The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming,

(p.s. candles totally beat the zippo app)

Right now

My horoscope for this week says "If I had to give a title to the next chapter of your story, it might be "Nothing That's Happening Will Make Much Sense Until It Has Finished Happening, Whereupon It Will Yield a Burst of Insight about the Big Picture of Your Destiny."

So I can stop worrying and sit back right?

I can let myself take things as they come. I don't need to know what tomorrow will bring right now, tomorrow will get here all on it's own.

I don't need to worry about how my relationships with the people I care about are changing. They will change, and things will happen.

All I can be conscious of is how I am feeling in this moment, and how I am showing up for other people right now. Right now, I can be whoever I want to be.

One Day

One muthatruckin' DAY!!!! Ow!

Who loves and praises you?

Oh my dad surely does. When he cooks a steak, it's practically a celebration in itself to have it sitting on your plate. Nevermind my raw food/vegan shenanigans lately, but I've never much cared for steak and I'm sure that special place in his heart is a little broken because of it. So when we got home tonight and I was appointed cooking duties, I gleefully shouted out, "Just so's ya knows....it's salad tonight!" I think my dad started crying on the inside a little, but I added chicken as a compromise. After the salad was made, and devoured, my darling dad says a little gruffly, "It's bland. But it's good." and said I did a good job. Go me! I don't see this as a I-have-to-compliment-you're-not-cooking-skills-because-your-my-daughter kind of thing. My dad liked it, I know he did but he'll never admit it. He knows I know he liked it. As in the picture above with the unplanned yet eerily similar facial expressions, my dad and I have mad skillz in silent communication that frequently befuddles my mother.

Let me Linger Here

I mentioned on twitter that I had something really awesome to share today. And I do! I've known about these t-shirts for awhile, but just got around to ordering one today. The concept is this: You spread joy. You wear a shirt with a stranger's face on it, upload your own face, and let someone else wear it. We're all one, and what better way to show it than by wearing eachother? I'm deeply in love with this idea. For myself, I will be wearing the vibrant Emilie Lebel in Electric Blue. She's 20 years old, from Moose Jaw and her passions in life are wine, cheese, intrigue in other cultures, music, happiness, film, photography. Ch-ch-check it out! And get your own!

I also wanted to share some of my own excitement from this week.






This is the wonderful carnage (and future gift wrap) I recieved from healthforce nutritionals. Half a day into the detox was enough for me, but I'm working out future, less intense ways to use my lovely product. I realized how much pressure I was putting on myself to detox, and what for? I will detox, in time, and maybe not with the level 3 intense 7 day detox I had imagined. It's not doing it THAT way that I want, I just want to DO IT.



And, of course, the lovely grey sludge that brought upon this insight.



On the very vibrant and bright side, I hauled all of this in from the grocery store. Yummmm! SO excited about this. I haven't had a stocked fridge in forever, I'm really excited about the time I get to spend in the kitchen right now. So good!


My lovely, supa yummy, strawberry-banana-mango-flaxseed smoothie this morning. I never use my blender. I make up that dragging it out, using it, washing it and putting it back will take up too much of my time for work. But this morning I slept in, made a smoothie, was early for work and clearly had time to take pictures.

Happy and ready for work - still very much alive and kicking after the interestingness that was Sunday!

Maybe I'm just a pansy but...

This detox is a lot harder than I anticipated, or the beef-n-oil-sand-lovin' ghost of Alberta is wrecking it's revenge on my recycling-newly-mostly-vegan ass. Calling healthforce tomorrow to find out if life is really supposed to be like this ;)

Either way, I'm not doing the Level 3 7day cleanse tomorrow. After I find out if today was "normal", and if it is, my 7 day is now a 30 day. Take that intense stomach pain! No one shall make me yell "MOTHERTRUCKER" at work (except for maybe the politicians, but even then I somehow keep it inside) ;)

And, in the interest of my safety, here's what happened today in the least graphic way I can possibly describe: Finished ALMOST half of Detox Day 1, by breakfast many trips to ye olde bathroom, later I just moved all my stuff INTO the bathroom since I was there so much, and then I had about 6 hours of violent puking, shaking, and freezing (my house is 32C and I was in sweats and a down blanket) my ass off. It has since then subsided, I stopped downing the pills and powders. Now I'm just dizzy, dehydrated and smell really bad.

SOooooo if anyone thinks that sounds normal/sounds allergic/sounds like something else, let me know. I'll love you more than I already do, if that's even possible. X.

Answer me this

Do boys have radar? I mean, seriously.

Where are your distractions when I'm chasing after some somebody for months and months? Why can't you occupy me then? But as soon as I'm not interested in anything with anyone it's like they come out of the freakin' woodwork.

Just an FYI, my multitasking abilities only extend to filing and talking on the phone. If y'all swarm the front desk all at once no one's going to get served. So, with this information in mind, please get behind the rope, form an orderly line, and I'll get to you when it's your turn.

I feel like I should be bragging about having "them lined up around the block" but humor aside, only this could wake me up at 1 in the morning.

I really want to read this book, Sex at Dawn, which talks about monogamy and how it doesn't "exist" but I don't think it's for me. I touched on a past relationship in the last post, and it only proves my point. Boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, boy sings girl cheesy songs, boy moves to a different continent. 4 years in an open relationship and I was mostly monogamous anyway. I don't have the brain power, or whatever it is, to think about more than one person at a time. If I like you, all of me likes you. When there's more than one person expressing interest in me it's deer-in-headlights-syndrome. Without any shadow of a doubt, I will stand there with a stupid expression on my face until something hits me.

I don't know how to juggle either.

So until further notice, one at a time please :)