NO SAIL TODAY

Posted on July 2, 2013 by hafong

The sweat is running down my face. I’m sitting on deck stairs, catching the gentle afternoon breeze. I can hear Sheba panting on the deck. I lean against the side railing, closing my eyes. I can hear the whoosh of the traffic, the drone of a lawn mower.

The bread is done. The loaves are cooling on the rack. Sheba’s life jacket and her mats are washed in soap and water, rinsed and drying in the sun. Amazing how much her things can stink up the car. Amazing what a little soap and water can do.

We went out to Elbow Sunday for our first sail of the year. The mast went up and we got the boat in the water. But that was as far as we got. For one reason or another, the sail wouldn’t go up. So we gave up on thoughts of sailing that day. We ate our lunch on the beach. Sheba sat in the wet sand, dressed in her life jacket and nowhere to sail.

After lunch we got help and took the mast down, loaded the boat and got it out of the water. After an hour or so of packing and loading up, we headed home. And after another hour or so we got home. You might say we had a day of nothing or just frustrations. But I just said: That’s life.

I’m sitting in the kitchen now, tap, tapping away, keeping my heebe jeebies at bay. Sweat is dripping down the sides of my face. I wonder if other people get them. I suppose everyone has their own demons or else they are lying.

The AC is now on. Its coolness is soothing. The sweat recedes along with the ghosts. I sigh one big sigh, feeling stronger, dreaming sweet dreams of sailing.

HOT SUMMER DAYS

Posted on July 2, 2013 by hafong

It’s not even 7 am yet. The sun is out and it is already hot and humid. I have already been awake since 4:30. Too early to get out of bed. Sheba is stretched out on the cool wooden floor at the foot of the bed. She is stretching her boundaries.

At 6:00 I decided it was a waste of time staying in bed. It would have been fine had I been content. But I was not. Such is life now and again. Everything changes and this, too, shall pass. So for now, I will stay and embrace it. I can still tap out my words and feelings. Perhaps I can free myself.

I padded out to the kitchen. I hear Sheba retching and soon out came her breakfast, eaten in too big of a haste. What a mess! But she is lapping it all up again. I turn my back and let her do her thing. Sometimes you just have to. Life can get like that. I wipe the floor with damp paper towels.

I am tapping out my words on the deck. The birds are chirping. A crow cawed. Sheba is at my feet listening. The words are coming from my fingertips. What a blessing! What a relief! I can still make life work. I try not to think too much. I just try to move.

Yesterday we went for a long bike ride. I pedaled with my heart in my mouth. I pedaled with heart and metal. I pedaled with success. We celebrated with coffee at the Broadway Roastery.

There was not enough tables with umbrellas. We would sizzle under the hot sun. So we moved Rod’s cargo bike under the shade of the trees and used it as a bench. It was a lovely way of enjoying our coffee and watching the people come and go. But I do think he need to add some pop up trays for our coffee.

So you can see that even not so great days are in reality great days. It is in our minds and hearts to decide what they can be. I try my best and that is all that I can do. It is enough.

BE HAPPY NOW! YOU ARE NOT BEHIND.

Posted on June 21, 2013 by hafong

I am very much a junkie for self-help stuff of any kind. I am a walking storehouse of information of how to….You just have to name it – declutter, organize, meditate, be a functional depressive, how to win friends and influence people, blah, blah, blah!

So now I’m reading Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. You must know how excited I am to find someone who sounds so much like me, even down to being very near-sighted and that we experience the same anxieties about our vision. But she is much younger with children and a successful published writer. I am but a wannabe. But I am writing.

I am contemplating about my own happiness project, about how I would go about it. I kind of like Benjamin Franklin’s idea of cultivating his 13 virtues – temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, humility. He would practice each virtue for a week and record his progress. I am happy to be in the same circle as Ben. I am proud to be amongst those who think practice makes better.

Who is me and what do I want to do? I resonate with this picture I saw in FaceBook yesterday.

I would be ecstatic if that is how people see me…weird, random. Perhaps they do and I am finally coming out to myself! It is late but not too late. I am not behind. That is the wonderful lesson I’ve learned from the flylady.net website. You are not behind. Start where you are. Here seems like a good place to start to be happy. Now sounds like the perfect time. If virtues are good enough for Benjamin Franklin, they’re good enough for me. Order is on top of the list along with silence and tranquility. I am already frugal and maybe too resolute. I see that moderation is in the mix. The only thing I am not too sure about is chastity. Heh, heh!

COMING TO OUR SENSES

Posted on June 19, 2013 by hafong

It is another overcast day. The greyness wraps itself around my shoulders. It seeps through my pores, clouding me, slowing me. I do not let it drag me down. I hear the traffic whooshing down Preston Avenue. Life is busy as usual and I must move with it, however I can, as best as I can.

It’s a good time to get into the moment, this moment, the present moment. I have been listening to Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor of medicine, an expert on stress and mindfulness. Something he said in his book, Coming to Our Senses, twigged something within me. We have the five senses of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. But how aware are we of them?

I often turn a blind eye to many things, a deaf ear to the sounds around me. I try not to feel, afraid of the unknown. I eat to fill my stomach, not savoring or discerning the different tastes of food. My nose wakes up only to the pungent odours. I am ‘out to lunch’ too much.

On this day, I am coming back to my senses. I am trying to come back home to me. I am staying here to feel the grey. It does not hurt me. I see the sun trying to come through the layers of grey. All is well with the universe. I stay here in this moment, to feel the wind on my cheek, to smell the fragrance of the rose, to hear the birds sing and to taste the raindrops on my tongue.

WE ARE NOT ALONE

Posted on June 10, 2013 by hafong

Sometimes when we are troubled and feeling all alone, it is good to step out of our comfort zone and step into the world. We might see that we are not so different, so alone.

We would see that we all have our fears. We all have dragons to slay, moats to cross and dreams to realize. It is hard to lay oneself open, to be vulnerable, to be afraid. But despite all this, you can still make a move towards where you want to go.

So I have slain one of my many dragons…..fear of falling off my bike. I grabbed it by the throat and that fear is down. But I do know that it can always rise again. I do know that. That is what keeps me humble, my arrogance in check. But for now I can enjoy the ride and share this video of others’ similar experience. I hope that you will enjoy the ride.

ON KINDNESS AND GENEROSITY

Posted on June 8, 2013 by hafong

“I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

– from LIFE ITSELF, Roger Ebert

It is a rainy Saturday morning. My clouds have lifted a little. I am out of bed, dressed and sitting here sipping tea and tapping out my words. I am grateful that they come one by one, spelling out my story, easing my pain and lighting my way. What a gift I have been given! At least I can express myself, warning others that a woman has fallen…momentarily. But she will get up again.

What I have learned lately is that I am not a kind or generous person. My kindness and generosity only extends to others. And that is a false thing. It has surprised me to hear patients telling me that I am so kind and so gentle to them. Can’t they tell I am just boiling inside? It surprises me they take my sourness for humour.

Yesterday, I was confronted by a neighbour in conversation, even though I tried hard to avoid her. I felt my unkindness then. I felt my heart constricting in meanness, no generosity coming forth. I kept my eyes downcast, answering politely. It was very difficult but I did not want to listen to her woes. I did not want to see her tears. I did not want to be her keeper – when it suited her.

That was yesterday. Today I realize that I was being kind and generous to myself. I am a nurse, a caretaker. But I don’t have to take care of everyone. I can’t. I don’t have the power. I feel my meanness coming out when I neglect myself. And without kindness, there cannot be generosity.

To myself I have to be true. I am doing the best I can. Perhaps I can do better tomorrow.

RITUALS AND HABITS

Posted on June 7, 2013 by hafong

This morning the sky is overcast, but the leaves are still the greenest green and I am a shade paler than blue. I have been caught unaware by ‘forces’ and inattention. I have allowed myself be invaded by energies of not my liking. Perhaps I am talking too much, revealing too much. I am being vulnerable.

So what? I am, after all, just a mortal being. And if I have all these feelings and experiences, there must be other people going through similar things. And if no one talks and shares, we will be isolated like islands in the stream- with no Dolly Parton to sail away with.

I am working hard to bring myself back to center. I am paying attention and setting intentions. It is those rituals and habits that save the day. One of my favourite phrase from Regina Brett is: Get up, dress up and show up. I remember that on mornings when getting up is hard to do. You see things in different perspective when you’re up and standing tall. So when I remember, I change my point of view…like changing my walk route with Sheba. I do get lost sometimes by going in a different direction.

Getting lost is not a bad thing. Getting lost makes you slow down and get your bearing. You focus, you think, you observe, you see. I see that I don’t have to rush and find the answer right away. I see that I have time to breathe, to look around, to find my directions, to find me.

So this morning I got up, dressed up and showed up. I made my cup of tea and did my qigong exercises, throwing out my stagnant chi. I focused and felt my energy field. I set my intentions. I breathed. Everything is copacetic.

SUMMER TIME

Posted on June 6, 2013 by hafong

It is summer time and I am looking out the window at the greenest green. It is ironic that I am feeling my bluest blue. Beneath the blue I can feel my red anger bubbling through at the Power that made me this way. But I suppose that HE has a reason. That is what Caroline Myss says. There are no accidents. There is a plan, a story, a drama to be played out. I will wait and see.

I will sit and stay with my feelings and not run away. If I expect Sheba to listen to me, I have to listen to myself first. Sit and stay. Nothing will hurt me…. even when the clouds cast a shadow over me, I feel my skin crawl and someone is walking over my grave. Sit and stay. Everything is copacetic…A okay!

I sit and count my blessings. I sit and feel my discomfort, my pain. I sit and do my breath counts. I sit and plan my projects, the books I will write…on my life and times as a child in China, as an immigrant in a small town, as a nurse, as a…… I breathe in and out, counting the cross stitches on my Jesus picture. I see the loaves of bread and the potato biscuits I made yesterday. I sit and see the joy running in Sheba and I know that there is a higher power and purpose and know that this, too, shall pass.

And now, it is time to get up and MOVE…and do all those ordinary little things that add up to a life.

TAKING OUT THE TRASH

Posted on May 30, 2013 by hafong

The prairie wind is blowing again. It blows and blows, the kind that makes you feel weary. It is the kind that gives me a headache and the shivers, as if someone is going to walk over my grave soon. So it feels so good to have a shower, washing off the layer of old sweat and grime. I am clean once more, unencumbered, naked and pure.

I take out a bag of trash…old underwear and an old hair dryer. The heat had somehow melted a hole on one side and I burnt a finger on the hot molten plastic. Until then I was still using it. How foolish I am to hang on to it when I have another one in better condition. I take that as a sign to let go of the broken, misshaped and the dysfunctional. But it is easier said than done. So I MUST be alert and pay attention to these things before they bite me in the ass.

My mother use to tell me so many things….things that nagged on her. She tells them to me because I’m her oldest and she needs to get things off her chest. And when I said to her that she shouldn’t talk so to me, she said who could she talk to if not her daughter. It was just garbage and for me not to mind and to throw them away. That, too, is easier said than done.

But she did listen to me when I told her it was making me sick. I am not getting so much now. Chinese people are proud and private. They do not like to air things in public. They have to save face. Something must have happened to me. I am not such a good Chinese. I am not saving face. I am a stranger in a strange land. I’ve discovered that I cannot go home again.

But I have found a new land of LOLL where each person takes care of their own trash. In this land of mine, there is no history, no accounting, no envy, no accumulation of trash….Each day starts anew. The sun still rises in the east and sets in the west. And all is as we make it to be.

THE WOBBLES OF LIFE

Posted on May 29, 2013 by hafong

The karaganas are blooming in the park. I wish that I had a camera but I do not so I just enjoy their beauty and fragrance and store the moment in my memory. I will capture their digital essence another time. Sometimes you have to give up one thing to have another. Such is life.

The other evening, I went riding with my little biking class. Can I say that I did awesome….for a total distance of 20 k’s? Well, I did have one little wobble which ended up being a big, big wobble – and I came tumbling down the hill..like Jill but without Jack. But I got up and dusted myself off and got back on my ‘horse’. Jack had to help me get up and untangle the chains.

I am a little bruised and stiff but none the worse for wear. And the first wobble is the worst. Now that I have experienced the worst wobble, I can get on and push off with confidence. It’s what I tell myself anyways, even though in my heart, I will always feel the beginning of fear at the beginning of that first little wobble before I pedal off into the sunset.

It is good that I feel that little trepidation. It means I am alive and human. I can feel that excitement of uncertainty. What is life if there are no wobbles, no uncertainty? Where would the challenge be? So I am happy to say that my life is full of wobbles and challenges. But everything is copasetic. And perhaps one day I can sit astride my bike with ease and confidence. THAT would be very copasetic indeed!

onethousandandtwo

Looking at Infinity

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