Want to write....so much needs to be written. But i'm torn between having absolutely nothing, and far too much, to say.

Oh, hey, and i'm thinking of moving back to China. More on that later. I must get these stampeding Rhinos out of my ear....

Live...from Canmore, its...

wait. What am i doing in Canmore? Where did all these mountians come from? And why is that squirrel nibbling on my shoes?


Odd.


It's peaceful here, though. Nice place to wake up in. A sound muffling mist forms a roof between the mountains. The tourist shops and restaurants are quiet.


But 10 screaming people are playing scrabble in my left ear. Seriously, how excited can you really get about scrabble?

Some people really don't understand solitude. But hey, at least i have friends.

Yet another person who was planning on having a good day today...but my fuse didn't even last the morning without being set off. I try to stay positive on here, keep the bitter whining to a minimum, but what would a blog be without an occasional angry rant?

I mean, who uses random toothbrushes that they find in a bathroom? Seriously! If you didn't take it out of the package yourself, and you don't know where it came from, why would you stick it in your mouth? A toothbrush costs...what, two dollars at a drug store five minutes away?How lazy do you have to be to just grab what's there and not care whose it is? Never mind how pleasant it is for me to go for my fang-scrubber in the morning only to find it dripping wet and freshly used, but what if that nagging cough of mine isn't just allergies, but, oh, i don't know, a particularily virulent strain of Tuberculosis? SARS? Bird flu? What if that brush was there to clean into the cracks under the toilet-seat bolts?
Then there's the troubling thought that this might not be the first time....
I know, i know, i need to let that go...but that lovely little discovery pretty much set the tone for my morning. More things go wrong. Computers don't work, plans are thwarted- i arrive at school, park in front of Ali's, grab the parking pass and slap it on my dash, as i have done for time immemorial, so that i am a good little university-area parker in compliance with the mighty parking law , i rush off towards class with little time to spare, happen to glance back wistfully at the forlorn, green escort only to discover an agent of ultimate evil, a vile parking nazi, looming over my poor vehicle licking his slavering jaws hungrily as he gets out his dark list of doom and begins taking my liscence number.
Though i fervently desire to be in class on time ( for once) i cannot abandon my innocent conveyance to such a fate. I swing my bag, laden with lead bricks, around and hobble back to the car. I attempt to reason with him. I forget one cannot reason with pure unrelenting evil.
There is a parking pass in the window, perhaps you didn't see it?
Its for the wrong zone.
That's preposterous, its parked directly in front of the address on the pass!

Oh, then this pass is expired.

(IN truth, i knew this) Oh, well, I know. we forgot to renew it. We're getting it done now.

It expired on January 20th. It is now January 26th. I'm going to have to ticket you.

But you know this is a resident pass for in front of this house, and i'm here now anyway. i can move.

Doesn't matter. Its expired. You're getting a ticket.

You have to somewhat admire one for whom the world is that simple. Either admire, or stick your fist in their gut and hand them their spleen.

Eventually, due to my entering the car and beginning to roll it forward, the beast relented, reluctantly snarling, and went on to savagely pounce on the next offending victim. I drove around the block, found the swath of destruction that marked where the dark presence had already passed, and hoped there to escape notice and be gone before it returned for fresh blood.

But i was despicably late for class.

Really, worse than any of the that was the way such little things got to me and had me snapping at friends this morning, and seething with insensate rage about half the day. So a few things went other than i would like. Poor little bunny. I didn't have to let it put me off that badly.

I get home and find that a friend, the very same one i was unforgivably rude to this morning, dealing with far more shatteringly real unhappy news, of a kind i can't, at this point in my life, even imagine. And i'm whining about a toothbrush.

Today is a good day to be alive.

Fresh from my time of communion with mountain and snow yesterday, i awoke rather pleasantly to another glorious winter day, read a medieval anglo-saxon epic, and dicovered i could go skating with what was promised to be a fun group of people. This offer proved more enticing than said medieval epic, so i trundled off to rundle park to await the wintry festivities, only to discover my fearless comrades would not arrive for quite some time.
I spent some of the interim wandering the abandoned upper reaches of rundle, what i think, in summer, is the golf course. There was no reason for anyone to be here now, and i had it to myself. It was a moment of quiet perfection, a soul-deep sigh. The tailored, gently rolling lanscape, short trimmed meadows surrounded by tastefully spaced trees, clumps of firs, old, solitaryand thick-limbed birch and poplar, everything, from ground to reaching branches, dusted with a thin covering of snow, just enough to make this world thouroughly white -just enough that the dying sun, fanned out in orange rays against a glowing backgound of cloud, catches the frost with its fire, making this entire lanscape seem cut and sculpted from a sparkling white rock, or as if it were coated in the dust of diamonds. No footprints but mine and a few rabbits. following the path, pass through trees or over a hill and come to a entirely new scene: a meadow, a small arched bridge, an ancient, twisted tree, new and varied shapes, all cut from the same fine substance.

That feeling...was one i had forgotten. And i should not have forgotten it.

Skating, loomed over by the surreal but oddly beautiful backgound of the refinery, with its terraced gardens of lights and torches, and plumes of purple-orange steam, was also sublime. Our friends had lit a small fire on the island, and after a few laps i joined them there. To me, there is something in skating on a sort of pond, and gathering at a fire among trees to laugh, roast things, and drink hot chocolate, that springs from the deepest and best of human existence. It is, at the very least, the quintessence of Canadian winter. THAT is Canadian culture. Beer commercials, Bryan Adams and bland social-commentary plays can burn, for all i care. Preferrably in a large bonfire. By a frozen pond. With people skating on it.

Just returned, in a puddle of pleasant aches, from a skiing/boarding trip to the mountains with Chuck and Mack.
While i think it fair to consider myself a relatively proficient skier, having begun when i was in the second grade, but this trip was only my second attempt at working with only one slab of wood under my feet. I tried it once last year, at one of the puny local hills within edmonton, and thought that went pretty well for a first attempt. And i fell in love with it. Two boards would never be the same for me. And though this time i spent more time on my face, on my ass, or on my knees or in some rolling snowball combination of the three than actually standing up on the board, i still remain stubbornly un-dissuaded from abandoning skis forever in favour of the glorious board. For those brief moments that it was almost working, it was a thing of beauty. The tantalizingly close possibility of sweet heel to toe carving, trailing an arc of powder gleaming in the sunlight, is more than worth the present pain and humiliation, and the humbling admission of needing to go on easier slopes until i suck slightly less.

I hurt, but it was worthwhile. Abundantly so. While this trip, particularily our parking and attempted escape from sunshine, had elements that dangerously approached fiasco status, (We had to park about three km away from the lodge, on the road, and when we finally got back to our car at the end of the day, a tractor, used to ferry skiers to their vehicles, had jackknifed and slid into some poor schmuck's car, causing the mother of all line ups. we narrowly avoided that, and had to deal with some of the slowest drivers yet to crawl on the earth. AND we almost ran out of gas. Fun stuff) but it was SOOOO good to finally get out of the city. These grey, soulessly functional industrial parks and clone condo units really get to you after a while. To be on the road, to feel ones place in the presence of immense, stoic rocky massiveness, to see towering firs laden with snow, the black and white patches of mist shrouded juts of rock, that whole striking two-tone winter world...i don't know, somehow open space, trees, and really, really big rocks, all seen through the endless flow of large, fluffy flakes- it heightens something in me, raises an awarenesss, quiets other voices, releases other pressures...puts me in a different....mode. Fresh air in my lungs, a lot of snow down my pants, a bit of physical excercise and a number of blows to the head- all a recipe for improved mood, if you ask me. Nevertheless, it WAS good, and will be repeated soon...oh yes, it shall..... Mucho props (Don't get chopped up, though...) to Mack for driving and boundless generosity, Chuck for knowing what's going on, Chuck's bro Dave for head injury and company ( and taking me on a tree-dodging last run that definitely surpassed fiasco) and Jeff for graciously obtaining gear.

We define a man by what he admires, what raises him. All things aspire, even if atomically. A body will rise quietly until caught by the surface. Then the moon pulls it to shore.

Also from Fugitive Peices

There's no absence, if there remains even the memory of absence. Memory dies unless it's given a use....If one no longer has land but has the memory of land, then one can make a map.

Ann Micheals, Fugitive Pieces

Another old poem from the vaults...circa 1996, from somewhere in India...

Awake

The ridiculous morning rooster cries

Arise and join your world

The sun is up

Red and Fiery

Casting sharp light on the land

And, suddenly

Nothing is hidden

In your plush

Flower-papered bedroom

You are warm

Beneath soft, pleasant sheets

And comfortable

Your head sunk nicely

In enveloping pillow

I will rest yet, you say

My dreams are pleasant

I am not yet ready to face

The day

My dreams are grand, and noble

Mighty adventures

And oh so safe

Being only dreams

Awake!

The rude bird screams again

Leave your petty dreams

Let your eyelids struggle open

To the magnificent blaze

Of morning

Streaming through your painted windows

Awake I say again!

You have slept long

Your limbs are stiff

You had best check your house and fields

Lest

While you sleep on, in mighty dreams

The thief has come

Stolen all you once possessed

Taken your lambs away

While they had yet to see

This dawn.

Once more into the breach, my friends.....