These Gifts
Three robins, a lovely ghost, all the words, and make-believe tulips
I wanted goo-lashes for winter (that’s sort of spelling-onomatophobia isn’t it?) but they were rare, the goo-lashes I mean, and also too expensive and too much like Bob Barker would have worn or Walter Cronkite maybe so I skipped it (impossible to do in them) and bought little shoe-condoms which I wore today over my running shoes. They are (sorry) milky white and make my feet look like ghosts but that’s not the ghost I was talking about which I’ll get to later mood permitting.
Paths everywhere are mucky and today was a tricky little mixture of frozen puddles, the white kind I still can’t resist smashing, and hard footprint casts with dishy slick passages in between where things are prefuckingcarious let me tell you but in protected runners, it was okay although still slippery as fuck at times because even dry feet can splay.
Didn’t go down but feet took different directions a couple of times
Daisy just bobbed along at my side all happy and waggy and sniffy what with all the soft smelly old poo around and other delights and the view was amazing, good old Lake Ontario wild and wonderful as ever, and in the bush already are little sprouts coming up between snowy islands and everything’s got that sort of spring-shrouded-in-mist look, you know, almost like you forgot your glasses.
Everybody knows the trail’s tricky this time of year so I didn’t run into anybody although three robins were right in front of us twice and I full-on hollered sweet nothings to them, welcoming them back, and also yelled away to Daisy to stay close which she pretended not to hear.
She is snoring away beside me now as I write this, muddy paws and also earlobes I just noticed and now I’m singing that old do your ears hang low song… are you?
I am starting to remember my dreams and when I’m in them, I know I am dreaming and also I know I am re-dreaming so the houses –although strange in the way of dreams where the support of walls is unnecessary for a roof to exist etcetera – are familiar.
Last night’s was me searching for artwork in a many-roomed house I knew then but don’t know now. I was looking for a red painting I was told was magnificent but it was not where they said it was, they kept changing their minds or I kept misunderstanding I don’t know which, but I woke up without having seen it although I can see it in my mind now and it’s textile which nobody in the dream mentioned, abstract, and likely, I think, to seep at me throughout the day.
Maybe I’ll take up weaving (Aga, I can hear your eyes rolling)
Aga is my weaver friend and me saying maybe I’ll take up weaving is like her saying maybe I’ll write a story today as if it’s that easy, you know, both weaving and writing which at this moment seem similar indeed, as if they’re just choices or whims like learning to french brain (oh look… Spellcheck’s still drunk) or how to make bread, the crusty kind with the right chew, how to propagate air plants (aka how to kill them), whether to use an en dash or a comma, what colour, and suddenly, like the dream houses, I’m in full-blown deja-vu which is lovely.
Also thinking of getting a new job because the way I described my workplace last blog or so got a few remarks mainly saying ewwww. It’s actually NOT a lousy job. The work is various and challenging and I get to take things from concept to completion all by myself and the clients always thank the “team” which is because I am both a copywriter and an art director, usually a never-the-twain kind of thing but for whatever reason, my particular skills twain.
And there are jobs out there, I checked, where they are looking for a team. An art director and a strategist/writer, and I am thinking of applying and pretending I am two people until the interview at least unless I can figure something clever out which might involve taxidermy.
The name I am thinking of for my pretend duo is Hue & Poe and the little tagline might be Talk About A Dream Team! or maybe I’ll let the secret out a little with Are Two Heads Really Better Than One?
And although my math skills used to be sharp and are now imaginary and since they will be expecting two of me likely around thirty years of age each, I might throw in an equation that says in the universal language of numbers that I am no longer privy to, that I am an exponent of two adept and much younger individuals, you know, something, but not exactly, like: i = (30)2!
Fucking impressive, right?
But this blog was supposed to be about These Gifts which I was thinking about while walking to the GO train on Monday and when I got there I sat on the bench warm in the sun with my eyes closed behind my sunglasses and the residue of good music and I thought about my friend Nancy who died last month and how when I think of her now I believe the distance between heaven and earth is less than it used to be. And then I think of all the stories I am writing and there’s a very good glow there and also summer’s coming and paddle-boarding with my favourite person where heaven also feels pretty close both under and above and I think of my family, near and far, my friends, far and wide and you guys, too, who read this from all over the place, little villages in Ireland, Fiji, Labrador, and other tucked-away places I’ve never heard of but google and am amazed.
