amount of courage. And so I walk that careful line of awareness and acknowledgement of all that is frightening in this world, at this moment in time, without being overwhelmed by it.

The Cinematic Orchestra and Sigur Ros help.

the kids on the corner playing ghetto games...

2009-03-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

I find living in alberta to be kind of ridiculous at times. Like this week's weather - yesterday we experienced a record low for march of -42.7... tomorrow we'll be back up to +1. Honestly. A 50 degree difference in temperature in two days. Its a wonder our bodies can stand up to such things. I tried to find some interesting facts about what happens to other living things and inanimate objects in a 50 degree temperature change, but alas, I'm not an excellent Googler.

Something else of note...I was asked by a customer today if I was over the age of 30. Apparently I look JUST like this customer's niece who was over 30. This guy wasn't that old..maybe early 50's...and after I politely responded that, "nope, I am under 30" he said "well, I guess everyone has their twin." At that moment I wanted to say "you know, now that you say it, you look just like my 92 year old neighbour". Though I am not one to get sensitive about my age, asking a 24 year old if they're over 30 is slightly offensive. And who poses that question? Even if you were inclined to, isn't the more flattering way to say "are you UNDER 30"? Really.

Other than that, today has been uneventful so far as I watch the clock tick towards closing time.

ps. Something to watch if you're a little bored...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ASzJyyvg3I

send for you now to tend to me now...

2009-03-07T14:16:00.000-08:00

I don't usually write a lot of personal information in my blog...well, in some ways. I write a lot of really deeply personal ideas and thoughts and plans that run through my mind, but I don't divulge very many specifics about my day-to-day personal life. Caylie (click on her name to the right to check out her blog because I'm too lazy right now to attach the link right here in my post). Anyway, my friend Caylie tends to have the opposite approach and I am often quite entertained by her writing so I thought maybe I'd take a page from her book today. This is also a post for Karen who told me earlier this week she checks my blog everyday and I do not write nearly enough for that kind of dedication. Plus, I feel kind of disconnected from her at the moment in terms of day to day life...for the past 2.5 years karen and i have gone in cycles of 4 or 5 months of seeing and working and socializing with each other every day and then 7-8 months of visiting here and there or being altogether in separate countries. This marks month 7 of catching up when we can. That being said, I'm writing this day-to-day personal life post for many reasons.

I went to Luke Doucet last night with Beth and Joel and Tash on a last minute ticket invite from Beth. It was fantastic. I like Luke. I'd only ever seen him at Folk Fest before and though, I'd have to say I do prefer listening to him with the August sun on my face, laying in the grass with a cold beer in my hands, I really enjoyed myself last night.
After that, I went home and organized my laundry...sorted through a good portion of my wardrobe which of course was laying in piles on my floor and signed the photos I am donating to Jordyn's art auction for one of CRWRC's AIDS relief projects - all while watching my latest addiction: Prison Break.
Then I iChat video chatted with Patrick who was still up at 1:30 in the morning working on ... well, if I really understood what it is he does, I could be able to tell you but I think it has something to do with a website for the up and coming rapper, "Cloud". I have a cold so I've been taking neocitron before bed and it has knocked me out pretty good the past few nights so I don't really remember falling asleep, but when I woke up the world had been transformed by a crazy amount of snow.... (oh, I'm feeling the urge to deviate from this structure...)

These past two winters I've spent out of school have been strange. Last winter I was unemployed, spending all my savings on a photo show at Remedy and living most of my days at home drinking tea and watching the snow fall in my back yard. Though it was a beautiful time of life...to be able to have that time to think and write and read and photograph and walk and wander, I often felt like I was sort of just paused. I want to say it felt like I was in transition, but it really didn't. It felt like I was in limbo. And even though I spent the summer busy with work, it still felt like I was on hold.

Iceland felt like the moment before everything lets go. Like the meniscus on a full glass catching drips from a leaky faucet. You know, where it just reaches the top and holds that tiny little curve above the lip before that next drop makes it slide down the edges. There was so much beauty and awe and so many insane, incredibly unique experiences going on, but it was still on pause...holding out for that next moment, for that next thing that would change that delicate balance that was keeping everything as it was. And though I felt it coming, I never let myself imagine what shape it would take or when or how my life would look when it happened. I think we live a lot of these events in our lifetime...some more significant than others, but each still irreversibly disrupting the careful balance of our lives to that point. I've lived some myself and watched my friends and family live them as well: moving away from home, career decisions, university, marriage, children, travel, death...etc. Actually, I want to change that list. Those are all events...but I don't think it's the events themselves that create the change as much as the emotions and experience that go along with them....fear, independence, responsibility, love, knowledge, wisdom, grief, joy, etc. All these things, when experienced deeply, can transform a worldview, change a person, alter the course of a life. They're the kind of things that you can never go back from, you can never forget and you can never return to being the person you were before.

For me, that last drop fell the night I flew in from Reykjavik, stepped off that plane in Toronto and found Patrick waiting at the gate.

Kiss you goodbye and walk right through that doorway...

2009-03-03T09:23:00.000-08:00

I tried to write a new post all day. Instead, I've just come up with a list of things I want to do, but don't know how or when. It is as follows:

- spend a year learning carpentry
- travel to Borneo
- spend a weekend photographing the Alberta Oil Sands in Ft. Mac
- write for Air Canada's En Route magazine
- present another photography show...but a more focused, more cohesive set
- get my MA in English Lit
- build an ice sculpture (I once saw this guy on Sesame Street fill balloons with water and freeze them into perfect ice spheres...its stuck with me)
- see Ayers Rock
- attend an outdoor Sigur Ros (and/or Xavier Rudd) concert
- photograph the Queen Charlotte Islands
- write a children's book
- oh so many other things, but work is done and I'm headed home to dream some more...

jai ho...

2009-02-24T08:28:00.000-08:00

I turn 24 tomorrow. This morning I'm sitting at my kitchen table eating cheesecake for breakfast and looking at my shooting target from saturday. After a spree of warm weather, its been snowing constantly for the past 24 hours. Everything covered in a pristine, smooth white blanket. The fields out my back window look endless and I can barely make out the silhouette of the line of trees at the end of the road before it disappears into the flat white horizon. I don't love winter a whole lot, to be honest, but I do love the way the world draws in close when it snows. Everything slows down, the only thing that exists is what you can see and feel and hear: the tops of streetlights dissolving into the sky, the crunch of shoes sinking through fresh powder, snowflakes falling from my eyelashes down my cheeks. I thought I'd have already done some things by the age of 24 that I have yet to accomplish, but today everything is simply distilled down into that line of trees on the horizon - the extent of my world.

send my roots rain...

2009-02-21T13:37:00.000-08:00

It's been a while. I know. And I haven't been taking many tree photos. I know.

I've been away. Visiting in Toronto. The CN tower, Steamwhistle Brewery, The Green Room, 98 Chandos.

And then I've been working. Literally from the hour I got off the plane. 10-6 at the print shop, everything else outside of sleep is allotted to marking first year English Lit papers over the next week or two. In the midst of relatively painful grammar and writing, I pulled out a line from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, "Thou Art Indeed". I like Hopkins, even though he's someone I forget about more often than not. There is one of his poems that has stuck with me since I first read it though. It's called "Windhover" and its worth a look if you get a chance. But that is not the poem that captured me tonight. The last line of "Thou Art Indeed" caught my eye for some reason. It's rather simple. In my opinion, Hopkins has written far more beautiful things. But for some reason, it grabbed on to me.

"Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain"

I have a lot of speculation about what that could mean to me and why that in particular stuck in my mind...but I think I'll leave myself to mull over that privately for now.

back to marking.........

memory will rust and erode into lists...

2009-02-09T13:00:00.001-08:00

Its been snowing all day. Almost imperceptibly. There's enough coming down that downtown across the river is completely whited out, but out the windows in front of me, it looks like only a smooth white mist.

Rather than becoming the girl who takes photos of trees, I've now turned into that girl who takes photos of power poles. I can't/refuse to explain it but I'm just loving them lately...as long as they have a bunch of sepia grit all over them.

the sound the universe makes coming in my window...

2009-02-03T15:00:00.000-08:00

After my last post, I got to thinking about all the things I like taking photos of that are in danger of being cliche: trees, sky, space, sunlight. It reminded me of a book I received as a gift last Christmas. It's something I read as a child and had forgotten about until Karen gave it to me because she said it reminded her of me. I've gone through a lot of books in my lifetime already, but I have to say that this is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. And though I was a little hesitant to share it all here, I thought I'd just add this link for you to go buy it yourself once you've read it and been astounded by its beauty because the illustrations are pretty incredible as well!

-----
If You're Not from the Prairie
by David Bouchard

If you're not from the prairie, you don't know the sun, you can't know the sun.
Diamonds that bounce off crisp winter snow
Warm waters in dugouts and lakes that we know
The sun is our friend from when we were young
A child of the prairie is part of the sun
If you're not from the prairie you don't know the sun.

If you're not from the prairie you don't know the wind, you can't know the wind.
Our cold winds of winter cut right to the core
Hot summer wind devils can blow down the door
As children we know when we play any game
The wind will be there yet we play just the same
If you're not from the prairie you don't know the wind.

If you're not from the prairie you don't know the sky, you can't know the sky
The bold prairie sky is clear bright and blue
Though sometimes cloud messages give us a clue
Monstrous grey mushrooms can hint of a storm
Or painted pink feathers say good bye to the warm
If you're not from the prairie you don't know the sky.

If you're not from the prairie you don't know what's flat, you've never seen flat
When travellers pass through across our great plain
They all view our home they all say the same
"It's simple and flat!" They've not learned to see
The particular beauty that's now part of me
If you're not from the prairie you don't know what's flat.

If you're not from the prairie you've not heard the grass you've never heard grass
In strong summer winds, the grains and grass bend
And sway to a dance that seems never to end
It whispers its secrets - they tell of this land
And the rhytym of life played by nature's own hand
If you're not from the prairie, you've never heard grass.

So you're not from the prairie and yet you know snow you think you know snow?
Blizzards bring danger as legends have told
In deep drifts we roughhouse, ignoring the cold
At times we look out at great seas of white
So bright is the sun that we squeeze our eyes tight
If you're not from the prairie you don't know snow.

If you're not from the prairie you don't know our trees you can't know our trees
The trees that we know have taken so long
To live through our seasons to grow tall and strong
They're loved and they're treasured we watched as they grew
We knew they were special - the prairie has few
If you're not from the prairie you don't know our trees.

Still you're not from the prairie and yet you know cold..you say you've been cold?
Do you know what to do to relieve so much pain
Of burning from deep down that drives you insane?
Your ears and your hands right into your toes
A child who's been cold on the prairie will know
Of all of those memories we share when we're old
None are more clear then that hard bitter cold
You'll not find among us a soul who can say
"I've conquered the wind on a cold winter's day"
If you're not from the prairie you don't know the cold you've never been cold.

If you're not from the prairie you don't know me you just can't know ME.
You see, my hair's mostly wind, my eyes filled with grit,
My skin's red or brown and my lips chapped and split
I've lain on the prairie and heard grasses sigh
Ive stared at the cast open bowl of the sky
I've seen all those castles and faces in clouds
My home is the prairie and I cry out loud

If you're not from the prairie you can't know my soul
You don't know our blizzards, you've not fought our cold
You can't know my mind, nor even my heart
Unless deep within you, there's somehow a part
A part of these things that I've said that I know
The wind, sky and earth, the storms and the snow
Best say you have - and then we'll be one
For we will have shared that same blazing sun.

put a little something in our lemonade and take it with us...

2009-02-03T09:20:00.000-08:00

There is a tree on the southeast corner of the high level bridge. Well, not on the bridge per se, but on the corner of 109th St and Saskatchewan Drive (which is basically the southeast corner of the high level bridge). Ninety percent of the trees around it are evergreens. The other ten percent are some sort of deciduous trees that look bare and dead right now. But this tree is a Russian Olive tree. They're probably my favourite tree. Or at least in the top three. This morning, as I sat in deCapo watching the sun shine through its branches, I decided I need to take more photos of trees. In the past year, I've been constantly in fear of becoming that girl who takes photos of trees, so I have held myself back in that regard. And I think I've lost out on some great images because of it. So today, I'm deciding to take a photo of a tree that I really like once every two weeks. I'm bringing my camera to my early breakfast date tomorrow and setting up across the street for a little while until the light hits through those branches at just the right moment. Because I like trees. And I like photographing them. And I really like Russian Olive trees. And I'm not ashamed.

i will fix you...

2009-01-29T15:27:00.000-08:00

Its warm enough today that it is raining. The cement balconies on the building across the street are streaked dark with rain, and though there is not yet enough to make significant puddles, the pavements seems to be moving, alive with the impact of a hundred raindrops at a time. All I want to do right now is go outside and walk in it. Rain is kind of a rare thing for me. Growing up in the middle of southern alberta, I think I have experienced less rain in my lifetime than most Canadians. I miss that about landscaping. Those early weeks of May where you think the rain will never stop and let you work, when its so cold your fingers sting and turn red. The 10 minute showers in June that last just long enough to cool you off and make everything a darker, richer version of itself. Watching the July thunderstorms move in, sometimes just lingering at the horizon for hours, sometimes crashing down around you so quickly you can't make it to the truck before it soaks you straight through to the skin.

About this time every year I get to the point when I remember that I am not an indoors kind of person.

The photo above was taken in Galway. It didn't rain much in Ireland while we were there, but there was a day or two where it came down pretty good in Galway. I like the sheen on the streets and the darkness of the stone roads, sidewalks, buildings. Galway was also the very first place I ever owned/purchased an umbrella. Only 1 euro.

people call us renegades cause we like livin' crazy...

2009-01-21T08:08:00.000-08:00

Its 9:08 am on Wednesday morning. I'm laying in bed still and ever minute that I stay here, is a minute off of my time to get ready and make it to work. I had great plans to get up and go to yoga this morning, but to be honest, I'm a little scared of going alone to mysore for the first time. Karen says she'll think about going with me tomorrow morning, so I'm rationalizing that I will go then. Instead, this morning, I've talked with patrick for 30 minutes, listened to music for another hour and watched the sun streak in across my world map and slowly slowly make the whole room that glowing kind of light.
Yesterday, work was difficult...not in a hard to do kind of way, but more in a hard to take way. Everyone I work with was listening to Obama's speech and deriding him for just dishing out more American propaganda, how he's going to just be a major disappointment and all this change he's calling for is just a new song and dance without any action. I was discouraged. Well, first I was a bit embarrassed because I was feeling really uplifted by Obama's speech and really did feel like we are all on the edge of a new era. And then to have him cut down by everyone around me made me feel a little silly at first, but then I got to thinking...anyone who can make the people around him, supporting him, feel that way...feel like they are empowered and encouraged and able to create movement and change in their world, well, they're worth following. They're worth backing up. No one can accomplish everything they want to, that they set out to, especially the head of a country when their very roll is tied up in the process and structure of politics. So, we cannot judge the most effective leaders based on what changes they themselves have made, but rather, how many other people they have inspired and empowered to take responsibility and change into their own hands, their own families, their own communities. It is ignorant to place the expectations of this new era solely on the shoulders of one new, energetic, charismatic President...of course we will be disappointed if we do that. This new "Era of Responsibility" is not about one man, but a community of action and movement, and so I will not allow myself to be brought down by the pessimists who will only WAIT to see what happens next. I will be inspired and empowered and will WORK to make what happens next.

man, I'm going to be late for work, but I am definitely feeling much better about the day.

she's got Bette Davis eyes...

2009-01-15T12:05:00.000-08:00

I've had a lot of things go wrong for me this week. I thought about making a blog to list them all, but instead I thought it might be more positive to list those things that have made my week not an entire write off.

- Geneva saying "it's the future here. i've got the star trek transporter all up in this place" on Ryan's facebook status and the long conversation about alcohol and time/space transportation that followed

- waking up to a phonecall from Patrick

- Tomato lentil soup and Sufjan Stevens on a sunny afternoon at Sugarbowl

- going for drinks with Linda after work

- pad thai with jamie, jodi and beth

- selling a 30x40" canvas of my work

- obscene amounts of fish with karen and beth

- booking a flight to Toronto for kick ass cheap

- planned phonedates with: louise, amy, hailey and sarah

- yoga on saturday

- above 0 temperatures

- sunshine and large front windows at work

- after eights

#1...

2009-01-04T06:48:00.001-08:00

This is one of those images that you just can't set up. I was shooting my friend Darcel's wedding in a public park and her roommate Jesse and his girlfriend Rickie spent the whole ceremony sitting on their bikes in the back. Rickie had this awesome "LIFE" bag and once when I circled around the back of the group, I saw this...and I just caught my breath and took the shot feeling like there would probably never be another moment like this for me to capture again. I like this piece a lot. It's printed and framed up at Vivid Print in Edmonton (http://www.vividprint.ca) if you are strolling by the area and wanting to get a closer look.

#2...

2009-01-04T06:34:00.000-08:00

Jamie commented on my first #10 post that it was one of her favourite days...ever. I feel like 2008 has had quite a few of those days for me, what with Jamie and I's trip to Iceland and running around Ireland with my sister. But there were a few of those days that happened in Edmonton as well. This was one of those days: Cait and Brad had been up to see my show with her parents, and after they left in the morning I called Jamie to meet for breakfast. I had a few hours to kill so I wandered down the back alleys of Whyte ave and explored the places I'd never stopped to really look at. I made it to Cafe Mosaic a little early so I sat outside on the ground reading a new book I had bought until Jamie came. It was the last weekend in March and the weather was nice so after breakfast, Jamie and I climbed on top of the High Level Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Level_Bridge_(Edmonton)) and just took a look around. After we decided to come down, we sat down at Sugarbowl, filthy dirty, laughing the whole way, and had a beer. When I think about it, most of my "one of my favourite days ever" in 2008 have been spent with Jamie. And I really like this photo of her too.

#3...

2009-01-04T06:27:00.000-08:00

I keep forgetting about this one, but I like it a lot. It was also taken early in 2008. At night. In my empty house in edmonton. At a moment when I was struck with creative genius and was similarly completely and utterly unemployed. I had been listening a lot to Great Lake Swimmers, especially "Rocky Spine" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kr6L22w7H8) and had this in mind when I set up the shot. Once again, it has this inexplicable quality about it that just draws me in and makes me love it.

#4...

2009-01-04T06:16:00.001-08:00

This one really belongs in the top 3. Don't ask me why I made it #4. I love it. While we were in Akureyri, Iceland my 18-70mm (kind of an all-purpose lens) focusing mechanism broke. It kind of sucked because I wasn't so used to shooting with manual focus and every once in a while would forget about it and just take the shot without focusing. Well, every now and then, one of these non-focused shots would come out with a certain mood that really grabbed me, so I would start to do it intentionally. On our way out of the Westfjords we were on this gorgeous stretch of highway that just rolled out in front of us. Having just read Jack Kerouac's "On The Road", and with all the things going 'round in my mind, I was absolutely struck by the way the sun fell exactly off the clouds and into my lens in that moment. I love this photo.

Akureyri: http://www.port.is/

#5...

2009-01-04T06:12:00.000-08:00

I took this photo early in the year of 2008. It's at my farm in southern Alberta. I love it. The fog and the cold and the different tones of the trees and the grass in the background, the crispness of the wheels and the wood...there's just something special about it to me.

#6...

2009-01-04T06:07:00.001-08:00

Though I really loved County Kerry in Ireland, the city that really stole my heart was Galway. The small feel of it, the little shops and cafes on narrow cobblestone streets the quiet river going through. I went to NUI Galway (http://www.nuigalway.ie/) while I was there to take a look at an option for a masters degree that looks pretty amazing. This was taken on one of the only days it rained while we were in Ireland. I still am not satisfied with this particular version of this image, but have yet to find time to dig it out of my archives and redo it. But this week I will because I am burning all the Ireland photos to cds for you Pamela! I haven't forgotten, I'm just not quite finished...you'll have them when I'm back. I promise!

#7...

2009-01-04T05:51:00.001-08:00

This is where it gets interesting.

I like taking portraits. And when it came down to it, I couldn't choose just one of these as my favourite for the top ten, so #7 is more of a category than a single award.

#7a.

This is A. She's Karen's sister and the oldest of the Fernhout gang I spent a lot of my time with. I don't know what to say about this photo other than I really really love it. Its one of my all time favourite portraits.

#7b.

This is Neil. I work landscaping with him in the summer. He has two sweet daughters and a wife who are his world. After having been in the army for 18 years, he found himself in the private sector. I'm kind of glad he is because I got to meet him and work with him and get to know him, but it's tough to watch this whole mission in Afghanistan wear on him as the soldiers killed in action and reported on the news are his friends. People he knew, worked with, laughed with and cared about.

#7c.

This is me. I take a lot of self portraits...mainly because I'm always available to myself and never get sick and tired of the shoot before the photographer does. I like this one because of the wind and the light in my eye and my new Guinness hat from Galway.

#7d.

This is Patrick. I like this one because its a nice portrait and I like him an awful lot and because this was taken in Edmonton. He flew out from Toronto with a return ticket set for two weeks later. A flight he never made as he decided to stay with me for a month and then experience Christmas with my family. At the moment I'm writing this from his parent's livingroom, experiencing the holidays with them as well. So far, 2009 is shaping up to be a good year with lots of things to look forward to on the horizon.

You can check out Patrick's work here: http://www.kerbydesign.com

#8...

2009-01-04T05:39:00.001-08:00

At the beginning of October, Jamie and I skipped out of Iceland for a while and went to Ireland for 10 days with my sister Pamela who flew out from Calgary to meet up with us. Ireland was really really beautiful and I loved the way the sun would come down in Dublin peeking through the brick buildings, stretching along the cobblestone streets. This was taken one of the first nights we were in Dublin walking from our hostel on Talbot over to Lower O'Connell so we could cross the river Liffey and explore the Temple Bar area's supper options. (http://www.dublinmapped.com/) The pole you see at the end there is the Dublin Spire (http://www.spireofdublin.com/). What I liked best about the spire - and which I did not photograph - was the monument of Jim Larkin near its base. Its a beautiful statue of him with his hands thrown into the air and his words inscribed underneath it "The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise." I suggest you go to Dublin to see it for yourself, but if that's not in your plans, you can see it here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Big-Jim-Larkin.jpg)

#9...

2009-01-03T10:19:00.001-08:00

Reykjavik, Iceland. Last night of the Iceland Airwaves Music Festival. It was a kind of traumatic night for me, but that's another story. This concert was in the Iceland National Museum. Dikta was the band getting ready to go on stage here, the smoke machines had been pumping for the past 30 minutes and the guitarist just got everything set up and was walking under the "Iceland Airwaves '08" projection when I shot this.

*you can find out everything about Iceland Airwaves here: http://icelandairwaves.com/

best of 2008 #10...

2009-01-03T06:03:00.000-08:00

Hi!

I've been pretty quite online during the holiday season so I am taking advantage of this slightly lazy morning to write up a quick post. Mainly I was looking at katya's (http://scphotography.blogspot.com/) stream this morning and thinking that I should do a sort of similar "best of" 2008 kind of run. So without further ado, here it goes: my top 10 photos of 2008 (according to me)

#10

Vik, Iceland Day 2 of our insanely incredible roadtrip around the island. Vik is my new favourite spot on earth. That's Jamie standing on those wild cliffs overlooking the town -you'll see jamie popping up in this post quite a few more times!

*click on the photo to see it bigger*

how winter makes me reconsider it all...

2008-12-18T10:10:00.000-08:00

Today is one of those days that the air is so still and cold and full of winter that you can see it. It blurs out the edges of trees and pulls the world in close. Everything slows down, becomes mystery, any kind of movement seems like a transportation between worlds...makes me think of Avalon this morning.

Its not terribly cold though and after brushing off my car this morning, I stood there for a while watching my breath hang in the air and counting the seconds before it started to disappear. Sometimes I really like winter.

since it's christmas let's be glad...

2008-12-16T15:59:00.000-08:00

Today my bangs got dragged through my wrap. I didn't notice it until I was back at work and supremely confused about where the thai sesame smell was coming from...washed my hands a few times, checked my clothes and my face.

It was my hair. I'm going to get it cut tonight.

i once knew a girl in the years of my youth, with eyes like the summer...

2008-12-11T08:06:00.000-08:00

okay, i've been a bad blogger. Its been well over a week since I last said i would post regularly. To be honest, work has been so ridiculously crazy busy in this christmas rush that I've had no time to slack off and write blogs. So rather than berate myself for it, I'm going to post another photo to talk about. Actually, I'm posting two. I had another photo in mind, but yesterday I saw different one and it got me to thinking.
I live on a farm in the city and it is beautiful. My front yard leads out to the paved city street while my backyard stretches out into fields of flax and wheat and tree lined gravel walks. I like wandering out along the gravel road behind my house because the trees are dramatic. Dark black trunks against the greens and browns and oranges of the earth and the wiry black branches so stark against the western sky. I love it. And I take lots of photos out there because the sunset always looks so beautiful out there. I took this one earlier last month. Just home from traveling for months, glad to be resting in the places i love best here in edmonton, but also leaving pieces of me spread across everywhere I'd been.

This is a photo I've taken 100 times, but every time the sun turns a certain colour of gold, or the shadows stretch out to a specific length, or the trees look a particular shade of impossible dark, I feel compelled to shot it again. and again. and again. Each time its a different moment for me. Its different from the last time I took the shot, because I am different. Its always interesting for me to see this image again and again because to me, the moment is always changing. I know something about the photo that no one else does. I know what I was doing before I went to shoot, I know what I was thinking about, I know what I was trying not to think about, I know what I was wanting and needing from life in that moment. I know all these things that are so intrinsically linked to that specific photo for me, that any other viewer would never guess at.

Which is why, when I see this same moment through someone else's eyes, it catches me off guard.

Patrick took this photo yesterday while I was at work. It's strange to see this moment and know it so well and know my own experience in it and then see his and wonder about what was going through his mind. Where he had been before he went out to shoot. What it was that called him out of the warm house into -30 degrees to capture this.

It reminds me that every image has so much more inside of it than we are every able to know. The complexity of someone attempting to capture their own experience is incredible.

we'll call it christmas when the adverbs begin...

2008-12-02T16:28:00.000-08:00

I am still here and alive despite reports of me falling off the face of the earth. Though, I'm sure the 5 people who read this blog will have long since stopped checking for my updates. I think I resolved a while back to write more entries, more often. Well, I suck.

I've been throwing around this idea lately about starting a kind of photoblog, but I thought that I might end up abandoning it or this one or both, so instead I've come up with a compromise. I am going to post a photo every week on this blog...maybe it'll be something recent, maybe something old...but I've decided I want to be more aware of my work. Better able to speak about it, to defend it, to understand it. So I'm gonna start here. I don't plan on writing about technical stuff or even really critiquing it - mostly I just want to talk about WHY I took the photo and what it looks like to me...and hopefully this will inspire me to write more frequently about other things as well.

I like taking portraits. A lot. Not set up ones, but ones that just sort of come out of a moment. A space that can't be recreated. It's something I usually don't think about. I just see it. The light, the colour, the focus...it all seems to come independent of anything I do. I'm not a creator, I'm a witness. There is a portion of text that Dryden writes in his "A Song for St Cecilia's Day 1687":

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.

Its this beautiful image of the whole of creation being created by harmony and music and the whole of the entire universe comes together in humanity. When I take a portrait of someone in the context of one of these impossible to recreate moments, this is how I feel. Like, what I am capturing is just this tiny glimpse of something that is massive and overwhelmingly complex and infinitely important. And what I capture of it is tiny and fleeting: the edge of a smile dipping in at the corner, the smooth line of light along a cheekbone, eyelashes peeking off the edge of a profile, a stray hair blown outside of a hood. Things that just hint at something so much deeper, so much more.

Today I want to talk about this portrait:

I took this one of Jamie while I was walking with her in the playground across from our house after it had rained. It was one of my favourite afternoons of last summer. What I like the three pieces of hair around her face in the background...two falling forward, one still clinging to the inside of her (actually my) hoodie. I like how her eyelashes are super dark here, but not without detail. I like the way she has her mouth set while she's thinking and how the zipper creeps up at the bottom of the image, but what I like BEST about it is the piece on the close side of the hoodie that is being pulled out of the frame. It makes me think there is something more to this image, this moment that just shows itself for the briefest instant before the wind lets that piece of hair fall back into place. That's what I see when I look at this photo.

throw a stone and watch the ripples flow...

2008-11-21T14:15:00.000-08:00

Its strange how we measure...our time, our money, ourselves. I once saw this Get Fuzzy cartoon that I really enjoyed:

We really do measure everything around us by what we individually experience. We measure our money by pints, by car tune-ups, by the pair of shoes that match our new outfit, by the next plane flight. We measure our time by best before dates on milk cartons, by the next client's deadline, by when we sleep and when we wake.

I have no big thoughts about this. Just an observation. I don't know if its a good thing or a bad thing, if its a sign of self awareness or self indulgence. I'm going to have to think on this more.

crickets talkin' back and forth in rhyme...

2008-11-16T16:22:00.000-08:00

I've been told that I haven't been blogging enough lately. Which is true. It has been a while. Not for lack of thinking/experiencing lately, but I guess it has just sort of fallen to the wayside since I've been home. But no more.

I've been thinking about legacy lately. I was out on the town this weekend and was being properly introduced to someone who I sort of knew already, or at least, I knew who he was. He hadn't ever put my face to my name apparently and responded by saying "Oh, YOU are Bri. yeah, I know who you are...you're a legend!" Which made me laugh because he was just kind of being funny but also kind of commenting on my level of involvement at King's when I was there. I remember hearing past student's names thrown around in my years at King's simply because of all they were involved in, and it was strange to me to be on the other end of it. Anyway, I was out with my cousins who came up to visit for a few days, which is always a good time, but in particular, this was an important visit. Chris, the cousin closest to me in age, had returned from his tour in Afghanistan earlier this fall and this was the first time I had seen him since. He came over this afternoon for grilled cheese and to show me some of his photos before he went back home. Some of them made me in awe of the Afghani landscape, some of them made me tighten up inside to know that Chris had been through these dangerous places and some of them made me laugh because he had taken quite a lot of photos of himself when he was bored. He and some of the other guys would swap photos and I started to notice a real self portrait trend. Every once in a while Chris would come across a batch of photos with the same guys in them over and over again...they were always wanting their picture taken, he said. And I started thinking about that. About how, in the middle of a very real military mission, these guys were constantly jumping in on photo opportunities. To have a kind of concrete evidence of their existence, of their life there, of who they are. When I watch the news and hear of another Canadian casualty, its so often accompanied by a photo of them standing beside their army buddies in the desert or in front of their barracks with a gun slung over their shoulder or poking their head out from behind the gun on their tank. And I couldn't help but see this all in the photos that Chris had. I wondered if, when the photo was taken, the solider in it thought about whether or not it would accompany news of his death if he were hit with a rocket the next hour.

I am reading this very-well-timed-for-my-life-right-now book called Brida. There was a passage that I read today where a mother is telling her daughter a story from her past and concludes with, "Thank you for listening to me. It's the first time I've ever told anyone that story. I was always afraid I might die without having done so, and that it would be wiped forever from the face of the Earth. Now you will keep it for me."

So lately I've been thinking about legacy. About how story and image can pass along a history. I have always been somewhat aware of this, but I'm really starting to understand that it is a driving force in my life. To keep a history. My love for language and for art...it is leading up to something bigger in me, outside of me. I'm beginning to understand that history slips easily through a generation's fingers and the consequences are profound. So there are certain people who must, as part of who they are, carry the story. I think I'm one of those...maybe not in a universal, encompassing way...but I feel the weight of history pressing on me - the story of the family, the story of the land, the story of this time in this place. I feel the urgency of it upon me and I know it has chosen me to carry it. To keep it. To share it when the time comes.

there's a design to what I did and said...

2008-11-07T20:02:00.000-08:00

I've been home for over a week now. I've been working for the past 5 days and life seems to have settled down to a "normal" kind of lull. I'm getting good at printing things and knowing my way around Vivid Print and learning what its like to be working for a living again. It's friday and I'm waiting for my cousin Jodi to show up to have a couple of beers and catch up on everything. Life seems to be stretching out before me clearly...smoothly...enjoyably.
Beth is gone to visit Kaeli for the weekend and Jamie is on the phone upstairs. The cat is on my lap, kneading my leg and the familiar glow from the kitchen light is making shadows across the linoleum. Sufjan is singing quietly from the stereo. I am home.

And yet, I am everywhere else. I close my eyes and I see Vik or Skagafjörður or Akureyri looking out at the unpredictable north atlantic. Drinking wine, squishing black sand beneath my feet, licking salt off my lips. I close my eyes and I'm in Kingston, wandering back to Melisa's in a blizzard with 4.5 liters of wine and some perogies. I close my eyes and I'm in Killarney, biking through unbelievably green forest, taking photos, falling behind and then catching up again with Pam.

It feels as though I have lived in a dream these past two months. Somehow I need to sort out what was reality and what was imagination and work from there. Somehow.

every time you close your eyes...

2008-11-02T10:07:00.000-08:00

I am home. It feels strange to be back, but also like nothing has changed. As if we were never gone. I woke up motivated today. That rarely happens. So I decided to revamp my room. I came home to a pile of laundry that still needed to be done in the middle of my floor and with all of my traveling exploding out of my bag onto my floor, I decided there needs to be a change. I also felt like my room, my closet, my life was getting very cluttered and needed to be purged. I'm not very good a purging stuff. I usually end up on sitting on the floor 3 hours later reading old letters from friends with pile of clothes on my lap that I never wear but can't bring myself to throw out. Today though, today was different. I have two big shopping bags of clothes going to value village and a big black garbage bag of everything else that no one (including myself) would want. And it feels good. I feel like I'm making space in my life.
Next, is the bookshelves. No, I'm not throwing any books out, but they need to be reordered. They need to have places where they will fit and not just collect dust, have months of bills piled on top of them and fall off the edges onto the floor every few days.
I even got the inspiration to fix up my futon a little. It has always had these 3yr old pen drawings of scrawled hearts and stick people on the top of the wood from the family I inherited it from and today I painted it. I didn't have a paint brush, so I used a sock with hole in the heel that I was going to throw out. That wasn't terribly effective though so I ended up just squeezing the paint onto my fingers and spreading it across the wood. It was really satisfying.

but every now and then when I'm sleeping, I still have a dream that I'm flying...

2008-10-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

I wandered down to the harbour today. It was beautiful and clear and the 30 minute walk along the ocean was relatively warm and sunshiny. I stood and watched the water for a while, took some photos for some other tourists and then explored my way between the docked ships until I was out of tourist territory. Along one of the thoroughfares between docks, I stumbled upon this little restaurant with a blinking "OPID" sign. On the window it said "Lobstersoup" so I went in. It was a tiny little room: chipped cement floor, three planks anchored into walls to serve as table with kleenex dispensers at each end and things that looked like old milkcans scattered around for chairs.
A guy came from the back wearing a plaid shirt and yellow fisherman's pants held up by suspenders. Definitely working pants, not costume pants. I wondered for a second if it was sanitary for him to come straight off the docks and cook, but then I thought "I'm sure I've eaten worse." So I asked for the only thing they seemed to serve...Lobstersoup. He came back a few minutes later with a little basket of cut up tiny baguette and a styrofoam cup of brownish-reddish liquid.
Now some of you may know how I feel about Boualong's Tom Yum. I want you to take that and multiply it by 9. This was THE BEST soup I have ever tasted. Sitting alone in the tiny "Seabaron" restaurant, I thought I just might die from sheer food ecstasy. And, the bread was even warm.
I don't care if you like seafood or not - because this is like no "seafood" you've ever had - this soup alone is reason enough to come to Iceland.

we drank fine wine in one swallow...

2008-10-19T13:16:00.000-07:00

It is winter here. It changed over the course of yesterday. Yeah, its been cold for a while, but this morning when I woke up (or afternoon), it was winter. There was no snow or wind even really. The sky was just as overcast as it has been for a while now, but it was winter. You can smell it, taste it. Feel it in the rock hard ground beneath your feet. I stand in the kitchen making toast, listening to my new Ane Brun cd (which is coincidentally called “Changing Seasons”) and I feel like…well, I’m not exactly sure what I feel like. I feel like crying and like laughing and like being alive is one of the strangest and most complicated things in the world.
I wish I had a guitar to play along with Ane and sing in this empty kitchen about seasons and time and treehouses and the rain.

Lullaby for Grown Ups - Ane Brun

Go to sleep
with closed eyes
Your prophecies
won’t be fulfilled tonight.

When you think
of falling skies
remember there are a million ways to die

Don’t be afraid
anymore
Don’t wear your inside out
To keep you warm

So rest your head
It’s just as well
You can’t keep the sky from falling
Anyway

and it drifts like smoke...

2008-10-17T03:29:00.000-07:00

Hello!

We are back in Iceland! Reykjavik is good. A little cooler and a little less green than when we left it, but still doing alright. Its still a little moody, weather-wise, but I’m sure it’ll come around. We’ve been at the Airwaves music festival since Wednesday and I’m averaging 7 concerts a day…hoping to up that number today and tomorrow.

I am craving a Prikid swiss mocha, but refusing to get addicted to the coffee that I no longer cringe at in it. Good thing there’s a 40 minute walk between it and I. And with the way the rain just whipped up again, I’m quite content to sit inside the kitchen and sip my hot chocolate and baileys. I’m thinking it would be lovely to go next door and sit in the hot pools while the cool rain pours down, but that would entail me braving the rain out to the tent, finding my swimming suit, walking down the block, showering and then running through the cold from the door to the pool before I could enjoy it. So yes, I think I will stay here for now. I’ve heard so many great new artists already this week, but this morning, I just wanted to hear Norah, so I’ve got her playing while I’m cooking up my eggs and toast. It feels really quite cozy domestic this morning: no one else in the kitchen, which is all windows on 3 sides, warm light spilling out from under the shelves, the smell of breakfast, socked feet, hoodie, leaning against the counter holding my mug close to my face with both hands. It makes me think of home. I think this is the first time I have, actually. Pam is safe back home, catching up on sleep. Jamie is getting into the homebound frame of mind. But me, I could stay here another month. This morning reminds me of last year about this time though: just finished landscaping, no plans, nothing urgent to do, reading poetry in the quiet morning kitchen with tea, nothing but time. This doesn’t make me wish that I was home though…the eve of winter for me in Edmonton this year will be spent very differently. I desperately need to work. I have left old work unfinished and waiting for me. I have new work that’s hovering constantly, ready to come crashing at me. There will be no time to really catch my breath beforehand. Rather, I’m planning to just hold it and jump in…probably surfacing around Christmas, gasping for air. Life moves so quickly. Its only October 17th and I’m talking about Christmas as though it is right around the corner.

and it's coming into sight as the days keep turning into night...

2008-10-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

This is for the old Irish man that stood outside the bus window in his tweed cap and jacket and winked and waved at me.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how one year can change the course of an entire life. Then I began to think of how inadequate a year is to measure a life. I am 23 years old. What does that mean really? 23 years means very different things to different people.
I feel as though we are intended to live each year in the direction of the kind of life we want to live. I've spent the better part of the past two years working landscaping and being unemployed and wandering around strange parts of Europe and pouring scotch in dark, ritzy bars. When I was in school, it was easy to justify doing simply what I loved because it was leading up to something, I was moving forward in my education, my prospects, my skills, my life...but what can I say for myself now? Have I stopped moving? Am I stuck? I don't feel stuck. I feel like I'm making decisions, not on the year, but in the moment, that make me very happy. Because in reality, life moves by leaps and pauses, not through years and numbers. If I'm not living every moment as the kind of life I want to live...what good is a year to me?
In The Shack it says "Today we are throwing a big rock in the lake and those ripples will reach places you would not expect."

So this is to the Irish man who made me smile and laugh and wave back. Whose actions, unknowingly, made me realize that I am happy with this day, with my life.
I hope I can live my life to do the same and watch the ripples return to me in beauty I did not expect.

I like to dance all night and some of the day...

2008-10-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

-Overheard at The Duke public house in Dublin-

scratch that.
In trying to focus on what I'm hearing, I realized that I am taking so much in that I can't begin to write it all down. Its amazing what your mind can process at once without you realizing.

All the snippets of phrases and laughter and sighs mixed with bar stools scratching the floor, change tinkling into registers and the sound of glass against glass, glass against wood, glass against hand. The far-off crash of dishes, the scrape of fok against plate.
Is this comin' or goin'? shouts the barmaid
Newspaper pages flick against air, the nervous shuffle of bags and tourist's feet. Guinness rolling down pint glass, foam curling around grate, gripping at the edges until it becomes too much and then, that first,
hesitant....

drip.

mocking us with the sight of what we might have known...

2008-09-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

Its 4:37am. I'm waiting for the FlyBus to take us to the airport at 5. People who will be taking it with me are slowly filtering downstairs. Its turning cold here. Supposed to be -12 tonight. The French man is wearing his wool sweater with a winter jacket over top. His ball cap is on backwards and he's jumping from foot to foot while he blows into his fists and rubs his hands together.
Its not really THAT cold.

I'm listening to a song called "Have you Passed Through this Night". I don't know who its by. You can listen to it here: http://kerbydesign.com/random/music/04%20Have%20You%20Passed%20Through%20This%20Nigh.mp3
Its really good. I feel like it is one of those songs that would play in a movie where someone is standing in the midst of a great crowd of moving people. All of them rushing and going places with purpose while they just stand there. Watching, listening, closing their eyes. I feel a little like this will be me in London. So much to see. No time to see it, let alone try and take it in. I'm already mentally bracing myself for it all. My camera battery is charged, my cards empty. I'm sure they will be full by the time 48 hours rolls around. Two days will feel like I've barely caught my breath before we meet Pamela at Heathrow.

After settling in to Iceland and Reykjavik and feeling very at home here, the next two weeks will put me back into "travel mode". Just as I was beginning not to feel so much like a tourist. I can't wait. Mostly, I'm excited to sit down in Dublin and have a pint. That will make me feel more like myself.

Until Ireland, have a good week and you'll probably see more from us on Friday/Saturday.

riders on the storm...

2008-09-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

I have a polaroid that has written across it
- It's all as easy as it seems -

Its not really a photo of anything. Overexposed, I can make out a window and a lamp, one wall is red and maybe some books in the bottom left corner. Either way, it fits this theme in my life lately. Since Cafe Paris in Akureyri, I've been paying more attention to the thoughts spinning around in my head. I feel like this summer and this trip and everything I've been reading and seeing and experiencing, is a part of a movement. All part of something that is leading up to, building up to....something. Something that will require courage and strength and the ability to believe that the risk is worth the cost in the end.
This polaroid stares up at me from the worn table of a corner booth in Prikid on a nondescript Monday afternoon.

- It's all as easy as it seems -

What is? I wonder. Relationship? Career? Growth? Love? Life? Yeah, when i think about them, it seems to be simple. I can completely envision what I need to do and say and accomplish in order to be living fully, in order to move forward into the next step towards what I want. But when I'm faced with the risk, the moment, the timing...I get scared and back off when I need to be stepping up. And then the moment is gone. But, somewhere, repeatedly, I keep hearing...

- It's all as easy as it seems -

ransom notes keep falling out your mouth...

2008-09-27T02:51:00.000-07:00

Last night was the big runtur (google it) in Reykjavik. Every friday is. Jamie and I haven't gone out on a friday yet. So when we got in last night from doing the golden circle run (Thingvellir, Geysir, Gullfoss) it was late and we were hungry. So about 10:30 we headed out towards downtown to hit up Habibi - probably the best quesadillas in the world. We had planned on stopping in at Belly's for a pint, but the door was locked strangely, so we decide found our way into the Celtic Cross instead. My new favourite spot in Reykjavik. It was tiny and quiet with tables hidden behind old wooden doors and stainedglass windows. It was beautiful. And a pint of Grolsh only cost 650kr (roughly $7 CND at today's rate).

To get downtown and back from the hostel campground, you have to walk pretty much along the water. Along the way there is a new building going up with three large cranes around it. The wind is as constant as the rain here and as it passes through the cranes, it makes the most beautiful, haunting sound. It has a gorgeous melody. I don't think Jamie likes it so much. It seems to freak her out a bit, but to me, it wraps itself around my soul and lets me breathe. I think when we're back here for those last two weeks, I might just sit out there along the harbour and listen to it for a while some night.

won't you come out tonight...

2008-09-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

After driving the length of the Snaefells peninsula coast today, Jamie and I came upon Akranes where we planned on setting up for the night. Unfortunately, upon driving around town, we found it was pretty dreary and industrial and being totally turned off by it, we decided to continue on to Reykjavik which was only 30 minutes and one tunnel under the sea away. So we are back in Reykjavik (which means we have successfully driven the entire coast of Iceland!!! About 5000km I think) for the night. Only for the night. We have our car until Monday and so tomorrow we set out to see Thingvellir national park - where we will be camping between the two continental plates..yes, very cool. And then off around the area to see Geysir and Gullfoss and experience all the cheesiness of Viking Village before we have to have the car back to Budget at 2pm on Monday.
That all being said, I have learned many things about Iceland as a nation having now seen the sights around the country.

#1: Not everyone in Iceland is technically beautiful...and most do not have naturally super blond hair (sorry to shatter the myth people!)

#2: Every single tiny little town on the map (and off) has a swimming pool. If there are two houses within 5 miles, there will be a swimming pool. And Elvis and Coldplay....they really like their Elvis and Coldplay.

#3: Along those same lines...almost every farm on Iceland is named and is on the map. No lie. Its strange. Most of them end in "Holt"

#4: Vik and the Snaefell lava fields have been some of the most life changing scenery I have ever experienced.

#5: I could definitely live here. In one of the following towns/cities: Akureyri, Vik, Grundarfjördur or Reykjavik....probably in that order.

#6: Icelanders have a very strange idea about what constitutes a major highway...or even a road for that matter. Also, they have very poor road construction skills. I won't give the details until I'm back safe and sound and mom and dad don't have to worry!

#7: Horse meat is amazing. Come on now, don't knock it 'till you've tried it.

#8: I do not like riding horses. Stay tuned to Jamie's blog for an up and coming account of that event.

#9: Geothermal pools are great. And I think they could get me into a really healthy lifestyle. I always feel like running when I'm finished in one and then going back and then eating lots of granola and skyr. Too bad they're not in Canada. There goes that plan.

#10: Vikings still live here. I saw one today. He was elderly and lumbering around with a GIANT beard, wearing only a speedo.

more later....

your eyes are closed like you truely believe....

2008-09-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

fuck holmavik.

yes I said it...sorry mom...but that has been the theme of Jamie and I´s past 24 hours. We drove from Skagastrond -the country music capital of Iceland (where we ate at the country bar...the only country bar in Iceland with its own radio station) to Holmavik yesterday. Getting there early in the afternoon, we decided to go a bit futher and camp at Dragnes, but first to stop and check out the museum of Icelandic sorcery and witchcraft which is Holmavik´s claim to fame. It was creepy. And strange. We got headsets and wandered around the warehouse looking at books and objects and fish heads. Some of it was interesting, some of it was boring, all of it was bizzare. The final room was the 'stone bowl' where they had one glowing red light on this stone with a hollow spot in it with all the creepy halloween music glory you could imagine. We decided that was enough and went back to reception where we found the kind middle age man who let us in (wearing a cute wool sweater at the time) now dressed up in full Icelandic socerer´s garb. It was creepy. After making casual small talk about the town and the tourist season with this bizzarely clothed man, we headed to Dragnes, only to find the road closed for construction. Neither of us wanted to stay in Holmavik to begin with, and definitely not after the museum, so we decided to try and make another hour or two of drivnig to reykjanes...4km out of Reykjanes, the road was closed for construction. We had the choice of driving another 200km to Isafjordur or turning back 80km to Holmavik. Our gas tank decided for us. We couldn´t make 200km. So back we went down the road a second time, deciding to fuel up in Holmavik and turn around and drive until we were tired and then set up the tent in a field somewhere when we wanted to stop for the night. We cruised into the Holmavik gas station...the only thing left open in town at 8pm, where the girl told us the pumps weren´t working. We were invited to stay and wait to see if they would be fixed in the next few minutes. Having literally NO other options, we settled down at a table in the gas station. I saw a phone and thought it might be a good time to call home as it would be the early afternoon and hearing a familiar voice from across the sea might make the day a bit better. I dug through my change to find the proper amounts and picked up the reciever......no dial tone. When I walked back to the table, a storm had blown in, screaming wind and black black rain. I felt like we were in the first scenes of every horror movie I refuse to watch. After waiting for an hour, the gas station closed and we were told it would hopefully be working in the morning.
We slept in the car with the doors locked and were waiting at the pump when the station opened this morning to get the hell out of Holmavik.

In Isafjordur tonight. Much nicer town.

we tried to find some worms to aid in the decay...

2008-09-19T13:38:00.001-07:00

So I haven't blogged recently...or since Reykjavik. Hopefully you're all following Jamie's blog who seems to manage the time to write one every time we stop for internet. There has been so much to see and experience since we left the capital. Lets do a point form "bring you up to speed"

Day One:
Reykjavik to Hella: beautiful campground beside glacial river, really nice waitress at the cafe - reminded us of Krystal Braam, met a french couple also camping - nice people, drank draft Icelanic beer (Thule) and watched the rain come in.

Day Two:
Hella to Vik: rain. lots and lots and lots and lots of rain. brilliant icelandic ocean highway and a strange side trip down a deadend secondary HWY 250, saw a nice waterfall though. Then saw lots more waterfalls. Got to Vik late. Horrible supper at Hotel Puffin....tasted like the smell of wet sheep. paid $35 for said supper. Set up tent at 10pm after giving up "waiting out the rain" in the pouring pouring rain. Whole tent wet. Sleeping bag wet. Cold, wet night.

Day Three:
Vik to Hofn: Got up early, watched the North Atlantic ocean on our doorstep...stopped raining around 9am. Everything I own is wet. Walked along the black sand beaches in the early morning drizzle. Ran across black sand beaches back to higher ground in the early morning drizzle when I realized the tide was coming in much faster than I anticipated...ocean only grazing a heel as I leaped the last 2 feet to safety (the north atlantic is not a friendly ocean. Only 10 feet off shore the waves were easily over my head and cold and dark and vicious). Ate last of the soggy pastry for breakfast. Hiked with Jamie up the cliffs above the ocean and over the strange rock formations (best part of the trip for me so far! incredible!) Packed up wet tent and drove to national park (can't remember the name...lots of s's lots of k's and f's too). Gave "martin" the german a ride from park to Hofn. He said everything like this "I be wanting to go to the supermarket now?" Jamie and I are still using the martin voice for every other sentence. Stopped at glacial lake full of strange ice formations. Beautiful. Got to Hofn (pronounced hup-f) in hurricane wind conditions. Dried out the tent nicely. Found our French couple friends there too. OH! and had a wonderful meal at the cafe.

Day Four:
Hofn to Eggissldtir (or something like that): Drove in ridiculously windy conditions along scary roads that ran along the edge of cliffs along the ocean. Beautiful drive. Stopped a few places to take photos along the road. Found a great cafe and ended up spending a fortune but eating tons and really good seafood. Found a liquor store, shared some wine, went to bed.

Day Five:
Eggissldatir to Akureyri:Went from ocean views to highland desert. Drove the "28km" to Dettifoss which took about 45 minutes in and 45 minutes out. The most horrible road I have ever driven. all gravel, all washboard...like take the bottom off your car washboard. Dettifoss not so impressive. Selfoss further down the trail totally worth it! Super windy, driving out we found ourselves in the middle of a sandstorm. sand EVERYWHERE. Now dry, but dirty. Went to Mytvan to find it pretty much all closed up for the season. Continued to Akureyri. Gorgeous town! Old and full of character like Reykjavik, but cleaner and brighter and with whales living in the harbour. Campsite pretty much closed. Staying in a beautiful sleeping loft at the hostel for the night. Drinking beer, watching tv and processing photos to be uploaded maybe tomorrow??

All that being said, I guess that wasn't so point form. Vik has been my favourite so far. Standing at the top of those cliffs looking over that terrifying ocean, I wished I could take this home. This feeling, this moment. Instead, I took a rock from the beach.

Okay, I'm tired now. I'll maybe write something interesting tomorrow. Good night.

gotta ask yourself the question...

2008-09-15T04:30:00.001-07:00

This weekend Jamie and I found ourselves at a heavy metal pub with a random assortment of people...most of them french Canadians. I was talking for a while with Phil about our upcoming roadtrip around the island. He and his friend had just had enough time to rent the car for a few days and had just came back from their whirlwind version of our two week adventure. We were talking about how everyone in Europe seems to fly: even in Iceland, you can fly from Reykjavik in the south to Akureyri in the north rather than make the half day drive. Such a strange and foreign concept for Canadians who see driving from Edmonton to Lethbridge in a morning, no big deal. Phil said something that made me think though, he started to talk about how you don't really understand the land and the people unless you DRIVE it. Jamie and I have this car for two weeks - everyone has looked at us like we are crazy, as a trip around the island can be done in a day or so - but there is something about this country that I want to understand. Something that I will never know if we don't take our time to let the land work itself into us.

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” - Jack Kerouac

look what the light did now...

2008-09-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

So I made it safe and sound, writing this blog post at Reykjavik City Hostel. And other than having less than 5 hours of sleep to my credit in the past...well, since Saturday...I am doing excellent and things are slipping along smoothly.

I had an interesting encounters with water in the past few days though. Its not something I think about usually, coming from Alberta and all, but on Tuesday I found myself sitting on the edge of Lake Ontario with Patrick and Jamie. It was the first time I've seen any of the great lakes - I think - and I was pretty amazed by the way the water stretched all the way to the horizon. As we sat there, the waves kept on lapping against the bottom of my shoes. (as some of you have previously read about, I have this thing about the shoes I travel with and was pretty disappointed to not be able to take along my well-traveled blue sneakers this trip) Well, the longer we sat there, the more momentum the waves picked up and then suddenly, one burst up from under my shoe and up over the top of it, down the laces and I watched it drip back into the lake. Jamie laughed and said the great lakes were consecrating my shoes. I've thought about that a lot since then and have come to believe they were. Tuesday was a pretty big, full day for me and it felt like there was something sacred in the way the water ...for lack of a better word maybe... 'baptized' my untraveled, untested shoes. I was still mesmerized by that idea, staring down at my shoes about 5 minutes later when I neglected to see a chain fence that almost took me out at the knees. Its good to have a balance between reality and mysticism.

As a side note, I LOVE Reykjavik. In fact, everything I've seen of this country makes me fall in love with it. So far, it has more that met my expectations. I have so many things I could say here, even though I've only been gone a few days, but I think I'll stop for now. Jamie just updated her blog too though, so if you want a few more details and anecdotes about the trip this far, check it out: http://theblogthatismylife.blog.com/

Also, one last note...I took photos today. Not for a wedding or for a family or for a company...for me. To tell the story of this trip and of how I experience it. It felt really really good.

it felt like floooooooating, it felt like floating...

2008-09-09T16:42:00.000-07:00

My candle burns at both ends,
it will not last the night.
But ah, my foes and oh, my friends,
it gives a lovely light!
-edna st. vincent millay

I have to be at the airport in 5 hours. I feel as though the past 48 hours have been frantic, but mostly, I think that is in my head. My head is definitely feeling frantic, but my past two days have been great. I secured a job that I may potentially love for November, I listened to the songs Dave wrote while he was in Kenya, had a sleep over with Karen, sat in on Arlette's 17th Century Lit class (yeah, I'm a geek...but I'm okay with it), had a surprise lunch with Theresa, got my hair cut and had a pint with Sheri. All in all, its been a good time. And on top of it all, I've cleaned the backyard of beer bottles and other post-party debris, I swept and washed the kitchen floor, am currently doing a load of laundry and I bought brand new bobbie pins. So other than actually having something packed, I'm doing well.

In Arlette's class this morning, they were discussing segments of Francis Bacon's writing. I'm not the biggest Bacon fan, but he has a way of putting things that is really beautiful. In his "On Empire", he starts by saying "It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire, and many things to fear." He's talking about kings, but I couldn't help but turn it around. While talking with Arlette after class, she said that I have the whole world before me. And she's right. I feel as though I have 'many things to desire and few things to fear'.
What a beautiful place to be in.

how can I get any rest now...

2008-09-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of things on my mind this weekend. After finishing my job on Friday, I started to realize that having to decide what to do and where to work and how it should be done all day at work was nicely keeping all of the things in my head at bay. Suddenly on Saturday, all the floodgates came open. Sometimes my thoughts are so loud and overwhelming I can barely pay attention to the people around me in the present. I think I need a trip. Like, I don't know, Iceland? Say, a week from today?

I also have been thinking lots about what to take and what to leave and I came to the decision to take only my hiking boots for shoes. Which makes me feel pretty torn. I have this pair of blue runners that have been with me everywhere I've traveled. I mean EVERYWHERE. LA, Houston, Honduras, San Fran, Singapore, Nepal, Bangladesh, Victoria, Iowa, Michigan...everywhere (except Quebec, because I didn't own them back then). But I am leaving them at home while I go to Iceland and Ireland and London and I'm feeling pretty sad about that. They don't fair very well in wet conditions (thanks Victoria) so it makes very little sense to even think about bringing them along, but they will be missed. I am going to wear them this week lots to try and make them not feel so bad about not making this trip with me. I took a photo of them this past christmas because I was thinking about how great it is to have shoes that "carry so many stories".

we push and pull, i fall down sometimes, i'm not letting go, you hold the other line....

2008-08-31T06:50:00.000-07:00

I changed my flickr screen name today. After 3 years of going by "fatal Cleopatra" (only 18th Century literature enthusiasts understand that one) I have changed it to "bri~".

Yes, I realize flickr is not a "reality"...most days...but it felt pretty momentous to change my name nonetheless. I'm still unsure if I'll stay with it. The thing is, its not just 'from here on in' that my name changes. It changes everything I've commented on retroactively. I feel like flickr has been pretty instrumental in my evolution as a photographer, and to have that journey changed feels...weird.

That being said, I took a photo at Darcel and Chris' wedding yesterday that I'm really proud of and love quite a bit. If you're reading this, you're probably one of two people - my sister or my mom - and so you've probably already looked at it, but if you're not either of those, go check it out. Because I like it lots. And I hope you will too.

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/onblack.php?id=2814526436&size=large

(for those of you who care...mostly for mom...my web address stays the same on flickr despite my name change. you still type in www.flickr.com/photos/fatalcleopatra to see my stuff)

swing like a wrecking ball, like the heart of god, what a mystery...

2008-08-29T05:14:00.000-07:00

Today is quite possibly my last day of work (word is still out on whether or not I'll put in a few hours on Tuesday). I woke up this morning feeling strange that the last 5 months have gone by so fast. Everything is surprising to me this morning, like it has been sneaking up on me and suddenly has decided to hit me full in the face.
Suddenly my job is done.
Suddenly its still night when I wake up.
Suddenly my trip to Iceland is less than 2 weeks away.
Suddenly it is fall.
Suddenly my summer has slipped between my fingers with only a bike ride here and a trip to the waterslides there.

smoke baby smoke baby...

2008-08-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

I used to think that spending too much time on my own would make me weird. Now I'm finding that not enough time on my own makes me kind of ordinary.

I've been so busy with work lately and photography projects and planning for Iceland and shooting weddings and more working and keeping up with friends and a little sleeping thrown in, that I haven't had much time to just spend an evening at home in my own head. At folk festival this weekend, I spent a lot of time jumping from friend to friend and visiting and trying to hit up all the artists shows I wanted to see. And then on Sunday morning, while sitting listening to Brett Dennen, Colin Hay and Martha Wainwright, I was looking at the program deciding where to go next and I took in this deep breath and realized what it was I actually wanted to do. What I love so much about folk fest. I laid back against the hill and closed my eyes and let the music just wash over me while I just felt the grass against my shoulders and the sun on my feet and just let myself sink into my surroundings. Being spread so thin this summer, I've forgotten that I need to find those spaces to root. To dig into the moment and just be there. I've been looking so forward to doing that everyday for two months in Iceland, that I've skipped so quickly and shallowly over the past few months that I've let most of my summer slip by me. Today marks one month before I'm waking up in Reykjavik and out of necessity to keep my sanity in the next few hectic weeks, and to make an attempt at taking back my summer, I plan - not to slow down - but to at least give a space for "rooting".

Tonight I chose to take a few moments to cook myself supper and write this blog and think about home. As I cooked, I could smell supper on the stove in Burdett. See my mom shuffle her feet to the music in her head, flipper in hand. Hear my dad coming through the garage door and stamp his boots on the concrete floor. I still heard my dog's collar rattle through the door as she shakes her head and lays down on the step, even though she died months ago. I opened my eyes and breathed in and felt settled. Which is good. I have much to do this week and I need to be able to breathe and think things through to manage everything that must be finished by the time the weekend rolls around.

every step that you take could be your biggest mistake...

2008-07-14T16:45:00.000-07:00

Things cannot always stay as they are.

I hate that. I hate dealing with that. I love change, but I want change when I am ready for it. When I am eager for it. When it fits into my schedule, my plan.
But things cannot always stay as they are.

I want my friends to stay close to me. I don't want them to move away for school or spouses or careers. And I don't want to move away from their homes and gardens and mornings full of crepes and strawberries. I want them to be a 20 minute drive across town for tea.

I want to finish everyday with my hands dirty with the earth. I want to be tanned and strong and spend more time with the wind and sky and grass than with four walls and a ceiling.

I want to always be doing what I love. I never want to agree to take money in return for making myself do something I don't enjoy doing. I want to have pride in my work and know that it will benefit someone else too.

I want to live three lives. I want to drink wine in the late afternoon on my farmhouse porch in Edmonton, to walk to the Sugarbowl and sit on the High Level bridge to watch the sun go down. I want to be able to lift off and explore the world on a moment's whim, to see Germany and Borneo and Argentina . I want to dig my toes into the soil between rows of green wheat crops and listen to the gravel crunch beneath my feet as I walk down the driveway in Burdett.

I want to have enough of everything I need to sustain me. I want enough money and enough time and enough love and passion to know what to do with them and to use them well.

or the story goes...

2008-07-02T20:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't been blogging lately. I've been working lots. But it is July now - probably my second favourite month of the year - and it deserves a post.

My mind has been running in overdrive lately. Never stopping long enough on one thought to let myself even realize what I'm processing. When I think about what I want to blog about, I can't find one cohesive thought to speak on. Instead, maybe snippets of moments from the past few weeks will suffice. I've been all over the map lately with moments of beauty and pain, and excitement and of bitter boredom and disappointment. The days have been blurring together lately, but there are a few sketches in time that stand out to me from the past weeks...

- Drinking beer with my friends until late in the evening and wandering into the fields behind my house, laying in the unbelievably soft green, young wheat and staring into the night sky.

- Stepping out of my work truck to see another park turn brown and crisp...watching the grass I take care of slowly shrivel and dry out.

- Standing in the quiet livingroom of a friend's house holding a Carol Sheilds book in my hands feeling an overwhelming compulsion to sit down and read it rather than join the voices I hear in the backyard enjoying a Canada Day bbq.

- Listening to fireworks ricochet between downtown buildings and river valley and watching the ash and smoke float between tree branches.

- Watching someone learn to back Karen's work truck and trailer into it's spot in preparation for her leaving for two weeks on Friday.

- Feeling my arms and back turning brown with heat and dirt and sweat and sun.

- Watching one of my friends learn to adjust to a new stage of life and fight against the pull to let freedom and independence become loneliness.

- Breathing in the smell of summer heat, sitting my porch, listening to Bon Iver, watching black birds against pink/blue evening sky.

from Carol Sheild's "Swann"...

"Some days Virginia Woolf is the only person in the universe I want to talk to; but she's dead, of course, and couldn't like me anyway."

and in the end, we lie awake, and we dream of making our escape ...

2008-06-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

tidbits from a life rarely expressed by blog lately...

Its sunday morning. I am laying in the tent, in my backyard, in my new amazing sleeping bag. Its been raining little bit by little bit for the past few hours. Big drops hitting the tarp in some irregular rhythm. I have the new Coldplay album on and the screen zipped down enough that its letting in nothing but the scent of rain. That smell mingling with the wood fire smoke and pipe smoke clinging to my clothes and hair (remnants of last night's summer solstice six hour bonfire party) is making the moment absolutely perfect.
Last night Dave brought his guitar and harmonica and diggeridoos and we sat around the fire eating and drinking and laughing and taking turns playing what we could on the diggeridoo - which for most of us, wasn't a whole lot. As the fire died down we all ended up laying on our backs in the grass, feet against the fire pit, watching the sky in silence.
On top of it all, I slept in my contacts. I've never done that before because I've always been too nervous to, but when I got these new contacts, my eye doctor said that I should have no problem sleeping in them for up to 7 nights in a row. Though I'm not sure I'll make a habit of it, I woke up and I was immediately able to see. I haven't had that since grade two.