Spring! & 'Things i Hear'

snow is melting

Last week was wonderful.  Spring started showing up more regularly.  There were less -10C moments & only 3cm of snow.  The last night it snowed i went outside & respectfully told winter to "GET OVER IT".  Like some drawn-out romantic crush, winter now seems gotten over. 

After seeing nothing but snow for months now, it's so exciting to go for a walk and see THINGS.  Grass, whole bushes, furry buds on the trees, seaweed & driftwood on the beach.  i discovered that you can polish driftwood with a stone & yesterday i made myself a hair stick.  and i taught our friends, who are the owners & chefs of the local Asian restaurant how to cook scrumptious Indian food (but forgot to take a photo for the blog, d'oh!)

the hair stick i made from driftwood

Also, i danced for the first time since i dislocated my knee :)  we went to the local film festival & met an amazing animator (Martine Chartrand who paints on glass: http://www.nfb.ca/film/black_soul/).  i've been spending a lot of time with crystals.  (that's maybe a whole other part of me that some of you don't know.  can see my work here:  http://crystal-light-web.blogspot.com).  i've been preparing to launch an etsy shop, taking photos, writing blurbs about the pieces i have made, & of course the actual of the crystal necklaces.

breakfast w/Dodo Rouge (who got camera shy)

i am now going to hang out the washing. outside.  it is a big moment in This Canadian Yurt!

For those interested, i'd also like to share some of the writing is did the first day i sat outside the yurt (which i mentioned in the last post).

 

9 Things i Hear [& a story concerning squirrels]

1. It gets so silent here that the flapping of crows’ wings counts as an Event.

2. Droning of fridge and flies disrupts the silence.

3. Do i hear electricity marching through the wires, or crickets chirp-croakin’ in the dogwood?  Which has more stamina?

4. The surround-sound of nature’s amphitheatre makes the cries of even the crass seagulls an auditory feast.

5. Unseen geese honks, coyotes’ howls & wood peckers’ drills gives an eerie sense of irrelative space in the valley.  I can’t tell the distances between these things:  i don’t know how or where i fit in.

6. The line “a peace that passeth understanding” could’ve been written for the silent space i feel inside here.

7. Buddha-still i contemplate a list of words, concentration buried beneath layers of syntax.  The Jay lands suddenly at my feet, our squealed shocks ricocheting off one another: like opposing magnets of sound, we are both pushed physically backward.  Sometimes i am unsure to whom the fright belongs, but my heart thuds as though it were all mine.

8.  The rare times a car passes, i curse “bloody highway”.  i do it just to hear Antoine’s laugh.

9.  i can’t decide if i prefer the French word ‘brouhaha’ or its English counterpart ‘hubbub’. i whisper them aloud.

Memories of a morning i awoke to a scratching scramble coming from above.  Squeezing open an eye, i reluctantly brought into focus the transparent circle in the centre of the yurt’s roof.  A sprawled, grey shadow appeared, accompanying the grating thumps.  The petit mass threw itself uncertainly across the roof.  It bounced & belly-flopped in semi-circles around the chimney, as though performing some kind of pagan theatre piece to a smoky (volcanic-esq) god. My eyes and mind finally co-ordinated to conjure the word: squirrel.  And as if the label broke the spell, he was gone.  Sliding down the ropes with the air of a circus-performer exiting from a magnificent show.

Anyone else see the halo?

 And yes, Dodo-Rouge is still dining with us!