Today has been a bit strange, or at least the latter half of it has been. I'm swirling full of deep emotions, deep thoughts. Everything has seemed strangely full of meaning, and each new thing I saw while I was out before would start a new eddy of confused thoughts. And in case you were wondering, all of this was entirely without the use of illegal substances.
I started writing this while I was out before, sitting in the car while my mum went inside to buy something at a store, just looking around and thinking.
The rain-snow mix that has been falling off and on all day has paused for now, and the street that winds along the shoreline is covered in water. Warm yellow streetlights turn the puddles that litter the broken old pavement into tiny golden pools, that shimmer invitingly.
As we drew away in the car though, everything seemed to be less pretty than I'd first thought, the puddles on the street reflecting brief flashes of light, gold from the streetlamps, white-blue and red from car lights, cluttered and bright. The sidewalks looked worn out, and pipes and gravel were heaped on them where they're doing construction work.
I sat in gloom, brought on by me overreacting to being interrupted while I was writing (I hate being interrupted while I'm writing), until we arrived at the library, where I ran into a childhood friend whom I haven't seen in years. We talked for a while. She's 20, starting university soon, living on her own, and doing pretty good. When I said goodbye and we drove off, though, memories just kept spinning through my head. Us dancing through the streets barefoot in long skirts, pretending we were pioneers (I was absolutely obsessed with pioneers for quite a while when I was young), the tea parties we'd have, with the tea being made from various herbs we gathered from her mothers garden, thrown into random combination's that somehow always managed to be drinkable... I just couldn't help thinking how fast time passes.
So we drove in the dark, the streetlights making yellow blurs as we passed, a bus making a considerably larger blueish blur as it passed, looking strangely surreal... Talking with mom about old memories... While everything just kept going strangely surreal and full of meaning, sadness/happiness/loss/uncertainty/confusion/optimism. That's the best description I can give.
While I just tried to make sense of all the thoughts, all the emotions I couldn't fully grasp.
It's been a strange day, yet between those strange bits, it's also been utterly normal. I had many perfectly normal, everyday, thoughts and feelings, some perfectly normal conversations, and I came home and watched a perfectly normal show. There's just been this kind of overshadowing of deeper things...
Like I said, I'm in a strange mood tonight.
Peace,
Idzie
Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Gaspe, the old house, memories from my childhood...
Isn't it strange how small sounds, sights, smells can trigger a memory, just like that? A flash of something in the past, so strong it almost feels like, for a moment, you're actually there again.
I was just sitting by my computer, window open wide, warm air blowing and sunlight streaming in, when I heard a crow caw, and a memory flashed. In that memory, I'm looking out of the window of my Great Grandmother, Nan's, house in Gaspe. Crows wheel in the air, cawing. They also cluster on the ground, talking and squabbling while they hurry to grab the best bits of food. Nan would always keep a large, once white, bucket in the kitchen for table scraps. The evidence of thousands of meals was forever immortalized on that bucket in a variety of colors, mostly those of rotting food! Then, periodically, she'd toss the scraps out onto the wide expanse of mowed grass that stretched out from the side door. And I'd watch the crows. I've always loved crows!
It's been many years since I'm been to Gaspe now, but I still remember it as one of the most beautiful places on earth. It's right near where the great St. Laurent river meets the Atlantic ocean, and as it's too far North for it to be fashionable as anything but a tourist destination, it's not overly populated. Vast tracts of forest lie virtually untouched, except for where the ski slopes cut abruptly through the mountainsides, scarring a place that I wish I could have seen several hundred years ago... You can pick cranberries in the meadows, or buckets full of wild blueberries, sweet and sun warmed, right off the plants, clustered in the edges of the forest where grass turns to trees... You see both deer and moose tracks regularly, and the area is also home to a host of other wildlife.
By the seashore, you can play in the waves, as long as you're careful of the occasionally deadly undertows, and I've watched seals playing in the water a mere few dozen feet from the shore. As you walk along certain beaches, on one side is the water, and on the other side, cliffs, crumbling slowly and surely down onto the beach, old Summer houses sitting precariously close to the ever retreating edge. I've sat in an unoccupied life guards chair, and looked out onto a glittery, ever moving expanse of water that stretches on forever... I've walked the beach at night, when the cool white/gray/blue light of the moon stretches out from the shore to a perfectly full disk, a pathway to the moon...
Some places you go, you can watch the whales lifting themselves out of the water for a perfect photographic moment, or, more likely, simply see the flash of fin, and feel a thrill of excitement at getting even a glimpse of one of the most amazing creatures on earth... In the harsh rocks near the waters edge, you can go searching for fossils, imprints of old sea life on broken rocks, creatures that have been dead for millions of years, and trace their spiral shells with your fingertips, cool and hard to the touch...
I love that place so much, even though I haven't been there since I was 11, and I haven't been there for more than two days since I was 10! Nan, my Great Grandmother, is still alive, and turning 99 (I can hardly believe it!) next month. However, she's not really up to taking care of herself anymore, and lives with her son, although he brings her back to Gaspe every single Summer... The house where they stay, the house I remember so well, is right next to the very same house that my Nan grew up in, almost a century ago, a house that was built by her father in the late 1800's. In the old cemetery, now hidden behind someones house and almost inaccessible, you can find the names of my family carved in stone, or so I've been told. So much of my ancestral history lives on there, and so, so many memories from my childhood... So much beauty and life, far away from the city lights, and far enough north that you can watch the northern lights flicker, ethereal and unearthly, across the night sky... I have to go back there. Soon. Because I miss it...
Peace,
Idzie
I was just sitting by my computer, window open wide, warm air blowing and sunlight streaming in, when I heard a crow caw, and a memory flashed. In that memory, I'm looking out of the window of my Great Grandmother, Nan's, house in Gaspe. Crows wheel in the air, cawing. They also cluster on the ground, talking and squabbling while they hurry to grab the best bits of food. Nan would always keep a large, once white, bucket in the kitchen for table scraps. The evidence of thousands of meals was forever immortalized on that bucket in a variety of colors, mostly those of rotting food! Then, periodically, she'd toss the scraps out onto the wide expanse of mowed grass that stretched out from the side door. And I'd watch the crows. I've always loved crows!
It's been many years since I'm been to Gaspe now, but I still remember it as one of the most beautiful places on earth. It's right near where the great St. Laurent river meets the Atlantic ocean, and as it's too far North for it to be fashionable as anything but a tourist destination, it's not overly populated. Vast tracts of forest lie virtually untouched, except for where the ski slopes cut abruptly through the mountainsides, scarring a place that I wish I could have seen several hundred years ago... You can pick cranberries in the meadows, or buckets full of wild blueberries, sweet and sun warmed, right off the plants, clustered in the edges of the forest where grass turns to trees... You see both deer and moose tracks regularly, and the area is also home to a host of other wildlife.
By the seashore, you can play in the waves, as long as you're careful of the occasionally deadly undertows, and I've watched seals playing in the water a mere few dozen feet from the shore. As you walk along certain beaches, on one side is the water, and on the other side, cliffs, crumbling slowly and surely down onto the beach, old Summer houses sitting precariously close to the ever retreating edge. I've sat in an unoccupied life guards chair, and looked out onto a glittery, ever moving expanse of water that stretches on forever... I've walked the beach at night, when the cool white/gray/blue light of the moon stretches out from the shore to a perfectly full disk, a pathway to the moon...
Some places you go, you can watch the whales lifting themselves out of the water for a perfect photographic moment, or, more likely, simply see the flash of fin, and feel a thrill of excitement at getting even a glimpse of one of the most amazing creatures on earth... In the harsh rocks near the waters edge, you can go searching for fossils, imprints of old sea life on broken rocks, creatures that have been dead for millions of years, and trace their spiral shells with your fingertips, cool and hard to the touch...
I love that place so much, even though I haven't been there since I was 11, and I haven't been there for more than two days since I was 10! Nan, my Great Grandmother, is still alive, and turning 99 (I can hardly believe it!) next month. However, she's not really up to taking care of herself anymore, and lives with her son, although he brings her back to Gaspe every single Summer... The house where they stay, the house I remember so well, is right next to the very same house that my Nan grew up in, almost a century ago, a house that was built by her father in the late 1800's. In the old cemetery, now hidden behind someones house and almost inaccessible, you can find the names of my family carved in stone, or so I've been told. So much of my ancestral history lives on there, and so, so many memories from my childhood... So much beauty and life, far away from the city lights, and far enough north that you can watch the northern lights flicker, ethereal and unearthly, across the night sky... I have to go back there. Soon. Because I miss it...
Peace,
Idzie
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