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Johnnie tagged me

January 31, 2008 By Being 6 Comments

Johnnie Moore tagged me to reveal eight things about myself you probably didn’t know and then tag eight others…alright then.

  • Since 1987 I have worked with the I Ching as a way to understand the pattern language of change, using it to sharpen my seeing about all kinds of situations.   I don’t use it as a fortune telling device, rather as a user’s manual to change. It is one of my oldest practices, although   by no means a daily one.
  • Since January 1986 I have kept written journals which have recorded 22 years of living.   They are less diaries and more just notebooks of many shapes and sizes.   I have only lost one, spanning a period of nine months or so during which a close friend was murdered.   It was in a bag I had stolen at a gig.
  • All eight of my great-grandparents were born in Canada, and most of my 16 great-great-grandparents were born here too.   For a country of immigrants, and considering that most of my ancestry is European, that is a remarkable stat.   In 2001 only 4% of all Canadians had all four of their grandparents born here.   My wife is South African by birth, so my kids and grandkids will be firmly in the other 96%.
  • I have only owned two cars my entire life, but too many bicycles to count.   Because I grew up in Toronto, I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 24.
  • I wear a signet ring that has a phoenix on it.   It was given to me by my paternal grandfather in 1989 when I turned 21.   He mused that it was a crest that had been in our family since the 1300s, and was a common symbol that Christian crusaders adopted from their time wrecking havoc in the middle east.
  • My first job for which I was paid was working in a cemetery.   During high school I earned money lifeguarding, working at a self-serve gas station and selling tropical fish at AAA Aquarum on Yonge Street in the days before the big box pets stores did in the little guys.   The owner of that shop died from AIDS-related pnuemonia in 1986.   He was the first person I knew who had HIV.
  • I was a teenage stamp collector.
  • Although I have met many bloggers in my life after reading their blogs, Johnnie was the first one to offer me a safe harbour and a spare bed to crash on for a couple of days when I was travelling through London last summer. It was a generous gesture born out of a uniquely 21st century trust relationship.   Out of gratitude for   imposing on an otherwise perfectly good weekend of getting lost in WoW, I have responded to this tag…Thanks again, mate!

So that’s it.   I’m leaving Regina tomorrow for Calgary and Seattle to do a little work with the Quinault Nation and catch up with Harrison Owen, who is breezing through town.   To pass on the meme I’m tagging the last eight bloggers I’ve met face to face with: Tenneson, Ashley, Christie, Jeff, Andy, James, Nancy, and Andre.

Cold. Very very cold.

January 30, 2008 By Conversation, Facilitation, First Nations, Open Space, Travel

Workshop

Regina, Saskatchewan

I love it here…big open prairie sky meets wide expanse of earth. And over it all, the air is chilled, so cold that I actually succumbed to the spit test. I spat on the sidewalk and immediately poked at my saliva with my boot. It had instantly turned to ice powder. The thermometer in my ride’s car said -41. By this afternoon it had warmed up to -28, which is the current temperature. If the warming trend continues, it’s supposed to be a balmy -14 by tomorrow afternoon. That is a 27 degree difference: the difference between a freezing fall day and a too hot summer afternoon.

I can’t imagine how people survived out here in the old days. Getting to the fire, as Chistina Baldwin says, is indeed a life and death situation.

In a training workshop today with some lovely community leaders and tomorrow we run a day long Open Space for the community. Exploring hosting and getting ready to harvest leadership for community change.

You know you travel a lot when you are stranded at home by accident.

January 29, 2008 By Travel One Comment

I’m sitting in the Vancouver airport killing time before a flight out to Edmonton.   I spent last night at home, which was a surprising novelty.

I have been on Whidbey Island most of last week delivering another workshop on The Art of Hosting Conversations that matter – more on that soon.   Yesterday I was due to fly from Seattle to Calgary and then on to Regina where I am spending three days doing work to support the Urban Aboriginal Strategy there.   Two of those days (today and tomorrow) were to be a two day hosting workshop and Thursday I am opening space for a large community meeting aimed at revitalizing the process.   Following that, I have to fly back to Seattle for a day of work withthe Quinault Indian Nation and then home on Saturday for a week.
Travel was complicated by a blizzard that swept across the   prairies yesterday bringin temperatures in the low -40s to Regina and Calgary.   When I checked in in Seattle, I discovered that my flight to Calgary had been cancelled, so they routed me through Vancouver.   When I got here, the flight to Regina was cancelled in the face of a raging blizzard and windchills that dropped the temperature to -53.   I can’t even conceive of air that cold.   You’d think it would just drop out of the atmosphere and pool around your feet.

So, I lucked out by being stranded in Vancouver.   I went home and enjoyed a nice unexpected evening with the family.   When I woke up this morning, we had ten centimeters of snow on the ground and I was seriously doubting whether I would be able to leave Vancouver.

It’s now midafternoon, I’m checked in and everything seems clear on my evening flight to Edmonton and then to Regina.   I get in at midnight.   The weather should be warming up significanlty while I’m there.   They are expecting highs of -31 tomorrow.   Thursday should be a balmy -15.

If my flesh doesn’t freeze solid, I’ll be back to Seattle Friday and then home Saturday for a bit of a rest.

Lorca and the spaces that ache

January 22, 2008 By Poetry 2 Comments

One of my favourite lines of poetry ever written is contained in this surreal poem from Frederico Garcia Lorca.   I remember reading the final stanza for the first time maybe ten years ago and it shook me.

Intermission

Those eyes of mine from 1910
saw no dead man buried,
no ashen fairs of mourners at dawn,
no heart quivering in its corner like a sea horse.

Those eyes of mine from 1910
saw only the pale wall where the girls tinkled,
the snout of the bull, the poisonous mushroom,
and the incomprehensible moon that illuminated dried lemon rinds
under the hard black bottles in the corners.

Those eyes of mine on the neck of the pony,
on the pierced breast of the sleeping Saint Rosa,
on the tiled rooftops of love, with moans and fresh hands,
on a garden where cats ate the frogs.

Attic where the ancient dust congregates statues and mosses,
boxes that keep the silence of devoured crabs
in the place where the dream squabbled with its reality.
My small eyes are there.

Don’t ask me any questions. I have seen how things
that seek their way find the void instead.
There are spaces that ache in the uninhabited air
and in my eyes only children dressed without their nakedness!

Home again, gone again

January 21, 2008 By Travel

Queen of Capilano pulling into Horseshoe Bay, below Black Mountain

Just when I get home, off I go again. This time, I’m travelling to Whidbey Island for the Art of Hosting and then on to Regina, Saskatchewan for work with the Urban Aboriginal Strategy there, a combination of training and hosting a one day Open Space meeting.

So the light blogging continues until I can find some time and connections to speak about. In the meantime, enjoy the recent additions to my flickr account of some photos of Maui, a trip to the Quinault Nation, and life here on my home island.