Hello! My name is (Leung) Hafong alias Lily Leung. You always say the last name first….that is the Chinese way. That is my partner lurking behind me. Since this is my blog, I won’t mention his name. But this is a rather cool picture. You see me and yet you don’t…sort of the way I feel about myself most of my life. So this blog is a self-exploration, an archeology dig of some sort. My tools…..words of a thousand or so at a sitting. I will try for that.
Isn’t it funny how time slips away? And isn’t it funny how memories can bring tears to your eyes? So not to let memories fill me with sadness and tears, I’ve made another run at my day. I don’t want my precious time to just slip away. What better way to bring myself back to the here and now than to step out of the house. I’m greeted with morning sunshine and blue skies. Hello Saturday! It’s nice to see you.
Then it is into the greenhouse. It is still green and lush with growth. I can’t complain of it being barren and empty. I might even get a bitter melon or two afterall. Aphids destroyed most of my plants early in the season. So I’m crossing all my fingers and toes.
A cool grey October 3. I’m late in rising in the dark of the morning. I’ve had a hearty breakfast of porridge, a boiled egg and a thick slice of toast. I’m ready for the day. I’m ready to take a run at it. I’ve been instuckthis past year. It’s time to dust my self off, pull up my socks and hoist myself out of the rut. It is not an easy thing and I will fall back time and time again but I have to at least try. It is best to strike when the iron is hot. The saying also goes to say, Do not wait till the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking.
I’m going to use both quotes to add fuel to the fire. Once in awhile I’m buoyed by good vibes and things flow effortlessly. But I’m often afflicted with acedia. This is how Wikipedia describes it -“Acedia has been variously defined as a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one’s position or condition in the world.” When I’m in acedia I need a stick to prod me into action. That is why sometimes I have to take a run at it. I’m using this month to write myself out of acedia into a better space.
No doubt that life is hard. It is for everyone. I want it to be a reason to live and to give it my best go. The day is grey but I have 2 pink doors to lighten up my world. And the garden still grows. Cooler weather is coming so I better get off my duff and finish harvesting.
October 2 and the second day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I’ve never had a plan of how I tackle this challenge. I just sit down at the keyboard and hope my fingers will find the words. I found that there is a rhythm when I get going. It soothes and smooths me. It stirs a physical pleasure in me. I love seeing how the letters and words march across the screen. It is a meditative process, an exhalation of my soul. I sigh with my fingers as well as my breath. And life is beautiful again in the moment.
Finding bliss is a good reason to keep writing. Meeting and connecting with like minded people is a good reason for participating in these writing challenges. It helps to keep the juices flowing. It’s good to have a cheering section. Excitement at the start wanes after a few days. Writer’s block sets in pretty fast. Then it is hard work to carry me through to the next bliss. I look for inspiration everywhere.
Inspiration is all around. Sometimes I have to be wakened to see it. The other day I found it in the story of the Grand Hotel in Shaunavon. I’ve been following the journey of its restoration on Facebook for awhile and had forgotten about it till the other day. It’s been sitting vacant for over 40 years till Kent Karenmaker bought it. The project was to help his mental health and to find purpose. I find that pretty inspiring since he suffers from depresseion and was working on it by himself. It is a grand hotel with a grand history. It holds a fascination for me because the original owners were Chinese. Two members of the family were murdered in front of the hotel in 1940. It’s a story forgotten but not lost.
October 1. Another new day, another new month. Today is the first day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. It’s a month of writing a blog post a day and posting it on the Challenge page, reading 2 others or more and commenting on their posts. It’s an opportunity to meet and interact with other bloggers and supporting each other. I see many new as well as familiar names.
My main goals for this challenge is to show up each day and to enjoy and learn from the process. I do not have a business to promote. I have no products or service to sell. An online friend, Tom Fisher, introduced me to the world of blogging many years ago. I started on Blogger in 2005 and switched to WordPress in 2012. I’ve been blogging on and off since. I love how photographs and words come together. One can say a photo is worth a thousand words. In the same way a word can tigger a kaleidoscope of pictures.
I hope my keyboard will be magical this month and help me get through the challlenge with flying colours. It’s easy to get stuck. A month can be a long time. I am wishing myself and fellow challengers luck. May we see each other at the finish line.
A sunny morning for the 30th of September. So many things to do and yet I am stuck, not knowing how to start. I couldn’t very well take a run at it, not knowing what and how. Worse of all I don’t feel like it. I’m feeling what the Greeks call acedia, the inability to care. It’s no stranger to me but it’s the first time I’ve encounter the word that describes it so well. I have to give much thanks for Kathleen Norris and her book Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life.
I do feel a wee better now that I’ve spoken out. I’ve broken the ice and can take a run at things. It’s the last day of September. It’s a agood bye to the old and hello to October tomorrow. It will be a start for another month of the Ultimate Blog Challlenge. I’m limbering up my fingers and shaking awake my brain. I tend to be a mental as well as a spiritual sloth. How can I motivate myself to wake, care and feel passion for all that is in the here and now? Perhaps that will be my theme to explore for the next month.
At long last, I’ve made a start at digging myself out from under the many layers of clutter and dust. I can breathe a little better and see a little clearer. I wish I could rid the fruit flies that are buzzing around the kitchen. I’ve taken steps to eliminate them by setting up apple cider vinegar traps. There’s no ripe fruit or tomatoes on the counters. The counters are fairly clean. Still they persist. I wish I was as tenacious as the fruit flies at cleaning and clearing my spaces. I have not been but am working on exercising that particular muscle. Today is another first day of the rest of my life. I am good with words. Let’s see if I am good at my words.
It’s a beautiful sunny but cool Sunday. It’s warming up nicely. It’s a good day to work on things inside and out. I have trays of ceyenne peppers drying in the dehydrator. I’m sipping on tea made from last year’s dried stinging nettle. It’s not exactly delicious but I am detoxing from my caffeine and sugar addiction while making use of stinging nettle leaves I’ve gathered and dried. I’m making a strong start. Let’s see if I have staying power.
I’m good with starting and working small. I am not a super or wonder woman. I’m more of a tortoise than a hare but I can still get there wherever there is. Right now my there is not far. It is within reach. I am not reaching for fame or money. I’m reaching for the ability to feel just a little joie de vivre, to have a sense of meaning of life in this time we are in. I guess it is asking for alot. But if I don’t ask, how will I get it?
A cool, breezy but sunny September morning but it is warming up nicely. I am, too. My body is reluctant getting out of bed in the dark. It wasn’t till after 7 till I could face the day. Now it is an hour before noon. I have a pot of sour cherry syrup in the making on the stove. It’s one thing to have all the wonderful harvest of food. It’s another to make use of them. I still have last year’s haskaps, strawberries and raspberries gathering frost in the freezer. I still have last year’s apple and grape juice in the cooler. Thank goodness no apples and few grapes to juice this year.
I am a gatherer of everything but not much of a user of anything. I seem to run out of energy doing the first and nothing left to do the second. I hope to work to correct this aspect of myself this year. I ran out of energy after the first paragraph yesterday. It is hard to break out of myself. Perhaps I need to reread Joe Dispenza’s Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. Old habits die hard but I will persevere.
Today is cool, windy, grey and drizzling. Autumn is definitely in the air. However, the forecast continues to be favourable for the next week. I will leave the garden for awhile yet. No need to hurry with the clean up. Meanwhile, I am enjoying this cool windy day. It feels delicious to sip my tea and tap away on my keyboard. I’m defrosting a jar of soup for lunch in the microwave. I am making use of what I have. And I have returned to finish this post I started yesterday.
When I think about it, life is very hard. It always has been. Once you get off the treadmill, it’s hard to get back on. It’s hard but you just got to, somehow. What I’ve been trying lately is taking a run at it, at least once a day. Then I can say I haven’t given up. I’m still trying. What I’ve noticed is that the second time, the run is not quite as hard. My feet are lighter though not yet fleet. What I hope for next is endurance, a longer run and less whining. Everyone knows life is hard. I better can it. It’s getting tiresome.
So what I have to do it is remember my motto from Regina Brett’s God Never Blinks, “No matterhow you feel, get up, dress up and show up“. The important thing is showing up. Whether I feel like it or not does not matter. Nobody else has to know how I feel. Sometimes it is better to keep that to myself and put on a cheerful face and put my best foot forward. The rest will follow. It is a surprise but this I know from past experience. This keeps me on stepping it up every day. Some days are better than others. I’m ok with that.
A beautiful cool sunny September morning. I am a little more peppy though I’m not ready to do the jig yet. I’ve taken my vitamins and made a tour of the garden and greenhouse. I’ve turned on the dehydrator on the deck. There’s 8 trays of Roma tomatoes drying, sending off their aroma into the air. The day has started and I am ready for it.
It’s 11 months since I’ve witnessed my mother taking her last breath. I’ve wondered and dreaded the moment since she was diagnosed with her heart condition in September 2001. It was a time hard to forget. She had her first CT scan on September 11, the day of the 911 attacks. I woke up listening to the news on the radio. I thought of our relatives in New York. Then we watched the news unfold in the waiting room at St. Paul Hospital.
Now it is 24 years later. I’m sitting here, sipping my tea and tapping on my keyboard. My mother is not here. She’s had a good 23 years without surgical intervention. There were ups and downs but she had done well till age caught up with her. 93 is a good age. She was alert and independent right till the last moment.We couldn’t ask for more, could we?
Though I am no stranger to death, it was traumatic. She was my mother. I was joined to her umbilically in her womb for all those months. Then we had all the years after. She was like the pebble in the sea, sending out waves near and far. And now there are no more waves. The world has changed for me without those waves. It reminds me of how powerful each of us can be and how the world changes when we depart.
A sunny September morning. I’m dragging my ass around. I wonder when and if this malaise will leave me. Until things or I change, I will keep on dragging, one foot in front of the other. I wonder how many fellow draggers are out there. Surely I can’t be the only one. I’m not full of cheer but I am not filled with gloom either. Can I be just neutral or are there different shades? I’ve never been bubbly or gregarious but neither am I silent and reclusive. Sometimes I talk too much. I feel somewhat defective and lacking.
I find the world and life very heavy and challenging. I am grateful that I don’t have to go out there having to work at a ‘job’ to earn a living. I guess I’ve done my time and paid my dues. But there’s no sitting back, relaxing and enjoying it all. Now comes the hard stuff, the stuff I’ve swept under the carpet to be delt with later, the later which is now. It is true that you can run but you can’t hide. Things never go away. They catch up with you.
I find everything hard because I let them be. They are hard because I don’t deal with them in a timely fashion. I spend too much time to look for reasons and explanations of the whys of everything. Sometimes there are no rhyme or reason. If only I can just get on with things. So many if onlys. I need to stop thinking and saying that, too. Just decide. Just move. Just do it.
onethousandandtwo 