In Remembrance...

Earlier today I posted "In Flanders Fields" in honour of Remembrance Day. Later on I came across the following poem which was inspired by, and written in response to, "In Flanders Fields." I am posting it here in the hope that it touchs you as it touchs me. The last verse, and especially the last line, is what moves me the most in this poem.

The Fields of Flanders
by Edith Nesbit

Last year the fields were all glad and gay
With silver daisies and silver may;
There were kingcups gold by the river's edge
And primrose stars under every hedge.

This year the fields are trampled and brown,
The hedges are broken and beaten down,
And where the primroses used to grow
Are little black crosses set in a row.

And the flower of hopes, and the flowers of dreams,
The noble, fruitful, beautiful schemes,
The tree of life with its fruit and bud,
Are trampled down in the mud and the blood.

The changing seasons will bring again
The magic of Spring to our wood and plain;
Though the Spring be so green as never was seen
The crosses will still be black in the green.

The God of battles shall judge the foe
Who trampled our country and laid her low. . . .
God! hold our hands on the reckoning day,
Lest all we owe them we should repay.

Lest We Forget...

In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

What to write about?

I know I haven't written in a while, about 2 and a half months at this point, but I have been dealing with various issues. And I have been trying to figure out what I wanted to write about in this journal.

At this point I can't say that I have entirely figured out what this journal is going to be, but I do have some ideas. I also have some ideas about what this is NOT going to be. In fact, I am more certain about what I am not going to put in here than I am about what I am going to put in here.

First, I this is a journal, not a "blog." The difference here being that most people see blogs as commenting on the news, and the world at large, with lots of links and commentary. While I might include the odd link and greater commentary, this is a personal journal. I am writing about me and my world. But since I am part of the greater world, others things might creep in.

Second, I am not going to talk about work. At least not as much as I can avoid it. There is a chance that people I work with, and more importantly, for, could find this journal and read it.

However, this journal is intended to be an outlet for me. As such, it is intended to cover my life in general along with my emotional state. So just about anything can and will creep in at various points.

That being said, I setup a comment system on this journal. Feel free to leave whatever comments you want, although I would prefer if they were on topic and constructive. I do reserve the right to remove any comments I find to be offensive. It will be at my sole discretion. Please be aware that the currently the comments are stripped of all HTML code. I am looking to modify the code so that it keeps any line breaks that were entered. Currently they are stripped as well.

I have also setup an email address strictly for this journal. Feel free to email me there for anything from comments to coding errors relating to the journal to questions you might want to me to address. The email address is journal@wyldwoods.net As before, I reserve the right to deal with the emails I get at that address as I see fit. Or to discontinue the address if it starts to get spammed.

Anyone have any questions about this? Comment below, or email the address I listed above.

Peace.

More About Sunday

I said at the end of my last post that I had a bit of a surprise Sunday evening. Well, the surprise was a friend showing up at my door.

This is a friend I met this year at Rites of Spring, a gathering held each year at the end of May. She lives in New Jersey and had been up to visit once before. This time she was on her way to Maine for a few days and stopped on her way through because she was concerned about me.

We talked for a short time and then she continued up to Maine. She did invite me along, but I needed to go to work in the morning. Even more so since I am planning a vacation and don't want to use up the time I am planning for.

I do have to admit that we didn't talk for long because of me. There were a couple of reasons behind it. First, I was making myself something to eat when she got there and when it was ready I couldn't put off eating too long because of my blood sugar level. Second, I was not (am still not) that comfortable talking to people who matter. I had a hard time even making eye contact while we talked, because seeing the concern caused a ... a rush of thoughts and emotions that I couldn't deal with all at once.

What I mean by that is best explained (I think) as follows: I can talk to people at work, about work, because it doesn't matter, not really. However, my friends matter. Even more than that, my clan/tribe/chosen family matter even more and I have had a harder time getting in touch with them. Not that they are hard to reach, but because I could not even think about contacting them without that same rush of thoughts and feelings starting. I will also say that there are only a couple of people I consider to be in my clan and the main two a call my brother and my sister.

I suppose I should say that I am not a big fan of the phone to begin with, having done technical support for years, along with other jobs that required phone use, and when I get mixed up like this I am even less likely to use the phone. That being said, this morning I tried calling Sand, clan member and sister, to try to reach her before she left for FireDance. I didn't get a hold of her. I don't know if it was because she had left, or she was just out, or still asleep.

Namaje.

Washed Clean

Anyone in my area of the continent, Boston, knows what the weather has been like this week. But for the rest of you, it has been alternating between unbearably humid (and hot), and pouring down rain. This is not all that extraordinary for this part of the country.

Well, a couple of days ago, Sunday to be exact, I needed to get out of the house. So I decided to head into Boston to walk around and (hopefully) clear my head. It worked, sort of...

I got in my truck and drove into Boston, parked in the underground parking at the Commons, and just started walking around. I walked through the Commons, the Public Gardens, Downtown Crossing, and Quincy Market. There were a lot of people in this last one, more than I really wanted to deal with, but I was hungry so I stayed in the area for a while so I could get some food.

About the same time I finished eatting it started to rain, just a light shower really. This was enough to send most of the people in the area running for cover inside shops and doorways. This cutdown on the crowd enough that it was now fairly pleasant to wander around the now mostly empty (at least outdoors) marketplace, which I did for a while. Finally I started back towards Downtown Crossing and eventually the Commons and my truck. I did stop at the Borders Books on School Street for awhile on my way.

While I was in Borders the light shower transformed into a full blown thunderstorm with the sky openning up and dropping all the water it had. It was still like that when I left the store and continued back to my truck. It didn't take long before I was completely soaked, I think it was about 10 steps, but I continued.

I have to say that I didn't mind being soaked through. It kind of felt good, like the rain was washing away the pain I have been feeling. Emotional pain that is. It didn't wash away everything, but at least it got rid of a layer or two for a while. And of course, as much as I was enjoying getting completely soaked by the storm, I was also enjoying watching people huddle in any little bit of shelter they could find. It seemed like they were afraid of getting wet. Like they were afraid of nature itself, while I was enjoying being out in the rain.

It was almost like I was being carried back to a more innocent time, a bit like being a little kid again. Of course the feeling didn't last since I had to drive through Boston traffic to get home.

So Sunday afternoon wasn't too bad. The evening brought a bit of a surprise, but I'll write about that later. For now I need to get some food into me.

Namaje.

Nightmares

I don't normally remember my dreams. In fact, it has been so long that I don't know if I even dream anymore. I know I used to dream, but the last time I can remember dreaming was years ago. At least until the last two nights.

I don't remember much about the dream I had the night before last except that when I looked in the mirror I did not recognize the face that was looking back at me.

And then there was last night, and the nightmares...

I don't remember what happened in the nightmares last night, just that they were bad enough that by the time I was awake enough to realize what was going on I was standing beside my bed with the light on, I was sweating and my heart was pounding. It took a while before I could lay back down and go to sleep again.

I don't know whether it is a good thing I can't remember the nightmare or not. On the one hand, it might give me some clue about what has been bothering me for the past couple of weeks; but on the other hand, I have had some pretty vivid nightmares in my life and I don't need any more in my psyche right now. There are images I can remember from nightmares years ago that I can remember like they happened last night. And these were nightmares I had between 20 and 25 years ago.

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I want to write more about what I have been going through the last couple weeks / month, but I don't know what most of it is. And what little I do understand I can't put into words yet. But I will keep trying.

Speaking of Canada...

It turns out that the government has setup a webcam on a rooftop across the street looking out over Parliament Hill.

When I added this entry the camera was showing them setup for tonight's Canada Day concert on the hill. I don't know what it will be showing in the image below while you are reading this since I am loading the image directly from the webcam.

Happy Canada Day!

This past weekend was the first weekend in quite a while with good weather. The sun was shining, the day was hot but not too humid so it wasn't stifling. And since I had been planning on going to the annual T.O.P.I.C. PowWow, in Canton, MA as I have every year for the past 5, I went on Saturday.

Did I mention that it was sunny?

I got a bit of a sunburn. My face, arms, and a 'V'-shaped patch on my chest. The burn on my face and chest isn't too bad, neither are my forearms. In fact most of the red has already faded out of these areas. However, my upper arms, right to the shoulders, are still red and sore. I am treating the burn with an Aloe Vera Gel from the pharmacy and it is working great. The main problem is sleeping. I sleep on my sides and therefore end up lying on the burn most of the night.

I guess I will have to start wearing sunscreen. The couple of times in my life I have worn sunscreen I have hated it. And since someone out there is wondering, I have only worn sunscreen 2-3 times in my life and yet this is the first time I have had a sunburn that lasted more than a few hours, a day at most. Any other time the redness faded and it became a tan in a very short period. I guess this is not the case any more.

I blame the thinning of the ozone layer and the medications I am on for diabetes. The pills make you more sun-sensitive, although as I said, this is the first burn I have had that lasted and I have been on these same pills for a couple of years now.

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As I mentioned in the title of this entry, today is Canada Day, and yet this Canadian is stuck working. Of course is because I am currently in the Boston area and get July 4th off instead.

Comments, what comments?

Because I switched my host to one which supports PHP, I have been able to add functionality to this journal. I have added the ability to leave comments.

I don't know that anyone is actually reading these posts, or if they want to leave comments, but it is there now just in case.

And I should say that I know it has been almost two months since I have made an entry. I have a lot of stuff running through my head and once I get some of it to slow down enough I will write it up and post it here for all to see.

Namaje.

House, Sweet House

I need to figure out when I am going to be moving. Yes, I said when, not if.

The other day, while registering some things, I got to the part of the questionnaire which asked "Which of the following do you plan for the next year?" While I was going through I realized that I had checked the box for moving to a new residence, and that I meant it. I just don't know how far down the road it is, figuratively or physically.

While I don't necessarily want to move just yet, the advantages of living where I am are quickly being out-weighed by the negatives. I am not going to list out the negatives here. At least I don't plan on listing them, but who knows what time will bring. So the question becomes, when do I leave? Do I leave sooner when I am less able to afford it monetarily? Or do I leave later when the other costs of staying start to add up?

And once that has been answered, the next question is "Where do I move to?" The two main options I see at the moment are that I either get another small apartment in the area I lived a couple of years ago, or I move home.

I don't think a move is in my short term plans. Looking a month or so out. However, a small move could very well be in the works for three to four months out. That would depend on what kind of lease I can get, as well as what kind of answers I can come up with for those two big questions of When and Where.

Thinking about it a further, I guess I don't have to answer the When question first. I need to answer When and Where at the same time. Both for the short and long terms.

...

The saying "Home is where the heart is" just came into my mind. Well, if this is true then I have several homes. If only one of them was where I lived.