Red Cedar

this much i know at the moment – i am not the same person as i was a week ago – but that doesn’t mean i know exactly what has changed except things are going in different. i write now from my laptop, sitting in my car on the ferry to the big island listening to philip glass and wishing i was heading out on a solo road trip of some sort rather than going to visit my family for the holidays.

i am feeling obstinate today – days of tears, lack of sleep and too much alcohol at the wake leaving me in a numb state unable to figure out the next step where to?

coming into the city yesterday cast a different light on community and i wondered about whether i really do belong there – or in the country where i am living now. i have decided this morning not to argue with myself either way but to live out the year i have rented my house for and then ask my heart again what it wants. i think i could live in the city if i could convince myself it is possible to be healthy there – which in the last two years i have increasingly doubted to the breaking point of leaving.

i am unapologetic in this lack of certainty – am wondering what following my heart really means not just for me but for those around me. i feel the need to make some sort of a physical journey soon – i think a road trip to visit those who i feel lost to, who feel lost to me – something to confirm my internal wanderings in real space.

these days i feel splitting apart at the seams, so full of everything my 31 years has been and somehow condensing ever more into this being – and although i know i need to find the essence, i am easily distracted by all the things i could do instead. like the raccoon who dies because he won’t let go of the shiny silver set in the trap – we become conflicted between our desires and in the end forfeit our very lives. this is what i fear in myself….. this struggle for naught.

i honestly believe that every day is a chance to be new again, to fill in the blanks and move forward – but while that is easy to say, it is not always so easy to see. and change is never easy to make lasting so imprinted we are with all the previous moments in our lives, so sure our freedom to change is hampered by our childhoods as a fait d’accompli. however, it is only in believing that we can be doing – otherwise why would we get out of bed each day? it can’t all be biological drives and habit….. (or can it?)

i’ve decided to leave the coast early today and spend a day in the city rather than allowing myself to wallow in solitary mourning any longer. i have spent the morning so far laying out the dozens of remembrances that have been posted at bob’s memorial site – and i will find a printer in the city to have those ready for the wake. reading the beautiful words of others has been simultaneously heartening and heart-wrenching but in all i am glad we provided that sharing space for people to gather their thoughts.

so i will be in vancouver tonight, going to vancouver island tomorrow afternoon and then in saanich and victoria until monday. anyone needing to reach me during this time can ring my cel as i will have that on me throughout. i am taking the laptop with me also so i’m hoping to keep up this journal in my absence.

take care in this most trying of seasons.

on my way to finish the christmas errands needing to be done before i see family, i drove up a logging road just north of gibsons to get a good, long, uninterrupted look at the mountains towering over howe sound – capped in snow and anchored deep below the water line.

on my way home, i drove down to the breakwater in roberts creek and walked out beyond the estuary to surround myself by the sea.

somewhere between those places is a solace found in an apparent stability that is really continuous change. that is where all our lives are lived, as fluid as the ocean, as solid as the mountain, as present as the air that sustains each breath…. if i stand here, in this space between earth and sky – is my thin layer of skin keeping the world out, or is it connecting the rest of me to everything else?

i am grateful for this fluidity, the thinness of my skin in the sun-soaked morning, the deep roots which bind me to my community. i am neither far away nor near – but always easily found – always ready for the next…..