hey hey hey the end is near! on a good day you can see the end from here

Yesterday evening I drove away from work for the last time, feeling such freedom and thanking goodness that it was still light outside (more than just light, bright sun right level with my eyes). Arriving at the birthday party where the barbeque was loaded full of brightly coloured vegetables, turf and surf, drinking summery drinks and standing close to the people that I love! That feast was a feast of major proportions, so colourful and delicious, and shared with such wonderful company. Oh my life, I am so lucky and so blessed to be surrounded by these things which surround me.

Later on, at the shack of a tavern at the end of the road on the outer edge of town- there's a band playing, nobody dancing except for me just swaying my hips a little bit, standing in the front. I see sitting at the table next to me a young man who has written a poem on a napkin. He won't let me read it, but he asks for my e-mail address. This afternoon, I awake to a poem in my inbox. Ted drove us home, and we kept company together, talking about the pain of a marriage ending after 24 years together, a stranger opening up his kind, wounded heart.

Today, I walked into an art gallery packed salon-style of paintings of trees, and now I might paint something to put into a show in two weeks. At the BVO I found a great pair of little black boots, for two dollars. I finally returned my pile of long-overdue library books, and Jane the librarian, bless her, knocked my fine down to ten dollars from eighteen! I picked up a loaf of cheddar sage bread, and an elk pepperette from the hundred mile market. Both are delicious.

Today, as a lot of days, I find myself thinking so loudly in my head about the universe and the wonderment of everything, and I feel so happy. And now I can finish Prodigal Summer guilt-free.

melting thawts while driving into sunset

Seven thirty p.m. and the sun is a gigantic orange globe, hanging low in the sky. Seen as a perfect circle through the piles of trees but burning my eyeballs when in plain sight. I have rose-coloured sunglasses that turn that blueish evening light into purple, making my vision feel like an old photograph. Everything smells like spring- that dusty road, the wet ground. I like to drive with my windows down all the way. I like to smell the evening air. I have to turn up the music so loud to hear over my noisy car and the whooshing air passing me. I am listening to Jungleland, and I want to be sitting barefoot on a car in the summer, drinking warm beer (or even better, cold beer), feeling that summer feeling. This melting month is the best so far.

stranger poetry

Once when I was younger- not old enough to buy my own alcohol, but dating someone who was- I was sitting outside of the LCBO in Owen Sound trying not to look too conspicuous. I was sitting on the curb in the parking lot, and a man walked up to me and started to tell me about his life. He told me that his name was James. He was a published poet, and he told me that I had probably read some of his poems before, maybe without knowing it. He was intoxicated, that kind of intoxication that seems and smells permanent- and he was on his way to buy some more alcohol for his evening. He has sad watery eyes, red red skin, days old stubble. He sat beside me and talked for awhile, about his poetry mostly. I wanted to read something that he'd written, I asked him where I could find something to read. He asked me if I had a paper and pen, and told me that he'd write me a poem right then. I gave him my brand new notebook and starting in pencil, then switching to pen, he wrote me this poem. And then he flipped the book over and wrote on the last (or was it the first) page another poem. His writing is messy, but I think I have deciphered them.

"Through the

journey through

life your journey

I know God

love's you so

through the

ups and downs

he is always

around" (signed James).

"You know

things can't go

wrong and I

know it's the

same old song

we try every day

in every way

you will do ok."

Sometimes I wonder about this man James and where life finds him, or where he finds life now.

morning window

This is the photograph that I was talking about.

hereyeson the horizon

We have been drawn together by our scents. Holding onto each other in unconscious states where we make the air warm between us. And then we can't remember much else (only that feeling) so we meet again to see what it was.

What a funny way to spend an entire day- drinking until it feels like afternoon and then all of a sudden it's evening. We are cheering together with the tables of older folks (with stickers on their faces). We are celebrating every cheer with swayed down hugs and kisses and those older folks scoff at us for being so silly maybe, and yet they are smiling at us too because we are so young and so happy right now.

You keep telling me that I've got gypsy hair, and the old Czech man (drinking half Creemore, hald Guiness) scolds you for saying that, sayin' I ain't no gypsy and if you only knew what that really meant (to him) then you would take it back! He turns to me and asks me where I found this one, and I don't even really know.

You lead me through empty houses that you have been working on with your hands, through icy streets that threaten to take us down again. Crossing partly frozen streams and treking through snow as deep as I am tall, to stand in the harbour and look out at the frozen water and wood. There is a boat that seems to be full to the brim with rotting fish so we have to run all the way back to the road, following that flattened full moon and wishing we knew more constellations.

Now you are up in the sky, probably overtop of Saskatchewan about now. I hope that you got your window seat to look at the tiny wooden houses (having left the bricks behind). I hope that you will fly back this way again someday.

my life in tea

The Past:
I saw a woman with long fingernails, she let me know how to turn my cup (counter clock-wise three times to get rid of the tears). Her round glasses sat low on her nose, her round face circled with wirey gray hair. She was wearing a necklace with a grey-white oval stone. She smiled up at me and I couldn't help but thinking of her like a canyon lady out of Joni Mitchell's song, telling me my future by the way the tea leaves stuck to the edges of my cup.

Everything is filigreed, there are angels which surround me, charming my life. A 'K heart M', and she lets me see it so I know she's not making it up. "Ken loves Mandy, or something like that", she said. And there it was! She sees five children, or children in five years. She sees a C-trip, maybe Cuba? Australia is in my future, in the next four years for sure. Animals all over the place, especially the Australian kind.

She sees my relationship as a good one, with a guy who treats me well, and she sees that I have great expectations for this to be a great relationship. But he won't be the one I marry. That K looks like scissors now, if it means Katie, maybe watch out for a woman around my boyfriend, a nasty ex-girlfriend. I don't know!

Sitting in this "Salon de Tea", the night felt funny in the first place, the snow finally fallen and the lights gone up downtown. Walking hand in hand to the appointment it didn't even feel like Guelph, I felt older somehow, and I wonder how it will feel to live somewhere where I'm not a student, to be an adult and maybe to feel differently about it.

I'm trying to do homework now that my reading is over, but I want to remember things, and I'm trying not to listen to what she says to him- I don't want to hear it, and I realize that I didn't want him to hear what she was saying to me. She asked if I was pregnant, it was the first thing she asked me. I told her about Emma's miscarriage, and she said she thinks there's another baby in Emma's future, and probably soon! She said that a lost baby never leaves you, that there is no animosity, that sometimes a baby just isn't ready to come about, but that the same baby might come the next time.

The woman who works here is on a computer with her son, and it seems like they are having a personal conversation, with concern over absenteeism, maybe apathy about school. Not arguing, but there's concern, and it seems funny to me that this building houses all of these personal issues and premonitions right now.

I wonder about this tea leaf canyon lady, want to know how she knows the things that she does, how she learned to look into a cup full of wet leaves and see the future and the past. I wonder what her life is like when she goes home. I see her apartment in my head, everything ornate and shiny, probably full of sentimental knick-knacks. I wonder what her family is like.

I think about the things that she said and I wonder now if I'll think about them later when my life lines up with them, or if it doesn't. I'd like to see her again, or someone like her. I'd like to look into my own leaves, I think I am going to try.

The Future:
Everything she said was true, or came true.

An Exhibition of the Art in my Parents' House (assignment from Learning to Love you More)