Elephant Revival- Go On

My Travel Blog...

sojournnotes.wordpress.com

Travel Blog to Come...

September 6, Calgary-Thunder Bay
September 14, Thunder Bay-Zurich
September 21, Zurich-New Delhi

Adbusters Canada

"Karl Marx was one of the first to observe that as societal wealth increases so too does the prevalence of individual madness. Marx estimated that in 1852 one out of every 850 residents of Great Britain was classified as a "lunatic" whereas merely five years later the rate had increased to one in 700. The trend has since continued and rates of mental disorders are rising annually in the richest nations. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the US suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression-the highest rate globally. In the Netherlands one out of seven are similarly afflicted. Most alarming is that in 2005 researchers predicted that one in two Americas will suffer from a mental illness in their lifetime. According to the WHO, mental disease will be bigger than heart disease by 2020. In many ways, mental breakdown is much scarier than ecological breakdown, because once we lose our ability to think clearly-once we descent into a society of anxious, depressed me-then we will never be able to deal with the political, economic and climate tipping points now bearing down upon us. In a strange twist of fate, the apocalypse that we fear is coming our way, may not be of devastated landscapes but of devastated mindscapes."

Kono Matsu

An Ode to my Journal

There's nothing more disconcerting than losing ones own journal. It must have happened at Fountain Tire. I had a flat yesterday on my drive back from the mountains-I stopped in Didsbury to get it fixed, while waiting I wrote in my journal at a coffee shop then went back to Fountain Tire. I recall pulling out my journal to write some more-but I never did-I was interrupted, the guy fixing my tire wanted to show me the patch on it...what did I do with my journal from there? I didn't slip it back into my bag, for it's not in there. Did I really set it on the magazine table? Laura, did you really!?

So I've searched high and low but no journal, somebody, somewhere may have read it, may have tossed it out, or maybe it's still sitting there on that magazine table, being perused at intervals by people waiting for their flat tires to be patched. Perhaps on my list of things to do today a drive into Didsbury would be most beneficial...poor little exposed journal.

poet friend

II. Sadness
But there is also the sadness of spring-time, which,
like falling snow, distracts us.
Both sorrow and joy throbbing and pulsing—a
countless crowd of feelings are stirred and
mingle together in this festival of perfume.
What if I have a friend far away on the shores of
the Hsiang! (Calgary/India) Clouds part us and hide us
from each other.
Upon a little wave I shed the tears of separation,
and—little wave going eastward (and Westward), take to
my friend my soul-felt love.
Oh! that I could grasp this golden light of
spring, keep it and horde it—a treasure-trove
of days for my fairest far-off friend.

Spring is Here and so am I

I've discovered some poetry by Theodore Roethke. I like skimming a poem first and noticing the lines that jump off the page:

"I dream of journeys repeatedly"
"I learned not to fear infinity"
"What I love is near at hand
always in earth and air"
"I learn by going where I have to go"

Tomorrow-I'm going with a couple friends to camp and rock climb and then there'll be a week in Thunder Bay visiting a dear old friend. It is difficult to believe that the school year is over, that the hum of activity last weekend is now covered in quiet restfulness. There will be one more month here for me and then I'll be shooting off into another chapter. I want the month of May to be a Monastic month. My roommate will be in England, the campus is empty, and aside from work I don't have too many obligations elsewhere. So I'm putting this out into the universe, "Monastic Month of May!"

It will be a sort of retreat, a reflective time-and how good it is to do this in Otterburne where I've spent the last five years. How good to use that time to say good-bye to it all. And to enjoy its fields and its trees while I can; to read the Lonely Planet guide to India, to plan my trip, to write, to "imagine! imagine!" and then to go out and do.

"One day you finally knew what to do, and began."
-Mary Oliver



In the meantime I will say how much I've loved Prov...This is what I've loved:

-the color of twilight when all the snow is blue
-the recital hall where sits a shiny black piano
-the walks down long gravel roads with friends
-walks on the frozen river
-playing guitar outside in a thunder storm
-tea and wine and wine and tea and coffee and a good chat and a good book and a good friend
-the fireflies, the stars, the nighttime owl that swoops down suddenly with big white wings
-finding inventive ways to climb onto the roof

Here's to closing one chapter, and beginning another! Cheers.

Jon Bryant - Think Back - OFFICIAL VIDEO

Alchemy - Unfinished

Nicole and I decided to record one of our songs. Still a lot we need to work on but here's a taste!

snowy woods and Rilke

I went snowshoeing yesterday in the woods. There is a stillness about winter which always catches my breath, suddenly everything is quieter, seems more solitary, more thoughtful. Black branches of trees were frosted over in white snow, draping over the frozen ground. The sky; grey too, and wings of black birds crossed over it at unexpected intervals, interrupting the stillness. All the colours are muted, the river is silenced by it's covering of ice and snow. Then I read later the thoughts of Rainer Maria Rilke, which so often impress me.

He writes to a young poet who is seeking a mentor, someone who will advise him. These letters were written over a span of 5 years. Written from Rome, Italy, Paris, Sweden... what comes out of Rilke's pen as he corresponds with this man is poignant, beautiful, wise...here is a taste from "Letters to a Young Poet":

"If you will cling to nature, to the simple in nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you. You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day to the answer."

"Your life, of which I think with so many wishes. Do you remember how that life yearned out of its childhood for the "great"? I see that it is now going on beyond the great to long for greater. For this reason it will not cease to be difficult, but for this reason too it will not cease to grow."

"So you must not be frightened, if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall."

Vivian Maier, street photographer and nanny

Bonhoeffer

"O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on you:
I cannot do this alone.
In me there is darkness,
But with you there is light;
I am lonely; but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me...
Restore me to liberty,
and enable me to live now
That I may answer before you and before me.
Lord, whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Balmorhea - The winter

regina spektor - Lulliby (Songs)

the world happens all around me

spins revolves soaks

all connected in this transitory web

I see a calm golden moon sailing through barren sky

I feel the branch, the root, the ripple, the tide

The storm may be upon me now

And if it be stronger than my wits

I will sing until the waves become a staircase to the stars

quiet now...listen

Laura Marling - Rambling Man

Lissie - Everywhere I Go

The roses on my rosebush are still in full bloom. I find them beautiful. Everyone tells me it's a miracle that they are still alive. They survived the frost of last night, they budded in mid-september and stayed until nearly november, it's my miracle rosebush. My roommate and I went to see them last week late at night in the full moon. The music wing was to the right and someone had left a window open while practicing. We heard a piano, a cello and a viola. We sat on the ground by the roots of the rosebush and listened to this amazing music, afterwards we went home and made hot tea. These things I love about life.

Paul sent this video to me, I'd like to be this girl wandering around the world with an elephant trailing behind. I'm restless again, I want to wander and wander.

I came back from Toronto last night. I missed seeing the stars in the big city. Toronto lights blot out all of them...so driving home last night beneath this black sky completely covered in white lights was breathtaking. So I find joy in these little things. My rosebush, the stars, and elephants. I find hope in my shoes and where they might take me, my backpack and what it might hold. I like the last couple of lines from a Mary Oliver poem,

"imagine! imagine!

the long and wondrous journeys

still to be ours."

So...goodnight world. goodnight. sleep well, rest well. blessings. peace with you tonight.

10 Things

because I have a cold; and because it keeps me indoors; and because the thought just crossed my mind...I will write a list of 10 things I want to do with my life:

1. Travel India. I want to do more than just see India. I want to be more than a tourist. I want to be with the people and among them, does it sound narcissistic to think i could help them? Even in just small ways I would love to try.

2. Write a book. I have always wanted to write a book, something leaning towards fantasy with an allegorical feel. Derived from real life experiences or just imagination? That is yet to be decided!

3. Record a cd of the music I've written.

4. Go Skydiving

5. Plant a garden

6. Travel the world while documenting my time in it by writing music, taking photographs, writing poetry, and stories...this I think is a life-long adventure.

7. Become fluent in another language

8. Travel across Canada in an old VW! (is that not every Canadian's wish?)

9. Walk where Jesus walked.

10. Read. Read. Read. Read how other people are interpreting this crazy world, read the poets, classical literature, read from the philosophers and theologians, read why people do what they do, or how we have no idea why we do what we do! And the following is Mary Oliver's advice:

"Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it."

Of course there is more than this, but here are the first things that come to mind.

Most of all I want to look at life and see it. See the things that nobody else notices, and count the moments that are quickly forgotten. I think that all of life is a waking up, each day draws us closer to being more alive; if we let it. I don't want to sleep through my life and suddenly wake up at 80 wondering where it went. I want to live fully now. I think that means many different things and looks different for different people. Right now for me, it means waking up, being thankful for the sun that shines into my big yellow kitchen, for the long fields I can see from my window; the honking of canadian geese; the laughter of my roommates; sitting out on the deck while the sun sets with a cup of tea; the hope of tomorrow.

1995 Laura

Dear Reader,

I thought I might type out an old journal entry from 9 year old Laura.  I was looking over my old journal from 1995 and always am amused.  Here is a piece:

"April 19, 1995

Dear Diary,

Today we went down to the creek near my omas house.  It was fun.  Stephanie, Paul and I made a club we called it the secret club.  It is very pretty down there.  We have a hole in a hill where we put tresure, there is 3 or 4 bridges down there that go across the creek too.  There is a hill that looks like a cliff, so we call it the cliff.  If someone wants to start a meeting then they would go AAIAA!!  really loud.  The creek down there is clean and there is lots of evergreens.  At the farm there is even beaver dams its fun, not boring like the city."

The ladybugs lying creviced between the tangled green carrot leaves, left an impression forever imprinted in my mind; as home.  Home; the smell of fresh bread being pulled from the oven.  Home; the sound of a guitar being strummed from downstairs. Mom had a knack for making things beautiful.  She could pull pine cones from the front yard and frost them with golden spray paint. She would have them sitting in a green basket by the fire, looking as though they had been taken from a Martha Stuart magazine.  

 She was the cool hand that rested on my forehead at night, or the comforting smell that hung over me during our nap times when Stephanie was away at school and Paul was lying in his crib.

Mom was born in a small town called Taber, in Alberta.  She grew up in a time, when her Grandpa owned the only Burger joint in town and she could go over with her friends for free ice cream.  She ran among the hollyhocks and caught bumble bees in glass jars.  On hot summer nights her and her friends would take turns on the swings outside, then scream as the bats would come out, flying round their heads.  Independent and free-spirited mom took a road trip with her best friend Penny out to California when they were 16.  She was married when she was 22, and had Stephanie at 24.  She first discovered that she had cancer in 1989.  She was 29 years old and had three children.

At that point I still clung to the ideal.  The mother who was ready with a steaming cup of hot chocolate after I had come home from a winter walk with Papa.  The one who’d pull out her guitar and sing late at night when I was lying in bed; the one who’d take out her paints and sit by the window, sketching patiently the robin’s nest in the tree, then carefully filling the sketching with colors from her pallet.  She sketched me once when I was 4.  I fidgeted and tapped my foot as she followed the long bangs that cut across over my eyes, the dinosaur shirt I’d always wear; the round cheeks. 

Her mother, my Grandma had a lighthouse station on Vancouver Island when I was growing up.  It was here I began to love the ocean.  The phosphorescent lights dancing in schisms upon the tripping waves.  The empty echo of the foghorn as it sounded among the crevices of hollow caves, etched with old sketches of the people who had lived within them years ago.

Grandma had my mom when she was 16 years old.  She married her high school sweetheart, my Grandpa, but he left her to be a rock star in California, at least that was the plan.  He wasn’t ready to grow up, but my Grandma didn’t have a choice.  Still, the love that was present with the voices that sang around the piano was real, and each time we left a visit with my Grandma, my mom and her would be in tears.

Grandma: the scent of cigarette smoke, which somehow seemed comforting to me as I curled up and laid my head on her shoulder.  The hands that would play Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” on our piano until I begged my mom to teach me the music.  Grandma, laughing behind her video camera as she recorded us jumping up and down, pulling on moms arm, begging to be understood.

We’d go out onto the ocean in a boat, watch the waves lap up against the side; Stephanie would catch a starfish, Paul would catch a trout.  We could watch the Orca whales raise their black, shiny bodies into the sunlight, then back down again into the dark depths of the mysterious waters, which I imagined would go down for miles and miles into complete darkness.

Oma came with us to the Lighthouse once, Oma, my dad’s mom.  Oma: thick German accent, amber necklaces, would cuddle with me and tickle my arm, would jump up to the sound of music to dance, would laugh at our antics, would watch as we’d scrub the tiles in the bathroom, “not until they are perfectly clean!” and then she’d take us out for ice cream.

Oma was born in Berlin, Germany.  She witnessed the atrocities of Hitler in World War 2.  She shuddered in horror in the bunkers as Berlin was bombed out.  She was not immune to the weakness and strength of the human spirit, she loved God despite her hard life.  She was already married, with five children when she immigrated to Calgary, Alberta.  Difficulties at home did not dispel a deep and transforming love for God and in all this ugly pain...beauty.

When I was a child she had a farm.  We would take trips and spend vacations on this farm, where moonlight danced in the brook, and tadpoles whisked across our toes.  Where the trees whispered their secrets, surrounding an old and forgotten barn.  I’d stand at the mouth of this barn and shiver in delightful fear at what might come out of it!  I fell in love with wide open spaces, with the dusk and with the cold, distant stars.  

In the mornings Oma would sit at the window, sipping her coffee, seeped in warm bathing shoots of morning sun, I could tell she was not alone and so I’d tiptoe down the stairs, open the front door and go outside in my black rubber boots.  Met with the sound of a thousand bird choruses, met with the singing of the cattle, met with the One who sat with Oma too.  

There he was again, in the hospice as Mom lay there, looking at us through gleaming eyes.  “I love you,” she said, “I am proud of you.”  There he was again, surrounding us all, remembering us, holding us, asking us to trust.  To trust what?  To trust the heaviness, for he has held it up, to trust that after darkness comes light, to trust that in the garden, where the ladybugs slept and the bumblebees buzzed...that in the ocean, where the darkness hid large creatures that broke over the surface of the water to our delighted screams...that in the firelight that leaped from the burning logs on the farm, our voices being carried into the woods in the far corner, to trust, that He surrounds all these things.

These three women shaped my life.  They are my legacy, they are beautiful beacons of light and hope.  Thank you Mom, Oma and Grandma, for loving me, for shedding the light you’ve had, on me.