Global Consciousness

Wow. I am sitting here reflecting on the gifts of the amazing child, Ta'Kaiya Blaney, the ten year old singer and songwriter I posted about a couple of nights ago. She is a prodigy, who began singing and playing music at age three, and who has always been concerned about the environment.

When I see an amazingly talented child like Ta'Kaiya, it gives my tired old heart a lot of hope, because it means the consciousness on the planet is accelerating, and advanced souls like this child are coming here to help us make the shift, to point the way. I have been seeing a lot of these children lately, on tv, with their angelic faces and pure voices, their ancient eyes, and their message of peace and love for Mother Earth.

Old Souls. Beautiful spirits. With a message we need to listen to

with all our hearts.

Brrrrr!

My driveway.

Okay. Just kidding! Got the image from WreckedExotics.com

Just a reminder that things could be worse, hee hee. (Only in Canada, eh?)

Last night my daughter, sister, sister's boyfriend and I attended a terrific Canadian band at our small local theatre. The Stellar Band of Neighbours, so named because all the musicians live in the same neighbourhood, rocked the place. All very stellar musicians, indeed. I love musicians, so alternative, so outside the box, living their passion. What a great life, playing music, jamming, performing to thunderous aplause. Also likely living on the financial edge. But worth it to do what you love, and have joy. Lots of us live there, anyway, they have lots of company:)

My dad was a musician and my entire being is filled with music that has no outlet because I never learned to play an instrument. But I am like a tuning fork in the presence of music.
I vibrate, and my being plays along with those on stage.

Last night this group was so good even our staid usually reserved Port Alberni audience was on their feet and groovin' to the beat. It was wonderful.

Sigh.

In late January a string trio will play. Lisa and I must go!

This morning I am moving slowly, reminiscently. k.d.lang is on the stereo and after my morning tea I will tidy the living room and take a photo or two to show you how cute my living room is with my little tree. I may wrap some prezzies.....for that, I have to put John Lennon on, because every year he assists me with wrapping the Christmas gifts. I so love John.

Egads! Methinks the rain has stopped. The sky has lightened. My gray-sky lethargy is lifting off.
Thank heavens!

GIFTS

[Posted for  Poets United Thursday Think Tank prompt:
Thankfulness. It was written during another season of
gratitude and giving, but seemed
appropriate for today.]

My daughter's heartache
dimmed the lights
this Christmas.
Her raw grief
swamped our craft
and we both
went down.
But the spirit
is meant to try;
Hope lifts our feathers.
We point our noses
forward:
and, one by one,
the healing days
go by.

So yesterday
the sun came out;
the fog had lifted,
trees poking through
the mist
the way I like.
Coffee was on,
John Lennon and I
were singing
War Is Over and
Give Peace a Chance.
Soup was bubbling
on the stove,
the incense wafting.
Music is joy
and my feet
still can dance.

Today I sat
by someone's
dying mother.
How hard
she labored
to take
just one breath,
then another.
My Christmas gift
to God
I had thought
that this would be.
It wound up being
God's Christmas gift
to me.
I walked out
-on my own two legs-
past all the wheelchairs,
past those in bed,
into the falling dark.
Breathing in the fresh air
was a miracle,
the line between
my life and theirs
so stark.

Tonight at the end
of the road
I watched
a heron
lift elegantly
against the winter sky.
My daughter's voice
is growing
ever stronger;
her spirit
is remembering
how to fly.
My inbox
was full of love
as this
welcome
new year starts -
my life's true wealth
is friends
with golden hearts.

Even in pain and grief
-who doesn't have it?-
I remember
to be grateful
every day.
I am in love
with nature
and she is
all around,
so affluence
and plenty -
they abound.

Circling,
endlessly circling
through this stuff,
I make my way,
and I keep on 
coming home
to what's
"Enough".

What we're
looking for
is already
inside us.
What we
focus on
within our life
expands.
What we do
when things
get tough:
haul wood
and carry water,
use our hands
to give to
someone
who has
less than us,
sit with the dying,
remember the living,
write a poem -
assuage the loneliness
of the human heart
by giving.

My daughter, today :)

Remembering John Lennon

image from bandswallpapers.com

I was sipping 
warm mocha 
when my eyes
idly glanced
at the front page
of yesterday's
news.
"John Lennon
would have been
70 today,"
I read,
a fact
my brain
simply
refused.

Not possible,
for it wasn't
very long ago,
that he was
young and cool
and, while never  cool,
I , too, was young.
Most of life still
stretched before me,
with hope
my heart was strung.
I had time to waste
and more,
for the slow-moving
hand of time
to bring me
what it had
in store.

That hand has
speeded up now
and I need to
readjust
my vision
to the sight
of John Lennon
and I
teetering
on walkers,
or swinging
a mean cane.
The rockin' we'd
be doing
would be in chairs,
and all the songs
of love and pain,
all the heavy sighs,
would be about
how damned fast
this life goes by.

But John,
I still sing with you
when I have
your albums on:
War Is Over
and Give Peace
a Chance.
My heart still
constricts
and I 
can't believe
you're gone,
as you sing
your songs
to which
I used to dance,
with all that came
to be
just waiting
in the wings
that fateful day
that would 
whisk you
fast away.

You would have been
a really cool seventy,
and I am 64.
(I'm still not cool.)
And I swear
that it is
only an eyeblink
since I wandered
through Gastown
like a happy fool,
with my brown jacket
with the fringe
and my long red hair.
Your music
was playing
everywhere
and we shared
a dream,
the world
imagined
peace,
(You were
not
the only one),
when Blackbird
sang in
the dead of night
and all the lovely
out of sight
tomorrows
were still
shining
so bright,
not yet
passed and
full of loss
and
sorrow.

I live in a world
sadder
for the loss of
your clear voice,
and war is everywhere
more than it ever was.
But Peace is still
a choice.

Beam us some
from where
you're watching,
lonely dreamer,
whose music
recalls
those days
we thought
would never
end.
Your birthday
reminds me
of what I am
too
well aware:
there are fewer
tomorrows
than yesterdays
now,
my friend.

SHINE

(Raymond Brian "Brick" Baker, my dad)

Music is part of my heritage. It's in my genes. I was conceived, marinated and raised in music, and from the time I was small, I wanted to be a singer. My father had begun as a classical violinist, but had then fallen in love with jazz. Still in his youth, he switched to alto sax and clarinet and joined a band, to the dismay of his parents. Ever after, they rued the day they bought him his first saxaphone, blaming the music scene for his subsequent alcoholism and the downhill turning of his life, which had begun so full of promise.

My dad was hugely talented, and he bitterly watched lesser musicians, with whom he had played as a young man, pass him by and rise to some measure of success and fame. He never made the connection between his drinking and his inability to hold a job for long, in the music field or out of it. He had a very hard time with the emergence of rock 'n roll, and used to sit snorting with disgust at the television. "That's not music!" When in his cups, he'd stick out his tongue at the set and make a blowing noise: "Phphphphphphphphphphphpht!" But he was too transfixed with rage to change the channel.

Because of him, and because all the other kids loved them and I wanted to be different, I didnt immediately swoon over Elvis and the Beatles. The music of the '40's serenaded my life: Pennies From Heaven, I'll Get By, Stardust, As Time Goes By. They still have the power to take me right back, to my parents' lives in Kelowna. It is the love songs of their era, not mine, that I remember best.

(My folks on the dock in Kelowna, late 40's)

My mother liked to tell how my dad taught me, at age fifteen months, to do the musician's backwards hand-clap, on the knee, to the beat: "choo-whish-te-choo, whish-te-choo", and how I had the tempo down pat. Nights when the party atmosphere had not yet degenerated into shouting and the crashing of fallen bodies in the living room, sometimes they would get me out of bed, in my ratty plaid dressing gown, to perform for the company. I'd wail winsomely "Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe", do a self-taught little dance routine with a big grin, then go back to bed, feeling like a star. It was only a matter of time until I'd be discovered.

I longed to play an instrument. I would stand beside friends as they played the piano, looking at the musical notes I could not decipher, with tears in my eyes. Music was a magical language and I uninitiated into its mystery. I ached with longing to sit at the keyboard and play, express all the music I felt so strongly inside me. I asked my mother for lessons. But we were poor; she said she didnt want to waste the money.

All I had was my battered little boxed record player. I would close my bedroom door, turn it on, leave the world of pain and confusion I lived in behind me, and enter a new one, filled with music, hope and the dream of a better life.

There was high excitement when my dad came home on the weekend with new albums; in those days they were 33 and a thirds. One time he bought five, a rare extravagance in our circumstances, then got drunk and sat on them, smashing them before he'd even played them all.

I was twelve when I bought my first record with my babysitting money. It was a 45: "Twilight Time". My dad hovered anxiously as I put it on the turntable. As its slow notes and pure tones sounded, he relaxed. "I guess I dont have to worry about your taste in music," he approved. High praise!

(My dad on the wharf on Okanagan Lake in Kelowna, likely in the late 40's)

Briefly, my mom did allow singing lessons when I was eleven. I was sent to an aged old nun, who sat at the keyboard resignedly plunking out the notes, bored and disinterested, as I stood in my school uniform and sang "There Was a Little Green Elf" without conviction. I even was entered into a singing competition and somehow managed to get through it without disgracing myself. Nor did I stun those assembled with an electrifying performance. I just couldnt get too worked up about a little green elf. (I can still remember that song today!) My mother and father sat in the audience, one of the only times I remember them attending an event of mine. The judges, bored, noted down my mark without enthusiasm. It was clear that this was not to be my fast track to fame. I stopped going to lessons and returned to my preferred music, about love and pain.

Also briefly, my mother enrolled me for ballroom dance lessons, to help me with the awkward passage from twelve to teen. There was one shining evening when I performed at the Stanley Park tea room, and stole the show from a roomful of adult performers. Somewhere there's a photograph of me groovin' to the beat, the instructor beaming down at me as I did the Swing, glowing and laughing into the camera.

But it was with my records, in the privacy of my room, where I unleashed my real voice, the voice of my longing, that no one but my long-suffering family ever heard.

I was in my Grandma's back room listening to the radio when I first heard Brenda Lee on the radio. I stood stock still with a shock of recognition. She was singing her big hit "I'm Sorry", and I recognized that her vocal range was exactly like mine. I could sing like her! I had to get her records! I was further excited when the announcer said she was only thirteen years old, like me: a little bitty girl with a great big voice, who was already a star.

Brenda Lee saw me through my teens. My mother called what I did up in my room "coon shouting", as I balefully sang with all the dramatic anguish of my teens. I thought a coon was an animal, and didnt get the connection. I vaguely pictured some men out in the bush, hollering for raccoons. It was only later that I realised, with a start, that it was a racial slur, intended to diminish that heartfelt singing that expressed all the pain I had no words for, all those bright dreams that one day I would lose the acute self-consciousness that prevented me from being the person I knew I was meant to be. One day I would spread my wings and fly beyond this life of pain and limitation. As long as I could sing like this in my room, the possibility existed that one day I would sing before an audience, and they would like it. They would like me. One day I would shine.

It didnt happen. My stronger need was to provide myself with the kind of home and family I hadnt yet experienced, the story book life promised by all the books and movies and the songs that fed my dreams. Marriage, babies and heartbreak claimed the next two decades of my life.

I didnt sing at all during my marriage. But after it, music once again claimed my soul and rode along with me. My children remember me singing. I sang along with Abba, with Joan Baez, with Stevie Knicks, with The Bells, the Beatles and Elton John. In my little house full of children, I sang for the joy of living, for the morning breaking, for the dream of a love that had not yet come. I sang for happiness and hope. I sang the song that was mine.

I have become a great appreciater and encourager of musicians, of anyone with talent. I want them to not be held back by what had held me back. "Go for it!" I tell them. "You're terrific! Shine on!" I encourage them to throw off all the self-consciousness I had not been able to conquer, to feel "good enough", to assume the confidence I was unable to muster. To believe in themselves as I had not been able to, and to go for their dreams. Part of my encouragement is vicarious; they can do what I did not, can live that part of the dream for me, that alternate reality, that road untaken, due to the circumstances that shaped my early world.

Years when I worked in a coffeehouse, I was the most rapt of listeners, the music inside me still aching for release, but this time flying along on the fingers and voices of others. The musicians always said they didnt need a big audience as long as they had me to listen to them :)

Music is still a passion, and I still cant play a single instrument, still am too inhibited to leap about at dances and release the beat pounding within me, to set it free. I stopped singing some years back; I lost my voice when I got ill. It is enough now to listen, to applaud others in their golden moments, to join my being with its music to the All That Is, the great song of life.

Acceptance finally comes that it is too late to be a young star rising; too late to be the youngest published author in Canada; too late to be the person I once dreamed that I would be.

But it isnt too late, it is never too late, to shine.

Project Genesis: Eat Locally~Help the Planet, Help Yourself

photo by NASA: Save the Earth

Saturday mornings at Harbour Quay, we have a farmer's market, full of a rich variety of local produce, baked goods and arts and crafts. The setting, on the water, is lovely (except for the encroaching clearcut across the water - unsustainable logging drives me crazy!). Deep sea vessels find their way along this inlet to pick up our lumber and take it Away. Sadly, we are exporting a lot of jobs with the wood.

The atmosphere at the market is friendly, and carnival-like. A far lovelier experience than supermarket shopping, but it is so much more than that.

Our local market is under tents, while awaiting construction of a new improved site close by. I love the freshness, nutrition and flavor of locally grown produce. Love knowing it has not been tampered with, or loaded with chemicals and preservatives. Not genetically modified. Just fresh, nutritious, flavor-full whole foods, grown close to home. Like my grandma used to cook and eat.

It is better for us, but also better for the planet to eat locally.Transporting food over great distances adds to fossil fuel emmissions. A regional diet consumes 17 times less oil and gas than food shipped across the country. A local meal travels 66 times fewer food miles than imported foods in supermarkets. (source: The 100 Mile Diet by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon)

We can enjoy fresher, healthier, tastier food while reducing our human impact on the planet.

There are always garden-fresh beautiful bouquets available for a song.

Produce just doesnt get any fresher than this. The flavor, compared to stuff picked green and "ripened" in trucks while it crosses the country, is unparalleled.

Spuds with a friendly smile. A lovely way to shop and feel good about supporting our local family farmers. Agro-business and multinationals have made it difficult for small farmers to survive. We can enjoy better nutrition, encourage sustainable farming, and reduce our carbon footprint, all at the same time. And have fun doing it!

Honey fresh from the hive. Our grandparents ate whole foods. I do believe there is a direct link between our consumption of processed foods full of chemicals and preservatives, hormones and antibiotics, and the rise in cancer in North America. The jury is still out on the effects of genetic modification. But messing with nature cant be a good thing. I believe in growing things the good old fashioned way, and raising our domestic animals and chickens humanely.

This Saturday there was even live music. The Marim-Bam-Buzz Band played their joyful marimbas and set all our toes to tapping. Everyone was smiling, and it was as much fun to me as a trip to the Mardi Gras.

Beautiful huge blueberries and beautiful smiles!

Climate change means we need to focus on meeting our needs locally. It is healthier for us and better for the planet. It helps preserve farmland. We can ask our local grocery stores to feature organic and local produce. Most are happy to meet customer demand. When the demand is there, business will respond.

This cool car was parked near the market.

The Rage's Farm booth is always knee-deep in customers. Their produce is fantastic.

These little girls looked so adorable!

I couldnt resist this glorious little sweater, fresh off the knitting needles, for my cousin's first grandchild. It has little red cars for buttons, too cute.

Our town has another market on the main road into town. Naesgaard's Farm Market has been around for decades and offers wonderful locally grown produce as well as starter plants for local gardens.

Their entry is so inviting. Being on the main road through town, they attract a lot of tourists on their way to the west coast. But we locals are happy they are there as well. A trip to both of these markets is highly enjoyable. Plus you come away feeling good about supporting them, with bags of the most lush and flavorful fruits and vegetables. It is win/win all around.

This week they had some old tractors on display and were fund-raising for Children's Hospital.

This is their cornfield, right beside the market.

Multinationals have created a system, and a dependency on that system, that works well for them and for their Bottom Line: Profit. But it doesnt work too well for humanity in general, or the planet. We can vote with our feet and support our local food producers. It's a vote for this planet, which is our home.

For many more great ideas on how to help Mother Earth, please go to

http://oldgreymareprimitives.blogspot.com/2010/06/project-genesis-7110.html

BROCK AND FRIENDS

The original coffeehouse with Lea-Ann's clothes hung out to dry :)

There are wounds that leave no scars, and I'm sure there isnt a person living on the planet who doesnt carry a fair share of them. My psyche bears the imprint of my beginnings in a violent, alcoholic household. It took years for the scar tissue to form around my numb and frightened heart, decades more to scrape away the layers and rediscover its beating presence within.

My childhood had been followed by a soul-crushing marriage, and then an affair with a man who time revealed to be a con man and an alcoholic. Now I was alone. For years I lived only for and with my four children. I felt safe only with them, beating a path between the library, grocery store and home. We did everything together. We hiked up Knox Mountain to fly kites on the grassy slopes, we went to the lake, or for bike rides, me leading the way on my big bike, the kids trailing behind me on their smaller ones like a brood of ducklings. My entertainment was their all-night sleepovers, when they danced and played and had popcorn fights, and I was their audience.

When I found Brock and Friends coffeehouse in Kelowna in 1980, there was a fozen Siberian wasteland living in my chest. I looked out at the world through frightened eyes. But something drew me through that door - something that wanted me to live.

I was shy, self-conscious almost to the point of muteness. But the minute I stepped through the door, something in my spirit knew I had come home. Here was the other side of life I had been searching for, here were dreamers and seekers, people who lived gently on the earth and with each other. Here people were accepted as they were; people gave freely, unafraid, unconditionally. Here people who felt they didnt fit in anywhere else, fit in. I watched people come in the door and be greeted warmly, by name, and wondered: Could there ever be a day when I'll be one of those people?

Brock and I in the new bigger coffeehouse. I preferred the old one.

In this little old house full of plants and stained glass and glorious music, my life turned down another pathway. Out of their abiding kindness, they offered me acceptance and safety and space just to be. My life as I now know it could never have been, had I not walked through that door.

The coffeehouse was run by volunteers, so I pushed through my shyness and put my name down for some shifts. Local musicians signed on for evening performances and, irresistably, the music drew me forth.

Brock loved the stage :)

At first, I was afraid to come out of the kitchen. I prepared the food, served it, then scuttled back to wipe down the counters, over and over. People were kind to me. They never pushed. They were the same to me whether I was happy or sad, mute or awkward. Still, if a man came into the kitchen and walked up too close to me, I froze completely. It was easier with the women.

Brock often said, "Come out and enjoy the music, Sherry. You dont have to stay in the kitchen."

Brock was a true clown. I never laughed so much in my life as I did with him.

In time I crept as far as the doorway, to watch and listen. Finally, I leaned up against an old treadle sewing machine just inside the door, and let the music take me away. I listened with an ache that was almost physical. All my life, I had wanted tp sing. Buit my self-conscious "not good enough" inner self held me back. I sang in private. Once, thinking I was alone, I was singing along with the tape deck as I chopped vegetables in the kitchen. Brock came out of his office and said "Sherry, you should be singing here with the others. You have such a beautiful voice."

Too shy. Too self-conscious. One part of me trying to break and fly free, the other holding me to the earth.

Lea-Ann with the voice of an angel

Magical evenings happened in that coffeehouse. Once after a public performance, some musicians from a symphony orchestra came to the coffeehouse and jammed with the local musicians. One of the regulars, Roger Sparks, had written a song called Gentle Jonathan about his brother's suicide. It was one of our favorite numbers. The musicians took that melody and improvised a fifteen minute riff on it that was utterly magical. Everyone was blown away.

At the end of the evening, as we were closing up, Brock came up to me and, for the first time, gave me a hug. "What a magical evening this was!" he said.

Lea-Ann, Brock and Roger, tuning up

I walked home under the stars with an awakening heart. Other than my children, this was the first hug anyone had given me in many years. I woke up the next morning in tears. I was coming alive, and it was painful.

I called Brock. "It hurts to feel! It was easier to be frozen!"

"No, dont ever say that," Brock chided. "It is always better to feel, to be alive. If you dont feel the pain, you cant feel the joy either."

It was while Brock and I were chopping vegetables side by side in the kitchen one afternoon, giggling and joking, that I realized I was standing next to a man and that I trusted him. I had never trusted a man vefore. But Brock was as safe as a brother. He had given me space and acceptance and time to heal from the traumas of the past and, unforced, the bud of my being slowly began to unfurl.

I realized I was giving of myself, and getting back something I never had, the sunshine of others' joy, and a reflection of myself I had never seen before, in all of my friends' eyes. What I gained in those years was so much more than what I gave. I gained back my life there, the life I was meant to live as the person I was meant to be. No small gift.

Here, I found my true home, and a family.

Myself, my dear friend Jeane and Guy, the "regulars"

Now, when I walked in the door, other faces lit up and called happily to me. One day while I was cleaning the toilet, down on my knees, scrubbing away, feeling satisfied that I was tending those I loved so caringly, the realization hit me: "THIS is the love I've been seeking all my life." I had thought I longed for a partner to give love to me and fill the empty places that had lived in me unfilled my whole life. Instead, it was in giving love, that I was filled. It was a revelation.

I began to write again, and to flower, and my shyness fell away. The coffeehouse marked a turning point in my life, set me on a kinder path than the walkways I had traveled, pointed me in the direction of my dreams. From that time on, I was on my own journey. I was on my way.

We had poetry nights. One evening the little Suzuki violin players came and played for us. Musicians both famous and not famous played for us, many of the undiscovered with surpassing talent. I adored the music and was expressive in my appreciation. Strangely, while the local bars were packed, most evenings we had only a scattered handful of people to enjoy the amazing offerings. Bu the musicians used to say "We dont need an audience when we have Sherry," because I loved it all so much.

One day Brock told me, "You must know you're a healer, Sherry, dont you?" I did not know. I only knew I was happiest in giving. I took home and housed one or another of the young girls who found the coffeehouse, until they found somewhere of their own to live. At the cofeehouse, as we prepared the food, there was so much laughter, there were times I could hardly stand up from laughing so hard.

Jeff with his face painted. Lisa and Steph were around there somewhere

One glorious afternoon, we had an outdoor musicfest in a huge grassy field outside of town. As a Celtic band called Mullingar began to fiddle their lively jigs, spontaneously most of the audience leaped up and began to dance and whirl all over the field in a glorious circle, against the setting sun. A moment that will live in memory forever.

Four year old Stephanie is on Guy's shoulders

I longed to join them, envied their joy and abandon, remained stalk-still at the edge of the field, imprinting the sight on my retina.

By the time the coffeehouse closed, a few years later, I stood on the stage and addressed eight hundred people, telling them of my gratitude for the years we had shared. One of the women came up to me later with tears in her eyes and said "Your power and your beauty made me cry."

Brock and Friends healed the inner wounds, and gave me wings to fly. With music and kindness and time and gentleness, they raveled a warm cloak of love around me that I carried with me forever after. I tip my hat to the universe for those golden years, when I burst out of my shell of pain and emerged into the land of the living, assisted by the kind folk at Brock and Friends, my family for all time.

My time there had been al about following one's heart and so, the next leap was a huge, trusting move to Tofino, the home of my dreams. Tofino was like one big coffeehouse, full of the alternative lifestyle folk with whom I feel most at home. I came out of myself even more, but still sang and danced only when I was alone.

In Tofino, at every musical event, the entire crowd became a palpitating, writing mass of ecstatic gyration. I was far more open now, much braver. But still not liberated from my self-consciousness enough to get out of my seat and gyrate with the crowd. I thrummed with the beat of the drums all through my being, but could not leave my chair.

All this lifetime, one part of me longed to be Out There while the other held me fast. I could reflect on so many wasted chances to fully participate in life, many missed opportunities to fully savor joy - and yet, still, all those times, inside my heart, I danced.

Thanks, Big B :)