cottage living

Creek listening, star gazing, fire loving, silence. Autumn's end is here and nature is in a state of decay. Death, stillness, rebirth. Not photo-beautiful but very definitely beautiful in its own right.

imaginary pictures

If I were to post the pictures I wish I could there would be one of the family of deer running through a field of Canadian Geese yesterday, causing total chaos. Best part of it is that they weren't even going anywhere, they were just messing with the geese because they could. Deer are funny, who knew?

Or one of Richard, a local homeless guy. No home but a professionally made, laminated sign asking for "Change Please" left beside a jar outside the coffee shop he hangs in. Best times are when he is outside panhandling, he heckles anyone passing by in a suit yelling after them to "Get a real job". Classic.

I don't have those pictures as my camera wasn't at hand much this week. Instead a blurry picture of my Friday mornings. Some assisting, lots of laughing.



And if I were going to write more I'd add that as I was typing this the glass candle holder on my table exploded setting my tablecloth on fire. This follows the bedroom fire a few nights ago. Seriously. WTF?

Headed to the cottage tomorrow, if fire didn't symbolize so many supercool things I'd be way more worried about what might happen with the fireplace and all that wood...

MacBookBabysitter

Me and Mac's PhotoBooth hanging with Kai while Erin slept.



Love, love, love.

the nose knows

In unrelated, but very bad, news: while I was playing with pictures in the living room my spaceheater was on fire in my bedroom.

sunday

Practiced, assisted, then met the rolfer for brunch. We managed to keep it to just a few hours to leave time for the madness that was the Santa Claus parade before heading north for the shala's first birthday party. It was an epic weekend and a gorgeous fall day. Life is good.

friday

Dinner with friends. More dinner with different friends in a different city. Taking 1,001 pictures from the same angle to amuse myself while the Very.Bad.Band played. Following the art crawl from gallery to gallery looking at stuff. Wandering through the city with a laughing group of old friends, young spirits until the early morning hours. Good people, good food, good art, terrible music. Lucky, I am.

torontonians are stupid?

Thank God for such detailed instructions, otherwise I wouldn't have known what to do when I got to this big metal structure bridging the river...

unclear signs

Ok, so wait - where do we go in?

some people are very smart..

...as long as you’re breathing, there’s more right with you than wrong with you...

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn ~

crappy pictures, perfect weekend

Sleeping in, catching up over tea, freestyle-playground-bliss inducing yoga at the other studio, early dinner where the cool kids play, sitting in the dark, eyes closed, listening to the Giller nominees spin their stories, brunch spent lost in conversation, hours passing, a quiet night alone, and a new electric blanket to crawl into bed with because it might only be November but it's Baltic to me!

Food for the soul, all of it.

and btw, i don't :P

An amazingly wonderful weekend, moonday-extra long sleep in thanks to the time change, chocolate for breakfast (yeah, I know, again), and a concert tonight that I've been looking forward to for months - thought it was next week, turns out it's tonight, yay me.

Despite all that goodness, it's THIS that made my day: Yogi Rap

A friend forwarded me the link, one of his students made it. Best. Thing. Ever.

you would not believe...

...the amazing things happening.

Life is sweet and things are about to get a whole lot more exciting :)

in the alley

Beauty is determined...

holy crap

It's autumn. The beautiful blue skies-puffy clouds-gorgeous colours-crisp air-wonderful kind of autumn that preludes the greyness to come. Impossible not to feel vibrantly alive at this time of year.

Yoga practice is just awesome and teaching feeds my soul. Taking on more mysore shifts which I love, still volunteer yoga-ing with psych patients which is both humbling and hilarious, and beginning new volunteering with delinquent/incarcerated youths. The work that pays my bills if easy, light, fun.

Plays, concerts, pot-lucks, author readings, brunches that will last for hours, soul-friends, trips down south to play in the ocean - this is a month packed with goodness. I'm happy.

Beneath all of that, which is very real, I'm being clobbered by memories and regrets this week. It sucks. Strange to have two such strong currents - elation and sadness - running with equal force at the same time. I'm tired of thinking, tired of trying to understand what can't be understood, tired of taking responsibility for behaviour that isn't mine, and impossibly tired of blaming myself for my responses when there was just so much to respond to. Stuck in someone else's confusion multiplied my confusion and weeks were wasted ricocheting off each others' neuroses. The end was shitty and that sadness lingers but it wasn't my ending. What more is there to say?

So I quiet thoughts of wondering what I should 'do' knowing there is nothing to be done and no one to 'do' it to. I sit with it and go with the flow trusting that what's going on this week is phantom memory of what went down a year ago. Kind of like when body memory releases feelings completely unrelated to what's going on in the current moment. It's not real, it's just remnants burning off when the cosmic cycle comes full circle - releasing what lingers, what's unnecessary.

Life carries me along, it's weeks like this that my mind pulls me back. But only during weeks like this and this week is almost over. Nothing is permanent, change is constant, this is a good thing.

suuuuch a good day

saturday night

saturday

Four hour brunches - exactly why God created Saturdays.

nuit blanche

All night city-wide art exhibit, 7pm-sunrise. So much fun.