2009.

So I found myself suspended from work over the next few days because I forgot an important scheduling deviation. Oops. My mother died last October, and her funeral utterly destroyed my finances. Sigh. Shana and I are in our latest breakup, and while I think there's strong potential for us to remain close, this time it feels like the big one. Ouch. I learned recently that there's a warrant for my arrest out in New Jersey, with hefty fines, because of a very old driving snafu. Yipe. I got robbed on Monday when someone I thought I trusted took some cash from my wallet. Grr. I may have kidney stones, and there's this tooth that's really annoying me. Damn. There's some local Craft "community" stuff that leaves me shaking my head and clutching my heart. Jeez.

But you know what? I'm ok.

I'm ok because I've dealt with so much angst and grief and stuff in the last year or so, that now I'm just laughing about it, rolling with it, and adjusting my plans and strategies to simply accomodate all these turns of fate. Adapt and overcome, adapt and overcome, adapt and overcome.

So what am I doing?

Completely on impulse, I'm roasting a duck with apple-raisin stuffing. I'm going to pop a bottle of Henkell Trocken open, and Aphrodite and me are going to enjoy an intimate moment at the house shrine. I'm getting leathered up and going to dance my ass off at Savage Garden. I'll finish with a few pints with friends at the Done Right Inn. There's a party tomorrow. Then, I'll be starting this coming year with a focused, persevering, joyfully successful series of accomplishments on my roster of healthy and happy goals.

I may go on walkabout in February. I'll be riding horses in the spring. I'll be diving in the summer. I may be in Cuba in the autumn. By next winter, I will have Canadian dual-citizenship.

When the universe unfolds before you in a way you'd rather prefer it didn't, often all it takes is a shift in perspective to find the nuance that opens you to possibility. Find the stillness. Be in the moment.

My 2009 wish to you is this: may this coming year bring you shameless living, unselfconscious laughter, brazen success, incredible sex, loving kindred, crowded kitchens, good books, and the pleasure of having been heard, understood, and appreciated by those you love.

And whenever it doesn't, just adapt and overcome.

Aren't we glad, Pea?

They tell me that they're finished with your body. They tell me what we already knew, that you didn't have any diseases, and that the man that you had bitten will be just fine.

Aren't we relieved?

The thought that you had to undergo this indignity makes me ill and numb. The thought that that part of you which I showed so muh affection to found itself on cold steel and subjected to instruments makes me angry. That, when I'm summoned to collect what will remain of you, the brittle-white bones crushed to powder, that part of your presence will be absent has me numb. I can only hope that when they were finished, you were shown some respect.

I was thinking about the spot near the makeshift inukshuk that Cai made, where you often lay down to rest, or at the base of the evergreen that still bears ribbons from past equinoxes. But I won't be in this place forever, and when it gets demolished, I wouldn't want you disturbed like the squirrel next door was.

So I'm thinking about a sapling near the other memorials in the park. But I'll keep you home for a time, beside where Beltane waits. I miss you.

Peanut Butter Gypsy Gillette-Chanoux.

You are anxious to get outside, you ignore my demands to stop shouting at the door. I relent.

You try to cross the street, something you almost never do. You are struck by a car that continues down the street.

The old man sees this and hurries to you, unable to get the license plate. He lifts you up, but you've been savaged and your pelvis is in pieces, and you maul his arm while he sets you down on the pavement in front of his home. He frantically tries to find out who you are, and runs into one of the women who has lived above your new home. She gets me. I pick you up, and you don't even flinch when I feel your hip click under my arm. I race you to the doctor. They fill your mouth with tubes, your leg with tubes, and ease your pain.

For the next two days, all of my energy is devoted to saving you, seeing what can be done for you, being with you as your expressive and loving paw clutches my fingertip. You brighten when you see me. The trust you have had in me shows in your tired eyes. But your body is badly broken. I struggle to find a way to pay those who demand money before they begin to heal your broken bones.

I'm successful! I race you to another doctor, a specialist who can mend your limbs. But she looks at me with a solid heart and tells me that your injuries are worse than we all feared. You're anemic, you have older bone injuries, and you're flat. It amazes her that you're still alive. She asks me to make a decision.

Two years ago, you slowly started to trust me as I coaxed you toward me with food. You were starving, your fur in mats, and you needed a friend. My girlfriend then didn't approve, but I took you in, and you stayed with me long after she left and abandoned her own with us both.

You were cool when it came to snuggling, and then I told you that while Cleo is wonderful, I really needed a kitty who would do so the way Beltane Titania would. Starting the very next night, and continuing for every night after, you cuddled deeply and closely and contentedly until the break of morning. You were so expressive, and apart from wanting to be outside in good weather, never made a demand.

I waited in a room with a couch and wastebaskets filled with used tissues. My friend and his hound were with me. She brought you to me in a blue towel and rested you in my lap, just as you would be when we were at home. You immediately relaxed and rested your chin on my arm, like always. We spoke. I asked you to forgive me for breaking the promise to heal you, that I did everything possible for you, that I cherished the deep trust you had shown in me. But now it was time, and I was and am so sorry.

She filled the first syringe and connected it to the tube in your leg. You mewled and snuzzled your face into the crook of my elbow. Your fur was as soft and as warm as ever as I cradled you, held you, loved you. With your face against me in the way you loved, you passed.

I brought your limp body to my shoulder, and for a long while I believed I was still hearing your heartbeat. Days later, I still hear you talking to me from the front window or as I walk down the block.

I don't understand why this had to happen. I'm sorry. I did the utmost best that I could for you. I love you.

Just like riding a bike.

"You've got to make your own fun."
- Kathy Bates, as Bettina

So I'm on vacation, two paid weeks from work, and what plans I had have changed. I won't be going to Chicago or New York. I won't be taking Shana to Cuba or Honduras. It's unlikely that I'll go camping.

In the past, I would devote time like this to working on my pad. Not now. I may get a second, throw-away, labourer job to make some extra cash and get a great workout, but I have a feeling that I'll be spending time in the next two weeks to milk Toronto for all she's worth. It's time to focus on goals and make some progress on the plans I keep procrastinating on.

So I bought an old Raleigh mountain bike and some necessary gear from Mountain Equipment Co-op, and just finished my first pleasure ride on my first bike since I was a kid. I'd borrowed a bike when I was living in New Brunswick (that's in New Jersey, you Canadians), but this old boy is mine, all mine. Acquiring it is a goal achieved, and that does my spirit good.

Now, off to Funhaus for my first fetish night in months.

The moon, the now, and a strawberry for the self.

...Know your seeking and yearning shall avail you (nothing) unless you know... that if that which you seek you find not within yourself, you will never find it without..."
- from The Charge


The key to lasting happiness is to find celebration and joy within, to harness and caress any lucid moment that reminds oneself that there is always something broader, more enriching, more sustaining, more beautiful than any of the inward pressures that would otherwise drag one into a mire. To smile more, to see the shaft of sunlight beside the road accident, to find divinity in the lingering of the broken kiss; this is the path toward celebrating the senses and the present moment. A fraction of a recognized, beautiful moment can free oneself from a day's worth of distress.

Happiness can occur with someone else, or even because of someone else, but once it occurs through someone else, one abdicates part of one's own power and ability to create and transform. We may choose to voluntarily abdicate some of this power as we nurture a personal relationship with another, but a healthy awareness requires that we remember that, in the end, our own happiness is entirely our own responsibility, doing, and celebration.

Sometimes there isn't much green to find.

My friend Alex hung himself. He's dead, and I recently found myself wanting to call him. I didn't. I wonder if, as in times before, I was feeling his need to talk. We seemed to share an energy awareness about when things in our lives were getting disrupted. He's dead, and it doesn't seem like anyone's looking to conduct a rite for him. Should I?

My mother's health is deteriorating, and I'm worried. I spent two days in New York, caring for her and making certain that all one of her home attendants had been stealing was only cash. It was, and to the tune of maybe a thousand dollars. My terror is that she will die, I will be in Ontario, my uncle will be in Florida, and it'll be Christmas morning for thieves in Brooklyn.

After nine months of constant daily contact and several trips to be together, things with Shana and I have ended. She broke it off because having a long-distance relationship was becoming too challenging, then begged to have me back, and tnot long after I fucked up in a spectacularly marvelous way. While I sensed some important differences between us, I also sensed more long-term potential with Shana than I have with any other woman since Cai. That in itself impresses me, but right now I'm a little distracted at what happened between my new best friend and I. I'm managing well (maybe 've learned something finally), but I love and miss her.

No, no greenery in all this. But I did lose ten pounds and bought a bike today.

More dukkha to do.

Rob sez:

"1. Critique and question and agitate the parts of yourself that are complacent or addicted to convenience. 2. Give help, sympathy, and encouragement to the parts of yourself that are off-centre or out-of-focus. 3. Shake up the static, habit-entranced situations you see around you. 4. Be generous and creative with those who are suffering."