Pheasant

It's been snowing lightly all morning. I've been watching it periodically through different windows. I love days like this where I can slow down. A day at home like this, all to myself, with no agenda, is more of a place than a time frame. It's a place to slow down, observe little things, remember bits and pieces of who I've been and who I want to be.

I watched the pheasant that hangs out in our yard for awhile just now. He's always alone when he comes here. He wanders around, quite simply. Sometimes behind the house, sometimes in front. Today he was in front, walking under the two big spruce trees. Taking his time. But when he gets startled, if he hears a noise or sees a sudden movement, he comically squawks and part flies, part runs away. He loses his dignity in those moments; you can see his embarrassment afterward.

I've been in the past for the last few hours, looking at photos, reading old journals, remembering things about people I know and have known. It's such a mixed experience: regrets, happiness's, surprise at how much I change and stay the same, wonder at how things turn out unexpectedly.
In old things I wrote down I find so many forgotten things, and there's some kind of comfort in reading through how I found my way then. It makes me a little more confident that I can find my way now. In the present that is always so much messier and harder to navigate in than the neat, decided past.

Are the clues I find in my past less valuable than the snow and the pheasant of today? The past is funny, how it doesn't stay in it's place, how scraps of it drift to the surface randomly. How we carry it with us, lots if it usually closed, but still on file, still waiting to be brought out for review, for questioning. So many moments, words, actions to sort through- to love, to admire, to remember, to mine, to walk around in.

Make noise

I said the word delightful and then felt weird about it. But it was delightful.

There's a lovely contrast between the dark, almost black lines of the trees and the new pale skies lately when I'm driving home form work.

Things I turn off and hold back sometimes: tears, desire to dance, desire to make big messes, desire to make noise. Although that's hard to admit. You like to think you can be open and transparent but you are opaque sometimes and closed. What does it? Is it that all or nothing line that makes me hesitate? There's something about protecting myself.

Lots of good conversations lately, lots of good visits. The moments of realizing lost childhood innocences like believing toys were "real" or in Santa Claus. The moment I became aware of my hands, sitting on the bus on the way to school, suddenly not knowing what to do with them.

Driving out from town today wasn't pale like that. It was late afternoon, and there was colour in overflow, in abundance, in "an embarrassment of riches." The waves rolling in were having so much fun being purple-blue like that. The sky was sloshing around new cloud formations in technicolour blues and purples and pinks and the landscapes in-between were so happy to be flooded in orange, yellow warmth.

It was thrilling, it was delightful, it was delicious. Being thrilled and delighted and excited about things makes you vulnerable. Emotions are at so many of my cores but they are hard to trust. They're messy and they choose the wrong words and they don't know how to be cool or how to hold back or how to tone themselves down.

Arriving home at night

There is the sky! The one with stars and clarity and plenty. This clear sky full of stars is the one I'd almost forgotten about, the one I forgot to keep in my pockets. The one I forgot to breathe in and out, the one I forgot to wrap around myself. The one I forgot to pack between the layers of my days, the one I forgot to point to and point out, the one I forgot to be thrilled by (somehow, under the embarrassment of being thrilled).

There it is! Returning like a ship in the distance, returning with full sails and new stories to tell. Bringing all that which is glorious and thrilling and new and courageous.

Inside outside

I threw some old bread outside for the birds but i forgot to watch to see them find it. I can imagine them instead- swooping in, discovering the gold mine, calling their friends. I know it will all be gone when I check tomorrow.

Here's the house, here's the ocean, here's listening to the Pixies LOUD and here's February and here's Saturday and here's this time and this place.

The colour might be pale pale pink, almost white. There's been frost on the windows in the morning. There's been the putting on of three pairs of socks and then slippers. In this act things happen both inside rooms and outside the house. I stared at a black animal not knowing what it was. I went out to get wood and it was there on the hill behind the woodpile. We stared at each other for a long time. It had pointy black ears.

Inside, meanwhile, lights are on and casting themselves as far as they can. Wood stove is burning and making its pocket. Plants are living and growing their tiny fractions in a row. Hyacinths are blooming and sending out their scent which has a velvet texture and the words thick dense and massed.