“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” (george eliot)

good-bye beautiful september full of light and strangely bountiful bloom. interestingly enough, during september, some of the flowers in my garden decided to throw convention to the wind and gave themselves a party, blooming brightly as though it were spring suddenly. it was like a reminder to me that it doesn’t really matter what stage of life you are in, you can bloom any old time you wish and so i shall and so should you, and you and you. it is never too late to discover the brightly coloured joy that starts off as tiny seeds in our consciousness and to throw caution out the window and start showing our soft velvet petal dreams one by one in an explosion of joyous beauty.

i have always been a late bloomer and am absolutely delighted to see that my garden has decided to celebrate that fact with me. mother earth totally rocks my world and the universe be a pretty magical place. i love that.

A secret. October is a magical month for me and I am excited as it enters because beautiful things happen in October, oh so many beautiful things.

“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” (henry miller)

… a car screeches, honking squeal of tires skid across an intersection, black angry marks left behind as shoes tap a quick rhythm down a busy sidewalk jarring music of a cell phone bleeps and coffee sloshes over the rim as the pace quickens, faster, more, now, yesterday, today … breathe … a bird’s song washes over the wind’s soft siren call, soft whispers of quiet sunbeams cushion tiny puffs of feather light fuzz, in the moment, lingering thoughts vanish in the sound of a gentle breath in and out …

“Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.” (edith wharton)

Lily was a dancer. She didn’t have a studio filled with torn tights and leg warmers, striped in various shades of purple and she had never known the floodlights of a flushed face as the crowd cheered and roses flew into the air landing at her feet. But Lily was a dancer. In the dark of the night, she would lift her face high up to the star filled sky as the moon cast down beauty on her face as her arms flung outwards and she twirled in the air, dew dancing up like diamonds clustered at her feet. Her thoughts would disappear in the soft wind made by the swirl of her skirts and the weary blisters of pushing her day forward to the angry swirl of voices would dim into the music of the night. Sometimes, during the day, smiling quietly, Lily turned her face to the sun and remembered.

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” (john fitzgerald kennedy)

conformity is a funny word. try running it around your tongue, conformity. its a bit awkward really.

i knew growing up that i never really fit in anywhere. there were the obvious reasons, i was poor living in a trailor or i had a sister who had cerebral palsy or i was part native or my mother was american, born in missouri. i got to choose whether i wanted to be american or canadian. i lived in canada so it was a no brainer really. i wasn’t like a lot of the other poor kids because my parents didn’t let me run wild and they didn’t drink or do drugs and we had books all over the house and my mother never wore makeup and ran around in bare feet, bohemian in her thoughts. i lived inside my head, dreams and ideals. i carried a little kodak point and shoot with me everywhere. i drew photos with pencil crayons and wrote poetry before i could spell. i was fired from my first job not because i wasn’t good at it or because i wasn’t a hard worker but because they didn’t like how i dressed, my sister was in intensive care with bolts in her head at the time. i was a punk in a town that only knew metal. i smoked my first joint alone in my room, the window open to the trees because i wanted to know what it was like before i did it in public. i worked hard to become a badass so i could hide my sensitive nature behind a facade of angry pain but i still looked like mom’s apple pie because i couldn’t hide my baby face smile. i went to university where it was assumed that i grew up in a normal white middle class environment and my mom never had to kick a drunk stranger off our front stoop. i use words correctly but even now i misprounounce them because i learned most of my words at an early age in books and i never heard them spoken. i think its quirky but it drives other people crazy. i learned how to talk and smile and blend into a room but i always had a hard time with conformity. i would argue for the sake of arguing, passionately attempting to learn more than i knew. i devoured books in smoky bars and have a box filled with drunken poetry written on the fragile cloth of a napkin, ink spots sunk in deep. i am turning forty this year and people still mistake me for my late twenties until i mention i have a teenage son, i like watching their faces as they think i was a teenage mother. i don’t like watching their faces when i tell them about my twins and how they died held in my warm arms. my hair is long and straight and people still assume that i blow dry and straighten it before i come to work and my hairdressor still tries to find a way to make it curl. i like to ramble incoherently about nothing and everything written on this blog is done so in a mad purge from my brain to my fingers.

i never wanted to be anyone but me and even if i don’t know exactly who i am, i am enjoying the journey that tells me who i was.

“Bottom line about this “collaboration with the universe”– it is our mission and intention to find the most lovely stuff floating out there, and if you are the creator/maker of it, we want the world to know about it and you.” (amy krouse)

(thanks to an enchanted life)

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it — the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it — the whole story doesn’t show. (andrew wyeth)

today is the first day of autumn and the rain falls wet on leaves gold lining the streets, dark streets slick with the cold low hung clouds grey flannel blanket wrapped around my weary bones. my kitchen smells like apples and cinnamon, pots simmered on the stove as bags of apples were peeled and cored, cooked and frozen. the garden is mostly in and bags of leaves have begun to pile around the composter.

i have so many thoughts and words stretched out like an elastic band, emotions flung around red and ripe, juice dripped down and yet i find myself growing quieter and quieter afraid to give voice to ever changing puzzle pieces fitted and then discarded as the paint colour changes the scene before my eyes.

so i will awkwardly give voice to autumn’s loud whisper of colour, her daring reveal, lifting her skirts, a dervish twirl of brightly coloured petticoats before she lays down her weary head and bares her bone beauty briefly as she snuggles into a warm soft blanket of white cotton wool.

welcome my dear friend … lets whisper long into the night until our words run dry and we find ourselves dreaming soundly.

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” (albert camus)

i remember standing at the bus station, hands swollen and red from the cold wind as my hair whiped itself around my face. i had no winter boots, only ridiculous black leather platforms that gave me a funky edge that even though filled with old wool work socks did nothing to keep me warm. i was cold and tired and worn from working all day and looking forward to an hour long commute to the school to pick up my son and then finally home to rummage the cupboards for some semblance of a balanced meal for him. i was thin because i had no choice.

i dreamed of freedom, the freedom to capture the way the sun danced down on that crystal of snow that hung precariously like a diamond shattered in the stars atop a barren branch of scarred bark.

Buddha says that “the whole secret of existence is to have no fear. never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. only the moment you reject all help are you freed” and i thought about that as i stood there, eyes stung by the beauty, teared by the cold. i thought about friends i knew in search of freedom, rejecting the money dooled out by well meaning parents, as they flew off in a plane to look for the elusive freedom. i thought about how i didn’t have the luxury to be free to search for freedom or even to find it in the capture of last spring’s rosebud.

i decided that freedom was having enough money to not worry about the hunger, the electricity bill, the clothes that covered the warmth of your child. i felt lucky because i had a wall of books, well worn friends that traveled with me over years of time and freedom lived in their words sleeping loudly beside me as i lay back at the end of the day. i have freedom because i am chained in an office, a cubicle that affords me the tools to go home and put in another full day of work at my business and the pounds i have gained in a full pantry swollen and bloated is a price for the freedom that lifts me up and cradles me in this life.

freedom is hard work but so worth it.

“Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower” (albert camus)

it is summer hot outside, the sky is a pale blue made more luminous by the yellow green hues of orange littering the vast array of trees across the city. leaves like blossom petals in spring litter the ground with their dance of colour, line the streets and rain down in the soft breathed wind. energy soaks into skin, drenching me with the warm glow of an autumn moon full in an orange sky begging me to run through scattered leaves and drown myself her warm light. right here, right now, i choose happiness.

“Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet’s abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.” (paul engle)

eyes closed, heart open … if i stare long enough i see you breath, puffs of air dancing out spraying my cheeks with warmth. eyes open … longing to sink deep into golden arms embrace, soothed sky eyes wet with morning dew. we are as one, soaked in the colour of a dying sun, scented in the secret darkness of forbidden beats on skin worn leather. and for a moment, i see.

“There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.” (carol shields)

i am in nesting mode casting my glance around my home in dismay at how much work i have to do, want to do before the cold of winter darkens my door. the chapter in my life that i don’t talk about is the clutter that constantly threatens to push down on the skull of my mind, tiny bones spread thin. how does one do it really? how does one manage a full time busy career, a husband, a child, a fledgling business which requires every spare second of time and somehow manage the garden, the house and the myriad other mundane details like cooking and paying the bills all the while attempting to carve out time for creative desires and artistic intentions.

i am sure the answer is there hiding in a soft nest of uncluttered organized mess. i am so sure that if i just somehow manage to organize my home that everything will be easier. perhaps i am deluding myself but i have a hazy memory on the corners of my mind of another time, a time before death danced down to hard on me and sent me spiraling into an abyss that took all my time just to find a way to breathe again. there was a time when my house shone with organized gleam, everything had a place and what didn’t found its way out into the world, into another home. i dream about those polished corners of space and wonder how can i find myself back there or if it really matters. I keep thinking that if I was more organized, if surfaces were less sticky with yesterday’s dried jam breadcrumb, if there wasn’t a pile of boots and shoes cluttering the door and a mess of paint cans in the kitchen still waiting to be put away, if clothes actually got folded instead of piling up in baskets … well … somehow, magically, I would be able to get more creative work done. Again, perhaps I am disullisioning myself because somehow, photos are being processed and I am marveling at images of beautiful brides and smiling guests; somehow I am taking photos again, daily, marveling at the way the autumn light sings down from the sky; somehow, I am doodling images that will find their way onto canvas once winter’s dark drives me to brightly coloured art and somehow, I have begun to sketch out a collection of jewelry designs for cozy twisting of silvered light.

I wish a fairy godmother would sprinkle dust down on my nest of brightly coloured magpie finds and magically smooth the surfaces of calm and rest so I could see those creative eggs I am hatching more clearly. I bought new pillow covers for my living room, brightly coloured jewels of silk and I bought beautiful green material to make new curtains and in my mind’s eye, I see the design coming together as snow replaces the leaves that fall outside my window and I sink into the hibernation of creative busyness that winter brings. But first I have to clean out the cobwebs in the closets, spilling out the last remains of grief hidden under piles of comfort’s clutter.

i am here, quietly breathing in life, gently blowing out life, wandering in the spaces between the noise of it all. my life is so incredibly busy right now and i feel like i have more to say in the photos that speak to me, in the breathe of light between puffs of air so i have changed the format here a little bit with the photos more pronounced while still leaving lots of room for words because i could change my mind tomorrow and write you a novel but in the meantime want to commit to posting more frequently even if its just the thoughts that i see.

“Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” (henry david thoreau)

This morning’s bike ride into work was cold, frosty and uncomfortable. Even with gloves and a fleece headwrap over my ears, it took me forever to warm up once I got into the office. I longed instead to be wrapped up in a long sweater, leather wrapped calves and the clicking of boots with a scarf wrapped around my neck.

I cannot deny the fact that it feels like Autumn and big yellow leaves litter our street, our front yard even as I taste the fruit that I grew over the summer, fresh juice dribbled down my chin as my fridge fills with cucumbers, juicy sweet tomatoes, squash, carrots and beets. Bags of freshly picked apples wait for me to peel and cook and freeze and the ever emerging darkness starts to bring a different light to the world that I live in.

The seasons dictate how I live, what I do, my emotions strung into a line of yearly ritual in this land of extremes where my heart dwells. It was only a couple of weeks ago, when I couldn’t find escape from the relentless heat, highs hitting the high thirties (nineties for those on fahrenheit) and now I check the weather ever night to see if I have to cover my roses, my tomatoes because the frozen waver of a frost sits quietly in the air.

My son started school today and I feel myself dreaming of warm fires and pumpkin eyes glittering, walks through corn mazes and leaves crunching as my eyes seek out the brightest leaf in a valley that will soon be covered in hues of orange and yellow as green winks good-bye.

I find myself suddenly tired, weekends of activity and late nights processing photos, droopy eyed and in need of a rest, I actually contemplated taking a blog break but realized that likely a nap would suffice. I suspect that early evening will find me snuggled into the aroma of vanilla scented sheets as I wrap up into a cocoon of sleep, hopeful that I will soon awake from this slumbering dream to find myself rejuvinated by the crisp air of this decaying season, strangely filled with life as my world prepares for a sheet of white sleep.