I'm writing a book on this crazy and unexpected year. It's over a hundred single-spaced pages, and there's more to go. Can I succinctly summarize? No.

Snow floats in delicate dance from a white sky. That I can see from my basement window. Had anyone told me I would be here a year ago, I would have laughed.

This year I packed myself away and started out, like the Tarot Fool, unburdened and fresh. I left Vancouver and returned to Toronto, without a house to move into, without a job. It continues to be a wild ride.

I am reconstructing my life slowly. And differently. Having left and returned gives everything a freshness. But I am not seeing the same way. People are somehow changed. It's like I can see more deeply, and am surprised by what I discover. No wonder he or she was so loyal! No wonder I always felt oddly hurt by him or her! Perhaps I couldn't see below surfaces before, and now I can. I'm negotiating my way through my resurrected life carefully. Christmas with my mother, normally almost more than I can bear, was surprisingly alright. Relationships with certain friends have fallen by the wayside, especially if they were money or status dependent, which I didn't know before, when I had a fairly large trendy house downtown, but which has become clear since. Relationships with other friends have become even closer. And these seem to be with those who have a larger wisdom about life, who truly come from the heart. Even my sense of this city has changed. I am situated differently and walk down into the core from a residential neighbourhood. Everywhere I go I find friendliness. But I'm not as immersed in this culture as I once was. It's like I'm non attached: I've been elsewhere, gained a knowledge of what it's like to leave everthing, of grieving that loss, and then returned to what was left to find it changed too. I'm an older and different woman now. Not as sparkly, I can feel that. My hair is brown, not blonde, and I am more subdued. Gentler. Moving slowly, as I reconstruct who I am in my various communities. I can never go back to the way I was, yet don't know who I am becoming. But I think it's going to be a whole lot better, happier, more trusting and more fragilely beautiful because I undid myself, let go of safety, of possessions, of all my assumptions and approaches to everything, and am in the process of creating a new life even as I am creating a new view of my world.

Many blessings to you all. Many thanks to those of you who have shared in my journey. May you have a most magnificent and happy New Year... xo

I had one of the nicest Christmas' ever. Low key, but with my family, my two brothers and my mother, on the 25th, and then my two children, two neices and one nephew, and bothers, and mother, and doggy, she's welcome at my mother's, on the 26th. Two years away, and what was not enjoyable before, family tensions et al, are gone, washed away. Just quiet gratitude. The way it should be. And why is it that sometimes we have to nearly lose everything before we let ourselves in to what's there, appreciate what we have? Or is it that I was gone for 2 years, and they nearly lost me, and so are being appreciative of me? Whatever it might be, it was very nice and has left me feeling, well, happy.

I wrote in The Move: "The prodigal return. When what leaves comes back. We return again and again to our roots in our memories and our dreams. We never truly leave where we have come from. Our past lives on in us."

But it's more than that. When you go back to what you can never fully leave, it's changed, it's not the same. I am extremely lucky: it's much better.

Happy Holidays... and for those of you dreaming of a White Christmas. Whatever your family, &/or friend, rituals, however you celebrate the birth of the light, enjoy!

(borrowed the delightful White Christmas from Ken's site.)

I discoverd, looking at my sitemeter, that Freecycle Newswire linked to my post, A path of gifts. It was difficult writing, searingly honest- how fragile I am yet strong. But only strong in the sense of knowing that we give much to each other and it is through our love for each other that we blossom. How happy the giver of a gift can be when they see how wonderful what they have given is to the recipient. The art of receiving is as important as the art of giving. Loving kindness, support for each other, caring, helping, giving, receiving, surely this is what makes the world go round. The beauty of us. Finding that people really do care. Such plentitude in our hearts.

What happened to my beautiful digital camera? It's 2 1/2 years old, was not dropped, just started doing this a few days ago- focus is gone, colour bleeds. While the effect is certainly interesting, I need a camera that works!

I have an extended warranty on it that's up next year; I am hoping Sony will cover the repair of this. How am I going to take photos over the festive season, or continue to create my photopoems without it?

Any ideas on what's happened to the camera?

I am dressed in a black suit, leather boots, my curls free but tamed by a conditioner. Lipstick outlines my ready smile. I answer the phone all day at a head office for MasterCard. At lunch I eat leftover tandoori curry in a vacant office and then travel in the mirrored, news-screened elevator down to a coffee shop to buy a lemon-coconut pastry. What am I doing here? The crowds of well-dressed business men and women. I am alien to this moneyed world. I walk through, carrying my pastry, watching like an anthropoligist studying strange creatures who are bulging with hidden aggession beneath cultured veneers of wool and leather, their preened and polished gleaming highlights decking the concourse like Christmas lights. It is the opposite of the third world country I come from; it is the far end of the spectrum politically for me. When I was numb after my marriage ended and couldn't be a college & university editor anymore, I started temping. What drove me into this world is unclear. Yet, alien as I feel, I am comfortable too. I know I look like everyone else. No-one would know how traitorous I am to the very world that undergirds our culture, keeping the flow of money rolling, supporting us all. Or am I? I open my Marguerite Duras library book, Two by Duras, to the words, "Don't be afraid."

From "The Move, " something to think about...


Section #38

Everything begins as a seed. A future is contained in the seed: the full, flowering tree; the whole person exists in possibility. All the information that is needed is contained in the seed. With an adequate mixture of necessary ingredients, it will grow and flourish in all the ways it was meant to.

Perhaps relationships begin as seeds too. What they will ultimately become is contained in the beginning. The parameters are set, even if unconsciously so. Attitudes and expectations, the rhythms of the way it’ll unfold, are prescient at the beginning. If one knows how to read the flickers of intuitions, dream fragments, stray thoughts, then one might discern the possible directions of the relationship and whether it will be ultimately satisfying and endure or not.

Careful and diligent tending is only as good as the seed planted at the beginning.

How else to explain the strange coherencies of her stories and dream images and the turn of events at a crucial time, which would prevent their relationship from flowering, or even coming to be?

It seemed as if this line of the plot had been woven into the seed of their connection before they even discovered their desire for each other.

The twist in the plot line would tear apart what was only the fragile, tender beginning.

There would never be more than that; yet she would remain entangled as if in a fisherman’s net.

That was what the oracles of image and dream indicated and she wondered if it was possible to change the genetic structure of a relationship before the damage could occur.

It was one of those days. With the large coffee urn and a shoulder bag with a thermos mug of coffee & lunch, I rushed out into the frigid day and just missed the bus. By taking a different route, consisting of running a block, 2 buses and a streetcar, made it on time; but when I got there I found I'd forgotten my purse. The last time I forgot my purse was probably 35 years ago. Someone lent me a token to get home, otherwise I'd have been walking. The 30 cup coffee maker was well received.

At the other end of the day, the same route of 2 buses and a streetcar took not half an hour but an hour.

The lock sticks. Well, it's almost had it, actually. You turn your key for ages and it half opens, and then finally, with twiggling and effort, the dead bolt slides back into its socket and you can get in to let out the dog who's been barking nonstop throughout.

My daughter let me in tonight. Her hair was still damp from a steamy shower, which was odd, because she never showers in the afternoon. And then she unfolded a story of attempts. I'm still shaken. She spent an hour in frigidly cold weather trying to get in. She was wearing sneakers. Her key, which doesn't fit in the front door, got stuck there when she tried to get in that way. She sat in a chair by the side of the house, her hood pulled low. She cried before telling herself to stop, no self-pity. She couldn't feel her feet. She felt tired and thought of sleeping. She finally decided to go to the Community Centre but found it noisily full of children. She came back, managed to get the key out of the front door and went to try the back door one more time.

The lock slid back. She was in. To a very rowsing welcome from the dog, who by now had berserkly barked for an hour.

You can imagine how insane I became when she told me the story. And how I related it to my landlord as soon as he stepped in the house. He went into shock too and has been apologizing all evening. He's getting the lock fixed tonight or tomorrow, has promised to be here when she gets home from school tomorrow since I'm working.

And then I went and bought her a small bag of Tim Horton's sugar donuts, her favourite... have her wrapped up in a comforter with a heating pad, and have put emergency money into her backpack that she is never to spend unless she has forgotten her key or can't get in, and then she's to go to the cafe at Loblaws and buy a hot chocolate and a pastry and do homework at one of the little tables... oh, and phone me. Yes, she must phone me.

That child of mine, who I love, oh who I love, is too dreamy. The two of us, I swear...

Temperature

-12 °C (10 °F)

Pressure/ Tendency

102.0 kPa↑

Visibility

24 km

Humidity

70 %

Wind Chill

-21 (-5 °F)

Dewpoint

-16 °C

Wind

NNW 21 km/h