What to do? What to do?

An early morning walk before the recent welcome clouds came.
I love, love, love and empty landscape—empty of people that it.

Arbutus trees stupefy with their profile. The drought has
caused this one to shed its leaves.

Awake and at my desk at 6:00 am Sunday morning, I look at my calendar to see what is ahead this week, and I see nothing—I have not one date or meeting on my agenda until next Saturday when I go to Bowen Island for a birthday celebration. What the Hell am I going to do?

I so wish I could find a passion for reading. The earth moves for me when I read a good book and I have read voraciously at times but now, to be honest, I find it boring. I fall asleep. It’s the same with TV. I cannot sit still for a television show except for the extremely rare show (such as Endeavor currently).

I recently found a certain bliss making costumes. Making the four costumes and wigs for my show was a highlight of my life and so I’ve been shaping my thinking about future projects keeping the making of costumes in mind. But this morning I realize it is not necessarily costumes I want to make.

The other night, I wanted to watch a TV show but I knew I would get antsy sitting for an hour and so I played solitaire whilst listening to the show instead of watching it—a lot of television need not be watched when you get right down to it. So I played a new game of solitaire I have learned and listened to the program (about using viruses delivering cell-specific medicine).

I listened to the program and glanced at images when I wanted. Playing solitaire concurrently made it easy to sit through the program and I realized that it is doing things with my hands—not necessarily making costumes—is what I want to do.

I feel like the little boy I once was is back, wanting to built model cars and boats again. But I don’t either; I don’t want to build models or miniature dresses. I don’t know what I want to do but now I know I want to use my hands not for typing.

I’ve been in this space before and found drawing with pencil crayon very, very satisfying. The other thing that appeals is calligraphy and the illumination of manuscripts. I may be on to something now….

So Many Plants; So Little TIme

This is a Llareta plant. It’s a member of the Apiaceae family, and that makes it cousin to parsley, carrots and fennel. It’s a desert plant and grows high up in Chile's dry Atacama Desert. It grows a little over a centimeter a year and has a hard surface is actually a dense collection of tens of thousands of flowering buds at the ends of long stems. The plant is very, very dry, and makes for great kindling.

I Walk Therefore I Am

Walking is so good for me.

Whereas I once enjoyed exploring the city, my walks are now pretty much exclusively on the seawall. It is an ideal walk—unimpeded, totally flat walk and a perfect length (13K door-todoor). Also, in the constant presence of the sea and forest, it serves as my church, provoking conversations with God and self-reflection equivalent to confession.

Following the closing of Trudeau, a walk had me realize that my motivation as a creator has been to get attention. The revelation hurt but it may mean that I have outgrown the need.

This weeks lesson also felt rather brutal: I have long known that I am judgmental and I am very comfortable with that because I believe that judgements (and their resultant conclusive generalizations) are a positive function of our intelligence. Judgement is a learning behaviour.

My judgements are instantaneous, positive and negative. I have had such strongly positive and quick judgements that I have been moved instantly to tears. I have had so many strongly negative instant judgements, I have developed the habit of looking down to avoid seeing the stimulants that provoke them. I hate the selfish people who give themselves permission to act outside or above the laws and social conventions, and I see tons of it on the seawall.

I flash hate some some people and when I did it to someone the other day I knew right away that I was projecting the hate from inside me. I knew it was the cancerous pain I have been carrying since the disintegration of my family. I am hopeful that this revelation means that my future may have me better able to suffer fools. Time will tell.

Socrates, who famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living, would be proud of me and I am proud of that.

New Tableware

I love my new tableware. I have completely done over my my table now and am very happy. It's from Paris like my glasses. My people. Yay!

Oooh

Launching Leon: Myoclonus

Some people like to have maps on their wall onto which they put pins into each country they visit. Me? I like to see how many diseases I can get. I'm kidding, of course, but I do have a few doozies such as Prinzmetal Syndrome and Todd's Syndrome.

Prinzmetal is the name given to a condition that has the walls of the coronary artery going into spasm and that causes a heart attack. I have had two. Todd's is a condition related to being Migrainous. it causes visual hallucinations.

I also have a condition called Myoclonus. Myoclonus is spasm of a muscle or group of muscles. Myoclonic twitches or jerks usually are caused by sudden muscle contractions, I have negative myoclonus—my muscles spasm when they relax. 

I only usually have muscle spasm in my calves and it almost constant, probably due to all my walking. But systemic myoclonus involves spasm of all the muscles in the body. I have had it once so severely, I was diagnosed with epilepsy, but normally I just have one massive convulsion and always when I have laid down to rest.


This morning, as is often the case, Leon came to lie down on top of me when I decided to have a little mid-morning nap. I was tired from all the cooking and cleaning last night, and shortly after lying down it hit: A huge single sustained convulsion and poor Leon was launched into the closet.

Surprise: Liking the Smoke

The photos above are rather remarkable in that I happened on the canoe on the shore. Nothing particular was going on, some native rowers were just out for a row from North Vancouver and they had landed where they could walk up and get snacks, but….

They landed right where the first native settlements were in the earliest days of settlement in Vancouver and only someone born here, like me, would know what they were seeing.  This canoe is about 50 meters from where the last native graves are in the park.

•

Wednesday involved shopping for a dinner I am making for friends tonight and taking time to revel in the pleasure of no responsibilities. I walked the wall and it continued to feel Fall-ish due to the presence of wood smoke—smoke that makes a fairly effective filter of heat and ultra-violet and infra-red rays. Walking was really pleasureful today; in fact, I liked the smell of the smoke because it reminds me so strongly of my young years when we burned leaves without compunction outdoors.