While I stood there...

North Shore

On the Seawall

continued... on the Seawall

The Lion Gate

Siwash Rock

And while I stood there 

I saw more than I can tell 

and I understood more than I saw; 

for I was seeing in a sacred manner 

the shape of things in the spirit, 

and the shapes of all shaped's as they must 

live together like one being. —Black Elk Speaks

 

It is late September. There is an indefinable magic in the air. Everything is calm. There is stillness in the air. The autumn is a season of melodrama and reflection. The passing of time, like the north shore on the emerald water, is more noticeable in this time of the year than any other.  

What am I doing in this park?

Soon

We'll be treading through wet leaves,

pushing what's left of summer with a boot

in the immense twilight where we'll come to feel

that life is but a matter of a day,

that all things born must perish,

that tasks are all in vain,

that one knows nothing, has nothing, is nothing.

What am I doing in this park,

trotting out these hackneyed tropes?

Fall, evening, the end of all of it....

It's getting late, rain is on the way.

I'll catch cold if I don't go back home.

—Elegy Written in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Park, Robert Melançon

 

Beauty often is ephemeral

The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty wrote Yoshida Kenkō, a 14th-century Japanese Buddhist monk.

The sakura, or cherry blossom. The trees are famously fleeting. They bloom for only a week or two, and then the petals are gone. Other flowers — plum blossoms — last longer. Why go to such great lengths to cultivate something as fragile as the cherry blossom?

Because beauty lies in its own vanishing. Life is ephemeral. Everything we know and love will one day cease to exist, ourselves included. That is life’s one certainty. The cherry blossom is lovely not despite its transience but because of it. This has always been the case. 

The pandemic has driven home our own transience. And while it may be too much to ask to celebrate this truth under such dire circumstances, we can learn to tolerate the unknown, and perhaps even catch glimpses of the beauty underlying life’s uncertainties. 

Fraser River Tour III

To find beauty in the uncertainties! I observed the Fraser River from various vantage points: from a bridge, on its shores, by daylight and sunset. I would even bend over and peer through my legs, marveling at the beautiful inverted landscape. If you can’t change the world, change how you see it — even if that means contorting yourself. 

—Fraser River is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountain and flowing for 1,375 kilometres (854 mi), into the Strait of Georgia at the city of Vancouver.

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” —A.A. Milne

43 years in Canada

1978年2月21日我站在香港啟德機場平台上, 在寒冷早晨的陽光裡, 腳下放著行李箱, 我看著不遠之處的泛美航機747, 世界上最大型噴射機, 很快就會帶我去紐約然後去多倫多。我充滿了恐懼和不安, 最正確不過的恐慌, 例如, 在小島上生活和在有無限機會的新世界中作出選擇, 而不是困在一個男權至上社會中的暗淡前景, 因為我的人生選擇是如此有限。回頭看來, 這個行動像閃耀的北極光, 是我人生的轉捩點, 讓我可以受教育, 讓我在這個收容我的國家加拿大站起來。去過無數的地方, 經過無數的變動, 現在我在這裡, 溫哥華。

It was the 21st of February, 1978. I was standing on a platform in Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong. In the brightness of a cold morning, a suitcase at my feet, I was watching the Pan Am 747, the largest jumbo jet in the world, which would soon take me to New York then to Toronto. I was full of fear and uncertainty. It was all scarily accurate. It was, for instance, opting for the remote island life and a chance at the new world’s infinite opportunities instead of a gloomy future in a male dominated society because my choices in life were so limited. Looking back, this move shine through time like the northern light. It was a turning point, allowing me to have education and stand upright in my adopted country Canada. After many places, many moves, here I am, in Vancouver now.

Fraser River Tour II

January in Vancouver is challenging when you haven't really experienced it before. The days are really short. It starts at 8 am and ends at 4 pm. Which means there are about six hours of useful daylight. We don’t get to see the sun, because it only appears once every two weeks for 30 minutes if we're lucky. 
This is the most dreary part of the year in Vancouver. Wet, cold, damp, dull, grey, dark… only if the sun is out and all is well with the world.
And finally the sun came out today, and more than 30 minutes! 
Actually making it outside into the weather, the naked trees, the flying birds, changes everything. I walked to Fraser River in the wind, and breathed in the cold air at the top. It felt like the right thing to do after the year of 2020. Wish everyone well and alive! 

—Fraser River is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountain and flowing for 1,375 kilometres (854 mi), into the Strait of Georgia at the city of Vancouver.

Fraser River Tour I

We are in our 10th months of restrictions due to Covid-19 pandemic. There have been 765 deaths in B.C. and 14,331 deaths in Canada. 

Here, in our little place in LuLu Island, beauty and horror co-exist. I cannot complain of much hardship where we are. We live in a beautiful townhome surrounded by parks, farmland and oh yeah... Fraser River. But I am thinking about the deaths, the healthcare workers, and worrying about my mother, my daughters... Like many people, I've been struggling with sleep!

Walking it out may be the answer. I did 5 km this morning. I'd like to call it the Fraser River Tour — I started at home, and walked to River Road, skirted nettlebed and back home through #3 Road. The rose bushes are fading now, but there is cow parsley everywhere. And snow geese are returning, flying gently in the sunshine. Yes, walk it out, I say.

But this morning, oh my goodness, there wasn't anything else to say. How can we possibly begin to appreciate all this beauty?

—Fraser River is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountain and flowing for 1,375 kilometres (854 mi), into the Strait of Georgia at the city of Vancouver.