10/31/2005
The Financial Times gets the scoop two years too late. "US 'had no policy' in place to rebuild Iraq".
10/30/2005
Tales to Shiver By
I won't say that this is a list of my favourite eerie stories, rather I'll frame this more accurately as stories that had an impact on me. Many of these were read as a child so the potential to fright was at its height. Pidgeons From Hell and Haunted however I read as an adult in just the right setting and they burned into me the way a good tale of terror should.
Robert E. Howard - Pidgeons From Hell
Joyce Carol Oates - Haunted
Ray Bradbury - There Was an Old Woman, The October Game
Edgar Allan Poe - Bernice, Morella, The Black Cat, Fall of the House of Usher
H P Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, the Colour Out of Space, Whisperer in the Dark, The Haunter of the Dark
Algernon Blackwood - The willows
H G Wells - The Red Room
Rosemary Timperley - Something in the Cellar
Angus Campbell - the Sad Vampire
English Folktale - Teeny Tiny
Joseph Jacobs - Where is My Golden arm?
W.W. Jacobs - The Monkey's Paw
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wall Paper
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Washington Irving - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Graham Ingles - Horror We? How's Bayou
Bram Stoker - Dracula
Charles Manson - Manson in His Own Words
Charles Burns - Blood Club
Leslie adds:
Alvin Schwartz - Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Julio Cortazar - House Taken Over
Paul Spencer - You Must Flee Again
Ray Bradbury - Jack in the Box
Robert E. Howard - Pidgeons From Hell
Joyce Carol Oates - Haunted
Ray Bradbury - There Was an Old Woman, The October Game
Edgar Allan Poe - Bernice, Morella, The Black Cat, Fall of the House of Usher
H P Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, the Colour Out of Space, Whisperer in the Dark, The Haunter of the Dark
Algernon Blackwood - The willows
H G Wells - The Red Room
Rosemary Timperley - Something in the Cellar
Angus Campbell - the Sad Vampire
English Folktale - Teeny Tiny
Joseph Jacobs - Where is My Golden arm?
W.W. Jacobs - The Monkey's Paw
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wall Paper
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Washington Irving - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Graham Ingles - Horror We? How's Bayou
Bram Stoker - Dracula
Charles Manson - Manson in His Own Words
Charles Burns - Blood Club
Leslie adds:
Alvin Schwartz - Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Julio Cortazar - House Taken Over
Paul Spencer - You Must Flee Again
Ray Bradbury - Jack in the Box
Poe Boy
One of my favourite stories for its macabre atmosphere is Edgar Allen Poe's Fall of the House of Usher. Which begins with this sentence:
Poe as a man and writer explored the brink. He drank copiously throughout his life and indulged in whatever opiates and narcotics came across his path. He was known for his salaciousness before and after he married his fourteen year old cousin. While marriage for a women of that age was not so unusual at the time the close blood relationship between them seems to have preturbed Poe, who had lived with her since she was 9 years old.
It is in the Fall of the House of Usher that we see what happens, through Poe's imagination when people tumble over that edge that Poe so willingly seemed to spend his days gazing over. The narrator of the story seems to be encountering his dark doppleganger in the form of Roderick Usher, as he crosses the threshold into a gothic nightmare of disintegration, taboo and hallucination ending in an apocalyptic collapse that is as purely psychological (psychotic?) as it is material.
If you haven't read this tale there is no better time than the end of October to step inside the vaulted doors of the House of Usher.
DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.It's a story which sets out the classic themes of horror: madness, decay, mortality, isolation and violation. Clearly this story had an enormous impact on H.P. Lovecraft whose own tales are rife with the horrors of madness, cross breeding, inbreeding and fear of age. Baudelaire the author of the Fleurs du Mal and an early translator of Poe's works into French, was enamoured with Poe for his descriptions of the dark beauty and he found in delirium and obsession.
Poe as a man and writer explored the brink. He drank copiously throughout his life and indulged in whatever opiates and narcotics came across his path. He was known for his salaciousness before and after he married his fourteen year old cousin. While marriage for a women of that age was not so unusual at the time the close blood relationship between them seems to have preturbed Poe, who had lived with her since she was 9 years old.
It is in the Fall of the House of Usher that we see what happens, through Poe's imagination when people tumble over that edge that Poe so willingly seemed to spend his days gazing over. The narrator of the story seems to be encountering his dark doppleganger in the form of Roderick Usher, as he crosses the threshold into a gothic nightmare of disintegration, taboo and hallucination ending in an apocalyptic collapse that is as purely psychological (psychotic?) as it is material.
If you haven't read this tale there is no better time than the end of October to step inside the vaulted doors of the House of Usher.
Praxis
I started a new blog as part of Rocket-booster Digital Media Design. It's called Praxis:
"Praxis is term that comes from my days as an anthopology student. In brief praxis refers to the "acts that carry their own rules, limitations and structures within themselves" in other words a fancy word for practice. Within anthropology and the social sciences however it takes on a more specific technical sense that relates practice/social action and culture, to the body itself. The body as the nexus of the social and the individual. While there are hundreds of tech related blogs and web sites out there. Praxis is a discussion of design and technology as filtered through my interests, perspectives, experience and concerns."
"Praxis is term that comes from my days as an anthopology student. In brief praxis refers to the "acts that carry their own rules, limitations and structures within themselves" in other words a fancy word for practice. Within anthropology and the social sciences however it takes on a more specific technical sense that relates practice/social action and culture, to the body itself. The body as the nexus of the social and the individual. While there are hundreds of tech related blogs and web sites out there. Praxis is a discussion of design and technology as filtered through my interests, perspectives, experience and concerns."
Late Night Meanderings
It's 2:40 am as I start this post, at leat that what the clocks say now. We had to set the clocks back an hour so that those of us who suffer from SAD can real feel the boots. So to the body it's actually 3:40 am. Vive la late night.
It was a gorgeous autumn day when the sky looks so much bluer as it hangs behing the jagged orange leaves that still fill out the skyline. I've been sick for three weeks now and am getting a battery of blood tests on Monday. I'm not too worried. If anything I'm convinced I could have been a GP. I know the routine. Check the throat with the little pointy light, check the ears, check the eyes, thump the chest and ask the patient to breath deeply while listening with the stethescope. Tell patient to lie down poke around the abdomen ask if anything hurts. Say it's probably a virus and check of some boxes on the lab form and say "I'll send you for some blood tests. In the meantime get some rest." So easy.
Last night I ventured out into the world for the first time since thanksgiving. Yes the world was strange. So cold I could see my breath. I could also see Mars which is the second closest it's been to earth in 60,000 years (2003 was the closest). Dave and I rented some bizarro Japanese films. On the way home my breath was visible so I know winter is on it's way back.
Dave and Sayuri came over tonight for dinner. I made some pasta from scratch with an excellent spinach and ricotta filling and delicious tomato garlic sauce mmmmm. I know I made but it was damn good. It was a fine evening all around and I must say the old Burning Ring disks came in very handy as dinner music.
I watched Young Frankenstein after they went home. That must be one of my favourite movies even though it's super cornball. Terri Garr, Madeline Khan, Gene wilder, Cloris Leachman, Peter Boyle and Marti Feldman. Marti Feldman was so funny and not only because of his googly eyes.
I first saw this film when we lived in Saudi Arabia on the compound cable. There were no theatres and little television broadcasting beyond cartoons and Saudi news. Seeing it again tonight made me larf. Which is the same thing as laughing but better. Terri Garr was also very hot as Inga the German sexpot. Anyway it was a lot stupider than I remembered and even more fun to watch because of it.
And now I collapse.
It was a gorgeous autumn day when the sky looks so much bluer as it hangs behing the jagged orange leaves that still fill out the skyline. I've been sick for three weeks now and am getting a battery of blood tests on Monday. I'm not too worried. If anything I'm convinced I could have been a GP. I know the routine. Check the throat with the little pointy light, check the ears, check the eyes, thump the chest and ask the patient to breath deeply while listening with the stethescope. Tell patient to lie down poke around the abdomen ask if anything hurts. Say it's probably a virus and check of some boxes on the lab form and say "I'll send you for some blood tests. In the meantime get some rest." So easy.
Last night I ventured out into the world for the first time since thanksgiving. Yes the world was strange. So cold I could see my breath. I could also see Mars which is the second closest it's been to earth in 60,000 years (2003 was the closest). Dave and I rented some bizarro Japanese films. On the way home my breath was visible so I know winter is on it's way back.
Dave and Sayuri came over tonight for dinner. I made some pasta from scratch with an excellent spinach and ricotta filling and delicious tomato garlic sauce mmmmm. I know I made but it was damn good. It was a fine evening all around and I must say the old Burning Ring disks came in very handy as dinner music.
I watched Young Frankenstein after they went home. That must be one of my favourite movies even though it's super cornball. Terri Garr, Madeline Khan, Gene wilder, Cloris Leachman, Peter Boyle and Marti Feldman. Marti Feldman was so funny and not only because of his googly eyes.
I first saw this film when we lived in Saudi Arabia on the compound cable. There were no theatres and little television broadcasting beyond cartoons and Saudi news. Seeing it again tonight made me larf. Which is the same thing as laughing but better. Terri Garr was also very hot as Inga the German sexpot. Anyway it was a lot stupider than I remembered and even more fun to watch because of it.
And now I collapse.
10/29/2005
Making Science More 'Interesting'
Phillip Johnson who is sometimes referred to as the 'father' of the intellignent design movement said recently, "We're not out to damage science. We're out to make science more interesting." Teaching that the pyramids must have been built by alien visitors to earth in ancient times might be considered 'interesting'also. Maybe they can teach that in Kansas schools as well. Or how about scientists engage in knife fights to decide whose research should be recognized. Science cheerleaders might be interesting. How about celebrity science orgies?
10/28/2005
Coming Soon the 1000th Posting
Soon I will be approaching the 1000th posting of this version of the Glob and Wail. To celebrate I will, ah forget it.
10/27/2005
Taliban Revival in the Mid-West?
It's both dismal and amusing how the state of Kansas takes aim at evolutionary theory while evolutionary scientists help it on its move back to the stone age. This article from the New York Times reports:
The scientists are concerned as the Kansas Education Board is "singling out evolution as a controversial theory, and also for changing the definition of science itself so that it is not restricted to natural phenomena".
Two leading science organizations have denied the Kansas board of education permission to use their copyrighted materials in the state's proposed new science standards because of the standards' critical approach to evolution.
The scientists are concerned as the Kansas Education Board is "singling out evolution as a controversial theory, and also for changing the definition of science itself so that it is not restricted to natural phenomena".
10/25/2005
Gloomy Tuesday
The rain began sometime last night and continues on it's drizzly way to this moment. It's also very cold out and not having worn gloves my fingers turned to icicles. I had horrible deep lengthy dreams all through the night that seemed to drag me through all the low points of my existence. Thus it was I woke up feeling drained and demoralized and this flu or whatever unamed virus that torments me won't go away. The worst of it is the almost constant state of mental fog that washes over me every other day.
Now especially for Leslie, bring on the jokes:
Now especially for Leslie, bring on the jokes:
The Alsatian Dog
An Alsatian went to a telegram office, took out a blank form and wrote: "Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof." The clerk examined the paper and politely told the dog: "There are only nine words here. You could send another Woof for the same price." "But," the dog replied, "that would make no sense at all."
Doctor
Patient: "Doctor, I've got a strawberry stuck up my bum." Doctor: "I've got some cream for that!"
Sheep Jokes
I
Two sheep herders are flying the herd to a new farm. Suddenly, the engine fails and the plane begins to fall quickly to the ground. SH1: Quick! Grab a parachute and jump! SH2: What about the sheep?!? SH1: Fuck the sheep!!!! SH2: (pause) Do you think we have time?
II
An Aussie journalist was in New Zealand doing stories where he saw a Kiwi farmer doing unnatural things with a sheep. He approached the Kiwi and firstly asked, "What sort of sheep is that?" He scribbled down the farmer's reply - "a Merino". The next question was, "Do you shear them?" The farmer replied hastily, "No! Go and find yer own!"
III
What did the Cloned Sheep say to the other sheep?
"I am ewe".
10/22/2005
From the White House
Does it make any sense that the US government legislates accessability regulations for American web sites and than proclaims on the White House's own web site that " The U.S. government does not support Netscape for Windows." In other words if you are legally blind we are concerned but if you don't use Explorer we can't accomodate you. In fairness the two things may be related in that Netscape may not be fully compliant with their accessability regulations however its always professional form as I understand it to design websites that perform within the scope of standard browsers.Then again until the latest release Netscape had for all intents fallen off of the map. (and what about the small fortune spent a few years ago fighting Microsofts unfair business practices that hurt Netscape).
What is really funny though is that this page contains Bushs radio address urging young people to be safe on Halloween but at the bottom of the page it reads "This web site is not intended for viewers under voting age."
What is really funny though is that this page contains Bushs radio address urging young people to be safe on Halloween but at the bottom of the page it reads "This web site is not intended for viewers under voting age."
10/21/2005
The Frozen Dead Guy
To get to the old mining town of Nederland Colorado you travel up from Boulder along winding roads through ancient strata that stab and jut in violent angles all around you. If you look too long at those layers of displaced earth you realize the age and violent history of the land you are traveling through and your mind can readily be pulled back into an unfathomably distant time. If your imagination takes you there you can see the forms of frozen giants in the stone. The journey is both beautiful and alien to an easterner like me.
One of the first things you notice after you pass the reservoir is a white shed that says Cryogenic Mausoleum. What? Yes this little shed in this little town in the hills has a dead guy frozen inside of it right there in the open. In fact, as I found out there is an entire celebration that goes on around this memorial called "Frozen Dead Guy Days."
Until I now I didn't know anything beyond this but thanks to the internet I've been able to get the background story.
One of the first things you notice after you pass the reservoir is a white shed that says Cryogenic Mausoleum. What? Yes this little shed in this little town in the hills has a dead guy frozen inside of it right there in the open. In fact, as I found out there is an entire celebration that goes on around this memorial called "Frozen Dead Guy Days."
Until I now I didn't know anything beyond this but thanks to the internet I've been able to get the background story.
10/20/2005
Spooked
Oh what a weird night. I just woke up in the dark and the wind is howling and the leaves are rustling and church bells are ringing and the dog is having bad dreams.
If this were a movie you just no something terrible was going to happen soon.
If this were a movie you just no something terrible was going to happen soon.
10/19/2005
Shetland Lamb of Christmas Future
This is what Leslie is getting for Christmas one year. Don't tell.
Smoke screen
Do you trust big business to do the right thing? Is this an exception to the rule? or is this representative of a certain mentality that puts profit before human rights?
Make what you will of it but according to the Guardian "British American Tobacco, the world's second largest cigarette company, has secretly been operating a factory in North Korea for the past four years"
Make what you will of it but according to the Guardian "British American Tobacco, the world's second largest cigarette company, has secretly been operating a factory in North Korea for the past four years"
10/18/2005
Bio-Warfare in Washington?
On Sept. 24, 2005 the day of the peace march, 6 biological-weapons sensors in Washington detected the presence of f. tularensis, a deadly virus used in biological warfare. What on earth is going on? The associate director for special projects at the St. Louis University School of Public Health's Institute for Biosecurity, William Stanhope is quoted as saying "I am stunned that this has not been more of a story." Indeed. "I'm sorry, you don't have enough money to buy enough martinis to make me believe that it is naturally occurring at six different sites." You can read more about this troubling circumstance at Salon >>>
Report
Around 5 pm I took Luna down to the dog park. I had just passed Osgoode and was going down the hill on Sweetland when through the sound of Jonathan Richmond singing about replacing Hippy Johnny because he was straight, I heard a mans voice yelling and cursing behind me. I took the earphones out and turned around to see a caucasian man in a navy uniform about 6'2" with a grey military cut. He yelled "Just try me fucking Chinese!" and was walking in an aggressive stride. I think he had a cellphone in one hand. He turned west into the alley behind the apartment units on Osgoode and thats the last I saw or heard of him.
Listen to the Wind
It's really chilly tonight. I went for a nice walk with Luna. The clouds were playing over the moon taking eerie forms and people have started putting pumpkins out. I'm still sick, so nothing looks or feels very real; everything seems a bit distant, a little out of reach. Sounds come from canyons or around corners. It's time for bed but I expect another restless night.
As a designer I'm usually thinking of the relationship of line form and colour in two dimensions and how these relationships can be used to communicate different ideas, messages and feelings. A classic symbol from ancient times is the yin yang which expresses in a beautifully minimalist way some very complex notions.
It really got me thinking then when I came across an update of this symbol that includes not only an emulation of three dimensions but also of time/motion. With only a very minor twist that takes nothing away from the traditional symbol it manages to express the harmonious interactions between the yin and yang in different manner while also hinting at how out of simplicity complexity can arrive. The yin and yang have a different relationship here than in the two dimensional depiction. In the three dimensional animated model there are now three spaces the yin the yang and the negative space in which they rotate. All three forms interact and expand on the notion that out of the interaction of two principles can come great intricacy.
It really got me thinking then when I came across an update of this symbol that includes not only an emulation of three dimensions but also of time/motion. With only a very minor twist that takes nothing away from the traditional symbol it manages to express the harmonious interactions between the yin and yang in different manner while also hinting at how out of simplicity complexity can arrive. The yin and yang have a different relationship here than in the two dimensional depiction. In the three dimensional animated model there are now three spaces the yin the yang and the negative space in which they rotate. All three forms interact and expand on the notion that out of the interaction of two principles can come great intricacy.
When Prolactin Gets in My Eyes
Some interesting thoughts on tears from a physiological perspective. The tears we cry as an emotional repsonse actually have a different composition than basal tears (which lubricate our eyes) and reflex tears (which are produced in response to irritants) Emotional tears have a 25% higher protein content than other types. This protein content reflects the stress related horomones that are secreted in tears.
For those more inclined to social and culture understandings of phenomena there is A Natural and Cultural History of Tears by Tom Lutz, although the reviews of it are such that you may well gain first hand experience with the subjuct matter after you've parted with your hard earned wages in exchange for this volume.
For those more inclined to social and culture understandings of phenomena there is A Natural and Cultural History of Tears by Tom Lutz, although the reviews of it are such that you may well gain first hand experience with the subjuct matter after you've parted with your hard earned wages in exchange for this volume.
10/17/2005
Pravda = Truth or something like that
It's nice to see that since the fall of the Soviet state that Pravda has evolved into a newspaper that doesn't run away from difficult truths as exemplified in this story that reveals the truth about man-beasts through the ages. Read if you dare the cold hard facts: Centaurs appeared after copulation between humans and animals
And there's a lot more where that came from in the Science section.
And there's a lot more where that came from in the Science section.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRowr
I am now sick of being sick. Since Thanksgiving I've had this raunchy cold/flu that will not leave. I can't draw, I can't write, I can't focus, I can't stand it. It's cold and I am super crabby. GRRRRRRRRRRRR SNARL,@*&*&%*#*&@*!*&*!^*.
There that feels better already.
There that feels better already.
10/16/2005
Archimedes Death Ray
Legend has it that in 212 BC Archimedes designed and built a glass or mirror used to burn invading roman ships. Students at MIT experimented to see if such a thing is possible >>>
It's Time to Leave the Planet
Argh is about all I can say to the fact the Mattel is now producing a line of Barbie clothes for real women. >>>
"Little girls are growing up faster than ever and looking to adults and teens for inspiration, and Barbie is their aspiration."
"Little girls are growing up faster than ever and looking to adults and teens for inspiration, and Barbie is their aspiration."
10/15/2005
Phone Imps
last year I bought a Panasonic cordless phone and while I liked the freedom of being able to roam my phone doodle production dropped significantly. The battery however started to weaken and even though its a rechargeable battery its practically dead. Leslie came to the rescue buying me a regular plug into the jack phone this summer. As a result the phone imps as I call them keep coming. Here's a couple (and yes I am fully engaged in the conversation while I draw these. I don't even see them until I hang up:
10/14/2005
Tokyo Dave
Dave has been my friend since we moved to OS in the 80s. We lived on the same street, went to the same university and then he moved to Tokyo where he has lived for the past 14 years. Leaving his dream job working for the English edition of the largest circulation paper in Japan, the Daily Yomiuri, Dave is once more living among his fellow Canadians in Toronto. Welcome back old friend.
Bush Whacking
I haven't done any good Bush whacking lately. It's just too easy and his ways are just so predictable that the outrageous becomes routine.
Recently Bush held a televised "conversation" with the troops in Iraq. Of course the entire production was scripted and directed as much as any motion picture (perhaps more so since I doubt the soldiers were encouraged to ad-lib). From his "town-hall" meetings to promote his overhaul of social security where the "audience" is hand-picked and given questions to ask, to his Potemkin village photo-ops, this is all just another sad trick pulled straight out of 101 Propaganda Techniques to Fool Your Friends and Family.
I guess I'm still sometimes astounded that an article like this in Yahoo News can put all of his crap out in the open but some people still seem to eat it up like it meant something. Here's a man who trumpets to the world how he is the leader of a country that cherishs democratic values and freedoms and he is afraid to face the public in case someone asks him an awkward question (see Ireland June 2004). He was to chicken to speak in front of the Canadian Parliament when he visited Ottawa last year. Blah blah blah it really is boring except it matters. Oh and let's not forget the use of puppet journalists in the White House Press Corps like Jeff Gannon. Last but certainly not least the lies and deceptions around Iraqi WMD's and terrorists that were originally used to justify going to war in Iraq. The staged events of the fall of Baghdad. The declaration of victory on the aircraft carrier, the prepackaged news, on and on and on I could be here for days cataloguing this crap.
And yet despite all of this .... sigh. I think they realize most people are too busy trying to pay the bills to notice or care.
Recently Bush held a televised "conversation" with the troops in Iraq. Of course the entire production was scripted and directed as much as any motion picture (perhaps more so since I doubt the soldiers were encouraged to ad-lib). From his "town-hall" meetings to promote his overhaul of social security where the "audience" is hand-picked and given questions to ask, to his Potemkin village photo-ops, this is all just another sad trick pulled straight out of 101 Propaganda Techniques to Fool Your Friends and Family.
I guess I'm still sometimes astounded that an article like this in Yahoo News can put all of his crap out in the open but some people still seem to eat it up like it meant something. Here's a man who trumpets to the world how he is the leader of a country that cherishs democratic values and freedoms and he is afraid to face the public in case someone asks him an awkward question (see Ireland June 2004). He was to chicken to speak in front of the Canadian Parliament when he visited Ottawa last year. Blah blah blah it really is boring except it matters. Oh and let's not forget the use of puppet journalists in the White House Press Corps like Jeff Gannon. Last but certainly not least the lies and deceptions around Iraqi WMD's and terrorists that were originally used to justify going to war in Iraq. The staged events of the fall of Baghdad. The declaration of victory on the aircraft carrier, the prepackaged news, on and on and on I could be here for days cataloguing this crap.
And yet despite all of this .... sigh. I think they realize most people are too busy trying to pay the bills to notice or care.
10/13/2005
How the Knight of Cups Came Calling
It's been 6 months now since Leslie and I met in person in Sophie's kitchen in Cambridge and over a year since we started the correspondence that led us to that time and place. Looking back it's hard to believe how everything has unfolded. From the vantage point of looking back it all has the perspective of being an inevitable course that brought us here, but really there were so many things that had to be in place for this to work the way it did. It all seems like a dream sometimes as we slip in and out of each others presence, but there is a connection that seems to have always been there, as if it was only needing to be recognized, something that came before us and now winds its way through us, and will go on after we are gone.
Last fall I would take walks at night through the neighbourhood, the dry leaves rustling at my feet, the stars glimmering through the sharp autumn air and there would be the sense that something connected her. To my sensible mind this was a fantasy among fantasies, another random thought and impossible connection that only made sense in dreams. And yet when the moon shone down it always drew my thoughts to her in far off Colorado. Somehow I felt she was looking up at that same moon in the same vast sky that stretched out between us and was thinking of me. This was long before any intimations of what was to come.
These thoughts that grew in dreams, between the notes in the music we shared and the lines of the letters we wrote were drawing out a path for us to follow, one that would bring us together on a warm and sunny day on Pearl street where the white and pink blossoms of springtime rested at our feet. Where she handed me a silver box containing one pressed violet crocus, the same as I had picked for her weeks earlier and never sent or said a word about to her. It still lay pressed between the pages of a heavy book back in Ottawa. When I saw that flower I froze; I melted. I can still feel the warm shiver that ran through me at that moment.
That's how it all started.
Last fall I would take walks at night through the neighbourhood, the dry leaves rustling at my feet, the stars glimmering through the sharp autumn air and there would be the sense that something connected her. To my sensible mind this was a fantasy among fantasies, another random thought and impossible connection that only made sense in dreams. And yet when the moon shone down it always drew my thoughts to her in far off Colorado. Somehow I felt she was looking up at that same moon in the same vast sky that stretched out between us and was thinking of me. This was long before any intimations of what was to come.
These thoughts that grew in dreams, between the notes in the music we shared and the lines of the letters we wrote were drawing out a path for us to follow, one that would bring us together on a warm and sunny day on Pearl street where the white and pink blossoms of springtime rested at our feet. Where she handed me a silver box containing one pressed violet crocus, the same as I had picked for her weeks earlier and never sent or said a word about to her. It still lay pressed between the pages of a heavy book back in Ottawa. When I saw that flower I froze; I melted. I can still feel the warm shiver that ran through me at that moment.
That's how it all started.
Ella
This time through I stopped in Toronto and visited with Kirk and Lisa, finally getting to meet the lovely Ella.
10/09/2005
Happy Thanksgiving
It's been an amazing autumn so far. We went to my sister's for Thanksgiving dinner and I came home to see that Leslie had sent me this beautiful picture of her in the Aspens and since I shamelessly adore her I had to post it.
10/05/2005
Great Visit
Sharon and John left for Alqonquin Park yesterday with the ultimate destination of Parry Sound to see John's brother. We had a great visit with excellent weather. They arrived Sunday afternoon and unwound at the Royal Oak before venturing out into the Gatineau Hills. In the evening we ate outdoors by a small lake in Wakefield. I have some more photos I'll post after Thanksgiving.
Also in the visiting vein, Leslie booked her ticket to come to visit at Christmas for almost a month! I can hardly wait. This is going to be such a great Christmas.
Also in the visiting vein, Leslie booked her ticket to come to visit at Christmas for almost a month! I can hardly wait. This is going to be such a great Christmas.
