when you love somebody

The day we took these photographs, the sun was high in the sky like a golden peach and the ground was warm to walk upon. Signs of trees soon to blossom and the almost forgotten nectar of spring time awakened to remind us why the land beneath a peach sun is a land worth missing when it goes away. I made a bowl of oatmeal on the stove top and dressed it in brown sugar – I closed my eyes and each bite made me dream of the soon to be raspberry spoonful being stirred by my hands after foraging in the garden. I counted daffodils and pansies and golden sunflowers rising. 

Although there was daylight, oatmeal, and peach suns to live below, I couldn't keep myself from the blueness of this day. As we tried to take photographs, I could tell C wasn't in the mood for standing in and holding the camera. I couldn't understand why – spring was here, babies were laughing in the distance, and birds were full bellied. We've done this before, I thought. How hard could it be when this particular day was more beautiful than so many days that came before it? I started counting how many times I've been there for him, how I've never missed a gig, how helping me with photographs is all I ever ask for, how I've always put his smile before my own, as if I did all of these things to win and not simply because I love him.

This is where I end. Instead of calmly turning to him and trying to build a boat for us to ride across the stormy sea together, I got angry. Teeth showing, eyes rolling, a snapped branch on a white oak kind of angry. I rose my voice like a weed wrapping around a delicate flower. My mind turned into the belly of a vacuum, a space filled with every dust of anger once swept underneath the carpet. I was here in the forest, a place to call home, and my loved one stood angrily beside me. We may have been facing the sun, but the sullen mood stood like a dark cloud rolling over the mountain between us.

In these moments of hurt to be hurt, I think back to all of the trigonometry lessons I took in school and how I wish I could trade them for lessons on how to handle heartbreak and how to not spoil a spring day. We kept arguing, the way only loved ones are bound to, until I decided to walk away and find the river for cooling my skin. I could hear the birds, I could see where flowers were starting to grow and I could feel the peach suns glow on my forehead none of it mattered, none of it felt beautiful because C was unhappy with me and I unhappy with him.

After letting time pass, we finally found each other and sat on a park bench until we left for home. I was hungry, my eyes were sore from crying and I had the desire to sleep for days. As we walked into the home we share, we turned to each other, the way only loved ones are bound to, and we hugged as if it to say let's walk into the peach suns and dark moons together. Looking back at it now, I wish I had remembered to breathe. Instead of tying stones to the little things that are better kept within, I should have remembered every kiss, every bout of laughter and the way he runs to get me apple juice whenever I go thirsty. 

When you love somebody, you don't have to be right.

The Outfit
Flower head crown Crown and glory
Dress The Bay
Vest Value Village
  Wedges Blowfish shoes *

Reasons to read a book

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”― Alan Bennett

Here are reasons for you to read a book:
  • Within one book, there is an entire world.
  • Books are quiet. They do not demand noise or space. All you need is your hands to hold the book and your eyes to see it.
  • Books let you see through somebody else's eyes, they can even make you understand yourself and those closest to you better. 
  • Reading helps to expand your vocabulary ― you don't need to be an aspiring writer to understand the value of words. When our vocabularies expand, we learn new and more efficient ways of describing ourselves and our feelings. Being able to put into words how one feels is incredibly powerful!
  • Reading teaches you to see and appreciate the little things in life. A book writer's role is to not only seat you in their world but to give you legs to walk in it. When describing a room, tiny details and descriptions help the reader travel to its place. It's the little things like a crooked window or yellow cup that end up bringing us there.
  • Books are dreams written with ink. A story about dragons or fairies or talking cats? Sure, why not! Books don't beg you to ask "could this happen in real life?" Books just are, we can escape safely through them.
  • When you read, the author can only describe so much about a character or a feeling, it's up to your imagination to build the pictures in your head. This is why a movie will never be as great as a book because you are relying on somebody else's painting. When you read, you become the paintbrush.
  • I could buy a ticket for the train or I could sit on my porch and read a book, either way I'm traveling to a new place.
  • Better writing skills ― whether you're a poet, writer of stories, or writer of songs, reading is the greatest tool you can be equipped with to become a better writer.
  • Reading is healthy for you, just like exercising your body, your brain deserves to stay sharp too. 
  • Whether by route of fiction or non-fiction, a book has the power to change you and in doing so can grow violets and sunlight inside of your mind.
  • You don't have to read only 'classics.' I once read a fishing manual of my uncle's and it moved me in ways only the ocean could. You never know where you'll find that sentence, story, or character that awakens something inside of you. 
Open your books! What are you reading today?

The Outfit
Dress Mama Stone Vintage
Sweater Oasap *
Boots Found at thrift & antique store in Nanton, Alberta

stretch our bones

I feel at home whenever I visit Edworthy Park – the birds carrying baby birds in their bellies, the squirrels climbing pine trees, the forest, the families playing together, the way time slows down for those who visit. I think everybody ought to have their own little space in the woods where they can listen to cricket songs and hear their own voice echo. The last time I visited Edworthy for photographs, the cherry tree was wearing flowers and I was standing on my tiptoes below it. As always, I was happy to be alive in the blossoming season and I was doing all that one could to keep old age from creeping into the cracks of daylight. If you stop to visit the flowers and pine groves, if you trade the city buses for birdsong every once in awhile, you're bound to feel young no matter the year on your calendar.
 Tomorrow, we leave in the early hours for a road trip that will lead us to music gigs in Lethbridge. I hope to stop on the way so I can breathe in the southern Alberta air, eat little hand spun sandwiches, and watch the spring winds blow across the plains. I love road trips – the world rolling by your window, a scenery changing with each mile, leaving the familiar to be with ourselves, tasting life and endless joy as we travel along the road. I even enjoy the breaks in between when we stretch our bones and count the other travelers who always drive too fast. There is no need to hurry, these roads exist for the journey, let bad moods and restless legs be forgotten, we've got country and an entire world at our feet.

The Outfit
Skirt Chicwish*
Boots Oasap *
White Blouse Value Village

the unknowing of wolves

 
  It is April, the month where pillows are beds for sunbeams and dogs are reunited with the dandelion patch. I sit on wooden pallets in the backyard and play my gourd banjo while the light of day makes me feel less alone than I felt all winter. I make a promise not to write about weather or birds or oak trees as often as I already do, "that's just small talk" I tell myself. Perhaps the time has come for me to write about belly aches, or how I wish I was canoeing on some great lake, or maybe I shall have conversations with the wolves that live inside of us all. 
— 

When I was a little girl, I was afraid of nothing, not even the black dog that howled from across the street. I left my house barefoot and wandered to the mosquito crowded lake to fish for shrimp with my bare hands and feed them to the ducks. I pulled armored weeds from the ground and when they left a stinging red trail on my finger, I'd return home seeking a band aid then back to the earth I went. Nothing could stop me from being joyous in my movements, it was the pure bliss of childhood, the unknowing of wolves and hearts that can break. 

I was alive, but I did not care to think about it. I only knew my hands were able and my lungs were working so I could breathe in the pollen, and I was grateful it never made me sneeze. I knew kids who had allergies and it made adventures by the lake or dandelion patch impossible for them. I was a girl, but I did not care to think about it. I only knew I peed sitting down and my hair was longer than my brothers. I wasn't good at math, but I did not care to think about it. I only knew I liked words more than numbers and I didn't need math to catch my hand on thorns from the blueberry bush or to watch ladybugs climb blades of grass. 

I lived each day with curiosity the size of a world. I was myself being myself, wide eyed and bushy tailed like a rabbit hopping into the field of April sunshine. I never once thought I was wrong or out of the ordinary, I was just being me. There was no loneliness, no teeth being clenched by imaginary wolves, no letters to attend to and no fields of belly butterflies to keep you from becoming the person you have wanted to be. It was life and it was bountiful. I knew happiness the way scientists know the body of a bird.

April brings memories of a happy childhood: the lake, the dog, my brother making castles out of sticks, myself being myself, unafraid, unapologetic, weird and wonderful, blueberry bushes and the sweetest fruit of freedom. If only I could always see the world the same way I saw it when I was young, but I promise to keep trying by breathing in the pollen and by being glad it doesn't make me sneeze.



The Outfit
Skirt Chicwish*
Boots & Shawl – Value Village

my life in photographs

The springtime is fickle you never know if tomorrow is the day for tulips bursting from their bulbs or if winter has yet to depart. One day, there is sunshine and pale blue skies, the next there is cooing winds at the windowsill and dreaded snow falling from dark clouds. I try to stay patient in my wait for warm weather. I lift my feet into socks, I pull sweaters over my head and I sit at the window trying to repaint what I see into a springtime scene.

If I can't have the garden to dig my hands into, then let me have my banjo for clawing at and singing songs with. I've learned two new songs in recent months and soon I will begin another. I live for my banjo, it is my life blood, my mother and my moon. I am certain that I would be unhappy without it.

I'm going into April with the desire to rise earlier, make more use of my time, quit letting weather and other people dictate how I should feel, and a pride that will let myself be myself. Let me sing in April like each note is a whole world listening.

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you can visit my instagram!