The First Crocus -You are the Sunshine of My Life!

It isn't much, but I am breathless with anticipation, every spring. Our first and only crocus has bloomed. The crocuses that had stayed in this garden from former days were terribly spavined, when I first moved here..they were shrunken blooms, too soft and wilting, and very small. Our new, hybrid set of bulbs has been demolished by squirrels.

The wild croci have gradually improved, and now bloom almost as nicely as commercial hybrids. I found that their humble presence, as Canadian wildflowers, became my focus for so much interesting meditation, due to having photos of my garden to look at, rather than the whole picture. My crocus and lavender made me think of a romantic spring song that I have always loved. I realized that they had been there for thousands of years, recording the history of the land. I have wept with realization, and gratitude, seeing the netted bundle of lavender on an ancients' hair, seeing that these plants had probably been here for all time.

I worry that I am in the blue poodle stage ,though, - you know, the time of life when old dames have to have a row of $200.00 blue poodlles on their sill? Next month, they absolutely must buy the latest in the collection of blue poodles. Ever since I was in my twenties, I have pondered middle age with fear and loathing- would I turn into an idle blue poodle collector? Worse-would I be fat?

Never. Yoga, meditation and good diet would prevent all that. I was determined to be in ultra health, and also I would aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllllways be slim. Ugh. Who needed middle age. What bags they were, the ooooooold ladies on the beaches, with bulging tummies and cracked- egg too-long-in-the-saucepan varicose veins marbling their thighs. We young women sneered, hooted, chided, pleaded, dieted, and proseletyzed about slimness and vegetarian diet.

To little effect, our naiive estimate that these were all fat because they were frigid witches did not alter the ill behaviour of our elders. No, they seemed content to live in wallowing sin, it seemed.

I guess they laughed at us, if they were people like myself, and went on.

When menopause hit, I could not believe the difference in size and shape. Initially, I laughed at my bulging stomach , since my culture (yours, too , I guess) had filled me with a youth quest that was supposed to never end.

It took me about 10 years to stop giggling at how I looked. Along with the added (padded ) was my sense of humour- luckily , some insulating warmth along with the water and poundage that my tendons had called in for comfort.

I never thought I would be hit with arthritis - tendonitis, and worked hard at getting rid of it. Like it or not, even yoga, 10BX, meditation and damn good sex do not stop your body from plumping out like a pumpkin, when it needs to.

I guessed that I was very wrong, and mentally apologized to the long- dead grannies whose bags bulged with blue poodle coupons and bags of chocolates.

I have, literally prayed that I would never hit the bluepoodle stage.

I make jokes about blue poodles to my son, who has grown up with my camping about the yuckola stage of life when nothing grows but waistlines and collections of things. I swore that I would never dye my hair blue. It is still a nice auburn, I should not worry.

No, my collections of photos, post-cards, greeting cards and nice, shiny kitchen apples will have to do.

I chose to collect kitchen apples (apple-shaped kitchen things) because my little boy was always, to me, the apple of my eye. I was in danger of becoming the kinder-kitchen-kirke poplin cherry-pie whiz of the beige elite of yesteryear, I imagined. But, something about pyrex apple bakers shaped like apples, and candle apples that I could always use for various festivals, just seemed to please me.




An older and seasoned woman now, I still imagine dancing around with my tiny son in my arms, singing "You are the apple of my eye, that's why I'll always stay with you"....

It is now that my collections of flowers and photos of them have become my darlings, my brief notes to eternity. Little things. Sometimes, I just need a little gem or a potshard.

Luckily I have the internet and my web work. There is a science to scripting which has to be addressed, pretty regulary. The newness of it keeps me from entrenching myself into sentimentality, or retreating into religious esoterica.

I don't want my collections of memories and geo-adventures in horticulture to become stale and dusty like blue poodle rows. I don't want my apples to become too important. My guy buys me apple stuff, and I sell it, so I do not have a monster on my hands.

I guess the old dame stage is a quality retained by ladies of earlier times, who were not expected to work or to do much besides keep Dads' home spotless for him, so he need never worry whn battling it out at the office. All that changed, and I found I was re-designated to the list of "super-moms", or super-women, at least while I was in Toronto. A seeming impossiblity, I worked, supported the apple of my eye, and I kept the house clean, cooked, studied, took dance, yoga and therapy courses, etc.

I see all these stages in life, now, as horticultural additions to the family tree. I may be little and striving, but I will survive and pop back, a renewed record of what has been holy, a sacred soul of the lumen.

Snowed Under in Kanata April '06 Update

Well, just when all enjoyed hope for the spring weather, it was inevitably, snowing this morning, and right on the crocuses.

I've decided to leave short notes, since I doubt very many people read into this blog. Though I am actually educated to the point where I may work professionally as a journalist (all it takes is second year Mass Communications) I only write a personal column once a month on my own website. I archive some of my columns, since they are still a little relevant to current debate.

The last one is "archived" in my companions articles section:

URL: http://www.northdaysimage.ca/companionarticles.html .

That article was a long and fairly serious page, based upon concern over image in mass media, and the enormous repercussions that the visual insult toward a groups' faith incurs, although only at times. It's the Feb 06 April Column link. If you ever need it, it is there, along with the delightfully fresh magic lantern image of Lord Balfour, from his youthful days as Secretary to Scotland. In purchasing magic lantern slides (which are 160 year old original photographs, developed as slides on glass) I discovered a whole new world, as I researched the early photographer, George Washington Wilson. Interesting, the photographer was a Scot, but his parents chose a name famous to Americans. Wilson had also taken a photo of Queen Victoria in her mid life, or a bit later, a find whch was quite rare. Apparently Queen Victoria was vain, and did not like photos taken of herself after she had aged. Geo Wilson must have been a most acceptable and almost familial persona to British Royalty.

I sold all of these slides to a person in Great Britain who gives actual magic lantern shows, so someone might be interested in that.

Here is a bloggers essay about the magic lantern shows of the UK . Link below:

http://misusesofliteracy.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-is-this-phantasmagoria-this.html

If you run across my image of The Rt. Hon. Balfour (his title at the time of shooting) , it is not for replication, since the rights to the use of these images should now be with the excellent British historians. I hope that most people will be decent about that. The British Historical Society only lets people use their photo images after they have filled out a form, and it looks like money is involved. This is probably why British Realty seems so expensive when shown via TV realty sales shows - the British still back up property rights and copyright ownership.

Since I have a chance to grouse on my own Blog at least, copyright values are on my mind. Probably, no-one reading this will be dishonourable about copyright, since you are the literati, and not the commercial oafs that stick around to plunder, snoop and market, but I have a big beef.

I can't prove it, but I was sure I had pirates upon both my fine art (in the early days of poor locks) and then, upon my copyright work, which is a religion testimonial about a leader of the Buddhist faith. I called my paid copyright work "Meeting Ananda Bodhi- Heavenly Enlightenment". I worked on writing , and then re-writing and editing my work for almost exactly two years, nine to five, five days a week. .....I found out how hard it was to sell a first work, even though there is an avid market for exactly this type of support for mystical teachings..... I also found out that hundreds of people were into my work, without my permission. ...........If you have ever heard politicians making jokes or earnest effort about one of my statements, let me know, please. They are probably the first of a privileged class who helped themselves (or I believe) to my paid copyright.................. This statement was a wry idea of mine. I said, in my work, that the Ministers of Canada (its ' MPs) relied so heavily and dreamily (as if a given ) on the free work of "little women" volunteers, that no wonder they chose to call themselves (and spuriously) a 'ministry'.

Then I wrote, 'so why do they not call themselves a Rabbinate or an Imamate, by the same token?'

I know that more than one person took me up on this, because I am part of the Ottawa Valley , or world think tank- a volunteer group of concerned mystics, and avid researchers, whose loose but brilliant application gives some propriety to the otherwise grungily commercial application that our government has been doling out, along with other platitudes toward the reactionary backlash that has so dishonoured our Canadian Civil Rights.

If you are not into our pooled knowledge bank, about which we are always encouraged to only think, because of the esoteric nature of some interests, and , like my sister, tend to think of spiritual union as schizophrenia (and she is adamantly distrusting of clairvoyancy or telepathy) I really don't care. Just please, think about your grotesque and constant interference into higher conversations with the babified battle cry of "I don't say fuck, etc". Most of us are not usually talking to you, especially when speaking out loud in our homes. Most of us do not have time for people who insist on challenging freedom of the press and of speech, let alone freedom of thought, all written into our constitution.

That leads me to an interesting point. I saw a commercial for Country Style Donuts last night. I forget the channel. In Toronto (Ontario) a day before, there had been a huge explosion in a coffee shop. I think it was in a Tim Hortons, but that might not have been on the news.
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What, I wonder, would the scripting for country style donuts mean, when a narrator explained that Country Style Donuts only offers medium and large coffee takeouts, so that, if you use the (and I quote) "wrong foreign language" to ask for a size of coffee, there are only two to choose from?
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I have been dismayed to find that the language phobics as well as stealth pirates have been hawking their rude commercial way into both my own private space, and my private desktop. Although there is not much I can do about these mini-minds, there have been absolute idiots listening into our basement. My example is the flake who insisted upon presenting her proof of schizophrenia- my verbalized prayer in Hebrew, on the first day of Hanukah. (When did we start spelling it Hanuka, by the way? In school, I learned this as Channukah). We are so Americanized,we might as well go ahead and only call it New Year, or Rotsa Ruach day.

Anyway, there have been nerds of nerd hill in our community who have insisted upon calling the use of "foreign" languages a case of schizophrenia,( fer Gawds' sake- what sort of little minds exist in the human world?).

I have a feeling that the coffee shop was not immune to the anti-language freaks, who have probably been pre-trimmed of their ears' capabilities from before birth by poor sound experiments in silicon valley and/or the hyper- paranoid security black marketeering. Maybe it's just the hot water they got into as children over Mommies' fear of vilis pilis, the Joose.

I find that, even though I write to Interpol about the freaks who hack into my desktop, they are still there, along with attendant health difficulties from insect toxin, disorder, and antique fibre.

The bottom line is that these people do not give a fig about others' lives. In fact, they are terrorists toward not only pc users, but our lands' stasis. Don't quote me, but it is a principle in the wind from scientists who do not want to see a whole community turn to ash from gas fire.

My case, and gripe, today, is the following:

Yesterday I made a mild spring gif, animated for a little interest, with some silk veils of purple mist. I know that kids copy our scribbled artwork, but I could loudly hear the beans who keep following me around, watching everything I did from their vantage point on the cable lineswork, or near to it. Knowing that, whatever I try, I can't get away from these ugly and violent people, I persevered, and placed my work on the net. What of it? It is just a gentle note.

What of this type of trespass, you say?

Living here in Glencairn, I witness many space events. For instance, aircraft fly overhead very regularly, and rocks project coloured light shapes from both meteorites and ground.

Last night someone was flying very low, and I anxiously poked my head out the window to have a look at the jet, rushing north in a dark sky. Yesterday, there was a crash of a cargo plane somewhere in the states. I am used to relating to those on high, and why should I havedreamed up this theme, that I am about to mention, although in part, albeit to myself?

Someone had made their own version of my artwork, but they used something known to pilots as a pattern in aircraft engineering, and interfered with a regular passenger jet. (The rest has been perceived, I do hope, and is now --sorry to say---censored by myself---

And, whomsoever you turkeys are, deliberately trying to ground aircraft, or worse, someone will catch up with youse.