Bought lime green crocs to wander on the rocky beach of Qualicum. Found them bizarre to swim in, because they were loose, but they stayed on, and they felt nothing like flippers do but anyway. I enjoy those little stands and shops by the sea, selling things like shiny pinwheels and  loud sunhats and bright can’t miss me neon green crocs. Had lunch at a place called Lefty’s, and the menu was peppered with little jabs and facts about lefties, and why they’re better than righties, and that lefties will rule the world one day…

Haven’t yet seen the sandcastle competition in Parksville yet, but the summer is still young.

I like the fact that this blog is both Dev’s and mine-we can each say what we want, and it’s cool.

Went wandering, and you should try ice wine gelato! Delicious stuff, made with real ice-wine.

We stumbled onto fresh fruit sorbets in 1/2 fruit shells when we were grocery shopping once,  and they’ve become one of our favourite treats. They’re so refreshing. I want to throw a party and have those fruit sorbets for a light lovely summery treat. I like them all but I think the lemon sorbet in the lemon 1/2 shell is one of my favourites.

Saw an eagle today, just drifting stark black and white over the downtown core. No one else looked up and saw it turning in lazy seeking circles. Even though the pace here is pretty laid back, no one had the time to look up and take note of, or enjoy, their surroundings.

We saw one also, before, when we were playing Go on the peninsula. It was silent and smaller than I thought it would be. I almost missed seeing it because I thought it was a gull, there are so many that fly around, but it was darker, so then I thought it was a hawk, but then I saw its unmistakable “bald” head. Tres cool, because I’d heard there were a lot of them on the island, I mean, they even have a sightseeing package where you can walk along their known flight paths, but I hadn’t actually seen one prior to that. Reminded me of the vivid azure Peregrine Falcons that live on the roofs of some businesses in downtown Edmonton…not many people know THEY exist either.

On the UVic campus, they have all these domestic-looking and really cute bunnies, but I found myself comparing these adorable nibblers to the wild, long eared, long legged hares that range over Edmonton, and for some unfathomable reason I prefer those rangy boxing Alberta hares to the cute BC bunnies. I twitch whenever I think of that. Summer is ripening. May 1st was technically the first day of summer, we had no maypole, but there was no snow here;  we had strawberry milkshake pink and white cherry snow and  starry drifts of white daisies, and shocking electric purple violets clinging to drab cliffs. Now, the darker wild pink roses are starting to bloom, and hot orange and yellow flowers I have no name for, burning mini suns everywhere, and the leaves are turning a graphic glossy green, and all summer the blackberries will ripen and swell until they burst into crow-black, juicy berries to stain any mouth or stray fingers in the fall.

Storytellers have value. If they have the courage to use their voice, they really can change the world.

Every musician whose lyrics you never listened to, because you were caught in the beat, in  the cheery rhythms, every incomprehensible poem, abstract art piece, cubist painting, every dance, all these things matter. They are all stories, all songs, all art pieces, and performances and showcases, and lovely larger than life warm sustaining things; even the crazy hippy wailers, strumming their one string guitars in the rain and mist, wearing  bright colours and lovebeads, and wonderful hats, they have something to say too.

I can hardly believe that once, I used to try to make myself to be nothing, small, insignificant, when that’s so clearly just not where my heart lies.

I can feel the weather starting to deepen into that beautiful bell of full summer. We found a beach when we were out driving at random on the weekend, and from the lack of signage, we think it must be a local one. Spent the days combing the shore for interesting shells and rocks and bits of sea glass. I found a tiny triangle of pale pink sea glass, from what I cannot guess, it’s edges dulled by the relentless surf. Got our feet wet in the c-chilly ocean new shoes soaked with salt and kelp, what a laugh. Corpses of crabs were festooned all over the rocks, a messy feast for hungry birds.

Been a year since we moved here and we’ve both come so far and been through so much. I think there is much still to go though as we let go of the shackles of our old lives and see that we are stronger for it.

My view is full of green and fresh scents and flowers and beautiful sky. I can see layers of blue hills in the distance, I can smell the sea.

I’m enjoying this easy life with Dev, walking along a beach, or down the throat of the Goose, or just meandering wherever the road takes us, it’s good we have each other.

Friday : Eric and Leseen visited and we had a great dinner. They taught me to play Chinese Checkers. We drank way too much tea-we were all floating on it but hey, c’est la vie. They are definitely decent company.

…Then we decided, since it was late already, why bother sleeping, I mean, we had to be up at 530am anyway, to catch the bus to get the early ferry to the mainland.

We caught a few zzz’s on the ferry, and saturday,

…was spent moving through Vancouver with Dev’s family. Finally met his sister. Everyone was so loud and bright and cheerful, it was great fun to wander everywhere with them.

We saw the Olympic Torch (Extinguished, but still…) and took the sky train everywhere. Vancouver is VAST and so jam packed with people and buildings and industry. They have a beautiful and enormous harbour, with mountains fringing it. We took the seabus to North Vancouver, where they have this really intriguing hidden market on the quay. I think it would be a good place for my dad to sell his pots.

Caught the last ferry back to the island, caught the last bus home, totally crashed.

It was so great to get out and spend a day on the mainland, with everyone. I really enjoyed myself.  Really had a lot of fun.

Sunday: chillaxing. Slept in. Took it easy. One of the Tim Horton’s we frequent also now has a creamery. So we indulged in hot java and cold ice cream. The Cold Stone Creamery section had just opened-we were among the first customers. Dev had a cheesecake fantasy and I had choc cake batter and oreo ice cream. We were offered lids if we wanted it “to go”.

Trying to quit is hitting me harder than I thought it would. I know I am not good conversation. I know I am irritable. I don’t know how to push through either. And this is only day one.

To add to it I feel constantly hungry and bored.

I am not sure how much I want to quit. I am not sure if this is worth the aggravation. I guess that is the nature of addiction though.

Rolled around by my dreams last night, can’t shake the feeling these dreams will be with me all day, watching me from the shadows. My dreams always linger, sometimes for days. It’s like some unwritten fantasy novel plays itself out in my head, complete with elabourate costumes, magic, and lots of people and families, all connected in ways I can’t precisely define. It would make a good book, if I could remember more than the vague outlines…

I keep expecting a bit of magic from my dreams to find me in this waking world, just behind a corner, just under a leaf curl, in an unexpected person’s startled face as I run unthinkingly into them. These feelings are always stronger after a series of colourful crazy expansive dreams; last night’s had a huge cast and many crazy adventures. They are not lucid dreams-I can’t control the action, but they sweep me completely away anyway, and what a ride it usually is.

Barely woken up today. It’s quiet and hot in the dolrums of late summer. A wind whispers through trees in the backyard, making the leaves talk to each other quietly. Perhaps they are unwinding the skein of my dreams and taking away all the disturbances of the night, turning them into racous birds to set loose on unsuspecting hungry tourists.

And then the music starts up, and surreality fades into the industry of earning a living.

I plunge into

frigid icy water

salty

bright with captured sun.

seaweed curls lasiviously

around my ankles as I wade

in the shallows.

I grasp a

handful of pirate treasure

culled from the bottom of the sea.

the sand onshore

is hot

and holds buried burning stones

lazy petrified driftwood logs

expired sea kelp.

The Pirate King and I

are dancing

between the water and the waves.

Rolling around in the doldrums of summer here, a lazy unwinding late July day. The heat is so very different here than on the prairies; it carries water and salt from the sea. My thirsty skin craves moisture, so I find this type of heat a balm. I don’t need to slather on so much hand creame here, as I did in the pairires, where a dry cracked wind always seemed to find me in any morsel of shade.

Of course, riding my bike a thin layer of sweat coats my skin, and I get to work sticky and red and hot, and I long to plunge into the icy sea in the inner harbour, rather than work. I can hear the American ferries boom when they trawl into the docks, and it makes me shiver with travel lust.

That sound always makes me remember taking the ferries from the mainland to the island, when I was a child, and usually I’d have a new book to read, or a comic, or sticky hard candy to glut my sweet tooth on. The outer deck used to be too cold for me, but I’d sit by the window and watch the sea and the sky and the thickly clotted islands pass. The decks where the cars were kept were always so quiet, and I never realized until recently that they are not closed in. The windows have no glass, and the railings are crusted and sticky with salt, and cold from the sea spray. Eventually, I would try to brave the icy windy outer decks, because one parent or the other would be leaning over the railings, hair blowing madly, watching some miniscule speck on the horizon with a pair of huge black binocculars. They’d go “Look! There, do you see?” and hand me the binos, and I’d look dutifully, but I was never sure what I was meant to be seeing, so I’d just make some appropriate murmur and hand them back.

The part that I hated and loved the most was when they would announce we were close to our destination and would we make our way back to the vehicles, and we’d all sit in the still warm air and wait until the ferry nudged into port. The anticipation of driving off into a new place, full of summer and sun and swimming and sand was so desired I could never really sit still. I remember a huge grin splitting my face and I was bouncing on the seat one time, as we rumbled from the belly of the ferry into a welcoming sunshine.

I
Melt
onto the parched
patio
I fan fan fan
Me
Wishing to waft away
away
These unbearable
Lazy sighing
Lagging-tongue
Dog Days

There is something in the dusk hours, that makes me long to go riding. The colours become so vibrant in the setting of the sun. Fire reds and deep velvet blues fill the sky. The electric colours of the flowers, and forest greens of the leaves start to gain this heavy saturation, bringing the colours out to play. As the world lies down to sleep, the flora, and heavens start to scream out with vigor and life. The peonies and holly, The roses and poppies start to glow, little splashes of colour rising from the growing darkness.

As the sun goes lower and lower into the horizon,  gets lined in the glow of the fire, causing the brilant reds and oranges to mesh into the velvet blue sky as it becomes speckled with glowing jewels, some brilliant, some letting you see just enough so that you know they exist. This foreshadows the over saturation that begins to occur, as slowly the purples, pinks, yellows and reds of the flowers snap to near black.

This is in near direct contrast to dawn, Where everything seems to be covered in a haze of grey and dusty pink. Colour is leached from the world and slowly added back again. There is no where near the intensity that happens in the night before. The world is greeted to a world with promise, but still seems a little ashen. It is as if Mother Nature herself is not quite ready for the new day.

The days have been odd – a weird mix of restlessness and not wanting to do much. So we sit and relax. A day for reading and writing it seems.

To me, the weather seems to accentuate this. It is sunny out, but there also lies a chill wind. It is hard to beleive sometimes that the ocean air can reach this far in. We lie a good four kilometres from the ocean.The scent of the the ocean still reachs us though.

It would be nice to have some rain to wander through. We don’t see as much rain as we would like, seems Victoria does not see near as much as the mainland can. Almost like we have a little shelter. It stays temperate though. rain or shine it stays warm, quite the change from the prarires.

We still need to explore this area. We know downtown, and the area we live, but have yet to really explore the city.

The city is small. We almost want to laugh  when people give disdan about driving to Victoria from Sooke. It is a half hour drive during busy hours, but everyone here seems so used to the short distances. Two of the major roads are only a block apart, and the blocks are much smaller than they are out east.

We will most likely be wandering later today.