A rainy autumn ride home on the ferry, night time lights n water



The play of rain on the windows combined with the light for so much visual interest, I couldn't help but go all expressionist art on my camera.




Waiting and watching the ferry traffic as we all sit in our cars and wait for it to pull in, a manuevre that I've done a kazillion times since 88.




I love me sum puddles at night.




Liquid gold




The Bowen Queen pulls in all stealthlike.




A helpful but confusing set of signs and instructions.




I love the little heads lit up from behind. Trips me out for some strange reason. Like the ferry is a big bug that extrudes all these little beetles with their little symbiants all soft and human inside.




To me this denotes busy noisy movement




Second on board. Love my steering wheel cover. The guy in front was on his little netbook, I was on mine, the future of ferry travel. Free WiFi on BCF




This would make such a great painting.




Diamonds and pearls




Jiggleshot on the water




Engineering has so many patterns.




For Nat to help her remember




What's in Nat's heart as she is so far away.




All the ferry workers waiting for the docking. I've known one of them for 22 years.




Geometric lines and angles




LED streetlight refraction rocks red



Driving and taking pics at the same time is NOT recommended. I'm livin' on the edge!

Trying to capture the cones of light under the streetlights as I rush by.



Movement and light

 So, Natalie, know that you are missed by your friends and that we're all here keeping terra firma where you'll find it and us, when you get back here in a couple of months. Rotsa Ruv from all of us...Grace, Ron, Dave, the girls... the kitties, the Mohammeds... all of us, send you rots and rots.

Crows - A Crow Photo Totem Study

In my illustrious educational journey, I travelled for four years amidst a group of indigenous classmates who were instrumental in cementing some preconcieved notions I'd already developed through my pagan shamanic path. One of these was the archetype of totems and what they represent as well as how I can use them to gain courage, understanding and self analysis.

This is actually the sliver of the old moon hanging low in the sky. The light on the right is the 7am helijet taking off and passing over Saxe Pt, which is the shadow in the foreground. Not daybreak yet, but soon.

Crow medicine in many indigenous cultures represents an aspect of the trickster, the comic, the koshare that is allowed to mimic the king and not suffer the indignity of death. They are vigilant, they are family pods that have history and a very stringent established pecking order, and they have a sense of humour.

Love it when their wings are captured in the moment of takeoff or landing.

The crows here at our Eagle's Aerie are a clan that are around every morning at 9 when my downstairs neighbour, Maggie, chucks a cup or two of cat food out into the fir tree just off our balconies. As a photographer, I love the interplay of their feathers and I try to be handy with my camera when the weather and lighting is right, to play with catching my crows in mid flight. I want to catch them the moment they lift off, but they are so fast and the delay on my digital SLR is so slow that quite often, all I catch is where they just were.

I would fly if I could...

But every now and then, I manage to luck out and catch a stunning shot that makes my day. The new pic that is the background for the blog is just such a picture. The crow had snatched the morsel of breakfast potato patty off the branch and was making haste to fly where she could chow down and I just happened to catch her in full wingspan.

Missed me!

Here then, are today's pictures. The first one is of the sliver of moon that was out this morning when Ron awoke me with a cup of coffee and a kiss. The rest are pretty self explanatory. I'm off to get ready for work now so I can't stay and play and make it all pretty, you'll just have to be happy with some entertaining pictures of my fine feathered friends.

The starling baby pinfeathers have thickened and are looking very ornamental these days. Preening keeps them neat.

Heckle and Jeckyl

Cat food cuisine is the best!

The ease in which they can contort to get to the feather fleas is amazing. So limber and quick!

Here's the whole fam damily, Heckle, Jeckyl, Murgatroyd and Aloisious

Gimme a kiss.

Amazing tail fan

The sky at 9 this morning.

My side of the bed - Switching

As we age, I learn the true meaning of 'old age is not for sissies'. Today we had an opportunity to observe another indication that life is catching up with us.




This shot obviously has nothing to do with the blog topic but that I'm talking about Ron, and this is Ron, all bundled up, heading off to work on this coolish November morning. All the photos today are in sequence, in that they were taken in succession as the morning progressed. While I wrote, the fog drew closer and closer.


Ron's always slept on the left side of the bed, and even before Ron was in my life, I was a right side sleeper. Like a beetle with a magnet embedded in my shell to ensure I never face East, I sleep facing West and I'm learning that's pretty entrenched.




At 5:30, there is scarcely a car on the road, and although the stars and moon were out, and the skies were clear, the sun never really dawned.


When Ron's shoulder started bothering him, a couple of months ago, we went through a lot of possibles, as to what could have caused it, and what could we do to help heal him. While he was away for the better part of a month, I moved the bedroom around and also switched our nightstands, signalling 'the change'.




Off to the East, a low, dark cloudbank rolled in over the island, coming over Oak Bay, then downtown and soon, it will sock us in, here by the base in Esquimalt.


We were officially switching sides of the bed.

When Ron got back, he was relieved to see that his needs had been heard, and he was excited and hopeful that sleeping on the opposite side to what he was used to, meant that he would then be able to keep his weight off his sore shoulder and sleep through the night for a change.




I love that even though dawn never really dazzled us, I managed to catch it through the windows of the seaplane coming into Victoria Harbour


He's been home a week and in that week, I have beaten up my nightstand five times. I roll over, reach for him and hit wood.

In the meantime, he is sleeping facing me, so now instead of a broad strong back to nuzzle up against, I have a morning mouth face snuffling at me, or if I hunker down to nuzzle his chest, my 5foot 10 and 3/4 body starts having a battle with the really solid bed's footboards, which have no intention of letting my size 13 dogs, win.




You can see, it looks like dark grey dry ice fake fog, but no. It's real alright. And the sun's edge is chasing it. The higher the sun rises, the closer the fogbank approaches, a race that the sun has yet to win today.


I wake up with wrists bruised and sore from my railing them on the nightstand and more often than not, just get up. I put on my kaftan, go to the bathroom and then I'm bright eyed and bushy tailed awake. Wandering into the living room, I refer to the clock to get a bearing and its a quarter to 5. I stay up. A pot of coffee and some quiet time is in order by then and I have a couple of hours before Ron is up for work.




Looking towards Metchosin as the cresting sun hits the windows on the far shore.


Its challenging enough to be in that joyful part of middle age where my hot flashes, or what Ron calls my 'Tropical Vacations' are blindsiding me, left and right. All night long, the one leg out rules under the down filled duvet, and every half hour I flip back the covers over Ron so that I can bask in the cold air of the November room.




And 10 minutes later... whoa.


Except now, I'm being a vaccilating heat source... AND fighting a night stand.




Another day in Paradise.


Tonight, we've agreed to go back to our old bedsides. 

'Not for sissies' is right.

In Remembrance - Margaret Elizabeth Stout - My beautiful Auntie Peggy

Today, on the day when it is believed that the veil is thinnest between the netherworld and ours, I like to like to light a candle, share a sacred meal with a loved one, and pay attention to the indications around me that my loved one has deigned to come join me.

I speak of my Auntie Ellen often, she is the Coast Salish Elder who guided me through my years in university. She would say, whenever a fly was apparent in the classroom, that a loving relative was attending. She believed that flies could be used by our ancestors as a means of travelling to our reality, to check up on us, and to keep tabs that we were okay. Her rationalizing was that fly incarnations were brief and that flies had the ability to move through space rapidly, in order to get through tiny spaces to facilitate their getting to where they needed to go in a short amount of time so they can fulfill their visit's goal.

All this month, at work and at home, I have had a single fly come say hi. Not obnoxious, as Auntie Peggy would never be rude, just obvious that it was there. Just staying out of reach, because sadly, I've quickly sent Auntie Peggy to her demise without thinking a lot over the years since her death in 2004.

Auntie Peggy. The one woman who loved me through all my hellish years with my mother. Who would take me for the weekend, bravely, and return me on Sunday night lying through her teeth that 'Chrissy was SUCH a good girl." I gave her conniptions, she'd say to me when my mother wasn't around.

This was the woman who was always there with nonjudging unconditional love all through my years as a troubled teen and twenty something, going through life on a hellbent for hell streak, she was still there for me whenever I was in a pickle or had been abandoned again.

Auntie Peggy, who worked her whole adult life at Spear and Jackson's since the war years, making saw tooth blades and teeth, in coveralls when nice girls wore skirts, she was a feminist from way back. She never took a sick day in her life, taking the bus up Kingsway to Burnaby every day, Monday thru Friday, at 6 in the morning in all kinds of weather and when she retired, they'd rescinded pensioning people so she wound up with nothing for her years of work but a tiny gold stickpin a quarter the size of a penny.

In 1988, when we returned from Alaska, my son Dan and I were able to stay with her for a whole month as we got on our feet. What could I have done without her?

Auntie Peggy was 5 foot nothing to my almost 6 feet but she would walk me the 5 blocks along East 13th in Vancouver to the bus stop to keep me safe, even though at 80+ she was walking back by herself, a target and a soft touch for the local thugs.

Her passing was a hard one for me to take. She is my stepdad's sister and that stepdad had no fond feelings for me after I left home and abandoned him with my mother and sister. So when Auntie Peggy's end was near, and she was transferred from the hospital (where I saw her last, briefly) to a facility for hospice for her final days, he wouldn't return calls, wouldn't let me know where she was, and then, months later after hearing from my sister that she had passed, that man didn't allow her or myself to acquire anything of hers. We have no idea what happened to her apartment's contents or all the treasures that she had in there like the complete records (78's and 33's) of the Beatles and so much more. I have a few treasures of hers that she gave me those last visits in 2002 and 03 when we both suspected what was coming, a ring, lots of old photos of her from her younger days. They will come out today to be a part of a very private altar I will assemble in her honour.

Every year at this time, Auntie Peggy comes to the forefront of my world and I spend a day with her. These slippers I am knitting (and that she taught my friend Genya to make too, who is making them by the bucketload this yule), are a tribute to her.

Happy Halloween, Auntie Peggy, now that you understand me so much more.

Danny, the squirmin' German and his Auntie Peggy

The events of the day - What's significant about Halloween to me anyway?

While I wait for the sun to crest the clouds at the horizon this dawning Halloween, I prepare to capture the images of the Great Pumpkin rising in the spectacular cloud created pumpkin patch in the sky and I ponder what's significant about today.

My aim is to share a few of these ponderances as I gather moments captured in digital imagery.

I have about five minutes till the show starts, so I'll just set this up now.

Hallowe'en

What does Hallowed mean to me? Always meant sacred. Since I could begin to read, the culture I lived in kept information that interested me as a fledgling reader child, in the 'occult' section. These days that also encompasses 'new age' and 'self help' and 'natural healing', but back then, it was tarred with a tainted brush, suggesting the mysterious, the evil, the chaos to me.

Sacred became a word that early on meant something deeply special to me, so the word hallowed, signifying sacredness, was also something that bode my paying attention to it. What fascinated me, as a German child transplanted to Canadian soil, at the age of 5, was that everyone would dress the children up and let them loose in the neighbourhood to be given candy at every house. When I was introduced to thinking about 'sacred' and its connection to 'Hallow' een... I found it odd that the two, costumed kids high on candy and deeply spiritual evolution and health were synonymous. I think that's when I became a phenomenologist.

Speaking of phenomenon's... here's the sunrise. Back in a few.

To simply say WOW! would be a gross understatement. That was a parade, a feast for the eyes and indeed, a breath taking phenomenon that really grounded me. The connection of the breaking dawn with the ponderings I'm doing of the word 'hallowed' doesn't escape me. I commemorate the experience and set the day by finishing a pair of rainbow slippers for the winter, for myself... the first in my upcoming collection of yule gifts I'll be making...

But first, I must finish my bloggeroony, and then I must share with you the imagery so that you too can get the full effect of how this morning was so sacred for me... and how sacred this day is... and how vulnerable I am as I open to greet the day.

Everything, oddly, is insisting that this be centred.

Fine.

Sunrise, the breaking of dawn, and the official arrival of the Great Pumpkin ... Halloween and its significance to me.

Keep in mind that today is also the 40th anniversary of the tragic last day at my childhood home as on Nov. 1, 1970, a very angry 14 year old girl shut a door behind her that she was to never open again. Also, to add to the layers of complexity of significance of the season, to me, last year at this time, my two closest of friends, separate of each other, unaware that the other had done the same thing, ended my friendships with them, based on status message misunderstandings on Facebook. 20 year friendships who watched and participated in the raising of my children, but, without giving me any opportunity to fight for my right to defend myself, cut me loose, which had a devastating affect on me.

Thankfully, Kali is my diety, now. Kali, the goddess of destruction is the archetype that I mainly emulate so I can identify with the chaos that one feels when old skin is rubbed off and the new skin underneath adjusts to the new sensations of exposure.

After a lifetime of klutziness and naming my daughter Grace, because I've never had any, the Hindu goddess of destruction, of chaos and rebirth was an obvious choice to use as a meditational focus and I've pondered my connection to her many times. Kali is my 'patron saint'.

In the past, I've celebrated Halloween in a variety of ways. One year I dressed as such a successfully bagged out bag lady, the party I had tickets to, the annual Alaskan Hell's Angel Halloween bash, wouldn't let me in until I had someone go get Happyjack, the Anchorage HA treasurer who I saved from freezing to death in a snowbank, to let me in. Ironically, a picture of me in that getup was pinned to the bulletin board in our local watering hole, 'The Trade Winds', for four years before I finally took it down and tucked it away before I moved.

There were a couple of Halloweens that I created Halloween Howl events for the Moonwit Collective members who were local, and their allies, and we would transform a local hall or available space for a spooky party of inviting those on the other side to party with us, a fabulous gifting, performance art, exquisite food and libations, all in interesting and beautiful costumes. I remember being Benazir Bhutto for one, the woman prime minister of Pakistan, who was assasinated just a little while ago!

This year, Halloween falls on a Sunday. Twice now, I've toyed with being dressed up and gone out on various errands wearing the assembly of clothing that makes me look decidedly witchy. Lots of skirts, lots of symbolism in my jewelry, mostly. I mean, I'm a witch every day. Why do I have to wear a pointy hat that itches to prove I'm one of the witches?

Halloween is essentially a time of year when I am readdressing the events of the past year. Looking at my successes, at what I could have done differently, and then looking to the future with a developing plan of what I want to accomplish, how and when, for the coming year.

My Salish Elder, Auntie Ellen taught me that it is important to set aside time to think about 'the thought before the thought'. This is time that you set aside to think about when you want to plan and what you want to plan. So, my Octobers are pretty much where I turn more inward, incubate myself, stay home a lot, knit and ponder the things that I find addressable, all these things considered.

This year, I spent a lot of time in triage mode, pulling together all my energies and my daughter's energies as allies, into keeping my partner Ron from losing his groundedness as life challenged him on his every level of existence. Keeping the home happy, keeping us all on a fairly even keel has taken its toll on me. Add to that that there is more month than money with me not making enough to cover my expenses and we have been dealing with far too much stress.

So I am vowing on this Hallowed E'en sunrise that this year, I tend more to keeping my own self more evenly keeled and grounded. This year, I will tend to my knees, to my holistic health. I will get massages and chiropractic treatments and I will take time for myself in new ways that pamper me as well. I recognize how important it is that I, in my empty nest transitioning, tend to the needs that I've long neglected for myself. Mammograms, ultrasounds, dental work and exercise that bears my weight are all on the list of this vow to myself. Juicing with organic fruit and vegetables for both Ron and I as well.

Friday, as I was considering all this, I accompanied my partner to the cardiologist. This is the specialist who decides the path of treatment for Ron's heart. I learned a lot I'm not able to share here but it was chilling at any rate. The end is the beginning sometimes. The snake eating its tail is an image that comes to me a lot these days.

The symbol of the eternal return was evident to me, this year as I meditated on my year end reflections. Ouroborous.

I'm big on symbolism. The snake comes up a lot, regeneration, rebirth, the wheel of life is all contained within its powerful imagery.

Kali and the snake. Ron and his heart. Chaos and order. So much to think about.

As the sun broke over the top of the clouds, the parade that covered the horizon from left to right looked like bumbling bears and elephants, all decorated with gilt costumery. They rose and fell, as the sun's blinding rays shifted, reflected and shadowed across that airy landscape and then the Great Pumpkin was warm on my kaftan as I stood on the deck in the exceedingly cool air, its thin cotton allowing every breeze to waft through. Seagulls and crows regaled with the starlings, their morning song greeting this day, while I stood with camera to my eye, capturing every special element of my view...

Today, special rainbow slippers while Ron is at church. And a bit more thinking is in order.  My job is coming to an end where I've been the past two years and I have several diverse directions I can go in. There are roles as companion for the elderly, as an assistant to someone working in the Melaleuca health suppliment field, and I have a request from someone who is in the private jet business who is going to be needing an assistant as of December, all interesting directions for me to think about.

I am also pondering going back to school for a counselling degree. More and more, I hear folks encouraging me and now that I have a BA, I'm thinking that perhaps that's the direction I need to go to, maybe I DID miss my calling. Menstrual counselling is something I've done for decades, maybe its time to find out more about the mind and how to help folks sort out shattered lives.

But this coming year, I vow this Halloween morning as the sun now basks through my living room sliding glass doors and my cat splays wantonly in full winter fluff on her pillows enjoying its warmth, I am tending to me first. My mind, my body, my spirit, will all get equal time as I strive to evolve into someone authentic, intentional, conscious'er than I am, and be healthier to boot.

Like the wheel of life, the spirals in a lotus blossom, or the chicksnhens on my balcony in the dawn sunshine's illuminating reveal, I am coming around.

Tonite, all the little ghouls and boys will be trick or treating. There's a bonfire down at the big parking lot behind our shopping centre and lots of activity on the streets below.

Halloween is here. What does it mean to you?