there have been births and deaths and tree-felling and eaves-trough cleaning; things have been emotionally and physically taxing this past week. Someone once asked me what the importance of setting up a sweat lodge experience was for me, and the most immediate response would be a practical one. I live in a natural environment(I live in the bush essentially) 6 months of the year. I want to be here for all the reasons that lend themselves to acquiring more knowledge about basic survival. What better way to learn, than from the original people of THIS LAND. I reflect on the terrain that I feel closest to, (like a racial memory) & the Rockies, Newfoundland, Scotland and of course where I now live, Georgian Bay. These geographical places come to mind. The only anomaly is my birth place, Alberta. The vast expanse of nothingness is so big, the sky is so big, so it’s really the space that liberates me, not necessarily the land.
….so after the funeral that I had attended in Orillia on Saturday, August 10th, 2013, I purchased a newspaper at a Petro Canada on my drive back home.
Leah McLaren, a columnist for the Globe and Mail wrote something about Jack Handey, The Saturday Night Live icon who wrote his famous 10- second pensee, called Deep Thoughts. This McLaren, in her 30’s, evokes the 90’s, & memories of my son Shane, also keen on spinning those SNL thoughts on a Monday morning.
Jack Handey’s humor is so refreshing with it’s elliptical end, the unexpected end. She cites “Its deploying drone strikes in a war against clichés.”
Here is a sample: “If trees could scream would we be so cavalier about cutting them down?”
“We might , if they screamed all the time, and for no reason at all.”
This irrelevant vacuous stuff just DID IT for me on that drive home.
Then on Sunday a friend reminded me to have someone help me clean the eaves troughs(What if I fell off the ladder???)
It brought to mind the postings, (advertisements for security bracelets for the elderly) in subway trains on the TTC. Miss Hope, or whatever her name is, was photographed in different positions; one indicated that she had just tumbled down the stairs. Her arms would be splayed and she would appear to be in a coma, but she must have pressed the red button on her arm before sinking into an unconscious state…. because she knew that HELP was coming.
So maybe something to consider when I go Kayaking…alone….somehow I just don’t get as many scenarios as Miss Hope gets herself into, at least on the subway walls…..
on that note, have a nice day and remember as Spike Milligan put it so aptly on his tombstone:
“I told you that I wasn’t feeling well”…or sort of like that….
I am fine. I hope that you are fine. it is a bright sunny windy day. Best Susan
2012thislandisyourlandseatosea 