“It all ends in tears anyway.” ― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

I spent my spring break in Florida this year and so there was no better beautiful beast to represent March's Love Wins species, in my mind, than the iconic Florida Panther (Felis concolor coryi).

Mural by: Arlin located in St Peterburg, Florida

Photographed by: Beastly Virtues

Heavy Heart

In Loving Memory of Kim

March 4, 2018

I rarely journey over to the mainland other than for necessity but I had promised him I’d make the trek into the city under the guise of other plans. I wanted to do something special for my birthday and I’d sensed he was craving company. I thought it may bring a smile to his face as it had been a while since we’d seen each other. We’d met about four years ago when he started chatting me up on a bus I told his father and we laughed as the three of us sat in his room together. We had plans to meet in the afternoon as I was going to walk around and see a few murals in the area before stopping in. I’d had the vet coming to check in on Argus and Mino that Friday and so I jumped on the first ferry across thinking I’d have time to do a bunch of things before I went to visit Kim. It’s about an hour and a half commute to the BC Cancer Agency and I was quite early. I walked for about a block but all I could think of was going to spend time with him. I was looking forward to reminiscing and seeing how he was doing. I looked at a handful of murals as I made my way to the hospital. I had sent a text asking if it may be okay if I came earlier but had not gotten a response so I just continued to walk in his direction. When I got to the hospital I gathered my composure and prepared myself for what I thought may be a shock to my expectations. He’d recently shared a picture of his hair loss from the treatments. I got to his floor and asked the nurse’s station for the direction to his room and she said I’d just missed him. He’d gone out on a pass to the grocery store with his father and I could maybe catch him along the way. I don’t know how we never crossed paths, or perhaps, it was simply that I may not have recognised him passing as I was lost in my focus to simply get there… I continued to walk to the grocery store and took a deep breath when my eyes caught him in the tea aisle with his father. His back was facing me and I had no idea that he had become so frail that he was not able to make the short walk from the hospital to the store. He’d simply told me we could go for a walk but that he was slow. I took a deep breath and walked down the aisle toward him. It warmed my heart to see his surprise and his smile when I came in to view. I leaned down and gave him a hug as he introduced me to his father. The three of us did his errands and then walked back to the hospital. I sat for the afternoon laughing with them and enjoyed the warmth of both their charms. I could see where he’d gotten his charisma and sense of humour. It was a perfect but heart-wrenching afternoon. While the mood was light and hopeful there was the underlying unspoken vulnerability of the reality that seemed all too close. Throughout his whole battle with cancer, he’d maintained true elegance and courage. I think, so much so, that I was not prepared for who I first saw sitting in that chair that day. When I’d noticed that he was getting tired I gathered my things to go. While his personality radiated a shield of strength, when he got up from his bed to hug me, I could feel his vulnerable frailty. I had planned to come back again soon but my intuition was that this was goodbye. With a last warm smile, I left the room, the hospital, and walked absorbed about the commute to get home. I could feel the tears well up, as they are while I write this, and I was determined to maintain my composure. I tried to distract myself along the commute home. We texted back and forth along my ride home but it was getting late and so I wished him goodnight once I had gotten to my ferry. The two-hour trip home felt like four. As I opened the door to my house it struck me and released me at the same moment. Tears gushed from my eyes beyond my control. I thought I may have had more time but it really was goodbye… I had thought I’d go see him again yesterday after my race. It had been two weeks and he’d said that he was feeling better after a rough past week. Then on Friday night, his mother said he’d been diagnosed as terminal and placed in hospice that past Tuesday. While I wanted to simply rush and visit I felt that it was a time for his family. And, this morning I learned that he’d passed away at 4:45 am. Sadly, he fell days shy of his 38th birthday. So young and resilient just a year before it’s hard to fathom but throughout his battle with cancer he was an inspiring force of strength and grace. I will hold close to my heart those final moments we had together and carry with me the memories of this genuinely kind soul. Peace be with you…

This coming May I have signed up to get moving and raise money for the BC Cancer Foundation. Please consider supporting my journey by donating.

Testing the waters...

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

Click to read O is for Octopus

Ode to my feline companion

The summer came and went in the blink of an eye beneath the thick cloud of smoke from the wildfires. I flew home for a brief escape during my two weeks off and only seemed to finally catch my breath the day before I had to return to the coast. It had been a difficult beginning to my return to work after the summer. It now feels like that time was years ago and equally only hours ago at the same time. I blink into the past and reopen my eyes to the current reality I find myself in. Moving forward as best as I can. It is hard to do justice to my longtime companion. I never imagined I would lose him so quickly. It all came as a shock and happened so quickly that I seem to only truly be processing what it feels like with him gone a few weeks later. 

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

Rhymes with Wombat

Photo by Gnangarra

Loves Wins explores a critter that rhymes with Wombat!

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…

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

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...

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…

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… 

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. 

As I stood on the walkway with the ducks and geese, I watched the gulls along the edges of the bridge. We both seemed to be hoping to see fish fly up from the water on their fatal mission. I saw one giant Chum struggle against the current but no airborne Coho soaring up the fish ladder. But sadly, the reality is also that some take a dead end path and may not even complete their journey. While I initially walked away saddened by that thought, it wasn't long before a couple of heads bobbed up in the distance that made me smile knowing that a different cycle would be completed by those that took "wrong turns"...

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…

Resonance

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection…” Anaïs NIN

K is for...  Resonance at Love Wins for September. 

A prelude... 

Please be sure to come back as I add more over the month of October about my beloved feathered letter K...

Immortal Beloved

This month's Love Wins story is about a specific Jellyfish and the reality of this being's immortality...

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.