Bird Therapy

Sunflower seeds and chickadees

soft rolling waves and a chilly breeze

the beaming sun and tall birch trees

I'll take another day like today, please.

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Today was what I like to call a slow Sunday. After cucumber wine until the early hours the night before, I got up, washed my face, threw on my new sandy grey speckled knit, and drove home to the sounds of one of my favourite bands Needtobreathe. I swear I can never get enough of their songs.

After tidying my bedroom, sorting through paperwork, changing my fish bowl and watering my plants, I stepped outside for a mid-afternoon waterfront walk. It was so refreshing; the kind I've needed for a while. And I suppose it has been a while: winter is long, after all, and sunny days like today aren't easy to come by.

The air was cool but the sun was perfectly warm, and I fed some chickadees right from the palm of my hand. This, my friends, is something I must do more often. Like a bird therapy; a featherlight heartbeat lands on your hand, clasping its tiny claws onto your fingers, just for a moment, to snatch a sunflower seed or half a peanut.

Connecting to the world around us, the real, real world with real creatures and things that live alongside us, is so healing: trees, buds, sprouts, swans, all of it. It's therapy.

Walks and Talks

As always

walks in the rain are mandatory for the peace it brings,

except this time damp colourful leaves are everywhere.

I wish there was a way for me to meticulously describe my bike ride atop a cliff yesterday,

but there is not!

A couple weeks ago on my daily 40 minute drive to school I accidentally came across the best radio station that ever came to be (in Toronto it's 89.5fm, but it's worldwide). They host a one hour radio series from 9-10am that has a different episode every day ranging from all sorts of incredible topics from corporate America, globalization, today's environmental, food and health crises to science and spirituality and solutions to the absurdly and ridiculously frustrating distorted world we currently live in due to the powers that be. The radio series is called Bioneers (biological pioneers!) All of this is actually specifically what has been bothering me a lot lately. A lot.

At the introduction to the episodes there is a clip of a woman doing a lecture saying "...it's all connected, it's all intelligence, it's all relatives" while geese are sounding in the background and everytime it plays this clip I cry. Every morning I am literally crying on my way to school. It certainly puts a bit of a damper on my morning but I can't not listen - there is such an enormous amount of invaluable information to be heard and it is very significant for everybody to listen. Agh! Everything is just so messed up and everything is connected and I hate this apparent universal ignorance that has washed over humanity but I know people can awaken to it all and I hope so badly that things will change and all of the corporations that are in power over everything (like Monsanto, for one small example) will be shut down. Ultimately, I wish for that. I feel as though this is what a big part or meaning of my life is all about - changing the current world we inhabit, someway, somehow. I know it begins with the collective minds. Perspectives and attitudes must be adjusted into the direction of supporting and connecting with nature and ourselves, first. I feel like I know what so many of the answers are and everything that I would do if I could do it would make so much sense but the scope of the world is so large and I feel so small.

Anyways, do check out the radio series which I believe you can find and listen to on their website, or perhaps the conference itself from which it originates. www.bioneers.org.

Fall, Energy & Magical Lettuce

favourite peasant skirt & boots


I LOVE FALL!


It is the ULTIMATE season of flow and peace and it is delicate and calm and elegant. I went to the farmers market the other day and I got a big head of un-poisoned romaine lettuce and I ate that thing. I ate it. It had a lady bug in a leaf and some other fuzzy green bugs that I let outside and although I felt moderately disgusted and apprehensive while I ate it, I deeply appreciated the life it embodied. Then I did some very liberating yoga. Seriously my body must have been a bound ball of elastic because when I stretched in all ways it was like releasing a dove into the sky. That is how beautiful it felt. Oh and then I danced like I was in a theatrical performance. And then I went for a walk under the sun in the chilly air and at work I was a ball of energy. I felt like I was on drugs.

I give credit to the lettuce. And the sunshine and the cool air and the season of fall because I love it so. The trees and colours still have much more to offer before all is white dust.

I am currently fascinated by intestines. That is what I am presently learning about.

Foggy Walks

I never used to care about foggy days. But I have discovered an enormous overflow of joy and excitement and wonder within me whenever it is really foggy outside. 

I immediately want to go for a walk in it.

So that is what I did yesterday evening.

Revived

I have been craving the energy of a forest. So I went for a long, serene walk today, and I feel like the reset button has been pushed on me. I feel re-connected again. I've been cooped up far too much these days between my house, winter and work and I feel revived, restored, renewed! I sat on a log and just sponged up the energy from the trees and sticks and birds and the wind especially. Nearly made me cry. When I got home I actually felt high, on life.

Cloudy Day Walk

I live about a five minute walk from Lake Ontario. Today was cloudy and cool and windy and beautiful. I really love cloudy days... there's something about a cool, overcast day that makes me feel centered and quiet. It always reminds me of being around my mom when I was very little, when I lived at my old house. 

There were tons and tons of monarch butterflies fluttering around me (I tried to get one to land on me). I stood on a cliff and just watched and listened to the waves down below. I just love having the world surround me.