Goodnight and Good Luck

I started this in 2005. The writing has been a friend - and I treasured the writers/friends I've found here.

Everything has a cycle, though - and this cycle has come to an end.

I wish you all peace, happiness, wisdom, laughter - and good writing. I'm only a click away if you want to find me.

Be well, all of you.

Namaste.

Linda

Pilot to co-pilot

Cat used to feel very very sorry for himself when I was at the computer. He was, after all, down on the floor like an animal and he didn't like it. He sang great sorrowful arias to that effect, too. Andy, formerly known as "the wanker," suggested that I might give him a place to sit and watch and much to my astonishment, it worked. As soon as I sit in my chair, he sits in his.

Now, my only remaining problem (other than him throwing up on the carpet), is that he feels compelled to bead. Or at least to stand on the beads when I work, trying to eat them.

The truth of the moment

I’ve reached the State of Equilibrium. It borders on the State of Hysterical Inertia – a territory with a thousand highways criss-crossing flat, changeless land only to arrive back where they began. It is always exactly 5:00 p.m. in Hysterical Inertia – neither day nor proper night. You start having impulses to get out of the car and dye your hair blue-black, or shave it off, or move your bed into the bathroom. Anything to get off those roads. I imagine it’s like Alberta, without borders or mountains.

I’m not sure what’s beyond the metaphorical gazebo I’m sitting in now. The thing about Equilibrium is that it doesn’t particularly matter what’s out there. I’m counting crows and seagulls. A three crow morning today, matter of fact. And that’s about the only fact worth knowing. I’m pretty much happy with breathing as my primary activity.

You do have time to think here, though. And I realized today (with no sense of alarm or disappointment) that when people (okay, male people) hail you on an internet site, it is merely a reflexive action - a man passing by rotates his cranial unit and seeing apparatus in your direction. Rather like a nervous tick. A flicker that sputters out in the time it takes to send an automated compliment. I’ve stopped answering the flickers.

In November, I decided that a period of celibacy was in order. I cut the last thread with my used-to-be, who took it in a spirit of bad grace, foul temper and threw in a couple cutting remarks. No one else was in view, so it was pretty much a done deal. And I was happy with the decision for a week.

The fretting began soon afterwards. I was celibate for over seven years once. By the end, it was neither a happy nor a healthy experience. I began to dwell on that. Began to ponder years, possibly all the rest of them (because I-am-no-spring-chicken, as they say) alone. Alone except for the cliché of a cat. Woman and cat. How long, I wondered, until I was dressing the cat or making little hats for him and then taking pictures. Ohmygod posting them. Here.

I moved from Fretting to Hysterical Inertia over a period of weeks.

And here’s the thing – I have no idea how I got to Equilibrium. One minute I was considering packing a duffel bag and running for my life – to anywhere else. And the next, I was in the gazebo not even remotely considering haute couture for the cat.

And feeling like my life was…pretty much okay. Maybe it was the hours of making mandalas – or just plain old divine intervention. At any rate. I’m manless. The cat is hatless. And there was just one crow on the way home. No seagulls.

Send therapists

The floor of Herhimnbryns garden

I've gone Mandela mad. Kaleidoscope Krazy. I'd snitched this photograph from Secret Hill, having fallen in love with a certain blue-grey that seems to be everywhere in Western Australia, and this morning, because I had Far More Useful Things To Do - I made Mandelas instead. This is much nicer to look at full size. So please click to enlarge.

Travel plans

The cover of a book on Claude Monet is tacked to the bulletin board on the wall in front of my desk. It is, specifically, a reproduction of one of Monet’s paintings of the Garden at Giverny. I’m caught in butter yellow water lilies and the water itself, a shimmery reflection of surrounding greenery.

I’m dressed in jeans, a sweater, socks, boots, my winter coat and a scarf. My hands are icy.

The new heating system for the college is having one of its frequent unreliable days and outside, it’s -14C.

I’m imagining strolling the garden at Giverny, eating in Monet’s blue and yellow dining room, drinking coffee in his studio, talking a little about the work, the light…

Later, I plan to visit Frieda Khalo’s blue house.

Mostly, I plan not to be here – where the Atlantic Ocean spits wind cold and damp enough to split your bones. To leave this place where, for 8 months of most years, listless grays and shriveled browns give way only to the dingy white of exhaust-stained snow. This place of shoulder-hunch and salt-stained boots and February weather bombs. Soul shrinking. Bleak.

I will take myself to Frieda’s, where tropical flowers bloom year-round – fiery reds and flaming oranges, exotic pinks and purples…the scent of heaven in the air.

Frieda waits in this alternate dimension. A pet monkey on her shoulder, flowers in her hair, the jungle breathing green behind her. We will walk to the blue house together, holding hands and laughing.