Both sides, now*

Actually, the world around me right now is brilliant white. A major snowstorm blew into town on Wednesday and dropped a whole heap of snow.

I was thrilled of course with the snow, never mind the cold northwesterlies, never mind that my husband didn't make it much past the driveway because of the snow, never mind that I had to go rummage in the basement to dig out my son's old discarded winter boots in order to get to the 2 birdfeeders in my yard without getting clots of snow sticking to my socks.

Never mind all that, I was thrilled for the snow as, unlike last winter, the flowers in my garden have a chance to survive the cold hand of winter. Last winter we didn't get any snow until January or February yet the temperature was minus way down there and windchills were fierce. I lost the red beauty of the cardinal plant, the goat's beard (and he's supposed to be tough!), the black eyed susans were stunted, and even a long-enduring bleeding heart just stopped beating.

So, this winter has provided some grace as the flowers are already blanketed and insulated. Toasty warm roots. Batted down. Resting in peace until the first hint of green comes knocking.

If you look closely at the photo of the harbour, you can see the lights of the lighthouse shining out like the eyes of a bug peering back at you from a dusty basement corner. This was yesterday's photo; this morning it is -22 with a windchill of -32 so all clouds and chimney smoke lie in the air like flat pancakes. A sure-fire way to tell if it is really cold; just look out your window at your neighbour's chimney. If the smoke is flat, moving parallel, yet almost motionless, well, chances are it is below -20 celsius, edging to the -30 mark.

My daughter said to me as she came down the stairs this morning, mom, go look out my window at the clouds. They're so pretty.

Are you sure it's not pollution, I asked?

I went up to the third floor to look out of her south-facing bedroom window. A gorgeous sight greeted me. A solid wall of dense white pillowy clouds swirled low along the horizon of the lake. Nanabijou was blanketed. Gone. The clouds looked like a very effective wallpaper border. But, a peek to the right confirmed my fears. These aren't clouds at all, just pollution from the mill rolling across the harbour, trapped by the cold air, and instead of billowing off and toxifying someone else's landscape and breath, why, the toxic effluent was just hanging around for a change.

Yep, I told my daughter when I got back to the kitchen, they sure are pretty. But they're not clouds at all. Just pollution from the mill.

After my daughter left for her teaching placement, I sat down with my coffee to listen to CBC radio. Someone in town has written a new book about homelessness; the interview will be coming up. Someone in town dressed up as a homeless person and went out on the street to 'get the goods'. But, said the announcer, he got quite sick so he had to give up his project.

I turned the radio off. Probably this young man is a very nice young man. Maybe my neighbour. Could belong to a local writer's group. Or just a well-meaning I-want-to-get-the-'real'-story-out young man.

But I couldn't help thinking about the Anishnawbe fellow I saw from the overpass on Monday freezing morning. First, I thought it was a pile of green garbage bags that had blown up against the small shed by the traintracks. But no, I saw someone sit up. Crawl out of his sleeping bag on the ground. He seemed ok. I left him to his privacy. When I returned back from my loop, I saw he was gone. I wonder, did he also decide to 'give up his project'? I wonder if he too decided he had enough of homelessness and went back home instead? I wonder if he has the choice.

* http://jonimitchell.com/musician/song.cfm?id=BothSidesNow

post script: Later the next day I read in the local Source community newspaper an article about the homelessness author. It seems the author himself may be Anishnawbe (not sure though). So, I thought, does it make his work then more legitimate? (not sure if the ethics of the project apply regardless). Interestingly, he was commenting on how the project did not turn out as he had imagined; in his words "We tried to do something that turned out to be a total failure." But, he states that he wanted to do something with the material he had collected. Currently he is a reporter for the Kenora Daily Miner. His book is for "mainstream audiences". Does that mean mainstream as in class or mainstream as in white middleclass? (not sure)

Palestine Health Journal: Gazans Die Because Israel Denies Treatment: International Pressure Should Prevent It, Says Barghouthi

dear friends, please visit this site and read the information on it. I posted a comment as I was very distressed, not only to find out about how many Palestinians have died at Israeli controlled checkpoints, but also that there was only 1 comment-- and it was so mean-spirited! Does anyone care? Are we so cold-hearted? How will the world be healed? What can we do to stop repeating pain if our very language causes harm?

Palestine Health Journal: Gazans Die Because Israel Denies Treatment: International Pressure Should Prevent It, Says Barghouthi

keijukainen tanssi talvella

Finnish for 'fairy dancing in the wintertime." This handmade girl-of-steel can be found in my flower garden, underneath the highbush cranberry. Whoever made her (an artist out west, in B.C. I think; I bought her from Fireweed on Algoma St a few years ago) polished her in such a special way that she reflects back differently each time you look at her.

If you look at her in the dead of night, she will appear to be dancing across the dark. She picks up the slightest shimmer of light and catches it, painting her dress with its luminosity. One night, one very deep black night, I looked out my window and couldn't even see the outline of the shrubs, but there Keijukainen was, shimmering pink iridescence, pirouetting one foot in front of the other and gleaming. She was all alone in the dark; the only one, the only soul visible.

A few winters back we had so much snow that it literally touched the soul of her foot. She looked like she was dancing on the snow, on a landscape of white brilliance.

She carries a wand of green semi-precious stones that ring out in the wind. A string of peridots chiming calm, dispelling anger, bringer of good luck and health. Protection. A light dance across the field of the heart. With a wand of peridot it is said one can dig deep into the mysteries of darkness .

upside down world

Today, I am sharing with you a quotation that one of my friends sent me recently:

"One has to be in the same place every day, watch the dawn from the same house, hear the same birds awake each morning, to realize how inexhaustibly rich and different is sameness."

Chuang Tzu

This is so true. I walk the same paths each morning, walk along the same creek each morning, the same shoreline, see the same sunrise in a thousand different costumes, the same rocks, the same birds, and yet, if I were to share with you all the amazing photos and wrote up all the heart-stopping sights I see and the quirky conversations I have with other early a.m. walkers, why, this blog would be unmanageable!

I thought of the amazing richness of the commonplace, of the routine, of the mundane, of the same- old same-old this morning after I finished my yoga practice in, of course, the same old way. I thought of how many of us are running away from that "same place" and "same house", desperately desiring change, something new, looking in the mall for just that new something, never mind that you can't fit one more thing in your closet, dreaming of a tourist jaunt to some resort filled with people just like you, casting your eyes over someone else at the Madhouse, someone different than the person at home waiting for you....who may also be out looking for something to liven up their life....oh, the list is long. No time to make dinner. It's too boring. Always the same.

Routine. The latest discard in a disposable society.

I was thinking, wouldn't it be wonderful if we, too, made green shadows? I think our shadows are much darker....carbon coloured, in fact. Unlike the birds we are leaving a big gloomy footprint on earth....or should I say more of a sasquatch hole in the sky?

Looking at the everyday world, at what appears so routine and commonsense with new eyes, with an upside down look reveals not only green shadows on ice but all sorts of revelations.

Upside Down. A Primer for a Looking Glass World. It's a book I read a number of years ago that made me think in new ways. Here is a link to excerpts from Eduardo Galeano's upside down look at the world:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Eduardo_Galeano/Upside_Down.html

giving up the ghost

the lake is giving up the ghost this morning, that is, the warmth of her waters is dancing up from the deep and swirling on the surface. The ice is past creeping its way in and is well on its way. Have you ever stopped to listen to the sound of ice forming? It snaps and creaks and you can hear soft crystalline shatterings. Sometimes you think someone is coming up behind you, but no, it's just the ice making its presence known.


The pink and gold ray of sunshine is the surface of the lake; it's not ice yet, it's just the waters giving up the ghost.

The blue mirror is not the sky at all. I looked down from the footpath and saw a morning cloud laid like the finest tablecloth onto the surface of the water.

Two days ago the harbour was a haven for ducks and geese; this morning I saw only 7 mallards. Two days ago there was only a skip of snow on the shore and open waters. Today the lake is a patchwork of ghostly swirls, paperthin glace, floating jigsaw puzzle sheets, thick slabs of ice cones laid along the shore, and sometimes the odd ice carving startling itself out of the water by the rocks.