What do I know?

 Yes I am sitting here in the dark typing. Another attempt to look at the screen instead of the keyboard.

Which is very hard for me, but hey as you see it is working.

In with this I would like to make a point. My desire to look at the keyboard like now, even in the dark I am looking towards the key board now, oh dear. 

Try again

So you can see a desire like that, is not helping me to type better.

 on a total different note, I also have a strong longing, for a few days now to go to the 911-pond.

And that I compare to my sisters desire to travel, and I assume many people miss travelling.

Oops and right now my husband's desire to have the radio on, while not even listening. It drives me crazy, like now when I am writing this post, I do not want to listen to the radio. A front line worker is being interviewed, I think she has been on air with the very same story since April now. Sorry I have no patience fro that.

That is actually another post, I think in people and on radio ( we do not do tv or internet ) I too easy pick out the negative....I want to see the beauty first and yes I do want to be aware of the negative...I believe in the fact that everything has two sides.

This way , here now, this blind typing takes me way too long. I post this as is, Hopefully, I always hope that this is being read and that the readers have their own thought accordingly What i am that some thing is triggered, something new. Is there someone out there? Are you there?

Something that makes you more at ease, more satisfied with what is, in this very moment.

CO2 emissions

 Like Corrie I like listening to the radio, but when I write fiction, my characters are more clear then I am myself, like i listen to the radio, but most often only half,  I miss half of the story.

In Corrie her gossip is acceptable, because she is a character in a story, but in myself I try to at least become aware of it when I do it. This awareness is like listening to the radio playing in the back ground, background noise, So the awareness of being in the moment and knowing when I long to talk gossip, my ways are like the background noise, I am somewhat aware but unable to turn it off. And not really knowing if I just have a critical mind or do I just like to pick out the negative.

So this morning I heard something on the radio about CO2 emissions, you probably heard something too lately, it's news again. I took sides with the radio announcer, she asked  the expert something like , what do we have to do? The expert said, get ready for an increase in cost and for the government regulations.

To me the answer was a big joke like the one Corrie was laughing about in the last post.

Increase in cost won't be a problem, because earlier in the news it said that the rich (most of us) have an excess of money at the moment due to covid. 

And being ready for regulations? What the heck? To me we have to change our ways USE LESS CO2 which means, turning off the computer NOW, oops.

It is very hard to change and I think that might be why people do not like to talk about it. The radio announcer, good for her, she tried.

As everything today is relevant with Covid in mind, this is also, we do travel less. Amazingly

Yes travelling in most cases, causes CO2 emissions

But I invite you to think, what are you ( if you are in on this necessity, I assume not everybody is concerned) 

What are you doing LESS?

Less is more, maybe you have read my stories in the past about that.

Like now we travel less, we do have more time to go for a hike ( I have seen this with my own eyes, not having this many hikers this summer as anytime before).

And I? What will I do today?

.....see  i have to think very hard, stop typing now

Yes that would be one thing, turn the computer off, less computer time, I can stop now, but really I am not  willing at the moment to spend less time on it during the coarse of a day.

Today I will: turn off the lights this time of day, NOW, I did, I can type in the dark, somewhat harder for me..  And coming mornings I can do things that do not require the lights to be on, like listening to the radio, meditating, reserve these thing for the dark hours, and use the daylight for things that need light....

I will let you know how that goes.

gossip or just crazy stuff

 Its Corrie here again, in these crazy covid  days, she listens to the radio a lot,  mostly to comment on the crazy covid rules, crazy according to her, one sided she will say, which is interesting because she  herself lives a very solidary. Social distancing, because she is not well loved and has no one to keep distance from in the first place. Anyway she listen to the radio, it is about the guy who brought his mother here from California, and now he cannot understand  the problem with that, Dave Black treats him very respectfully. Which according to Corrie makes it all quite hilarious: thinking, while everybody in the country is living with travel restriction, this man cant understand why he cant bring his ailing mother here and  on top of that expects yukon health care to just puts its big and caring arms around her and him!  Now he asks  the public, how can he be expected to just bring her back in a day notice...Corrie talks  more to the radio then to Philip,  a no brainer pal. 

Then there is a knock on the door, it is Marion, the next door neighbour ( 2km) with an equally hilarious story. Marion wonders why her, plumber, is upset with her. Well asks Corrie why is he upset with you. what did you do. Well I just asked him to give me a free estimate for some work needing to be done,... on she goes , she told him in the same sentence she is not going to hire him for the work  because she already found an other plumber but she does need two estimates.

Corrie explains...ehhh i think i would  somewhat mad, if asked by a client  to do some work ( writing up an estimate is work yes) for free. No, no, Marion goes, you do not get it, I do that all the time and everyone always has been ok with that. Philip tries to get a word in too but to no avail Marion has done many favors to others after all  and as soon as she steps out of the door Corrie and Philip burst out laughing, and take joy in repeating, playing out, the whole story.

 After Philip and Corrie calm down, Corrie gets out the the astrology charts, there must something in the stars, some retrograde planet, because this now is the 3th time today.

 Earlier that day Corrie  had gotten a phone call from a shady friend, lets call him John. John had had  a brush with the law recently, but  now wanted to inform Corrie, what a friendly policeman was handling the case. And!  John said, as Corrie knew someone else who was also active in the same illegal activity. Said John: You should go to your friend and tell him to go take himself in, to that friendly policeman, and the police man if your friend  is honest about it like me, will give him some slack too!

Whoopy ding life is just too good to be true!

And if you noticed, Corrie has more friends then she realizes, enough of them at least to keep a little distance.

stepping into a different world

  Now at this moment, sipping rose petal tea. I just recently discovered how  I like to drink rose petal tea;  put a small handful of dried rose petals, and add hot water (Not! boiling) The rose petals will float and every sip you  smell and taste the summer smell of roses.

It's almost -30 C outside, i just checked.

The other day I was invited along to someone's house. It was stepping into what  I feel was the 70s, could be the 80s. The people, their clothes, the chairs, the colors in the house, mostly everything. The only modern world item was a laptop and tv screen.  The way a wrap-around ( the batik type thing) was used as table cloth. I think I remember doing that decades ago. ok. haha. well I still sometimes do it, but I consider myself a bit odd,  timeless. It certainly not something I had seen in someone else's house in that way. It is hard to describe the house, everything seemed to have been acquired at garage sales or the like, but many many years ago. Even the food served was reminiscent of  good old days.

The tea came in cups that only my mother would still have, the ones with flowers and a golden rim and what was offered was herbal or black.  

The choices of tea not so unusual, I always think it is just me that would like to see some greater creativity, more local, in choices of tea. A few of my friends will offer  hand picked spruce tips or wild chamomile, etc.

But what is  the moral of my story  here|: People can live that way, and very happily at it; with stuff that is totally good, useable and sturdy, stuff that might be 40 years old, older even.

I do not need to drink rose petal tea out of the latest Starbucks cup ( ha and as I am the last one to be up to date, maybe Starbucks is already old, maybe there is something newer to be had in the form of cups.) 

And now here I open my cupboard; no, i can't pride myself in still using left overs of  my grandmother's tea set. 

Please let me know if you do! Awesome!  is what I will say.

I hope every story is a love story

 What I do know for sure is that... I, in my head now, am going from the idea of stories per day, to the story of every moment. So yes, I would like to say that every moment has a story, and everyone of those stories is a book.

I have heard people say that their head is so full of thoughts. So I assume many of us can relate, when I meditate, 20 minutes this morning, many thoughts, but I was able to not follow them and so to speak not let the story run  my mind. 

As a writer (maybe even if you do not write, you can still relate I think) For me there is being lost in thinking, not really aware, and opposite to that, as a 'writer' I am aware of thinking and let them run to pick which one I want to write down, or sometimes just type them like now as they come out.

haha what a miraculous feeling, to have the fingers be in sync with the mind.

How glorious!

But what I also love is that how in a single thought there is a knowing the whole story, without having to think it in thoughts.

If I for example think; "Mary", I can stop at that thought, and know the whole story, a  whole book, about Mary, that I have fabricated in my mind. It might or might not have  little to do with the real Mary. My story about her  might also be quite different depending on the day.

Today for me, hers is a love story; A most beautiful very special woman who was for 50+ years, in a most beautiful very loving relationship  with Gerry. When I think of Gerry, I see his smile, the twinkle in his eyes.

And a love story, I think, never really does end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utBKv9ZMojM

my focus in meditation

 hmmmm much like my writing, NOW here i am typing, YOU Now you are reaidng.

But in my now, I had some music on and started dancing, but i am back.

I meditate to become more aware, and this morning I remembered to have an intention and  I added bodhichitta.

I meditate every morning for 17 minutes. Which  I feel I could now expand to 20 minutes, but 20 used to be too long, and 15 too short.

If you read the previous posts, I have been trying to get a sense of where  and when my mind gets hooked, and I get lost in thought.

This morning in those 17 minutes, i set 2.5 apart and was able to stay aware in those 2.5 minutes. Now it is in my character (not wrong or right) to always improve and again, i will try to expand that too tomorrow.

In those 2.5 minutes, I sat up, with my back supported, closed eyes most of the times, and in open awareness,  with the breath to come back too

I am dancing again

 and previously while writing I stop when Don asked for attention, he has interrupted me twice, all good, I got back to writing.

-riders on the storm-

In meditation  those 2.5 minutes this morning, I was able to not dance, to not be interrupted. Maybe feeling my toes maybe slightly wiggling, but not get lost in it, maybe hearing something, listening, but not losing focus on awareness. Thoughts would appear, mostly towards the future; what I would write here. But I was able to stay aware.

How cool is that? I am very proud of myself!

Why I write this, is to hear from YOU, really your meditation might be totally about something different. Please tell me. Or when what I describe here is something you do during the day, normal practice, of focusing on writing for example.

yukon biking survey

 Ohh looking outside: suddenly snowing bigtime 

and I buzzing with somewhat too much energy,  yesterday lethargic, today this, I already did a ton of stuff.

But shovelling snow later on will be good for me, the physical exercise will  for me both combat lethargy and hyperness.

And i am over with Corrie, she is just a gossip. And i being aware that my thought now shifted away from gossip to 'there is something wrong with the world' and 'I  know how to fix it"

Oops and unsuccessfully, I am always trying to improve on myself. These days it is Not reacting to insanity but being still ( quiet) when confronted  with  Don complaining.  Maybe if you know, and the following will help me with what i really wanted to talk about  which was - using a bicycle to get around-. 

But maybe you know how hard it is to change a habit. For me it is like i start erring on the other side, becoming ignorant of real needs, and often after an attempt falling back into the same pattern as soon as the focus is gone.

Like in my meditation I try to watch my breath and  catch the moment where i am thinking again. For me at the moment is like this. I am watching my breath ( for say plus 20 years i did not understand this practice, so i can pad myself on the back  that i finally get it) So I am paying attention to me breathing in breathing out, and i try to catch when i revert to thinking. barely possible for me, most of the time during a 17 meditation i will catch my self around 5 times having drifted of in thought after the fact. But what i noticed this morning, is that yes watching my breath i will have beginning of thoughts that i can let float by and keep attention to my breath but still around 5 times I did get hooked, the thought floating by within keeping focus on my breath are like little down spirals in my awareness. Whereas being in thought I am gone from awareness, that is till because of sitting or something makes me realize i was lost in thought. 

But there is also something else, while focusing on my breath i can also fall into dream state, like having a dream image appear. I know i have this lots, but from now on i also would like to watch it happen so to speak

As you see meditation is never boring

Neither is biking, I do not have a fat tire bike, but my bikes are somewhat of a mountain bike, Actually i have 3 bikes , as i said in the survey. After i did the survey i realized that actually have 4 bikes. I have trampoline bike, a bike with out tire to be used on the trampoline, I have used it once, no it is not a miskoop ( what is the English word for that?) It was made by son, and left behind.

Anyway i would have liked to add that on the survey, that would sound cool right a 60 year old woman owning a tramp bike. 

note, I am am receiving a shoulder rub again :):):)

What i would try to explain here too is that my mind goes from gossip to saving the world, both really strange ways to have the ego at work

Because really how do we change other people into bike riders, and why?

And what makes me a rider? Did I get lucky in the genepool?

.....hmmmm I do want to encourage you though, if you are not already a bike rider, to have a bicycle, there are lots in the dump, fix it up, have it fixed up if you have the money. I do think it is good for Mother Nature if we more often grab that bike, and NOT to drive 100 miles to participate in an event...what is that?! Oops you maybe love these bike events so much, and maybe it does encourage you to do an errand on the bike instead of taking the car.

Be good! use your bicycle! 

And me now going to shovel some snow I will first scoop out the trail to the bike shed.

Essential to riding your bike is that you can get to it in the first place.

a young buck

 Don and I just spend an hour watching a buck deer in the yard, and now i am behind the computer again, because i did scare the deer away by making the slightest noise, Why couldn't i stay quiet? The deer leaped up and bounced away after i made that sound with the window, trying to see the deer better.

 Don is standing behind me, massaging my shoulders. What a heavenly way to type.

I do not know if it has anything to with the sudden rise in temperature, the animals coming out of hiding after the snowfall and minus 20 C degree temperatures. But me feeling, all day, if in big need of being massaged, my body feeling dragged down.

 to continue Corrie's story 

Why is like that, that she often doesn't recognize people? She has wondered about that often.

And after the car is pulled out of the ditch with Philip's jeep, she apologized to the neighbour about not recognizing him, and as she did apologize, she suddenly  remembers his name: "James!" they laughed.

When young, Corrie recognized way more people then they did recognize her, she was aware of this; walking through the city, just knowing, seeing a woman in the library for example; oh yes that woman lives on my street, we  briefly spoke once.  Then as a young adult Corrie became aware that actually a lot of people did recognize her too,  she figured because she does not look ordinary, she is very tall and has a long face. And now in an encounter people will know who she is, but she has to ask; who are you again? Somewhere 30 plus she lost her ability to recognize people easily,   acquaintances like her neighbour James here. or a good friend in a crowd.  

I wonder what causes such handicap, which is not declining eyesight, but something else.

Corrie is 60 , Phillip is 73

Philip later goes back to the scene to see if he could figure out, by the tracks in the snow, how James ended up in the ditch. But Corrie knows, it was Philip's driving. He is the slowest driver on the road plus the way he always is putting on the brakes, both on the road as in life. Corrie and he will have a conversation, he will say. It is a miracle Corrie figures that he massaged her shoulder so long this morning, normally he would start something like that but stop after 2 minutes.

In this case he stopped, according to Philip  himself, to let James pass. and yes Corrie can see that, but.... 

The same for fast drivers, they have no clue that they are the ones that drive too fast. Let's take one such neighbour, Violet, Corrie knows she drives fast! Corrie has often shared rides with her; Violet is a speedy driver. Actually so is  Tanya, another neighbour Corrie has seen driving. Both Violet and Tanya are convinced they are good drivers. Corrie knows by the way they talk about other drivers. Other drivers drive too fast. Much faster then Violet or Tanya, or so they say. Corrie can not imagine. Violet  was telling a story how she takes others peoples license plate numbers to report them to the police, and Tanya is always complaining about the reckless drivers in the Yukon, passing her at times on the inside or something weird.

Corrie is happy that at least Philip is a slow driver, even if it means he does get stopped by the police more often then the fast ones, or so it seems. Her and Alek agreed on it, because they both have husbands who do not have a lead foot. And both their men have gotten in trouble with the police due to it.

polarization

 Please bear with me, what i am posting so far  this November 0f 2020, they are rough drafts. Today i feel i can slow down enough to actually put out a readable first draft. So to start of the right way, let me check if i post this, the lay out, is correct, if it fits in the box where it is visible to the reader. ( Previous 2 post it did not want to do that automatically)

Check.

Yes it worked!  I will post a continuation of this post in 15 min.

 This is a piece of fiction, based on characters  in my neighbourhood, but I wanting to protect the identity of real people. It obviously has to do with their/our shortcomings, I will start of with my quirk.

I  gave myself the name of, Corrie. 

The road is well plowed, slightly up hill, winding through a forest of snow laden trees, after a morning of fresh snowfall, the sun is starting to come out, and gives the whole scene a most glorious look, as often Corrie feels as if they actually live in a high quality nature movie.

Phillip pulls up very slowly besides the car in the ditch. Corrie sitting in the passenger seat, her eyes meet the eyes of the distressed driver. She assumes she knows why he gives her that look, a look that is not so much distressed but more like being annoyed.  Annoyed,  she reasons within herself,  not so much that he is in the ditch, but that it was Phillips fault.

She seizes him up, he seems like a nice enough young man, maybe a trouble maker, She wonders,  but it is not that weird neighbour, the came running out of his house one day, eyes bulging, because she was trespassing, and she was. 

As Corrie and the man each step out of their cars, he climbing over to the passenger seat in his car, because well he is in the ditch a snow filled ditch. And she walking around her to get to his. Phillip is not moving.. yet.

Corrie inquires, "are you a neighbour?, as she does not recognize the man. He laughs kindly, happily if to a child really, thinks Corrie later, and yes he does behave if he does know them, and shortly  after Phillip came out of the car, 

He asks " Phillip do you have chain?"

 -to be continued-

 

 

 

one ordinairy day

 

Just a normal day  for us here.

I wake up around 8 am, to be honest  more like 8.30 am, it is late for me.

 But here in the Yukon we are on Yukon Standard Time,

 which to say the least is a little screwball,

 Like our midday falsl at 2 pm. And now i would be the first to say

 here in the Yukon it doesn’t matter because we do 

not have much daylight in the winter, and in summer 

well it is all daylight. But I am normally an early….... 

 

Whoaa whoaa wait a minute just as i am typing this 

there is the most beautiful sunset going on. 

The mountain in the South West, Kelvin mnt that is

 on the east side lined with a bar of golden light. 

And it is lasting , it is just sitting there. Now you

 might now that here up north sunrises and sunsets are

 drawn out events, gloroiusly so. And as this is all going 

on me rattling away on the keyboard, my husband is

 rattling away, and i keep saying i am typing i am not listening.

 It is something about our potatoes  in the cool room,  

Shit he says , you don’t care,  Yes yes i care, but i am typing 

We here me and the reader, i was actually telling you ,

 i am an early riser. But with this two hour midday point

 in winter i feel i am sleeping longer and longer, and 

normally i like to eat right at noon and then again at 6, 

but that has shifted too, i eat now at 1 or 2 and supper

 is far away. It is 5.30 here. Normally i would be cooking away.

So this as always is going to be a long story, 

Only being at the time when  I only just got up.  

 Lets say it was 9 am when I have done my dream

 journal meditation and was sipping coffee. 

It was snowing again. Lots of snow this year.

 I did some  light shoveling and later on that morning

 a neighbour brought back the big shovel she borrowed. 

Just in time.

Oh my husband is talking again , to me, “Awe fuck men”,

 yes that is how he talks. He is not used to me typing away,

 but heck it is nanowrimo, one month a year i do do this.

Later this month i will do a post on the art of shovelling snow,

 but for now we move along.

I made bast porridge,  it was good, yes yes i will like this 

addition of spruce bast to my diet.

 I forgot what else i did that morning, but in the afternoon 

we got ready to haul water at the creek, Stony Creek. 

Yesterday Don had noticed that the road towards the creek

 was plowed, which means we can get to the creek. 

And we did, and  I will keep you posted on a bridge someone build.

 I am predicting the bridge will fail and be pushed out by the

 ice and block off the culvert underneath the highway, thanks 

a lot Geaton! OOps now it is out there on the Internet, but 

 he build the bridge or so i heard.

Anyway till now the bridge has proven very helpful

 to haul water, I clean off the bridge, with a big axe,

 make the waterhole bigger and Don filled five 5 gallon jugs.

We stop at Mendenhall Landing, and the river is most 

beautiful the sound of ice hitting the rozen shoreline,

 the river freezing up, and i suddenly i heard the swans, 

Still 5 swans. I worry for them, the river will freeze up soon. 

Ad South seems too far to go.

I come home and want to put a photo on my desktop 

back ground, a recently bought refurbished computer. 

Somehow it is not working, i need a code…. My mood

 dropped like rock , I do not know nothing about computers, 

just enough to do this and that, but not like a millennium who 

understands them . I opened my email  to see if that is working,

 and Ole my life always a string of glory, an email from Jonathan 

at Tergar ( meditation) asking why we are so hardwired to be unhappy.

 Instantly I laugh at my upsetted self, and long story short, phoning Trinity ,

 it is all resolved in a wiffy, Hurray for Technology

Bast

 

(Before reading this post, forgive me about the choppy lay-out, i was unable to figure

 out how my blog works today, hopefully i will work out the glitches in the next few days'

as i plan to be blogging in the month of November, nanowrimo)

 

Recently we had a big wind storm here and a few old growth White Spruce in our yard

 blew down.

And simultaneously  I had  been introduced to Alek. Alek like me turned out a lover of eating

 wild foods, 

nibbling on everything we came across on a hike. No fear of dying of just a nibble. Which

 we both felt

 withholds many people from eating wild woods, the fear of dying. 

Also related to my study of Botany in the days of that wind storm i had been researching

 in  the book

 ‘long ago person found’. By accident i found that in the stomach of this long ago person

 Spruce Bast

 was found to be in his diet. Alek, on that hike, had been asking me about the inner bark

, cambium o

r bast of Birches, to be used for flour, food.

Hence the Two downed White Spruces in my yard, they  put it all together. 

And in between clearing snow, we had an half meter snowfall after the storm, i would

 dredge through

  the snow to one of the downed spruces,  It was a gigantic one, say 50 feet length

 and 60 cm diameter

 at the base. Big for our semi arid region, It’s age i suspect a few hunderd years.

And sawing away the bark i discovered a spot with a cm thick layer of cambium.

 The tree totally

 deteriorated in the core, the cambium spotted. I do not know what the cambium

 of a younger healthier

 tree would like like.

I could see though that the cambium was not the same thickness every where 

, a thing i had read

 on line. Not much on google though about Spruce Cambium and it’s edibility ,

 almost nil and whatever

 i found was hardly relevant.

I scraped of the cambium with a knife, with gloved hands stuffed the scrapes i could

 catch in my pocket.

Nibbling i found the taste and texture surprising palatable. Do note i enjoy a various

 amount  of extreme

 tastes, and cut most sugar out of my diet. The low sugar intake to me is paramount

 to enjoy new foods.

Later offering it to others, the reactions were...wonderful:  “yak too bitter” , “ it tastes

 like firewood”,

 “it tastes like wood, oh now i have a piece of wood stuck between my teeth."

But happily to me everyone was nibbling. Alek of course was

 the only one who

 said, ”Yes! That is ok”.

I tested people out on election night, bringing a dish of woodchips ( cambium 

, dried rhubarb and

 chocolate.

I knew for the job of harvesting i needed my log peeler, but  could not find it

. I went to ‘my’ tree with

 a hatchet, small axe, that worked better then the saw and knife, but still no

t a way to harvest

 a reasonable amount to actually use as flour.

Yesterday i searched the whole work shop for the tool i needed. And yes after

i said to my husband 

, “Don i searched the whole shop and did not find it” , i turned my head and there

 it was.

And yes! This proved to be the tool to harvest a bigger amount, now do not think

 anything big, first i

t is not me to harvest large amounts of anything  and still this tree was life recently

 but old and a hardy

 bark, and we are talking lots of snow to deal with.

So i harvest a cup full of scrapings

This morning i put it in my grinder with some plantain sees and some rumex seeds

 and made

 a good looking flower, now that i mixed with the same amount of whole wheat flour,

 and made

 pancakes. Cranberry pancakes that is.

Hmmm the spruce tree taste was not there, but the bitterness yes, next time

 i have to try it withou

t cranberries.

And as long as i do not feel like a grouse that i have to start eating gravel,

 to activate a gizzard

 i don’t have,  i will keep experimented and upping the dose.

 

( sorry for the chopped up lay-out, lots of issues here posting on my blog, i forgot how it worked,

hmmm strange, how it's workings do not make sense.) 

spring log 1998

Spring log 1998

 March 14 Nadine's birthday outside 

First week of April cleaning deadfall,

April 3 walked from the pyramid to the lake

April 7 playing tree tag above the rock

April 10 dinner outside

April 12 Gopher spotted by Alexander

April 16 mourning cloak

April 17 driveway clear of snow

April 18 Geese flying over

April 19  2 crocuses showing purple

April 19 burning grass ( almost put the forest on fire)

April 19 grouse drumming

April 21 Robin

woodpeckers

squirrels active of and on all winter

bikes have been out all winter