Author: leaving traces

Marshmallows and key lime pie. Sweet. Salt. Acid. Heat. A cool sip and a juicy bite. Cool and warm in the same sense. Senses intermingle, dance and dangle – intertwine and entangle.

Brushing a soft citrus foam over a pistachio ice cream. Lemongrass. Reeds of butter. Tart. Soft. Tangy. Wisps of sugar woven around your tongue – candy corn – caramel brittle. It was the clouds over each leaf that led me here – reaching out to hold each other. Toes dipping in cool water – turquoise, clear. Have you ever put your hands in a creek and felt the energy of the water? Gentle and swirling – how to describe it? Cool, moving, almost sticky – does the meniscus live all throughout the water – not just on the surface?

I think I have the ‘vid’. Just the new gentle one – I’ve had a dry cough for a few days and my face is hot. This too shall pass. Or I’m a hypochondriac as my lovely supportive partner quipped at me on our juicy sun bum walk today. He did a snappy finger movement while he said it, he was proud of himself for two reasons – a) because he found the fancy English word and said it right, and b) because he gets a rise out of calling me on my bullshit. It’s pretty funny. We jest. Ha.

Okay – food, poetry – desire – the balance or contradictions of flavours to make our palette sing even if off key according to my third grade music teacher.

Key limes. Whip cream. Insulin peaks and valleys. Both peaks and valleys are welcome in this scenario – a spoon scoops through pie valley while whip cream peaks can be seen in the distance.

I need to go get some key lime pie, and whip cream. I’m done.

Frangipani mammogram. Toucan Sam. Jane and Tarzan. A bearded man. Marzipan marsupials in a jungle jam.

Bread and honey. Palms to the sky. Birds fly by – a croc underwater next to a turquoise bathing lady. Murky waters and wrapping vines. These palms stand tall – poking and prodding – fanning out to no one and everyone at the same time. No shyness here. No hiding in plain sight. There was a peacock one and a wooly mammoth one. I wish we appreciated human body shapes the way we appreciate jungle diversity.

All of the different forms, textures, shapes all unique but all here. Someone, or a team of someones decided each and every leaf, vine, palm, branch, trunk, feather is necessary. We need them all.

How many types of duck are there? Snakes? Crocodiles, alligators, caymans?

People? Dumbasses. The cute ones. The ones who make it worth it. Evil shortman-syndromed ones like Putin. He can shove something up his…I’ll pute something in… ah, forget it. Cys men of the world – the mean ones – go fuck yourselves.

Let’s band together as a global community and let Covid loose on all the evil leaders of the world on some island of exile and see who comes out victorious. No live streams. No life lines. I don’t want to hear a damned thing about it until it’s over or they’ve come to their senses. To come live peacefully with the rest of us. Singing songs, baking cookies and doing community service for life.

We’ll seize their bank accounts and redistribute the wealth where it truly needs to go – environmental protection, regeneration, and clean water for all.

Eye stretches. Disco dancing with the muscles in my eyes. Geometric triangle flashes. Stretching the eye muscles. Eyes and jaw connecting. My jaw dislocated today for the first time in a long time. I gave myself a skull massage last night when I couldn’t sleep. My partner laughed, “A skull massage? Is that what we’re calling it these days?”

I could feel the plates of my skull like tectonic plates under the Earth’s crust.

My eyes are soothed – they were happy to look up to the right and down to the left. An acupuncturist I saw said a man goes to her with hearing aids and after the fourth or fifth time he could turn them to his lowest setting and hear her. Maybe Kristina’s eye exercises are healing our eyes – will we still need glasses after a few eye wellness retreats?

Will our worldview change? Hmm… I’m not liking my writing right now. I feel like I’m reaching – trying to sound good or make someone feel good instead of allowing my authentic voice to flow.

I’ve been attempting to intentionally connect with beings from other realms – maybe that’s dragons or angels – river mermaids or all of the above. The Sun has been so amazing these past few days. I make sure to get up and soak up that Vitamin D – my bum feels the best jiggling as I walk in the sun. Must be the black pants and the aspect ratio of my juicy bum to the sun. Ha. Sun bum.

Okay – I’m kind of tired. Our seventeen year old nephew said he’s leaving at March break to go back to Poopert (slang for the shitty port town of Prince Rupert). It makes me think of what I can and can’t control – when I see more for someone but don’t see them put the effort in for themselves it makes me mad. I know this must be one of my shadows I need to work through. I guess I judge myself for not doing enough and then judge others as well.

My armpits are trying to tell me something. I think they want to be inside-out. Maybe I can take them off, put them in warm water, stretch them, knead them, pull them – put them through a pasta press. Roll them out again. Fold them over each other again and again. Add some fat from my belly to soften them up and keep them from getting too dry and stiff.

Hang them out, well, inside-out, outside over the clothesline. Like those honeycombs hanging from the tree branches, we saw this morning. My poor neglected armpits. How can I show them love? So far, the only attention they get is when they stink, when they are hairy, when I apply deodorant – and sometimes when I look at them in the mirror – “is this too much hair to be a ‘cute feminist’?” Ugh, the bullshit. Aliveness. Can I look to my armpits to learn about aliveness?

I’m going to show my pits more love. Is there a connection between the back of my legs (or legpits) and my armpits? I’ve been noticing a bit of sensitivity in the backs of my knees recently – I wonder if my armpits tried to tell me but my legpits are the translator to interpret so I understand.

Don’t forget to cancel your appointment on Wednesday – can’t afford psychotherapy anymore. Keep getting body-based healing though – your body is aching for it.

Ok – where’s the story? … Food and my body – seems to be a bit of a theme here. Balls of dough – stretching, kneading, contracting, expanding – Janelle, fifteen minutes is a looooonnnngg time. Where’s my talk to write when I need it? Scrunchy, crunchy, slumpy, crusty, too much flour, left out too long – overbaked, undercooked – squishy, over-easy, hardboiled – medium poached. My aliveness is in the medium poachedness of life.

What does a perfectly poached egg do for me in how I run, manage, succeed in my own life? Is grief the runny egg whites?

I am becoming more and more aware of the erasure of myself. I’ve spotted a pattern – particularly online and in some social settings. I’ve found a metaphor as footprints in the sand along the shoreline – or a river flowing underground seems to resonate on this for me.

I’m learning about the fear of my own vulnerability – and also learning about discernment, what to share and when to share it.

Guess what, L? Being vulnerable also doesn’t mean you need to overshare. Or share with those you don’t trust.

I learned from Maryam Hasnaa that we can practice how much to open our hearts in different scenarios, which is especially important for highly sensitives.

Sensitive. Being seen. Visibility and invisibility. I have been hiding a lot because of who I am and my position in this world – a 6ft1 white woman casts a large shadow. However, I’m being encouraged to take centre stage in my own life and shine my light – without outshining or overshadowing others. Maybe I can look to a tree that provides shelter for others from the rain? Or maybe it provides a welcome coolness in its shade from the midday heat. I am here to exist and hold space for myself as well as others.

My head feels congested and foggy – my back is aching. I think my mom looks to me to be the emotional support in our fragmented family. I am becoming more and more aware of who she is – what her motives are, what her priorities are, what she shares and keeps covert. Unfortunately, her training as a lawyer and her line of questioning aren’t contained to her work. She has learned to relate to people on an emotional level through a series of misinformed assumptions, leading to interrogating questions, and usually from a stance of having already made up her mind on what is right.

Raspberry yumyums. Goody gumdrops. Wispy cotton candy swirls. Sweet. My Little Pony. Those soft puffy strawberry candies that sometimes taste like soap. Crest toothpaste. Neapolitan ice cream. Strawberry. Vanilla and chocolate. How many licks does it take to get to the centre of the tootsie pop asks the owl. Nostalgia. Eighty’s baby. Ninety’s child. Jem and the Holograms. KD for lunch. Raised by my german nanny. Parents fought. A jukebox with oldies. Kids these days think Eminem is ‘oldies’, and now he’s cool again.

Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre take-over the Superbowl with 90’s jams. Has the pandemic made us long for the past more so than ever, and as a collective?

Is this how my parents felt when I wore low-rise bellbottom jeans, thinking that was a new trend ‘our’ teenage generation started?

This Aaron dude is my motherfucking spirit animal.

Am I a cool, cute duck that can get away with casually saying, “Is it bring a dumbass motherfucker to work day?”.

I’m pretty done with behaving. Colouring within the lines of my life – now, that doesn’t make for good TV, does it?

Twat. Cunt. Taint. Fucktard. Dumbass. Knob. Dickface. Kumquat. Gotcha.

Dillweed.

Dumbass.

Motherfucker cocksucker.

I texted motherfucker cocksucker to my partner’s phone while they were driving so the autobot female voice would read it out all clunky and polite. That’s the kind of cool stepmom I am.

“Cock… sucker.. mother.. fucker… Turn right in 300 meters.”

Sigh.

Ladysmith is so stale.

We left crackers (Stone Wheat Thins) in the back of our cupboard for so long, like four years. They got that stale, squishy yet hard, and really dusty musty flavour. That is the staleness of this town, but without the flavour.

My cheeks are a bit flushed – almost time for hair of the dog.

I would like to share this with my mom. This describes her stance and how she struggles to bend and sway and is so rigid in her rightness.

Yesterday afternoon she called. I answered in a dorky, long “Hellooooo…” in an attempt to start things off on a lighter note. She laughed, and then cut to the chase, “What’s with Korb’s job anyway? Does he not work anymore?”

[That fucking bitch.]

I bit back. “What is the real question you are asking?”

“Well, he was gone for soooo long on Haida Gwaii at Christmas. If I had a job, they wouldn’t let me do that.”

[PS my friends – he was back home for ten days and stayed by his mom. I’ve learned the hard way to stay out of it and let his dad and mom sort through the stuff.]

Plus, he lives by us eleven months out of the year. Ten fucking days of watching TV isn’t going to undo all of the hard work we’ve done and turn him into some lazy, good-for-nothin hooligan.

Anyway – I don’t want to get too into this call (which lasted almost an hour), but I will say this – I stood my ground, called her on her bullshit, and maintained a relatively healthy heart rate preventing my forehead veins from showing up to the party.

She always has an ulterior motive with her line of questioning – guilty until proven innocent.

Anyway – this poem hits because it has a wonderful picturesque way of quickly and elegantly shedding light on the bullshit and rigidity of rightness.

As my kid would say when asking about his career planning class,

“I don’t even know what I’m going to do when we get home”.

Standing like a straight pencil. I was too lazy to get out of bed and walk around or be too tall and too straight.

Is an octahedron a stop sign shape? I’m thinking no… pretty sure that ends in ‘ogon’. Tobo-gone – the trail you see as the toboggan falls away over the hill and out of site. Oh, gone.

Oh gosh, Oh golly. I’m glad this is a space where friends can bring forward what they’ve been carrying – it’s not easy to do. It takes time, and one person’s time doesn’t look like anyone else’s time. Battling depression – it’s weird because it’s hard to know if you have it – it’s hard for a depressed brain to self-diagnose. It was frustrating crying all the time – feeling lost, unclear, uncertain. I think I’m slowly coming out of it though, at least the real self-loathing stuff. Wading through that was a terrible beast.

Remember those cabins in the woods? Let’s go there.

Haha! I’m too cynical for this one… red roses – ughk! A love story.. hmm.. not really sure what to say here. Valentine’s Day is dumb… it’s also the National Women’s March to honour Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls. Capitalism always has a cover-up for something. I love my dog. I love certain places out in nature at certain times – or all seasons – rivers and creeks and water always draws me near. I love the ocean but there is something so magical about rivers and creeks and where they are born – usually in the heart of mountains – in bedrock, bubbling up through the Earth, following the path of least resistance, sometimes, but not always. Sometimes I think the rivers in me are guiding me to the rivers outside to lead me to myself. I actually just thought of this here, today.