Here comes my last day at the cidery and we celebrate at Lady Smith Christmas parade. I have felt I wanted to party for a while, impatient to make my legs dance, to make my lips shine; thus, I am getting ready like I was partying all night long in Paris.
The following hours are endlessly beautiful. Cold, loud, cheerful and childish. I feel like I am 3, I feel like I am 15. The town lights up in a perfectly planned schedule as the crowd cheers it, us included. Firefighters trucks honk shiny and happy. There are more Grinchs than Santas in the parade. We run after fireworks from one house to the other like we were playing our own version of “Red light – Green light”. We end up at Kieran’s mum’s place, quiet and peaceful like a church, drinking ciders and eating crepes like any good French would do. And my night is weirdly hung over when I haven’t even drunk that much…
I leave then, tired, but I go. Late like always. After a clean up in my car. After a fond goodbye to Sunny. After a clumsy see you soon to humans. The sun is cloudy as my tires screech on the gravels and I am ready for my next adventure. I leave like if it was not really a departure, like if I was coming back soon. I leave without pain, like it was part of my daily life. I leave without a tear even if my heart squeezes.
Thus, for almost a month, my days have slowly and sunnily flown gardening, pressing appels or blueberries, flying with the blue heron, listening to the hoopoe’s secrets, dancing with talkative sea lions, running with voles in the weeded trenches, playing hide and seek with our neighbour bear, exploring this mysterious island, making inspired parallels between life and gardens, growing my own roots, drawing my way to tomorrow, feeling epiphanies in my heart about what we leave behind, how we grow old, what makes us wise…
My heart has felt unbelievably tired, my body has endlessly ached, my soul has felt lazy for days. I have felt feverish, uncertain, full of hanging questions, mute, oblivious and profane, then finally peaceful, light. Poetic. I have been transformed by nothing, changed by everything. I have gazed at the bay for long hours, lonely, moved by the morning fog, silvered by the waxing and waning moon, browned by autumnal sun, blushed by setting or rising sun. I have admired landscapes smiling, raining, icing and snowing in one day. I thought I had turned the world upside down, living my winter in September and my autumn in November; I though cold was only a rocky memory; yet, Canada played up a bit.
I think I found here my own personal meditation, fingers in the dirt, heart on the moon…. I knew this island would play a role in my life; I had foolish hopes that, never coming, didn’t ache, I had unknown expectations that, revealed, changed me. I knew I needed to be here, even if the island wistfully brought me back to some evanescent memories for a weekend, because my heart finally processed this place that become a good remembrance of one part of my beautiful past where I don’t want to go back to. Because I am here and it is not the Olympic Peninsula. Here is better. Here is a beautiful promise for my future.
I have new desires, spread in Alaska, blossoming for real today. In Alaska, I dreamt surrealistically; here I dream grounded. Projets narrow down, find their own timeline. Nothing is frozen, everything may change. I go one step after the other. I feel like in front a blank page, the same I had to fill up one year and a half ago, I reorganized month after month and still impacts my daily life now. I focus on my opening doors, I am devoted to what I can help and I leave the rest to moon random. I still have two months of travel to find new windows for my writing, to be surprised and unexpected…. To be perfectly balanced with the stars.
Justine T.Annezo – Nov. 28-29th 2019, Cowichan Bay (BC) – GMT -8
Fleeting Wor(l)ds 