Gathering No Moss

Well, time to move on again. It's been a very good winter .. got some new things under my belt -- teaching university, modelling for art classes (which I'm almost out the door to do today), some new radio programs and sound pieces, lots of reading, lots of blogging, connecting with old friends ... it's been a full few months.

And now I'm starting to pack up and move out of Windsor ... boxing up things to take back to store at my friend Ellen's place in Hamilton. I'll be back and forth a few times in April and May. Come mid-June I'll be going out to housesit for my friends Hildi and Peter in Vancouver.

Two months on the Pacific coast ... those glorious mountains and salt sea breezes off of English Bay. Takes me back to my mid-twenties, arriving with practically no money and waiting and waiting and waiting for my UI cheques. And every day walking to the UI office to see if my money has arrived, frustrated, yet looking up at those mountains and saying to myself, thank god I'm here.

And ya, it's bound to hurt that this is where Barry lived the first part of our lives together. But I'd been there for a while before I met him, and there was a me out there that was not him. There have been very few places since where I can honestly say I've experienced my separate self and been so happy with her.

And I've got lots of friends to visit in really wonderful places all up and down the coast. And then in the fall, over to India, Sri Lanka and Thailand for an undetermined amount of time. I don't have to be anywhere at any particular time.

You know, my life would be darn near perfect right now if my heart wasn't still so sore. You think you're getting over it, and then it comes back to land another punch in the gut yet one more time.

To put it in some kind of perspective -- my friends Sarah and Kevin have this song that Kevin wrote (I'm working on a podcast right now with a conversation with them and five of their really great songs ... the CD will be out in the summer.)

The chorus of this song goes:

And the preacher is preaching salvation
And the judge and the hangman agree
But the point of this whole sad narration
Is the pain that will set us all free

And then there's the Epilogue, which sums it all up

And the preacher is playing piano
And the hangman is drinking the gin
And the judge is in bed with a barmaid named Fred
Too busy to save us from sin

So ultimately I guess that means we can experience our pain without fear of judgement ... because everybody's all wrapped in their own lives. There's something good in that.

You really have to hear the whole song, and all the others. Great album. (I'll let you know when the podcast is posted) Inspires me to start writing songs again too. I'll have a piano all summer in Vancouver. It really is all good.

Even the painful stuff -- it will set us all free.