Life – Page 15 – Rant and Roll

Looking down on these bright blue city lights.

Sunday nights are for:

Dostoevskian musings.

Tank tops and comfortable shorts.

Fresh cut lavender and dark roast coffee beans.

Sunday nights are for:

Finding all the hair elastics I’ve scattered about the house.

Half-drunk water glasses, reflecting a sleepy, satisfied sunset.

Placing my shirt, shorts, and running shoes at the front door.

Finding the good athletic socks.

Sunday nights are for:

Watching the final stage of the Tour de France, mesmerized.

Post-Tour living room workouts.

Sunday nights are for:

Monday work-meals. (Peanut butter and jam sandwich; salad with homemade dressing; cucumber slices and cherry tomatoes.)

The Lumineers

Sunday nights are for:

Scribbling and scribing.

Dreams and delighting.

Sunday nights are for:

A subtle breeze cooling the heat of my cheeks.

Kitten kisses.

Sweeping up the fallen rose petals.

Painting the nails on my hands, but not on my feet.

Sunday nights are for:

Washing the weekend’s campfire from my long, blond locks.

Long walks, and whispered talks.

Sunday nights are for:

Memories

Sunday nights are for:

You and Me.

So let us melt, and make no noise

Hey kids.

Since yesterday’s post was pretty grim, I figure I should bring some levity to the situation, lest you all conclude that I’m two steps from plunging into the Fraser River and succumbing to a similar fate to that of British Columbia’s ever-depleting salmon stocks.

(A victim of over-fishing and sea-lice infestations? WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT HERE.)

Anyways, it’s not as though we can ignore the fact that the worldy goings on of late have been bleak as hell, what with all of the war, killing, and partisan hackery that dominate our political, social, (and unfortunately sometimes even personal) discourse.

It’s hard to ignore these omnipresent and always disheartening realties.

Try, of course, as one might.

It rained for the first time in Vancouver in what feels like years.

We’ve been blessed with such unbelievably warm and sunny weather that I had almost forgotten what it means to live in a coastal, temperate rainforest.

An excellent reminder of the reality? My extensive collection of cheap flats and my ever-strengthening propensity to forget my umbrellas every which place I travel.

What a talent!

Anyways, what I really want to write about is my unwavering belief in the incredible beauty of human connection (particularly in light of (or perhaps despite of?) all the depressing and violent garbage being levelled at all hours of the day, in all four corners of the globe.

Humans are the worst, and yet we are the absolute best.

We are capable of so much terror, greed, and fear, but we also have the capacity to do so much good, spread so much love, and create so much magic.

We have the capacity to meet someone and immediately know them. Immediately know you were meant to know them.

I sometimes feel corny talking about soul mates (but then I question whether I actually do feel corny, or whether or not I’ve been conditioned to think that such topics are corny, what with so many young lads and lasses crying “gauche!” when confronted with raw and real displays of love and emotion.)

Perhaps it’s a mix of both (I certainly lend credence to the belief that there is a time and place to best trumpet your affections for an individual/individuals with whom you are besotted) but mostly I am just one giant love warrior with a massive ax to grind.

(Love ax, mind you.)

I so firmly believe in soul mates that sometimes I feel like my heart is so full that it just might break into hundreds and hundreds of pieces in the hopes that each fragment might be gifted to all the amazing individuals who have impacted my life in ways both uproarious and profound.

Sometimes I meet someone and I feel this connection, and I just want to stand there in front of them and proclaim, “THIS IS MAGIC. TELL ME THAT YOU FEEL IT TOO.”

(And while confident as I am that they would too feel this link, I do sometimes think of the sensation I get after having woke from a mind-jarringly real dream featuring a good friend or even acquaintance when I am left wondering again and again whether or not “they could have dreamed the exact same dream?”)

Can I really be the only one who just experienced/is experiencing this?

Human beings, I tell ya.

What a bunch of strangers in an even stranger land.

So as always, I turn to my life coach and imagined grandfather – Mr. Ray Bradbury.

“You have to live in a cloud of emotions. You rev yourself up. Give yourself time in the middle of the afternoon, or when you’re waking up early in the morning, when you’re in that kind of wonderful, euphoric state in-between, on the verge of dreams when you get a kind of nuclear bombardment of all kinds of fragments of ideas jumping around inside your head and hitting each other. They begin to fuse and detonate each other. It’s a very hard thing to describe. You don’t have any control over your mind at a time like that, and you don’t want it, see? Let it run wild!”

Hell yes, Mr. B.

I’m all about running wild.

Just try and stop me.

Stranded in a fog of words, loved him like a winter bird

Riding the elevator down to the ground floor, I am overcome by a simple, yet supreme sadness. As though nothing will ever be good again in the world.

I have been administered a Dementor’s kiss, only I feel hot and clammy, instead of bone-numbing cold.

That horrible sensation of a full-body blush.

Once outside I feel like sitting down on the sidewalk.

Once outside I feel like crying.

Walking to the bus stop, I watch as a group of pedestrians take turns stepping over a sleeping homeless person. His body but another piece of broken and unwanted sidewalk detritus.

He is empty Starbucks containers and dirty sleeping bags (but also daydreams, loves, hopes, and fears.)

He is humanity ground down to a small dirty sign that just reads, “Help.”

I feel like throwing up.

My eyeballs are scratchy.

I’m desperate for tears that, for some reason, won’t come.

I try to phone a friend but she doesn’t pick up.

Waiting for the bus, I feel deeply embarrassed about talking so highly of myself in the office (and also for telling a very uneven Michael Fassbender joke.)

But mostly I just felt awkward and stupid for bragging (boasting?) about myself.

Even though I know it wasn’t.

I was just talking about my life (and my daydreams, loves, hopes, and fears.)

So for the next 40 minutes I stand and just think about why I feel this way.

I think and feel.

About feelings.

Putting in a little elbow grease

OH MY GOD KEN!

SOMEBODY JUST CALLED!

…

Please play this song as you read this post because I am utterly obsessed and listen to it constantly and I like to pretend that as I walk about town that it’s the soundtrack to my life and we’re just at the mid-way point montage and everyone is like – WILL SHE MAKE IT?

And the answer is YES! YES SHE WILL!

Dear readers.

What adventures have you encountered of late and which hearts have grown five sizes from the lips of new kisses and which faces have been warmed from this bright sun’s wide strong rays and which eyes seem ever the brighter from a clear sky that looks to float just out of arms reach, and yet touches everything with the softest of fingertips so that we might all blush the lightest blue?

Regale us with your stories.

Because of late everything is so beautiful.

On Saturday morning I woke up at six, pulled my legs out of bed and ran seventeen kilometers. The early morning air was cool enough to keep me going, but I cannot say that the heat did not creep.

Because the heat always creeps.

Afterwards, I arrived home, showered and then hopped on my bike.

It’s been over a year since I last rode atop my noble steed. My “champagne green” beauty of a cheapskates find that I love because once I get into that saddle I forget all pretense of “taking it easy” and just GO GO GO.

Biking is funny to me because I never think of it as exercise because I am utterly committed to “looking cute” any time I do it.

I will never, ever ride a bike in running shoes.

I would rather be strung up from my (non-running shoed) toes.

And yet I will never go slow.

I am a study in contrasts.

And sillyness.

I biked to the Big Sisters BBQ and then back, a journey which totaled another twenty kilometers in the searing mid-day heat of a long and magnificent Vancouver summer day.

Once home I took a few minutes to sit.

The next day I biked from News Westminster to Kits Beach.

And then from Kits Beach back home.

This too is pretty far – about 56 kilometers.

Coming back, the sun was slowly sinking back from whence it came (Godzilla’s guest bedroom?) and the breeze kicked up and everything felt aglow with the possibility of a summer, and Sunday nights and family dinners, and young romances, and new friendships, and everything was heightened by the butterflies that fluttered about my stomach because I truly believed that anything and everything is possible and so very likely to happen.

Arriving home at nine, sweaty and salty and sand-touched and sun-kissed, I ate all of the Greek yogurt and blueberries that one famished and helmet-haired gal could manage.

I am also a master of disguise.

On Friday night we ate a lot of nachos.

On Saturday I watched Old Boy.

OH(LD) BOY.

I need to start investing in some iron clad undies because goodness knows I really don’t sufficiently gird my loins when taking a chance on more, shall we say, non-traditional cinema.

As perfectly summed up in a text message between myself and the friend with whom I watched the film:

ME: You had sex with your daughter and then you cut your tongue out?!>! O________________o

HIM: I hope no one reads my phone now.

ME: HAHAHAHAHA. Good point.

I am learning to see.

See so many things.

“Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action?” – Ray Bradbury

Enjoy these long, eternity-tinged days.

For you and they are filled with magic.

Sometimes fabricated, always real

For almost two straight years I wrote faithfully here at Rant and Roll.

Without exception, I published posts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (and often Tuesdays and Saturdays, depending on when extra inspiration would strike.)

Nowadays, it’s less that I am uninspired to write (in fact I find myself reaching for my laptop more often than not – what with the unending stream of ideas percolating away inside of my brain. Sometimes I actually imagine these conceptions as small nuggets of gold, and my mind as one giant, ever swirl-swirl-swirling miner’s pan.)

It’s just that, I just can’t seem to keep track of days, hours, space, and time – let alone said nuggets.

Flip open my computer on any given day and you will find three or four half-finished posts (as well as three or four half-read Grantland, Jezebel, and Deadspin articles.)

There may even be a Youtube video or two for your viewing pleasure.

So where does that leave me? Where does that leave us?

Pretty much at the same place where I have been treading water for the last six or so odd months.

You see, I just don’t ever remember life being quite this bonkers – always barmy yes, but never to the extent where I feel as though days are simply slipping between the crooks of my fingers and the dips of my toes.

But the crazy thing is (and the big difference from six months ago), is that I don’t feel scared or upset by this.

(At least not anymore.)

Because these days, the warm weather, and fantastic runs, and fabulous friends, and fantastical reads – and all the other magical magic that make up this incandescent, resplendent, and transcendent life of mine – make me want to cut each day up into one million of the finest fragments and carefully sew each one into a soft and sinuous blanket that I may wrap myself in for all of the ages.

And they make me want to share it all with you.

Whenever,wherever the time may be.

Some things.

Sugar (da da da da da daaaaa)

I haven’t eaten junk food in six days.

That is six more days than my previous longest record.

Prior to this almost-week, I am fairly confident that had I ever been the subject of a medical autopsy (as opposed to all of those recreational autopsies), the corner performing the operation (always Dana Scully in my imaginaiton) would have found my corpse to be comprised of 1/3 Rogers product.

However, in a bid to curb my anxiety, up my health-quotient, improve my running (just in case I ever decided to full-on try that competitive racing thing), decrease my chance of familial-susceptible diseases, and just in general TRY SOMETHING NEW – here I am.

The ex-chocolate bar queen.

And you know what?

It’s been the absolute best six days of life.

(It would seem as though in a bid to replace my discarded crown, I am now the queen of excessive use of hyperbole.)

Marc and I have been cooking amazing dinners, eating the delicious produce grown from our very own backyard, and taking the time to sit outside and enjoy our meals.

I cannot quite explain to you how nice it is to bide my time and prepare a delicious and nutritious dish, instead of eating seven oreos and then complaining about how much my stomach hurts, and then dreading the task of forcing a few bites of a meal down my throat (only to be starving three hours later and repeat the first step which would then ensure a redux of the hurt tummy blahs.)

I think this renaissance (can it be a renaissance if you never remember living the process a first time around?) will be one I stick with.

She was looking pretty beat.

A post-Tough Mudder snap:

On the plus side, I carried my 180 lbs partner 100 meters and was the fifth woman to finish the course.

On the downside:

and

Old friends.

Revisiting this genius:

So if Bradbury is my all-time favourite author of life, Heinlein is definitely in my top-20. The dude can not only write, but sweet mother of pearl does he ever make you think.

He may not make me quake, and cry, and shake, an die like ol’ Ray, but Bobby A too has a few tricks and treats up his sleeve.

Dance break.

About a boy.

Look at this dude.

HE IS SO CUTE I CANNOT EVEN.

This August will mark eleven years that I have had this brilliant, bonkers man in my life.

That is like – more than one third of my life.

(That is like, MORE THAN A LONG TIME OF MY LIFE.)

How do you even spend that much time with someone and now bludgeon them to death with a pineapple one morning over brunch?

I have no idea.

Good thing we never eat brunch.

Anywho, he’s just such a marvellous person who makes my silly little heart smile all the time, and sometimes I feel like a broken record just waxing eloquent all the live-long day about all of the full-stop brilliant things he is doing with his life, but I don’t care because he is a difference maker and world builder and all of his energy and brilliance shines light into the lives of his many students, and his words, and deeds, and thoughts and passions impact so, so many who come up to him and say “thank you thank you” and those who may not even know it, but who will wake up one morning, on a sun-drenched Thursday morn, and just think to themselves, “wow.”

Because that is what I do.

Everyday.