square one...

There's so much to say right now but as usual, just like all those times that slip into a vortex where you were sure you had so much to tell someone but when you have them living and breathing in front of you you have nothing to say, well here we are...

Being back in my home and native land has left me surprisingly little time to contemplate and return to the neurosis of my ever-active mind in which my fantasies are played out on mute in my brain because I'm surviving in spiritual and cultural, not to mention personal, limbo right now.

I find myself hearing other people saying, "I heard (... insert random thing here) on the CBC the other day." and I'm already ahead of them because I listen to it every waking moment of the day and I remember what Kamloops's mayor had to say or what people think about graffiti artists and uncontrollable semi-weeds in their gardens. I found myself wishing that I could listen to the US presidential debates in the car whilst simultaneously sexually climaxing and found myself utterly disillusioned and disenchanted that I could not because I was busy downshifting.

What am I to do here? What does my life entail? Will everything work out to some pre-destined plan of which I am unaware? Am I resting too comfortably on my laurels? Why is it raining and a bit cold in the middle of an Okanagan summer?

I feel as if I'm back to square one but keep looking for the beginning and all I find is a circle...

journey not destination...

This year has seen a lot of destinations. Exotic ones. Historical ones. Gong show ones.

But there's one destination that I haven't yearned seriously about until now...

Home.

In six weeks I will be home. Do I remember the last time I thought this? No. Not really. In fact there was once a time when I thought, just how much more could be different when I come home? That time I came back to new home/new dad/new life but that all turned out pretty darn good, didn't it? So here's what I hope, this time when I go home I hope that nothing has changed. I hope that my parents love me as much as they did when I left. I hope the Vernon summer is as spectacular as I remember it. I hope that having tea out on the veranda watching the pheasant skulk around with binoculars peering at Stevo's from across the lake, waiting for a perfect day for pull the purse, swimming past the shore-line murk with the dogs in tow, Canada Day, my friends, my family, my dogs.

As sad as I am to leave this place, the destination remains the same.

Volver. Go home.

A Modern Day Marshal Plan…

I was going to launch into a great creative comparison about how sometimes enough time and investment of resources can make even the most dire of enemies come to terms with one another but instead I’ll just say that I had a nice time. It has been good to see you and I think I will leave it at that. It has reinforced some things that I was uncertain about and reconfirmed the things about which I was sure.

And a big thank you to those other people who have been patient with me, even when they think I’m absolutely mad to venture down that road again. I promise this time it’s just a corner store stop and not a transatlantic voyage.

I'll play me in the movie version of my life, thank you very much...

I hate this never ending comparing myself to others routine. It is old and no matter how hard I try not to, it still occupies my mind every once and a while. But despite of ever feeling like maybe I haven't accomplished what others have, or obtained what others might want, I don't feel like anything is missing. Maybe I live in the clouds. Maybe I'm unrealistic. Maybe I just am charting my own course and I'm grateful to be able to do so.

So I might learn another language. So I may in fact take up another degree. So I may never be the 'grown up' that you describe. I think for me that's okay. I think I'd play myself in the movie version of my life. Just seems better that way.

when Autumn blows the quilt right off the perfect bed i've made...

The next season I see change in Canada, my home and native land, will be autumn. Part of me yearns like the last and every time I come back home. Volver. The Spanish love this concept. Maybe it's a universal. The proverbial returning to the nest to find your room is an office (this doesn't apply to me since I'm an only child and I would NEVER let that happen, but you get the gist). What will become of me?

Meanwhile, in Rancho Sevilla, things are warming up and the trees are in bloom and everything is idyllic, I wonder where I'm going in this life time; where we're all going.

So often I find myself feeling like I've been here before. Not here geographically, but here, in life. Especially in terms of reevaluating what I thought I was looking for or what I thought I wanted to achieve. I know this all sounds vague, and that's okay because that's part of this existential dilemma that I keep finding myself in.

What happens when you are no longer privy to the things you used to use to define yourself? What do you do when you were certain of what life path you were going to take and then you end up taking an entirely different one. Have I ever interpreted this as failure? I'd like to think not. I've always been relatively flexible and readily adaptable to most situations and yet I find myself wanting to, hark!, settle down??? Maybe that's not it, just maybe be in one place again, like I was for the last five years??? Oh the comfort of blissful, ignorant complacency.

The good part is that we have been here before and we did get through it. It's time to put some more metaphorical sheets on the bed and hunker down for the rest of our lives is coming straight down the pipe at warp speed and we never think we're ready even when we are.

pot of gold...

Today I had this momentous click on the bus... I ventured to listen to some music that normally I groove to for a few minutes and then start to tear up when I realize how it was virtually the soundtrack for my summer-angst-diet cola-and-smokes period, sort of like a blue or a pink period but much tackier. Anyways, somehow I found myself a few minutes in and unable to curtail my grinning. What had changed?

I got to thinking about how glad I was that I came to Ireland this summer. It was an especially epic decision for me and the pretense for the voyage is finally not a matter of importance for me. For some reason I remembered some really great moments that we had that I suppressed because some other moments were not so good. How are you still on my mind, I sometimes wonder. But the truth is really much simpler than I've been admitting to myself. Things were fun, you were the twinkle in my eye, if only for an instant, and I dare say I was in yours. I remember how normal somethings felt with you, watching the CBC and drinking tea in the morning. Having butterflies and not eating for a few days. Playing pool and talking jive. Being soaked with rain. Bowling. Crazy evangelists on the bus.

And so maybe for that time you were the gold at the end of the rainbow and elusive as it is, I saw it once. And I will again. Leprechauns, dangerous little creatures. Don't tread lightly when considering an overseas voyage to the Emerald Isle, as she is as enchanting as she is heartbreaking.

Cheers to the disassociation of bad memories with good music.

dibs on the dylan...

Sometimes, whether you like it or not, the truth rears its ugly head like a bearded woman waking up from a long winter's nap, and it's not pretty, not by a long shot.

The other day I found myself doing the John Cusack, making lists, alphabetizing my collections then I switched to a more Jason Lee-esque obsessing wondering what I would get dibs on, such as mall rights and for me, listening to Dylan, when the catastrophic relationship that was ended.

And so the truth of the matter remains that I still obsess. I do. I'm not going to lie. Everyone knows I did. Is it a woman thing? I don't think so because the two examples of such desperation were males, but its definitely a human being thing and it doesn't go away.

In my dreams, I'm the Queen of Hearts and I hold court every other Tuesday and I hear the battles of who verses whom and I sentence people to years worth of Britney Spears on repeat or award unoffending parties dibs on the Dylan.

But alas, alack, heavier than the stones in my pockets, is my sense of inequity and a deadly waking fear of dying alone.