Spring has begun. I know that to everyone reading this how absurd this must sound, but for me, spring begins with the Winter Solstice when the daylight begins to increase again by seconds. By January 1 if we do not have snow or bitterly cold weather, I can safely say that spring is here. Still laughing. Well, go ahead and laugh but I'll bet you don't go out much. I do. After spending rather too much time in my apartment this morning I finally hauled myself outside. It was already quarter past one. I had a reasonably productive morning. I was up at 8:30 which must seem hideously early for New Years day, but really I spent New Years Eve at home as usual and was warm and snug in my bed reading a novel in Spanish translation by just past midnight. I will not bore you about my dreams, which I thought were interesting and I think very positive though I can hardly remember them now. I spend a lot of my dream time hanging out with strangers, people I have never met before, but they are people, individuals as real and clear to me as though I met them on the street. I wonder if some of us when we dream, that we enter a parallel dimension, or the afterlife. I actually believe this, especially with some of the visits I have had with my mother and other people who I know who have died when I'm dreaming. There is something just a little bit too real about the contact and the conversations.
I spent the morning, doing exercises, brushing my teeth, shaving, showering, making my bed, and arranging cushions. I have cushions of many colours covering my bed which I use as a couch during the day, since I live in a small bachelor apartment. I just bought too large cushions in a store in Kitsilano, on West Broadway, where I was waited on my a pleasant young woman telling me about how tightly she has to budget because of the enormous debt she is racking up because of student loans. We talked about how important it is going to be for post-secondary education to become more accessible if they're going to expect the job market to be adequately filled. The cushions have beautiful covers, one a solid chartreuse, the other saffron. It was a good deal and I paid in all just over seventy dollars for everything. I often feel guilty about spending money on nice things for myself, even when I can afford it, and I had to almost force myself to make this purchase. I have the money. I just received a refund for a money order that didn't go through in Mexico City where I will be visiting again this coming March. The bed and breakfast there cancelled my reservation and I was able to book something a little more affordable in a nice looking pension in Coyoacan nearby. The owner of the place where I was cancelled and I hope to have coffee together when I'm there in March so he can explain a thing or two about why the cancellation occurred and hopefully I won't have to put something on Tripadvisor about them. They were very upset, or so they seemed, since with emails we don't always know who the writer is feeling and no one was using emoticons. :-P
After I cleaned my apartment, as I do every morning following my shower I had breakfast, checked my email then did an hour's work from home. I was putting together the last of four outlines for pottery classes that I will be assisting in at one of the mental health teams where I work. In this case it is people with addictions as well as mental health diagnoses. Each session touches on the ancient or tradional pottery of four different places: an extinct culture of prehistoric Japan, the Jomon; Catal Huyeck, a prehistoric city in Turkey, the aboriginal cultures of the Americas, and Africa.
When that was finished I felt tired so I rested on my bed, enjoying the new cushions while listening to a Spanish radio program and dozed for over an hour. I had to force myself to get up, have lunch (a piece of multigrain toast with peanut butter, honey and cheese. I was very glad to finally get outside and the cool air smelled wonderful. It was already one fifteen. I have to get out every day, whether I'm working or not. Even on a cold, gray, rainy or snowy winter day (spring as I am insisting it now is) I have to be outside at least three hours together, spending most of the time walking.
I enjoy privacy when I'm walking outside of downtown. If I'm not comfortable with someone walking behind me I will either stop and let them pass me or I will cross the street. I don't hate people but I really seem to need time to myself when I'm walking outside. Near the entrance to Stanley Park there is an apartment building with franklinia bushes lined up in a row in full fragrant bloom.
Although they are usually white I have seen them in pink and as in this case the flowers are red. They look like camellias and have a lovely fragrance. Did I say that it's Jan.1? This bush is from the state of Georgia in the USA and became extinct in the wild two hundred years ago. The leaves of the daffodils are already well-emerged and they should be blooming within three weeks if we don't get a bad cold snap. Near the tennis courts in Stanley Park I could smell the sweet pungent fragrance of a winter bush that flowers in the winter.
If anyone knows the name of this bush please let me know. Stanley Park was lovely and green underneath the grey sky and many trees have ferns growing on them so that it's almost like walking in a subtropical cloud forest in Costa Rica, but chilly. They are called licorice ferns and are edible as pot herbs. These beautiful ferns grow all over Vancouver and decorate the trunks and branches of many local deciduous trees. If you have still never noticed them, then shame on you for not getting out often enough.
I like the many original old growth trees that survived the logging madness of over a hundred years ago. They are huge and thick. There is moss everywhere. There were a few too many people out in the park today, but even though I prefer nature without people I still think it's great that people are getting out for fresh air and exercise. We don't really seem to belong here and if I see people walking ahead of me on the trails I try to slow my pace so they will get so far ahead that I cannot see them and then I think I'm viewing nature just as God must have intended it: without us. I realize, of course, that I also look just as incongruous here as everyone else, and it is also helpful to be reminded from time to time that liking it or not we are all part of nature, we just have a rather screwy way of negotiating our relationship with la Pachamama (Mother Nature).
I looked for a JJ bean to have coffee in after but the one downtown as well as the one in Yaletown were full almost to overflowing, but such is the tao of the JJ Bean cafes. Everywhere they spring up they silently scream "We are not Starbucks!" and watch them come. I was given a gift card for Christmas from one of my bosses and I still feel too cheap to spend any money which is why I settled for going home instead, which is okay because I walked about eight miles altogether today. I was particularly wanting to spend time working on one of my drawings in my sketch book. I will only draw in public places, particularly peaceful coffee shops and the staff room of one of the mental health teams where I work, but not at home. At home I paint. When I am in Mexico for a month I will have lots and lots of time to spend two, three or four hours a day inside beautiful cafes and restaurants with my sketch book, coloured pencils and coloured ball point pens.
I feel reluctant to spend any more unnecessary money because of what I spent yesterday on those cushions so I'm carefully pacing my spending till I know I can spare some more. I am thinking of buying one cushion cover a week at that store, since I'm in the area at least once a week, until I have enough to cover my four old cushions. They are kind of drab and beat up looking, about the same size, perhaps a wee bit smaller than the ones I purchased yesterday. I bought them second hand in 1999, just soon after I had found a place to live following almost a year of being homeless. They cost all of twenty-five cents each.
Since I arrived home I have been working on this blog and working on a painting, two quetzals with white orchids on a gold background. This is one of the many paintings I have been reworking. I am also listening to the CBC Radio One. There was a program on about giving. And this was also endorsed by our Governor-General David Johnson. The stories were very moving, but I have a cynical suspicion that being a plant of the Conservative Party, the Honorable Mr. Johnson is really trying to get Canadians more used to volunteering and taking care of one another because we are in store for yet more cuts in social programs. Please, God, let me be wrong.
I didn't go anywhere for coffee today, neither did I yield to temptation and buy one or two novels in Spanish from Chapters where I stopped to have a look on my way home. I have spent no money anywhere today and I feel rather good about this, as though I am already squirrelling it away for those other cushion covers (all different great colours of course), a bathroom scale, because I have to start taking charge over my weight, and maybe one or two more books in Spanish before I go to Mexico in March where I will be buying, yes you guessed right, as many books in Spanish as I can carry through customs without sustaining a major back injury. I already have nearly one hundred books in Spanish on my book shelves at home that are still waiting to be read, and a library of more than five hundred books. I know these will be a major pain in the hiney when it's time to move but I want a good well-stocked library in both languages because when I retire I will have a little more time to read (though I expect to continue working part time). And books in Spanish remain quite hard to get in Vancouver and I never know when a source is going to dry up on me.
I have spent my entire day alone, which is a bit unusual, I suppose. I might have gone to my church where the labyrinth was open for a few hours and snacks available downstairs, but I really needed time alone I and especially time outdoors in the fresh air. A busy social life isn't always a healthy choice.
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