to a raven i have loved

raven, flying thoughtful circles
raven, with his long, straight bill
raven, who stole the light and cracked the clam to bring forth our world
raven, clever trickster:

floating above my gaze across the valley,
deep traveler's call, vibrato undertones announcing his game
each time another loop is complete.

and then a wonderful airborn dance:
three slow beats of his wings, brief glide,
then in one motion wings quickly tucked in and tilting to bring his shoulders
perpendicular to the many trunks below - eyes on both of his worlds at once,
a graceful shallow dive, only a moment long, then untucked a stacato laugh,
three beats of his wings, a moment's glide,
and sidelong dives of only a few feet's decent again and again,
around and around, in a lazy, agile spiral descent.

he is not greedy with his magic.

wee creatures and their mothers

i'm working in labour & delivery this month. i've learned some stuff:

1) it's not so bad to be covered in blood & goo, especially if your boots are black

2) it is just incredible what a woman's body & mind can do to get those wee little creatures grown and out into the world.

3) even women who are self-described 'whimps' can tolerate an incredible amount of pain, whith the help of all of those endorphins.

4) joyfully crying dads make me cry.

5) a new understanding about why women & enjoyment of sex weren't thought to mix for such a long time: imagine delivering a baby, maybe getting important and tender bits of your anatomy torn and mashed in the process, maybe having those shreds healing whilly-nilly with infection and scarring (before the joys of clean and timely repair), and then try to work yourself into an aroused frenzy when next an engorged phallus comes your way.

6) babies are slippery.

30thirtyTHREE-OHtreintatrente

that's how many years complete. same old same old, but i feel pretty alive, i do! skinny dipping in icy-cold mountain-top lakes is one way of celebrating. donuts and a misty morning are another. standing on the mountain-view porch, watching the magic of a tipsy raven is one more way. supper with new friends promises to be a fourth. i am a lucky lady, this is sure!

letters from a thursday in the BC north

let me tell you about this particular piece of heaven.

i arrive in the new home. view more stunning than i remember as the late afternoon sun pours into the living room past lush houseplants and wooden furnishings. high ceilings, glass almost filling the walls that face the mountain.

i walk the eager black dog waiting for me - through more sunshine, down the gravel road to my only 3 neighbours. woods and mountains are all we meet.

i return to my new temporary home and prepare myself a lovely little salad - fresh greens from an earthenwhere pot on the mountain-view porch, fresh basil from the kitchen garden, beautiful black olives and fine cheese, sprinkled with italian olive oil and fragrant red wine vinegar.

sitting on the porch, overlooking the forest that is the backyard and leads only to the mountain, my borrowed black dog licks my feet as i please my palate, and i look off at the glacier-capped mountains further in the distance beyond the forested hills that close the valley of the Hazeltons.

i can't imagine feeling anything but peaceful with this massive rocky slope towering over me, with all those tiny spots of trees rising up its slopes, with that persistent snow up near the clouds to put me in my tiny little place.

everyone has apple trees (and bear-visitors almost without exception). berries are plentiful, and I've heard mushrooms are as well. so are fish - today i feasted in Gitsegukla with a clan celebrating a gravestone placement ceremony. the big chief had passed-on 3 years ago, and today was a celebration, in blanketed regalia, with 'burnt fish' and cold potatoes, and elders and speeches. so much to eat, so much to watch, so little that i could understand. then back to work at the community clinic, and then an early end, which was good news -- today i am tired after a moderate night on-call.

the day, living beside a mountain, is extended beyond the dusk that falls to earth -- the peak reflects back another hour of sunshine and light to keep me from napping just yet.

still, i'll soon be asleep, maybe even here on the couch with my book that i'm unlikely to get too far with. and then tomorrow i'll run the four and a half kilometers into work, i think.

on the other hand, i could tell you about how last night, i terrorized myself with handed-down stories of violence. of scars perched on cheek-bones cut by her lovers' fists when their son was small and she too was only a child. of a desperate father, molding gold and setting diamonds while his family, his life are shards scattered around him, and his child, still very much a child, returned to him with a black eye and a need for powdered crystals of another kind.

or my frustration today -- first, disappointment, though there are any number of possible reasons to explain why the mother of my 19-month old patient from emerg last night never made it back to see us about figuring out whether her little one has rickets or not. and more frustrating was the 2 and a half year old who's young parents came to see us today to see about getting disability allowance for her -- she wasn't speaking well (and had been identified over a year ago with hearing problems), but somehow had slipped through the cracks. ears perforated, teeth rotted away to little stumps, and her little brother on a similar tack - and i can't tell who will make sure that they are looked after.

enough of ramblings.

hope all are well!

xome.

6 weeks of madness

i have been plunged into madness -- 6 weeks of psychiatric institutions, psychoses, depression, confusion and mania. but (this time, at least?) not my own -- work brought me to the constellation of crazy, and i came and went between the two sparkling pools of madness in this town.

fine strong minds scrambling for a way to keep afloat. this world is hard, this much i know. beautiful, and hard, and there are many, many ways of being in it. for some, their way of being doesn't suit, and some such folk stopped a while under my watch, and ate my pills, and shared some thoughts. there was a little healing, there was worstening, there was a great deal of hanging on. it was work i could sink my teeth into, fangs and all. challenging, in nearly too many ways. i loved it, absolutely.

and strangely, for all the fear and sadness around me, i drew a great deal of energy into my own quivering mind - emerging with a staff in my hand and the sensation of steady for the time being.

i felt - i feel well and rested and with only a slight longing for my own days of ecstatic energy. and now i'm off again. to serbia, then northern b.c. before i again refuel here in my home, and in the splashing waves of this fine lake. fingers are crossed that the water remains warm enough for more dancing in the wind (i've taken-up windsurfing, and i'm hooked!).

dragonslippers

a friend lent me this really incredible book, Dragonslippers. it's a graphic memoir, written by a bright young woman who survived a 10-year long abusive relationship. the drawings were from her time during those years - very honest. it's a very incredible document, and really worthwhile, i think, regardless of one's experience with spousal abuse. i'm sure i will find occasion to share it with someone who needs it in the future. find it, read it. that's what i suggest.

so much hot air

admiring the joy of falling through air, but feeling so far from all that freedom myself today. instead, too much hot air and knots.

it can be said that happiness = 1/|expectations-reality|.

but trying too hard to remodel expectations in anticipation of an unsatisfactory reality is another kind of lie. it probably won't allow disappointment to be avoided, just postponed. better to adjust reality or feel more comfortable with disappointment.

already summer's heat

last i wrote it was avril. month of fickle sky-sourced tears and wicked winds taunting with warm undertones and the promise of floral blooms.

and now, already it is june. i missed a lot in between. as ever, a lot of expressive silence is the theme when i'm around that mildly intoxicating creature. now i'm back home (oh! frabjous day, calloo, callay!!), and though working too hard, so thrilled to be here for this season. bike rides and long strolls in my favorite woods to help me hang onto shreds of sanity after 29 hour slumberless shifts in the bottled-air halls of the hospital.

so glorious to feel at home -- a feeling fairly foreign to me and mine until i settled into this town years ago now. home. a place to come back to after wild wanderings and mad adventures. (bliss and sigh)

and from here a better place to reflect on the transformation. chrysalis. so hard to resist the shiny new lenses i'm expected to wear, as i learn this professional role. but this for later.

now, to revel in the tingling buzz of blood pumping every which way after a glorious evening bike ride -- strip, a quick dance around my apartement, and some supper, before no-doubt collapsing for some welcome sleep.

happenings in the environment:

a baby bird, dead on the pavement, beneath its tree,

an enormous concrete tower over the grave of our community garden,

clear sky, have stars, will travel.

un stage à Montréal

bon, alors - j'suis ici à Montréal. learning all about drugs. drugs drugs drugs. and addiction. dependence. abuse. detox. relapse. abstinence. harm reduction.

gambling, booze, smack, crack. and methadone. people who are sooo happy that they're in a methadone program. people who hate being on methadone. some on methadone a few weeks, others on it a dozen years. people who are trying very, very hard to re-write the stories of their lives. except that they're not stories. they're just lives, just people, and just a whole lotta drugs.

and i'm floating along through the maze of this city. happy en français, less happy en ville. but transpo isn't so bad with my handy-dandy metro pass, and there's good eating at every corner, and i've become hooked again on coffee and croisants. all i have to do now is go and find some friends to drink a little substance with myself, and a little art to help my brain process.

this world.

i told her she might have breast cancer.

she told me i was wonderful.

poporchestra

forgive me if this is news only to me (i don't really drink pop - but i have one beside me now...)

i'm sitting with a can of sodypop, and it is MAKING MUSIC. the little bubblybubbles are tinging and ringing against the sides of their aluminum can. it sounds rather lovely, especially filling the pauses between the clatter of these keyboard keys.

sip. and gone. more of a dull splat-splat now. maybe just the right level gave just the right resonance?

ah little magic!

wrecked on ice

out on the sea-ice, on the way to try to hook some sea-fish, we came upon this trapped relic.

and while i'm at it, just wondering: couldn't we make a pedal-driven snowmobile? (it would be too fantastic to bicycle across the frozen ocean)

my little bag of worms

with a hole at each end
he worms his way into mine
to start an itch that won't die

transformation

i think that i will surely look back on this period as a transformative time in my life. i have been rushing around the world of late (haven't even been in my own home since january, with another 2 months to go), but it's not catching up with me at all - i think because it's just been non-stop learning.

first it was nunavut, and what will probably prove to be my favorite month of this beastly thing called medical clerkship -- the final long months before a new md is minted. i had a ball up there - fun, warm people, interesting work every moment of every day, and the adventure of a place unique in so many ways.

then, a whirlwind working trip to chile, and the buzz of youthful energy collected. five hundred and fifty bright and empassioned students from around the world, wading through protocol and policy to get to the heart of some very hearfelt dialogues.

now goose bay, labrador, and surrounded by islanders and an ecclectic mix of docs from all over the world (mexico, nepal, england, poland, iraq, colombia...). and i feel, here, where i'm outside of my comfort zone professionally (surgery was never what i thought i would voluntarily sign up for, even if only for a few weeks -- i'm more of a 'healer' than a 'fixer', more jazzed up by process than by outcomes, and ever-tentative about creating wounds) that i'm stretching a tough, fibrous capsule that was close around my arms. in spite of myself, i am enjoying this time, this learning, this material, and my expanding vision of what i am capable of immensely! no doubt largely due to the very good fortune of having an exceptionally kind and gentle teacher in a field known for neither.

it all feels bigger than the words i can find for it. i wish i could capture it better - it will soon have faded, and i'll be unable to evoke the magnitude in memory.

Pastoral Pucón, Chile

Frobisher Bay, day's end

sitting in the plane, reading words of the world.

a flight from ice-country, with sea-food tastyness, and the best damn airplane food i've ever tasted (thank-you First Air, and the purse-strings of the government).

lovely words, also, of that fine wordwizard, christian bok. diamonds on the page...

red wine and fond memories, already, of fantastic fun with voyagers from various corners of our south. and the first (and maybe last) time i've enjoyed 2 disinterests: olympics, and television. such fun when it's a social gateau.

sweet warmth in my finger-tips
as the blood of a god
seeps from lips
to bathe synapses
in memories of kisses.

goodbye to such lovely people who make me happy to be transforming into: this thing i am becomeing; that role i will absorb; the healer i would like to be.

hmm. hot cookie, hot damn! they even make cream-topped capucchinos on this flight!!

leaving blizzards and blowing behind. gusty white-outs and taking flight with the wind behind us as we hopped down the long hill towards fur-hats, skinned foxes, and stone-cold fertility. and i miss him already, his legs crooked into mine, his arm holding my head, his heart keeping time. his a long night, and mine as well, the rush of air under this plane, over that bus, to take me to a room full of somber silence in celebration of a life lived too quickly, and its breathless end. i'm sorry, simon, that you wanted it to end. now i dream of the ends of imagined loves of those i've loved, rather than thinking of you, and you, and you - 3 with likely more to follow, who've found no salve for your weighted sorrow.

with love to you all, and looking forward to trees.

blustery day

Nunavut notes - on the 6th day she sang with delight

This morning is stunningly lovely. An icy white mist softens the hard lines of the frozen bay, and adds a hint of citrus smudge as it picks up the warm glow of sunrise spilling over distant hills.

Sunrise carries on for hours, and soon enough becomes a drawn-out sunset. And it has been cold, but I've quickly acclimatized. I don't think I've really felt cold since the first day, and this probably because I've learned to dress for these temperatures. In fact, most of the time outside I'm swelteringly hot beneath my layers and layers of insulation.

Yesterday, Steve & I found time to wander about town for the afternoon. We visited the museum, which has lovely artwork and objects of lives past and present to explore. The Cape Dorset prints and carvings are stunning - wish I could go there to see more! There are works by artists from many of Iqaluit's 27 communities here, and a print that Steve & I have our eye on (if I'm to buy something here, I should try to do so before the 50+ pilots and other Boeing engineers and tech folk descent here for a week of cold-weather testing of the new 800-seater airbus!).

Upstairs, at the museum, there are several large photo albums with pictures from the 1920's, the '50's and the '70's. This little place has been completely transformed in that time. From a Hudson's bay trading store and sparse tent settlement, to a landing strip and ?geological survey operation, the erection of a few buildings (igloo-shaped church, pre-fab space-station-esque school building), to what is now a busy, if still improbable community of oil-heated, electrically-wired homes, a hospital (and a newer replacement in the works), several schools, and even an 8-story 'high-rise' with a public swimming pool inside. We continued walking a little after the museum - besides the over-priced NorthMart, there's an Outdoor Survival shop, which warm gear and guns, and at Arctic Ventures, the competing over-priced grocery store, we found Bollywood classics blaring loudly to entice passers-by into the shop. Apparently, some people order their produce weekly from Montreal (at normal prices), and then pay to have it flown up here in order to save money! Hard to imagine that it's worth it until you've seen mark-up on goods that the bi-opoly has managed.

and other tidbits:
Each house is uniquely numbered here, so taxis ($5 per passenger, flat rate no matter the journey) need not worry about street names and such. There is a red light at the front of every home - when the water tank is empty, the light goes off and the water truck, which drives up and down the streets all day, comes to fill the tanks (too cold for water or sewage pipes here!).

Nunavut notes - day 1 in Iqaluit

1530h, sunset, as I trudge up the long, long hill to the apartment. It's been a long day, it seems. I left Ottawa in the grip of an icy storm, with tree-tops heavy in snow-dresses, and leafless branches twisting to the sky. Twenty minutes of furious de-icing by the ground-crew, and we were off. The day was bright, and I could catch good glimpses of bright snow sweeping across the earth in every direction. Almost flat - an undulating ripple much like the swells of the sea. And my sense of scale and perspective all wrong - are we flying low, just above the surface of the treeless barrens, or far above, distance dwarfing rolling hills and rocky lands?

The run-way here in Iqaluit is just long enough that it has apparently been designated as an alternative landing site for the space shuttle. Probably overkill for our comfortable little jet. We landed, and after a short wait for the stairs (they were frozen, so was the back-up generator for the spare set), we disembarked. The air against my face, in my lungs, was cold, but I felt well-prepared with my new cold-weather gear: down vest, parka, 2 layers of mits, fleece hat, balaclava, long-johns... I missed my greeters at first, but then I saw Steve, dwarfed by his giant blue, borrowed parka with thick fur trim, and we gathered my too-full bags to take them to the apartment. First, we dropped off two optometrists preparing to head further north for a week of prescription-writing out in the community. There seem to be lots of people like us here - short stints of work in this remote piece of Canada.

Iqaluit in the sunshine is busy, with a steady buzz of SUVs, taxis and pickups to-ing and fro-ing, and a healthy crowd on foot. I joined the walkers for a few hours in the afternoon, wandering down the hill from the hospital, across town at the NorthMart, and back up again to close the loop to the hospital. Most of the big banks, many government offices, a few coffee shops are here, along with chools, a new, half-finished hospital, and even an electronics chain. The NorthMart has everything - $800 Snow Goose parkas, a small pharmacy, big-screen televisions, dry goods. Produce, fresh or frozen, is exorbitant, but the selection is impressive. Tomatoes - $9/lb, snow peas at outrageous prices, bananas $1.50/lb. But I found (of all things) an avocado I could afford, at $1.49, and bought a small package of tricolor pasta and a little bottle of pesto sauce for a grand, three-item total of over $11. Something to eat tonight if I'm hungry, at least. Will have to be careful not to get scurvy up here (!), and not to be taken-in by the promise of cheap calories offered by the bargain-basement prices on the bags of chips and other junk.

There are many Inuit wearing at least some recognizably traditional outerwear - knee-high skin boots, and babies in the hoods of brigthly decorated amautiks - women's coats with hood-pouches perfect for small children to be carried in. It's not uncool for teens to walk around in snowpants, or big parkas, either. Though there are enough people wearing far less than I can imagine wearing below 30.

Sitting in the apartment, warm roibos tea in hand, watching a calvacade of 13 little spots of light, like ants, crawling across the frozen surface of Frobisher Bay. Clear night, blush of the day's memories lightening the brow of the far-off hills, and steam rising from the houses dotting the hill below mine. No stars yet, but soon, I'm sure, along with dancing sky-light unique to the north, if I am lucky.

why did i cry today?

First tears: I had to endure the dentist, which has never, once, gladdened my heart. As he gently squeezed the burning numbness into my gum (it seeped up to my lip, my nose), one eye was stoic. The other, further from him, spilled a steady stream of my pain. What a thankless profession.

Second tears: I voted. As I tapped that little piece of paper into its fragile cardboard box, a wave of awe rose through me, and I blinked back tears. Kept blinking them back as I left city hall, and walked across the newly finished square with skaters dancing. I think it's because we come from a country where votes for most were hard-won only a little more than 10 years ago. What a priviledge, what a responsibility, what power safely managed by the masses!

why don't we tie their jaws shut?

mouths hang agog,
at the afront
of another breath denied.