What if everything you’ve done so far in your life has all lead up to this moment when you realize it was all wrong? At this epiphany, does everything suddenly become meaningful and worthwhile? Does that make all previous events right if they lead to this?
Yes, if it effects a new plan, a deliberate change in direction and velocity. At sea, when on a collision course, there are two ways of avoiding disaster. One is to change your course, usually by steering for a place behind the point of imminent impact. The other means of avoidance is to change your speed.
Black…with cream
Usually, slowing down is the prudent and courteous way to prevent that theoretical collision. If every moment of your life has, with all the changed directions, the starts and stops, the collisions and near-misses, placed you here at this moment, on the heading and speed as it is with the intentions and attitudes you have acquired, then perhaps there is a cosmic plan for our brief existence. Dunno? Me either!
Some days I feel like the fabled hoop snake. When threatened, It swallows it’s tail to become a hoop which rolls away downhill to escape. The trouble with that is the acceleration is constant until the inevitable abrupt stop. A friend, lost for more than thirty years suddenly appeared on the dock last week. All work came to a stop after the tearfully happy reunion with this person and their travelling companion. The next twenty-four hours were very intense and rich with a lot energy being exchanged. I felt drained at the end of it. It was a wonderful time of affirmation and closure about certain things but I felt the need to take the weekend off and recharge rather than carry on with the completion of my Cheoy Lee project.
I have a home in Ladysmith, in the Northern part of the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. I live on my boat, but it is rather nice to get away on occasion; especially with all the gringo yachters roaming the docks. I love the valley. It is splendid to explore and discover new things that have been here under my nose throughout the quarter- century I have lived in the region. I also confess to a great envious inner stirring with the blogs from my friends Tony and Connie presently touring in the South of France. So this blog is a photo essay on the Cowichan Valley, “Guys, don’t forget your homeland. Take this!”
aka visible fart
chickens for sale for fifty cents
“The environment is everything that isn’t me.”
….. Albert Einstein
OK, OK – so the Cowichan Valley has some wonderful food, vineyards, charming farms, dogs on strings but what you have which far surpasses France is good coffee! I have never had such a bad choice of coffee to buy for the home than here. I don’t understand this as even walking the coffee aisles in the supermarket one doesn’t smell coffee nor even at the local coffee van at the market?
Tony:
Wonderful as ever to hear from you. How I envy you guys. I’ve had great coffee in French restaurants but I think it was ….Italian! I saw a wonderful film yesterday about the snobbery of French cuisine called ‘The 100 foot Journey’ it may not even play in France but, if you get a chance to see it in English, don’t pass it up. Jill, who knows the places you’ve been visiting is intrigued with your blog so take that as a compliment. For me, all else grinds to a halt when your next post arrives. Thank you. A la prochaine. fred