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January 2008 - joy, beauty and tragedy
I have tried to write about my trip to India. Two months have gone by and all I know is that my life will never be the same, but I can't explain why. My feelings there were intensified by the discomfort, the uncertainty and the lack of a daytimer (a disconcerting experience for a recovering control freak like myself). In Pune, my home base, I did a family constellation session and an emotional expression workshop as well as many meditations and vast quantities of dancing barefoot in a long flowing maroon dress. The most interesting meditation was the three hour AUM meditation which took a group of us through 12 minute exercises of 12 different emotions in 3 hours. We started with anger and ended with peace. My favourite 12 minutes was "crazy" in which I found myself chewing up and spitting out half a box of kleenex while I rolled myself around the floor wrapped up in a mat. I enjoyed that. The Osho meditation centre provided ample opportunity to connect to places in myself I hadn't ventured into before. I had never grabbed a pillow and pounded it into the floor screaming at the top of my lungs. That's something you just have to do. Outside the workshops, dancing and meditations, a significant experience happened one night on our way in a taxi from Tiruvenamalai to Khozikode to see Amaji, the hugging guru. We had been driving for nearly 15 hours through the lush, monsoon swept rural beauty of Kerala; the driver was getting tired and driving too fast in the dark. We were only half an hour from our destination. There were 3 dogs in the middle of the road. In one of those surreal movie-like moments I watched as the driver didn't slow down like he should have. Only two of them got out of the way in time. Life was like that in India. Joy and beauty and tragedy all rumpled up together.

December 2007 - india
I am still jet lagged, in a time warp, feeling like a completely different person than I was before I left. I can't begin to find words to express the vastness of the experience. I do recommend it and will be going back next year. Some western people go and never come back. I can see why. Life is completely different there, inside and out. Osho - the man and his teachings (now that he's gone) and the meditation resort, are well worth checking out, especially for anyone who is curious about an alternative path and/or disinterested in western religions. The workshops, the meditations, the atmosphere, people from all over the world descend on Pune, a typical Indian city of four and a half million. It was an opening, an immersion into a place and a way that I have been looking for and writing about for a long time, with no knowledge of where I might find it. I have found it. Osho's way is, I think, the most logical way to enlightenment. He says, "success is accidental, fate is accidental, but bliss is not accidental."

November 2007 - 40 something
I just turned 46. And I feel good.. I'm leaving soon for my first trip to India. I keep asking myself why I'm going. The closest thing to an answer is ... for my freedom. It needs a kick start. Something feels stuck in me, and it won't get unstuck. I think meditation will be the way for me. I realize I could just stay here and meditate, but I haven't, even though I've been saying for years that I would, and I'm pretty sure I won't. So, I'm going there to do it. Or, possibly for something else. I'm going because I can, because everything conspired to make it appear to be the right thing at the right time.

October 2007 - firecrackers
I'm not a fan of firecrackers. Maybe I'm a stick in the mud. I should just get good ear plugs. But, I have a dog. When she hears firecrackers, she must think the world is crashing in, because she becomes highly agitated, whines and whines and wants to go outside. You have to let a dog out during firecrackers or fireworks only once, to know, they might not come back. So, if I had one wish this Hallowe'en, it would be that firecrackers would become obsolete. There are alot of things in our culture that don't make sense to me, and I realize, it's all in the name of fun and mischief, but firecrackers have to go.

September 2007 - a field

A field can feel so good
So unbelievably fragrant and wild and fresh
When not mired in one's need for
More substantial things
like knowing one's worth, one's purpose
One's usefulness in the world.
and these things are not unimportant.
But, a field, just the standing in it
And the brief moment of knowing its complexity
Through one long deep breath
Is surprisingly substantial.

August 2007
I have just returned to work after a three month sabbatical. It was a blur really, I can't even remember what I did all summer. I lived free of work responsibility and tried to pay attention to what I love to do, and just do it.My strong tendency to organize, and be responsible however, kicked in, and my summer of "freedom" did not have much space for spontaneity or pure unadulterated play. How do kids do it? I could not free myself from a way of living that revolves around planning, organizing and controlling every element of my life that I possibly can. But, it was a good beginning and a solid effort. Will have to try it again next year.

June 2007 - condoland
I will soon move out of a condo I've lived in and owned for ten years. The location is condoland: Kitsilano, Vancouver BC. Some people like it here. Never a quiet moment in condoland. I like it when it's raining hard and people decide to stay home. Because, otherwise they're out racing around in their cars on my street; or manicuring their lawns and greenery with any manner of electrical and gas-powered device. I guess I prefer nature in a more disorderly fashion. The leaky condo situation has come to my neighbourhood as well. Five buildings in a one block perimeter have undergone the tarps in the last 3 years - two of them co-ops. My thoughts on that one are extensive, but what's done is done. Since I am moving from a condo into a "room in a house" I have decided to downsize drastically. I have three large chests full of "stuff" I've kept, some since childhood. It is now strewn around my living room and bedroom. Piles everywhere. The piles of my life. I feel like I'm sorting through pieces of my insides I've allowed to hang around for too long. The rain is pelting today. If it could talk, it would say let it go, let it go. On another note: a favourite new singer-songwriter from Vancouver: Adrian Glynn. Check him out. You won't regret it.

May 2007
I'm an impulse planter box flower buyer. Sometimes, I'm embarrassed to say, I don't even check to see if they need full or partial sun and I plant them randomly in my boxes, some in full sun, some not - like a planter box russian roulette. I find out mid summer which ones I planted in the wrong place. Planting flowers in my balcony flower boxes has helped me survive in the city. As if survival were enough. Why do I have to be so hard on the city, I wonder? I guess it helps me figure out what I don't want. Quiet is what I do want - inside and out. Outside is becoming more and more difficult to achieve, even on the rural, sleepy island of Galiano, where I live part-time. I've thought about building a sound-proof studio to block out all outside noise. Yah. And then when the noise starts, I'll just go inside and play music and not come out till it's quiet again. In the meantime, I will continue to practice meditating when the leaf blowers and weed eaters steal the relative quiet I am trying to find, wherever I am.

February 2007 - petrified
I am petrified that the life that I chose is a concretized rose. I am petrified that there will be no compromise. That money and power will always overwhelm what is real and I will be standing in the space between enemies whose hate comes from irreconcilable difference, ignorance and the understandable need for comfort and security. I am petrified that I may never move beyond my own stuckness well enough to be able to figure out how to protect this earth as I stand by and watch it perish.

January 2007
For C.C.
She spoke with an air of authority,
though every word seemed laced with soft white designs
intricately woven to hold together pieces of beauty
that perhaps had been overlooked by others.
The energy pushed out hard from her power of expression
combined with a razor sharp wit
and ability to inform the sad humour of arrogance with
the collective will of pure earth acting through fleshy souls
stumbling and losing their way
while they stubbornly hold on to impractical
but wholly perfect desire for the wild to survive.

December 2006 - crazed heart
If I would only listen to my own advice and pay strict attention to what my heart wants without exception, then life could only get better in ways unimaginable. But, I still give my mind top priority and what does the rational voice say? Oh no. You can't have that. You can have this over here, much less than what your heart is asking for. This is your life. You chose it. Your heart is crazed. It is out of touch with reality. It is soft, it doesn't know what's best. It is dancing on the extraneous left-overness of what you deserve. And is it ever trying to get my attention.

November 2006 - no mo snow
I have just survived the great snow storm of November 2006. When I first saw the snow falling softly on Galiano's forests around me I was like a child, in awe of the beauty of nature. Three days later after having no power, no running water, no phone and no snow plow I was still like a child - having a tantrum . . . what an opportunity to figure out how to enjoy myself without any of the usual comforts and distractions ... suffice it to say that the power was out for 5 days and I can't say I handled it well, though much progress was made on my songwriting and some character building took place.

October 2006
Click here to view the film I made with 4 other women at a one week intensive at the Galiano Island Film School this summer. Go to Film Library, then Documentaries. Scroll down one page and click on "Born into Bodies." I also acted in the Drama entitled, "Bloodlines." There are many other excellent short films posted on this site.

October 2006
Recently I have heard the phrase, "Sue, I just want you to be happy." Good intentions aside, not meaning to slight anyone who wants me to be happy, I'd like to be free to feel whatever I feel, happiness or not. I feel a subtle pressure to be happy, partnered, successful, stoic, beautiful, wealthy, etc. The thing of most value (for me) is what my heart holds and is willing to express, no matter what it is. If I were to die tomorrow I would not regret the lack of happiness in my life. If I regret anything, it would be not expressing myself as honestly and freely as I want to. If someone wants to wish anything for me, make it that.

September 2006

I don't know where September went. But it's gone. I have been writing, but not as much as I've been "doing". The more I do, the more I think about meditating. I haven't quite managed to do the meditating yet. I'm too busy doing things that need doing. So where does that lead me? I remember the sense of "never having enough time" that used to permeate my life. I noticed it mostly when I was talking or visiting with people and I would always feel like I was in a hurry. I didn't have time for idle chat. There was always something I had to get to. The perpetual list in my head was very long and whatever I didn't get to (either because I didn't really want to do it at all, or because it lessened in priority) would keep recycling itself through the list along with all the new items. So, what it is that I'm so busy doing? And when will I stop all the doing and just be? It's definitely time for a meditation retreat. I seem to need to remove myself from my "life" and go somewhere where my phone and email and dog and home and various obsessions are not. There I can take the first deep breath I may have taken in a very long time.

August 2006

I finally (after 3 years of good intentions) made it to Swing Camp in Sorrento. A week of music and vocal workshops, dancing, performing and camping, eating and cajoling with 180 other serious swing music lovers. What a lovely thing to do and how incredibly fortunate that a bunch of great people started it 6 years ago. At meals we talked about the joys and challenges of loving, playing and performing music. It was superb, and not without the usual challenges to comfort level and ego that don't arise while practicing in the living room. At lunch one day a woman said to me, ".... you know, I think music can change the world". Swing Camp in Sorrento has definitely changed mine.

July 2006

Well, I saw Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth and I have to admit it's been a bit of a rough go since. My natural inclination is to ignore the worst stuff, so as to prevent despair. I had been hoping that the media's glazing over of the seriousness of global warming was the truth. Since I saw it I've been madly searching the web looking for some kind of reassurance that the "herding of the masses toward doom" as talked about by Jim Hoggan in The Tyee is something we can reverse. He says "there is a well-orchestrated campaign taking place in Canada, the U.S. and Europe that is actually designed to slow down public understanding of climate change." Yeh, I know. It worked on me. The other comment I like in the article entitled, "You Can't Spin Mother Nature" is "... spin is alot less expensive than change when it comes to climate change." He goes on to say that " ... anything that stands in the way of the public understanding what this problem is, is slowing down that process ... because in the end it's public demand that's going to change business and government." As inconvenient as the truth can be, this one is worth it.

June 2006 - alien

Back in the city after being on Galiano for 2 weeks. I feel like an alien. Thank god for the trees and ocean in this city. I understand that the city does not annoy everyone the way it does me. I could survive and maybe even thrive here if I had to, but I don't. I have found something other than the city to sustain me - a place where silence and space are the long waited-for haven where I can live in a way that suits my sensitivity and need for creativity.

May 2006

(written on Bodega Ridge)

I could live on this rock with these trees
and this wind
and this ocean before me
and drink in its stark beauty
too lush for words
and let the ocean breeze pick me up
and carry me to a heaven
no greater than this one

April 2006

Nothing much to report. I won't resort to bad poetry, of which I have lots.

March 2006 - my asylum on Galiano

I have been reclusing (relatively speaking) on Galiano for 6 months now. For several years previous I had been feeling increasingly grumpy and irritated by city noises, speed, and just people in general, including myself. Of course I could choose to accept or reject those things external to me, but it was easier said than done. I am reminded of a great film I saw recently called "Asylum" in which R.D. Laing's "asylum" houses in England in the 70's are documented. A story is told in the film of a man who came into one of these houses (where people are allowed to "be crazy" without treatment if they wish) and went to bed literally and did not leave the room for 3 years. Yes, it was messy and a strange thing to do ... he was allowed to go "down" until he was ready to come back up. I liked the idea alot and thought about what my own version might look like. Then I moved to Galiano and the next thing I know I'm alone alot with very few distractions. I don't even have access to email on the island, and only 2 mediocre t.v. stations. You can only imagine how "crazy" an urban person might go under these conditions. I'm still trying to figure out what's happening to me there. I do know that I am no longer grumpy or irritable and that I listen to birds alot. I'm also developing an unusual desire to grow vegetables.

February 2006 - ramblings

I realize now that this page is not named correctly. I will change it to "ramblings" when I get the time. Maybe I've been on an island too long but I've been paying alot of attention to the wind and the trees lately. I wrote this during the last windstorm ... "... sway trees, and tell me the secrets you breathe through your leaves and how you bend with the wind in an arc of fragility as you grasp the wind's whisper while you stay utterly strong and fastened at the ground ... are you laughing now as the sky exhales and then rests so you can prepare for the pushing and pulling of air moving hard and fast ... air on a mission to get somewhere and you tree, are in the way ... if you fall tree, it will be nature's way and you will roar with a hunger for the ground that is stronger than your desire to stand ... it is the colour and the smell of you that brings me closer so my soul can remember that I am just a tree with a brain that thinks way too much ... "

January 2006 - complete chaos

Is it me, the full moon, the accumulating energy of kazillions of people becoming more desperate in the world ... what!?!? Truly, I feel as though I may do something crazy soon. Not criminally crazy, just personally crazy. I would enjoy it right about now. I know other people feel it and perhaps like me have no idea what it is exactly, or what is to be done. This very minute it feels like there are frazzled and frustrated molecules banging into each other all around me. As I open my mouth to breathe I take them in and start walking around with this unpleasant feeling that something is just not right either in me or in the world. This is a familiar feeling, but much more pronounced than ever before. A bunch of possibly unrelated thoughts: I watched the Golden Globes last night - all the women's breasts looked the same to me ... same size, shape, everything. Many years ago a woman sat up in a tree for months to try to save it from being cut down. She succeeded and it was saved. Most of the entire forest around it was decimated. Today, I got a big glossy magazine in the mail, the "Healthy Aging Business Review" advertising and promoting plastic surgery and beautifying procedures. Have you heard of eyelash extensions? Later in the day I talked to someone who's daughter had nearly died from anorexia and she had started the "Looking Glass Foundation" to raise funds to start a healing centre in the lower mainland for young women with eating disorders (there are none). In any given day I feel tremendous optimism and devastating despair whirling around me and I just try to stay calm. Maybe it's time to do something crazy.

December 2005 - time of reckoning

I feel this is a time of reckoning for me. This is the time of my life when I am fully aware of the choices I have made and the nagging question of whether or not it was really me who made those choices. I am thinking about freedom these days and the apparent abundance of it in my life. There is something holding me back from embracing the freedom that I have created for myself. Most recently I've been thinking a recurrent thought - I'm in the wrong place. I don't know whether place means location or where I am sitting on my own path in life. It all feels self-indulgent at times and I scoff at my insistence that the pursuit of desire has spiritual merit. Pursuing desire has not stopped me from thinking, feeling and worrying way too much of the time. This may sound like complete hogwash, but I think there is a voice, an energy in the air, in fact coming from many different sources that has been telling me my entire life that my real purpose is motherhood and anything other than that is a lie. If it's true, why have I acted so deliberately to pursue my creative and personal interests? This is when I start wondering why I wasn't born a boy so I wouldn't have felt that I had to choose between them.

November 2005 - island girl

Some people have taken to calling me a hippie freak, which I like. How I ended up living on a small forested gulf island with more deer than people I'll never know. But, I am there for the next year and have become quite comfortable building fires, chopping kindling, talking to the trees and having the choice of only two mediocre t.v. stations. I drive a '71 VW van between the island and Vancouver, where I go to work occasionally and can't drive faster than 55 miles an hour. Apparently, it's time for me to slow down. Being alone alot is a challenge but a necessary state for me right now. In the city there was simply too much going on outside of me to be able to make any sense of what was going on inside. When I return to the city I feel the onslaught of an energy that I can't really define. I've been in big cities before - San Francisco - and never felt the same aggression and negativity I feel in Vancouver. That was 15 years ago, mind you. I'm beginning to wonder if there is an ideal place for me to live, where it would be. I can't see staying on Galiano full-time or long-term. Will just have to see where the wind takes me.

October 2005 - moving on

I recently attended my 25 year high school reunion. It sure took me back in time and made me wish for some things. I wish I had known in high school how much bigger the world was than how I saw it. I wish I had known that I was just starting out as the person I was becoming and that who I felt myself to be was partly other people acting through me. I wish I had known that the struggles were necessary in order to move anywhere worthwhile. I wish I had not believed that I needed other peoples' approval SO much and I really wish I had seen myself in a more positive light and had acted with more self confidence. Aside from all the wishing, going to the reunion also made me realize that I am thrilled to be over 40 and to have figured out the things I have. I think as long as self discovery moves along as it should, life really does get easier. (except for the hard times) I'm giving up a life that's rooted in anything but acknowledgement of and movement towards what makes me happy. This isn't so hard to do, except for the undoing of the bad habit of thinking I should usually do what somebody else wants.

July 2005 - everything bugs me

I don't know why everything bugs me but it does right now. Maybe I've got nerves made of butterfly wings or maybe I just can't handle getting older. Maybe I live in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong body. Maybe I've mishandled my love relationship one too many times. Maybe I was never meant to be a podiatrist or a musician and I willed them both to happen for temporary reasons. Maybe I should have adopted that little girl from Nepal 7 years ago. All I'm trying to do is figure out why everything bugs me. I'm taking a deep breath and telling myself to relax and let it all go, because life just keeps moving and I have to too. In terms of my current situation, I will just have to do my best to keep looking for beauty amongst all this bleakness, because that is what keeps me going.

May 2005 - putting off what I most want to do

I'm not a procrastinator. But, sometimes when there is something I really want, it comes with a thin veil over it, so I can't really see it clearly. I know I want it, even without being able to see it, but the veil slows me down somehow. I think the veil is put there purposely so I have to look really hard to make sure this is something I really want. I watched "Field of Dreams" last night and especially loved the story about the doctor who had given up his dream of being a major league baseball player because he knew medicine was a calling for him. Even when he had a chance to turn back time and become the major league star he had always wanted to be, he sacrificed it to save a little girl's life. It made me think about my own passions and dual love of medicine and music. I ask myself now, is it necessary to choose? And what exactly is the choice I'm making? Is it a choice to commit to my creativity (which I've already done) or is it a nagging feeling like I have to let go of the pragmatic, practical me in order to fully express the creative me?

April 2005 - the thing I like about tulips

The thing I like about tulips is that they're kind of like people. Sometimes they're straight as a rod, reaching for the sky with pride and confidence; other times they're slightly droopy at the neck with a haggard and tired look; and other times they're fully fallen over with petals falling off and standing only because the vase is holding up the stems. Right now I'm a purple tulip that is leaning heavily with frayed edges and a petal just about to fall ... but with a fresh stem cut and new water, I could snap back to life. I have nearly finished my first year of music school. As the classes end and my time is freed up I try hard to remember what I used to do with all this time. I'm sure it was music related in some way. The value of formal schooling, I think, is that someone who knows a whole lot more than me decides what I need to learn and smothers me in mountains of work in order to get me to learn as much as I can. The whole time I'm thinking I'm not learning anything, other than how much I don't know. But in the end, I start to realize that now I know many things about music I didn't know before and I can even imagine how I might use those things to write better songs. Mission accomplished.

January 2005 - the snow storm of snow storms

I've lived in Vancouver for 14 years and I've never seen this much snow. What I love the most about it aside from snow clumps hanging from all the tree branches is that people get out of their cars and walk. What a joy that is. I actually talked to a neighbour who was out shovelling her patio with a dustpan. Why that brings me joy I'm not certain. I guess I'm in a post-tsunami phase now and my perception of the world and life in general has shifted ever so slightly. If a tsunami can hit southeast Asia it could certainly hit the west coast of Canada, couldn't it? For me, that's enough reason to look at life differently. Interestingly, I just saw an infomercial for the World Wildlife Fund - they were talking about how Canada has the most lenient laws for oil spillage from tankers and they say that if you're going to spill your oil and waste in anyone's waters, come to Canada. How can that be? Again, it's tempting to feel pretty hopeless about it all. What will one small person like myself do in the context of a world that seems to be hell bent on destroying the environment ... hmmm ... easier just to not think about it at all.

January 2005 - oh yeh, the tsunami

It's mostly the children and the animals I think about. It's not that I don't think it's tragic that adults were swept away to their death, it's just that the children and animals are the most innocent. I read an article in the Westender this week that made a connection between westerners' overconsumption and the massive global weather changes that are occuring. I wondered, was this tsunami a direct result of years and years of gas guzzling cars, destruction of our forests, and the spewing of an enormous amount of toxic waste into the environment? I also read that these areas of the world that were affected are inhabited by people who live very simple lives and are very spiritually evolved. As I look around my 750 square foot condo I look for evidence of simplicity ... hmmm ...

December 2004 - Eminem and condoms

Christmas with family can be such an illuminating experience. One of my favourite things this year was taking my nephews to Norquay ski hill - listening to Eminem and discussing the relevance of his lyrics on the way and talking about condoms and other subjects that young men don't necessarily want to talk to their aunts about. I discovered that one of my young nephews has grown up into a bright, loving, creative 25 year old and the other is struggling through the troubled years of high school - probably quite normal, but worrisome for me. We talked about kids having to fight (girls too) and the teenage joys of substance (ab)use. It reminded me of how important it is for me to stay in touch - auntie Sue on the sidelines offering my quirky perspective in the hope that I can help to open their minds and imaginations and to simply be interested in them as people.

October 2004 - busier than I ever thought I could be

Now that I'm married to the music program at VCC, music is everything. All day, all night, all weekend, every spare minute is spent studying, practicing, listening, creating, learning. The VCC program is challenging and time-consuming and fantastic. When the feeling of regret (that I didn't do this 20 years ago) comes along I try to just let it be there and wait for it to go. Regret is a waste of time and energy, period.

September 2004- busy writing songs

By far, the hardest part of trying to rediscover the artist in me is having to endure the voice that keeps telling me I'm no good and never will be, so why bother trying at all. I guess that's when my rebellious, mouthy side comes in handy.

August 2004 - tired of all the crap

I dreamt I was on death row last night in a space suit with a small orange tinted window to look out of and it was hard to breathe. I was packed in with a bunch of other similarly clad people being wheeled somewhere. I had an especially dark day yesterday and for a short time forgot that the dark times always pass. But, the dream is still with me today and I think it's about keeping my world small and distorted somehow by paying too much attention to my thoughts rather than feelings. Can't let the mind override the feelings, though it constantly tries.

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