Humanyms

There’s a small bit of amusement in a Lindt & Sprüngli. In 5 languages it is enough to say store in a cool dry place but only in one language is it necessary to define cool at not over 18 degrees.

Some time I’m going to make a font from letters curling up at the edges like that. Then what? Haven’t a clue.

Lovely thing in the mail: listening to the rain, an anthology of Christchurch haiku and haibun which interrupts reminds me… A large haiku contingent came to the Tree open mic (Sorry Colleen, I forgot to take pictures again of the reading again.) Won a Omnibus 3 from Gaspereau Press there tho. That’s a good concept for a catalogue; a sampler instead of blurb and review blurbs. Having it reminded me Spine exists. I had almost got to the cash register a couple times with that.

Super-Hub procured a part for our vacuum and took the machine apart and repaired it. We can now vacuum again.

Glad to have a couple projects underway myself.

Amusing to take to logical absurd the women going from, or between, clubs, them clung to each other as if on a pitching ship. Their elbows being hooked remind me of a barrel of monkeys as they totter on their high heels. I wonder if I followed if I’d see a tangle as their house of cards swayed and tumbled completely.

Looking back across 5 year time gaps, I feel satisfied with changes I’ve consciously made with body language from extremely closed fan. Default used to be with arms and legs crossed whether sitting or standing, head down, looking away making pointed finger and hands behind back or flappy wrists and little eye contact or focus to not being so distractingly absent. One is socially registering as absent unless one talks and does so approachably.

My arms are lead hollowing out and the floor clamps for my feet aren’t so reliable after the amount I’ve jangled at them. Still body has memory of its own and rules are still forming. I made it my practice for 15 or 20 years to not touch, even to the point of arranging body space and hands clasped behind back to signal and remind myself not to gesture on people, equating touch with invasive (in family culture of non-touch), temptation-causing (to anyone), religiously defiling (in the case of Sikh and Muslim law of touch from non-family female) or awkward (spreading negative energies of uncertainty). There’s a lag. My habit from belief outlived belief but I feel close to what I can call a freedom margin of comfort. Having enough free neurons to observe helps. And asking people explicitly. That helps too when reading alone fails to give enough data.

Good things are incongruous. Even for all the noise in my head, this home is remarkably quiet. Contrast heightens, accentuates the negatives. Almost a week now since our cat’s systems shut down. Nasty and good how the body goes on autopilot. On waking, I automatically get out of bed and look at the place on the floor for the water level in the cat bowl. Automatically go down cat food aisle, a punch of nausea. I hadn’t been aware of how much of the day I was sat upon. It’s like having a broken toe, like a bumper-car ride.

I am rarely at ease with being mushy. I don’t like to leave myself open to haters. I’ve always minimized cat references here, tho she had “her own” blog.

Glad for gregorian chants. Something soothing about group voices.

And in other news, it’s mini book expo time. This year 50 publishers & authors are offering 309 titles (592 individual books) as reading copies in exchange for reviewing them. New titles daily. [via CanCult]

Live Jazz by the courtyard in the Byward Market to sooth the soul.

Didja Know Links: henna sinks in red or brown depending on your health among other factors, and can be a sunscreen to give reverse henna pattern tans

Quote: “Not with anger, not with fear. 
For negative thinking is a luxury we can’t afford.” – Yoko Ono

Glad Game: Good to get a reminder to do it.

Glad to have used both an outhouse and a portapottie and not only for the reasons one might first think - glad to have not dropped keys out of my pockets into the down there.

Glad for a delightful weekend and pleasant yesterday. Bowl of cherries a mixed flavor pack as it is.

Does it count in a pinch as a glad thing that I did wash my bag eventually three times, but after 4 days of cream cheese smeared in room temperature. How’d I not notice? I noticed, but didn’t. We were painting…there were lots of weird smells…will it only count as good when I get the smell out? …Spoiled dairy, the negative space to show a wireframe positive space by contrast? I think I’m stretching the dead horse…which is…

Glad for the soaker downpour. It must change the ions in the air. Or maybe that was the hail that I apparently missed. Ian Tyson joked about bringing the Calgary weather with him; so wait a few minutes for the snow. Close.

I didn’t make the progress I envisioned for the day but overall better than hours sticking sticks in my eyes. That’s something isn’t it. (Psst) What? my bar too low? Nonsense.

Leaning on the very door which is being painted while its being painted, and realizing hey, my shirt is sticky. Ach, ach, ach, shirt ruined. No, hubby to the rescue. Glad I can laugh at myself. And have someone who can take that in calm stride.

Glad the wall is painted. (Is it adding to or detracting from success that it has been 2 or 3 months since the paint was bought? But done now.) Glad bottom line matters in this case. And coming in the mail is magnetic poetry.

Wait, missed a linkage; this does actually relate since our paint is metal paint to make a wall that’s magnetic.

I’m getting better at staying away from things that aggravate me instead of trying to like them. That effort just muddies me and leaves me no room/energy to sink into what I easily naturally love. (Would an extension of that to be to not harangue parts of myself that aggravate?)

Glad people put their experiences out frankly, like the internal and external conversations that happen when one is dealing with depression as a baseline, then add a father with Alzheimer’s angrily time travelling to the mix…Walking the Black Dog often has clear-eyed strategies resources to get depression out of the closet with no clucking, no ducking.

I like how I dive into things headfirst but really, pesto on my forehead? However do I do that?

Glad for friends near and far who are willing to decide to reach out instead of withdraw. More people, more perspective and perspectives.

I think the time/distance/words perspectives of doing my 40 words a day project of people who impacted me is useful. It’s settling a lot I never took time to think about, appreciate, reconcile, consider, etc.

Call me hedonist, but glad for food. Nutrition in stomach and chocolate chasers. Like,

When I feel least like talking, least like going out is probably when I most should. Indulging in headspace and homespace isn’t always a good thing.

Glad post-events post-life blahs are passing. Maybe I just need to habituate to quieter and get zen again. Or, what is that called again,…rest?

Glad this is arguably seasonable. Seems 2 years ago I felt the same.

Glad I can notice that I overgeneralize into pattern two random iterations. Sly monkey brain likes patterns.

Glad clueless driver didn’t actually mow the cycling Hubby down.

Glad to possibly, even probably, get a tomorrow which will certainly be a reshuffled mix.

Glad my body talks to me. We just have to work on its potty mouth when I stay up too late. Sure, I had a reproach coming, but nagged all day…?

Don’t think I’ve quite reached glad yet. Hm, what’s needed? More meercats. In sequined who’s-your-favor-the-philosopher-figure facemasks. On tricycles with travel-size hair products being juggled. On the back of a very large tortoise. No, tortoises are cliché. On the back of flight-enabled tricorders that launch from naturally occurring pastry crumb dunes. The dunes are forming at the end of the fence in Tijuana, from interstellar winds scooping from a bakery in Delhi. Or trailings from McDs imported by subterranean banana slugs the size of Nessie.

Glad that the shoulder and neck rolls pay off hour after hour, that loosening works.

Poetry Link and Pic: Bywords at Pesbo

Quote: “On the soft bed of luxury many kingdoms have expired.” – Andrew Young

(And I really hate being complicit in the high percentage of males taken as quotable. Bee, get away from that bonnet. There will be no new nests made in bonnet…blooming bonnets think they are zoned high density)

“Can’t seem to find the angels for the devils” – Let it Go

One must watch for beauty because it’s retiring more often than not (unlike ugly which is more in your face, bop you on the nose). Comfort is the open field or closed forest to walk or open road to drive. Highway speed, windows cranked down, music cranked up, going thru Edelweiss, Quebec. (I’ll have to go there deliberately one day.)

It has a fantastic, almost mythic, landscape. I pulled over to take it in. I didn’t take photos there but symmetry in plantation of pines caught my camera eye.

“At the end of the day you just got to say its alright” – Ordinary Day

An afternoon of nonsense and sense and laughter with a friend.

And even a chipmunk who came to lick the chip salt off my pants. How often does that happen.

Sitting with fire and good conversation and company.

“Step off the edge and never worry about the fall” – Consequence Free

Coming home to the NAC orchestra playing with Ian Tyson who said, as a back up band, the orchestra wasn’t doing badly compared to the band back in Calgary.

He said his main occupation is ranching and music’s just a way to fund it, this Spanish occupation. The first cows and sheep and cowboys all came thru a heritage of Spain and the culture runs thru the midline of North America, Saskatchewan thru Mexico of one ranching heritage.

He also has a cafe. Naturally he sang as well as pleasantly pattered, and the crowd was the full of the field, unlike the night before in the rain. Children ran their organic circles, blowing bubbles echoing or being echoed by the seagulls turning their arcs.

Blog Link: Crime rates fall, as usual

Quote: “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” – Dalai Lama

Not sure who Jehoshua is, but he sure seems friendly, or busy, or both.

Or else, in Ottawa’s continuing tradition of off-beat graffiti, it’s religious.

I still remember when I called into the city when the building I was working in got storey-high spray paint. I called it in and the operator braced herself for what she was about to hear and tentatively asked me to tell her what it said, if I could read it. When I told her “God is Love”, she laughed and said, huh, that’s kind of nice.

Had a bit of tea. It was herbal (going for the hard stuff as usual) with bits of dried fruit, and it kept running as dark on the 3rd cup as the first.

Marianne Fiset, soprano with director Julien Bilodeau and L’Orchestra de la Francophonie Canadienne. Gorgeous voice. Think this was my fav, in first movement. Orchestra in the Park is a free classical music concert series for 18th-20th in Lebreton Flats Park.

Beyond that,…Nice to see you here. Here’s your hat, what’s your …not much I want to say here. Go see Brittany.

Why? Pick a post, any post. Here: free samples. Everyone loves free samples…

Today at the store, I saw a guy in the dairy aisle wearing a t shirt that said “Watch it, or you’ll end up in my blog.”

I felt bad for him. Then I felt bad for myself…because here he is in my blog, and I didn’t even have a t shirt warning him. (from same)

What are you addicted to, friends?

Oh, and no one say puppies, rainbows or baby laughs…because we all know that’s not true. (intervention post)

And the quotable from her that pointed me there in the first place that resonates too well:

Why do I have a butter knife in my hand? Hmm, it has mayo on it, I must have been making a sandwich. But wait, why am I standing in the bathroom? Wait, I don’t even have any lunch meat. And, where are my pants?

I haven’t slept much lately. Is it obvious?

Found via Blogtations

Smallest of teehee on seeing man with toolbox, with the back of his shirt reading “in control” rattling inwards that door labelled push. Wonder what he’s repairing…?

At the cheek by jowl concert, one kid still stands out to me. He was stymied by someone stopping. He and his 3 grade-3-ish friends (and dad) stood then the little boy made a fishie with his arm and called out, coming thru and all these adults squeezed back to make a path that he and the 4 (and meek bow-headed dad) walked thru. Hope he keeps that assertive leadership intact thru all the years of being dismissed by agism of him being “just a kid”.

From the letter home, mom said “Dad is outside cutting the grass. He started yesterday.” (;) Isn’t she a slavedriver? I wonder if she lets him in for lemonade before the job’s done.)

In the grocery store I find myself trying to backtrack why I’ve come saying aloud “what am I looking for” realizing at that very time the line of Still haven’t found what I’m looking for plays on the P.A.

Seeing all those sunburned people out there at festivals I mull the idea of working out a contract with a corporate sponsor to provide free samples of sunscreen. Maybe with condoms and safety insurance too for a full-coverage protection kit.

Redeem this act of furtive photographing by making it into a promotional act by considering buying a New Yorker (but not current issue), or better yet look at what Sipress sells directly

Thought Link: Semantics of Crasy Talk, good nonsense, and call someone on it, nonsense

Poetry Link: Another demonstration of how Huth is brilliant

Poet-y Link: Saving Al Purdy’s place so it can stay as physical heritage.

Recipe: The food blog is not dead but sleeping, meanwhile, Cream Cheese Squares

Quote: “Never eat more than you can lift.” – Miss Piggy