Andrew Binks

http://ow.ly/ewZYJ
lay vs laid, lain etc…

Incent or incentivize? http://tinyurl.com/d8u4jud

 

My mother died just over a year ago. I didn’t really have the inclination to keep up with the blog after that. I suppose it’s because I thought she was probably the only one reading it. Ah well, in that time I did have things I wanted to share. A couple of weeks after she passed away, I noticed a sky that was overwhelming in its absolute gloriousness; the clouds were mountainous and had parted to let through a huge array of beams, the kind of thing you see in the movies, I’m sure there was something like it in the ten commandments.

I remember living in Vancouver and, one night, after going through the pain of being dumped by an on-the-rebound short lived relationship, I was walking across the Burrard street bridge on my way from work as a barista in Kitsilano, back to my studio in the West End. I paused at one of those small decks overlooking the passage into False Creek. The night was clear, characteristically for the dry Septembers, and the sky filled with stars. I looked up and knew, with no question, that I wasn’t alone. There was too much out there–the dark mountains and the full starry sky beyond and above, to think that I wasn’t part of something, what, I know not. But there was an incredible feeling of comfort that has never left me. Not since that night. I can’t say that it takes the shape of anything, it is just the knowing that I am connected to it all. To all of this.

Now back to the sky that caught my breath after my mother had died. When I looked up to that immense canyon leading out to the blueness and brightness and so full of light, I had to smile. It was as if my mother had kicked me in the butt to say “damned if I’m outta here.” Though I have felt the sorrow of not being able to be with her physically and tell her my stories, for which she was always the best audience, I feel comfort in knowing in my heart that she is in a place of pure light and love.

I remember walking in the field days later, crying and hoping that she, wherever she was, would not be sad at seeing me crying and missing her. Inside my tears I knew I would survive, although there were other tearful times when I told myself “I didn’t sign up for this kind of emotional pain.”

Where I am living is close to nature with few distractions of sounds from the man made world, just the odd vehicle on the distant road. Visually I see only things of nature, when my back is to the house. I think it makes it easier to sense the messages that surround us moment to moment.

I had violets grow in my garden last spring that I never planted and were coincidentally my mother’s favourite flower. The morning of my birthday, recently, the cardinal which I haven’t seen for over a year, dropped by while I stared out at the trees with my coffee. My mother and I used to talk about the cardinals. She even enlarged a photo of one that I had sent her, and put it in a Christmas calendar for me. These things happen frequently and I have to smile.

We have had to abandon the phrases we grew up knowing––March coming in like a lamb and going our like a lion or vice versa––for blank stares into the sky and into the west to ask “what next.” The winter has been a prolonged, extended, drawn out sentimental departure, always turning back for one last glance, maybe a quick kiss or a tight and fleeting embrace. But winter couldn’t say goodbye, meaning that slowly budding tulips have lingered just above the ground long enough to have their heads bitten off, and that the bird feeders continue to be busy with activity––the level of food dropping as quickly as the temperature at night.

The deadly storms in the southern US send us their dregs to rip across our land, filling the sky with a grey foreboding, lashing rain from all directions and shaking the house with wind. Thunder comes now at odd times of year; summer storms hit us in spring, fields brim with water before overflowing onto roads, and when the sky clears and we believe the tempest has departed, the clear skies are filled with a bluster that blows the dog off the road and into my legs.

Is this climate change, or are we simply saddled with impatience to get our hands into the dirt, and dig and plant and have the garden fill up with that familiar short lived but intense tropical lushness? I long to know just what it was I pulled off the discount rack last year, the very last of the last of the perennials that is now fully comfortable and finding the nourishment it needs, below the soil. I need to rearrange, find a new home for the raspberries, perhaps replace that large hole with some rose bushes. I need to feed my senses, taste the earth’s miracles, smell the smells, and listen to the array of species of frogs, peepers, crickets and toads. All those things which winter lacks like a jealous lover. Winter, your time has come…

It has been “that time of year” for over a month now. We wait for the sun and rain to warm the earth enough for roots to spread and bulbs to swell. If you look closely you will see that something is starting to happen. Despite the extended periods of cold, life remains intact just feet from our steps. I am starting to believe this spring might be a short one. My feeling is that, as it was years ago, we went from too cold to too hot, didn’t wear wind breakers or move from sweaters to shirts to t-shirts. Summer came upon us, dead leaves and dirty piles of snow shrinking while dusty small tornados ricocheted down the street. And as for April, it was only just barely enough after a long winter. For now I have no choice but to wait and plan: a bigger vegetable garden, where to move the raspberry bush, and how long I can wait before getting a load of soil and mushroom compost delivered. In the meantime I’ve filled my kitchen with pots of hyacinths and daffodils from the grocery store. I can’t wait much longer for 400 bulbs to bloom, at this stage I think they must be at their most tempting for rabbits and other members of the yard family, and may not make it much further.

It was the kind of morning where grey is what welcomes me after I realize that I am not going to see a sun rise. I could wait just a moment more in the hopes that it is not grey, but a soft predawn blue. But no. Soon there is enough light to see the wind whip the fine cold snow through the meadow, create small hurricanes and tornadoes, exit stage left, angrily, between the trees, and head east, but soon return to stir up even more trouble, trying to frighten the birds from the yard, startle the rabbits who are hunkered and fluffy against the fury. This fine powdery snow is all I need to know it is biting cold. This tempest soon gives way to lake effect and the constant thick stream of bigger flakes past the house. Perhaps it isn’t as cold, but I have steeled yourself against it to get to the car, and, once inside, care only about the front and rear defrost doing their job.

Out on the road, spindles of snow slip across my path, fired by a long wind from far away. In places the field seems to continue onto the road. The odd truck is in the ditch because it took a drift too quickly or not seriously enough, or didn’t see it. The small drifts pull at the car, trying to tug it to the side, like navigating a boat on a particularly wavy day.

Back home I notice the sky has opened up for a moment, and I grab my camera, not that everything else was not photo-worthy, but here the sky seems to be exposing its mouth, throat, and lungs, inhaling back into the space from where the strong wind has blown most of the day.

Yesterday I walked to the mailbox. It’s about two miles away and some days I just take a small detour in the car to pass it and pick up the mail, but some mornings I look at the sky and know it will be a walk-to-the-mailbox day. The stars are still up there and a hint of colour slowly grows in the east, which says clear, cold, crisp. The walk is silent, the odd truck or school bus passes, sometimes there won’t be a vehicle the whole way there. Even though I walk past snow blown fields and through a forest of brittle trees, the whole place is alive with something–some kind of spirit–the wind clacking the branches together–the sun so filtered by the trees where it hits the edge of the escarpment an hour before it sets for good, that I swear it is pure silver without a hint of gold. This presence says nothing more than that all is well, on my little walk, in my little corner of this great big universe, where all is not always well. Nothing much matters on these walks. I have nothing to worry about other than a letter slipping out of its tucked place in a magazine.

We had an owl somewhere here the other night. I heard it and was delighted. I don’t know if I’ve actually ever heard an owl before or has it just been in the movies and seen in children’s picture books. When a friend visited in the late spring, we stood on the deck and listened to the busy birds in the yard and the trees. She said they sound so happy. The owl made me happy. I was delighted that it found some refuge, or a vantage point, or even the time to make a series of hoots.

It’s funny, this whole pallet of winter colour–white on white on grey until the sky burns at the end of the day–and sounds–ice cracking under the ferry, owls, ever present coyotes, the lone phantom woodpecker I have finally spotted in the woods–so much more limited maybe than the other seasons, but just as rich. It’s all here as the longer days start to race towards us and the arctic cold presses down upon us, and we are caught in this somewhere in between.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The moon is in Aries today. At around five this morning, about an hour and a half before I took this picture, a strip of white light lay across the bed from my feet up to my head. Yesterday a clear wind blew from the east bringing a wall of cloud late in the afternoon, and after that a clear night for the moon.

I keep expecting grey and dull and colourless landscape but the fields, the garden, even the tomatoes that have fallen off the stems are rich with colour. This time last year a couple of medical concerns presented themselves to me, leading me to believe that my time here was soon to come to and end. All symptoms combined did not add up to a positive prognosis, but, fortunately, all symptoms were unrelated. I confess I was terrified and deeply saddened at the prospect of leaving so soon, and felt like there was still so much to do, strange, like life is one huge project that needs to be completed, for no apparent reason. I saw everyone else’s problems as gifts that kept them anchored here, on earth. Perhaps I felt I hadn’t loved enough, shared enough, used up all my life credits. What is it I am waiting for?

Where I live now is nirvana, birds eat out of my hands, finally, and bugs wait patiently for me to usher them back out of the house (Ivswat the flies). Everything captivates me, helped along by a beer on the porch at the end of the day while I watch the light fade from the garden and deny the fact that a chill is filtering into my bones, as I sit until the last possible moment.

http://ow.ly/2QNgX Autumn Escape – A glossy silver finely sprayed from the edge of sun singed taught water #haiku #authors #novelist

I run the risk of posting lots of pictures of sunsets and landscapes but there is something I am reminded of every time I stray out to the beach. First of all I am reminded of how beautiful it is and how easy it can be for me to neglect beauty when it is not plunked right in front of me. Perhaps it reminds me that the seasons don’t change quite as quickly as we presume they do. People are forever saying “well that’s it for summer, winter’s here,” believing the water too cold to get into now, not trusting the warm autumn sun that drapes everything in a golden light that you never get in the summer, or the winter. I passed miles of flaming deciduous trees, mostly hot oranges and really strong stubborn reds on the way to the water. But it was the beach I needed. The leaves need a slow walk along a country road to be appreciated, not a mad kaleidoscopal dash with finger tot he hutter though the windshield. So, amidst the colour, you have a very monochromatic scene. An for all of the heat of the day, the wind blew hard off the water, even the birds seem to tire of sitting on the air. The beach was empty more or less, a couple of bodies appearing intermittently, and a few sail boarders by the time I left.

And how does one turn ones back on this? You have to hope that the scene filled your spirit enough, as if the wind off the lake blew the horizon’s soul lifting elements right into you and filled you up, enough that you could almost make it to next time. The trouble is you never realize how much in need of a recharge you are, until you come back.