Beauty in the Breakdown

I am tired. Tired deep. Tired.

But my heart is light.

This weekend was madness. From the moment I locked the office door Friday afternoon to the moment I unlocked it this morning.

At the airport on Sunday, we walked out from the underground parking and there was a Fir tree swarmed with small black birds. Each one singing some story to the dusk sky. I have never seen anything like that. Tree limbs heavy with song. It was in such stark contrast to the steel and glass of the Domestic Arrivals façade. A camera would never do it justice, only the sound of them singing, loud and exuberant.

I love airports.

The people watching. The good clothes and shoes. The bad hair. The flowers. Coffee in paper cups. Small luxuries, new books, glossy magazine covers. The lovers. The kissing, the hugs. The small happiness, the loud hello’s. The tired eyes and the hidden stories. The individual histories unfolding. We are witness to life here. Take the woman dressed in black leaning against the pole. Waiting for luggage, alone. Or the young lover who carried the most beautiful bunch of pink flowers. Not the cheap ones they sell downstairs, but something that took thought and preparation. And how he could not keep his hands or lips off of her, how she smiled at him with such openness.

I wonder if I wear that face when I see Jeff. (My heart surely does when I walk in the door.)

And the black man who caught my eyes and said hello. Or the way, even tired, we are gentle with one another. We share something, this mass of humanity. We share in some common joy, the arrival gate.

The birds just reminded me of why I love the airport. The surprises. The pleasures of strange people and how we are all attached in one way or another. Sitting on the limbs of our existence.



G.

Teach me This...

Covered Bridge

Hidden Places

There is something to be said about the beauty of where we live. Could anything be more gorgeous, a study in contrasts? The lush green of the corn fields in the Fraser Valley to the grey green of sage in Salmon Arm? The dark jade green of the Columbia River and the pastel turquoise of White Swan Lake?

I love this beautiful place. With it’s red sun and it’s roundabout roads.

We drove twelve hours to a little lake up near Cranbrook for the long weekend. Johnny Cash on the stereo, winding through little towns and past fruit stands jammed full of tourists. I love almost every minute of it. (Almost?) Yes, almost all of it.

We stopped in Salmon Arm for a swim, sandy banks and pale green water. I was surprised by the oil money from Alberta that was being flaunted. Escalades and huge speed boats, eight out of ten plates from Alberta. It’s all good for the locals but I have to wonder what we are eroding. Everything bigger and better, the Texas of the north.

Walking along a side road in Golden was interesting. The gardens were so beautiful. Eden. Overflowing the neat perimeters in an ecstatic love of the sun and heat. South, deeper into belly of the province, the road smooth and silent, cleaving away from the busy main highway. Through Invermere and the deep valley, clinging to pink stone and blue blue sky.

Natural hot springs, sulfur and heat. (I ruined a bathing suit.) How delightful to find these natural springs on the edge of the river, large stones have been collected to cause it to pool, cascading down to finally mingle with the cold melt water. It’s only too bad that there was nothing private about it, FULL of tourists and children and loud voiced tipsy people. There was remnants of wax on the large boulders, evidence that this place is never quiet, that even at night there is a crowd.

The lake we camped at was so clear. No matter how far you swam, you could sit still and see the bottom, the soft wave of weeds. I went running the one morning along it’s banks on a little trail that wove it’s way along little bays and over a creek. Unfortunately though, I broke the trail… meaning the million and one little cobwebs that had been formed since the last person took it. And we all know how I feel about spiders.

Coming home we took the southern route. Yhak, Midway, Grand Forks, Greenville (a personal favorite). By the time we hit the Appalachian Mountains, the truck was full of tomatoes and peaches… tired boys and wet swim suits full of sand from Bromley Rock. And through the pass the clouds pulled in, the sky that angry dark right before a storm… until we hit Hope where it let down. Welcome home. But how could we sustain all this beauty if there was not the liquid sunshine?

Am I glad to be home? Yes and no. J. and I need to take a week and go explore some more, get off the beaten track.

Somewhere he knows from his railroad days is a town half forgotten called Donald. Pulling off the main road we ducked under the highway than wove our way beside the tracks until we came to a sign that stated Donald Cemetery. The only thing left of this town that used to boast a main road and a church. There were only a couple of traditional stones, the majority being carved out of wood. Worn away by weather and time, the stones were no longer legible. What a lovely find. It’s things like this that I love the most about traveling with J. His little hidden delights.

And now you know who I am having the love affair with. The green of home, the gold of soft hills and sage brush.



G.

Something BLue

Something Blue

Beauty in the Breakdown

Due to my recent escapades and adventures there has been a need for new photographs. Strangely, I do not completely trust them to J, although I did as much cropping today as I would have with pictures he had taken. Still, the need was there… and so I set up the all seeing eye to try and capture some of my skin.

The camera is such a fickle lover.

Inspired by Eliza, I crave the play of light. I need one of those little remotes you see in her fingers though… and find it difficult to set up the frames as I see them in my mind.

Perhaps I will find someone with a beautiful eye to try their luck.

I love these though, taken in the old mirror. The streaking of the silver is lovely.

How strange it is, by the time the last frame was taken... I craved J. Craved should be capitalized. The eroticized mind. Always hungry for something new and delicious. Either that or the workings of an over-imagitive mind. But who gives a hell about definitions. An hour to go until he is home.... isn't that all that matters?

G.

Confession

The lawn is dying. And do I really care? There is a line across the street. Gold for those who do not give a shit, green for those who do. The green is so lush this time of year, a marked contrast to the unforgiving brown of neglect. How is it though, that the weeds live on?

We are so resilient. The weeds.

Considering my love has spent a fortune on implements for whacking away the weeds and lawn, it seems like a waste to let it all die. But really, it’s still pretty. Wrap your mind around that… beauty in the gold harvest color. Yah, I know. Green is easier to love.

J. and I are planning a trip to Galiano in the next few weeks. I know that this time of year will find the wild flower fields gone, only the husks remaining… but I am sure that there will be many other things to see. The purple of the starfish… the green of the glass.

I crave this time of year all through winter… and here it is. The sky is that periwinkle blue at night that poets have been trying to translate for generations. The air has that muggy energetic feeling of trouble and delight. Yes, you… of adventure. It’s heady with pheromones. Every teenage boy is in rut right now and really, can you blame him? The short skirts and tank tops… bikinis and tanned legs that go allll the way up.

Some women read their romance books like a guilty pleasure this time of year, some women live it. Which are you?

I met K. for the first time last week… pretty woman, wonderful eyes. And her freckles were stunning… a labyrinth of connecting the dots, finding the pathways to secret gardens. My mind would wander… drift off in it’s summer way, the ice cubes in my coffee melting. Tick tock, until her voice brought me back from my freckle holidays. But what sights I saw…

I know you do it to, drift off into daydream when you should be paying attention. I do believe I have an advantage though and can pick up where I left off. The only risk is if I drift off while talking… rambling over dirt roads of cognitive thought and conjecture. My listening may get lost on those back roads… and it takes time to get back on the highway. Which I did with K.

Her smirk at the car still has me wondering. She is not a romance reader, this woman. She is a fellow adventurer.

Summer. Infinite sky. The way water beads on skin, fracturing the light. A field of gladioli, burnt orange and magenta pink. The urgent call of the morning birds and the gentle hum of the traffic on main street. The gold of our lawn in striking contrast to the neighbor’s. There are many definitions of summer…


G.

Telling Secrets by Candlelight

I took a French lover once. An arrogant, self serving, uncouth, beautiful, sexy man. When we went our separate ways it was with a passionate uproar that rippled out and touched everyone we knew. Yes, it was messy. But such things happen after you live with such passion…

Or was it conceived passion?

This was a man who had multiple affairs, with me… with other women. A man who lied about everything… but lived in the moment.

So when we met a French couple last week, I could not quite shake the “I have been here before” feeling. David reminds me of Daniel. Playing that guy… but really very insecure under it all. Don’t take this the wrong way; he was a nice enough guy… charming in all the right places. But there was an under taste that I could not quite put my finger on until recently.

I think he was intimidated by J. For some obvious and not so clear, hidden under our clothes sort of way. It’s in the little comments he made, in the lack of follow through with getting together.

But I have to say, I am not disappointed in their silence. In a way, I am relieved. Daniel was trouble. So would this Frenchman. It’s beyond their control. Arrogant cocks that they are.

It makes me love my J. all that more. For his beautiful nature and sublime laid back attitude. What a wonderful state of life we live.


G.



Le Coq Francais
~For Daniel (Written a million years ago...)


Five o’clock (am),
pastoral delight.
I am roused from
sweet slumber
by the cock crows.
Le coq francais,
with his perfectly
proportioned,
proud sleek head,
feathers glistening
with west coast damp,
lords over the barn yard.
He scratches at the
heaving mounds
of fertile valley soil,
while his chick
pecks at the spilt cream
from the milk-maids pail.
And the brood of hens
squabble
over night-crawlers
in the frost-free
morning air.
His crow rings
out over the landscape,
with curves echoing
the arch of his
regal tail and I slip
from my sheets
my inner clock
ticking to his call.

Beauty in the Breakdown

Purple Star

Confession

This time of year it is difficult to resist the sweetness of temptation.

The succulent red globed cherries shockingly shaped like a circumcised penis head. (Think of that next time you bite down hard to the pit, or as you lick it clean to bite again…)

The golden plum with it’s burnished shadow of orange. It smells like when I was twenty-one and all those pleasures plucked from that tree.

The dripping watermelon, wiped away with the back of a greedy hand.

Sweetness everywhere… an overabundance of it. The bees must be heady with the scent of nectar.

To taste something so surprisingly wonderful, to dip first your fingers then your tongue… to glut on the heady experience of taking in too much “Pinch me now” sensation…. this is summer.

I could eat honey and still it would be competition to the saccharine I taste on a lip or nipple, or even better yet; the greedy slurping of passions. The sing song of a mouth full…

Oh such bliss in our greedy intake of the season.

Ah, but sugar, bees are not the only ones drunk.


G.

Strange Fruit....

Lady's Mantle