watching where i step

March 20, 2015March 20, 2015 ~ carin ~ Leave a comment

Dog like an angry fox at the bottom of a driveway. Possessive of its tarmac.
As I pass it watches me, positions itself as something much larger… I buy the ruse, walk faster.

But it’s not the only scary thing at this intersection of seasons.Ice too.

And then another dog. Black and small and growly, companion to a small woman in black. She does not say hello, speaks only to the dog. Perhaps winter has been long and hard for her…

A teenaged lad approaches, staring at his hand. I veer out of his way.

And then a puddle in the shape of a hawk in flight.

And this.Always this.

Smell of cigarette smoke on the other side of a cedar hedge.

Third dog—a very young puppy, gambolling through the snow, followed by two gamboling young girls.

Things are getting better.

Signs of spring.

Also, the sun. Still high at 6:30 p.m.

Another puppy, a sand coloured one, unremarkable and content it seems.
And then, because there haven’t been enough dogs, a beautiful but seemingly unfriendly Lassie, walked by a chap in designated walking apparel and with his perky young daughter outfitted in pinks and purples. He reluctantly returns my hello with a lemon sucking face. (No disrespect to lemons.)

As I turn toward home, a dove. Creaky garden gate sound of its wings as it flies from tree to overhead wire, sits, watches in that non-judgmental dove-like way… and I wonder what the view is like from there.

♦

lines and circles

February 16, 2015October 2, 2020 ~ carin ~ 11 Comments

I have a labyrinth.I made it out of snow.It runs past all the stuff I didn’t cut down because the birds like the Rudbeckia seeds… and I didn’t get around to the tall grasses or the hydrangea.A trained eye will see that it’s technically more “snowy paths in my yard”… but it works exactly the way a labyrinth does.That is, you walk and walk and walk in a more or less circular way, turning left or right without thinking because the goal is not to think — once you begin thinking you’re toast. At that point it becomes less meditative labyrinth walking and more I wonder if the neighbours are frightened yet walking.If you’re doing it right, you’re not thinking a single thing except maybe about the crunch, crunch, crunch of the snow under your steps. The zen of crunch.It’s occurred to me to wonder how many steps long the labyrinth is but I’ve never paced it out. There are angles to be considered and the whole process would require a certain amount of addition.

And who needs the math…

♦

On the subject of labyrinths…

a walk on the wild side (with bits of civilization)

January 30, 2015January 31, 2015 ~ carin ~ 8 Comments

I call this: Wild Cucumber in Old Apple Tree While Garbage Bag Looks On

How do you pronounce mullein??

One winter I saw an otter appear out of a snow bank and slide into the creek.

And so now I always look and look. But no otters today.

There are bits of green though. This surprises me almost as much as otters.

And the way shadows play in late afternoon sun.

And the dashes of red never get old.

But after a while, walking aimlessly in the woods, things turn a bit Blair Witch Project and I remember this is where someone just the other day said they saw coyotes looking peckish. A little too hastily I turn back for safer ground, nearly tripping over some villainous ankle-grabbing vine.

And so, back in the civilized world…
… I see something glistening up ahead…. A bit of magic afoot??

But no.
Just more civilization.

These trees were planted the year we moved in. Some were inches tall. The trees have fared better than the sign.

And the signs of civilization fare better than… well, you know.

♦

“Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.”

—Carl Jung

in this tiny space was everything

January 4, 2015January 5, 2015 ~ carin ~ 10 Comments

Years ago I lived in a tiny furnished apartment on the second floor of an old Toronto house — and in this tiny space was everything I needed.

A single closet the size of a phone booth in which I managed to hang all my clothes and all my coats, as well as store my shoes and winter boots.

A bathroom in the hall, shared with the woman in the apartment next door.
I heard her come and go but we never once, in all the time I lived there, met face to face.

At the end of the street, a fruit and veggie monger. In winter I would sometimes buy expensive tomatoes from some faraway place where tomatoes were grown to be luscious. I ate them with basil and listened to Joan Armatrading and Van Morrison and had a white cat and a bedroom made almost entirely of windows.

I once called a friend to come and eat tomatoes and basil with me and she came, expecting, I think, a whole lunch but it was just those perfect tomatoes.

Basil.

Oil and salt.

Joan Armatrading, and Van.

And it was enough.

here comes the sun

December 21, 2014December 21, 2014 ~ carin ~ 4 Comments

“There are two ways of spreading light;
to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
– Edith Wharton

♥

Happy season of light…

what i saw

October 24, 2014February 11, 2019 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

A young Bob Dylan, carrying a backpack and wearing winter boots on a summer day in October.

A girl in a Halloween costume though I don’t know what she was supposed to be.

A girl with purple hair, but that’s nothing.

I saw a guy in a yellow X’d, orange city-worker jacket driving a brand new silver Cougar convertible.

And a woman of about sixty wearing all lime green who sat herself down on the sidewalk of a downtown street, back against a brick wall, big smile as if she was about to open a picnic basket, and just along a bit, a young lad with lip piercings minding a baby in a stroller. He held his phone in one hand but was transfixed by the woman in green.

I saw a woman of thirty-something in a pink sweatshirt, and a beautiful girl child, maybe five or six years old, with curly yellow hair and a pink toy stroller that kept getting caught in the wind and being blown about whenever the girl let go, which she found so funny. “Look, mummy!” she yelled, laughing as the stroller kept moving by itself on the sidewalk. But the mummy was looking at her phone. For a good five minutes she stared at her phone while the beautiful girl child played with her stroller and the wind. Finally, mummy stopped looking at her phone and took a picture of the girl child before herding her into the car (minivan). That photo is probably up on FB or Twitter by now, looking for all the world like she spent even a moment with the kid.

A line of people waiting for the soup kitchen to open.

I saw a guy in a long fur coat like something out of the 60’s.

And a young woman with shaking hands and unfocussed eyes who asked politely for some change. I said yes. She said thank you.

And that was that.

**
More things I saw.

the hypnotic quality of squirrels

October 10, 2014April 7, 2015 ~ carin ~ 8 Comments

Driving from point A to point B… I pass a body of water that sparkles like a cliché in this autumnal way that can’t be ignored. I turn the car around, park, walk directly to it.

I’ve been here before but never noticed the ‘canoes only’ sign. I wonder if that means kayaks too. I would argue a kayak is a canoe made for people who would rather not tip over…

I’m immediately not sorry I allowed this diversion from point A to point B.

I meet a smiling man and woman with cameras and tripods, they ask if I saw him. Him who, I say and they tell me about an eagle, a baby bald eagle, swooping majestically… just there. They point. I point in the opposite direction and explain I was watching ducks and geese dunk their heads. They continue to smile, but I think a little less sincerely.

On the woodsy trail, a few children with parents. The kids squeal with pleasure at the squirrels, as if they’ve never seen one. A boy’s voice over the others: “These squirrels are mesmerizing…” and even though I agree (I’m a veteran squirrel watcher), I can’t help feel he’s just elevated their watchability cred even more.

I take the road less travelled that leads past open fields on one side and the forest on the other. About twenty or so metres ahead, a white-tailed deer leaps across, from field to woods.

There is no picture to document this, only milkweed and asters.

After that a gang of turkeys shows up.
Fortunately they shuffle off into the woods without incident.

This is tempting. I would only need to install bookshelves and a fridge.

Before I leave I run into a few more people: an older couple on a tricycle built for two. And a very young couple, she, chatty with long fire-hydrant-red hair and he, merely besotted, unassuming in his oh-so-thin-Goth look, walking beside her. They could be spending the day anywhere, but they chose here, and it pleases me when she cries out Oh, look, a chipmunk!

Another young couple, the dad in jeans and a top hat, the toddler being followed by a herd of ducks fresh out of the pond, the mum getting it all on film.

A swimming hole.

And then onward, to point B.

sunday worship

September 28, 2014September 29, 2014 ~ carin ~ 6 Comments

The beach of course.

I read somewhere that as little as 20 minutes of morning sunshine (somehow different than afternoon) boosts metabolism into magnificence. I’m not here for metabolism boosting but these little bonuses never hurt.

There is a lad in an orange worker’s vest with its fluorescent X, he’s picking up litter. On a Sunday morning. This, I think, is noble work and I want to tell him so. I start with Good Morning as I pass and he, without looking up, without making eye contact, mumbles most miserably: morning. He keeps walking and I do too and the whole idea of nobility has gone right out the window. I’m not sure he’d understand my meaning anyhow, might even think it was a negative.

The lake today is a cliché.

Cool and perfect and I want to swim out to a pair of resting gulls.

But I collect glass instead. Only the tiniest bits of green. And then I sit on a picnic table and the picture I snap makes it look as if I have a fox’s tail. I take this as an excellent sign. As well as a compliment.

An old hippie with toned down Roger Daltry hair, a tan and tie-dyed tee-shirt walking a baby bulldog. The dog stops, rolls onto his back among the lake lap and pebbles, stands and shakes himself off. The old hippie doesn’t rush him.

And then a dad and a very young child, maybe three or four. The child in navy pants and a grey and blue striped top, possibly meant to advertise that it’s a boy. His dad on the phone, seemingly unsure of how to have childish fun; he eyes a pretty woman in leggings walking past. Now he skips stones with a vengeance and looks to see who’s watching and when the child picks up a stone and throws it, the dad doesn’t watch. Soon the child no longer watches the dad, but walks away instead. I’d like to think this is a lesson in independence, in not caring if anyone’s watching, but I strongly suspect this isn’t what the boy is learning. Eventually the dad realizes the boy is gone and goes after him, shouting, checking his phone, then he spits as if to assert himself in the absence of stones to throw. They walk away from the lake, metres apart. The child is sullen and the dad asks loudly what he wants, accusing, angry—does he want to go home??
The child doesn’t answer, keeps walking.

Remember, he is three, maybe four.

And I want to answer for him:

how about some warmth? some engagement? a sliver of joy in the pleasure of this day, in your kid’s company… how about just holding his tiny hand…

shady shenanigans and a black and white cat

September 22, 2014September 27, 2014 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

Walking without my camera today and seeing things differently.

Always a surprise how this works, that instead of feeling like I’m missing some shot or other, I just happen to notice things that don’t require filming.

Like the black and white cat running through the park from the ravine. He doesn’t pause long enough for me to take his portrait anyway. I say ‘his’. I think of all black and white cats as boys, a holdover from the one I had as a kid. Called him Peter. He thought he was dog, came with us to the beach, no leash required. Jumped back in the car when it was time to go home. One day he gave birth to four kittens in the laundry chute. It was a confusing time for all concerned.

I pick up litter in the parking lot where people dump the debris from their cars. Two young lads pull up in an SUV and a blond chap gets out, the other drives away. The blond walks into the park a piece and then checks his phone a few times, heads into the bushes. Could be a call of nature but the Nancy Drew in me wonders if it’s a rendezvous of the nefarious kind…

The apple tree that was so heavy with fruit last year has only one apple. I look really hard for more. Zip. [sigh] No windfall cobbler this year…

A child in pyjamas walking with a woman in pyjamas.

Pink and white cleome fading against a warm grey wall.

la pomme, courtesy of WikiCommons

define cool

September 19, 2014September 23, 2014 ~ carin ~ 7 Comments

So Vogue Magazine has named a section of Queen Street West in Toronto the second coolest neighbourhood in the world.

Yessirree, bob. You heard that right. The world.

First place is somewhere in Japan.

This blows my tiny mind. Not because the ‘hood isn’t a cool one, but because, well, you know, it’s Queen Street. I mean is there nothing ‘cooler’ (and by the way, ‘cool’ is Vogue’s word, not mine. I don’t use ‘cool’, even when I mean ‘cool’, in which case I will tend to use the less cool ‘groovy’) in New York or Paris or Montreal or Sydney or Milan or Vancouver or Reykjavik… than the stretch between Gladstone Avenue and Bathurst Street…??

But I’m not one to judge these things. I like sand.

Still, there I am the other day, strolling these recently hallowed blocks in my beach-loving Birks (which, it turns out, are currently trending with hipsters and I do hope the trend stops soon because these are my shoes and the hipsters have so many of their own)…

And what I find is that there is indeed much happening of a cool/groovy nature on this bit of pavement.

No lack of cool/groovy temptations…
in these hipsterville blocks…
not to mention roads less travelled within them.
There is free, exquisite reading material,
and free fashion counselling.
A stretch of road where economics are no small thing…
and creative minds are rampant.
Where the insults are relatively mild,
and the love is coffee scented.
A stretch of coolness where there’s never not a place to sit,