Time, Warped.

A fall day in 2018.

I sit drinking my coffee, listening to the guy playing the fiddle in the square below as the tourists pass him by. His repertoire is seemingly limited. Or maybe he only plays what "works" for his audience of vacationers. Whatever his reason, this guy plays non-stop traditional-Québéçois-sounding fiddle tunes. The next guy who will take over that corner after him plays piano. Last week, it was non-stop Pachebel's Canon. The fiddle stops, and a kid is screaming.

Eight floors above, I take another sip of my coffee and type, still somewhat drowsy. I woke up at 11:36 a.m. The bedroom is dark with the blackout curtain closed; it's easy to lose all sense of time.

Lofty Endeavors, or My Debut in Four-Inch Heels.

I went to my first gala this weekend. It's been a lot of fun to think about dresses, shoes, jewelry, hair, nail color and other gala-related fashion details. I found my dress a month or so ago at a thrift store for $10. Don't panic on my behalf though: I know you are probably picturing the scary 1980s prom dresses that populate most thrift stores, but somehow I found two excellent formal dresses on the same day, plus some other non-formal finds.

August and Everything After...Is Unknown.

Somehow the months since mid-March have passed in a blur. A good blur. Like bokeh. The day I last wrote, I did indeed end up making madeleines that I gave to a friend for her 51st birthday. That evening at her party, I had a long conversation with her son. He seemed to be enjoying our talk, and I wondered if he might be interested in me. No, I told myself, he's younger...of course he wouldn't be interested in that way! But several weeks later, his mom put us in touch with an email, and we started emailing. Some weeks after that, he asked me on a date.

Most of the way through Q1.

So far 2015 has included some of the busiest months I have ever had. But this time has been good, mostly because in all the busyness, winter has gone by with me often in a survival-auto-pilot state. That might sound negative, but not having time to think too much in the depths of winter has actually been a relief. Supposedly February was the coldest in over a hundred years, but I was so busy going from one job to another that I hardly noticed. In fact, I was often loosening my scarf or removing one mitten because I was warm from jogging to try to catch the next bus so I wouldn't have to wait 6 or so minutes for another one.

5 Years.

Five years ago today I moved to Québec.

What my life is like now is nothing like what I thought it would be on that day I crossed the border and moved to Canada. I came here to be with the person I loved, and once I left my country, he became my home. It wasn't a conscious decision; it just happened in my heart when I displaced myself for him and we got married.

When that exploded and the ground beneath me finally stopped shaking, I realized that I would need to gently dust myself off and redefine "home" for myself. I had to figure out a path forward.

Because sometimes you have to throw your own parties.

I threw myself a birthday party. I knew the first part of this month might not be easy for me, so I planned ways to intentionally take care of myself. I wanted to feel surrounded by loved ones and welcome in a new year, and a birthday is a perfectly normal reason to have a party. (Unfortunately a I-survived-the-depths-of-hell party is a little less socially acceptable.) And since I didn't have someone to throw me a party, I decided to throw one for myself. This probably broke some etiquette rules, especially because I made it a potluck party, but I don't even care. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Sage.

A year ago yesterday, my life was suddenly blown apart with one incredibly brief sentence. Tomorrow is a year from the day my now-ex-husband walked out of our home to be with his girlfriend.

If you had asked me then to imagine what my life would look like now, I would have been completely incapable of it. At that point, I could not begin to imagine my life without my ex. My mind couldn't even process what had just happened, let alone my heart. In the beginning, each morning I woke up from a few hours of sleep to re-remember what had happened, after having forgotten while sleeping. Eventually I began to wake up remembering. It took time to accept that things weren't ever going to go back to how they were before, and I don't think I will ever fully understand what happened because it was all so dissonant to absolutely everything I had believed.

Résilience.

This morning I watched this video about a goat that made me cry. The concern and commitment of the caregivers was moving, but it was seeing the little goat's determination that left me with tears running off my face and dropping onto my sternum. The goat kept going, despite adversity, with an attitude that I interpret as thankfulness. And not happiness, but joy. I was taught from an early age that joy is different than happiness because it is independent of external circumstances.

The other day I saw that a library in my town had added the word "résilience," written in huge silver capital letters, all across one side of the building. It's much larger than a billboard, and I took it as a message of encouragement from the universe to keep going. It is a reminder that that we can bounce back from adversity, that the human spirit is strong.

A slow train to spring.

Crocuses are late
Only snowdrops have arrived
A slow train to spring
— Kim Philipps, 48, Bronxville, NY. 

I thought spring would come with Easter. 

It was gorgeous outside this afternoon on my walk home from work. I enjoyed the sun and thought about how I felt at home in my town. Recently, I spent too much time online looking for the (seemingly nonexistent) perfect pair of gladiator sandals in Canada. Despite this, I still feel like I am somehow in between winter and spring.

Tenacity.

As I sit here in my sunny living room, the sound of chirping birds just outside the window reminds me that spring is technically here. Nevermind the incongruous detail that we had a snowstorm on the first day of spring and another small one two days later. It still looks like winter, but there are whispers of spring. Those tenacious birds confirm that winter will not last forever.

I probably should be working on one of the many projects I am in the middle of right now. I am getting ready to enter week four of a very busy four-week period. But I saw this article ("This is what 80 Looks Like") on Gloria Steinem and wanted to share it. So here I am.

Here and there.

• I bought vacuum cleaner. A Miele. I love it. It's black and silver, though I chose it for other reasons. However, it coordinates very well with my home's color scheme.
• I vacuumed the whole apartment the day I brought it home. There are no longer little rocks on the floor in the 3-foot (half) radius around front door. And Booboo was pretty comfortable around it, which is a huge change from how he was with the previous vaccuum.
• At the store, the registration process for the 10-year free warranty (!!!) asked for the reason for buying a vacuum. There was not an option for "My ex left me for another woman and took the vacuum cleaner with him." So the guy at the store said I should just choose "Replacing a broken vacuum."
• My new Miele rolls behind me so easily, like a happy little puppy following me around. It was on sale, plus I even got an extra $40 off because I took one that had an almost invisible scratch on the bottom. Honestly, I probably did more damage to it on its maiden voyage around the apartment the other day.
• You know the risk I talked about in the last two paragraphs of this post?

Boldness has magic in it.

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

-Goethe

Last fall someone emailed me that quote after I had shared with her what was going on in my life and some of my artistic goals and dreams for the future. I printed it out twice and stuck it in frames in two different locations in my apartment to serve as the reminder I needed as I looked ahead at a wide-open, unknown future. I re-read that quote while brushing my teeth before bed. I re-read it when I felt discouraged and stuck.

No going back no going home.

I got home from my holiday travel three days after my return flight was originally scheduled. The domino-effect delays and cancellations caused by the recent snowstorms led to my Thursday flight being cancelled and rescheduled for Friday. Then that Friday flight was cancelled. After lots of time on hold yet again, I was told the next flight I could get was for Monday. I later called back and managed to get a flight for Sunday, but then that one too was cancelled. More time on hold and the feeling I would never make it home led to looking for flights out of a nearby city an hour and a half away. I managed to get a a flight out of that city for Sunday. I was told that if I didn't make that flight, my next option from either city would be the following Wednesday. Both legs of that Sunday flight ended up being delayed, but I eventually got home at 2 a.m. or so Monday morning.

Darkness and light and the belly of the whale.

I've been thinking a lot about darkness and light, death and rebirth, and the journey into the belly of the whale.

In writing about the monomyth, Joseph Campbell described three overarching stages of the journey: departure, initiation and return. The last step of the departure stage is the journey into the belly of the whale, where the hero seems to be swallowed up by death.