Growing Versions

What have your surroundings been telling you this year? Have they been embracing you? Or repelling you? Have they been giving you good ideas or draining you of all of your goods? Is there a tree that gives you a comfort? Or a chair in a special place that makes you feel at home? Where do you go to be set adrift? To be rooted?

When I was brought home from the hospital, I was brought home to a tiny but vibrant little part of the world. It was right next to a busy corner.  The church and a restaurant/store and very active neighbours. Going back to visiting the corner, felt like looking at a map of the world after only looking at a picture of one house.   The mountains, the sky, the terrain that knit together my early world.

The things I do on my vacation are never predictable. 1. You already heard about the homemade unicorn costume. 2. I got to go to the Co-Op Grocery store in Bay St. Lawrence. It is a pretty humble place but it had been sitting there in my imagination, unopened, for a lot of years. 3. I finally saw the Hangover.  It made me laugh a lot. 4. I had a magical work related meeting in a magical town and it didn't feel like work. 5. I finally took pictures of Southwest Cove. My vacation went beyond my expectations.

Vacations are like checkpoints. When one is really needed, you cannot really go forward without one. It is the fight you have with your partner just as you are trying to leave the house. It is the travel hiccup, the lost luggage or delayed flight or the flat tire. It is the awkward reunion with people you used to know, but now discover you don't know as well. You need to stop and do an inventory of your luggage. You need to scan the horizon and decide which route to take from here, do you have the right documentation for this journey, should you stay with these companions or should you hastily re-organize your entire journey? You have to wait more on vacations.  Waiting that can be idling, irritating, or relaxing. You can be held up or held onto. Pause. This inconvenient stop can make the rest of the trip smoother or longer, decide which way you want to proceed.

Love is a lot of things. It is a lot of things we never expect it to be. It is making a unicorn costume with a painter's suit and a cone of styrofoam. It is gluing it together with superglue. It is gluing it inadvertantly to a near by bucket (and getting a little superglue on your fingers). It is ripping the cone and the painter's suit off of the bucket and making a big hole. It is taping the gaping hole closed and supergluing it all over again (and not sighing the whole time). It is thinking, I hope he isn't embarrassed by his superglued unicorn costume when others show up with Superman costumes. It is gracefully accepting that because the cone listed dangerously, the homemade unicorn costume had to morph into "garbage man". It is looking your kid in the eye (and without laughing) agreeing that this unicorn costume can be resurrected at Hallowe'en. It just needs a mane and a tail. We forgot the tail and the mane this time around.

 In the summer, it is not uncommon for me to wake up to the left overs of a "project".  It sometimes takes a while to figure out what came out of the project. Eventually, i discover it....

A lot is unknown. A lot is known. I do not know exactly how much I do not know. But I know what I know. Steer clear towards what you know, don't let the unknown scare you off course.