Composted

It’s Canadian Thanksgiving again, a whole year later. It’s incredible how fast the years seem to fly by now, at the ripe “old” age of 44. This becomes most obvious to me on Tuesdays for some reason. Have you ever caught yourself realizing it’s Tuesday again, though it just seemed to be Tuesday like five minutes ago? I swear there are more than 52 Tuesdays in a year. 

Which makes me think of that song Walking on the Moon by The Police? Do you know it? I urge you to if you don’t, at least for this one particular line that goes “tomorrow’s another day… to stay.”

For all my life, up until a key turning point about five years ago, I thought Sting was singing “tomorrow’s another day… Tuesday” (try it, it fits). My then-boyfriend laughed at me and demonstrated with accentuated pronunciation and exaggerated mouth movements to stay. Well, I guess there’s a song like that for all of us. Tuesday suits me better, because it speaks to the ordinariness of life (it’s just another Tuesday), which I consider to be its richness. It poses a problem though – it makes the song irrelevant any day but Monday. To stay invokes a different feeling, communicates a deeper message that in some ways extends the ordinariness of just another Tuesday and suggests the option to stay, to commit to, to sit in and be with and feel the ordinariness of life, which includes the crap and chaos and joy.

Anyways, I promised not to start this by digressing, a rule which I’ve already broken, but this is why I make them in the first place. Do you ever do that? Make a rule for yourself that you know you’re going to break for the pleasure of rebelling in your own life? I mean the inconsequential ones of course, like only having two cups of coffee instead of the safer-bet one. Or digressing in your own writing, and knowing there’s at least one person out there reading this rolling their eyes. 

Reflections of Thanksgiving in yesteryears included thoughts on falling in love, gratitude for all I have, and feeling thankful for loss (when I was trying to reframe a difficult time). I’m not attempting to wrap Canadian Thanksgiving’s grim history in rose-coloured paper, but instead direct my attention to gratitude in general. So, this year’s reflection is on the romance of life, which is to say the mystery, excitement, anticipation, and remoteness from life caught red-handed in those simple ordinary everyday moments.

It sprung forth to catch my attention and direct my heart and mind and awareness towards all those delicious moments that require nothing other than my presence. Precious moments that don’t require money in the bank, a 5-year plan, or any sort of material validation. Romance unlike all the ways I’ve habitually encountered it in my life: in travel, in men, in a fresh new life plan, in another teeth-sink project, in a joint or a bite of ganja brownie, in a rose quartz dildo (yes, I just wrote that). Not to say such things aren’t the stuff of romance, but they’re oriented towards an outcome – a change of scenery, a person, an altered state of consciousness, a way to feel different, be different, do different.

This morning, I woke up feeling grateful just for a good night’s sleep after a few not-so-good ones (anyone who knows that blessing, knows that “just” is a facetious modifier here). I had the kind of sleep that leaves drool stains on your pillow and dirt under your toenails, perhaps a scraped knee, and a feeling of having been somewhere else, galavanting through the wilderness, bathing under waterfalls, napping on mossy earth, visited by exotic birds soothing all the accumulated nervous system strife. I awoke with a very full bladder, but without the usual grit behind my eyelids, but rather a soft, squishy alertness, and met the day with eyes that felt like fresh quiet rain puddles.

And the feeling of being unafraid to put my face out into the world, but instead choosing to plant it in old, musty books with secrets to life, in front of large brown Kraft paper to collect random spillings of a mind sorting itself out (this is actually possible!), to stare out the window at the striking silhouette of Doi Suthep while my moka pot coffee percolated the day’s finest offering. 

In one of those sacred, ordinary moments, my gaze fixed on the way the sun lit up every leaf of every branch of every tree on the mountain. The way the fluffy clouds – so fluffy and white as if they’d come straight out of a child’s drawing – drifted above the mountain and cast shadowy shapes on its contours. I watched them morph into elephant trunks and old lovers’ names as my rich black brew rose to fill the pot, realizing how much better coffee is when it percolates up rather than down. The glorious hiss and steam of coffee, ascending to its power to transform the mood, the mind, the previous night’s misgivings.

Then the inner world sprung properly forth.

Sat on my deteriorating-in-a nice-way wood floor, I ate crunchy peanut butter on homemade oat toast. Crumbs, Ignored, I jotted down ideas for a new project (they’re coming in from all angles these days). Kundalini music (who knows why) wafted from my speaker, sending its seductive, feathery sound into every corner of my home, making the plants perk up with fresh, leafy life. Sandalwood incense rose in seductive swirls across the room and out through wide open windows to meet the cityscape.

A raw, organic allowance slowly saturated the morning, so I literally rolled with it, across the floor, in between mind spills and sips of hot, oily coffee. I danced with a recently discovered, naked sense of freedom. The kind of freedom that’s realized when you finally give up the game. The freedom from self, but with the ever-enduring ability to sow the seeds of self, enjoy the silliness of self, sink into the wildly conflicting sensations of being a feeling human without drowning in them. The freedom of being a wave but knowing you’re the ocean. Like a new seed sprouting, after feeding on the leaf rot of an old way of being, and breaking through the surface of rich, moist soil to see the day and grow towards the light with its roots firmly based in its recycled origins. 

There was no beard, no statuesque stone, no 5-year plan, no money spent or made. No flight booked. Just home-brewed, up-and-up coffee, spontaneous movement, a thick black marker, and a giant piece of paper. Oh, and crunchy peanut butter.

I might need a shower at some point today, but for now, the conditions for a Canadian doing Thanksgiving in an ordinary Thailand-based life are perfect. The turkey can fill someone else’s belly, the wine may be poured by someone else’s hand and drunk by some other lucky mouth, the smells of the feast only remembered, a passing up of the pumpkin pie. They’re only symbols of a culture anyway, one that has its roots in me like a banyan tree, impossible to detangle but seen well enough to realize they don’t run the show.

So, I’m grateful for the simple allowance inside these moments. Now that the seeds of self are tended to, I can slip on my flip flops, get outside and breathe in another ordinary day, and go do some good for the people I love.