Snippets – Page 5 – follow your nose

Waiting for …

August 18, 2017January 18, 2024 Katharine Asals3 Comments

There has been a lot of topsy-turvy here in our tiny household. Much transition.
The cat has been a bit stressed out at all the activity, Nervous Nellie forever waiting for the worst. It’s become a bit of a sport to tease her about her Chicken Little tendencies, while the humans stumble through Harvey, Irma, and the sabre rattling of North Korea as if everything were hunky dory.
Ah well. Who knows really.
Meanwhile, summer was…

…as summer should be.
Road trips and friends and lakes and chili hot dogs on Sauble Beach and misty river mornings and dragonflies buzzing and the sudden swarms of mosquitos on the Bruce Trail and an impromptu dinner party crammed around the tiny table of an RV.
Through it all the strange part for me was a health issue – I’m not usually a person with health issues, but 2017 has presented health issues as a distinct new concept, so there’s a new sense of the body as something potentially treacherous, fickle and demanding – an ally to be carefully courted – not the effortless ease of yesteryear.
Ah well. So be it.

Then beginning of September my boy moved out – after 23 and a half years, with the hope of a job on the horizon, he packed up his things and went to live with some friends in a hipster part of town.
Ah well. Very very happy for him.

And so with a bit of extra space at home, slowly I’m packing up my studio.
A few things are in progress on the walls, and I go over after work and look at them and feel unsure of what to do, where to begin, when to end.
I sit and look, waiting.
Waiting for some kind of sign, some kind of indication of what’s the next move…

Weekly Photo Challenge – Waiting

Natural Friends

June 6, 2017June 6, 2017 Katharine Asals7 Comments

Work has been more than a little intense lately – a good thing, of course – but the rare free moments are spent with friends or scribbling at the studio or, as spring springs and the weather gets nice, seeking to carve out wee moments that allow a few breaths of connection with nature.
In the mornings, if I hover at home for long enough, I can hear the coo of the turtle doves – maybe my most favourite sound ever – their gentle melancholy coos so delicious I just can’t rush myself out to the bus and begin the descent into the city, moving through the increasing urbanization into downtown, the sea of condo-building cranes and growing gridlock, to sit perched alone in a room with a computer.
If I opt to bike or walk a ways before hitching up with some form of public transit, there’s the kind of long short cut through the park.
And well, look who’s here – the rough croaks from the ponds and puddles all along the flooded walkway freeze time and I squat to take a closer look. Who cares if I’m late? I mean really – let’s talk priorities. There is a rarely seen friend here, the moment suddently so exquisite, it’s impossible to rush.

All the times with frogs come back to me – the streams filled with tadpoles when we were kids, the rims of ponds and lakes, long slippery legs swimming amongst the lilypads…

One of the jobs that’s had me busy is with one of my most beloved friends, Nicky – making a film of the play she did – a kind of hybrid of documentary meets play on film. Oh, her breathtaking performance – gives me goosebumps still after so many viewings. But the lines also follow me through the city, their poetry –

Love is love, and hard enough to find.

Oh indeed. It comes how it comes.
So when the cat, the center of our little home universe, gets diagnosed with something that will cost an extra $60 / month in medication for the rest of her life and griping about it to Nicky in the afternoon at her kitchen table she shrugs in a way to suggest maybe it’s time to rethink…
Oh but no.

Love is love, and hard enough to find.

Heading home at the end of the day, I’ve a bit of a long, elaborate route involving 3 buses, all to be able to watch the evening skies and shifting neighbourhoods and avoid the bad air and dank dark underground of the subways.
The streetcars on Queen have been replaced with buses and by about Carlaw at 8:30 or 9 on a Friday, heading east from the studio after work it occurs to me, Hey, I wonder if I should text Tom & Bea…? Cause they live somewhere along the route here in the east end and it’s Friday…
Tom & Bea arrived in my life in the strangest way – when my husband arrived from Cuba, the 2nd day he was in the country we went down to Harbourfront to catch a free concert with Femi Kuti.
Like, just soak that in for a moment – a free concert with Femi Kuti –

Sometimes Canada just rocks.
Anyways there we were, milling around in the crowds in the beer tent, my husband fresh off the plane from Cuba, and a woman stops and says to him: Hey! I know you!
That was Bea. With her husband Tom. They’d been tourists in Cuba, and well, whadyaknow, small world.
Right away there was something so familiar about them – Tom lanky with a sideways smile and a glass of beer, Bea vibrant and beautiful and laughing and always moving – there was almost a kind of deja vu, like I KNOW these people.
Several years and a divorce later here I am on the Queen St bus wondering if I should drop Tom & Bea a line.
Even just saying their names makes me happy, makes me think of the kids books, Ant & Bee –

But no, no, it’s late already, too late to be starting evening plans.
Until the bus passes the patio of that Cottage joint on the south side just after Leslie, and I glance over and could swear that’s Tom stretching to make a point to the fellow beside him at a table right there in the middle in the thick of things.
Without thinking, I scramble to jump off the bus.
What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe it’s not them?
I can always catch the next bus.
Totally worth the risk…

Love is love and hard enough to find.

Weekly Photo Challenge – Friend

50 happy things (almost)

December 21, 2015September 14, 2016 Katharine Asals26 Comments

In fact, this is more like 25 happily grateful thoughts, but apparently I’m very slow, as I spent a lovely hour making my list and was still at only 25 or so, and the exercise was supposed to take 10 minutes… please see below for the full explanation of the challenge, and I recommend the list-making, whether or not you are a blogger. It is a wonderful meditation on all that is good and even glorious in your life.

* * *

I am grateful for gentle rain on this quiet Monday of a solstice
I am grateful for the delicate chirps and warbles of birds in December
I am grateful for yoga in the mornings, the long deep stretching like a cat
I am grateful for flowers, endlessly fascinating colours and shapes

sunflower center askew

I am grateful for my smart sweet boy, snug as a bug sleeping upstairs

IMG_20151215_101212
I am grateful for our tiny home tucked away in a courtyard in a neighbourhood tucked away from the rest of the city – a small hamlet of a home
I am grateful for kind and friendly neighbours around us
I am grateful for the cheap thrill of glittery gold candles from Dollarama, adding light and sparkle to this dark restful day

glitter gold
I am grateful for new friends who have come so quickly to feel like family, like we are all right in the soup together, there for each other
I am grateful for old friends who after so many years and cities apart, show up as such wonderful human beings still and again, as interesting and supportive as ever
I am grateful for blogging friends who pull me into the fray, who make the big wide world of the internet feel like a sweet friendly village (including the wonderful and indefatigable Dawn, who invited me to do this)

I am grateful for pens and paper, for pencil crayons and cameras, for paints and computers, all the delightful toys I have at my disposal to be creative almost all day every day

I am grateful for the new studio, amazing precious fun-filled space that waits patiently when work overflows
I am grateful for the amazing job offers coming out of my ears right now, and for finding myself in love with my metier all over again
I am grateful for our new Prime Minister, the Paris Climate Change agreement, and for all the hints of optimism out in the political sphere
I am grateful to live in a country with universal health care

I am grateful for 3 nephews and 1 niece full of sweetness and silliness and laughter
I am grateful for a family as interesting as it is kind, as unique as it is supportive
I am grateful for the bus along our street that comes almost every 5 minutes
I am grateful for the library just 2 blocks away, source of all kinds of amazing worlds inside of books
I am grateful for the park down the hill where I can spend hours lost in a world of turtles and ducks and geese and hawks and even the occasional muskrat

single turtle on log
duck in light
I am grateful for travel, each and every time
I am grateful for Netflix, and the huge amount of excellent TV shows that have sprung up, making a cozy evening at home a stimulating option
I am grateful for water – element that I sheepishly love the most – to swim, to soak, to drink, to dabble toes in
I am grateful for sage and sweetgrass smudge to clear the air, heart, and mind

smudge w abalone
I am grateful for coffee
I am grateful for spinach
I am grateful for fish
I am grateful for all the teachers I’ve had, for what feels like a huge resource base of knowledge so close, so accessible, so generous
I am grateful for this moment of quiet on a Monday morning to think about all these wonderful things in my life

* * *

Here’s how it works: set a timer for 10 minutes. Once you start the timer, start your list – the goal is to write 50 things that made you happy in 2015, or 50 thing that you feel grateful for. The idea is to not think too hard; write what comes to mind in the time allotted. When the timer’s done, stop writing. If you haven’t written 50 things, that’s ok. If you have more than 50 things and still have time, keep writing; you can’t feel too happy or too grateful! When I finished my list, I took a few extra minutes to add links and photos.

It’s about choosing to look at and appreciate the happy, choosing positive over negative things to focus on. In taking time to reflect on things that made me happy in 2015, I feel grateful. If I express gratitude, I find myself feeling happy. Either way, it’s a win/win. I guarantee, you that you will find yourself feeling good, smiling, feeling grateful and happy if you spend 10 minutes reflecting on positivity.

To join in: 1) Write your post and publish it (please copy and paste the instructions from this post, into yours) 2) Click on the blue frog at the very bottom of Tales From the Motherland’s post. 3) That will take you to another window, where you can past the URL to your post. 4) Follow the prompts, and your post will be added to the Blog Party List. Please note: the InLinkz will expire on January 15, 2015. After that date, no blogs can be added.