Confessions of a stargazer

I’ve always been a daydreamer. In class, in church, indoors, outdoors, wherever I happened to be, I delighted in abandoning the ship of reality and diving into the imaginative waters of my mind. One spring day while walking in Dipper Harbour, many moons ago, I paused to let my mind wander. Wouldn’t it be groovy if I could just lift myself off the ground a few feet, suspend myself there, and watch the world drift by underneath me? What an effortless, delightful way to travel! Perhaps suspension from a cloud would work. After 24 hours I’d have been around the world and back already! Hm, maybe it wouldn’t be a lazy drifting after all...but still! Efficient and fun! Except for skyscrapers...and what about others doing the same thing? I’d need some sort of cloud-control...What about the Arctic? Brr Willard! Bah, inconsequential details!

As you can see, traveling has always been an, ahem, dream of mine. Although a cloud is certainly more enchanting than a giant hunk of noisy, polluting metal, in any case, off I go to zoom halfway around the world! I am so looking forward to this new adventure in my life, and I hope you, wherever you are, find peace and wisdom in the months to come...the ninth cloud, I suppose. If you ever happen to be in Asia, you are welcome to disembark in Seoul! :P Love to you. XO

Photo courtesy of the one-and-only Hubble Telescope.

On blotting those blotchy eyes...

I don’t know why, but I hate crying in front of people. Particularly if those people are either related to me or are strangers. What is it about it that I find so mortifying? Perhaps it’s my red-headed colouring that’s the problem. The normally ghostly-pale complexion that turns fire-engine red at the first sign of distress, the nose that could light Santa’s way long after the pain, stress, or grief or has faded. Or maybe that the whites of my eyes turn Barbie-pink as my mascara starts making raccoon drawings around my eyes.

No? What then? Embarrassing as all that is, it’s because, for some reason, I equate crying with being weak. And being weak equals disaster! To be avoided at all costs! Everyone knows that. No one wants to be around a wimp, a crybaby, a momma’s boy (or girl), a sissy, or a namby-pamby! (I found that last one in the thesaurus and thought it deserved mention). No one! They will all laugh! They will hiss and sputter and run away!

Jeez, how foolish. The truth is, no one wants to be around a “Rock of Gibraltar” persona all the time, an unfeeling shell, a fake. Upon reflection, I must say, it would be a scary, lonely world indeed were it filled with a people unable to feel sadness about their relationships to others.

So, although I still don’t like it, my higher-order-thinking-self is telling my lower-order-thinking-self that maybe sometimes it’s ok to cry, just a little bit. I said good-bye to my baby nephew today, and his parents. How could I not feel sad? But in feeling sad, I am happy and content because I have these relationships to begin with. I am a fortunate, lucky, loved girl. And maybe that’s something I can let myself shed a tear or two about.

Part Two of a Two-Part Series

So, my little country road flooded last week, as you saw here. Now the water is low enough to drive through. Take a look!

It's Nearly Time...

...to leave these moonlit, snowy fields. To leave the stars blinking in the cold night air high above the Belleisle Bay. To leave the warm wood stove, the sleeping dog, my hot coffee and stack of books. To leave the flooded, icy roads winding through the back woods of New Brunswick. To leave my baby brothers to their sliding hills and snow forts; to leave my dad in the workshop and my mom in the kitchen. To leave my other siblings to the grand old city of Saint John where they work and live. Yes, it is time to go.

To Korea. To teach English, to speak some words of a different language, to see things I have never seen, to learn. To see, how do you live, over there? And there, and there? It’s time to travel. Oh, sad as I am (and sad I am indeed) to leave, the countries I have yet to see are calling my name. I will spend a year in Korea and then I will go look at the world.

So thank you my friends and my family, for taking care of me. It’s time to move on. Don’t worry...I’ll be able to speak to you from the Land of the Morning Calm via the wonders of webcams.

Love, love.