No Love Lost

I end the year with the letter L for Lamprey; a being that seems to be a fitting parallel to embody my past year. I was drawn to exploring this creature as a metaphor but the more I read about them I truly became enthralled with this captivatingly disturbing jawless fish. While I did not explore their patterns of mating or courtship, theirs is a story of exploration into overcoming the challenges they create…

The long and winding road of recovery...

I’m still in recovery with my three best buddies and unable to spend long periods of time at the computer. Dictation has been the way that I have managed to keep up with the daily emails and communication. While this feature of dictating to my phone has been helpful in the day to day repartee, it’s not as easy for me to craft a story that way… 

As such, I’m in still in the process of working on the finishing updates to Resonance, our letter K; and now, this month’s Love Wins character. We’ll be ending the year with a being whose existence is antithetical to the traditional species I write about which are vulnerable or on the brink of extinction. Rather, December’s Love Wins being is more like a character from the reels of a creature feature… 

Be sure to check in on winter solstice for the update to Resonance and on New Year's Eve to meet our letter L in No Love Lost… 

Full Circle

I've been recovering from a concussion for over a week now. It’s hard to have one’s routine and process interrupted in such a way that it affects one’s creative method. I’m used to writing through the keyboard. I’ve never been one to dictate, but since looking at a computer screen gives me a headache at this point in time I am required to adapt to a new way to record my ideas and thoughts.

I remember as a child I relied on keystrokes and keyboard shortcuts for my digital work and play. One day my father came home with a mouse. I vowed I’d never use it. Well, I broke that vow and I adapted to the mouse in concert with keystrokes. I am still wary of touch screen laptops though as a result of my digital imaging background. The thought of fingerprints obstructing a clean view of my imagery makes me cringe. Now I am faced with the new adaptation of dictation. It seems that the words have always flowed more effortlessly through my fingers than through my voice. However, I have no choice and will have to practice listening to my stories and thoughts out loud rather than through my inside voice, which leads me to my experiences from yesterday…

On my way back from my doctor's appointment I walked by the lagoon hoping to see the salmon run. Although I'll be out of full force commission for the next two weeks my doctor recommended that I extend my walks and keep to low-key activities. I had heard about the yearly journey of these determined swimmers but had never managed to catch their passage in time. It's fascinating to think about what goes through the minds of the Coho and Chum as they return to spawn. It always looked exciting in pictures and so I thought I'd make the effort and take my walk along the causeway where the upstream expedition begins. I find nature to be a calming force and so this seemed like an ideal low-key activity that included my prescribed walk. 

As I stood on the walkway with the ducks and geese, I watched the gulls along the edges of the bridge. We both seemed to be hoping to see fish fly up from the water on their fatal mission. I saw one giant Chum struggle against the current but no airborne Coho soaring up the fish ladder. But sadly, the reality is also that some take a dead end path and may not even complete their journey. While I initially walked away saddened by that thought, it wasn't long before a couple of heads bobbed up in the distance that made me smile knowing that a different cycle would be completed by those that took "wrong turns"...

And so, although I was equally disheartened by my doctor's revelation in the delay of my full recovery I'll head his prescription and speak my thoughts for now. I’ll look forward to catching up with Love Wins in December. Until then…

Resonance

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection…” Anaïs NIN

K is for...  Resonance at Love Wins for September. 

A prelude... 

Please be sure to come back as I add more over the month of October about my beloved feathered letter K...

Immortal Beloved

This month's Love Wins story is about a specific Jellyfish and the reality of this being's immortality...

Dog Days of Summer

I have not posted in Beautiful Creatures in a little while, having concentrated on my Love Wins series. However, I thought this fitting in that it reveals my own childhood experiences with my brother and family that have shaped who I am and I was inspired by the familiarity of sounds that can trigger such powerful memories. 

In memory of Richard Boissonneault 1945-2016

(July 24th, 2016)

The air resonated with the familiar whirr of static, like the sound of a breath as it escapes the threshold of one’s lips and snakes through a blade of grass held between one’s thumbs. That constant low pierce saturated the summer air but never revealed its source other than in the memorial shell of a previous corporeality. The preserved memory of alien husks are the only signs of these cyclical transient guests that remain bonded to the bark of the maples whose branches swayed in the summer breeze to filter the sunlight where she sat on that park bench watching it dapple through the leaves. 

It’s all about the framing… She lay there listening to the constant drone of the cicadas in the wee morning hours of that still August night. She had always thought of the sound as a source of comfort and a reminder of her childhood until he’d revealed his own loathing of their uninterrupted mating whirr that seemed to have no end. They had sat around that evening talking about different insects; a strange topic but one bug led to another and the conversation continued in ebbs and flows with imitations of the maddening perpetual familiar mating call of this cyclical insect. Now, as she lay there in bed she could hear nothing but that piercing buzz that disturbed the fluidity of her intervallic thoughts of the reminiscences of the weeks gone by that brought her to this point. 

The 17 year awakening of the cicadas seemed a fitting metaphor for the summer’s loss of her uncle that had brought her family together. With the exception of a few of her relatives, it had been about that long since she’d seen the greater part of her family on her father’s side. The family that she’d grown up with as a child, and for whom she’d had fond memories of in those foundational years of her childhood. She closed her eyes thinking back to that day of remembrance that had brought them together, focussing on the small wooden box at the front of the room that was once her uncle and she fell into sugar-coated recollections of moments on the farm with her cousins. She remembered the pig that wowed her in disbelief by her sheer size, for she had only really known the idea of a pig to be like the piglets that were suckling this giant sow. Each time her brother and her were let loose with their cousins it revealed a new curiosity, from feeding the goats, the softness of touching the ethereally downy fur of the angora rabbits she remembered eagerly waiting to brush, to the mischief and contrary nature that simmered beneath her shy and sweet demeanour. 

She smirked as she recalled riding a horse for the first time with her cousin’s at the neighbouring farmstead. As she got on this huge splendid animal she could barely contain the smouldering anticipation behind her soft manner to feel that moment of connection as she and this horse would begin to race through the open field. She was warned not to touch the backside of the horse behind the saddle and that cautionary advice inevitably sparked her contrary nature. As they began to trot her crooked smile revealed her intentions and her hand slowly reach behind the saddle to gently tap the horse on its right haunch sending the animal into a wild gallop as the two shot forward in a breathless moment that she can still feel over thirty years later. It is like those last moments of giggles of freedom before leaving when they’d find themselves up in the rafters of the barn flinging their bodies into the void of that weightless moment before landing in the hay beneath. 

These irregular visits to her uncle’s farm were always filled with moments of wonder, mischief, connection and childhood whimsy. They are moments that will always remain with her, they are memories that she still cherishes all these years later. She can recall the tenor of her uncle's voice and those family gatherings. In loss she has been given those memories once again that were not forgotten but simply squirrelled away for days like these to revisit when she needed a smile.  

The more loving one...

I'm a little late this month in publishing the story for my series exploring courtship, mating and bonding among species. Nonetheless, I made it in time for July with the latest from Love Wins... In June I explored H for Humans. This month my story came to me thanks to someone who recently introduced me to the work of Auden. The More Loving One, a poem by from his book Hommage to Clio (1960) iwas the inspiration for my narrative on the letter I.

H is for Humans

While H was for a brief hiatus Love Wins is back with a mirror for the letter H.