Cleansing, Body and Soul

Time for the ol' bod to be purified. And perhaps, as an indirect result, my soul will undergo the same process.

I was talking to my friend Julie the other day while she suffered through a cleanse. No carbs, no refined sugars, you know the drill. And then I woke up the next morning with this nagging sense that it was my turn.

It has been a year since my last cleanse, and all signs now point to the necessity of it. My acne is getting out of control, I'm tired for no reason, my hormones are wacky and I sometimes feel like...well, for lack of a better term....a cow. Not because I think I'm fat (because I don't - so don't go writing lame comments as a guilty response to my fishing for compliments), but because things just don't feel quite right inside. I literally feel the effects of carbo-cose build up (I made that term up - it's what I call the globs of flour and sugar that I imagine are sticking to my insides) and I want to GET IT OUT and start fresh.

So, I bought myself a nice companion, a 7 day herbal detox that focusses on cleaning the blood, flushing the system, and restoring fibre and other good things in the process. Which is good...you don't just want to wipe everything out! And now I'm ready to fill my body with goodness.

I have a few things to share with you, then. The first: some recipes for delicious things that are good for you. The second: a food-for-thought moment.

Whatever's-in-the-fridge-and-cupboard-Quinoa-summer-salad

The point is that if you have Quinoa, you can make an awesome salad, and it can be different every time. Which is fun. What I'm giving you below is not so much a recipe, but a list of what I happened to throw in, because these are ingredients I almost always have in stock. And it was DELICIOUS! But it will change next time I make it.


2 cups cooked Quinoa
half of a large onion
kernel corn - half can
goats feta (crumbled on top when serving...so it doesn't get soggy)
fresh chopped cilantro (also mixed in fresh when serving so it doesn't go limp)
chopped celery
chopped cucumber (take out the squishies first - seeds etc)

Dressing: a bit of olive oil, a bit of balsamic vinegar, a bit of mustard, lime, and some minced onion.

You can add pine nuts, seeds, tomatoes (fresh or sundried), roasted garlic, pickled beets...anything. And it keeps for days (if you leave out the liquidy things and limpy things until last minute).

Who says eating on a cleanse has to be painful?

Also, I'm cooking up a curry right now, and serving it to myself in a roasted green pepper (lop the top off and voila! insta-bowl. Isn't cleansing fun?). Also, never underestimate the power of baby bok choy to add life to a stirfry.


Food for thought:

 We really do love to be inspired for a fresh start. And when an inspiring moment strikes us, we often get all eager-beaver for a day...but  inspiration fades quickly as the reality of the difficulty that lies ahead sets in. C'est la vie. Now seriously,  get on with it. La vie, that is. I don't want to not do things that inspire me because I'm afraid I won't succeed in finishing what I set out to do. But I also know that we can't follow every whim and fancy that crosses our path or else we'll be too tired to live. Choosing which inspiring bandwagons to jump on and actually invest ourselves is tough, because there are just too many inspiring things out there to keep tabs on. But for a season, an inspiration will present itself as a gift, and if you ask the right questions, you will know if it's got your name on it.

I would also like to point out that doing a cleanse is more than just good for your body. It is a practice that puts hunger and suffering in perspective, that tests and fortifies discipline, that differentiates between need and want. How could I possibly think that my cravings are remotely worthy of the statement 'I'm starving', or that my dietary restrictions are a form of suffering in any way shape or form? I'm glad for the reminder, as I walk by the bakery on an empty stomach, that I have it good.

Keep it Simple

Whenever I watch other people doing something that is a part of who I am, I get an intense and immediate urge to do it too. The first recollection I have of this feeling was when I was in high school and would go watch university-level volleyball games. Watching people who are stellar at what they do makes me want to do it all the more and all the better. I would sit and watch and imagine myself on the court with them, moving with them, dying a little inside because I couldn't actually get my hands on that ball.

So as I was driving the long drive back to Thunder Bay after the Winnipeg Folk Festival this week, I had the same tremendous urge to make music, to get my hands on some notes and some rhythms. Music has always been a part of me, but it always takes a back seat to things that I'm better 'known' for. Funny, because I still get that way about some sports sometimes too...but people have a hard time imagining that I was a serious jock in high school, so I just kind of laugh it off with them, and leave it to the pros and resume being the tree hugger (which is by definition non-jock) people see me as. As for the musician in me, I suppose having a solid handful of friends that are wonderful and super talented musicians makes it a little easier for me to leave the real music to them, and to disqualify my own desire to make music by calling it 'mucking around' or 'just for kicks'.

When I realized that even now, being what I consider to be entirely self-aware and free to be who I am and yada yada yada, I still very subtly compartmentalize myself into what I can and cannot do, or into what I think others expect me to be able to do or not do.

So I'm going to make music when I want to. Even if it's just mucking around. Even if my friends are pros and I'm still in musical adolescence. Even if it's not what I want to do for a living or for any particular reason at all for that matter. Just because the season is right, and I feel it in my bones.

So, to put my money where my mouth is, here is a song I wrote and recorded one afternoon in my living room, straight into my computer. A guitar, a plastic container, a christmas ornament with bells on it, and egg shaker, and my snappy fingers compliment the sound. It's ghetto, it's imbalanced, it's flawed...and I'm learning to not be afraid of that. It's just the way it should be. In fact, those same words might be used to describe me, so it fits nicely.

Even if you don't believe in God, or are unsure of where he fits into your life equation, this song holds truth that is unavoidable. When life gets too hot to handle, we often react by turning our eyes upwards and asking 'why?' and 'what now?'...often in frustration and usually as a last resort. We have the tools at our fingertips to navigate these rough patches, but we often don't trust that we do. It's much simpler than we make it out to be. So, without further ado, here is my ghetto little poppy gospel song:

A Shared Spirit

Today I was catching up on reading my friends' blogs, and I came across an incredible story that needs to be shared. I'll paste the beginning of the interview (done by my friend Andrew Kooman) here, and if you want to read the rest, follow the link at the bottom of this post to get to his blog site.

Amanda Lindhout: A Global Vision

Red Deer native Amanda Lindhout was working as a freelance journalist in Somalia in August of 2008 working on a story about refugees when she was kidnapped with  Australian photojournalist and colleague Nigel Brennan by a band of young Somali gunmen. During her 458 day captivity she was tortured and abused, often left in chains in a small dark room.

Like thousands of others worldwide who prayed for the release of Amanda and Nigel, I followed the story and held my breath.  Amanda, with Nigel, was released in November 2009  and returned home to Canada after 15 months in captivity.  It was a time of darkness difficult to imagine, and yet what is perhaps more remarkable than the fact that she survived the terrible ordeal, is the grace and vision with which she now lives.

Since her release, Amanda has launched The Global Enrichment Foundation which seeks to build stronger communities, cultivate leadership and promote peace through education in even the most poverty-stricken and violent of countries.  The Foundation’s first initiative is the Somali Women’s Scholarship Program (SWSP).

It was my privilege to help Amanda put together a site for the Foundation, and to conduct the following interview, which took place via email, amidst her busy schedule.

Andrew Kooman: I’ve heard you talk about forgiveness, and that though not an easy thing or a straightforward path, that you’ve forgiven your captors. How essential has forgiving these Somali men been in your process of returning to normal life in the days since your release?

Amanda Lindhout: Forgiving the teenagers who took away my freedom for almost a year and half was essential to surviving my time in captivity. On a daily basis, while still a hostage, I set aside ‘gratitude time’ each evening where I would reflect on any moments of goodness I had seen in my captors. This helped me to remember that all human beings are essentially good, even if they are choosing to act in disharmony with that. Despite the abuse I endured constantly, I never doubted that those boys had inside of them the same spirit that I have, which is what all of humanity shares and which connects us.

AK: Your experience, from what I’ve heard and understand of it, seems unimaginable to me. You seem so resilient and strong. What was your survival strategy; how did you endure those long 15 months?

AL: I survived those long months in captivity by staying absolutely focused on the joy that can be found inside oneself. When you are locked up alone and shackled in a dark room, you realize that happiness doesn’t stem from external circumstances, and that despite whatever painful, difficult experiences you may be going through, you always have the power to transcend it by connecting to the source of peace which is within all of us.....

READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW AT    http://andrewkooman.com/archives/4155

Blinded by Ink Blots

This morning, before the weather later took a turn for the worst, I took advantage of the quiet sunshine to go for a ride around a lake near my neighborhood here in Thunder Bay.  My backback held a bottle of water, a book, a journal, and my favorite inky pen. The spot built into my bike frame normally reserved for my water bottle held my travel mug....filled, of course, with delicious fresh dark coffee.

After a tour around the lake, and after exploring some surrounding neighborhoods I had not yet seen, I set up camp at an empty picnic table, did some morning calisthenics, sucked back my entire water bottle, then got to the warm-down routine. Coffee and reading. Mmmmmmmm. Perfect.

I wanted to share a bit of what I was reading this morning, because I was a good moment digesting it this morning....which usually means that it's the kind of thing that is good to be shared with other people.

George A Buttrick writes:
'' A lecturer to a group of businessmen displayed a sheet of white paper on which was one blot. He asked what they saw. All answered: a blot. The test was unfair: it invited the wrong answer. Nevertheless, there is an ingratitude in human nature by which we notice the black disfigurement and forget the widespread mercy. We need to deliberately call to mind the joys of our journey.'' 


I think that we are not naturally optimists. But I also think that many of us, if not most...if not all... wish, however subconsciously, that we were. Sometimes a certain level of deliberateness is required to overcome our ungratefulness, to see through the lies we have come to believe about ourselves and our neighbours, to escape the trap of lazy thought and thoughtless talk....in order to see the paper through the blot. Something like seeing the forest for the trees.

North Easterly.

I debated the future of this blog.

I know many faithful followers have expressed their disappointment over the last 2 months of lightweight blogging. And as I have just travelled across Canada, I discovered that far more of you were following my blog than I would have imagined. So I have a hard time letting it go.

The problem I have is with the expectation of context that comes with this blog's short history, and more evidently, in the blog title itself.... 'Northern Exposure'. It was a blog started for a number of reasons, all of them having to do with my adventurous hiatus in the North. It was a reason for me to keep up the discipline of writing, having public accountability. It was a project to keep me motivated to write while I (for once) actually had the time to do so, living so far from my regular life and lifestyle. It was a way of keeping friends and family informed on what was going on in my life. It was a way to keep people in touch with a part of the country they feel connected to in terms of cultural and national identity, but disconnected from in terms of actual knowledge.

So, having moved away from the Northwest Territories, I feel a bit weird about where to go with it now. I feel like a fraud keeping the title. I had my saturday morning rituals, I had my interesting northern tidbits complimented by random thoughts and perspectives...but they were somehow all connected to the North, or, at the very least, my northern experience. So the title of my blog is distracting me from moving forward.

BUT WAIT!

To most Canadians, I AM in the north! If I were to ask the bulk of the Ontarian population their opinion on the matter, they'd heartily agree that Thunder Bay qualifies as Northern Canada. Heck, they probably all assume it's north of 60 anyway. This from a group of people who think Barrie is the far north. (sorry, Torontonians - you don't have the best reputation as being the most geographically aware...but we are endeared to you for it).

So without further ado, I will continue my relationship with Northern Exposure. But I want you all to hit the reset button on your expectations, because there are no rules, and I don't want to to have to change my blog name and theme every time I move. Those of you who know me and my vagabond-y-ness well will understand why. I'll blog about whatever comes up, be it Northern (or not), Canadian (or not), or Exposure or...mmm, let's hope it's not the latter. Though could make for some saucy saturday mornings.

For now, I continue to justify the blog title by seeing the world through Torontonian eyes. Come september, I'm back to the drawing board. Thoughts?

Cheers friends.

Living Room Stage Blog Redirect....

Hey there long lost friends and followers -

After what seems like a very long stretch of non-blogging, I thought I'd show a sign of life. I'm going to take this little moment to redirect you towards my other blog, which briefly explains what I've been up to these days...and promotes my upcoming (and very last minute) Living Room Stage "tour"....

http://www.livingroomstage.com/News_%26_Blog/News_%26_Blog.html

Soon and very soon, I will give a full explanation of m whereabouts the last month or two...complete with pictures. But not yet. Soon.

Cheers, y'all. Cheers.

So much for maintaining my blog.

I have had a crazy month. I launched my websites, and I was away 3 weekends in a row - which meant I missed my regular Saturday morning posts 3 weeks in a row.  With the melting snow, I was afforded many opportunities to leave my 2km bubble in Hay River. I went to Yellowknife, Fort Smith (twice, even!), and to a little cabin in the woods near the Alberta border.

Now I find myself in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Quite unexpectedly. My niece and nephew live here, and recently I felt it impressed upon my heart to spend some quality time with them. I’m in a bit of a funny life-space right now, trying to figure out what my priorities are. I thought I had it all figured out. Turns out I didn’t. Ah, the joys of curveballs.

I’ll leave you with this brief update, and some pictures of an evening out with my awesome niece and nephew. I plan to come back to this planet soon, after having dropped off of it for some time. I’ll keep you posted on how the journey back to earth is coming.

Cheers friends,

Joanne.

I'm alive! (in case you just so happened to be worried from my lack of presence on the blog last week - Michelle, sorry to disrupt your saturday morning flow by not being there with something for you to read!!)

Dogsledding and icefishing got in the way of my posting last weekend. That’s right – I had a true northern experience, fish fry and drumming circle included. I spent last week as a chaperone-slash-photographer at a francophone youth rally in Yellowknife. And the best part: Snowking. If you don’t know about Snowking, look it up. If you’re too lazy to look it up, I’ll give you a 3 word explanation that should do the trick: snow castle concert.  Here's a teaser:

I'm off to a little cabin in the woods for the night...I,ll post more when I get back tomorrow. Ahhhh...nordic adventures!!!!

Websites!

My 2 new websites have been officially launched! (you will especially appreciate this if you read my last blog post....)

The first one is my main page, my hub: www.joanneabraham.com

The second site is for my theatre project in progress, The Living Room Stage:

www.livingroomstage.com

Please check them out and pass the links on to your friends and family...let's get this party started.

Cheers, all...and Happy Sunday.

Today’s morning Coffee – tech edition

I wasted a whole day yesterday.  Wait, no. More precisely, the day was stolen from me. By technology. And when that happens, it dampens my spirits…and I have a hard time getting over it.

It was a day where Murphy’s law ruled: if anything can go wrong,  will. If you think something will be easy, it won’t. If you think you know what you’re doing, you don’t. And so on and so on.

Let me set the stage: I have recently set some deadlines for myself, in order to keep myself motivated and on-target with some projects I’ve been trying to or wanting to undertake for quite some time. I needed to take the first 5 months of living up here slowly…so I deliberately did not give myself the pressure of personal deadlines. I knew it was important for me in that first season of being here to take time to learn how to just BE.  To reset my internal clocks, to deconstruct the idea I had that I had to DO, to check things off lists, in order to have purpose. It’s all linked to a previous blog I wrote (a few weeks back) about discovering a new way of seeing yourself and your purpose, which ultimately defines who you are – it’s that whole ‘you’re a gift’ thing…

So, I’ve been feeling lately that I’m in the second season. I’ve passed through the changing of the seasons already, which was a time of evaluation and  intentionality, and have come fully into the next. What this season means is taking the time to concentrate on the things I discovered in the first season, and being deliberate about developing the things that presented themselves – during my time of evaluation between seasons -  as being connected to my heart and soul in their present states.

So I’m now being deliberate about a few things, hence the deadlines. One of those things has been to get my website stuff ironed out. People always ask me for a website address if they want to recommend me as a photographer, or if they want to find out about my living room theatre project – and though I have had a website in the past, I didn’t really think about how it was connected to me personally, and somehow I never wanted to give the address out. It sat unused online for a year. I always meant to get around to fixing it. But I never did. Which was a good thing – because I gained the clarity I needed to attack the project with renewed clarity. So I have been working on building 2 websites for myself over the course of the last few weeks. During my time of evaluation and intentionality, I mapped things out to see how I could have a website (or two) that would give information about what I do (photography, theatre, videography, blah blah blah), without being disconnected from who I am. Without it just being a marketing tool to sell my services, which I’m really not all that interested in doing at this point.

So, that beings me back full circle to yesterday, the day technology stole. My deadline to put the sites up is this weekend. I designed them on a super simple design program on my Mac, which is theoretically awesome for working directly with a server to host it. I bought my domain names a few weeks ago.  I have a Mobile Me account, which is this awesome service package Mac offers that gives you a million different great little features. One of those features is web hosting. Long story short, it wasn’t happening – I couldn’t publish (export) my website designs to post on the internet with Mobile Me (a common error for lots of folks, it turns out), so I decided to not be a cheapskate and pay the hosting fees with another company (which is kind of better in the long run anyway, because sites hosted with them supposedly get better results in search engine keyword searches). So I not only paid for my domain names (the ACTUAL www names), but I also paid for someone to host them for me (that is, to store the information on their servers and put them up for me).

Fine.

It took me from 9 am to 2pm to just get that basic stuff sorted out, after much frustrated trial and error.  But then I couldn’t upload my files to their server the way they had suggested. So it took me another couple of hours, and much forum perusing to figure out that I needed to download a different FTP client and try it that way. With that, I managed to get one of my sites up and running. Great. But I tried and tried and tried to get the second site up – to no avail. I called the host, waiting 20 to actually speak to a real person, and explained that I had paid for 2 sites to be hosted, but my account was only showing one. Turns out they forgot to add the second, so my FTP client wasn’t finding the second because it seemed to not exist. Right then, as  he was about to put me on hold to check things out, my phone card ran out. And I can’t make long distance calls from my phone without a phone card. So I waited and hoped that he would just fix it even though our call was disconnected. No such luck. I tried on my own for another hour. Nothing. So I called a phone card company to reload my minutes. Apparently, they take 30 minutes to activate your account. So I had to wait. At the end of the thirty minutes, I tried the number that they gave me, and it didn’t work. I called the  phone company back. It turns out I was given the wrong number to try from my area. They gave me a new one. Which also didn’t work. After the 3^rd phone call to the phone card company, we got it sorted out. I called the host back, with 527 minutes to spare if I needed it. I waited on hold another 15 minutes. They fixed the problem (or so we thought) by activating the second domain name as a hosted-by-them site. Tried to get my FTP client to connect with them, still didn’t work. At this point, it was 6pm, I was angry, frustrated, hungry, and miserable… and some friends were about to come over for a movie. I decided to stop swearing at my computer and take a break. When all else fails, shut down and restart.

After a shower and a hot meal, I made one last call to the host, explained the situation, and he said  ‘Oh, I know exactly what the problem is…you haven’t set up a blah blah blah blah’ and I said ‘well, no – the two guys I spoke with the last two times I called didn’t say anything about a blah blah blah’ to which he replied ‘well, of course you have to set up a blah blah blah otherwise you wouldn’t be able to blah blah blah’ to which I replied ‘ok, whatever.’  So we fixed the obscure super-embedded problem, and I had to wait another hour or two for the changes to take effect. And thus ended my technological meltdown, at 10pm. 13 hours, down the tube.

I felt disgusting at the end of the day – having squandered precious time sitting in front of a screen, being angry and volatile and negative.  I don’t know what I would have done if I had gone to bed last night with no breakthrough. With no sense of accomplishment. At least I went to bed knowing that today would be a good day, because I would be able to meet my deadline, having worked out all the glitches ahead of time. But would I have believed that tomorrow would be a good day if I didn’t resolve my problems before bed? Would I have been able to reconcile to lost time, or the guilt that comes with having turned into a tunnel-visioned tech beast for an entire day? Hmmm…..

So now, I’m off to try to launch my sites. Wish me luck in exorcising the tech demons in this brand-spanking new day. It is a new day, after all.

Saturday Morning Coffee - Reader's Edition

A brief history of books, 1980-1995.

I have read, read, and re-read an infinitely countless number of books in my life.  I was a wormy, wormy kid. And it all started with: The Adolescent Series.

When I was in 1^st grade and read Francine Pascal’s first book in the revolutionary new  ‘The Sweet Valley Twins’ series. I remember it well, as I had probably read it once a month for a three year period. It had a soft pink cover with a picture of  blond haired and blue eyed twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield: ‘Best Friends’ was its title. I read the second book ‘Teacher’s pet’ in rapid succession. I was hooked. This extended into a love for all pre-teen series new and old - the Sleepover friends,  the Babysitter’s club, anything Ramona Quimby, the Little House on the Prairie, The Bobbsy Twins. And of course, for that super sleuth Encyclopedia Brown.

 The content of the books matured with me. To my repertoire, I added RL Stine’s Fear Street books and Francine Pascal’s next-generation series, Sweet Valley High. Fear Street was a gateway series to creepy Christopher Pike and a bit later to Dean Koontz and John Saul (not to be confused with John Ralston Saul, the great Canadian author and philosopher).

At some point in my life, I have probably owned every volume in each of the above-mentioned series, and I’m certain I have read each book at least 5 times. I remember the way they looked, classed among their clans, all lined up along the long bookshelves that ran across my wall from one end of the room to the other. I remember how well I knew those collections, and what each individual name and number meant to me. Which characters I wanted to be. Which characters I identified with. Which characters I wished were incarnate, so I could befriend them. I remember, too, how I would go to the bookshelf every evening and pull off a book that fit with what I wanted to feel, because I somehow knew how to do that. Funny – I didn’t know that that’s what I was doing, but I was.

It’s also funny to think that though I have in my lifetime read many thought-provoking, challenging, clever, and intelligent books, I owe my love of reading and writing to cheap adolescent novellas. The kinds of books that I now steer clear of. But without them, I would not be the person I am today.

But I do want to mention that aside from the different series I have mentioned, there are a number of individual books that have been etched in my memory as being significant landmarks along my childhood journey.  If you have read these books, you will probably let out a little ‘YES!’ as you identify with the significance of them in your life as well – as the books in this list have an extra ounce of lasting power. And if you haven’t read them – do at least read the ones I have marked with asterisks!!!

This list is not a complete list of all the awesome books that were available when I was a kid – or that were necessarily entirely popular – but of the ones that I remember reading over, and over, and over….

A Doll in the Garden

King of the Wind**

Little Women

The Secret of Nhymh

Island of the Blue Dolphins**

Hatchet**

The Secret Garden

Charlotte’s web

Charlie and the Chocolate factory

The Little Prince**

Are you there God, it’s me Margaret (on the fringe of my pre-teen into my teen years – I’ll conclude this list with it, and kick off the next list from here next time.)

Consider how a good book can affect your attitude, your mood, your outlook on life. Consider how a book can inform your worldview.  Consider how a well-written or well-concocted story can make you appreciate the unique gift of another person to bring a story to life. Consider how remembering a book you loved as a child can make you burst out in a fit of joy as you reminisce with friends, as though you have rediscovered something you had lost. It happens to me all the time.

Stay tuned for a Brief History of Books, 1995-2010.

Kisses.

Kisses.
Originally uploaded by Joanne Abraham Photography


Bisous. Kisses in french.

I have a new fascination with light in the darkness (in this case, literally speaking, but I suppose I could easily argue for the proverbial application). 

It all started with my name, but now... I have bigger plans. Time for me to invest in a few different flashlights, I think...and some color gels....

Any suggestions for my next drawing? I want to work my way up to complex images, but I need to start small. If you suggest it, I promise I will try it out and post it on here for you to scrutinize.

My name in lights.

My name in lights.
Originally uploaded by Joanne Abraham Photography

I heart aurora.

I heart aurora.

Saturday Morning Coffee

 First, let me establish the saturday morning convention. I blog every saturday morning, always with coffee in hand. I have been calling the posts 'TMCNL' - (today's morning coffee and nordic lesson) - but I have decided to be a bit more generic in my title so that there's a bit more room to move. So the convention is NOT that I necessarily give you some wisdom about the north, but that I write on saturday mornings about something you can read while you too have your coffee time. I hope that they can be a bit more interactive, too - I want to hear your thoughts. The other convention is that I have to take a picture of myself that morning...just so we can connect in real time. So, this morning Rosie, sporting her nifty purple tights and pioneer camp hoodie, joined me in my bedheaded and pyjamaed photo shoot.

I digress.

Years ago I read something lastingly profound in what turned out to be one of the most influential books I have ever read. It’s an image that, while incredibly and specifically  pertinent to that season of my life at that particular time 10 years ago, still anchors me, still speaks volumes of simple wisdom to me.

Here it is:

 [God] wants to bring man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and KNOW it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. [God] wants him in the end to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor’s talents – or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall…

The wisdom goes on and on from there. That whole chapter reeks (a sweet patchouli-nag champa-tea tree-mint-citrus-infused reeking) of freedom, celebration, and vision. That we might be able to REALLY enjoy who we are, and not have to stoop to a kind of false humility that causes us to pretend we’re no good, or on the flip side, to become so obsessed with or paranoid about who we are that we can’t escape our own narcissistic grip.

That we might truly care about seeing the world, this proverbial cathedral, being built to house its global congregation – and to not care so much about being recognized for having our hand in it as to truly truly truly desire to see it built, knowing it is GOOD! To have the vision and hope it takes to foresee what the cathedral could truly be. To be so moved by the vision that it becomes impossible not to act, and yet to truly be free to do so. To experience freedom from the overwhelming anxiety that comes with an expectation to contribute, by replacing obligation with desire, by means of a renewed perspective of what it really means to LIVE.

A million and one wonderful thoughts (not necessarily classifiable as conclusions) can be drawn from this man’s wise view of the world, even if just from these few pages. I’ll try not to beat a dead horse here…I have been known to exhaust a thought by being too verbose. If you have a thought to contribute to this, please share your thoughts below. Let’s get some audience interaction going here.

PS- I’m stealing Kerianne and Cory’s idea  from their blogged journey through south America: first person to tell me what book I’m quoting from (and who the author is) gets a special NWT postcard from yours truly. No cheating! Your guess must from your own mental archives… not google  J  

Wine List

I realize that I have not mentioned my Thursday night wine list in a while. If anyone is looking for recommendations for new wines to try, I’m going to suggest shopping in the French isle.

French is maybe cliché as far as wine goes, and I’ve never been interested in them until now. I’ve gone through looooooong phases of Australian Shiraz (bin 555, for a hearty choice) – because, I always thought, how can you go wrong with Yellowtail? Then I shifted to a full year of Argentinean Malbecs. Tasty, reliable, full-bodied, smooth malbecs. A winner amongst former Shiraz drinkers. Well….my tastes have changed.

The dry and thin tastes of France and Italy have stolen my heart…and my tastebuds. I stumbled upon Chateauneuf du Pape a couple of months back (my first and most hearty recommendation), and now have made it around the Hay River liquor store represented-country circuit. This week I settled on a simple and homemade-looking bottle of Bouchard Ainé et Fils….merlot! No matter what Paul Giamatti may say, merlots have made it back into my good books.

Looking for a new wine to try? Try Bouchard Ainé et Fils, and watch the taste evolve over time. At first crack, it tingles the tip of the tongue. Interesting. Tangy. Let it sit a bit, and taste the way it rounds out and becomes fuller over time. I always taste it immediately after opening, have a half glass, to see what it’s like at first birth. Then another half glass after it has had a chance to mellow at least an hour or two. Then a glass the next day, to see what a day can do. Write down what you observe. It will change the way you taste.

Practice being observant. It will change the way you live. Er, and drink.

TMCNL3

(Today's morning coffee and nordic lesson 3)

I left for two weeks, and in that short amount of time, light has returned to Hay River. I suppose the science of it is that after December 21^st, the days get longer more quickly here because of our angle to the sun compared to the angle of you more southerly folk. So while your days get longer by maybe 2 minutes a day, ours are getting longer by 4. So it adds up quickly. My daily ritual of getting up a couple of hours before going to work is getting sweeter and sweeter. It’s no longer pitch black when I leave the house at 8:45am! I can’t wait until the sun greets me when I rise. My guess is that will happen sometime in April. I’ll keep you posted.

There is a fundraiser for Haiti today at École Boréale, the francophone school in town. Garage sale, BBQ, face painting, Quebecois hippie threaded hair, music. A small town shindig. Haitians could probably not fathom our living conditions, just as we cannot fathom theirs – but we’re connecting. The world is really just not all that big.

Speaking of a small world, have I ever talked about how small it really is up north? I don’t think I have. Excuse me, then, if I am repeating myself. But the longer I live up here, the more I understand that though this land is vast, the community is small.

Let me paint a picture for you:

 I live in the Northwest territories, a gigantesque hunk of land. I am an hour and half north of the northern Alberta border (or, as I’ve said before, about 1100 km north of Edmonton). But there is STILL way over 1000km to the north of where I am.

There are a good number of little communities scattered and distanced about this limitless NWT, Hay River being I think the 3^rd largest at 3500. (Only Yellowknife (20 000) and Inuvik (4000) have got us beat). Most other communities’ populations are in the hundreds, definitely not the thousands.

Let me do some territorial town name-dropping, see if you’re brushed up on your northern Canadian geography:

The southerlies (south-ish of Yellowknife):

Fort Smith, Fort Resolution, Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, Fort Liard, Hay River

The northerlies: (north-ish of Yellowknife)

Rae-Edzo, Wha-ti, Deline, Dettah, Norman Wells, Tulita, Lutzelk'e, Aklavik, Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk, Paulatuk

Now these names may be foreign to you for the most part, but I hear about them every single day. The names of these towns (and, more astoundingly, the people in them) are part of daily news, business, and conversation. So now, when I start my day off waking up to CBC news north, I always know what they are talking about. I have my bearings in the NWT. And to bring me to my point about the small worlded-ness of the seemingly endless territories – I usually know WHO they are talking about, even if it’s in a town I’ve never been to, 800kms away. Partly because of small town talk and gossip, partly because the north shares the same newspapers, partly because the north has defied the law of 6 degrees of separation by reducing it to 1 or 2.

So it doesn’t take much to be famous up here.

Funny story:

For the last 2 years, I have subscribed to the CBC’s ‘The North This Week’ podcast (a condensed and abridged radio program you can download after the broadcast), knowing I would be northern-bound someday. I didn’t have a sense of where things were, and the names of towns were a mystery to me, but I enjoyed hearing about what was going on up in that huge cold space, which I imagined to be a bit more populated and far more disconnected than it actually is.

So once I got up here, I somehow went 2 months without listening to that podcast. Maybe because I had the straight feed from CBC radio anyway. Anyway, I put it on one morning, seeing that I had a whole bunch of podcasts to catch up on. I chose one at random. Within 5 minutes, I realized that these places and names of people no longer belonged to some huge, unknowable place – but to a world I was beginning to naturally become a part of. Within 10 minutes, it went beyond just familiar context – because what I heard next was a familiar voice. My friend Kevin was being interviewed. Now, Kevin is kind of a northern Big-Deal as it is (ha!), so it’s not really a surprise. But had I been in Abbotsford, tuning in, his voice would have been part of the anonymous bigness of the north – but instead, his voice became a part of the very personal smallness of it.

I have more stories like this one. Almost every time I read a newpaper, I know the people in the pictures, or at the very least, know who they are. My theory is that there are about 4 famous people in every town, and you can guarantee they’ll make almost every issue. You can also guarantee that you’re only 1 degree away from them.

Un Cadeau.

 I just got back from a trip. A life-giving, heart challenging, identity enriching, value-clarifying trip. And it took 10 planes to do the trick.

I attended an artist’s retreat in Woodland Park, Colorado, home of my ready-to-burst pregnant BFF. We were talking about our gifts and desires as artists…mmm, just as people actually… and the many complexities that are part and parcel to exercising (and occasionally, exorcising) them. We talked about the way our abilities and inabilities seem to bear on…no, stronger….threaten our identities. We either feel pigeonholed by what people perceive us to be good at, inadequate compared to what other do better than ourselves, foggy about our purpose and vision, and/or, as is often my case, unable to move forward for a million and one good reasons…blah, blah, and blah.

And so we are often crippled.

While we stumble about, we lose the connection to who we actually are/were to begin with – and that’s where the fun begins. We are afraid to lose our whole selves as we stumble in the darkness...so we can’t let go of the ways we give ourselves value. To do that would threaten our existence. If I am a musician, to not be known as a musician (not to mention with a certain level of competence) might threaten my entire sense of purpose, of belonging, of importance. Think about it – how many times do we see people fall from great heights? Could it not be traced, almost every time, to a case of misplaced identity? Because if we really know who we are, we in theory should not be destroyed by failure, by incompetence, or by a case of have-not or have-not-anymore. And what, then, for those who do not yet have a recognized or recognizable ability? Are they just less lucky? Or do they not still have something incredible inside of them to offer to those around them, intangible and low-profile though it may be?

If we could know who we are, really - at the centre of the volcano, at the base of the iceberg, at the core of the hearts – would we not live differently? Would we not be able to better love, to better give, to better promote true life? Knowing that we are unshakable, because our identity is not dependent upon the peripherals, which shift and shake and change? The peripherals can be lovely, but how much more lovely can they be if they are the fruit of an unshakable seed?

So – something tangible. I say all this fluff, and now I give you something firm: you (you, you, YOU) are a gift. Aside from your abilities. Aside from your inabilities. Aside from your insecurity. Your doubt. Your guilt. Your jealousy. Your desires. And so whatever your problem is – whether you’re too good (ha!) or not good enough – who you are (and therefore the joy and hope, freedom from oppression that you can impart to others from that place) is not subject to what you do. So be free, little trifflewig, be free!

Hydratin'

Curious Bear

Curious Bear
Originally uploaded by Joanne Abraham Photography

Today's Morning Coffee and Nordic Lessons 2 (TMCNL 2)

Grab your morning coffee and come sip with me. Ok, if you’re a morning coffee drinker like me, it’s already too late for your morning coffee. Let’s call it elevenzies.

Do you copy when I say ‘the greyhound demographic’? Let me rephrase that. If I were to talk about the types of people you might find skulking around busses and depots, you would capische, right?

A couple of weeks ago I became an honorary member of the bus riding demographic. Because it is approximately 650$ less to take the bus to Edmonton than it is to fly. Believe it or not, to get from Hay River to Edmonton, which is exactly 1000km, 2 hours by plane, 10ish hours by car, or 16 hours by grayhound…it costs anywhere from $800 to $1400 to fly. Unless you are a lucky duck that gets wind of a rare seat sale (which to my knowledge, has not ever occurred other than in Nordic mythology). Or unless you work for the government, who will buy your ticket for you, at approximately 11 times the cost, without batting their territorial eye.

Now that we’re on the subject of travel costs, let’s move on to the educational segment of this post. Allow me to enlighten you with all of the recent discoveries I have made regarding northern travel, both endo and exo.

1. Hay River has a small airport that flies to only 2 places: Yellowknife (40 min flight) or Edmonton (3hr flight), the closest major airports. There is no such thing as a package deal out of this place – you buy your flight to one of the 2 major-ish airports, and then make all further travel arrangements separately. All my life I have lived near major airports. I never knew what a luxury that was. I wonder what percentage of Canadians DON’T live near a major airport? I have sympathy now for the extra financial burden (not to mention major inconvenience) it imposes.

2. Flight costs out of Hay River are as follows:

                 to Yellowknife: Buffalo, $330 round trip.

                                      First Air, $400-$500 round trip.

                                   (let’s guess which one the government uses?)

                 to Edmonton: Northern Airlines, $1340

3. To get to Edmonton from Hay River, you then have two flight path options:  the cheapest, indirect through Yellowknife which costs approximately $800 ($330 with buffalo, then the other leg with another airline); the more expensive, direct to Edmonton, at $1340. Let’s take another guess at the sole user of that airline….

3. If you take the cheaper, indirect route through Yellowknife, you will always have a 4 hour layover in an abbotsford-sized airport. Always. Apparently, all flights arrive sometime around 9am, and all flights depart sometime around 1pm.

4. Say you want to go somewhere OTHER than Yellowknife or Edmonton (which if you’re a government employee is unlikely…except maybe if you’re French, in which case you go to Winnipeg). Then you basically HAVE to get to Edmonton to get anywhere else*. You’ve already got your $800-$1400 ticket and 9 wasted hours to get you to Edmonton…now add your final destination to the total. You’re looking at a minimum of $1000 to get anywhere…plus an entire day of traveling, IF your connections work out nicely. For a town that only takes 10 hours to drive to from Edmonton, you’d swear we’re in Iceland.

footnote*not entirely true. I found a loophole. Continue reading for further enlightenment.

5. When you live far from a major airport, and you want to visit your best friend on the same continent who also (though not as dramatically) does not live near a major airport, it costs about as much as flying to Madagascar.

6. To prove point #5, I will give you a supporting example. I was recently trying to book a trip to Colorado to visit Karla. Simple enough. I’ve been before, it cost me around  $250 to get there and back. Ahhhh…but from Seattle. Domestic flights within the states are pretty dang cheap. So I arrive at complication number one: I am about as far as I can get from the US border. Not an option. Must take an international flight – now my cost doubles. Ok, fine. OK, international flight to Colorado. No problem. I’ll book it from Edmonton. Oh wait, it costs minimum $800 to get there, then it’s about $600 to Denver….. $1400 for a one week vacation within north America. Okay, there must be another way. I’d drive to Edmonton, but I don’t have winter tires on my car, I don’t trust my little civic in this cold, and what if there’s a storm or I hit the ditch and can’t get to my flight in time? Ahhh….full circle back to grayhound. Very affordable option – $160 return if I book three weeks in advance. But 16 hours each way. I know the route well, considering I did it just a couple of weeks ago. Ok, a 16 hour bus ride, I can do it again. Let’s check the connections – leave Hay River at 8am, arrive Edmonton at midnight…no flight out to the states until 6:40am. Flights out at that time to Denver all have stops in other cities, so I would arrive in Denver at 4pm. Okay, one and a half full travel days to get to Denver – gross and long, but at least I can afford it. Wait, Karla doesn’t live near Denver. I have to get to Colorado Springs, which is about a 2 hour drive away – or more with rush hour…which is when I’d be arriving. Ok, how do I get to Colorado springs? Bus? 70 bucks each way. Plane from Edmonton? Tack on another 200 bucks, since you really just connect through Denver anyway. Not to mention that we’re also adding time here. So I would finally arrive at Colorado springs, either having spent 1 million dollars flying all the way ( I think it works out to $1600) and a full day traveling..or bussing a total of 18 hours and flying 5 hours each direction, and spending $900.  Great options, eh? I love you Karla, but I could be going to Europe.

7. There are loopholes, such as Westjet seat sales from Yellowknife direct to Vancouver for a little over a hundred bucks each way. Hmmmmm…..Vancouver….that’s close to Seattle! Just get  a ride across the border and all of a sudden….direct flights to COLORADO SPRINGS (not even Denver!) for another hundred bucks each way. Yellowknife to Colorado Springs for 500 bucks. Ok, now we’re talking. The ridiculous thing is that my 40 minute flight north (the wrong direction) across great slave lake to Yellowknife from Hay River costs me twice as much as the others. Oh well….suck it up, princess.

So I am sadly not going to become one with the depot demographic this time around – I suppose I have risen above. Which is too bad, because when I had the experience of a few weeks ago I found a lot of fodder for creativity. I scribbled furiously on a big notepad for hours, about skittish Eugene and his meager plastic bag and the corrections officer that left him at the depot… about Bill the bus driver who told me of how left Hong Kong to give his boys freedom and enjoyment in education…about the old aboriginal man with tourettes freezing on the side of the road waiting for the bus in middle-of-nowhere Meander River…about the homeless couple that camps out the Edmonton depot, always walking purposefully about from one end to the other with blakets around their necks and with a single duffel bag filled everything they own, tagged with official greyhound tags as they masquerade as travelers for dignity’s sake….about the frenzied Chinese man that spent 15 stressful minutes trying to get the arm of his chair to lift, then another 10 trying to get his seat back to recline again after having not having noticed that he had accidentally triggered it to pop upright, thinking it was the button for the arm…about me, listening to Jupiter Winter by Sufjan Stevens, clicking my teeth and blinking my eyes to the beat of each passing pole, pretending I’m in some independent film about a girl discovering some great truth (as inspired and suggested by the epic tune playing in her gigantic headphones) traveling alone towards some great destination on Christmas eve.  Amazing, the kinds of characters you find lurking around bus depots and hiding out in their busses. The kinds of people who can’t afford to fly. Is it any wonder? I guess I’m one of them…

…well, not anymore.

It is cold.

NWT-918
Originally uploaded by Joanne Abraham Photography

It is cold today. But not in measurable terms, unless you count skin pain and swollen hands as valid measures as degrees C, F, and K.

Good thing there are beautiful things to keep your mind off the weather.

Today's morning coffee and nordic lesson

Ahhhhhhhh......it just doesn't get better than morning coffee. The single most enjoyable part of every day.  Er, is that shallow?

 When I first moved here, I had a beautiful morning ritual (which I explained in great detail in an earlier post, for those of you that follow). But since the land of the midnight sun has become the land of perpetual dusk in the winter months, I have been unable to maintain it. Every wink of sleep more I can steal, I steal - which, as those of you who know me as an early-bird-catching-worms, is slightly unusual for me. Turns out I am not immune to the slumbering, lumbering effects of darkness.

Oh, don't get me wrong. It's not pitch black all the time here - I'm not far enough north for that. Allow me to educate you on this matter. I receive lots of southern inquiries into what it's really like up here: Is it dark all day? Are there any trees up there? Inuit hunting seals? Have you tried blubber?...you know, typical clarifications on the very little we know of our Canadian North. Which is not a criticism on my part....because I thought I knew stuff before I moved here, and it turns out I didn't. I knew a bit about mythology and tradition, but nothing about the lay of the land, the population, current affairs. So here are a few little notes to help you understand where I am, and what I've learned about the Vast, Great, and White North. You might want to keep referring to a map to help it all make sense:

1. I live in Hay River. It is both affectionately, practically, and clichéedly referred to as the 'Hub of the North', as it is transport centre of the NWT. The highway is paved all the way here from Alberta and the railroad passes through, so all goods pass through Hay River before going out to more remote places via plane, bus, or boat. The population of Hay River is around 3500. We have 2 grocery stores, 2 hardware stores, an arena and rec centre, and about a block's worth of other random shops. It's bigger than you would think. But maybe smaller than you would like (unless you're like me, who misses life in lil' ol' Princeton!)

2. The canadian show 'North of 60' was called 'North of 60' because the territories are all north of the 60th parallel. Common knowledge, ok.... but to some of you it's news. But the 60th parallel is not really that far north, really. Considering it's only a 9ish hour drive from Edmonton. It is NOT the arctic. The 60th parallel is NOT synonymous with the term arctic.

3. The term arctic coloquially refers to the area north of the treeline, but more precisely refers to the actual arctic circle....where it really is night all day, all winter long. Here in Hay River, we have lots of trees, and we are just in solar limbo. Here it is pitch black until 9am,  dawn until 11:30am, then at noon the sun begins to head towards dusk, then to full black night by 4:30. And the sun lays fairly low in the sky all day -  all day long shadows are cast, making it feel like perpetual dusk.  I'm told that summertime in Hay River means daylight until midnight, then dusk all night long. No full black. I'll confirm if this is true come july.

4. Hay River is only about an hour and a bit north of the 60th parallel. So if you drive due north from Edmonton, you'll hit the Alberta-NWT border in about 9-10 hours (well....summertime driving anyway),  take a photo by the sweet Northwest Territories sign planted at the 60th parallel, drive another hour, stop at the beautiful gorge and waterfalls just before you hit the no-man's land town of Enterprise, eat a meal at Winnie's diner, then continue another 25 minutes up the road to Hay River, on the southernmost shore of Great Slave Lake (which is not to be confused with Slave Lake, which you'd have passed by on your way through northern Alberta...the lake up here is, well, Greater.) And instead of continuing to the southern shore of the Great Slave via Hay River, you could also have decided to take one of the very few forks in the northern roads, back at Enterprise, to head due west then north around Great Slave Lake towards Yellowknife via Fort Providence. And shoot some buffalo while you're at it.

5. Great Slave Lake is really quite large. Peripherally oceanic, from the southern beach's perspective. Yellowknife is really right across the lake from us, on the northern shore, but it takes a 45 minute plane ride with Buffalo Joe or a 5 and a half hour detour by car along the west side to get there. It's a big lake.

6.  Buffalo Joe is our local Hero. He is the star of Ice Pilots NWT, a new show on the history channel. Many of you are already watching it.  Joe and his crew fly old war cargo planes...for daily passenger flights to and from Yellowknife. They had the world première party here in Hay River, his hometown. I went. I watched the first episode with a bunch of Hay Riverites that know Joe, have flown with him often, and that cheered every time they knew someone else in the show...because it's just that small of a world up here. Buffalo Joe himself gave me a t-shirt. I almost fainted at my brush with fame.

PS- I just saw him again this morning. And I patted his dog  a few weeks ago. I'm basically famous.

7. The Ravens should be counted as part of the population. They are as big and as loud as a real person. And they really do laugh. And they comprise the majority of the wildlife you will see up here. My animal count so far:  Foxes - 1, Ptarmigan - 10, Buffalo - 5, Rabbits - 3, Wolves - 0, Caribou - 0, Moose - 0, Bears - 0 , Ravens - One Billion. If I were to have to make a pie chart, you see how the average percentages would difficult to even calculate, let alone section into slices of pie, given such a margin of difference.

Well, that's all for this morning's lesson. Stay tuned for more coffee time with Joanne.

On the agenda for today: Yogurt and granola, Snowshoeing, Turkey Stew. Hmmm.  Somehow my agendas are predominantly comprised of food related activities. Sweden 30 pounder, here I come.

...and a-Ptarmigan huntin' we will go....

NWT-914
Originally uploaded by Joanne Abraham Photography

Yesterday my friend Adam and I skulked around the in the woods. He was hoping to find lynx. We found Ptarmigan instead. We shot them, like we shot the bison. Note his weapon of choice. It's a cruel life here in the great white north. No sissies allowed. Hawksely would agree.

Adventure Adschmenture

What I have learned about me by not being ridiculously busy for the first time in a decade:

1. I am a procrastinator. I had my suspicions in the past, but it has been confirmed. In the past it was never obvious because I was always working on ten things at once,  and while each thing was put off to the very last minute, I was busy all the while. There was always daily deadline. With no sense of immediacy or urgency, I putter … even more than Ben Braun-Kauffman. Because there is always something to accomplish in puttering. It’s just harder to measure. 
2. I will always and forever wish for more time. I will always yearn for the mythical Someday, when I will be able to release and act upon projects that remain blurrily confined to my brain. These ideas will always grow and spread in painful and inspiring spurts, and my desire to accomplish them will always be eventually converted into guilt or pressure. Even if I have the time to do them.
3. I am 75% ideas, 25% action. I always thought I would readily take action on my ideas if I were (in the mythical Someday) granted to time and space to do it – I hoped I was a more balanced 50/50 split. Turns out, as I am now living in the not-so-intangible mythical Someday, I’m only a really devoted do-er when I have a full schedule and I have no choice but to get ‘er done.  But lighten the load on my plate…(see item #1 above)
4. I have a lot of ideas.
5. I am afraid of taking on a major project on my own. I’ve been talking about writing all year, and was waiting for the opportunity to be away from my normal distractions and commitments to give my brain room to de-fuzz from fatigue and busyness. Now I’m supposedly in it. And I revert back to items #1 and #2. And then taking #4 into account in conjunction with #3…well, you see where that leads...
6. I need people to keep me going, to hold me accountable, to inspire me, to bounce ideas off of, to collaborate with, to goof off with, to run around outside with, to adventure with, to get me out of my head and to keep me from going too far inside it for too long. I might think I’d rather be alone, I might think I need to be free and totally independent, I might think I would like to be hermit. But I need to connect. I am neither rock nor island, as it turns out.

Conclusions:

This year’s adventure – leaving Abbotsford at the end of June to travel across Canada and perform in living rooms and backyards, and venturing north of 60 to satiate some longtime Mowatian desire to experience one of the most Canadian parts of Canada – has not been about what I thought it was going to be about. It is not about finally having the time to write a play. It has not been about organizing the digital archives of the thousands upon thousands of photos I’ve taken over the course of the last few years. It has not been about becoming Heather Rose so that I can feel less like a fraud when I tell her story. It has not been about reconnecting with my French roots. It has not been about better understanding the plight of the Inuit or the First Nations people of Canada… or what Farley Mowat and John Ralston Saul and by extension maybe even Louis Riel are all about.

So far as I can tell, it’s been more about discovering different elements in myself, removed from the me I have come to know in the last decade. To experience firsthand the variability of the properties of character, of faith, of pride, of skill, of a sense of belonging, of a sense of self. To see how environment and habit shape and define. To observe and take stock of who I am in quiet, when no one else is looking...well, besides maybe Rosie. And to be inspired by the opportunity to do so.

And the 6 items listed above, which are neither Gospel nor complete, are things that I have been observing in myself as being slightly … different… than I would have liked to see in myself when I imagined living in the mythical Someday (though simultaneously confirming niggling suspicions I may have had). Because one might say that I’m living in that mythical Someday, since I took a year to get away and chip away at my dreams of writing and being bored. And I suppose I want to object that I’m not living a true mythical Someday, since the ideal mythical Someday should always be just a bit out of reach, since we like to romanticize everything anyway. The mythical Someday will never be what you imagined it to be, because in your dreamy projections, Someday holds no limits. I have limits here. My brain is still often fuzzy. I have a job in the real world that is lovely but consumes my energy and my brain – I can’t leave it behind at 5pm. I am tired when the winter sun tells me I should be tired – until 10am and after 4pm – which leaves me very few personal brain productivity hours, and none outside of work time. I still don’t know how to sit still without guilt, so I’m forcing myself to do absolutely nothing and work through my subsequent heart palpitations. I’m still learning what I’m like and what I do when I have no obligations, and when no one has expectations of me. All that to say that though I’ve been headed towards my mythical Someday, a deliberate time to work through the dreams I’ve always told myself I’d get to “Someday when my life allowed for it”, it is not as romantic or as lofty as it was in my projections.  Which I knew I would discover…just as I knew I might discover the 6 things…but needed to experience first-hand. I needed to know what part of me operates in fairytale. And it’s been worth it.

It’s always worth it. Every moment is significant, every experience is valuable. I’ve realized over the last few weeks - as my body is becoming increasingly less tolerant of dark days and as the novelty of adventure wears thin as it grates against awareness of the geographical distance between me and the people that I know and love, and that know and love me – that I often try to be quite conclusive, reasonable, and constant in my feelings about things… when in all honesty I'm experiencing polarized emotions simultaneously. How can I love it so much here , and dream of all the amazing things that could come out of staying here indefinitely ….and the next moment be longing for my old community or for my family? For the mountains and the ocean? The answer is in reconciliation. Life and our feelings towards it are not cut and dry, black and white, crisp and clean. My pull in two opposite directions does not have to be contradictory. The fact that my Someday now occasionally shifts from Arctic back to West Coast does not negate my reasons for coming here in the first place, or make my love of life here less real, though I’d want to err on that side of thought when I’m in secondguessing mode. Hey, I’m only human. I will always sweeten the past and idealize the future…and take the present with a healthy dose of criticism. It’s what I do. So, then,  I suppose that makes the present is the only real part. Which is why it’s worth it. I’ll take authenticity for 500 please, Alex. Ooooo...well, let’s make it a true daily double!

Every so often I function in fairytale – sipping wine, sampling dark chocolate, and nibbling on goat cheese while I wait to be handed inspiration on a silver platter, and dream of the day  (er, the Someday) when it all falls into place. When my gifts and abilities make sense together. When I feel like my sense of purpose in my vocation is actually enough. When I find success in blazing some kind of sustainable grassroots artistic trail. But I won’t be disappointed for what I have not yet produced. Or what I have failed to live up to. I am more than the sum of my parts, I am far more than my job + my skills + my dreams. My identity is not threatened by failure, by inability, or by shame.  I am a child of God. That’s what matters.

And I’m getting a better idea of how often I wait for mythical Somedays…and am reconciling myself to the fact that I always will. It’s who I am.

Unless of course, you (a living human being) give me deadline. Then I’m in like Flynn.