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SNOW CONSIDERATIONS: TUESDAY

Yesterday, in Victoria, it snowed.  It did not all melt overnight as has happened in the past.  It snowed more.  Today the schools are closed, buses are not running, Libraries are not lending; the Polish Deli is open, Patisserie Daniel is open, the local grocery store is open, half the deck got cleared and seeds, muffin, water, nectar were put out for the birds: a seagull was the first visitor - the muffin!

I was incredibly grateful to find the power on when I woke up, to turn on CBC Radio and find Paul and Jeff and Madeline cheerfully chatting.  I was astonished to open the front door and find the newspaper tucked cozily in the mailbox: the thirteen steps up to the veranda were full up with snow.  I was very happy to find that a plow had gone down our (side) street.  I was touched and thankful that two kind people cleared steps, path, sidewalk and car of snow.

The extremes of snowy weather bring out extremes in me: I have winter angst.  It is a major reason why I moved to the West Coast from Ontario sixteen years ago.

Enough time has passed since I moved here and enough experience, here, of the brevity of winter (ie, snow!) has allowed me to observe the details of winter angst with more curiosity than dread.

Snow can be overly abundant, relentless.  It can hang around branches, eyelashes; it can hang around for months.  It inhibits freedom.  Mostly it has to do with mobility; you have to pay such attention to where and how you walk in snow (aka slush, ice).  Ankles are challenged, shoulders hunch, focus must be on the next step instead of surrounding interests. 

Once all these issues were noted and addressed they were put into a perspective and I could stop and look around.  It is beautiful outdoors.  The sun is out.  Crows in the snow look so black/black and make the snow look so white/white. Neighbours are out on the street shoveling and talking.  People are out on the street strolling and talking. There is not a cat in sight. There are few cars.  I saw the first icicle I have seen in years.   

   

3 D ARTIST TRADING CARD

One can only push the limit of an artist trading card so far; it is meant to be 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches and more or less fit into a display sleeve.  I have pushed the limits with things that unfold or pop up or were full'y fibre.  When I indulge in using things gathered from streetcombing (the flotsam and jetsam that 'washes' up on city streets overnight) the liberties taken are major: last trading session I took along cards cut from a stack of roof shingles and attached large items such as a ghost pen that boxed, a flattened fork, dangling earring, expecting the unusual aspect of finding such interesting things would permit their inclusion.

This time I have had to come up with another means of 'attachment'.

This time the list is going to be verbal and for the first time I am going to make numbered issues of the same card. 

And for the first time I produce an artist trading card here: verbally.

Items 'found' (visually) on streetcombing adventure, October 2006

1/2 of a table top ironing board with the complete cover and padding

shaft of black umbrella - and - canopy, crushed with spokes splayed

(on road twelve yards apart)

man's black glove, left hand, swollen with the rain

six inches of a do not enter police tape crumbled in the gutter by a drain amongst sodden leaves and trickling-away water

the silver part of a shopping cart that moves out of the way so carts can be stacked together in a grocery store

the rest of the shopping cart across the street

two cigarettes, about one-quarter smoked, still burning, side by side, on the sidewalk outside a restaurant

HABITAT HEARING

The first year in a house requires careful listening if we are to turn it into a home.  Attentive listening to what the components that make up the structure have to tell us.  All together it is the heart.  Understood it is the soul.

SHARE THOSE EXPERIENCES!!!

Across more than forty years as a journalist a most frequent response to what I have written is "I didn't know anyone else felt that way", usually spoken with both amazement and gratitude.  Well!  I reflect that surprised thankfulness because often it was a risk to speak what I was thinking or feeling, fearing that perhaps no one else was.  This feedback keeps me motivated.  But they are sparks, these glimmers of expression in each and every one of us, and need to be fanned to grow.  Speak!

PEPPERED ANNOYANCE, BARBED WARNING

There's a certain panache to a peppermill-bearing waiter offering to grind 

that spice over your food, I suppose, but this pleasantry is lost on me because cracked black pepper tends to lodge in my teeth and burn my mouth.  For a period of time, when every restaurant seemed to think it posh to put cbp in almost every dish from omelets to beef stew to coleslaw, apprehension began to erode the anticipation of enjoyment of dining out.  This seems to be diminishing, both the ubiquitous practice and my hesitation to ask “just what are those black bits?”

Now restaurants and delis are in a rush of rosemary. In roast vegetables.  Meat. Casseroles.  Etc.!  Rosemary leaves tends to shrink and toughen when cooked and have pointy ends.  I feel as if I am picking eyelashes off my tongue.  The last time I tried to remove all the darned bits from a dish before I ate it and lined them up neatly around the edge of my plate the waitress stopped and stared. Next time I'll flick them off the table.

I may be avoiding danger, apart from dying of embarrassment.  The spines of bay leaves have been proven to cause serious problems in the digestive systems of some people so we are now advised to remove bay leaves before serving.  Rosemary leaves may be a barbed menace.  The flavour (which I like) can be had by crushing the leaves.  

KNITTING DETECTIVE

My detective, Harold Edison, has been wielding his knitting needles for years, knitting in bed, often in the dark, and I have not yet decided if this is a fact known by family other than Polly, his wife.  So it was with interest that I came across the mysteries of Patricia Wentworth with her Miss Silver who solves crimes and knits as she does so.  They take place in the forties and fifties in England; I am enjoying them a great deal.  There is mention of how Maud knits (Continental style, hands low in lap), what she is making (clothing for her niece's children), difficulty in getting wool due to the War (limited colour choice distresses her and at one point she considers a wool substitute but decides it will not be warm enough so uses dull gray wool in a child's outfit but trims it with overly bright green yarn).  She is continually drawing up the wool.  Her knitting bag is described in each book. Her needles must be metal because they click. 

I have learned a new knitting term!  Depended.  Her work "depends" from her needles.   

REFLECTING

If one lives on one's own one is well advised to frequently check one's appearance in a mirror, particularly before going out amongst fellow beings.

This is partly to do with things such as a vest being worn inside out (a woman behind me in line at the bank machine informed me of this the other day) or a scarf dangling down one's back and dragging on the sidewalk (a cat clued me in to this, actually on the same day as the inside-out vest).

But I rather "delight in disorder" of dress as Robert Herrick did in his poem of that name.  It elicits communication be it human or feline.

No - my mirror advice has to do with noticing - once in a public washroom after I had been out and about for hours! - a thick purple line on my upper lip attesting to consumption of a blueberry smoothie for breakfast.

People, for some reason, do not tell you about such a mustache.  At least strangers don't.  My kids would have whipped it away with their comments before I arose from the breakfast table.  They are all on notice duty with other ladies now. 

Perhaps it would be a good idea to put up another mirror as each child leaves the nest.

CASTING OFF QUEST

There are many ways to cast on stitches for knitting.  Is there more than one way to cast off?  I got to wondering  this as I was casting off a loosely knit shawl.  I cast off loosely and the result looked - cast off loosely: I was wanting something a little less slack, a little more - connected.  So I began to experiment and I came up with these two ways of casting off:

1) K1 *yrn fwd K1  Pass the first K1 st over the other two stitches; pass the yrn fwd stitch over the K1 st. (one stitch on needle)  Repeat  from * to  end.  Pass wool through last stitch.  This was more ‘connected’.

2) K1 * Sl 1  Pass K st over the Sl  st

K1 Pass Sl st over the K st

Repeat from * to end.  Pass wool through last stitch.  This had a bit of a ‘twist’ to it.

I might just cast this query off to the West Coast Knitters Guild and see what they think. 

MOTHER ON MY MIND

My mother, were she alive, would have turned eighty-four today.  I will celebrate this birthdate in my usual way, a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday (likely in the car where it is less likely to startle neighbours, birds at the feeders or yard-crossing cats).  I will also light a candle.

We could have had a better relationship, my mother and I; I could be remembering her differently.  At times I send an "oh, darn" thought to her memory.  But it was what it was and I am what I am because of and in spite of our interaction.  Interestingly, I have learned much about the mother/daughter relationship in the years since her death.  I can't really explain this but I certainly feel it and am surprised.

HERE AND NOW

One motivation to keep us trying to live in the moment is the awareness that if we are not in the moment we are living in another time, in someone else's life; neither is as satisfying or beneficial or serving purpose as our own time, our own life.  If we examine this we realize how negative and closing down it is. 

When we are thinking of the next job and fearing what it might entail, or thinking about our behaviour at a past event and fearing what people thought of us (and how incredible it is that we spend so much time in such thinking!) - it is just that - thinking and fearing.   

Conversely, if we are recalling an enjoyed vacation or thinking about a pleasant forthcoming event the body as well as the mind is engaged and it is feeling that has taken precedent.

We can't just think about the moment.  Try it.  We may start by thinking, "I am thinking about this moment," but feeling about the moment happens simultaneously and we are here and now.  The flip side is that feeling the moment (which is the essential tool of meditation) brings experience of the moment, of the here and now.  And life opens............

(William Bloom 's book The Endorphin Effect zeros in on the why and how this happens in a nicely practical way)