Of all the things I've lost I just keep gaining

I might not ever be able to whistle again. I have a bumble bee in my lip forever. But someone still wants to kiss it, bumble bee and all.

I am in a new room. It is full of my things. It has three windows and I think this is symbolic. It has a floor where I will type love letters and make crafts and stretch and dance and vacuum. This is the first day of my new life again. I will be a farmer. I will make sprouts and bake bread and run out of money and be nervous about it. I will smell like earth and make love in a single bed. These are the things I think about now:

What is winning? What is progress?

I keep letting things go with one hand and grabbing at new things with the other.

Is this ok? Isn't this maturity?

My mother says I'm fickle and impatient.

I worry that I want too much and can do too little about it.

I worry about what it means to stop worrying. I've stopped worrying.

I expect nothing but dream of everything.

I will be a farmer and a wife and a chef and a mother and a spinster and a shop owner and none of these,

and any and none are all the same to me as long as I am happy and can have a dinner party every now and then.

She asked me "so you want to get married then?"

I said "I don't believe in marriage. I'd just like to have a wedding. I'd have pie instead of cake."

I mostly want to consume everything with all my senses. I want to crush loved ones into my body. I want to bite shoulders.

The end of the coast

I travel south down the coast, on a train for (what I think may be) the very first time. I watch the waves and the changing colour of the sky pass me by, moving in and out of sleep. I type streams of consciousness poetry on my laptop because I have misplaced my pen for my journal. I close my eyes and simply type, and wonder what the train attendant must think of me.

What I have done on my journey:

Made a fort.

Eaten a lot of doughnuts.

Been naked in public.

Been naked in hot springs.

Written in the journal of a bed and breakfast.

Slept a lot.

Hot tubbed a lot.

Laughed a lot.

Loved.

Listened.

Learned.

What I have not done:

Climbed a mountain.

Found chantrelle mushrooms.

Seen the golden gate bridge.

Slept in the nest.

Read an entire book.

Made an entire song.

Stayed up all night.

flown a kite.

Of all the things I did not do, I realized that all of those things fade away when I am presented with the opportunity to simply love and be loved by others. I would rather laugh through the night in a small crammed damp room with a bottle of wine and a beautiful person laughing right beside me than admire the landscape or go off on a hike on my own. It is just my nature. I will never find anything as beautiful or absorbing as other human beings. It is not ultimately the place that concerns me, but the people that are contained within that space. Adventuring through someone's heart, mind and spirit is the ultimate journey for me, and I have been blessed on this trip to be able to take that journey several times, with very special, life changing people.

Thank you to all who allowed me to share this time with them, who loved me and supported me and made this little trip a very meaningful, (not to mention delightful) time!

Love as always,

Natalie

I cannot create a flower

Over and over today, as I walked down the path of wild lilacs, this quote from a poem by my friend Nick pervaded my thoughts incessantly.

I found the brightest yellow petals shed from their stem on the path and picked them up. How gracefully they flowed from their orange centre to their bring yellow tips, how soft they were between my thumb and forefinger. I noted instantly that their little black spindly (for lack of a proper descriptive word) seed-holding centres looked like little butterfly arms, making the petals more resemble little caped butterflies than flowers.

I was overcome with the thought that all humans can really do is destroy or improve upon what already exists, but they cannot truly create anything new. Anything we seem to "create" is frivilous and distracting "improvements" (perhaps only the area of modern medicine can I say this is not true...but even then, one will agree that modern medicine has become obscured by greed, and mostly seeks to cure illness which only exists as a result of the other modern instruments of self destruction marketed as improvements we think we've made in other areas).

Nature does not destroy anything. Everything "dead" in nature lives on and has a function and a purpose. Human beings create things with no lasting purpose. We live on an ugly, nonexistant line while nature spins forever in her perfect circle. If this is a reflection of our internal nature, it frightens me.

Natalie and the Nest

I wake up to waffles.

I drive along the coast listening to Radiohead, admiring the happy cattle roam endless stretches of green mountains.

I go to a bar on a mountain in the middle of nowhere and meet people from all over the place as we all dance to a 6 piece, all-white boy Motown cover band.

I eat edible flowers right off the vine and puzzle-piece my way through rock walls as I stare at the ocean and the flocks of pelicans dotting its horizon.

I climb the sides of mountains and realize my mind and my body are saying one thing: "I want it", referring to my overwhelming desire to be in the water. As I realize my desire cannot be realized due to the steep slope of the mountainside, I am comforted instead by stumbling upon a group (herd? tribe?) of 50 or so sea lions, talking, sleeping, swimming and taking care of their young. It is just them and I and the crashing of the waves, and it is a good substitute.

We drive 45 minutes to the nearest town and buy groceries at the local organic food store/cafe, and meet two brothers who only come in to work on the weekends so they can make all vegan and gourmet dishes for the cafe. Upon bringing our salad out, one of them comments "those are shaved brazil nuts, and those are sprouted alfalfa"

4 of us girls sit in the hot tub at sunset, drinking wine and talking about love, new, old, lost, found, and secret.

I've seen 8 hummingbirds. Previous to this, I had only seen about 4 in my entire life.

I make soups and vegan cookies. I make beet salads with goat cheese.

I play the grand piano in the main lodge in the afternoon when no one is around but the front desk staff.

Kata and I sing hymns and favorite songs to each other in the garden in the afternoon when our laptop music dies.

Finally, there is a human sized "Nest" in a tree that has been made by a local artisan that guests can sleep in for a reduced fee. It being a slow season and colder, no one currently chooses to do so, leaving it free for staff to enjoy. Soon enough, I will be nestled inside of it. One of these days.

What can happen to you in 2 weeks when you don't have a job or a planIt I

It feels like a million years since I've been able to sit down and write out my thoughts and experiences. So much has happened in just the past two weeks I can barely summarize each day, let alone the entire 2 weeks worth. I will attempt to give you the readers digest. Since humans, and especially this human, seem to be losing their ability for memory, I can't really remember in what order everything happened to me, but here I go:

Last Monday: Played duck hunt and Dr. Mario and slept in a perma-tent in my friend's backyard. When shopping in a grocery store for dinner, I commented that two jars of oysters in the next isle looked like off coloured vaginas, immediately followed by the man in front of us picking up those jars and paying for them.

Tuesday: Was taken to the top of San Francisco, then went out to a live Jazz bar at night and had my first Greyhound made with fresh squeezed grapefruit. The music gave me tingles and perma smiles.

Wednesday: went for a mega walk around the city, moved in to my new couch surfers house, got aquainted, planned for the next day.

Thursday: Explored the mission district with Yoshi, finally got to see David Eggers pirate/tutoring store, got a mop dropped on me on purpose while in the store, and then Bowerbirds Concert!

Friday: Rented a car for the first time in my life, took a Road trip to Santa Cruz, stopping to explore the Redwoods. Came home and had my couchsurfer host hit on me, got uncomfortable, had unnecessary argument due to couch surfer being secretly crazy, went back to couchsurfing headquarters, walked through the mission district and saw large group of kids with boomboxes and light strings attatched to their bikes riding through the streets.

Saturday: Wrote and read in a cafe all day, ate ice cream sundaes with Menalaos, took the overnight bus to Los Angeles.

Sunday: arrive at 7am in L.A, get picked up by farm owner, get taken to his "urban farm", which looks disheveled but hopeful. Meet other wwoofers, two sisters, Rebecca and Rachel, who are insta-soul mates.

Monday: After Rosie, who comes to the farm 3 times a week, began our day with group yoga, me and the girls start work on what is clearly the farm of a man who is a psychological "hoarder". Rebecca finds an entire possum skeleton underneath a pile of abandoned boxes. We find a boat motor. We start making a junk pile. We organize all his unused pots. A dog that is being walked gets into the chicken coop and scatters the chickens. We can't find one and there's nothing we can do about it. David, the farm owner, blames the dog, not the fact that his chicken coop is being held together with plastic twist-ties. We make a big lovely dinner. We laugh and share stories by candlelight, which we also found under other crap and made use of. We look forward to more cleaning and purging and helping.

Tuesday: David is acting weird, we don't know what to do. He finds his chicken in his neighbours yard but will not go over to get it, just stares at it over the fence. When I ask David if he can come meet with us so we can get started for the day, he says it's not working out and we all have to leave. We pile 4 people's things in a truck meant for two, tuck me illegally into the back and head off to the sisters' other sister's west hollywood apartment for the night. I frantically find a new place to wwoof in the area and fill out an application. We make a video using their sisters hair extensions as facial hair. I have vegan dinner with Toronto friend Rod. We talk about art theory and the like.

Wednesday: The sisters and I get the HELL out of L.A and head up into the mountains, where, 5 hours later, we arrive at treebones, a yurt resort in the mountains overlooking the ocean, with a fully functional organic farm (finally!)

and non-sketchy owners. We camp out under the stars in the mountains with the other wwoofers, and the next day the girls left (to return in a week when other wwoofers leave!?) and I started my life here at Treebones, which includes a daily waffle bar breakfast, nightly dip in the outdoor hot tub overlooking the water, and all the fresh veggies I can handle.

Life is good. Crazy and good.

Holy Crap Holy Crap San Francisco!

San Francisco has welcomed me with open arms. It is more than I could have anticipated, although certainly I had great expectations to begin with. To my luck, my first couch surfing experience just happened to be at the couch surfing headquarters, consisting of two communally occupied attached apartments with 16 people living, working, and loving together. They are all well travelled and talented lovely people and it has been a blessing to take part in their community. (I'll be doing a video tour of this house tomorrow)

The first night I arrived, I was fortunate enough to instantly be thrown in to a good-bye party for one of their members Mandy, who was moving to their other headquarters in Istanbul. She was a lovely girl, wearing a moustache most of the evening and having the best time someone could have while saying goodbye to her loved ones for 4 months (while she was packing, I managed to score a blue cashmere sweater off her that she was leaving behind...h'amazing!)

Anyways, at this party I happened to make friends quite quickly with a girl named Yoshi, who has just moved to San Francisco on a whim from Los Angeles, and through her couch surfing friend landed a room in an artist activist collective down the street called Million Fishes,

to which I promptly invited myself over for dinner the next evening.

This winery-turned artist living/work space was one of the most inspiring, beautiful places of inspiration and community I've ever seen, (besides the Couch surfing house just down the street). 16 people of all different artistic backgrounds, singers, painters, designers, actors, dj's, you name it, all existing under one roof, all with their own studio spaces, and to top it all off, their very own personal storefront gallery to host shows and events, and possibly soon enough a cafe space.

I spent the evening teaching everyone my favourite game, broken telephone pictionary, and we followed it up with brownies and beer and Brazil. It was magical. You can see Yoshi and Damon, aka baby cobra, giving me the grand tour in three parts below (the place is so big I had to do it in three parts!) I would love lovve to recreate this amazing community back here in Toronto.

A few things I noted that made this group successful:

--Nearly everyone had full time, pretty well paying jobs that helped keep things running.

--They had a schedule of chores and responsibilities within the house that seemed to me for the most part they kept to pretty strictly.

--The house was big enough to accommodate that amount of people, with several communal spaces and lots of individual work spaces to help balance out private and communal time quite well.

--Nearly all the bedrooms have raised beds, to make more space for desk space and personal space.

Overall it was one of the most inspiring places I've ever had the privilege to experience, and I hope one day the DCC or the About Face Collective can match its ambition.

(You can see some photos from a Million Fishes on my Facebook, I've found the process of uploading photos onto blogspot too long and tedious to endure for every posting)

3 days in Vancouver

My how time passes! A girl really needs to be intentional in order to keep up with these blogs!

I left Ashley, Jenna and friends on Saturday night, where I arrived in Vancouver, greeted by my gracious aunt and uncle, who whisked me away to their lovely centrally-located apartment, conveniently around the corner from a house my friends Nniamh and Doug were hanging out at.

After I fixed my plane hair and plane face, I met up with them around 10:30, which, with the time difference, felt like 12:30 to me (for those of you who know me, you know that this means I had to overcome my old-lady nature to deal with this late-night party-going option).

The three of us left that apartment pretty quickly and headed over to the east si

de where the real party began. I

n a quiet, suburban-style, middle class neighbourhood, one house on the street was alive with sound, people, music and youthful shinanigans. I don't know how to describe the feel of this party. At times it was like a Bah Mitzva, Klezmer dance music blaring, clapping and circle dancing, dark haired bearded boys taking each others shirts off and dancing and laughing and shouting, people playing brass instruments and accordions in the kitchen, people banging their wine bottles on tables along to the music. It was truly magical. (See photos and videos below. )

One of my favourite moments of the evening was seeing Nniamh in the bathroom, helping a girl who had cut her nose open somehow and was bleeding profusely. Once the wound had been bandaged, Nniamh decided everyone else in the bathroom had to also wear a bandage over the bridge of their nose as well, as an act of solidarity. It was a touching gesture, and one of the many reasons that I love Nniamh.

The next day, Nniamh, Doug and I managed to borrow a car from their friend Max and we took a road trip on the sea to sky highway up to Squamish, a small, quaint town off the highway an hour north of Vancouver. I've discovered quite quickly that Vancouverites love their sea scapes. Big time. Nniamh bought wolf silhouette earings, which I highly approved of, though whales were a close second.

That night (being last night) I had dinner with my aunt and uncle. My uncle took me to a famous market, nearly overtaking a tiny island. It was like every food shop in Kensington market all put together under one roof. When my aunt suggested we pick up some pasta, I had no idea my pasta options at the market would include pear goat cheese ravioli, which clearly I consumed later with delight.

Now I sit in a cafe on Commercial Drive, the Queen street-esque equivalent of Vancouver, eating a cinnamon bun and noting how about 40% of the population of B.C uses longboards as their main mode of transportation. I'm down with that.

Scene: I passed an asian girl on the street having a very loud argument on her cell phone, (part of which went "I'm drunk right now and you're screaming at me", which was unsettling because it was two in the afternoon). Then, 20 seconds later, I pass a pizzaria with a young asian man screaming into his cell phone "who do you think I am!? Who do you think I am!?" which I can only assume was the other side of the drunk girl conversation.

Enjoy the photos, I'm tired of writing!

What a life!

Nothing says Canada like kitties.

These wood carvings smelled tremendous! There were sawdust bins everywhere and freshly cut wood and it was simply delightful.

So many bears, so little...wall space?

The sea to sky highway.

Below you will find Doug's opinion of bikers as we make our way across the bridge to the highway.

More photos to come!