Angels in the architecture

Terminal 4 in JFK International. What an airport. Under construction and huge areas cordoned off, men in hard hats and orange cones amongst the world travelers.

No signs for the inexperienced. Managed to find a nice young man at a money changing booth who told me how to get to the Airbus which brought me to the correct terminal for departure. So much about modern travel is left up to the individual to figure out. For a while back there I was lost in a maze, following crumbs which had been eaten by birds, going around in circles.

Twice through security on no sleep: I am compliant and passive. Stand. turn around. Submit to being patted down around my chest. The man behind me has his groin wanded. Wonder if this equipment will be found to be carcinogenic somewhere down the road? Imagine an extra-terrestrial studying this and hypothesizing this activity is a non-productive mating mutation of the species.

Am now going on two days without sleep and really fuzzy around the edges.

Sitting at the departure gate there are homecountry accents around me. Well yes, this flight goes to Johannesburg and nowhere else.

But I have become American. I am carrying way too much baggage. I forgot that I need to only have one bag, even if two are allowed. When one is taking care of oneself, always keep hands free. These two bags are way too stuffed with flasy expensive toys. Camera. Laptop. Need to find a way to rationalize it somehow. It will be impossible to travel the way I usually do with this amount of baggage. How could I have forgotten the one bag rule I worked out way back in the early nomad days?

Hmmm American living has made me soft in so many ways. Have become accustomed to being able to sprawl with possessions around me, not worrying about security. In a country which has taken the material redistribution industry to a high level, this will never do. I will not survive a block outside of the airport.

But there are sparrow angels in the architecture, twittering amongst the travelers. We are all going to Graceland/traveling companions are ghosts and empty sockets....

Nomad dreaming: again

The camels have called. I must follow an old silk road of spirit.

Nomad dreaming. Again.

Death's undoing: terminal 4

Saw a blood red, half moon hanging in black velvet on some horizon over North America. Now JFK International Airport, New York City, thinks it is 6 am.

Body has no idea where to stash those lost hours, except rebellion against confinement in crowded flying sardine can.

Instead of tea, yoga and meditation of my habit, I contemplate death's undoing in the echoing cavern of Terminal 4.

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. It was the Second World War. Elizabeth was a teenaged Red Cross volunteer in Durban, tending to wounded soldiers. Boys become men by wounding. That's the terrier Jock at her feet.

ain't no mountain high enough

Making myself at home with Seatac FREE wifi before I am motherless between continents.

Oh oh oh Seattle I have loved and missed you. Sorry about the fly-by nature of my affections.

For my mother: hambe kahle

Feline family time: knocking on heaven's door

Now that the eagle has landed in dove-land of matrimonial bliss, I had my first east coast, blood of my blood, family experience, mid-August (yes I am still posting late. Technical difficulties, Busy, Busy.)
Steamy with humidity in August, Cranbury, New Jersey is small town east coast style, sandwiched between Princetown and Rutgers. Farmlands lap the edges of the town where the houses are anything but rural for someone from the I had a farm in Aaaaafrika Karen Blixen old country by way of the rural mountains of the west. A spaghetti of fast multilane highways and toll booths reel commuters in, unspool them at the end of the day.
It was a flying visit to meet the feline grandchildren, celebrate several natal days.
A hello and goodbye kind of fly-by in which we investigated the local second hand bookstore, The Cranbury Bookworm, quality-control tested the local coffee shop, The Blue Rooster Cafe and Bakery (after all there must be standards in the New World). Summary outcome: over-greasy fried egg flavoured hashbrowns, cracked cups but points for actually having a tea cup and saucer and looseleaf tea served in a teapot complete with cosy in the sticky heat of the day. Also major points for the rooster in the name and the iconography surrounding.

The search for the definitive hashbrown continues and no, you cannot distract me with flourishes such as a slice of watermelon and 5 pomegranate seeds. Love the mosaic tables on the porch, though.
Lionheart and I also paid respects to some of the old, old folks in an ancient cemetery of weathered stones and faded epigraphs, then wandered, in the rain, through a newer housing development for the more recently departed. We admired the dammed up river at Brainard lake (no relative to Fargo, name nothwithstanding) which a week later, thanks to wild lady Irene, became a raging torrent flooding the town.
Red, white and star spangled blue dressed up east coast colonial/Victorian architecture like a photospread in a design magazine all gleaming white, old cream or barn red, fluted columns and white painted porch furniture. Scored a sighting of yet another Iron Horse to add to my collection, this one a weather vane on a roof.
Ate the best homemade vegan waffles followed by the best homemade vegan carrot birthday cake EVER. Warm rain and movies in the middle of the day, on the couch. Cat behind lace in the widow. Cat on the counters drinking from the family heirloom china. Cat on the computer keyboard. Cat come home amongst the pigeons. Welcome! [Full set of pics on flickr. All 126 or more of them]

Commemorating a decade

Ten years ago today I was in the US Consulate in Johannesburg, surrounded by white flowers, white candles burning on desks and counters, seeing the first immigrant visa to be issued from Africa after 9/11 stamped approved. An experience made holy by history

13 September 2001: the day some doors closed irrevocably in order that others might open.

It's been a decade of loss, despair, hope, disillusion and unexpected small gifts. I have been seared by salt water then seared again in cycles of futility which only perspective reveals.

Today it seems I stand at the decade's peak contemplating the reversing moment of decisions and revisions, even as I descend in the slough of the next peak.

I always did live my life in seven year cycles, not ten anyway. Some things are so yesterday at the ten year mark.

Lose your temper and you lose a friend; lie and you lose yourself.

Dances with light: Swan Lake

The day after my non-paddle, Deliverance experience at Little Twin Lakes, I ranged further, thinking to find solace in the Sun Lakes basin. Somehow, though, I ended up, late afternoon, at Swan Lake, Ferry county, in the 1.1 million acre woods in my backyard, Colville National Forest.
It must have been that velvet horned stag who stamped his foot at me on the way, just before the magnificent cliffs which drew me to the place. I have no better explanation for why, when I headed out in the morning in one direction, I came home in the evening having paddled a lake in a rather different direction. Circles. The nomad dreaming kicking in again.

There were loons, an eagle swept my brow holding my attention aloft during some patches of murky shallows where the gnarled limbs of drowned trees rose out the deep to grasp at me with their tormented soul shapes - those things fishermen call snags, but which test my paddle vertigo.

I have found that sometimes there's a conscious reining of awareness necessary. I must tell myself to keep it light, keep thoughts on the surface play of light and reflection. To look beneath the surface: that way madness lies.
When it comes to large bodies of water, though I am irresistibly drawn, I only want to dance with the light on the surface. Watery depths hold terror for me. I have no desire to be a diver nor a swimmer in some of these places I have paddled this summer. There's too much pond slime ecology going on down there.
My Swan Lake afternoon was stained around the edges with quiet sublimity and setting sun saturated colours. A peaceful, prayerful place which, though not big, gave enough to charge the batteries.
For a while.

Shaken, not stirred: Little Twin Lakes, Colville National Forest

Another weekend, another lake. Or two maybe. Little Twin Lakes in Colville National Forest has primitive campsites (that means no running water, but there are fire pits) and a beautiful solitude with the deepest darkest wind stirred indigo blue water, on the day I was there way back in late July. Yes, I am posting late. August ate me up and is only now spitting me out the other side of the end of summer.

As I was surveying the somewhat rustic boat launch, the hair prickled on my neck and arms. The feeling that I was being watched was strong.

Before unloading the kayak, I explored a little further along the road circling the lake, taking the turning to the deeply wooded campsites.

I found one site which seemed occupied: an old car from the era of tail fins, and, his back to the road, on a camp stool next to a tent, an individual sitting motionless as a dummy or a dead person, staring into the middle distance. Straggly long grey hair, braces (suspenders) holding up blue jeans over a checkered shirt. Banjos were playing again.

Have I gone through a warp in time and stumbled onto the movie set for Deliverance? Found, perhaps, a body double, waiting for the cameras to roll or the clapper board to come down?
I decided not to kayak Little Twin Lakes that day. Something about that deep indigo and the motionless watcher made me uneasy. I have found it good counsel to trust my gut feelings when entering strange water for the first time. Even more so when alone.
Shaken not stirred. Deliverance 1 kayak paddle 0

Note: there are at lest three Twin Lakes within a few hours drive of my mountain town. This is the nearest and is in Stevens County, off HWY 20 just east of the town of Colville.

Stormy sunset

The rewards of not coming home and logging on are already evident. Last night a beautiful thunderstormy sky flared briefly molten. Just so happened that I was out there in that sudden fleeting magic.

Little bits of rainbow shimmered and played about the copper cathedral spire.

What a lightshow!

Yes for me it is proving definitely a good idea to turn off, tune out and drop in to reality around me. Season is changing fast. I am free to bear witness.

Now that I am getting over the initial shock of sudden withdrawal, I think that I am going to be so very grateful that the home internet was taken away from me.

We get just what we need when we are ready for it. That's how I console myself anyway. Platitudes or wisdom?

Note the addict's caution, still hankering for what is impoverishing,  even as I experience the liberation.