Author: Katharine Asals

Saudade

Katharine Asals5 Comments

There is a strange cat in the basement, like a cat that has been painted a dark burgundy.

I am nudging the cat up the stairs towards the back door, and as we pass through the kitchen, Dad is there, hunched and skeletal, getting himself a snack. He makes noises of annoyance at the cat, at the audiobook I am listening to… I promise everything is being taken care of, everything will be alright in just a minute.

***

When I awake I remember of course Dad left us on Wednesday.

He was 90 – a life very well lived.

His departure had been coming for a while, coming for a year and a half and then coming on all at once, coming so clearly and pointedly in the last week that we contacted palliative care and they came and laid out what they could offer – the painkillers, the sedatives.

During the summer I was out in BC for a couple of months, and often feared we might lose him while I was away and it would be something I’d have to live with.

There was an evening where I’d come back from dinner with some new friends and was on the couch in the house where I was staying, messing around with my phone, and I looked up and saw an owl, just there on the balcony, staring at me.

The next day I thought for sure I would get the call that Dad had gone. The owl was so spooky, his sunken black eyes glaring at me I was convinced he was a messenger of death.

For days I drew him over and over, in pencil, in watercolour, on the iPad…

But no, the summer carried on without incident after the owl’s visit, and many evenings were spent in various local bays enjoying the sunsets and watching the seals come out, their little round heads bobbing in the water looking for evening snacks.

Word of the summer : crepuscular.

1 : of, relating to, or resembling twilight

2 : occurring or active during twilight

Back home and into the final weeks of care, soon enough it was clear where things were going, and the spirit of loss and melancholy began to haunt all events.

A friend had a film premiering at TIFF, so I went and tried to be distracted by the bustle, the crowds… but alas, Dad was such a huge aficionado, a devotee of the festival every year until these last few, so my thoughts were with him at every turn.

In recent nights another critter made it’s way into my world – I’d been leaving the balcony door open at night to get some fresh air in as the apartment was full of strange smells.

A moth got trapped inside and would get fluttery in the evenings, knocking against windows and ceilings, clumsy futile movements, harassed, looking for a way out.

Wednesday morning I found the moth dead in the kitchen. And I wondered…

Indeed, it was the final day.

Lens Artists Challenge – Longing

Letting go of patterns

Katharine Asals8 Comments

I find myself on a boat, quite a large boat.

But it seems I have a corpse that has come with me, or is somehow part of what I am carrying.

I’m figuring there must be some paperwork that needs taking care of, some bureaucratic machinations must surely be done for the corpse, so when a few crew members pass by, I ask them : What needs doing?

“Oh, you can just let that go”, they tell me, “just let it go into the sea”.

It’s about a week after the dream that I find myself in waking life on a ferry, and it takes me maybe half an hour to realize I am in fact on a rather large boat and that it might be a really good time to let some shit go.

Dead shit.

I’m not sure I could define or articulate exactly what the dead element consisted of, but I did have a sense of patterns of behaviour, repetitive stories, relationships that aren’t necessarily working out.

So I opened my arms to the wind there on the upper deck of the ferry and tried to let it all go.

The next day we stood on a mountaintop and looked out.

High enough that the birds floated up to us on the currents of wind.

Mostly we just looked in awe, took in the expanse, the huge sense of space, but once in a while we pulled out the binoculars and tried to identify the flash of movement in the water.

Aside from the tankers passing, all remained elusive and mysterious.

It was the following day at the eastern point of the island that we saw the fins of what we guessed must be porpoises, small and agile, making their way across the strait.

Nope, sorry, I didn’t take a photo of them.

Right now I’m carrying only my phone, no big camera, and besides, those moments seem so precious it feels more important to breathe them in than take a fuzzy terrible picture.

Breathe in the moment, the sea, the wind, and let all the dead shit go…

Lens Artists Challenge

The Quiet

Katharine Asals10 Comments

I have kind of fallen into what has turned into an extended, self directed artist’s retreat.

Originally I came out here for a wedding, but there was a house sit available and somehow, magically, that has become a two month visit to paradise.

The property where I’m staying has such a massive garden, I’m still getting to know all the areas of it, while watching the blooms come and go.

Up to one side is the orchard section, including apple trees, pear trees and hazelnuts –

And in various clumps around the property are gatherings of all kinds of ever shifting variously blossoming flowers –

The hummingbirds are plentiful, darting in and out the flowers, bickering over access.

Crows and ravens and the occasional distant eagle pass through.

And of course the songbirds….

Early morning and late evening at dusk are when the bunnies show up, but the deer wander through any time of day and will help themselves to the raspberries or the rather green looking pears on the pear tree, or sometimes they’ll just stop in for a rest in the shade –

But while all moments of the day are beautiful and peaceful, without a doubt, my favourite time is first thing in the morning, out on the balcony with a coffee, as the sun gradually finds its way up and over the tall tall trees….

Lens Artists Challenge – The Quiet Hours