the view from here

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

I’m sitting on a small wooden deck, plastic chair well padded with a wool blanket. Comfortable despite the temperature. I’m looking at trees dancing in wind and thinking how different they are, birch, balsam, maple, spruce, tamarack, alder, beech, and yet the same, needing water, light, nourishment. Kinda like us. Each of us different yet the same. What I love about the dancing is that every one of them has their own way of moving depending on variety, age and size, its location relative to other trees. Every nuance in wind direction, no matter how brief or tiny the increment, registers in their branches, the same effect but differently for each. The same but different. And how it’s this difference that makes the whole thing work. If they all leaned the same way, to the same degree, in the same moment, the forest would fall over. It’s the variation of sway that gives strength to the whole. Like us I’m thinking. Not so different from us. More same than different.

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do’s and don’ts, an ongoing list

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

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Don’t fret about what you can’t do anything about.

Do what you can do in your own small space of self, community, your own three square feet. Consider your choices. DO what you can do. This is not nothing.

Stop scrolling. Just stop. Stop.

Breathe. Walk.

Read something made of paper. Listen to the sound of each page turning.

Think about what you just read.

Read a cook book and realize all the food in the world. Make some.

Find a window to look out of. Paint, write, sing, dance what you see. Send the painting to a friend.

Befriend a tree or a rock and if the weather allows, stick around a while, see if it befriends you back.

Find the sun, turn your face to it, eyes closed, heart open. Send it thanks. Not just on the solstice.

If you can breathe, walk, read, cook, write, sing, dance, paint, are near rocks and trees, if you are relatively healthy, safe, and comfortable, and if the sun occasionally shines, especially then, kiss the ground.

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Image courtesy of Wikicommons.

the catiquette of ‘things that shouldn’t be there’

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

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The way a cat enters a room and sees, on the floor, on the far side of said room, a bit of crumpled paper That Isn’t Supposed To Be There. The cat freezes. Stares. Eyes super wide and their expression as if That Is For Sure An Intruding Tiny Dragon Over There And Who Let THAT In?? She walks slowly, carefully, toward it. Brave. Extends a paw. (Brave but still careful.) Immediately determines it’s a bit of crumpled paper and just like that walks away. Turns her back on crumpled paper. Washes face in sunbeam. Somehow still cloaked in dignity.

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Image courtesy WikiCommons.

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where the old liquor store used to be

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

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I don’t have the kind of phone with GPS. Or internet. Or texting. I have the kind that’s decades old, half the size of a Crispy Crunch, and only with me when I’m in the car and then only used to call someone should the car stop moving for whatever reason. Never for directions. For directions I use the Pull Over And Ask That Person There system, which involves a) hope, and b) trying to remember what they say about going along this road until you get to where the old liquor store used to be then left at the place that used to be the school and past where the Zellers was, directions that almost always include a big tree or a purple house at some point.

And I’m fine with that. Because even if That Person There isn’t sure, but… or I’ve already forgotten what to do at the big tree, not to mention I haven’t a clue where Zellers was, there’s something rather jolly about the asking, the standing there on the side of a road with a stranger who’s trying their best to be helpful and then possibly getting even more lost anyway but something has changed, this moment of personal contact that keeps me feeling hopeful as I trundle along, discovering a wooden bridge over a stream, a hilltop view, a tearoom, and a tiny community art gallery I’d never have found otherwise and I make a mental note to come back when I have time to explore.

Assuming I can ever find any of it again.

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the serendipity of joice

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

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I see one of these online and immediately buy a mop, whose hair I braid and not long after on a dollar rack at the front of my tiny thrift shop a perfect dress I’m not even looking for shouts at me and right beside it, the perfect blouse which I’m also not looking for and then at a garage sale a child is selling her old games and stuffed toys and a single pair of flowered pink wellies that feel full of beautiful child energy and when I say I’ll take them I notice the child’s face change and I say: I’ll bet you’re sad your feet don’t fit these anymore and she nods and I tell her I can see that they’re special and that I’ll take good care of them and she smiles and no sooner has it occurred to me to put ‘straw hat’ on my list for the next thrift shop visit than I remember the one in my beachbag I haven’t worn in years because I prefer a ball cap that says beach goats, which is another story entirely.

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summer postcards: good enough

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

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I’m reminded of the chap who once stopped me on the beach, he was visiting the island, staying at a nearby cottage with his young family and wanting to know WHAT to do and WHERE to go and THINGS to see and all this as we were surrounded by one of the most glorious stretches of coastline, uncrowded, perfect weather, seals breathing deeply on that rock there, blue heron on another, a single tern idly floating in water calm as glass, the occasional kayaker and only a few swimmers in this magical expanse of saltwater where only minutes earlier I’d been floating myself, though not entirely tern-like, eyes to the horizon, thinking how extraordinary to have all this s p a c e to myself… and so I ask the chap, who is the whole time he’s talking, looking at his phone… I ask how long he’s here for and he says a week and I give him some places because he seems so intent on What and Where and Things, but then I add my best advice which is, honestly, for now, just sit down, I say, and in the morning see how you feel and if you Must Go Somewhere, drive in a random direction, don’t plan anything and be surprised by everything or, even better, don’t drive, stay where you are another day, and maybe another… He nodded as if yes, yes, but he could hardly stop fidgeting, scrolling, googling for better ideas while all around him the heron and the tern and the horizon scratched their heads.

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Later in the week, I went back to the beach and there was the guy again… seems time and maybe the absence of finding what he thought he was looking for, had had its effect, turned him into a guy who wears loose clothing, trousers rolled halfway up the shin, hands in pockets and walking sloooowly along the shoreline, stopping frequently to stare at the horizon, walking in a way that looks like he’s in love with walking and you can imagine him walking like that around the world, no sign of a phone and the tween kids are swimming a ways down the beach, his partner walks too, at her own pace, separate but together, like they’ve all found each other by giving each other space, not separation. Walking like someone who noticeably breathes differently than the guy I saw six days earlier. In fact I hardly recognized him.

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summer postcards: zinnias on my mind (not in my vase)

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

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My mother’s garden always had a whoosh of zinnias. Surely among the best cut flowers but she never cut them and when I complained about the absence of fresh bouquets in our house she’d say “I think flowers are happier outside.” She wasn’t a fresh bouquet kind of person (preferring to make dried ones out of dead things in the fall) which at the time made no sense to me and felt more like she was being intentionally difficult, denying something that mattered to me just to make a point or exert her mother power. Who doesn’t like cut fresh cut flowers??

Lordy lordy. Seeing my own zinnias this morning, reminded me of all that and made me laugh. I may have over-analyzed her motives, i.e. got it wrong, because… seeing my own zinnias this morning, I thought: I like flowers outside better. And anyway, I have cats that eat bouquets. And to be honest I love those dead dried fall things.

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summer postcards: bean meaning to write

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

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Every year, the same thing. Starts off all well-paced organization and then come August EVERYTHING is ready at the same time and I forget, every year I forget, how time-consuming it is, this glorious thing called veggie growing, and this year more time-consuming for having to water oftener than I normally would as we’ve had so little rain and the growing is slower and the harvest is less than usual and I swear I can hear the lettuce gasping some days and yet I pick a bowlful and am amazed at the flavour and so I water and weed with gratitude (I hope the lettuce gets the message) and yesterday I picked an armful of beets and today I blanched them for the freezer and picked some beans, which will be turned into salad and pickled and if there’s still extra I’ll make a yellow bean tiara.