[...I was on the fence, and I never wanted your two cents...]

Been somebody else for so long. I can barely recall what it's like to be me. 

Will anything I've accomplished be kept, having been somebody else for so long?

Who was I in that year-long dream?

Does she differ?

I remember climbing on rooftops.

I remember drinking the evenings away happily, as wonderful, electric emotions played with my body.

I remember running about in the city of trees.

I remember boys and their sweaters.

I'm neither who I was before nor who I was during.

All I know is that I like a song that was introduced to me today.

I have no clue who I am.

Seeking the parents of our lives, like benevolent trees. 

My mind plays three games with me, often: Logic, poetry and play. Like rolling down a hill, I often get carried away by a chaotic madness, fitting piece after piece together, of the substances that make up life. There is great satisfaction in the world of rational construction, especially when exploring the human being. We are constructed by such fascinating materials, all existing only because of their relation to each other, and within their relations there are infinite mysterious variables that lead to more and more paths of inquiry. 

But we can get lost in the world of reason. In our tumbling, we must pause and remember poetry. We must blink our eyes and take in the purity of the air, of the red twigs against the green grass speckled with white. We must do this and forget to break vision down into cones and rods, we must breath and forget the functions of oxygen. We must feel our beating hearts and remember what, and whom, increases their intensity.

But play, who can forget play in the scope of being. Without play, poetry would feel empty, reason would feel hopeless. Here, we celebrate relation in its purest benevolence. We celebrate joys, passions both large and small. We celebrate smiles, we celebrate noses, we celebrate toeses. Play is when we both forget and remember. Play is when we stop caring and care the most. 

[...So gather twilight to your breast...]

As winter solstice draws near, I hover excitedly on the brink of my newly revived life. Seasons do accompany us through our journeys. That is why we celebrate new light on the darkest days. We celebrate birth, we celebrate hope and excitement, we celebrate the year behind us and we celebrate the year to come. 

Winter solstice is one of my favourite points on this earthly calendar. Even though today the day will be longer than the first day after solstice, the first day after solstice feels brighter because of what is to come. Solstice is the last night of six months' worth of growing nights, and the first day of six months' worth of growing days. Who would not look forward to that first morning?

Easter mimics much of the same mentality. Through the darkest, coldest, deadest days of winter, Easter marks the coming of Spring. Forgetting all we know about our conceptions of Christianity, at the heart of its essence, it is a death and a rebirth. At King's, we have an Easter service in which the dark chapel is interrupted by a single candle that is lit at midnight. Everyone already holds a small candle, and the single flame is passed from neighbour to neighbour, until the entire chapel is illuminated and warmed by the flames of a hundred candles. Regardless of belief, the aesthetic impression of the single flame multiplying into hundreds within minutes is breathtaking. The meaning of it is wholly present and yet unspoken - unspeakable - in everyone witness to it.

Thus it is with me. Our transformations do not come instantaneously. We are not struck by a bullet, thrust into darkness and to soon again rise in the fullness of day. Rather, we shrink away into darkness like the waxing and waning of the winter days... But, from within the darkness, a candle is lit, the green of a seedling sprouts from underneath the melting snow, and the darkness slowly diminishes as light takes its place.

To begin life again at the dawn of winter is beautiful. The colour white, my favourite of all colours, encompasses all and wipes away the grime of old illusions. Against it, the richness of evergreens and the duskiness of bark calm me, as if they are drowsy, smiling animals, so content that their eyes take them to sleep. The shock of the cold is like the clarity of ice-water. The welcoming warmth of indoor fire is like the warm drink that puts us to sleep.

The world to come excites me so much I am almost afraid I won't be able to contain myself. Colours, tones and materials put me into a state of frenzy. Learning makes my heart sing. Reading is unbearable because my desire moves faster than my eyes. I must be drinking the herbs and evergreens because I am drunk from them and wanting more. It breaks my heart to see the dogs running in the park, because against my desire, I could never bind them to me infinitely, inseparable from their roving spirits, sharing our insatiable hunger and excitement for life.

To be reborn into the darkness of winter. To set my beeswax to flame and walk alongside the growing days. I am grateful to the seasons for this blessing. 

[...The sorting of seeds and grain...]

I didn't know where to put what, so I put it all in you.

[ The sorting of seeds and grain ]

Division is present. Necessary. In uniting the whole.

Which are seeds that need growing? In what soil do I plant them? 

Which is wheat, ready to be ground and baked into bread?

Which are oats, steel-cut and ready to boil?

Which seeds and grains are these?

How do I tell them apart?

What are they, and

What do they need?

Where do they go?

...

I delved them all into your soil, whether seed or grain, desperate to unload them from my carrying. Desperate to see something grow so I could feast from the table of our union...

But the myths already tell us otherwise. From barley does not grow bread. 

So Vasilissa sorted grain. As did Psyche.

As have I.

Patient, yes.

I was once in some woods (literally). I didn't know who I was. I felt like I'd been wandering down the wrong path (metaphorically). I didn't know who I was.

I wandered to my heart's desire (literally). Though he was chopping wood, he wasn't being what I wanted him to be. I wandered away (metaphorically). I wandered away (literally). I didn't know who I was.

I wasn't being what he wanted me to be. And he wandered away (metaphorically). And I wandered away (literally). Because he wasn't being what I wanted him to be.

He wasn't being what I wanted him to be, because he wasn't being me. 

And.

He wasn't being what I wanted him to be, because he wasn't being what I wanted me to be. I didn't know who I was, so I imagined who I should like to be. So I thought, I better leave, so I can be me. Rather, I better leave, so I can find that thing, that I should be. (Because it isn't in he).

I wasn't being what he wanted me to be. I didn't believe he'd love me if I was anybody. Or rather, if I was not anybody. If I wasn't being what he wanted me to be, he'd stop loving me. So if I wasn't going to know who I was, I would have to wander away.

But I loved him. So I tried to be, what he wanted me to be, and be me, and be who I thought I should be, unsuccessfully, anyway. But he wandered away, anyway.

Because he didn't know who he was.

Do we build upon what things should be? Or do we build upon what things are? What things should be are just ideals, they are just ideas. But then, how do we know what is? Aren't they just ideas too?

Perhaps I should stop drawing comparisons between things like city planning and my mental state. Even my relationship to my stove somehow becomes a metaphor for my psyche. There is wisdom everywhere it seems. "Hrmm, soup or pizza?... OhIcan'tdecideI'mconfused,fuckit... Ah! Suddenly! I understand your soul!"

Architecture paired with psychology is perhaps valid both in poetry and in life. Both in my metaphors and in my reality. But can a regional tax reform really be telling of my fragile personality? Should I base my psychological development on a document outlining by-laws put in place to curb urban growth? 

So... I touched. I became. Am I crumbling?

[...'Till clay-cauld death shall blind my e'e, I shall be thy dearie...]

[Cheeks radiate with love]

There is beauty in everything, especially the cold, still winter. The windows here have never told me anything I didn't want to hear. When all is encompassed in white, be it snow, sky, or the hidden essence of all colour in view, to me it breathes holy. 

We crawl into our holes like them beautiful animals. The squirrels and the birds they do know our dwellings too. Skins and hides hold our bodies sustained, while the fire, the fire does keep us. 

Dogs wail. The dogs they do cry for us; laughing when we arrive from the labour of wood and stone. We, in our cabins to bathe. Tea for the coldness of skin. 

Why is it that my feet always run out from underneath me?

I sing on to the cold glass,

Looking higher

and higher

into the winter's night

to see beyond the haze.

But as soon as I lift my gaze

My singing

and my breathing

Fog.

[...The phantom of love moves among us at will...]

On thinking upon my thinking:

Things, in their need to become, become what it is they need to be. 

The spirit of the world only allows for certain shapes, and it directs its growing cells into the shape of their appropriate forms. A tree is what happens when tree cells pile upon each other. A circulatory system the same. 

But these things, they must allow themselves to grow how their innermost beings desire them to grow. The natural world, which consumes so much (but seems to neglect a portion of the human spirit) grows naturally, and adheres to its given journeys of form*. 

(Note*: It does not know the shape it will be, until it has already become it. The future is thus undefined, and time cannot hold in secret that which does not exist.

There is no fate, only form. Form is desire. Desire is the movement of life. Life is the movement through dissonance to harmony.  Love is the journey through death to find life.)

What is this strange and mysterious portion of the human spirit that inspires so much deformity?

The delightful city of Halifax, the home my heart seems to have chosen for me, is becoming what it needs to be. It has it in its plans. Truth, it seems, is striking a chord in this little city, and the will of the people is protecting its spirit.

And myself?

[...And the little white dove made with love, made with love, made with glue and a glove and some pliers...]

Build me a house.

Build me; a house.

Build. Me; a house.

[ The newness of me ]

My loss was like the digging of a hole. A grave, dug from the soil that sustained me. Though somehow, from the loss of soil and the killing of trees, trampling over underbush and burrowing deeper, deeper and deeper... Though I've drowned in dirt and been buried in fog, I awake in the clearness of dawn and see: a foundation has been built. 

Find the posts. Build the walls, the windows and the doors. Build the roofs and the bannisters, boards and billowing beams, undulating through rooms of wood, plaster and stone. The panes of glass bordered in black, facing the east, feeling the first of mornings to come.

Build it: Build me. Newly born, barely formed, though deeper than before. Stronger than the gripping onto soil, onto leaves, breakable branches, facing night skies naked, pinned by bodies, pinned by nothing.

Weave me tapestries, set to walls, hiding secrets, telling stories. Bring me my fire, harvest me my ashes (to wash me down in soap). 

To be. To be me. Built of me, upon my loss.

The doors. They will be yours.

The interior of me, open to you...

 Always.

Has every artist a muse? Every Orpheus a Eurydice?

"Bury me in fire. And I'm gonna phoenix. I'm gonna phoenix."

Every phoenix has its fire.

...

To my gift from God - my sun - my fire,

When my house is fully formed - will you walk through my doors?

No longer inchoate nor inordinately infirm - will you feel free enough to roam my halls?

You saw me debilitated, decrepit and disabled. Ailing, feeble and weak. Groping through sand dunes, salt flats ("picking through your pocket linings"). I shot you with such insult. Injured you with such blindness. Begged you with such reckless indigence. 

How can I - could I - ever forgive myself?

I can't.

I don't. 

All I can do is build my house (upon the ashes of that crude and embryonic me).

And hope.

(What has happened cannot be undone. But new memories can be built. New battles can be won. With time, the newness of me can repair us, until soon we'll barely remember we ever were broken. Soon. [Not yet, though ready to wait patiently as I build, as you wander and unfurl] And hope will be my impetus.)

Love.

I am my love. It may be you, but it is mine, and it is me.

That is all I know.

[...'Solus' - ipse...]

Blinking at the new; unknown. Vacant and still. Silent and unsure.

I am afraid to do anything, lest I become what I touch.

cut from letters:

My mind is no where near overdrive... simply feeling a little unsettled and unresolved. Like I'm waiting for a kettle to boil with the heat on low... or some other unsatisfactory activity.

Little questions are falling down a ladder and going "plonk, plunk, plop," trickling down and falling into a puddle as I look on with blankness.

...

[...My clay-coloured motherlessness rangily reclines. Come on home, now. All my bones are dolorous with vines...]

Returning to my broken home, the tomatoes are choked and rotten. My eyes skim past the moistened brown leaves, drowning my dying plants as November comes to an end. 

I seem to remember finding peace for a time; peace in the prospect of healing and change. My rewards would continue to multiply, my loves to blossom. I would withdraw to my den in sorrow and in peace, let my wounds heal, and return to comfortable labour and after that, the return of my beloved. I could relax, and let the problems stew, and I would rest on them, and calm them with my hopeful strength.

Only, the beasts that had awoken in me continued to stir. I thought acknowledging their existence was the beginning of the end of the long-fought battle. But I was wrong. They had yet to reveal their full power to me.

The little garden I had planted, my little square plot of hope for new life, was not enough to sustain me. The demons that stewed in that old, broken house-hold began to eat at my very flesh. The wounds I suffered daily became too much to bare. I relied more and more heavily on the one person who gave me life, who was constantly weeks and months away from me, and it felt like a life-time (and yet from where I am now, I would give my life to return to those days when I knew he'd return). 

I followed my fleeing mother. And just like everything in that house, including me, my garden was abandoned. We are still hiding in our cave together, as the walls of that old house continue to fall into decay, and those who keep it allow the squalor to seek deeper into their bones.

I come back to it out of necessity, and find my tomato vines crowded and collapsed, their fruit, unripe and rotting on the ground beneath them. But behind them, accompanied by a city of weeds, there is something growing that I had forgotten. His mother's everbearing raspberry bushes. His everbearing raspberry bushes. Taken from his garden and planted in mine. Carved out of a decade of his life, bearing fruit that gave way to continuous memories. 

Even in the midst of the decaying home I have fled from, seeing these raspberries of his is the only thing of his that I can look upon that does not cause me pain. They are my only hope, my only beacon of light amidst the squalor and sorrow.

I tried to heal. I tried to fill my life with enough to sustain me, so that he would not have to bear me as a burden. But I failed. I failed him and I failed myself. Now he is gone, and there is nothing in me but death.

If I have wounded him, I would give anything to heal the damage I've caused. I will never stop loving him.

But it is scary to know that if you were to see someone and not be able to be with them, it would drive you to an insanity greater than imagination, and your only escape would be death.

[...Through the rest of my life, do you wait for me there?...]

To the one whom I have given my heart,

Carving a circle in my belly.

[...But always up the mountain side you're clambering, groping blindly, hungry for anything...]

Today I want to: take calculus; take physics; major in psychology (take biology); major in architecture; at Dalhousie; at McGill; go back to ballet; go back to hip hop (it may not be mine but it is rhythm); figure draw; write music; learn the harp; get a job at a cafe; write; write; write.

Tomorrow I want to: get a master's in architecture; in philosophy; get a PhD in psychology; write about psychology and architecture and philosophy.

I do not want to think about: love; marriage; children; living happily in the country-side.

Today I want to fill the void that swallows every tomorrow.

In the absence of fulfilment, I am hungry.

I have done nothing.

I don't know what the hell I want.

[...Man is a god when he dreams, a begger when he thinks...]

Inspired by ruined paradise. A panel of angels in their old winter clothes sipping hot coffee out of tin mugs to stay warm. Amongst the fallen pillars in the hidden winter sunlight, shuffling through papers on a long wooden table, their grace and wisdom inspires me.

Thank Beauty it is raining today. Funny that a girl who fears the night doesn't start her day until four. But the freshness of the rain and my presence on this porch reminds me of my grandmother once here, years ago, on the same porch, different rain. She sat reading a book while I watched the storm, and I watched her not noticing the thunder and the lightning, but all the while knowing that it was the storm that brought her here.

Like my grandmother in the middle of the storm, protected from the water by a small roof, and from the lightning by the thousands of structures taller than us, we are so often drawn to beauty and its power, letting its influence breath over our skin, the sounds drift into our ears, yet letting the full power of it wash over us. The storm passes and we are still distracted by our novels. We were drawn to it, we wanted its mist on our skin and its scent in our bodies, but we did not want to stand under it with our mouths to the sky. We'd rather push the thunder from our minds and remember only the water, washing away the dirt of the city.

Why do we try so desperately to oppose Nature? We cling onto our bits of paper and our accomplishments and our photographs, never letting the old decompose so it can become earth again and give new life to the Spring? Perhaps we would lose progress. We would lose this computer, this piece of writing, these clothes, this meaningless existence. But perhaps we wouldn't feel so small. Perhaps we wouldn't fear death quite so much. Perhaps meaning wouldn't be questioned in the garden, for God is so wholly present at every moment. Where has it gone? Even the plants are diseased in the city. We've even tried to crush the meaning out of the Seasons. Strawberries in January, sun tanning in coffins of false lighting, electric heating, air conditioning. You can now live in Virginia and never sweat a drop. What heaven? What earth... Where has my paradise gone? It hasn't always lived in my dreams. The simplicity of rain hitting leaves, the breathtaking sight of a field at dawn, of horses grazing in the mist. Such simple things are my dreams made of. Yet even that seems unattainable.

By the time my arms have rotted, my feet may have sunk too deep into the soil. With waiting, our possessions can only pile, and the sacrifice may become too great. Shall I reconcile myself to the city? Are my veins bound up in the movement of the traffic?

I don't fear solitude. But I have no home in the country. Thus I am stuck. For now. The route to my dreams via investing in real estate and taking on a profession. How terribly heartbreaking. Nature and I will have to bear the company of misery and shame for awhile yet. First, I have to beat this game of humanity. I need money. The only way to set land free is to possess it yourself, to abide by the laws of dogs. The only way beyond it is through it. What kind of a war is this?

Writing gets significantly worse with depression. What kind of an outlet is this supposed to be anyway?

When I slip under I do silly shit. I shit (she reads later and decides not to fix) on the computer and observe people's lives, people I used to know but not that well, from what can be found on the internet. I look at pictures of people and find that they are now brilliant artists, photographers, painters, musicians, famous, popular, beautiful, fashionable, lovable, well liked, happy, depressed in a cool way, cool. I think, shit, I went to high school with them. I was better than them at that when we were both 16, they even thought I was cool, and now they've gone and got good... REALLY good, really COOL good, and I'm even worse than I was then. In fact I haven't done shit in those 4, going on 5, 6, 7, 35, 58 years. Here I am, doing nothing. I am doing a gr. 11 math credit. I have less than a year of University, no high school diploma. I sit at home. I don't even do those little things I thought would make my days worth while. Play violin. Every day. At this rate, I'll be great by my 365th every day play violin. I says. I says two weeks ago. I says two weeks ago since then done nothing but my life shattered by a two day First Aid course. Great. Can't handle First Aid course. Can't handle Art Gallery with a friend. Can't handle being out of house. Can't handle being in of house. Can't handle alone. Can't handle people, make me all kinds of uncomfortable or angry. 

If I were a little Irish leprechaun I wouldn't have to be cool.

But if I were cool... I could be in people's cool photos too. Maybe they could even paint pictures of me. Make me feel beautiful. Make me feel cool.

But there I was standing in the kitchen. Brewing nighty night tea. Dropped my apple on the floor. Took a bite, was gross. Rotting. Couldn't get the taste out of my mouth.

But there I was standing in the kitchen. All I want to do is get married and move to the colonial American McStates Estate lands of tall trees and rich people and big clean houses and have babies and a husband. Here I am wanting to be everything I was taught was a failed woman. Here I am wanting to fail. Here I am failing anyway. 

Electricity takes the path of least resistance, says my First Aid instructor. Here I was am single woman taking charge of career. Take lots of school, be lots of success, hate marriage, hear me roar, how dare you define me by ability to create human life. No, back: Here I was am single young woman, pretty neat really. The adults like me, think I'm pretty clever, think I'm pretty wise. I wear lots of mature colours, not really blending in. Neat independent smart girl. Then, there I went. There I went when those boys in those sweaters peered at me with their endearing eyes. Bless their souls what wonderful sweater wearing beings. I became some sort of monster. Some sort of married monster. Some sort of romantic comedy I don't want you to do dishes, I want you to want to do dishes kind of pink hysterical picket fence lady monster. I just want to be... with a Him. 

There's no going back it seems...

My Him-right-now, he's away right now...

Why do I feel there is no meaning in my life right now...

Or has there been since meeting that first boy in that first sweater...

Or was there before....?

Electricity takes the path of least resistance, says my First Aid instructor. My current ran through him when first I touched him. I don't think I ever wanted a life alone. So am I doomed to hating where I am until I get what I think I want? Good luck getting it. Turns out it's hard to ... get things. you want. 

So I do nothing.

How can one do, when doing has lost all meaning?

[...Oh do I feel like the mother of the world, with two children fighting...]

I saw through facebook today that a person my age who I saw around my University was recently killed. He was in India wringing out wet towels when he came into contact with a live electrical wire. The current went through his right arm and out his right leg. Both his arms were amputated and much of his skin was burnt and cells only continued to die. A necklace he always wore most likely carried the current to his chest. He was apparently able to hug his parents with his left leg. Eventually he fell into cardiac arrest and died.

This past week I took a First Aid course. The Red Cross building was next to a graveyard, and the topic of death was very present, yet factual. But now, my motherly instincts in addition to this minor training have made me feel responsible for every scrape, bruise and heart attack that I may come into contact with. What could I have done for Lyell? Had I been there, could I have done anything to keep him alive? To save his arms? His kidneys? His heart? This minor training has made me feel responsible, and yet all I learned was how to recognize that something was wrong and to call 911. Or, if they are already dead... do CPR. Every time I've called for an ambulance they have taken close to 40 minutes to arrive. Lyell had to be driven because there were no ambulances, and was rejected by two hospitals before being taken in some six and a half hours after the electrocution.

After reading of the death of Lyell, I stood in my room thinking, and heard the screams of a child being dragged up the street by his mother. His twin brother followed 10 yards behind, scared and clearly in pain because of his brother's screaming. No human being should ever be heard making a noise like that. How do I save him?

I could never say that life was fragile. Life is very strong. But this world is a very powerful place. The actions of a mother, how profound an affect it has on a living being under her care. An electrical charge that can destroy a body in less than a second, before returning to the earth where it immediately dissolves. How do we embrace these victims? How do we ground the current before it takes a life?

In lieu of flower, Lyell's parents request a random act of kindness towards a complete stranger, as he would have liked. But personally, I hope that my kindness will no longer be random, but constant. I hope that all my actions are performed out of good will. I hope that I will never give my children need to scream like that child. 

[...Men fall from you like rotten fruits, oh, let them perish, for thus they return to your root...]

Everybody has had one of "those" conversations; conversations that start out with a simple observation or inclination, and in the end become the hatching of a plan to save the world or the creation and conclusion of a revolutionary world-view. But soon after, the plan begins to appear less realistic to the parties involved, and enthusiasm peters away; or the idea seems significant, but perhaps beyond this world, so it is put aside while the "real" world is attended to. So an idea that was born out of the simplest of observations becomes not only more than itself, but more than reality can contain. Somewhere in the course of these dialogues, truth gets away from us.

This is how I feel about philosophy these days. We can say philosophy began with the pre-socratics, or we can perhaps say philosophy began when religion began (when did religion begin?) but really, we can't remember how the conversation came about. In any case, we all know that Plato got involved at some point and everybody got pretty excited by what he had to say.

So what's all this about? Well, I was thinking today about capacities. Not whether or not they exist, that is to say, whether or not people are born with a sort of natural capacity for something like math or music, but rather just that I know I could do certain things, but I choose not to. In this case, I was thinking of philosophy.

I know that I have the ability to understand and respond to many of the big scary complicated philosophers, and that it comes a little easier to me than it does to many others. At least I know that with time and some assistance from my superiors I could probably tackle Heidegger and Arendt and the like. I will not say Hegel, but perhaps at the end of it all I could grasp a portion of even Hegel. But just because I know I could do well in philosophy, and I could pride myself for sitting amongst the more intelligent and "dignified" of humans, I have no interest in it. Why? Well, I think it's because I studied philosophy out of a desire to find truth; because I actually care about the content of philosophy and not the presentation, not just the way in which Reason chose to arrange Reality this time.

So with that said, when I think of philosophy, especially the scarily intelligent moderns, I just think of a conversation that has got away from itself. They all must have read so much Aristotle, and whether or not they agree with anything he says, what is responding to Aristotle compared to contemplating one's own existence? Or better yet, what is contemplating existence compared to experiencing existence itself with the entirety of one's being, without excluding all but the rational and contemplative faculties? But still, when it comes to developing and sharing ideas, I'd rather "I wonder about Being..." over "Being is..." any day.

Though ideally I'd prefer...

[...in sympathy with the new joy of the plant world, ever pure, ever the same, where all things grieve and rejoice again in their time..."

I found myself downstairs with a mundane task, but noticed the sunlight. So I stood outside. I noticed the garden, so I went and envisioned the transformation of weeds and garbage to fresh chard and tomatoes. So I set to it.

The magician's wife, an odd elderly neighbour of mine, enthusiastically called across the street to me of the wonders of gardening. "Sometimes I wear gloves," she yelled, "but sometimes I just use my bare hands and let the dirt dig deep beneath my finger nails," and off she marched.

As batty as the magician's wife may be, she is of course not the only woman to be seen on my city block out in their yards with their trowels and their garden forks. There is indeed something archetypal about women and gardening, which is perhaps hard to believe when it is hidden by modernity and cliché. But nevertheless, I believe it is there.

The sowing of a seed: utter disbelief that it could grow to be a full plant within weeks. The creation of a garden: such immediate satisfaction because you can see the product of your labour. But you can only possess it as much as you can possess a child. Dressing, feeding and keeping it tidy; you can in part call it yours, but is it really? A composer creates music, but has he created sound? In the same way a woman creates a garden or a child, but at every moment she is aware that it is Nature, self-sufficient and all-consuming that is responsible for the creation. Nature created her, it works through her, and she interacts with it through her will. Who else but one who plants seeds and watches them grow knows that it is Nature that has allowed for such a creation, and that she is only responsible for arranging it: choosing what notes, played for how long and it what order.

[...brother in hands, held in the hands, of one million bending bones...]

I.

My brother Calum, who is only 24, has worked his way up to being better than most professional classical bass players in the 14 years he has been playing. I could go into detail about his various successes within the musical profession, but all that needs to be said is that he is one of those gifted genius types that are a parent's blessing and a sibling's curse.

But envy aside, his music has often unknowingly kept me company in the middle of the night as he has recited cello sonatas that he has learned to mentally transcribe. And might I mention that anyone who has ever lived in a house with a musician knows that music is more beautiful when it creeps through the walls and leaks into the room in which you are dwelling. He has also on occasion been found within the foliage of Pender Island, and to the neighbouring residents' delight, the forest has resonated with his music, carrying the far-stretching frequencies within miles of where him and his bass stood.

However, perhaps like many gifted people, playing double-bass is not actually his passion. Rather, it seems that at the moment his true love is sawing pieces of wood. Not for anything particularly--shall we say--grande; just sawing wood, down the middle, with a Japanese saw. At the moment he is disassembling an old bed frame, and then proceeding to saw the panels of wood down the middle to make two pieces of wood. Out of these pieces of wood he intends to make a box. The other day after an evening of sawing down the middle of pieces of wood, he wiped the sweat from his brow and grumbled triumphantly, "life is good." Ahhh.

II.

Now, I am just desperate to add in somewhere that among many of Calum's peculiarities, of which there are many, is his passionate hatred of acronyms. Acronyms such as "WWOOF," which stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, or as it's more commonly translated, Willing Workers on Organic Farms. The idea of a perfectly dignified organization naming themselves after the sound of a dog barking is just positively enraging to my brother. However I, thinking that passionately hating acronyms is such a delightful quirk, decided that if I should ever write a book of fiction, I would have to give one of my characters such a quirk. I've only ever decided to remember two characteristics for my potential future novel, and this is without question the better one.

[...the herb yielding seed...]

The computer lacks a certain romanticism which often makes me reluctant to use it as a medium of relation and expression. However, I do already tend to use it as a medium of relation and expression (or impression?). I seem to collect photographs and pictures of things I like which I come across, or poetry or song lyrics. I use facebook (a phenomenon, as vulgar as it is, which reveals aspects of the human psyche which are actually fascinating) to connect with people, be it through messaging a friend or through "lurking" through their photographs to see what they're up to. I have WWOOF Canada, The University of King's College, Banjo lessons and cookie recipes bookmarked on my computer, and it reflects bits about myself that really do make up me. My hotmail account has at least one email from just about everyone I care about, and many more whom I have communicated with that effect some aspect of my life. So indeed, quite a bit of me is already expressed in this medium.

Starting a blog does feel a little silly to me, probably because I am reminiscing on my days as a 13 year old girl writing in her online journal about who knows what, and probably because it doesn't feel as dignified as writing a book or starting an underground publication, but oh who cares. I enjoy writing, but I see little point in writing if no one will read it. Writing, along with everything, feels so essentially relational to me. So what a convenient way to share myself. People are so neat, so surely I must be kind of neat as well. I feel I have some things to share, and perhaps someone might find them interesting. At the very least, my Mum will. And I really quite like my Mum, so why not.