Where I Stand

Windsor St, Vancouver, 2013.

It is 2014. Did you realize this? I know that you must have scribbled it a few dozen times by now; writing a cheque to your landlord, or filling in another white form, or scrawling it on the chalkboard so that your kids know that it is a school day, and no you cannot go to the bathroom classjustSTARTED.

But it is. 2014, I mean. Blink blink. It's also February. Blink. You've been meaning to write a post that means something, for quite some time now.

Summing up a year, looking ahead to the one up next-- it has such oracle-like, wisdom-shouldering Shawls that wrap around it. It's always easier to not. And yet-- not doing so is unfathomable, since you have pretty much done one every year since you were an itty bitty newborn in this Internet world. You can't send 2013 to bed without tracing its braille one last time with your fingers.

Meditation rock, Saturna Island, 2013.

So. Two thousand and thirteen. My lucky number, my lucky year. My phoenix rising from the embers of some serious stuff. If I was a life meteorologist, I would see that the ebb and flow of joy waxes and wanes from year to year, season to season. 2013 felt like a whole season of light.

I'm still not good at recaps-- this hasn't changed as I've gotten older. Longer in my soul. The most we will arrive to, will likely be nonsensical to you. Incomplete.

The High Line, New York, 2013.

You were love. Every morsel of you was full of it. Not neccessarily the kind that is sopping with roses and beautiful photos, taken just so. Beyond the portrayal of you on my FB page or this modest project here, which can be so misleading in all its camera angles and edited turns of phrases, you were love. The real kind. The kind that builds itself up, and heals pain, and joins fingers together in friendship. You were a chortling, brimming, 'we did it', 'but i'm exhausted' kind of love. You restored my heart back to its rightful rack; heaved it from the second last rib; elevated it so it could elevate me.

My back deck, Haines Junction, 2013.

You were adventure and power. That's right. That word that I shy away from. Why? Power doesn't have to be connected to greed or wealth or harsh tones. Power is sinew and limbs and nerves and verve and vivre. Power is the ability to stay a course on a rocky sea, or ask for someone else to row you to shore, if it needs be.

The Auriol Trail, Yukon, 2013.

So, I thank you, friend. I will tell my grandchildren about you, how all my memories of you are tinged with the soft glint of a pale yellow. It isn't true that you were the beginning of something, since all my years (even that kick in the shin 2012) began me. But you were a checkpoint, for sure, and you told me that I am running the right road.

The trek behind Rick's Cabin, Yukon, 2013.