My last post here was some time ago and relating to Canada, my much romanticized homeland. Though I in fact resided in Boulder, Colorado between the ages of 12 and 25, Canada, oh Canada was always home... *soft sigh*
Anyway, exciting news, I have now firmly declared Canada home and relocated there. Interestingly enough, a post on this very blog took on a life of its own and propelled me onto an entirely new life path. Ironic (?) that a love letter to Canada would begin a chain of events ending in my moving to Canada.
In brief: the post largely concerning the particular landscape of my love spurred a thought in my uncle -John F. (Jack) Crowley III, ASLA, professor and former dean with the College of Environment and Design at the University of Georgia, and founder and president of Urbantech in Athens, Georgia- that I might find interest in the field of Landscape Architecture. I did in fact upon looking into this find great interest and applied to the Master of Landscape Architecture program at the University of Guelph in November of 2008, was accepted in February of 2009 and moved to Guelph in June of the same year. It is still June, I have only just arrived.
This is therfore the beginning of something new which I will undoubtedly have something to say about, in fact I already have something to say upon the subject of chai so please recognize this as a preface, indeed and introduction, to my following musings on this topic. Here follows the Chai Chronicles...
Friday, June 19, 2009
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Since I'm already (recently anyway) on the subject of Canada, here's a poem I wrote a while back about my childhood there...
Back there, I walked barefoot through broken down barns
where moss grew in blankets across cracked cement floors.
I was told to wear shoes should rusty nails sprout
instead of muddy water between my toes,
but all I ever got was dirty.
I never cared much for shoes
and my feet will never fit into slender glass slippers now,
but any prince who hopes to win me
will not care for such trivialities.
You had to feel the earth under your feet
to keep your head out of the clouds that your heart reached for.
Back there, lucky horseshoes grew on toppled brick walls
and cinder blocks held secret treasures to humble shipwrecks.
Back there, the brightest colours I've ever seen
were lights that danced in the sky on a cold night.
I lay on the roof of a great hall and watched
as my heaven turned to stained glass.
Back there, all it took to be a hero
was to battle demons in my dreams
and rescue my mother from milk snakes,
even if I was the one who brought them in.
I built grand museums of mud
for the rocks I found on the roadside,
and fashioned wooden watchtowers and blanket forts
to frame the next adventure.
Back there, I tunneled through snowdrifts
until I had crystal palaces,
and cut pathways to other worlds
through tree stands and hedges.
Split trees and arched roots
were doorways to distant lands
that beckoned and drew me,
and I always went through.
All the ingredients I needed
for such flights of fancy;
were imagination, and room to wander.
Both I had plenty of, back there.
Back there, I walked barefoot through broken down barns
where moss grew in blankets across cracked cement floors.
I was told to wear shoes should rusty nails sprout
instead of muddy water between my toes,
but all I ever got was dirty.
I never cared much for shoes
and my feet will never fit into slender glass slippers now,
but any prince who hopes to win me
will not care for such trivialities.
You had to feel the earth under your feet
to keep your head out of the clouds that your heart reached for.
Back there, lucky horseshoes grew on toppled brick walls
and cinder blocks held secret treasures to humble shipwrecks.
Back there, the brightest colours I've ever seen
were lights that danced in the sky on a cold night.
I lay on the roof of a great hall and watched
as my heaven turned to stained glass.
Back there, all it took to be a hero
was to battle demons in my dreams
and rescue my mother from milk snakes,
even if I was the one who brought them in.
I built grand museums of mud
for the rocks I found on the roadside,
and fashioned wooden watchtowers and blanket forts
to frame the next adventure.
Back there, I tunneled through snowdrifts
until I had crystal palaces,
and cut pathways to other worlds
through tree stands and hedges.
Split trees and arched roots
were doorways to distant lands
that beckoned and drew me,
and I always went through.
All the ingredients I needed
for such flights of fancy;
were imagination, and room to wander.
Both I had plenty of, back there.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Thoughts
So what if I'm not travelling?! It's all still a journey in the end and anyway this is my blog and I'll write what I want!
On that note here are some thoughts...
10.19.2008
The radical organization is often ineffectual because they adhere to a simple principle; no compromise. I too am idealistic and wish anyway that they would sometimes quit being so stubborn and actually try to accomplish something by means of the dreaded compromise. However, I applaud their refusals.
It is my view that the corporation (evil machine if you will) is as evil as they seem to become because all these people running the show, with no one person in charge, are constantly making small compromises. This behavior, over time, whittles away all integrity with no one person ever having to assume the responsability. Sad.
On that note here are some thoughts...
10.19.2008
The radical organization is often ineffectual because they adhere to a simple principle; no compromise. I too am idealistic and wish anyway that they would sometimes quit being so stubborn and actually try to accomplish something by means of the dreaded compromise. However, I applaud their refusals.
It is my view that the corporation (evil machine if you will) is as evil as they seem to become because all these people running the show, with no one person in charge, are constantly making small compromises. This behavior, over time, whittles away all integrity with no one person ever having to assume the responsability. Sad.
On the subject of Canada: a wistful and fanciful account of a brief visit
Sunsets normally give me the feeling of being in slow motion so it strikes me as odd to watch one flashing by through the window out one side of a speeding airplane. A pretty stunning one as sunsets go even, somehow oddly like a pastry. A warm glowing red center sandwiched by the darkened and muted shades of earth and blue-black silhouettes of thin, swiftly shifting clouds. Out the other side, the day old full moon is giving an entirely different feel to the cloudscape. Instead of an intense and defiant setting sun, we have a softly glowing countryside of cotton hills. So much more the subtle and yielding, is the moon, and yet as dependable and powerful as the sun. Tonight it is the silent companion to this otherwise unseen landscape of clouds.
If I sound overly romantic and dreamy, I am.
I am in love...
I am in love with the countryside where I was born, from which I am sadly returning as I write. So much would I rather be going there. It may be that all it needs to be is home for me to love it, the feeling being something for which I constantly yearn. Ontario's countryside offers me a taste of that unique quality which so many reach for and find elusive. It's a curious thing the concept of "home", at once tangible as it is so often rooted in place and ethereal nonetheless. Truly it has only to do with the people I love who are in that place but the land itself is so central in my worldview that I cannot discount it. Ultimately I must concede, having cornered myself into this cliché, that home is indeed where the heart it, and only as tangible as love itself. (Note to those in Ontario: Sorry if I drove you all mad with my constant chatter about wanting to be living there... hehehe)
So if this letter is stemming from love, then it is planted in the intangible stuff itself and could grow any which way. I now feel very strange about putting it to paper at all.
On that note let us return to the land. As a child I spent enough time out in the woods and the fields exploring and learning the lay of it that it was always filling my head with ideas and ideals. You might say that it kind of impregnated me with the stuff of what I would eventually become (ie an incorrigible dreamer). The land was born into me as much I was born into it.
I can't help but wonder if the intensity of my feeling for it would diminish were I to live there again, as opposed to just visiting. Likely it would, however even just to take a quiet stroll in the woods and catch sight of something which brought that feeling back, once in a while, in all its expansiveness, I think would be enough. The way I see it it's like enlightenment; the fleeting moments we experience of it are enough to keep us striving toward it, each in our own way. Just as we meditate as a means to catch those glimpses of peace than if people and place can bring a similar feeling than why not be there?
Now let me describe this little piece of paradise for you… Those of you have the pleasure of living there will know it well but perhaps you may still appreciate the small reminder from eyes which see it less often. Caledon Ontario is given the hills it's known by from the Niagara Escarpment which runs through it serving to display all the better it's beautiful forests and rocks. Those with and eye for details will notice the wide variety of mushrooms, which though they sprout everywhere no less give the forest a little extra charm. Ferns give a little softness to the spaces between fallen logs in the hardwoods, and needles soften your steps in the evergreens. And everywhere else, meadows lest we forget the countryside is mostly cultivated. There are many horse farms and some dairy's. I like the mix because it reminds me of the essential character of Ontario, wild and domestic at once. Cows make me think "masses" while horses, no less domestic nevertheless give me a feeling that the essential wildness will never be bred out of them, I certainly hope not anyway. I also cannot ignore the horrible sprawl spreading out from Toronto into the countryside which is no wilderness either, orchards and farms, but despite it wolves can still be spotted and go a little ways north and you could probably find somewhere to disappear and never be seen again.
Fall there is by far my favorite. The awareness of the encroaching bitter cold of winter forces you to be present and appreciate each moment, crisp, colourful and perfect.
My family, their friends, and even some I'm lucky to still call my friends (having not lived there for the last 12 years) have set a precedent for lifelong friendship that I am genuinely grateful for. It seems to me at least in this day in age, the age of so called "mass communication" that in fact people communicate very poorly with one another and shallowly more often than not. I am refreshed finding this not to be case back there, that people I've only known well many many years ago are still good friends with one another and also welcoming to me. My heart is warmed to be so quickly and unquestionably accepted back into the fold. So before I get too sentimental which is not normally the way I am I'll leave it at that.
I love you all.
And a special thanks to Jim and Anne for helping me get there, and really for helping me get anywhere ever. You're amazing.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Two months later... (for Aviv)
Once I dreamed of the Sea in Springtime
and the dream filled my soul with music and beauty,
with impulse and desire and yearning for a different way.
Though the Sea in Springtime was often unpredictable
I loved it, too, for that.
It could be rough and tempestuous at times, but it was all part of the spell.
The depth and hue of the Spring Sea was so enchanting and captivating,
none who dreamed the dream wanted to wake
only to find themselves again on on hard, dry land.
Those, like me, who dreamed this dream,
found all they wanted to do from then
was float in the Spring Sea again.
She was always obliging, inviting.
Anyone who dared enter Her domain were welcome to stay,
to flow along as long as they could, or would.
Welcome to shine brightly under the sun, glow under the moon,
welcome to keep mystical secrets with Her,
to speak Her language.
The dreamers were welcome to surrounded by Her beauty
if they were willing to taste also Her salt.
I dreamed this dream, once, of the Sea in Springtime and I hope to dream it again someday
when the slower flow of the earth brings me back again to the Sea from whence I came.
and the dream filled my soul with music and beauty,
with impulse and desire and yearning for a different way.
Though the Sea in Springtime was often unpredictable
I loved it, too, for that.
It could be rough and tempestuous at times, but it was all part of the spell.
The depth and hue of the Spring Sea was so enchanting and captivating,
none who dreamed the dream wanted to wake
only to find themselves again on on hard, dry land.
Those, like me, who dreamed this dream,
found all they wanted to do from then
was float in the Spring Sea again.
She was always obliging, inviting.
Anyone who dared enter Her domain were welcome to stay,
to flow along as long as they could, or would.
Welcome to shine brightly under the sun, glow under the moon,
welcome to keep mystical secrets with Her,
to speak Her language.
The dreamers were welcome to surrounded by Her beauty
if they were willing to taste also Her salt.
I dreamed this dream, once, of the Sea in Springtime and I hope to dream it again someday
when the slower flow of the earth brings me back again to the Sea from whence I came.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
...and that was it.
after three months of cartwheels and landslides, three months of laying on our backs exhausted in all different sorts of dirt, three months of crushed flowers and foreign garbage, popcorn and coca leaves, eggs and tea - a hurried goodbye, girlish shouting in the airport, and a promise to see each other again in the cave, still decorated with all the samples of our affection for pachamama.
morgan and i met in nicaragua, thousands of kilometeres north of where i am now, thousands of kilometers south of where she is. i remember being so confused, tired, and so happy to see her, throwing the pack which has since been lost to the ether on the ground and embracing her while i lit my triumphant cigarette of arrival. waterfalls, desserts, newfamilies, new words, jokes and joints, flashing the passport at everyborder and turnign that magic key to crawl into new lands, again and again. all those millions of hours like a bug with too many leggs spent turning into the weird bus aliens. its difficult to believe that a moving pen, having writ, can really move on just like that - i lookaround to tell morgan somethign funny, but shes on another continent again.this is how it goes.
its spring now north of the equator, and i know morgan will watch all those clouds part over the rockies and remember the little one clinging to the volcano at ometepe, and remember me. i know she´ll roll in the colorado grasses for me, because id do it for her.
this 3months of whirlwind vacationing has taken it out of me. though i havent stayed in one place for long since i left home a hundred yrs ago, i have also not spent much time doing what weve been doing -going from bus to hostel to bus to nature hike to restaurant to dance party to beach to bus to hostel. i am delighted to be snuggling now into cusco, the bellybutton of this earth, to drink carrot ginger juice every sunrise and watch my heart pound less and less as it gets used to the altitude. i am excited to have a job and somewhere to go for a few hrs every day, excited to make friends who arent leaving in the morning. its nice to have no schedule. i cant wait to smell the flowers.
through this crazy email list you have all been with us every step of the way. i feel like fantasia and you have all been reading morgan´s neverending story, this part of which i have been blessed to be a protagonist of. thank you all for your interest and energy, whichfuels us to fuel you with stories and puts us together in a lovely circle. this is the point of it all.
keep paying attention tomorgstar, she is a superhero, and will probably save the world.
peace out,aviv
That's right folks now if you'll kindly make some wishes (donations) pronto, aviv's kingdom won't dissapear into the Nothing.
Ahh what a whirlwind adventure it was; the winds howl around you so fast as long as you're moving that you get all caught up and befudled and think the journey will last forever and then, before you can try to locate Kansas below you, suddenly the wind drops you on top of a political hotbed (Wicked Witch of the East/ Florida) and another adventure entirely begins. This one begins with a birth, as many do, and the world welcomes onto stage right little Maya Marquez, my new neice.
My final days with Aviv (accepting of course that we are still in the cave) were spent on the sometimes luxurious, sometimes smelling of toilets busses between Cuzco, Peru and Quito, Ecuador because we had exactly 4 days to get from one to the other. Fortunately or not (too early to tell) we did make it and I boarded a plane to my current location, in Miami Florida at my sisters house. From here I managed to be interviewed and accepted for a job with the City of Boulder Open Space & Mountain Parks before even returning to Boulder. Once I finally do get back to Boulder (tomorrow), a town I always leave because I dearly love returning to, I have two days to adapt before getting right to work! Lord the culture shock, though after Miami, Boulder will be a breeze. Indeed things are all going a little too smoothly for me...us... to be entirely convinced that we have yet left the cave, the cave being where we were in the day before we "left"Cuzco.
I've spoken of mystical places and people from Nicaragua to Peru, of ceremonies involving candles to cactuses, of farming and feasting and I've spoken of friends. It was all that and more, and less it cannot be// than all the sea which only is deeper than the sea. From my place in my sisters living room where I have had plenty of time to reflect and watch television (because she had to go off and have a baby...the nerve) I saw an advertisement for a clothing label telling me that a journey (as compared with a simple trip) is an underaking that changes you. This then, according to some fancy cloth sticher or another, has been rightfully recalled as our journey. Aviv and I are very nearly opposit forces and we have acted equally on each other. It was indeed most mad and moonly. When Aviv sent me her half of this email she remarked that she attempted to write it in my style, by which she meant it posessed a beginning, a middle, and an end. Ahh yes, structure, my "style", por que yo soy una capricorna. However, since I am an Aquarius this year and in honor of Aviv I shall not end this.
Once upon a time...
morgan
---
"podran cortar todas las flores, pero no podran detener la Primavera"
-Pablo Neruda
love is more thicker than
forget more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
- ee cummings
after three months of cartwheels and landslides, three months of laying on our backs exhausted in all different sorts of dirt, three months of crushed flowers and foreign garbage, popcorn and coca leaves, eggs and tea - a hurried goodbye, girlish shouting in the airport, and a promise to see each other again in the cave, still decorated with all the samples of our affection for pachamama.
morgan and i met in nicaragua, thousands of kilometeres north of where i am now, thousands of kilometers south of where she is. i remember being so confused, tired, and so happy to see her, throwing the pack which has since been lost to the ether on the ground and embracing her while i lit my triumphant cigarette of arrival. waterfalls, desserts, newfamilies, new words, jokes and joints, flashing the passport at everyborder and turnign that magic key to crawl into new lands, again and again. all those millions of hours like a bug with too many leggs spent turning into the weird bus aliens. its difficult to believe that a moving pen, having writ, can really move on just like that - i lookaround to tell morgan somethign funny, but shes on another continent again.this is how it goes.
its spring now north of the equator, and i know morgan will watch all those clouds part over the rockies and remember the little one clinging to the volcano at ometepe, and remember me. i know she´ll roll in the colorado grasses for me, because id do it for her.
this 3months of whirlwind vacationing has taken it out of me. though i havent stayed in one place for long since i left home a hundred yrs ago, i have also not spent much time doing what weve been doing -going from bus to hostel to bus to nature hike to restaurant to dance party to beach to bus to hostel. i am delighted to be snuggling now into cusco, the bellybutton of this earth, to drink carrot ginger juice every sunrise and watch my heart pound less and less as it gets used to the altitude. i am excited to have a job and somewhere to go for a few hrs every day, excited to make friends who arent leaving in the morning. its nice to have no schedule. i cant wait to smell the flowers.
through this crazy email list you have all been with us every step of the way. i feel like fantasia and you have all been reading morgan´s neverending story, this part of which i have been blessed to be a protagonist of. thank you all for your interest and energy, whichfuels us to fuel you with stories and puts us together in a lovely circle. this is the point of it all.
keep paying attention tomorgstar, she is a superhero, and will probably save the world.
peace out,aviv
That's right folks now if you'll kindly make some wishes (donations) pronto, aviv's kingdom won't dissapear into the Nothing.
Ahh what a whirlwind adventure it was; the winds howl around you so fast as long as you're moving that you get all caught up and befudled and think the journey will last forever and then, before you can try to locate Kansas below you, suddenly the wind drops you on top of a political hotbed (Wicked Witch of the East/ Florida) and another adventure entirely begins. This one begins with a birth, as many do, and the world welcomes onto stage right little Maya Marquez, my new neice.
My final days with Aviv (accepting of course that we are still in the cave) were spent on the sometimes luxurious, sometimes smelling of toilets busses between Cuzco, Peru and Quito, Ecuador because we had exactly 4 days to get from one to the other. Fortunately or not (too early to tell) we did make it and I boarded a plane to my current location, in Miami Florida at my sisters house. From here I managed to be interviewed and accepted for a job with the City of Boulder Open Space & Mountain Parks before even returning to Boulder. Once I finally do get back to Boulder (tomorrow), a town I always leave because I dearly love returning to, I have two days to adapt before getting right to work! Lord the culture shock, though after Miami, Boulder will be a breeze. Indeed things are all going a little too smoothly for me...us... to be entirely convinced that we have yet left the cave, the cave being where we were in the day before we "left"Cuzco.
I've spoken of mystical places and people from Nicaragua to Peru, of ceremonies involving candles to cactuses, of farming and feasting and I've spoken of friends. It was all that and more, and less it cannot be// than all the sea which only is deeper than the sea. From my place in my sisters living room where I have had plenty of time to reflect and watch television (because she had to go off and have a baby...the nerve) I saw an advertisement for a clothing label telling me that a journey (as compared with a simple trip) is an underaking that changes you. This then, according to some fancy cloth sticher or another, has been rightfully recalled as our journey. Aviv and I are very nearly opposit forces and we have acted equally on each other. It was indeed most mad and moonly. When Aviv sent me her half of this email she remarked that she attempted to write it in my style, by which she meant it posessed a beginning, a middle, and an end. Ahh yes, structure, my "style", por que yo soy una capricorna. However, since I am an Aquarius this year and in honor of Aviv I shall not end this.
Once upon a time...
morgan
---
"podran cortar todas las flores, pero no podran detener la Primavera"
-Pablo Neruda
love is more thicker than
forget more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
- ee cummings
Monday, March 10, 2008
This can happen to you!!! If you spend 4 straight days and nights on a bus. BEWARE THE BUS FEVER!
Then I took a flight to Miami and thus concluded the adventures in South America with Aviv.
This is what happens when you photograph incan ruins, at night, with no tripod... at least you can see their expert stone cutting skills.
Saqsaewaman ruins. Fondly referred to by obnoxious tourists like us as "sexy woman"
VEGGIES!
Alpaca wool woven "camas" (blankets)
Mineral dyes
Images from a market an hour or so out of Cuzco
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Aviv´s awesome tattoo. Reads: ¨podran cortar todos las flores pero, no podran detener la Primavera¨-Pablo Neruda. Transalation: "you can cut down al the flowers, but you can't stop the Spring"
Beautiful mountain view above Cuzco
Dear all,
it is diffficult to describe the events that have transpired since mylast email, it is as though another whole trip has occured in the lastmonth. Since leaving the farm in Ecuador we have been to beautifulbeaches, desert oasis, seen the most powerful sunsets, camped in avast desert under an eclipsing full moon, volunteered to clean trashfrom that desert (Peru is pretty much a vast desert until you get intothe mountains or over them into the Amazon), bathed in miracle greenwater, Aviv has gotten one beautiful tattoo, visited Incan ruins onhorseback, met amazing people, explored the oldest continuallyinhabited city in South America (Cuzco) and well, stayed there. Ifever there was a city that seemed to have all the qualities of a cityI could dream it was Cuzco.
Cuzco is where the story really begins. I am not certain I am yetequipped to tell that story as I am still in it but I will be headingback to Quito tomorrow evening in order catch my flight to Miami whereI hope to meet my new Niece due to be born on the 7th. I shall then beback in Denver on March 12 and once I´ve processed I shall relate all.I sincerely feel that through happenstance, synchronisity or fate youmight even say I have arrived in Cuzco for a reason. I, I should saywe as Aviv feels very similarly to me for her own just as importantreasons, I though feel I have been shown a map for a pathway I´vealways known I´d take but didn´t know where to begin.
When I set out from Boulder, my great and wonderful teacher, Karingave me a tarot reading for this trip. To summarize, is spoke aboutmajor transformation and a new path for me. I have been searching forthat path for the past couple of years if not all my life and that iswhat brought me here. Today my new path begins as Aviv, I, Joshua andPatrick (two of our new friends we´ve travelled with) go toparticipate in a ceremony of our own design but with ancient rootswhich is a sort of farewell for our group, and for me also abeginning. We will be watched over by a man who has many years ofexperience in such ceremony and whom I would call a Shaman. On thissubject I cannot speak much more as the experience is yet ahead of mebut you shall all be in my heart and I ask that you keep me in yourstoday.
The journey I have been on these past few months has been beautifuland powerful and changing. At the risk of sounding like an acceptancespeech, I must once again thank thank thank everyone who helped me gethere and supported me along the way. I love you all. I must also thankespecially Aviv who has been my companion and my great friend througheach new adventure.
This isn´t an especially descriptive email and I apologize buteverything is still swimming in my brain and I cannot make it into atale just yet.
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