It's been a while since I have written anything. After losing my shadow, my beloved companion Pig, who'd been by my side the past 17years, I lost my verve. There were a succession of painful events prior to, and thereafter, that overwhelmed me this past year and so it's been difficult to write anything than other than the daily necessities of interactions. I am a deeply private person, so writing for me has always been a calming and healing process that helps guide me through any hardships; consequently, the abstinence of that routine meant relying on other distractions to quell the pain of facing reality. However, at some point, there is always a trigger that sparks my imagination, inspires me. It’s usually a chain of various events over time that culminates in giving me that nudge to go on. And so with that, I thought I’d embark on an exercise to begin again and give you the next letter in the Love Wins series… O
Lives of the wild to wild lives; what can we learn from the beings that surround us?
Tuesday 6 February 2018
Saturday 30 September 2017
Ode to my feline companion
As we entered into autumn the memory of my three bums on the deck attentively watching something that I was blind to me resurfaces without my effort. I often reminisce about simpler times and look to the past for comfort.
However, when I truly think of the past it was filled with its own obstacles and although difficult in the moment, it now seems like an easier time since I have overcome those past challenges. Seventeen years of a life with a companion who was always by my side. One who was completely attuned to my needs and had a keen sense of when I truly needed that comforting. I think of those "easier" times being under the cottage lying in the dirt with the house less than a foot from my body as I worked on insulating the place for the winter. I look back with a smile as I remember my fear of being crushed by the house held up with rotting posts and the dangling spiders centimetres from my face. And, there he sat, right next to me while I worked so that I would not be alone.
Argus my wanderer often follows me and Mino on walks but I remember the time I broke my foot and this was the only time Pig followed alongside during our walk. It's almost as though he was making sure I was okay, much like his silent presence with me while I insulated our home. I'm comforted in knowing that I was there for him in his final moments. My arms around him, as he took his last breaths and my warm loving gaze, was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes years ago and the last thing he saw as he left his body.
2000-2017
Sunday 30 April 2017
Friday 31 March 2017
I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion...~Steinbeck
A little bit of a different twist on the theme of Love Wins this March with M is for mouse. While there are several species of mice that are endangered or extinct I wanted to share my own experiences with these tiny critters as my March was filled with the kind that make me scream in terror to the ones that conjure an inspired smile…
Tuesday 31 January 2017
She closed her eyes and let images flicker through her mind...
Behaviour is the mirror in which everyone shows their true image...
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
It has been a month that has come and gone in the blink of an eye. However, 2017 is already beginning to redeem 2016... Last week, I was given the gift of hope and encouragement. Each day now drawing closer to an inspired goal reignited by a beautiful soul. Five weeks and counting. I was due for a little good news and true smile. I'll return to Love Wins in March with M. But for now, I think for February, I may just have another story to continue...
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Crayola Beach.... Where the colours were in the rocks. |
It has been a month that has come and gone in the blink of an eye. However, 2017 is already beginning to redeem 2016... Last week, I was given the gift of hope and encouragement. Each day now drawing closer to an inspired goal reignited by a beautiful soul. Five weeks and counting. I was due for a little good news and true smile. I'll return to Love Wins in March with M. But for now, I think for February, I may just have another story to continue...
Saturday 31 December 2016
No Love Lost
I
end the year with the letter L for Lamprey; a being that seems to be a fitting
parallel to embody my past year. I was drawn to exploring this creature as a
metaphor but the more I read about them I truly became enthralled with this captivatingly
disturbing jawless fish. While I did not explore their patterns of mating or
courtship, theirs is a story of exploration into overcoming the challenges they
create…
Thursday 1 December 2016
The long and winding road of recovery...
I’m still in recovery with my three best buddies and unable to spend long periods of time at the computer. Dictation has been the way that I have managed to keep up with the daily emails and communication. While this feature of dictating to my phone has been helpful in the day to day repartee, it’s not as easy for me to craft a story that way…
As such, I’m in still in the process of working on the finishing updates to Resonance, our letter K; and now, this month’s Love Wins character. We’ll be ending the year with a being whose existence is antithetical to the traditional species I write about which are vulnerable or on the brink of extinction. Rather, December’s Love Wins being is more like a character from the reels of a creature feature…
Be sure to check in on winter solstice for the update to Resonance and on New Year's Eve to meet our letter L in No Love Lost…
Tuesday 1 November 2016
Full Circle
I've been recovering from a concussion for over a week now. It’s hard to have one’s routine and process interrupted in such a way that it affects one’s creative method. I’m used to writing through the keyboard. I’ve never been one to dictate, but since looking at a computer screen gives me a headache at this point in time I am required to adapt to a new way to record my ideas and thoughts.
I remember as a child I relied on keystrokes and keyboard shortcuts for my digital work and play. One day my father came home with a mouse. I vowed I’d never use it. Well, I broke that vow and I adapted to the mouse in concert with keystrokes. I am still wary of touch screen laptops though as a result of my digital imaging background. The thought of fingerprints obstructing a clean view of my imagery makes me cringe. Now I am faced with the new adaptation of dictation. It seems that the words have always flowed more effortlessly through my fingers than through my voice. However, I have no choice and will have to practice listening to my stories and thoughts out loud rather than through my inside voice, which leads me to my experiences from yesterday…
On my way back from my doctor's appointment I walked by the lagoon hoping to see the salmon run. Although I'll be out of full force commission for the next two weeks my doctor recommended that I extend my walks and keep to low-key activities. I had heard about the yearly journey of these determined swimmers but had never managed to catch their passage in time. It's fascinating to think about what goes through the minds of the Coho and Chum as they return to spawn. It always looked exciting in pictures and so I thought I'd make the effort and take my walk along the causeway where the upstream expedition begins. I find nature to be a calming force and so this seemed like an ideal low-key activity that included my prescribed walk.
And so, although I was equally disheartened by my doctor's revelation in the delay of my full recovery I'll head his prescription and speak my thoughts for now. I’ll look forward to catching up with Love Wins in December. Until then…
Friday 30 September 2016
Wednesday 31 August 2016
Immortal Beloved
This month's Love Wins story is about a specific Jellyfish and the reality of this being's immortality...
Monday 8 August 2016
Dog Days of Summer
I have not posted in Beautiful Creatures in a little while, having concentrated on my Love Wins series. However, I thought this fitting in that it reveals my own childhood experiences with my brother and family that have shaped who I am and I was inspired by the familiarity of sounds that can trigger such powerful memories.
In memory of Richard Boissonneault 1945-2016
(July 24th, 2016)
The air resonated with the familiar whirr of static, like the sound of a breath as it escapes the threshold of one’s lips and snakes through a blade of grass held between one’s thumbs. That constant low pierce saturated the summer air but never revealed its source other than in the memorial shell of a previous corporeality. The preserved memory of alien husks are the only signs of these cyclical transient guests that remain bonded to the bark of the maples whose branches swayed in the summer breeze to filter the sunlight where she sat on that park bench watching it dapple through the leaves.
It’s all about the framing… She lay there listening to the constant drone of the cicadas in the wee morning hours of that still August night. She had always thought of the sound as a source of comfort and a reminder of her childhood until he’d revealed his own loathing of their uninterrupted mating whirr that seemed to have no end. They had sat around that evening talking about different insects; a strange topic but one bug led to another and the conversation continued in ebbs and flows with imitations of the maddening perpetual familiar mating call of this cyclical insect. Now, as she lay there in bed she could hear nothing but that piercing buzz that disturbed the fluidity of her intervallic thoughts of the reminiscences of the weeks gone by that brought her to this point.
The 17 year awakening of the cicadas seemed a fitting metaphor for the summer’s loss of her uncle that had brought her family together. With the exception of a few of her relatives, it had been about that long since she’d seen the greater part of her family on her father’s side. The family that she’d grown up with as a child, and for whom she’d had fond memories of in those foundational years of her childhood. She closed her eyes thinking back to that day of remembrance that had brought them together, focussing on the small wooden box at the front of the room that was once her uncle and she fell into sugar-coated recollections of moments on the farm with her cousins. She remembered the pig that wowed her in disbelief by her sheer size, for she had only really known the idea of a pig to be like the piglets that were suckling this giant sow. Each time her brother and her were let loose with their cousins it revealed a new curiosity, from feeding the goats, the softness of touching the ethereally downy fur of the angora rabbits she remembered eagerly waiting to brush, to the mischief and contrary nature that simmered beneath her shy and sweet demeanour.
She smirked as she recalled riding a horse for the first time with her cousin’s at the neighbouring farmstead. As she got on this huge splendid animal she could barely contain the smouldering anticipation behind her soft manner to feel that moment of connection as she and this horse would begin to race through the open field. She was warned not to touch the backside of the horse behind the saddle and that cautionary advice inevitably sparked her contrary nature. As they began to trot her crooked smile revealed her intentions and her hand slowly reach behind the saddle to gently tap the horse on its right haunch sending the animal into a wild gallop as the two shot forward in a breathless moment that she can still feel over thirty years later. It is like those last moments of giggles of freedom before leaving when they’d find themselves up in the rafters of the barn flinging their bodies into the void of that weightless moment before landing in the hay beneath.
These irregular visits to her uncle’s farm were always filled with moments of wonder, mischief, connection and childhood whimsy. They are moments that will always remain with her, they are memories that she still cherishes all these years later. She can recall the tenor of her uncle's voice and those family gatherings. In loss she has been given those memories once again that were not forgotten but simply squirrelled away for days like these to revisit when she needed a smile.
It’s all about the framing… She lay there listening to the constant drone of the cicadas in the wee morning hours of that still August night. She had always thought of the sound as a source of comfort and a reminder of her childhood until he’d revealed his own loathing of their uninterrupted mating whirr that seemed to have no end. They had sat around that evening talking about different insects; a strange topic but one bug led to another and the conversation continued in ebbs and flows with imitations of the maddening perpetual familiar mating call of this cyclical insect. Now, as she lay there in bed she could hear nothing but that piercing buzz that disturbed the fluidity of her intervallic thoughts of the reminiscences of the weeks gone by that brought her to this point.
The 17 year awakening of the cicadas seemed a fitting metaphor for the summer’s loss of her uncle that had brought her family together. With the exception of a few of her relatives, it had been about that long since she’d seen the greater part of her family on her father’s side. The family that she’d grown up with as a child, and for whom she’d had fond memories of in those foundational years of her childhood. She closed her eyes thinking back to that day of remembrance that had brought them together, focussing on the small wooden box at the front of the room that was once her uncle and she fell into sugar-coated recollections of moments on the farm with her cousins. She remembered the pig that wowed her in disbelief by her sheer size, for she had only really known the idea of a pig to be like the piglets that were suckling this giant sow. Each time her brother and her were let loose with their cousins it revealed a new curiosity, from feeding the goats, the softness of touching the ethereally downy fur of the angora rabbits she remembered eagerly waiting to brush, to the mischief and contrary nature that simmered beneath her shy and sweet demeanour.
She smirked as she recalled riding a horse for the first time with her cousin’s at the neighbouring farmstead. As she got on this huge splendid animal she could barely contain the smouldering anticipation behind her soft manner to feel that moment of connection as she and this horse would begin to race through the open field. She was warned not to touch the backside of the horse behind the saddle and that cautionary advice inevitably sparked her contrary nature. As they began to trot her crooked smile revealed her intentions and her hand slowly reach behind the saddle to gently tap the horse on its right haunch sending the animal into a wild gallop as the two shot forward in a breathless moment that she can still feel over thirty years later. It is like those last moments of giggles of freedom before leaving when they’d find themselves up in the rafters of the barn flinging their bodies into the void of that weightless moment before landing in the hay beneath.
These irregular visits to her uncle’s farm were always filled with moments of wonder, mischief, connection and childhood whimsy. They are moments that will always remain with her, they are memories that she still cherishes all these years later. She can recall the tenor of her uncle's voice and those family gatherings. In loss she has been given those memories once again that were not forgotten but simply squirrelled away for days like these to revisit when she needed a smile.
Friday 22 July 2016
The more loving one...
I'm a little late this month in publishing the story for my series exploring courtship, mating and bonding among species. Nonetheless, I made it in time for July with the latest from Love Wins... In June I explored H for Humans. This month my story came to me thanks to someone who recently introduced me to the work of Auden. The More Loving One, a poem by from his book Hommage to Clio (1960) iwas the inspiration for my narrative on the letter I.
Tuesday 31 May 2016
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