Wisers Whisky

There is a place under the oats, under the sky, where you buried treasure for your future children. To make them strong. They would dig not knowing how deep. Not knowing if they were in the right place, until they were, or until they gave up. 

If I were to talk about it, you wouldn't remember the time you bled the walls red. Your blood Josef. Painted the walls. I made you believe you were asleep. Cleaned you and put you to bed. Alone I scrubbed away the traces. Rung the towels until the water ran clear.

It was the car I loved if not you. Volkswagen Jetta. Sheep skin seats. Filthy as fuck but well built. It was the same colour as your skin exposed to the sun all those hours working outdoors. 

Most saw the smile lines and freckles, the arms, large and brown. They thought you were simple. And you were. Except your simplicity was a distillation of great wisdom. There is something to be said about brawn gained stacking bales of hay, and brains nourished on fresh air and open spaces. You were dazed and rugged to everyone else, but pristine in private as I read you to sleep.

Do you remember the night I screamed? Everyone heard. You woke and it was real and you were scared too. The bear breathing inches from our heads. Huffing and sniffing. And then terror. The huge paw pressed against the wall of the tent. And I was wrapped up in it, suffocating and so I screamed bloody goddam murder. So loud Saskatchewan heard me. But then it wasn't real. It was just nighttime and I was just dreaming and you said "What the Shit" in the stoned-surfer way you had of speaking sometimes when you were half asleep, and the people camped around us who thought I was dying laughed when they heard you because they knew I was okay, you were there. 

I'm convinced you knew I was begging the universe. Chanting, chanting, chanting. Taking the Whisky like it was communion. But it wasn't time. They found your car abandoned in the airport parking lot. Your tin of weed wrapped in a bread bag, wedged in haste under the seat, 4 joints expertly rolled.  

You were gone. They'd tease me and tell me you were coming back to dig us out of the mess we were in. You'd bring a flat bed truck loaded with dirt bikes for everyone and we wouldn't have to walk for hours through the mud anymore. I believed them. Time trudged on, knee deep. And gradually your absence became so real and everywhere felt so empty. I stopped looking. Stopped waiting. Stopped and savoured how completely free I was to remember the straw of your hair, the lines of your face, and the smooth white skin underneath it all.

"When the student is ready..."

"...the teacher appears." Buddhist proverb

Late last summer Squanch and I were exploring in our area and we ended up on a nearby mountain slope picking wild cranberries with two strangers, while our dogs intermingled, weaving golden threads in and out of the little pine trees around us. It was one of those encounters that feels like a gift from the universe. These two women were wonderful berry picking companions, and every time I sprinkle those frozen red orbs into my blender for a morning smoothie, I am reminded of the serendipity of that afternoon.

Well, the gifts from the universe keep coming (I sound cliche new-agey when I say stuff like that but oh well, it is the only way I can explain it). Turns out one of those women runs an outdoor learning centre from her home where there is a beautiful building (I describe as a hippie/zen church), that hosts, among other things, yoga classes. And so, by this chance encounter I was enrolled in the best yoga classes I could possibly imagine!

The teacher blends her incredible knowledge with an uncanny intuitiveness. She takes time to explain things, allows us to experience the poses how it feels best to us and guides us gently with her calm wisdom. By the time class ends there is a sense of balance to my energy, I feel as if I have exercised and had a massage at the same time. 

The atmosphere of this hippie-zen-hall is perfect for yoga. We do mountain pose in front of a wall of windows overlooking a mountain range. A wood-stove crackles in the corner while we lay down on our mats for our final relaxation pose.

I must remind myself, as socially anxious as I am, such gifts often come from outside my comfort zone. We approached those women in late summer, on the side of a mountain, and struck up a conversation, and after a long dark winter, I am still benefitting from the harvest of this encounter.

treeplanting journal

The dust from the logging roads coats my teeth, whiter now if only for the grimy tan of my face. Squished up with duffel bags and his long legs, there is silence and there is sunshine. It’s calm in this truck limbo, and I’ve been starved for calm.

The dandelions have burst forth overnight from the prairie floor. I’m planning a painting in my mind, how I’ll use an old toothbrush to splatter the yellow in atop the green grass, fluorescent in the lazy afternoon sunshine. The sky is bigger here than any sky I have ever seen. I can’t fathom a canvas big enough for the abundance of clouds, languid they lay about like corpulent Romans following a feast.

Beside me he shifts his hands on the steering wheel and I notice him noticing a bird flicking in the wind, its energy bursts through the stillness of the afternoon, but the fluidity of flight remains true to my tranquility. We do not speak.

(GP May 2009 planting journal excerpt)



meredith by the fire

At night, the sky smudged a gradient of cobalt to ash, she sits by the fire and makes an attempt at the moment. It’s all she can do. Zen falls like the crumbs from the cake of others and she’s there to catch a few in her swollen hands, savoring seconds of peace.

She’s pegged the restlessness of her mind to the vastness of her country, the never-ending possibilities of people and place; the hearts she’s broken and the hearts that have broken her and all the hearts lined up like bottles on a fence waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

Every pair of eyes she’s ever seen stay with her, become a constant presence, watching, judging, laughing. Here in the wilderness, the layers of herself have been peeled away and her soul cowers and spins, dances and winces, a grub in the sun. And she’s not sure if this means she’s lost or if it means she’s found.

(May 2009)


waiting things

Cigarettes smoke themselves
in anticipation
collars darken like the day
and still, still
boot darkened socks
wait on the floor
damp and alone.
Branches accumulate
and the open space
becomes tired and dirty
strewn with waiting things
patient like the earth
beneath fingernails
calm as the filth
in hidden crevices.