I got hit by a car today.

The driver apologized and gave me his card.

​He was a Funeral Assistant.

​

The things that I can not share with you
could crowd a street.

They could line a beach
edges brimming with sand,
and filling up and spilling over.

They could make a trail
of all the places I have been
that you do not care to see.

They could mark my way back
to the places I wish I was.

​And you would never know.

I may be home
​but I'm not all here yet.

As it so often goes, it's when I'm not searching that I uncover something completely unexpected! I was recently in the Maritimes for the very first time, hiking around the Halifax area. My friend and I spotted an owl perched on some rocks by the ocean... a popular spot for gulls, cormorants and ducks, but an unusual spot for an owl! After some internet-help verifying the ID, we confirmed that this is actually a burrowing owl, very far from home! A species-at-risk in most parts of Canada, this little one likely came up on a cruise ship from Florida as they aren't endemic to the maritime region. This was completely a case of "right place, right time" spotting, and I hope that the NS Bird Society will let the people in the area know that there is something very special in their backyward that they should protect!

WHERE: Yukon & Alaska
WHEN: May 20 - 27, 2017
WHY: Girls' road trip!

​

I fall so easily back into these spaces,
the dislodged, unmade bed of a mind half-asleep.
One eye open,
curled lashes,
the drowsy weight of thoughts half-considered and debts unpaid.

Today I am purple and blues,
the change of habitat rendering my arms bruised
and my face shades of indigo.
I couldn't find sleep here, but I chase dreams anyways.
I can't find stability in the sky, or the clouds -
precipitous metaphors; precipitation imminent,
I follow them north until they open with such force 
that I have no choice but to become clean.
All the night there is raindrops,
and the sound of a million tiny heartbeats.
My own is lost in the pulsing,
​but I am louder in my anonymity.

WHERE: Vancouver, British Columbia
WHEN: April 12 - 17, 2017
WHY: Vancouver Indoor Highland Games

And so it begins! 

​

WHERE: Aberdeen, Scotland
WHEN:  February, 2016
WHY: Returning home, albeit briefly.

Looking through some old photos on my computer and feeling nostalgic, not for places necessarily, but the feelings that accompany them. 

WHERE: The Banff Centre
WHEN: March 12 - 14, 2017
WHY: Conference

It's 7 a.m. and I'm physically wired but mentally exhausted. I find reflective practices and continuous conversation with strangers draining, but these feelings subside when I look out the window or find time to myself. I'm supposed to be journaling - and I suppose that I am doing that now - but I'm distracted and disconnected.

Yesterday, I volunteered at a session on "Resilience as a Path to Transformation". As with all sessions at conferences like this, I'm more interested in the facilitation strategies than the content. Delegates were led through a guided visualization exercise that asked them to imagine themselves the way they want to perceived, and finding strength in their values and within themselves. 

I don't recognize these buildings now,
nor the faces of the people who stare dolefully out the windows.
There's no sense of belonging, here - 
just the dissociated millennial three floors up,
and the distant stare of the boy who's lost his mother.
I'm a creature of habit.
Of habitat.
And I'm here.

I feel at home anywhere, 
it's my gift.

To sink into the soft grass in a park halfway 'round the world,
and lull myself to sleep with the syncopation of a foreign language.
Your mother tongue whispers sweet nothings through my ears,
and I run my fingers through blades of grass and over vowels like velvet,
every bit aware of the sensations that arouse when words wrap so effortlessly:
there is an eroticism in familiar words spoken miles from my address.
I don't have a backstory, but I see the world through hardcovers and bookmarks;
I can balance on my tropes.

I use books like maps, to ground me in reality
                                         to locate the truth
                                         to navigate my own story.

I wake up next to strangers in the golden hour
in tangles of cotton and glass.
​I feel at home anywhere,
it's my curse.

This is not my story: there is no beginning, no middle.
I've come into the plot at the end - I'm not familiar with the characters.
I'm under the impression that this is where I ought to be, though it feels wrong.
These hands are not my hands.
These fingers curled around the arms of a stranger can't be mine.

I'm a creature of habit.
Of habitat.
Of habit.
I recognize the reflection in the windows,
but not these buildings.
This is not my story.
​This is not my story.