the happiness vortex

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

I can’t explain the pleasure I get from visiting the local dump.

Pretty sure it started with weekend jaunts as a kid when my dad would take in a load of old lumber and then nose around for wotnots, spare parts, a hubcap. It was like a free garage sale. That was when you could still nose around and the junk really was mostly junk. Treasures were rare. Now there are fines for scavenging.

Oh the irony.

Because it’s not just plywood that people are dumping anymore. Now the bins are heaped with treasure. You could open several stores daily with the amount of quality goods being pitched.

A woman with a load of furniture tells me she’s a professional recycler, she’ll come to your house, pick up any junk you’re getting rid of, sell what she can, keep what she likes, and take the rest to the dump. She says she’s furnished her whole house this way, including appliances, and makes a decent living on top of it.

I watch a guy toss in two whole bikes.

What are the odds both are broken? And anyway, didn’t people used to fix bikes?

While I’m considering this, another guy tosses in another bike, a tiny one, so tiny it was probably ridden exactly three times. And okay, so the kid’s grown out of it. You’d think there might be someone it could get passed on to… like maybe dear old Sally Ann?

It’s staggering the amount of crap we have in our lives and the ease with which we toss and replace it. In the few minutes I’m there I see more than a few bins replaced or the contents squashed to make room for more. There’s always more. The bulldozers and bin movers and squashers are busy everywhere you look.

Despite all that, I’m oddly happy here.

And it’s not just me. The staff are consistently cheerful. From the guy in the booth when you arrive, to the one who tells you what dumpster to use, the woman in the building that takes cardboard or the guy in hazardous waste, the people you pay on the way out… everybody’s so friendly, so pleased to see you. It occurs to me that I’ve never met one cranky employee at the dump. Ever.

Sure, it could be drugs.

But I have another theory. Isn’t it just possible that all those people letting go of all that stuff, all that purging, creates a giant cleansing vortex? And who wouldn’t be happy in a spanking clean vortex?? By which reasoning it can be assumed that a shopping centre, a place where stuff is accumulated, would be one of the less therapeutic places to work. [It’s starting to make sense isn’t it?]

Anyway—not that anyone’s asking—given the choice, shopping centre or dump, I’d pick the dump.

For the vortex, obviously.

Plus I’m pretty sure they get dibs on the loot.

this morning i danced

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

This morning I danced to Ladysmith Black Mambazo in front of a winter scene by Lynne Campbell, black-legged sheep in falling snow. I didn’t think much about winter or sheep, or Africa for that matter although I wondered if the music was inspired by the land. I would assume so, drums and heartbeat. And then I thought of a pueblo in New Mexico full of tourist buses and the woman I met as I walked across a parking lot who lived there and for some reason stopped to tell me that when the buses and the people were gone you could feel the energy of the red earth through your feet.

I’m often thinking about land in one form or another and so as I danced it wasn’t unusual that I began to think about the wild, unkempt garden outside my window with its bushy native shrubs, serviceberries just ripening, rows of lettuce and cucumbers, the robins and rabbits I share this with, and then I thought beyond it to my town—not especially picturesque or special, just mine—and the lake that I love despite its pollution… the gulls, the peace, the way the lake knows how to be itself and do what it’s supposed to do despite what we do to it because we don’t know how to be—and how all of it links me to childhood, to the flinty smell of factory on my dad’s clothes as he comes through the back door—my mum, with a picnic hamper of potato salad, homemade bread, radishes, a thermos of Koolaid, another of coffee; us heading to the beach for supper and a swim.

I dance to Ladysmith Black Mambazo thinking how what’s happening in Ottawa this week, this month, is a crying shame. That this act of devastation to the land and the water, to the rights of everything alive, is being trampled without explanation or apology. That these changes to the environment and the eco-system are not merely wrong and unfair and unkind to the planet, to ourselves and the creatures we’re meant to protect—which in turn we can thank for our survival; see how far you get without bees—but what the madness in Ottawa changes is how generations will think, how they’ll live, whether they ever eat radishes on a beach, what they’ll have to think about, care about. What they’ll have left to care about…

That woman in the pueblo recognized the inevitability of economics, she knew that ridiculous as it is, we’ve created a society where there are concessions that need to be made. But What Ottawa is doing—turning its back on the environment—is more than a concession, it’s unconscionable.

And yet it’s happening right now, a Parliament all eager willingness to bulldoze and deceive. Something wicked this way comes…

My new favourite mantra comes from @Belgraves:  “What our country needs is for Canadians to act like the people they think they are.”

It’s not possible to sit back and do nothing.

So I dance, try to feel the earth beneath my feet.

And then I wonder: what can I do? How do I sing the rhythms of this land?

the postman brought all that

~ carin ~ 5 Comments

Here’s what I love:

— that someone went into a shop and chose an image from a rack or a shelf

— that they had to get stamps too

— and a pen

— and then find a mailbox

— the whole process maybe taking a day or two, the postcard in their pocket or bag until they found a place to sit down and write it out… a cafe, no, a trattoria, or a park bench surrounded by pigeons, piccioni… all the while a small connection between sender and sendee—not to mention a trace of Italian sunshine still there in the corner…

I love all that.

Before I even read a word.

So grazie, young travellers, for knowing how much this would make us smile!

why didn’t anybody say…

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

“In first grade, I came home crying because a boy at school had pulled my long, beloved braid so hard that my scalp still hurt. My mother laughed and said, “That’s how you can tell that boys like you.” The next time it happened, I turned around and punched my tormentor in the mouth, knocking out one of his teeth. I wound up in the principal’s office, and my mother cut off my hair. Oh no, I thought, something is very wrong here. Why didn’t anybody say… That’s how you can tell that girls like you”?”

—from ‘A Click is a Noise that a Woman Makes’, by Pat Califia, in the anthology Click: Becoming Feminists, edited by Lynn Crosbie (McFarlane Walter & Ross, 1997)

signs of doubt

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

I couldn’t find an inside. But this, I feel, is hardly reason to be cavalier.

Translation: this door is now a wall.

They also make signs. Fast… easy.

As with all surgery related decisions, go with whoever’s offering the discount.

And furthermore… Xkoxofmos Jddd Kmfberp. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

I’ve blacked out the number so Petes won’t be overrun with calls. There are surely only so many bottles to go around but, if you want one…well, you know…I’ll give him a dingle.

Thank you, Peterborough!

may and i

~ carin ~ 3 Comments

 
I should have known I couldn’t let May slip by without a note of reverence. We have history, May and I. It’s the month when I seem to both lose the most and find the most; the month that makes me pay attention.

It’s the month my dad died twelve years ago, the month my mum had a stroke in 2010; the month she died a year later. It’s the month I was married and the month—in a completely different year—that I was close to snuffing it too. It’s also the month I didn’t.

The details of finding and losing are never as important as the lessons.

And there’s little point in going on about either.

Cryptic, yes.

And personal, in way that’s worth celebrating with others.

That’s May.

~

I went walking this morning, although I didn’t feel like walking. I’ve buggered up my neck. Don’t ask how. It doesn’t matter. It’s a long story. It’s the usual story. It’s no surprise. It’s my own fault. It happened a few weeks ago. In May.

Anyway. Everything hurts. Walking, sitting, swimming, driving, writing, thinking, looking around.

Like I said, the details are unimportant.

Halfway to the beach I remember I’ve forgotten my camera, which almost makes me turn around and go home and stay there. Wallow a bit, the way you feel you have a right to when everything hurts.

But the car keeps moving toward the lake and I don’t have the strength to argue.

So to the lake we go.

And once there, I walk.

First, past the hot pink wild roses that smell just like gift soap, then past gulls sunbathing on the pier, past the guy, young, maybe his first summer job, with ear protectors and a weed whacker in the garden donated by the Rotary Club. I think how much more he might get out of the experience if he could hear the waves and the birds, the laughter of an older couple in matching helmets as they cycle by. I have a set of clippers I’d be happy to lend him.

The sand is warm, the lake calm and glassy. Sky blue. Clouds fat.

A woman approaches in lycra. I lift my head for eye contact, prepare to say hello, but she marches by, all purpose and form. I have the feeling a pedometre might be involved. She’s walking for health, for fitness. No time for niceties. Best not to get in the way. Best not to judge. We all walk for our own reasons.

I’m carrying my sandals, sloshing through the water, hoping I don’t have any open wounds; a couple of seagulls paddle along just ahead of me, stopping when I stop. I like this connection, all three of us aware of each other. Then a story I heard on the news this morning comes to mind, about that guy who sent body parts in the mail, the things he did to kittens, and I wonder what happens to some people that they don’t feel connected to things, and I wonder how much of that can be fixed… and whether we’re a society who even knows how to fix broken people.

I watch a mother and a young boy, maybe four years old, approach the lake. She is so scared for him, clutches at him as he makes for the shore. But he’s scared too. He walks slowly, tentative. Both of them stand at the edge not knowing to pick up a stone and skip it. Eventually, they leave, make for the swing sets up on the grass, but even there I can see her face, anxious, telling him to be careful. He moves around stiffly, checking to see if she’s watching; he wants to please her. He’ll be careful.

After that it’s just me.

I collect beach glass, more than I’ve ever collected in one day. Mostly green but a couple of browns and a nice sized clear. Most are tiny, but it doesn’t matter. That my eye finds them is what counts. I’m grateful whenever I can see what’s right in front of me.

I fill a grocery bag with litter.

I find a plastic lion and almost leave it but then it makes me think of Bert Lahr and I smile, pop it into my pocket with the glass. I hope its owner wasn’t too distraught when s/he got home and found the lion missing. Maybe s/he’ll come back to search for it and find something else, something much lovelier, in the process. Maybe I’ll take it back, leave it in the crook of a tree. Or on the swings. Maybe the frightened boy will be the next to find it.

I’m sorry I don’t have a camera to take a picture of a low-flying gull over clear stoney water and tufts of seaweed.

Or four feathers that look more like ancient pens discarded on the sand.

By the time I get to the large flat rock where I once saw a young girl meditating, seemingly oblivious to anyone who passed, I’ve stopped thinking about pictures, about capturing things, and I remind myself it’s good sometimes to let things go, that there are other ways, many ways, of remembering.

Things lost.

And found.

ink and stamps and a sidewalk, oh my

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

I wrote a postcard today.

I like postcards.

I like getting them and I like writing them.

I think, in a way, I like them more than envelopes and letters. Although there’s much to be said for envelopes.

Postcards are the original ‘tweet’, a status update. But with no expectations, no demand for immediate response. No pressure.

I walk along the sidewalk, drop the postcard into the box.

And someone will find it, take it to wherever I’ve said.

I never get over this amazing fact.

And then I walk home.

I cross a bridge on my way, stop a minute, look down.

I think I’ll write another postcard tomorrow.